New computer/Windows Vista

Avatar for cl_shywon
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-20-2003
New computer/Windows Vista
4
Sun, 02-18-2007 - 10:22am

I'm considering buying a new computer with my tax return.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-16-2006
Tue, 02-20-2007 - 10:24pm

Hey shywon

My friend is a comp sci major and is the smartest guy I know though he can't spell to save his life, so I took an except (and edited them for his colorful language) out of his livejournal to illustrate what he thinks of Vista. It's filled with a bunch of techincal stuff but I think you'll get the jist of it. It's kind of long but I hope you find it useful because I agree 100% with it. I'm personally going to buy an apple laptop, though I would buy a linux if he didn't live 250 miles away

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So occasionally I get comments from pro-microsoft people as to why I am so not wanting to even touch vista or other newer windows products with a 10 ft pool.

Well, here are 2 good reasons.

First, DRM - Digital Rights/Restriction Management. Company's taking away the rights of you the consumer for using products you purchased. Every time the topic comes up, it get increasingly worse with what companies like Microsoft are planning next. In this case, the new media player takes away your rights of doing anything under general fair use. You can no longer back up your old licenses for your old DRM-infected media. You have to get permission to play songs from cd's that you have ripped yourself. You can't transfer your media from one pc to another. Software will be next ladies and gentleman. Maybe not in windows vista, but eventually you'll have to contact ms to get permission to install software that you paid for on your own machine.

Second, anti-competition measures that microsoft takes to keep people from realizing the vulnerabilities of there software. In this case, they are planning on making it hard for companies like symantec and mcafee to produce protection software products. Great, now we have to trust a company that is known for their software f ups for our virus protection. I can sleep better tonight. How the hell can you trust a company that sits on patches to keep people from thinking their software is insecure, with your virus security. Much less, what about right to decide what virus production software you want on your machine.

Where'd the hell did free rights go here? They've been slowly chipping away at them for a while and each time people just roll over and let their rights be taken away from them. when will people realize that this drm and other restriction imposed my Microsoft is full of crap and actually resist the software. go over to Linux for instance to avoid having to pay for all the software. nah. People would rather pay for $300 for XP professional edition instead of get a version of ubuntu/fedora/or some other linux distro for free or next to nothing. same thing goes with MS office. Why should they get an open source alternative worked on by several people for the price of breathing oxygen on a clear sunny day, when they can shell out $500 for a full legitimate version of MS Office 2003. Quality differences are negligible people.

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-21-2005
Tue, 02-20-2007 - 10:34pm
Hmmm...not sure I like the sound of that.
Avatar for cl_shywon
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-20-2003
Wed, 02-21-2007 - 7:33am

Thanks for the advice...but I have to say, I can't put any faith in anyone who advocates Linux.

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-21-2005
Wed, 02-21-2007 - 1:24pm
Some of the kinks will work out, but I think with Windows, there are always going to be "kinks," I'd say for at least the first year or so (but that's just my opinion).