OT Vista Blues
Chandru Murthi
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/et-tu-intel/index.html?ref=technology
Intel, the giant chip maker and longtime partner of Microsoft, has decided
against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft's
Vista operating system, a person with direct knowledge of the company's
plans said.
"This isn't a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology
staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,"
Intel is hardly alone in its reluctance to embrace Microsoft's latest
operating system, which was available to corporate customers in November
2006 and to consumers in January 2007. Large companies routinely hold off
...."But by 18 months, you'd expect to see a significant uptake, and we
haven't seen that," said David Smith, a Gartner analyst. "There's not much
excitement."
So say we all?.... Chandru
mark
you may have no choice but Vista.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080630/ap_on_hi_te/microsoft_xp
Peter McMurray
"Chandru Murthi" <cmurth_xyz@xyz_seeinggreen.net> wrote in message
news:bP8ak.59$dz.44@trndny01...
>>
> "This isn't a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information
> technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,"
>
to Vista but they do mean that people have to actually examine the
procedures that they are currently using. Wow! they might even have to come
down out of their ivory towers/cubbies and actually look at what people are
doing and why. That plus the fact that when you buy a computer it comes
with Vista which in my opinion is the only viable desktop in the general
market.
I can tell you now that I have never walked into an organisation that did
not have people working around the system. The horrifying sight of
spreadsheet abuse as non-programmers dream up their own little wonders is
one classic area. Often that can be our own fault. Expecting people to do
it properly as trained is to say the least ambitious. In my own case I can
think of examples where I need to stand back and see what I can do better.
For example our pricing algorithm starts with a "Free on Board" price and
works up through margins, discounts etc to a final charge - all clearly
demonstrated on screen in a tree structure. However some people cannot
reason this way (there are times when I wonder how they find their way to
work, then I remember that the best operator I ever had suffered agrophobia
and we had to rescue her from the corner outside the office as she was lost)
so the answer is to give them a screen that lets them put in the prices that
they want to charge and work it backwards for them.
A different but essential point is paperwork - I have mentioned already the
terrific integration of TIFF scanning that can save a fortune in time,
effort and storage.
Then of course there is the security which is massively improved, but of
course that does not show except in the "annoying" requests for
confirmation. Do not turn them off except in a properly designated
Administrator account and definitely disable guest whilst setting all other
users with standard privileges only. Yes that means do NOT do development
work in an administrator account and then wonder why it doesn't work
properly for a standard user.
Peter McMurray.
Chandru Murthi
news:LCeak.16132$IK1...@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>
> "Chandru Murthi" <cmurth_xyz@xyz_seeinggreen.net> wrote in message
> news:bP8ak.59$dz.44@trndny01...
>>>
>> "This isn't a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information
>> technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,"
>>
> That is the important part. There are some excellent reasons for
> upgrading to Vista but they do mean that people have to actually examine
> the procedures that they are currently using. Wow! they might even have
> to come down out of their ivory towers/cubbies and actually look at what
> people are doing and why. That plus the fact that when you buy a computer
> it comes with Vista which in my opinion is the only viable desktop in the
> general market.
Hmmm...I don't know about you, but personally I use a PC as a simple tool
and what's important to me is that it does not get in my way and is as
reliable as a toaster. And...the buttons shouldn't have changed since the
last time I got one.
I thought the story (which is all over the web) spoke for itself. What I got
from it was that a *signficant number* of people, including movers and
shakers in the computer world, were at the very least, wary or indifferent
to Vista. This means something (to me), as it confirms my more Luddite
impressions of a product I cursed for a month until I reverted to XP.
> I can tell you now that I have never walked into an organisation that did
> not have people working around the system. The horrifying sight of
> spreadsheet abuse as non-programmers dream up their own little wonders is
> one classic area.
ABUSE?!! Call out Program Protection Services! What the heck are you
talking about?
Peter, you obviously use a PC is a very different way and I'm willing to
accept that you actually like Vista. But I suspect the vast majority of
users couldn't care less.
>Often that can be our own fault. Expecting people to do it properly as
>trained is to say the least ambitious.
I have NO desire to be "trained" to use my PC. That's the point of it, it's
supposed to be user-friendly.
> In my own case I can think of examples where I need to stand back and see
> what I can do better. For example our pricing algorithm starts with a
> "Free on Board" price and works up through margins, discounts etc to a
> final charge - all clearly demonstrated on screen in a tree structure.
> However some people cannot reason this way (there are times when I wonder
> how they find their way to work, then I remember that the best operator I
> ever had suffered agrophobia and we had to rescue her from the corner
> outside the office as she was lost)
Hmmm. Dawn... what say you?
> so the answer is to give them a screen that lets them put in the prices
> that they want to charge and work it backwards for them.
>
> A different but essential point is paperwork - I have mentioned already
> the terrific integration of TIFF scanning that can save a fortune in time,
> effort and storage.
I regret to say I barely know what a TIFF is. What's wrong with gifs? What
does scanning mean anyway? Like Google Images?
> Then of course there is the security which is massively improved, but of
> course that does not show except in the "annoying" requests for
> confirmation.
"does not" or do you mean "does?"
> Do not turn them off except in a properly designated Administrator account
> and definitely disable guest whilst setting all other users with standard
> privileges only. Yes that means do NOT do development work in an
> administrator account and then wonder why it doesn't work properly for a
> standard user.
Yeah, and I will stop logging in as root on Unix as well. Hahaha.
Chandru
> Peter McMurray.
>
>
frosty
> I regret to say I barely know what a TIFF is. What's wrong with gifs?
> What does scanning mean anyway? Like Google Images?
TIFF = Lossless compressed image. Works especially well for
one-bit (black and white) images, even better because there's
a multi-page option, and standard TIFF viewers abound.
Scanning is simply a way to archive documents. (There's other
reasons to scan stuff, too.)
--
frosty
Chandru Murthi
into the details of formats. My broader point was that there's no convincing
reason to use Vista unless forced to, and as long as you re-opened the
issue, and Peter has not responded, what IS the big deal with Vista and TIFF
images?
Chandru
"frosty" <fro...@bogus.tld> wrote in message
news:PJmdnfARrPZ5APTV...@centurytel.net...
frosty
compressed TIFF files for years, now, on WinXP. I've not seen
Vista, nor do I care to. I suspect that like IE 7, it would break
our application, in some way.
--
frosty
Peter McMurray
Sorry I did not get back more quickly, I was too busy loading Visual Studio
2008 :-)
I did mention in earlier posts that one of the things that we have done to
dramatically improve part of a clients business is to scan the drivers
diaries. We are talking forest workers who rarely see a town - 2am to 4am
starts with 14 hour days are typical - they maintain a diary of loads , fuel
and repairs that they fax in if they can get to a machine or drop at a
weighbridge somewhere. This created a lot of paper that has to be analysed
and tax laws require to be stored for 7 years. Now they drop the diary in,
the operator scans it into the new Vista Document Imaging software and
brings it up on the screen beside the spreadsheet where she can markup the
TIFF document and add comments then record the figures in the spreadsheet.
Vastly simpler and more cost effective than the old method. We will be
improving the job in other ways but need to make haste slowly.
The Vista gadget bar is another excellent addition with a notes and a to do
gadget linked in with Outlook. Outlook is vastly improved with the
possibility of coloured groupings easily differentiating items.
The list goes on and will extend, as the number of users is headed to over
200 million IT departments are going to have to wake up - like it or not
green screens are dead along with many traditional ways of data capture as
Qantas engineering have discovered with JetSmart aka DumbJet. Now the Apple
iPhone is going to freak IT out as it nudges BlackBerry along.
By the way I did mean "spreadsheet ABUSE". The people who think that they
will just bang it into a spreadsheet and ignore the system are everywhere.
In my example a "clever" manager decided to put the customers he was
interested in into a spreadsheet and instead of putting the daily price
changes into the system - a simple one field entry - he showed the operators
to just use his spreadsheet and print copies for the drivers - yes the
delivery dockets did have that info but only if you kept the computer up to
date! Problem, he had the algorithm wrong on a couple of customers so they
had cheap fuel for many a day plus the operators had to over-ride the price
calculated by the system on every entry for every customer. Then of course
the management reports were rendered useless as every transaction was an
exception!
A computer is not a toaster, it is a vital ever developing tool just like a
car. A Thunderbird may be a great chick magnet on Sunset Strip but as a car
it is useless today without airbags, ABS, Stability control, Climate
control, and fuel efficient engine - although I am willing to accept that
the average American SUV is more akin to a TBird than a car where safety and
efficiency is concerned :-)
I saw a great quote today "We are limited not by our actions but by our
vision". The partial retirement of one of the greates computer visionaries
this week will no doubt see more changes. Personally I am diving head first
into a new era of study that may or may not work but I will not die
wondering. Even though I have been perfectly happy with my tools to date I
need to change the approach as life rushes on.
Peter McMurray
"frosty" <fro...@bogus.tld> wrote in message
news:wZmdnTQrp-miz_fV...@centurytel.net...
cheseroo
I think it's fair to for me to make assumptions as to the flavor of
Koolaide drunk by the people that regularly post here so as a random
person off the street I thought I'd jump in and throw out my take. I
posted on a different version of the Vista connundrum in another post
but I don't think it evey appeared.
My take? I'm an d3 admin. Our customers run d3 on NT, linux and
aix. The d3/*nix systems rarely need administration, d3/NT often
needs administration. For that reason, I prefer d3/*nix because it
makes my job easier.
We run XP on our internal desktops on a windows domain with a
centralized security solution. We bravely/stupidly let the boys in
Redmond automatically update XP every month. Perhaps we have been
lucky but haven't had many security related issues. The workstations
are used to run Accuterm/Accuterm GUI, MS Office/Outlook and maybe one
or two other apps. We bought 2 brand new name brand Vista machines
that have been sitting in my office for months. Why? They are the
slowest pigs I can remember since trying to run Win 3.1.1 on 8mb of
memory. The users complained so much we pulled them back out. These
machines were not XP machines upgraded to Vista mind you but out of
the box Vista running just Accuterm and Office. Now we are told that
the 1GB of memory they came with isn't enough. My Lord, I can run 100
d3/linux users on 1GB of memory but I can't run 1 stupid support
person with 1GB on Vista? I know it's not an apples to apples
comparison but I just can't see any reason to buy enough hardware to
run Vista when XP does the job fine, thank you. As an admin I look
around and see all these indications that there's a fair number of
people like me (nee Intel) that would rather wait to see the next
version of windows and I see no reason to think I'm smarter than them.
