Microsoft looks to 'Mojave' to revive Vista's image

[ViolentJ]

Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista.

Full story:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9998336-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

That doesn't surprise me at all. I have to say that Vista for me at least has been the best OS MS has made and I'm not an MS fan buy, I used Linux exclusively for 2 years.

 

[Englebert]

LOL, funny!

I think its all a bit ghey to be honest. Like the Bill Gates thing. He used to be considered a pioneer, now people think hes some sort of dictator. One that gives a $1 Billion to charity every year...

 

[McBunny]

+ he is retiring so he can work full time with his charity

nasty nasty man

 

[Lee]

+ he is retiring so he can work full time with his charity

nasty nasty man

He's already retired, and has started spending his 36 billion on the Gates Foundation charities.

I've always thought he comes across as a nice bloke, but they're the worst kind in business, fine for having a beer and a chat with, but all the time he's fleecing your wallet and f**king your wife. I've worked with a few guys like that, all worth millions!

Back to Vista, I've been really impressed with it. It's been far more usable then Windows 2000 was when that came about, but that was really the first leap into an NT kernal based OS for desktop use. XP was okay to start with, just pretty 2000. With Service Pack 3 it's spot on.

I'm a bit pissed this week that I can't run VMware under Vista x64. To get it to run I have to turn of Driver Signing, which is fine, except for the fact it f***s up my networking!

 

[172boost]

Gates is a fraud anyway and he should be giving most of his fortune away considering he nicked somebodies idea in the first place.
I personally don't like Vista one bit, it's ok if your a first time user but just darn right confusing if your not. Also, it seems to use unbelievable amounts of resource just for stuff that's running in the background so Joe average with his standard spec PC has a good machine that runs like a dead dog.
Hopefully this 'Mojave' will go someway to resoring my confidence in Vista.

 

[BenWall]

Hes not a fraud, just really good at business and seeing the gap and exploiting it.

 

[ViolentJ]

Gates is a fraud anyway and he should be giving most of his fortune away considering he nicked somebodies idea in the first place.
I personally don't like Vista one bit, it's ok if your a first time user but just darn right confusing if your not. Also, it seems to use unbelievable amounts of resource just for stuff that's running in the background so Joe average with his standard spec PC has a good machine that runs like a dead dog.
Hopefully this 'Mojave' will go someway to resoring my confidence in Vista.

Not sure you read the article properly. Mojave is Vista. The point they made was that take a bunch of Vista haters, show them Vista but call it something else and they suddenly like it.

What is a standard spec pc these days? I run vista on an X2 4600+ with 4GB ram which is hardly anything special but it runs perfectly smoothly.

 

[Daz]

Gates is a fraud anyway and he should be giving most of his fortune away considering he nicked somebodies idea in the first place.

He didn't really......

Hopefully this 'Mojave' will go someway to resoring my confidence in Vista.

Maybe you should try it..

 

[NIN-172]

I tried Vista. It was nice looking & ran ok. It's just annoying as hell. they moved all the advanced stuff to different places from where it was in XP & some of the networking stuff really is a pain to work with. Then theres the security features that ask you if you really want to run something you just double clicked.
Apart from that it's ok. But why put up with that sort of crap if there is nothing wrong with XP?

I'm guessing this test in the OP was done on a random selection of ordinary people who may not even use computers that much, except at work & have just got wind of the "Vista is crap" thing from people around them, & don't really know if it's bad or not.
The thing is they are probably using XP on their home pc & happy with it, so why would they need to go out & buy Vista anyway, when it doesn't offer hardly anything over what XP has.

 

[wozzaa]

Most of the things people have problems with can be changed. The locations and layout for everything can be changed to the same as XP so thats no reason to dislike it.

The security thing asking if you want to run something can be turned off.

The vista using more ram thing is not entirely true. Turn off aero and it uses roughly the same as XP. But you lose the aero features and also the way Vista manages resources is a little different. But not entirely bad. Just need to get used to the system I was dead against it and now run vista 64 as my only OS. And find it runs brilliantly now.

 

[Lee]

You can't run Vista without Aero, how else am I going to justify it to my boss.

"So why are you the only member of staff with Vista?"
"Check out the fancy tabbing Trev, and look at the way the video keeps playing"
"Oooo, that's pretty cool"

Sold. lol

May parents have been running Home Basic on their old Athlon XP 2800 for over 12 months now, and other than a few printer driver issues that's been spot on.

