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UK Greens Declare Vista Bad For Environment 290

Posted by kdawson from the riding-the-hype dept.
schwaang writes "The UK Green Party says that Vista's DRM requirements will force many unnecessary hardware upgrades. Quoting: 'There will be thousands of tonnes of dumped monitors, video cards, and whole computers that are perfectly capable of running Vista — except for the fact they lack the paranoid lock down mechanisms Vista forces you to use. That's an offensive cost to the environment. Future archaeologists will be able to identify a "Vista Upgrade Layer" when they go through our landfill sites.'"
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UK Greens Declare Vista Bad For Environment More

UK Greens Declare Vista Bad For Environment

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  • Linux is bad for it too (Score:5, Funny)

    by suso ( 153703 ) * on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:04AM (#17826292) Journal
    Linux users probably use more CD-Rs because versions of Linux have come out more frequently than versions of Windows. Think of how many Linux CD-Rs you've written since Windows XP came out years ago. Probably enough to make plastic to make a monitor casing?

  • Strange... (Score:4, Informative)

    by tgd ( 2822 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:06AM (#17826300)
    I didn't have to upgrade a damn thing... on a two year old Celeron system.

    Maybe MSDN Vista is missing the "upgrade all your crap" bit being set.

    • Re:Strange... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Corporate Troll ( 537873 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:21AM (#17826442) Homepage Journal

      Two year old isn't really old, is it? My main desktop is from beginning 2003 and it's still a nice machine.

      I found a perfectly functional P-IV 1.9GHz/512Meg RAM/40Gig HD/Dual-headed-matrox in the dumpster at the recycling centre. Booted it up, and a spyware infested Win2000 popped up in my face. That was fixed with a Linux install. How old is the machine I just described? It's perfectly capable of running WinXP. Vista, probably not all that much....

      People throw away the nicest machines if for them it "behaves broken" or "because a newer version is out".

      Those greenies may have a point, but I foresee golden times for dumpster divers....

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by tgd ( 2822 )
        Thats actually how I got the machine in question. A company was getting rid of it because it "didn't work" -- it was spyware infested. Its actually, I believe, a 1.8ghz Celeron or something like that. The drive is bigger, 60gb perhaps, and its got on-board video and sound. Nothing special. I bet the machine didn't cost $500 two years ago.

        Vista runs fine on it. The "experience" score was a bit low, but everything worked fine.

        People who want the latest and greatest whiz-bang crap may need to upgrade, but thos

        • Re:Strange... (Score:4, Informative)

          by paganizer ( 566360 ) <thegrove1&hotmail,com> on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @09:59AM (#17827490) Homepage Journal
          This will probably be flamebaited, but...
          "vista is 5 years more advanced than XP", huh? what, exactly, are the features of Vista that make it a "upgrade" from WinXP, or better yet, Win2k?
          Is there ANY feature of Vista that will improve my ability to do ANYTHING AT ALL I currently do on my Win2k machine?
          NOTE: Due to Microsoft failing to release the software after developing it (except to a $6000 version of Win2k Server), my Win2k machine does not fully make use of a 64-bit CPU, or a "hyperthreading" intel CPU. I'm aware of this, and don't consider it a problem as there are no 64-bit apps or games that look interesting; and my dual AMD CPU motherboard unclogs it's nose at hyperthreading, it's a silly concept. The only thing that makes me even consider changing operating systems is the 64-bit thing; eventually, software developers are going to start using it... I just hope Debian & WINE will be up to the task by then.

          So, I repeat, to the parent & everyone else who even begins to consider "upgrading" to Vista: Is there ANY feature of Vista that will improve my ability to do ANYTHING AT ALL I currently do on my DRM-free Win2k machine?
      • actaully, that machine could very easily run Vista if you don't mind turning off Aero. Vistas requirements aren't much higher than XPs without Aero.

