Release Of An Operating System Just Not The Big Deal It Used To Be
from the some-party-dude dept
While Microsoft has tried hard to drum up enthusiasm for the release of Vista with various stunts and threatrics, it's clear that there's just not the same level of excitement surrounding its release as there had been when previous versions of Windows were released. Retailer CompUSA held a nationwide midnight launch party last night to kick off sales of Vista, but according to on-the-ground reports, they were sparsely attended. A smattering of people did show up, though it seems like some were just there because they were curious to see if there was going to be a spectacle or not. According to one person who has attended multiple Windows release events, Vista's launch saw the smallest crowds of any -- less than Windows 95 and Windows XP. None of this is enough to say that Vista will be a dud; it may just take awhile for people to upgrade, particularly since for many it will require them to get new hardware. But it's clear that the release of a desktop operating system just isn't as important as it used to be, which has to be somewhat disappointing for Microsoft, after having spent so much time and money to get it out the door.
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who wants this prepach?
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Releases are not good anymore
I got one and I wore that sucker until this spring, when I finally tossed it because holes were developing near the seams. Sweet shirt. Wish I had another.
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well...
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I have just one question...
Where/when is the local launch party for Leopard?
I'll see you there.
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Midnight launch party @ CompUSA!!!!!!
Tell me if any of the following seems like fun:
* Driving to the middle of nowhere... only at "select-locations", which were horribly placed. The entire Los Angeles are location was set in Long Beach - Yeah, any white person hanging in long beach after dark, is just asking to be raped.
* Sticking around a computer store from 10pm to 2am on a work-night (school-night, for those of you just returning back to school this past week)
* CompUSA isn't exactly a place that comes to mind when people say "Party"... neither is BestBuy - but at least BB has more life in it (?)
* With so many people purchasing the OEM version of Vista online for 1/2 the price, what incentive is there for anyone to go out and buy it in a retail location for retail price?
* (see last comment) And with the recent "Out of stock" happenings with Nintendo Wii and Sony PS3s, what guarantee was there for those who actually did show are those locations, to KNOW BEFORE HAND, that their particular flavor of Vista was going to be in stock for their arrival?
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lumping all OSs together
"But it's clear that the release of a desktop operating system just isn't as important as it used to be"
I use Debian GNU/Linux. In many corners of the Linux-based operating system world, you don't have a momentous Upgrade Event for a shiny new whatever. You incrementally keep your system in good shape at all times. In some cases (Ubuntu, Debian come to mind) the operating system practically keeps itself updated.
Maybe it's fair to say that many people/businesses are less than thrilled specifically with the Vista operating system and Microsoft itself as a company.
I must have read a dozen articles over the past few months saying that Vista is a change from prior Windows versions in that it's got lots of things that no end-user really wants. More restrictions on what they do with their box. I've read over and over: there's nothing going on here compelling people to be excited.
Meanwhile, I'm excited every single day by my lean, ultra-stable, open and completely free system.
Vista is, at best, a horrendous waste of money in return for more of the same, poor treatment of users. At worst, it's a creepy escalation of invasions into personal freedoms. Be wary of welcoming this pig into your lives and businesses.
I urge you all, take this opportunity to be finished with Microsoft here and now. Try a dual-boot. Try a "live" Linux. Talk to friends/family who already use an open operating system, ask them for help getting started. Take control of your computing.
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It's A Work In Progress
Considering M$ has already said the first service pack is in the works and will be released in the "2nd half" of the year, what's there to celebrate? Cheering for the marketing group that they got a partially incomplete OS to market?
Bill Gates stated that this will be the last OS release for a while, opting instead for upgrades.
It's bad enough that M$ is the 8000lb gorilla in the tech industry, but it's turned into a gorilla without direction it seems.
We may need an evergreen for good luck, but it won't be to signify the completion of the highest point in Vista.
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vista isnt the devil
I, myself, won't need to upgrade to get Vista but it's just not a necessity to get it atm. Probably why the parties weren't too crazy.
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Re: lumping all OSs together
http://goodbye-microsoft.com
It's a site that installs Debian Linux almost automatically. The user will need a broadband connection, and a free partition or spare hard drive, but you'll have a dual boot system with Linux and XP (or W2K) when you're done. I love mine and little by little, I'm becoming a Penguin lover.
