Happy Birthday Microsoft Windows!

What if you use wired Ethernet instead? How about other machines w/totally different hardware running Win 7 on the same network?

Unfortunately, it's impossible to tell w/o more diagnosis. It could be the wireless hardware in your computer (didn't know if you were using wireless, until now), interference from 2.4 ghz sources (e.g. 2.4 ghz cordless phones which might not even be in your household, microwave ovens, etc.), your wireless access point/router (and its firmware), driver problems or even OEM provided connection managers fighting w/Windows.

I recall that my Lenovo T61p running under Vista sometimes would have trouble reconnecting to my Linksys DI-624 (624+?) after resuming from hibernate. Lenovo provides its own connection manager (Access Connections) and Windows does its own. It sometimes was confusing to figure out who was in charge. That laptop is running Win 7 now and I my wireless AP is different now. Sometimes my AP gets into a bad state where it seems like wireless devices can't connect (including my iPhone 4) and power cycling the router "fixes" things.

The above crap router would REBOOT if my 2.4 ghz cordless phone rang. Sometimes, it'd go into a continual reboot loop if you were on the 2.4 ghz phone, until you ended the call. I expected range loss but not reboots. I ended up switching to a cordless w/different frequency.

Can you switch to another wireless adapter? Are there newer drivers for it? (you might have to check w/its chipset maker) Can you try disabling certain bands/standards (e.g. 802.11g)? How about changing the encryption type (e.g. WPA > WPA2) or related settings? If there are any OEM provided connection managers, perhaps let it or Windows only handle the wireless connections?

 

It's not crystal goblet. It is more like a safe with a window with a force field protecting it filled with diamonds and cash. Everyone wants into it.

With UAC and any common sense you wont get infected. I have a few unprotected PCs and they are just fine. Nobody writes viruses for macs because it is worthless to do so. You want to steal from a mass user base, not a niche market. There are numerous security flaws in OSX, and it crashes just as often as Windows. I have had the spinning beach ball of death or just a forced random reboot more times than I can remember.

ME was pretty poor. 98 is not horrid, it works just fine. Well 98 SE was just fine. Infact I still use it on one of my machines

No security software is neccessary. It is security, like insurance. You pay insurance everymonth yet if you ever need it it would have been cheaper to just pay for repairs outright. If you do get infected with a virus it is not really that hard to click the automatic system restore. If that doesn't work then a few hours in the registry and file system from safe mode will work 99% of the time. There are also lots of free utilities to do all of that for you when you need it. Alternatively you pay for security software and "set it and forget it".

Leave program open in OSX and you will see memory usage creep up as well. This is a bad programming in general thing, not a Windows only thing.

 

I run Windows 7 with Parallels Desktop on a big 8-core Mac Pro. I don't mind it except for a few nits. I really hate being reminded every time I copy a file from one drive to another that it may damage my computer. Also, many of the minor, quirky behaviors from Windows 95 persist. I hate having to click in an Explorer pane to be able to use the scroll ball when I've gotten so used to being able to just hover over a background window and scroll it in OS X. Windows just seems to take so many steps to accomplish simple things, and as you drill deeper into the tabs and pop-ups to find a setting, the Win 7 appearance quickly vanishes and your looking at XP or 95 again. Otherwise, it seems to work well. I don't have any need yet to run a second VM with Linux, but that may happen. Still, I've owned nothing but Macs since '85.

 

I started with DOS 5 - batch files, baby!

 

I started with DOS 2.0 but have played with 1.0 and 1.1 before. Man... back in the DOS days there was expanded and extended memory, QEMM, EMM386, loading stuff high to leave enough free conventional RAM, TSRs, etc.

I don't think I had Windows 1.0 but I think I've played with it a bit. I've had to use Windows extensively as far back as 2.x. But, for everything prior to Win 95, I only ran Windows to run Windows apps.

 

Ah, the registry! Now if that isn't the most perverted concept in the history of computing I'll eat my hat! A hundreds of megabytes file that nobody but a Windows expert can even begin to understand, that one wrong keystroke will kill your entire system, and that allows malware programs to rebuild themselves after you think you've erased them.

Thank you for reminding me. The registry is another reason I gave Bill the boot. I'm a pacifist, but whoever thought up the idea of the registry should be covered with honey and tied to an ant hill.