        I have seen XP running on a 200Mhz CPU with 256MB of memory, just as a rough metric.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
        Up until about 8 months ago, I was running a PII 266 I got back in 1998. It fulfilled all my needs. But eventually all the RAM chips started dieing, and it would have cost almost as much for new RAM as it did to buy a new computer, so I bought a new computer, which cost more than the RAM did, but I wanted another computer that would last me 8 years. It's actually cheaper to buy a new PC than to buy even just Vista, so I think a lot of people will take this option.
    • Do you reckon? Or maybe the Green party is talking about business use of Vista. Most businesses aren't on a two-year upgrade cycle and your kit would be relatively modern for them. Most business used to use a five-year cycle, although snce hardware passed the point that it handled basic office tasks ok the cycle length has increased. I don't think that the average PC from 5-7 years ago is going to handle Vista without an upgrade.
    • And how many PC users are running two year old systems or younger? I'm not. I have a 3-year old laptop with 512MB RAM, a 7-year old desktop with 1024MB RAM and a 10 year old deskop with 256MB RAM. If I wanted to run Vista do you really believe that I wouldn't have to upgrade a single piece of hardware?
    • My friend you make 2 year old sound as if it was as old as you could do, which it isn't . My comp is 4 years old and it is not exactly archaic
    • We all know what Vista is stated to require, but I would really be interested to find out what the minimum anyone has been able to run Vista on, while still have a satisfactory experience. For example has anyone managed to get it running on P3 with 512MB RAM.

  • they forgot to mention (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:07AM (#17826318)
    that running a desktop in hardware accelerated 3d mode all the time also means more power consumption...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by TheNetAvenger ( 624455 )
      that running a desktop in hardware accelerated 3d mode all the time also means more power consumption

      Ya, that was all the speculation and theory; however, it doesn't hold water in reality.

      There have been several reviews from Tom's to TweakVista that show that Vista on a laptop does not increase battery drain, and the Aero Glass only consumed 1 watt of power over having it turned off, and this is offset by the other power saving features of Vista.

      I know this is SlashDot where facts don't matter, but do we ha

  • Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:08AM (#17826330)
    I'm kind of confused. You see, the laptop I bought a couple years ago, which apparently has no support for HDCP or any of those other copy-protection measures, actually runs Vista _just fine_. In fact, my desktop, which is a relatively old AthlonXP 2500+ machine, ALSO doesn't need to be upgraded, beyond maybe getting a little more memory.

    Look, DRM sucks. But DRM is no excuse to just start making up FUD. Vista is a hog, but blaming it all on DRM seems pretty inaccurate. Saying that everyone is going to start filling landfills just because their video card doesn't support HDCP seems like it's crossing over into "deliberately lying".

    • Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Informative)

      by a_nonamiss ( 743253 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:18AM (#17826410)
      The whole DRM thing concerns high definition media. Have you tried playing Blu-Ray on said laptop? HD-DVD? If you did, I think you'd find that you can't play it in high definition. It will downgrade the signal if you try to play it on your 2-year old Celeron, and will not play in full 1080p glory. That's what all the bruhaha is about. It's not a big deal to some people (like myself, who has a 50-inch HDTV and could care less about playing it on his PC) but to others this functionality is important. The bottom line is we aren't getting what we paid for.

      • Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by kjart ( 941720 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:26AM (#17826484)

        Have you tried playing Blu-Ray on said laptop? HD-DVD? If you did, I think you'd find that you can't play it in high definition. It will downgrade the signal if you try to play it on your 2-year old Celeron, and will not play in full 1080p glory.

        I doubt that a two year old laptop will have a Blu-Ray drive, so no, I don't think it would be able to play one. People will have to upgrade to enjoy such things, but this has nothing to do with Vista.

        The bottom line is we aren't getting what we paid for.

        Yes, I would tend to agree, but I don't think this has anything to do with the features in Vista or any other OS for that matter. It is the content producers choice to use DRM on their content and they are rightfully to blame for it.

        • Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by BFaucet ( 635036 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @09:30AM (#17827130) Homepage
          You should only have to upgrade your optical drive to view HD content. If you're running Vista, however, your older monitor that is missing the HDCP (that has absolutely NOTHING to do with quality) will have to be replaced despite it's full ability to display HD content. THAT is the concern. Not that you'll have to upgrade the whole laptop.

