Steven, wait until XP dies and then get Linux. Hopefully by that time there should be a decent NLE for it.

Tongue firmly in cheek,


Vista - the clue is in the name.

You are working away on your PC in Windows, real non-Vista windows and you choose to exercise your eyeballs by looking out of the window. If you are lucky you have a vista. If you don't you might buy Microsoft Vista. Either way, you've got something beautiful, adventurous but intangible benefit wise. You can go there, you can touch it but it is no longer a vista, it becomes a diversion. Now get back to work.

Microsoft has gone all "Hollywood" on us. All glitz and glamor but with little substance of any purpose other than to entertain yet prohibit. Valuable in some circles, but not for a general purpose operating system.

Before I get fired up, do consider that there are going to be 3rd parties at work trying to shoe horn functionality back into Vista. So the chances are that some of the areas where Microsoft have cornered their public, their happy public - now like cornered rats, will be set free again. It is bound to happen. XBOX was worked around, XBOX360 looks similar. OSX was for a time heading towards being viable outside the Apple hardware requirement. Man will find a way. Folks buying new PCs with Vista OEM will want to patch it back or go buy an OEM XP. For which they'll need a driver set that gradually won't be available for XP if it is an off the peg PC from a proprietary vendor. Mess, more mess.

Until then, XP32, Server 2003 and XP x64 are the saviours. They work, >2GB of application memory isn't such a big deal. Hard discs are getting faster and we'll see them with gigabytes of RAM on them to aid workflows such as ours quite soon (, if not SSD flash hard disc replacement tech.).


Whether folks should embrace Linux or OSX just on the merits of Vista being anything but turn-key (more like the gobble gobble variety of turkey)...... I'm not sure. I'd be more hopeful that apps like Vegas became slightly more OS agnostic for sure, but no single OS provider should win. This is how we got into this mess in the first place. Power:corruption:forceware.

Just by coincidence I was helping out a fellow Vegas user today and he told me of another local editor whom he'd sold on Vegas. They just got a new Dell laptop with Vista preinstalled. Seems so far Vegas is running just fine.

I say this having just bought two full XP Pro licences myself.

And I wouldn't hold out much hope for OSX either, it seems to me that the next release will have to have the same level of DRM insanity built in as well if Apple are planning to have HD playback and I can't see them leaving the market for that all to M$ somehow.

Bob.

P.S. Anyone want to buy a XP licence?

Not to defend Vista... but I'm not having any problems with Vegas and Vista. Media Manager doesn't work, but I'm sure they will patch that.

I would agree that the new Vista security is a royal pain. When they said "added security", I thought they were talking from a internet point of view..... They're not. They have now made it MUCH harder for anyone on your network, or on your keyboad to break into your machine. But when you own Vista "HOME" , the worry isn't so much Mom, Dad and Sister Jane breaking into your machine.... it's the internet. So... IMO. they have tightend up security all right.... IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES!!!

Having said that though... it is entirley possible to turn most of it off, or tone it down as you may prefer. If you set things up properly then you should not have problems. I've completed 2 projects already on it with no hassles.

But when you own Vista "HOME" , the worry isn't so much Mom, Dad and Sister Jane breaking into your machine.... it's the internet. So... IMO. they have tightend up security all right.... IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES!!!
===============
That has been the problem all along and we fall for it. Microsoft insists on integrating their browser into the operating system leaving it eternally vulnerable. Since Windows 2000 Microsoft has further and further made the OS internet dependent in order to function creating "necessary" internet dependent process that MUST run in order for the OS to run. That is to protect Microsoft and to create a dependency upon Microsoft in order to function. I amazes me that there are victims who still defend these monopolistic practices. I don't even know how they use a computer while standing bent over facing opposite the screen.
John

In the name of security Vista does not seem to be NLE friendly. I know many editors who really do not like to have their system available with access to the net however Vista "requires" this - probably most know this but here is the run down from MS:
Clients must renew their activation by connecting to the KMS Host at least once every 180 days. Clients not yet activated will attempt to connect with the KMS host every two hours (value configurable). Once activated, they will attempt to connect to the KMS host every seven days (value configurable) and if successful will renew their 180-day activation life span.

Clients have a 30-day grace period to complete activation. Clients not activated within this time period will go into Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM).

Also it seems like you will have 30 days to reactivate every time a hard drive is added or changed.

Not only this but from what I have read once you go into "RFM" Vista starts to self delete after a certian time frame.

I wonder if MS has considered a "NLE" version of Vista? I mean consider how fast things are moving in the NLE world. One could be adding hard drives and new hardware every month or more.

May I suggest anyone who is anxious to switch to Vista "as soon as possible" for the new eye candy, at least wait until the huge Service Pack 1 is released in December?

That release target is official according to Microsoft.

"A pound of cure beats an ounce of prevention." Well, SP1 is their pound of cure for a lot of the problems that always crop up in any desktop Windows release (the servers have been much better).

If you turn off all the maddening security features in Vista, you may be worse off than with XP. The question is: has some third party vendor developed a replacement that does it right? Is it even possible?

