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before you make a decision, read the article I link to below.
In short, buy windows vista, if you do NOT play video games, or watch dvds, or play cds on your computer.
if you do, then stay as far away from vista as possible.
The following article link was posted on an IT pro website, the content is solely the work of the person that owns the site it is hosted at.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...vista_cost.txt
You know, I don't quite get it. There's a huge chain of elements here. The content itself must support DRM. The operating system has to. The media software has to. The motherboard has to support an encrypted bus. The graphics card has to. The sound card has to. The external audio system has to. The display has to.
Of all the (sub)companies that create these parts, it benefits exactly one: the content providers. For all others, it means reduced functionality and increased production costs. Oh, and I believe there are license costs, too.
So when is any of the others going to say, "Wait - why do I support this?"
yup.
but it's also why I posted the link, so that people can see exactly what the DRM / content protection / anti-piracy is going to mean.
let people know, and let them make their own choice, knowing.
if you know you won't be able to do what you usually do with vista, will you spend the money buying it?
most people would say no.
Don't get it if you want game playing? Sorry but that's currently Microsoft's only method of getting DirectX 10. Also who cares about DRM and anti-piracy measures? We all know Windows Vista is going to be hacked. It might take a little while, but it will happen. Also even if it never does get hacked, why should it bother you? Unless of course you are pirating things. :p
Microsoft can never create a everlasting pirating system. People will figure ways around it like a million times before. This does not really anger me anyway. If theres license costs and decreased stability because of it that will very much anger me.
decreased performance or no performance for your existing software.
degraded audio and video if they don't use a specific encoding and hardware type.
so it's a cost to replace all software and movies and music just to be able to use them on vista.
far worse than the supposed software incompatability with xp.
[ I've seen windows 9x apps run on xp no problem, yet the current xp version of these apps won't run on vista ]
Granted I don't intend to purchase Vista right away, but I will probably end up purchasing it at some point. I'll just wait to see what happens. My bets are on a service pack within the first year. ;)
As has been said, I'll probably get it when:
1. There are many new games out that only run on DX10.
2. SP1 is released.
Though I've found almost nothing good about Vista previously, this article was a topper. I was looking forward to the outpouring of 64-bit drivers with the release of Vista which would alow me to install XP 64-bit on my dev box without any nagging issues. It appears likely from this article that these drivers may either not function on XP or they may function in a less-than-optimal way.
Chances are good that I'll never buy Vista, and it's a guarantee that I won't even look at it until at least SP1. The methods used to push Vista on the consumer are attrocious as well. All the stores hype systems you can purchase now and you'll recieve a free Vista install when it ships. Theres DX10 for Vista only, which is a giant slap in the face for so many of us. And since Vista-ready hardware will be the only hardware available from now on, we'll all be paying the price regardless of what we use. And to think I was once interested in the latest Windows release (long before they chopped everything good out of it). Things were going in such the right direction with XP too...
Though the intentions may have been admirable, the results are abysmal. Far worse than 98 or ME IMO. *disgusted*
>> Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support
I think this is the most annoying feature. I've got a hard time trying to get a working printer both in Linux (with CUPS) and XP. If this one is implemented, I can't dual-boot again with the same machine. Do I have to have 2 different machines for each OS? WTF are you doing Microsoft????? :mad:
I don't see how MS could force hardware manufacturers to keep those technical details secret. Vista is supposed to run on current hardware isn't it? And of lot of that hardware has third party drivers
And what about software like Ndiswrapper? Maybe I just don't understand this HFS thing.
Should be interesting to see what happens during the time Vista is current. I wonder how much of a foothold Linux will gain. At anyrate, I also don't see much of a point with using 64-bit just yet. Sure the extra memory sounds nice and all, but unless you have more than four slots you'll be stuck using 2GB modules. Last I looked those weren't cheap. :p
"Coming soon, Windows Vista (R) Hospital Edition (R), and Windows Vista (R) Air Traffic Controller Edition (R)..."
So the time when the computer pipes up and says, "Sorry, Dave, but I can't do that," is on its way. Except instead of not letting you kill it because it is malfunctioning, the computer will simply be preventing you from playing a movie (whether you paid for it legitimately or not is irrelevant, the KEYS are invalid!).