Joe
3fe054...@p39g2000prm.googlegroups.com:
The issue's going to be the availability and support for XP from a
business standpoint. MS will eventually force the issue by eliminating
the aforementioned, but XP will still be available from "smaller
hardware suppliers" according to a few recent (June '08) Internet
articles I've seen. Overall, I think it will be tougher to purchase and
obtain support, but it will be possible.
Regarding Vista, you'll need at least 2GB RAM and a dual core processor
for it to run "nice". It's really not all that bad because hardware and
memory are ultra-cheap these days. For max efficiency, you have to turn
off the Aero, animation, and all the other bells and whistles that Vista
has. Once you config Vista for max efficiency, it's actually pretty
good.
Windows 7 is the next release (supposedly scheduled to come in either
'09 or '10), but it probably won't be the saviour to Vista. Just Google
"Windows 7" and start reading..
Chandru Murthi
> Hi
> Sorry I did not get back more quickly, I was too busy loading Visual
> Studio 2008 :-)
> Document Imaging software and brings it up on the screen beside the
> spreadsheet where she can markup the TIFF document and add comments then
> record the figures in the spreadsheet. Vastly simpler and more cost
> effective than the old method.
Thanks for the explanation, but off the cuff it seems that Vista has merely
incorporated some existing software to do this task. Could one not have just
gotten it elsewhere for XP?
> The Vista gadget bar is another excellent addition with a notes and a to
> do gadget linked in with Outlook. Outlook is vastly improved with the
> possibility of coloured groupings easily differentiating items.
I apologize for being sarcastic, but THOSE are the best examples of
increased
functionality? The last time I felt a need to color-code my email messages
was...never?
> By the way I did mean "spreadsheet ABUSE". The people who think that they
> will just bang it into a spreadsheet and ignore the system are everywhere.
> In my example a "clever" manager decided to put the customers he was
> interested in into a spreadsheet and instead of putting the daily price
> changes into the system - a simple one field entry - he showed the
> operators to just use his spreadsheet and print copies for the drivers -
> yes the delivery dockets did have that info but only if you kept the
> computer up to date! Problem, he had the algorithm wrong on a couple of
> customers so they had cheap fuel for many a day plus the operators had to
> over-ride the price calculated by the system on every entry for every
> customer. Then of course the management reports were rendered useless as
> every transaction was an exception!
You're actually describing operational "abuse" if you will. How has this
anything to do with Vista's supposed improvements?
Couldn't they screw up just as well on Vista?
> A computer is not a toaster, it is a vital ever developing tool just like
> a car. A Thunderbird may be a great chick magnet on Sunset Strip but as a
> car it is useless today without airbags, ABS, Stability control, Climate
> control, and fuel efficient engine - although I am willing to accept that
> the average American SUV is more akin to a TBird than a car where safety
> and efficiency is concerned :-)
Just like with a computer, most people driving cars don't know or care about
DRIVING, they just want comfort and reliability (and I say this as an ex-BMW
owner who used to go on tracks a bit.) So the average use of a car IS like a
toaster, you get in, turn the key and expect it to start, and motor your way
to your destination. So the analogy is bad.
Your use of a computer is like my driving on the track ,we expect more of
our machines.
But my use of a computer is like toasting bread (and making a living.) I
don't intrinsically care about it.
> I saw a great quote today "We are limited not by our actions but by our
> vision". The partial retirement of one of the greates computer
> visionaries this week will no doubt see more changes. Personally I am
> diving head first into a new era of study that may or may not work but I
> will not die wondering. Even though I have been perfectly happy with my
> tools to date I need to change the approach as life rushes on.
I would suggest stopping to smell the roses too, sometime.
Chandru
> Peter McMurray
Peter McMurray
When was the last time that you got out on the floor and genuinely examined
the business processes?
I actually asked the operator why she said "I like my Vista". Lo and behold
ease of use with document imaging was number 1 and no you cannot do it that
easily in XP, Linux or any other desktop. Outlook changes figured very high
on the list with colour coding of the contacts a major benefit. Outlook
interfaces easily to things like the Payroll, Creditors, Debtors etc and
separating the contacts in this manner is very valuable. The gadget bar
links are also very valuable with popups and reminders for jobs to be done
today etc.
My example of spreadsheet abuse was intended to show that we need to look at
how people actually work and that now there are significant changes in the
Office suite particularly well linked to Vista is a good time to start.
There are other major benefits such as the security et al but perhaps people
should read the info rather than launching into criticism. On that point
why did you dump it since you will have to go back to it or retire. In fact
I find it quite intriguing to see people claiming that their *nix systems
never fall over but Windows often does. It never seems to occur to them
that maybe they have made a mistake as a very significant chunk of world
business sees it differently. :-)
As for the BMW, well that got slammed by Top Gear last year for a ridiculous
interface that required one to read the manual in depth just to shut up the
stupid GSP gadget and other "improvements". My examples are from a superior
and cheaper car, the MAZDA 6, perhaps that is why Mazda sell far more cars
world wide! By the way a BMW happily led my brother through a maze of
Belgian streets and when in the middle of a square with 6 lanes of traffic
announced "you are here" Whoopee-doo. Bad design and worse implementation.
As for smelling the roses. Mate I think that I have you well beaten there
as I watch the wedge tailed eagles soaring on the ridge above my house, the
swoop of a white goshawk or a kookaburra past my office window and then at
night the wondrous sound of thousands of frogs chortling around the
paddocks. A few years back you would have been right as I was working far
too hard
Good Luck with your systems
Peter McMurray
frosty
>
> As for smelling the roses... I watch the wedge tailed eagles soaring on
> the ridge above my house... a white goshawk...
Sweet! Out here we have Bald Eagles and Osprey.
Of course, they don't supply constant stimulation,
but we make do.
--
frosty
Chandru Murthi
> Hi Chandru
> When was the last time that you got out on the floor and genuinely
> examined the business processes?
Thankfully, never ;).Business is a complete mystery to me.
> I actually asked the operator why she said "I like my Vista". Lo and
> behold ease of use with document imaging was number 1 and no you cannot do
> it that easily in XP, Linux or any other desktop. Outlook changes figured
> very high on the list with colour coding of the contacts a major benefit.
> Outlook interfaces easily to things like the Payroll, Creditors, Debtors
> etc and separating the contacts in this manner is very valuable. The
> gadget bar links are also very valuable with popups and reminders for jobs
> to be done today etc.
An easily amused user, eh? I can send her some crayons.
> My example of spreadsheet abuse was intended to show that we need to look
> at how people actually work and that now there are significant changes in
> the Office suite particularly well linked to Vista is a good time to
> start. There are other major benefits such as the security et al but
> perhaps people should read the info rather than launching into criticism.
> On that point why did you dump it since you will have to go back to it or
> retire
Think I can keep my XP for another 4 years and will seriously think about
retirement then. Or else switch to my son's W2000.
>. In fact I find it quite intriguing to see people claiming that their *nix
>systems never fall over but Windows often does. It never seems to occur to
>them that maybe they have made a mistake as a very significant chunk of
>world business sees it differently. :-)
>
> As for the BMW, well that got slammed by Top Gear last year for a
> ridiculous interface that required one to read the manual in depth just to
> shut up the stupid GSP gadget and other "improvements". My examples are
> from a superior and cheaper car, the MAZDA 6, perhaps that is why Mazda
> sell far more cars world wide! By the way a BMW happily led my brother
> through a maze of Belgian streets and when in the middle of a square with
> 6 lanes of traffic announced "you are here" Whoopee-doo. Bad design and
> worse implementation.
BMW is far and away the best "drivers" car according to most reviews. Don't
confuse the bastrardization of control which is the I-Drive (optional on the
little BMW's) with drivability.
However, you're actually proving my point. I-Drive does nothing substantial
functionally, probably took a 100 man-years of design time, is a complete
bear to understand, and gives new meaning to the words "user-hostile."
Remind you of Vista?
Chandru
Peter McMurray
> "Peter McMurray" <excal...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
> news:5xdbk.16852$IK1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>> Hi Chandru
>> When was the last time that you got out on the floor and genuinely
>> examined the business processes?
>
> Thankfully, never ;).Business is a complete mystery to me.
Obviously
>
>> I actually asked the operator why she said "I like my Vista". Lo and
>> behold ease of use with document imaging was number 1 and no you cannot
>> do it that easily in XP, Linux or any other desktop. Outlook changes
>> figured very high on the list with colour coding of the contacts a major
>> benefit. Outlook interfaces easily to things like the Payroll, Creditors,
>> Debtors etc and separating the contacts in this manner is very valuable.
>> The gadget bar links are also very valuable with popups and reminders for
>> jobs to be done today etc.
>
> An easily amused user, eh? I can send her some crayons.
You do have an uncanny ability to jump in too deep. She actually is vastly
more experienced than your good self. She is a qualified accountant with
many years experience running accounting departments, an experienced Pick
programmer who is also perfectly capable of changing a disk drive or power
supply and has significant exposure as both installer and user of most
popular operating systems.
You definitely need to get out there on the work floor for a change.
>
>> My example of spreadsheet abuse was intended to show that we need to look
>> at how people actually work and that now there are significant changes in
>> the Office suite particularly well linked to Vista is a good time to
>> start. There are other major benefits such as the security et al but
>> perhaps people should read the info rather than launching into criticism.
>> On that point why did you dump it since you will have to go back to it or
>> retire
>
> Think I can keep my XP for another 4 years and will seriously think about
> retirement then. Or else switch to my son's W2000.
What a pity. Once you were a leader in the development stakes now you are
like the old farmer who never could see a need to change his horse for a
tractor and wondered why he went broke.
>
>>. In fact I find it quite intriguing to see people claiming that their
>>*nix systems never fall over but Windows often does. It never seems to
>>occur to them that maybe they have made a mistake as a very significant
>>chunk of world business sees it differently. :-)
>>
>> As for the BMW, well that got slammed by Top Gear last year for a
>> ridiculous interface that required one to read the manual in depth just
>> to shut up the stupid GSP gadget and other "improvements". My examples
>> are from a superior and cheaper car, the MAZDA 6, perhaps that is why
>> Mazda sell far more cars world wide! By the way a BMW happily led my
>> brother through a maze of Belgian streets and when in the middle of a
>> square with 6 lanes of traffic announced "you are here" Whoopee-doo. Bad
>> design and worse implementation.
>
> BMW is far and away the best "drivers" car according to most reviews.
> Don't confuse the bastrardization of control which is the I-Drive
> (optional on the little BMW's) with drivability.
>
> However, you're actually proving my point. I-Drive does nothing
> substantial functionally, probably took a 100 man-years of design time, is
> a complete bear to understand, and gives new meaning to the words
> "user-hostile." Remind you of Vista?
