@oyb

i see my name has cropped up in a number of your postings (or shall i call them rants) and i decided to sink low enough to respond.

it is interesting you have conceded that you have never used linux before and therefore resort to posting the opinion of others who essentially are windows fanboys. what you say is precisely the kind of gob expected from a linux bashing windows lover so your rants are not weighty enough. sure i didnt get those pix from www.windows-lovers.com or whatever but then YOU didnt copy-paste your opinions from www.linux-lovers.org either!

trawl the web and come up with similar linux pix as ive have posted.

unlike you i have the advantage of experience having used windows, linux and mac os x. my history began with MSDOS up to windows vista. i have used vista right from beta 2 before it even went RC, i used Mac OS from System 7 up to leopard, and i have dabbled with Unix. however im just beginning to use the desktop versions of linux.

infact, my very first system was an Amiga console with Dos, right before window 1.0

i have even used Solaris, which im sure you havent

still, im in a better position to judge for myself which is the better OS.

and the better-no, the best OS right now is none other than Leopard. sure, Tiger was more stable but for usability, stability, ease of use-Mac OS X leopard is the bomb.

next in line is linux.

next is windows xp.

and last is vista.

even BSD is better than vista if you look beyond the bling bling that vista emulated from os x. hey, everything good about vista was lifted form osx: spotlight for windows search, breadcrumbs for finder tabs, flip 3D for expose, gadgets for dashboard widgets, aero for Aqua translucency. even user account control.


its interesting that MS is rushing to get out Windows codename 7 to make up from the bad PR in the wake of vista.

i still use all three OS's but predominantly i use my Macbook and occasionally use vista for god-knows-what.

all in all, OS is a matter of personal preference.

lets leave it at that.

lookit whos talking about ranting -     

i suppose all those 'why you should never use windows' pix are reasoned, delibrated , thought-out, honest and mature criticisms of windows 

with all your vast experience with windows couldn't you have posted screenshots of your error messages , rather than hittting us with a copy paste deluge /blitz of the failuresbased on of others experiences with windows based applications? the only pic you posted that could directly be related to windows was the data execution prevention window. as i asked bigbrovar - should i blame windows for an AVG error message? or for a popup window?

na wa oh - why does using linux bring out the arrogance  in people ? (it clearly brings out the fanatic -  )

as you said OS is a matter of prefenence  - which is why if u really want linux converts, you should give us the pros of linux - rather than the downsides of windows. people who have been using linux for longer than you have realised that - which is why they don't hijack threads with rants about why windows sucks.you could pick a few pointers from them  , rather than descending to cheap 'my OS better pass your own' 'i sabi computer pass you' ' i dey use computer for inside womb - so y'all ex noobs better stfu' trivia

@oyb

you betray your total lack of maturity, and i figure you as someone who has pleasantly little to do besides starting flame wars and ending them with insults.

i have been through many a flame war and and you are nowhere near as formidable as the worst smeghead on any of them so i shall brush off your name calling.

me? rant? yes i did rant about the iphone and when big brovar and i hit on about windows/linux i told him of the weaknesses of both sides and why i used windows: my needs then were better taken care of by windows.

that doesnt make it technologically superior. it only served its purpose.

right from windows 1.0 the world (as least most of it) was near unanimous in agreeing that windows sucked.  like DOS in those days people had very little choice.

now the field is becoming varied thanks to desktop linux and OS X. ever since i moved to Unix-like i have found very little reason to switch to windwos though i do defile myself with vista occasionally when my needs can best be served at that point in time by the infamous bloatware.

now since im basing my judment on experience, i don't need young idiots such as yourself telling me what is better for me, more so when you probably were getting weaned when windows 95 was unleashed upon mankind.

since you have never had the benefit of indulging in the unix platform, it is you, sir, who should STFU.

ive come across many of your childish rants and you always end up insulting the very people you argue with.

yah, that is SOOO mature, OYB.

meanwhile, unbox yourself and get a copy of Ubuntu or whatever (they are free) and find out the strengths and weaknesses of linux and place yourself on an equal footing with us who have had the leverage for longer than you started growing pubic hairs. there is no point trying to reason with you since you are either by birth or by design too ignorant of the very issues you so passionately insult others on.

yes none of my current copies of windows is legit. i didnt buy them because im too smart not to. only a complete slowpoke will go the market with $200 or more staring at six different versions of vista and not wonder if there is a better alternative.

i did buy my macbook and my copy of leoard is legit.


as for those pix. well, they were put up for fun, as im sure the authors intended. if i were to put up a screenshot for every little error i get, my precious bandwidth will be sucked up. besides, unlike you i have better things to do than convince blockheads of the woes of REdmond.

my anti starcomms rant got me banned. . .

yawn. . .

just as i thought - being a self styled 'computer guru' really brings out your maturity _{(my oh my - did i get under your skin - could it be because my comments had the ring of truth? )}

eventually, when i can find the time , i will try linux. but i'm scared . . .it may turn me to a raving , prick . ( i mean - lookit u) plus - where will i find the time? (you are probably the one who has precious little to do with his time - if u had time to as you put it - test so many versions of linux) unless of course it was more of dabbling than testing. . .will we ever know?

considering the fact that this is the only place where we meet - i'm suprised you have 'come across many of my childish rants'

anyway thanx for veriying what i stated before - exnoobs like me have no business argiung with gurus who were using linux while they were still a gleam in daddy's eye

the least you could do is try to be original in your insults. that can't be too hard - or maybe u could google mtv's yo mamma if you need some help. . .since the copy and pste thing seems to the the neoteny way. . .

you missed the point, kid. its your insults that brougt out the worst in me, not your sometimes valid arguments about windows/linux. i have no objection when people say they prefer this to that; the least i can do is try to sow them there are alternatives if they care enough to dabble.

