Vista gives a view of a new world (BBC) {legal terms and conditions in license}

[eppur_se_muova]

***
While those reviews have focused chiefly on new functions, for the past few months the legal and technical communities have dug into Vista's "fine print".

Those communities have raised red flags about Vista's legal terms and conditions as well as the technical limitations built in to the software at the insistence of the motion picture industry.

Hard look

The net effect of these concerns may constitute the real Vista revolution as they point to an unprecedented loss of consumer control over their own PCs.

In the name of shielding consumers from computer viruses and protecting copyright owners from potential infringement, Vista seemingly wrestles control of the "user experience" from the user.

Vista's legal fine print includes extensive provisions granting Microsoft the right to regularly check the legitimacy of the software and holds the prospect of deleting certain programs without the user's knowledge.
***
more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6319845.stm

A pretty grim article. Read down at least until you get to this little gem: "He noted that Vista intentionally degrades the picture quality of premium content when played on most computer monitors."

[montanacowboy]

1. Won't catch that on my computer

doesn't little Billy Gates have enuf money or power yet?

He can stick Vista where the sun don't shine and no one should buy it - boycott it

[Howardx]

4. no kidding

why exactly would i want this piece of shit "upgrade"?

[Javaman]

26. What for the "upgrade" for those of us who stay with xp...

I can see it now, "for those of you with older computers who can't upgrade to vista, we have come up with a work around. The new xp! Get all the same great apps plus a few EXTRAS..."

Yeah...extras...

[MadHound]

2. Just another reason that I'm sticking with Macs

They provide the hardware, OS, and once you purchase them, they're yours. You don't have Apple looking over your shoulder all the time, recording your data and erasing things off your hard drive.

MS has been getting more and more authoritarian with every passing OS. Meanwhile the quality of their product along with the usability, stability and security has been consistently been declining, even as the price raises. Perhaps this will be the last straw for the MS faithful. Or not.

Oh well, I'll just keep on doing what I want, when I want, with absolutely no interference or breakdown on my wonderful little Mac.

[thepurpose]

10. I so want to go Mac. I didn't before because of the cost of the hardware, but

now I'm thinking its worth paying extra up front to avoid the cost of windows upgades which always seem to include more hard ware to get better performance. I mean, are you Mac guys swapping your motherboards, video cards and processors as much as us Window guys seem to do?

[eppur_se_muova]

14. "are you Mac guys swapping your motherboards" ... HUH?

Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis? I've bought a few upgrades to add more clock speed (mostly those nice ZIF CPU's), and I thought I was at the high end of the hardware tinkering spectrum. AFAIK most Mac users don't bother -- after a few years of new models, the cost of upgrading by parts is not much less than the cost of a new machine.

Of course, I do not speak for the video geeks, for whom no combo ever seems fast enough. :)

[Elwood P Dowd]

15. You can buy a used or refurb Mac Mini for $400.00 - $500.00

and keep your current monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I found one for a friend.

[JCMach1]

20. I bought my whole family used Pentium 4's for that price

including XP installed...

Install Linux dual boot and !

[MadHound]

17. Come on over to the light!

You can get your basic Mac Mini for 600 bucks, though the monitor is a seperate cost. All in one iMacs start at $800. Both of these machines should fulfill all of your computing needs, unless your doing some serious graphics work. And since the new Macs are now dual core, you can run Windows on the same machine. I don't know how well that works out, but I imagine it should be OK. Check out the reviews at Macworld and else where to get the full scoop.

No, we don't have to be constantly adding video cards, swapping out motherboards and such. First of all, Macs are built to last, so that includes putting in hardware that is going to stand the test of time. About the only thing I've done to any of my Macs was add RAM. My last Mac was a PowerMac 6100, made in 1993. It lasted a good ten years before the software and internet exceeded it's capacity to keep up. I still have it, it still works too. It just was too slow for the 21st century:shrug: I still use it once in awhile when I get the yen to play some old school games.

