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[FalconFour]

Here is a reply I sent to someone here that had basically told me I'm an idiot for hating Vista, and that all new computers can't run anything but Vista. I'll supplement it with sources and whatnot as well.
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ALL COMPUTERS have the option to use XP. Microsoft just SHOVES Windows Vista down peoples' throats because they are DESPERATE to CONTROL more users. Look at my sig, I have a brand new computer by anyone's standards, and I am proud to run Windows XP. Also, everyone has downgrade rights for Vista, so if you have Vista, you can illegally download XP and use it legally - call up MS, tell them you have a Vista key, and you're good to go.

XP is FAR FAR FAR more reliable, stable, compatible, faster, less bloated (BY FAR!!), customizable, tested, proven, and ANYTHING ELSE that makes an OS great. The fault of having configuration problems in XP is not due to XP. It's due to you or your software.

There are things in Vista that can only make Vista be considered the world's first spyware operating system! It's designed from the ground up to be a consumer control OS. It has functions at the core to monitor what is being shown on your screen and if it's "acceptable" or "licensed". The endless yes/no confirmation popups asking YOU if THE COMPUTER can do something are an ironic front to THE COMPUTER asking ITSELF if YOU can do something.

And have you looked at your hard drive usage lately? XP uses about 1.5gb tops. Vista, 15gb at a minimum. What does it do with all that wasted space?! It just consumes it! Microsoft has thrown away anything by the way of space conservation or efficiency. They waste 15mb of space writing a "Hello World" program in their new programming languages. They figure, because that space is there, they should use it! And what of Trusted Computing? Making sure that illegal use of software can be traced back to the computer it's running on? Yes, only Vista supports that new little identification and encryption chip, and if Microsoft gets a foothold in the market with Vista (which smart people like me are trying to break), they'll be able to require everyone uses it, making it so everyone can be ID'd, tracked, and prosecuted for even looking the wrong way at a copyright symbol.

So you like using Vista? It's got a shiny interface, right? Well, if it's just the shiny interface that matters to you, and not what goes on at the core, you might as well give all your money to the government, work for the government, get your house from the government, buy your food from the government... because living is all that matters, right?
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Source about the tracking chip - it's called the TPM or Trusted Platform Module, wikipedia, BBC story explaining why it's BAD BAD BAD.
Source about Vista controlling what you watch and how - a HUGE article about Vista's DRM internals: A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection, an article by Peter Gutmann, cryptographic genius and general know-it-all.

And all you really need to do is look around at all the problems people are having with Vista, and you'll see why it's nothing but BAD for EVERYONE. It's almost exactly like 1984, the book/movie. Where does Microsoft want YOU to go today?

Discuss.

[Pwntastic]

I think Vista is a pretty cool guy, eh looks cool and doesn't afraid of anything.

[UnknownAssassinX]

I think Vista is a pretty cool guy, eh looks cool and doesn't afraid of anything.

I think meme is a pretty cool guy. eh is funny and doesn't afraid of anything.

[Aleksei Vasiliev]

ALL COMPUTERS have the option to use XP. Also, everyone has downgrade rights for Vista, so if you have Vista, you can illegally download XP and use it legally - call up MS, tell them you have a Vista key, and you're good to go.

Wrong. Many pre-built computers do NOT have the option to go with Windows Vista.
The downgrade rights only applies to Vista Business and Vista Ultimate. None of the others, which most users will have, include downgrade rights.

XP is FAR FAR FAR more reliable, stable, compatible, faster, less bloated (BY FAR!!), customizable, tested, proven, and ANYTHING ELSE that makes an OS great. The fault of having configuration problems in XP is not due to XP. It's due to you or your software.

This only applies now. Windows XP is being phased out, and manufacturers will stop writing drivers and providing updates for XP eventually (years from now).

There are things in Vista that can only make Vista be considered the world's first spyware operating system! It's designed from the ground up to be a consumer control OS. It has functions at the core to monitor what is being shown on your screen and if it's "acceptable" or "licensed".

Yeah, pretty much.

And have you looked at your hard drive usage lately? XP uses about 1.5gb tops. Vista, 15gb at a minimum.

