f13.net

January 30, I believe.

So, I doubt that it would be a great idea to get this right off, but I am hoping that someone can explain a few things to me.  One thing I am wondering about is that Amazon shows XP Home as a prereq for Vista Home Premium Upgrade (http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Vista-Premium-UPGRADE/dp/B000HCZ9BG/sr=1-1/qid=1168364597/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-1134744-0163013?ie=UTF8&s=software).  The implication is that I cannot, say, install Vista Home Upgrade on top of XP Pro.  That would be annoying, perhaps.

Also just a general "what's the state?" for anyone that was bold enough to install Vista.  Am I really going to want to avoid this for 6-12 months, or more?

I was looking in to Vista yesterday. What I found was. XP Home and XP Pro can upgrade to Vista, XP Pro x64 CANNOT upgrade, you have to buy the full Vista.

I think a lot of us here are going to want Vista Ultimate, as it has the gaming features of Vista Home and Vist Entertainment, but it also offers all the parts of Vista Business, like Remote Desktop and some security stuff.

Im hoping to pick up a OEM copy from Newegg.

Does...eh...Your XP Pro key need to be....valid, in order to upgrade?

Upgrading before Jan 2008 to Vista is asking for pain, PAIN and more PAIN. There are cheaper ways to do it, like stapling your genitalia to a wooden cross and setting it on fire.

My suggestion is not to upgrade until you upgrade your hardware, then just buy it with your new computer.

(http://media.arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.media/ms-vista-upgrade-path.gif)

My friend just uninstalled the recent build because it lacked hardware/driver support. I'd say wait.

The installs I've seen of it have been dog slow compared to XP running on the same box.  I suspect that with better hardware the disparity would shrink, but really, why the hell should the OS on its own require more than a gig of memory?

There is also the issue of cockblocks (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12314) that don't look good.  Maybe some brave soul will feel this out for me.  I'm inclined to agree with sinij.

Hey, agreed with twice in one day.  How's it feel?

As for the hardware upgrade, I was going to wait until then, but I'll be doing that in a few months I expect.  This will be before the suggested January 2008 tollgate.  I don't think Vista will be shipped with OEM PC parts, so it's a retail box for me in any event.


Seems that IE7 and recent DirectX updates require this too (if you use Windows Update, at least, nyuk, nyuk), so I'd think that's a certainty.  I won't even bother to try to put a Vista Upgrade on my machine until I get around to installing that (hopefully) legit copy of XP I recently bought.

Eh, oh well. I'm going to eventually build a new rig anyway, so I might as well get a full version of Vista so I don't have to juggle 2 OSs.

Thing is, I know my LinkSys Skype phone doesn't support Vista yet, and I'm pretty sure my scanner doesn't also (never got it working in the beta).  That's 2 pieces of hardware down the tubes.  Now I have some confidence that eventually my phone will be supported because Linksys is a reputable company.  Visioneer, the company that produces my cheapass (but completely suitable for my needs) scanner?  Not so much.

I won't touch Vista until 2008, or SP1, whichever comes first. But it does look like Creative found a workaround for the EAX problem, but we'll see how much more overhead it throws on the system. Stuff like that is one reason I was considering quad-core, just to spread the load of background shit like audio processing, since hardware nerfing. Anyway, Creative is adding in something to catch EAX calls and translate them into OpenAL, for games that don't support OpenAL.

I think another year of XP will work out ok.

Visiontek sucks balls for driver support, we had to toss (actually sold it for $10 at a yard sale) a scanner because we couldn't get it working with OSX. OS9 only? Ok, sure.

Having dinked with betas of Vista for the last year (for business purposes), I can safely say I'm keeping it off my home machines for as long as I possibly can. Aside from the performance issues, the phone-home DRM stuff irks me, and the security features are sorely lacking compared to the hype they've received. In fact, they're generally just really annoying instead of actually useful for the power user, and you cannot shut them off.

