Author Topic: Vista and Microsoft 2007  (Read 13136 times)

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ChaCha

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Re: Vista and Microsoft 2007
« Reply #15 on: Jun 14, 2007, 09:27 am »
We now have 2 people using vista which is causing quite a few issues on our rather dodgy 'network', and we are going to be buying at least 8 more laptops in the next 6/8 weeks as the staff expands - trouble is our IT guys say avoid Vista as the kinks still aren't ironed out, however the suppliers say there are almost no XP options still available. So there wont be a choice much longer.

Regarding Office 07 - like jempage -  as I get used to the new layout it all seems to make a certain amount of sense. It's just tedious when I'm in a hurry to get something done (all the time it seems!) and can't find the feature I need...
ChaCha

Trevor7

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Re: Vista and Microsoft 2007
« Reply #16 on: Jun 14, 2007, 12:06 pm »
I recently switched to Vista and Office 2k7 because my school offers both for free.  Now I used to do computer work back before I wanted to SM.  I even got Microsoft certs and all that crap.  I have played around with every operating system from windows 95 to Mac OSx and even linux, and I can tell you once you get used to it Vista is awesome.  The biggest issue I have with 2k7 is I need to save everything as a 2k3 file so that people without 2k7 can open it.  But other then that I love it.

Scott (formerly Digga)

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Re: Vista and Microsoft 2007
« Reply #17 on: Jun 16, 2007, 04:02 am »
First - people who believe there are no Viruses for Macs are sorely mistaken and I welcome them to freely open emails and what not from people they don't know.  Macs weren't targeted by hackers and virus makers for so long because no one owned them.  Now that they're becoming slightly more prevalent in the world, the viruses have appeared.  Don't be fooled into thinking that buying a Mac will prevent your computer from getting a virus.  You're just setting yourself up for a big fall.

Second, I agree that all software should be updated to be used with Vista by now.  Every developer has had a copy of Vista for the past 2 years at least and there's no reason why working updates shouldn't be found.  However, if your Virus software isn't working, it's entirely possible because they want you to buy a new one.  When you're protection expires, you can't just reinstall it, you have to buy a new subscription.  Oftentimes, it costs the same to update to the newest version of the software so you might as well do it.  Yes there are free versions of Ant-Virus (like AVG) out there but use them at your own risk.  I find that paying for the protection gives me some sort of comfort and I know what I'm doing with computers.  I recommend PC-Cillin personally as it has the least amount of BS programs attached to it and isn't as much of a resource hog as McAfee and Norton.

Third, as for using the same features of the Mac, what's so wrong about it?  Everyone copies everyone else when it comes to technology.  Sometimes they improve upon it, sometimes they don't but it's a business.  If one thing is working, there's no reason not to use it.  Apple does it just as much as Microsoft does.  Apple's just pissed because Microsoft has better marketing and a stronger user base than the Mac and that'll be the case for many years to come still.

Fourth, one of my biggest gripes with the Mac is that they are completely overpriced for what they are.  You get a PC with similar specs or better and you pay 1/2 the price.  So feel free to consider it when you are in the market for a new computer, just know that when you pay $2000 for that shiny white laptop, you could have paid about $700 for with Vista and it all works the same.


Mac Calder

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Re: Vista and Microsoft 2007
« Reply #18 on: Jun 16, 2007, 09:47 pm »
Digga, I am going to disect your post point by point.

1: True, viruses have been written for both Mac's and Linux (as well as BSD and all other unixes) - the difference between a windows virus and a virus for  a unix based operating system is the ammount of damage it can do. This is due to the very way Unix was designed. If you are stupid enough to use the root account, and visit suspect sites, run suspect executables etc, then you really do deserve whatever virus you get. Just as an example - out of the box, most users on a windows machine can install software, and that software is installed in a system directory (Program Files) - they can also delete and change files in said directory. Out of the box, the same cannot be said for unix. Users have the ability to run said files, without the ability to change or modify them.

Then there is the fact that 99% of people I know (which leaves the 1% of machines I set up for people I know) used an account with Administrator priv's. So any security that was built into the system (ie permissions) were laid useless by the fact that out of the box, "Power User" and "User" accounts were useless. The solution - which has been implemented on OS X and Unix in general for the last god knows how long is the ability to temporarily switch into "SuperUser" mode (aka sudo), so that when an application needed higher permissions, you were asked for a password, and it had to be a concious decision.

I wont deny that Windows has taken a few steps forward in the latest release, and I have not had time to adequatly test it, so I won't comment, but it's reputation as an insecure operating system is well deserved.

Point number 2: Incorrect. All software houses/people willing to fork out big bucks (for MSDN) have had access to various release candidates and betas for Vista, not EVERY DEVELOPER. Many software houses do not make the sort of funds to justify said subscription. Also, software houses are not required to release update patches for their older software because of a new operating system, unless it stated in the system requirements that it works with Vista (which some did prior to release). Software houses exist to make money - and there is no money to be made in spending X thousand dollars writing patches to freely distribute to customers who have upgraded to vista. Especially if their product was a 'once off' type purchase and they stand a good chance of people buying the "Vista Upgrade Patch" or "Software X - now supporting Vista".

Third point: Correct. In a way, this is how software evolves - through a process of leapfrogging the competition - they add feature X, we add X and Y, they add Y and Z, we add Z and A.