 

[Mike_182]

Gates is a fraud anyway and he should be giving most of his fortune away considering he nicked somebodies idea in the first place.
I personally don't like Vista one bit, it's ok if your a first time user but just darn right confusing if your not. Also, it seems to use unbelievable amounts of resource just for stuff that's running in the background so Joe average with his standard spec PC has a good machine that runs like a dead dog.
Hopefully this 'Mojave' will go someway to resoring my confidence in Vista.

Penis. An obviously illiterate one at that, because it's not a few lines into the article that it comes out and says that Vista IS 'Mojave'.

And I run it on a Core Duo 1.6Ghz laptop - with Aero turned on, and 1Gb RAM. It works, it's not unusuably slow and whilst, yes, it was faster running XP, it's even faster running 2000 but then I'd rather have a desktop I don't mind looking at... Would you buy a pig ugly car that drove well? Or would you buy the good looking car that drove ok?

 

[Mike_182]

The vista using more ram thing is not entirely true. Turn off aero and it uses roughly the same as XP. But you lose the aero features and also the way Vista manages resources is a little different. But not entirely bad. Just need to get used to the system I was dead against it and now run vista 64 as my only OS. And find it runs brilliantly now.

Actually, it DOES use more RAM. But you know why? Because it puts the stuff you use in there - to reduce the amount of stuff it loads from disk. Think, when XP came out how much did it cost to put 1GB in your machine? Few hundred notes IIRC. Now you can put 8GB in a desktop for £70, and 4GB in a laptop for £80. RAM is cheaper, and is THE SINGLE best way to improve performance of a machine - as most frequently the bottleneck is either the hard disk, OR getting the data from the hard disk to the processor. RAM is much closer - on an AMD it's just a wire away, and on an Intel it's only got the memory controller to cross... No spin-up times, no seek times, it's just there. How much RAM you have free isn't a judge of how well an operating system is using RAM. In fact, there's a big argument that if you've got loads of free RAM then it's actually bad at managing memory usage. SQL server for instance, instantly uses 75% of system resources to start loading the most frequently accessed data on...

The exact principle that my Intel TurboMemory card works on - and it genuinely does work.

 

[Daz]

People do a "Task manager" and see it using most of the RAM, with very little free.. "just on the desktop with no apps open!!1oneoneoeneleven!!1one"

Incorrect.

 

[Mike_182]

People do a "Task manager" and see it using most of the RAM, with very little free.. "just on the desktop with no apps open!!1oneoneoeneleven!!1one"

Incorrect.

O noooooooooo!!111oneone!one11

I'm using all but 35MB of my physical memory!

Oh wait, no, 2320MB of itis actually cached applications and data so that my Outlook, for example, opens within 2 seconds. At a push!

Yes Daz - it is x86. Using my XPS M1530, and IMHO if you're using 4GB of memory tops then 64-bit extensions is a bad move, as EVERYTHING in x64 is bigger - dotNET, MSIE... The whole lot, and benching side-by-side a 4GB system runs better on x86-32 than x86-64 setup. Different story on my desktop as that's got 8GB, which is a lot more space for s**t, but as my laptop is capped at 4GB by the size of the stick I can put in it then there's no point considering it.

That and it has an nVidia Mobile Graphics chipset which Dell have to release drivers for, and they've not yet got x86-64 drivers for it that work. Properly.

 

[Daz]

...

x86?

 

[Griff]

...

x86?

32bit

 

[wozzaa]

The vista using more ram thing is not entirely true. Turn off aero and it uses roughly the same as XP. But you lose the aero features and also the way Vista manages resources is a little different. But not entirely bad. Just need to get used to the system I was dead against it and now run vista 64 as my only OS. And find it runs brilliantly now.

Actually, it DOES use more RAM. But you know why? Because it puts the stuff you use in there - to reduce the amount of stuff it loads from disk. Think, when XP came out how much did it cost to put 1GB in your machine? Few hundred notes IIRC. Now you can put 8GB in a desktop for £70, and 4GB in a laptop for £80. RAM is cheaper, and is THE SINGLE best way to improve performance of a machine - as most frequently the bottleneck is either the hard disk, OR getting the data from the hard disk to the processor. RAM is much closer - on an AMD it's just a wire away, and on an Intel it's only got the memory controller to cross... No spin-up times, no seek times, it's just there. How much RAM you have free isn't a judge of how well an operating system is using RAM. In fact, there's a big argument that if you've got loads of free RAM then it's actually bad at managing memory usage. SQL server for instance, instantly uses 75% of system resources to start loading the most frequently accessed data on...

The exact principle that my Intel TurboMemory card works on - and it genuinely does work.