Definitely not. The help in Vista and associated Office suites is the best
that any manufacturer has ever produced. You still have not told us what
upset you so much that you changed back. Perhaps you were too busy fixing
the notoriously dodgy BMW :-)
Peter McMurray
Peter McMurray
"frosty" <fro...@bogus.tld> wrote in message
I suspect that you may not have that view :-) Although the species that you
chose do indicate a knowledge of the topic. In which case I should say Grey
Goshawk Accipiter Novaehollandiae it just happens that our local variant is
pure white and unfortunately endangered.
However try Google Earth 41 14 33.86S 147 14 59.89E and you can see that I
actually do have the view and this is the time of year that they return to
our valley. I anticipate the mountain ducks on my top dam in a week or so
and the Little Grebes should build their floating wonder home on the lower
dam later in the month. The Welcome Swallows normally arrive on August 28.
By the way the new Google Earth version 4.3 works really well on the 24"
screens now popular with Vista :-) Oh! yes the client particularly likes it
because he can check out forestry blocks before he bids for them, saves him
a lot of 4WD and unnecessary walking. Plus of course his new Vista machine
is a devil of a lot faster than his XP machine :-) Maybe that could be
because I read the specs before I installed them - the extra gig of ram was
actually free from Dell that week :-)
Peter McMurray
>
Tony Gravagno
of the Vista features just to get it "pretty good". Why can't we just
throw the same or less hardware at XP and get a system that has all
the software we already own, running "great"?
T
Tony Gravagno
>> Now they drop the diary in...
"Chandru Murthi" wrote:
>Thanks for the explanation, but off the cuff it seems that Vista has merely
Regarding this Vista vs pre-Vista thing, I feel like I'm reviewing
conversations I/we've seen many times in the past. But it's with
people who tell me how much happier they are with a relational DBMS
compared to MV. And the following is from a post I made here in
January about people who migrated to jBASE or U2 from D3.
>I can't tell you how many times I've had this conversation:
>[technician/user] We moved to jBASE for feature X.
>[me] D3 has that.
>[technician/user] Oh, well we got feature Y with jBASE too.
>[me] D3 has that too.
>[technician/user] Oh, I didn't know that.
>
>The conversations occasionally end with a vague silence as the
>technician user realizes they probably didn't need to spend all that
>time and money to migrate after all. That's OK, I won't tell
>management if they won't.
What's happening is that people aren't looking closely enough at what
they can get with what they have. I have not seen a technical advance
presented for Vista that isn't possible with similar coding or an
existing off-the-shelf solution. Fax, diaries, scanning,
spreadsheets, mobile comms... the endless list of things people "now"
get with Vista have been available for XP for years. The only thing
Vista has that's new is a new shell around the kernel which isolates
applications from one another. It's a fundamental change to the
operating system which has nothing at all to do with the applications
that run over it.
In short, Peter and anyone else looking to Vista as the great saviour:
If you have a business requirement, chances are extremely high that
you do not need to migrate to Vista to satisfy those needs.
Yes, of course there is software that has been written which is now
Vista-only, but thisn't because Vista offers features that aren't
available anywhere else, it's because companies are trying to avoid
supporting multiple platforms, including ones that Microsoft has
started to obsolete. Can we get 'foo' on XP? Increasingly the answer
is starting to be "no" simply because some developers can't continue
to incur the expense of coding and testing against so many OS
platforms. It's a matter of sheer human resources. We're not
enamored with the new platform, we just can't afford to continue
supporting both the old and the new, and it's a tough business
position to insist on sticking with the old. While many companies
have taken that bold position, many others haven't, and for this
reason I'm starting to resent the presence of Vista - it's mere
presence is affecting the availability of updates for software that
didn't need it.
There is a natural tendency to believe that what one has now simply
isn't good enough, but with that "other tool over there" everything
will be possible. I don't care whether people are talking about
relationships, software, or going to some other part of the country to
find a job - the grass is always greener somewhere else, whether it's
hope, facts, or blindfolds that help to convince us.
And no stack of facts, no matter how compelling, is going to convince
someone who has already made a major decision that they could have had
what they wanted with the tools they were using before. This is
especially true of decision makers who are responsible to upper
management or paying customers, where it's considered politically
risky to acknowledge that any direction but the one already advised is
the correct one. It's not that people are afraid to admit they were
wrong, it seems more fundamental than that, like there's an on/off bit
in the brain that suddenly toggles into a third neutral state of
denial, and otherwise very logical people refuse to change their minds
at any cost.
Consider as a recent example the matter of comparing fields in AQL.
There was firm conviction that this wasn't possible in D3 and that
it's only available in other environments. I said it was possible and
was challenged to prove otherwise. I presented a complete solution,
dispelled the myth... and the thread went silent. Was there
acknowledgement that people have been wrong all along? Has anyone
stepped up to say "wow, that's neat, I can sell it to all of my
customers?" Nope. And I'm sure next year someone will post here
wondering why they can't do that with D3, and other people will tell
them how wonderful other platforms are because they can do something
that D3 can't.
I wonder how many people out there will admit that they can feel that
bit toggling right about now...
T
Joe
(except, perhaps if/when XP support ceases to exist). But if/when Vista
is the only available choice, it'll run very well with all the resource-
sucking visual attributes turned off.
Tony Gravagno <address.i...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote in
news:9p4u649tcokhst0cc...@4ax.com:
Chandru Murthi
>
> "Chandru Murthi" <cmurth_xyz@xyz_seeinggreen.net> wrote in message
> news:5Wwbk.92$0V1.71@trndny01...
>> "Peter McMurray" <excal...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
>> news:5xdbk.16852$IK1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>>> Hi Chandru
>>> When was the last time that you got out on the floor and genuinely
>>> examined the business processes?
>>
>> Thankfully, never ;).Business is a complete mystery to me.
>
> Obviously
Obviously you don't get irony.
>>
>>> I actually asked the operator why she said "I like my Vista". Lo and
>>> behold ease of use with document imaging was number 1 and no you cannot
>>> do it that easily in XP, Linux or any other desktop. Outlook changes
>>> figured very high on the list with colour coding of the contacts a major
>>> benefit. Outlook interfaces easily to things like the Payroll,
>>> Creditors, Debtors etc and separating the contacts in this manner is
>>> very valuable. The gadget bar links are also very valuable with popups
>>> and reminders for jobs to be done today etc.
>>
>> An easily amused user, eh? I can send her some crayons.
> You do have an uncanny ability to jump in too deep. She actually is
> vastly more experienced than your good self. She is a qualified
> accountant with many years experience running accounting departments, an
> experienced Pick programmer who is also perfectly capable of changing a
> disk drive or power supply and has significant exposure as both installer
> and user of most popular operating systems.
In that case, I'll make that a new set of power tools. In fuschia.
http://www.ladiestoolsonline.com/
> You definitely need to get out there on the work floor for a change.
>>
>>> My example of spreadsheet abuse was intended to show that we need to
>>> look at how people actually work and that now there are significant
>>> changes in the Office suite particularly well linked to Vista is a good
>>> time to start. There are other major benefits such as the security et al
>>> but perhaps people should read the info rather than launching into
>>> criticism. On that point why did you dump it since you will have to go
>>> back to it or retire
>>
>> Think I can keep my XP for another 4 years and will seriously think about
>> retirement then. Or else switch to my son's W2000.
>
> What a pity. Once you were a leader in the development stakes now you are
> like the old farmer who never could see a need to change his horse for a
> tractor and wondered why he went broke.
Not planning to go broke, buying a new gizmo every few months.
Also bad analogy. If you have been following the slow food movement, you'll
find that many "old-fashioned" farming techniques are beginning to make a
come-back as the realization dawns that hyper-productivity and mono-cultural
farming causes an eventual decline in soil fertility and generate more
problems than they solve. The horses may have been a good thing.
>>
>>>. In fact I find it quite intriguing to see people claiming that their
>>>*nix systems never fall over but Windows often does. It never seems to
>>>occur to them that maybe they have made a mistake as a very significant
>>>chunk of world business sees it differently. :-)
>>>
>>> As for the BMW, well that got slammed by Top Gear last year for a
>>> ridiculous interface that required one to read the manual in depth just
>>> to shut up the stupid GSP gadget and other "improvements". My examples
>>> are from a superior and cheaper car, the MAZDA 6, perhaps that is why
>>> Mazda sell far more cars world wide! By the way a BMW happily led my
>>> brother through a maze of Belgian streets and when in the middle of a
>>> square with 6 lanes of traffic announced "you are here" Whoopee-doo. Bad
>>> design and worse implementation.
>>
>> BMW is far and away the best "drivers" car according to most reviews.
>> Don't confuse the bastrardization of control which is the I-Drive
>> (optional on the little BMW's) with drivability.
>>
>> However, you're actually proving my point. I-Drive does nothing
>> substantial functionally, probably took a 100 man-years of design time,
>> is a complete bear to understand, and gives new meaning to the words
>> "user-hostile." Remind you of Vista?
>
> Definitely not. The help in Vista and associated Office suites is the
> best that any manufacturer has ever produced. You still have not told us
> what upset you so much that you changed back. Perhaps you were too busy
> fixing the notoriously dodgy BMW :-)
Ever owned a BMW? It's quite reliable, thank you.
Look back on this thread and another one from last month for Vista problems.
Also check TG's much more moderate response:
"Why should anyone get Vista with extra hardware and then turn off all
of the Vista features just to get it "pretty good". Why can't we just
throw the same or less hardware
[and, by extension, software - Chandru]
at XP and get a system that has all
the software we already own, running "great"?"
Or Joe's "it'll run very well with all the resource sucking visual
attributes turned off."
On the other hand, I've seen nothing you've posted that shows Vista's
superiority (well, colorcolding, gadgets... and better help.) I'm
underwhelmed.
Chandru
frosty
> news:CoGdnWVpkYjt8PDV...@centurytel.net...
>> Peter McMurray wrote:
>>>
>>> As for smelling the roses... I watch the wedge tailed eagles
>>> soaring on the ridge above my house... a white goshawk...
>>
>> Sweet! Out here we have Bald Eagles and Osprey.
>> Of course, they don't supply constant stimulation,
>> but we make do.
>>
>> --
>> frosty
Peter McMurray wrote:
> I suspect that you may not have that view :-)
Well, you suspect wrong. WTF? You think I sit here
and make up stories about what birds we have, here?!?
--
frosty
Peter McMurray
It seems that the points have got lost in the middle of all this: I am
sorry Tony but your long amswer does not change these items.
Point 1 Vista is the current supported operating system from the major
supplier.
Point 2 the wrapper as Tony calls it is much better.
