Is Vista a virus? - Esato archive

Posted by paul101
you may have heard a rumour that Vista is a virus ... no, vista is not a virus. here's what viruses do:

they replicate quickly. ok, vista does that.
viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so. ok, vista does that.
viruses will, from time to time, trash your hard disk. ok... vista does that, too.
viruses are usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems. sigh ... vista does that too.
viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow and the user will buy new hardware. yup, that's with vista, too.

until now it seems that vista might in fact be a virus, but there are some differences.
viruses are well supported by their authors, run on most systems and are universally compatible.
their program code is fast, compact, efficient and they tend to become more sophisticated as they mature.

so, windows vista is not a virus.

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[ This Message was edited by: paul101 on 2008-05-04 10:59 ]

Posted by BobaFett
u must be really bored...

Posted by whizkidd

Thats a shocking revelation!

Posted by belialwafu
thats why vista sucks, haha i dont know why some people just buy them, xp is still the king of the ring

Posted by Cycovision
Everybody said the same thing about XP when it first came out and they were running it on 450Mhz celerons with 256Mb RAM and 8Mb on board graphics

Obviously M$ will try to get people to upgrade to Vista but what they really mean is "go out and buy a new computer with Vista already on it".

It's not that bad, all you need is a decent entry-level dual core processor, 2Gb RAM and DX 10 compatible on board graphics and it'll run like a dream. Those aren't exactly amazing specs by todays standards and you can pick up a complete desktop system like that for less than Ł400.

Posted by whizkidd
Thanks to Microsoft.. Or we'd still be using underpowered pc's.

Posted by Trev1982
does anyone read micro mart its a pc mag over here in the uk, there was couple page spread last week bout Mr Gates saying that vista was a experiment for windows 7 which is the next instalment of OS for microsux,

Posted by Cycovision
He is very keen to get windows 7 out. I read somewhere that several heads rolled over the multiple delays and numerous leaked alpha releases, I think he sees Vista as an omen of bad luck!

Posted by belialwafu
if they say vista is good OS already, then why are they releasing WINDOWS XP SP3?

Posted by Trev1982
there is no way they can stop supporting XP yet, even though they say there going to, am pretty sure they will get a bit of a kicking seen s many business's purchased xp and didn't upgrade because of the price, they stop supporting there will be trouble for MS

Posted by belialwafu
yup, if they do, lets go linux. just kidding hehe, and a lot are going to pirated version right now because of the stupid pricing.

Posted by paul101

On 2008-05-04 11:14:49, Cycovision wrote:
He is very keen to get windows 7 out. I read somewhere that several heads rolled over the multiple delays and numerous leaked alpha releases, I think he sees Vista as an omen of bad luck!

KDE (linux) can do the multi touch thing that is supposed to be main feature in windows 7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6moM7x0ttKo&feature=related

edit: works brilliantly with touchscreen

Posted by QVGA

On 2008-05-04 03:19:15, paul101 wrote:
you may have heard a rumour that Vista is a virus ... no, vista is not a virus. here's what viruses do:
[list][*]they replicate quickly. ok, vista does that.
[*]viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so. ok, vista does that.
[*]viruses will, from time to time, trash your hard disk. ok... vista does that, too.
[*]viruses are usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems. sigh ... vista does that too.
[*]viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow and the user will buy new hardware. yup, that's with vista, too.

_________________
By the Year 2020 We shall RULE THE WORLD - Tesco... every little helps

It's Raining, It's Pouring...
Oh sh1t, it's Global Warming.

[ This Message was edited by: paul101 on 2008-05-04 10:59 ]

Vista trashes the HD? What does trash even mean? It will tell us our system is slow?
Seriously though, i'm quite sick and tired of people bashing Vista when a) they dont know anything about computers. b) they have not used it them selves.
I've been using Vista ultimate for 1.5 years now without any problems.

Posted by arien617
^^ Been power using Vista since Feb 01 last year.

Dude. It's shite. It has nothing OS X, which I've been using heavily since January...

Posted by QVGA
Dont compare Vista with Mac. Mac has such shit support for softwares and games that i cant imagine myself using it. Why dont you tell me whats so bad about Vista?

Posted by thomas93
Each to their own :-/

Posted by QVGA

On 2008-05-04 13:30:19, thomas93 wrote:
Each to their own :-/

Not good enough. I need solid reasons and proof as to why Vista is shit

Posted by thomas93
I have Vista so I can comment

1) 1gb of RAM just isn't good enough.

My Dad has a similiar machine downstairs but with a slower AMD processor and XP he boots up in 20 seconds I boot up in 3minutes.

2) Software imcompatability. I had to pay for some software cause some freeware isn't compatible.

It's alright but could be better tbh.

