lordjedi

kirkenshrir said:

But the death of the record store is not what i'm worried about. It's mostly the death of the used CD shop - that is scary! I could name dozens of artists I love today that I discovered through used 2$ cds, tapes & even LPs picked up from used record stores, hand-me-downs, garage sales or pawn shops and the disapearance of this part of the market is really a tragedy for our future musical heritage.  Music is now deletable.

Yes, but it's also much easier to share it.  You can simply share a folder of songs on Kazaa or through Bittorrent and then someone else, who may not ever be able to get to that used CD store you have near you, can experience the same music.  Then, if the artist has setup a website, they can go to that site and buy more (if it's available online).

The death of the used CD store, I think, is easily eclipsed by what the new media and technology allows us to do.

Rob said:

It doesn't take an insane setup, just the right $300.00 amplifier, $200.00 phono amp, $300.00 needle, decent turntable, and decent speakers.

Many people (myself included) would refer to a $300 record player as an insane setup.  Especially since they'd want most of their music portable, which means it would go on the mp3 player which would render the $300 record player moot.

Hunter6 said:

Brandon Routh's Superman was emotionless like....like..... an Vulcan. 

Brandon Routh fits the Leonard Nimoy/Spock mold more so then the superman mold.

Brandon Routh's facial features also seem to match Leonard Nimoy facial features better then....

Zachary Quinto.

I know most people think Zachary Quinto looks like Leonard Nimoy, but the truth is he does not.

Zachary Quinto's facial features are not like Leonard Nimoy facial features.

 

Uh, actually, I think Quinto looks much more like Nimoy than Routh does.  Even if the facial features aren't an exact match, they look much closer to Nimoy than Routh's does.

PSYCHO_DAYV said:

YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER THAT THIS IS A REBOOT OF THE ENTIRE SERIES.  IT'S GOING TO BE DIFFERENT, BECAUSE THE LATEST STAR TREK HAD BECOME STALE IN THE EYES OF THE STUDIOS NOT NECESSARILY IN THE EYES OF THE FANS.  WHEN YOU DO A REBOOT YOU WASH AWAY ALL THAT CAME BEFORE.  IT'S A HARD THING FOR FANS TO DO, BUT THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS.  NOBODY IS FORCING ANYONE TO GO SEE THE REBOOT.  THAT'S YOUR CHOICE ALONE.

The reboot doesn't have to completely change the story though.  It could easily be a reboot that goes back to its roots.  The Batman reboot didn't completely change the story and that turned out great.  If the studio wants a different Trek, then I'm sure they'll get it.  Without the hardcore fans though, it's not going to go anywhere.  Remember, in order to get the "normals" into the box office, their Trek fan friends will have to bring them.  Otherwise it's just going to be regular folks saying "Well, that's Star Trek, and I'm not really into that".

EDIT: Something I forgot to mention.  So I'm watching the trailer and the cop asks the kid what his name is.  Now I don't know about you guys, but when someone asks me my name, I tend to leave out my middle name.  I know it's obviously there to tell us exactly who he is, but was the middle name really necessary?  I think a simple "James Kirk" or even "Jim Kirk" would have been fine.

The real problem that NBC has is that the show is no longer the killer hit it once was.  They had the single most watched show on TV.  Now they don't so they're acting like a bunch of children who aren't getting their way.  Cry me a river.  I'm sure they'll cancel it if the ratings don't improve, I just hope they give the crew that's left enough time to wrap things up.

I still love the show and I'll always have the DVDs to watch and rewatch.

Tiptup said:

I wasn't really speaking in terms of planned OS time lines or what Microsoft defines as support. I'm talking about the kind of reasonable functionality support we'd get if Microsoft had a competitor or two that were able to earn some of their business. As it is, there aren't really any practical ways for me to run my software or programs on a different operating system made by another company and, as such, Microsoft has less incentive to make me happy. My programs work in 2000, XP, and Vista yet Microsoft limits me to go with the last one or else pay a price.

