Answered inline
Greg Rozelle said:
Yes, I may have DRM and DMCA confused.
I am trying to avoid being like Alias and Frank. I do not want to be
down at their level. I will to try complain constructively
Thank you. There's nothing wrong with asking questions or criticising Vista.
Rude, obnoxious people like the two you mention don't help anyone to get
answers. They also try to stifle debate on Vista.
Here are the bad things I have read and heard about Vista.
I know some of these may not be true.
Volume license require activation every six months.
Not good from a business perspective. I am surprise the OEM agreed
to this requirement,
The way volume licenses work has changed with Vista. Volume licenses in XP
were abused. I personally see at least 10 computers a month with stolen
volume license keys that have failed WGAN. In Vista there are two types of
keys for a volume license. One has to contact Microsoft to activate. Each
volume license key is only good for so many activations. After that the
licensee would have to contact Microsoft for more activations. Once a
computer is activated it acts like any other Vista computer and only needs
reactivation if Vista is reinstalled or the hardware changes. The other has
to contact a server set up by the owner of the volume license every so
often. I agree this makes it harder and thus more expensive for a company to
administer but given the frequency that volumes keys are leaked and abused
something had to be done.
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/vol/default.mspx
Hidden folder/partition only Microsoft or third party can access.
Where viruses or other things can hide. This is yet to be
determined.
I don't believe this to be true but it's possible. I think if it was true
someone would have definitive proof by now. It's a simple matter to install
Vista, remove the drive, and inspect it at the bit level.
Home user having activation problem from pre-installed system or when
they use the restore cd. Telling them to contact the OEM for
activation problems, then the OEM telling them to contact Microsoft.
Wga causing problems as well for legit system. (See Windows Vista
Group).
I agree this is a big problem. Microsoft has been very agressive with WGA
and WGAN in Vista. I think they have been too agressive. The current problem
this weekend will cause a lot of well deserved criticism. They need to back
off a bit on what causes an activation.
WGA and activation some people have claimed that is spyware.
I don't believe it's spyware. It's pretty easy to use a network sniffer to
examine the traffic between a Vista computer and Microsoft. If personal
information was being passed the press would be all over it.
Limiting the number of activation for home user to 3 unless they make
a phone call.
I'm neutral on this one.
A lot of programs or drivers have cause the activation to pop up again
and will not go through and sometime even by phone.
I haven't seen this and I've activated and support a lot of computers
running Vista. It has been reported often enough that it obviously happens
to some people. Again, I agree that Microsoft has been too agressive with
WGA and WGAN. It was much less intrusive in XP.
People use USB plug-in hardware, as cause problem with requesting
activation as well. That how people share data sometime, like
using a flash or jump drive.
I haven't seen this and it doesn't get posted in newsgroups and forums as
often as other things that cause an activation. I'm not convinced this isn't
user error or defective hardware. Personally I've got three USB hard drives
and six USB flash drives that I've used on many different Vista computers.
I've never had to reactivate because of pluggng one in.
I have compared the problems with xp originally came out. There
sure is a lot more post in the Vista General, then in the Windows Xp
group.
I disagree with this. I have been building and selling computers since
before Windows 1.0. XP had more more problems than Vista when it was first
released. This is only my opinion. I haven't seen any statistics I would
trust.
You need to have a Internet connection for your computer to continue
to work. This is the one that really bugs me. Not every computer
is connected to the Internet.
There is no need to ever connect a Vista computer to the Internet.
What really bad for Vista from what I actually read awhile back.
U.S. Government has banned Vista from being installed on all
computers.
I covered this in my last post. This is normal for large organisations with
large networks. What other software is banned from their network? Many large
organisations ban XP because they are still using Windows 2000. They may
also ban Linux because it can't be centrally managed from their Windows
servers. They may ban Macs for the same reason. They may ban Open Office
because they have standardised on Microsoft Office. The reason why it was
banned is the important thing. It was banned because they are not ready to
support it yet. I haven't installed Vista on any of my customer's networks
yet. I have recommended they wait until they need it. I think with Vista's
much better security and group policy management it will be much better than
XP on a corporate network. Business' can't afford to be guinea pigs. Let
someone else work out the bugs and problems. I took the very same approach
when XP was released. It was out for over a year before I recommended it to
my business customers.
