Why Vista?
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I know that a certain amount of you will want anything new just because it's the latest & greatest toy to play with. So, we'll scratch that reason up front as I'm talking about tangible benefits. Vista will also sport a new Neat & Groovy set of eye candy. Again, sexy for geeks, but no real tangible benefit. Having arbitrarily eliminated those two reasons, what are the functional benefits of upgrading to Vista? In other words, besides having a ton of new security / permissions hassles to deal with (not to mention compatibility problems that seem to dwarf all predecessors), what will I actually be able to do with Vista that I can't already do with XP?
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalStrategyConsulting.com
While there are a lot of people saying negative things about Vista even though most of them have not used the system, it is much the same when XP came out an people where saying it was Windows ME SP2, but now must of those same people are running XP whining around that they do not want to move to Vista. Those will be running Vista in a year or two like everyone else! Anyway, I have to agree with Judah Himango. Beyond that though, Vista has a backup program that actually works, a user interface that is far superior to XP, and if you are a web developer, IIS7 that will drastically change things once Vista Server comes out. Even now though IIS7 brings with it the ability to run multiple websites on the box just like Windows 2003 server, so you are not limited to just one website node in IIS such as XP Pro. If you upgrade to one of the top models of Vista you also have media center built in, along with Virtual PC (I have had problems with but I am sure it is due to beta versions). Out of all the things that Vista brings though, it is more of the small things that would sell me on it even if none of the features mentioned came with it (although I doubt I would pay as much for the upgrade if it was only the small features). I have started a list of the small things I find handy in Vista, but there are a number of them I forgot to post: http://rockymoore.com/tech/archive/2006/10/28/786.aspx[^] Windows Vista is a "polished" version of Windows with attention to the small details which most people will appriecitate once the use the system for a while. Vista will dominate the Windows market, and for developers that means we better get use to it ASAP. While a good portion of the business world will watch and wait, when they move, developers need to be ready. Another feature is that 64 bit verison actaully works and will be supported for the future as most companies will focus on support moving forward and XP just in not in the picture anymore as a future technology. I am not saying that Vista will be the end all for everyone but it is a great upgrade Windows and comes with many new features and technologies natively not added on to an older platform. Also, .NET now is a full citizen, not just another addon, different tools in Vista are built using .NET and many with .NET in mind. One last note, "some" have mentioned the
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Judah Himango wrote:
Start menu that makes sense: every machine I go to, you click the Start->rograms and *booom!* the whole screen fills with program entries. Vista's new Start Menu solves this problem by making the menu a limited size with scrolling.
The option to choose between a multicolumn or a scrolling startmenu if you have alot of icons exists in XP. I don't recall where, but do remember having to switch from scrolling to multicolumn before. Other features that I've cooled over the descriptions of are per app volume control at the OS level. Mute the browser so embedded audio anoyances aren't heard. Double or tripple the volume on my DVD player so I don't blow my ear drums in switchig back to winamp after watching a movie. Delete in explorer reports undeletable files, but doesn't halt on the first error reported. Sound (and some other??) drivers moved out of the kernal so they won't bluescreen you when they crash. I'm not sure which version I'll get, but my fall07/spring08 PC will probably be running some version of it.
-- Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.
dan neely wrote:
Delete in explorer reports undeletable files, but doesn't halt on the first error reported.
Give me my Vista! This has always annoyed the crap out of me.
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
Neat & Groovy set of eye candy. Again, sexy for geeks, but no real tangible benefit.
I'm a nerd rather than a geek, and I don't like eye candy in my OS. Such things are not for nerds (and I doubt geeks want them either), they are for everyday users who don't know any better -- i.e. most of Microsoft's market share. I like icons and toolbars that are small, non-distracting, and customizable. I'm now running IE7 which I hear is a precursor to Vista, but I hate hate hate the oversized buttons and crap, I want a "classic" mode. I probably won't go to Vista. I did install the Beta 1 on a system which is now collecting dust in a closet. I hope Vista goes the way of ME, I'll wait for the next one.
Did someone mention Luddite before?
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To be fair you cannot turn off the OS X boot sound without resorting to 3rd party apps or writing your own bash login scripts. Rather annoying.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland FeedHenry needs you
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
What does it sound like? I can't actually remember the last time I rebooted my iBook, though - I vaguely remember logging on a couple of months ago, but since then, it just gets put to sleep when I'm done with it.