i can perfectly hold my own in any forum in any flame war without resorting to name calling, sadly that feat is seemingly beyond your limited capabilities. if you hadnt gone the gutter route i wouldnt have called you the blockhead you are.

nonetheless, i still maintain that OS is a matter of personal reference just as i will keep insisting windows is not near as good as some of the alternatives. for those of you out there who feel locked into windows, there are better alternatives, just as those perfectly hapy with vista can stick to it.

meanwhile, sometimes even though you hide behind an Alias you cant help letting your mentality slip through, so dont assume for one minute i believe your penchant for sinking low to rugrat levels is an online persona you cultivated just to "get under my skin". sir, it will take an army of your ilk to achieve that momentous feat, while it will take only one of you to prove how obnoxious you are.

my personal opinion goes beyond copy and paste. sure i copied and pasted those pix for fun. if you take affront at that, then find the nearest tree, throw up some good sturdy rope and hang yourself. it will do mankind a major good, i tell you.

a prick i may be, but im good at it hence this bout. you, on the other hand, sucked at near about everything. for a born prick, you do a poor job of it.

im glad you suggest me googling mtv for yo mama jokes; for you to sugest that implies its what you do. i dont need mtv to insult you; you do a better job insulting yourself than i can ever do in six lifetimes.

this is my last shot at you, and i still suggest you stop being lazy and get a copy of linux and discover for yourself why the mnovement exists.

and while you are at it, grow up with the snide remarks. they do you no good.

Jesu Christi!  Gongo don so o!  This one come pass battle of the planet o.  I know even know say this thread still dey so.  Look fellas make una take a chill pill cause last time I checked, the topic was Vista tweaks for optimal performance not Windows Vs. Linux.  Haba! make una take am sofry sofry now.  If Linux works for you, then by all means use Linux and if Windows is your cup of garri, use it.  There's really no need for all these heated debate about which OS is better.  Evidently, the die-hard fans of both OS won't admit that each one has it's own shortcomings.  Though I gotta give you some props oyb for standing your ground despite all the Linux bandwagoners (if there's such word) bashing Windows. 

Abeg, all I was trying to do is help the average Vista user try to see other ways of obtaining maximum benefit for their money.  Again, in no way am I advocating Vista and as a matter of fact, the notebook I'm using to type this is running XP SP3.  Regardless of the OS you have, if you do not maintain (as in update and other system maintenance) your PC on a regular basis, you will always have problem on the long run (most of us know that).  Shebi na machine and machine sef get hin wear and tear cycle now.  Can't we all just get along.      Peace!

eminemkayc:

ON THE CONTRARY AND FOR UR USEFUL INFORMATION, I AM A PROGRAMMER AND I HAVE IN DEPTH KNOWLEDGE OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES FROM QBASIC TO JAVA M.E, AND THIS DATES BACK TO MY UNIVERSITY YEARS WHEN PROBABLY You NEVER SAW A CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT OF A P.C. SO WHEN I SPEAK, I DONT TALK WITH MY TONGUE IN MY CHEEK RATHER, THE PHRASE USED IS A SUMMARY OF MY RESEARCH! SO RATHER THAN BEING IMPUDENT AND INSOLENT WITH UR STATEMENTS, WHY NOT MAKE UR INQUIRE INTO THE EARLIER MADE STATEMENTS AND NOT SCRATCHING THE SURFACE OF IT, 

Hmmm, oga programmer, you do realize typing in caps is not only distracting to the reader but an indication that you're yelling.  Haba! you dey fight pesin for hia?  Oga, I come fear o, na so you dey write ya programs.  Abeg, turn that tin off o jare-- so much for a programmer.     Peace!

@ALL
Vista Is great. I tried doin some Installation on Linux , and I recall all the sweatings. No be small thing. Vista is for big boys. People with money and resources. I have a laptop running Vista RAM - 2.5G duo core. The performance is amazing. I run Oracle 10g, Netbeans 6.5M , EClipse 3.2, and still sometimes play Winning Eleven all at the same time. And Everything occurs Fast.

So if u want the power of Vista / Graphics effect, then u have to sacrifice some resources.

the theory of relative intelligence

my linux desktop (hardy 8.04) with compiz fusion, gecko, wine, screenlets, Avant Window Navigator and tons of stuff installed.

OYB (and like-minded folks), here's something for yer!

and here is leopard. looks best when desktop is left free of clutter.

and here is the vista desktop, themed to make it more presentable.

ive actually hid the clutter on the desktop cos i only use vista fro phone management, hence littl;e bother to house clean

@Ex Inferis
What exactly is your point What exactly are you driving at? Say all you want, Linux and Windows both have their pros and cons. Apart, from Windows Vista been expensive, I think its much easier for Users to use Windows, (u can argue that if you want). I use Oracle Linux Unbreakable, Ubuntu 7.0, and Vista and I tell you, for now I spend more time on my Vista system.

Infact there's this thing about Vista - imagine you having a motioned Picture / Video has background. When I first saw it, I wanted to cry in awe.

javaprince:

@Ex Inferis
What exactly is your point

what is my point about what point, exactly?

the retort to OYB (some in jest)? the desktop pix?

the former speaks for itself its reason for being, and the latter to convey the fact that i use all three major operating systems and therefore i feel im able to judge which is better-for me at least.

you say vista is easy and i quite agree with you-to a point. someone migrating from windows xp or lower will no doubt apreciate the ease of use of vista since its not a remarkable departure from the way windows XP and 2000 work (we still have to restart after uninstalls or almost every little tweak- in 2008!) if you have used Xp, you know where the control panel is, you know how to navigate Explorer, you expect applications to be under all programs and of course you know how to access the dreaded registry.

someone with that kind of background will find moving to Linux or OS X an alien experience because nohting is whgere yoiu expect it to be. however after a while you will become sufficiently familiar with its inner workings to appreciate its advantages over windows. and that was why i insist detractors TRY first before making uninformed judgments.

