About that license etc... I made indeed quite some changes to make Vista a bit user friendly and make it work a little bit like XP. But I think that I'm gonna get me another and bigger HD and clone my actual Vista OS to a partition of that new HD. Afterwards I will go back to my old HD and reinstall the complete OS like it was shipped, since I have the original discs to reinstall it. Just in case I would need to claim a warranty.

It's not about warranty, which is why I keep a Vista partition. They said I have to have Vista installed for hardware support, so I just shrunk its partition and gave a bigger one to Linux. The licensing issue is that now Microsoft could be like the RIAA and sue your for "piracy" since I believe any violation of the license agreement is the equivalent of pirating the product in question. Of course they'll probably never know you made those changes (which if they make them angry they can sue you), but this all depends on how far you're willing to go to support copyright law.

OK, but for all that still complain about VISTA let me give you one final proof that they are absolutely right and that an OS like Vista will never work the way a XP does and will forever and always cause problems of instability and powerhungriness, nomatter how much CPU and/or RAM you put in it.

Unnecessary Resource Consumption

Every 30 milliseconds Vista polls all the components in your computer with a huge 128-key encrypted code to determine that they have not been compromised by pirated content. The amount of CPU power that utilizes would run your entire PC a few years ago.

Therefore even though you are forced to buy the latest and fastest type of CPU to run Vista, a significant slice of that computing ability is shaved off the top for Vista's 33-times-a-second paranoid polling.

This resource overuse extends into devices as well. Graphics cards have to dedicate one or more rendering pipelines that were designed for delivering high quality video just to code and decode the constant 128-key poll.

Vista users have found that between 10% and 50% of their total computing system power is used up by the Operating System alone, even without running a single application.

Could you at least cite these facts because I have never seen Vista spike my cpu like that. What do you mean compromised by pirated content? Like, pirated movies, music, pirated version of Vista.
I wish there was a mod alert button on these forums because I'm pretty sure you're just being a troll.

That's funny, cause when I'm not doing anything with Vista... it sits on 0% CPU usage...

I hardly think that license is legally binding anyways. Installing an app can change the OS condidtion. It's illegal to record a TV show in western countries, but they still make VCR's and etc. The company that makes things like Windows Blinds would more likely get sued, not the end user, but it doesn't happen.

Same here troy, unless I'm in a game or encoding the cpu stays faily low. It's the memory that gets used by the pretty addons like Windows Sidebar. If you had a Gig of ram in XP, put an extra 1 gig stick in (hardly much when compared to the price of the OS) and your fine untill Windows 7.



Thats all rubbish. Whats your source?

This post has been edited by sarahw: Jan 6 2009, 10:16 PM

First of all, yes I could indeed cite my source, but that would just give you an opportunity to start a new debate about the trustworthiness of my source. I have more than enough reason to believe my source, trust me. If you want to look it up, do a Google search like I did. On the other hand why would you see your CPU spike like that ? Have you ever considered using a CPU meter ? Vista has a gadget build-in one you know, just watch that jumping while you're absolutely doing nothing and while in fact there should be nothing running in the background. I agree those things are far from accurate.
Furthermore why would I go into a debate with you since I suspect you're a die hard addict of Vista and you have more post as opposed to me, so maybe you're an expert, and I'm indeed a troll. Let other ppl judge about which one of us makes most sence, according to their own experience with Vista.
Oh and BTW I mentioned in the start that in fact all that stuff was specially intended for "all that still complain about VISTA", so since alot of the repliers so far are absolutely not complaining I don't see the point in arguing about it.

This post has been edited by JimB007: Jan 6 2009, 10:42 PM

No, not unless you provide said links and proof that it is indeed a trustworthy site.

I'm not a lawyer, but from as many copyright workshops and lectures I attended at school, the terms are fully binding in the U.S. I think there are a few countries where they aren't binding, such as because the user wasn't given the option to read it until after the transaction, but a couple of the said lecturers advocated agreements like that in order to "protect" your software in ways copyright law cannot since it has historically held up in court. I certainly wish it weren't binding in the U.S... Installing a standalone application or (probably) adding functionality wouldn't violate these terms because it's not working around "technical limitations". Something to actually patch a flaw (or DRM) in Vista or otherwise altering the operating system would be. So, if there were a zero day vulnerability, you can't go look at %SYSDIR%\kernel32.dll under a hex editor trying to fix it yourself and would be required to wait for Microsoft to release a patch.


Aside from McAfee mucking things up every so often, my CPU useage is hovering between 5% and 15%. I am looking at that CPU widget right now. My computer isn't even idle, but what you're probably referring to in regards to piracy prevention is Windows Genuine Advantage.

OK, here's what I did after this last comment of you, and now I know there's a chance, there's gonna be some real debate about the trustworthiness of my source. But I just found "another" source ...

So what I did do and what you could do too BTW, is the following: grab a complete sentence or part of words and put them between quotes and Google for it. I took at complete random this line in my post and put it between quotes to see the result, and yes I got "another" source, so yes or no, the original or not, I have no idea, but certainly not my source, but one that says the same things about Vista: "resource overuse extends into devices as well"

Take a look for yourself. And if you know more about Vista, you should maybe start a debate with that person, after you've invited him ove here. But with all due respect, I have more reasons to believe him over you.

So go here

http://hubpages.com/hub/All_The_Reasons_To_Not_Install_Vista

Once again that's not the source of my post but it is another. Maybe a detective could look up the original first source. I don't have the time for that, and at a certain point, I believe ppl.. So please forgive me if I won't go into a debate about the trustworthiness of that link. To me this and my original are worth my trust, also since in time I found other sources that say the same things about this "polling" of the Vista OS.

