PC gamers shun Vista, sticking with XP

Games like Crysis benefit clearly from the DX 10 upgrade, but that benefit hasn’t been enough to push gamers into upgrading to Vista. Historically, those are the very first computer users, living on the bleeding edge, to upgrade to new hardware and operating systems. The statistics from Valve, whose Steam system lets gamers download titles from the web and which collects system information in return, shows that Vista still has less than a 15 percent market share among these users.

That’s roughly in line with the total consumer market, but it’s a real surprise considering the advantages Vista’s DirectX 10 offers gamers. There’s no way to run DirectX 10 on XP, so the only way to get the very best PC gaming experience is to run Vista. They should theoretically be lining up to buy Vista in droves. Read the full article on Yahoo Tech

 

InfoWorld’s “Save XP” Petition

 

“…Millions of us have grown comfortable with XP and don’t see a need to change to Vista. It’s like having a comfortable apartment that you’ve enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice. The thought of moving to a new place — even with the stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and maple cabinets (or is cherry in this year?) — just doesn’t sit right. Maybe it’ll be more modern, but it will also cost more and likely not be as good a fit. And you don’t have any other reason to move.

 

That’s exactly the conclusion people have come to with Vista. For most of us, there’s really no reason to move to it — yet we don’t have a choice. When that strong desire to stick with XP became obvious in spring 2007, major computer makers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard quietly reintroduced new XP-based systems (but just to business customers, so as not to offend Microsoft). Come June 30, however, even that option goes away.” Read the full story and sign the petition at InfoWorld.Com

Why ‘No Macs’ is no longer a defensible IT strategy

Once confined to marketing departments and media companies, the Mac is spilling over into a wider array of business environments, thanks to the confluence of a number of computing trends, not the least among them a rising tide of end-user affinity for the Apple experience.

 

Luckily for IT, many of those same trends are making it easier for tech departments to say yes to the Mac by facilitating IT’s ability to provide enterprise-grade Mac management and support.

“We’re seeing more requests outside of creative services to switch to Macs from PCs,” notes David Plavin, operations manager for Mac systems engineering at the U.S. IT division of Publicis Groupe, a global advertising conglomerate. There are so many requests that Plavin now supports 2,500 Macs across the U.S. — nearly a quarter of all Publicis’ U.S. PCs.

And Plavin is less of an anomaly than you might think. Buoyed by increased interest in the consumer arena, Macs are cropping up in more and more organizations, in large part because end-users are pushing for them. Read the full article on InfoWorld.Com

 

Top Analysts: Windows collapsing under its own weight; Radical change needed

 

Microsoft’s Windows juggernaut is collapsing as it tries to support 20 years of applications and becomes more complicated by the minute. Meanwhile, Windows has outgrown hardware and customers are pondering skipping Vista to wait for Windows 7. If Windows is going to remain relevant it will need radical changes.

That sobering outlook comes courtesy of Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald. Half of a full room of IT managers and executives raised their hands when asked whether Microsoft needed to radically change its approach to Windows. Read the full story on ZDNet.Com

 

Vista’s upcoming Service Pack fails to add speed to OS

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is not measurably faster than the original stock edition, a Florida-based developer of performance testing and network metrics software said Monday.

“Microsoft has hinted that SP1 is faster than Vista RTM,” said Craig Barth, the chief technology officer at Devil Mountain Software, referring to the release to manufacturing version of the operating system. “But we found pretty much nothing measurable. It surprised me as much as it surprised everyone else, but the numbers are the numbers.”

Play Valve’s Team Fortress 2 on a Mac

The latest version of CrossOver, Codeweavers’ Mac and Linux application designed to get Windows games and applications working on those systems, has been released. CrossOver 6.2, now available, features a number of different updates both to increase compatibility and to make Windows applications run faster than ever. And first among these updates is the fact that it will now run Team Fortress 2 right out of Valve’s new Orange Box. Read the full article on TUAW.Com

Gabe Newell: DirectX 10 for Vista was a mistake

Gabe Newell, president of Valve Software, said that Microsoft made a terrible mistake releasing DirectX 10 for Vista only and excluding Windows XP. He said this decision affected the whole industry as so far only a very small percentage of players can use DirectX 10. Read more.