          A lot of folks like being able to upgrade only what's needed on their system. Vista is just making it so you'll need to upgrade stuff for the sake of getting their DRM shit working. Even if your system is already capable of doing all the whiz-bang stuff.

          Fuck it. I've been using Win2k/Ubuntu and have yet to have a reason to install XP. I doubt I'll feel the need to move to Vista. I'll just drop Win2k when things stop supporting it. Why should I drop $200 for something that'll require me to drop another $1000 for no new functionality?

          • Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Informative)

            by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @10:47AM (#17828092)

            You should only have to upgrade your optical drive to view HD content.
            Wrong. Decoding H.264 at HD-DVD or Blu-Ray bitrates requires some serious horsepower. My 2.2GHz Athlon 64, for example, just can't hack it. You either need hardware acceleration (high end GPU) or a fast CPU (probably dual-core).

            Try downloading a 1080p trailer from Apple sometime. Notice how, even with the fastest software decoder (CoreAVC, although libavcodec comes close), your formerly fast CPU can barely manage to keep up. Now consider that Blu-Ray/HD-DVD have considerably higher bitrates.

            If you're running Vista, however, your older monitor that is missing the HDCP (that has absolutely NOTHING to do with quality) will have to be replaced despite it's full ability to display HD content.
            IF said content uses the image constraint token, then yes, you will need HDCP, or your content will be downscaled to 960x540 (the same resolution as many "HD" XVID HDTV rips, mind you). It works the same way on a standalone HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player. Apple's implementation will doubtless work the same way as well, because it's mandated by the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray licensing groups.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by westlake ( 615356 )
            If you're running Vista, however, your older monitor that is missing the HDCP (that has absolutely NOTHING to do with quality) will have to be replaced despite it's full ability to display HD content. THAT is the concern.

            Your monitor is an aging 17 to 19 inch 4:3 display. Your monitor is a power hungry fifty pound glass bottle. Which will in not so very distant future be making the trip to the dumpster anyway.

            Tell me that there is anything which will hold you back when the big screen HDCP monitor become

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DarenN ( 411219 )

          Yes, I would tend to agree, but I don't think this has anything to do with the features in Vista or any other OS for that matter. It is the content producers choice to use DRM on their content and they are rightfully to blame for it.

          Except it doesn't seem to cause any problems for the PS3's blu-ray playback! And because of the "signed driver" and "authorised hardware" issues there will be problem with a lot of legacy hardware (by which I mean anything in your machine that the manufacturer hasn't got signed drivers for).

          It appears that MS is making more of an issue of DRM than anyone, including the content producers expected. And their EULA says that they accept no responsibility for any breakages or lost data. Pah! On the other hand,

        • Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mysticgoat ( 582871 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @09:58AM (#17827480) Homepage Journal

          It is the content producers choice to use DRM on their content and they are rightfully to blame for it.

          I won't argue with blaming the content producers for DRM. But they aren't the ones who are paying for it. The people who buy Vista are paying for it— through the additional monetary costs of the hardware needed solely for the Premium Content pipes, and through the obligatory CPU overhead of running the processes that assure the OS that you haven't sneaked any non-DRM hardware onto the machine in the last few milliseconds.

          The people who buy Vista are paying for all this even if the box will never be used for Premium Content. Even if the only thing they will ever do is run spreadsheets, word processing, Blender, and Tetris— they will stay pay to protect DRM Content Providers from the possibility that a copyright might be infringed on in their box.

          Vista is a great way to spend a lot more money on a new box that will give you marginally better performance on the job than your old WinXP box. If you think that the appropriate design goal of an OS is to provide the user with the most cost effective means of utilizing cost effective hardware to get his computing tasks done, then Vista is "defective by design".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mwvdlee ( 775178 )
        The weirdest thing about this signal degradation, is that the CPU actually needs to do MORE work to bring you LESS quality.

        DRM is crap because it lets the consumer pay for it to take away consumer rights whilst having absolutely no benefit to the consumer. If DRM ever managed to stop breaking copyright, it could be considered useful, but it doesn't. All it does is make honest consumers pay more to get their legal rights back, that were taken from them by DRM itself. DRM is extortion; "the more you pay, the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Erwos ( 553607 )
        So, the issue is with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, not Vista. I can play back 720p video just fine from unprotected sources.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kabocox ( 199019 )
        The whole DRM thing concerns high definition media. Have you tried playing Blu-Ray on said laptop? HD-DVD? If you did, I think you'd find that you can't play it in high definition. It will downgrade the signal if you try to play it on your 2-year old Celeron, and will not play in full 1080p glory.