And, really, there's no compelling reason to upgrade a gaming machine to Vista aside from DX10. I'm absolutely going to wait and see how the dev community approaches the DX10 issue. Being an early adopter here can only cause pain.

Why the rush to upgrade to Vista, can't wait to get fucked by DRM up the ass? What suddenly wrong with your XP/2000 OS, it still works and there isn't a single Vista exclusive out there.

Psh...  There's no DRM alive that can't be circumvented.  I don't see DECSS preventing me from using my Blockbuster Online account to it's utmost.  Beyond that Vista is quite a bit better than XP. 

MS will bribe or buy a developer to ensure that at least one megahit game requires DX10.  All other developers will follow suit a month later.

Crysis

I'll get Vista at the time I actually need it to play a game that will not run on XP.  My guess is it will be 2010 before that happens.

I can't make my middle fingers gigantic or numerous enough for vista. Not just no. Hell no. Fuck no. My next OS is ubuntu, fuck you, I'll go consoles if I have to, before I put up with the DRM shit you're trying to shove down my throat.

Halo 2 for PC is, I believe, a DX10 exclusive. As is, as noted above, Crysis. The Shadowrun game will be Vista/360. According to Microsoft, Hellgate:London and AOC will have DX10 support, but no word on exclusivity.

I might be off, but yeah, I too looked at it briefly and got the impression that they wrapped a lot of crap around a DX upgrade, and are trying to basically bundle an OS with what people want (DX10).  I don't know what the hell Microsoft is thinking, but what I want from an OS is something that lets me run Applications, not something that interrupts what I'm doing every 5 minutes.  And, as far as business users, they just want to click their Word and Excel and email and once they've done that, they want to WORK, not play with the damn computer, cause they got deadlines and shit to do.

It all started with the Anti-Virus applications upgrading themselves to Security Suites and then being extremely annoying with pop-ups whenever you turn off parts of the "suite" (such as the freaking firewall component; I have a damn Cisco box blocking the Internet, it's sufficient).  And now Microsoft... what they made is a whack-a-popup game, not an OS.

It sounds stupid, but Microsoft really does want to own your asses, and have their hand in everything you do. It's in your interest to push them back at least once. Just one fucking time.

Stop buying their shit.

I'm going to protest by not buying their vista only games and instead buying their 360 versions.... and I guess I'll need to buy a 360 for that.....   :cry:

As long as you stick to games on the XBox, you'd be fine (even though MS has all of these grand plans to coax cripple you into buying a Zune and Vista in the future, for various media functions).

As for DX10 games, for some reason Crytek has come out and said that both the 360 and PS3 are incapable of running Crysis (even with the 360's partial DX10 functionality).

Pretty lame considering that UE3 looks every bit as good.

Whenever Apple updates the iMac Ill be getting XP64 for Bootcamp.  (Getting Dawn of War off a putzy low graphics output 15" screen onto a big badass dual or quad core with a middle-high end card?  Oh FUCK YES.  And then I will have the excuse to play through it again as the Tau and Necrons!)

I probably will skip Vista as long as possible.  If not permanently.  We will see what solutions like Parallels and Cider end up doing for the Mac market.

Will I be able to play all my current CD and DVD based games with XP?  Yes. Will I be able to play the newest Trackmania (now with 100% less Starforce on the downloadable version of the game!)?
Yes.

Do I care about not playing Halo 2, a game I won't care about till i can get it for the X Box/360 for 10 bucks?  No.

The choice is easy.  Yall deal with the bullshit.  Ill wait as long as I can.

I have high hopes for Feisty Fawn what with it having ATI and Nvidia drivers loaded by default. If Feisty + Wine can run EQ, CoH, and WoW then it's away with Windows (I'm pretty sure WoW is a done deal at least with Crossover). Oh, and Morrowind and Oblivion. I've been meaning to try Sabayon which has 3D support but I don't have a DVD drive in my desktop yet and I don't want to mess with my laptop at this point.

