Simple fix for what ails you in Vista

[Vigilante]

Moore's Law does in no way shape or form apply to software.
Hardware? sure
Software? not for a few more decades maybe..

Well I have tried both Vista Business and now that I have a lean mean
fighting machine I am now using Vista Ultimate. Except for a few changes
with
Windows Explorer that I'm still getting used to I have found it to be a
really good O/S.
If you remember back when Windows for Workgroups changed to Windows 95 there
were similar complaints which as we know in time were sorted out.
Some people say that Vista is slower than XP, but how quick can you blink?
If your old enough to remember DOS 3, DOS 4.01 and DOS 5 you would notice
that things these days are far better ( Except for ME of course ) lolol
Having spent over a year reading comments on this site the conclusion I come
to is either people have the wrong hardware or are too busy picking holes in
Vista that they miss what it can really do. Whether you believe in Moore's
Law or Murphy's Law or even Wang's Law ( Wangs Law says that Murphy is an
optimist ) Technology and software are at the stage where they are
continually outdoing each other and until that reaches a point where they
aren't competing against each other you will always have conflicts of one
sort or another.

 

[Vigilante]

Norton and your belief in it was the problem.
Nortons has always been 10x the trouble it was worth.
AVG or Avast!
Much more worthwhile. And free.

Hi Guys:
I was just browsing through to post a question when I came upon your
discussions. I have been running Vista since early in February and I find it
head and shoulders above XP. In fact, I switched to Vista because I had
reinstalled the XP O/S so many times that Microsoft finally shut me down.
The
reason for all the reinstallations was an internal XP problem related to SP2
and that junk AV software from Norton. After an initial attempt at
downloading SP2, my computer froze solid when Norton blew past my 'notify
before download' setting and started a download of an update at the same
time. Thereafter, I decided to ignore SP2 until Microsoft got their act
together and set both MS updates and Norton to 'notify before downloading'
I
might just as well have saved myself the trouble. Each one would take turns
kicking in and it would trigger the other one. That problem was a
Microsoft/Norton internal problem. With Vista, the problems come from
incompatibility with non-MS applications and that is the fault of the
software developers. The software has to be made compatible with the
O/S...not the other way around. In spite of what developers like the dolts
at
Nero think, the tail does not wag the dog. And yes, Vista has its problems,
but with over a million lines of code that is to be expected. And yes,
Microsoft is an arrogant, sloppy company when it comes to fixing glitches in
their system. But try i-Mac like I did and you'll be glad to get back to
Vista. i-Mac is a beautiful machine but, like Norton, their philosophy comes
straight from the Nazi handbook..."Your computer belongs to me and you vill
do it my vay or ve vill shut you down." A word of advice...don't trust any
updates from Microsoft except for Windows Defender. Don't download them
until
you check with "Ask Woody.com" where the updates are rigorously monitored
and
you can find out about any problems that other users are having before you
try to install them.
Regards gents
Powell

 

[xfile]

Very well said.

Aside from other issues that may or may not surface for using a new OS, it
never ceases to amaze me to see the logic of buying/upgrading all new
hardware and applications for an OS, and at the end of the day, people are
still using applications and hardware and NOT the OS for the majority of
work.

On the other hand, what would one miss out if taking out the new OS factor
from the above and still buying/upgrading the latest and greatest hardware
and applications? Well, I leave it for everyone's own answers.

For consumers, they(we) don't necessary need cost justifications, and as
long as one feels gratifications of any kind, that's good enough for
buying/using a product. But for convincing an OS is needed for productivity
and tangible benefits, the above logic isn't making any sense.

 

[Steve]

Vista is good but not great IMO. I don't think it is a huge improvement
over XP, but it does look nice and it does seem to load faster (at least for
me) at start-up.

The issues I have with Vista are...

The search feature is horrible IMO. It works like old people screw, slow
and inconsistent.

I always liked the powertoy sendto that added the sendto any file or folder
command to the right click menu. Would have liked this included in a new
improved OS since it certainly improved the old one.

Most of the time I have to shut down and restart Software Licensing to be
able to get to my control panel, or use my printer, or even acces Windows
Update after I start-up my PC. I know I am far from the only person with
this trouble and it is anoying as hell. I certainly think it should have
been fixed by now, or better yet working out of the box.

Takes a very long time to shut down. Not sure why that is, but it is a
timed fact on my system.

Internet Explorer is slower all the time and crawls on occasion (Don't have
this trouble with XP on the same sites at the same time). If I do a restart
then IE works fine again.