Point 3 I asked the user what made their life easier. When I received an
answer that seems frivolous instead of getting all sarcastic I said show me
please. There are things that affect the operator every minute of the day
that are made much easier in Vista. Such as the link from the Gadget bar
To Do list to Outlook which is far more than an email reader. Colour coded
categories for all the major items that are easily added with a right click
are valuable.
The ability to handle scanned documents and a spreadsheet at the same time
side by side.
The vastly improved help with videos.
The much improved security.
The list goes on and no you cannot do these things easily in XP or GNU. Of
course you can program anything if you have sufficient time and money to
waste.
Point 4 Anyone being trained today is being trained in Vista and the latest
Office and if one does not know what they do one is at best going to look a
chump
Last but not least., I don't dislike BMW, Heck if I had the money an M3
would be on the list and if I ever manage to get back to Europe top of my
list is a trip in a Ring Taxi with the fabulous Sabine Schmitz - now there
is a woman who had the fear gene left out of the mix. But as a daily ride
they are not value for money the reliability long term is suspect just like
my favourite vehicle which was a long wheel base Land Rover - it chucked the
main gear cluster after 70,000. My Mazda on the other hand the first one
had a broken switch on the dash when I traded it at 180,000 and the second
is coming up for 160,000. As for the broken switch I can hardly blame Mazda
as my dear wife managed to snap an eighth inch thick petrol tap on the
Landie :-)
Peter McMurray
Joe
It may be that Chandru, Tony, et al. are missing the boat here. Anyone
is certainly free to ignore Vista for whatever reasons and not make
money from selling solutions for it, while others might choose
differently.
As for Vista requiring more power, so what? XP is a pig compared to
Linux. Vista runs great with contemporary hardware and config (2GB RAM,
a semi-decent dual core processor, and a graphics card). After all, it
_is_ the 21st century.
BMWs are decent cars, but there are also other, less costly cars that
approach that performance level - better bang for the buck you might
say, unless, of course, you're into the nameplate thing. Rovers are
fun, but they are most finicky. From a reliability standpoint, our
Mazda is wonderful.
Peter McMurray
I have to disagree.
Firstly the people who turn things off in normal use accounts are in my
opinion taking the wrong step. Sure turn off aero if you have underspecced
the hardware that is not an important choice. Turning off security
features - hey if you leave the chook house door open don't complain when
you lose them to a fox/quoll (we probably don't have foxes but quolls love
chooks :-))
However for anyone doing web development it is a different story if they
want to keep up with the field. I lack the detailed experience so I will
quote Mike Volodarsky "It's important to start thinking about it now because
Windows Vista ships with the same full featured IIS7.0 bits thar are
expected to be released in Windows server "longhorn" This means you can
immediately take advantage of the new IIS 7.0 features to build your
personal web site and host it on Windows Vista." Yes it will run the old
stuff by simulation but all the goodies are in the new one, over 40
configurable options right down to being able to configure your own
application on a hosted site without having to go through the host owner.
Now that is progress. Sorry for the "toaster" types you are going to have
to read the manual to get it right.
Peter McMurray
"Tony Gravagno" <address.i...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote in
frosty
> ...As for Vista requiring more power, so what?
> ...Vista runs great with contemporary hardware and config
> (2GB RAM, a semi-decent dual core processor, and a graphics
> card). After all, it _is_ the 21st century.
So... S/W that requires more h/w to get less done
is... Progress?
--
frosty
Joe
news:2cGdnaa1wqc_mezV...@centurytel.net:
It's life, it's been going on for quite a while, and it will most likely
continue for quite a while.
I'm certainly not defending the trend, just recognizing it for what it is
and seeing potential business opportunities.
Tony Gravagno
>Point 1 Vista is the current supported operating system from the major
>supplier.
At the risk of getting too political, you've accepted Vista as the new
supported product as easily as the American public relinquished a
number of rights after 9/11/2001. This is all too Orwellian for a
forum discussion.
>Point 2 the wrapper as Tony calls it is much better.
That's not quite a point, it's an opinion, but OK.
>Point 3 I asked the user what made their life easier.
Haven't I been asking people to do that for years?
>When I received an
>answer that seems frivolous instead of getting all sarcastic I said show me
>please. There are things that affect the operator every minute of the day
>that are made much easier in Vista. Such as the link from the Gadget bar
>To Do list to Outlook which is far more than an email reader.
Outlook is indeed much more than an email reader. This is why I've
offered products that integrate MV apps with MS Office. See this page
as one example:
removepleaseNebula-RnD.com/products/manager.htm
Read the FLASH! note on that page. That page and the software were
written about 6 years ago. With some encouragement it could be
reincarnated. We do have some clients using various parts of it.
>Colour coded categories for all the major items that are easily
>added with a right click are valuable.
I do this every day in Outlook 2003 on XP.
>The ability to handle scanned documents and a spreadsheet at the same time
>side by side.
Perhaps I'm missing this, but if they're both in "windows", how is
this different from what we've been doing for 20 years?
>The vastly improved help with videos.
Videos are everywhere, it's a sign of the times. With better
bandwidth, user demand, mobile devices, etc. videos of all types have
become a part of the global culture. Vids are being used as a
replacement for howto's and tutorials. If a picture is worth a
thousand words then a vid is worth a million, and it takes minutes to
consume a vid compared to reading text.
Vista is not special with video Help. If a new GUI product for
end-users comes out _without_ video help these days, it may not
survive. (Take note everyone, that applies to YOU!) With an
outlandish stroke of generalization I'll summarize that people do not
read anymore, they watch videos. While I'm optimistic about various
aspects of new technology, and willing to work with it, I'm concerned
that increasing use of audio/video will further corrupt the written
word, as we've seen with emails, forums, blogs, and chats. This is
history in the making folks - from the caves of Chauvet and Lascaux
through Gutenberg, and on to YouTube.
Bottom line, Vista presents no innovation in this area.
>The much improved security.
I am in favor of improved security but not at the risk of user
hostility. It was a bad implementation of a good idea and they've
suffered heavy casualties in marketing the product because of it. If
Microsoft had offered Windows XPSE, as in Secure Edition, they would
have taken even more marketing grief, but not if they accomplished the
real goal. Consider all of the Secure Linux initiatives which aren't
shy about their goals, just google "secure linux" and "selinux". If
Linux was inherently so much better in terms of security than Windows
then there wouldn't be so many products and initiatives in place to
improve and maintain security. It's all about marketing.
>The list goes on and no you cannot do these things easily in XP or GNU. Of
>course you can program anything if you have sufficient time and money to
>waste.
How much time and money are your clients spending on new OS, new
hardware, new applications, and training? How many utilities did they
have before that they can't use now? Holy cow, sure you can get
anything you want if you have enough time and money to completely
replace what you have with something new.
Peter (and others), we've sort of had these discussions in the past
where you didn't know that something could be done and you found
information here that turned your notions of the world upside down.
This is no different. I'm telling you that you can already do with XP
what you've been talking about with Vista. You're now entering into
the wonderful but deep and time consuming world of .NET. Consider
that .NET was developed over XP and it runs on Windows 98. There's
nothing that Vista supports that is not already available in XP.
Rather than summarize with "no you cannot do these things easily" when
I keep telling you that you can, you and everyone else here is faced
with the real dilemma: You don't know what you don't know. When you
find new information, you think it's new for everyone. When you find
that information related to a new platform, you think it's unique, but
those of us who have been doing this for years know that it's not. So
you're faced with your own conviction that your new information just
has to be dead right, versus expending time and perhaps money to do
more research only to find out that your new information is
incomplete.
The reality is that almost all of the information we have is
incomplete and we need to move forward in life with the information we
have, or we'll never move forward at all. Do we spend more unknown
quantities of money on research, perhaps to not have a complete
solution, or do we accept that someone has put a mostly-finite price
on "a solution" in front of us, so maybe we should take it. Many
people here will remember the TV show "Let's Make a Deal". (No, not
"Deal or No Deal") Life is an endless stream of the same thing: Do
you want the prize you have now, what's in the box in front of you, or
what's behind the curtain?
I created a business called Nebula _Research and Development_,
specifically intended to address this issue, where people either don't
move forward because they don't have information, or they spend too
much money moving in unnecessary directions (like Oracle) because they
don't know that they can do things now with what they have rather than
paying lots of money to go somewhere else. My business has been only
moderately successful for the exact reasons we're seeing here. You'd
rather move yourself and your clients move to Vista, than to
understand and make use of existing Windows platforms. "Forward and
new" are relatively safe business positions as well as instinctively
comfortable, so very it's tough in this sense to argue with that
decision. In our market we see the exact same dynamic for decision
makers considering a move from Pick to Oracle. Rather than paying
someone like me some hundreds of dollars to tell them (and perhaps
implement) what can already be done with Pick, it's safer for them to
follow the marketing hype of Oracle, even if it costs millions.
People don't want to pay for consultation or research, they want
answers. As weird as that sounds, that's the way people are. There
is a lot of value in being able to give people "a solution" rather
than giving them options for what they could do to solve their own
problems. As a tool developer selling people who themselves provide
solutions, this has been an ongoing issue for my business, and it's
part of what's driving more of these NebulaSolutions that you guys
will be seeing more of in the future.
In the interest of fairness I must re-state that I have never loaded
Vista or spent any time on it as a user, only with clients as we
installed various products. Yeah, I have my own Pick-ish aversions to
trying new stuff sometimes. There is a whole lot that I don't know
about Vista and I'll be happy to be wrong about many things. So far
however, no one is paying my company for (research or development of)
Vista solutions, and I haven't read anything that challenges my
current understandings. Feel free to educate me/us about what's
really new and better, but also remember that so far everything you
have told us is not in fact new, and hardly better.
>Point 4 Anyone being trained today is being trained in Vista and the latest
>Office
This is only a self-fulfilling reason to make a change. "You must
change and everyone else must change, therefore you must change." I
don't go for that sort of hyperbole. Please get the products
straight. Microsoft Office 2007 is a suite of applications that runs
on the entire family of Windows Operating Systems. Microsoft (as I've
read recently) has indeed made use of some features built into Vista
to improve the Office 2007 experience, but in the grand view of all of
the things that Office 2007 does, simply over Office 2003, these hooks
are trivial. You're looking at Office 2007 compared to 2003, and
you're attributing it to Vista. I highly recommend you run O2007 over
XP and then work out the delta of the features lost that seem to be so
much more valuable between the OS's.