Funny link, that one. I still don't understand why you don't post your "original" source... What do you have to hide? You can believe others, I don't care, but if you want to convince people about what you believe, it's a whole new ball game. Lots of people here are saying Vista does not have the problems you claim it has.

Anyway, some comments from some quotes taken from that link:

I have never experienced a problem with DRM, ever. Did the author ever think people will use a computer and not put music on it? Or just play from their CDs only?

I've had my system playing High Definition content onto a High Definition screen... So wrong from my experience. And again, what if the users purchased Vista but never intended on using it for High Definition content?

I could go on... but I'm still laughing after reading the rest of the article. That article is old enough, and for all intents and purposes, no longer applies.

Troy

That's just an over simplified, dumbed down explanation of AACS, the copy protection scheme required to (legally) play Blu-Ray/HD DVDs that Microsoft implemented in Vista. You can find evidence of perhaps some of what you found there in the Vista EULA (page 4) if you're struggling to find a source. I touched on the content protection quite a while ago as one reason I don't approve of Vista, by philosophy, and cited this paper as a source. Your explanation, however, is dumbing down what is going on even further than the source you cited, then stretching it beyond what is really going on. The site you gave a link to does not explain how or why any of these issues occur, or provide any evidence for these claims. This paper received a lot of attention a bit over a year ago, including by security researcher and journalist Steve Gibson. Vista is a slow operating system, and to my understanding content protection (specifically AACS) is one of the main reasons for it, but that does not mean that Vista is constantly making certain that all of your available CPU cycles are used up.

Edit: Troy, you beat me to it. I was still typing when you posted.

I'm afraid the burden of proof falls on the one who presents his findings, not the audience.

This only applies to AACS-compliant devices, which includes Blu-Ray/HD DVDs and I think some protected HDMI media for those who watch cable on their computers. It basically means that all of the hardware (optical drive, video card, sound card, monitor, etc.) is required to negotiate security with eachother, playing pickle-in-the-middle with the user in case the user "sniffs" the signal and, God-forbid, records it. In order to pull that sort of scheme off though, you can't have a single of those devices keys compromised, and already users have grabbed a number of them from memory. Even this setup is being cracked, so no, it's not doing the job against piracy. The device revocation is when Microsoft or one of the content producers can revoke the keys from a device once said key is compromised, preventing anyone else from using it (or the compromised device) to read the media stream in an unencrypted form. Clearly this hasn't worked too well.

In an attempt to dumb things down, this explanation was actually paraphrased, and to put it bluntly, wrong. The requirement is that every piece of hardware involved is certified, and what happened as this started to take off was that people who got the top-grade HD certified computers would not have HD-certified monitors; after all that crypt, the monitor didn't have the DRM firmware, so they made a device to downgrade the resolution, then scale it back, essentially giving you like 800x600 resolution instead of a copy protection error. The blank screen, I believe (it could have been some sort of STOP message, if I recall correctly, but don't quote me on it) was if the copy protection software detected that the user was trying to circumvent the scheme and capture the stream in an unprotected format.

I don't know if any of this applies; there was public outcry in response. I believe Vista still has an elaborate copy protection scheme, possibly a lot of the above, but I being an anti-DRM advocate, I stick with Linux where that nonsense hardly exists if at all. I therefore don't keep up with it because, bluntly, I don't really care.

Now, I'd like to personally extend my apologies to admin, for derailing his thread. It was my intention to only state my opinion on Vista, as a simple summary of why I think the ability to downgrade to XP would be useful to many and I am saddened that I can't do it, but to keep my political position out of the matter, and stay on-topic. This was supposed to be about downgrading from Vista to XP, and be open for discussion for anyone who had questions, but seems to have turned into a political flame war.

This post has been edited by lavagolemking: Jan 7 2009, 07:17 AM

I said I don't see the point in looking it up trough my browser history and I admitted it just could be it isn't the real original source anyway. I don't do a complete detective search to look up the original source; but I am sure I didn't get it from a forum. I'm not trying to convince you, I'm rather, like I said, trying to reaffirm what others that are not so satisfied with their Vista, experience on a daily basis. It would be hard to convince you anyway since you don't have any problems with your Vista OS . And according to some posts above, it seems that ppl use their OS for various purposes, so you and I might eventually not be running the same kind of applications and/or use Vista in totally different ways, be it hardware or software. Perhaps that could explain this:

I prefer Vista over XP most of the time. The only times I wish I still had an XP desktop are when I am trying to install and play an older game on my computer, since with all the billions Microsoft invested in making Vista, they couldn't be bothered to make it backward-compatable. Just installing many games is between annoying and impossible. Example: I tried installing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for my dad. It didn't work after installation, and also refused to un-install. I had to delete all traces of it manually, including risking my computer's integrity by deleting it from the registry manually, by following poorly written instructions on the EA support website. After that, I had to boot up in safe mode, run as administrator and install it that way. Same with the expansion pack for it. However, it is brilliant while playing more modern games, and I don't really play the older ones very often anyway.

Theres nothing wrong with Vista, If your running a 2.1Ghz processon and 3Gb ram and ur PC still crashes then ints something up with your machine surely.

Ive ran Vista Ultimate in 3 Ghz Processor and 512 Mb Ram on a Dell dimension 5150.

And that was pushing it but it still ran and was totally bearable.

I have the windows 7 beta and this is sweet as. Few tweaks to how it looks, which makes it look so much better!

And it runs quick as you like. I havent encountered one hiccup yet.