Microsoft "fudged" Vista for Intel?!?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

See, theres the rub...If something breaks on an apple machine its all apple, so they get the shovel in the face. If anything breaks on a windows machine...the hardware made by xyz, the software made by abc, the drivers and add ons made by ghi, or the combination of the bunch...microsoft gets the blame. If Apple had to deal with 30 top platform makers, thousands of add on/driver manufacturers, and 10x the applications...I doubt it'd be any prettier.

The h/w has been Acer, emachines, and now some not-cheap no-name box concocted by a local h/w seller. Not great experiences overall, anyway. I'm glad others have fared better.

Nothing first tier, in fact mostly el cheapo manufactured machines. No surprise you've had trouble. Some acer laptops are fair to middling (i'm using one right now), but their desktops are cheap. Emachines are junky. Local h/w store "white boxes" are usually overpriced and underfeatured and bought by people uncomfortable with computer technology.

BillG screamed at Intel execs to do

Pretty funny watching a pudgy nerd shrieking at a guy who used to throw molotov cocktails at soviet tanks in hungary, hmm?

Not to mention if you buy a laptop of comparable quality, reliability and service ratings like a Thinkpad, the Mac isn't a 30-50% premium anymore.

I can buy a pretty solid thinkpad for $1100-1300...a macbook pro runs close to $2k. I can also go to a Dell XPS or Latitude system and get one loaded to the gills with arguably BETTER parts, capabilities and equal build quality for under $1400.

You go to the plain vanilla mac book and you're stuck with a 13" screen and nothing much to write home about vs a Dell Vostro or low end Latitude, either of which can be had on sale for almost half the price.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again although the mac folks got red in the face two paragraphs ago and arent gonna see it...its a good computer with a good operating system. There just isnt any fairy dust in it that makes it worth more or a better value.

 

[al_bundy]

thinkpads are a joke these days

i have an HP that they gave me at work and cost $1500 new. the works including an HDMI port.

i had some problems with it and went from vista to XP and back to Vista. last time i didn't install most of the HP software and it works a lot better now. Nice thing with HP is they give you real OS disks. not the crappy ones that install all the crapware.

 

[ladelfina]

There just isnt any fairy dust in it that makes it worth more or a better value.

...except for the fairy dust that has so far kept ME spy/malware/virus-free SO FAR, over decades. Like the credit-card ad says: "Priceless."

See, theres the rub...If something breaks on an apple machine its all apple, so they get the shovel in the face. If anything breaks on a windows machine...the hardware made by xyz, the software made by abc, the drivers and add ons made by ghi, or the combination of the bunch...microsoft gets the blame. If Apple had to deal with 30 top platform makers, thousands of add on/driver manufacturers, and 10x the applications...I doubt it'd be any prettier.

WE AGREE! .. but Apple didn't choose that route because it cares about its customers (as it has done since even before the PC hegemony was a done deal). Aren't you on a pro-consumer pro-customer-sevice bandwagon? Why would you want to buy a Ford (sorry, Lexus) if you knew that [-]Ford[/-] Lexus guaranteed the body, the engine was third-party X's problem, the engine s/w diagnostics company Y's problem, the drive train company Z.. etc.??

You just want to turn the key and GO.

And if it doesn't go, and it doesn't all work together, and the engine doesn't communicate with the drive train, you want to take it up with the [-]Ford[/-] Lexus dealer.

If you WANT to build a car from scratch, go ahead. That's what a lot of PC geeks do, God love 'em. But what gets me is why a person who just wants to turn the key and GO would EVER choose, or have chosen, freely, being of sound mind, Wintel.

The best customer service is to not require it in the first place.

---
Marquette: sorry, is Visual Studio not VB? He's having most of the problems with reporting. The short story, as I get it between growls, is that M$ bought out Crystal Reports (so they don't exist any more, nor can you use old versions with the current Visual Studio) and at the same time reduced the native Reporting functionality of Visual Studio (yes, .NET, I think.. I'm not up on all the 'flavors') from its previous incarnation, in what particulars I don't know, but leaving him up the proverbial fecal creek w/r/t reports and printing. Lots of multi-thousand $$$/year 3rd-party solutions, though!! Pay us thousands so you can print a table!!! He's written an accounting app., and obviously needs to print out invoices and balance sheets and so forth. P.S. He needs now to get the latest and greatest Visual Studio upgrade: 560-something euros.. 800+ dollars. MAYBE that will allow him to print some of the DB query results he wants; maybe not.

