dell rolls back to XP...

Nothing is going to keep a determined person out of a PC connected to the internet no matter what OS you're using.

no, but you can sandbox threads to minimalize damage, something UNIX has done for decades pretty successfully.

and from what i've seen of UAC it does a decent job of it too, disabling it pretty much undermines M$'s efforts to secure windows sensibly.

UAC is definitely most useful for non-primary users, or those who you want to keep under control.

Really Vista has a LOT of options for large business networks. From an admins POV, UAC can be a godsend, as it is much stricter in keeping people from fucking things up on your networked machines.

For the regular user however, anyone who has a "just click OK without reading" mindset isn't likely to gain a lot of protection from UAC. However, as I said before, in a network environment... people don't have that option without the admin password.

Actually, they will know what to do. In fact, in a PC magazine that is sent to me every week PC Weekly or something, they had 50 easy tips to tweak Vista that any user could do. Constant streams of info like this from all different sources, from the net to magazines that show up at your house for no apparent reason, is designed to help the average user.

I had Vista up and running in less than an hour this weekend. Actually, it installed in about 20 mins + drivers, then took me about 40 mins to install all the other programs I use. It was simple and easy. I was adding new gadgets to my side bar after 5 minutes of use. And surprise, all of my equipment is working flawlessly.

I like it. It's pretty fast and responsive. It boots nice and quickly and hell, when you hibernate, your PC shuts down consuming almost no power, then you can hit the power button and restore everything to exactly how you left it.

The average user DOES need all those warnings and popups. Why? Because look at how many PCs get so infested with spyware they quit working reliably. This will help stop that. I can turn that stuff off, because I'm a more advanced user.. but for the general populace? They need it.

What is funny is basically all these same complaints happened when XP was released as well. Then those scared of MS changed their tune and praised the best (non-server) Windows release yet.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070515/tc_nm/microsoft_vista_dc_4

I've read that as well CD but I didn't report it because of the following:

-The pc market today compared to the release of XP is larger by leaps and bounds.

-MS is counting the "promised upgrade" PCs that shipped with XP as Vista sales... whether or not the users actually applied to get their Vista copy and installed it. (this is where the bulk of the early #'s came from).


I see vista as a step forward, but not a leap. Furthermore, it doesn't play very well with old hardware which is where you see the majority of complaints. They've done a solid job of improving security, including a anti-spyware scanner by default is a good step. People bitch about UAC, but frankly the only way to maintain compatibility with all those old ass programs and still increase security is something cludgy like this. A cleaner security improvement would have killed tons of old apps, and that is unforgivable to users.

The price/version stratification is terrible. Make one version for large organization users and one for everyone else. Or better yet, make just one version! Cheaper versions don't serve any purpose other than to justify the high price of the "real" version (aka ultimate). If anything, split windows media center off as a seperate product.

A question about Office 2007:

I'm fucked, right? I like it 'n all (so far) but the new format isn't compatible with older versions, right? So if I write a paper, send it to my university e-mail address and then try to print it at university (which has either Office XP or 2003 - not sure) - that'll fail, right? Or at least fuck up how the document looks?

I'm not sure if Office 2007 uses new formats or not...

Even if it does, you can always set it to save using an older version of the format, which will be compatible in both places.

Office 2007, a beautiful, beautiful piece of software, does in fact use the new XPS file structure - basically, they're XML-formatted documents. Anyway, this does mean that older versions of Office cannot read the files unless they have the Compatibility Pack (available free on MS' site) installed.

However, when you click the Office Logo menu, and go to the arrow next to Save As..., a slideout should appear with "Save As .doc" or whatever, and it will mention 97-2003 compatibility.

Basic should never have been an option. Beyond that, it's not too bad.

MS seems to love to do that though, as evidenced as well with the 360. They should have only had the premium version released, yet they brought out the Core as well, which IMO is a waste without a HD. Just like Vista Basic is a waste.

I have home basic. It seems fine.

Basic is just missing some bells and whistles.. you might not even notice a difference. I'm not even sure what it is, exactly.. I was just told to stay away from Basic.

Well, no one said you couldn't hang back and stay analog.

That fancy-pants marketing babble looks normal to you?!

Most noticably you are missing Aero...

Well... nowadays... yeah!

You know what they say about the frog in the pot...

Will someone explain the different editions of Vista for me so I can make an informed decision?

I guess not.

Just don't opt for Basic, but I also don't think you'd need Ultimate. Unless you want to be a really cool, savvy, smarty nerd. Then go for Ultimate. Most of us just went for premium.

Yes, basic doesn't use Aero, which is basically all of the graphical enchancements to the UI.

This might help:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/default.mspx


So might this article:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2068721,00.asp

Elwood, for you, I'd go with Home Premium, since it has some more media features attached to it.

I don't think you'll really need Ultimate.