Bad Windows

"An article on the Computerworld site quotes polling results from a potentially-divisive PatchLink survey. The poll shows that the majority of enterprise customers feel there are no compelling security enhancements in Windows Vista, that they have no plans to migrate to it in the near term and that many will 'either stick with the Windows they have, or turn to Linux or Mac OS X'. A majority, 87%, said they would stay with their existing version of Windows. This comes on the heels of a dissenting view of Vista's track record in the area of security at the six month mark, which sparked a heated discussion on numerous forums."

Slashdot 

Microsoft has released a pair of update packs for Windows Vista to a select group of software testers in its Connect program, which have subsequently found their way online.

The updates for the 32-bit and and 64-bit versions of Vista were posted Sunday on the Windows Server 2008 Beta portion of the Microsoft Connect Website.

The updates reportedly address a number of issues with Vista, including problems with PCs waking up from sleep or hibernate mode, file copying, memory management, network configuration, and video and printer driver compatibility issues, according to testers.

Judging from the reaction of users who have downloaded the updates, Microsoft appears to have addressed many of the Vista related headaches that users have been reporting since the OS launched in January.

Read more at www.crn.com 

Two substantial collections of Windows Vista hotfixes leaked to the Internet after being offered to Windows Server 2008 beta testers this weekend, leading some users to speculate that the pair are actually the foundation of the future Service Pack 1 (SP1) release for the OS.

Labeled "Vista Performance and Reliability Pack" and "Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack," the two updates feature a long list of non-security-related bug fixes, including those that improve Vista's resumption after sleep or hibernation, boost the speed of copying or moving large directories, prevent some memory corruption problems, bolster the reliability of systems upgraded from XP to Vista and increase compatibility with video drivers.

"These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support or other means," the two packs' release notes said. "Installing this update will improve the performance and responsiveness of some scenarios, and improves reliability of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios."

Read more at Computerworld 

In November of 1985, Microsoft released Windows 1.0. And thus began Windows' 22-year reign (to date) as the world's most popular, most irritating computing platform. Which Windows features have been responsible for the most angst? We tallied this list of offenders with the advice of PC World editors and contributors as well as members of the PCW community. Our roster includes several kinds of worsts: Just plain bad ideas, good ideas gone awry, and a few ideas that started out terrible but eventually became surprisingly decent. Click on the images above to see 'em all, starting with number 20.

Read more at PC World 

Hacking Windows Vista.

Will Vista ever be safe? 

The efforts of Microsoft to pressure the Linux community over alleged and unspecified patents is akin to "patent terrorism", according to a local executive for Sun Microsystems.

Sun, which had some patent troubles of its own with Microsoft until they were resolved in mid-2004, says that Microsoft's recent tactics are "going against the spirit of innovation around software."
In recent times, Microsoft has struck legal agreements with Linux distributors Novell, Xandros and Linspire, pledging not to sue users of these distributions over alleged patent violations–none of which have yet been tested in a court of law.

In return, the Linux distributions have agreed to varying conditions around the distribution and use of their software–many of which fly in the face of their open-source heritage.

"What we're seeing though now can be loosely described as patent terrorism, where people are using their patent horde as a threat," said James Eagleton, systems product manager for Sun Microsystems. "It's almost like a cold war stand over tactic; where I have these patents and if you breach these patents, I'm going to come after you and sue you."

"That's totally, from Sun's point of view, going against the spirit of innovation around software. No one, certainly in the OS development community, wants to have these doubts lingering over them, especially users," he says. "No one [wants a situation] where you have to think, if I go and use this open source software, who knows who's going to come after me for damages and claims."

Read more at ZDNet

Google search for Vista Problem = 120,000,000 hits

Google search for XP Problem = 112,000,000 hits

Reasonably interesting, served my purpose of demonstrating to a friend that getting Vista was a bad idea.

More interestingly, Google search for "problem" = 679,000,000 hits – by my maths that means that problems with XP and Vista account for over 34% of all the world's problems…

the INQUIRER 

Alfresco Software, Inc., provider of open source enterprise content management has announced the immediate availability of its first-ever global survey of trends in the use of open source software in the enterprise.

The Alfresco open source barometer survey, conducted April through June 2007 using opt-in data provided by 10,000 of the 15,000 Alfresco community members, showed that Windows is increasingly a popular evaluation platform for open source software but most enterprises use Linux when they go into production.

“The survey shows there is a clear leader at each level of the open source stack but also indicates an increasing trend for organizations to adopt a mixed stack, combining both open source and proprietary software, to enable use of best of breed components,” said Ian Howells, CMO, Alfresco Software Inc.

Read more at CIOL

Microsoft may be involved in an obscene amount of business ventures, but to me, the one thing that will always represent Microsoft as a company is Windows. They can keep pumping out Zunes and XBOX 360 video game consoles all they want, but their operating system is still their flagship product for better or for worse.

It’s true that a lot of our computing is moving to the Web, but despite what some may say, this doesn’t completely eliminate the need for a real desktop operating system. In fact, it’s hard to even imagine a world where Windows doesn’t exist. Like it or not, Windows is to computing what air is to humans. It’s so much a part of the market that it’s almost impossible to picture computing without it.

With so many companies now focusing on the Internet, it’s nice to have companies like Microsoft and Apple that are staying honed in on the desktop. In Microsoft’s case, Vista isn’t a final act by any means. The company has continued to make it known that there will be more major operating system releases coming from Redmond, so stay prepared to keep those anti-virus programs up to date, people.

After all of this time, money, and headaches that were and still are associated with Vista, it can be easy to understand why tackling more of these operating system reinventions is something that Microsoft might want to take a break from for a while, but it should come as no surprise that Windows is here to stay on the desktop.

Read more at OSWeekly 

"It has been a month since my upgrade to Vista. I like to keep up with tech trends and though reluctant to throw out XP, I forced myself to just 'swallow the pill'. After all – change is inevitable, and resistance to change shows only our inability to adapt to new scenarios and obstacles. I refuse to be left in the dust of an evolutionary sandstorm. I have thus relinquished my pride and dipped into the improvements Vista has to offer. Improvements such as increased performance with audio hardware and DAW(Digital Audio Workstation) software. We're talking about a Microsoft upgrade that almost rivals the audio development quality seen on Mac DAW's for years – but with none of the proprietary hardware BS that is forged into the Mac world.

"Wait!"

You exclaim,

"What does this have to do with the title of this post?"

I'm getting to that.

After installing all of my usual apps on Vista I was impressed to see most everything was 100% backward compatible. I expected much of my software to be rendered incompatible. Out of everything I've tried to run on it – 99% produce excellent results in both loading time and performance as compared with those same apps running under XP. Improved support against malware, spyware, and trojans – complete with a user rights management system that a seasoned Linux user could appreciate. All these positive aspects and more, and then…..
Read more at Whitedust.net