So you think you want to go Windows Vista huh? (part 2, Angry's rant)

[Angry_Games]

since it is "opening day" for Vista, and we'll soon (probably tonight) have to open up new prefixes for Vista (cuz all you sheep will rush out to buy it I'm sure), and no one ever reads the polling station much, I thought I would give myself (since I am the admin) and others who are intelligent and have actually done their own homework and research, a chance to tell you why some of the most respected and trusted members here will not be moving to Vista anytime soon (I'd rather have rectal cancer that bled continuously).

 

 

so here goes. Don't take offense at what I write. It's just my typical rant.

 

 

started off with:

 

Deliberately reducing the quality how? I know that Vista will use more resources but the extra consumption will be negligible especially with faster hardware being released every day. Even so with these "reductions", games will still perform and look better than anything on XP as far as I can tell. Play a copy of Crysis on Vista with full DX10 support, then play a copy of Crysis on XP with DX9 when Crysis comes out and tell me what you think. My money is on the DX10 version. I have not read anything into Vista besides the politics regarding DRM so please indulge me about these quality issues, I am very interested. As far as XP and gaming technology goes, I still believe in 2 years it will look pretty mediocre compared to what Vista will be capable of.

 

if you all haven't seen Gears of War (an Xbox360 game) on a truly nice 720p or 1080i HDTV, then you haven't seen that DX9 is not dead.

 

Gears of War is written for DX9, and blows away anything I've ever seen in terms of game graphics (and phsyics) goodness...even for PC (and I've tried out all the best-looking games on some of the best machines one can build for gaming).

 

Gears of War might be an Xbox360 game, but it was built with MS Dev tools that still revolve around DX9 (because that is what the hardware on the Xbox is).

 

The Unreal3 engine that Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas (and the future upcoming Unreal3 game, and any game made on this terrific engine) are built is also a DirectX9 game engine.

 

John Carmack, famous founder of Id Software (who brought you Doom, Quake, etc) says there's no good reason for Vista nor DirectX10 (read the sticky in the OS section about it...hardly anyone has read it which is surprising considering how Carmack is probably the one guy who has set technology standards for PC gaming over the last 10-20 years, and then realize that Epic Games, makers of the Unreal engine and games, have also forgone DX10 with their latest engine however it looks like it might be able to be updated in the future for DX10 routines).

 

not sure if I'm telling you truth?

 

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/08/24/xbox-360...0-confirms-ati/

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX

 

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3153097

 

these are just some of the google finds you will see. While these mainly deal with Xbox360, again, remember that the Xbox360 is just a PC that has been stripped down of everything except what is needed to run games (and gaming over a network).

 

The ATI gpu is DX9 only.

 

The point?

 

Look at what is out on the Xbox360. It looks better than most PC games, and a game like Gears of War, and upcoming games like Forza Motorsport 2 and then there's the Halo3 thing coming....these games are all written for DX9.

 

It sorta proves Carmack's point that there's no good reason for DX10 nor Vista.

 

 

 

Now think about the other half (besides gaming) of the equation.

 

Hundreds of millions of business computers are all finally running XP (except there's still a good chunk of them running Windows2000). Look how long it took to move away from Windows NT to 2000 for business computers (ie: Mission Critical...meaning it has to be up, running, and reliable or money is most likely being lost).

 

Why do business computers take 5-10 years to change over to a new OS?

 

Because of the horrendously expensive software that is specifcally tailored to a business's needs, and it's written exactly in the same way that console games are written: for a specific platform (in the case of business pc's, this revolves almost solely around the Operating System).

 

Have you ever heard of the nightmares (many of you have I know) when some jerkoff shows up to the company and decides to start upgrading PC's to the latest OS?

 

That guy gets fired and the business(es) have to scramble to replace the new OS installs with the tried and true versions (because again, new OS's break mission critical software and sometimes entire networks)

 

Then on top of that, there's the rash of security holes, exploits, etc that take years and years to patch and close up. Look at XP...been out 5+ years and still holes are showing up. When you fresh install XP, you get...64 updates I think? 90% or more of them are security fixes. The rest generally revolves around crash fixes.

 

Keep in mind, SIXTY-FOUR updates...AFTER SERVICE PACK 2 IS ALREADY INSTALLED.

