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125 Comments
- estvir, on 10/11/2007, -17/+100Here is the first part which was a big hit with the Digg community: http://www.digg.com/microsoft/Windows_Vista_more_than_just_a_pretty_face (Copy and paste, it's being retarded or I broke it somehow :x).
I have been saying this for some time now: "Vista is not simply XP with a new skin; core parts of the OS have been radically overhauled, and virtually every area has seen significant refinement."
Yet doing so usually gets you branded as a 'Microsoft shill' but hopefully now that a well respected site like Ars Technica has explained it people will actually start to believe it. Actually, I foresee in the near future a bunch of childish people calling Ars Technica biased, paid off by "M$" and other similar things, with no basis, of course. Oh, and in saying that I agree with Ars that there was a lot of disappointment and many areas that need work but overall it's the biggest update to Windows in a long time.
About WinFS, while not there as originally planned, what they wanted to achieve with it has been mostly met just in other ways. Before Jim Allchin retired in a interview he explained this, I'll see if I can find it again. Also, managed code doesn't completely not exist in Vista.
But anyway, it's well written and a nice change from the usual stories people Digg about Vista on here. - elvenseven, on 10/11/2007, -19/+72It's not cool anymore to bash Windows :(
- geoken, on 10/11/2007, -15/+55Why don't you formulate an actual argument and allow people to either agree or disagree. As it stands all your posts in Microsoft threads bounce from issue to issue and for the most part have nothing to do with the actual content of the thread. But hey, I guess as long as you're saying something bad about Microsoft (no matter how unrelated it is) you've fullfilled your goal.
- strictnein, on 10/11/2007, -17/+56@schestowitz:
You're a sad sad little fanboy.
Look at his comment history and digg history. All he does is digg linux related stories and then make worthless comments on Windows ones with his annoying quote style. - grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -7/+44> Vista: 80% RAM use - open an app, lets say a game or photoshop - wait 10 minutes while it clears enough RAM to load app
No, the reason it is 80% RAM use is because photoshop is already in superfetch and therefore would take only a moment to switch. Even if it is not, anything can be immediately dropped by superfetch because it is just a prefetch cache, so to 'clear enough RAM' is an operation measured in nanoseconds. - avinash240, on 10/11/2007, -8/+36In my experience most people who bash Vista, haven't truly tried it. I work at an IT company and we're running it on a couple of machines. It's a very nice OS, I also installed it on my gf's IBM Z Pro workstation, when Vista is given ram, her machine has 2.5 Gigs, it's blazing fast, they really have something nice with their pre-fetch technology. I'm also someone who works on Ubuntu(Work Desktop), CentOS(Servers, command-line), Windows XP(Gaming Machine), and OS X(Home Development) on a daily basis. OSes are tools, not a religion, to me and they did a nice job with Vista, it has it's warts but every OS I used does, and I've used quite a few.
- BlackCow, on 10/11/2007, -4/+27@swordedge
Dugg down for being an apple zombie,
"Load some on your iPod"
What do you work for apple, you know its JUST a show, iPods have NOTHING to do with it.
Idiot. - geoken, on 10/11/2007, -7/+28Since when can't you install WHQL drivers. I've been installing every beta nVidia driver for the past 3 months. Do you know the difference between a signed driver and a WHQL driver?
- Kanna, on 10/11/2007, -5/+25I have been using Vista 64-bit since the November launch date and I have to say UAC has NOT bothered me at all. It annoyed me for about 6 hours, during which time I was still setting up the machine with new apps and system configurations. If UAC is your biggest concern, I can safely say you won't see it as often as you think it would. Disabling UAC does more harm than good, plus if you decide to re-enable it in the future some apps might not work properly anymore.
- mushroom, on 10/11/2007, -6/+25You think this is bad look what he is doing on this site http://help.lockergnome.com/linux/forum-10-days0-30.html every post is by him he is some sort of human spamming machine
- quiksliver, on 10/11/2007, -5/+24you think thats bad? check out his website:
http://schestowitz.com/
yikes - elvenseven, on 10/11/2007, -5/+23He even spams Netscape, yes Netscape.
http://www.netscape.com/member/schestowitz/activity/stories - MioTheGreat, on 10/11/2007, -5/+22UAC is much more than sudo.
