Microsoft Vista: getting stuck with it. By Pappy McFae
On the heels of The Linux Project, this is my review of the latest offering from Redmond, Washington. I feel compelled to write my opinion about Windows Vista. It came pre-installed on my new Compaq laptop. Had my tax check come earlier than it had, I might have been able to get a new machine with Windows XP on it instead. Alas, it was not to be. No matter, I wanted a new machine, and I didn't really care what it had on it, as long as it worked better than any of my other machines.
I haven't had a new computer since the 486 DX2/66 chip was considered bleeding edge. Oh yes, that was the time when a math coprocessor may or may not have been included in your chip, and there was a separate socket on the motherboard for it. I'd say it's about the same time I began playing with Linux. Every computer I have had since that time has been used. They were also at least two years away from bleeding edge. So, when the opportunity arose to buy this machine, I was all for it!
I love the machine. It's a Compaq C504US. It came with 512 megs of RAM, 100 gigs of hard drive space, a Celeron M chip at 1.83GHz, widescreen display, DVD-ROM/burner, wireless internet, and so many other lovely things. It's a very nice system at a very nice price.
However, I get the distinct feeling that it would run a lot faster if it were running anything other than Windows Vista. Having worked on a few machines that ran XP, I can say a virgin installation of XP on a newer machine runs really well, and really fast. A full install of Windows XP tips the scales at about a gig or so, depending on the options you choose. This install of Windows Vista comes in at a bloated 3+ gigs. That's just the operating system That's none of the other included programs.
Windows Vista is built to be very flashy, glitzy, and pretty. Unfortunately, all that flash and glitz comes at a price. That price is system performance. This machine should be running like it's tail was on fire, and it's ass was catching.
No such luck. Booting takes almost a full minute. Bringing up a program such as Firefox takes about as long as it takes on The Linux Project test system. That system is at least ten years older than this one. Talk about chewing on a Sux Donut.
There have been numerous reviews of Windows Vista. Few have been glowing. Most agree that those who are running well with Windows XP should stay where they are with that, and not take the big leap to Windows Vista. I am forced to agree with that assessment.
In my opinion, Windows Vista is Microsoft's attempt to give Windows a more "Linux-y" edge to it. For someone who has spent the past six months working with Linux, it's easy for me to see some of the Linux-y bits. The standard disk tree indicators, boxes containing + or - have been replaced with triangles that point to the right when the tree is collapsed, or down when the tree is expanded. The desktop actually looks more like the Linux KDE desktop than it does a Microsoft creation. The more I look at it, the more I see the similarities to Linux. Frankly, if Microsoft wanted to release a bastardized version of Linux with the MS moniker, they should have just done what Bill Gates did when he began Microsoft: rip it off and put their name on it. But that didn't happen. Instead, they made Windows Vista.
Windows Vista isn't all that bad. It's just not all that good either. There are some incredibly irritating bugs contained in it. Not the least of which is the inability for it to share resources on the rest of my networked machines.
Unlike Slackware, which not only sees every machine on my home LAN, it also can access every shared hard drive AND printer, Windows Vista sees NOTHING! I'm totally serious! The reason for this is that Microsoft no longer supports NetBEUI. NetBEUI is the magic behind file and printer sharing on my LAN.
The curious thing is that Slackware uses TCP/IP to share network resources via a program package known as Samba. Windows Vista also uses TCP/IP exclusively. Even after almost two hours of screwing with it, I couldn't get the new machine to see the rest of my network.
Frankly, that completely sucks! I am so used to being able to print to any printer in the apartment, or moving files from machine to machine, the fact that I can no longer do that is a real pain in the ass. I am sure there is a way around it, but that way has yet to present itself. From what I hear, you can install the NetBEUI from XP, and it is supposed to work. I am just about at the point where I am willing to do that.
I'd expect network inoperability out of Linux. I don't expect it out of Microsoft. I'd really love to know what the thought process was in the mind that thought it would be a big step forward to lock people out of their LANs. I mean, it seems a real stupid thing to me. If they are going to eliminate NetBEUI, then at least rip off enough of Samba to make my LAN accessible to me via TCP/IP.
Yet another irritation with Windows Vista is the "security guard". Those of you who have seen the Mac commercials with the guy that looks like a Secret Service guy behind PC know what I am saying. There are certain functions that, when you elect to use them, bring up this irritation. The screen darkens, and a dialog box pops up asking if I REALLY want to perform the action I just told the computer I wanted to perform.