No they don't.  If your stuff works just fine on XP or 2000, then stay with that.  If you're worried about needing to reinstall and reactivate, just clone your drive so you have a spare.  The only time you'd really have to pay is if you ever needed support for 2000 or XP.  I don't think I've ever known anyone that actually had to call Microsoft about an issue with either OS.  99% of the time, if you find a problem, they've already released a fix or there's a workaround.

Tiptup said:

It's interesting how you mention Vista's re-written driver model since that's a perfect example of what I'm saying here. I'm sure the brand new driver model for Vista is really cool (and stuff) and I don't begrudge Microsoft wanting to make money for their work there. However, newer hardware effects don't ultimately rely upon a "driver model" to work. There's no reason XP's driver system couldn't have given gamers access to the latest, 3D-hardware driven, graphical effects. Even if it didn't work as well as what Vista offers, it wouldn't be hard for Microsoft to expand functionality in this tiny way.

It has nothing to do with the "latest 3D hardware driven, graphical effects".  Anyone that's seen comparisons of DX9 and DX10 can see that they look very similar.  The difference is in the actual code though.  DX10 makes those same effects much easier to program.  And since DX10 takes advantage of the newer driver model (which DX9 doesn't use), it's nearly impossible for XP to use DX10 without a major rewrite in the graphics driver subsystem.  Why do you think it took up to 6 months for Nvidia and ATI to release good Vista drivers?  They basically had to rewrite their existing drivers to work with the new subsystem.

Your comment about newer effects not needing to rely on a driver model to work is laughable.  Of course they rely on the drivers.  Without drivers, newer effects can't do anything.  As an example, just try running Bioshock on hardware that supports DX9, but doesn't support Shader Model 2.0.  You might be able to hack it and get it to work, but it doesn't work natively.  Same goes for Portal.  Without hardware support for SM 2.0, that game crashes after walking through the first Portal.

The differences between Vista's graphics driver model and XP's are not "tiny", they are monumental.  Again, this is why good drivers took so long to come out.  XP drivers actually made things slow on Vista.  Once good Vista drivers were out, speeds were comparable and sometimes better (talking about in game here).

I'm guessing that most of you don't program or at least don't program at a low level.  You'll never understand how something that looks very similar might be completely different under the hood.  You'll just keep sitting here and saying how they could easily make it work under whatever OS is your favorite at the time.  The reality is that unless you can actually see the code, you have no idea how easy or hard something is to implement.

Johnny Ringo said:

Everything links back to the company. Every major villain, hero or event. And in a universe shrinking move even more of the major players are related to each other, Flint being Claires uncle along with Peter and Sylar...

Considering that Arthur hired the doctor who originally discovered how to give everyone their powers, this doesn't surprise me.  Remember that Tracy asked another doctor if he knew her and his response was "I created you".  So again, how many of them had their powers given to them and how many had them at birth?  I'm inclined to believe that at least half the Patrelli family had their powers given to them.

Tiptup said:

Mid 2009 release date? Guess I will hold off on building a new PC after all . . . though my current machine really needs to be reworked (I think the video card is buggy).

They're shooting for the holiday season of 2009, so Christmas.  It's usually the best time to release a new OS (or a new anything for that matter).  I get the feeling they might actually hit their release schedule this time, especially since they don't plan on releasing another beta and they only plan to release one release candidate, probably in the first or second quarter of next year.  If they manage to get all the features they want into it and it's relatively stable, I can easily see them hitting a christmas '09 release.

Tiptup said:

The fact that Microsoft keeps changing the basic support of their OSs each year is dirty. If they had any competition with OSs that were capable of running programs with the same source code, the situation would be very different. Instead we'd get an OS that was updated each year but didn't lose support so quickly, and was given more interface improvements over the course of it's life.

Instead, Windows 2000, XP, Vista, are all very similar in their source codes. The major differences are external and shouldn't require us to upgrade or risk "support" and availability of the versions we like.

First, those timelines aren't changed each year.  MS releases an OS and each OS gets the exact same type of support.  Vista's support will probably end sometime in 2012, but I haven't looked at the timeline for it, so don't quote me on that.

