Hi
Talk about hitting the nail on the head about Vista. If I purchase a PC
with Vista on it.
It will be removed as soon as I arrive home. I have ran a dual boot pc
windows Ubuntu for about 3 years .
I can now do everything I need in Linux. and in the past few years it
has really improved.
Getting ready to purchase a laptop and I will load Linux for pskmail and
psk31 etc.
73's
Nathan
KD5BLZ
>
>
> >
> Folks need to know, there are some pretty severe design decisions which
> impact usability of Vista for ham radio usage. This has nothing to do
> with driver availability, old code, etc.
>
> One prime example involves MS design decisions capitulating to big
> media. As I understand the problem, soundcards can no longer be opened
> for read and write simultaneously. A form of full duplex operation so to
> speak. This is due to the chance that a pirate could playback protected
> media and also record it via analog loopback to an MP3. Now every
> previous version of windows, macs, linux, etc all allowed that.
>
> And it turns out that most soundcard based ham programs require that
> capability, as you need to have both open even if not running full duplex.
>
> So many just simply do not work without major rewrites. I'm sure Dave,
> Simon, Patrick, and the other developers are aware of this, and some may
> even have already addressed.
>
> But the issue is that it's a conscious design choice which broke many
> sound applications from speakerphone type operation to ham radio apps.
>
> And for what? If you were going to do an audio loopback and pirate, you
> could do it with two Vista machines. Or just about any other single
> computer. Or an Ipod. Or phone, etc. Or just rip the CD, which is what
> real pirates do.
>
> So they seriously broke something without offering any serious
> protection, much less an advantage to the user.
>
> Or how bout the same anti-piracy vista issue that had 100Mbit lan
> performance drop to a crawl if an mp3 is played, due to the new
> anti-piracy DRM hooks.
>
> There is a whole laundry list of compromised design decisions in Vista
> all to appease Big media.
>
> For corporate users, it's worse. I work for the largest computer
> supplier in the world. We sell vista to consumers, not by choice, but
> because MS required us to. It was a fight to be able to still sell XP
> only recently won. So here's the kicker. hundreds of thousands of
> company computers in operation. Due to a combination of functionality,
> unaddressed defects, and (yet even more) bad MS design choices, the IT
> department has elected to push off moving to Vista indefinitely. To the
> point that if possible they may wait for a successor. So Vista has the
> real possibility of being the next Windows ME dead end.
>
> The IT decision centers around the expense of moving to new
> infrastructure due to MS design changes with no functionality increase,
> and in many aspects, some decreases. The only one who benefits from the
> change is MS.
>
> But then, guess what. Large corporate users don't get locked out of XP
> if it does not pass validation due to a replaced hard drive, etc. So
> there was already a precedent where consumers have to accept MS
> constraints which would never fly with corporate users.
>
> At any rate, Vista issues are more than anti-MS linux zealots slinging
> mud. There are real issues that are going to be very difficult for
> developers to resolve. MS's answer is "sorry, just deal with it".
>
> Me, I use XP on the work laptop, and will indefinitely. Most of the
> house PC's are (licensed) W2K, running just fine. If they are forced
> into retirement due to non-support, they will move to Ubuntu. Main
> email/web/ebay/programming/drawing house pc is Ubuntu. My family uses
> it, and does not know it's not windows. It's that close. But it runs for
> weeks rather than days without reboot. MS Office runs transparently
> under WINE, as do many of my ham programs. I recently moved an older
> laptop from XP to Ubuntu, and was stunned at how smoothly it operates.
>
> Meanwhile, my old scanners and printers are 100% supported plug and play
> under Ubuntu, yet drivers are not available for Vista. (and even XP on
> my flatbed scanner and graphics tablet)
>
> I'm not a Linux zealot, and will readily admit it was not ready for
> desktop usage in the past. I'd use XP across the board if I did not have
> to be concerned it may stop working when MS discontinues support for it.
> But I'm slowly being forced to alternatives by stuff like the Vista
> design choices, the bizarre "Genuine Windows" phone home validation
> schemes, etc.
>
> My dad is using Vista, and it works for him. Huge learning curve, but
> he's happy. I'm sure others will post that logger32 works fine for them,
> etc. But there are some fairly well respected ham programs which do not,
> and it's not the developer's or user's fault! :-)
>
> Have fun,
>
> Alan
> km4ba
>
>