Next Microsoft will be asking CD/DVD drive manufacturers to implement a mechanism to turn the drive into a brick with a "pirated DVD" inside. The rationale? It will prevent people from even considering pirating premium content if the threat of hardware failure is there. (We'll just ignore the false positives that will occur due to error or malicious troublemakers.) And when CD and DVD drive manufacturers balk, a "critical security update" will come out and suddenly, the only time your drive works is when you install the OS (assuming you didn't buy your computer with windows pre-installed).
Hell, why not make Windows a "subscription service OS"? If you can't connect to the internet, tough. Microsoft won't care when they're raking in $39.99 a month from each of the other people who are actually paying this!
On the other hand, perhaps they would send you your unique reg key in the mail each month to make sure Windows doesn't stop working. You won't have to get online then, you'll just have to appease your computer every month with a string of 1024 letters and numbers that will come encrypted on a USB Flash drive, so you'll have to plug it in and use it before your current windows subscription expires or you'll have to buy Windows all over again and re-install it!
No, no "re-activation" of windows as this would leave access to someone to hack the re-activation... "I'm sorry, Ma'am, you allowed your installation of Windows to expire. There is no way to retrieve your family photos or financial records. You agreed to this when you began using the program. Would you like to purchase a new and improved version of Microsoft Windows for only $249.99 plus a monthly subscription fee of only $39.99 per month? Since you previously had a valid license I can offer you a 10% discount, so that would only be $224.99..."
As an added security measure, once you have renewed your subscription to Windows, it would set about re-encrypting your entire hard drive (over the course of a day or two for the REEEELy big hard drives out there) with the new encryption key based on your reg code. This way, if you let windows expire, you can't even throw the drive into another machine to retrieve your stuff. More incentive to keep up on your subscription (talk about a hefty late fee!), and if the crackers fail even once, all their hard work becomes an encrypted paperweight that will only be useful again if the HD is reformated...
Oh god, the nightmare! It's one thing to make it difficult to copy stuff. When it's moderately difficult, the casual user won't bother, more difficult and the dedicated user/cracker won't bother, and this can ramp up and up and up to infinity, but there will always be a cracker who can and will crack the security no matter how tight it is.
Apparently Microsoft (and/or those who are encouraging them such as "premium content providers") either doesn't believe this truth, or they don't care about the collateral damage they cause in trying to "one-up the pirates". They need to make the security "good enough" to thwart the casual, dedicated and perhaps even ambitious crackers, and then realize the damage caused by those who are left is worthwhile to keep the program useful to the rest of us who are willing to pay for the program.
The footnote is though, that Microsoft are a corperation that will continue to grow. I am not a MS fan, but it all boils down to their products and the rate and price they offer the comsumer. Vista. for the long hall of it, has not been advertised as much as XP or even ME was. This is largley due to the fact that it has had a few tech hitches. When it is finally released to the market, it will sell.
Many of the newer machines will be pre-installed with vista. But saying that, how many people do you think will ditch XP? I for one will not. MS are well kown for bringing out a new idea and placing a big red bow with a tag that says "please buy me". I have never been pursuaded by this, and the fact that Vista has been a big topic of debate does not push me into buying it.
If I do, I would get it with a new machine. But like I stated on another thread, why would sombody want to be pushed into getting Vista when what they have is fine for what they need? Ok, so it can cope with Direct X v10, but how many newer games are going to run with that?
I do not use my PC or laptop for games. I have a console for that. You can look at windows OS like compilers. Look at MS6.0. Still used today, although rather buggy and not very compliant, but it still gets the job done to a certain level. Then look at 2005 version. Much better in looks and feel, and has one of the best compilers out there, better than MINGW.
Again, people still use the older compilers over the newer ones, so the same is said with people using Win 98 over XP.
It is a long running debate that will not be solved anytime soon
Given the hardware situation, Linux might actually lose market share, because that new, shiny Vista-enabled hardware might not be supported.Quote:
Originally Posted by Frobozz
One more reason to hate the whole thing.
I sent an email to the author of the article.
his response indicatesthat the article was a security list posting originally, and that it was written very early in the testing stages.
from what litle input he has gotten from vendors since this was published / posted, MS has actually been working on these issues.
I'm no fan of MS software, but I didn't think MS would be stupid enough to release something as bad as the article suggested. by knowing how bad it was [ with the information about it being early testing period for the article ] anyone that does buy vista won't be shocked when some stuff doesn't work right, or is unusable in quality. and they won't be upset if it isn't a large percentage of their existing software / media library they have to replace.