the problem with Linux is not lack of programs or compatibility with windows: afterall Wine, cedega and crossover do a good job emulating windows' API's, and Linux reads fat and NTFS partitions.

the problem with Linux is actually learning its inner structure and a totally new file system: ext file system, BASH, ASH and ohter Shell languages are a far cry from Windows' Fats/ntfs and Command Line (or DOS if you are using Win Me down). but not for soemone with a Unix background or Mac Terminal experience. Someone with a DOS background will find it challenging to do some configuration on Linux using shell, but then again not everything requires you dropping to the command line these days as there are GUI's fro just about everything.

only in that note will i agree with you that Linux is not easy: for a beginner. however in terms of configurating your system it IS easier. every configuration file not available via normal settings is a text file in plain english, even for devices. in windows you have to wade through the registry and hunt for that cryptic config file armed with a scientific calculator to convert long hexadecimal strings to decimal in order to make changes to hidden settings.

and then you reboot

hey, someone with no windows or computing background will no doubt find windows daunting. ive seen Mac and Linux users who have a hard time getting things done in windows cos everything was just different. so im not surprised windows users feel the same.

when i was learning BASIC and DOS i thought the same thing about the IBM clones in the late 80's and early 90's. but now im perfectly at home with DOS. when i started Unix i found it unapproachable but now (eve though im getting rusty) i have no probs doing shell.

infact, when windows 3.0 hit us i remeber thinking it could never stand up to MSDOS because we found the whole Presentation Manager gimmickry from windows 1.0 finicky and a bother. Using DOS felt much better and not until Win 95 did i start giving DOS a few missing times. infact, it took Apple's Mac to totally switch me to a GUI environment in 1997.

windows is in widespread use only because in those days it was te ONLY OS you get when you buy a new machine (bundled with a DOS interface) and your options really were DOS, OS/2 and Windows. nobodywas selling OS/2 machines besides IBM (and OS/2 kind of was limited in scope) so windows was the program you got. the only other alternative was a Mac but it was pretty expensive but yet much more advanced especially after Nextstep.

so there you have it: windows was forced down our collective throats and some of us grew up with it knowing nothing better. you became proficient clicking icons and you assume noting coud be simpler.

well here is the deal: in all the years of windows the core component, Explorer, did not change much. navigation as was done form win 95 is still done even in the M1 release of Windows 7. meanwhile Apple's Finder (the counterpart of Explorer) is a joy to behold and use.

here is my point: linux is a worthwhile alternative to Vista because it already does what Vista does in in a much more stable environment and with more security. ive never had to run an antivirus app in Linux because tere is no need to.

Leopard is aMUCH BETTER al;ternative to Vista by light years because for ease of use it trumps both vista and Linux with the power of Terminal sessions to give you absolute control. it is of much more sophisticated technology, everything is very easy to find, its incredibly easy to use even for a rank beginner. and that is why i use it a lot.

next in line is Linux. it is stable, secure, free, works a lot like Leopard, has thousands of free programs, runs servers very well, is immensely configurable (to get that Vista theme i had to crack UXtheme.dll, replace shell32.dll by taking ownership at the coammand line, and replace imares.dll  beacus vista by default wont let you install themes) is better at networking, and has good hardware support. it is also easy to use.

98% of linux programs are free, 80% of windows programs are paid for. for every windows app there is a (sometimes better) equal alternative.

In mac most programs are not of the click-next-next-finish-restart viariety: simly drag the downloaded app into the Applications folder and Bingo! you are done. to remove, just drag it to trash. WHAT BEATS THAT FOR EASE OF USE?
same thing with mounted drives: to unmount (safely remove in windows), drag to trash icon.

ultimately my point is that Leoipard and linux are better than Windows in my experience. however this claim is personal and not global, so if you like windows i have no reason why you shouldnt.

i just hope you will try the others out there.

javaprince:

Infact there's this thing about Vista - imagine you having a motioned Picture / Video has background. When I first saw it, I wanted to cry in awe.

you are talking about dreamscene, a part of Ultimate update. hah! it chops resources like theres no tomorrow.

i promptly took mine off because besides aesthetics it has no practical purpose, and is very distracting. most default processes are already screaming for more resources so why further cripple a near-dead machine?

besides, stardock Deskscapes works the same way even on Xp.

for eyecandy nothing comes close to linux. wiggling windows, translucency, water effects, drop shadows, 3D rotating cube desktop, fire effects, zoom and pan effects, magnify effects, windows animation, skydome, screenlets, Plasma-plasmoids, emerald themes, desklets, fading inactive windows, etc etc. and they eat minimal resources, able to run on any WDDM-capable card with 512 MB ram. try running Vista Aero on that!

@Ex Inferis
I'll reply proper/better soonest. But know I find your views interesting and am trying to go thru them. Are u online let's have an Intelligent Chat.

I use Windows Vista, Oracle Linux Unbreakable(for Oracle 10g database), and Ubuntu.

Runs on 512MB? Its a LIE!!! Thatz great I mean. Imagine to properly enjoy my Vista(so as to run Oracle, Netbeans 6.5M, etc) and my other development tools I had to Upgrade my Memory to 2.5GB and that costed me an extra N13,000.00.

I currently use Ubuntu on my personal laptop, and Vista. I use Oracle Unbreakable at work (don't have a choice), but I have never used Mac OS. How do I get a copy? Then whatz Leopard?

yup, 512 mb is heaven in linux and its not too fussy about your graphics card so long as its at least 64mb of vram and able to do shader model 2.0 and OpenGL. vista will gawk at that if you throw Aero at it, " direct x 10, Shader Model 3.0, Wddm, 128mb vram, D3D etc etc" and then it runs its benchmarking tool and tells you your card qualifies for only 2.1 of graphics performance when that same card can run Need for Speed Carbon at 1280*800. haba!

the more ram you throw at vista, the more it eats. try this: amp ip to 3gigs ram and watch the CPU gadget at sidebar; it always hovers between 40%-60% no matter what even with no program running. the secret? fire up taskmanager and see the strings of endless processes running all at once! DWM alone has 2, SVCHOST has like 5 etc.

kai! no wonder apple did away with running processes in Iphone 2.0 apps that need a constant link and relied on push notification instead. not that any OS can do without them, but windows has far too many obscure processes and threads running concurrently and they are always asking for more ram.

