Scobleizer: Why Vista isn’t as good as the Mac
Amit
· 1 year ago
It'd be interesting to know what's causing the issues. I'm running Vista on a Toshiba M7 and don't have any issues with startup/shutdown. It's a simple config option to wake up the machine on opening the lid, and it's been solid every time. I wonder if there is some issue with Dell hardware.
Aaron Fischer
· 1 year ago
I have always had those types of issues with dell laptops.
Dan Forsyth
· 1 year ago
I had nothing but problems with sleeping and shutting down my brand new Dell. Then I uninstalled the PC-cillin anti-virus that came pre-installed. Now it runs just as it should.
david
· 1 year ago
Only two hours? What are you running, the 17" model? My MacBook may be a more basic machine but I get nearly 4 hours most days, more if I'm being careful, like turning off WiFi and BlueTooth when I'm not using it.
Leo
· 1 year ago
Interesting that you blogged about this today. Yesterday, I used Bootcamp and installed Vista on my Macbook. Closing/ opening the lid on a Macbook is a great experience when in OSX but in Vista - it's a whole other story. I know Vista gives you full control over what hapens when you close the lid but as you said, "It doesn’t always startup right". I wonder if Vista SP1 will do any good for such small issues that make such a huge difference.
Solnyshok
· 1 year ago
Thinkpad X60 XP, T61 XP, HP desktop Vista ditto on all machines. After some 5-7 sleep/wakeup cycles, problems begin with WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, etc. Restarting helps, but it sux.
Charlie
· 1 year ago
I have a Dell m1330 came with vista home premium. I had some issues (BSOD on restart or getting stuck in the shut down process) with sleep and hibernate when I first got it. Being a developer i hosed my system and reinstalled Vista, and still had some issues.
Installed Vista Sp1 and issues are gone.
chush.net
· 1 year ago
So why is Vista not as good? I mean, yeah, Macs are cool, but so far it looks like the only advantage you found is promptly starting up and shutting down. Does not sound like that much.
Robert Kozak
· 1 year ago
Slight nitpik: You really mean comparing a Dell with a Mac. Not Vista with OS X Leopard.
"My Mac has only done that once and it turned out I had a bad set of RAM. This isn’t the first time the Dell has given errors or problems on boot, either."
So maybe your Dell has a problem.
Then again maybe what you mean to compare is Vista with Mac OS X? You are comparing an entire operating system and saying its not as good as a Mac because of Start Up and Shutdown is not as smooth or errors out while at the same time praising Windows (I assume you mean the Vista brand.)
"the fonts on Windows are more readable, for instance and things do seem snappier on my Dell, plus that darn battery life is just wonderful, especially when I’m flying across the US like I’m about to"
I usually love reading your posts but this one was way too confusing.
Peter Cranstone
· 1 year ago
Get the new HP tablet. Totally rocks with Vista on it. Dell didn't get the drivers right - HP did. Read this guys review... totally rocks
I resorted to renaming pending.xml. Still no update from Microsoft as to a fix past that for this problem. Will I be able to get SP1?
I would note that I'm also running Vista on a Dell laptop, but haven't noticed any substantial startup problems until the above one.
bluvg
· 1 year ago
Robert, when we got our first batch of Lenovo X61s last August/September, we experienced the same thing. We never figured out what exactly was the cause--it was intermittent. Some indications pointed to "Intel Turbo Memory" drivers early on, but that was tough to pinpoint.
However, these little machines are absolutely wonderful now (since November, roughly)--they easily qualify as one of the best laptops I have ever used, if not *the* best. They are *very* fast for an ultralight notebook (ours have the regular Core2 Duo CPUs and 7200 RPM drives), and the sleep/hibernate/resume feature is flawless. I've even tried to "confuse" the laptop by closing the lid, then reopening it before it completes the transition to sleep/hibernate--it completes without issue, then resumes when the lid is reopened once again. About the only knock against it that I have is that it doesn't include an optical drive, but in a pinch it does have the slice-style dock that snaps on the bottom to add this capability if you need it (and even then, it's still a light notebook... just not so thin anymore).
My guess is that Dell hasn't fleshed out all the issues yet. At any rate, you may want to give the X61 a try--I highly recommend it.
Steve Olson
· 1 year ago
I currently run Vista on three different vcomputers and we have installed on hundreds across the enterprise. I've never had a problem with Vista starting and shutting down properly. I haven't been able to find experiences to justify all the negativity about Vista. Robert, I like Vista.