Sheesh. You can make any kind of DB, you just can't PRINT the f***ng results. He'd be better off with a 20-year-old version of Claris FileMaker or 4D Write or Fox whatever-the-hell-it-was. I've given him all kinds of suggestions like, export data to a text file, then massage it, export to Excel, Word, whatever.. no dice. I naively mentioned PDFs at some previous point and got a look that could positively kill. I'm amazed I'm still here to post.

Bill Gates is ruining my marriage! I want my old husband back!

PCs and printing have always been a PITA. Always, always, always, always, always. Almost 25 years now, and they still don't "get it". Don't even get me started on Word and its creative pagination schemes that vary from machine to machine and print driver to print driver. THESE PEOPLE HAVE ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD and choose to torture us. I'm only out of it since I ER'd (thankfully). In fact, if I had to choose ONE reason why I'm happy not to be working, it's that I don't ever have to deal again with a.) Word and b.) PowerPoint. Ok, that's TWO REASONS.. but they are related, and they are biggies!

--
Al, glad you got a "real" OS w/yr.HP purchase. Since he's always paying so much to Microsoft for licenses.. maybe DH shies away from the premium hardware.

Local h/w store "white boxes" are usually overpriced and underfeatured and bought by people uncomfortable with computer technology.

Possible, but the h/w guy here seems more reliable than his analogs in the US, actually. He contracts some programming stuff to DH and they have a certain 'inteso' as they say here. It's not an in-and-out consumer purchase but supposedly one between professional peers, and this was supposed to be a big step up from Acer, etc. I don't even know what the machine issues are, specifically, so I can't shed any light on that here and now.


Too bad the $$ Thinkpads are "a joke" on those who bought them.

Too bad, as Nords' OP points out, the modus operandi of M$ & Companions is to joke around. If you want a serious computer you know where to look.

 

[al_bundy]

sql 2005 has reporting services built in

and CR was bought out by Business Objects and they are big in business intelligence which is why it costs so much money now

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

...except for the fairy dust that has so far kept ME 100% spy/malware/virus-free SO FAR, over decades. Like the credit-card ad says: "Priceless."

Hmm, me too. And I didnt have to pay extra. Heck, my current laptop has a pretty high res 17" screen of good quality, a core 2 duo processor of good speed, plenty of memory and disk, a dvd DL burner and all sorts of other goodies and it only set me back $599. Price that out in a mac. I could have four of these for what one of those goes for.

The only thing thats kept the mac world virus free is a lack of interest on behalf of the average virus writer to take advantage of the multitude of exploits that, like every operating system, OSX is filled with.

 

[Marquette]

Take a look at Active Reports by Data Dynamics.

Data Dynamics

Each sku he'd probably be interested in has royalty-free licensing, and the pro version allows his end-users to design their own reports.

edit: and, I've never, ever ever had an issue with viruses. Setting up a halfway decent home network is simple, a decent anti-virus is simple, and it's not hard to keep yourself from grabbing files from unknown sources. I haven't had a virus in 15 years. A friend of mine, on the other hand, gets them all the time... he's always in search of codecs, though, and that's likely the source of his problems (well, one of them anyway)

One thing that's interesting... if you're a professional developer, or freelancer of any kind, it's worth the extra $100-$200 to get a quality computer from the start, especially when it's a business expense! I typically charge $70 an hour for freelance dev work. At that rate, any amount of downtime when I need my computer is unacceptable.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Oh my dear god, its worse than I thought. A similarly configured macbook pro (slightly faster cpu) runs $2800.

Thats about $2200 worth of pixie dust. Plus tax.

 

[ladelfina]

Al bundy.. I mentioned SQL but DH said that requires end-user licenses. That's not in the cards.

I didn't know who CR was bought by.. sorry if I erred. But anyway it's not available to him as before for whatever reason.

Thanks, Marquette, I will pass on that link!

End-users here are not going to want to design reports, tho', believe me.. It's hard to get them to even SEE THE VALUE of accounting s/w a la Quickbooks. He's got clients (a few are actually certified ACCOUNTANTS) that want nothing more than to bypass all the invoicing/payments auto-connections and instead write special entries line-by-line with notes, exactly as if they were doing it by hand. There's invoice A.. but they don't want to use the program to record PAYing invoice A.. they create their own bank movement instead and write a note "I paid part of so & so's invoice". And then of course it's impossible to correlate with any invoice, and near impossible to search on since they write in the notes field whatever the hell they want. They don't want to click on the outstanding entry and say "pay invoice". To say there's a learning curve is a grievous understatement.