Posted by QVGA

On 2008-05-04 13:35:14, thomas93 wrote:
I have Vista so I can comment

1) you have insufficient system resources, i fail to see how that is Vista's fault. Its like saying Doom 1 ran perfectly fine on Pentium 1 so why cant Call of Duty 4 run on it?

2) I can say the same for XP. An enormous amount of software and games for windows 98 became obsolete when XP came out due to their incompatibility.

Posted by thomas93
Insufficent resources?!?

I fail to see where visa needs to send all this power.

And 98 loseing all the software cmpatibility was worth it for the added fuctionality XP offers, again I fail to see where Vsta offers more and takes away more :/

Posted by max_wedge

On 2008-05-04 13:46:27, thomas93 wrote:
Insufficent resources?!?

I fail to see where visa needs to send all this power.

And 98 loseing all the software cmpatibility was worth it for the added fuctionality XP offers, again I fail to see where Vsta offers more and takes away more :/

You are quite wrong about Vista performance. Vista will run fine on 512 MB of RAM, and a low speed celeron dual core processor (not even core2). It will even run zippier if you turn off the Vista theme and visual affects, which dumbs the interface down to Windows 2000 apearance, but retains all the cool vista Explorer shell features that are mostly an improvement over Windows XP.

The main problem with Vista is 1. the lack of Business software compatibility (home users are less likely to have problems finding patches and drivers), and 2. the problems of compatibility with older hardware that vendors aren't releasing drivers for, and 3. High end multimedia hardware and software incompatibilities caused by Vista DRM systems. If you buy hardware and software carefully, you can avoid the problems above easily.

For anyone with an average computer of 2-3 years old or less, not being used in a business environment, Vista should be an ideal OS with many improvemnents over Windows XP (itself an excellent OS).

I like it.

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[ This Message was edited by: max_wedge on 2008-05-04 15:32 ]

Posted by paul101
problem is, i just cant be bothered waiting for it to ponder the meaning of life before i can actually do anything with vista... with ubuntu the GUI loads, and i can click on firefox and it loads instantly

i much prefer windows xp

Posted by max_wedge
Linux is a mixed bag. Some distros take a terminal amount of time to load, some are zippy.

I've also seen Vista and XP systems boot very quickly, I also don't believe in having numerous different background utilities loading at startup, which is what usually slows boot times. I mean who needs to know at any instant what speed your fans are running at or have some CD packet writing program running in the back ground just so you don't have to dig into the Program menu when you actually need it.

On lean systems, I probably find Vista a little quicker at booting than XP. By booting I mean after login and after all start up programs have finished loading. For boot to login screen only, both OS's can boot in as little as 20 seconds depending on the Motherboard BIOS sequence.

I still much prefer Windows XP in a business environment, but the time is coming where Vista will be just as good.

Posted by Cycovision
^^^

Well said. The commit charge for a clean install of Vista is around about 700Mb if you're running Aero and have dedicated graphics. If you turn all of the fancy features off, it drops to around 400Mb which is about the same as a 'used' XP installation if I remember correctly

Many people have been a little unfair towards Vista since they expect it to run like greased lightning with all of the bells and whistles on a PC that, whilst not archaic, is still out of date compared to what you could get for the same price right now.

As with all windows OS's, the biggest cause of slowdown is third party software that runs in the background. Some of them, such as printer manager apps and a couple of infamous antivirus packages, are absolutely huge when they really don't need to be.

Posted by max_wedge
yeah, I'm pretty happy with Vista. I think the only real let down is the over-complex DRM arrangements, but if the main hardware and software vendors don't feel they can rely on Vista DRM to work reliably with their products they will work outside the DRM regimen forcing MS to drop it in Windows 7 (my hope anyway).

I love the fact that Vista Home runs perfectly on my mums el-cheapo Compaq laptop with 512MB RAM looking like Windows 2000. It also goes to show how not a huge amount of processing power is needed to do internet/word/photos kind of home user stuff, as long as the UI has atleast a mediocum of efficiency.

Posted by Cycovision
Yup. I do sometimes wonder just how many people have actually used Vista to a reasonable extent before forming an opinion on it.

UAC, for example, gets a hell of a bad time but personally I've had no trouble with it at all. I've never found it annoying or intrusive, I don't see it happen very often at all and on one occasion it actually prevented a trojan from running before Avast anti-virus had chance to pop up an alert (which it did immediately after I denied access to the trojan in UAC!).

I wonder if the people who don't like UAC are the ones that always seem to have problems with spam, adware and viruses?

Posted by QVGA
The most criticized feature of Vista is the UAC, and its quite shocking to see that people dont realise that its a feature that can be turned off.

Posted by thomas93
Woo Avast

Posted by Dogmann
Hi all,

I also don't understand all this constant Vista bashing as i have now been using it since March 2007 on a new Toshiba Satellite P100-160 laptop.

