Windows Vista

[Scottish Business Owner]

I know we have a few pc guys on here who can maybe give me some steer on this or indeed people who are actually using Vista at present.

Is Vista an essential upgrade and is it really a huge step forward? Microsoft claim to have sold millions of copies but i'm as yet unconvinced as to whether it's a must do upgrade.

Love to hear a few opinions

 

[stugster]

DSG International (Currys, Dixons, PC World) recently fell off the FTSE 100. Their reason? Poor Vista sales. (apparently).

I've got a copy of Vista Business, and I wouldn't touch it again with a barge pole. I'm happily upgraded now to Windows XP Pro.

Vista is slow and cumbersome.


http://home.easypcscotland.co.uk/articles.php?article=vista1

There's an article I wrote about Vista

 

[PC]

Is Vista an essential upgrade and is it really a huge step forward? Microsoft claim to have sold millions of copies but i'm as yet unconvinced as to whether it's a must do upgrade.

No, no and thrice no....

I played around with it for 3 months and despite the fact it has been out for over a year the number of bits of software that don't work with it is quite high. For example, Quickbooks 2007 (I had to kludge it),Webposition 4 (no plans for a Vista version yet) and as for Vista's UAC, what a pain!

While you can , stick to XP. That's what I'm planning on doing for quite a while yet and this is the advice that I have given my customers.

 

[nothing does]

I'm a Mac man and wouldn't change it for the world!

 

[Scottish Business Owner]

Pretty easy decision then, I'll be sticking with XP Pro for now. Thanks for the input folks!

 

[PC]

I'm a Mac man and wouldn't change it for the world!

Ditto

and we even service Mac's when they have their very occassional faults

 

[computer storm]

I have been a vista user from the off, and yes there has been problems with it, but the UAC can be turned off via a group policy, and since the release of SP1 for vista i have found that it runs very well, my whole business is running with vista and we have not problems so far.

But there again i am running all microsoft products.

regards

Darren

 

[Former Member 1]

In my experience no Microsoft product has ever worked right out of the box. Nor has any brought with it any great advantages. Mainly each incantation of Windows has absorbed greater and greater amounts of computing power to perform increasingly pointless tasks. Such as having happy cartoon dogs trot across your screen or making the background 'prettier'.

As a basic business machine there is almost nothing of significance I can do with the AMD3500 with it's 4Gb or RAM and 250Gb hard drive that I wasn't doing 14 years ago with my 386 and 8Meg or RAM.

Our desktop machines are the remains of our old edit suites. I strip them out and rebuild them in more basic form. The Edit suite gets rebuilt everyone gets a new PC. We wouldn't have moved to XP at all but for some new video technology demanding we change our edit programs. When we did jump it was WELL past the stage where SP2 had been issued and a lot of the stability issues had been solved.

Vista holds NO attraction. It strikes me that it's virtually a piece of spyware in its own right; and I don't trust Microsoft. Then there's the usual fact that the damn thing just plain doesn't work properly; and early adopters are being forced to do Microsoft's product testing for them......

Our CCTV server STILL runs windows 98; and that won't be changing anytime soon...

Frankly what I want is a stripped-out basic GUI that maximises the performance of my machine and allows it to work to it's full potential. And when you consider that 39 years ago they put a man on the moon with less computing power than an old XT class PC clearly that isn't Windows....

My advice is NEVER upgrade unless there is some function in some that it's absolutely essential to the growth of your business to have... If you want to waste money buy a Mont Blanc pen! It'll work correctly right out of the box and will still be working and looking good in ten years time!

 

[Gordon N]

Interesting post Matt (when does your 'I hate Microsoft' t-shirt arrive?)...

Have you ever dabbled with linux at all? I have a couple of mates who are into video production and editting and they swear by it, all be it they are only working on an amatuer level, but the stuff they produce looks professional to me.

Regards,

Gordon

 

[PC]

Have you ever dabbled with linux at all?

There goes the learning curve!

 

[Former Member 1]

Interesting post Matt (when does your 'I hate Microsoft' t-shirt arrive?)...

As soon as I can get the file to print on the graphics printer across a windoze network.

Have you ever dabbled with linux at all? I have a couple of mates who are into video production and editting and they swear by it, all be it they are only working on an amatuer level, but the stuff they produce looks professional to me.

Regards,

Gordon

My problem is that I need to be using stuff which is more or less industry standard. I need to be able to 'port files to and from other users and systems reliably. And when problems arise I need to be able to solve them quickly; possibly drawing from the knowledge of colleagues in other parts of the world. I also have a large array of equipment that needs to be able to 'talk' to my systems.

For instance today there is a stack of American kit arriving. Cameras VTRs monitors... I cover the Edinburgh festival for a US broadcaster. I need to use their kit and integrate with their systems... And I simply don't have the time on my hands that an amateur has.... It has to work and it has to be 100% spot on; the results being sent to the other side of the world for broadcast...

If Avid or Premiere or FCP are ever available to run under Linux I'll be there! But working at a professional level is a million miles away from amateur dabbling both in technical terms and in the way the job needs to be done. What at first sight might look good to a layman is often riddled with technical problems that mean it can't easily be broadcast, duplicated nor incorporated into another programme...

I did look into editing in Linux about two or three years ago. But it was a non-starter. The forums on the subject were dominated by people who plainly knew sweet fanny-adams bout video production. Those who claimed to have a professional background were, as far as I could tell, either children or adults suffering from mild mental illness; fantasists in other words...

Holiday snaps and wedding videos I DON'T do!

 

[Gordon N]

If Avid or Premiere or FCP are ever available to run under Linux I'll be there! But working at a professional level is a million miles away from amateur dabbling both in technical terms and in the way the job needs to be done. What at first sight might look good to a layman is often riddled with technical problems that mean it can't easily be broadcast, duplicated nor incorporated into another programme...

I thought that might be the case, and I have no doubt you are right about the difference between amatuer and professional production - my mates luckily don't fall into the category you mentioned in your post, they do it for fun and class themselves as 100% amatuers.

It is rare these days to find an industry that linux hasn't muscled in on, must be in the pipeline!

Regards,

Gordon

 

[Former Member 1]

I thought that might be the case, and I have no doubt you are right about the difference between amatuer and professional production - my mates luckily don't fall into the category you mentioned in your post, they do it for fun and class themselves as 100% amatuers.

It is rare these days to find an industry that linux hasn't muscled in on, must be in the pipeline!

Regards,

Gordon

I honestly don't know if there's enough money in it..... It's quite a conservative industry...

Really it boils down to three main contenders... FCP on the Mac platform, Avid and Premiere.... There are others of course. But most are viewed as a little 'left field'....

Those of us who have gone down the Premiere route on the PC are generally among the more technically confident. In that many will build and configure their own systems and most ARE trained (like myself) engineers . It works reasonably well at a basic level out of the box. But to get it working REALLY well requires a bit more... well lets say there are a few tricks of the trade. But that's about as 'out there' as you can afford to get in this game...

No doubt if someone were to develop a either a 'turnkey' or 'kit' Linux solution that proved reliable and affordable it would gain a following. But to be honest there aren't THAT many buyers out there for this sort of thing. And no-one who's doing this for a living has time to sit spoon-feeding a computer...