If they wanted to see how to do it right, they could just look at OS X. They copied so much else from OS X, why not that too? Because the Vista bureaucratic 50-headed middle management hydra wanted to one-up OS X, and none of its 50 heads contained any common sense.

After reading the posts to this point, I cannot adequately convey how happy I am that I switched to a Mac.

This isn't Mac fanboy jibber-jabber or an attempt to convert anyone. I just suspected Vista was going to be a PITA from a DRM standpoint. I'm sad to learn that seems to be the case.

FWIW, the switch so far has been painless. And it's nice having a machine that boots up in about 30 seconds, as opposed to my PC which takes FIVE MINUTES, by the time it opens the antivirus, malware, and firewall programs.

Still editing on Vegas, and that's worth the five-minute wait. Everything else is done on the Mac.

"After reading the posts to this point, I cannot adequately convey how happy I am that I switched to a Mac."

What kind of programs can you run on a mac?? I toyed with the idea of getting a mac... but I like the programs I'm running now. Can you run very much the same kinds of editing/video programs on a mac??

Yeah, us too. We still do a lot of editing in Vegas, as we have a short about to make the festival rounds that was started in Vegas 7, but we've largely switched to Mac. FCP is a pain in the ass, though. If Apple would get smart and make OSX available for all PCs, they would crush Microsoft in probably 10 years. Out of 6 computers, 4 are now Mac/OSX. What a pleasure to use, on so many levels. Our last switch was our scriptwriting Sony Vaio laptop, that hardware-wise was great five years on, but XP just kept getting mal/spyware (after several reinstalls of XP) and we finally just bought a MacBook. Now if we could have simply installed OSX on that same laptop... Even if OSX was $300, no problem. It is that superior a product.

I have a hard time figuring out how people get spyware/malware on XP. It seems awfully easy to run a clean PC.


As for bootup, I have a laptop with XP sp2 on it and all the other apps I need. It's a P3 700 clocked down to 500. It boots in...(Let me check) a little less than two minutes from power-on through login to the point where the drive stops churning.

It loads ZoneAlarm and AVG antivirus and a bunch of small crap that wouldn't need to be there if it was just an edit system. I certainly don't think this is a fast bootup but it's not bad.

On the other hand, I have an Ath64 X2 4400 with mirrored boot discs. It's very slow to boot but I guess I get what I deserve. It's the onboard nvidia RAID, which I'm really not keen on after using it a bit.

Probably the main point here with XP is that most users create their own hell. Maybe with Vista MS is lending a helping hand but I think that many people's problems are going to be user created.

Here's the problem I created when I started using XP: I was absolutely convinced that user directories ought to be on a separate partition so I went to great pains to get XP to honor user home directories on D:

Unfortunately, you couldn't enforce it and companies like adobe would insist that my home directory was on C: and also on D:, giving me two sets of config files that might be used interchangeably, and might hold the same sort of info but in two locations, used interchangeably by the different modules of the program.

So, you can create your own hell by insisting on doing things "your way" even though your uncaring heartless and soulless software is going to do things "its way"

Rob Mack

Yep. Never had a virus, worm, trojan or whatever that made it past the Symantec stuff I got on here. Or even before that (relatively recent acquire).

On-line, all the time.

'Course, I've only been running Windows since 3.1 :^)

On the other hand, my wife gets all sorts of goodies infesting hers. I've given up telling her she doesn't have to follow every link someone gives her. Y'know there are still diallers out there? Who has a modem anymore?

>>>Even if OSX was $300, no problem. It is that superior a product.<<

No, it's not. It is an inferior product. It's slow, looks and feels like a toy, and doesn't run any of the apps I need it to run ( only Adobe apps are the exception ).

I don't know what you do with your PCs, but I haven't had any spyware/malware problems ever.

Common sense ( and just about every NLE manual ) will tell you that you shouldn't install antivirus or anything like it on your workstation. If you want to be professional about it, you should have a workstation which runs only your apps, and a separate machine for internet access. It's very easy to have a stable machine which will crash far less than an average mac. Having said that, even this laptop I'm on right now, had a single crash since I bought it ( about 20 months ago ) and it runs AV + Firewall, and is on-line all the time.

As for Vista, I don't know what the big deal is. As I mentioned many times before ( and some others mentioned it too ) even Win2Kpro will run all of these NLE , 3D and compositing apps. You don't even need windows XP. Why bother with vista until you're forced to use it.

You want to boot up in les than 20 seconds, get a Raptor HD and don't use AV.

"I haven't had any spyware/malware problems ever."

I don't know what anti-spyware programs everyone is using, but XP install right out of the box with no internet connection contains tracking cookies. Now maybe I haven't had any problems with them, but I still get rid of them.

I use Spybot and Ad-Aware.

Edited: My wife's Norton subscription ran out this week so I had her uninstall it and install Avast. 5 viruses/trojans found on the initial scan. You couldn't pay me enough to go back to nort0n.