I use Ubuntu too, but i have isos for Vixta, Linspire, Freespire, gOS, Kubuntu, RH, Pclinux OS 2007 and 2008. some i run on virtual machines at work though i coulndt get vixta to work. im looking for Linux Xp 2008.

if you want a copy of Mac OS X you either have to buy a Mac or download a HUGE torrent of a modded leopard or Tiger image to Install in your windwos machine. look for iatkos Vesrion 2, Kalyway, brazilmac. you know Mac does not use BIOS, soemting called EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) and a trusted module rom chip to prevent you from installing Mac Os on intel machines. tose images i mentioned above contained soemting called PC-EFI which emulates Mac's bootrom and bypasses TPM checks to enable you install on any dual core or Amd machine with at least 1gig ram.

i think i still have iatkos 1.0 DVD so i will rummage throug my stuff and try to send you.

meanwhile Leopard is the latest iteration of the MAc OS X (note: X is 10, not 'eks') , being 10.5. Apple name their OS after big cats, so we had tiger, Panther, Cheetah/Puma. next up is Snow Leopard. some say Tiger (10.4) is more stable sha. but for bling bling effects and ease of use nothing beats Leopard.

@Ex Inferis
Thanks a lot for the information. Faster and better than Google. But I have a question for you, Does Mac OS systems follow after the UNIX/LINUX architecture? And what do u mean by it does not require a BIOS?

actually google is faster if you know what you are looking for

well, if you knew your Unix history you'd probably know that one implementation of Unix was the BSD (Berkley Software Distribution, hope i spelt Berkley right) and that the Mach Kernel OS X uses is actually a microkernel meant to replace that of BSD. (as a programmer im sure you know what a kernel is). so yes, OS X is Unix-like since its kernel is derived from an imlementation of Unix. i do not know the core kernel of Linux since Linux Torvalds rewrote it but i'll check my books. however i do know Linus began wit a Unix kernel.

nextstep introduced Object Oriented Programming (again as a java programmer i assume you are aware of tis too since java is OOB) and implemented it into Mac OS then called Rhapsody. nextstep (or Openstep) was of course bought by apple from the ousted steve jobs.

so actually its nextstep that gave Os X all its mojo.

as for BIOS, i assume you know how BIOS works-you switch on your system, BIOS boots from a rom chip on the motherboard, checks all the hardware settings as well as the hardware to see if everything is as it should be, if everything passses this check, the BIOS hangs over control to windows or whatever and the system boots.

well, apple doesnt use BIOS. first, every intel apple machine (they swithched from PowerPC architecture to Intel in 2006) has a rom chip called a Trusted Platform module (as an offshoot perhaps of bill gates' Palladium/ Trusted Computing Initiative) which works in conjunction with the EFI and checks to confirm the hardware is indeed intel and Mac. if it is, the system boiots. if not the system refuses to boot. if you try to install OS X on a non-apple machine (ie on an intel windows machine) with a bios, the EFI will detect the absence of the TPM and will know its a non-authorized macine and will refuse to install.

EFI is the Apple equivalent of BIOS but is much more advanced. BIOS is outdated technology and yet Vista still uses it.

tried logging to yahoo messenger but i cant, using the web version (hate Ajax!). just add me up, neoteny7@yahoo.com.

well, if you knew your Unix history you'd probably know that one implementation of Unix was the BSD (Berkley Software Distribution, hope i spelt Berkley right) and that the Mach Kernel OS X uses is actually a microkernel meant to replace that of BSD. (as a programmer im sure you know what a kernel is). so yes, OS X is Unix-like since its kernel is derived from an imlementation of Unix. i do not know the core kernel of Linux since Linux Torvalds rewrote it but i'll check my books. however i do know Linus began wit a Unix kernel.

atcually Linus Torvald decided to wire a clone of the Unix Kernel because Unix was proprietary and too expensive for students , his teacher uses a clone of Unix which called MInix but for Linus to use this he had to walk all the way to school to use Minic , to prevent the stress he decided to write a clone of Unix , which was built from ground up and he released it
here is a copy of the historical post LInus sent to the Minix news group , the post annoucing Linux to the world






"From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready.I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system(due to practical reasons)
among other things). I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40),and
things seem to work.This implies that I'll get something practical within a
few months, andI'd like to know what features most people would want. Any
suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's
all I have :-(. "



The Linux was released under the GPL licensing making it free and open to the public to distribute modify and improve , this lead to a revolution as millions of hackers sent in millions of parches , Linux was incorporated into the GNU project and the OS called GNU/Linux was born , and so it was the idea , from the dark basement of a 21 year old , nurtured by millions around the world , became a force that can nolonger be ignored ,

We have 5 macs here at work and i most say apple defines what an Interface should be , its more than a piece of art , it a well tot out machine , and the only reason i dont use a mac is subjective , for me freedom is the most important thing , it comes before anything , and LInux gives me that , i wont get it in with apple , but like i said my reasons are subjective ,

@bigbrovar

hi dude, thanks for refreshing my memory. i do remember now that in fact Linux stands for LINUs' MiniX.