Hence why I said the above text.
I know it caches programs into memory to load them quicker its just most people don't want or need to know why it does so.

I went x64 mainly due to the amount of ram that gets used up by my system in other resources my 4gb would have shown around 3.1gb in 32bit. And I quite often use 90% of the available memory. Actually after moving to 8gb but looking at some other new components at the same time. Quite fancy a 4870 just waiting for the 1gb versions or the x2 versions to launch.

 

[ivegota16v]

People do a "Task manager" and see it using most of the RAM, with very little free.. "just on the desktop with no apps open!!1oneoneoeneleven!!1one"

Incorrect.

O noooooooooo!!111oneone!one11

I'm using all but 35MB of my physical memory!

Oh wait, no, 2320MB of itis actually cached applications and data so that my Outlook, for example, opens within 2 seconds. At a push!

Yes Daz - it is x86. Using my XPS M1530, and IMHO if you're using 4GB of memory tops then 64-bit extensions is a bad move, as EVERYTHING in x64 is bigger - dotNET, MSIE... The whole lot, and benching side-by-side a 4GB system runs better on x86-32 than x86-64 setup. Different story on my desktop as that's got 8GB, which is a lot more space for s**t, but as my laptop is capped at 4GB by the size of the stick I can put in it then there's no point considering it.

That and it has an nVidia Mobile Graphics chipset which Dell have to release drivers for, and they've not yet got x86-64 drivers for it that work. Properly.

you want to see performance, wait till job public get the new intel nahalem 6 core, all which hyperthread and have QPI = no fsb

i cant share the figures yet, but well i wouldnt be buying shares in AMD...

 

[ViolentJ]

4GB on 64bit. Aside from the usual background stuff the above reflects FF and NOD32.

 

[KDF]

Vista is terrible. People who work in IT will tell you that. People that don't know computers very well will tell you its great.

 

[Mike_182]

Vista is terrible. People who work in IT will tell you that. People that don't know computers very well will tell you its great.

:nono:

What do you think I do for a living?

 

[thecremeegg]

Vista is terrible. People who work in IT will tell you that. People that don't know computers very well will tell you its great.

Ha muppet - people that know computers will be the ones telling you its great. Im struggling to see why people hate it so much when it runs faster, looks nicer and is more secure :S My only gripe is the networking is more tricky to use

 

[Mike_182]

Vista is terrible. People who work in IT will tell you that. People that don't know computers very well will tell you its great.

And in light of the above comment, I think actually you'll find people who are afraid of anything Microsoft will tell you it's terrible, people who have an open mind and have spent the time to sit down and use it will tell you it's great.

Let me take a fairly recent example - Vista installed out of the box AT BETA 2 on 10 out of 10 computers. It worked - OK on a couple it wasn't great and there were driver issues with some of the specialist hardware, but it worked. When I got my hands on XP's final release version back in the day, it bluescreened. 5 reinstalls later it was doing the same. Then, for no apparent reason, it worked. Now, people swear by it. Do any of you even remember the shitstorm that was kicked up when XP hit the shelves? "We don't want to move from 2000, it works, XP doesn't". Now any company that DOESN'T use XP on it's desktops is either using a Mac (not applicable), Windows 2000 and is considered prehistoric, or Windows Vista and called reckless.

I've used Vista on my support laptop (complete with all manner of technologies as TPM/HSDPA card) and the ONLY issue I had was that our Citrix farm is PS4, and the installer was more difficult to get working on there, and that in my docking station I use a PCI nVidia Quadro NVS280. Of which you can use Vista on it, but only using the XPDM drivers. But I've got integrated Crestline graphics, which don't completely disable when using the station, and that uses WDDM drivers, which it cannot run the two concurrently.

Which is nVidia's problem if they don't want to write display drivers for legacy PCI products.

 

[Mike_182]

Vista is terrible. People who work in IT will tell you that. People that don't know computers very well will tell you its great.

Ha muppet - people that know computers will be the ones telling you its great. Im struggling to see why people hate it so much when it runs faster, looks nicer and is more secure :S My only gripe is the networking is more tricky to use

Even then, the more tricky networking has it's uses - I had a problem with a client device that was plugged into the network, but nothing was working - but it had been assigned an IP address. Vista's network diagnostics found an old DNS record on the Router for the machine, which when that was cleared fixed it.

So Vista really is a bag of old nails if the only thing people are finding more difficult, actually serves a purpose!

Not to mention how much better s**t looks in DX10 games.

 

[The Hoff]

Speaking from a strictly business perspective, any company considering migration to Vista are commiting IT suicide. The training issues and implications would be enough to put me off - people moan enough upgrading their Office suite!