Sure, Macs cost a bit more up front, but frankly with all the bugs, spyware, adware, backdoors, trapdoors, crashes, upgrades etc. etc. in the long run a Mac is cheaper, both in time and money. I've currently got an eMac that I got back in '03, and it purrs along just fine, plenty of speed and memory. I imagine that it too will be able to go ten years, or more, before the state of the art outpaces it.

I would strongly suggest that you go down to your nearest Apple dealer, library, or friend and take a Mac out for a spin. I think that you'll fall in love with it and will never look at another Windows box again. I've had to use PCs at work and elsewhere, and I've always found it to be a royal pain. I've lost data, had the damn things crash at critical times, gotten infected with viri, all of the typical shit, and all it does is raise my BP. With a Mac I can do what a computer is supposedly designed to do, use it as an effective and efficient time saving tool.

[Elwood P Dowd]

18. I have a 1994 Performa and 1999 iMac that still work perfectly

Never had a minutes trouble with either. I probably need to donate them to someone.

[bikebloke]

31. I second that.

When my six year old PC finally gave up the ghost, I looked into Macs. Comparing the long term costs for virus protection, hardware upgrades, etc, the price evened out. Except with Macs, you skipped the headaches. I've had an eMac for over three years. No problems. Time I might have spent trouble shooting has been freed up for my own projects and activities.

[Book Lover]

19. For good or bad, the Mac folks do not play with the hardware

The idea of rolling your own machine is hobbled in the Mac world by the distinct lack of third-party hardware vendors (thanks, Steve!) There are lots of reasons to go Mac, but if you do get a Mac box, you will not crack it open like a Win box at all. The fun of the Mac is the software, not hardware tinkering.

FWIW, currently at home and work I have a suite of Win boxes, but I work in publishing and have had many, many Macs in my life.

[niceypoo]

23. almost no software available for Macs

And the training wheels dont come off
hense their niche share of the market

[MattSh]

25. Oh come on.

I don't know a single Mac user who loses any sleep because Windoze© can do something their Mac can't do.

And if they get this STRANGE urge to run Windoze©, or a Windoze© program, the newer Macs go both ways (run Windoze©). Can't do that with Windoze©, can you??

I mean, how many DIFFERENT types of word processors do you need? Or browsers? Or mail clients?

I'd rather have one that works correctly, then do have a choice of 100 that don't.

WHOOPS **** On edit, here's some fine print in the new Vista license..... You CAN'T run Windoze © on a Mac, unless you pay (or ignore the rules).

Vista Home license forbids virtualization

If you want to run Microsoft’s new Vista operating system on a Mac using Parallels Desktop for Mac, you’re going to have to buy the Enterprise or Ultimate editions. Parallels’ Ben Rudolph recently posted about the issue on the official Parallels Virtualization Blog.

With the release of Vista, Microsoft has reworded its End User License Agreement (EULA) to forbid the use of Vista Home Basic and Home Premium Editions with virtualization products like Parallels and VMware. Macworld has confirmed the information with a Microsoft spokesperson.

“USE WITH VIRTUALIZATION TECHNOLOGIES. You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system,” reads the EULA.

...and...

The issue for users is price: Microsoft sells its Home editions of Vista for $199 or $239, while Business and Ultimate editions cost $299 and $399 respectively.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/macworld/20070201/tc_macworld/virtualvista20070201_0

So, if you want to do virtualization, you must buy the high priced Vista upgrade.

(Note: Mac OS upgrades are generally $130).

What's that about Macs being expensive????

[Occulus]

27. Are ANY of those mac users you know also gamers?

I'm guessing not....

[MattSh]

30. You're guessing correctly...

I'm at that age when I'm trying to get my son engaged in activities other than TV and computers. And yes, I group those together deliberately. I see too many people impressed with themselves that they're "computer literate" when they're only using the computer as an extention of the boob tube. Yes, there are educational computer games, just like there are educational TV programming. Two guesses as to which ones are more popular.....

[Elwood P Dowd]

28. Simply not true

And like Matt posted, Macs can run Windows if you need it for some specific software.