OS X works a lot like linux so you already have a feel for the thing. even micrososft seems to concede vista has failed and Dell and others in defiance of Microsoft are still offering Xp, theres an ongoing petition with millions of signatories demanding MS not to kill Xp, and yet some people still dont get it. steve ballmer snorted at the idea of a service pack for vista cos in his own words vista did not need service packs as it was a continually updating OS.

guess what? sp1 for vista is old news now. ive installed it, and i removed it.

this may interest you

http://vista.blorge.com/2008/04/21/microsoft-may-allow-businesses-to-skip-vista-go-direct-to-windows-7/

if you are too lazy here is the text

" Microsoft has done everything but admit Vista was a failure, it has skipped around the term with Steve Ballmer saying that it is “a work in progress.” Well, it may be but after trying to fit in every feature possible, DRM bloat (which may or may not be the cause of system sluggishness); the company is now once again trying to please everyone that is dissatisfied with Vista and will do everything possible to make Windows 7 everything that Vista wasn’t.

The company has already hinted that Windows 7 would make an appearance in the late 2009 or early 2010 time frame but could it be earlier than that? TechReblic thinks it may.

“Microsoft will use smoke and mirrors to conjure up an early release of Windows 7, the next edition of the world’s most widely-used operating system. Then they will quietly and unofficially allow IT departments to migrate straight from Windows XP to Windows 7.”

The author also suggests that some features of Vista should be stripped out or minimized starting with User Account Controls; leave the virtualization feature but tear everything else out. Other suggestions include,
Simplify the interface back to something closer to Windows XP
Reduce backward compatibility in order to streamline the code base
Work much harder with vendors to ensure driver and software compatibility with new hardware and applications
Reduce the cost of Windows in retail boxes
Release Windows 7 by the end of 2009 and market it as the simplest and easiest Windows ever

History is once again repeating itself. Windows ME tried to be everything and failed; it was quickly swept under the rug by the completely redesigned Windows XP that magically appeared just one year later. Windows Vista tried to be everything which failed and is going to be quickly done away with by Windows 7 which Jason Hiner calls, “Windows Vista Service Pack 2."

here is another

http://vista.blorge.com/2008/04/17/microsoft-ceo-steve-ballmer-vista-is-a-work-in-progress/

and the text

" With all the problems regarding Vista, Microsoft is trying to think its way out of the worst marketing debacle since Windows ME and it may well have found it. Speaking at a conference in Seattle, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called Windows Vista "a work in progress."

Vista had its first service pack released but one of its updates caused on infinite reboot cycle on some systems which was later fixed. A later update to non-SP1 Vista and Vista SP1 system caused USB device driver problems. Clearly, there are still issues with the operating system.

According to PCWorld, Ballmer said,

"It’s a very important piece of work. We did a lot of things right and have a lot of things we need to learn from. You never want to let five years go between releases."

Unless you need a new computer there is no compelling reason to upgrade you current PC to Vista nor is there one to buy a new computer with Vista especially if the one you have is a relatively new XP system.

Now, if you do need a new computer, it will probably come with Vista unless you consider a Mac or a Linux based computer. And if you do wind up with Vista, chances are you will not have compatibility issues with anything that came with or is installed in or on the system. Anything you add to it, well, that’s taking your life into your own hands."

the pc world link is http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144773/ballmer_vista_is_a_work_in_progress.html


do not misconstrue the above as anything more than the author's opinion (which incidentally, i share). its a plain fact vista is underpowered and shattered many illusions of six years of expectation. while linux was evolving, Mac was radically growing and even solaris was gracing the desktop, MS worked away uplifting XP with few innovations. you wont understand until you read what was offered but was sadly removed from vista.

since im spamming, here is another informed opinion

The problems with Vista laid bare
Part One What we got and why

By Liam Proven: Wednesday, 21 March 2007, 8:43 AM


"The only problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste. They have absolutely no taste." - Steve Jobs to Robert X Cringely in Revenge of the Nerds

REGARDLESS OF WHAT Bill Gates might have claimed in interviews, a lot of the goodies in Vista have - I'll be diplomatic - drawn inspiration from rival products, primarily Apple's Mac OS X. The trouble is that Microsoft has prioritised the wrong bits, taken the wrong inspiration. And the sad irony is that if it had made different choices, we'd have got a simpler, faster, safer Vista a lot sooner.

So what sources and where has MS got its ideas from? And where should it have done so instead? You don't have to look far.

System-wide instant search and a query-driven, location-independent view of the filesystem are very useful things to have. Microsoft spent years working on "Windows Future Storage", a complex system that would store all your data in a SQL database.

Instead, Apple came up with Spotlight. A minor tweak to the filesystem code means that every file saved to disk is indexed as it's saved, making it simple to offer near-instant file searching. Once you've got that, it's relatively trivial to offer folders showing all image files or all files containing "Dear Mrs Jones" or all files of over 38.45Kb generated by used "alice" between 2:30 on 13 April 2004 and 5:15 on 26 September 2005. No need for a big heavy relational database or SQL or anything else.

And guess what happened? Microsoft quietly dropped WinFS and Vista gained a very Spotlight-like index-driven search system instead. On Linux, GNOME's Beagle search is much the same. If you use an older version of Windows, you can get much the same functionality from Google Desktop Search, MSN Search Toolbar or others; they don't have the benefits of integrating with the shell, or of being able to put indexing hooks right into the filesystem, but the end result is similar.

The idea for Vista's pseudo-3D GUI surely came from OS X - as it did with open source versions such as Compiz and Beryl. The live previews of taskbar buttons strongly resemble the live icons in OS X's Dock. The visual inspiration for the 3D window flipper was probably Sun's 3D Java desktop Looking Glass, but the competitive pressure was surely from OS X's Expose.

A bit of background
Bear with me for a second. To understand what Vista does and why, you have to know the history - and the history comes from a different company.

The whole concept of using a 3D graphics card to accelerate the windowing system comes from the Mac's Quartz Extreme. Apple's OS X is based upon NeXTStep, NeXT Computer's pioneering Unix-based OS from the 1980s. The NeXTStep GUI didn't have hardware acceleration, because it was drawn by Display PostScript, which was too complex for the simple 2D graphics cards of the time to provide any useful help. OS X's graphics system, Quartz, uses Adobe's royalty-free PDF imaging language instead - which is derived from PostScript anyway. In OS X 10.0 and 10.1, Quartz was unaccelerated.

