[olug] Vista is AMAZING!!!!

[Aaron Grothe]

Hey All,

As part of a project I'm starting I need to port a piece of software
to a Microsoft Windows Box.  This is also when my second to last
e-machine box has decided to go on to the great beyond 4 out of 5
dead!

I thought about building a box and getting an OEM version of Windows
XP.  I haven't bought a box like the normal people do for a while so
I decide why not see how far its come in the last couple of years.

So I buy a Compaq with the following Specs

Dual Core AMD 3800+ CPU
1 Gigabyte of Ram
200 Gig SATA hard Drive
Windows Vista Home Premium
Nvidia 6150??? GPU

This is the most powerful box I have EVER bought.  It is at least
twice as powerful as my last workstation.

I open the box:

o - No install discs, not even the classic system image CDs
o - Pretty straightfoward, except for no parallel printer port or
serial ports

I boot the box

o - It asks me to create an account.  It then takes over 10 minutes
to "optimize my windows experience".  I rebooted twice because it
gave me absolutely no idea what it was doing.
o - After cutting my own system image restore discs, which I can only
do ONCE I let Norton activation and the system updates fight it out
for a while
o - With no apps running I'm already up to 780Mb used!!!
o - So after a bunch of updates I reboot
o - Allow/Deny confirmations for everything are great.  I get asked
for about 10 times to setup my machine

Now I'm on boot #2

o - The time for the box to boot is about 120 seconds, which is
amazing - plus 30 seconds to login as a user
o - I fire up Internet explorer to discover that Compaq has sold my
toolbar space to Yahoo and anybody else who will pay for it
o - With the raw amount of adware/spyware/bloatware on this machine. 
I'm surprised they aren't able to give it away for free
o - I decide to uninstall some of the software such as AOL and the
like.  Guess what they're not in the program listing.  Ha! Ha! Ha!
You can delete the Icon, but the love is always going to be there. 
Unless you use msiinv to work get real access to the underlying
packages if they actually used a package
o - To verify something isn't wrong with the box I boot into Knoppix
5.1.1 to make sure everything is Ok.  The machine sings in way it
never will again, until I buy my next Vista box and repurpose this
one to be my Linux box
o - If you're like me and I know I am.  You probably have an html
file you have on your desktop with links you hit frequently.  Well
know you're going to go to allow/deny every time you hit one, because
they are in different zones
o - I decide I'd like to be able to print from my Windows box.  I've
got a HP 4050 N with a jet direct card.  Everything I have can print
from it, the only box I had problems with was XP because it didn't
like a real network printer, since it was home edition.  I let Vista
search my network for a printer.  I'm pretty excited, it takes about
5 minutes.  Maybe its finding a printer I forgot about :-)  Nope. 
NaDa.  So I give it the IP and work through a wizard.  It works. 
Yea!!!  Printing to a network printer in Vista is now as easy as it
was in Linux about 3 years ago :-)

I can only conclude the following:

o - When Vista is the only Microsoft Windows Option for OEMs you will
begin to see an adoption of Linux that is higher than ever
o - Vista is the single largest step back I've ever seen Microsoft
take, largely because you have no choice.  ME was a choice, this
really isn't
o - If this is Premium I shudder to think what the poor bastards who
got Vista basic are going through
o - If you have to dual boot, hang onto Windows XP for as long as you
can.   
o - If you use Linux get ready for company, because a whole lot of
people are going to be coming our way :-)

I'm honestly thinking of seeing if I can get the project running
under Wine so I can truly take advantage of this new box.

Regards,

Aaron
0-0-0
"The Journey is the Reward" - Old Zen Buddhist Saying


 
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