Microsoft: Longhorn is Now Windows Vista

[the future]

Exactly. If 90% of all users used Macs, there'd be a helluva lot more flaws exposed and more risks associated with using them.

Ah, the age old "security through obscurity" line... Cling to it, if you must, but it's just not true. If you don't believe OSX is more secure out of the box than XP, you simply don't know what you're talking about. Of course OSX is not 100% bulletproof either, but so far we're doing quite well...

There's no real point in getting into a pissing contest about this - If a windows machine does what YOU need it to do, all good and well. Splendid, in fact. Alternatively, if a Mac does what YOU need it to do, same deal. We can all have our opinions, but at the end of the day, it's what works best for YOU that matters most.

Now this is something we can all agree on! Case closed. Have a nice day!

[ROF]

There's no real point in getting into a pissing contest about this - If a windows machine does what YOU need it to do, all good and well. Splendid, in fact. Alternatively, if a Mac does what YOU need it to do, same deal. We can all have our opinions, but at the end of the day, it's what works best for YOU that matters most.

True.

I just hope the uneducated masses understand what they are getting when they see a machine available for purchase with a windows version that doesn't perform up to the standards of the hardware or software they want to use. Surprisingly there are people out there who think they know alot about computers because they can point and click.

[roma_turok]

Look to the video: http://metahost.savvislive.com/microsoft/20050913/pdc_20050913_300.asx
technical previews of the next version of Microsoft Office, code-named "Office 12," and Microsoft Windows Vista
If you boring from Bill speech, slide to time 31 min. preview Microsoft Windows Vista
and for "Office 12" slide to time 50 min.
Run the video in full screen to see details.

[DereX888]

Windows NT 5 (i.e., Win2K and up) is as stable as OS X. It isn't as SECURE out of the box as OSX. If you use standard components and install standard business software on Windows XP or Windows 2000, it very very rarely crashes, certainly no more than OS X.

Fair enough. Only install selected software and keep the maintenance up, and Windows can be stable. No need for these precautions in OSX, though.

Of course there is no need for "these precautions in OSX" since you have software choice about 1/100th of what Windows users do

If every Windows user would stick to Windows itself only probably they wouldn't have any problems either (like most of the average Mac or Linux users do, specially new linux users, they usually dont know how to compile anything and their downloaded program just "lay down there o the desktop" lol... look around - majority of them just have the OS itself and nothing else, rarely they add an app or two on their 'precious Macs').

Windows - being way inferior to anything else - has won the battle over people's PCs for its easiness of adding the stuff and customizing the OS.
Linux flavors (some ofcoz, not all) have reached the 'easiness' level of about Windows 95 just now, if at all.
OSX is great (I love it personally), but it is as obscure in 'real life' as say home users of Sparc or white buffalos. Geeks or those who "want to be different" use Macs (hence vitualis was right about "artistic people" etc, and you know it is correct; Macs are simply 'fashion statement' like Prada, Klein or Gucci in most cases; only professionals and geeks buy it for what its worth - most of the home users are just unknowledgable "artistic people" using them as they come, for emails, browsing etc - something what any cheapest PC could do, but they buy Macs for this just because they want to be different; In the movie business environment I see about 1/3 to 1/2 of people using Macs - and believe me, 99.99999% of them have no clue about the difference between Mac and PC, they simply bought it because theyre cute).

The "security through obscurity" is silliness. Windows is the OS used on 90%+ of computers, and obviously it must be the main attack target.


And BTW: the word "virii" - where does it come from? Is it plural stemming from "viria"? I know you meant plural for virus, hence viruses, but "virii"? :O

[the future]

Where is that yawning emoticon when you need it...

[DereX888]

Where is that yawning emoticon when you need it...

riiight... can't handle the truth - don't start such subjects :P

[jimmalenko]

Exactly. If 90% of all users used Macs, there'd be a helluva lot more flaws exposed and more risks associated with using them.

Ah, the age old "security through obscurity" line... Cling to it, if you must, but it's just not true.

... and you don't know that it's untrue


No-one would know either way, unless Macs infiltrated 90% of the marketplace, and I doubt that's gonna happen in my lifetime. It's just common-sense - I mean, people that write viruses are generally either doing it to cause destruction or to see how wide they can cast their net, and pure weight of numbers suggests that there's more users using windows, so it makes it a more "profitable" target for these undesirables. There's just no value in attacking a minority, except for kicks.

Maybe windows is easier to get into .... but we're never gonna know for sure until the same volume and quality of hackers have a crack at a Mac. You need to compare apples to apples.

[roma_turok]

Bill Gates Goes to College

[HawkBoy]

There's no real point in getting into a pissing contest about this - If a windows machine does what YOU need it to do, all good and well. Splendid, in fact. Alternatively, if a Mac does what YOU need it to do, same deal. We can all have our opinions, but at the end of the day, it's what works best for YOU that matters most.

