The pricing for Windows 7 is out (in Off-topic)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8118749.stm

"In the UK the upgrade version of the Home Premium edition of Windows 7, available to those with an existing Windows license, will be ﾣ79.99.

By contrast buying this in a shop, and which can be installed on more than one machine, will cost ﾣ149.99."

If the American prices are similar, I will yet again stick with the crappy system I currently have.

If just to stick it to Microsoft for "forcing" me to pay for a better OS, one that Vista should have been.

Do you use XP or Vista?

I have vista on all but 1 computer I need for work. That has xp.

I really dislike vista, and loved xp.

so you can upgrade for fifty bucks for home premium? that is a very tempting price!

Considering all the problems I had with Vista, including some of my older programs not being compatible, they should give you the upgrade free of charge.

I already bought 1 iMac due to Vista's incompatibility, it likely will be the start of more Apple purchases given Microsofts excessive greed.

I will also be sticking with XP Pro. I've not seen a valid reason to switch to 7 yet.

And if I do switch operating systems any time in the near future, it will be to Fedora.

The strongest argument I've seen for Windows 7 (at least the 64bit version) is protection against exploitable buffer overflows. In that one aspect it's leading the pack (Mac and Linux included) in security.

What is that novice?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_buffer_overflow

Apparantly it's something that makes your head hurt to read about.

my new computer does have 64 bit vista, that is the reason i think the fifty bucks is very much a bargain.

I wouldn't bother switching from XP. From Vista though it's worth considering..

yeah, the only trouble with Vista is that old crap doesn't run it and it doesn't run old crap. duh?

no Vistax64 is great and I never had any troubles at all. Win7 is nice but the prices are to high just to abandon Vista for it. Nah when I build a new machine I'll probably get Win 7 then.

Why bother buying a new OS at any list price, when you'll get one at heavily discounted OEM price whenever you'll buy your new machine ?
:)
Not like you'd really have a choice anyway if you buy a new machine, the vast majority will come with Win7 installed, you'd have to search quite a bit to find one with anything else (of course, if you build it yourself from parts, you wouldn't have that problem).

Henk,

My work teleradiology program does not work on Vista.

It is not old crap, just worked well with XP and has not been updated to work on Vista.

I am quite a few other programs that are not Vista compatible.

Therefore my utter disdain for Microsoft and their forcing people to upgrade.

Ranger, you might want to consider Windows 7, one of the big things Microsoft announced just recently for Windows 7 is XP Mode, which is essentially the same as running an XP virtual machine on Windows 7, but with one notable difference.
      

"XPM does not require you to run the virtual environment as a separate Windows desktop."

also
      

"Before, Microsoft could claim that Windows 7 would be at least as compatible as Windows Vista. Now, they can claim almost complete Windows XP compatibility, or almost 100 percent compatibility with all currently running Windows applications."

-Source

Fexy,

Thanks, I may have to reconsider spending money for an upgrade, especially if my teleradiology program will work on Win7.

Novice, the only reason that Windows have the best security is that they are the ones in the most need of it. On my Mac i don't have any antivirus software because no one can be bothered to make a non-windows virus. :D

Also, for those interested, here's a video of someone using XPM in a beta of Windows 7: Video

That looks useful.

Nayab: that's what you want, no one looking for the buffer over flows that hit safari over and over again year after year. Just make sure you keep it updated!

ow btw Ranger if one program does not run with Vista it is not up to Microsoft to fix that but the publisher of that specific program.

And we are not to debate which OS is better.
That debate is easy everything work related XP
Everything else Vista/Win7

I'd keep XP around for the next 10 years if security updates kept being produced by Microsoft. For the every day user, not much has been changed since Win 95, and we are ''forced'' to pay stupid prices every couple of years for Transparent Windows! Better-looking Loading Screens! Yay!

I mean, come on. Last big update was Dos->Win 1.0

They are getting away with it because we are dumb. Oh, and because we are too busy drooling over the next iPod. (That still plays music, just like the first version. AWESOME!)

See, I never had a problem with Vista. I have a computer Science degree, and I do all sorts of bizarre things to my systems. I still used a lot of 16 bit programs, and I didn't even have a problem with those. Sometimes I think I'm the only person alive who didn't have a problem with it and heck... Even liked it.

However, I've been using the Windows 7 Release Candidate and... I'll be buying Windows 7 as soon as I am able. I just love it. Sure, there are some things I hate, but you just disable them. The new networking stuff is currently terrible, but maybe if everyone on your network uses Win7, it'll be great. Its designed to work with other Win7 PCs is all.