What businesses are used to here is, still, throwing all the receipts in a shoebox and handing it to a commercialista (tax accountant) who charges them an arm and a leg to enter it all, massage it, and sort it out at the end of the year. Nobody knows from daily/weekly/monthly sales.. at least at the medium to small business clients he is targeting. It's an uphill slog, even though, if they could print out their own balance sheets and movements, they would save more in doing it themselves after a year or two of what the commercialista charges to do the same thing with much more high-powered s/w. Plus they get to see what's going on in real time (I guess they seem to see this as more of a curse than a blessing?).

---
The laptops are indeed too rich for my blood. I'm tooling along on an old mini <$500. I can throw it in my pocketbook if need be. CFB has the chops to evade viruses with little effort. Others here have reported different experiences. Sure, you can walk the streets safely if you have had special ops training. What about "the rest of us"? People who don't have a computer sci. or engineering bkgd. and may not have the time to struggle and just want to turn the key and GO? I pay someone else to do my oil changes and tuneups, and to prune my trees, too. Paying is not the only issue. (If paying were the issue, you'd have a Ford and not a Lexus, and you'd have saved way more than $2k.)

 

[ERD50]

The only thing thats kept the mac world virus free is a lack of interest on behalf of the average virus writer to take advantage of the multitude of exploits that, like every operating system, OSX is filled with.

Well, if that is the only thing that has kept the mac world virus free (your words), it's been pretty effective so far.

With no sign of it changing either. Despite all the vulnerabilities you like to point out.

Wait a minute - you said 'exploits' - you meant 'vulnerabilities' didn't you?

-ERD50

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

CFB has the chops to evade viruses with little effort. Others here have reported different experiences.

Its pretty easy. I dont open up emails with attachments from people I dont know, and I dont go to russian porn sites. I dont use WEP encryption thats been broken for years.

Others seem to do it differently.

I havent even installed a virus scanner in Vista. So far not one single blip.

 

[Marquette]

Techworld.com - Mac OS X security myth exposed

besides, who wants to take over a mac; odds are the only thing of interest would be cat pictures

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Well, if that is the only thing that has kept the mac world virus free (your words), it's been pretty effective so far.

With no sign of it changing either. Despite all the vulnerabilities you like to point out.

Wait a minute - you said 'exploits' - you meant 'vulnerabilities' didn't you?

-ERD50

Did you really want to go another 12 rounds with me and end up looking like a blowhard...as usual?

I thought this stuff wasnt "fun" for you any more...

I guess most people looking for security through obscurity could buy a cheap PC and install linux on it. Then they'd get the same level of virus obscurity, have more software to run, and it'd be even cheaper than buying a windows based machine.

And gosh, isnt linux the same thing as OSX anyhow? I mean, you did say that OSX is the same as freebsd, right, and freebsd is just about the same thing as linux. Of course, anyone who actually knows what they're talking about realizes that none of that is correct or true, or even remotely so.

*DING*

 

[ladelfina]

I have NO cat pictures, I SWEAR. Limited dog pictures.

Plus it's not just viruses and firewalls.. I don't want to mess with drivers and DLLs and incompatible 3rd-party hard disks or printers or CD/DVD drives or video cards or sound cards or any of that. Everything that I have bought for a mac that claims to be mac-compatible has been.. plug and play, for years, not just some recent thing or new continent you guys may have recently 'discovered'. The only hiccups are with the dastardly HP. I avoid HP printers because of their evergreen driver 'issues' and how they make printing so INSANELY complicated. Did I mention that I think ease of printing is important? Unclear on Vista, but if I previously asked DH if he could print something out at x%, the answer was always "no". OKkkaaayyy.

it'd be even cheaper than buying a windows based machine

Except they'd already have paid for the Windows license anyway.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Techworld.com - Mac OS X security myth exposed

besides, who wants to take over a mac; odds are the only thing of interest would be cat pictures

Yeah, we've been over this before. Some folks think that by paying extra to the guy in the black suit they get something special.

A virus writer has one thing in mind: how to easily do the most damage or make the most money. So far that hasnt involved breaking into an OS that has a single digit market share and mostly consists of kids and old men.

But gosh, this new Vista thing seems dang near bullet proof. Maybe the ease of virus writing thing will swing in another direction.

On the other hand, maybe I'll just keep buying my windows based notebooks and if one gets infected, I can just throw it away and buy a newer, better one. If I get infected once a year, it'll still take 5 years for me to break even on what would be a very old macbook pro...

Hell, my wifes 17" Dell laptop, my 17" acer laptop, and my firebreathing desktop with a 32" lcd display all together cost less than one 17" mac book pro. Shoot, I could throw in an EEE and still be under the price cap.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I have NO cat pictures, I SWEAR. Limited dog pictures.

Plus it's not just viruses and firewalls.. I don't want to mess with drivers and DLLs and incompatible 3rd-party hard disks or pringter

I have cat AND dog pictures.