Second, Windows 2000, XP, and Vista are not very similar in their source codes.  Windows 2000 is close to XP, but neither are close to Vista.  Vista isn't even close to Windows 2003.  The biggest change in Vista was with the driver model.  The video drivers were completely rewritten.  Those changes could not be backported without completely rewriting the driver model in XP.  That would end up making XP just like Vista, which would be pointless from Microsoft's perspective (it was nearing it's end of life as it was).

skyjedi2005 said:

Actually a Monopoly is bad for free economics because they can charge more money and have less or zero Competition  When the companies compete it is better for the consumer.

That is why the government has anti trust laws in place forbidding monopolies yet Billy Gates has so much money Microsoft does not have to play by the rules.  They can buy up all their competitors legally.  Bad for everyone except Bill Gates wallet and his shareholders wallet and the wallets of the lobbyists and politicians in Washington who grease the wheels and allow illegal monopolies to continue.

You should study anti trust laws more closely.  It's not completely illegal to be a monopoly.  It is illegal to abuse that monopoly position by either preventing other companies from entering the market or by overcharging for your product.  Of course, the FTC doesn't usually approve mergers of two competing companies (see DirecTV and Dish Network) with the XM and Sirius mergers being a recent exception.

Microsoft was found guilty of monopolistic practices, but the "remedy" was next to worthless.  And you're right, when companies compete, it is better.

Where i live Verizon has the monopoly on fiber optic lines so they can charge whatever they please when if there was competition the costs would be less.

If Verizon laid the lines, then they should absolutely have the monopoly on them and be able to charge whatever the market will bear.  People don't have to sign up for FiOS.  FiOS, from what I've seen, is very reasonably priced for the speed it offers.

Now Microsoft OS is under a patent does not prevent other companies from creating their own operating systems, but the little startups being bought up by gates does.   Bad for Us the consumer bad for free thinking and development of competing technology. 

What startups?  Apple and Linux haven't been bought up by Microsoft.  And none of those "startups" had to sell.

I find it funny that the Pirates of Silicon Valley as that movie pretty Much states we will always only have Apple and Microsoft competing.

Please don't base your opinion on what is obviously a "docudrama".  The things that took place in that movie happened during the infancy of the PC industry.  The one thing that separated Gates and Jobs at the time is that Gates knew all he had to do was get to market first.  Jobs finally learned that lesson years later with the iMac and then even moreso with OS X.  Everything ever since has put Apple back on the map.

I like the PC better than the Mac.  The mac is designed for ease of use and to be retard proof.  PC has better games.  Better Software.  Better customization.  More overall processing power, can build better gaming rigs.   Mac Good for editing video, or for rendering that's it as far as i know.   Well the new ones supposed to be an entertainment machine playing Video and audio from the itunes store.   Shitty quality movies and audio i call a de-evolution not a revolution.  Not when i can have DVD quality movies and CD quality music why get mp3 at 320 kbps garbage.  Worse quality than a casette tape, lower quality than even broadcast radio.

 

The new ones can play video and audio off CDs and DVDs, just like a PC.  Hook it up to your TV and it's just like a HTPC, so that argument is pretty much baseless.  If anything, the Mac is even better for it than the PC since it was designed to do those things flawlessly.

skyjedi2005 said:

Gates should be taken that money and reinvesting it in American industry and American jobs.  We should not be helping other countries first what about the poor people who live right in the usa?

Who are you to be telling people how they should be spending their money?  Maybe you should get off your horse for once and stop moaning about how other people spend the money that they earned.

No one forced anyone to buy DOS or Windows.  There are alternatives out there.  The alternatives may not be easy to use, but they are out there.  If you don't like Microsoft or anything else about them, stop buying their products.

I guess I'm seeing it in the opposite way.  I'm seeing it as all the Heroes/Villains are somehow inextricably linked together.  These people didn't just suddenly pop into existence the first time we saw them.  Claire's mom worked for The Company, which makes perfect sense since I believe Noah knew about her during Season 1.  She's never mentioned working for the company to Claire though, as far as I can remember.  And we now know that Nathan's dad was involved in the accident that crippled Nathan's wife.

Most of the people have been brought together by the actions of The Company.  That makes perfect sense since The Company has been hunting down and finding these people for a while.

