Gustav Brock
Gustav at cactus.dk
Thu Jan 10 02:26:26 CST 2008
Hi John, Shamil et al John is right, clients are very conservative and only invest money for a reason. However, I have to back up Shamil - Vista is so much better designed that for pure design reasons it is a pleasure to work with. I truly dislike the Fisher-Price default look of Windows XP and have had to switch to the "Classic Look" to relax. With Vista, MS has removed the advantage Apple had of a better and nicer looking UI. There are issues, of course, but I'm confident they will be solved. I haven't done any comparing speed tests with dual core machines but Shamil's results look promising. And wouldn't it be strange otherwise? Why shouldn't MS developers try hard to improve and optimize the core? I've just had a new Lenovo dual core for Vista with 4 GB ram and a high-end graphic card. It rocks - my techie colleague was amazed - and it again stresses what I've written several times: don't waste time on upgrading old hardware, buy new hardware for a new OS, these days the cost of ram is so low that I can hardly believe it. When I read this discussion I couldn't help making a comparison to a test drive I took last week of the Toyota Prius, a hybrid car you may know. It struck me, leaving the car at the dealer, that from that moment all other "normal" cars appear totally outdated. This is scaring as the Prius is not a brand new model and it makes you wonder what other car manufactures are doing and why and how Toyota can be three years ahead of the competition. Well, they just produce cars that people expect - no surprises - while the Prius (and the high-end Lexus sedan, of course) exceeds your expectations. Maybe that is the situation for Vista, it is positioned beyond the current expectations of the general user to a OS. That said, we still advice clients to carefully consider if a move to Vista is advantageous (as said, it _will_ require new hardware). On the other hand, I clearly remember we gave the same advice when Windows was at 3.11 and Windows 95 was introduced .. and again when Windows NT (which also for all practical purposes did require new hardware) was introduced ... /gustav >>> shamil at users.mns.ru 10-01-2008 00:48 >>> John, I'm just trying to get developed my strong positive worldview on this imperfect world - the more I will complain about the world around me the more imperfect it will become... ...so I'd better keep hunting for the good things than complain :)... ...yes, new technologies need quite some investments both into hardware and development tools and development methodologies but the final result is rather impressive and economically (and environmentally) effective, despite the fact that being in database-centered software development for the last almost 30 years I can't say there are many new ideas but the level of the nowadays hardware and software technologies allows to do literally in hours and days what needed months and years to be developed in not that far ago past... -- Shamil -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 1:58 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: Re: [AccessD] Access 2007 Shamil, The following are just a couple of interesting things I found on the subject. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=357 http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=349 http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=352 My perception is simply what I see from my own clients. I only work (so far) with companies having anywhere from 1 to 60 or so employees. These companies do not upgrade just to drive the latest and greatest. If a machine functions for it's given purpose, they may very well keep it for 8 years more. I have to PUSH these clients to buy more powerful machines and I only do so when they need them. There is nothing right or wrong about this, it is just a fact. I had a client that just retired (about a year ago) their last Windows 98 machine running Celerons and 500 megs of main memory. They only did so because the database had grown to the point where I could demonstrate UNDENIABLY that the machine itself was causing them lost productivity as they waited for the claim form to open. They went to dell and bought way powerful, way cheap low end machines with Windows XP Pro. these machines will likely suffice for another 6 years or so. This seems to be the trend in SMALL companies. It might very well be different with the IBMs and such large companies. Even there though there are compatibility issues that will be weighed. Small companies "just leap" when they are ready to buy. They tend to not think much about "will my application(s) run under...". I have to be on top of things like the ribbon bar fiasco and warn them that they will have a problem if they go there. At any rate, I am a small business and I am much more careful about what I do than most. I do not do anything that will cost me three weeks of inability to do my work because I will starve to death if I lose three works work. As an example, take the move to Office 2007. I cannot "just switch" because I have to do 8 hours or more of paying work every day. The ribbon bar and all that crap would cause me untold lost billing time. If and when I do it I will do so on a virtual machine. I will use it for email, for writing docs, for playing with my few spreadsheets, and I will PLAY with Access 2007 to become familiar with it. Slowly, I will come up to speed, and slowly I will switch to using it (assuming my clients do of course). >>I like its graphics... :) >>I like the feature of 3d view of windows of currently running apps... To be honest I turn off all the "eye candy" just because it annoys me and slows down my machine. Vista is very much about eye candy. I just don't care about it, not that it is wrong if you like it, I just don't. I like new things, but I cannot afford to just leap without thinking about my income, which will suffer if I can't do my work and my clients get irritated with me. John W. Colby Colby Consulting www.ColbyConsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Shamil Salakhetdinov Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 4:35 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: Re: [AccessD] Access 2007 <<< LOL, well there must be something wrong since the whole world is not buying in. >>> Russia is a Wonderland you know :) (Just kidding...) <<< Vista just has a reputation of creating a ton of problems, many of them in the Digital Rights world, >>> Well, I do use software from official MSDN and it works well... The issue of not being able to read DVDs with the copies of my files I made on my desktop is solved here with using FAR manager - it does read these DVDs well under Vista... The issues with making setups of custom software for Vista e.g. by using INNO-Setup are getting solved "automagically" by INNO-setup creating proper manifest files... <<< many more in performance. >>> In fact under Vista on the same Dual Core Pentium my software runs faster than under W2k3... <<< You do, so tell us, what does Vista do for you that is the "killer app" that makes you think it rocks? >>> I like its graphics... :) I like the feature of 3d view of windows of currently running apps... As I wrote above under vista everything I use usually runs faster on the same dual core processor... :) I just like it because as far as I see it's a very good professional work of MS engineers - I just like it... <<< Why would my business users (clients) pay tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade every machine in the house? >>> That's a rock stable OS for the next 5-10 years therefore investments should pay back during this period in time... Why your customers buy new cars, factories, houses?... I'm not "preaching" for Vista - I just like it :) If you and your customer do not like it and do not see how its purchase and installation can pay back and bring good profits - do not use it :) Again, I just like it as great modern mature OS software... I like it by heart and eyes, and I neglect all the other issues :) That's it I can tell about it. John, sorry for my being so short in my words, and not-informative, and probably not-convincing for you and your customers... You can try to avoid using this "MS-bulldozer"... I'd better drive it/ride on it :) Thanks...