I havent messed with a driver, dll, 3rd party hard disk or printer since the windows 98 days. It either just works or I install a driver disk that comes with the printer...just like you do on a mac.

All y'all mac folks need to stop thinking about windows 98. Didnt you just say I was thinking about stuff from nine years ago?

I do have to admit though. The machine does get a little whacky sometimes after I've installed 100-200 different programs on it...most of which arent available for the mac...

 

[ERD50]

Did you really want to go another 12 rounds with me and end up looking like a blowhard...as usual?

I thought this stuff wasnt "fun" for you any more...

Well, I was going to limit it to just warning prgsdw that he was wasting his time - CFB will be 'right' no matter what...

But as usual, you don't answer the question, and you throw a bunch of chaff out there. So:

Vulnerabilities or exploits? (same question to Marquette)? Big difference.

-ERD50

 

[Marquette]

Vulnerabilities or exploits? (same question to Marquette)? Big difference.

-ERD50

A quick Google search indicates that it has vulnerabilities and that some vulnerabilities have been exploited. So, yes, both.

edit: and sorry, I didn't realize I was stepping into a "mine's bigger" discussion.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Def Vulnerability: In computer security, the term vulnerability is applied to a weakness in a system which allows an attacker to violate the integrity of that system. Vulnerabilities may result from weak passwords, software bugs, a computer virus, a script code injection, a SQL injection, a Blue Pill, or malware. A vulnerability may exist only in theory, or may have a known instance of an exploit.

Def Exploit: An exploit (from the same word in the French language, meaning "achievement", or "accomplishment") is a piece of software, a chunk of data, or sequence of commands that take advantage of a bug, glitch or vulnerability in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer software, hardware, or something electronic (usually computerized). This frequently includes such things as gaining control of a computer system or allowing privilege escalation or a denial of service attack.

Both known vulnerabilities and exploits crafted to take advantage of those exploits have been well published for OSX. Several articles written by well respected publications have tabulated higher numbers of problem areas, particularly high severity ones, in OSX vs windows.

And Apple keeps patching them, so obviously they were there.

You paid too much for something and now you're both defending your poor choice and trying to get some attention to fill your sorry, depressing life, such as it is.

You still wanna go another ten rounds wandering around in areas where you have no experience or actual knowledge, but think you might? Or are you close to retreating to your "I was just trying to learn something" or "I was just trying to complete the discussion" thing after you get beaten into a corner?

*DING*

 

[JB]

Microsoft's 'Vista Capable' pitch was wrong and bad for customers. So is Apple's implementation of a music distribution that requires their own products to play. MS/Apple are both focused on their bottom lines and don't pay enough attention to their customers. (That's why Apple doesn't sell a high performance $800 desktop system). When using a computer, I don't really care what OS it runs. I can figure out what I need to do using any modern OS. And they seem to be converging, borrowing features that the other system does better.

I'm running Windows XP now because I have some software that's designed to run on it and use some decent hardware that was relatively inexpensive. I own Apple stock because the brand loyalty is already at cult status and is still growing, they are able to sustain very high margins while keeping their customers happy, they have great marketing, and the press coverage is outstanding.

 

[ladelfina]

need to stop thinking about windows 98

I give up. Yes, I guess DLLs just disappeared on 1/1/99. THEY DIDN'T. XP has DLLs.. AND (naturally) DLL conflicts. As far as Vista is concerned, I don't know. I don't WANT to know. [Ok, I don't want to remain ignorant.. Gee, what a surprise.. like zombies they still haunt the living.. Google "vista dlls" see what you get: "Windows Vista DLL patching.." "Vista Dll manifests", "Vista: DLL register fails during install" and those are 1/2 of the first six entries.] I hear DH cursing DLLs on a continual basis. They're always missing! You can download them, but they won't be recognized! You may have to rewrite them yourself!

CFB, think of every crappy company that put out a bad product and gave you bad service; I know you've got a passle of 'em. Now tell me why you should be LOYAL to that crappy company. Why should you be loyal to a company that hates it customers and --to get back to the OP-- can only think of how to screw them harder by misleading them in order to push trash that more likely than not won't work as advertised? Because they have a guaranteed customer base of people who are too fearful to throw them over? Coming late in the game to a middling level of competency, even if it costs a few bucks less, doesn't cut it with me. There's more than one PC person who is dissatisfied here even with the (pseudo OSX clone) Vista; it's not just me and ERD.