Its just not mature enough as a complete package and while it may indeed have more intelligent memory management its still lacking in critical areas.

I think their own admission to ceasing non-critical dev work in favour of pushing Windows 7 forward is more than an admission of "we dropped the ball".

I use Vista on my Vaio in dual boot with XP and make a point of switching between them. From a home user POV there's more protection for the masses and in general easy enough to get to grips with. But business wise there's still zero penetration.

Some people may be interested to hear Lloyds TSB in the City still use NT4...

 

[Mike_182]

Speaking from a strictly business perspective, any company considering migration to Vista are commiting IT suicide. The training issues and implications would be enough to put me off - people moan enough upgrading their Office suite!

Its just not mature enough as a complete package and while it may indeed have more intelligent memory management its still lacking in critical areas.

I think it's biggest flaw in a business environment is it's different. HOWEVER, have any of you switched it to classic mode? Given that users click Start, Programs, Microsoft Office, Outlook/Word/Excel 9 times out of 10, then it won't pose a problem. The issue is with the training of the support staff and the users that have more control over their computer's appearance.

It is however purely a training issue that exists and in time that will pass as more and more people at home get Vista. To make a blanket statement that any company considering migration to Vista is a bit far - there are many environments that it would not impact on, or would have negligible impact.

 

[Andi-B]

I don't like it.. Just as much as I still don't like XP,

But I run XP because half the hardware and the majority of software I have and use on a regular won't run on anything else.
I can't run Windows 98 SE as it has no more updates. (Which I'd quite happily return to if it did)

I see no verifiable reason why I should swap an OS when it works.

 

[Mike_182]

I see no verifiable reason why I should swap an OS when it works.

We'd all be driving a Ford Model T in your ideal world then?

 

[Andi-B]

^^ Didn't mean it that way at all, I just don't validate spending money on an OS for a machine that came preped and designed for another, I have a four year old home built machine that has 2 GB Ram running an AMD XP1400+ at 1.6Ghz that originally ran WinME, now running XP Pro and a laptop running XP home.

I personally don't see the benefit to me to splash out on the newest OS from Microsoft that's all. It will benefit some by the way of businesses and enterprises and I've known some of them even complain about the hassle of switching it over to Vista. Microsoft have to understand it ain't for everyone.

If it ain't broke.. Why try to get the hammer out and bash it?

 

[Mike_182]

^^ Didn't mean it that way at all, I just don't validate spending money on an OS for a machine that came preped and designed for another, I have a four year old home built machine that has 2 GB Ram running an AMD XP1400+ at 1.6Ghz that originally ran WinME, now running XP Pro and a laptop running XP home.

I personally don't see the benefit to me to splash out on the newest OS from Microsoft that's all. It will benefit some by the way of businesses and enterprises but not someone that uses it at the low end..

If it ain't broke.. Why try to get the hammer out and bash it?

You see your argument came across as a full stop should have stuck with 98SE - what you mean is why should you UPGRADE your OS on your existing machine.

Simple answer is don't unless you want to be on a supported platform. When the hardware dies, buy new and use the OS that comes with that new hardware.

Your implication was should I go out and buy a new laptop, it should have Windows 98SE on it.

 

[Brand86]

I really like Vista, works well and quickly. Touch wood the system hasn't stalled or crashed once yet.

As for Bill Gates, you can't hate him just because he has done (VERY VERY VERY) well for himself - we are the ones buying Windows after all.

I am not a Windows fan but kind of anti-Apple as all my mates who love Apple stuff seem to bang on about such trivial features on their OSs. "Ooh look, pretty coours and icons that expand..." "Yes, but there aren't any games and you can't edit anything. Fantastic!"

 

[Daz]

Let's not get into an OS war. It helps no one.
I used to get into "discussions" daily about Windows 2k/XP Vs. Linux (Various) Vs. Mac OS8/9/X and it got me nowhere - people still didn't understand like me

I was right.. they were usually wrong.. the end

 

[McBunny]

^^ Didn't mean it that way at all, I just don't validate spending money on an OS for a machine that came preped and designed for another, I have a four year old home built machine that has 2 GB Ram running an AMD XP1400+ at 1.6Ghz that originally ran WinME, now running XP Pro and a laptop running XP home.

I personally don't see the benefit to me to splash out on the newest OS from Microsoft that's all. It will benefit some by the way of businesses and enterprises but not someone that uses it at the low end..

If it ain't broke.. Why try to get the hammer out and bash it?