UAC allows for Vista to support access levels that Linux doesn't even have. Look at IE7. It runs, and it doesn't even have access to your _USER_ startup folder, It only has access to tiny "Low" subset of the HKCU registry, and an even tinier part of the file system. (Actual file saving and stuff is handled by another process). If you have a normal process on Linux hijacked, it can ***** with your user profile. If IE7, or any process rigged to run as "Low" is hijacked, it can't even add a file to your _user_ startup folder! - grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -1/+17> No. If Vista's using 80% of your RAM, something is wrong. I've never seen more than like 10 megs free. Superfetch should be using EVERYTHING.
It depends on how much RAM you have and how much Superfetch has to load, but yes, it should use as much physical RAM as it needs. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+17Don't quit your day job.
- MioTheGreat, on 10/11/2007, -7/+20"No, the reason it is 80% RAM use is because photoshop is already in superfetch and therefore would take only a moment to switch. Even if it is not, anything can be immediately dropped by superfetch because it is just a prefetch cache, so to 'clear enough RAM' is an operation measured in nanoseconds."
No. If Vista's using 80% of your RAM, something is wrong. I've never seen more than like 10 megs free. Superfetch should be using EVERYTHING.
And AlexFerny, the difference between Vista and Linux is that Vista will premptively cache, Linux will cache after you use something. There are probably programs that let Linux cache preemptively, but I don't believe it's the default behavior. - cquinnd, on 10/11/2007, -6/+18" there was absolutely no way to get around the driver-signing requirement. "
Pressing F8 on startup was the method I have seen recommended. It is not acceptable as a permanent solution, but there is at least that way around the requirement.
" because the small/individual developers couldn't WHQL sign their drivers for 64-bit Vista. "
AFAIK, driver signing and WHQL certification are two different issues.
The other thing you mention is not a bug in UAC at all, it is by design that even users in the the Adminstrator group log in as a Standard Users, the difference is the Administrator group has the ability to run elevated programs on prompting. Where other Users would also have to provide at least a password.
"The only way to get around this was to disable UAC altogetherr, which nearly takes away the point of installing vista altogether.... improved security."
That is also incorrect, you can also get around that annoyance (if it is annoying to you) by tweaking some of the half dozen group policy settings that control how UAC works on your system. And UAC is only the first of many new layers of improved security that is built into Vista, particulary on the 64-bit version.
I would agree that if you are happy with XP SP2 you might not want to switch or upgrade as drivers and apps continue to mature into the new platform. But if you are interested in some of the new features in the OS as outlined by the Ars article, and have been checking the status of driver updates and improvements in application compatibility, then this is not a bad time to start looking at Vista. Waiting on service packs is of lesser importance (imho) than waiting on the status of newer hardware and programs that are designed more with Vista in mind.
I settled on the 32bit version for the time being, and because most of my existing hardware did not gain an appreciable benefit from running in 64-bit. - MioTheGreat, on 10/11/2007, -4/+16Disabling UAC is a stupid ass idea.
It disables the ability to use Medium, Low, and maybe even Untrusted level processes: Everything runs as "High" (Admin)
Vista has 6 ways to launch a process. TrustedInstaller, System, High, Normal, Low, Untrusted. With UAC off, everything runs as High, and that's bad. With UAC on, most things run as Normal, with certain things like IE7 running as Low. - MioTheGreat, on 10/11/2007, -2/+12Indeed, it does offer better theoretical security than any other browser. Even if the browser is compromised, it can't install anything into the current user startup folder, or even touch the files on your desktop, documents, etc.
I think Opera is/was considering implementing it. Firefox, on the other hand, has been slow as ***** to even get Vista compatibility working. - victorc26, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11No, there are people who actually don't get any viruses. And are knowledgeable enough to not open unknown executables. We also update our OSs regularly. We also have a router.
My XP install hasn't gotten a virus, ever. The same with my Vista install. And believe me, I look.