>and if one does not know what they do one is at best going to look a
>chump
I'm having a very hard time with that statement in this particular
forum. There is an entire industry based on Office integration with
business software. But there are few MV developers who have knowledge
or interest in linking Outlook with their apps. The following links
go to products that are essentially dead because few MV-oriented
developers saw the value:
removeNebula-RnD.com/products/manager.htm = Outlook
removeNebula-RnD.com/products/analysis.htm = Excel
removeNebula-RnD.com/products/doc.htm = Word
Perhaps things are looking up, we're seeing a lot of interest in
Excel. I just wish MV people would recognize that Excel is just one
of the Office apps and that we can do the exact same thing for all of
the others:
removeNebula-RnD.com/products/xlite.htm
Regards,
T
Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com
Tony Gravagno
>I lack the detailed experience so I will
>quote Mike Volodarsky "It's important to start thinking about it now because
>Windows Vista ships with the same full featured IIS7.0 bits thar are
>expected to be released in Windows server "longhorn"
Bloat bloat and more bloat.
1) End-users do not need a "web server".
2) IIS6 is already on the XP install media as an option.
3) All of the bits are already in XP !!! It's called .NET.
4) The world abounds with tiny web servers that are satisfactory for
performing client-side services. These are components that you can
get for free or fee.
The core of a web server includes:
- a socket listener,
- an HttpRequest handler,
- application code that provides content,
- an HttpResponse processor that may transparently reformat the output
to suit the client browser/device.
That's all you need for business and I write and use this stuff in my
sleep, yes, even in MVBASIC.
IIS (all web servers!) wraps that core to provide the following:
- listens on multiple sockets
- supports "virtual directories" to re-map URLs to directory paths
- intercepts the request to create logs,
- provides many different types of security,
- routes requests for specific content types to the proper processors,
- caches responses to avoid re-processing
- and much more
As I said, end-users don't need a web server, you already have the
core that's required for serving pages, and we've already been doing
this stuff for years - it's that core that is of value, and we can
take advantage of this now.
It's all about marketing. The less people understand what they
already have, the better because it makes people think they "need" to
buy something else to get what they want. What do they want? They
want what the Marketing department is telling them they can only get
in the new purchase. My little voice, among thousands of other little
voices has been telling you for years about all the stuff you can do
with your system, and it's been largely ignored. When Microsoft
suddenly gets your ear, now all things are possible - but only with
the new stuff they want to sell you.
>This means you can
>immediately take advantage of the new IIS 7.0 features to build your
>personal web site and host it on Windows Vista."
Umm, you aren't going to host your website from home on your PC...
>Yes it will run the old stuff by simulation
Simulation? Is that the same as backward compatible? And if you have
old stuff, isn't that a clue that you actually can do that stuff now?
> but all the goodies are in the new one, over 40
>configurable options right down to being able to configure your own
>application on a hosted site without having to go through the host owner.
We can already do that, that's why shared hosts have control panels.
And I'm sorry to break the news but if a shared host doesn't want you
to use a specific feature on their site, you're not going to get it.
>Now that is progress. Sorry for the "toaster" types you are going to have
>to read the manual to get it right.
>Peter McMurray
I must be going about this all wrong - I'm always trying to sell
today's technology to people who are struggling with yesterday, and
I'm constantly trumped by yesterday's technology being sold as a new
feature in tomorrow's software.
T
Tony Gravagno
>If you have been following the slow food movement, you'll
>find that many "old-fashioned" farming techniques are beginning to make a
>come-back as the realization dawns that hyper-productivity and mono-cultural
>farming causes an eventual decline in soil fertility and generate more
>problems than they solve. The horses may have been a good thing.
It's increasingly evident that the fast lane has led us all into a
massive wreck. I would be in heaven if we could figure out a way to
re-channel our industry efforts toward providing software tools that
can be used to improve the world around us, rather than just helping
to streamline the business practices that have screwed this all up in
the first place.
If any of you want to verticalize your software for eco-friendly
end-users businesses, I'd offer free services and deep discounts to
help, as well as contributing from our profits to related projects.
>Look back on this thread and another one from last month for Vista problems.
>Also check TG's much more moderate response:
>"Why should anyone get Vista with extra hardware and then turn off all
>of the Vista features just to get it "pretty good". Why can't we just
>throw the same or less hardware
>[and, by extension, software - Chandru]
>at XP and get a system that has all
>the software we already own, running "great"?"
Holy cow, Chandru - complete agreement on TWO points in the same
posting? Dinner is on me.
dbene...@gmail.com
assimilated, resistance is futile!'
Smiles,... Dale
Chandru Murthi
say way too
briefly. I decided not to post my response since it's been covered here.
>Sorry for the "toaster" types ..."
the toaster comment was for me; I have not yet figured out what the
bagel button on my toaster is for ;).
And, on that issue, note Peter says "you are going to have to read the
manual to get it right". Pretty ironic vis-a-vis your previous post on
user-hostility and videos being mandatory. RTFM in the 00's!
Chandru
"Tony Gravagno" <address.i...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote in
message news:phi274pc83v1mksl3...@4ax.com...
GlenB
>>When I received an
>>answer that seems frivolous instead of getting all sarcastic I said show
>>me
>>please. There are things that affect the operator every minute of the day
>>that are made much easier in Vista. Such as the link from the Gadget bar
>>To Do list to Outlook which is far more than an email reader.
>
> Outlook is indeed much more than an email reader. This is why I've
> offered products that integrate MV apps with MS Office. See this page
> as one example:
> removepleaseNebula-RnD.com/products/manager.htm
> Read the FLASH! note on that page. That page and the software were
> written about 6 years ago. With some encouragement it could be
> reincarnated. We do have some clients using various parts of it.
>
General comments:
With a little bit of Google research I managed to put together a command
line program in VB.NET that adds tasks. Took me maybe an hour for a basic
"hello world" sample. I also learned how to had appointments in the process.
I don't see why people aren't using the tools they're already paying for
either. Then again, people have a tendancy to be oblivious to the technology
they already have. If it's not plug-n-play, a pre-written program option, or
a commercial add-on, it's not a viable technology or product. The most
recent PDF generation discussions on CDP (wanting to buy a product or use a
for-fee product to produce PDFs) just make me want to pop developers on the
forehead like in the V8 juice commercial. There are free tools out there
that can be used with the stuff you've paid for already. A prime example is
using of the hundreds of PostScript printer drivers that come with Windows
in conjunction with Ghostscript to make a PDF. I've been saving trees with
free e-docs for well over 4 years on Linux. Would I pay for a complete tool?
Sure! If what's available absolutely won't do what I need it to. I'm not
going to spend a penny on it until I know, for a fact, that my options are
zero for a solution match. Imagine if a grocery store bought a new shopping
cart everytime one came back with chipped paint. That's an obvious waste of
money that could run the store into the ground. The same is true for buying
technology that you already have bundled in another product. Not only could
you be duplicating functionality that you've already paid hard earned cash
for, but you could also be basing your entire solution on a product that may
not provide the best method of implementation for you.
>
>>Colour coded categories for all the major items that are easily
>>added with a right click are valuable.
>
> I do this every day in Outlook 2003 on XP.
>
>
>>The ability to handle scanned documents and a spreadsheet at the same time
>>side by side.
>
> Perhaps I'm missing this, but if they're both in "windows", how is
> this different from what we've been doing for 20 years?
>
I don't get it.. I have an MSDN copy of Vista Ultimate. I'm going to load
it this week and start playing.
>
>>The vastly improved help with videos.
>
> Videos are everywhere, it's a sign of the times. With better
> bandwidth, user demand, mobile devices, etc. videos of all types have
> become a part of the global culture. Vids are being used as a
> replacement for howto's and tutorials. If a picture is worth a
> thousand words then a vid is worth a million, and it takes minutes to
> consume a vid compared to reading text.
>
> Vista is not special with video Help. If a new GUI product for
> end-users comes out _without_ video help these days, it may not
> survive. (Take note everyone, that applies to YOU!) With an
> outlandish stroke of generalization I'll summarize that people do not
> read anymore, they watch videos. While I'm optimistic about various
> aspects of new technology, and willing to work with it, I'm concerned
> that increasing use of audio/video will further corrupt the written
> word, as we've seen with emails, forums, blogs, and chats. This is
> history in the making folks - from the caves of Chauvet and Lascaux
> through Gutenberg, and on to YouTube.
>
Public video streaming is bandwidth eye candy and I'm totally opposed to it
unless it's truely for educational use. YouTube is a huge waste of our
shrinking Internet resources. SPAM is too and it's unfortunate that many of
the worthwhile prevention methods aren't being accepted and merged into a
standard. Seeing as this isn't a SPAM discussion I'll direct that to another
thread.
> Bottom line, Vista presents no innovation in this area.
>
I'll look when I get time.
>
>>The much improved security.
>
> I am in favor of improved security but not at the risk of user
> hostility. It was a bad implementation of a good idea and they've
> suffered heavy casualties in marketing the product because of it. If
> Microsoft had offered Windows XPSE, as in Secure Edition, they would
> have taken even more marketing grief, but not if they accomplished the
> real goal. Consider all of the Secure Linux initiatives which aren't
> shy about their goals, just google "secure linux" and "selinux". If
> Linux was inherently so much better in terms of security than Windows
> then there wouldn't be so many products and initiatives in place to
> improve and maintain security. It's all about marketing.
>
I remember when Office took a "secure" approach and dropped net folders.
Boy was that a PITA to work around. Did people work around it? Sure, but I
doubt many of them liked it. How many people like paying taxes? I bet
everyone complains about how high the taxes keep going up, but everyone
keeps paying. If you're hooked into Microsoft products, you have no choice
but to follow them or switch to another platform. Honestly, I think
OpenOffice.org is a better product and it's _free_ to boot.
I don't agree with your selinux argument in relation to Vista marketing.
We're talking desktops versus servers here. Do you run a public web or
e-mail server on XP?
>
>>The list goes on and no you cannot do these things easily in XP or GNU.
>>Of
>>course you can program anything if you have sufficient time and money to
>>waste.
I think that's too much of a broad statement to be considered. "Easy" is
subjective to the individual you're talking to. I can easily set up a Debian
box with KDE or Gnome and have all the fun things on it that I have on
XP(and more!). State me a specific case that is not "easy" to do on GNU.
Bare in mind that the hardware requirements for Vista are in the same
mindset as with the Linux kernel/driver requirements. If you get supported
hardware it "just works" right outta the box.
>
> How much time and money are your clients spending on new OS, new
> hardware, new applications, and training? How many utilities did they
> have before that they can't use now? Holy cow, sure you can get
> anything you want if you have enough time and money to completely
> replace what you have with something new.
>
> Peter (and others), we've sort of had these discussions in the past
> where you didn't know that something could be done and you found
> information here that turned your notions of the world upside down.
> This is no different. I'm telling you that you can already do with XP
> what you've been talking about with Vista. You're now entering into
> the wonderful but deep and time consuming world of .NET. Consider
> that .NET was developed over XP and it runs on Windows 98. There's
> nothing that Vista supports that is not already available in XP.
