WINDOWS VISTA

No, that's when you install Linux.

Use this thread to make fun of other badly-named products or Windows in general.

Microsoft Bob, anyone?

Or their famously ill-named Critical Update Notification Tool.

Windows ME to thread.

Ha! I'd EXCELSIOR both of you guys, but I'm sure I'd get beaten up on the way to my locker.

omg.

After a coworker rather unkindly commented that the name made them think of a cheesy nacho plate, it was decided that they should have really called it Windows Chimichanga. "Chimichanga" is one of those inherently-funny words.

"O S she was taking me over and O S it was the start of the summer"

please help me stop

does anyone know how big an update this is supposed to be? did they rewrite the kernel or is it mostly superficial stuff? what are the main improvements? do we finally get widgets?

Windows Vista from this day forward
you will also be known as Mad Watcher

Supposedly this *was* going to be a big update, but currently they've dropped WinFS, Avalon and, er, something else I can't quite remember, that were supposedly the big features of it.

In it's current state it's more like a particularly garsih theme on top of XP, i.e. this one could really, really fuck MS

sounds pretty snoozy.

(xpost whats winfs and avalon?)

Avalon is the graphics subsystem, much like, you guessed it, Apple's Quartz Extreme, which would use modern graphics hardware to render the OS.

*okay, so BeOS had it first

Apparently it wasn't, though.

I just realized how funny Windows ME must have been for those in the UK.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Windows XP SP3 scheduled for second half of 2007. Y'all are never gonna see Vista.

Anyway, to clarify, yes the file system has been delayed and will come a little later; however, a new search based on metadata which runs over the existing file-system (which is how Apple does it) will be in Windows Vista.

Windows Vista is coming out in the second half of this year, and the new graphics engine will be in it. For those who don't know, the entire GUI - folders, applications, pointers etc - will be built using vectors (rather than bitmaps as it currently the case with Windows and OS X) which will result in a smoother look, and ability to scale over different resolution without getting tiny icons/text. Also, with the entire GUI running over a graphics card (rather than in Software which Windows currently does, but OS X doesn't) the CPU is free to concentrate on other tasks.

True, the interface may look a little ho hum, but that's why you can chance themes poeple...

There are also enhancements to make the kernal much more streamlined, one of the results will be a new Audio driver model which will mean even lower latencies for pro-music people - I'm particularily interested in that.

Although Microsoft has stated that WinFS will not make its wide reaching debut in Windows Vista, users of the 5219 build noticed that WinFS is in fact included in that version. Several Windows 'rumor' sites and newsgroups such as Neowin and Paul Thurrott's Windows SuperSite have made speculation that WinFS will in fact be ready on time for Windows Vista's release.

system processes rather than files but...
http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/

They should have called it Windows Vectrex. Then I'd buy it.

Granted, they've probably made a lot of progress over the last year and a half, but.... yeah.

system processes rather than files but...
http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/

When Linux was on my machine I had a 3D-walkabout file manager, but I can't remember what it was called. It was very good though. You could walk up to video files, which were represented by big boxes (as was everything, really), and hit the space bar on them to watch them!

My worry is -- it looks like absolute shit. If you thought the XP look was bad... well, you were right. This is probably not worse than that. But still, get a load of this turd of graphic design. Apparently Misty Valium is the "in" color right now. And squattier, harder-to-press buttons made with default Illustrator effects! Be still my heart!

Worse of all, installing it wiped out my dual-boot install of Ubuntu. Fucking crap. And you just KNOW that trying to yank this sucker out after I installed it will destroy the machine. You can't even upgrade Explorer and then downgrade it without braking the OS, much less upgrading the whole OS. I see a reformatting in my near future. What a world, what a world.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=24113

http://www.clearification.com/

I did actually sit there for the better part of a half hour and listen to his the musings of his that play automatically. I like that guy.

The only major issue I've had was when I installed PGP Desktop 9.x last week. After install, it rebooted Windows, at which point I received a BSoD, then Windows rebooted, BSoD, rebooted, BSoD. I got a little freaked, and anticipated an OS reload - but I restarted in safe mode and ran the restore point utility, which had automatically taken a snapshot of the system prior to the PGP install. All fixed! I was impressed.

In fairness, this would happen under XP too.

To be more specific, the install doesn't work, and can fubar the OS. I had a lot of entries in the registry saying the PGP software was installed at "C:?Program Files\PGP", which may have had something to do with it. I thought maybe the service firing up was causing the problem, but I disabled it and still got the BSoD.

A guy on the PGP forum found this workaround, which I discovered too late:

I am with you all here but I have found a hack err.. workaround.