 

Imagine how many security flaws and such are cured if you combine these 64 with all the fixes that SP1 and SP2 together combined all fix...

 

how big of a nightmare is that for businesses?

 

 

 

 

My personal take is that MS has absolutely no need to release a new OS, except for money. There is absolutely nothing new in Vista that we need.

 

Instead of all the resources on Vista, they should have put a lot towards XP-64, and maybe enchancing regular XP even more, if possible. If MS put resources into XP-64, this would force software makers across all genres to start really getting serious about 64-bit.

 

Instead, they spent all of their time on a new, horribly bloated OS that is very picky about the current (ie today's) software that it will run, still pretty poor driver support, pretty bad gaming performance compared to what a nice XP machine can do (partially because of the software being optimized for XP, partially because XP doesn't boot to the desktop at 750MB RAM use). Worse, they seem to have put in an insane amount of time to implement this bull crap DRM scheme.

 

 

The deal-sealer for me is when I plugged in my legally purchased DVD of Band Of Brothers (boxed set) and Vista basically told me to go **** myself and refused to play it. Took it to my XP rig and PowerDVD started right up and played the movie, no questions asked.

 

 

 

There's some that argue that DX10 will of course offer performance enhancements (by removing workload from cpu and putting it to gpu and other subsystems). Honestly, this is hogwash. Nonsense. They could program DX9 (9.0d? e? m? lol) to do this too....and then call it...DX10!

 

They should have spent their time also working with Intel and AMD together to create a killer set of development tools that would not only take advantage of multiple cpu cores, but to help software (and game) developers learn how to really take advantage of it (almost every game dev has complained about how hard it is to utilize SMP in game engines...but that is because they've only had single core cpu's to work with so long....wouldn't it be smart to have the world's largest software company, who has the largest install base of OS's on computers across the world by a HUGE margin, to work with the two cpu companies to make some dev tools and guidelines for SMP processing?)

 

 

shoulda, coulda, woulda.

 

 

I'm simply....flabbergasted by the droves of people who are so gung-ho about Vista. After spending 5 minutes listening to them, I wonder exactly what size of a rock might have been dropped on their head (by a MS exec or worse, marketing monkey).

 

I'm not saying everyone that wants Vista is a freaking moron.

 

I'm saying that everyone that tells me they want Vista and why they want has drank the kool-aid that someone is passing out without even questioning why they are drinking the kool-aid. (most, like any sheep, simply repeats "what they heard" and these days, it's what someone on the internet said.

 

No one has any real time to do some real research anymore. So someone comes in claiming Vista is DX10!!! and has "Aero!!!!" interface, and claims "It will be better!!!" really hasn't bothered to really really read up on what exactly they are and aren't getting with Vista.

 

 

so many negatives on this OS, and yet the cattle are lining up for the slaughter (Best Buy is open until Midnight I guess for Vista...Halo3 or a PS3 or Xbox5 etc I can see staying up and waiting in line...but an OS that is going to be the biggest nightmare personal computing has seen since the move from 98 to 2000 (and biggest laughing stock in the internet for months if not years)????

 

 

I apologize if I offended anyone in my rant...but me, I'd rather eat the hot lead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the face 100 times before I ever thought of moving over to Vista.

 

XP is possibly the best, most stable OS we've ever had from MS....and now they want to go and **** it all up....for no good reason.

 

 

 

which leads me to join in the Linux bandwagon a bit more. Some of you know just how truly much I hate Linux (like Palestinians hate Jews, like Blackhawks fans hate Red Wings fans, like Red Sox fans hate Yankee fans, etc).

 

I truly hate this abomination, this half-aborted fetus of "could-have-been's".

 

The reason I hate it so much is because i WANT TO LOVE IT SO MUCH.

 

I've tried many times to install and learn Linux, and while I can get into it and getting it to actually boot up properly, installing anything is a joke, a chore, and not worth the effort (Culinist and I sat up for 12 hours one late night trying to install Nvidia video drivers into Linux so I could run a game that was compiled specifically for Linux...no go, so we tried an ATI card instead...no go there either. Finding a windows share and hooking into it on a LAN = no problem...but getting a windows machine to get into a Linux share? Takes a ******* degree in super-astronomical-technical-software-engineering (to the average bonehead like you and me).

 

Linux wants to compete??? How about stop making it an uber-dork OS that no one but true geeks who are still virgins can understand.

