This is irrational fear

[Rick_EE]

Originally Posted by polonyc2

I'm always trolling

but you and Skully are excluded from my trollishness

Then I will troll for you. Find your teeth yet, old man? Then maybe your bite will have an effect.

[ctal]

Originally Posted by polonyc2

then again the significantly older demographics of this forum I'm sure plays a role in people's perceptions

I too wondered what he meant by that statement. Being someone who tends to interpret things in a positive manner, I tentatively concluded he meant that older people would tend to have more senior corporate positions, to which my comment in post no. 4 would be more applicable. People in senior positions would be more likely to be called upon to respond to action items from top management that would allow no time for learning curves dealing with unfamiliar software.

At least, I hope he meant something along those lines.

Regards,
-- Al

[Wingit]

Originally Posted by Rick_EE

Then I will troll for you. Find your teeth yet, old man? Then maybe your bite will have an effect.

I left them by my rocker in Ignoitton station, space cowboy, but you knew that.....

[Ozzie]

Thank you for that interpretation Al!! I was sure is was positive too...

[polonyc2]

you guys still playing Eve Online? (Wingit, Rick_EE)

[Wingit]

Originally Posted by polonyc2

you guys still playing Eve Online? (Wingit, Rick_EE)

yup, give it a whirl, if you have an underdeveloped sense of fairplay, extreme paranoia and a vindictive nature, it's the perfect MMO...I find it much like real life politics....to be honest, it is the only game i have stayed with this long...since August of 05. lots of new content added (free) , but it's a monthly subscription. EVE Online site has a free trial I believe.

[SupDawg]

Vista does nothing for corporate users. Maybe the IT dept gets some new stuff, but for the end user, not a whole lot will change.

I can upgrade to Vista at work, but there are a ton of apps I use everyday that simply isn't compatible with Vista. C'est la vie

[zapionics<alt>]

Originally Posted by polymorphic

...
There is no demand for a new OS at this time, so Vista is a lame duck. XP security is tight, performance and reliability are rock solid, compatibility is on a grand scale ...

I think this goes to the heart of the issue. Does anyone remember the heartache of Win95? or Win95B? And Win98? or Win98SE? my god, but if I ever had to install it one more time i would have gone mad... and the frequent blue screens! And that god awful TCP/IP applet... I became an expert in knowing all the quirks of that piece of cr*p.

No wonder Xp became so popular in the end. I think M$ thought it would go the same way this time too. They just assumed that the slow sales of Vista were the same situation as back in the day when Xp first came out. But it was just that we didnt want to let go of our finely tuned Win98 boxes, that we had spent so many hours, blood, sweat and tears tweaking up, until we knew that Xp would be better.

What M$ has failed to do is show that Vista is, in any real way, better.
In the end we'll be forced to switch, as support for Xp fades even further away, but we wont like M$ for doing that to us.

[sammy2066]

Originally Posted by S.SubZero

I work for a big company's IT dept. We handle server hardware stuff and some configuration. About 20-30% of our typical workload is done at our desks, the rest being out at the servers. Our desk work is limited to some internal websites, Outlook, and some terminal services client stuff. Fairly mild, and our workstations reflect this; P4 3ghz boxes, 1gb RAM, typical mass-produced OEM "corporate desktop" jobs. They run XP, and as long as people don't load all kinds of junk on them they do OK for our purposes, though the hard drives are very small and they tend to be sluggish and churn a lot.

At some point, we had a couple of high-end workstations we set up for another department fall through some red tape and land on our desks. These things are quad core 2.4's, 4GB RAM, big hard drives, definitely way above and beyond what we are used to. My boss and I decided to set them up and use them until someone comes to claim them. We set them up, and... NOBODY WILL GO NEAR THEM.

Why?

Because they are running Vista. Vista x64 SP1 actually.

Even my boss, once he saw they had Vista, would not touch them. One ended up on my desk, and I love it. It runs Aero fine, all the work stuff flies, and they are totally stable and slick. I set it all up just how I like it and I really hope I can hang on to it for a while. The other box is sitting in the middle of the room, practically untouched. Here's how the conversation usually goes:

Me: "Why isn't anyone using the other quad?"
Any: "It has VISTA."
Me: "But it runs fast, and everything is great..."
Any: "IT HAS VISTA."