Charlie Owen
· 1 year ago
Shouldn't your title have read: 'Why Dell isn't as good as Apple'
My Dell XPS M1330 was pretty much a dog out of the box due to all of the 'value add' stuff which doesn't come with Windows Vista. It's been as rock solid as my MacBook AFTER I performed a completely clean install of the operating system -- even sleep works identical to my Mac with the out-of-box Windows Vista defaults (closing the lid makes it sleep, opening the lid makes it wake).
Dell *could* ship their boxes every bit as solid with Windows Vista as what Apple with a Mac + OSX -- they choose not to for a variety of reasons (some good, most not in my opinion).
Instead of finding fault with the OS you might be more appropriately finding fault with the OEM.
Elitist Snob
· 1 year ago
Vista is riddled with problems. Aside from its chronic sleep apnea you speak of, up waking my system has no audio output. The only remedy is to reboot the system drill down into the speaker settings in Control panel click "test". This problem appeared when I first setup Vista on my PC and hasn't gone away no matter what patch or driver update I install.
I don't quite get your Leopard comparison because my biggest pet peeve with Vista is its sluggish performance. Vista makes even a brand new PC feel two years old. Something is fundamentally wrong with the OS, and the fact that SP1 does little to improve things leads me to wonder if it will ever be fixed.
XP may be long in the tooth, but it sure runs a hell of a lot faster and more reliably than Vista.
Miles Archer
· 1 year ago
Wonky drivers. Mac benefits from a closed ecosystem.
Malcolm Sheppard
· 1 year ago
"One simple little thing: the Mac starts up and shuts down properly every single time."
MacBook Pros have removable batteries, too. I bring a spare with me whenever I travel. On my 17", between the two batteries, I can easily get 3 full DVDs in. :)
My biggest complaint with Vista is that it keeps asking me, over and over, "You just tried to open APPLICATION. I know you clicked on it, and that you've clicked on this application thousands of times before, and answered YES to this dialog each time, but please, can you tell me if you're really, really totally 100% positive you want to launch this application?"
Um, yeah, I do. And I will want to again tomorrow, thanks.
James
· 1 year ago
The funny thing here is that I have been infuriated over the last 18 months with my MacBook Pro's inability to resume reliably after shutting the lid! Particularly if I've changed power source while asleep (mains->battery or vice versa), sometimes it just resumes to a blank screen and beachball of death. Sometimes shutting, reverting to the previous power source and re-opening wakes it properly, sometimes not. I also had some extra hoops to jump through to get my faulty battery replaced under the recall (the battery serial number qualified, but the laptop's serial was changed when Apple refurbished it, upsetting their online form) - at one point, the support guy I phoned wanted me to take the laptop to the "nearest" Apple service place, which at the time would have meant a full day traveling there and back!
I've had worse laptop problems Windows-side though - my mother's, for example, where ATI refuse to release drivers ("that's the manufacturer's job, even though it's an ATI chipset") - unhelpful at the best of times, but when the manufacturer went bankrupt two years ago, just after selling the laptop? Completely useless - and embarassingly pathetic compared to nVidia's stellar example of providing drivers!
steve
· 1 year ago
"...most of the tools to build great Silverlight experiences will be on Windows and not on the Mac. Not to mention that killer WorldWide Telescope..."
That's what VmWare Fusion (or even BootCamp) is for! ;-)
Elitist Snob
· 1 year ago
@James
Nvidia's proliferation of drivers isn't an act of charity. They release new drivers to flesh out the bugs created in previous releases. Who needs Microsoft to burden us with buggy software when we've got Nvidia?
Sahu
· 1 year ago
I installed vista on my dual core 2 sony vaio and pretty much lost all functionality that was built in. No more camera, finger print scan security, function controls, etc. It really sucks. Although I had admin right I couldn't even download all the drivers from sony because vista wouldn't allow it. The funny thing is I have somehow lost the "wow" things that vista offered.
justin
· 1 year ago
One of my biggest Vista gripes is startup/sleep/shutdown. I'm on an Inspiron 640m, and the machine won't go into sleep mode (via pressing the power button) when the AC is plugged in. So each night, in order to put her to sleep, I have to unplug the power, hit the power button, close the lid, and plug the power back in. Annoying.
Robin Wauters
· 1 year ago
I just bought a Sony Vaio with Vista, works like a charm and I get about 3 hours of battery life with heavy usage.
maxskybarger
· 1 year ago
I have been using Vista on my Dell laptop since Vista's debut with little or no problems and can't think of even one involved with booting up. Battery life is another story. My laptop is a little over a year old and I have about 20 seconds to get from my desk to my recliner before my computer shuts down. My only salvation is the cigarette lighter converter for the car.