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Re: well...
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New offerings...nothing the consumer wants
In previous updates we were getting improved GUI's, new file systems, tools, capabilities, features. We were actually 'upgrading' - and were excited for it.
What are the new, customer WOW! features that Vista supports? DRM? Please. Maybe if Microsoft had done some real innovating it would be exciting. Hard to get excited about a new product that no one really wants.
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Re: Re: well...
Definitely. *nix systems are very solid.. One of my machines at home:
$ uptime
17:18:51 up 248 days, 20:10, 5 users, load average: 0.11, 0.12, 0.09
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Re:
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Re: lumping all OSs together
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Re: Re: Re: well...
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Re: Midnight launch party @ CompUSA!!!!!!
The CompUSA in Long Beach is at the Marina Pacifica shoping center, right in between million dollar homes on Naples Island, Seal Beach, and Belmont Shores. It is all white people.
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Re: Re: Re: well...
1) Gotta get rid of sooo many flavors. It's kind of like when an Independent runs in the Presidential Election in the states. Normally, they have no chance of winning and they just end up splitting the vote and potentially causing someone else not to win. How many flavors of linux are there now? With so many variations out there, it seems to dilute the number of users in each flavor, making the prospect of moving over a little more daunting for someone who is used to using an OS with a huge users based. Basically Linux geeks, pick a couple of flavors and live with it, we don't need so many of them
2. The old support issue. The reason why Red Hat made good inroads in converting more folks into linux land is that they had tech report from real people available, not some usegroup somewhere.
3. I've trolled on a couple of linux boards and they vary widely in their willingness to help newbies. Some are every nice and in fact encourage "newbie" questions, others seem as though they have users that don't want to be bothered unless you are perceived as "their caliber". Again, this would be very daunting for potential users.
4. Linux should be completely runable and manageable from a GUI. Right now, I still find myself having to go to the command line for most tasks. Non-professional users are not going to go back to using a prompt unless forced at gunpoint.
In the final analysis, Linux is a great platform but it needs to get over its public perception that it's the exclusive province of the geeks and nerds that come to places like this. When linux has matured to the point where my wife (who is by no means a tech person, TIVO is still like magic to her) can use it, right out the box, then we will finally see the end of the M$ empire. Btw, I don't think MAC will ever overtake PCs just because of the cost and Apple is still too fussy about letting outside development houses make hardware and software for them.
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Re: Re: Midnight launch party @ CompUSA!!!!!!
I still think the location would have been much better if there were more of them - AND during normal hours.
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Re: New offerings...nothing the consumer wants
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I see dumb people everwhere.
You fucking moron. Have fun paying 600 bucks so you can shell out some more cash for "Trusted Computing" applications, and buy the same content over and over so you can MAYBE play it on WM Player, your dvd-player, blu-ray player, hd-dvd player, your iPod, your zune, PS3 and XBox360.
The rest of us aren't rap artists, so we can't afford to pay companies so they can think up new ways to charge us for stuff WE ALREADY HAVE.
I use Linux as well however you cant play any major games on it without crippling your system by using a windows emulator.. So if you want to get rid of Microsoft youre stuck playing solitaire. No thanks Ill stay with Windows as well
Support games not written in MS's proprietary DirectX API, instead opt for OpenGL based games, and you'll see more games like Doom3 and Quake4 hit the Linux Market.
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Re: I have just one question...
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I was at CompUSA last night
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They should have released XP_ME first
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As a business owner this means that I will have to make some important decisions.
As far as the great Linux debate goes, although I'm a *huge* open source fan, I find the cadre of Linux devotees such as poster #24 decidedly annoying.
I prefer the situation we have now, with the abundance of choice. I would like to see that situation continue because I believe it is in our best interests.
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Linux is a pretty decent system, but like what has already been pointed out, there aren't the massive amount of applications and games. In general, Linux also has an image that makes people think DOS. Most of my friends who know nothing about computers think Linux is exactly like DOS.