Fourth: Not quite correct. See the one thing that Apple do is provide a well tuned system. OSX is optomised to run on the hardware they have selected. You can get "tuned" windows systems too, and they cost about the same - if not more. That is why when a Mac G4 600MHz was put up against a 1.8GHz pentium 4, the Mac G4 seemed to be faster. I did a few design courses during highschool, and we had a number of G3's, G4's (running OS9 and OSX) and MS systems (XP) - The G3's and 4's always outperformed them much higher specced XP systems. That is what you pay for.
« Last Edit: Jun 16, 2007, 09:48 pm by Mac Calder »

zayit shachor

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Re: Vista and Microsoft 2007
« Reply #19 on: Jun 16, 2007, 11:19 pm »
If you really don't like Microsoft - use Open Office.  It's free and will open any office document as well as edit them.  Works with PC, Mac, and Linux.

Open Office is great - just make sure that you save things as .doc or .xls as the case may be, and not as .odt - otherwise no one else will be able to open them.

Scott (formerly Digga)

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Re: Vista and Microsoft 2007
« Reply #20 on: Jun 18, 2007, 02:00 pm »
Mac - Just a few statements

1 - I didn't include Linux in the comparison because as of right now, only a complete power-user for computers will use a Unix based system (not to mention even knows what Unix is).  And it is true that too many people use Windows as Administrators that don't know what they're doing, but that's not Windows' fault.  Users don't take enough responsibility for some of their actions.  Also, purchasing a pre-made desktop or laptop, you start with a non-administrator account.  It gives you enough to run things and install things as necessary but not kill your computer.  What most people did with XP though was to just use the administrator account.  Vista took that into account and really has stepped up the usage of "normal" user accounts so that being an administrator on your PC isn't required to simply install a program.  And yes - anyone that gets a virus on any computer, deserves to get said virus. 

2 - I'll concede that software companies aren't required to update their software to be usable with the newest operating systems.  But with some of the bigger companies like Creative there is just no excuse.  But I was really referring to User Subscriptions on products like Virus protection when it came to updating.  I should have been more clear.

3 - Yes OSX is optimized to run on its own systems.  Makes perfect sense since they built it.  But in that regard, Dell does the same thing with PCs and again to get a comparable system, it's still far cheaper to get a PC than a Mac.  What I like about the PCs is that they are more customizable than Macs but I also like building computers so I'm biased.  And I don't agree with anything that Intel put out as far as specs from that far back.  For the longest time, Intel had a reputation among the PC community for bloating their numbers to make it look better than AMD.  It was the era of speed being considered the best and 1.8GHz looks better than 800MHz.  Comparing the G4 and the AMD chips would have given you a better comparison and AMD has always been cheaper than both Mac and Intel.  It wasn't until recently (the past 2 years or so) that Intel finally started to actually beat AMD with it's processing power and no longer relied on higher numbers to make sales.

Mac Calder

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Re: Vista and Microsoft 2007
« Reply #21 on: Jun 18, 2007, 09:27 pm »
OS X is based on BSD. BSD is Unix.

I will skip the rest - which whilst I have an opinion, I really can't be bothered typing (long day) and move straight onto your final point.

Actually, an AMD Athlon XP 2100+ which is running on the machine beside my G4 400MHz, with half the ram - 768 mb in the Mac vs 1537mb in the PC is quite easy to compare. The Mac beats it hands down, although it would run even better with more ram. Which is why I use it for my desktop work.

nb: the XP 2100+ runs at about 1.8GHz.

Scott (formerly Digga)

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Re: Vista and Microsoft 2007
« Reply #22 on: Jun 20, 2007, 12:30 am »
Sorry for the long day.

In what way does the Mac beat the AMD hands down?  Now I'm just being curious of course.

And I didn't realize that OSX was based on BSD.  Makes more sense now as to why you brought that up.

Mac Calder

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Re: Vista and Microsoft 2007
« Reply #23 on: Jun 20, 2007, 08:11 am »
Even simple things. The time between my clicking on the green X and excel appearing (2003 & 2004 versions of office respectively), and just general 'responsiveness'.

fritz

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Re: Vista and Microsoft 2007
« Reply #24 on: Jul 03, 2007, 05:05 pm »
I'm on Vista and Office 2007 too. There's no real specific advantage to stage management for using Vista. However, I've found the Office 2007 system to be a great help and time saver when typing up anything for stage management. If you're using Office 2007, just always remember to save as a Office 97-2003 file type (.doc, .xls, .ppt, etc...) instead of any of the new 2007 file types ["OpenXML Format"] (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc...). That way you won't run into any problems if you email an ASM a given form to edit or email production notes out or anything like that.

stagemonkey

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Re: Vista and Microsoft 2007
« Reply #25 on: Jul 10, 2007, 01:47 pm »
After a long and annoying process of Best Buy Customer Service I finally got a new laptop (old one broke too many times and they had to replace it under the lemon clause of the service plan.)  Any the new laptop has Vista and really I didnt want vista this soon because of all the bugs of a new system, but oh well I have it and I find there are things I like about it.  What a lot of people dont know is that there are ways to sort of revert Vista to operate more like XP, much like XP could revert into a windows 2000 look.

While I havent used office 2007 much yet (as i think my laptop only has a trial version) I dont have much to comment on that.  As for Open Office i tried using that a little bit and while I find it can do everything MS Office can do I'm finding it a little hard to make it do what I want, maybe im just too used to MS Office.