Isn't it time some something really revolutionary in the battery field?
Robin Capper
· 1 year ago
As Miles said, likely wonky drivers. I spent a day taking notes (7 hours cont. operation) on a HP 2710 Tablet*, all on std + the slim extn battery, and at the end it was still saying 2 hours power remaining. Bliss
* To date it's been restarting fine.
Miguel
· 1 year ago
Controlling the platform is a strategic advantage of the Mac (but also a limitation). If Windows only runned in a single hardware platform all would be easy ;)
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Malcolm: that was the situation where I had something bad. Apple replaced a bunch of stuff inside my Mac.
I'm using a Mac Power Book 17-inch, so, yeah, I don't get that many hours. Maybe three if I turn everything down.
Loren Heiny
· 1 year ago
My Toshiba M700 Tablet PC has shutdown/startup issues too. I'm not sure which are Vista related and which are bios/driver. I have noticed that if I have a USB device connected at the time of putting the Tablet into hibernate, that if I unplug the USB device it partially wakes up the system--although it never fully comes up. I have to power the system down. So I'm always careful to unplug everything before hibernating/sleeping the system.
I also like the battery life on the M700. I typically use an extended battery which gives me a good 5 hours. Great for plane trips. And this is with a 2.6GHz Core 2 Duo, 7200 RPM drive, and lots of compiling.
Brian Hoyt
· 1 year ago
SP1 fixes a ton of sleep related issues. Also many sleep issues can be narrowed down to driver issues. We found one caused by the fingerprint scanner driver on some machines. Also for Loren I just want to let you know the clean image I built on M700 is almost trouble free, just an option. I like Toshiba hardware usually but their base images leave something to be desired.
Rishi
· 1 year ago
Fwiw, I've had TONS of wakeup issues with my macbook pro ever since upgrading to leopard.
Barbara Duck
· 1 year ago
For all those interested in battery life, the Sahara i440D Slate tablet will have a 10 hour clip on battery out soon. This is cool as it has a couple usb ports on the unit too. If you need a keyboard, you can use a usb or blue tooth keyboard. There are some cool fold up units on the site too. With the battery clipped on it is still around 5 pounds...not bad. The Sahara has a hardware button to go back and forth between touch and digitizer too. We all want more battery life where ever we can get it. It does a great job with Vista, been running it on the tablet for over a year.
Just finished the HIMMS show in Orlando and the tablet and battery got a lot of interest. Ignore the ugly woman in the video (me) here having a bad hair day doing the Vista dictation demo with no headset required. The picture shows the unit with the battery clipped on. There's also a plug in for an external SATA drive and fire wire connection.
Here's more from the site on the 10 hour battery coming out. The stand shown on the picture comes off as well so you can use it as a mini docking station . Cool stuff and not your ordinary tablet by any means.
I've had no problems with Vista on my old Gateway and no problems on my new Dell M1530, I've made comparisons between the two OS's and it's always the same story, OS X seems to do somethings better and worse than Vista, as for astetics, I like the Glass look in Vista over OS X, but that always subjective.
This is a good way to draw traffic to your site Robert but otherwise, this is an old argument that leads nowhere.
Jim Harner
· 1 year ago
... fonts better on Vista?
You must be kidding.
I have a MacBook Pro which also runs Vista. OS X is a dream, but I almost never boot into Vista. Its not the speed--it the philosophy of Vista that seems primitive.
I waiting for my MacBook Air.
joe
· 1 year ago
to anyone who doesn't or has never used a Mac, you don't understand what Robert means by "start up and shut down" or even sleep. 1) If you actually do have to shutdown or restart, the Mac will have all this done in under a minute, every time. 2) more importantly, the sleep functionality is almost flawless. On a laptop, you close the lid and it will go to sleep, and can last weeks on battery. When you open the lid, by the time the lid is all the way open you're already back to your desktop, and you will be connected to wireless within another second. This is one major place where the "it just works" mantra is undeniable.
If you use Windows, then yeah, you might not have a specific problem with your laptop startup/shutdown or sleep performance, but once you use a Mac for a while you start to see the kinks in the Windows armor. On my work IBM Thinkpad, for example, when I have to restart (which is way too often for my liking), i really never know if my computer will be out of commission for 2 minutes or up to 5+ minutes. The as far as sleeping.... well i never know what will happen really. Sometimes when i close the lid it will sleep like I have it set to. Sometimes though it won't sleep, and it will continue to run and just drain my battery. Sometimes when I open the lid, it will pop out of sleep relatively quickly within a few seconds. Sometimes it will just sit there, and I have to hit the power button to awake it. Sometimes I get impatient and hit the power button twice, which restarts the PC. Sometimes it doesn't wake up at all and I have to force restart with the pwoer button. It's a mixed bag, really.