It's simple, don't fill your OS install with crapware you don't know to be trusted. - benitojuarez, on 10/11/2007, -3/+13@lolhax
while masturbating furiously to pictures of penguins.
obkeblowme You are a straight up linux troll and you know it. I mean come on you have 5 posts saying ms scumbags ms trolls ms this ms that. get a life. - lolhax, on 10/11/2007, -5/+14Go teabag schestowitz.
- grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10> sudo remembers your login for a while, UAC does not.
The article points this out, but also points out that this is a potential attack vector. I would agree that UAC could be improved to address the numerous prompts when setting up a system for the first time. But anything that makes it tolerable to run as a non-administrator is a big step up. - genckas, on 10/11/2007, -4/+12I am sorry but Vista may be an improvement but performance is far from perfect. It makes my Core Duo on 2 GB RAM work like my old P4 on 512 MB RAM.
Yes the OS has changed a lot, its not XP, but MS just has not improved the performance, at least for my scripts, apps etc.
As for security, I have been using Windows for years and never had any problems. Its up to the user, if you open attachments, surf without care, you get bitten (I do not use an AntiVirus app). - Nalin, on 10/11/2007, -3/+11Open up an Administrative Command Prompt and type this out (yes, those are two D's):
bcdedit.exe -set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS
Boom. You can use unsigned drivers in 64-bit Vista. Of course, this also prevents you from watching hi-def movies. =/ - Hickeroar, on 10/11/2007, -17/+25This whole series on ARS has been eye opening. It's cool to know that while everyone is screaming about MS copying apple, they really did make some real hardcore changes where it counts...
This post comes from a mac, by the way ;) - lurpitus, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10There are some really excellent features in Vista. E.g. caching has been improved quite a bit. There is actually some intelligence in it now. OS actually learns which software you are using and when and it caches them so they starts faster. I've been using Vista for months and the feature just works. Of course it is not perfect but better than normal FIFO type of caching in other popular operating systems.
I don't mind UAC at all. If you keep getting lot of UAC prompts then perhaps you should take a minute and review the way you use the OS. - estvir, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10> You think this is bad look what he is doing on this site http://help.lockergnome.com/linux/forum-10-days0-30.html every post is by him he is some sort of human spamming machine
Oh, he does it there too ? That's a shame.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy
^ He does it on there too. What's amusing is, what is the point of posting there ? I mean, the people who would actually visit a USENET group or forum like that are mostly likely already die hard *NIX zealots.
He thinks he's helping FOSS but he's not, he's an impediment to them and they need to get rid of him and his type like RMS. - mamee, on 10/11/2007, -6/+14lol
http://schestowitz.com/IMG/gallery.jpg - kday, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8No..... there is a option to temporarily disable driver signing when pressing F8.
However, in 64-bit Vista, disabling driver signing didn't always work (Specifically with ATI tool at the time). This may be patched by now, but at the time, "disabling" driver signing did not always work so well. When Vista RTM 64-bit was first released, everyone was having trouble disabling driver signing. I searched forums for hours with no solution. After doing a Google search now, I am glad to see that disabling driver signing now works with minor side effects (such as some DRM content not playing).
And @cquinnd
You are right about the WHQL. I stand corrected. And about the UAC, I don't remember the specifics on what I was having trouble with, but I do think it was a bug. However, you may be also right here. - EntropyFan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7@geoken
As far as I can remember, WHQL is a Microsoft cert that says your driver (or code) passes a minimum quality rating. They are willing to state it works with their OS.
Signing is different; MS makes no claims about the code(MS has nothing to do with the digital signature), but the signed drivers give a path back to who wrote it. - TubaTechno, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Thanks guys for pointing out this idiot. I was going to block him for spreading fud that isn't backed up (check his links for sources...there are none) and is completely opinionate, but now I'm going to block him for being a douche.
- estvir, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9That's what I thought but reading comments by schestowitz and OBKenobi shows that that is a true pipe dream.