I can see how this "feature" could save someone from doing something incredibly stupid. I can also see how it could prevent someone from accidentally allowing a bad web site from loading malware. However, I really have to say that someone who has been working with computers since the time of Windows 3.1 and DOS 6.0 can judge rather well whether or not they know what the hell they are doing when they tell a computer they want to do something.
You really need 1, maybe 2, gig[s] of RAM to run VISTA.
512 will boot up, but it's not going to run it.
That's not entirely true. I am typing this message right now on that new machine. It only has 512 megs of RAM. It's not the RAM or speed that's bothersome to me. It's the fact that I can't connect to my home LAN either with my wireless router, or by way of the wired network. This is supposedly because Microsoft thought it would be a nice trick to force people to read the provided help files trying to get connected on your LAN. Word is there is supposed to be a fix for that coming with the sure-to-come service pack.
If there is any reason I warn people against "upgrading" to Windows Vista, that would be the inability of Windows Vista to connect to their LAN systems. Not everyone can afford to plunk down $150.00 per computer for the basic Vista upgrade package for every machine on their LAN. When you consider the fact that only the most modern, hyper-ized machines are going to be able to work with it, once again, the price of Windows Vista really isn't worth it!
Perhaps in the future, Microsoft will realize that not everyone can afford to buy new computers just to stay abreast of their upgrade schedule and the greed therein. Maybe it's time that we all started flipping the bird in the direction of Redmond, Washington, and started using the bird known as the penguin; the official mascot of Linux!
Blessed be!
Pappy
by
Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 863 comments)
on Monday, April 16, 2007 at 7:34:27 PM
To be honest, I was into this .NET vision until Vista/3.0. Now I'm reconsidering my career with MS products. Unfortunately, outside of MS, there is not much happening in the computer world that pays enough to make a living.
Also, news to Microsoft. Most medium/small businesses are running with computers 3-7 years old. They don't need new computers for their employees.
They are not going to load Vista for a long time if ever.
MS Vista is not going to fly in these shops. In fact, I'm beginning to think the time is ripe for a Linux revolution to really get started. . .
by
e m (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 19 comments)
on Monday, April 16, 2007 at 11:51:05 PM
To be honest, I was into this .NET vision until Vista/3.0. Now I'm reconsidering my career with MS products. Unfortunately, outside of MS, there is not much happening in the computer world that pays enough to make a living.
Yeah, unfortunately, the open source nature of Linux and its associated programs pretty much squelches the possibility of making money from being on the front lines of the (hopefully) soon to come Linux revolution.
Of course, there are Linux distributions such as SUSE and Red Hat that sell their systems for a profit. While to my mind, this defeats the ideals behind true open source Linux, it does open the possibility for you to find a place where you might be able to pull in some money for your computer abilities. Of course, you could also delve into the world of Linux and be on the top of that incoming wave when it hits. Sure, the system may be open sourced, but not just anyone can install it, configure it, and make it run properly. That takes a bit more knowledge and talent than inputting a CD key.
Also, news to Microsoft. Most medium/small businesses are running with computers 3-7 years old. They don't need new computers for their employees.
And even if they do, are most businesses you know going to be willing to spend the long dollar Microsoft seems to be demanding for a less than stellar operating system? The wise businesses should be stockpiling as many copies of Windows XP as they can get. Until Microsoft realizes that the inability to connect to legacy LAN systems hurts Windows Vista more than it helps it, the only way that anyone is going to be able to put new machines on their LAN systems is to use Windows XP or Linux and Samba. This is definitely going to hurt their bottom line. If my review of Windows Vista can help hurt that bottom line, then I'll feel I have done my job. What happened to Microsoft's respect of backwards compatibility?
They are not going to load Vista for a long time if ever.
And considering the hoops one has to jump through to do that, it's a smart move. Considering the upgrades that will be needed to some older machines just to be able to considering running Windows Vista, I think, at long last, Microsoft has jumped the shark! It's about time!
MS Vista is not going to fly in these shops. In fact, I'm beginning to think the time is ripe for a Linux revolution to really get started. . .
I am all for that! Considering the experience I now have working with Linux, if that revolution comes perhaps I'll finally have the ability to make decent money again. Considering what it takes to run Linux versus what it takes to run Windows Vista, I think the tipping point has come.