EnricoG
· 1 year ago
I have a 17" Dell notebook and I had the same exact experience described in comment #14 by Charlie. Too much bloatware (so I did a clean install) and no problems with the sleep/wakeup driven by opening/closing the lid. I run Vista 64 bits and shutdown takes about 8 seconds. Startup takes about 25 seconds to get to the logon screen and 10 more seconds after it.
Sean
· 1 year ago
Wait, you don't know? Well let me tell you about your Dell laptop. Dell has spent tens of millions of dollars in perfecting many things in their laptop intellectual property portfolio. For example, the patented wait-ten-minutes-before-you-can-do-anything feature that is invoked when you take your laptop out of stand by. To mitigate this problem, you can sometimes get lucky (sounds like you have) and execute the you-only-thought-you-were-on-standby-but-we-disagree feature which increases productivity since it throws out everything you were working on so you need not worry about it any more. One of my personal favorite Dell programs I use quite often is the I-closed-the-lid-but-don't-really-want-standby-so-it-will-kill-the-battery-and-overheat capability. I find that helps in maintaining a docile battery and ensures the computer sweats and gets good exercise. I also favor dell for laptops because of all the pre-installed virus and spy programs, so I don't even need to visit porn or phishing sites to get my machine infected. Especially helpful is the Dell taskbar agent which asks me every 10 minutes if I would like to send Dell feedback. I think all these features work great in concert with Windows. Dell paid Microsoft lots of money to hook into their SureAnyProcessCanBlockMyMachineFromStandby() API calls. These in turn activate the no-you-really-can't-kill-that-hanging-process subsystem. You can read more about these features and more on my blog under the topic http://www.seanstoner.com/blog/2008/02/27/why-i...
Musings Cafe
· 1 year ago
Some very restrained discussion here for the most part. I was expecting a huge flame war with the Mac fanboys lining up against the PC fanboys.
I always find these flame wars take on the aspect of a biblical zealotry in certain cases.
Even so, it has got to be pretty sweet for companies to be sending you free stuff to play with...
sent from: fav.or.it [FID36688]
DAG
· 1 year ago
I don't run a MacBook Pro 17", but the battery life you are reporting sounds crazy to my ears. My MacBook doesn't have the kind of battery life of my old G4 laptop, but easily runs 4+ hours with heavy daily use on Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. Maybe you should take a look at the settings and try a custom setting more suited to longer battery life.
BTW- How about giving an Axiotron Tablet Mac a try and tell us your impressions since you are a Windows Tablet user. I like the tablet concept, but am no fan of Windows and would like to see an established Tablet user give it a good shakedown.
Ollie
· 1 year ago
Yeah, the same happens to me. Sometimes shut-down just goes on for ever and is never completed so I have to take the battery out. When I shut my lid it sometimes doesn't go into sleep mode either.
Diego
· 1 year ago
The problems you're having with the Dell still happen on Dell laptops with XP. It's not a Vista thing.
notebooktrad
· 1 year ago
I use a Sony Vaio VGN-FZ21M It's small beauty and has a good keyboard.
On a plain (without wlan) I have 3hours + battery and if I need, I can change it.
I love Vista and have no problems with sleep and wakeup at all.
Vista is way better then its image!
Christopher Coulter
· 1 year ago
Mac vs. PC/Windows, cue up Usenet and BBS flame wars of yore. Personally, I prefer Atari ST over the Amiga, as MultiTOS is just THE stuff, with no start-up/shutdown issues whatsoever. MyAES Foreve!
Ganesh
· 1 year ago
I am using Vista on HP Pavilion for 8 months now. Let me tell you it rocks!! I am an ardent Mac fan (I don't why. I have never used Mac). Day after day, I feel that the steam in 'Mac is superior to PC/Vista' is swooshing out. Look at the 'Why Mac' on Apple website - the only main point seems to be - 'Mac already had what Vista has now'. So what? Where are the softwares for Mac? You have to take recourse to Windows again for having better compatibility range (through Bootcamp etc.). why should I do that when I have almost all substantial features on my Vista (even if they are late, they are there NOW). I am using PC's for almost 6 years & believe me, I have never seen a blue screen - not on XP and not on Vista now. And I will not for sure go for Mac because it is a one click start/shut down machine. I would rather dual boot my machine with Linux (which is free). C'mmon guys, these are non-substantial features. I get bugged off when the fan of Mac next to me starts making helicopter's sounds and I can feel its heat.
