[Maleko]

people gotta move with the times

[GrofLuigi]

@DeathNACan: costs of *.* - that will go to Microsoft. Training, certification, courses... that $$$ goes to microsoft. Anyone still wonders why some spell Microsoft with a $?

I once read that Adobe makes more money from training than from products themselves. I don't see why that wouldn't apply to Microsoft.


@Maleko: but who defines the "times"? Microsoft? And if it appears they are just copying user interface from Apple... all the time? So....

GL

[studio48]

Win2k3EE, on Dec 10 2008, 08:41 AM, said:

I've installed Windows 7 build 5696 and everything works fine, except one thing: I don't like the new Vista-like start menu, but the old classic start menu (Win95-98 style). Is there a registry tweak to enable it somehow?

Go to systemsettings /advance settings and choose for best performance..
You will now have the classic theme for windows 7
Good luck!

[Win2k3EE]

I knew that. I wanted classic start menu with AERO enabled.

[spacesurfer]

It's a good thing why some posters in this thread are retired. You know what they can, "Can't teach an old dog new tricks."

I guess when you get to that retirement age, you like things the way they always were.

Sooooo.... that doesn't mean keep things as they were. Some people **CAN** HANDLE change and ADAPT to new way of doing things. Hey, it might actually be faster.

Gosh, if we didn't improve, we would still be getting out of our car and winding up the engine!

So, come on. Quit posting the same old crap about MS this and MS that. If you don't like it, don't use it. Simple.

[CoffeeFiend]

spacesurfer, on Jan 9 2009, 07:19 PM, said:

Sooooo.... that doesn't mean keep things as they were. Some people **CAN** HANDLE change and ADAPT to new way of doing things. Hey, it might actually be faster.

Gosh, if we didn't improve, we would still be getting out of our car and winding up the engine!

That's basically it. Some people prefer to fight change instead of embracing it, and usually whine in the process.

If they listened to these people, we'd still be using the command line (no GUI), because "it's just as good of a program launcher" (that's what they all said in the win 3.x era anyhow) -- who needs a mouse anyways? There's always someone complaining about any minute change in the interface, something that got moved by an inch, any new way that's actually better, things placed more logically and all that -- just because it's different, and they don't want to adapt ("the old one worked! why did they do this?")

Just like if they change the GUI, people say "it's just a new skin" (whereas if they didn't change it, they'd say NOTHING as changed as they don't seem to see past the GUI).

Just like they complain about "bloat" for any new feature that's added (they don't use it, so surely nobody else does, right?), and if they added nothing, then it would be a worthless upgrade, etc.

And so on.

The good part is soon they'll stop whining about Vista. The bad part is, they'll be whining about Win 7, then Win 8, 9 and so on.

The ONLY way to please those people is to have a totally identical GUI (no changes at all, nothing moved) yet still have a new shiny GUI, has new features (yet doesn't have them), various enhancements (yet not have them), and have that run on a vic 20, and be free and open source -- and even then, they might have to pay you to run their OS before they stop complaining.

It's a good thing they don't listen to them. Not every change is for the best, but for the most part (~95%) it is.

[Atmosphere XG]

Right Click on the Task bar and, go into properties.

Go to the Start Menu tab and click on Classic Start Menu.

[DeathNACan]

MagicAndre1981, on Jan 9 2009, 09:34 AM, said:

sorry with the old menu have to do more clicks to get the programs open. You're only intolerant in having new ideas. I hope they never bring those old, stupid startmenu back.

Let me say first, I am not intolerant of new ideas. Otherwise, I would not have downloaded the beta. I'm sorry but you're response is typical of the attitude I have seen with too many IT professionals and Power User Amateurs who put new things to play with before user's needs. They either do not know or forget that every change made has a potential cost associated with it.

Many IT professionals overlook that fact that users either do not have ability or simply lack to learn IT technology as they do.

