● IBM releases second Beta of Symphony.
● Vista numbers only seen as increasing because of new computer sales and bundling.
● Ballmer still harping about advertising and how it’s a big bet for Microsoft.
● Microsoft stories galore. Too many in fact.
● Dangerous spyware-plagued machines can be fixed.
● Does it take 3 people to rewrite a press release for Reuters?

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Tech5 Podshow



  1. NappyHeadedHo says:

    The OS certainly is!

  2. Dwight E. Howell says:

    There is nothing to gain by changing from XP to Vista as for as systems managers are concerned. As long as it runs your software and works with your hardware who cares? Upgrading is a chump move.

    On the other hand it came with my new home premium machine and other than not running a few old programs I didn’t expect to run, having loathsome DRM crap, and a picture manager that was set up to do things their way rather than my way I don’t see any problems with it. I just go around the last.

    It is stable and it works. The learning curve was a few minutes every so often which is to say almost nothing.

    Of course my system got good scores except for middle of the road on graphics but then I could care less about that mystical user desktop. I have great graphics for what I do use it for.

    Gates once said it right. Get a new operating system when it comes on your new computer.

  3. Mr Witwicky says:

    Vista has its problems. I bought it from the microsoft employee store for 60 bucks, Ultimate edition.

  4. Mr Witwicky says:

    To clarify, I like it more than XP, and I’m not a MS employee.

    It’s easy to hate, if you have shitty hardware.
    It’s easy to hate, if you cant fix your own pc.
    It’s easy to hate, if you are a clueless gamer.(see above)
    It’s easy to hate, because it’s slightly turdish and needs refinement.
    It can be enjoyed, if you can find fixes for the bugs and get it working smoothly. The interface is great, and it IS going to replace XP.
    Macs are cute and all, buy one so Johns stock goes up.

  5. Sying Flaucer says:

    It came preloaded on my notebook, definitly a resource hog. Notebook came with a gig of ram, crawled along, so I doubled it to 2 gigs, still crawls (proc ==dual core T5300 1.73ghz). I like XP better, just because of performance.

  6. Sying Flaucer says:

    “it” is Vista 🙂

  7. beowulf says:

    Ghestopo Bloat ware!

    Take a hint from the linux movement. People dont want to ask permission to use things they right fully own and paid for.

    Are your papers in order? Papers please.

  8. llseenm says:

    Come on John… Since when was technology reporting ever anything more than reproducing press releases? Even back in the day when mainframes were king, and computing consisted of IBM and the B.U.N.C.H. (how many of you kiddies know what that means?), the trade pubs then, primarily Computerworld and Information Week, were 90% press releases. The fat glossies that arrived with PC’s were no better. There so-called reporting consisted mainly of press releases, usually quoted verbatim! And their product reviews were a joke since they depended so heavily on advertising.

    Any ‘objective’ reporting, and product reviews are only found in the blogsphere. Of course most objective voices are drowned out by the incessant religious dogma of the various fanboys!

  9. ECA says:

    Vista is a FORCED piece of software, they are TRYING to FORCE you to go to Linux, or something ELSE. WHY?? SO thay can SHOW they have competition…

  10. SN says:

    4. “It’s easy to hate…”

    That is no doubt, the most asinine posting I’ve ever read here. And that includes everything written by Mister Mustard.

    Basically you’re saying that all of Vista’s problems are the users’ fault. How exactly do you define “shitty” hardware? I’d assume that if my hardware works with XP but not with Vista it’s not the hardware’s fault. It’s the OS that’s “shitty”! And you honestly believe that the user should “find fixes for the bugs”?! Even at $60 that’s complete BS.

    If I buy something it should work. If it doesn’t I should get my money back in full. Vista does NOT work and it is in no way my fault. End of story.

  11. Mr Witwicky says:

    #10, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  12. Farfig says:

    see #10 post for why noobs shouldn’t speak.

  13. Mr Witwicky says:

    Eating some crow for breakfast. COD4 crashes in Vista, booted to XP works fine :((((

  14. MSwanberg says:

    @Mr Witwicky… You must be doing something wrong. I am running CoD4 on my Macbook Pro under Vista Ultimate (using Boot Camp) and it runs perfectly. No crashes, no issues (knock on wood).

    @Sying Flaucer… please specify what you mean by crawling. What’s crawling? Copy operations? Screen refreshes? Photoshop? Pr0n downloads?

    I have Vista on a few of my machines and I have no problems with it at all. Some drivers are less-than-optimal but we all had the same growing pains with XP.

    And the DRM stuff is myth. Read Ed Bott’s article.

    -Mike

  15. Witwicky says:

    Its the cracked executable. I’m going to buy it, but works fine on XP

  16. VegasBob says:

    Tried Ubuntu, to complicated to play a DVD, the other night downloaded the latest version, after install, lost internet connection.
    gave up, deleted it. I thought I’d give it shot.
    I also have XP and Vista, prefer Vista.
    It’s faster then XP or Ubuntu on my system.

  17. Mister Mustard says:

    >>That is no doubt, the most asinine posting I’ve ever read here.
    >>And that includes everything written by Mister Mustard.

    Ouch. And they say I’m “mean”.

  18. #11

    “Why is it that in any written rant (including John’s) against vista includes almost takes into account everything except this stupid & useless activation scheme?”

    I agree on that with you, that’s why I strongly recomend to find a cracked version so you don’t have to bother with it.

    Or in any case someone will pop up a keygen for Vista and things will be fine 🙂

    In any case, how many still remember when XP was fresh released and everyone was acting like monkeys throwing turds at it just because it crawled on a pentium 3 with 128MBs of RAM?

  19. matt says:

    yea, vista screwed with my graphics card. i had my old computer with XP run cod4 just fine, but when i use vista, the game wont even start and vista keeps going, “graphics card was not working, but it was successful in turning it off, now it is turned back on” and so on, all the drivers for vista won’t work either, seeing as those are in a beta test. Now i can’t play cod4, i just got that game like 2 weeks ago and i can’t play it, cuz my old computer fried and i am stuck with vista.


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