My C:\WINDOWS folder is using 9GB.
I am using XP Pro SP2.
Vista requires 15GB of free space, I'm not sure it uses all of that.

And what of Trusted Computing?

Currently, it is only used to encrypt your hard drive to prevent physical thieves from getting access to your data.


I hate Vista, and I'm not planning to upgrade to it, but your arguments are not all correct.

By the way:
Mainstream support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 will end on April 14, 2009, four years after its general availability. As per Microsoft's posted timetable, the company will stop licensing Windows XP to OEMs and terminate retail sales of the operating system June 30, 2008, 17 months after the release of Windows Vista.

[FalconFour]

Support will end and nobody will care. I've never relied on Microsoft support anyway. Never called their tech support, never needed to, although the lack of activation support (if that expires too) will just make me have to go "illegal" on them. So will millions of other computer users, because nobody is buying Vista for their XP computers.

I guess you're right about downgrade rights (source: link), I just didn't read it right. However, nobody says you had to downgrade using your downgrade "rights" - you can always download XP and slap it on there (on your own head I guess, but who cares anyway?), or go to eBay and buy an OEM copy of XP Home or Pro and use that. The fact still remains that any computer can run XP... I would say "just as well as Vista", but that would be insulting to XP - any computer that runs Vista *WILL* run XP 100 times better.

As for your folder size, there is something run amok in your Windows folder. You should download something like TreeSize Pro (jam-software.com) to determine the problem there. There is no excuse for a Windows folder that big in XP. Hotfix uninstallers and service pack uninstallers (both things that should be removed regularly) don't even make up that big a folder, to date. My folder is, at this moment, only 2.82gb (and even I need to go through and figure out what's making that so big!).

(edit: Ah, it's my Windows Installer cache (430MB), and saved print documents (361MB). I'm sure there's more junk I can cut off there too... but Windows Installer was the start of the unbelievable crap that Microsoft would build into Vista... seriously, why would an installer need to read the original installer disk in order to UNINSTALL itself? Only Microsoft...)

[Aleksei Vasiliev]

"Support will end and nobody will care."
After mainstream support ends in 2009, only security updates will be released. Nothing else.

"As for your folder size, there is something run amok in your Windows folder."
I forgot to uninstall Electric Sheep after I stopped using it. I fixed that, and now my Windows directory is 3.94GB. 1.1GB of which are installer files. I don't want to remove those; see below.

"Windows Installer was the start of the unbelievable crap that Microsoft would build into Vista... seriously, why would an installer need to read the original installer disk in order to UNINSTALL itself?"
From my experience, this is caused by corrupted/non-existent install logs. I've had this problem on games before.

[FalconFour]

Actually, I've found that if you remove files from that "Installer" folder at all (which are, in fact, the original installation .msi files), you'll have to provide it with the installation disc. Not only does Windows Installer add a huge amount of bloat to the Windows registry, it also makes a duplicate of itself in the Windows folder. InstallShield does the same sort of thing. It also makes cryptic shortcuts that are easily broken and corrupted, and doesn't leave any recognizable log trail to clean itself up in case of failure. It's the worst possible way to code an application and it's the way Microsoft has been heading for years. Now they've built an entire OS on worst-possible coding practices, and made it look pretty so people don't care about the unbelievable clusterf*ck that's going on under the hood.

Long live NSIS.

[FalconFour]

Also, years from now, when support for XP will inevitably stop, I honestly do hope there is a reasonable replacement. In order for that to happen, though, people need to stop using Vista, to send a message to Microsoft and the big corporations that people will not tolerate being treated like pawns, buying ever-increasingly powerful hardware just to cope with their horrible coding practices, or to be able to play obscenely DRM-protected purchased content. We should take back control over our media and our computers and refuse to let what we see and hear be controlled by content providers. The only way we can do that is to refuse adoption of the key component in the DRM Disaster, Windows Vista.

I don't think the replacement is going to be Linux either. Linux is too much a server-oriented OS and almost all applications are written for the Windows platform. I don't know if MS will ever be willing to step backwards and rethink their OS strategy. If someone ever comes up with a good alternative to Windows that actually runs all the same things that Windows does, it'll be a huge hit, but it'll never get anywhere because Microsoft has the death-grip on the computer industry. Manufacturers won't trust any other developer, and hence, no developer will ever get anywhere in the hardware department, meaning they won't get anywhere at all.