Does Microsoft Game Studios not trust the Windows API?

Microsoft Game Studios‘ Combat Flight Simulator 3 (CFS3) does not in general run properly on dual core computers running XP or Vista. The reason appears to be that the code by-passes the functionality in the Windows Application Programming Interface (API) for sharing out processing tasks between CPUs. In my case it was a little known AMD utility that saved the day. Read more.

Broken Windows

Not since Windows ME or Mac OS X 10.0 have I observed a more troubled consumer operating system. This is a difficult post to write, because I really don’t want to beat on Microsoft about Vista yet again. But yesterday’s continuation of the Windows Vista Capable lawsuit and several conversations I had today are reasons to look at what Microsoft got wrong and why the company should make things right. Simply put: Windows Vista is a train wreck, but it didn’t have to be. Unfortunately, my “Wow” moment was accepting Windows Vista for what it is. Read more.

NoteBookReview.Com: Hasta La Vista, Vista

You’ll probably tell me I am being presumptuous with this article/editorial, and that I am running around with my head cut off screaming “THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!” I wouldn’t totally disagree with you. But here’s the bottom line: Windows Vista’s effect on the market will be catastrophic, and OEMs and PC users alike are in for a very rough go of things over the next year or so. Without further delay, let’s talk about why you should be concerned … and talk about solutions to the problems. Read more.

Vista games cracked to run on XP

The news is sure to irk Microsoft who may now face an increased delay in some consumers adopting Vista at this early stage. However, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Earlier this month Falling Leaf Systems said in a press release that it believed Microsoft was deceiving consumers by stating that the titles would only work on Vista, and announced its intentions to release compatability software to disprove the claim. Read more.

Microsoft admits Vista failure

[Microsoft] is at a dangerous crossroads, if its software bumps up the price of a computer by 100 per cent, people might look to alternatives. That means no [Vista] DRM infection lock in, no mass migration to the newer Office obfuscated and patented file formats, and worse yet, people might utter the W word. Yes, you guessed it, ‘why’. People might ask why it is sticking with the MS lock in, and at that point, it is in deep trouble. Read more.

Popular Science: Microsoft Security Grunt #6 worst job in Science

Do you flinch when your inbox dings? The people manning secure@microsoft .com receive approximately 100,000 dings a year, each one a message that something in the Microsoft empire may have gone terribly wrong. Teams of Microsoft Security Response Center employees toil 365 days a year to fix the kinks in Windows, Internet Explorer, Office and all the behemoth’s other products. Read more.

If Microsoft made toasters

I believe that Microsoft’s domination of the PC software market has dulled and altered our expectations of the ‘fit for purpose’ and ‘use from the box’ aspect of all - not just computer software - products we now shell out our hard earned for. Read more.

A thought from the author: PC vs Mac

I came to a realization the other day while surfing around the net looking for things of interest. I happened to read a comment on a site from a PC user to a Mac guy. It was a very biased and ignorant comment that left me envisioning this PC user as a 5 year old kid with his index fingers in his ears yelling “Lalalalala. Macs suck. Lalalaa I can’t hear you!”

But then it hit me. I used to be one of those guys!

Is my PC bad for gaming with Windows Vista?

“Under XP, I don’t really have any issues running anything with everything turned up. FEAR, Company of Heroes, what ever. Company of Heroes I can play on the medium maps with all options turned up at my native resolution and I don’t run into any slow down. If I try the large maps, I have some slow down. Now on Vista, I can barely play CoH on the small 2 player maps! It absolutely crawls. I just picked up Shadow Run and it is a beast. I have to turn down just about everything and go to 1024X780 (which looks awful on my monitor) and turn down all the graphics options. Read more.

