Vienna

Post by **Leisher** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 4:31 pm

First Screens?

I've been told by a vendor that Vienna is going Beta in July.

Post by **TheCatt** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 5:00 pm

I've been told by MS that it isn't, and won't be out til 2011.

Edited By TheCatt on 1203458430

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 10:39 pm

2011? Goddamnit.

Post by **Leisher** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 8:55 am

I've been told by MS that it isn't, and won't be out til 2011.

Interesting. The info I received was also from MS.

Of course, there are also the widely reported rumors that MS's next OS was going into beta sometime in 2008.

Personally, I've thought it was WAY too soon to see a beta of Vienna as it was originally scheduled for 2011. However, following the disaster of Vista, reports were that MS really started pushing Vienna to get it out the door ahead of schedule.

I wouldn't be shocked to see a middle ground product. Corporate America has already told MS they won't be going to Vista and most tech savvy folks also skipped it. So maybe MS is going to work on a new version of XP to tide people over until Vienna in 2011? Something based on XP, but with the critical Vista features that would get the techies and corporations to move to it.

For corporations, I think MS would need to ensure that whatever they want to release, it has much better legacy support than Vista. That was the main reason I heard as to why companies wouldn't and couldn't switch. Pretty much every company is running some software that is from the 80s or early 90s.

Ditto for home users. I would've switched to Vista simply for Direct X 10, but I didn't want to eliminate half of my game library by doing so. If I wanted to limit the number of games I can play I would've bought a Mac.

Post by **GORDON** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:31 pm

People aren't buying Microsoft's new OS because they are pretty much satisfied with the OS they currently have, Windows XP. Vista was unable to bring anything new and relevant to the table.

And Microsoft's solution is to release ANOTHER new OS?

Good thinking.

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Post by **Vince** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 8:34 am

Leisher wrote:Ditto for home users. I would've switched to Vista simply for Direct X 10, but I didn't want to eliminate half of my game library by doing so. If I wanted to limit the number of games I can play I would've bought a Mac.

Xp killed more of my games than Vista has. Pretty much anything that didn't run on NT as well as 95/98 when Xp came out was broke.

Now I do have some weird stuff happen in some of my games on Vista, but they mostly amount to quirks rather than code breakers.

A couple of my lower quality games are causing the video to stop responding from time to time, but looking through their forums I see that these have issues in xp with certain video cards. So I think they aren't very solid to begin with.

Post by **Leisher** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 9:46 am

Xp killed more of my games than Vista has.

XP did kill a lot of older games in terms of running off the CD or floppy drive, but all could still be made to work in a DOS box.

That's not true of Vista. That's why all the PC gaming magazines warned that if you're still in love with an older game, even some relatively new ones, don't upgrade as you might lose the ability to play it.

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Post by **Vince** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 8:11 pm

Leisher wrote:XP did kill a lot of older games in terms of running off the CD or floppy drive, but all could still be made to work in a DOS box.

Any of the old games that made direct writes to your video and audio hardware were killed iirc (which were mostly the DOS based ones), since NT doesn't allow for that. And a lot of coders did that back in the day.

I've always had trouble playing older crappy looking and sounding games after really great looking stuff came out. May have been work arounds that came about. I'm sure there will be emulators written for Vista as well.

Like I've said all along, there's nothing new with any of this.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:17 pm

Just cos it ain't new doesn't mean it don't suck.

Post by **Vince** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 12:52 am

No argument there. I'd submit that the only upgrade that MS put out that DIDN'T suck (by comparison) was 98.

Post by **TPRJones** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 1:20 am

I haven't had any problems playing old DOS games on XP using DosBox. Blood Bowl and the original Civilization come to mind as examples. They do tend to error out after I've exited them, but by that point it doesn't matter really.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 1:03 pm

Hell, even "World of Xeen" runs just fine w\ Dosbox on my laptop.

Post by **GORDON** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 2:21 pm

Vince wrote:No argument there. I'd submit that the only upgrade that MS put out that DIDN'T suck (by comparison) was 98.

98 was nothing more than Windowns 95C, and even then it needed a major service pack in the form of 98SE to make it work right. And you couldn't even upgrade to SE, you needed to buy it all over again.

The last major advance Microsoft made in windows was 95. They've done nothing new for us ever since except lock us into a forced upgrade cycle. I can't really be happy about that, even knowing I live in a capitalist society and they aren't a charity.

Post by **Vince** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 9:21 pm

TPRJones wrote:I haven't had any problems playing old DOS games on XP using DosBox. Blood Bowl and the original Civilization come to mind as examples. They do tend to error out after I've exited them, but by that point it doesn't matter really.

But that's through an emulator. Xp out of the box broke a LOT of games. I suspect emulators for Vista will come along.

Post by **Vince** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 9:23 pm

GORDON wrote:They've done nothing new for us ever since except lock us into a forced upgrade cycle. I can't really be happy about that, even knowing I live in a capitalist society and they aren't a charity.

Seems to me your issue isn't with Microsoft, but rather software developers that no longer write code for old OS's. Ultimately, why do you upgrade your OS?

Post by **GORDON** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:12 pm

Vince wrote:
GORDON wrote:They've done nothing new for us ever since except lock us into a forced upgrade cycle. I can't really be happy about that, even knowing I live in a capitalist society and they aren't a charity.
Seems to me your issue isn't with Microsoft, but rather software developers that no longer write code for old OS's. Ultimately, why do you upgrade your OS?