Diego
· 1 year ago
Those problems you're having aren't exclusive to Vista. I've seen the same problems (happening a lot) with XP on Dell laptops.
mario
· 1 year ago
Apple and MAC OS for ever.Never buy Microsoft software.Especially an operating system.
Mr_Simple
· 1 year ago
Sounds like the issue is Dell, not Vista or Mac.
PK
· 1 year ago
Any day mac is the best
Steve
· 1 year ago
scoble, you do understand that when you get a BSOD its usually caused by a hardware/driissue and not software, right?
Ioannus de Verani
· 1 year ago
It has got to be pretty cool, though, to have companies just sending you free stuff to play with...
sent from: fav.or.it [FID38090]
mark
· 1 year ago
Even on XP, I've had the same problem with startup on both Dell and ThinkPad laptops. Never had that problem with my Powerbook. Worse, the XP laptops don't always go to sleep, in which case, I'd have a very hot laptop, or a dead battery laptop, when I'd pull it out of the bag. So now I have to wait until it's actually asleep before I put it in the bag. Annoying.
Chris Hanson
· 1 year ago
What does it matter that the tools to build anything related to Silverlight will be on Windows? All that will do is serve to further marginalize an already also-ran technology...
Joe
· 1 year ago
Yep, in the minds of the Mac fans Vista is Toast, it's the same story when XP came out Vs Windows 2000,the same BS reasoning,the reality of the matter is that Vista is a solid and well designed OS and is selling well and will continue to sell into the hundreds of millions, they've already passed the one hundred million mark in sales during year one.
Microsoft sales are up and continue to trend upwards,its wishful thinking, but sorry.. Microsoft isn't going away.
I have a few Mac fan friends and we always agree to disagree, but otherwise we usually have a good time together without the stillborn arguments about who's OS is better and why.
thomas
· 1 year ago
I am always amazed what computer users find as acceptable these days.
The fact that the computer doesn't start properly means to me the product doesn't work. Period.
It's like buying a car that only starts properly sometimes. When it doesn't start you need to disconnect the distributor cab which in most cases will fix the problem but you don't really know why. Would you find that acceptable?
At the end of the day I believe manufacturers should get their act together and first make sure they have a working product before they pack more innovation in... or perhaps it's that "innovation" that is often causing the problem.
Tim
· 1 year ago
"Vista is a solid and well designed OS and is selling well and will continue to sell into the hundreds of millions, they’ve already passed the one hundred million mark in sales during year one."
uhhhh, isn't that like AT&T of the 1970's stating that the rotary dial telephone is a big hit and will continue to sell well?
Vista will continue to sell since it is the defacto standard and that XP, at some point, will no longer be offered on packaged systems.
Granted a few will make the leap to Apple. Some may even be tempted to get the linux boxes that are being sold at walmart, since those will surf the web, do email and have Open Office.
A question on my part, is Vista a build of Windows Server 2003 with a different UI and other "innovations"? ( MS has really overdone that word)
product man
· 1 year ago
I have to agree with you. As a Mac user and a PC user, my biggest complain about Vista is startup time and inconsistent startup. Why does it just turn on when I open the lid? Most of the times yes, other times, I have to reboot it. Confounding. This is because Apple controls the hardware and Microsoft doesn't. For Microsoft and its hardware vendors, it just ends in a finger point game, with Microsoft saying, "hey, we did out part". Its pretty much true that Microsoft did its part and the hardware guys from Dell to Sony fail, but from a consumer's view this is a "Vista problem". I don't think this situation will ever improve across the board.
Tim
· 1 year ago
Perception is everything. As product man states well, it may be a Sony, or a Dell or whatever, but when there is a problem, that MS Vista logo is very prominent. MS wants everyone to know where the os is coming from. "Vista Ready", "Running MS Windows".... stickers tend to be all over the machine. And since MS dominates the market, well, they get the blame. Sometimes undeservedly. Most of the time not.
Thomas makes a good point as well. MS and OEM's are too worried about "innovation" that they don't take enough care of the essentials, or at least it appears that way. The sleep function is good example.
Brandon Paddock
· 1 year ago
Robert - that's a hardware issues, not a Windows vs Mac OS issue.
I run Vista on my Macbook. It never fails to resume from sleep. Never.
Leopard resumes slightly faster when I open it (although partly this may be deception because I don't resume to a login screen on Leopard, but do on Windows). It takes about a second to resume to Leopard, and about 2-3 seconds to resume to Vista. Very small difference.