Modern 3D cards, though, are powerful processors in their own right - as is demonstrated by the fact that they're getting used for real computation now, such as the GPU version of Folding@Home. The innovation in Quartz Extreme, which appeared with OS X 10.2, is that Apple's engineers found a way to use a 3D card to speed up their GUI. In QE, each actual window is handled as a 3D object by the GPU - which means that the GPU does the grunt work of compositing (calculating which window appears on top of which other ones, which bits are hidden and so on), moving windows around, scaling them and so on.

What that means is that suddenly all these special effects are computationally "cheap" - in other words, they don't take much CPU power. It's not doing the work, the graphics card is. This being so, not only can the developers use them more widely. So, you get pretty but largely gratuitous effects like transparency, drop shadows and zooming translucent "ghost" icons when files are double-clicked - but it also enables useful new features, like Exposé. In case you're a deprived Windows user, I'll explain: Exposé is a feature of the OS X windowing system where hitting a hotkey shrinks all the windows onscreen - either showing all a single application's windows side-by-side, or all applications side-by-side, or even zooming them all offscreen so that you can get at the desktop for a moment without minimising or otherwise disturbing the arrangement of your windows.

There are several important points to realise here.

Firstly, all the shrinking, scaling and other "chrome" is done in hardware, so it puts no extra load on the CPU.

Secondly, all the chrome is part of OS X's Quartz graphics API - these sorts of features are an inherent part of using a sophisticated language like Postscript or its descendant PDF to implement the display. This means that the developer doesn't have to make great extra efforts: they can just specify a window as 80% transparent or tell Quartz to rotate it 74° clockwise and shrink it 18% and it just happens. Such facilities are built into the OS, so it does the grunt work of implementation, not the application developer.

On a machine with a poor graphics card, the effects are rendered in software, slowly - so even users of old Macs don't miss out on the fun. But on a modern machine with a powerful card, it all happens in hardware, automatically, and the programmer need neither know nor care. That's the third benefit - implementing things this way doesn't exclude users with older, slower hardware. It levels the playing field for developers and users alike.

The Microsoft way
Compare this with Microsoft's effort in Vista. All the chrome happens through extensions layered on top of the basic 2D Windows GDI (Graphical Device Interface). If the user has one of the Basic editions of Windows Vista, they don't get the 3D effects at all - those editions don't include the feature. If they have one of the more expensive editions but a low-spec graphics card, they don't get the snazzy effects either, because they only work on certain CPUs.

Which means that the developers have to take these things into account. And, of course, all this stuff is new in Vista. Microsoft has realised the implications of this and is releasing an update for XP to bring some of the new APIs to older versions - but if you're on Windows 2000 still, forget it. Naturally, along with the down-market Vista customers, XP users don't get the new 3D effects, either.

So if a developer incorporates this 3D stuff into their app, it won't display on all versions of Vista and won't work at all on older versions of Windows. Which means more work for the programmers, ensuring that things degrade gracefully.

To be fair, these problems aren't unique to Vista. Now that this 3D whizzery has been done, naturally, everyone's doing it. In the open source world, there are two parallel efforts - AIGLX and Compiz. The technical details of how they work are irrelevant; suffice to say that they both use the 3D card to render and display the desktop, using two different underlying approaches. That's one of the joys of Free software - with no accounts department to have to justify things to, multiple different approaches can be tried. The one that works better or has some compelling advantage will succeed.

The snag is that the same problems that face Microsoft, trying to bolt 3D onto a twenty-year-old 2D-based imaging model, also face the Linux world. On the Free side of the fence, though, users replace and update their software far more often. New releases of Ubuntu Linux come along twice a year, the same as its GNOME desktop - very roughly ten times as fast as the Windows rate of about twice a decade. And of course it usually costs little or no money to update to a new version of Linux, whereas every successive release of Windows gets more expensive than before.

So why are we getting all this 3D glitz, anyway?
Regardless of where they come from, these sorts of features are rapidly becoming not only accepted but expected in modern desktop OSs. So we can't really blame Microsoft for doing what everyone else is doing. It gives the "wow" factor, the instant appeal of the shiny, which is the main driver of the Vista marketing campaign. Although of course the real thing propelling Vista uptake isn't adverts or upgrades, it's that soon all new PCs will come with Vista on. If it could afford to be patient, Microsoft could save its massive promotional effort - in a year or two, Vista will all but replace XP anyway.

The main reason it's going to all the trouble is twofold. For one thing, Microsoft makes a lot more money on an upgrade copy of Windows or Office than from OEM bundled one, so it is in the company's interest that people buy Vista. More significantly, though, it needs them to want Vista. Microsoft, along with the whole PC industry, is predicated on growth: they really need all their customers to dump XP and buy new software - and hardware - as soon as possible.

Actually, in recent years, the rate of improvement in PC performance has dropped off. The boom years were the 1990s, when every eighteen months, PCs got roughly twice as fast. But this is not what the famed "Moore's Law" predicts. What Intel cofounder Gordon Moore actually said was that the number of transistors it was possible to put on a chip for a given cost would double every year and a half. For a while, more transistors meant more speed - but it doesn't any more. Processor designs have got to the stage of complexity where it's difficult to make them much faster while keeping the costs down. The rate of improvement in raw speed is slowing: now, they're spreading sideways instead of upwards: more cores, more memory, GPUs that can perform more complex and more elaborate 3D rendering in hardware, and of course, bigger disks and faster communications links.

Acting against this, though, is another driver: more transistors take more power, even as they continue to get smaller and smaller. Computers with more CPU cores and more capable GPUs require more electricity to run and they generate more heat - so the machines are getting bigger and hotter and noisier, and designers need to go to greater lengths to counter these trends.