I don't know how the computer industry is going to get out of this Vista mess other than getting Microsoft themselves to change their ways. That is the challenge we've got to face. By sticking with XP, I'm both making my computing experience better, while at the same time being just one more user that's sending that message.

[Pwntastic]

Double posts, they are not advised.

[ddwagnz]

personally i haven't used Vista, but have heard many things about it, Ive seen it running on my mates computer, and personally,
Its just a make-over release, i don't want to waste a few hundred dollars on an OS that requires so much of your system's resources to just run it! why bother upgrading your PC when you can get almost the same stuff on Linux, at $0.00...
but that's just my opinion

[Aleksei Vasiliev]

"If someone ever comes up with a good alternative to Windows that actually runs all the same things that Windows does"

That is impossible without being just as bugged as Windows.

[Rakielis]

having used vista for nearly a year, i completely disagree.  and the funny thing is, your arguments are the same as those that XP faced when it first came out. 

ive found vista to be more functional, faster, and less problematic than XP ever was.  however, just like any other OS, tweaks must be made if you want things to run perfectly for you.  for XP, there are no programs that do a lot of this for you.  with OSX and Linux, you have to download a bunch of stuff to add what you want it to do, but with vista, you have to turn stuff off.  while its true that most mainstream people dont have the computer intelligence to turn this stuff off, those same people dont know there are other things you can download to add features to their current OSs.  ive met many people that didnt even realize there was something other than Internet Explorer. 

yes, vista uses up a lot more ram....but have you ever inspected as to what its doing?

its a feature known as super prefetch.  and the longer you use the computer the more accurate and faster it becomes.  what it does, is it pre-loads materials for programs you use often, before you open them.  if RAM isnt being used, its being wasted.  if the RAM is ever needed, it will clear out the prefect files as necessary.  the more ram you have, the more its going to prefetch.

btw - my vista install (sans my installed programs) is only 11 gb, and i have vista ultimate.  also: "XP uses about 1.5gb tops" is crazy.  it always went over 5 gb on first install.  i would usually give it 15 or 20 gbs and i could quickly put it in danger of filling up once i had used the OS for a few weeks. 

XP has terrible registry problems, Vista doesnt.  this is noticable because XP degrades rather badly, but vista has stayed clean and smooth.  only reason ive had to restart my whole install, is cause i got a whole new computer.  i had some bsod errors, but that was cause one of my ram sticks went bad and no OS would work no matter what it was (cause i tried quite a few lol)

XP is stable now, but it was AWFUL when it launched, vista stabilized rather quickly (read: about 2 months). 

lets not over look the completely re-written sound kernel that makes having a high quality sound card almost completely unnecessary while XP is using the EXACT same sound kernel as windows 95.

having to work on XP at work, i can honestly say that i dont miss it at all.  programs lock up MUCH more often on XP, especially when they are intense applications(such as graphics work).  sure, every now and then a program will "lock" in vista...but it will unlock almost right away, and if it DOES lock, it quits when i tell it to quite (much unlike in XP where you tell it to end and its just like lol no wai).

i also have a friend who had Vista, then went back to XP cause he complained about the same stuff you guys are about how its slower blah blah blah and came back just a few days later and was like "i was wrong, vista is indeed a better OS"

fact of the matter is, i use vista and i will never go back to XP.

[Pwntastic]

I completely agree with Rakielis. Entirely. Having used vista ultimate since it was released, i have come to the same conclusions.

[FalconFour]

Goddamnit! Why do I have to be the experienced, knowledgeable one here? I've got this civic duty to de-bullshitize the entire internet, and I'm only one person. Why does God hate me? Why can't there be more intelligent people out there that can help me out? Worst of all, since I'm the only one here that actually understands these things, I appear to be the deluded, egomaniacal lunatic that goes around imposing his opinions on people. Sigh...

