Total Members Voted: 50
yep that is always the same statement everytime a new windows OS is released, but you always end up eating your words.
Nvidia to blame for more Vista crashes than MicrosoftWhoops, they did it againBy Andrew Thomas: Tuesday, 01 April 2008, 10:45 AMDOCUMENTS released as part of the Windows Vista Capable lawsuit suggest that Nvidia drivers have caused almost a third of all Vista crashes - almost twice as many as Microsoft itself.30 per cent of early Vista crashes are attributed to Nvidia, while Microsoft was to blame for almost 18 per cent. Intel and ATI each accounted for about nine percent of crashes, say the documents."These issues are a year and a half old," Nvidia PR director Derek Perez told ZDNet, adding that the company had made 'significant progress' in reducing errors."We continue to improve drivers," he said, which is nice of them.A Microsoft spokesman pointed out that graphics drivers are awfully complicated things and that the company has taken 'exhaustive steps' to ensure hardware compatability.The Spokesvole added that Microsoft has seen 'great progress' by Nvidia in addressing driver issues.
XP gets reprieve as Vista is too big and clankyAtomic kittenBy Stewart Meagher: Tuesday, 01 April 2008, 3:50 PMOVER AT IDG, Sumner Lemon says Microsoft will not kill off Windows XP on June 30th deadline as it would have liked to.The fact that Vista won't run on the current rash of low-cost, low-spec lappies has a lot to do with it.Microsoft likes to bin its older "operating systems" in a bid to get users to upgrade to newer versions. The fact that Vista is more like a cumbersome downgrade means it's having trouble this time around.Low uptake from users, negative feedback from those who did upgrade and a large number of "Save our XP" petitions have all contributed to the widely-expected decision to stay the executioners hand.That and the fact that Linux seems to be getting quite a nice foothold in the budget end of the market and Vole doesn't like to share its burrow.Microsoft has been caught with its pants round its furry ankles in the belief that system specs would rise year on year.Poor people have cottoned on the the fact that instead of a multi-cored, megabytemongous beastie, they only need a plastic toy with a crank handle to see what this fangled interweb is all about.And now the not-so-poor are cottoning on too.
Macs run Vista better than PCsApple spanks competition in unlike-for-like testBy Stewart Meagher: Thursday, 17 April 2008, 10:15 AMPOPULAR MECHANICS has published a shootout between similarly-specced Macs and PCs using popular benchmarking tools and user feedback and has come to a (not very) surprising conclusion.Glen Derene from PM also used a number of 'real world' tests to find out how the machines. "We tested two all-in-one desktops and two laptops - one Mac and one PC per category - and assembled a panel of testers with a range of experience and preference that ran the gamut from expert users to my wife’s stepfather, who, by his own account, had never actually turned on a computer."Our testers were asked to set up the computers right out of the box and explore the machines through everyday tasks such as Web surfing, document creation, uploading photos, downloading Adobe Acrobat files and playing music and movies through Media Center and Front Row."In all fairness, the test was aimed, not at the likes of our readership (before you start getting your slide rules out and shouting at us about the iniquity of the whole thing) but at the average Joe user with little or no interest in pootling about in the inner workings of his operating system, or over-clocking his toaster.We'll hand you back over to Glen for his conclusion:"In both the laptop and desktop showdowns, Apple’s computers were the winners. Oddly, the big difference didn’t come in our user ratings, where we expected the famously friendly Mac interface to shine. Our respondents liked the look and feel of both operating systems but had a slight preference toward OS X."In our speed trials, however, Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times. We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple’s platform-switching Boot Camp software... and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did."Simply put, Vista proved to be a more sluggish operating system than Leopard. Our PCs installed some software faster, but in general they were slower in our time trials. Plus, both PCs showed weaker performance on third-party benchmarks than the Macs. Our biggest surprise, however, was that PCs were not the relative bargains we expected them to be. The Asus M51sr costs the same as a MacBook, while the Gateway One actually costs $300 more than an iMac."That means for the price of the Gateway you could buy an iMac, boost its hard drive to match the Gateway’s, purchase a copy of Vista, and still save $100."Let's not forget that Popular Mechanics also reckons its readers like to build particle accelerators and spaceships in their garages.
Windows 7 confirmed for 2010Screenshots appearBy Nick Farrell: Monday, 26 May 2008, 1:01 PMMICROSOFT has confirmed that Windows 7 will be with us " sometime in 2010" and appears to have released screenshots into the blogsphere.A spokesvole said the release date of the successor to Windows Vista will ultimately be decided by, "meeting the quality bar". It is not the first time Microsoft has decided something in a good pub.Client versions of Windows 7 will ship in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavours. A server version with the original title of Windows Server 7, is also being looked at.The Vole is keeping deadly quiet about Windows 7 in case more punters decide that is probably worth waiting three years rather than buying the disappointing and lacklustre Vista. It also seems unlikely to want to promise the world and then have the embarrassment of having to pull all the functionality because it cannot get it to work.However, screens of some of the early versions are starting to leak onto the Internet. They do not tell us much, other than it looks like Microsoft really has started to copy Apple's desktop. µ
City of Vienna dumps Linux for VistaUm die EckeBy Sylvie Barak: Friday, 13 June 2008, 3:41 PMAFTER BEING SHOWERED with bogger praise for deciding to migrate local government and council’s to Gnu/Linux plans a while back, the City of Vienna seems to have now turned its back on open sauce.And suffer the little children, because child day care centres will be the first to be reconfigured with, shiver, Microsoft Vista.Seven-hindred and twenty computers will be part of the initial Linux purge, with the fairly feeble excuse being given that the OS doesn’t allow a very specific application, used for testing kids’ language skills, to run. Active X only currently works on the Vole’s Web browsers.But even though Mozzerrella is currently working on a fix, which would in all probability make the rejig redundant within a year, the City of Vienna has decided that it would rather splurge almost eight million Euros of taxpayers’ on licenses for the Vole’s Vista. Not only that, but dumping Open Sauce for the irritating Volish OS will cost the city another 105,000 Euro according to Austrian IT news site Futurezone.Vienna’s public administration workers have until recently had the choice of whether to use a GNU/Linux desktop, running Wienux or a Microsoft desktop. Most chose to go with Mightysoft’s option, but the majority of those who chose GNU/Linux were those in the children’s daycare centres who are now being forced to change.Politicians, however, deny that Vienna has turned its back on Open Sauce, with one Social Democratic Party member, Siegfried Lindenmayr, telling Futurezone: "Vienna has been using Open Source software for the last twenty years and will continue to do so.
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