Vista

[miriam_e]

Had my first look at Vista last night on my nephew, Dan's, computer. My first 2 reactions were "Oooh, pretty!" and "No use to me whatsoever."

I spend all my computing time doing a few things:

• writing text files (as articles or stories or programs
  
• viewing pictures and video files
  
• creating pictures and video files
  
• playing sound files (talks and music)
  
• recording sound files
  
• creating and programming virtual worlds

Vista doesn't help with any of these and potentially impedes some of them.

• viewing video files could become a problem because of restrictive digital locks
  
• playing sound files could likewise become more difficult
  
• running virtual worlds may be more difficult as the operating system sucks so much power it could slow VR rendering. Dan hasn't seen any slowing of his blisteringly fast machine, but my much slower computers would likely be brought to their knees by Vista.
  
• apparently Vista encrypts your hard drive, which I think means there is no chance of sharing with Linux.

So, like I say, not any use to me.

I wonder how many people get sucked in by the pretty surface and become shackled to the restrictive monster lurking underneath.

Comments

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I run Several computers at home. I use AmigaOS, Win98SE, Puppy Linux, and a recent Debian Linux distribution called 64-Studio. I've gradually been removing all my Win98 installations and making a concerted effort to find a Linux distro that is as easy to use. The best OS of all time, as far as I'm concerned is AmigaOS, but its lack of easy networking relegates it simply to certain tasks that are complex and not easily performed by the other OSes. Win98 has a lot going for it in lightweight easy usability, but is so fragile and crashes so much that in the long run it is probably not worth the trouble. XP is more stable but has backdoors built in and is another step down the road to dependence upon the dark side.

Puppy is the easiest, fastest Linux I've used. It is not pretty or glossy (though I've fiddled with my desktop settings to make it rather attractive), but it is like greased lightning and damn easy to use.

You may be interested in 64-Studio. It comes with a whole slew of graphics, sound, video, and other multimedia editing programs. It is all free. Unfortunately, unlike Puppy you can't try it out on live CD before deciding to install. With 64-Studio in order to try it you have to install it on a partition. With a Linux or Win98 based machine this poses no great problems, but with XP it is difficult (XP doesn't like to play nice with others) and with Vista it becomes impossible.

64 Studio is at http://64studio.com
Puppy is at http://www.puppyos.com and http://www.puppylinux.org