Windows Vista Week 2

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback169.html' target='_blank'>http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback169.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"We are now in the second week of the Windows Vista launch and the FUD (Fear Uncertainly and Doubt) being spread by those that compete with Microsoft is reaching amazing proportions. Apple, in their Mac vs. PC campaign is taking all kinds of shots at the system and wound up getting Bill Gates so excited he actually called Steve Jobs a liar in a NewsWeek interview. The campaign does say some questionable things which we’ll explore at another time but let’s check how the Vista launch month is going."</i><br /><br />Check out the article for some details on what looks to be a pretty smooth launch for Vista thus far. On a personal note, I got a copy of Vista to play around with at work and have been pretty impressed with it. If anything, I find it almost too user friendly. I know this sounds weird, but I'll explain. I installed Vista on a few year old Thinkpad. Installation went very smoothly. I booted up and was unable to get on-line. I could not find any way to set-up my wireless access because there simply were no wireless options showing. Apparently, Vista only shows you options which you can actually use. Vista must not have had drivers for my built-in wireless, but had not informed me of this during the install (or I missed it if it did). So, I plug into a wired connection and within 30 second, Vista pops up that it had found solutions for my computer, the solution included wireless drivers. A few more clicks, and my wireless was up and running. From the novice users perspective, this is great; but as a more experienced user, I did find this a bit frustrating.

[Phronetix]

Any Mac user who was around for early OS X will tell you it was no picnic, yet the experience was considered vastly better than OS 9 by most.

It is encouraging to know that MS may be planning on a 2.5 year timeframe for Vienna's release and future releases past then. Apple did a similar thing with its OS X followups (Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger) spaced at 1-2 years apart. Doing so will keep the OS current, and I know of the service packs but have never looked into them, so I am not familiar with how many features/changed exist in such things.

If Leopard was not due out so soon, and some say as soon as next month, I don't think Apple would be so loud. By this summer I can play with Leopard and Vista on the same machine? How cool is that?

On a side note, will anyone be posting about using vista on a Mac with parallels, or is that beyond the scope or outside the main focus of this site?

Dennis

[randalllewis]

Apple's current Mac campaign is clever and witty and I have admired many of the installments. That said, their Vista ads so far have been insider baseball kind of stuff that most PC users will not understand. Most of the ads have had appeal to average computer users but the vague references to needing to upgrade peripherals and UAC go over the head of the vast majority of PC users. These people, if they pay attention at all, say "huh" and go buy a new PC anyway.

And for the sake of those reading this- the fact that you and I are posting and reading posts on this website means we are NOT the vast majority of PC users. The recent Mac ads have been aimed at us and we are not likely to change our opinions.

[Jason Dunn]

On a side note, will anyone be posting about using vista on a Mac with parallels, or is that beyond the scope or outside the main focus of this site?

No one on the news team has a Mac, so that kind of sums it up. ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

Apple's current Mac campaign is clever and witty and I have admired many of the installments.

I've gotten a chuckle out of some of them as well, but unlike their early ones with were based on more or less accurate truths about the two different platforms, their last few have been treading into the realm of falsehood. The UAC one is particularly false: I was demonstrating Windows Vista to my mother and father in law last night after getting their new Dell Vista Laptop set up. I showed them the sidebar, installed programs, email via Outlook, IE7, WMP, and all sorts of things without ever seeing the UAC prompt. I had to go into settings to find something to trigger UAC, so I think it's completely false how the Apple ads make it sound like *everything* causes a UAC prompt.

[jeffd]

I've had windows ultimate on my dell 1505 laptop for almost a week now, and I really like it. It look smooth, no bugs or mysterious crashes. I'm not jumping to reinstall any games on it for obvious reasons, but I guess I'll be copying my guild wars over to it soon enough (yay install-less games!). I am quite impressed with its usability for the simple user now. Plenty of prompts, a more indepth help system. I think the start menu is a little worse off simply because it opens folders in itself rather then off the side, reducing clutter but not readability.

Driver wise, I was also impressed that it had everything (this is not a dell edition of vista btw. My dell was bought before the vista upgrade offer :( ) that it contained all the drivers for my laptop, including wireless, all ready to install. It did contain only a simple driver for my ati x1300 though, wich was only capable of a graphics score of 2.0. Upgrading to the latest ati vista driver upgraded my score to 3.0.

One thing though, you WILL be scrambling to find new versions of your fav programs. My old acdsee was crashing on startup, and my old zoom player (the one that comes with the CCCP too) would force the computer into basic aero mode while the player was open ,due to the way it didn't like the way it accessed direct draw I guess. While the switch was actually painless and the computer went quickly to aero glass mode when the player was closed, it was still an ugly bug. However even though the latest zoom isn't vista ready, it works fine with aero glass. Ditto with the latest acdsee, not vista ready yet, but works with glass (it did crash on its very first startup, was odd, but hasn't given me a problem since).

[Tim Williamson]

On a side note, will anyone be posting about using vista on a Mac with parallels, or is that beyond the scope or outside the main focus of this site?

No one on the news team has a Mac, so that kind of sums it up. ;-)

Further proof that Jason and Thoughts Media are just a pawn of the Micro$oft regime!11 :evil: :lol:

[Jason Dunn]

Further proof that Jason and Thoughts Media are just a pawn of the Micro$oft regime!11 :evil: :lol:

:lol: Kent Pribbernow had a Mac, and was on our team for a long time, but he went on to other things - so, trust me, it's not a matter of me not wanting to have a Mac user on the team, it's more a matter of me finding people from the community that would make a good fit on Digital Media Thoughts as a contributing editor (which is an ongoing struggle).

Vincent on our review team is a Mac user. 8)

[Jason Dunn]

I think the start menu is a little worse off simply because it opens folders in itself rather then off the side, reducing clutter but not readability.

Try typing instead of searching visually - it's 1000% faster. Once you get into the habit, you'll be amazed at how "barbaric" the XP version was.

[jeffd]

jason, you give far to much credit for my spelling skillz. ;)

[Chris Gohlke]

If someone wants to give me a mac mini, I'd be happy to give it a run for the money against my PC. :D Which BTW, my birthday IS coming up next week.