MS Vista & High-End Audio

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kirkawall

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Hi All,

I'm a Mac user so have no opinion on Vista except that I hope never to own it. However, I am in the process of putting together a computer-based system in one of the labs I run and came across this article on Vista and DRM. Anyway, worth reading I think, though I emphasize that my own interest is primarily in just how regulated it appears that "premium content" is going to be.

best,

k


http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html


And see the MS "blog" for their response and comments:

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/w...-protection-twenty-questions-and-answers.aspx
 
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i really think that Microsoft will be in trouble when they realize that nobody actually wants Vista.

It'll be interesting to see what happens.
 
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My concern is that Microsoft may succeed in pushing Vista into corporate use. MS targets corporations first, consumers second. They know why.
 
I'm not sure about that, Ralf. "pushing" a system into corporations is not done by managers. It's done by IT professionals, who see an opportunity of keeping themselves employed by ironing out bugs, installing drivers, offering support, troubleshooting and cleaning up virused, owned PC's. This is the little dirty secret of Microsoft's success: IT people who kept getting paid for keeping more or less healthy a very insane system, perpetuating the Stockholm syndrome and making themselves indispensable, not because they are good and positively producing something but because they're good at limiting the damage - the system in use was so buggy that it made them necessary, a must. Now Vista comes and does 2 bad things: 1) it requires more hardware, which means more money to be spent (as opposed to "invested") and managers hate that; 2) it pretends to be more secure and less prone to failure, and IT professionals hate that - it makes them obsolete. What's left ? Home users ? They might be attracted by the eye candy (but it's been offered by Apple for 5 years now) but will shudder at the DRM thing. Sum it up, and you will get a strange picture, which sums up to what I said -DOA.
 
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I hope you are right about that. The company I work for uses PC clusters and thousands of PC desktops and laptops. To manage these, standard hardware configurations and standard OS images are used.

Vista has hardly been released, and the organization who is in charge of IT standards has already announced a beta of the Vista based standard configuration for laptops and desktops. A new config could be deployed as early as Q4. It took us until 2005 before we upgraded standards from Windows 2000 to XP! So I wonder what is going on.
 
BTW, if things keep on going they way they are very soon we will have speakers that are DRM compliant. Soon almost every speaker will have some sort of DSP circuitry (subwoofers are a good example). Once these chips are in the speaker there will eventually be room for DRM processing.

Think I'm crazy? If I had told you last year that very soon almost all TVs will enable DRM you would have laughed. Now it is reality with HDCP.

Lastly, Apple is not immune to this. As a matter of fact Apple helped to make DRM a viable comsumer control model with Fairplay, iTunes, and iPods. They have no qalms about using DRM. DRM is helping Apple maintain their near monopoly of downloaded music. We will definitely see more DRM in OS X.
 
i really think that Microsoft will be in trouble when they realize that nobody actually wants Vista.

It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Your joking right? Unless you buy an Apple, when you buy a new computer, it will come with Vista. Success inevitable.

My company employs over 60k workers. How many do you think will get a Mac?

Answer: Zero.
 
when pc games start coming out on mac first ill by one. personally i think any system powered by intel is the way to go.
 
when pc games start coming out on mac first ill by one. personally i think any system powered by intel is the way to go.

LOL :haha1: , news flash: Apple Mac's are powered by Intel

You can run XP /Vista on any Intel based mac, either in dual-boot or under a Virtual Machine mode.

Personally, my next laptop is a MacPro so I can run any OS on it.

But for now, one of the 8 computers in the house is the Vista laptop I'm typing this on (and using Office 2007 to spell check). Works fine.

Oh, I also have a PowerMac G5 dual (mostly used by the artist of the house, my wife), so I'm agnostic to the OS war.

The DRM thing in Vista is a concern; As they are doing very unfriendly things to the poor average user, and severely tying the hands of the power user.

For instance, I think it sucks that we pretty much can not build our own Vista MCE machines. You'll ahve to get those from a large OEM (Dell, HP).
 
Although Vista may not be as big of a deal as Windows 95/98 or even XP, it is definitely an upgrade. I personally had my doubts, but once Vista came out and I had a chance to use mess with it, I can tell you it is a real upgrade. It does have mac/linux influences, and first reports may show that it is very buggy with drivers, etc but once all this gets ironed out a few months from now it will be a replacement for XP. It is more than just eyecandy. Wait for service pack 1 before you make real judgments. Remember any windows when it first came out?

As far as DRM goes, some applications which require specific licensing such as temporary MP3 downloads this will most likely be improvements. Microsoft has been very DRM based over the past few years. One recent example of their dedication is the Zune 3 day/play issues.
 