But in the grand scheme of things that is a short list of problems that are
mostly just annoying.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Hi Mike,

Has IBM figured out for why they lost PC OS battle to MS?

Or, why they eventually had to sell PC business to its OEM/subcontractor
which is the biggest joke in PC history?

Did you help the company same way as you are helping MS now?

IBM lost the OS battle because OS/2 required MCA machines if one was to get
the best from it. Windows won out because it didn't. It was loose enough to
run on just about anything at all. The final nail for the OS/2/MCA
partnership came from Intel with the introduction of PCI. It gave all of the
advantages of MCA, but on a cheap affordable x86 platform.

IBM persisted with MCA even after the death of the MCA PC. MCA continued to
survive in the RS6000s. IBM wanted the PC, RS6000, AS400 to work together,
but each part was hugely expensive to buy and to maintain. Make no mistake,
these old machines were tough as all hell. You could drop them from a second
storey window and they would still work. The RS6000 workgroup servers could
be used as extra seating, or parking lot barriers and you could power them
up and they would still work, but at a price that most could not afford.

If you take both side covers off of a modern PC to do maintenance, the case
carcass twists to the point where you have to reseat everything before
putting the final cover back on, or suffer blue screens, but it costs only
$$$, not $$$$$$.

The IBM PC business was a small part of what they did, and they could not
compete with the cheap clones. IBM made a few mistakes over the years but
dumping the PC business was not one of them.

Companies like IBM, Microsoft and Intel are needed in this world. They may
make mistakes, and they may not always appear to be customer oriented, but
they are big enough to set and maintain standards. Only a virtual monopoly
can ensure that whatever you buy, no matter which part of the world, it will
still work for almost everybody. Yes, the few get rich doing it, but look at
the benefits to the rest of us.

Some examples (there are many others).. people all over the world can hook
up and play the same game, be it World of Warcraft, Age of Empires, Combat
FS 3. The pilot could be Australian, an American tail gunner, a South
African bomb aimer. The 'enemy' could be a fighter squadron made up of a
Brazilian, Canadian, Brit, Norwegian etc. Imagine trying to do this if the
pilot was using a BBC 'B', the tail gunner using a TRS-80, and the bomb
aimer using an Altair!!! How would the fighter squadron fair against such
odds when using a motley collection of Eagles, Dragon 32's and Atari
2600's!! They wouldn't even get off of the ground.

We can send documents, greetings cards, talk in chat, watch PowerPoint
shows, all kinds of things, and all courtesy of IBM, Microsoft and Intel.
Linux rides on the platform established by the big three. Without them,
there would be no Linux.

I didn't do software support for IBM, although I had to know about it, how
to use it. I was in hardware support for RS6000 and latterly PC
servers/workstations, training wannabe technicians etc..

Do you know why the Spanish adopted broad gauge railroads? I will tell you.
It was to prevent French rolling stock from gaining free entry on the rails.
In the event that France might want to invade, they would have to use
convertible rail cars or get off and commandeer a Spanish train. Of course,
when Spain realized that France wasn't going to invade, the difference in
gauges became a stumbling block, and Spain then had to go to great expense
in adopting the international 'Brit' standard gauge or suffer being cut off
from the rest of Europe.

When the Channel Tunnel opened, the track gauge was the same on both sides,
but the power supplied to overhead catenaries wasn't, and still isn't.
Special power cars have to be used that can quickly switch from one to the
other. This is what comes of everybody doing their own thing.

IBM were the rails, Microsoft was the power supply, Intel was the catenary
system. What they set up enables us to go anywhere, even if we don't always
know quite where we are.

 

[xfile]

IBM lost the OS battle because OS/2 required MCA machines if one was to

get the best from it. Windows won out because it didn't. It was loose
enough to run on just about anything at all. The final nail for the
OS/2/MCA partnership came from Intel with the introduction of PCI. It gave
all of the advantages of MCA, but on a cheap affordable x86 platform.

IBM persisted with MCA even after the death of the MCA PC. MCA continued
to survive in the RS6000s. IBM wanted the PC, RS6000, AS400 to work
together, but each part was hugely expensive to buy and to maintain. Make
no mistake, these old machines were tough as all hell. You could drop them
from a second storey window and they would still work. The RS6000
workgroup servers could be used as extra seating, or parking lot barriers
and you could power them up and they would still work, but at a price that
most could not afford.

In short, IBM disregarded the market demand and trends and persisted on its
own standards and wishes and hoped the world would have changed for it.

I was not talking about technology and product developments, I was referring
to your mindset and attitudes as trained by the company and as to why it
lost despite it had/has more than enough talents and resources.