Unfortunately, that's not really true. If you have a computer that works well for you, then you basically have to try to get the whole world to use it otherwise you eventually won't be able to use it anymore.

Amigas worked 10 times better than PCs/Macs for me, but since everyone else used PCs/Macs I'm now stuck doing the same.

[DereX888]

Amigas worked 10 times better than PCs/Macs for me, but since everyone else used PCs/Macs I'm now stuck doing the same.

Only people with strong will/mind can stand against the peers/society pressure :P

[slacker]

While someone else is spending their time whining about the BENEFITS of this OS or that OS, I'm making $1000/day on my XP machine in roughly an hour/day every day. The applications/software/tools I use do NOT EXIST on other platforms.

Intro to Computers 101,

Figure out what applications/software you need, and then find the hardware/OS platform that runs IT and buy IT. It was good advice 25 years ago and it is good advice today.

[SatStorm]

slacker, I second that

BTW, I use W2K and I don't need something more for now.

[Tidy]

About the whole Windows vs. Jaguar argument.... does it really matter when ALL new macs will be PC compatible with Intel chips come 2007?

If anyone believes that Bill Gates bail out of Apple had nothing to do with this fact I think they will find themselves sorely mistaken.

IMHO Bill bailed them out with a major stock purchase so he could coerce them into switching to Intel chips that way his operating system could be installed on Mac's.

[roma_turok]

Microsoft to launch Vista in first week of October

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/02/28/vista_launch_in_october/

[solarfox]

Sources told TG Daily that Microsoft is aiming for a global rollout in the first week of October (2 - 6 October).

Meanwhile, experience tells the rest of us that a global rollout of an exploit targeting the first new security flaw in Vista will occur in the second week of October.

[ROF]

If an early October roll out is what is planned that would an after holidays present will be waiting for me.

I can't wait to upgrade beyond this windows XP. It has served me well but after seeing what Vista has in store I can't wait to see the final build.

[burnman99]

Wow, it's good to know the name of a product that I'll never ever, ever, ever, ever buy.

Roger

[DereX888]

I won't buy it either.
Gates will send it to me for free, as usual
Yet I'll be still using Windows 2000...

[Wile_E]

The new GUI is just a gimmick. How is a 3D desktop going to help anyone that has a "2D" display. All our displays are 2D! Our displays don't even have depth-of-field either. At least not yet, they are working on it. I'm also not going to be forced into buying Vista just for games. DirectX10 should be made available to WinXP too.

[vitualis]

Personally, I quite like Windows XP. It is definitely the best version of Windows so far. Although I can understand corporations being reluctant to upgrade from Win2K to XP, I think a lot of the criticism leveled at XP is unwarranted.

Quite simply, XP Pro is fundamentally the same as 2K except with a flashier UI and better driver support. If you don't like the UI, then you can turn it basically all off and you are left with 2K-ish simplicity.

I have used quite a few Linux variants and although some are quite good and all have aspects where they are better than Windows, none have convinced me to change in the longer term. Inevitably when I give up and use Windows again, I'm forced to admit that Windows simply runs and works better for what I do on an everyday basis.

Although Linux proponents (and I have been guilty of this too) claim that it runs better on lower spec machines, this isn't really true if you use a modern distribution. WinXP runs my my Athlon64 very well, but it also runs well on my parent's PIII 500 MHz machine perfectly. Even more extreme, it runs on my Pentium Classic 233 MHz server reasonably well too. No modern Linux distro is as flexible as this.

The only OS that comes close to being as "everyday" functional for me as Windows XP is Mac OS X. However, since I don't have a Mac, that isn't a viable option on my existing hardware.

Regards.

[DereX888]

@vitualis:
I agree with you. No modern linux distro is able to run on older machine (Im not talking about minimalistic distros that fit in the USB drive etc - come on ), while 2K can be setup and run pretty well on such old crapsters like Pentium 133 MHz - remove IE and related junk from it and voila, its light and secure as NT can be.
However.
Linux is really great.
I have tried almost every distro out there in past years.
But I won't use it personally, unfortunately.
No linux distro is able to support all of the hardware I use, and I'm quite fed up with constant learning curve for each new distro. Also I think its time linux coders should go beyond all this "geeky" (to 90% of users out there) command line typing, and start working on more functional GUI for their distros, or Microsoft will really win this "OS war" once and forever soon :/