Personally, it seems to me that they're trying to explain how everyone got into position in Season 1 and why Arthur only appeared to be dead but actually survived the poisoning.  I'm looking forward to seeing if Peter gets his powers back and what happens with Sylar now.  Everyone's powers are either gained through their family line (Patrelli's) or were given to them by that doctor.  Who's powers are natural and who's were given to them remains to be seen (we only know of two so far).

skyjedi2005 said:

You get a good set of bose headphones on top of that and your set. Fuck mp3 and ipod.

You had me until you said this.  I don't know a single audiophile, and I know plenty of them, that would call Bose "good".  Bose are considered over hyped and expensive, nothing more.  Most "audiophiles" prefer much better speakers.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=343759&highlight=bose

Moth3r has to be kidding that he thinks 128kbps MP3 is comparable to CD which can be several thousand kbps if not megabites per second.

Try again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3

By contrast, uncompressed audio as stored on a compact disc has a bit rate of 1,411.2 kbit/s (16 bits/sample × 44100 samples/second × 2 channels / 1000 bits/kilobit).

That's the upper limit for CD audio.  DVD audio can be higher, but not CD.

MP3 is all well and good if you have a low quality dub off a casette tape to digital, but if you are a studio starting with a master that sounds better than what most people can reproduce at home why would you use mp3?

Who the hell ever suggested a studio use mp3?  Studios start with their master and keep it there.  Even the master has higher quality than a CD.  The master goes to the CD and an mp3.

Its true that the mathmatical quantifiers are way over my head when it comes to digital music and video.  After all is not digital just 1's and 0's and math.  Computers are called so because of their computations per second. All i know is what my eyes see and what my ears hear.

 

A guy did a study years ago (the website no longer exists) where he ran a CD and a 128k (might have been 192k) mp3 through an analyzer.  Both came out with the exact same signal.  So anyone that says they hear a difference is full of it.

And just so you know, many of the songs on iTunes are actually AAC format, unless they say they're unencrypted mp3.

Darth Chaltab said:

Well, I got the latest version of Open Office, so the problem is solved, though it still annoys me that after all that money went to Office, we can't use it because of a blasted serial number.

As for my crashed computer, it's under warranty, so it will be fixed eventually.

You could still try loading the hard drive from the other system on the working system.  Even if it doesn't totally load right, you only need a minimally functioning system to get in, run a keyfinder, and then write down the key.

MeBeJedi said:

Background checks and such would make it very difficult for many of these types to aquire weapons legally.

But not impossible. A responsible American citizen with a clean criminal history is not, in any way, being deprived of their right to own a weapon in this scenario.

A delay in a right is an infringement of a right.  We don't delay freedom of speech, so why do we allow the right to own a gun to be delayed?  States like Arizona have instant checks in place that work very well and they have a low crime rate.

And just so you know, an American citizen with a clean criminal history is being deprived of their right to own a firearm in states like New York where they require permits and registration.  If you can speak your mind on a street corner, why can't a citizen with a clean criminal record buy a gun without needing a permit in the state of New York?

Contrary to what's reported, buying a gun is nothing like buying a gallon of milk.  Paperwork is almost always filled out.  Background checks are performed (either 10 day waits or instant checks).  It's even a felony for a felon to simply touch a firearm.  The problem is, no one ever goes after them and prosecutes them.  People have failed the background checks in states like California and not been prosecuted at all.  Maybe if we just started enforcing the laws on the books we'd have fewer criminals on the streets.

MeBeJedi said:

Oh come on guys.  Obama has raised the most money ever of any candidate.

 

I never said he didn't. I'm just making the point that when Pro-McCain folks single out Obama for all the money he's raised and spent, they are ignoring the historical fact that, up until now, Republicans have historically been ever more guilty of such "attrocities". All of a sudden, it's a problem? Give me a break.

Try quoting my whole comment next time.  The problem isn't that he raised a ton of money.  The problem is that he said was going to stick with public financing until it became apparent that he was going to get a shit ton of money from donations.  If McCain had done this, people would be all over him for it.  But when Obama did it, it's "change".