The design trend for personal machines is toward the all-can-do home entertainment and home systems (frig etc) management. That is how the market is visualised and this isn't what we want for specialised work (NLE, computing, etc). In my previous scientific workplace we went through many squabbles about PC/Mac installations, generally focussed on the organisation's desire to standardise on Windows and various people's preference for Mac (then compatibility was a significant issue, but was solved). My personal preference has been for PC because of 3rd party software I use in astronomy and video, the machines are cheaper, and they can be reconfigured as needs change. When you buy Mac you buy a system and when you need any upgrade you buy another complete system; the cost of systems is a significant issue. On the other hand, Mac systems are designed to be "leading edge" and manufactured to work and to do so without the user needing to fiddle. Now with "bootcamp" the Macs can run the PC software I need, so really I think my next laptop might well be a Mac (I need a faster machine to run DVrack). I see Spot is using a Mac.
Presently I do all email etc, office work etc on my laptop and maintain entirely separate systems for editing and post production, so can happily work without Vista. However because the market trend is away from specialised users, maybe there is no hidey-hole; future Vegas will utilise the facilities of Vista.

...........Mac systems are designed to be "leading edge" and manufactured to work and to do so without the user needing to fiddle.

cause ya got to call a mac tech to fiddle for ya

If it doesn't work as you wish, that does seem to be true!!

>>>Mac systems are designed to be "leading edge" and manufactured to work and to do so without the user needing to fiddle<<

Again, not true. Macs cost more, but use cheap components. They may look cooler then Dells, but they are cheap inside. Even macpro uses a laughable video card as its default option, a very ordinary HD and the rest of components. Components are the same ones you'd find in a low to mid range PC. There is no difference, you just pay more if you buy from Apple.

I can tell you of many examples, where Macs, not only wouldn't work right out of the box, because they installed bad ram, wrong ram, or power supply, and they couldn't resolve the issue for up to a week ( so much for you buy a mac, plug it in and it just works ).

If you pay $400 for a PC from Dell, of course it's ging to be worse than a Mac, but these days, you can just buy parts you want and assemble it yourself getting exactly what you want.

There is a repair shop on 23rd street here in New York, full of Macs which were supposed to just work.

Case and OSX are the only difference between a mac and an average PC. You can get almost the same looking case ( or something even nicer ) from Lian-Li, if you really need to. OSX is useless to a lot of people like me, because it won't run any software I need. So that's alot of $$$ to pay just for a logo.

Deusx_Statement = 'OSX is useless to a lot of people like me, because it won't run any software I need.';

YourOS = Get (SystemOS);

True_Statement = Deusx_Statement.replace ('OSX', YourOS);

While not intending to start up a religious-type spat between adherents of Macs and PCs, that seems to be the way the responses are headed. The arguments in favour of building your own PC are well known and my editing machines have been built specifically for that purpose (the cost benefits I pointed out recently to an FCP adherent). It is useful to know definitively whether Mac technology is up to scratch (I wouldn't use Dell as a standard of quality). The issue is really about operating systems and the reservations that have been expressed about the directions Bill Gates is going. If we don't like that, does Steve Jobs offer a sanctuary for specialist computing? Obviously with Intel chips one can probably build a machine that will run OSX, if you could get the software without buying a Mac.

Thanks for all the replys, good stuff here. There is a lot to like in vista, and the windows platform. but until somebody comes up with "Vista Be Gone" vista tweaking software for content creators, Im staying away from vista. Little is actual security measures. its for security of copywrited content. and thats what we are creating. Dah. Vista is designed at every step to block any move that even resembles moving content around. Hey, its what we do! Vegas runs great, if not smoother on vista, and I had no driver or software problems. My issues were of a workflow nature. Please Please Please let me control my own "security" experience. Vista removes your options too. should have saw the coming storm in xp when one care antivirus locked my windows firewall on, andno easy way to disable it. MS seems to be looking for an xbox model for an os. The new mac operating system will tell us if we should switch to mac linux or continue to use 3rd party hacks of xp
Steven

I will be using XP Pro on my main box for some time to come. But I have installed Vista Home Premium on my 4 year old Shuttle SB51G box for the media center stuff. It is rocking pretty good with 2 Cable tuners and 1 HD ATSC tuner. It is really a slick media platform. I also must say that Vista is a bit more more than glitz, glamor and security.

Just a few things I have noticed in the last week of using it:

GOOD THINGS
1) True Symbolic links with mklink(subtle, but huge)
2) Don't like the CPU overhead of Aero? Change the Theme to Windows Classic.
3) Scalable image/video/document thumbnails in explorer
4) Media tagging and searching in explorer
5) Ability to kill those "unkillable" tasks that can occur in XP
6) Saved searches are very handy for my large media collection
7) CD/DVD burning much more accessible
8) Enhanced Explorer grouping/stacking/sorting options
9) Did I mention Media Center?
10) Apple's Front Row and iTV can't hold a candle to media center.
11) Ability to use XBOX 360 as media center extenders


NOT SO GOOD THINGS
1) More CPU cycles devoted to security and wiz-bang rendering
2) Some compatiblity issues with older windows apps.
3) Vegas not as fast? (I need to do some real tests to verify this)
4) The biggest thing that I wish Vista had was something like OS X's Automator, quite a bit brilliant bit of code that.


P.S. It is trivial to disable UAC (Type "UAC" into the control panel search box).