[Emillereid]

32. I bought MS Office for Mac -- and I loaded it on both my and my daughter's

computer -- and if we both have it on at the same time, the long arm of microsoft will turn one of them off. Scary. I had to buy a second copy of the software.

[Hokie]

3. K & R

Damn, I may have to learn Linux soon.

[Recursion]

8. Nothing to learn

Download Ubuntu, install, 10 minutes later you're happy.

You may think I'm joking, but I told my office that it's a beta of Vista and they were ecstatic. No complaints yet.

[Nomad559]

12. My suggestion

Try Fedora Core 6, I have been very happy with It.

:)

[Name removed]

5. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[alfredo]

6. Ha!

"He noted that Vista intentionally degrades the picture quality of premium content when played on most computer monitors."

There goes the porn market.

[Ignacio Upton]

7. I'm not going to let the RIAA and MPAA tell me what to do with my stuff

Fuck them. I'm keeping XP, and I'm getting a Mac if this DRM shit isn't removed by the time I need a new computer (yes, I also know that itunes has DRM, but at least I can still burn my itunes songs to CD-R and CD-RW just in case my computer needs to be reformatted.) Thankfully, I won't need a new computer for at least two to three more years.

[BRLIB]

9. I have an automobile license plate from a conference

over 15 years ago hung in my cubicle that says:

UNIX! Live Free or Die!

Unless you need functionality that can't be found in Open Source software (and you would be hard-pressed to not be able to find it with a well crafted Google search) the ease of use of current Linux distributions is certainly as good as Windows, and without the hardware penalty for a Vista upgrade. Macs are also infinitely preferable and OS X, also derived like Linux from Unix, is what the user experience of Vista resembles, according to what I have read. So why not get the original?

OpenOffice, which ships with most Linux distributions, can read and write to Microsoft Office formats and publish to Adobe PDF.

Just a few options:
Ubuntu 6.10 (seems voted as easiest to use)
Fedora Core 6
open SUSE 10.2
Freespire

Download for free (to help share the bandwidth use a Bittorrent client)
Or go to a bookstore (Barnes and Nobles) and get a Linux magazine with a DVD distro included (most with DVDs come from England).

Set up a dual boot and wean yourself off Microsoft!

[IDemo]

16. No more Linux or dual booting for me, thanks

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=89890&mesg_id=90425

If I do make the jump to another operating system, either after Vista SP1 or Mac OSX 'Leopard', that will be the only OS on the machine. No Linux or BootCamp/Parallels.

[Bruce McAuley]

11. I figure my XP MCE ought to be good for a couple more years...

Then I'll have to look at a Linux set-up, likely, not much other choice right now.
Maybe the OS will have migrated online by then, and I can just "rent" it as needed.
Who'd want to own something like Vista?
I'll delay, the sensible solution, at least until XP isn't supported any longer, and/or Vista gets cheaper or some other system works as good for general use. Might be the last Microsoft product I ever use, the one I got now.

Bruce

[pinniped]

13. When is Gates going to meet the chimperor to discuss the porn-deleter patch?

?

[symbolman]

21. WOW

Have you seen the New VISTA commercials? They show old film clips with kids and adults watching them who haven't seen them before, like early space flights, rockets taking off, civil rights speeches, etc..

After each serving of Retro Film or experience the viewer says, 'WOW'.. again and again, as the pace of the commercial quickens..

SO.. "He noted that Vista intentionally degrades the picture quality of premium content when played on most computer monitors."

WOW, STUPID. WOW, MONEY GRUBBING ASSHOLE BILL GATES. WOW, Guess what Kids, if Bill Doesn't want you to see it, then YOU WON'T..

Like Gates said once, Information IS MONEY, and HE wants it all.

This is why I don't throw computers away or recycle them.. might need them to save the fucking Planet once VISTA has made people's computers Unusable CYBORGS for GATES.

Another Gold Plated TURD courtesy of GATES :)

[Vidar]

22. Incredibly, Microsoft manages to sink even lwer & charge even higher.

[samsingh]

24. i am very likely going Mac

[sakabatou]

29. I'm planning on a Mac when this one dies