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What does it sound like? I can't actually remember the last time I rebooted my iBook, though - I vaguely remember logging on a couple of months ago, but since then, it just gets put to sleep when I'm done with it.
It is a short, quite sharp but low note. I have to reboot to get at Bootcamp when needed.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland FeedHenry needs you
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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I've posted on this at least twice before in the lounge. Unfortunately the search isn't digging it up. Here are some reason I'm planning on moving to Vista: Security: users run as non-admin by default, which is difficult to do in XP (something I've been doing for over 2 years, and it is a major pain) An improved shell: check out the breadcrumb bars, the save file dialogs -- things have really simplified, and simple is better. Search: search actually works and it's fast (and hey, there's no little doggy :)). And with Search folders, you can basically have dynamic folders that update themselves automatically. For instance, you could have a search folder that contains all image files containing the word family. The folder automatically updates as you save new family photos to your computer. Parental controls: see what games your child has been playing, and for how long. Set time limits on games, rating limits, and at what times they can be played. Haven't looked at internet parental control yet. Start menu that makes sense: every machine I go to, you click the Start->Programs and *booom!* the whole screen fills with program entries. Vista's new Start Menu solves this problem by making the menu a limited size with scrolling. That itself isn't great, but you can type in a search box embedded right in the start menu to find any program. In practice, this if far faster than visually finding some program group floating among a hundred others. DirectX 10: Vista only! If you're a gamer (my wife and I both are) then Vista is a must for this reason alone. Better UI: sure, the eye candy, visuals, and animations makes XP look like Win 3.1, but they've actually improved on UI design. Have a look at this blog post[^] for a quick skim of some changes in Vista's UI design. Those are just some off the top of my head. I suspect Vista will easily supplant XP as the dominant OS in the coming years. *edit* oooh, almost forgot. A new network stack built from the ground up with IPv6 support. In addition to security and performance improvements, it lets you do cool things like Windows Internet Computer Name[^], no Dynamic DNS required. :cool:
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Trollslayer wrote:
In a single user environment XP's security is fine
Tell that to my brother, who's single user machine was so bogged down with virii and malware there was little option left but a clean install! :) Search...there's so much more than "searching" to search. Virtual folders are very cool and very useful, but you might not realize they are using the excellent search under the hood. IPv6, Windows Internet Computer Name, drivers outside the kernel (thus, fewer blue screens due to bad drivers)...so much more.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: God-as-Judge, God-as-Forgiver The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Was his A/V software up to date? Or present?
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Why the hell not!? Are they mad!? VS2k3 is the last usable IDE in the Visual Studio series.
-- From the Makers of Futurama
VS2003 works fine under Vista in most scenarios. The scenios that don't work can (in most cases) be worked around. The same is true for VS6 and VS2002.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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Was his A/V software up to date? Or present?
That's the whole point. Most home users don't and as a result the net is riddled with botnets. X| Vista could change that - although the change will cause us lots of pain as the tools we use need to do things most user apps don't. Remember Sony's rootkit trick? I doubt if that would even have been possible under Vista with UAC enabled.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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I take it you can still mute across all apps with one simple mouse-click or keystroke, right? (And to be honest I have never wanted to set different volumes for different apps.)
regards, Paul Watson Ireland FeedHenry needs you
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
Yes, it can.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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VS2003 works fine under Vista in most scenarios. The scenios that don't work can (in most cases) be worked around. The same is true for VS6 and VS2002.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
What scenarios are we talking about?
-- Verletzen zerfetzen zersetzen zerstören Doch es darf nicht mir gehören Ich muss zerstören
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Why the hell not!? Are they mad!? VS2k3 is the last usable IDE in the Visual Studio series.
-- From the Makers of Futurama
It may mostly work, but PSS won't take support calls on it. Yes, they're flaming idiots, and I've told them so, and told them that it blocks Vista adoption. They're not interested. This isn't really the Windows team's fault, moreover, it's DevDiv's.
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
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It may mostly work, but PSS won't take support calls on it. Yes, they're flaming idiots, and I've told them so, and told them that it blocks Vista adoption. They're not interested. This isn't really the Windows team's fault, moreover, it's DevDiv's.
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
PSS? Product Support Services? :~
-- Verletzen zerfetzen zersetzen zerstören Doch es darf nicht mir gehören Ich muss zerstören
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In a single user environment XP's security is fine - I have a firewall and antivirus and am fine. Search? Barely use it. Next!