For the railroad analogy, we could also discuss for why public
transportations in general are more popular and easier to be adopted in
Europe than in the states and it would be good for Linux vs. Mac. vs.
Windows, but it is not a good example for why IBM lost both battles,
especially for PC business.

IBM were the rails, Microsoft was the power supply, Intel was the catenary
system. What they set up enables us to go anywhere, even if we don't
always know quite where we are.

IBM was not the rails; it was the railroad company owing everything. Don't
get it wrong though, I still have many close personal (keyword: personal)
friends who are still serving at IBM and have nothing against the company.
But the fact is, it lost two battles which it should never ever happen.

 

[the wharf rat]

IBM lost the OS battle because OS/2 required MCA machines if one was to get
the best from it.

What makes you say that? OS/2 ran (and runs) fine on any old
486 witha vesa bus.

IBM lost a marketing war. Technologically they were as far ahead
of Windows as, well, Unix was... 1/2

 

[Tom Lake]

IBM lost the OS battle because OS/2 required MCA machines if one was to

get the best from it. Windows won out because it didn't. It was loose
enough to run on just about anything at all. The final nail for the
OS/2/MCA partnership came from Intel with the introduction of PCI. It gave
all of the advantages of MCA, but on a cheap affordable x86 platform.

OS/2 ran just as well on ISA bus machines as on MCA machines although the
public didn't know that.
Two problems OS/2 had were that IBM insisted on 16-bit 80286 compatibility
even though it was clear that the 80386 32-bit chip was far superior and was
going to totally replace the '286 in new machines. The second problem was
that
MS changed its mind about supporting OS/2 and instead put its resources into
its Windows Presentation Manager. It's rather ironic. Originally Windows
was
planned as a gentle intro to OS/2 but it turned out to blow the more
sophisticated
OS away!

Tom Lake

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

OS/2 ran just as well on ISA bus machines as on MCA machines although the
public didn't know that.
Two problems OS/2 had were that IBM insisted on 16-bit 80286 compatibility
even though it was clear that the 80386 32-bit chip was far superior and
was
going to totally replace the '286 in new machines. The second problem was
that
MS changed its mind about supporting OS/2 and instead put its resources
into
its Windows Presentation Manager. It's rather ironic. Originally Windows
was
planned as a gentle intro to OS/2 but it turned out to blow the more
sophisticated
OS away!

Tom Lake

IBM were too busy trying to sell a 'business solution' and the solution as
they saw it was OS/2 running on expensive machinery controlled entirely by
them. Yes, it had to be backward compatible and it had to fit into the IBM
big picture. This was the direction IBM wanted to go, but nobody at the time
knew where any of it was going to go or how successful it would all become.
IBM were streets ahead, but who could afford to travel them? Personally, I
think that IBM were too stuck with the 'image' of the complete business
solution.

Bill Gates' vision of the future was different to that of IBM. He saw the
personal computer pervading all aspects of life (Windows for washing
machines?), but to do that, it had to be cheap and cheerful, loose enough to
run on anything, regardless of whether it was exactly manufactured or thrown
together by a geek kid.

Steve Jobs says that Microsoft has no class, and maybe he is right, but if
you want to produce a product that will have universal appeal, will work and
be affordable to virtually everybody, Microsoft definitely have the edge.

I don't look at who made how much. I don't care that some became
millionaires. I look at what the effort of all of the pioneers of computing
have brought me and millions of others. I can 'talk' to my friends in
Melbourne Australia in real time. I can go to war without killing a single
soul. I can produce a greetings card without some sickly verse which nobody
would believe I actually meant anyway. I can type a letter to somebody which
has my current address on it, not the address I lived when I asked the print
shop to supply me with pre-printed letterheads (but I don't need 1000!!!!)

What does it matter the name of a companies which made it possible, only the
fact that it is possible..

 

[DanS]

Norton and your belief in it was the problem.
Nortons has always been 10x the trouble it was worth.

Not 'always'. When it was still Norton, it was still a good product. When
it because Symantec, that was when the problems started.

 

[the wharf rat]

IBM were too busy trying to sell a 'business solution' and the solution as
they saw it was OS/2 running on expensive machinery controlled entirely by

Nope.

It was simple incompetence in their marketing department: "OS/2
is a superior technical solution. Of course people will buy it."

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

What makes you say that? OS/2 ran (and runs) fine on any old
486 witha vesa bus.