        What two year old consumer laptop had a blu-ray or HD DVD drive in it? He has most likely has a CDR/DVD combo drive or DVD burner either of which could read DVDs fine. I've been sick and tired of this whole HD tv

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by mobby_6kl ( 668092 )
        >Have you tried playing Blu-Ray on said laptop? HD-DVD? If you did, I think you'd find that you can't play it in high definition.

        Have you? I think you'd find that the current HD-DVD movies don't have the flag that turns on the degradation requirement. But still, the 2-year old Celeron won't play movies in their full 1080p glory, because my 3 year old P4 can't properly play even 720p video without choking.

      • Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Informative)

        by massysett ( 910130 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @09:27AM (#17827080) Homepage
        Have you tried playing Blu-Ray on said laptop? HD-DVD? If you did, I think you'd find that you can't play it in high definition.

        Have you tried it? The non-HDCP signal degradation is optional, at the disc maker's option. My understanding is that most discs being shipped now do *not* have this degradation option enabled, because the studios know that most equipment out there right now does not have HDCP. A link from the article below claims that Hollywood promises not to enable the degradation until 2012 (take that promise for what it's worth.) So if your ancient laptop actually had a Blu-ray, it would probably play fine.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_Constraint_Toke n [wikipedia.org]

        I'm no DRM or Vista fan, but a lot of people on both sides of this debate are spreading misinformation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mpe ( 36238 )
        If you did, I think you'd find that you can't play it in high definition. It will downgrade the signal if you try to play it on your 2-year old Celeron, and will not play in full 1080p glory.

        In the process probably requiring more processing power that doing a non "degraded" rendering of the data.

        That's what all the bruhaha is about.

        Actually it's more about needing a more powerful machine to do useful work, thus otherwise perfectly functional machines ending up scrapped.

        It's not a big deal to some pe

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jimicus ( 737525 )
      Quite correct, but the great majority of folks are never going to upgrade their OS anyway - they'll just plonk down £300 on whatever Dell's advertising in the paper today. That's where the waste comes from.

      Though TBH I think that's more a society problem than Microsoft's fault.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by heroofhyr ( 777687 )
      You didn't mention whether or not you've tried running any high-definition video playback on the machine. Nobody said Vista itself won't run on a computer/laptop that lacks DRM support in the display, just that HD video playback will be impossible. The quality will be automatically downgraded to quasi-DVD quality even if your non-HDCP monitor supports HD-DVD. In other words, you can probably play HD-DVDs on your laptop, but I'll bet the video looks exactly like a regular DVD.
    • Yes, but there is no reason to get Vista if you can't run its new features. Personally, I don't even feel that the new features are worth the money, but that is beside the point. I know plenty of people who upgraded from 2000 to XP..and then chose an XP interface that mirrored the 2000 interface. Why? Why did they pay all that money for the same kernel doing the same thing with the same interface? The same is try for Vista -- why pay all that money for Vista, if you are going to use an XP-esque interfa
  • or it could be that nothing is found indicating the mass XP to Linux switch..

  • stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by otacon ( 445694 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:10AM (#17826340)

    Future archaeologists will be able to identify a "Vista Upgrade Layer" when they go through our landfill sites
    No we won't...the same reason we don't have a mainframe layer or black and white TV layer and the same reason we don't have a sword layer...people aren't going to buy new stuff to run software that does the same stuff...if you are going to buy a new computer and it comes with vista great, but people are really overestimating the market demand as far as the average PC user and even most 'advanced' (I use that term loosly) users.
    • No we won't...the same reason we don't have a mainframe layer or black and white TV layer and the same reason we don't have a sword layer...people aren't going to buy new stuff to run software that does the same stuff...if you are going to buy a new computer and it comes with vista great, but people are really overestimating the market demand as far as the average PC user and even most 'advanced' (I use that term loosly) users.