All ninety-nine percent of business users and most home users want to do is whatever it is they need to at the time, they way they know how to do it. They are afraid of change and for good reason. In the business world, it can cost them productivity, which can in turn cost them their jobs! In the home environment, they just don't want the hassle of changing things because most of them don't really understand what they are doing anyway.

I have seen too many IT professionals in the development end that fail to consider the impact of what they do on the user environment. They simply do not understand how in the professional world it effects the user's ability to do their jobs. What my rant was about is mostly Microsoft's failure to understand both the business and home customer's needs.

This is not an insult, but I can tell that you are either not an IT professional or are a new one. Your response did not take into consideration that new innovation should never have an unnecessary adverse effect on the user.

The reason in the business world is that it increases costs. Those costs can come many ways. Sometimes it is in the form of money, as in money spent for the software product and or the training both the IT professionals and users to use it. Other times those costs result from the of loss of productivity; and, that lost productivity can result form the time it took to train the user, the time it took them to adapt to the changes, the actual changes themselves making a given task more time consuming, or the the time it takes to develop and then implement workarounds. By the way, those workarounds are usually needed so that the change we made will work in the user's environment.

It is our jobs as IT professionals, Microsoft included, to minimize the impact of whatever changes we make into the user environment, whether that environment be professional (business) or non-professional (home). The reasons for this are:


1. Test to make sure a change works before deployment.
2. Test to make sure a change works does not adversely affect user productivity before deployment.
3: Keep the cost down in terms of money.
4. Keep the time spent training IT Professions down.
5. Keep the time spent training IT Professions down.
6. To avoid unnecessary downtime, make only those changes necessary.
7. To avoid a disaster, make only those changes necessary.
8. Make sure the change is cost effective.
9. Keep the user working.
10. Put the needs of the user first.

Again, in the business world, that means, unless there is really go reason not to, let the user do it they way want to, even if we know a better way. It's okay to suggest the better way, but we shouldn't force upon them. We don't have to do their jobs, they do!

The same can be said of the home environment, as any PC Technician will tell you.

Let me add that it is Microsoft's responsibility as a software and operating system manufacturer to do all the above. To that, they must add the following:

Consider the needs of the IT professional who must deploy and support the products they create. That means even if they think it is out dated but we think it makes our jobs easier, don't screw with it! And why?

Their business is to make our jobs easier as we see it, not as they see it not force their ideas onto us!

Finally, people are resistant to change. They are afraid of it, particularly where computers are concerned. The veteran IT Professional knows the even the smallest change can have disastrous effects. The amateur computer users is already afraid of his or her computer enough and doesn't want the added stress.

Maybe the best way to introduce new things is as "Did you know?" feature giving you the option of doing it the new way, rather than saying, "Oh, we decided you don't need that any more."

[Zxian]

DeathNACan, on Jan 12 2009, 08:41 AM, said:

All ninety-nine percent of business users and most home users want to do is whatever it is they need to at the time, they way they know how to do it. They are afraid of change and for good reason. In the business world, it can cost them productivity, which can in turn cost them their jobs! In the home environment, they just don't want the hassle of changing things because most of them don't really understand what they are doing anyway.

I don't see how making programs searchable by typing is a terrible thing. I'm currently on an XP machine (soon to be formatted to Vista) and I wish I had the built-in search that Vista provides. If you've ever used it for day-to-day work and finding documents, you'd know that it is faster, and lets users be more productive in the end. For most of my collegues and friends who have made the switch, it hasn't taken more than a couple of weeks in order to get the hang of how Vista is laid out. After the switch is made, they all say they like it more. And no, they're not in IT nor are they tech savvy.

If employees are having a really hard time making the switch from XP to Vista, they're lacking experience/training in general computer usage, and that's no fault of Microsoft.

[Win2k3EE]

Atmosphere XG, on Jan 10 2009, 08:32 PM, said:

Right Click on the Task bar and, go into properties.

Go to the Start Menu tab and click on Classic Start Menu.