"it is interesting to find MANY new books relating to VISTA at Amazon.com. I'm sure that if DRM were the only thin "NEW" in Vista, these books would not exist. A little research on your part may cure your ignorance, no?"
I sure hope you realized what he said was an expression. He didn't literally mean DRM was the only new thing. But there isn't really anything too new about Vista. Besides, most of those books show you little nit-picky things that make very little difference.
On to DRM: it sucks. There are too many requirements that cost too much. Rights management has always been a hassle. For example: my dad, not very technologically "savvy" is very angry that my mom's iTunes music (MP4a encoded with encryption) cannot be played on his Sony MP3 player. I've tried to explain it to him on numerous occasions, but it just ends up with him saying something along the lines of, "that's just stupid!" DRM tends to hurt "casual" consumers more then hackers or pirates because they can and will find a way to get around it. It just takes time.
-B
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I'm getting an apple for my birthday or maybe christmas this year. I'm fed up with microsoft and the crap that goes with it.
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Vista
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Re: I see dumb people everwhere.
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why i won't buy it
i hate to bring this up, because half of you will roll your eyes, but OS X runs faster today than it did when it was first released. the fact here is that apple made a new OS, and with each major update, they optimized old code WHILE adding features. microsoft never does this.
add that to the oppressive DRM scheme that is sucking resources, and you've got yourself a system that i don't want anymore.
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All of the different OS's have their strengths, and it boils down to what you like to use and what you're comfortable with. I'm not a huge PC gaming fan, so that's why I don't really find much on the PC that I can't and WANT to do on my Mac.
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Re: Re:
Lets ask ourselves why.
First the people who pirate their software/media are the people who have been doing it sense 3.1 and the advent of the tape recorder. People who download music in such bulk they can never listen to it all are also the people who would put on tape recorders to record whatever programming they want. The fact of the matter is that this unwanted distribution of media content and or software content will never be stopped or contained.
By the same token the vast majority of people do NOT possess the means, knowledge, or the lack of resources to want to pirate this content. After all anyone with half a brain realizes that the vast majority of people who download music, software, and movies off-line are too poor to buy them and thus resort to other means in order to get their entertainment.
As such we must also realize a couple of things.
A: College students and people who are too poor to purchase these content items will ALWAYS find a way to listen to, watch, or use the content that is being hidden from them. And attempting to stop them is nothing short of plane stupid as attempting to do so will simply cause people to raise their general level of tech competence.
B: If you were to succeed in stopping these items from reaching the hands of those who didn't purchase them, you would loose some of the best advertising in the world and thus also loose a sizable portion of your consumer market.
So, in conclusion, get your heads out of your ass and realize what a great service these pirates are really doing for you.
Morons!
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Re: New offerings...nothing the consumer wants
" * AERO Graphics - Replaces XP's Luna Desktop
* New Vista Explorer
* Vista Searches - Virtual Folders
* Dialog box for Program name - Replaces 'Run'
* User Account Control (UAC)
* ReadyBoost
* Task Dialogs
* Networking
* Better Event Logs
* MMC - Move Up / Down
* XImage and WDS
* Restart Manager
"
http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/vista/vista_new_features.htm
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Vista Rocks!
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Ubuntu
I started the dual boot install and when it got to the partition part, there were a lot of choices and each choice was a lot of computer jargon that I wasn't familiar with, so I chickened out. I didn't want to screw up my XP.
The Ubuntu website description of the dual boot install didn't explain which choice I should use or what it does. Does anyone know a better site to help with the dual boot install?
Thx
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Re: why i won't buy it
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w00t
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Re: Ubuntu
http://www.matthewjmiller.net/howtos/dual-boot-linux-and-windows/
Pay close attention to the part about installing GRUB (A Linux bootloader program) in your Windows MBR. Ubuntu will also find the shared FAT32 drive and your Windows NTFS drive (if you choose to dual-boot,) so you can usually ignore the part about MOUNTing drives after install.
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ha!
"kick of sales"
:P
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The fanatics already had their fix
Most Microsoft loving super geeks have already used Vista. Some of us will hurry out to get it while people like me will continue to live within the bounds of our budgets and just buy it when the time is right.