>
What sucks, though, is that XP is going to disappear soon. Unless you have
an OEM source with a lot of product keys left or you don't plan on buying
any new machines, you will be forced to enter the Vista realm soon. I was
opposed to XP until a couple years after it was released. Maybe Vista will
be quickly molded into the product we want and not the one that Microsoft
wants us to have. I can't say much about it yet. I have some application
testing to do on it, so I'll be getting into the guts of it shortly.
[chop]
Peter McMurray
At the beginning you would have been wrong. I have only just partly retired
a Windows 98 machine so I don't necessarily rush in. However my excellent
experiences with user satisfaction on Vista prompted me to look further. It
is quite interesting that no one has put forward a valid reason against
Vista. One says he dumped it after a week but wont say why. Another
mis-specced two machines and can't be bothered fixing his mistake.
As for the pronouncements regarding structure! Well I have been prompted to
do research that I should have done before
.
Fact: Vista disc security and handling is a total rewrite from the ground up
and the basis of Server 2008. The Vista graphics engine is totally new.
Things such as scanning are totally revamped and simplified. Office 2007 is
completely revamped and a vastly superior fit for Vista than any other.
Fact: IIS7 is one of the biggest rewrites that Microsoft has ever done. A
complete switch from the monolithic IIS6 to an object oriented open
interface. The control line freaks can do as they wish, the geniuses or is
that genii can replace any of the 40 plus modules if they wish. The fact
that I personally think that many of them are legends in their own lunch
boxes matters not. Earlier programs work because of some clever emulation
through objects. Best of all you can get on top of this locally with Vista
before barrelling into Server 2008. Yes you are going to have to read the
manual to learn how to configure it. Apparently this is too bad, one should
just be able to press the go button. I wonder how many of the naysayers
tune their own fuel injection system or know the difference between a town
and a country engine management chip for a Holden!
Fact: Internet Explorer 7+ is based on a tight following of genuine
international standards and therefore a very safe target for development.
May the rest catch up.
Fact: Microsoft are rapidly approaching the 200 million Vista user mark.
Now if I can just latch into a few of those , "dissatisfied" or not I will
be very happy.
Definitely assimilated now and looking forward to my new software working
fabulously with the Pick database that I love, singing and dancing in Vista,
but funnily enough as I have redesigned my techniques I realised that I can
incorporate Apple and the dreaded Linux. It is going to take a few months
but after 30 years of the old ways that is nothing.
Peter McMurray
<dbene...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:cdcfc95f-3db8-453c...@d77g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
Ross Ferris
Since when did The BORG use Windows. The only weakness I recall was
the "sleep" command ?!?!?
Simon
differences between the "real" world and the perceptions created by
marketing...
In the "real" world, Microsoft Windows on the desktop in a business
environment hasn't really progressed much after Windows 2000. I
cannot think of a single thing that I can do with Vista that I
couldn't do with Windows 2000. I will agree that Vista *looks* nicer,
but it eats an awful lot more hardware to boot! Most of the
Microsoft new additions that are in Vista as standard are also
available as downloads for Windows 2000 (the dotnet framework being a
key item).
This was highllighted to me a few weeks ago by a friend, who had seen
the new version of Microsoft Office 2007 on the Microsoft web site,
and wanted it - so went out to buy Vista to ensure that they got the
best from the product. I use Office 2007 on Vista, Xp and Windows
2000 and it's identical on each!!! However, users are brainwashed
by marketing that Vista is somehow better or desired.
At the end of the day we (in this group) are generally all busines
people, writing and maintaining business applications. We are
intelligent IT individuals, who should be able to divorce ourselves
from the marketing hype and see the products for what they actually
are. However, there is no reason why we shouldn't embrace and
extend other peoples marketing spend ! Microsoft has done all the
hard work for us, so we should be able to create an expectation of
better applications by using the "written for Vista" marketing angle
(even though we know that the products run the same on older versions
of Windows).
Bottom line, from a technology aspect, we can generally ignore Vista -
it is an irrelevancy in the business world (except for the stupid
additional security hurdles hidden within it!). However, from a Sales
and Marketing perspective, it's a powerful marketing bandwagon to jump
onto. We should just not confuse technology and marketing in the
process!
The same argument occurs with other "marketing" angles. SAAS
(software as a service) seems to be a marketing trend at the mo...
Definition of what this means varies, but again, we can embrace this
without changing the technology too much (even green screen character
applications can be hosted!).
Generally (I am speaking generally, and I know that there are many
exceptions!) , as Multivalue software developers, we seem to be inable
to keep up with the marketing aspects of our technology and
applications.
I'll give you an example of another vendor in another marketplace who
knows how to do this - Oracle. There is a standard (apparently!)
for XML databases called XML:DB. Oracle have a product called Oracle
XML DB which is part of Oracle 11g. Interestingly enough, amongst all
the blurb about open standards, the one standard that it doesn't seem
to support is the XML:DB standard - though the marketing hype around
the product clearly is designed to suggest it does!
One interesting trend though - to look from the other end of the
telescope - is that is appears that the consumer is getting cleverer
and is able to see through some of the hype - this can be seen in the
relatively low uptake for Vista - a product which has been around for
18 months now and would be expected to be seen as an absolute *must*
by historical Microsoft yardsticks at this stage. Microsoft seem to
recognise this trend, and have broadened more into other applications
in recent years reducing their reliance on the core OS and Office
applications.
I would conclude, ignore Vista at your peril ! but... this is really
something for the marketing people and not so much on the technology
people (though make sure your product does actually run on Vista!!).
Just my 2 cents worth.
Simon
Ross Ferris
> Hi Dale
> At the beginning you would have been wrong. I have only just partly retired
> a Windows 98 machine so I don't necessarily rush in. However my excellent
> experiences with user satisfaction on Vista prompted me to look further. It
> is quite interesting that no one has put forward a valid reason against
> Vista. One says he dumped it after a week but wont say why.
If that we me, it was easy. A lack of drivers - even newly surfaced
emails from inside of Microsoft indicate that this is the biggest PITA
for Vista for people that have existing hardware that has to be
used ... ESPECIALLY if the software uses "dongles" for security,
because even if you did run the software with Virtual PC, you don't
get access to USB ports.
Microsoft HAVE learnt from this, as the NEXT version of windows that
is being hyped already must have drivers certified for current
version, so that is going to give people 3-5 years to work on drivers.
I see Vista as something like "ME" --> a stopgap measure to get
SOMETHING to market
> Another
> mis-specced two machines and can't be bothered fixing his mistake.
> As for the pronouncements regarding structure! Well I have been prompted to
> do research that I should have done before
> .
> Fact: Vista disc security and handling is a total rewrite from the ground up
> and the basis of Server 2008.
I haven't seen the reference to filesystem in 2008, but I do know that
the "rewrite" has resulted in major speed degredation problem for
simple things like COPY --> Microsoft tried to address this in SP1,
but still acknowledge they have a lot of work to do in this
department.
>The Vista graphics engine is totally new.
Which is the basis for so many of the problems with existing
software!! Hardly a plus!
> Things such as scanning are totally revamped and simplified. Office 2007 is
> completely revamped and a vastly superior fit for Vista than any other.
You can run Office 2007 quite nicely on XPO. Oh, I remember the OTHER
time I ditched Vista in under a day! Christmas before last, and Office
2007 wouldn't allow me to access emails under Vista (had been working
just fine on XP) --> the fix for my problem only came out in October
last year
>
> Fact: IIS7 is one of the biggest rewrites that Microsoft has ever done. A
> complete switch from the monolithic IIS6 to an object oriented open
> interface. The control line freaks can do as they wish, the geniuses or is
> that genii can replace any of the 40 plus modules if they wish. The fact
> that I personally think that many of them are legends in their own lunch
> boxes matters not. Earlier programs work because of some clever emulation
> through objects. Best of all you can get on top of this locally with Vista
> before barrelling into Server 2008.
The vast majority of people could care less about IIS7 (or 6, or ANY
web server for that matter), as it normally doesn't form part of their
day to day LOB applications unless loaded onto a server class machine
(you see IIS7 suffers the same fate as IIS6 on XP in that you are
limited to 10 concurrent HTTP requests --> sounds like lot, but if
you have a page with 2 frames, text in each, aling with 4 images (even
little ones for buttons), then you just went SPLAT!! with a single
user
If you wanted to get on top of Win2008, I would suggest running
Win2008 on Virtual PC!! Works just fine!
> Yes you are going to have to read the
> manual to learn how to configure it. Apparently this is too bad, one should
> just be able to press the go button. I wonder how many of the naysayers
> tune their own fuel injection system or know the difference between a town
> and a country engine management chip for a Holden!
Once more, this is "stuff" that people shouldn't have to do. I know
with Visage we automatically configure the web server, allowing us to
"tweak" IIS6 so that we can get 40 concurrent connections without
distress. Anyway, most people will not WANT to do this unless the web
server is going to face the internet, and this simply will not happen
on a Vista box --> this is "good stuff" with 2008 (and some more
"tricks" coming with IE8), but is simply irrelevant "fluff" for Vista
>
> Fact: Internet Explorer 7+ is based on a tight following of genuine
> international standards and therefore a very safe target for development.
> May the rest catch up.
Errm - much as I hate to say it, but this is CRAP! IE7 does NOT make a
good job of following standards --> IE8(beta) DOES, and one of the
first "enhancements" has been to be able to turn this off so that all
of the people that leverage the "brokeness" of IE7 (and I am in that
camp!!) can still have people visit their web sites. Given that our
preferred platform for Visage IS IE7, I obviously like it, but Peter,
it is IE that needs to catch up to Firefox 3 !!
>
> Fact: Microsoft are rapidly approaching the 200 million Vista user mark.
> Now if I can just latch into a few of those , "dissatisfied" or not I will
> be very happy.
I'm not sure about the number, given your other "facts" (http://
www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/whynow.mspx indicates
the number is closer to 140million, but this is still "a lot") , but
at the end of the day, Vista is NOT going to go away (even though it
has a legion of "problems"), and by the time Windows 7 comes out,
people will have replaced their existing peripherals with ones that DO
sport Vista (and therefore Windows 7) support, so I think W7 will be
the "XP" of the current flush of technology, whilst Vista will hold a
place alongside ME to a certain extent
Bill H
"Tony Gravagno" <address.i...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote in
>
[snipped]
>
>You'd rather move yourself and your clients move to Vista, than to
> understand and make use of existing Windows platforms. "Forward and
> new" are relatively safe business positions as well as instinctively
> comfortable, so very it's tough in this sense to argue with that
> decision.