This is not possible in Windows 7.
I begin to feel sorry for bringing up this subject. I got used to the new start menu in an hour after installing Windows 7, so I'm not disappointed anymore.
P.S. Here's a trick to open explorer in Computer rather then libraries:
make a shortcut on your desktop of explorer.exe -> right click -> properties -> shortcut tab -> target line put this C:\Windows\explorer.exe /e,::{20d04fe0-3aea-1069-a2d8-08002b30309d}.

[DeathNACan]

Zxian, on Jan 12 2009, 02:21 PM, said:

DeathNACan, on Jan 12 2009, 08:41 AM, said:

All ninety-nine percent of business users and most home users want to do is whatever it is they need to at the time, they way they know how to do it. They are afraid of change and for good reason. In the business world, it can cost them productivity, which can in turn cost them their jobs! In the home environment, they just don't want the hassle of changing things because most of them don't really understand what they are doing anyway.

I don't see how making programs searchable by typing is a terrible thing. I'm currently on an XP machine (soon to be formatted to Vista) and I wish I had the built-in search that Vista provides. If you've ever used it for day-to-day work and finding documents, you'd know that it is faster, and lets users be more productive in the end. For most of my collegues and friends who have made the switch, it hasn't taken more than a couple of weeks in order to get the hang of how Vista is laid out. After the switch is made, they all say they like it more. And no, they're not in IT nor are they tech savvy.

If employees are having a really hard time making the switch from XP to Vista, they're lacking experience/training in general computer usage, and that's no fault of Microsoft.

I did not say making programs search-able was a terrible thing. What I said was that it is not the job of the IT Professional, whether working at your company or for Microsoft, to force change upon the user unless absolutely necessary.


At the heart of this discussion are really two important issues:

First, who decides when changes should happen and how much things should change. If I give you new options, you have a choice. It's your business decision or your decision as the home user what to do? If I take away those options you have, you have no choice. Microsoft wants to force change and taken away your choices. If they deploy Windows 7 with this GUI, they will have made decisions affecting companies and home users effectively without their consent.

Secondly, any competent IT Professional who ever had to support users will tell you they not afraid of changes, they are terrified of them! If something goes wrong, it can cost them their jobs, along with potentially cost their company thousands or even millions of dollars in lost productivity or revenues.

As for Vista, most companies do not want to go anywhere near it! Look at the stats for how many people still use XP. Most people don't want to go near it. And why, the learning curve is too steep for an the average user. By the way. Most users fit into that category you mentioned. That of "lacking experience/training in general computer usage".

We IT Professionals don't want users learning on the job and getting experience. We want them working! The less time they spend having to learn a new OS, the more time they are working. As for the home users, well they are afraid of 'breaking it'. With the exception of the Power User, most home users don't want things changed, they just want to browse the Internet, pay their bills, IM their boyfriends, watch their porn or download their MP3's... the way the know how!

[CoffeeFiend]

Wow, you're making such a big deal out of nothing, it's incredible. All this, over a much improved start menu?

People will adapt to new ways and new GUI changes, just like they always have.

And no, it's not gonna cost anyone their job, nor any of that nonsense.

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 01:54 AM, said:

As for Vista, most companies do not want to go anywhere near it!

[Citation needed]. That's merely your own opinion on the subject. Of course not a whole lot of companies have rolled out Vista yet -- last place I worked rolled out XP like 2 years ago (like 5 or 6 years late). They've *always* been upgrading late, nothing new here. It's not that they don't want to go near it, just like they weren't avoiding XP either. They'll eventually upgrade, just give them the time.

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 01:54 AM, said:

Look at the stats for how many people still use XP.

Vista has a nice market share. There are still XP boxes because most people don't see a need to upgrade yet (nor a reason to buy a new computer -- which is how most people get a new OS), and they'll be getting Vista or Win 7 with their new box whenever they upgrade next. No news here either. XP's adoption rate at the same point in history was no better (some would say even worse).

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 01:54 AM, said:

Most people don't want to go near it. And why, the learning curve is too steep for an the average user.