On my Mac i don't have any antivirus software because no one can be bothered to make a non-windows virus. :D
Being incompatible with a lot of stuff is hardly a feature. And this is what makes Windows necessary to have whether you like it or not, because all the software out there is written for it.

ow btw Ranger if one program does not run with Vista it is not up to Microsoft to fix that but the publisher of that specific program.
It's naive to think that every software publisher will release updates. Very specialized software hardly gets updated, and I imagine the program Ranger is referring to falls into that category.

I mean, come on. Last big update was Dos->Win 1.0
Hardly True.

For my teleradiology program to be Vista compatible, we would have to spend at least 150k in software upgrades and man hours of reprogramming our current system.

It is cheaper to have bought a few XP discs and keep them stored for when we need new computers.

So while it may be the publishers responsibility, it is often cheaper to not even bother.

What a way to run one of the biggest corporations? Give the public exactly what they did not want.

Which is why I am moving slowly to Apple.

Vista is utter garbage. The compatibility issues, the loss of control (and frustration of having to dig to find the ez things you could do with XP), the stupid warning messages that always pop up (are you sure you want windows to do this? are you sure? are you sure? are you sure? .... ya some un-PG times for sure). I hate it and was forced into it with my new comp. I will not even think about Win 7 until it has established itself.

Through school I can get a free copy of XP, I just found out, and was actually wondering if XP is still maintained through Windows update?

The thing that frustrates me the most is that most of peoples complaints (see Kevs post) can be solved by spending 2 minutes on google. You can disable those messages. Thats the very first thing I do when I install Vista. However.... Most of the people I know who I install Vista for actually ask me not to disable them so that they don't break anything.


R in Poutine.... have you USED Windows 95 recently? Seriously. Go try it and say that again. Dos to Windows 1.0 was NOT a big step. Windows 1 was a little program that had some lines that ran over the top of DOS. When Windows 1 came out, there were several programs that did the same thing that were more advanced. Windows 3.11 was barely anything more than that, it just did a LOT more and looked a LOT better. Very much similar to the XP to Vista thing. It's just that its less obvious to your layman what's changed between the two.

Anyway, Ranger. You might be surprised by Windows 7. At the very least its worth trying your specialty software in Windows 7 in XP compatibility mode before making major changes. The RC is still free to download from MS, I believe.

Well you just said it yourself Daz, and I've heard the same thing you don't want to do anything to brittle little vista or it will explode. I have tried changing settings and it has helped some, but I have spent more than 2 minutes on Google and that hasn't helped the bigger fish that Vista wants to fry.

I find it funny people can get frustrated thinking people didn't think of using Google. haha

For most of us laymen, Windows XP exactly what we need.

Windows Vista is a lot more advanced, and I personally have not used and likely will never use Vista's full potential.

For computer idoits like myself, Windows XP was great.

Now with all the compatibility issues with my old programs this is a lose situation with Vista.

Microsoft should have keep Vista and XP until they found a way to merge things like it appears they did in Win7.

XP did have the longest run between upgrades if I am not mistaken. It's funny the way technology is improving, yet the Windows OS can't even beat their own previous benchmarks.

I have had to help format 4 computers that have ran Vista for friends/family. XP...1. And that is when my backpack slipped and fell to the ground and my HP laptop cracked. Wish I had a Toughbook...

I did use 95 recently. I used it all the way through my Computer Science classes. And all I could do right now? I could do then.

Like I said, this applies to every day folks. Of course a power user will miss some features from the recent OS. That's not my point. Power users are never going to be affected as much as everyone else when forced to pay again and again for no reason. E-mail, the internet, instant messaging, word processing...you could do all this in Dos, and over Telnet. Only thing that has changed, REALLY changed is how good this all looks now.

And security. But I said that already.

As long as you are not a network manager, or someone who uses computers as a profession, you can be satisfied by any OS before Vista.

"As long as you are not a network manager, or someone who uses computers as a profession, you can be satisfied by any OS before Vista."

i could never be satisfied with windows me! ; )

Vista is to XP what ME was to Win98SE :)

Heh, windows ME was indeed a buggy mess. But I used it for five years still, I knew no better back then. It still served it's purpose :)

Being incompatible with things is absolutely, 100%, irrefutably the greatest thing that could ever possibly be the case in any reality if the system still does what you want it to do.

