Microsoft cuts Vista prices to urge upgrades

Lower the price of a poke in the eye, and I still won't buy one.

 

+1

Most of the programs I use have major stability issues with Vista. If it was free I still wouldn't take it. Maybe in a few years when the software I use has been re-engineered to work with it I may consider it, but not yet.

 

+2. I am happily typing this post on my MacBook Pro with Leopard. When I absolutely have to use Windows, I reach for the 'obsolete' XP Pro notebook that I keep for such events. Fortunately for me, I am reaching for the XP Pro notebook less and less.

 

What does Microsoft Vista had to do with politics?

 

Tim probably thought he was posting in FHOP.

 

I have Vista Ultimate 64 bit installed on my desktop. It was painful for awhile, but it seems stable enough now.

What drives me bonkers is that Microsoft themselves don't support their new operating system (they don't have x64 connectors for Windows Home Server and some of their hardware drivers aren't 64 bit compatible), so it's harder to criticize folks like Apple, who only recently added 64 bit support for iTunes.

 

!LOL!​

 

Things can get pretty nasty between windows and apple users... :argue:

 

Isnt Leopard 64 bit? I run 100% mac, but I'm no genius about them yet. I know not all apps are 64 bit, but I thought the OS was. Are you talking about itunes in windows? Cause you know....I'm sure that Apple's primary focus is to get their apps to work in wonderful windows.

 

:rofl:How long does the public have to wait? Every MS operating system has taken WAY longer then they said it would. The long time between XP and Vista was supposed to ensure it was stable and relatively bug free. We still get bimonthly security updates at work for our XP boxes. A Vice president I know at a major computer manufacturer that has "xxx recommends Vista" like promotion said it STINKS. I guess this person isn't following the company line.

My wife read so much bad press about Vista that we replaced the dying 2001 Compaq (running Windows Me on a WHOPPING 700 mHz processor) with an iMac G5 in November. Yeah, it is a new interface, lots to learn but at least we don't have security updates and bug fixes every other week.

 

You also don't have to suffer under an O/S that has a voracious appetite for memory. MS is now tied up in a class action lawsuit for making false claims about how under resourced PCs could run Vista....

 

Its pretty bad when your computer uses all of its resources just to run the baseline OS, let alone even do anything !!.

You'll be a lot happier in os X. The learning curve is small, just make sure you keep an open mind about how to do things at first while making the switch.

 

At Staples I saw a program that makes XP look like Vista.

It was in the bargain bin.

 

I had XP on my laptop. I only used the laptop when I traveled. It typically took half a day to download and install all the security updates (including reboots) any time I turned it on to prepare for the next trip.

Now I have Linux on the laptop. Sometimes there is an update which takes 5 or 10 minutes to install. Linux does everything I need from a travel computer.

But now I only take the laptop on driving trips. If I'm flying I take the N800. It would probably take 2 days if I had to update an XP machine each time I take a driving trip, which is usually just summer hiking in Canada.

 

I think most of the updates are security fixes as hackers continue to find new hacks. I wonder if OS "X" doesn't need as many updates because the hackers are reaching for the low hanging abundant fruit with a lot of computer novices using MS PCs?

As far as Vista being on Sale, I sure hope my wife doesn't hear about it. She will bring home ten copies and tell me she saved me ten times as much.

 

I once re-installed XP on a computer. I had the original OEM disk, which was SP1. It took two days (or was it three?) to install. The first thing it did, after running the installation disk and taking a long time with that, was to download a lot of patches to SP1, with multiple re-boots along the way. Then it downloaded SP2, with re-boots. And then it downloaded the patches to SP2, with lots of re-boots. It also had to download the latest versions of Norton and the firewall, plus their signature files. Not something I'd willingly do again!

OS X requires an admin user name and password before software can be installed. If a hacker manages to exploit a flaw and gets a program to run on your computer, it's a one-time event, unless it can guess at an admin name and password, or you provide them. With Windows, the hacker can install a program and get it to run every time you boot, and can hack the registry so that if you uninstall the program it re-installs itself.

An example was the one a while back that could mess with your IP look-up routine, so that if you typed in a URL, it could take you to a spoofed site. But for that to happen on OS X you'd have had to give an admin name and password. I think they said you'd actually have to give it twice, at different stages of the malicious install, but I'm not sure of that.

Didn't I hear that with Vista MS has its own anti-virus program built-in, and the third-party AV programs are locked out? And do you have to pay MS a subscription fee for that built-in one to work? Sorry if I got that all wrong. There's no way I'd trust MS for security software. It's like those old Three Stooges movies where someone hires the Stooges to be exterminators or rocket scientists or home remodelers.