Yesterday someone was sitting at my desk when I came into work (we sort of share desks with the other shifts so this is not unusual) but when I asked why he didn't just sit at the other quad box he said "I didn't want to use Vista so I didn't sit there. I didn't know you had it, but all the other machines were taken by the time I got here."

I'm totally confused. Not only do people prefer XP to Vista, they prefer XP on junk hardware to Vista on GOOD hardware. Huh?!

Very interesting take on people's impression of Vista. I've always been saying that if you have a system good enough to handle Vista, it's a good OS.

I work for the IT department for my university. We've not rolled out a single Vista machines. If some professor or faculty specifically asks for Vista, we make him an exception. Active Directory is pretty flaky in Vista too, that was one of the main reasons we cannot roll it out. The bad publicity about Vista seems to be proliferating amongst the masses, but of course, this does not seem to affect Vista sales as most computers have it pre-installed. One way or another, MS still makes money.

[sammy2066]

This is all talks aboit the older demo-graphicks ... i hears they is better in full evrsions?

[ctal]

Originally Posted by sammy2066

This is all talks aboit the older demo-graphicks ... i hears they is better in full evrsions?

I still haven't been able to stop laughing over the "Hey" thread, and now he adds this to it!

-- Al

[S.SubZero]

Originally Posted by sammy2066

Very interesting take on people's impression of Vista. I've always been saying that if you have a system good enough to handle Vista, it's a good OS.

These systems are definitely good enough, no question. In fact running XP on them would just be a crime.

Interesting opinions from people here. As I said, I do server support work, and in my profession it's not unusual to have new hardware dropped into my responsibility overnight. Our site gets new hardware, we're expected to learn it as fast as possible and be able to troubleshoot and fix it. Everyone on my team is expected to be this way. So it's odd one striking comment involves a lack of interest in learning a new thing. Vista isn't some upside-down inside-out OS compared to XP, it's very similar in fact. Visually it's different on the surface, but stuff for the most part is where it's always been, the same buttons still do the same stuff, and it's easy to reduce it back to something comfortable if the new style is too much.

I'm always eager to learn new stuff, it's part of why I do the work I do, and probably why I am employable in this field. I try to go beyond the "it's a paycheck" mentality and enjoy my work. To me a new OS isn't an impedance, it's a welcome challenge. This is also not a radical setup; like I said we do internal web, outlook, and terminal services. The process for these has not changed in Vista in some crazy way or anything.

This logic comes into play when I explain that my work is starting to get Server 2008 boxes and we are expected to support them. I've already upgraded my MCSE2003 to MCTS2008 (on my own dime) while there's people at work that won't touch Vista, and therefore lose out on learning 2008's interface. I already had a couple of issues where the techs had to give the job over to me simply due to lack of knowledge on 2008's interface, basic stuff like "installing a driver".. We had people above me, and people above THEM involved in a full blown work stoppage on some servers because they didn't understand that to run a particular setup script it had to be run as Administrator. Then they didn't know HOW to do that.

In this kind of industry one can't just not use something because "it's too complicated" or "different." Pounce on the different stuff, learn it, understand it. You might like it.

[ctal]

Good observations, SSZ. My comments, though, and some of the others as well, pertained to the 80 to 90% of computer users who are neither IT professionals, nor employees at companies that are in the computer industry, nor enthusiasts such as ABX'ers.

Regards,
-- Al

[traveler]

Originally Posted by ctal

Good observations, SSZ. My comments, though, and some of the others as well, pertained to the 80 to 90% of computer users who are neither IT professionals, nor employees at companies that are in the computer industry, nor enthusiasts such as ABX'ers.

Regards,
-- Al

Read ctal's comment twice S.SubZero.

Ninety percent of computer users would rather spend an extra ten seconds of the limited time in life fishing, hiking, or visiting family or bar-hopping etc instead of in front of a computer screen when the computer does what you want and never gives any problems the way it is.

You're always eager to learn new stuff? Same with the guys on the Cassini project and the guys on the Phoenix Mars Lander project (currently on its twelvth day after landing).

[Cogar]

Originally Posted by Wingit

I hope you are just trolling, lol

It could not be, with the exception of "old man" jaketerminate, we are all young here.