 

Linux is so great? Then how come the average idiot like me and 99% or more of you can hardly do anything in it once it is installed (and remember, installing in linux is not double-clicking an exe...its more like typing out this 90 character command line and hoping you didn't put a hyphen in the wrong place).

 

 

Of course, a couple of uber-dorks will cry foul at my statement, and claim Linux is sooooo easy that any person with an IQ of 9 or higher can figure it out.

 

I laugh at those uber-dorks as much and as heartily as I laugh at the cranks who claim they could whip any of us in an FPS game if they played with a controller and you or I played with mouse+kb.

 

LAUGH hahahahah LAUGH wow thats a good one dude...now go back to your level 39 World of Linuxcraft Guild and talk some more l337-h@x0rz while the rest of us just double-click something to install it.

 

Maybe more games and good software would get ported over to Linux if it wasn't so ^%@#$#@ hard to do anything with.

 

 

I can attest to the power of Linux. My buddy and I built a Pentium3 600Mhz, 256MB SDRAM linux server with Ubuntu one night. This little mother can really do the server bit like file storage, file serving, bit torrent, all kinds of good stuff that no XP rig on a P3 600Mhz + 256MB RAM could do (except play games lol). The one time I got Red Hat to work a couple years ago (9700Pro was the hottest gpu on the market then, and 1GB of RAM meant you or your parents were filthy rich lol), and actually got a gpu driver to install, and actually found a few bits of games that would work (Unreal Tournament was the best example, and Quake3), I was blown away by how great these games played...especially because I of course had a system that was pretty well untouchable by other systems at the time, and the games ran fine on this rig in Windows...but not even close to how great they ran (once you finally got the DIRTY @#%@#$#@ TO INSTALL AND RUN GRRRRR) in Linux.

 

(and that was probably only 24-40 hours worth of installing things and getting them to work proper...just so I could test two stupid games that took all of 15 minutes to install and start playing on windows platform).

 

 

I kinda see a correlation to the effect of "do I drive 6 miles out of my way to save $.03/gallon on gasoline? Or do I pay $.03/gallon more to get it at the gas station 2 blocks from my house?"

 

 

Me, I choose to get gas near my house. Same as I choose to not shop at Wal-Mart (we've not spent a dime at wal-mart in over 2 years...I gladly pay 1% to 5% more to buy it at a store that I don't hate for numerous reasons).

 

 

 

 

Problem is, everyone else seems to think saving 3 cents a gallon (without realizing they are wasting probably 5 cents a gallon on just to drive all that far out of the way to save 3 cents a gallon) is totally awesome wow man 3 cents a gallon omg i'm gonna be rich in like 234 years at this rate!

 

 

 

but

 

 

i guess at the end of the day, what matters is YOUR opinion. If you got to have Vista, then have it.

 

I can't say I will be of any help to you for at least 24 months (unless drastic changes in Vista take place) since I have zero plans of even installing the Vista packages that Microsoft sends me to evaluate. I will of course secretly install it once in a while to see if anything has changed (i've installed Vista 32 bit probably 5 times, and 64-bit probably 20 times in the last year and I hate it equally everytime...and I don't just install it and say "%#@$ this, this sux" then uninstall it. I install it and then try my best to tweak it, install software and games on it, learn it, and *gasp* even to love it.

 

But i hate it.

 

So take that Microsoft, and put it in your crackpipe and smoke it until it's bitter. Not that you care (cuz if you did, you'd drink your own kool-aid and then we'd be free of you at last)

[Chump]

AG: I hope I am not speaking out of line here (I am sure you will put me in my place if I am) but I think you should try one of those sensory deprivation tank thingy’s try to re-gain your warm & fuzzy inner happiness.

 

I agree MS can stick Vista up there pie whole until DRM gets axed.

 

I had also just downloaded Linux to install just for a look since the last time I loaded it up swore & deleted it but now I think I will forget that too.

[ReelFiles]

I have my copy of Vista on the way, BUT it won't be me main OS. I plan on sticking with XP until Vista is more mature, I would guess after SP1 and I would recommend the same to anyone.

There's nothing wrong with playing with the new OS, but I think the average user will regret simply replacing XP with Vista. Just show some patience and eventually once Vista becomes more mature it will be just as good if not better than XP SP2.