 

Obama is not a saviour.

 

The discussion was about campaign funds....so what's the point of this comment?

The point is that Obama is being treated like the second coming of Christ.  "He's going to save us all" are some things I've read and heard.  Quite frankly I find it disgusting.  If you're depending on the government to save you that much then you have bigger problems.  The government isn't going to save you anymore now than they ever have.

He says he's going to give you a tax cut, but have you every considered that if you don't have a job you won't even be getting paid.

Personally, I think it's better when companies get tax breaks.  It makes it easier to get into those higher brackets.  But if you raise taxes on high incomes, it just makes it more difficult to get into a higher income bracket.

skyjedi2005 said:

Hmm, so Lord of the Rings was actaully shot on film.  Another reason why it is so much better than Star Wars Prequels.  Yeah Episode 1 was shot on Film.  But after it was scanned and made into a digital copy they did the color grading and made it look overly bright like a video game.  The same thing was done with Indiana Jones IV.

Only you could take a discussion on LOTR and bring Star Wars into it.

One thing i don't like about Lord of the Rings is its unnatural color which was obviously a choice made in the digital grading of the image.  Overly blue and green hues, mostly cold blues.  Goldish Tones in some scenes etc.

Yes, it would depend on the scene.  The Shire was generally greener and browner to denote it's earth tones.  Helm's Deep probably had the cold blue and darker tones.  Gold tones were used for Galadriel and her realm.

skyjedi2005 said:

Hiro's still a good guy right?  This season and Season 2 sucked.   Good lord i'll just watch my dvd's of season 1 again.  Why Tim Kring needed to drag this show out and become a soup opera in season 2  and 3 when he could have told the storyline in 2 full seasons is beyond me.  I guess money is the only reason. 

The best new writer/director of sci fi tv sold out in the same way JJ Abrams and Joss Whedon have done previously.  Nowadays  that might as well be called pulling a Lucas or a Spielberg.

Maybe you should rent the season 2 DVDs and find out why things went the way they did.  The story wasn't originally planned like this at all.  When the writer's strike hit, they had to make a change.  That one change changed the entire story, but it didn't involve a huge rewrite.

skyjedi2005 said:

I guess the first President who Inspired the same Optimism as Kennedy was a Republican by the name of Ronald Reagan.

The media hated Reagan too.  The media seems to have a general disdain for anybody with an R after their name.

Reagan inspired hope and optimism against Carter's negativity.  Reagan told the people that we needed to get the government out of their lives.  That the only way to make America strong again was by letting the people lead the way to a great America.  Through hard work and perseverance, Reagan knew we could be great.  Carter just wanted everyone to accept Communism and not try to change the world.

Neither candidate today can hold a candle to Reagan.

Nanner Split said:

3) Yes, my computer does suck. But Vista isn't making it any better.

 

So what are you hardware specs?  Post some specs and we can tell you if the hardware is really capable of running Vista.  We can also suggest any upgrades that might help with any speed issues you might be having.

FYI, Vista isn't supposed to make hardware run faster.  You're either running good hardware that can run Vista properly or you're not.  XP was the same way back in the day.  I don't know anyone that ran XP back in 2001 with the default settings.  "It's slow", "It's bloated", those are all the things I heard about XP back in the day.  Now I'm hearing the same thing about Vista.

MeBeJedi said:

Not only have Republicans historically outspent Democrats.......THEY ARE ALSO THE BIGGEST OPPONENTS OF CAMPAIGN SPENDING LIMITS!!! No big surprise, since they've generally been able to get more money than the Democrats. Of course, now that the Dems are beating them at their own game, you can be sure they're going to insist on limits in the future. ;)

I doubt it.  What we'll want is the "Campaign Finance Reform" to be repealed.  Why should there be limits anyway?  What we need is full disclosure, not limits.  I already stated that I don't really care that Obama raised so much money.  What bothers me is that he said he was going to take public financing and then changed his mind once the money started rolling in.  This is the same complaint that I've heard from many of the Conservative pundits.  Obama was claiming that campaign finance reform was the way to go back in 2007, but then change his mind in 2008 when lots of money started coming his way.  So which is it?  Is he for campaign finance reform or against it?  He seems to be against it judging by all the money he's raised.