I am holding out some hope that the Ultimate edition of Vista will give you more control of the OS somewhat like XP Pro does. If that's so I may get Vista eventually. If not, my computer will become what I use for word documents and internet surfing after games go totally DX10. I refuse to be forced to upgrade hardware so my computer can run slower than it currently does.

If Microsoft is looking to force people onto consoles for gaming they've made a good start.

Considering everything I have heard, I don't see how any large corporation could justify dealing with this sort of irritation, except of course being forced into it by lack of support for XP.  I'd like to think there will be pressure from that end to change things, even if you don't hear a peep from the average moron.  Obviously I need to make a friend on our Windows team and see what I can find out.

Having my fears confirmed, more or less, I am now curious about the other OS options.  Seems like they have a chance to move up in the install-base rankings; Apple is an obvious player that is going to take advantage of any openings left by MS, but what about some Linux flavors?  Is there even anything else out there?  Can someone run OS X on PC hardware?

I don't like Linux, however it seems that I will probably like Vista even less.  Basically I ranked them by ease-of-use, not counting OS X since I don't have a Mac.  Maybe it was instinct, I don't really know, but last week I upgraded my Safari subscription and picked up the O'Reilly bash book.

Linux isn't what it used to be. Its really grown in terms of responsiveness and professionality in the last years. At work I use a Linux Fedora Core 6 box as much as I can get away with, both for its snappiness on a lower end system as well as just the sheer amount of tools for networks and hardware diagnostics it offers simply out of its own download database. Since it easily authenticates with basic Windows 2000/2003 server for the purposes of network file sharing, the only road block is the intercompatibility between Open Office and MS Office. You can also do a whole bunch of media manipulation and creation without having to spring for Adobe CS2.

I've heard great things about Ubuntu, in particular its awsome database of both tested and 'available, but not 100% verified' stuff. For example, you can download DVD codecs from Ubuntu's repository. Stuff that would otherwise cost you some money unless you obtain the codecs as bundled software, is readily available.

The real reason to get into Linux is quite simply, the command line. Apple, as far as I know, doens't have one, and Windows' command line is pitiable. Linux has a learning curve, a quite steep one, depending on how deep you want to get. Windows and Apple don't have a particularly deep learning curve for home use, but then again, there's a tacit assumption with them that the end user has to have absolutely everything done for them, so there are built in road blocks all over the place.

My recommendation to someone who wants to dabble in Linux is to set up an extra low end box you have lying around. I currently have FC6 running just fine on a Pentium II 400 mhz machine with 380 ram stuffed in it. It runs an ProSql/php database just fine, for instance. Of course, the load on it is miniscule, but its a good example of how far a Linux OS can stretch old hardware.

OS X runs on top of FreeBSD/Mach (heavily modified of course) and a standard Unix command line is readily available from the "Terminal" app or another 3rd party program.

Oh, cool. Didn't know that. Maybe Apple is the way to go, since nowadays you can boot to XP as well as the native hardware. I'm still a little gunshy about Apple, since although it has awsome robustness and no 3rd party shenanigans that MS products have, in the past the end user was stuck with few options. Granted, this was back in the early 90s.

One thing I do know for certain is that when shopping for a computer for someone who isn't actually interested in computers and can't be assed to learn, Apple is the only answer. I recently helped purchase a new Dell for someone who's not computer savvy, and I had to spend well over 5 hours just tearing down 3rd party junk to make the thing behave with a modicum of civility to the end user. There was so much intrusive crap bundled with the Dell that I honestly felt that Linux would have been more user-friendly to a computer newbie than a commercially pre-packaged Windows PC.