You see your argument came across as a full stop should have stuck with 98SE - what you mean is why should you UPGRADE your OS on your existing machine.

Simple answer is don't unless you want to be on a supported platform. When the hardware dies, buy new and use the OS that comes with that new hardware.

Your implication was should I go out and buy a new laptop, it should have Windows 98SE on it.

not 98se but 98se 2.5

 

[McBunny]

end of teh day we should go back to dos

oh look we are with exchange 2007 and server 2007

 

[KDF]

Vista is terrible. People who work in IT will tell you that. People that don't know computers very well will tell you its great.

Ha muppet - people that know computers will be the ones telling you its great. Im struggling to see why people hate it so much when it runs faster, looks nicer and is more secure :S My only gripe is the networking is more tricky to use

Glad you like it, its still s**t.

Vista is terrible. People who work in IT will tell you that. People that don't know computers very well will tell you its great.

:nono:

What do you think I do for a living?

Like I said, people who don't know computers will think its great.

Vista is terrible. People who work in IT will tell you that. People that don't know computers very well will tell you its great.

And in light of the above comment, I think actually you'll find people who are afraid of anything Microsoft will tell you it's terrible, people who have an open mind and have spent the time to sit down and use it will tell you it's great.

I have to use windows every day at work, XP is still MS's best OS (although granted thats not saying much) Vista is there because people need to think they are upgrading.. the smart ones realise they have just downgraded.

Let's not get into an OS war. It helps no one.
I used to get into "discussions" daily about Windows 2k/XP Vs. Linux (Various) Vs. Mac OS8/9/X and it got me nowhere - people still didn't understand like me

I was right.. they were usually wrong.. the end

Hey, I didn't even mention Linux once. Some people are just too defensive about about a bit of (badly written) code.

 

[KDF]

end of teh day we should go back to dos

oh look we are with exchange 2007 and server 2007

Yes I know ! MS are doing something right for a change. Less system resources for the pwetty windows and more stability.




(I Hope)

 

[Mike_182]

Vista is terrible. People who work in IT will tell you that. People that don't know computers very well will tell you its great.

:nono:

What do you think I do for a living?

Like I said, people who don't know computers will think its great.

So, I take it implementing and maintaining kit that most companies dream of using means I don't know computers? Tell me then, what is it you do that makes you god with computers? You ever used an Enterprise Virtual Array? How about set one up? You know how to put in Domino? Or what about putting a (Linux-based) Citrix Access Gateway into an environment that makes the government's security measures seem slack?

Back in your box keyboard warrior - not once have I taken a pop at your abilities, merely questioned your judgement of 'People who work in IT think it's awful'.

Bitlocker drive encryption is the best thing that's ever been available for our laptop users. Never again do we have to spend money on getting disks encrypted prior to loading the operating system.

That on it's own makes Vista an interesting proposition for our mobile users, as frequently confidential data is cached in people's offline files, saved to their desktops or to their C: drive.

So tell me now that Vista is a downgrade... A question for you though, is have you ever actually sat down and spent any time with Vista? There are better operating systems out there depending on your needs, but I can guarantee unless you've never gotten laid that you don't know how to do everything I can do within Vista, from a command prompt and Windows 3.11. It's called progress - sometimes things have to take an apparent step backwards to move forwards. I suppose being s**t hot at computers you know how much better the WDDM is at handling graphics components? Ok, it shoots legacy stuff off but hey, such is life.

A far fetched example is when we move to 'hovering' cars. That's going to be a pretty hard transition for those of us with normal cars, to the point it's probably going to seem like a step backwards.

Keep an open mind, you come across as an arrogant prick and I'm sure that's not your intention.

If it is, however, and you are that good, then where the hell is this operating system that you've written that's so much better?

 

[Mike_182]

end of teh day we should go back to dos

oh look we are with exchange 2007 and server 2007

Yes I know ! MS are doing something right for a change. Less system resources for the pwetty windows and more stability.




(I Hope)

It's intended for virtualisation environments. You don't think that a whole 2% of CPU resources to show a desktop every once in a while makes that much difference on a Quad Quad-core Opteron or something do you?

 

[Daz]

Oh man, I love flame wars.. not seen one for a while..

*sits back, loads Media Center/MythTV/Frontrow (just so I don't get flamed, I'll use all ), and grabs some popcorn* :rasp:

Imagine if KDF, Mike and myself all worked together? There'd be war. I'd be there on my iPhone, being fully productive syncing to my Exchange server, Mike on his Dell laptop which he can't sell, and KDF there compiling wireless drivers so he can get onto the network. IT Crowd all over again!