Vista goes to sleep faster, though. Leopard sometimes sits there for up to a minute after I close it before the light on the outside goes into its "sleeping" heartbeat mode.
Tim
· 1 year ago
We have a bunch of Dell laptops here and have seen various mobo problems. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the cause of your problems.
The good thing about Dell (and by extension Microsoft OS) is that they come out to us next working day to fix any faults. Is this type of support available for Macs?
Having said that, XP runs much better on our Vista capable laptops than Vista does.
JKav
· 1 year ago
This article points to the one reason a Mac is better; it's the hardware not the operating system. Vista is getting nailed because of the rip offs like Dell.
Ted
· 1 year ago
Silverlight? Please. A year from now, we will all be reminiscing about how Silverlight turned out to be the technological equivalent to the Edsel. The dev community does not want another proprietary media layer for the web. And guess what? They don't need it. With Javascript, SVG, and MP4/H.264, the bases are covered. If you want proprietary, there's already Flash, w/ 99% browser penetration, and cross platform authoring tools.
The only people developing anything for Silverlight are the shills that Microsoft is paying to do so.
BobTurbo
· 1 year ago
It is probably bluetooth breaking when trying to handle sleep states. Have a look in event viewer at the time of trying to wake or when it slept and look for bluetooth errors. If so, uninstall packaged bluetooth software from add/remove programs.
Christopher G D Tipper
· 1 year ago
I'm glad you raise this issue, as there is now a chance that Microsoft will address it. I just bought a Sony VAIO FZ21M with Vista Home Premium, and I had exactly the same problem. I left it in sleep mode for a few hours the other day, and when I returned it had 'woken up'. Problem was the screen was off and the only way I could get access to the desktop again was to pull out the battery and reboot. There is no indication what caused it.
bluvg
· 1 year ago
#43, 67: just want to point out--it's a pretty standard convention on computers/laptops in general that you can get the equivalent of switching off the power by holding down the power button for 5-10 seconds. You don't need to pull the battery to force a complete shutdown.
Stuart
· 1 year ago
I have started to have problems with my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet "Not enought resources to..." to go into sleep mode. The machine will turn itself back on with the lid closed -- heating up my backpack and wering down the batteries.
Yes, I know this an old (2005) machine and the problem is likely to be some Windows update. But this problem has caused me to give up the Tablet PC and switch to a MacBool Pro. But, I will still long for Tablet Mac.
SaS
Bob Hall
· 1 year ago
What I don't like about Mac users is that they are not "users." They are members of the Mac Cult. Mac "users" are emotionally attached to their machine, their software, and the other Mac cult members. Steve Jobs knows this, which is why he treats his cult members so badly by making all his new computers incompatible with his old ones. Mac cult members accept this obvious marketing ploy as the price for having "the latest and the best." There is no question that Mac software is really cool, but that comes with a high price. Mac users claim to be less "geeky," less interested in technical stuff. That may be true, but it proves just how expensive ignorance can be. The truth, I suspect, is that Mac users are just as involved with their software as most Windows users. It is true that Windows is less stable than the Mac OS, but usually the instability comes from using something from the vast array of options available to PC users, options unavailable to Mac users. For me, a former Mac Addict, backwards compatibility, much lower prices, and the flexibility of the PC far outweight the price I have had to pay with "instability."
gmail
· 10 months ago
vista is good
Henry
· 4 months ago
I feel that the steam in 'Mac is superior to PC/Vista' is swooshing out. Look at the 'Why Mac' on Apple website - the only main point seems to be - 'Mac already had what Vista has now'. So what? Where are the softwares for Mac? CPAP machine
All Comments
ditto on all machines. After some 5-7 sleep/wakeup cycles, problems begin with WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, etc. Restarting helps, but it sux.
Installed Vista Sp1 and issues are gone.
"My Mac has only done that once and it turned out I had a bad set of RAM. This isn’t the first time the Dell has given errors or problems on boot, either."
So maybe your Dell has a problem.
Then again maybe what you mean to compare is Vista with Mac OS X? You are comparing an entire operating system and saying its not as good as a Mac because of Start Up and Shutdown is not as smooth or errors out while at the same time praising Windows (I assume you mean the Vista brand.)
"the fonts on Windows are more readable, for instance and things do seem snappier on my Dell, plus that darn battery life is just wonderful, especially when I’m flying across the US like I’m about to"
I usually love reading your posts but this one was way too confusing.
http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/10/...
For instance, I was bitten by the KB937287 bug (see here: http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/...).
I resorted to renaming pending.xml. Still no update from Microsoft as to a fix past that for this problem. Will I be able to get SP1?