Jay said:

C3PX said:

As for Jay regarding Obama's spending, my point wasn't that it wasn't the guys money to spend, my point was HOLY SHIT THAT IS A LOT OF MONEY TO SPEND ON JUST A DAMN CAMPAIGN!!! Especially for the guy who has already technically won this election by a landslide. Seems like if this was an inevitable change and the wisest decision for people to make, it should not have taken over 600 million dollars.

And the Republicans are just as bad, so I'm not sure it's even relevant.

MeBeJedi said:

And as for the amount of spending being any kind of indication as to the candidate, I remind you - AGAIN - that Republicans historically outspend democrats (proving the inverse of what you are attempting to insinuate), and the amount of spending in presidential campaigns on these campaigns goes up every four years.

Oh come on guys.  Obama has raised the most money ever of any candidate.

Years ago the Democrats bitched about how much money the Republicans raised.  Now, suddenly, it's no big deal because their guy has managed to raise an absolute shit load of money.  This is the same guy that said he'd sit down and talk with McCain about only accepting public financing...until money started really pouring in.  Then it was suddenly ok to take campaign contributions from private donors.  $150 million in one month.  McCain got $40 million for his whole campaign (I think that's the right number).

Obama is not a saviour.  If you're lucky, you'll get a full 4 years of policy out of him.  If he's to hard left though, and I have no doubt that he is, you'll get 2 years of policy out of him before the People turn Congress over to the Republicans as a way of controlling Obama.

Ferris, I wasn't necessarily referencing only your post.  My message was a pretty generic reply to all the posts that were complaining about Vista.

For the record, MS didn't try to force Vista on anybody.  Dell jumped the gun the moment Vista was available.  They withdrew XP without MS telling them they had to.  It was several months before systems became available with XP again.  I know because I was actively looking at their systems each week.  At work, we were going to need systems, but I hadn't had a chance to test Vista yet.  By the time we really needed them, Dell had made XP an option on the Optiplex and Precision lines again.  A lot of people blame MS for this, but the fault lies squarely on the OEMs.

C3PX, I don't know what program you're trying to launch on Vista, but it only does that when you try to either change system settings, load up some kind of admin tool, or install a program.  I used Vista for about a week at work and at no point did it ever prompt me to open any programs other than admin tools.  I never got prompted to change my screen resolution.  I never got prompted to launch DreamWeaver CS3, FireFox, Outlook 2003, or any other of a number of programs I use on a daily basis.  What I ended up doing for my initial install was disabling UAC, install all my programs, and then reenabled UAC.  I never ran into another problem after that.

Maybe the program you're trying to launch is an older one that, for some stupid reason, needs admin access.  I say it's a stupid reason because many old programs unnecessarily required admin rights just to run (this is mostly true for games, but AutoCAD was a huge offender of this).  Any program written in the last few years shouldn't have this problem though.  So I'm really curious to know what program caused this.  Unless of course you're constantly installing new programs.  That would of course explain it too, but then it's still performing exactly the way it's suppose to.  And interestingly enough, it performs almost exactly the same way a Mac does.

Please tell me you at least tried it on modern hardware.  If you tried to run it on the same thing XP shipped with (remember that XP is 7 years old), it wouldn't surprise me that it was slow.  On proper hardware (anything about a year or two old) it runs beautifully.  That'd be about 1 or 2 GB of RAM and a dual core processor.  Amazingly enough, that's the same thing most Macs ship with, yet Apple takes no heat for having a "slow and bloated" OS.

I just find it pretty amazing that people will still complain about an OS that may have had problems almost two years ago, but they haven't tried it recently, so it must still suck.  This is as bad as people saying that Windows just sucks, but their only experience is Windows 98.  Well, in that case, Windows does suck, but that also means it's time to upgrade.

I don't think Heroes has really jumped the shark.  I think things are getting a bit convoluted and messy and that Peter is having a hard time figuring out who to trust since he's seen the future.  I think it's getting pretty damn obvious though that Noah is going to lead the Heroes against Peter's dad (can't remember his name) and the Villains by the end of the season.