Bless their poor, ignorant souls. :) - FutureGuy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7@blackcow
I don't know what you do with your machine? Do you save your documents somewhere in your program files directory? I only see UAC pop up when I am installing something or changing some setting, and I use the PC quite a bit. I like that it notifies me when any key setting is changed or some program writes to key directories. - grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7> You can all say what you want . .but I still think Vista sucks. For me Vista is XP with a skin AND they changed the complete layout of the
> GUI so nobody noticed the fact that it is XP with a skin.
Fortunately, we don't care whether you think it is a skin. - grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9Driver signing makes it a lot harder for rootkits to be installed. I was kinda dissappointed when they opened the 32-bit drivers (but understand why they needed to).
- Topher06, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7I guess you should always get your facts from Apple's "I'm a Mac" commercials because those are not obvious PR ploys. Honestly, telling people what new technology is in a Vista box, in a positive light, is a PR trick? End the hate man, you will live longer.
- estvir, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8> Ofcourse, ofcourse. Whatever you say, MS trolls.
Haha, I love reading the comments of a anti-MS lemming who denies all facts. Also, wouldn't these people be 'fanboys' and not trolls ? Gosh, you can't even make a decent insult. How about instead of insulting people you grow up and prove what they say is wrong.
Epic fail.
> You can all say what you want . .but I still think Vista sucks. For me Vista is XP with a skin AND they changed the complete layout of the GUI so nobody noticed the fact that it is XP with a skin.
Err, RTFA and stop burying your head in the sand. The FACTS are there and they say you're WRONG. - MonGuSE1, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7Dugg down because scence is spelled sense and you sound like my customers. I've never had a virus or spyware on my computer... Thats because you aren't smart enough to look and have never had anyone else bother to do so... =)
- Topher06, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5I have considered Vista is to XP as Windows 95 was to Windows 3.11. Microsoft reached the end of the road with the XP/2003 codebase, it could not be made more stable without a significant investment in time and resources to fix over a decades worth of code. While it might LOOK like XP in many ways, this article lets us know what Microsoft has done to make it NOT XP.
Having said that, like with the original Windows 95, Vista's codebase is in its infancy. While it is, to date, Microsoft's most stable and secure releease (which most people can't or won't believe) its still an immature product that will only get better with time. I doubt the follow up to Vista will take 5 years, and I expect something in another 2 years, whether its just a major service pack, or a complete upgrade, as I feel that Microsoft will be able to improve on areas of performance, as well as hopefully add WinFS, which has become the companies nemisis of sorts.
I know everyone has this irrational hate of Microsoft and everything Windows, but Vista is definitely a step in the right direction and a significant improvement over XP. After using Vista, I can't go back to XP, XP seems just to klunky to use, even finding a program in the Start menu just seems old and non-efficient. If you can't go back to an old product, then something was done right in a new product. I will never recommend people run out and buy Vista to upgrade their box, but asside from all the haysayers, when they get that new PC upgrade with Vista built in, they will like it. I also recommend that you get new hardware to run Vista. I don't experience any significant performance issues because my Vista box uses RAID drives, 4 gb of RAM and dual core CPU's with a fast GPU. I mean, Vista is an OS for the future, don't complain if your 4 year old XP box runs sluggish under Vista. I purposely waited to upgrade my computer anticipating Vista. - bennettp, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7@mictester:
"MS have saddled themselves with the requirement for backwards compatability and a huge amount of legacy code that even their "best" programmers don't understand. There is lots of code in there from before 1994 - they can't remove it because it's fundamental to operation of Windows, and they can't rewrite it because they don't understand it, and they don't have the programmers with suitable skills anymore."
You're not entirely right there. The major point of the article is that some parts of windows have been rewritten entirely. For example, up until Windows XP, any drawing done by applications was done using GDI, which harks back all the way to windows 3.0. Any "new" systems -- such as windows forms -- would rely upon GDI.
However, in Vista, the backend was completely rewritten to use direct3d. The old GDI still exists, but only as a frontend to the new api. The most important result is that the old legacy code is no longer fundamental to windows. It exists only to provide support for legacy applications. - MioTheGreat, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5"UAC + Windows Defender + kernel upgrade does not equate to "improved" security."