IBM lost a marketing war. Technologically they were as far ahead
of Windows as, well, Unix was... 1/2

IBM weren't interested in running OS/2 on anything but PS/2's. They held
with the desire to supply a complete IBM solution which included an IBM OS
for their own PC's. Everything had to be IBM: machines, cables, printers,
networks, keyboards, mice, memory.

If you installed OS/2 onto an IBM PC, it all worked well. Not necessarily
true if installed on a non-IBM machine, but IBM were short sighted.

IBM thought that they were the big picture and pressed on with their own
thing, ostensibly oblivious to what everybody else was doing. Their stuff
was good but hideously expensive, and they ended up pricing themselves out.
The world and his dog wanted a complete solution which could be afforded,
and in the end plumped for a 'flying in loose formation' solution which
could do the same as IBM but at a cost which could be better justified.

BG aimed at the cheap market. It was more in line with his view that
computers would eventually be a part of normal everyday life.

Who was right?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

3.11 and NT were coexistant. 3.11 was replaced by 95 (3.11 was
just 3.1 with networking...)

It's just a obsolete bit of trivia, but that's not correct. Windows
3.11 was Windows 3.1 with support for diskless workstations and some
extra drivers (previously available separately) bundled into it.
Microsoft called Windows 3.11 a "refresh" release.

Windows for *Workgroups* 3.11 (which is *not* the same as Windows
3.11) is what you are thinking of--Windows 3.1 with networking
capability added.

 

[xfile]

I am glad you see it, and that is the reason for my questions.

MS came a long way for what it is today, and in my eyes, it earned it. But
no one can guarantee if tomorrow will be the same.

When I challenged you, Jupiter Jones, and a few others (except fanboy), I
was trying to remind you for not taking what MS has accomplished for
granted. When one is being poisoned by the success, failure will come in no
time.

I am just like you that wouldn't care who became billionaires and appreciate
what technologies have brought to us, and precisely for the same reason, we
don't want innovation to stop, and need to consistently push providers to
exceed their limits.

IBM is a great and respectful company and its R&D capability on worldwide
scale is second to none. I learn from both success and failure cases, and
in the case of failure, it is for not to repeat the same mistakes, not for
insulting others or anything like that.

Thank you for your patience and happy holidays.

 

[DarkSentinel]

IBM lost the OS battle because OS/2 required MCA machines if one was to
get the best from it. Windows won out because it didn't. It was loose
enough to run on just about anything at all. The final nail for the
OS/2/MCA partnership came from Intel with the introduction of PCI. It gave
all of the advantages of MCA, but on a cheap affordable x86 platform.

Mike, OS/2 ran extremely well on my 486/33, which was all 16bit ISA if I
remember correctly. What killed OS/2 was Microsoft. OS/2 ran the Win 3.1
stuff better than THEY did. MS kept putting out "patches" that broke OS/2's
support. Another blunder was since it DID run the Win3.1 stuff so well, they
was very little development for native apps. One of Linux's problems btw.

IMO OS/2 was way ahead of it's time. Would update file links on the fly,
first with pre-emptive instead cooperative multitasking, ran all the 16bit
on a separate VDM. To name the few that I remember...

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Mike, OS/2 ran extremely well on my 486/33, which was all 16bit ISA if I
remember correctly. What killed OS/2 was Microsoft. OS/2 ran the Win 3.1
stuff better than THEY did. MS kept putting out "patches" that broke
OS/2's support. Another blunder was since it DID run the Win3.1 stuff so
well, they was very little development for native apps. One of Linux's
problems btw.

IMO OS/2 was way ahead of it's time. Would update file links on the fly,
first with pre-emptive instead cooperative multitasking, ran all the 16bit
on a separate VDM. To name the few that I remember...

IBM were and are quite capable of killing their own stuff off without any
help from others.

 

[DarkSentinel]

IBM were and are quite capable of killing their own stuff off without any
help from others.

Very true, but in this case, what I said is true. I used OS/2, and I
remember what happened..

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Very true, but in this case, what I said is true. I used OS/2, and I
remember what happened..

I remember what happened too. In IBM, OS/2 was dropped from workstations in
favour of Windows 2000 and Lotus Notes. We were all given a version of OS/2
Warp, but none of us knew what we were going to do with it. Selling it was
out of the question. Nobody wanted it.

 

[DarkSentinel]

I remember what happened too. In IBM, OS/2 was dropped from workstations
in favour of Windows 2000 and Lotus Notes. We were all given a version of
OS/2 Warp, but none of us knew what we were going to do with it. Selling
it was out of the question. Nobody wanted it.

I remember. It's a damn shame too. It always bugs me that things that
actually work get left behind in lieu of things that don't.