Vista PI8?

Okay. So nobodies buying Vista because of pirates and not because it was too little too late.

Seriously. Is Vista even worth pirating?

I guess comparing Vista to the Apollo missions kind of backfired on them.

Of course. And the little issue that the majority of consumer systems currently out there being massively underpowered for Vista has nothing to do with it.

All I can say: "Wow"


Windows ME 2.0 appears to be a better description than "Vista".

Don't think worth pirating yet... at least in years.

My XP was bought 2 years ago and I don't want to change soon, Vista is "too safe to be accesible :"P

I'm not suprised at the poor sales.
Vista offers NO reason whatsoever for me to updgrade.
XP is doing fine. I'm not paying $$$$$/£££££ for eye candy and DRM nonsense.

Even if I DID want to buy Vista, I woudn't know which one I am supposed to get. Too many versions for heavens sake.


"We [will] really ferret through how far we can dial it up, and what that means for customer experience and customer satisfaction," said Ballmer

I don't know what that means for the genuine Vista user.
Will there be some background checking going on everytime a user connects to the internet?
My concern would be a genuine user would have to jump through hoops to prove they aquired their version legitimately.

There is also the danger of being mistakenly pegged as a pirate!!

Also, why buy Vista when they plan to release another O/S in [a http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;7680622;fp;16;fpid;1]less than 5 years[/a]

Pain and Harassment, as usual. And just guess if that would slow down pirates very long, and just guess would the pirate users have easier ride because all these nonsense craps are stripped away.

I got it and I like it a lot!

Is it true you can no longer view .doc files with Vistas WordPad?

What about the other accessories. Have they changed or been updated? (Paint, Notepad, etc)
Or, are they still the same as Win95 versions?


Oh, you should see Steve Ballmer in action too.
I think this clip should come with a 18 certificate: I love this Company!

@Jim: Ultimately, there is only one Vista edition: The Ultimate Edition. :) The others lack features and sooner or later everybody will buy the unlock key for the Vista UE. So if you consider buying, start with the complete thing.

Regarding the accessories: It's got a nice chess game now... Most of the other apps try to be Apple iApps- and iLife-look-alikes, but, as always with the Microsoft clones, are just cheap and weak rip-offs in comparison, but sold at a much higher price than the originals.

Vista has huge compatibility problems at the moment, even with MS applications. But that's normal for any Windows upgrade, and the next round of service packs will resolve that.

The most annoying feature is this UAC thing that Apple used in their latest "Get a mac" ad. Vista --really-- works like Apple portraits it in that ad.

Vista is a lot of "change for change's sake", but -nothing- in it is really NEW or "wow".

But the best thing is that for the retail price of Vista Ultimate Edition (~550 Euros), you can get a new Mac Mini with OS X and iLife... (Sorry, could not resist.)

In summary, and to be fair, except for the UAC, Vista does not feel bad. It's still a Windows, but the final release is not as bad as I thought it would be when I first saw the betas and release candidates. It even installs almost without any problems on an iMac. (At least it runs nice on mine.)

After playing with it for two days, I no longer use it, though. I think my history of 20+ years with Microsoft products is finally coming to an end. Compared to OS X, Windows is just a bloated piece of ugly, mediocre software, and my only remaining use for it is as a game launcher.

Why did I buy Vista, then? Because in my everyday life I work as a system administrator for a UN agency, and even though we're still a Windows (XP/2003) shop, I wanted to stay up-to-date and have sufficient time to get to know the beast if necessity arises.

But my long-term plans for the future neither involve Windows nor staying an employee for the rest of my life. But until I get there, I just have to put up with it. The love for MS products, that I once -really- had, is completely gone and I think that MS is a falling star - falling very, very slowly, but nevertheless surely. For me, OS X now represents what computing should be like, and therefor I finally decided to take a serious approach towards Cocoa and Objective-C, its native language.

Anyway, this no longer has anything to do with the topic.

Gotta go.

And I guess therein lies the problem.
Surely the big stores are going to pursuade Joe Average he needs the Ultimate edition regardless of his needs ..

Joe: "Hi, I like that PC there. How Much is it?"
Rep: "Its on sale right now. Just £350.
Joe: "Ok, but I which version of Vista should I get with it?"
Rep: "Gotta be the Ultimate one kiddo. All the others have essential features and applications missing."
Joe: "Mm, ok. I'll take it."
Rep: "That'll be £12,000. Do you have medical insurance?"

"FlameDuck is trying to make a statement, allow or block?"

> What about the other accessories. Have they changed or been updated? (Paint, Notepad, etc)


Paint should be updated to paint.net, it is far superior. Not having vista, or being in any rush to get vista, I don't know if it was or not.