1) set the compatibility mode for the installer file to Windows XP SP2

2) install PGP when it gets to the part where it says Vista is not complaint start another session of your installer

3) further inspection reveals the installer complains about
c:\windows\777B2D3774E543FAA3794F930502A0D7.TMP\WiseCustomCalla2.dll if you should see this just hit OK several times.. and it will install on Vista

4) now make sure the PGP service is disabled and delete any Run level services that are associated with PGP this needs to be done before the reboot

5) once reboot start the PGP service manually and then access your PGP desktop to crypt or decrypt your drives

This will get PGP 9.5.1 Desktop and Enterprise to install after that is just a lotof tweaking back and forth.

PGP Corporation's bullshit position is (still):

Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 3:14 pm Post subject: PGP Corporation Position on Microsoft Vista Compatibility

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PGP Corporation has long demonstrated consistent support for the latest operating system offerings from both Microsoft and Apple Computer. Due to the fact that Microsoft's Vista operating system is not yet a shipping product, PGP Corporation cannot commit to a specific date for PGP Desktop 9 compatibility. As always, we will provide compatibility as close to the release date as reasonable efforts permit.
_________________
Robert Johansen
Senior Backline Support Engineer / Forum Administrator
PGP Corporation

Maybe Vista's a little smarter about when to set restore points? I remember using restore points under XP and having mixed success (i.e. restore point was far enough back in time that I fixed the immediate issue but also wrecked some functioning programs).

Dudes, I'm thinking seriously about buying a shitty cheap Dell desktop for home usage.

Should I go Vista or XP??

lol!!! from the beginning

BUMP

XP! i installed vista now nothing works :(

Right now my impression of Vista is that it is like a model; very, very pretty but spends most of its time eating a bag of sick when your back is turned.

i still haven't looked up 'defenestration' but the joke makes me smile every time

it's not a joke

xxpost That's the way it goes, bro. If you want Vista, you gotta get a new machine, and not a flimsy one.

This is one reason sales of Macs keep climbing. If you need a new, expensive machine anyway, and you always had Mac kinda in the back of your mind, well hell, here's the perfect excuse.

i have a dual-core monster with gigs and gigs of RAM which is all pointless because nothing loads! latest drivers, patches, everything! thank god everything that isn't gaming i have a mac for

From what I understand, if your machine doesn't have that "Designed for Windows Vista" badge on it, you're going to have a helluva time. I used a Vista beta (as detailed upthread), but finally had to wipe my drive and drop back to XP. It just... never... quite... worked.

i would but i can't be bothered anymore

i mean there must be more to life than re-installing windows

I know, it's a fucking nasty diseased bitch, but I finally decided that XP was still better, no matter the trouble I had to go through to get back to it. It took months.

perhaps i should give up and get a 360 :) or a life :(

I just discovered that the machine I bought apparently has a BETA version of Vista on it. Cocking fuckfaces.

Bring it back!

srsly, no new machine should require you to buy a new OS. That's a mistake, has to be.

It was a refurbished machine thatI bought in July. I only discovered this over the weekend.

grrr.

i think it should be called WINDOWS RUBBISH

Windows Bagofdicks

Windows FUCK YOU BUY A NEW COMPUTER

WINDOWS NUDE SPOCK

DO NOT WANT

It's great if you call it Mojave!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9998336-56.html

http://gizmodo.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/07/vista_flatad_01.jpg

fail

Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1, wtf?

Oh my god. Never mind the OS being 'helpful' by throwing 800 warnings at me every time I boot into it, never mind how hard it is to find really really simple settings. Last night I used itunes to populate my new ipod (I want genius, orright). This morning I woke up to find that Vista had helpfully installed updates I didn't ask for and helpfully REBOOTED itself without asking me.

Can someone please explain in simple terms how the FUCK Microsoft is still in business?

btw I found the setting to turn off auto-helpful-rebooting, it's buried five levels deep in a hidden sys app called gpedit.msc

Those updates were incredibly, incredibly critical.

Without them your computer was vulnerable to a newly discovered exploit.

windows has had autoupdate as a feature for a while. the rebooting thing is irritating though.

I've just been trying to stop this but I can't get to 'gpedit.msc' - when i try and search for it it says it can't find it. So frustrating the whole rebooting thing.

My beloved parents-in-law they phone me every time this happens.

Ah, screw it - you can't do it on Vista Home it seems...
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/570289-gpedit-msc-missing.html

'irritating'

I went to the country for a short holiday. The car thought I wasn't using it, so it automatically drove itself home without telling me.

I dunno how, but I disabled auto update the minute I got the PC Im on now. Never does 'em on its own anymore. Nice.

Those updates were incredibly, incredibly critical.