What I want out of a computer is what I want out of the banking system: Trust. That it will work when I turn it on. That I can get my main job done and that it will be secure without my having to think about it. What HFWR spent in buying Vista and re-installing XP is just fantasy "free" time and money, right? It has no impact on the real world whatsoever. If it works out it goes on the positive side of the balance sheet, but any pain is invisible and sloughed off on someone else? A write-off/write-down?

Marquette: this is CFB's "hairball" and you won't win. Real world experience pales before arcane possibilities.

Compare: DH spends several phone calls and more than an hour in the inconclusive attempt, a few days ago, to figure out what will happen to his Visual Studio and OS licenses seeing that he has to reformat the machine due to its bad behavior. I would not have to make those calls, stay on hold, or wait for them to call me back. I would wipe the machine, take my OSX disk -strangely that actually COMES WITH the computer-- and install it, and install it and install it.. however many times necessary. [It hasn't BEEN necessary for many many years, not since the last power surge at the office.] I guess that is the benefit of an inferior and execrable OS that no one wants. But it's not my business on the line, it's his, unfortunately, so he can't risk M$ giving him a hard time about OS re-installs or getting abruptly cut off from Visual Studio.

Cost of not staying on hell-hold? Priceless.
Value of continuous work time? Whatever your project and billing rate tell you.

I don't care about patches if the patches work. Since I never perceived a problem and there was no damage, who cares? A 'problem area' is different from a real incursion, which trusting Windows users have suffered on a regular basis. I know CFB wants to conflate the two; what I don't know is why.

---
JB, I really never got into the music distribution aspect. When I explored the quality of MP3s I wasn't impressed. Anyway I see that as a separate animal.. and there's no harm in you avoiding iTunes and just buying CDs as you normally would, or choosing another digital music service. There's also a big difference between a restriction that is known, and outright deceptive advertising.

 

[Janet H]

Mac vs PC?

On your marks, get set, ......

Click for editorial comment - can we get back on topic now

 

[Nords]

Hey, guys? Can I interrupt for an on-topic second here? Guys?

Listen, I'm sorry I brought up the Mac comment. I thought that was old news and it was really just intended to be an old Berkun-style joke about software-development projects. I won't make that mistake again.

Truth is, I don't really [-]give a sh[/-] care which OS I use because I don't touch any of them until at least SP1. I was perfectly happy with Win95 until the PCs were only shipping with XP. I bought Apple stock in anticipation of the release of OS X and ditched it when we'd made our 50%-- before the post-release bug reports started rolling in. I tinker with either one of them because spouse needs one for her Navy work and kid prefers another for school and I'm happily maintaining my multilingual skills. I don't pay retail, either, so I'm not price-sensitive.

As for you death-before-dishonor types arguing over which is [-]bigger[/-] better-- how many of you can get a Mac and a PC to coexist peacefully on the same computer desk, hmm?

I posted this Intel-Microsoft thread to hear from the former Intel employees I know and to see if there are any other Microsoft or Intel alumni here. Youse guys wanna argue Mac vs PC, take it somewhere else.

 

[ladelfina]

Sorry Janet & Nords!

 

[laurence]

Look, I run an wintel shop at home, but my parents run Macs. My windows boxes need to be rebuilt for performance every 3-5 years (we have a flow down process in the house) where the Mac I used for high school term papers is still running just fine on Mom's desk (I'm 33 now). In addition, my good friends run a Mac house, and fully utilize the features. Every peripheral, streaming to their plasma t.v. music, iphone, etc. and it all just "worked" right out of the box. I'm very impressed with the quality, the look, and the feel of all the Apple goodies. I have the top of the line Blackberry and it looks almost clunky when he brings his iphone over.

My (small) beef with apple is it seems to channel me on one path, that I'm not really allowed or at least not encouraged to look under the hood or do much tweaking. I'm also a gamer and looking at the Mac game section reminds me of the Betamax section of the video rental store.

Apple has embraced their appliance/furniture/accessory identity, and I think that's a good thing. My buddy has a Mac that's just a slightly thicker 24 inch flat panel monitor. It's amazing to behold. Apple stuff is a status symbol, it's a fashion statement, and the stuff actually looks good in your home right out of the box. I don't think it's fair to attempt to compare wintel and mac, they've carved out different spaces.

FYI, I've been running Vista for almost a year now and had exactly two hits with my virus scanner....medium risk cookies. Tip for lowering your virus count, when windows says, "Hakkerwarezpornbot would like to install Active X control, would you like to continue?" don't click yes.

 

[Nords]

Tip for lowering your virus count, when windows says, "Hakkerwarezpornbot would like to install Active X control, would you like to continue?" don't click yes.

How much is your employer paying you for your executive network-security position?!?

In case you happen to have access to my IP address, I'm just kidding...