You're right, how could preventing malware from having Admin access to your system possibly prevent it fro---
Oh wait. Nevermind, you're horribly horribly wrong. - harlowsmonkeys, on 10/11/2007, -8/+13Actually, elevenseven, it isn't technically spam at Netscape, since Netscape *pays* him to post there. He is a "Navigator". They grabbed him when they were starting their Digg clone, and tried to hire all the top Diggers. Their definition of "top Diggers" was "people how post a lot", rather than the more sensible "people whose posts make the front page frequently".
As a Navigator, his record is less than stellar. He's posted more stories than most other Navigators, but has fewer stories that made the front page than most other Navigators. His percentage is something like 1%. (Here at Digg, his percentage was around 9%. I'm not sure what that says about the Digg voters vs. the Netscape voters.
Netscape also neglected to ask Navigators to provide some exclusive content to Netscape, and everything he posts there he posts at many other places. - lacronicus, on 10/11/2007, -14/+19@kday: dude, stability or expandability. while advanced users such as yourself may like expandability, others like stability, and since more people like stability, thats what they offer. sure, MS may have screwed you over, but that does not mean that their actions were without merit. like it or not, MS caters to the biggest group, catering to the others if it suits what they want to do. they may add a powertoy or something to allow such things, but since unsigned drivers can cause numerous problems with the OS, it is completely reasonable to eliminate them.
for that matter, why should MS allow you to install things based on technical ability? that makes no sense at all. should they make it hard to access? then they would get bashed for making it too bloated. should they have a test? ha! what would you suggest, considering that if they had their way, itd be the same way for 32bit. considering that, afaik, certification is free, it makes no sense that devs would not make their drivers compliant, unless its abandonware. such cases are rare, and if that is your case, i sympathize, but since you did not mention such a case, i shall assume that those who wrote your drivers are still making them. given that such drivers likely must be made specifically for vista, as they usually are, it is highly unlikely that they could not get them certified, especially since it is beneficial for them to do so, as they need not host the drivers, as they can then be gotten from windows update. this is, of course, assuming that they could pass the tests, but if they cant, then you likely shouldn't be installing them anyway. - drmsux, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7@Grumpyrain
"What UAC needs is a method to disable UAC for 24 hours."
It's called 'built-in Administrator account'. RTFM. - benitojuarez, on 10/11/2007, -4/+9"This should make Internet Explorer a great deal safer than it is today and perhaps the safest browser for Windows, at least until other browsers adopt a similar mechanism"
OHSNAP. Fanboys are going to chomp at the bit for that one. - cquinnd, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5"UAC + Windows Defender + kernel upgrade does not equate to "improved" security.
In fact, Vista is just as vulnerable to malware attacks as XP is. "
False. Vista was written to address several of the design flaws that created exploitable points in XP.
Any that might remain are targeted by the features you point out above.
You also left out features like service hardening, address space randomization, improved encryption
and driver signing among other security policies that MS is trying to put into place for the new platform. - grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5> It's called 'built-in Administrator account'. RTFM.
The built in Administrator account is disabled by default. Even so, Administrators still fall under UAC, which means unless you disable UAC, you will still get prompts. You also need to change the account type of the other users before it works properly.
The requested functionality is not how to avoid prompts (that is easy, switch off UAC through control panel in 10 seconds). It is to avoid leaving UAC off if your forget to re-enable it once done installing. - Zachari, on 10/11/2007, -6/+1005:52 06/08/07
Backstreet Boys, All I Have To Give,/windows/media/vol4/BackstrretBoysAllIHaveToGive.mp3
Enough said about this guy. - greatromance, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I made the switch to vista on my POS Toshiba laptop with a Celeron M and only 768mb of ram, and it performed a lot better than expected. I don't see where other users are coming up with the 80% RAM usage, as I haven't run into any issues like that... Yet. I'm going to load it onto my Core Duo laptop for permanent use now that I've messed around with it a bit, but from what I've seen it's a good step up for a Microsoft product.
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