I'm really looking forward to Vista, but only after I build my new machine and after another 6 months of bug fixed. The interface looks really nice, and it sounds like they have made a lot of improvements.

my brother is stutend. in germany students get the full vista package for free. legal of course.

i'll give it a try. i think i'll be needing a water bucket near my pc... hope not :P

I like vista, am currently using the last RC before release and its pretty good.

I don't see how pirates can be the issue when there is no working crack avaliable that can get past windows validation.

I'll probably buy it when the time limit expires. You can buy Vista ultimate OEM online for just under $200

No. There are no loopholes to getting Vista activated like there are in XP. The best you can hope for when pirating Vista is a similar situation to how WGA is cracked on XP now. Every while or so it gets updated and you have to find another crack. While not dangerous on XP, in Vista that could happen with ANY critical update without MS informing anyone and if you go too long without activating the system locks down like never before. It can be done, of course, but the stakes are higher than ever before.

I'd be much more likely to blame Vista's failure on MS's pricing scheme.


Home Premium is the only sensible choice for most home users.


It's called activation, genuine advantange and microsoft update.


Not true.


The games are all updated and there's some new ones. Outlook Express has been replaced by Windows Mail, a much better cut down version of Outlook. There are a number of new apps - but the rest more or less remain unchanged.


I suppose you have a PS3 too.


The new gfx driver system and the audio subsystem are, but changes like that are completely unmarketable.

I used to think Vista's good feature is a focus on security, but I just realized:

Windows is the most widely adopted consumer OS. Thus, no matter what, it will always be the least secure operating system out there.
Heck, XP will become safer a few years down the line when the virus people start focusing on exploiting Vista (the new one on the block) and pay far less attention to XP.

Besides that, all of the fancy software in Ultimate is no different from nicely built 3rd-party stuff, and Microsoft's attempts to get DX 10 and various games running only on Vista will fail very quickly.

I now have no reason to upgrade to Windows Vista.

That's kind of true, but XP became a hell of a lot safer BECAUSE people were exploiting it. It's kind of like how technology evolves through war.


Nobody really does. It's just a goos OS to have come with a new computer.

And much of it is much worse. Media Center for starters doesn't work properly on some Dual Core CPUs, and has much fewer features than say, SageTV.

No loopholes? Hardly: According to Information Week, there are spoofed activation servers around which bypass the entire official activation system.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196602710&subSection=Breaking+News

but for all those even thinking about switching to Vista, this is an interesting read:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/

Benchmark comparing XP vs. Vista, On a Core 2 Extreme E6800, 2 GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1900XTX test system (which is much faster than your typical user's home system, so should be plenty sufficient for Vista to run on properly -- right?)

Yet Vista is slower in pretty much EVERY single category than XP. sometimes slightly, sometimes significantly, sometimes mindbogglingly so.

Unreal tournament 2004? 32.4 % slower in Vista
DVD VOb to XVid transcoding? 18.4% slower in Vista
MPEG-2 HDTV to H.264 encoding? 23.8% slower in Vista
LAME MP3 Encoding? 2.2% slower in Vista
SpecViewPerf (designer program, using OpenGL) 84 to 98%(!!) slower in Vista
WinRAR compression? 21.8% slower in Vista

The only two instances I noticed in their tests were Vista beat XP were:

Discreet 3D Studio Max: 1.3% faster in Vista
Sungard Adaptive Credit Risk Analysis: 0.7% faster in Vista


"WOW" indeed.

Hmm... I am using the same system as the one used in Tomshardware tests and no matter how I tried I was not able to duplicate their results in various encoding/decoding tests. Vista is better than XP when it comes to multi-processor usage and for me who is spending most of the time doing video there's no going back. Vista is simply better. I am not interested in games they've tested so can't comment on that but I can say that I enjoy a very fast and smooth Trainz with my Vista.

Barney

I read an interesting column in an Aussie PC mag predicting Vista as the turning point where MS veers off to service the corporate world while Apple picks up the average consumer. Microsoft, it noted, really is the shiz in the business business (see what I did there?!) while Apple's user-friendliness is supremely suited to the home.

I have to admit, after x years using Windows and it getting increasingly difficult to do what I want with my own computer, I'm ready for a bit of Mac-style user-friendliness. MS losing my custom has jack shit to do with piracy.

And, just like with WGA, a critical update could blacklist those servers without any warning.


I would wager Tom's hardware were not using decent drivers in that particular case. Shame on them if I'm right.

well for 550 euro i can buy a decent PC with decent GFX card with Decent Memmory. and run my old XP Home on it :)

I'll take that bet. In my experience Tom's Hardware usually know what they're doing. I mean they're not [H]ard|OCP, but they usually get the job done.

You can get the job done with bad drivers.

Though I didn't read they had an ATI card in there... in that case... shame on them for blaming Vista.