Firewalls can themselves have vulnerabilities. When did you last patch your hardware firewall? Someone has to first catch a new virus, notice, and submit a sample to the antivirus vendors before they can produce an update that will detect it. This can take some time. You should strongly consider running as a low-privileged user. It stops many drive-by exploit attempts in their tracks because the developer of the attack code expected you to be running as administrator. A hypothetical zero-day exploit could still load itself into your user account's autorun locations and wreak havoc in your account, but would be unable to hack itself a hole in your software firewall, because that requires administrative privileges. I've not been an admin on XP for the last couple of years (I know the Administrator account password, but my regular account is not a member of the Administrators group). It can be painful at times, but only when you need to do admin work or have an application that is truly user-unfriendly. For example, right now I'm loading new firmware on a Symbol MC3000 device. The loader software, TCM, only supports USB if the user is an administrator - I assume this is because the driver itself has an ACL that only allows administrators to access it. I use either RunAs or Aaron Margosis' MakeMeAdmin[^] batch file to temporarily elevate my privileges. A particular annoyance is that the Network Connections control panel cannot easily be made to run as an administrator, so adding or changing IP addresses is out. I've got used to using
netshto work around this.Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
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Ah yes, I forgot about the driver changes; at least sound and video drivers are outside the kernel. And because of that, fewer blue screens (which are almost always due to bad drivers). :cool:
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. I'm currently blogging about: God-as-Judge, God-as-Forgiver The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
Sound drivers are in user mode, video drivers aren't. Video drivers change due to needing to virtualise the GPU in a way that wasn't necessary before, but they still run in kernel mode. IIRC when the Desktop Window Manager is on (accelerated desktop), GDI and GDI+ become software-rendered. You lose any 2D-acceleration capabilities. This can make legacy non-WPF apps (i.e. virtually all apps) render more slowly. I found that IE7 on Vista was noticeably slower at rendering CP than IE7 on XP.
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
want to reach for my wallet
Don't you own an MSDN subscription?
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -Brian Kernighan
Software obtained through an MSDN subscription is for development and testing only. It cannot be used for general business use (Office excepted). You must have an OEM or full retail product licence for your desktop operating system. Volume licence copies are only permitted for upgrades, not for the first OS on a system (you are not supposed to buy a bare system and install a volume licence copy on that).
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
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What scenarios are we talking about?
-- Verletzen zerfetzen zersetzen zerstören Doch es darf nicht mir gehören Ich muss zerstören
Thuings like attaching a debugger to services, I believe. If the IDE is running as a normal (i.e. non-elevated) user, the debugger may not have the required permissions. Running the IDE with admin permissions (which is in fact needed to register COM DLLs during a build anyway) should get around most (if not all) such issues. The changes proposed for VS2005 are more making it aware of UAC and the privileges it enforces than fixing anything fundamentally broken.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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It may mostly work, but PSS won't take support calls on it. Yes, they're flaming idiots, and I've told them so, and told them that it blocks Vista adoption. They're not interested. This isn't really the Windows team's fault, moreover, it's DevDiv's.
Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
I actually agree with you. It is daft, and they are being short sighted. Nevertheless, earlier versions of Visual Studio will still work on Vista if required. We are still using VS2003 ourselves (VS2005 is just not stable enough to be less than annoying, yet) and that is one of our test cases.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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Thuings like attaching a debugger to services, I believe. If the IDE is running as a normal (i.e. non-elevated) user, the debugger may not have the required permissions. Running the IDE with admin permissions (which is in fact needed to register COM DLLs during a build anyway) should get around most (if not all) such issues. The changes proposed for VS2005 are more making it aware of UAC and the privileges it enforces than fixing anything fundamentally broken.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Thanks for the informative reply Anna!
-- Verletzen zerfetzen zersetzen zerstören Doch es darf nicht mir gehören Ich muss zerstören
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Thanks for the informative reply Anna!
-- Verletzen zerfetzen zersetzen zerstören Doch es darf nicht mir gehören Ich muss zerstören
No problem hun. Michael Lehman (head of the Vista Evangelism Team at MS) is almost certainly the guy to talk to about IDE issues with Vista, BTW. We met him at the weekend at ESWC 2006 in Cambridge and he's pretty approachable. :)
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"