Anyone can write an article these days…

re: Anyone can write an article these days…

Sean — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:39:37 GMT

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols? The former editor of Linux Watch? The blogger lambasted for copying word-for-word from Red Hat press releases to write his articles (http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/04/steven-j-vaughan-cut-and-paste-is-at-it.html)? Writing a negative story about Vista? I'm shocked. Shocked!

-Sean ;)

re: Anyone can write an article these days…

Keith Combs — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:50:17 GMT

He might want to think about fixing his personal blog at http://practical-tech.com/. It looks like something hosed the formatting of his site. Must have been Vista.

re: Anyone can write an article these days…

garyk — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:27:03 GMT

you want facts? i was in the beta. address some of these problems and bonehead decisions. that's why i refuse to use vista. i used xp a year before it was released. here it is over a year AFTER vista was released and i still can't use it.

do you want bugs?

1. in windows mail, watched messages in newsgroups are not highlighted when a response is posted. makes it near impossible to tell if someone has responded to a post i made. worked in every version of outlook express for 10 years, then they broke it in vista. this was reported in april of 2005 and it was never fixed.

2. the practice of only storing the 20 most recent addresses in autocomplete in windows mail.

3. the folder view settings not being retained. set the folder view the way you want it, and the next time you open it, it may or may not be like you set it.

We told them to change simple things they changed to annoy users and make it take more clicks to accomplish the same task than it did in xp:

1. bring back the access to network connections by right clicking on the tray icon and selecting open network connections.

2. we told them to bring back the ability to right click the tray icon and get the network status.

3. we told them to bring back list view in folders.

4. we told them to bring back the behavior in a folder window that only selects the file name, and not the entire row including date and size.

5. we told them to display the folder size in the status bar without having to select all of the files.

6. try changing the time. yes, you don't do it very often, but why does it take more clicks?

7. try changing the panes in folder view. you have to traverse the menu system 3 times the get rid of all of the panes.

8. it tries to do everything for everybody, defrag, index, offline files, diagnostic data. no wonder normal pc's can't run it. and who cares about transparent title bars? i sure as hell don't. i want the operating system to be the fastest it can be.

9. in my opinion, search really sucks, too.

they gave us list view back in the folder views. Big deal.

in my opinion, every version of vista is vista home. too much fluff for anybody who wants to get work done instead of watching some dreamscene video on the desktop. who cares?

re: Anyone can write an article these days…

Jordan — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:07:43 GMT

You see more and more of these bandwagon jumping tards as time goes by.

arstechnica.com is particularly fond of posting anti-microsoft articles even when they are filled with half-truth and inaccuracies.

I expect regular blogs to be inundated with bad facts and such, but not an editorial website.

re: Anyone can write an article these days…

Brian — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:08:52 GMT

FYI, your link connects to a survey... bad form.

re: Anyone can write an article these days…

Keith Combs — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:16:25 GMT

Sorry Brian. The links to my blog, my dogs blog, and the article all work for me. I assume you are referring to CIO.com which I cannot control.

Bad form indeed.

re: Anyone can write an article these days…

MikeK — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:24:10 GMT

Keith, I haven't read the article in question but I do know that MS has oversold the minimum requirements for Vista. The machine with the Nvidia 6200 video was probably Vista certified. I have run Vista in various configs as well and FOR TESTING I was fine with even running Aero on my old Toshiba M2 with a 64mb Nvidia 5200FX Go card (definitely not certified). But wouldn't even consider it for my production machine.

My latest machine is an HP 6510b with Intel 965 Express. The CPU can certainly handle Vista but why are new machines shipping with Vista and such horrible video cards?

My organization is still slow to adopt and continues to roll out XP SP1 (even on brand new machines). Perhaps we are more conservative than most but when even new technology doesn't support the latest software, what else would you propose?

re: Anyone can write an article these days…

Keith Combs — Sun, 18 May 2008 04:20:29 GMT

MikeK,

Regarding your question on why OEM's would build a machine with a horrible video card, I guess the blame falls in several camps. I would imagine cost comes into play but frankly I don't know if we're talking pennies, dollars or hundreds of dollars.

The NVIDIA video chip in the MacBook Pro, the ThinkPad T61p, and several other products on the market make those laptops drive a great Vista experience. My Dell XPS 420 is also a killer Vista experience.

I guess we chould be blamed. Maybe we should have set the Windows Vista logo requirements much higher. However, people still try to force a square peg in a round hole. By that I mean trying to run Aero Glass on machines that really can't handle it. As you said, it ends up being a horrible experience. Turn it off.