Apple is Unix, or more precisely a BSD variant. At low level, I'm sure that means a heck of a lot, but at even the software developer level, it just means I have to remember to type "ps ax" instead of "ps -ef" to view process list. Just about anything built for *nix, I can compile and run on OS X. I say just about anything because sometimes software bundles have some esoteric CPU centric quirks (not so much an issue with Intel Mac now, but occasionally building software for PPC macs one would run into this, but not very often), but I have everything *nix that I ever had on Linux/Unix and more (a more aesthetically pleasing appearance and superior font anti-aliasing via Quartz). And that isn't enough I can run Linux through Parallels (as I could run Win too) without a reboot. Or just dual-boot with Boot Camp but running Windows on a Mac box is extremely distasteful to some…

I should probably explain why I don't like Linux.  I'm accustomed to a real UNIX, if you can call AIX UNIX, and the pervasive halfassness of Linux bothers me.  Admittedly this is mostly from a work perspective; things I can do in a three-word command on AIX would take a script or third-party app to do on Linux... or HP/UX or Solaris for that matter (thinking about the LVM here).  Another is that I know ksh.  I know ksh.  I can and will learn bash, but I am not at all excited about it.  I could use ksh on Linux, but the system files are all in bash so it would be in my best interest to just use bash myself.

Anyway, all of that doesn't really matter if I have a machine to run my games on.  Apple is looking good, actually, with no small thanks to Boot Camp.  It's not like all of my games run on WinXP, so I'm not married to that bullshit.

naum's "ps ax versus ps -ef" comment is one of the reasons I like AIX and one thing that would irritate me about Linux.  I can do both of those in AIX.  I usually do `ps -ef` but one of the things I like to do is `ps auxw|egrep -v "^USER"|sort -n +4`.

While I stated above I won't touch Vista until 2008...it was as consideration as a main OS. If I've got a hotrod pc (and I will), and something like Crysis comes out, I can see grabbing a copy of Vista to dual boot. It'd be just like the early days when I was a DOS gamer and booted into Win 3.1 only to play Civ for Windows. I hated Win 3.1 with a passion, never used the stinky thing otherwise.

For games like Spore, if there's a Vista version with lots of cool eye candy, I'd boot into Vista to play them, too. I just don't see it as a 'main' OS for quite some time, though.

Oh, and the apple command line (Terminal) is pure joy. Also, XP on a Core Duo mini with a gig of ram runs really nicely (not loaded with crapware, of course). I was REALLY hoping Jobs was going to announce a Core 2 Duo mini. I'm installing two new internet terminals this month (kiosks with the browser as shell) and cost-benefit-analysis (I heart CBA) says the intel mini. We'll be booting them into XP, and I can repurpose them as a mac later if needed. My (longtime mac addict) supervisor and I get a chuckle that I'm buying a couple macs to run windows. But it's the best scenario for the application, really.

Question for people with Bootcamp experience; can files on the Windows partition be accessed from OS X and vice versa?  I'm considering putting either XP or Vista on my iMac for Oblivion and a few other games but I can't make up my mind on partition sizes.  I'd like to, for example, be able to access MP3s in Windows that are stored on the OS X file system.

Real Unix? I wouldn't call AIX "real" Unix (which I have worked with) any more than Sun Unix, HP Unix, etc...
 
Bash and ksh arn't much different except for top end features that really shouldn't be used if you're looking for cross platform agree-ability… …one of the things that bit me a lot when working w/ commercial Unix platforms was how seemingly gimped some of the system commands were, compared to F/OSS Linux counterparts… …tar, awk, etc... And each vendor (Apple + the Linux variants) throws their own custom admin tools on top…

Will find out in a week or so after I get delivery of another Mac Book Pro and I am going to put BootCamp on.

But Parallels (http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/) can do this.

I have Parallels, and while it is rather wiz bang, it doesn't do DirectX as far as I know and therefore won't run Oblivion.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.

No, I think even if it would run, it would be painful...

Depends. If you run XP and format your Windows partition FAT then OSX can read/write the win partition. If you run Vista or use NTFS then no, OS X can't. Either way Windows can't read or write your OS X partition, doesn't even see it. I use a separate Firewire drive formatted FAT to share files between Vista and OS X.

