Member Avatar for joshSCH

oh sweet, someone else who hates apple! Awesome!

[edit] Ah, did you read my comment on your blog jbennet? lol

Member Avatar for twomers

I prefer to keep an open mind at all times, but what the hay, I hate apple too! Well, not so much hate as "I don't have an iPod".

I feel we're having a moment.

Member Avatar for lasher511

Yea, ipods are the only deceit product apple can come up with.. If Microsoft cared enough, the Zune would lead the mp3 industry by now! ipods suck.. just wait 'till the new zune comes out next summer!

Death to Apple!! lol

What makes you so sure that the Zune would be the leader?

And actually i own a Macbook Pro, I have worked on Imacs, Mac pros and Mac mini's and i have to say they are all very impressive products. Halfway through last year i would have agreed with you until i actually saw what Decent machines they were and the fact that they had an OS that not only works pretty much all the time but one that they spent so much time on that they could get all the pretty quirks in as well. Which is more then we can say for Vista which is pretty i will give it that but thats about all it is every time i have worked with it i have had nothing but problems.

Now i must say i am a big fan of windows as well and infact i have a windows partition on my mac and 2 other windows XP machines in my room and a Vista one.....but i just stay away from that one eww gross :P but the main thing that really irritates me about microsoft is the way they are pretty much forcing people to upgrade to vista by cutting off support for XP early and making directX 10 vista only and not only that It is an extremely demanding OS so not only do u have to go out and spend $750AU for a copy of vista that will do everything but then you have to go out and buy more Ram and upgrade all your parts that were working perfectly fine on XP and for what? a more buggy operating system and a supposedly better interface.

Make it work don't just make it good enough.

Member Avatar for twomers

>> cutting off support for XP early
How early?!

Member Avatar for jbennet

XP is being cut off in 2008 (after SP3 comes out)

Thats no surprise. XP was released in 2001/2. It has already had a long life

Member Avatar for lasher511

You will not be able to buy it by the end of this year and support is getting cut off some time next year.

Something tells me vista is not selling as well as they would hope.

Member Avatar for joshSCH

Well what did you expect? Who would upgrade to Vista? XP works perfectly fine, and everyone is happy with it. The only way people will upgrade is if they are forced to. From now on, there will be no XP support, and all the new software will only be available for vista.

I have a vista partition, and I have no problems with it. Vista Ultimate x64. It works fine.. I just prefer XP b/c I've used it longer..

Member Avatar for lasher511

Exactly! XP works perfectly fine. Its taken them how many years to get it working like that 7? . The last thing people want is to have to wait another 7 years for them to get it working only for them to release another OS.

It will be interesting to see how many people decide to switch OS over this because with vista being so expensive its now the same price to buy a mac as it is a PC

Member Avatar for joshSCH

Well, I got vista ultimate 64-bit free. If I hadn't, then I would certainly not buy it. Even if Microsoft cuts of XP support, there will be plenty of users who stay with it and help design drivers and such if Microsoft forces some companies to quit making XP drivers.

Member Avatar for jbennet

Lol i still use win2k and NT4 on most of my PCs

Member Avatar for lasher511

I do not think that microsoft can force companies to stop making drivers i would not think that would even be legal. If it were the case then i think it would apply to even older versions of windows and often when you buy a thumb drive or something similar you get a driver disc with it for windows 95/98

Member Avatar for joshSCH

Microsoft is the key to the software industry.. They can basically tell a company to only make vista drivers or else Microsoft will no longer support their software..

Most new products don't come out with older than XP drivers anymore..

Member Avatar for lasher511

I think it would also be in the companies best interest to have as large a user base as possible. Besides what difference would it make if microsoft was to stop supporting the software. They can still make the program to run on that OS infact there is alot of programs out there that im sure they would prefer users out there not to use on their OS. Plus there are tons of things that still have drivers for older versions of windows all you have to do is go out and buy a thumb drive or new monitor etc and they will have a driver disc for at least winows NT.

Member Avatar for joshSCH

Well, initially Microsoft had planned Vista to only install "Microsoft certified" programs. You know how sometimes the programs you install have not been verified by Microsoft.. theres tons of them out there.. And these companies actually have to pay Microsoft to verify their software.. Microsoft wanted vista to only install these verified programs.. but for some reason they changed their minds at the last second.. If Microsoft eventually decides to do this, they will have a huge monopoly in the tech industry.. not only will they have rights to the most used OS, but they will also be in control of the software industry as well..

Member Avatar for lasher511

Yeah but i don't think programmers will stand up for that crap and just start making all their programs for other OS. Meaning that not only will microsoft lose all the useful open source programs that people use on microsoft and various other thing but they will probably also lose the monopoly over Games and other things.

Microsoft seem to think they can do anything just because their the most used but eventually people will say enough is enough.

either that or it will be like one of those old fairy tales where the king(bill gates) returns from a distant land and smites his evil brother/second in charge(steve ballmer) and set everything right again.

Member Avatar for joshSCH

haha.. Well, I hope that happens.. Microsoft has been sucking w/out Gates. He seems like a nice guy, an idiot though (his entire fortune is to be given to charity!)

But anyway, yea.. I'd rather linux take over the industry. But that won't happen until the general public becomes tech-smarter.. maybe in the generation after mine..