Being different, yet as effective, is probably about as efficient as any computing resource could hope to be. All the advantages of anonymity and cracker-obfuscation yet no disadvantages (again, assuming it meets user needs now and into the future).

Virtualization and multi-boot architectures stretch that adaptability even further. Want to play with vulnerable, common systems? Do it in the sandbox.

I would be very eager, almost rabid, in fact, for anyone to defy that logic.

And Ranger, be careful about when switching from one tyranny to another. I assure you, Apple will lock you in just as hard as fast when you least expect it. They'll do it elegantly, in a fashionable black turtleneck, but the path is the same.

Microsoft is getting better, if anything, because they have to. I'm not saying they are there yet, nor me there with them, but they are closer than they have been for the last decade.

We are finally getting some real competition, and that's good for us, for a change.

R in P, if you could do everything in Win95 that one can do in Win XP, then, well...you weren't doing very much. Try writing viable business software on Win95 without telling people to reboot every day. Twice. After that, just simply try running a business on it.

WinXP is sticking around because of that very fact. Businesses finally have something they can use, with more advanced server OSes filling gaps via SQL Server, Sharepoint, virtualization, etc. They never held onto Win95 that way.

And Vista does things about as well. It really does. It just didn't do enough to justify the upgrade costs. That's all.

When business speaks. It usually makes some sense. *smile*

If it doesn't support most of the software out there, it doesn't do what I want.

That 'if' you left is a big one for me personally, but yes others can be satisfied with software bundled with their OS.

Okay. Let me express my thoughts simply, this is only an example.

My concern is that, if she wants to continue being able to check her bank account balance, send me e-mail and play minesweeper, my grandmother is going to have to upgrade her OS eventually. In fact, as soon as support is dropped for her current one. Which is not very long after a new OS comes along. Failure to comply to this will leave her open to hijackings, viruses, all sorts of annoying crap. It will render her machine useless quite fast. It's the ''casual'' computer users that suffer from the stupidly fast rate at which new OSes come out. Not the ones who know what they are doing. These people will gladly take those extra characters they can use when naming files.
They will looove the new file systems. They will explode with joy when they find out about the new Raid options.

But E-mailing is E-mailing. It does not change much from OS to OS. Solitaire is still solitaire.

Some people really need their AutoCAD to work better and faster. Some really need their Photoshop to offer new options. But what about that guy who just wants to chat with his girlfriend? Or the student who has a computer only because he needs Wordpad? They get shafted every couple of years, when they need to needlessly ''upgrade''. For a huge number of folks, the new breed of Windows that comes out only adds useless eye-candy...at the cost of a hundred bucks or more. This is what irritates me.

Sickone, that was a gr8 analogy, :)

"They get shafted every couple of years"

windows xp was released in october 2001 i believe, and it is still being supported and likely will continue to be supported for at least a couple of years.

the people you speak of will likely not be building their own systems. the os they get with a computer will last for the life of that computer, unless someone did something silly like roll them back to an older os.

I guess folks who simply have to have the most applications will always have to do an analysis and decide which OS supports more (and then hope they are the _right_ applications) I've personally never understood exclusively using the "this runs more things, so I'll use that..." line of thinking, since there is no way to know it runs the "things" you need or will need. Testing is still going to be required for that.

OSX has now, easily, reached the "enough apps" stage of the game when starting from scratch in a home (or even home/business) environment. It reached that critical mass several years ago, especially since so many applications can now be served up virtually or via the Internet. Business apps, legacy-DOS apps, and other niche software still require Windows since they were developed back when Windows was the only game in town (pre-OSX Mac software was simply such a tiny marketshare that it was crazy to side-develop for it).

At this point, especially counting the fact that OSX can run just about anything Unix/X-based, it could be argued that it has just as many programs running on it as Windows. Heck, I still use xv (image viewer) on my Mac and it has workflow efficiencies I still haven't found anywhere else (except no official releases in 15 years *smile*) Anyone making new software at this point includes OSX either by using Java, web-based delivery, or a cross-platform development lib (if they are serious about moving units). So, we aren't just talking about the software bundled with the OS.

In summary, the "better just stick with the most common and backwards-compatible OS" viewpoint (that I only recently moved away from myself) isn't really necessary any more unless you know for a fact that a showstopper program only runs on a specific OS, and cannot be replaced for technical, training, or personnel reasons.

if you are going to go the upgrade route, you can pre order starting today. i believe that i read that they would have a limited number of these upgrades available.