Besides all that, Linux remains a much more stable system overall. As soon as I can swing the change, I am going to downgrade my new system to Windows XP and Linux (probably Kubuntu since it seems to pick up all the hardware on my new system). Even running Kubuntu from the live CD, it runs faster than Windows Vista.
Thanks for your comment.
Blessed be!
Pappy
by
Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 863 comments)
on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 2:40:00 PM
I know that the people on the various Linux sites I haunt would be aghast that I would get rid of one Microsoft operating system to install another one. However, since most everything that runs on a computer today runs under some variation of Windows, as much as I love Linux, I also love being able to use my business database and other stuff I created under Windows. That's the reason I went ahead and killed a day of my life in the pursuit of "downgrading" (really, more like upgrading in the sense of speed and usability) to Windows XP.
I say killed a day because setting up Windows XP on my new laptop was anything but easy. Now get ready for some techie speak. I know it's hard to follow or understand for some people, but it has to be done!
The biggest problem associated with setting up Windows XP on my new machine was the interface for the hard drive. While most older machines have what's called a parallel IDE (also called ATA or ATAPI) interface, the new machine has the newest wrinkle, the serial ATA interface, or SATA for short. While this might seem trivial, in the world of XP, it's anything but.
All Windows operating systems need to communicate with the hard drive interface. In order to do this, a device driver for that interface needs to be installed. The problem is XP doesn't come native with this device driver. It is an after market file that must be acquired from the Internet. Since my machine is so new, so close to the bleeding edge, there is no direct driver for the exact SATA interface. I had to go through three different SATA driver iterations before I found the one that made the system work.
Which brings me to the second problem. In order to install an after market driver, such as the one required to give me SATA compatibility, that driver needs to be installed on a floppy disk, and read at install time by a floppy drive. Now my new machine is SOOOOOO new, modern, whatever, it doesn't have a floppy drive. Anyone who has purchased a laptop system in the past few years (unless they spent the LONG dollar) got their new babies home to realize there was no floppy drive installed.
This lack of a floppy drive translated into another drive to Fry's Electronics, where I originally bought the machine, to buy a USB floppy drive. Forty bucks plus tax and about an hour and a half later, I was at home wrestling with the new-found joy of getting the right SATA driver, and installing it on a floppy using another machine. It seems that Windows Vista didn't like to program that put the device driver on the floppy disk.
That brought up yet another BFG (BIG FUCKING GLITCH). One of my roommates was recently sent a nasty worm virus. It destroyed all of his data, and rendered his Windows a mass replicator of said worm. Since his system is a part of the LAN here at the old Pappy homestead, the worm was replicated onto every other system on the LAN, including my big Proliant server. I inadvertently activated this worm, which did a number on the machine I was using to set up the device driver floppies. That meant I wound up having to re-install the windows on that machine before I could continue the Windows XP setup on the new machine. You could say I was less than amused.
The only bright side to that scenario was the fact that I only screwed up an inconsequential redundant machine. The only reason I bothered with it is it has the only functional floppy drive. Since I now knew the activator for the worm, I could search for it on the rest of the LAN. I found it on every machine! I removed it and checked them all for other viral infection. NOTE TO THE WISE, if you see an icon that looks like a folder, but says NEW FOLDER.EXE next to the icon DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES CLICK ON THIS FILE! It's a real Windows killer!
Enough of the labor pains, now onto the birth. After I ironed out the glitches, I finally got Windows XP to take root in the new machine. Boy howdy, am I glad I went through the trouble involved in installing Windows XP. It runs like a gazelle on steroids!
This is the way I wanted the new machine to run when I first opened the box and plugged it in! It only took an extra $200.00, three trips to Fry's Electronics, and a complete day to get to this point. Given the way this machine runs now, it was well worth it. I am very happy. I can now run my C++ compiler. I can run other things better. While I have yet to try out a DVD, I have a feeling the performance is going to so eclipse Windows Vista, it will make me wonder if anyone at Microsoft tried to play their favorite DVD under the atrocity of Windows Vista.
So, a little money and time invested removed Windows Vista from my new machine. Good riddence, I say! As soon as I can swing it, I am going to buy a few more copies of Windows XP before it goes off the market. That way, if I need to "downgrade" from Windows Vista again, I can do just that!
Blessed be! Pappy
by
Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 863 comments)
on Monday, April 23, 2007 at 1:46:04 PM
