The week in your words: Vista, file sharing and open source

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Posted on 25 Jul 2008 at 16:23

In a week that saw Microsoft spread the Vista love, the cracks appear in the file-sharing alliance and open source suffer a security shock, we take a look back to see what our readers have made of it all.

Nine out of ten users love Windows "Mojave"

Microsoft had clearly tired of its operating system hegemony when it released Vista. How else can you explain its decision to develop a product, sit back as the world took a very big stick to it for 18 months, and then, just when the poor thing has been beaten to within an inch of its life, begin the $300 million marketing campaign. It's a rare kind of genius... but whisper it... it just may be working.

"I like Vista better then XP," beams satisfied customer r1sh12. "It's more smooth, never crashes and since I got Vista I've never had those stupid blue screens, or had to restore my PC. All my drivers were found without any problems. In my opinion this is the best Windows OS I've ever had."

Somewhere Bill Gates is blushing furiously, but r1sh12 wasn't the only one feeling the Vista love. Even ojfoggin was getting involved.

"I use Vista at home and XP at work. All I can say is that Vista works like a dream compared to XP. Some of the networking and advanced stuff is a bit harder to find in Vista but once it's set up it runs perfectly.

"I think the problem some people have is that they load Vista and when the log in screen comes up they go 'WTF! This doesn't look enough like XP! I'm gonna go back to XP NOWWWWW!!" That is the extent of their testing."

You clearly read our review.

cheysuli wasn't convinced: "Vista is stable, I've certainly never had problems outside Nvidia drivers. But Vista isn't fast and it isn't compatible. And unless you have 2GB and dual-core CPU, it sucks the life out of a PC. Corporate propaganda videos won't convince anyone who has used Vista otherwise."

We're not sure about that. It's worked for Apple.

ISP threatens to walk out of illegal file-sharing pact

If we're honest we saw this one coming. If the relationship between Anna Nicole Smith and that old guy was odd, then the shotgun marriage of Carphone "we won't kick anybody off the internet and you can't make us" Warehouse and the British "anybody who comes near our music should be hung" Phonographic Institute was just bizarre. But bless them they toughed it out for a whole day before the cracks emerged, with Carphone Warehouse admitting it would move straight back to its mum's house if the BPI tried to make it police the internet.

As always in these cases, it was up to the friends to take sides.

"I'm sorry, but what's wrong with the three strikes rule?" Asked GazzaT5, clearly unaware of our forum's propensity for answering blunt questions with battering ram answers. "If you've been caught stealing surely there should be some punishment! Yes there are privacy issues, but downloading music illegally is, well, illegal. The artists don't get any money when you rip them off do they? One of my friends was a bit incredulous when it was pointed out to her that downloading MP3s without paying was illegal - I mean, hello? Wake up."