Because I have to. ALways been the case as far back as I can remember. Microsoft purposely obsoletes their old OSs, has a near-monopoly in the manufacturing and install base, it wins majority market share becaue of that fact alone, and developers are forced to write code that only works on the new OS, case in point DX10. Or the old Microsoft GameVoice that worked fine on Win95 until one day it required Win98 for no reason I ever figured out.

Post by **Leisher** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 11:24 pm

Seems to me your issue isn't with Microsoft, but rather software developers that no longer write code for old OS's.

That's not accurate.

Its been proven in many courts that Microsoft has used bullshit and illegal tactics to push their products on the market.

Software developers HAVE to code for the most popular OS option or go out of business. And don't say they're popular because they're great and everyone wanted to go to the new OSs.

Try ordering a machine right now from Dell, HP, or anyone and ask for it to be installed and configured with Windows 3.1, 95, 95, 98SE, NT, 2000, ME, etc. See if they'll do it for you.

The movement to the new OSs aren't occurring because they have to happen, but rather because Microsoft is influencing the market to make it happen. Show me what Vista brings to the table that couldn't have been fixed or upgraded on XP.

Sure, there are times when software must change because the hardware has changed, but the industry is currently backwards in that respect. Hardware is just trying to keep pace with software. That software blitzkrieg is caused by games and Microsoft.

As more proof of that, explain why Microsoft, other than for purely profit driven reasons knew they'd be releasing Vienna in 2011 while Vista was still in development.

And understand I'm not bashing capitalism or their right to make money in that system. More power to them for doing such things, but I am trying to point out that their OS upgrades, which is particularly transparent in Vista, are not exactly necessary.

How about spending more time in the QA phase so that a product isn't released as a buggy mess? How about talking to your customers more to see what they actually want and need rather than what you want to shove down their throats (*cough*DRM*cough*)?

And I'm a Microsoft fan not a "down with the evil empire" nutjob.

Oh, and if any Apple nut reads this and thinks "Yeah! Down with Microsoft!" Shut the fuck up. You people don't even have opinions until Steve Jobs tells you that you have one.

Post by **Vince** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 12:08 pm

Leisher wrote:Try ordering a machine right now from Dell, HP, or anyone and ask for it to be installed and configured with Windows 3.1, 95, 95, 98SE, NT, 2000, ME, etc. See if they'll do it for you.

Just order the machine and load your previously purchased copy of 95 on it. Won't work, will it? Hardware vendors won't support their stuff under it. MS isn't the only company that does that sort of thing. Why can't I but a 286 mo-bo anymore? Would 3.1 even run on the hardware we have today? Is it possible with the bus sizes?

The movement to the new OSs aren't occurring because they have to happen, but rather because Microsoft is influencing the market to make it happen. Show me what Vista brings to the table that couldn't have been fixed or upgraded on XP.

And how does Microsoft recoop their costs on resources for support and updates on an OS that is never obsoleted? Start charging for updates? Maybe they could start charging a yearly fee for updates after the products life cycle, but I'm sure that would lead to even more pissing and moaning from consumers.

I've been racking my brain trying to think of something comperable to this anywhere else, but I can't think of anything. It seems that the OS is in a unique situation. It's a product that never wears out. Never "breaks" in the physical sense.

Sure, there are times when software must change because the hardware has changed, but the industry is currently backwards in that respect. Hardware is just trying to keep pace with software. That software blitzkrieg is caused by games and Microsoft.

The gaming industry had ALWAYS had a bigger influence on this than the OS. I've never upgraded my system for the OS. It's always been upgraded to keep up with my gaming needs. Then machines are sold based on what customers need and this bloat cycle continues.

It's some sort of law of programming nature that the code will expand to fill whatever resources are avalable. That isn't a problem that's restricted to MS. Tetris came out originally on a single 1.44 floppy when most games where multi floppys or CDs (that was near the start of the CD era). The reason why it was so compact was (I'm sure) because it was written by a Russian where the average user didn't have access to the same hardware that we do here.

As more proof of that, explain why Microsoft, other than for purely profit driven reasons knew they'd be releasing Vienna in 2011 while Vista was still in development.

You're kidding, right? Yes, it IS purely profit driven reasons. That's why they're in business. Why do automobile manufacturers plan on releasing a new model car every year? Come on. That one's a reach. Show me any business that doesn't have some sort of 5 and 10 year plans like that and I'll show you a business that won't exist in those 5 to 10 years.

How about spending more time in the QA phase so that a product isn't released as a buggy mess? How about talking to your customers more to see what they actually want and need rather than what you want to shove down their throats (*cough*DRM*cough*)?

I don't disagree with the "buggy mess" point. Vista DID come out with more issues than I'd have liked to have seen. I'd say the situation was somewhere between what the defenders say it was and what where the "anyone but MS" crowd said it was. Weird stuff that shouldn't have gone to final release, but most has been addressed.

I suspect this was part of a stratagy with DRM was to get in good with content providers. That way they could have access to that content with on-line initiatives (things such as their Live services, etc).

I guess I just don't have the anger over all of this because I have options. I could go with Linux or Apple if MS did something to piss me off enough. But I stick with MS because I know that all the apps I'll want are on that platform.

Post by **GORDON** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:54 pm

Vince wrote:I guess I just don't have the anger over all of this because I have options. I could go with Linux or Apple if MS did something to piss me off enough. But I stick with MS because I know that all the apps I'll want are on that platform.

But if you want a PC for gaming, then no, you don't really have options.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 6:08 pm

GORDON wrote:
Vince wrote:I guess I just don't have the anger over all of this because I have options. I could go with Linux or Apple if MS did something to piss me off enough. But I stick with MS because I know that all the apps I'll want are on that platform.
But if you want a PC for gaming, then no, you don't really have options.

Amiga says screw you.