I am starting to wonder how Peter's going to get his powers back though (maybe an injection?).

Wow, what's with all the hate toward Vista and Windows 7?  Is this coming from personal experience or just what the "blogosphere" says?  I could understand if this was January 2007, but Vista's 3rd party driver stability has improved a ton since then (yes, Vista's stability problems were in fact caused by bad 3rd party drivers, most notably from Nvidia).  And service pack 1 fixed just about anything else that cause people trouble.

Do you all think that just because there was a 6 year lag between XP and Vista that Microsoft wants to wait another 6 years to release a new OS?  Vista has been the exception to every single rule of every OS that MS has ever released.  Every OS has been released no more than 3 years from the previous one except Vista.  Service Pack 1 was the only service pack ever released that couldn't be easily integrated with the OS before installing it and that won't be happening again.

The reason you're having trouble finding XP is because, like all Microsoft software, it reached its end of retail life (planned long before Vista was released).  If you needed a copy that bad, you should've bought one before the end of July (I believe it was July of this year that its retail sales were ended).  It was very well publicized that you wouldn't be able to get it after July 31st.  Do you seriously think Microsoft should just continue to sell and support all versions of their OS until the end of time?  Windows 95 and 98 reached their end of sale and support life cycles a long time ago, but nobody bitched about that even though some people are still running it.

Vista has plenty of new features to bring to the table, not the least of which is better memory management and better search capability.  And if you're running with 4 GB or more of RAM, the 64-bit version of Vista has much better driver support than XP ever did.  Vista also has much better support for multi-core systems.  Since most new systems are running multiple cores, you're much better off with Vista than you would be with XP.

If you've just upgraded to Vista, then don't worry about Windows 7.  Yeah, they're leaving the same basic kernel architecture intact.  What does that mean?  It means that all the software you're running on Vista right now will work just fine on Windows 7.  It means all your drivers will work just fine too.  Why would you expect another major change?  XP used the same basic kernel architecture as 2000 and 2003 used the same basic architecture as XP (which is why games that work on XP work just fine on 2003), so it shouldn't surprise anyone that they aren't changing that for Windows 7.

I've used Vista extensively myself.  When it was first launched (pre-SP1) the only trouble I had was slow file transfers.  It was actually faster on the same hardware than XP was, with all the eye candy turned on.  It was the first OS Microsoft ever released where I didn't want to disable any eye candy because it was fast and actually improved the OS.  After SP1, slow file transfers were fixed and I haven't had any problems with it.  I actually leave UAC turned on too because it let me know if anything weird was going on.

Ferris, if Dell sold you a computer with the XP downgrade option and didn't include drivers for XP, your beef is with Dell, not Microsoft.  Dell is responsible for making sure you get all the drivers you need, not Microsoft.  If you had built the computer yourself, then you'd be the one that would have to make sure everything had XP drivers.  Most large manufacturers do still provide XP drivers, so they shouldn't be that hard to find.

ferris209 said:

All that aside, I am pretty stoked about it, it looks like all the kinks are, or will be, worked out from their flawed Vista release (although it ain't that bad to me).

What kinks would those be?  Pretty much all the things that were wrong with Vista have been fixed with SP1.  I certainly hope you're running SP1.  SP2 will probably be out in the next month or so.

I've had no trouble running Vista in my test environment at work.  Not a single crash or hang.

Gaffer Tape said:

Darth Chaltab said:

It's not that big of a download, honestly. If you have a connection faster than 28 K, you should have no problem getting it.

 

Not if you're running Windows 98... *smiles sheepishly*

If you're still running Windows 98, then you have bigger problems than using FireFox over IE.  Talk about insecure software.

SilverWook said:

No discussion of tonight's episode?

Those commando droids are actually kind of menacing! For a kid's show, they're not shying away from onscreen deaths.

And I think we've heard someone curse in Star Wars for the first time since 1980. ;)

1980?  I think your signature betrays you SilverWook.  We heard someone curse in Star Wars in 1977.  "Some damned fool idealistic crusade" - Obi-Wan Kenobi.