Windows Vista Ultimate

[compilerbitch]

First impressions:

Utter pile of crap.

Avoid.

It shouldn't take a rocket scientist several hours to consistently fail to even be able to download a file. Yes, you heard it. I've spent several hours attempting to download, er, a file. I'll say one thing for it: it's secure. But then, leaving my machine turned off is secure, too, and equivalently functional.

Buy. A. Mac. Instead.

Really.

Comments

[shermarama]

I've just bought a new laptop (according to the tracking it's at the East London delivery depot now, which might mean that I get it tomorrow, wooo) and this will be the first computer I've owned that runs on XP - desktop and this laptop still use Win2K, which I find far more sensible. I'm not going to be touching Vista with a bargepole if I can help it.

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

I've been getting fairly mixed reports. Some people have hated it, some people think it's a bit better. I haven't heard anyone else mention file downloads as a problem.

Nobody seems to think it's revolutionary.

(linux for all! linux is best! :P)

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

My laptop could've come with a free Vista upgrade, but I didn't see the point.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Hmm, it seems that Vista actually works if you turn off its security features.

Nice. Pretty stylish there, Microsoft. Spend billions improving security, but lock things down so much that the only way you can make the machine usable is to turn all of it off. It's such a newbie mistake to make in computer security -- they should be ashamed of themselves.

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

Surely from their perspective it's perfect?

They can blame the user for turning off the security if things go wrong, and charge you even more for Windows Live OneCare to fix their mistakes?

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

OneCare

Yeah, I heard something similar said about them.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

By default, basically nearly everything is disabled, even the online help! You can't even download files with the web browser. It is just totally insane. Of *course* people are going to disable the security. I just don't get it.

(I hope to doG that the NASA powers that be don't insist on Vista with security enabled -- if they do, I'll play hell to swap to a mac!)

[devalmont.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advice - I was just thinking about torrenting it. I however don't require any of the new features, I just want the pretty transparent windows. :-)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I don't recall exactly but I had to turn off the firewall on XP Home to be able to SSH out or some similar operation. So not a new feature, there l-)

[fanf]

http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_480x376.mov

[knirirr.livejournal.com]

I've been telling people to get a Mac for some time now. Unless, of course, they could use Linux.
In what way do you find Vista secure?

[(Anonymous)]

I need windoze because of several bits of software that I can't really avoid. At work, I have 4 computers, 3 of which run Linux, 1 runs Windows (for similar reasons). At home, I have 3 machines, all of which run Windows, sadly.

Actually, Vista seems reasonably OK *if and only if you turn its security off*. With it on it's basically unusable, so it gains the equivalent-of-being-powered-down security (and usefulness) award. With it off, you've basically got something largely equivalent to XP Pro, as best I can tell. I can live with that.

[arrhythmia.livejournal.com]

as fanf mentioned, the apple "Security" ad pretty much nails it.

also, have you seen how slow Vista is when doing something as straightforward as moving/deleting files? it's quite remarkable. the other day it took half an hour to extract a few megabytes' worth of files from a zip. (naturally this was under Boot Camp in my case, but i've seen the same behaviour on my colleagues' "PCs".) christ knows what's going on there, but i don't like it.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

We get that ad on TV all the time here. It is bang on the nail, I'm afraid.

Waste of f******g money, if you ask me. *Really* glad I did that, but it was partly because XP on that box became unusable recently after a -- you guessed it -- automatically downloaded 'security' patch. I am soooooo close to buying a sodding mac right now, but it would just cost too many arms and legs because of needing to replace windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator. But I am *really* tempted right now, since it basically looks like a have a couple of thousand dollars worth of (almost brand new) junk now.

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

I currently have a Mac, but I'm thinking about buying a new Ubuntu box, preferably one that can also run some flavour of Windows. Should I look for on that has XP preinstalled?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

My best advice is to go for something preinstalled, so someone else has already got the bugs out of it.

Or get an Intel mac instead, which can run Windows (or Linux for that matter) anyway.