Without them your computer was vulnerable to a newly discovered exploit.

lol true but guess who knew about that exploit and vulnerability for THREE WEEKS before bothering to patch and announce?

also the funniest vista reboot story I've heard is one of my coworkers was on a WoW raid as the hunter/DPS guy and right towards the end of the instance his machine popped up with the UPDATES HAVE BEEN DOWNLOADED SEE YA IN A FEW and missed out on all the loot + got laughed at by everyone

Can someone please explain in simple terms how the FUCK Microsoft is still in business?

because everybody keeps buying their shit pre-installed on every new computer? and macs are back to being almost 2x the price for everything? fuck it even if you ditch vista immediately so you can run ubuntu you're still paying for the license.

I got a call at work a few weeks back from a woman who was convinced somebody was hacking her system, because she had gotten Vista Ultimate. She described all the "symptoms" that were making her think she no longer had control of her new laptop and I was like "yeah Vista does that... yeah, Vista Ultimate comes with that..."

and macs are back to being almost 2x the price for everything?

That's fucked. I had the money ready to buy a Macbook this month, too. Not going near one on principle now.

I love how people have "principles" when it comes to computer operating systems.

wtf? Principle as in it's too freaking expensive.

wait, you were going to buy a macbook, and you had saved up the money, but now it's too expensive?

hahaha

Tom I think you mean that Apple isn't focusing on crappy, underpowered machines like the Mac Mini any more.

the mac mini is powered fine. it's as fast as a macbook. in fact it basically is a macbook w/out a screen.

wait, you were going to buy a macbook, and you had saved up the money, but now it's too expensive?

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, 28 October 2008 03:40 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

$2100 for a 13" laptop with 1Gb memory and a pissweak hard drive is too expensive.

is vista still seen as shit? im buying a new pc for gaming, bit of music-making, photoshop, dreamweaver + general internet stuff, and wondering if it's time to ditch XP and move to vista

I installed Vista last week, and it doesn't recognize my internal hard drive on which I store the vast majority of my MP3s. :(

is vista still seen as shit? im buying a new pc for gaming, bit of music-making, photoshop, dreamweaver + general internet stuff, and wondering if it's time to ditch XP and move to vista

also, in uk, all new basic PCs come with 1Gb memory - is this enough for Vista for my kid to do his homework/internet stuff on as all PCs now have Vista installed as standard (you can sometimes pay more for a downgrade-to-XP option !)

My laptop last year came with vista and it was 1gb RAM and it was ok (though i still upgraded to 2gb anyway once i saved up the cash)

im getting a friend of a friend to build a rig up for me so the option of XP is there - and £70 cheaper. i dunno though, im spending quite a lot on it so im thinking vista will worth it as it'll be the dominant OS in the next few years, plus it has directx and other such things to make games look/run better.

directx10 i mean

omg under no circumstances should you switch to Vista. Unless you want your high powered new machine to actually respond slower than your XP machine.

also not sure what "rigging" you are doing to access XP but if you are installing VMware you will probably have problems. I tried running VMware on a Vista box at work with no luck at all.

Vista's not worth having - not convinced Windows 7 will be much better

Problem Ejecting USB Mass Storage Device - Windows can't stop your 'Generic Volume' device because it is in use. Close any programs or windows that might be using the device, and then try again later.

Yes, that would be you Windows Vista. You are the program that might be using the device. Probably for indexing. I am now turning off the device anyway.

i have to work with vista at the office. wretched OS. xp isn't perfect, but it's streets better than this shit.

^^^ true, it's not worth having, that's all there is to it. It ain't a mac and never will be. Still, it came installed on my new pc last week and I haven't had any problems with it, it's extremely fast (though that's probably the pc itself) and error free up to this point. I made it work and look like it was XP first though. Cut out all the visual shenanigans and it works like a charm.

xpost to blueski that was.

I made it work and look like it was XP first though.

is there a big buttton in the control panel that does this so i know how to set up my kids crimbo laptop on boxing day ?

change to classic view

ah ha. that old trick. thanks.
thought it may be something deeper in Vista.

I made it work and look like it was XP first though

im planning to do this too if i get it. so no one got a good word to say about vista?

I prefer vista (at home) to xp (at work & the past) but I can't really say way. Turn off the annoying stuff and it's quicker/slicker that's all.

Should I replace my trusty 8 yr old Toshiba notebook with a Mac or a new PC? That is the question... I haven't tried Vista yet and I ain't used a Mac in years.

Horses for courses...?

eight years! good on you

I'm quite proud that I wasn't enticed by the marketeers into buying another machine during that time. And kudos for Toshiba for lasting the course! (and it's still working).

And maybe I've answered my own question.

story on slashdot yesterday about how dell have tripled the cost of 'upgrading' from vista to xp from $50 to $150.

