How long till you adopt Vista?

[nihil]

Hi Moira,

I had guessed that you were doing some beta testing, and I don't think you said anything that could be taken as encouraging anyone to do wrong.

You do introduce another interesting facet to the conversation though. As I see it the "security" that has been hyped is the system and user security angle? The question of piracy is a whole different ball game IMO.

I am not too surprised that the betas have been pirated as I probably wouldn't want my DRM out there for the pirates to practice on

However it is slightly worrying given their last DRM attempt. I have had several boxes with "illegal" copies of XP on them when the only problem was the battery and/or clock/calendar setting.

I am rather concerned as to what their latest effort will be

fourdc The way I see it is if you roll out Vista it is a clean install and effectively a new PC situation? You would test it on your "reference boxes", build your ISO/Mirror and away you go?

With Office and Exchange, I would suggest it might be influenced by where you are upgrading from, as you might have a user training issue. Over here I know a lot of places that still use Office 97 or at best, 2000.

[FNFiveseveN]

So please post some solid data about what you have tested, or keep your usual linux FUD to yourself. Most of us are tired of the linux VS windows argument..

Sorry there is no solid data I can give you about beta or pre-release clients of an operating system. I do know that Microsoft is trying to keep anti-virus makers in the dark about the OS so the "pen testers" and world renowned security researchers are gonna have a hard time finding out anything of value which relates to Vista in a real world setting.

So far 57% of the people who have taken this poll are quite happy with their current O/S and have no urge to explore the endless ways "better kernel memory utilization and security using kernel memory randomization" is going to make their digital life any better. I wonder why?

And would you please explain to my why you felt the need to post your thoughts about the previous posts in such a disrespectful tone?

[nihil]

Hmmmmm............ FNFiveseveN,

In your first paragraph:

1. You cannot expect solid data from beta/pre-releases. This is very true........isn't their very purpose to "solidify" things?

2. I personally do not believe that MS is "hiding" stuff from security firms. The betas have already been "reverse engineered", but MS are not going to give out the final version until they are ready. As MS bashing seems so popular, I really cannot blame them.............. there are a shower of little "wannabees" who will pick on this or that just to boost their own imaginary self-esteem. I certainly "wouldn't feed the bears"

3. If you are "World renowned" you will know how to do it.......... you get compiled executables you know

4. Second paragraph: You are saying much the same as myself............ I still run Windows 98 with no problems........ my complaint is that there isn't a lower cost version for business without all the eye candy?

OH! and please don't start a flame war................. I can be a very efficient fire extinguisher

[Moira]

As I see it the "security" that has been hyped is the system and user security angle? The question of piracy is a whole different ball game IMO.

I take the point. However, you have to wonder how well a company can ensure that their system is secure, when copies of their latest all-singing-all-dancing OS are doing the p2p rounds less than a week after being sent to manufacture and before even being released to businesses!

I am not too surprised that the betas have been pirated as I probably wouldn't want my DRM out there for the pirates to practice on

These aren't the betas, they're the final versions, the Ultimate versions at that, ie what businesses will get on 30th November. The only snag is that (so far at least) there are no activation keys. The ones included are all just RC2 keys which would be no good at all. Anyone subscribing to MSDN will get a key with 10 activation attempts, but I don't see these allowing pirated copies of Vista to become rife - by definition. Probably only a matter of time till a cracked key is released, but I haven't found anyone with an activation key of any type at the moment, so even if you don't morally object to using an illegal copy of Vista, the fact that it won't work after 30 days should be deterrent enough.

[gore]

LOL, yea, setting the clock back outta keep the pirates at bay lol.

[mohaughn]

I read an article in a trade publication that said that Microsoft was going to roll out Vista, the new Office and Exchange on the same day.

Should make the call centers busy. I wonder how many "shops" will do more than one rollout on their system.

Well they are mismanaged if they do.. While we are participating as a large corporate customer of MS we will not be running on any production servers any time soon. I think the earliest that will happen is the middle of next year, if even then. All of our new hardware is 64 bit capable, so we have definitely been planning on stepping up to Vista and exchange12 for some time now.

However, you have to wonder how well a company can ensure that their system is secure,

I'm confused, what does piracy have to do with security? The weakest link in any system is the human one. And I guarantee you that somebody inside of MS, or at one of their DVD/CD production houses is how the copies got leaked.

Sorry there is no solid data I can give you about beta or pre-release clients of an operating system. I do know that Microsoft is trying to keep anti-virus makers in the dark about the OS so the "pen testers" and world renowned security researchers are gonna have a hard time finding out anything of value which relates to Vista in a real world setting.