It's odd that OS X has no problems reading and writing to an NTFS shared folder on a Windows XP machine over the network.  One other question about Bootcamp and abandon the Mac talk; can you adjust the partition sizes after both operating systems are installed or are you stuck with that initial choice?

They are thinking "You will be our bitch, again."

As long as it's in FAT (FAT32 for XP) format. It can only read ntfs, I think.

Also, you don't even need Boot Camp, if you're willing to shell out. Parallels (http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=1B2D43EC&nplm=TK057LL%2FA) allows you run Windows in a OS X window (though a full boot through Boot Camp would be better for more performance intense applications). It also allows some drag and drop abilities.

[EDIT]

Umm...Weird. Everyone said this already. My bad. I didn't see any of those above posts for some reason.

Just some notes about Parallels, specifically Beta3 http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/beta_testing/ (http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/beta_testing/):

With Coherence, Windows no longer requires a full screen. Each app will launch in a normal window and look like a native application (aside from the widgets). Heck, they've even been able to get Parallels to use your Boot Camp partition as a VM so any changes made via Parallels is reflected when rebooting into Windows. Pretty snazzy.

Beta3 also now allows for adding Windows app icons to the dock for one-click launching. Finally, Command-Tab now cycles through each Windows app by name along with the native Mac apps.

For Boot Camp, there is a third party app called MacDrive 6 http://www.media4.com/products/macdrive6/ (http://www.media4.com/products/macdrive6/) that allows for accessing your HFS+ Mac partition from the Windows side. I've used it a bit and it seems to work well although there can be conflicts with Daemon Tools (just turn off MacDrive and all is well).

Apologies for the continued derailing but I've just discovered Parallels and am having a blast with it.

Not really. When writing to a "shared folder", you're really interacting with a SMB/SAMBA server over the network. Like this.

( Mac FS ) <-> ( OSX ) <-> ( SAMBA client ) <-> ( network ) <-> ( SMB server ) <-> ( Windows ) <-> ( NTFS )

The Windows OS on the other end is doing all the actual NTFS work, not OSX. This works for the same reason that you don't really need to care what OS a web server is running on. When trying to read a regular HDD locally, it would be more like this:

( Mac FS ) <-> ( OSX ) <-> ( NTFS )

And there's no non-Windows driver currently out there that has good NTFS write support. There's good NTFS read support though, at least in the Linux kernel. I would guess and Linux or BSD-derived OS has it available as a kernel module somewhere.

Erm, if you have a OS X partition and a Vista partition, can they both read and write to entirely separate, other partitions?

Windows can't interact with OSX (as far as I know [EDIT] Nevermind. Just saw that link above from BoredSomewhere), but OS X can read and write to FAT32.

Vista might very well require NTFS though (or maybe something new? I remember awhile back that MS was trying to implement a new file system....).

If I were to set the other, separate partitions to Fat32, both OSs could then access that data, correct?

Yeah. I'm just not sure if the Vista OS itself can run on FAT32. But besides that, I can't think of any problems.

The problem with Apple is their lineup, which should have been rectified at this MacWorld.  Can you tell me what's missing in this picture?

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/spaeschke/Macmini.jpg)
The MacMini.  No forced upon you monitor, which is good.  However, shitty non-upgradeable video card, no PCI expandability, lack of HD space.  Starts at $599.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/spaeschke/Imac.gif)
iMac.  All in one solution (monitor included, boo!), not expandable.  Starts at $999.

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v490/spaeschke/powermac.jpg)
MacPro.  Finally, we have expandability!  You can replace the GPU, easily add RAM, and you have PCI slots.  Downside?  Starts at $2499.

Now what's missing in the tremendous gap between the iMac and the MacPro?  Apple is fucking retarded.

I agree (speaking as a so called "Appletard" at that). They need a midrange expandable machine.

Apple had both tower and desktop versions of expandable midrangers for years. Until the G4.

IIRC, Vista demands that it, itself, be installed on an NTFS partition, but yes, it can read/write/access other partitions, so long as those partitions are FAT16/FAT32/NTFS.