I would note that I'm also running Vista on a Dell laptop, but haven't noticed any substantial startup problems until the above one.
However, these little machines are absolutely wonderful now (since November, roughly)--they easily qualify as one of the best laptops I have ever used, if not *the* best. They are *very* fast for an ultralight notebook (ours have the regular Core2 Duo CPUs and 7200 RPM drives), and the sleep/hibernate/resume feature is flawless. I've even tried to "confuse" the laptop by closing the lid, then reopening it before it completes the transition to sleep/hibernate--it completes without issue, then resumes when the lid is reopened once again. About the only knock against it that I have is that it doesn't include an optical drive, but in a pinch it does have the slice-style dock that snaps on the bottom to add this capability if you need it (and even then, it's still a light notebook... just not so thin anymore).
My guess is that Dell hasn't fleshed out all the issues yet. At any rate, you may want to give the X61 a try--I highly recommend it.
My Dell XPS M1330 was pretty much a dog out of the box due to all of the 'value add' stuff which doesn't come with Windows Vista. It's been as rock solid as my MacBook AFTER I performed a completely clean install of the operating system -- even sleep works identical to my Mac with the out-of-box Windows Vista defaults (closing the lid makes it sleep, opening the lid makes it wake).
Dell *could* ship their boxes every bit as solid with Windows Vista as what Apple with a Mac + OSX -- they choose not to for a variety of reasons (some good, most not in my opinion).
Instead of finding fault with the OS you might be more appropriately finding fault with the OEM.
I don't quite get your Leopard comparison because my biggest pet peeve with Vista is its sluggish performance. Vista makes even a brand new PC feel two years old. Something is fundamentally wrong with the OS, and the fact that SP1 does little to improve things leads me to wonder if it will ever be fixed.
XP may be long in the tooth, but it sure runs a hell of a lot faster and more reliably than Vista.
How soon you forget...
http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/16/caught-in-appl...
Very sloppy!
My biggest complaint with Vista is that it keeps asking me, over and over, "You just tried to open APPLICATION. I know you clicked on it, and that you've clicked on this application thousands of times before, and answered YES to this dialog each time, but please, can you tell me if you're really, really totally 100% positive you want to launch this application?"
Um, yeah, I do. And I will want to again tomorrow, thanks.
I've had worse laptop problems Windows-side though - my mother's, for example, where ATI refuse to release drivers ("that's the manufacturer's job, even though it's an ATI chipset") - unhelpful at the best of times, but when the manufacturer went bankrupt two years ago, just after selling the laptop? Completely useless - and embarassingly pathetic compared to nVidia's stellar example of providing drivers!
That's what VmWare Fusion (or even BootCamp) is for! ;-)
Nvidia's proliferation of drivers isn't an act of charity. They release new drivers to flesh out the bugs created in previous releases. Who needs Microsoft to burden us with buggy software when we've got Nvidia?
Isn't it time some something really revolutionary in the battery field?
* To date it's been restarting fine.
I'm using a Mac Power Book 17-inch, so, yeah, I don't get that many hours. Maybe three if I turn everything down.
I also like the battery life on the M700. I typically use an extended battery which gives me a good 5 hours. Great for plane trips. And this is with a 2.6GHz Core 2 Duo, 7200 RPM drive, and lots of compiling.
Just finished the HIMMS show in Orlando and the tablet and battery got a lot of interest. Ignore the ugly woman in the video (me) here having a bad hair day doing the Vista dictation demo with no headset required. The picture shows the unit with the battery clipped on. There's also a plug in for an external SATA drive and fire wire connection.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2008/03/tabletki...
Here's more from the site on the 10 hour battery coming out. The stand shown on the picture comes off as well so you can use it as a mini docking station . Cool stuff and not your ordinary tablet by any means.
http://www.tabletkiosk.com/tkstore/pc/viewPrd.a...
Is their any event like saltlick bbq last year?
Adnan
This is a good way to draw traffic to your site Robert but otherwise, this is an old argument that leads nowhere.
You must be kidding.
I have a MacBook Pro which also runs Vista. OS X is a dream, but I almost never boot into Vista. Its not the speed--it the philosophy of Vista that seems primitive.
I waiting for my MacBook Air.
1) If you actually do have to shutdown or restart, the Mac will have all this done in under a minute, every time.
2) more importantly, the sleep functionality is almost flawless. On a laptop, you close the lid and it will go to sleep, and can last weeks on battery. When you open the lid, by the time the lid is all the way open you're already back to your desktop, and you will be connected to wireless within another second. This is one major place where the "it just works" mantra is undeniable.