Again, just your observations and opinions. I've seen a LOT of people getting new boxes & Vista lately, and have been very happy with it. I personally ain't ever going back to XP.

If we listened to you, nobody would have made the jump from MS-DOS to Windows, nor from Windows 3.x to Win 95 (and so on) -- it was different people had to learn new stuff (the learning curve was FAR steeper than a new start menu)

[DeathNACan]

spacesurfer, on Jan 9 2009, 08:19 PM, said:

It's a good thing why some posters in this thread are retired. You know what they can, "Can't teach an old dog new tricks."

I guess when you get to that retirement age, you like things the way they always were.

Sooooo.... that doesn't mean keep things as they were. Some people **CAN** HANDLE change and ADAPT to new way of doing things. Hey, it might actually be faster.

Gosh, if we didn't improve, we would still be getting out of our car and winding up the engine!

So, come on. Quit posting the same old crap about MS this and MS that. If you don't like it, don't use it. Simple.

Gee, at 49 years of age I had no idea just how 'Over The Hill' I really am. Thanks for telling me. And you're absolutely right about not being able to teach and "old dog new tricks". What was I thinking of when I downloaded Windows 7 in the first place. Must be my senility kicking in. Why in the world did I ever beta test IBM PC DOS 7, OS2 Warp, Windows XP or Windows Vista in the first place?

You've got to be kidding me right? Have you ever heard the words "Forced Retirement Due to Disability"? Just so you will know, my hands, arms and shoulders took too much damage from too many years of using a computer. But then, maybe that's because I spent as much time at home in front of my computers, notice that was plural, installing and testing both new operating systems and software as I did doing my job.

By the way, I currently have three machines dual booting between Windows XP 64 Bit and Windows Vista 64 Bit. I have one machine dual booting between Windows XP 64 Bit and Windows 7 64 Bit beta, not counting my server running Windows 2003 64 bit. I have four browsers on my desktop, seven different media players, three pieces of anti-spyware (don't need more when they do the job), at least a dozen different media file converters, four ISO and image utilities, three email clients and more codecs than I can count, and one really good file manager. That, for your information, is the short list. Now tell me truth, you don't honestly think all that software miracle itself onto my computer with out being tested by me do you?

Please tell me you don't actually think that I did my jobs as Network Support Technician, PC Technician and Local Area Network Administrator with just the knowledge I had the day I was hired? It's not a good idea to support 3500 users after an OS migration unless you have 'played with it' for a really long time before it's deployed. What were you doing while I and my fellow workers were keeping all those users working so they could feed their children and pay their bills? Where were you when I was testing over 80 different pieces of software to make sure they would run on Windows NT 4 and then later Windows 2000? What bar were you in December 31, 1999? I was at work verifying that the world as we knew it in IT did not come to an end when the clock rolled over to the year 2000. I don't remember seeing you there while I was explaining to the head of Corporate IT the effect spyware was having on our user's ability to do their jobs. Did I miss you while I was at home testing, on my own time, thirty different pieces of anti-spyware so I had a solution to the problem? Do you really think all those years of experience have no value at all and I just stopped learning the day the put me out to pasture? If that's so, I guess I should burn my A+, Network+, Compaq APS, MCP, MCP+I, and MCSE cards.

Look, what I've been trying to get across to you is that there is more to operating systems and software than their pretty new features. There's how they are used, who uses them, what they are used for and how much it cost to used them. This is something Microsoft has either forgotten or never learned.

This post has been edited by DeathNACan: 13 January 2009 - 02:33 AM

[DeathNACan]

crahak, on Jan 13 2009, 03:45 AM, said:

Wow, you're making such a big deal out of nothing, it's incredible. All this, over a much improved start menu?

People will adapt to new ways and new GUI changes, just like they always have.

And no, it's not gonna cost anyone their job, nor any of that nonsense.

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 01:54 AM, said:

As for Vista, most companies do not want to go anywhere near it!