      I'm sure somewhere there is a black and white layer, probally started sometime in
    • Now as far as the home user goes you're absolutely right. There's little reason (besides DirectX 11 or some equally abhorrant abomonation) to upgrade to Vista unless you need a certain feature only it can provide. However, microsoft has been really good about making their next release NECESSARY to compete for X reason. Now to the intelligent technologist that marketing bullshit isn't anything new, but to the devoted follower it is proof positive that shit needs to be replaced.

      They'll create some *native*

  • oh please (Score:4, Insightful)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:11AM (#17826352)
    Future archaeologists will be able to identify a "Vista Upgrade Layer" when they go through our landfill sites

    Number of people wo will buy Vista retail - tiny
    Number of people who will upgrade an old PC just to run Vista that they just bought - tinier
    Number of people upgrading who will toss out perfectly good vid cards/monitors rather than building a secondary PC - all 3 of you.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by KiloByte ( 825081 )
      No, ordinary folks toss out the whole perfectly good computer.
      Already a lot of them prefer purchasing a new machine instead of paying a sizable part of the price to have it "repaired" by removing spyware.

  • Old News... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PenguinBoyDave ( 806137 )
    This is nonsense...it was said about WindowsXP as well. I don't see any news here.

  • Vista defaults to Standby, not Power off! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xaxa ( 988988 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:12AM (#17826362)
    The "Shutdown" icon in Vista no longer shuts down the computer -- it just puts it into standby! To shutdown properly you have to select the option from a tiny menu. This is going to waste a lot of energy, since people won't realise the difference.

    • You can change it (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I managed to change it back to shutdown by going through the advanced options in Power Options in the control panel. I'm not in front of my Vista machine right now so I can't give you the details, but you should be able to find it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MadJo ( 674225 )
        Still the grandparents point stands...
        You had to go and dig for that option, not many people are willing to do that, or have the knowledge about it, or even know that their pc doesn't shutdown when you select 'shutdown', but instead go to sleep.

      • Wow (Score:3, Funny)

        by Headcase88 ( 828620 )
        Windows Vista -- Our OS boots up so slowly that shutting down the computer is an advanced option.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jamesl ( 106902 )
      Which brings it into line with every other appliance (except maybe my can opener) and electronic device sold in the last 10 years. Hell, my car even has a flashing red light to warn miscreants that a force field is in place and any disturbance will will wake the neighbors.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Simulant ( 528590 )
      Not only that, but Vista's standby & hibernate modes don't work properly on nearly all of the >= 1 year old hardware I've tried it on (about 4 systems). I suppose this could technically be the hardware's fault but... damn it, XP could suspend/resume on these systems just fine.

      I've had to turn off standby & hibernate on my 2.8 GHz Xeon work machine because neither work right in Vista, which I've been testing for a month or so. I'm sucking up way more power than I did with XP.

  • CompSci students - heads up! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rufty ( 37223 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:12AM (#17826364) Homepage
    Free linux workstations coming soon to a dumpster near you!!!

    (Worked for my Masters, could work for you, too...)
    • HAha! I always loved being able to run something light like NetBSD on old computers that people think "no longer work." Of course, it is interesting that people think their computers are no longer good enough, especially these days. Yeah, that P5 I toyed with ran a bit slowly, on 64MB ram, but a computer from 2004 with 512MB+ would be fine running just about anything (except Vista). The best part is that most people who upgrade continue using their computer the same way -- they don't even use the new ca

  • GUI landfills? (Score:5, Funny)

    by ciaohound ( 118419 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:20AM (#17826432)
    Why would a landfill upgrade to Vista? Are they currently on XP? Are they even x86 architecture? I could see putting Java on them, for the garbage collection.

  • Kittens (Score:3, Funny)

    by MyNameIsEarl ( 917015 ) <assf2000@@@yahoo...com> on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:24AM (#17826466)
    As if being bad foor the environment wasn't bad enough, everytime someone upgrades to Vista God kills a kitten.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 )
      everytime someone upgrades to Vista God kills a kitten.