 

It's just a different approach. Storing settings in a common location for all to access vs. storing settings in preference files or in the binary itself.

FYI the registry is very strong nowadays. You can go in there and delete one of many system keys, reboot and it will be back to normal (well default normal). Similarly if you delete a preference file, it will come back but obviously with defaults!

Some are still system critical but generally the info is spread into multiple areas so you have to have malicious intent for anything to happen. And without admin rights you cant do it anyways. When you have the knowledge you can be very dangerous in Windows.

 

Toaster, I appreciate your sentiments, even if I don't agree with everything you say. The registry is much better than it used to be, but it's still an awkward way to accomplish the job. The intention was good, which was to get away from all of the .ini files floating about, but MS managed to make a mess of it.

The same thing is true with Windows in general. It's much better than it used to be: more stable, less bloatware, and better security. Still, it's not great, given that the Open Source world does a better job in general with a lot fewer resources.

The problem goes to the very roots of Microsoft, right from day one. They are a marketing company first, and a technology company second. Every new version of Windows overreached. Each added gobs of bells and whistles, instead of focusing on a solid foundation. Windows is a classic example of not having time to do it right, but always finding time to do it over. Microsoft has historically needed three tries to get anything right. They get there eventually, but only after a lot of pain and suffering, and by then it's a pretty shaky scaffolding holding everything in place.

Security is a good example. Windows has historically required a layer of external security to make up for the lack of built in security. Only recently has this began to improve. Linux has had it for years. The last few versions of Ubuntu has included AppArmor, which provides an enclosed sandbox for running vulnerable applications. This is far more effective and less resource intensive than the traditional anti-virus programs currently used under Windows.

It's hard for Microsoft to leave these problems behind, because they come from the company's basic culture. Microsoft has been this way from the beginning, although I do believe they are making efforts to change. I've been working with computers since long before Microsoft. I scoffed at the early PCs and DOS. It was an abomination. The early versions of Windows were even worse. Regardless, I wrote applications and system code for them because Microsoft was commercially successful. They were technically incompetent, but you couldn't argue with their commercial success.

Will Windows 7 be a complete departure from these earlier mistakes? I don't expect so, but I do expect that it will prove to be an improvement. How much is yet to see. My opinion so far is mixed, although it's probably too early to tell. If Microsoft follows its normal pattern, we need to wait until at least the second Service Pack before we see how it really performs.

Tom

 

And without the knowledge, you cannot fix anything. With OS X, it just works. Of course, the credit goes to Unix. Apple was merely smart enough to dump the old crap and adopt Unix and write a shell for it. Microsoft would be well-advised to do the same.

And with OS X, if you know what you're doing, you can open a terminal window and have full access to the power of the underlying Unix.

 

It seems like security is the #1 issue people have with Microsoft. I 100% that they are not great with security. But they aren't as bad as people make them out to be either...

Last time I took the time to compile data about this, I found a compilation of security flaws for XP, Vista, OSX 10.4, and OSX 10.5. Turned out to be about 45 total for Microsoft with about 75% or so of them in the "highly critical" category (non-critical, moderately critical, highly critical, extremely critical as ranked by an external 3rd party company that keeps tracks of security vulnerabilities and patches). Apple had something in the neighbourhood of 240, with almost all but 10 being highly critical (96%).

Charlie Miller (who has competed successfully in the pwn2own contest 2 or 3 years in a row I believe) said/tweeted about the Nov 11th (this year) patch: "Apple releases huge patch, still miss all my bugs. Makes you realize how many bugs are in their code (or they're very unlucky)."

As for patch dev time:

If I am going to run a program that I know is fishy, I boot up my virtual machine with a non persistant HD. About 8 to 10 seconds from clicking start to being booted (VMWare is awesome!) Drag over the suspect file and run it in there. I realize it is not a built in sandbox, but it works. Add to that that people get pissed at Microsoft for bundling things. If they bundled VirtualPC (or whatever they call their virtualization software) the courts would slap them with another monopoly/competition suit. Bundling IE and Windows Media player is no different than Apple bundling Safari and iPhoto and whatever the default media player is (iDefaultMoviePlayer probably).