[Citation needed]. That's merely your own opinion on the subject. Of course not a whole lot of companies have rolled out Vista yet -- last place I worked rolled out XP like 2 years ago (like 5 or 6 years late). They've *always* been upgrading late, nothing new here. It's not that they don't want to go near it, just like they weren't avoiding XP either. They'll eventually upgrade, just give them the time.

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 01:54 AM, said:

Look at the stats for how many people still use XP.

Vista has a nice market share. There are still XP boxes because most people don't see a need to upgrade yet (nor a reason to buy a new computer -- which is how most people get a new OS), and they'll be getting Vista or Win 7 with their new box whenever they upgrade next. No news here either. XP's adoption rate at the same point in history was no better (some would say even worse).

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 01:54 AM, said:

Most people don't want to go near it. And why, the learning curve is too steep for an the average user.

Again, just your observations and opinions. I've seen a LOT of people getting new boxes & Vista lately, and have been very happy with it. I personally ain't ever going back to XP.

If we listened to you, nobody would have made the jump from MS-DOS to Windows, nor from Windows 3.x to Win 95 (and so on) -- it was different people had to learn new stuff (the learning curve was FAR steeper than a new start menu)

I could spend the next couple of hours posting links from various websites and drawing this out but it would just be a waste of time. You have already made up you mind that I am just some old guy who is behind the times and too stupid to learn or know anything. As for all that market share Microsoft has 'gained' with Vista, I will tell you how they got it. They made deals with OEM's PC Manufacturers to push it on customers. Try buying a PC with Windows XP or NO OS installed today. Unless you go through the business side of a vendor it is almost if not totally impossible. That is not my opinion; that is a fact. I will end my part of this little debate by challenging you to Google, Yahoo or what ever you want the following phrases and finding out for yourself...

Microsoft Vista Downgrade
Vista sales 2008 (I'll give you this one for free... http://weblog.infoworld.com/sentinel/archi...ng_the_vi.html)
OEM's reject vista

Change can be a good thing... most of the time. New features are can be good things... most of the time. But in the end, innovation does not come first, customer's needs and desires do. Please understand that the people who are writing the code and creating all those nice new features you are using for the most part have a really bad history of not listening to either you or me. You have no idea how many times I went to a user's workstation and tried to show them a better, faster way of doing something just to have them return to doing it the way the 'knew how'.

I don't know what you do for a living but try and remember this, the people who fix and keep your computers running at your job are given the awesome responsibility of keeping you working. Your job literally depends on them doing their job and vice versa. They have to take a conservative approach to it. They can not afford to openly embrace every change Microsoft or any other software vendor introduces without testing it first. Businesses do not deploy an operating system usually until after it's been out for a minimum of two years. That is because vendors take that much time fixing the bugs they should have had corrected before it was every shipped. You can't just drop a new OS on a computer every time it comes out. It is an expensive process. That bloated code I keep hearing about comes with a cost... hardware upgrades. Upgrade the RAM for one computer for $60.00 and you won't go out of budget. Upgrade the RAM for 3000 computers and you just spent $180000.00. If you have to upgrade 250 workstations just to run the new OS at a cost of $1200.00 each, it will cost you 1.2 million dollars. Sometimes, people loose their jobs to pay for it.

Finally, you might want to remember that just because someone likes or dislikes something different than you do does not make them stuck in their ways. As you said, they have a different opinion.
As for your "If we listen to you comment" I answered that in another post. You do not know me. You do not know anything about what I did for a living or how I did it. It was people like me that kept people like you doing their jobs. People like me were given the responsibility to test and deploy and then keep running every operating system and software product people like you had to use because we understood the importance of change. In the world of PC support, whether home or business, you can't just force change on the user without considering its impact. When you are responsible for not only your job but the jobs of thousands of others, you will understand that. You have missed the entire point I have been trying to make and that is that you don't force change without a really good reason in the IT world.