Which makes the computers harder to sell. They don't actually work much faster than older computers, they just handle lots more data and can present it to the user with more snazzy visual and sound effects. Even for gamers, one of the hardcore performance-driven markets, the main benefits are being able to fill larger and higher-resolution displays with crisp high-definition graphics while keeping the refresh rates up.

In summary, we're not getting fancy 3D effects and other new features because we need them or asked for them, we're getting them because they're what modern PCs can do, and the vendors - Apple included - need to find ways to make these new features attractive and desirable because they need to keep selling more computers.

The only difference between Apple's method and everyone else's is due to history. Back in the mid to late 1980s, when Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple and started NeXT, he hired a selection of the best and brightest computer systems designers around, and starting with a clean sheet, they set out to build the best educational computer that money could buy - based around educational standards like Unix and commercial ones like Postscript, but intended for a market that wasn't as price-sensitive as the home and business ones, which would pay for and expected powerful machines with big screens and integral networking. The NeXT team made some very smart choices back then and Apple inherited those benefits when it bought NeXT - and thus got Jobs back on board - more than a decade later. All Apple's own efforts at designing the future - Pink, Copland, Taligent, OpenDoc, CyberDog and so forth - came to nothing and ended up in the bin.

The vision and the foresight came from NeXT, which took the best of what was out there at the time (BSD Unix, Motorola's 68030 and 68040 processors and some Digital Signal Processors), added the most promising future-looking technologies (Mach, Display Postscript, optical storage), and aimed high, for functionality not price: integrated standards-based networking, big high-resolution displays, laser printers for output and so on. NeXT also made sure that they were best-of-breed in areas like development tools, cross-platform networking and support for upcoming standards like Internet email and multimedia.

Much of this didn't deliver - there's little sign of the CPUs, DSPs or optical drives in modern Mac OS X machines. Overall, though, the bets paid off handsomely, and nearly two decades later, everyone else is still playing catch-up.

In the second and concluding part of this article, I'll look at the areas that Microsoft didn't prioritise when it was developing Vista - and which it arguably should have.

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/03/21/the-problems-with-vista-laid-bare

altough some of the statements in the LENGHTY post above are some people's opinions, i share moste of them, if not all. its not to illustrate that vista is comlete crap, just that its shortcomings are too many and unforgivable seeing the promises and features that MS made and removed from the roadmap. at one point even sidebar was removed (i think it was in Longhorn beta 2, cant really remember).

it works too much like XP and is hardly innovative enough to justify six years and countless millions. that is the butt of my argument.

i will not deny that it is a pleasurable eyecandy when properly themed, and sometimes is a joy to use, but it still is not up there on the scale of what i expected. while Apple was making networking and Upnp a breeze with Apple Bonjour, MS Vista was complicating things especially wit the hassle of bridging if you have 2 network gateways/nodes on one box. bonjour-capable devices find each other and their services on any network as easy as blinking using zeroconf principles, but sadly zeroconf on windows requires a bit of IP fidling sometimes. its annoying looking for one connected device on your own network when you expect it to appear automatically soon as it connects

i have given up my windows AMD machine to Linux, and on the MAcbook i dualbooted vista with Leopard via Apple Boot Camp. every now and then i use windows to manage some phone apps not readily found on Mac or Linux, and i find that itunes on windows works a lot better than itunes on Mac.

it works too much like XP and is hardly innovative enough to justify six years and countless millions. that is the butt of my argument.

believe me u dont know half of it ,

According to The Seattle Times, Microsoft took 10,000 employees about five years to ship Vista. If each employee costs Microsoft about $200,000 a year, the estimated payroll costs alone for Windows Vista hover around $10 billion.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/12/07/how-much-time-money-and-human-costs-spent-to-produce-windows-vista/

its a real shame , if an estimated 10 billion was spent paying 10,000 employees that worked on vista , for 6 years , and vista was the end product , remember even the atomic bomb didnt cost that much , its a real shame cosidering the fact that Debian the parent shoot of ubuntu is developed entirely by volunteers who code for free , even ubuntu , majority of the developers are volunteers and the ubuntu foundation relies on the 10 million dollar given to it by Mark shuttleworth , yet Ubuntu releases new versions evey 6 months , each version an improvement on the last , not the other way round , MS has lost it , unless drastic measures are taken , Windows would cease to be relevant , the world hold its breath and see what windows 7 would offer , if it fails , then it would be the begining of the end for the great evil empire ,

well said!

the Deathstar may well explode.

when jaguar debuted in 2002 or was it 2003 it provided a lot of the stuff MS was busy dreaming up for longhorn (none of which appeared in vista  ). they had to strip everything beacause they went in over their heads and had to ship something in four years. so we got saddled with Vista.

consider this: a lot of people make a lot of noise about how Apple has only like 5% of the whole PC marklet but they don't factor in that Aple isnt directly competing wit MS; Apple is actually fighting its battle with hardware manufacturers (Dell, HP, Sony, Acer,Asus, Emachines/Gateway, Ibm/Lenovo, Generics-without-a-name etc) because the real money, as contained in the post above bibbrovar's, is in hardware sales. Apple makes its own hardware and OS; MS only makes OS, while the OEMs make only the hardware which invariably get stuffed with MS Windows. therefore,  for Apple, it is a two-front war. in such a situation, product integration is a leverage and that simle fact escapes Gates, Ballmer et all otherwise they would go beyond churning out mice, joysticks and keyboards and actually make a proper, streamlined and integrated Windows machine and set a trend for the OEMs.

wouldnt this choice give MS the leverage the become finally innovative?

i remeber watching the videocast of Macworld 2007 keynote (you can see it on my desktop in the Linux screenshot above) when the iphone was introduced and jobs quoted industry figure Alan Kay as saying:

"peole who are really serious about software should make their own hardware". this forms the basic principle of Apple, and this is why the Mac, powerbook, Ipod, iphone, appleTV, Cinema Display, Time Capsule etc all exist.

not that everyone interested in writing an OS should cobble their own machine to go with it (imagine Linus Torvalds coding Linux AND building a DEC Alpha lookalike  ). but it behoves those industry leaders who set the trend (or are expected to) to provide the general direction of innovation. right now the PC is in Limbo: all we get are more expansion slots, faster wifi, bigger hard disks etc in place of genuine innnovation. and then the windows software that goes into that oh-so-generic box takes computing back twenty years!

now is when MS is supposed to do someting new.

besides, in contrast to tose windows OEMs Machines, Apples approach is a segmented one that targets core niches. all tiers of productivity have some sort of mac to cater for them: Mac Pro for video, graphics aand picture pfosessionals (some mac pros can take up to 16 gigs of ram and have up to dual quad cores, thats eight cores in one machine); macminis and macbooks for general computing for the average joes, and macbook pro for the mobile professional and macbook air for the upwardly mobile, frequent and wirelessly connected traveller.

now tats a product mix that makes commercial sense.

meanwhile HP is churning out look-alike Pavillions wit very similar spec sheets and bland focus. of course such junk sell higher volumes generate little profits. its Hp's volume sales against Apple's higher markup for premioum, well-thought out systems.

whether Hp sells a two hundred thousand naira box or a stripped down clunker for eighty thousand naira both with vista preinstalled makes no difference to Microsofts profits: OEM licenses do not charge margins for higerh specced machines.

now let us come back to that 5% Apple market share PC makers/sellers make so much noise about.

"While Apple is cited by Gartner and IDC as selling around 5% of all the computers in the US, it isn't obvious that Apple's 5% share is the cream of the market; it’s actually worth more than the same or larger percentage shares held by rivals.

There were 9.8 million Macs sold in the last two years, up from 6.2 million in the previous two year period. Those numbers don't compare with the stunning volume of PCs shipped by HP and Dell--which each sold 38 million PCs in 2006 alone--but Apple's profits do.

In the forth quarter of last year, HP and Dell combined sold 10 times as many PCs as Apple in the US, earned 5.5 times as much revenue as Apple, but together only ended up with 2.2 times as much net income as Apple.

In other words, Apple earned nearly half as much net income with its 5% share the market as HP and Dell together, with their combined 55% share of the US PC market: $1 billion for Apple vs $2.2 billion for HP and Dell together!"

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/9EF16A95-278E-40ED-9E00-FBEBD75207FB.html

note that the year in question is 2007


so what exactly is the point of all this seemingly neverending barrage on MS? simple, microsoft has lost focus  and is desparately trieng everyting (even blatant plagiarism) to catch up. from the zune which is still under 3% of the digital music player market as against the dominant ipod to the speed of openOffice.org in catching up and even beating Office 2207 featurewise to losing ground with the porrly manufactured Xbox360 (which is still losing money) to the total lack of innovation in windows mobile 6 (which now iphone OS X has completely trashed) to the ticking timer on Exchange (MobileME, from Apple, BES from RIM) all the way to the flagship product, Windows. microsoft is losing ground.

meanwhile, Linux is gracing ever more servers, desktoips, organizations and governments (most of the internet runs off Apache servers running Linux).

Linux is already on a par with Vista feature for feature and is even getting better, while OS X is leaving the competition in the dust. it is time the world woke up.

PS: unless where indicated, the opinions above are mine, but also informed by the findings of more professional critics, as such feel free to disagree and point out mistakes.

anyway back to topic.

i find it most annoying when vista keeps popping up balloons telling to check my security settings, i need an antiral program or that the antirus needs updating, windows defender has blocked startup items etc.

well, i don't know of any tool to remove this so i use the registry.

to turn off all balloon tips, go to registry (start, type regedit) and navigate:

HKcurrent use/software/microsoft/windows/current version/ explorer/advanced

in the right pane in Advanced, right click an empty space, select NEW, create a DWORD value of 32bits (or 64bits if you are on vista 64), name it exactly thus: EnableBalloonTips. the defaulkt value is (0), live it at that. if however the Key exists simply double click, set value as decimal zero (0).
reboot and voila! taskbar balloon popups burst!

like i mentioned before, vista does not allow custom themes, and that fancy transparency disapperas when you maximise a window (assuming Aero is running). well to kill two stones with one bird  i use a nifty tool called VistGlazz. it patches the necessary resources and enhances transparency. now you can install custom themes.

vista was done in such a rush that icons and animations from as far as windows 2000 are still found in Vista. to get rid of them i use a tool called Vize.

i don't like the default vista logon screen. the aurora theme hurts my eyes so i use stardock's Logon Studio Vista (its free) and download logons from www.wincustomize.org (or is it .com) to spiff things up.

iconpackager replaces system wide icons.

you want to install vista on a system without a dvd drive. waddaya do? well you could always copy the installer package to external disk, but that only works on a system that boots into xp or whatever. assuming you want to install vista on a non-booiting system without a dvd drive.

in that case use vlite. it allows you to strip vista of all but the bare essentials. in the end, you could have vista ultimate fit on a cd rom. bott from the cd and install.

hope this helps you hapless windoze users out there

wonderful thread.guy i have this windows vista Hp laptop,and just yesterday while browsing the firefox closes itself automatically.i was just wondering.after tryin to see whether it was due to settings,but to no effect.when i restart the system the theme settings just changed and likewise resolution.the battery that before then i could change the power settings,this time around the power settings was just on high reformance,it refuses to change.could this be virus?what should i do?Note:i used a card reader with one MMC and it changed the folders to an exe files.

The suggestions are good, though most are rather wrong ( practically), asking one to disable system restore? this is supposed to a forum to encourage good computer ethics, its rather wrong, u shld be arrested for ever suggesting that, but tumbs up to u, u've done a good job, thanks for the advice.