The Windows Vista Experience, part 1

[cdybedahl]

Ok, so the company decided it wasn't actually worth it to maintain an entire new environment just for me, so I got an HP laptop loaded with Windows Vista. In a way it's a good thing, since it'll give me some experience with the kind of environment most of you out there use, and it'll make it far easier for me to separate work and private life (no way on Earth I'm using this unless someone's paying me to!).

And you may be getting a series of posts giving my reactions to this Windows Vista thing.

The initial of which is "You've got to be fucking kidding". People actually use this? For real?

Comments

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

The company gave me Windows 64. It's a real pain even by Windows standards.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'd never even heard of that one until now. Is there a particular reason why they want your computer incompatible with everything?

[hawkeye7.livejournal.com]

Technically speaking, it is called Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. This is to distinguish it from the even more incompatible Itanium version. (Everybody's favorite bug: the System Information tool reports the current OS as Windows Server 2003 x64 and not Windows XP.) Basically, it's a 64-bit version of Windows XP. It runs many 32-bit applications but by no means all. Anything that uses a driver will require a special x64 version. These have been very slow in appearing. I recently installed Adobe Acrobat 8.0, which is the first version that supports Windows x64. Fortunately, a version of Perl is available for it.

The whole idea is to gain experience with 64-bit systems.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Apparently. Personally I'm planning to switch to Linux if I have to buy a new computer.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Nobody I know uses Windows Vista. I have a couple friends whose companies tried it, but I haven't heard that they are still using it. Most companies in the states use Windows 2000 pro or XP pro, because they are relatively stable.

Perhaps Vista will eventually morph into a stable version. It's taking its sweet old time though.

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

The problems with Vista have little to do with stability. The huge problem comes from its built-into-the-DNA "digital rights management". That is, it tries extremely hard to protect the big content-producing companies from the people using Windows. In comments to this post in another forum, a developer told me that some high-end audio stuff that was perfectly feasible to do in XP is flat-out impossible to implement in Vista, because the operating system itself forbids playing around with sound at that level.

This kind of problem is unlikely to go away in a hurry. Not even if Microsoft would want it to, since it'd require a major rewriting of the OS.

[zastrazzi.livejournal.com]

I don't think there are many people using it, and I know our company (large oil & gas) has no plans to switch. Me, I use OSX and Linux :)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That's not the way it works. It's comparatively rare for people to switch operating systems, mostly they buy computers with the OS ready-installed, and for some time now the installed OS has increasingly been Vista. Over the course of time Vista will become the de facto Windows standard. Eventually Microsoft will say "OK, we're not going to support XP with service patches any more," and at that point XP will limp along, becoming increasingly vulnerable, and later generations of some programs just won't work. You may not like it, but once that happens your company will probably have to think about switching.

[zastrazzi.livejournal.com]

Which may or may not mean switching to Vista.

We have a number of our field sites switching to Macbooks, and while I don't see that turning into a company wide thing any time in the near future it's entirely possible we may just wait til the *next* version of Windows.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

No argument here - as I said, I'll probably be looking at Linux myself. The problem I have is that at the moment I need compatibility with various programs (most notably an OCR package, Microsoft Office 2003, and Adobe Acrobat Pro), all of which I own in Windows versions, and between them they represent a sizeable amount of money which I will probably have to write off when and if I swap over - I seriously doubt that WINE will keep them working well enough to keep me in business.

[jthijsen.livejournal.com]

Think about switching? Not my company! Only last year did we switch from NT4 to XP. And we're still using office 97, which is an incredible piece of unstable crap. But we only use proven technology and in practice that means we only upgrade if we absolutely can't get around it.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Office 2000 isn't much better. Office 2003 seems to be about the best so far, certainly better than 2007.

[reddragdiva]

I have a friend with it on the new laptop she got. It's SO PRETTY - they've actually made Windows not ugly.

But jeez they make it hard to do stuff. I had to resort to the command line to access a camera software CD that Vista decided it was in my best interest not to let me see.

[dunv-i.livejournal.com]

Actually, they completely revamped the whole Windows thing for Vista (and made it look more like Mac in the process). I'm sticking with XP until my school upgrades (which might be a problem - I doubt my mom and dad will upgrade from XP and 2000 respectively just for us) which will probably be in two years from now. When Dell gives it to them. I like the way it looks (I love my upgraded WMP except it's not very user friendly in some ways. And don't get me started on IE7). In fact, thinking about IE7, I'd recommend not touching it. Ever.

Personally, I miss my 2000 computer (mostly because my old Intuos tablet uninstalls itself on this computer every 3 days and it needed a special cord because my computer doesn't have a serial port). And I'd switch to Linux, but there is no way in hell my school would let me.

[sugoll.livejournal.com]

People try to use it. We've only recently started playing, and discovered our regression harness won't run on it, which kinda hampers our support. So, our product's going out with a note saying, "If you're using Vista, here are the things that'll throw you..."