You can also get some handy programs like explore2fs to read from Linux ext2/ext3 partitions.

Yes, Apple hardware is expensive.  I have no interest in Apple hardware,  I want OS X... maybe.  That's why I wanted to know if I could install OS X on a plain-jane x86 platform, or is there some specialness to the Intel Macs?  I mean, if that's possible then I don't see why I should not do that.

From your perspective perhaps… …most Mac users don't really care for expandability, wanting stuff that just works, preferring to work with their computer, not on it. I bought an iMac for Mrs. Naum a few years back and she digs it... ...and it's a lot less hassle for me to admin (basically none, other than MS Office annoyances), basically plug and play.

Perhaps they could address the desktop market more, it seems that laptops (and I have one of the new shiny MacBookPros, which is expensive, but I don't think much more than the equivalent high end Dell laptop) are where they've made the biggest gains. If Linux wireless and peripheral stuff was a lot more painless I would go that route, but OS X brought the joy of computing back into my life.

Apple stock rose again, up to $97… …wonder if the Cisco squabble they intentionally wanted high profile public controversy… …free promotion for teh win…

And a final note on the Apple announcements… …one of my office mates bit takeaway was that they were playing Beatles tunes at the Keynote and he was geeked over the possibility that the Beatles would be on iTunes soon… …would never imagine someone getting all excited about that but I guess if you're a hardcore Beatles fan and you like splurging on iTunes…

Intel Macs have TPM chips and probably some other funky stuff that OS X presumably checks for on install to make sure you are installing on Genuine Apple™ hardware.

Which is ironic given how many times Apple Corps/Records has sued Apple and I wouldn't be surprised if they sue them again because of the name change.

Possible solution:
http://uneasysilence.com/os-x-proven-hacked-and-running-on-an-ordinary-pc/

Naturally I have not investigated this.

Wow, that beta version of Parallels is hot!  Thanks for the heads up.

Gulp: you are correct in that Apple does not cater to this crowd. Only their highest end workstation can be set up as a gaming machine, and even then you're very limited and it'll be in line with boutique kits. Unfortunately, it's also a good business decision, uniformity is great.

So, as always, work on macs and game on pcs. Nothing new.

Unacceptable. One computer for work and play should be enough. The entire PC industry is built on the idea of expandable midranged machines. Apple until the G4 did this shit. They're being cocksuckers now.

NOW?

This is hardly unique. Apple is a buzzword for pretentious design douchetards.

Except that OSX kicks ass eight ways to sunday.

A buddy at work runs osx on a dell precision. No clue how it's done, though. I could ask if you wanted.

It'd be fun to play with.

We've been doing a lot of testing of Vista at the office, and the conclusion is that there are still a lot of problems, including surprisingly standard apps don't run under it yet. Like Sky and others said, probably best to defer this upgrade for a few months until things settle down.

Not straight out of the proverbial box. There are a few third party apps that will let Windows see your OS X partitions, however. This of course, leaves you with the possibility of any particularly vicious malware screwing with those volumes as well though. And pretty much, since it's a beta, you're on your own if something goes wrong.

As for running Dawn of War, Jain (I always did like the Eldar). It kicks all sorts of ass on my Mac Pro with the 30".

It's damn cool in that it's "unix with real desktop applications", but performance-wise it remains terrible.  Linux runs circles around it on the same hardware for things like compiling larger projects (something I care about for work).  I haven't tried it again since Steve invented virtual desktops -- that might actually address some of my complaints about usability of the windowing system.

The lock-in to apple's hardware is annoying.  Their laptops in particular are huge.  If I could run OSX on my thinkpad x40, I'd seriously consider dumping Linux, but having to haul around some 5+ pound ginormous brick with a one button trackpad -> no thanks.

As for Vista... no, just no.  They've yanked all the interesting technology they were going on about and added more and more DRM and trusted computing shit that's just terrible for actual *users*.  Bleah.

-Q