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Re: why i won't buy it
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Analogy Police Alert
Tyshaun writes:
Wrong analogy. Your US Presidential election is more like the closed-source software market than the open-source one: because it's winner-takes-all, there is no real room for choice.
For a more accurate analogy, look at the car market. How many models of car are there? Hundreds. Yet does anybody say cars will never catch on unless they get rid of most of those models? Of course not.
Like cars, Linux is all about choice. You're never going to get rid of that.
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it's a shame
Nothing against Microsoft, some of their products are the best in the market; but i wish they would have at least stuck with their gameplan rather than bow to market pressure.
They're a big company and so could have survived a bit of hardship if the goal was worth it.
Now you've got a load of people who were once loyal to your product looking at a hefty price tag and bad reviews, not good pr. Better to nurture your customers rather than take the rug out from under them.
I'm looking forward to Apple's Leopard, primarily because of the self-healing ZFS file system theyre putting in; never again a corrupt file.
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It's Not Your Daddy's Windows
Now, we jump forward to 2007. Windows has gone through several iterations since Win95. The Internet has exploded, technology is no longer a "geek-thing," and the ability to add functionality to your browser, desktop, PDA, cell phone, music player, etc is so simple and there's so many options and alternatives. We're living in time where M&P (Mom and Pop) stores have their business systems wired to the Net, all transactions are electronic, and have video surveillance throughout the store. The point is that technology is no longer a "geek-thing."
With Windows 95, you had those long midnight lines because it was mostly the computer people who wanted the OS...then...quickly, M&P caught on. In 2007, Windows Vista is just another OS. Yes, it's more polished...yes it's faster (and maybe more secure)...but it's just not exciting to M&P. They could care less. It's not going to change the way we run our lives. Windows 95 changed our lives and opened our eyes to an environment that could increase our productivity on a daily basis. Vista isn't changing our daily lives...it'll just give us something prettier to see when we wake up in the morning, check our email, and head out to Starbucks.
That being said, I'll probably get Vista. I'm sure I'll like it. I'm sure it'll make me happier with pretty colors. It might even increase my productivity...but not enough to change my life on a daily basis.
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Re: Re:
microsoft sucks, get over your functional fixedness and learn to use mac, it rocks and will put any microsoft product to shame.
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Features versus Useful Features
Like many here. I've been running Vista Beta for some months. Verdict: Nothing to see here... move along. UI is cute, but there is no killer feature that makes it worth the price of DRM lockdown. Oh, and it runs like a dog on a 2.4GHz machine with 1GB RAM. Perhaps that is because it is beta, but I would not put Vista on anything less than 3GHz.
The first duty of an OS is to enable and support - not to provide an "XPerience" or help guard Big Content's income stream.
Oh, and this is a triple-boot machine that spends most of its time running my OS of choice... Windows 2000.
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Oh
I honestly don't see where that made any point. If Windows 95 had midnight lines before "M&P" retailers caught on... why would it matter that they aren't excited? I also don't think "M&P" stores caught on quickly by an stretch of the imagination.
Yes, more companies are using computers more then ever, but I seriously think that has a lot more to do with price then Windows 95 itself.
I can probably say Windows Vista is not having any midnight lines because it has nothing ground-shattering new to offer a general consumer, and the majority of the people that would have waited in lines (Windows "geeks") have already had their hands on this for a couple months now.
-B
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Re: w00t
w00t by BlackCow on Jan 30th, 2007 @ 6:16pm
I am actually super exited about Windows Vista and hope it lives up to everyone standards. *does vista dance*"
If it lives up to everyones' standards, it's going to be a major resource hog that doesn't allow you to anything with Media Files! In other words, it'll live up to being a POS.
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A big help would be for someone to rip off DirectX as a Free program which can be installed along with open GLbut which copies the DirectX calls and functions
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But I did!
I stayed up all night to get a chance to get a chance to pay $700 for something that I didn't need at all, that requires 49G of RAM to run, that requires 17G of diskspace to install, that's still susceptible to viruses and other security attacks, that will break all my games, and that requires a server just to boot.
Then I thought, hey, why not tack on another version of MS Office for another $900?
What's not to like???? Hooray for Microsoft!
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What about Xandros
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