It's a lose/lose for Microsoft because they suck at advertising. Apple is the god of marketing and advertising. Nobody does it better, and I do not see that changing. Apple can continue to make inferior products with obscene prices and sell large quantities because of their marketing geniuses. I will stick with the better products at usually equally obscene prices.

 

It doesnt always "just work" with Apple. I have had to fix numerous Apple devices from software barfs. There are many times when kexts explode and panic the kernel in various places/times. Without knowing how to get the safe boot option and other various command line argument booting options, it would have been impossible to get OSX to boot up without a reinstall. And even then intimate knowledge of the system and unix terminal commands are needed to get it back to a working state.

I think you mentioned memory overflow exploits in a previous post too correct? Apple is riddled with these exploits, but they call them "arbitrary code execution" I believe. This will do the same as in windows-land where you can take over another process with high level security permissions and do what you want without user interaction. The hole is there, it just not really being exploited in macland at the moment. Well with the exception of a few pdf viewers and png viewers...

 

Agreed. When I used to test Mac software for a living, I ran into a convoluted process to install either a Canon or Epson inkjet printer driver on Tiger (or Panther?). I've hit kernel panics (not that often though) on shipping versions of OSes. Adding a networked printer that was on Active Directory I recall was odd.

One time, I had a OS Software Update fail to install (it got stuck, even after waiting >15 minutes). Someone else in the group hit the same problem. My machine was unbootable. IIRC, I had to press a certain key sequence at boot to see messages to see how far it was getting. Fortunately, a coworker knew a good workaround. We had a netboot server so I could point my machine to boot off that, download the installer for the same update and could apply it to the non-booting partition (to overwrite the missing, damaged or incomplete file(s)).

For those who haven't seen these, they should give you a laugh.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-8IufkbuD0"]YouTube - Steve Ballmer Sells Windows XP[/ame] - updated version for Windows XP

 

That man sweats way too much. For someone worth over $10billion, you would think he could afford some antiperspirant. Almost all the videos of him show huge pit stains and even around the neck!

With the "dance monkey boy" video, he was running around for all of a minute and you can see his pits are wet by the end.

 

Hehehe. I guess you're referring to

.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE&feature=related]YouTube - Steve Ballmer - Developers[/ame] has sweat visible from the start.

 

Yep, that's the one...

I will be really disappointed if he doesnt do another $99 marketing campaign for Windows 8 whenever that comes out. It should be in his contract.

 

Mac OS used to suck big time. I hated working on networked Mac systems. Fortunately Apple lost (laid off) so many engineers that they couldn't make another iteration of their crappy OS, which by chance brought them to one of their best decisions: switching to Unix. Now they have a robust operating system under all of that pretty user interface.

Mac OS and Linux share a common problem: lack of support from hardware vendors. Obviously these companies focus their efforts on Windows, since that is the big market. Also, Microsoft has employed strong-arm tactics to keep hardware OEMs away from other operating systems. The net result is the same: many printers and other peripheral devices lack good support everywhere except Windows.

As for bad software and system problems, all operating systems have them. When you combine hardware and drivers from multiple vendors the problems go up dramatically. I don't see this changing anytime soon, with our feature and cost driven economy.

Linux has plenty of problems as well, but has one great advantage when it comes to fixing problems: source code. With Linux, any competent programmer is welcome to download the source and do some trouble-shooting. Collectively, this leads to some of the best support you can find, albeit ad hoc in nature.

As for me, I can sum up my relationship with computers as love-hate. I love them when they do my bidding. I hate the little bastards when they don't.

Tom

 

I love them when the do my bidding, I hate them when the do what I tell them to do instead of what I want them to do.

I find Windows 7 to be pretty good. In fact, after Installing 7 I didn't bother to add a dual boot Linux install like I have done for years.

 

We keep hearing that OS X has all these bugs in it, and that guy that claims to have found and published bugs. And yet there has never been a single successful exploit in the wild. You really want me to believe that not one single hacker is willing to devote a couple of hours of spare time just to prove he can? Gimme a break! Windows is crap. OS X is Unix.

 

I don't agree that Windows is crap anymore but do agree that the lower number of OS X systems aren't what keeps it from being exploited.

A big share of exploits are done to show off to fellow bad guy hackers. Anyone who creates a serious OS X exploit will become a legend, so there is lots of incentive for them to exploit OS X.