XP vs. Vista - A Tale of Framerates: Part II

[H]ard|OCP recently ran an article showing a significant framerate discrepancy on popular gaming titles between the two Microsoft operating systems on NVIDIA hardware. They’ve since gone back and done the same thing with ATI hardware and the new 158.xx NVIDIA drivers. While ATI did better than NVIDIA, there’s still a disturbing overall trend.

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Is Microsoft Trying to Kill PC Gaming?

Judging by the lackluster game releases and the attempt to suck the blood from PC gamers with “Games for Windows Live,” it starts feeling like Microsoft is doing all it can to actually kill PC gaming. Maybe my ideas will make no sense to them, or they’re just plain stupid ideas, but at some point, Microsoft needs to “cowboy up” and get serious about this. Because frankly, if it wasn’t for gaming, a whole lot of us would already have Macs, or be running Ubuntu Linux and never looking back. Read more.

Play the hottest upcoming PC Game “Crysis” on a Mac!

Is gaming the one thing preventing you from jumping ship and moving from a Windows PC to a Mac? Well that excuse is now null and void. Now that Intel chips are inside all Macs and you can run Windows XP or Windows Vista on a Mac the door is open for PC gaming on a Mac. But what about all those bleeding edge games that make owning a PC a neccesity? Also a null and void argument. The newest Macbook Pro’s (and likely the impending new iMacs as well.) feature DirectX 10 capable Nvidia 8600 cards. Sweeeeeetness!

[Oct 31st 07 Update:] Since this post is getting a lot of traffic this week, I thought I’d link to this article for those still not quite ready to make the leap… Installing OS X Leopard on a high end PC (Tutorial)

[Feb 28th 08 Update:] This is now the hottest post on this site. Since being posted it has been read by 8,216 visitors (That’s a whole lot of gamers interested in gaming on a Mac.) Please check back soon for a follow up article where I will be running and benchmarking Crysis on a Mac.

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Criticisms of Windows Vista

Considering buying Windows Vista? Read this encyclopedia entry from Wikipedia.Com before you do. Windows Vista, the latest version of Microsoft’s desktop operating system, has been the target of a number of negative assessments by various groups. Criticisms of Windows Vista have included… Read more.

Microsoft Games Losses Down, Still Substantial

Even though sales are up on the operating system side of things, Microsoft’s games division is still struggling. The Entertainment and Devices division lost $315 million, with sales slipping some 21 percent. That’s 22 percent down from last year.

DirectX 10 games on non-Vista PCs?

Is it possible? Didn’t MS tell us that we’d need to shift to Vista to play all DX10 games? Well, according to one person, you don’t have to…

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Project aims to bring DX10 gaming to XP, Linux, OS X

The Alky project aims to let Windows XP users who don’t want to upgrade to Vista in on the DirectX 10 gaming action. Linux and OS X might come along for the ride. Don’t get your hopes up yet, though.

read more | digg story

Nvidia’s “Windows Vista Capable” Faces Lawsuit.

Windows Vista users’ ongoing frustrations with graphics-card maker Nvidia have boiled over. A new Web site, NvidiaClassAction.info, created by IT consultant Dan Goldman, is gauging whether there is sufficient user interest to launch a class-action suit against Nvidia over the vendor’s allegedly spotty Windows Vista support. Read more.

SwitchingToMac.Com: Killing The Myth - Games Galore For The New Mac

I have been a gamer since the days of the Atari 800 console. My first real computer was a Sinclair ZX-81, quickly followed by the master of all game machines, the Commodore 64. Then In logical progression I moved on to the Amiga A500, then onto the A1200 and finally in 1995 I moved over to the PC. What caused this method of progressing through the computer world? Why choose one over the other? The answer for me - as it was for many - was Games. Simply put I was following the platform that supported the best Computer Games. Back in those days it was easy to see what was better, which computer to choose, and which was not so impressive. This can be seen happening today in the console industry, but what about the Computer Industry? Read more.