Okay, I guess I'll take this one from the top. I'll need my keyboard on my lap for this one... *moves* *opens another copy of the reply*

I can't believe I have to debunk this entire post, every word of it, because it's entirely false. Usually there are some truths and I admit my faults, but this one is just pure bullshit - the unfortunate problem is, it's the same bullshit almost all users of Vista believe. First, the statement that "you bitched about the same thing with all previous versions of windows!" is a huge half truth. TRUE that there was a lot of outcry over all previous versions of Windows. FALSE that it was about the "same things". Previous versions of Windows had the bloat problem well in hand, Windows seems to grow almost exponentially. We've almost taken that for granted now. But in the past, there were reasons for it - great new functionality like a greatly improved interface at the core, like back/forward navigation in folders, smart Start menu, things like that. With Vista, the bloat is unfounded, it comes from unnecessarily bloated runtimes and multiple copies of everything, sloppy coding and sloppy file management, 150 different languages all installed at the same time, crap NOBODY but the special 1% of the world actually need (like speech recognition)... all sorts of crap that already exists in various incarnations in Windows XP, just with a different name or face. Where the similarities in complaints end is with the complaints about Microsoft and the Hollywood relationship. NEVER BEFORE has Windows been so intrusive in making sure you're looking at, or hearing, what Microsoft and the big Hollywood companies want you to watch, when they want you to watch it. Never before has Windows been so intrusive in monitoring what you look at and enabling companies to track you down if they don't like what you're doing. Microsoft makes it all possible with Vista - all possible for Big Brother. Debunk that. I went over it in finer detail earlier in my posts.

Vista hides all its tweaks in the same way that XP does, in the "control panels" that nobody ever wants to touch. XP automatically reduced the quality of things to try to make things faster and blah, blah, blah, but Vista can't "reduce" low enough to even become near as fast as XP is out of the box. I deal with Vista on an all too occurring basis, and the most prominent complaint is "Damn my computer is slow!". You know why? Because Microsoft forces manufacturers to install Vista on a computer with 512mb RAM, which is barely enough to even run XP comfortably. It's no wonder it takes Vista 2 or 3 minutes to bring up a folder window. It's too busy "Supercaching" everything it thinks will come in handy - in memory intended to be used FOR THOSE PROGRAMS. The PF Usage graph in Task Manager is a perfect indicator of how much actual memory is being used, at the moment, outside of system caching and other dynamic uses. In Vista, it is way beyond an acceptable norm, usually in the 1gb area just out of booting. In XP, it's around 200-ish MB or less, leaving plenty of room for programs to actually be loaded. And in XP, if you aren't using too much memory (which most people aren't, with modern RAM amounts), you can completely disable hard disk-based memory (the page file) and Windows will absolutely scream with performance. I've been using my computer like that for at least the past 3 years.

Super Prefetch is just a fancy term to describe an extension to something XP already does - use the unused RAM for caching and preloading. Windows NT has done that ever since Windows 2000 (even earlier, maybe, I'm not sure about NT4). It always uses unclaimed RAM for disk cache, and XP adds prefetching (loading common programs). It increases with the more RAM you have. At all times, all RAM is always in use somehow. It's nothing new in Vista. ReadyBoost is just a way to compensate for Vista's horrible performance and memory consumption, shoving some cache off to the easily-destroyed flash memory instead of keeping it in the now-stretched memory. It's absolutely ridiculous that Microsoft would choose to use a flash device for their "cache", since Flash memory has a limited number of write cycles, and is generally ill-suited for rapid write scenarios. Instead of using a faster external hard drive, they choose to use a flash drive, probably because it has the incorrect public appearance of being a solid state device, therefore it must be "Better". Isn't that just brilliant of Microsoft?

A Windows XP install, clean and out of the box, is about 1.1gb for the Windows folder, minus the "dllcache" SFC backup folder (which is compressed anyway). As you install things like the .NET Framework (bloated as hell! Guess what? Built into Vista in about 1,500 different incarnations), it adds several hundred more MB. Hotfix uninstallers and backup data add to that amount and aren't XP's fault. But the basic idea is, a clean Vista install is VERY, VERY MUCH LARGER than a clean, stock XP installation. Unlike the difference between 3.1 to 95, 95 to 98, 98 to ME, ME to 2000 (timeline fail), or 2000 to XP, combined. It far exceeds any reasonable amounts of storage needed for an operating system given its capabilities. Mac OS X can do much more, in a much smaller space, with much less bloat. Looking at any other alternative option, even, Vista is just an unbelievable disk space hog, for no explainable reason other than that Microsoft wanted to make people have to upgrade their hardware.