[cluberti]

No one is saying you're stupid (or if they are, they should stop NOW - I'm watching). However, saying that because *your* experience that businesses aren't going to "go anywhere near" Vista or that it's because the learning curve is too steep is just that - your opinion. Businesses haven't upgraded to Vista largely because they do things slowly (large businesses, and most small ones, aren't real keen on being on the cutting edge of technology), and it's also quite likely that businesses that aren't upgrading also have (older) apps that either don't run on Vista, or haven't been tested to see if they do. I do think businesses will largely skip Vista and get Win7, but more because a lot of businesses I see have just finished upgrading to XP in the last 2 - 3 years, and won't really be in the market for new Windows software until XP goes out of mainstream support this year (and even then, it'll be at least a year or two before mass migrations ensue, and that will be Win7's lifetime, not Vista).

[Zxian]

I'll add one more thing to cluberti's post. I've worked at several companies in the past few years, and almost all of them have paid for training with a particular piece of software. These training seminars were not always cheap ($2500 for a 3 day course for one of them), and I still got paid while I attended. The company had decided that my training was worth that, even for something as short as a 4 month internship. There are times when a company is willing to pay money in order to have increased future productivity.

$400 per person (which is roughly the costs that you described above) is not that large of a sum of money for a company with 3000 workstations and, presumably, 3000 employees who use them.

[DeathNACan]

cluberti, on Jan 13 2009, 12:59 PM, said:

No one is saying you're stupid (or if they are, they should stop NOW - I'm watching). However, saying that because *your* experience that businesses aren't going to "go anywhere near" Vista or that it's because the learning curve is too steep is just that - your opinion. Businesses haven't upgraded to Vista largely because they do things slowly (large businesses, and most small ones, aren't real keen on being on the cutting edge of technology), and it's also quite likely that businesses that aren't upgrading also have (older) apps that either don't run on Vista, or haven't been tested to see if they do. I do think businesses will largely skip Vista and get Win7, but more because a lot of businesses I see have just finished upgrading to XP in the last 2 - 3 years, and won't really be in the market for new Windows software until XP goes out of mainstream support this year (and even then, it'll be at least a year or two before mass migrations ensue, and that will be Win7's lifetime, not Vista).

I agree with you. I addressed that in another post. If Microsoft had their way we'd all be upgrading every two years or so. That's just not going to happen in the business world nor for the most part in the home environment. As far as application compatibility is concerned, no argument here but it's not just other vendor's software they had problems with. Remember the XP SP1 debacle? It broke, for lack of a better words, a lot of apps including some of heir own. I too believe that most businesses will wait for Windows 7. Assuming that Microsoft is responsive to the IT Professionals that is. Look at some of the post in this very forum on that.

I remember having to go take a week long class when we migrated from NT 4.x to Windows 2000. It barely scratched the surface but wasn't too bad. XP was, for the most part, a cleaner code with a flasher GUI. No real big changes there. But Vista! God that is a nightmare from an IT perspective... policy and GPO changes, not just moving but busting up the way profiles are handled, adding the Trusted Installer service, and to top it off major GUI changes that moved, renamed or split up too much stuff. It's for the IT Pro not to mention the end user. Many of us were hoping that the would have learned from their mistakes with Vista and fixed them in Windows 7. It doesn't look as if they did but the jury is still out on that one.

[CoffeeFiend]

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

You have already made up you mind that I am just some old guy

Not so. But I already made up my mind that you're a Vista basher, and that what you say are merely personal opinions, without much (if any) facts to back them up.

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

They made deals with OEM's PC Manufacturers to push it on customers. Try buying a PC with Windows XP or NO OS installed today

You mean exactly like it always was? Like when you could get XP but not Win2k anymore? (and son on for every n-1 version)

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

OEM's reject vista

OEMs complaining? Yeah, that'd be because they now have to sell you a machine with more than 256MB of RAM and onboard Intel GMA video.

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

the people who fix and keep your computers running at your job

That would be me.

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

Upgrade the RAM for one computer for $60.00 and you won't go out of budget. Upgrade the RAM for 3000 computers and you just spent $180000.00.