The continued use of R83 and older Pick derivatives may contradict this
notion. To someone actually "paying" for this crap, "Forward and new" isn't
a profitable phrase. Why is Coca-Cola, and many other large organizations,
staying on XP? Because the decision makers are actually responsible for the
costs/benefits. When this happens it's amazing how adherence to efficiency
and value rise to the top of the priority list.
> In our market we see the exact same dynamic for decision
> makers considering a move from Pick to Oracle.
We know this kind of thing is caused by ignorance in decision makers and the
fact they don't pay the price of their decisions. This truth can be found
everywhere where decision makers are insulated from the costs of their
decisions (government anyone?). We can also watch the high cost of IT
getting transferred to lower cost producers (outsourcing).
When I hear about new-age computing where "knowledge" people become outdated
and can be replaced by three different IT slaves/tiers (GUI developer, dbms
administrator, network administrator) is it any wonder this kind of work is
no longer available locally? When one .NET developer becomes the same as
the next (nothing more than a technology slave) why should anyone pay
$150/hr instead of $20-30/hr?
I try to bring technology together for efficient and effective solutions
instead of breaking it apart so we can outsource its use to IT slaves around
the world (or just go along because that's what everyone else is doing). We
have mv.NET, .NET, and web enabling software (DesignBais) all running with
our application on U2. As GlenB has always said, there's good stuff out
there one can integrate without re-engineering the entire application.
>
[snipped]
Bill
Joe
news:a9369287-3434-4ac3...@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com:
Comparing Vista to ME isn't quite right simply because 98/ME support
went on along with each other to the end, while XP support will most
likely stop short of Vista support. That alone would most likely be
enough to warrant a move to Vista, albeit down the road apiece for the
doubtful.
BTW, is Visage compatible with Apache?
dawn
>
> - Show quoted text -
I figure it will likely be wise to go to Windows 7 in the not-terribly-
distant future. I am using Windows XP today. Old Chinese saying --
"Never leap a chasm in two bounds." I'm steering clear of Vista as
best I can. cheers! --dawn
Ross Ferris
> Comparing Vista to ME isn't quite right simply because 98/ME support
> went on along with each other to the end, while XP support will most
> likely stop short of Vista support. That alone would most likely be
> enough to warrant a move to Vista, albeit down the road apiece for the
> doubtful.
>
> BTW, is Visage compatible with Apache?-
>
> - Show quoted text -
I assume you mean for the web server component? It CAN be - we speced
the code out years ago for Tomcat, but there was never a commercial
case to complete the work. Our middleware "stuff" is reasonably
straight forward, and we don't rely on things like ASP or .NET, so in
theory, given a business case, we could also work directly out of,
say, websphere.
However, some parts of the Visage product stack do require a "windows
machine" in the mix somewhere for things like BIT cubes,
Visage.Reporter and our current fax & email gateways (but once more,
if people have a total aversion to the "M" word and are willing to
fund the port ...)
On the Vista front, my reference to ME wasn't meant as a direct
comparison, so much as an observation that I believe that overall the
uptake of Vista is likely to be (relatively) LOW (like ME was),
whereas "Windows 7" will build on the Vista driver base and be the
"XP" of the future
Joe
news:f14e619e-3eef-47f7...@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com:
> On Jul 9, 7:59 am, Joe <breakf...@nine.net> wrote:
>> Ross Ferris <ro...@stamina.com.au> wrote
>> innews:a9369287-3434-4ac3-8f25-f
> 00b78...@26g2000hsk.googlegroups.com:
So you'll just go "supportless" if XP support disappears before Windows
7 is ready for prime time?
Joe
8252-5e8...@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com:
Hopefully, but as with all MS we'll see...
Just curious as to why IIS was chosen as the default server over Apache,
as it seems that the more serious (for lack of a better term)
installations are running on *nix. Of course, I have no idea what your
customer base looks like.
Tony Gravagno
>7 is ready for prime time?
I scrolled through 177 lines to find this? Hey, at least when I post
177 lines it's almost all original content, whether people want to
read it or not.
(senseless quoting getting extensive lately, top-post or trim, eh?)
dawn
> dawn <dawnwolth...@gmail.com> wrote innews:f14e619e-3eef-47f7...@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com:
<snip>
>
> > I figure it will likely be wise to go to Windows 7 in the
> > not-terribly- distant future. I am using Windows XP today. Old
> > Chinese saying -- "Never leap a chasm in two bounds." I'm steering
> > clear of Vista as best I can. cheers! --dawn
>
> So you'll just go "supportless" if XP support disappears before Windows
> 7 is ready for prime time?
Apologies to Tony and those using readers that don't hide quoted text
-- using google groups has given me different procedures and standards
for posting, given that so much is out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
Well, Joe, my decision is a lot easier today than it was once upon a
time. I now make this decision only for me and various family and
friends, where I once ordered over 200 desktops/laptops per year. The
local college just decided to go with XP and distributed the machines
prior to MS announcing EOL on it -- that might concern me a little bit
more, but surely there are plenty of companies doing that. I'm
guessing some are stockpiling right now to make sure they have what
they need for XP. Support shops will get to charge more for XP
issues, I suppose, but it is much harder to introduce new s/w than to
purge it. Primos (Pr1me Computer's operating system) is still running
live in some places, as I understand it. Prime was dead about 15
years ago. I'm not worried on behalf of my business machines and
family and friends, but some of those family will likely end up with
Vista sooner or later. I then plan to shrug, do the girl thing
("golly gee, I know nothing about that machine") and have them call
the Geek Squad when needed.
smiles. --dawn
Joe
Interesting that you counted the lines. ;)
I don't particularly care to edit and/or trim (it's really not that
difficult to scroll), and I almost always reply in the same manner as the
post I'm replying to. It's a personal choice.
Joe
news:fd5ed24c-6f62-43a9...@x35g2000hsb.googlegroups.com:
> On Jul 10, 6:32 am, Joe <breakf...@nine.net> wrote:
>> dawn <dawnwolth...@gmail.com> wrote
>> innews:f14e619e-3eef-47f7-b4ff-9e271d
> 34e...@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com:
> <snip>
>>
>> > I figure it will likely be wise to go to Windows 7 in the
>> > not-terribly- distant future. I am using Windows XP today. Old
>> > Chinese saying -- "Never leap a chasm in two bounds." I'm steering
>> > clear of Vista as best I can. cheers! --dawn
>>
>> So you'll just go "supportless" if XP support disappears before
>> Windows 7 is ready for prime time?
>
> Apologies to Tony and those using readers that don't hide quoted text
> -- using google groups has given me different procedures and standards
> for posting, given that so much is out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
Point noted, but I'm not all that concerned with the "issues" (perceived
or not) of so many lines of quoted text.
> Well, Joe, my decision is a lot easier today than it was once upon a
> time. I now make this decision only for me and various family and
> friends, where I once ordered over 200 desktops/laptops per year. The
> local college just decided to go with XP and distributed the machines
> prior to MS announcing EOL on it -- that might concern me a little bit
> more, but surely there are plenty of companies doing that. I'm
> guessing some are stockpiling right now to make sure they have what
> they need for XP. Support shops will get to charge more for XP
> issues, I suppose, but it is much harder to introduce new s/w than to
> purge it. Primos (Pr1me Computer's operating system) is still running
> live in some places, as I understand it. Prime was dead about 15
> years ago. I'm not worried on behalf of my business machines and
> family and friends, but some of those family will likely end up with
> Vista sooner or later. I then plan to shrug, do the girl thing
> ("golly gee, I know nothing about that machine") and have them call
> the Geek Squad when needed.
>
> smiles. --dawn
Well, the whole thing might be moot - I just read that XP will be
supported through 2014 or thereabouts. That said, I also read that
Windows 7 will "look and feel" much like Vista (whatever that means),
and it will be potentially easier to install over Vista than XP
(whatever _that_ means). As always, caveat emptor. :)
dbene...@gmail.com
> I'm not sure about the number, given your other "facts" (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/whynow.mspxindicates
> the number is closer to 140million, but this is still "a lot") , but
> at the end of the day, Vista is NOT going to go away (even though it
> has a legion of "problems"), and by the time Windows 7 comes out,
> people will have replaced their existing peripherals with ones that DO
> sport Vista (and therefore Windows 7) support, so I think W7 will be
> the "XP" of the current flush of technology, whilst Vista will hold a
> place alongside ME to a certain extent
Ross, You may be correct in stating that the peripheral that are
supported by Vista will also be supported by Windows 7. Do you have
any evidence that this is true?
Vista doesn't support a lot of what XP does support. I don't believe
that M$ is locked into supporting much of anything from one release to
another.
That being said, I'll temper that statement by stating my view of all
software... Having backward compatibility is nice but it also can
complicate the software to a point that moving forward is too painful
in the update and support. Backward compatibility needs to be
tempered with the future enhancements, and at sometime you can only go
back so far for users.
Sitting on the fence... Dale
GlenB
> On Jul 8, 7:26 pm, Ross Ferris <ro...@stamina.com.au> wrote:
>
> > the number is closer to 140million, but this is still "a lot") , but
> > at the end of the day, Vista is NOT going to go away (even though it
> > has a legion of "problems"), and by the time Windows 7 comes out,
> > people will have replaced their existing peripherals with ones that DO
> > sport Vista (and therefore Windows 7) support, so I think W7 will be
> > the "XP" of the current flush of technology, whilst Vista will hold a
> > place alongside ME to a certain extent
>
> Ross, You may be correct in stating that the peripheral that are
> supported by Vista will also be supported by Windows 7. Do you have
> any evidence that this is true?
>
> Vista doesn't support a lot of what XP does support. I don't believe
> that M$ is locked into supporting much of anything from one release to
> another.
>
> That being said, I'll temper that statement by stating my view of all
> software... Having backward compatibility is nice but it also can
> complicate the software to a point that moving forward is too painful
> in the update and support. Backward compatibility needs to be
> tempered with the future enhancements, and at sometime you can only go
> back so far for users.
>
> Sitting on the fence... Dale
I just upgraded XP Pro SP4 to Vista Ultimate and have been playing
around with it. So far, all I can say about Vista is.. pretty icons,
pretty intuituve, and pretty damn slow. I've waited longer for
programs and updates to install and uninstall than on any previous
version of Windows with current PC hardware (core2duo 3Ghz 512MB
SATA3G drive at the moment). I have all of the eye candy disabled and
even with 512MB it still takes way too long to copy files and load
applications for my taste. I'm waiting on a 2GB Ballistix set to come
in. I stole the other matching 512MB stick from it a few months ago.
