[Gllug] Take a look at my photos on Facebook

[Christopher Hunter]

On Wed, 2009-11-04 at 09:47 +0000, Peter Cannon wrote:
> Christopher Hunter wrote:
> 
> > Incidentally, the latest Redmond Rubbish is just as broken as the
> > previous versions - the same vulnerabilities still exist.
> 
> Really which ones?

The most obvious ones are that it's possible (and usually preferable) to
turn off UAC, and that it still hides filename extensions.
> 
> > At work we got two laptops with Win 7 pre-loaded, so I've had a chance
> > to see it.  First boot was surprisingly quick, but the shiny bits are
> > much the same as Vista.  There was no option to choose browser (like
> > there was meant to be).
> 
> Yes there is its called the Internet install what you like.

Under the terms of the MS agreement with the EU, there was supposed to
be an option to delete Internet Explorer and install a truly
standards-compliant browser in its place.

>  As if
> Microsoft is going to have a choice "Please choose Firefox, Opera,
> Chrome or have ours Explorer" If that's the case I want to see Explorer
> available native, none of that wine crossover rubbish, in the repo's.

That doesn't make sense...

> > We installed the latest version of "Office" onto one of them, and tried
> > to use it.  File transfer is horribly slow, and it fell over to a blank
> > screen after half an hour of use.  A (very slow) reboot allowed it all
> > to start up again.  The boot time was now several times longer than the
> > first time, and the "performance" of the whole thing appeared sluggish.
> 
> Seems fine here, what's your network 10MB?

100 Mb.

>  What version of Office?

2007.

>  I'm using 2007 but have tested it with 2010 as well and its fine.

Nope - it crashed.  It began to get slower at doing ANYTHING.

> > At this point, neither machine had been attached to a network.  We
> > installed "F-secure" anti-malware nonsense (our IT department demand it)
> > on both and the machines slowed down radically.  We connected to the
> > 'net via our network, and tried to download updates to the anti-malware
> > effort and to Windows.
> 
> So that's F-secure and nothing whatsoever to do with Windows 7

No.  "Windows Update" is badly broken, and F-Secure is a joke.  Windows
Update actually broke some of the basic facilities of Windows.

> > Both machines began nagging about "registration".  We got both
> > registered (after some time on the phone to India), and then our
> > troubles really started.
> 
> Why did you not do Internet activation?

Because it wouldn't work.  The web page kept timing out - probably
because of the huge number of people trying to "activate" the rubbish at
the same time, and probably because they tried to host the webshite on a
Windows server.

>  You clearly state later that your network failed which means you had 
> Internet access so I'm a tad confused.

We started with working networking on both machines.  Shortly after
"activation" the networking failed on one of them.

> Why was you speaking to a human?

Because it was the only option that was working at the time.

>  Its automated activation these days and
> takes about 1 to 2 minutes.

It wouldn't work.

>  Oh I see its the India Call Centre taint.

That's where we were connected to.  They were actually quite pleasant to
deal with, but slow to answer the phone in the first place.

> > We had both crash several times, and one of
> > them lost the ability to network at all.
> 
> What? Because it was activated? Huh?

No.  Because Windows is unstable crap.

> > I tried booting Knoppix on the
> > broken one, and networking was fine, demonstrating that it was Windows
> > that couldn't network, rather than a hardware fault.
> 
> I'm still confused you stated at the start of the post that "We
> connected to the 'net via our network, and tried to download updates to
> the anti-malware effort and to Windows." yet here you're saying that
> after activating it failed to go on the Net? I think not.

Not immediately - it took a short while to fail.  After it failed to
connect, it wouldn't re-connect.  By booting Knoppix, we eliminated the
possibility of hardware failure, so the only thing left is Windows
failure.

> > The one with "Office" "lost" a few files that had been saved to it, and
> > after relocating and restoring them (they'd been arbitrarily sent to the
> > Trash), we found that they were corrupt!
> 
> That's an Office fault not Windows 7

No.  Windows 7 handles filing, so Windows 7 arbitrarily  moved files
from "Documents" to the "Recycle Bin".  It also damaged the files in the
process.

> > Both machines have been reinstalled from their "support" discs, and
> > returned to the manufacturer as "not fit for purpose"!
> 
> I love Linux, I'm 98% total Linux at home I use Linux at work. We are
> prominently a Microsoft reseller so I ought to make that clear but I
> cant sit by and see inconsistencies and inaccurate information purely
> for the purposes of slating MS

Not at all.  If it worked reliably and quickly, I would have been
impressed, and would have said so.  However, as is typical with most MS
products, it looks shiny but works poorly.  The strangest thing of all
was the way in which it got slower and slower the more it was used.

> Windows 7 is a pretty good product and it would seem MS has listened to
> its customer base for a change.

No.  It's an abysmal, overpriced, bloated mess of a product, which still
contains Cutler's undocumented, hacked together demonstration kernel and
the same broken IP stack that its always had.

> Is it a threat to Linux? I doubt it.

No.  It's certainly no threat to Linux, but is a serious threat to
Microsoft.  I'm tempted to run a book on how long they last...

C.

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