I don't use Areo or the desktop Widgets as both of those did make the system slow IMO and all i added to the 1GB Ram was a 2GB USB memory key and used the Memory Boost function. It has a Core2 Duo T5200 @1.6ghz and everything runs and works perfectly.

I am still using Outlook 2003 and my new printer installed with out any problems as have all my mobile devices PC suites.

But my days of loading up every bit of new software and especially in Beta are long gone and in over 14 months now i have had no problems.

Now if i would of spent money on upgrading my old machine to Vista i doubt it but as it came on the new machine it has served me perfectly no complaints here.

Marc

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[ This Message was edited by: Dogmann on 2008-05-04 18:56 ]

Posted by arien617
It uses resources like a fat guy in McDonalds...
Normal usage on OS X..:
(With 2.4Ghz Dual Core and 2GB RAM)

I'd love to see that on Vista.
It's nicked a fair bit from OS X as well.. Widgets.. Gadgets.
Spotlight on OS X.. Search bar on the Windows Menu.
The iMac is all in one.. Don't bring this up(I've beaten you to it.)

Though it has helped me come to terms with my sexuality. Not.

OS X beats Vista at shininess as well.. which is like Vista's main selling point..

Then again, this is the Mac fan in me speaking. However as I do own and live with both OS', I prefer Mac way more than Windoze..

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[ This Message was edited by: arien617 on 2008-05-04 18:58 ]

Posted by QVGA
Its hard to tell how much memory Vista is using exactly because its cached almost 99% of it. So on a task manager you might see free RAM as about 4MB or 1MB but it doesnt actually mean vista is using up 99% of it, it only means it cached it.

Posted by arien617
I have a resource monitor and out of 2GB, Vista leaves 1GB of it free!
That's just f*cking shocking!

Posted by Dogmann
Hi arien67

I don't know why you are so hung up on figures as all that really matters to me is if it does all i want when i want it to. That's it figures and free RAM i couldn't care less about and quite simply if Vista doesn't do what you want or you don't like it just don't use it would be my suggestion. But it appears myself a lots of others are more than happy with how our Vista computers run.

Marc

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Nokia E90,8GB SDHC, Fring, Seven, Tom Tom 6
Dogmanns Nokia E90 Blog @ http://dogmann.vox.com/
Honoured to have won BEST DEBATER

[ This Message was edited by: Dogmann on 2008-05-04 21:55 ]

Posted by arien617
I understand you Marc, but the figures relate to performance, do they not?
If my computer's OS is using half the RAM that's available, it's kinda major.
Until RAM does become much lower price, I can't justify Vista, bar the machines running it can be dirt cheap. Processor wise, 1.86Ghz, 20% from each core does seem to be in use at all times, unless it's totally idle, whereas that figure on OS X (see pic) is much lower. Ok, it is 2.4Ghz, but still, it being 99-100% idle is quite impressive..
To be fair, I'm not at all happy with Vista, and wasn't from day 1. Seeing much less of it now. It's probably the Mac fan inside me speaking, but I do prefer Leopard over Vista.

Posted by Dogmann
Hi arien67

That's fine by me no one says you have to if we all liked exactly the same things always the world would be a very boring place IMO. One of the things about Vista that did impress me though was i added 2GB of RAM with a USB memory key that was was Ready Boost enabled at a really cheap price as opposed to adding real Ram at a high cost. Although obviously it's not as good but it did the job and made a huge improvement for very little cost.

Marc

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Dogmanns Nokia E90 Blog @ http://dogmann.vox.com/
Honoured to have won BEST DEBATER

[ This Message was edited by: Dogmann on 2008-05-04 22:56 ]

Posted by arien617
I felt ReadyBoost did make a difference, but it just takes up space on my memory key. Real RAM is the only way in my opinion, and just too costly for my liking.

Posted by paul101
i dont know why people fork out for a Ł150+~ OS just to do web surfing and word processing when there are free alternatives!! /9that use up far less system resources)

another thing is, if you have a bug with windows... its a case of Live with it!!, whereas with linux, you can submit a bug report or a wish list for things you want / need ( launchpad )

i really dont see the point in forking out Ł150+~ for an OS!!

Posted by QVGA

On 2008-05-05 00:50:20, paul101 wrote:
i dont know why people fork out for a Ł150+~ OS just to do web surfing and word processing when there are free alternatives!! /9that use up far less system resources)

another thing is, if you have a bug with windows... its a case of Live with it!!, whereas with linux, you can submit a bug report or a wish list for things you want / need ( launchpad )

i really dont see the point in forking out Ł150+~ for an OS!!

Linux has terrible support for games and software. Thats why even now only about 1 % people use it.