So far 57% of the people who have taken this poll are quite happy with their current O/S and have no urge to explore the endless ways "better kernel memory utilization and security using kernel memory randomization" is going to make their digital life any better. I wonder why?

And would you please explain to my why you felt the need to post your thoughts about the previous posts in such a disrespectful tone?

Exactly, you are just spewing misinformation and have no clue about the enhancements in Vista... Hmm.. so nobody cares about kernel memory randomization? Damn, I could have sworn I've seen a lot of linux diehards puff out their chests when the linux kernal was able to randomize critical spaces of memory so that attackers could not latch onto a specific memory space as is the case with many virii and rootkits.

As for MS keeping things secret, again, give us some information on this. We currently use two main antivirus vendors at my work. And both of them have been testing their products and developing new versions that will work with vista and exchange 12 and take advantage of many of the enhancements. As for MS not sharing data with security researchers you are again, wrong. I've attended several large JDP forums and I attend somewhat regular conference calls with the exchange 12 JDP team. If anything the information they are sharing with their customers is much better this time around than with any product they have released before.

As for my tone, I think you need to not be so sensitive. I did not make any negative or disparaging comments to you other than to ask you to back up your claims. Which you just stated you can't do. So if me calling you out on your BS claims is a negative tone, then yeah, I had a negative tone.


As far as the other comments about people upgrading old PC's. Why bother? If it isn't broke, why fix it? I really doubt MS is really worried about not selling individual licenses to people with 4 year old machines. They make their money on major support contracts, corporate licensing, and bulk manufacturing licenses. Just because I'm not going to update my home machines(that is running win2k by the way) to Vista doesn't mean that I can't recognize that there are a lot of good features and security enhancements in vista.

As for issues with anti-piracy measures and DRM built into the machines. I don't like those parts of vista either. But you know what? Most other commercial OS'es have that feature functionality built in. And if Linux wants to be really considered as a rival to OSX or Vista, it will soon have to follow along in those steps. Otherwise all of the large content providers will just make their content so that it doesn't run on linux. And when the people write software to circumvent that, they will go to jail. Does this suck? Yeah, but the people with the money, also have the power. It's not just a MS thing, it is just corporate america.

[Moira]

I'm not too sure I completely accept your argument about piracy vs security. The human, social engineering aspect of security in any medium cannot be taken too seriously and MS ought to be able to cope with this. However, as things stand at the moment, there is no large scale piracy threat because nobody's going to be able to seriously use Vista unless activation keys become available, and if the legal ones are tied to 10 activations then people are not going to be handing them out willy nilly.

[mohaughn]

I'm not too sure I completely accept your argument about piracy vs security. The human, social engineering aspect of security in any medium cannot be taken too seriously and MS ought to be able to cope with this. However, as things stand at the moment, there is no large scale piracy threat because nobody's going to be able to seriously use Vista unless activation keys become available, and if the legal ones are tied to 10 activations then people are not going to be handing them out willy nilly.

So is the software really being pirated if you can't use it? Sounds like a coaster to me. Kind of like a street salesperson selling a DVD of the latest and greatest movie. They swear to you that the movie is on the disc, but you just can't watch it. Undoubtedly someone will find a way to circumvent the protection, just like always happen regardless of the vendor. But this really goes back to security factor #1, physical security is key. If MS could keep every copy of Vista running on their machines, in their datacenters and just have users connect to their machines they could keep it from being pirated. But how realistic is that? Find me 1 piece of commercial software that has not been pirated. If you have physical access to the machine and you have the time and desire you can crack anything.

I don't believe the ability to pirate a piece of software says anything about the security of that software. All it speaks to is the effectiveness of DRM, which so far has been proven to be very ineffective, again, regardless of the vendor.

[Moira]

Yeah, that's fair enough I suppose. I'm pretty sure their OS will never be totally secure from any angle, mostly due to user greed and laziness and just the general lack of common sense most people show when they go online. The same would be true of any OS, it's just that MS is targetted.

[mirado.kelly]

I personaly wont be makeing the switch to vista but perhaps longhorn server. Since Ive goten server 2003 I fell in love. Some video I watched on vista also turned me away, security looks overdone but it was a beta they were testing. The masive demands on RAM also turn me away, I currently have 512MB Kingston Value ram and am happy with it. Though I will not knock vista down, I will say from what ive read/heard the security is improved and the GUI interface is very interesting. When I had XP I disabled themes completely, at first it was kinda fun but then I wanted a cleaner interface.

We will see but im very hapy with Windows Server 2003, but am considering Longhorn Server whatever it gets named.