[tasr]

I have had every single MS OS since DOS was stolen. All right he paid for it, but it was like selling the Devil your soul.

 

Ahhh….DOS I remember the days well. After Windows 95B I decided to wait at least 6 months or longer before even thinking about moving to the next OS version.

 

I am in you hurry.

 

As far as Linux I’ve dabbled in Mandrake, Red Hat, Suse and now going to try Ubuntu.

[Guest Neezer]

will the Vista release cause the price of XP to drop any significant amount?

[THEnumber337]

I have absolutely no motivation what-so-ever to switch to Vista. My windows XP functions perfectly fine for what I want to do. Vista looks bloated.

[Angry_Games]

i was reading around last night and here's a new bit I'd like to try (though im sure it is still galaxies away from what we really want in a Linux OS, I'm always up for trying new things)

 

http://www.mandriva.com/en/download/free

[ReelFiles]

Been there, done that, same . as the other distros.

[tonester]

It's funny. Everytime something is released. Someone has to . on it. Its been that way for every single OS out there. This one is no different. You just know after a couple months most gamers are going to be running VISTA. Has anyone seen any DX10 games videos or screenshots. Sure Gears of War looks good but Far Cry and Crysis look better. Its the way of the PC world. In with the new and out with the old. Also, why would Carmack endorse DX10? To cut his own throat? Common man, Vista performance is better then I thought it was going to be. Don't knock it till you try it. Remember, as with any new software, there will be bugs, so try to be a little understanding and have some patience.

 

Peace out.

[boywander]

You'll be crying about the next new one in a few years - "No... don't kill Vista! It finally works more or less alright!" because what else is new? And any of that rant sound really familiar?

 

Most of the gripes with Linux revolve around proprietary drivers and commercial games... which is really surprising...

[Devil 07]

I made the Vista jump, but it was on a box that was going to get MCE on it anyway. I kinda dig the whole "media center" concept for entertainment rooms with big screens and surround sound. For my gaming rig it is and always will be XP and for work it is and always will be OSX. A new OS just gives me more choices in other areas of my "Digitized Life".

[UncleDavid218]

Travis, I always always respect your opinions when it comes to things like this (brown-nosing aside). This isn't a slam at all, I actually agree with you on 90% of your points. Vista, for me, really doesn't mean anything. It means Aero, which is nothing but annoying (though I love Flip 3D)... DRM, which is bull****, and restrictions made by Microsoft that make it seem at times that I'll never actually OWN my license. I don't care about DX10, because I don't game enough to justify the cost of a card for the time being (and obviously because there is no such thing as a game that requires it, but that goes without saying). All of that aside, I have it running on my main computer.

 

Why?

 

Why not.

 

I've always considered myself fairly far to the right politically (though increasingly more to the left). As such, I've always been a little close minded, which of course can be expected taking into account my age. So I thought, "What the heck, let's try this new OS out." It's not costing me much, and I always have XP Professional to go back to, so why not? I mean -- it's not like it's the end of the world for me. I don't game much (if I game for more than 3 hours a week it's a damned miracle). I don't do much that's taking a whole lot of my system resources (Photoshop and Macromedia Flash 8 are about as intense as it gets). I applaud myself if I manage to use over 1.5GB of RAM.

 

I'm an enthusiast -- but not a power user. You are both, and I believe that probably explains our differences in opinion (though again I mostly agree with you). While Vista has NOTHING to offer over XP, its newer and cooler (teenagers tend to get sucked into that, wouldn't you say? ). It's got a different interface -- that's about it as far as "features" for now (though I realize there are fundamental differences between the two, there are none that I know or care about).

 

And honestly, that's all that concerns me because there are no tangible differences (other than the UI), performance or otherwise, that would prevent me from using it. I have 2GB of RAM, so Photoshop won't ever use all of that. I have an overclocked dual-core processor, so I'll never utilize that. 7900GTX? What 7900GTX? I could get by with a 7600GT.

 

My point is, I guess, that while Vista isn't good for you and a lot of people, what's bad for you isn't necessarily true for others.

 

There are a lot of people that couldn't give a flying f**k how much RAM or how stupid Aero is (and some no doubt like it).

 

But I do agree with your point -- Vista does not have anything to offer over XP (and that Linux sucks ).