Posted by arien617
None of us Mac/Linux uses play games then, QVGA..

Consoles for gaming, computers for other things. I mean there's like a million different versions of Office and Vista.. Only one OS X and iWork...
And it's only Ł80, unlike the million odd quid for Vista Ultimate.
_________________
[/Arien's post]
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[ This Message was edited by: arien617 on 2008-05-05 09:22 ]

Posted by Cycovision
Erm...

The memory usage for OS X in that picture was about 800Mb, which is the same as Vista reports using on my laptop!

Anyway, as Marc and others have said the figures don't really mean anything. It's just horses for courses. I used a Macbook for ages but I've never really liked Mac OS much so I ended up selling it.

But you won't hear me slagging it off. I can understand why some people prefer it to Windows but I can't understand why some Mac users seem so hell bent on putting windows down

Posted by max_wedge

On 2008-05-04 23:06:02, arien617 wrote:
I understand you Marc, but the figures relate to performance, do they not?
If my computer's OS is using half the RAM that's available, it's kinda major.

That just means it's efficient enough that it doesn't need to use ALL the RAM for simple operations. Open 20 IE windows then load up Photoshop with 20 100MB images then tell me it's not using all the RAM. Using the same argument you have proposed, we would expect CPU to be running at 100% all the time also. Now I know many spyware infected computers this is the case, but it's not standard operation.

@cycovision, like you I have noticed that it always seems to be the MAC users who bring up the Windows versus MAC argument. It's like they have a constant need to reassure themselves that they are better than the average windows pleb.

Another thing I notice, is that since OS X has adopted a UNIX core, MAC users love to equate themselves with the Linux community. In my mind Apple products couldn't be further from the Open Source "free as in beer" philosophy that underpins Linux.

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[ This Message was edited by: max_wedge on 2008-05-05 10:49 ]

Posted by markztrance
VISTA

V - VIRUSES
I - INTRUDERS
S - SPYWARE
T - TROJANS
A - ADWARES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t210ZeB69n4

Posted by ronkx

On 2008-05-06 02:37:16, markztrance wrote:
VISTA

V - VIRUSES
I - INTRUDERS
S - SPYWARE
T - TROJANS
A - ADWARES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t210ZeB69n4

but i think vista is made more secure so that less of that you said can go in

Posted by Cycovision
^^^

Yeah there hasn't been any serious virus scares yet, like MSBlast and Sasser when XP first came out. Bearing in mind that every hacker and script kiddy in the world have probably been working flat out to try and be the first to 'kill' Vista, that's not bad going really.

UAC people! Don't turn it off unless it causes serious problems. Another way of looking at it; if you don't like UAC you're going to hate Linux!

Posted by ronkx
well, maybe thos apple guys are working on to break vista's security >=D

Posted by paul101

On 2008-05-05 08:17:25, QVGA wrote:
Linux has terrible support for games and software. Thats why even now only about 1 % people use it.

software:

OpenOffice (the same / better than MS Office)
Firefox (web browser)
GIMP (image editor)
wine (runs some windows programs under linux)
Movie Player (plays movies / dvd's out the box
emsn (msn messenger)

all the software the avrage computer user even needs, even photoshop works under wine

"The success is, in part, driven by the fact that for people doing an increasing percentage of day-to-day tasks like e-mail in the context of software as a service, at that point it soon doesn't matter what operating system you have," said Redmonk's O'Grady. "If a majority of (computer) usage is browsing the Internet and doing things like that, (Linux) is perfectly credible, perfectly usable."

http://www.news.com/Five-reas[....]27419.html?tag=ne.gall.related

Posted by NightBlade
Weird, I've been running Vista since Beta 2 (i.e. May 2006) and it's been a breeze to use. Interface is fantastic and the improved search features are very useful. I also love the gadget sidebar. Most of the problems I've had are because of video card drivers.
I say Vista can do everything a Mac can do, plus, it has a much wider range of products it's compatible with.

Take that Apple!

[ This Message was edited by: NightBlade on 2008-05-06 21:09 ]

Posted by arien617
Once you buy Mac, you never go back.

Honestly, I think most people on Mac are happier without Windoze.

I guess each OS has its pros and cons, but as I don't play games on PC, I'm doing fine without Vista..

Posted by NightBlade
@paul101:
You seriously think OpenOffice is better than Office 2007?

Posted by paul101

On 2008-05-06 22:21:28, NightBlade wrote:
@paul101:
You seriously think OpenOffice is better than Office 2007?

err... yes!!... it's free

so what can MS office do that OpenOffice cant do??

_________________
By the Year 2020 We shall RULE THE WORLD - Tesco... every little helps

It's Raining, It's Pouring...
Oh sh1t, it's Global Warming.

[ This Message was edited by: paul101 on 2008-05-06 21:27 ]