Microsoft Windows Vista

[OCybrManO]

Even with open source there can be a monpoly and im just saying, if there was a Linux Distrubution that became greater than all the rest and really became a major OS then a monopoly would occur, those people would have there own company and would figure out one hell of a way to keep there monopoly.

The difference is that if a monopoly occurs in an open OS, the industry just effectively restarts right where it began. How? Lots of people will want to help out with the vastly dominant distro and, eventually, when enough changes are made by various groups they will split back off into separate distros... putting us, essentially, back where we are today. A Microsoft-like monopoly based on secrecy can't exist in an open source environment because your actual source code is out in the open and anyone, at any point, can improve on your software and release a better version of it. Competition is omnipresent. So, if that same theoretical distro defends its "monopoly" against all of the off-shoots and remains a "monopoly" for a significant period... it is deserved, since their product bested competition that started from equal footing. Microsoft, on the other hand, is all about doing anything possible (well, anything they can get away with) to keep people from reaching equal footing.

Also, the people that develop and release free, open source software want to give something to the community. If they wanted to make tons of money off of their hard work... they wouldn't be writing free open source software.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

This is what I want

-A Dos application support as opposed to DosBox
-Something to speed up my games. Someone mention this feature for Vista, but it wasn't mentioned on the top link
-Microsoft Office as standard (and at a cheaper price)
-An OS that isn't sold at an extortionist price

 

[Cole]

Look I don't want to get into an Open Source debate linux was a bad example but look,
Microsoft is a business if Apple was in Microsofts position I bet you there would be just as many complaints and lawsuits. It dosn't matter what company is up there. The fact is that Apple creates Ipod, Ipod pwns eventually I see Ipod haters.
If you owned a company would you want competition? No. You wouldn't want it. The point of competition is to win, and Microsoft won and now they have none and there going to keep it that way by defending themselves. It dosn't matter how they got there, but the fact that they are there.

 

[furiousV]

Also, the people that develop and release free, open source software want to give something to the community. If they wanted to make tons of money off of their hard work... they wouldn't be writing free open source software.

And that shows their true attitude and if they really want to give us the best. Microsoft hide their source code as they want to be the only people ever to give you what they have created, and they have already won, as I am currently using Windows XP as i write this, and I assume you are too, as the vast majority of people here are. But as we are all dependant on Microsoft, we were born-and-bred on them, know how to use Windows and its system, and play our games on it, it is very difficult for us to move to Linux or another kind of Windows-like OS, and Microsoft know that. I understand very much that MS want to keep their market share, better said, monopoly. But what I hate about it is that Microsoft are abusing this.
Very high prices, why can they not lower them ALOT, they will still make billions due to revenue they rake in from millions of businesses that use their product.
Second, the limited number of times you are allowed to register Windows XP. My friend has recently been denied activating his legal copy Windows XP, message was "you have activated this version of Windows too many times", and other people have been instructed to purchase another version when they called up the support line about this. Pay another £100??????
I wouldn't.

If Windows was not priced as high, I'm sure there would be many more people actually purchasing legal copies. And I for sure would too.


And no, I do not try and crash Windows. Crashes have occured when playing Half Life 2, Battlefield 2, Call of Duty, Rise of Nations, many games, sometimes after a few hours of "light" use, ie only browsing, chatting on MSN/Xfire and a little HTMLing.
I guess we should get our terms cleared up:
Crash usually when the application itself crashes, and causes the entire system to hang/freeze. SOMETIMES I can recover, but after pressing Control+alt+delete, it can take a few minutes to even see the task manager, and then it is still very unresponsive. Alot faster to simply reboot.
Blue Screen of Death. The most feared. BTW, Windows Vista is supposed to do out with the BSoD, are we getting a Red Screen of Death now?


I would have a better attitude towards Vista if it weren't for this DRM and what is it, media encryption and you gotta have something installed before you can listen to the music that you purchased/downloaded? The files on my hard drive are for me to do with what I please, no other company/3rd party/program whatever should have any right to tell me if I can listen/view them when and how and where, if at all.
A friend of mine has purchased music from MSN, and I don't know what has happened, but he can now simply not listen to it. Don't know what he did though, but if he bought the music, he should be able to listen to it no matter what.

I'll hear plenty when Vista is actually released, but I sure won't be pre-ordering anything like it from amazon.co.uk any time soon. You think Microsoft will make it part of the MSDN Academic Alliance like they did with Windows XP?

 

[OCybrManO]

Look I don't want to get into an Open Source debate linux was a bad example but look,
Microsoft is a business if Apple was in Microsofts position I bet you there would be just as many complaints and lawsuits. It dosn't matter what company is up there. The fact is that Apple creates Ipod, Ipod pwns eventually I see Ipod haters.
If you owned a company would you want competition? No. You wouldn't want it. The point of competition is to win, and Microsoft won and now they have none and there going to keep it that way by defending themselves. It dosn't matter how they got there, but the fact that they are there.