I have had a very, very bad experience building that particular box. I went through two mother boards, CPUs and RAM before I managed to make it work at all, and it's never been particularly stable even then. Eventually Windows just basically keeled over and died, so I installed Vista as a last-ditch effort. It's not like the hardware is even old or unusual -- dual core Athlon X2, 4GB Ram, 400GB SATA hard drive, Radeon X1600 graphics card, Apple Cinema HD monitor, nothing skimped on really. But, frankly, it's been an unstable pile of crap at the end of the day. And since I built it myself, I can't return it under warranty. I've wasted *so much* money on that machine, it really bugs me. Ultimately I built it for running Photoshop and Illustrator primarily, mostly because I already had (legit) Windows copies of both of them. I routinely deal with >1GB Photoshop files, so the need for lots of RAM isn't optional for me.

It's looking like my best option now is probably going to be trying to get an academic discount (I qualify, weirdly) on a top end Mac Mini and Adobe Creative Suite. But CS3 is out shortly, so I may delay slightly. Don't know. Not happy at all currently.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

The blue-screens-of-death every 10 minutes are less pretty, to be honest.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

If I could get Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for Linux, Windoze would be GONE as far as I'm concerned. Next best option is probably going the Mac route, which I'm currently seriously considering.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

The ads don't show the Windows guy keeling over every few seconds with grand-mal seizures. I thought Apple were being cruel until I actually attempted to *use* Vista. Now I realise they were actually being quite kind.

[arrhythmia.livejournal.com]

i hope you do get a Mac; it will make you very happy, i think. (they're steadily conquering the FC corridor.) shame about the overhead of having to re-buy Photoshop and Illustrator for another platform. of course you can survive with Boot Camp (or Parallels Desktop, which works great, although i haven't tried anything graphics-heavy under it) but that sort of defeats the point.

with CS3 coming out rsn, though, it's not a bad time to fork out some dosh to Adobe for an upgrade! perhaps you can finance it by ebaying your Wintel kit? ;)

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

I'm tempted to do something very Bad and Wrong to my Wintel kit right now!

I'll probably hold off for CS3 as you say, might as well. I'll probably also go for creative suite rather than just replacing Photoshop and Illustrator, mostly because I want Indesign too -- I have a couple of art book projects in mind that Indesign is really good for.

[new-brunette.livejournal.com]

You have had a completely different experience from mine. I use an Intel Core 2 Duo-based macbook for work and an Intel Core 2 Duo-based PC running Vista Ultimate for home/photoshop/photoed and they're both lush and they're equally usable from my POV. The day job is fiddling under the bonnet of linux and it's a joy to be able just to turn on and use the machines I'm not using for development.

Stability of both machines is about the same - no BSODs (or mac equivalent) and they're both very fast.

I wonder why you've had these problems? I've not found the security stuff getting in the way on vista at all - I can SSH, I can download files, I can use VPN. Same with the Mac.

Apple might be about to up the ante with 10.5 of course, but I can't put a cigarette paper between the two in terms of which I prefer to use at the moment.

[foibey.livejournal.com]

Tried gimpshop/xara or do you need the proprietary features specifically?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

I used Gimp and Xara for a long time before I started using Photoshop a couple of years ago. I couldn't go back now. Gimp is OK for doing relatively simple things, but it isn't really up to the more complex image manipulation I do. It's good, but (like it or not) Photoshop is better. Ditto Illustrator -- I've had problems with EPS export from Xara (and Inkscape for that matter), and neither are *quite* as good as Illustrator in terms of usability. I can't live without solid EPS export because I use Illustrator for putting together illustrations for papers written in LaTeX. Also, Photoshop seems better at dealing with very large image files (1GB or bigger), which is surprisingly easy to hit when you're manipulating images with a native resolution of 8000x6000.

I'm tempted by going for the Creative Suite Premium edition, actually -- you also get Acrobat (which is extremely handy) and Indesign, which I've used to put together a photo book before and I was very impressed with it. I have vague ideas for 2 or 3 more photo books, so it would be nice to get good tools.

[fanf]

http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac_ads1/restarting_480x376.mov

:-)

[foibey.livejournal.com]

Fair does. Was just suggesting them in case.

[reddragdiva]

CrossOver Office.

[womble2.livejournal.com]

Why buy new hardware when Ubuntu will run on your Mac? (If it's a PowerPC Mac, I'm aware they're dropping support for PowerPC. Debian will still support it though.)

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

It's a PowerPC Mac, I'd rather run Ubuntu than Debian, and in any case in my experience support is always a bit better for the most used platform...

Also I'd quite like to run both Mac OS X and Ubuntu at the same time. I don't need Windows very often.