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article [bloomberg.com]
Microsoft Corp. is selling its new Windows Vista operating system for $100 to $399 and will make the program available on Jan. 30, according to Amazon.com Inc.'s Web site.
These are the Vista prices according to Amazon:
Vista Home Basic
Vista Home Premium
Vista Business
Vista Ultimate
[winsupersite.com...]
A long time ago--I mean, like two and a half years ago--I was secreted into a room on the Microsoft campus for my first Longhorn demo. At that time, Longhorn was still the Kitchen Sink (tm) of computing, promising to deliver every single bit of technology you could imagine, all wrapped around a Flash-like UI that was based on Anark technology. It all looked really impressive.I have yet to see anything like that materialize in an actual Longhorn/Vista build.
Since then, Windows Vista has been defanged somewhat, and while the early Aero Glass demos I saw seemed to raise the OS at least to Mac OS X levels visually, they didn't really go much beyond that. I was told to wait and see, wait and see, and promised that things would get better. Instead, things got much worse. In mid-2004, Microsoft halted Longhorn development, restarted the project using the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) code base, and componentized the core of the system before adding back much of the work other teams at the software giant had already completed.
Looks like about 399 reasons to keep running XP
Vista build 5536, that had limited release last Friday, apparently has fixed a majority of bugs and is extremely close to what one would expect from a release candidate for this OS. I'm looking forward to giving it a try if I can get my hands on it.
I, for one, will upgrade.
I will too, but will probably wait about 6 months for Service Pack 1 ;)
- 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.
- 1 GB of system memory.
- Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)
Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel.
- 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
- DVD-ROM Drive.
- Audio output capability.
- Internet access capability.
Mack.
Now the whole "What version is for me" question is very blurred.
Microsoft Corp. is selling its new Windows Vista operating system for $100 to $399 and will make the program available on Jan. 30, according to Amazon.com Inc.'s Web site.
And pigs will fly. Expect at least a few months delay.
Meanwhile I hear you can get Ubuntu Linux for... $0.00!
One thing to note about the different kinds of Vista available. Apparently the basic one won't offer the Aero fancy graphics. So you've got to pay more to get that. A word comes to mind beginning with b that also means fatherless children...
[edited by: Hester at 9:01 am (utc) on Aug. 30, 2006]
Vista build 5536 [...] apparently has fixed a majority of bugs
Without wishing to break any NDA agreements, I can confirm that this statement is definitely NOT true. 5536 is better than earlier builds, but you'd expect that wouldn't you?
There are various ways that MSFT remove bugs from their "To Do" list, some of the current favourites appear to be:
"By design"
"Won't fix"
"Can't repro"
...
you get my drift :-)
I'm buying me a new computer as soon as it comes out..must..have..more...power..
As with every other OS upgrade from MSFT in past, you do NOT get better performance by upgrading. You get more features, but at the end of day you need more raw horsepower to deliver the same perceived performance.
In essence, Vista crawls along on hardware on which Windows XP runs OK.
If you purchase new hardware in order to run Vista, I would encourage you to give XP a try on the same hardware before making your decision which OS to use.
I will too, but will probably wait about 6 months for Service Pack 1 ;)
<<<<<<<<<
I think I will wait for service pack 2
"I have been reading up on the licensing issues quite a lot lately and I think Microsoft have gone out of their way to make things overly complicated. XP was fine you have two choices, Home or Professional. This made it perfectly clear. Now the whole "What version is for me" question is very blurred."
Expect at least a few months delay
Nope - they'll have it out on schedule though I don't think adoption will be up to their expectations.
The really interesting stuff is going to happen in the courts - I predict a Google v Microsoft suit the day after Vista launches - as Vista will be the last major chance for MS to make big trouble for Google.
With the caveat that I do not even own a Macintosh nor would I have my employees use one (only because the best software is written for PCs) have you noticed how every new release of Mac OS gives you more features with less overhead requirement?
You can run MAC OSX on a 10 year old Mac!
I mean have you seen the memory and speed requirements for Vista? OMG! You couldn't run Vista on a Pentium 3.
The code is getting fatter, more hungry for CPU and Memory and it's going to be bug ridden as usual.
However, I still haven't got a clue which version I'll need for playing games on. I'll be disabling all the fancy GUI features and un-needed services as soon as it's installed for performance reasons. Hopefully I'll only need Home Edition, but you never know with Microsoft, maybe they'll limit Home to machines with just 1GB of RAM or 1 processor core.
I'll stick with XP for my laptops as they'll slow to a crawl with Vista and it's not easy to upgrade them.
I'm stick with Windows 2003 for my servers, and evaluate the new Windows Server OS when they announce details.
For desktops, I'll be sticking with Ubuntu. It's just much quicker to get desktop work done with Ubuntu, Windows just adds extra licencing costs and far too much maintenence.
[edited by: mrMister at 3:38 pm (utc) on Aug. 31, 2006]
A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC includes at least:- 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.
- 1 GB of system memory.
- Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)
Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel.
- 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
- DVD-ROM Drive.
- Audio output capability.
- Internet access capability.
This would be from the same company that told us Windows XP Pro needed only a 233MHz processor and 64MB of RAM?
[microsoft.com...]
;-)
And why Vista cost twice more expensive than XP?
With the caveat that I do not even own a Macintosh nor would I have my employees use one (only because the best software is written for PCs)
The best software? You mean Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, etc? Have you even looked at all the great Mac-only programs you get free with OS X? Or can buy from Apple?
What you really mean is "Windows has a larger user base, so more software (not necessarily better) gets written for it."
Maybe you could clarify what this "better" software is. :)
A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC includes at least:
- 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.
- 1 GB of system memory.
- Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)
Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel.
- 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
- DVD-ROM Drive.
- Audio output capability.
- Internet access capability.
Dont even bother trying with a computer with those specs.
It barely runs on my PC with 2GB RAM and a Dual Core 4800+ AMD
My wife needs Windows for Quickbooks but otherwise doesn't need Win. Too bad Quickbooks isn't on Linux or an equivalent business accounting package.
I have to use Windows for my stockbroker's software but I just gave him notice I'm dumping him for that reason alone. Otherwise, I'm totally on FreeBSD (and loving it!). I just have no use for Windows.