[whitejremiah]

to be quite honest, i use windows, and i really dont much care for it.......i would use linux myself, but unfortunately for me, im a pretty big gamer, and needless to say a good amount of games dont exactly run in linux...particularly copy protected games (yes, i know that i could use the wine emulation and no cd patches, ect.........)another reason that i dont use it, is cuz of stuff such as virtualdub, tmpgenc, ect not existing in linux flavor..........and you will NOT see me upgrading to vista for a VERY long time...to me it looks like a whole lotta DRM in one nice little package, my desktop is already better than any standard MS desktop that would be included with any version of windows anyhow...i got shortcuts to ALL the programs i use relatively frequently......as for the "pretty GUI" well, i can personally live without it....i know that the masses will probably find it to be more appealing but once again, im not with them.........i heard that you will NEED a 64mb video card to even boot up the OS......this strikes me as being wrong...until the screen resolutions hit like 6000x4800 or something as a relative standard, there's no reason that ANY os out there should require that high of a video card requirement (and i heard that to use all the pretty little features, its gonna be even higher requirements....)it's not that i dont have a powerful enough video card, its just that being the gamer i am, i know that sucking up 64mb of video space just for running the OS in the background....well, that can and will affect the framerates in more intensive games, so i'd just assume not do it if at all possible.....

[fritzi93]

If you don't believe OSX is more secure out of the box than XP, you simply don't know what you're talking about.

Not everyone agrees:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=165
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=166

[vitualis]

Look, OS X is obviously more secure out of the box, if only for the simple reason of security through obscurity.

Regards.

[fritzi93]

Look, OS X is obviously more secure out of the box, if only for the simple reason of security through obscurity.

Regards.

That's precisely the point. If there's anything at all in the Secunia study, then the "security through obscurity" argument seems pretty convincing. The contention that OSX is "inherently" more secure, less so. (*Is* there anything to it? Just asking.)

Is anyone else amused at the Mac fetishists who get positively insulted at the mildest suggestion their baby isn't superior in each and every way?

[DereX888]

I never bought a 'brand name' PC (sony's vaio, dell, etc etc) because i can always build much better machine than any cut-throat seller would like to shove up my wallet
For the same reason I never bought - nor ever I will buy - any proprietary "Mac" stupid machine. Anything proprietary can and always will strive in the fanboys market niche, thats why Mac are 4% of the market and every year will be less.
I do video editing, capturing, encoding and anything else just fine on Windows, plus I have the Windows 'freedom' of multiple choices in each field, why would I want to overpay for some "Macintosh" brand name and limit myself only to their hardware and limited software?
Sorry mac dudes, but that "Adobe runs better on Mac" is just full of shit lame excuse

But OSX on PC - well, we'll see, time will tell.
So far none of my machines is fully compliant with its requirements (i.e. one major common problem: soundblaster cards not supported...).
Windozes can accomodate wide variety of hardware, and IMO that - and abundance of software choices - is what made windowses the dominant OS in the world. But it is windowses 'curse' too - because of support for all kind of cranky devices often designed for archaic architecture drivers it makes windows OS less stable already on a hardware level, so no matter how windowses improve with each version, there are always some stubborn people who don't want to ditch yet their old hardware (and then we see posts flaming bill with headers like "windoze sux" )

Security... I really hope no one is comparing Win95 (it is windows too after all) to OSX...

[vitualis]

OS X is inherently more secure - if anything, you aren't automatically given root access on login.

Regards.

[roma_turok]

Instant Windows Vista upgrades are on the way
Today at Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report on ZDNet, I listed some of the upgrade scenarios that will be possible when Windows Vista ships. All three consumer versions - Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate - will be included on the same CD or DVD. You don’t need to go to the store and purchase a new shrink-wrapped box to upgrade; all you have to do is go to Control Panel and run the Windows Anytime Upgrade program.

http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=1269

>

[RabidDog]

Less Virii on MAcs ? true.. coz the writers are only familiar with the intel proc (they all use assembler, right?) Whats wrong with Macs ? lack of software variety and pricing .. It will be a LOT easier for people to port over apps to MAc when its Intel.
And all those saying they wont use it, (vista) WILL follow the Herd, they will just put up token resistance.. then shell out the £250 for the UBER version...Thus ushering in the day when the OS costs more than the hardware to run it.. just Like IBM b4 they were usurped by a young upstart company...
Red-dragon software perhaps?

[DereX888]

nah
im still with win2k and i see no reason nor any advantage to move to a "3D desktop" (on a 2D display - ROTFL!).
When i moved from NT to 2K it made sense (way way better hardware support, plenty of newer software requiring Win2K).
Moving to XP didnt make sense since all I could get would be more colourful GUI only (they share same hardware and software support, with very very very few exceptions), specially that in my opinion (and not only mine) XP is significantly less stable than 2K.
Same cons go for Vista:
I dont need nicer, more colorful and even more resource hungry GUI
But if Vista will really have any real-life advantage over w2k - ofcourse I'd "follow" and jump on it.
However so far (judgement based on all betas I've got) it doesnt look like theres any real advantage under its hood... just nicer GUI again... few new stupid gadgets built-in...
I think Vista will be praised by all newcomers to PCs, same as XP was, for its nicer and even-easier than predecessor's GUI.