I've been an IT man all my life. Unfortunately, the CLS kind, as opposed to the Montage kind. I've been seriously programming in more languages than you can shake your 2 hands at - from Lisp to Fortran, from Ada to Cobol, from Basic to Pascal, and this has been my life, the last 25 years at least. What happens when you do it, what has all this in common ? Well, almost nothing, excepted for structured thinking and the ability of putting yourself into the end user's clothes. It might seem scarce, a poor result under the sum line after all this time, but Microsoft fails at these simple tasks...with all the resources they have, sinking into a sea of bureaucracy and sufficientsness is unforgivable. This freaking "we, too" attitude, this presenting an operating system with some bells and whistles mimicking what Apple Inc has been delivering for 6 years now (and in the IT world the age multiplier factor is at least 5) is disappointing, not to say disgusting. I would be the first one to praise some innovation from Microsoft, because REAL competition is based upon this - it's the fountain for new ideas and improvement. But as of now, there is NO competition. Just a sad copy, walking on the narrow border dividing "innovation" from copyright infringement lawsuits. Just check out the evidence that came out lately, and you will understand. I am daily disgusted by how easy it is to bash Microsoft and by how their lack of innovation and professionality turns to be a brake for every Joe's interaction with the technology, much more than I'm pleased about Apple's offers. Maybe I repeat myself, for the sake of global understanding: a REAL competition between Apple and Microsoft would really improve our experience; as it is now, it's just a competition between China-made ML design series and US made ESL series - i.e. no real competition.

to end it in a nice, funny way - this is Microsoft: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=36099539665548298
 
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WTF ? which one should I get .. ?

Amazon's prices for Microsoft Windows Vista:

• Windows Vista Home Basic Full: $199.00
• Windows Vista Home Basic Upgrade: $99.95
• Windows Vista Home Basic Full (Additional License Only): $179.00
• Windows Vista Home Basic Upgrade (Additional License Only): $89.95

• Windows Vista Home Premium Full: $239.00
• Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade: $159.00
• Windows Vista Home Premium Full (Additional License Only): $215.00
• Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade (Additional License Only): $143.00

• Windows Vista Business Full: $299.00
• Windows Vista Business Upgrade: $199.00
• Windows Vista Business Full (Additional License Only): $269.00
• Windows Vista Business Upgrade (Additional License Only): $179.00

• Windows Vista Ultimate Full: $399.00
• Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade: $259.00
• Windows Vista Ultimate Full (Additional License Only): $359.00
• Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade (Additional License Only): $233.00


Are you really going to spend that kind of money on an operating system that is trying so desperately to be Apple's Mac OS X? Most likely, you're going to need a new computer to run Vista anyway. Why not use that money toward a new Mac instead? Install your current copy of Windows XP on it via Apple's free Boot Camp or Parallels US$79.99 Desktop for Mac. From what we see, you won't be missing out on much by ignoring Windows Vista (some call it "Windows XP SP3") and you'll be gaining so much more with Apple's virus-free Mac OS X and iLife applications running on elegant and inexpensive Intel-powered Apple hardware.
 

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I'll edit this one out - just to make sure it doesnt rub individuals the wrong way.

Just having a bit of fun. I personally have no loyalties with any OS. I've crashed Mac OS-X nearly every time I've encountered it, and Windows is not without its loads of faults either.

In the end, I'm just not that hard-core about the issues... just another passive user.
 
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LOL :haha1: , news flash: Apple Mac's are powered by Intel

You can run XP /Vista on any Intel based mac, either in dual-boot or under a Virtual Machine mode.

Personally, my next laptop is a MacPro so I can run any OS on it.

But for now, one of the 8 computers in the house is the Vista laptop I'm typing this on (and using Office 2007 to spell check). Works fine.

Oh, I also have a PowerMac G5 dual (mostly used by the artist of the house, my wife), so I'm agnostic to the OS war.

The DRM thing in Vista is a concern; As they are doing very unfriendly things to the poor average user, and severely tying the hands of the power user.

For instance, I think it sucks that we pretty much can not build our own Vista MCE machines. You'll ahve to get those from a large OEM (Dell, HP).



yea thats my point either way is a great way to go since both are powered by intel... but i wont by one due to the lack of support for gamers.
 
yea thats my point either way is a great way to go since both are powered by intel... but i wont by one due to the lack of support for gamers.

And therein, my friend, lies the fundamental difference between Mac users and PC users...

Mac owners consider their machines to be tools for doing creative, innovative, visionary work.