Yes, I'm sure if Apple is the one that topples Microsoft they won't be fair to Microsoft... especially since they had their ideas stolen by Microsoft in the beginning (and many would argue it still happens). Anyway, I haven't been a "fan" of Apple since Steve Wozniak left... because Steve Jobs was/is a pretentious bastard. Wozniak made computers because he loved the work. Steve Jobs "helped" him because he loved the money and fame. If it were up to Wozniak, he probably would have given out the schematics of what became the Apple II to the rest of the people at the homebrew computer club. Also, Jobs cheated Wozniak out of money on several occasions. So, yeah, I can see Jobs being almost as bad as Gates or Ballmer if he were in the same situation. On the other hand, if Wozniak was in such a position of power I think the industry would be much better off while it lasted (since a Gates or Jobs would probably eventually take over using insidious business tactics). What I mean is that I understand what you're saying... but I'm saying, in contrast, that it's a product of secrecy/IP/patents/copyrights/etc... and that it could be fixed by moving the computer industry into a GPL environment supported by open standards.

as I am currently using Windows XP as i write this, and I assume you are too, as the vast majority of people here are.

Actually, no... I'm writing this in Firefox on Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger. The only time I ever boot into Windows is when I wan't to play the major game releases that don't get ported to Linux... and, even then, I'm not using XP. I never updated from Windows 2000.

 

[furiousV]

Actually, no... I'm writing this in Firefox on Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger. The only time I ever boot into Windows is when I wan't to play the major game releases that don't get ported to Linux... and, even then, I'm not using XP. I never updated from Windows 2000.

Fair enough, but your not the vast majority now are you :cheers:

I infact use Fedora Core 4 myself quite a bit, and a friend of mine has successfuly loaded up Call of Duty in it, and he has been using it for less than a day.
Quake 4 and Doom 3 are ported to linux, and I hope many other game developers follow this example (havent id software ported all their games?)
Shame Xfire don't work in linux yet.

Let's not begin Microsoft and Apple bashing, or "use linux not Windows" or anything like that.

I actually would like to see Vista for myself, see what all this hype is about, and the screenshots do look pretty neat. What is the current release date set for?

 

[OCybrManO]

I'm not saying Vista is bad or OS X is bad. The latest versions of OS X are great for the average user. They're rather robust, easy to use, polished, secure, and Apple has always had good media authoring/editing software. Also, Microsoft is switching their development procedure away from bloatware toward much more streamlined, bug-free software... and they're overhauling the whole GUI. I support those changes, I just don't like the people in charge and how they run the companies. They're practices are holding the industry back from where it could be. That's all I'm saying.

 

[Cole]

And no, I do not try and crash Windows. Crashes have occured when playing Half Life 2, Battlefield 2, Call of Duty, Rise of Nations, many games, sometimes after a few hours of "light" use, ie only browsing,

If BF2 or HL2 or CoD or RoN crashes who says it's Xp's fault?
CoD, RoN, and BF2 have never crashed on me. And when other games do, my system hangs because it's trying to unload all the data and create an error report(you can set that off).

My friend has recently been denied activating his legal copy Windows XP, message was "you have activated this version of Windows too many times", and other people have been instructed to purchase another version when they called up the support line about this. Pay another £100?????

You don't go to other people you got to MICROSOFT. Microsoft gladly went actviated my copy over the phone when I explained it to them. They have great support.

 

[furiousV]

If BF2 or HL2 or CoD or RoN crashes who says it's Xp's fault?
CoD, RoN, and BF2 have never crashed on me.

I was hammering when installing Windows it said "Windows XP is more stable. You do not need to restart your computer." Something just like that.

My memory is fine. Hard drive clean. No virus.

 

[OCybrManO]

Well, Kamikazie's computer was rebooting itself whenever he tried to play DirectX games for a while, then he reinstalled DirectX and it started working again. So, if it wasn't directly a problem with the OS itself... it was at least a problem with a specific Microsoft-created part of the OS. Also, Microsoft doesn't write bug-free code. They admit that. They even said that one of the benefits of the new system they're using to make Vista resulted in less than half (I don't remember the exact amount) as many errors in their code. Still, even if it's not Microsoft code causing the crashes, they still have the burden of making Windows able to recover from problems in the programs it is running. Thankfully, that aspect has greatly improved since the pre-2000 days.

 

[diluted]

-Something to speed up my games. Someone mention this feature for Vista, but it wasn't mentioned on the top link

Indeed, that would be good. Something like a 'Game Mode' that the OS goes into, shutting down all processes that aren't related to the game (with exception of security-related stuff, like firewall/anti-virus).

 

[OCybrManO]

Yeah, they could use stuff they've learned from making the Xbox in order to optimize the system for playing games.

 

[Cole]

Yeah, they could use stuff they've learned from making the Xbox in order to optimize the system for playing games.

Which they've already done .
Automatically and Manually, and it will also be able to give your computer an overall score.
If I feel like going back and getting the article about it I will, I believe it's over and anandtech