Dual-channel goes a long way in performance, but I doubt it'll help
the file I/O that drastically. I'll post an update after the memory
gets here.
I like the network browser much better than on XP. So far the only
compatibility issues I've had were:
1) AVG 7.5 won't load the resident scanner (or windows is blindly
preventing it from loading)
2) The Sonic (Roxio) DLA driver is deemed incompatible so Windows
refuses to load it.
AVG 8.0 runs just fine on it and Accuterm 2K2 and ATGUI seem to be
oblivious to the upgrade. I haven't tested my VB.NET apps on it yet,
though.
All in all, I currently see no business reason to switch from XP
considering all of the XP stations are behind a few firewalls and run
smoothly on the current hardware. Honestly, with a personally
predicted 2GB of memory requirement and a hefty CPU to get typical
daily jobs done I really don't forsee a site-wide upgrade anytime soon
here. I do like to play, though. I'll start loading up a ton of PDFs
and see how long it takes before explorer stops responding. I've
already managed to kill it while the Windows Upgrade was downloading
files. Not installing.. DOWNloading! Nothing else was running!
GlenB
GlenB
> version of Windows with current PC hardware (core2duo 3Ghz 512MB
> SATA3G drive at the moment). I have all of the eye candy disabled and
Correction, it's a 2.13Ghz Core2Duo. I guess I should verify my
machine specs before posting eh?
GlenB
dbene...@gmail.com
to try some experimenting...
The site, vlite.net, (google: 'vlite') reports the ability to help
remove the bloat from Vista.
Note that this is not an advertisement for this site, but I do
remember hearing about their sister product for XP. It seems that
they can get XP to load on to disk using about 1.5MB (now my memory is
getting foggy...) I think.
All those who wish to experiment go for it and it would be nice to
report back the results.
Regards, Dale
Bill H
Tony is very good about supporting these products. So, if anyone needs
something like this, call Tony. :-)
Bill
"Bill H" <som...@somedomain.com> wrote in message...
>
[snipped]
Joe
af0f09...@e39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:
Decent processor, but Vista needs 2GB RAM to run decently. 512MB is
suicidal. Also, with 2GB RAM the eye candy is fine, but a decent
graphics card certainly helps tons. From what I've seen so far, MS will
set 2GB RAM as minimum for Windows 7.
Once you get 2 or 3GB RAM in your box, check out Windows DreamScene
(animated desktop) - it should be available on Ultimate. Real nice eye
candy.
Homer L. Hazel
I totally agree with you. If you want to leave lots of lines that I have to
scroll down to read
a one sentence comment, feel free to do so. Who cares about newsgroup
courtesy or
protocol anyway.
But, I like to top post so you can see my meaningless comments right away
without having to
scroll down many lines. So I'll do top posting and you do bottom posting
and we'll get along
just fine.
Larry Hazel
"Joe" <lu...@one.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9AD787849A...@216.77.188.18...
frosty
> ...If you want to leave lots of lines that I have to scroll down to read
> a one sentence comment, feel free to do so.
This is prolly the third time I've read "scroll
down" to the bottom of a post.
Y'all don't have "End" keys on your keyboards?
--
frosty
Homer L. Hazel
That was an awesome suggestion. When I hit end, it jumped down to the last
message in the window
and I'm thinking frosty is much smarter than this.
Then I realized I had to click inside the message and when I pressed end it
jumped to the end of the message.
Thanks for the learning experience. All I have to do now is decide whether
jumping to the "END" is the
appropriate thing to do or if there is a possibility that there might be
comments embedded in-line.
With Joe, I might be safe just to click on the message and press "END".
Larry Hazel
"frosty" <fro...@bogus.tld> wrote in message
news:ILydnX3h0rf0T-vV...@centurytel.net...
Bill H
Bill
"Homer L. Hazel" <home...@coxSPAM.net> wrote in message
news:CYAdk.19846$YO1....@newsfe08.phx...
Homer L. Hazel
I don't know about you, but I've got Vista and I'm using Windows
Mail as my news group group reader. The message list is on top
and a preview pane is on the bottom.
If I don't click inside the message, the down arrow moves down in
the message list and the message in the preview pane changes.
If I click inside the message then - horror of horrors, the down
arrow key works just like the mouse! It scrolls down through
the message! 8>). Oh yes, the up arrow scrolls up through
the message also.
Larry Hazel
"Bill H" <som...@somedomain.com> wrote in message
news:otydnfILu8EseOvV...@comcast.com...
frosty
>
> When I hit end, it jumped down to
> the last message in the window
> and I'm thinking frosty is much smarter than this.
>
> Then I realized I had to click inside the message and
> when I pressed end it jumped to the end of the message.
To tell the truth, I wasn't... the first time I hit "End" key,
I got the same result as you. "Tab" then "End," though, does
what you want.
--
frosty
Joe
> Joe,
>
> I totally agree with you. If you want to leave lots of lines that I
> have to scroll down to read
> a one sentence comment, feel free to do so.
Thanks, I might do that depending on my mood.
> Who cares about newsgroup
> courtesy or
> protocol anyway.
Eh? You've got to be kidding.
> But, I like to top post so you can see my meaningless comments right
> away without having to
> scroll down many lines. So I'll do top posting and you do bottom
> posting and we'll get along
> just fine.
>
> Larry Hazel
Peachy. I'm very happy for you.
Joe
extremely well-versed in all kinds of whiz-bang Pick-related stuff, but
when it comes to news clients they use just about the crappiest stuff
available (i.e., Windows OE/Mail). The best part, though, is the
rationale for using said clients... :)
"Homer L. Hazel" <home...@coxSPAM.net> wrote in
news:IiJdk.7850$UM1....@newsfe12.phx:
Bill H
I guess that was my point. :-)
"Homer L. Hazel" <home...@coxSPAM.net> wrote in message...
>
[snipped]
>
> If I don't click inside the message, the down arrow moves down in
> the message list and the message in the preview pane changes.
>
[snipped]
>
> Larry Hazel
>
> "Bill H" <som...@somedomain.com> wrote in message ...
Homer L. Hazel
I'm sorry you don't like Vista or OE or Windows Mail.
I do.
I don't feel the need to disparage whatever you choose to
use as your email client or your news reader.
Why do you feel it necessary to do so?
Larry Hazel
"Joe" <pa...@yourhouse.org> wrote in message
news:Xns9AD8C69406...@216.77.188.18...
Joe
adequate, but it's simply horrible for USENET. That said, I'm forced to
use Outlook (the pig that it is) for business, as it's mandated by
management.
In this group (as in many others), it's the norm for people to praise
and/or criticize different software, platforms, packages, practices,
etc. Hell, even people's personal preferences are criticized (witness
the comments about top/bottom posting and snipping long content). Thick
skin and/or a flame suit is pretty much standard garb. So why should
Windows OE/Mail be excluded from critique? BTW, you might want to ask
Tony that same question. ;)
"Homer L. Hazel" <home...@coxSPAM.net> wrote in news:9hXdk.8758
$1L1....@newsfe15.phx:
Homer L. Hazel
I don't care that you criticize Windows Mail, or OE or anything.
I object to your seeming need to attack the user of such programs.
I draw your attention to the last sentence in one of your earlier
posts.
> find it nothing short of amazing that so many group participants are
>extremely well-versed in all kinds of whiz-bang Pick-related stuff, but
>when it comes to news clients they use just about the crappiest stuff
>available (i.e., Windows OE/Mail). The best part, though, is the
>rationale for using said clients... :)
"The best part, though, is the rationale for using said clients... ;)"
Even with a smiley, that's an attack. That is not necessary.
Larry Hazel
Allen Egerton
> Larry, I use Windows Mail for one of my e-mail accounts, as it's
> adequate, but it's simply horrible for USENET. That said, I'm forced to
> use Outlook (the pig that it is) for business, as it's mandated by
> management.
<snip>
I use mozilla's thunderbird for mail/newsgroups and firebird as a
browser. Both are available as "portable apps", meaning that they can
(and in my case do), live on a thumb drive which I can plug into a USB
port on any windows box.
So my email/browser and a bunch of other apps and data are always with
me, (unless I forget the thumb drive). Critical data is stored inside
an encrypted "vault", and decrypted as needed. Passwords are stored in
"KeepSafe", another portable app and referenced as needed. Can you say
"no synchronization necessary"?
It's not everyone's solution, but it works well for me. For example, in
a week or two I'm headed to the beach for vacation. My wife and my
brother will both have their laptops with them, I'll just bring my thumb
drive and use one of their machines. Since we've got wifi down there,
I'm all set.
Rgds.
Homer L. Hazel
I've got a nice U3 drive that I bought at Best Buy with the
words GeekSquad on it. It also came with a Portable
application setup.
I use Thunderbird the same way you do, but since I'm away
from home, I cannot access my COX account using that so
I had to set up a gmail account. Google also has a nice
calendar application that synchronizes nicely with (Dare I
say it...) Microsoft Outlook 2003 or 2007. I use Thunderbird
for my main email account, but I do not like their news
reader. There's no calendar in Thunderbird, but there is a
portable application that can be had that will synchronize
with Google's Calendar.
Larry Hazel
"Allen Egerton" <aege...@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:fX3ek.1993$zv7....@flpi143.ffdc.sbc.com...
Joe
$VN1...@newsfe11.phx:
Apologies if I've offended you on a personal level, but I stand by my
statement. It's not an attack, but an observation. I can't help but
smile when I read some of the totally incongruous things in here.
If I might quote Sheryl Crow, "I'm gonna tell everyone to lighten up."
Douglas Tatelman
One of my office computers just died, and I decided to order an XP
instead of Vista.
I'm just not ready to waste my time integrating Vista into my good
working network.
I'm hoping to put the whole mess off for a few more years. Why ruin a
nice Summer?
Ross Ferris
When you said " I'm hoping to put the whole mess off for a few more
years", this really means you are standing in the "I'm waiting on
Windows 7 queue", but don't be worried, lots of other people in that
queue to keep you busy.
However, I'd start the "hard yards" now with the one computer that
DOES need replacing --> will make it easier when the next (and the
next, and ...) PC needs to be replaced
Ed Sheehan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology
Ed
"Joe" <brea...@nine.net> wrote in message
news:Xns9ADA6C8E32...@216.77.188.18...
Joe
"Ed Sheehan" <NOed...@xmission.com> wrote in news:g5g20q$bjf$1
@news.xmission.com:
Tony Gravagno
>I forgot to mention one thing here. We got our middleware from Nebula R&D.
>Tony is very good about supporting these products. So, if anyone needs
>something like this, call Tony. :-)
Thank you very much Bill !
Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com
Nebula R&D sells mv.NET and other Pick/MultiValue products worldwide,
and provides related development and training services