XP does not have registry problems. XP "degrades" because programs, mainly ones that rely on Windows Installer, make the registry large and unmanageable. While it may be true that Vista has some great under-the-hood improvements to help manage the bloat and maintain the system better, all it does is minimize the impact of the additional bloat and horrible coding behind it. XP does a fine job of managing the registry - especially when all it needs to do is "exist" and let the programs go whacky apeshit. And for some reason, although I've had some dirty RAM stick contacts or slots causing RAM errors, I don't recall ever actually having a bad RAM stick. Chances are, you ditched a perfectly good stick because it was dirty or not contacting properly.

As for the stability problems XP had... yep, I'll agree with you there. It was always a capability, yet never really stable, to fully disable your page file, until SP2. However, it's not stability that Vista has a problem with. Vista will be cleaned up and stabilized over time. It's not that. It's the heart of Vista that's the problem, the same thing I've gone over and over in this thread. The things that users will never notice until someone like me brings it up. The bloat, that will never go away. The DRM, which will never go away. Those things you cannot change with service packs. Microsoft will not reverse their decision about those things as long as people keep accepting it and buying it up. While it might be stablizing now ("2 months"? LOL. It's not even "stable" NOW! Give me a break...), it's even got a long way to go in that department.

The sound system is one great reason to AVOID Vista. You say the sound system in XP is the same as in Windows 95, that's a huge joke. The same as Notepad LOOKS the same on the outside as it did in Windows 3.x, the sound system has been hugely redesigned between each version of Windows (except 98 to ME, but I think it had a change too). Each version of DirectX redesigns the sound system in a different way, as many programs use DirectSound to output their sound. Wave Mapper itself has gone through many changes, but kept the user front-end the same for familiarity's sake, trying to add new functionality whereever it fit. It's nice to have a change there, but Vista took it totally while in bed with DRM, making it nearly impossible to manage inputs and outputs like it was familiar to do in previous versions of Windows (good-bye, stereo output recording - it's usually used for copyright infringement, right?). They did away with the mixer console and put in its place a "program mixer console" that's essentially worthless. To access complicated pin-mixing controls, you have to go through the new Sound control panel and poke around for the option you're looking for, in the wrong place, that does the wrong thing and then some. This is improved?

Programs don't lock up in XP. What typically happens, is when a program neglects to redraw the screen (or search for user input) while it's processing something, Windows claims it's "not responding" - especially notable when the computer is busy swapping data to/from the hard drive in order to keep up with a lack of memory. Windows is too quick to label programs as "not responding" when they're really waiting on Windows itself to finish bringing it back to life. Almost all the time, this problem is entirely eliminated by eliminating the source of the problem, the page file itself. If you get enough RAM to run things entirely in the memory, you'll absolutely love the performance you'll get (and the extended hard drive life) by ditching that old piece of junk page file. And you can kiss "(Not responding)" good-bye - with the occasional exception of a program that's waiting on a hung hardware device (like a scratched CD, a malfunctioning scanner, a bad driver, etc). Those are problems you would also see in Vista, no matter how much you may say you never do.

So, with that, I invite you to argue these points. Your argument was pretty much just what may be expected from an inexperienced user, the same people Microsoft preys on with Vista. You may think Vista is better, but believe me - over time you will see that XP is better, and you didn't give it the treatment it deserved. You probably hated XP because it was running on your slow, old PC - so you bought a new Vista PC and love it, because it has the specs to run the programs you were running with XP and do the things you were doing with XP. If you would take that beautiful new system and put XP on it, you would see a renewed world of speed, functionality, and performance like you've never experienced before. I would know, I'm running XP on a Vista-class computer now, and it's nothing but sheer orgasm. Why else would I be arguing this?

[Pwntastic]

I appear to be the deluded, egomaniacal lunatic that goes around imposing his opinions on people. Sigh...

Your cause, this post does not help it.