You can get enough RAM to run Vista for much less than $60 at full retail price, in big name brands no less, at full retail prices and in quantities of 1. And that's assuming you had no RAM at all, or will dispose of the old one. Newegg will sell you 2GB of DDR2 667 for $17 everyday. If you shop around, and are buying 3000 packs, you'd get a better price (let's say $13.33). So let's say $40000 total, which isn't much $ for a company with like 3000 employees. Iit may still looks like a large number, but a company that size pays several millions of $ on salaries weekly. $17 is a ridiculously low investment in fact, and it'll pay itself VERY fast. If it just saves a single hour worth of wait time over the lifetime of the machine (several years), then it already cost less than nothing. If it saves a single second everyday it already paid for itself. It's nowhere near as bad as you try to portray it. BTW, 250x$1200 isn't 1.2M but 1/4 of that (not that it would cost anywhere near that in the first place).

cluberti, on Jan 13 2009, 11:59 AM, said:

but more because a lot of businesses I see have just finished upgrading to XP in the last 2 - 3 years, and won't really be in the market for new Windows software until XP goes out of mainstream support this year

That's if they don't wait until extended support is over in 2014. And then upgrade to Windows 8. They're not avoiding Vista at all (unlike what DeathNACan claims), they're just in no hurry to upgrade yet as they just got XP recently.

This post has been edited by crahak: 13 January 2009 - 10:17 PM

[DeathNACan]

crahak, on Jan 13 2009, 09:28 PM, said:

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

You have already made up you mind that I am just some old guy

Not so. But I already made up my mind that you're a Vista basher, and that what you say are merely personal opinions, without much (if any) facts to back them up.

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

They made deals with OEM's PC Manufacturers to push it on customers. Try buying a PC with Windows XP or NO OS installed today

You mean exactly like it always was? Like when you could get XP but not Win2k anymore? (and son on for every n-1 version)

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

OEM's reject vista

OEMs complaining? Yeah, that'd be because they now have to sell you a machine with more than 256MB of RAM and onboard Intel GMA video.

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

the people who fix and keep your computers running at your job

That would be me.

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 10:59 AM, said:

Upgrade the RAM for one computer for $60.00 and you won't go out of budget. Upgrade the RAM for 3000 computers and you just spent $180000.00.

You can get enough RAM to run Vista for much less than $60 at full retail price, in big name brands no less, at full retail prices and in quantities of 1. And that's assuming you had no RAM at all, or will dispose of the old one. Newegg will sell you 1GB of DDR2 667 for $17 everyday. If you shop around, and are buying 3000 packs, you'd get a better price (let's say $13.33). So let's say $40000 total, which isn't much $ for a company with like 3000 employees. It's nowhere near as bad as you try to portray it. BTW, 250x$1200 isn't 1.2M but 1/4 of that (not that it would cost anywhere near that in the first place).

cluberti, on Jan 13 2009, 11:59 AM, said:

but more because a lot of businesses I see have just finished upgrading to XP in the last 2 - 3 years, and won't really be in the market for new Windows software until XP goes out of mainstream support this year

That's if they don't wait until extended support is over in 2014. And then upgrade to Windows 8. They're not avoiding Vista at all (unlike what DeathNACan claims), they're just in no hurry to upgrade yet as they just got XP recently.

You win! Your vast years of experience is overwhelming me too much. You have shown me that I have no idea of what I speak. Thank you for educating me about the way things really work in IT. Have a nice day.

[CoffeeFiend]

DeathNACan, on Jan 13 2009, 10:46 PM, said:

You win! Your vast years of experience is overwhelming me too much. You have shown me that I have no idea of what I speak. Thank you for educating me about the way things really work in IT.

Good attempt at trying [rather poorly] to attack someone instead of trying to refute his points (obviously you had to resort to a ad hominem attack as you were wrong from the start). All this, just because of a new (and much better) start menu...

No need to quote entire posts BTW (then again, why should I be pointing this to a experienced IT "guru"? BBCode ain't exactly rocket science...)

This post has been edited by crahak: 13 January 2009 - 10:00 PM