N------ M------- had vista recognize the driver and still fail to install.10 minutes ago

story on slashdot yesterday about how dell have tripled the cost of 'upgrading' from vista to xp from $50 to $150.

it gets better:
According to Dell spokesperson David Frink, the fee consumers have to pay to “cover the download request [that] has always been $20-$50”, depending on the platform. And that apparently did not change. However, there is a separate charge that Dell cannot influence, which is a required Windows Vista upgrade that “has always been $100-$130”, Frink said. We were quite particular to inquire which charges pop up when and where, but all Frink was willing to divulge was that Dell chooses to offer Windows XP to its customers as an option and is not forced by Microsoft to do so.
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/40501/140/

So basically, if you want XP, you have to pay for Vista anyway and then buy XP on top of it.

Microsoft tax

If you aren't keen on Vista, try the beta of Windows 7, fixes most of my complaints with Vista.

i really can't deal with that vista bs. this past summer i had to retire my 6 year old G4 and ended up replacing it with a pc laptop for $$ and freelance work reasons. i scoured the city until i found one with xp already installed. my poor parents' new pc has vista and my dad (who's never really used a pc to speak of until the last year and a half or so) is absolutely baffled. i can hardly help him, especially over the phone : /

I got a pre-activated XP Pro disc from my last job and I treasure it dearly.

try the beta of Windows 7

Oh, the lols.

serious lols. publicly releasing a beta two years after vista went on retail? how's the profits on your gaming business?

*punches ballmer in the shoulder* you hangin' in there, bro?

unless windows 7 gives you head while you word process you can pry xp out of my cold dead hands

From what I’ve read, Microsoft are going back to the 2/3 year release cycle they had until Longhorn/Vista got a little stuck. e.g. Win95, Win98, Win2k (and Win ME), XP (late 2001) so the beta release of Win7 isn’t entirely unexpected.

unless windows 7 gives you head while you word process you can pry xp out of my cold dead hands

Guess who's in luck????

I still can't get over how Windows 7 is Windows 6.

Windows 6.1 no less! and 6+1 = 7!! -Z-

Does anybody know how to get email messages from a copy of Outlook Express on an XP machine into a Windows Mail acct on a Vista machine? None of the usual export/import things are working...

i just got a laptop running vista and it started installing several fixes/updates right away. knock on the wood in my head, i haven't had any issues with it yet.

Does anybody know how to get email messages from a copy of Outlook Express on an XP machine into a Windows Mail acct on a Vista machine? None of the usual export/import things are working...

bit of a faff - but this could work :

hook up your outlook express to a newly created hotmail acccount (or have they cut OE access from hotmail by now ? ), create a seperate folder in your hotmail account, drag all the emails from your OE archive over into your new hotmail account.

now hook windows live to this new account, and bobs your uncle, you can download the messages into windows live.

i very much doubt you'll be able to post files etc etc.

If I remember right, export on OE was not as good as just locating that weird profile subfolder with your mail in (with all the .dbx files and whatnot) and just copying that folder to a disc, then importing those files to your new client, assuming you haven't already tried this.

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20090113/beta_fish_610x380.PNG

Windows 7 now in, um, betta.

So anyone installed the 'Release Candidate' version of Windows 7 yet? Vista hasn't let me down yet but it has some annoying niggles and I hate the interface. I'd be tempted but realistically I'm not IT savvy enough to deal with any problems if my install goes tits up.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

If you're not keen on the Vista interface, you'll not find much different in Win7. I’ve actually been using it as my day to day home OS for about 6 months-ish now from the orginal beta - it’s pretty much based on the now-stable Vista base, but with some good tidying up where it counts. The new taskbar is perhaps the standout new feature, but a lot of small bits here and there add up to more than the sum of the parts.

Plus, the font manager has been overhauled for the first time since Windows 3!!!

I am frankly relieved to find that I never contributed to this thread!

man when I saw that last post I got excited and hoped this thread had turned into urination puns

it's a slow day

Er... what exactly do you expect on an IT thread??!

i have vista 64bit but i'm keen to play old games on xp, via the xp emulator thing on windows 7. is it worth d/ling and testing this out now? will the fact that im 64bit mean a lot of games and programs won't work even with this emulator?

is there any word on how much it'll cost to upgrade to windows 7 from vista? i just shelled out over £100 on it just a couple of months ago so i'm a bit hmmm about doing it again so soon

gutted

"Microsoft has said that Windows 7 will be offered in Europe without the Internet Explorer browser on board."

If there isn't any browser included how are people in Europe going to download Firefox, Opera or IE?

gopher

^lol

I think there will be a separate install on the disk. OEM's will still bundle a browser, so ordinary consumers will not be affected, and I assume if you upgrade Windows 7 will pull all of your apps for a new build, although they may not run unless you have super premium or whatever.