Member Avatar for Infarction

> He seems like a nice guy, an idiot though (his entire fortune is to be given to charity!)
That's all it takes to be an idiot? Here I thought it was a good thing to give money to charity. I wonder how Warren Buffet ranks on that idiot scale as well...

As to the topic of drivers, Microsoft is learning that backwards compatibility isn't the great thing it was a decade ago. Hopefully they'll cut it off to not even support pre-Vista stuff by time Vienna comes out. And driver signing seems like a good idea to me; drivers are probably the software that the kernel trusts the most. They should be tested accordingly (especially since Microsoft tends to get the blame when someone else releases a buggy driver).

Member Avatar for joshSCH

Well, making companies pay Microsoft to verify their drivers isn't right.. The user should be able to install whatever driver he/she pleases..

haha.. yea, giving away your inheritance is idiotic to me.. He worked his ass off for that money, and when he dies he is just going to give it to some charity organization? The poor people are poor for a reason.. I am a strong fiscal republican, and helping out the homeless/lazy/stupid does not seem heroic to me.

Member Avatar for Infarction

Well, making companies pay Microsoft to verify their drivers isn't right.. The user should be able to install whatever driver he/she pleases..

If the average user (i.e. not very tech-knowledgeable) installs random drivers and their computer crashes, do you think they'll blame the driver or the OS? And if Microsoft does bother to test the drivers, why do you think they should do it for free? Most of the bad rep Microsoft has gotten for instable systems is hardly their fault.

Member Avatar for jbennet

Windows is just like many OSes. If you were to run he retail version of XP (No hotfixes,updates,service packs etc...) and all micrsoft software it would be very stable. Most problems come from bad drivers and badly written apps

Member Avatar for MidiMagic

I prefer WMP over Itunes, becuse it does CD-quality if the file allows.

But I prefer CD over either of them, and phonograph records over all of them.

Member Avatar for jbennet

I dislike how Itunes ties you into proprietary formats and players ( i know WMP is bad at this too but iTunes is worse)

Member Avatar for joshSCH

If the average user (i.e. not very tech-knowledgeable) installs random drivers and their computer crashes, do you think they'll blame the driver or the OS? And if Microsoft does bother to test the drivers, why do you think they should do it for free? Most of the bad rep Microsoft has gotten for instable systems is hardly their fault.

Do you really want to give Microsoft that kind of power? If software companies had to have all their software verified through Microsoft, then Microsoft would own the whole damn industry! They could do whatever the hell they wanted.. easily put any software company out of business, make sky high profits... Besides, I'm not an avg. user, and I like the option of installing whatever I want. Maybe Microsoft should tweak their permissions system a bit.. and not allow most users to install non-verified software. In fact, in the beta versions of Vista, the administrator did NOT have administrator rights to the computer. It was annoying as hell trying to figure out how to gain admin privileges.. (sudo wouldn't work! lol)

Member Avatar for Infarction

Do you really want to give Microsoft that kind of power? If software companies had to have all their software verified through Microsoft, then Microsoft would own the whole damn industry!

My post which you quoted was referring to drivers, not any software. As I previously distinguished, drivers are in a unique position of having a lot of trust from the kernel. As to the rest of the software industry, they've mostly become rather reliant on how open the WinAPI has been. With Vista's security setting set to the max, you'd find most of your software non-functional due to the kernel being locked down too tight. My point going along the thread has been that Microsoft gets the blame when their OS is compromised by 3rd party software. If they lock down their OS to prevent that, the software breaks. If they don't, they get bad rep for having an insecure product. Why shouldn't they be allowed to take measures against that?

Member Avatar for joshSCH

My post which you quoted was referring to drivers, not any software. As I previously distinguished, drivers are in a unique position of having a lot of trust from the kernel. As to the rest of the software industry, they've mostly become rather reliant on how open the WinAPI has been. With Vista's security setting set to the max, you'd find most of your software non-functional due to the kernel being locked down too tight. My point going along the thread has been that Microsoft gets the blame when their OS is compromised by 3rd party software. If they lock down their OS to prevent that, the software breaks. If they don't, they get bad rep for having an insecure product. Why shouldn't they be allowed to take measures against that?

Drivers, software, whatever. The point is, Microsoft would have the authority to verify or deny any piece of software/driver that they wanted to... this would make them very powerful! And what about the companies that take forever developing drivers? I've had to use driverguide to find many 64-bit drivers that the manufacturers have not fully developed yet.. The third party drivers are usually more buggy, yes, but they're better than nothing! Microsoft does get bad repped a lot for buggy drivers/software, but I seriously doubt they care much... What are people going to do? Switch to a MAC? ya right.. Microsoft needs to work on another solution to this problem other than making all the drivers go through them first.. It just gives them too much power.

Member Avatar for The Dude

Welcome to Daniweb :)

Member Avatar for Serunson

Currently it is 50, 50.
Daniweb members are undecided...

Member Avatar for lasher511

Probably because both media players have their advantage Itunes in that its simple an easy to do thinks on. Where as WMP has the advantage of being able to play movies and also have a playlist for these things.

I do not think giving WMP 10 a new skin is justification to call it number 11 however

Member Avatar for jbennet

WMP11 has many greater features over WMP10 for syncing with mobile devices

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