If you use Windows, then yeah, you might not have a specific problem with your laptop startup/shutdown or sleep performance, but once you use a Mac for a while you start to see the kinks in the Windows armor. On my work IBM Thinkpad, for example, when I have to restart (which is way too often for my liking), i really never know if my computer will be out of commission for 2 minutes or up to 5+ minutes.
The as far as sleeping.... well i never know what will happen really. Sometimes when i close the lid it will sleep like I have it set to. Sometimes though it won't sleep, and it will continue to run and just drain my battery. Sometimes when I open the lid, it will pop out of sleep relatively quickly within a few seconds. Sometimes it will just sit there, and I have to hit the power button to awake it. Sometimes I get impatient and hit the power button twice, which restarts the PC. Sometimes it doesn't wake up at all and I have to force restart with the pwoer button. It's a mixed bag, really.
Too much bloatware (so I did a clean install) and no problems with the sleep/wakeup driven by opening/closing the lid.
I run Vista 64 bits and shutdown takes about 8 seconds. Startup takes about 25 seconds to get to the logon screen and 10 more seconds after it.
I always find these flame wars take on the aspect of a biblical zealotry in certain cases.
http://musings-cafe.blogspot.com/2008/02/zealot...
sent from: fav.or.it [FID36688]
BTW- How about giving an Axiotron Tablet Mac a try and tell us your impressions since you are a Windows Tablet user. I like the tablet concept, but am no fan of Windows and would like to see an established Tablet user give it a good shakedown.
On a plain (without wlan) I have 3hours + battery and if I need, I can change it.
I love Vista and have no problems with sleep and wakeup at all.
Vista is way better then its image!
I am using PC's for almost 6 years & believe me, I have never seen a blue screen - not on XP and not on Vista now.
And I will not for sure go for Mac because it is a one click start/shut down machine. I would rather dual boot my machine with Linux (which is free).
C'mmon guys, these are non-substantial features. I get bugged off when the fan of Mac next to me starts making helicopter's sounds and I can feel its heat.
sent from: fav.or.it [FID38090]
Microsoft sales are up and continue to trend upwards,its wishful thinking, but sorry.. Microsoft isn't going away.
I have a few Mac fan friends and we always agree to disagree, but otherwise we usually have a good time together without the stillborn arguments about who's OS is better and why.
The fact that the computer doesn't start properly means to me the product doesn't work. Period.
It's like buying a car that only starts properly sometimes. When it doesn't start you need to disconnect the distributor cab which in most cases will fix the problem but you don't really know why. Would you find that acceptable?
At the end of the day I believe manufacturers should get their act together and first make sure they have a working product before they pack more innovation in... or perhaps it's that "innovation" that is often causing the problem.
uhhhh, isn't that like AT&T of the 1970's stating that the rotary dial telephone is a big hit and will continue to sell well?
Vista will continue to sell since it is the defacto standard and that XP, at some point, will no longer be offered on packaged systems.
Granted a few will make the leap to Apple. Some may even be tempted to get the linux boxes that are being sold at walmart, since those will surf the web, do email and have Open Office.
A question on my part, is Vista a build of Windows Server 2003 with a different UI and other "innovations"? ( MS has really overdone that word)
MS wants everyone to know where the os is coming from. "Vista Ready", "Running MS Windows".... stickers tend to be all over the machine. And since MS dominates the market, well, they get the blame. Sometimes undeservedly. Most of the time not.
Thomas makes a good point as well. MS and OEM's are too worried about "innovation" that they don't take enough care of the essentials, or at least it appears that way. The sleep function is good example.
I run Vista on my Macbook. It never fails to resume from sleep. Never.
Leopard resumes slightly faster when I open it (although partly this may be deception because I don't resume to a login screen on Leopard, but do on Windows). It takes about a second to resume to Leopard, and about 2-3 seconds to resume to Vista. Very small difference.
Vista goes to sleep faster, though. Leopard sometimes sits there for up to a minute after I close it before the light on the outside goes into its "sleeping" heartbeat mode.
The good thing about Dell (and by extension Microsoft OS) is that they come out to us next working day to fix any faults. Is this type of support available for Macs?
Having said that, XP runs much better on our Vista capable laptops than Vista does.
The only people developing anything for Silverlight are the shills that Microsoft is paying to do so.
Yes, I know this an old (2005) machine and the problem is likely to be some Windows update. But this problem has caused me to give up the Tablet PC and switch to a MacBool Pro. But, I will still long for Tablet Mac.
SaS
CPAP machine