PC owners consider their machines some sort of high-end entertainment consoles that will, coincidentally, also run Word and Excel... :D

I would suggest that you buy a frisbee or a snowboard or a nice mountain bike or even a paintball gun, and use those for your play-time. Getting outside will do you a world of good, and the money you save not having to buy all those new games would be MUCH better spent buying music CDs, or new components for your stereo (for rainy or cold days)...

I have a MacBook Pro 17", and I bought it with JUST OS X installed. I will not install Windows. I will not install Word. Hell, I won't even download the free version of Explorer. I simply refuse to patronize a company which continues to force inferior products down the throat of the computer world, and is perpetuating the conspiracy of perpetually escalating employment for "IT Managers" and "PC Help Desk Jockeys". If, for any reason, I feel the need to put a second OS on my Mac, it will be Linux.

The last company I worked for had 1500 employees. Of them, we had PCs on about 1000 desks and Macs on about 250 desks. For PC help-desk support, we had nearly 200 full-time people (1 helper for every 5 PCs), and they OFTEN had to put in overtime. For the Macs, we had 2 "help desk" people (1 helper for every 125 Macs), and they were part time, and actually spent most of their time as production artists in the graphic design dept. You do the math. Macs are more reliable, last longer, more backwardly-compatible over their lifetime, and interms of "real cost" in the business sense, actually cost less than 50% what PCs cost, in terms of up-time, reliability, and user-support over the life of the machine.

Take a Mac out of the box, plug it in the wall, and it runs for 10 years...

The Mac I had before this one was a PowerMac 9500 (made in 1995), and when I retired it (in late 2006) I was running OS 9.1, and the current (non OS X) versions of Photoshop, Quark, and Illustrator.

You can't even run the install disk for the most recent version of Windoze on an 11-year-old PC, and if you could, it would run so slow that it would probably cause a warp in the time-space continuum and collapse upon itself, creating a mini-black hole which would suck your wallet out of your pocket and make it disappear into a singularity...

Oh, that's what EVERY version of Windoze does, on EVERY PC.... :haha1:

Don't support Windoze.
Don't support DIVX.
Abandon the digital heroin they call "gaming", and buy a frisbee.
The air will do you good.

Spend your money on something worthwhile, like TUBES and ESLs... :D

And if you really feel the desire to throw your energy and money into a cost-ineffective, stress-inducing, mind-numbing activity, start designing your own cables for your sound system. Believe me, you'll throw buckets of money away , end up with the twitches and a dangerously accelerated heart rate, and you'll **** off your S.O. with all the bits of wire and smell of solder. (same outcome as playing computer games!?!) But on the good side, you might actually accomplish something useful with your time. :rolleyes:

--Richard C.
 
Richard,

Stretching a tad beyond the typical chest-beating I’ve come to expect from an avid user from either camp – I’ve got to say I am sitting here with a smile on my face. I realize some of your post is to illustrate the differences between general users, but the general theme seems well, a bit off! Hah!

Essentially it sounds like you are stating that any person who seeks a machine to fit their recreational needs (in this case; gaming) needs to, in essence, “get a life”.

Among the things Mac users may consider themselves, be it visionaries, artists, professionals, or what have you; another reputation they have is weighing in heavily on the snobbish scale; your post fitting that particular ‘general user’ to a “T”.

The bottom line; Leave unwelcome suggestions at the door. Dogging on someone simply because they chose to use a computer for an activity you could care less for (that just so happens to be the Achilles heel of something you believe so vehemently in) is in bad taste, period.
 
Richard,

Stretching a tad beyond the typical chest-beating I’ve come to expect from an avid user from either camp – I’ve got to say I am sitting here with a smile on my face. I realize some of your post is to illustrate the differences between general users, but the general theme seems well, a bit off! Hah!

Essentially it sounds like you are stating that any person who seeks a machine to fit their recreational needs (in this case; gaming) needs to, in essence, “get a life”.

Among the things Mac users may consider themselves, be it visionaries, artists, professionals, or what have you; another reputation they have is weighing in heavily on the snobbish scale; your post fitting that particular ‘general user’ to a “T”.

The bottom line; Leave unwelcome suggestions at the door. Dogging on someone simply because they chose to use a computer for an activity you could care less for (that just so happens to be the Achilles heel of something you believe so vehemently in) is in bad taste, period.


thanks. i was just tring to chime in and say why i have a pc and why i have to upgrade no matter what due to a hobby of mine.. and that since i like intel i like the new mac layouts... but for the above statement i do not care for. i do more than play games. i am an accomplished porsche mechanic, a dog lover, an advid gamer and above all a enthuisist of electronics audio, computer, car or other wise... guess ill step out of this one.
 
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