            Good. I hate cats anyway. I'll be sure to buy a few extra copies!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by AxminsterLeuven ( 963108 )
      Bit of a moral dilemma then, isn't it? 'cause every time someone installs Linux Steve Ballmer throws a chair at a puppy...

  • FUD (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cybrthng ( 22291 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:27AM (#17826488) Homepage Journal
    Vista isn't negating all that hardware, the Movie Studios are. You have the same problem of not being able to run protected content no matter WHICH platform you choose. If Linux ever gets High Def DVD or if MAC's ever get Hi-Def DVD you bet they too will be DRM'd

  • What a load of rubbish. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Toby_Tyke ( 797359 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:31AM (#17826514) Journal
    They might have a point if millions of people were going to rush out and buy Vista. But thats not going to happen, so the Green Party is, sadly, talking rubbish.

    Far and away the vast majority of PC users will be sticking with their current XP install until they buy a new PC, which will come pre-loaded with Vista. And even then, people don't tend to throw away their old PCs if they still work. They tend to keep it around as a second machine, or pass it on to a relative (instant recycling).

    I hate DRM as much as the next Slashbot, but come on. Thousand of people dumping perfectly good hardware so they can watch HD-DVD movies? I don't think so.

    • They'd be better off aiming at Spyware companies as they are the #1 reason I, and my collegues, get contacted to build new computers outside the workplace. At the institution where I do work, we have had measures against spyware for over 4 years now and there are systems running XP that are twice that age in our environment.

      Spyware drives upgrades. Since a user's computer is "too slow" to "open the internet" they get a new one. Not understanding a drive whipe + antispyware would do em good for what they u
  • The summary makes it sound like you HAVE to upgrade to Vista. If no one upgrades, then Microsoft will have to continue to support XP, etc. There's nothing that says you HAVE to upgrade to Vista if it's all that bad.

  • Faster PC's may be good for environment? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Knutsi ( 959723 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:38AM (#17826592)
    It seems to me that faster PCs in the past have brought them more and better functionality, making them replace other, potentially more enviromentally unfriendly technology. Not sure how the math on this works out tho'.

  • EU gets Vista-N, no media player = no DRM (Score:3, Funny)

    by Marbleless ( 640965 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:41AM (#17826612)
    Since good Europeans would be buying the -N editions without media player, they can't play DRM content anyway!

    So why would they need to upgrade their monitor? ;)

  • Get Serious (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Luscious868 ( 679143 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @08:53AM (#17826736)
    I hate sensationalist crap like this. Vista won't require a hardware upgrade for relatively new systems unless you want to experience all of it's bells and whistles. IMHO that's beside the point completely since most consumers will stick with the operating system they have until they buy a new PC that will be preloaded with Vista anyway. I know I'm in no rush to upgrade our systems where I work (and I'll never do it at home since I ditched my PC a year ago in favor of a Mac). I won't even bother taking a look at Vista until it's been on the market for two years. Let others deal with the inevitable bugs, security issues, driver problems and software compatibility issues. I'll stick with XP as long as possible. I just don't see very compelling businesses reasons to justify an upgrade to Vista. I see a lot more reasons for consumers to make the leap but as I mentioned above they'll do so whether they need to or not when they buy their next PC.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      "Vista won't require a hardware upgrade for relatively new systems unless you want to experience all of it's bells and whistles."

      Yes, but how many people will want to buy this and not use all the bells and whistles? very few.

      "since most consumers will stick with the operating system they have until they buy a new PC that will be preloaded with Vista anyway."

      Or there desire for vista is strong enough to buy a new computer easlier than needed. Looking at the history of computer consumers, this is likely to be
  • VISTA upgrade layer : Is that part of the TCP/IP stack ?
  • Throwing them away...

    But then where do I host my gigs and gigs of porn, store all my old music I don't like anymore.. what machine would I retrofit into my arcade chasis and set up as my MAME/LAME and SNES9X machine?

    Maybe what we really need is a creative linux hacker to buy up old machines, throw some apps on it to do home server functions, and then sell them back to the old users. What could they do? Just as an example, put one in the kitchen with a touch screen that you could use to track inventory, br

  • The Real Environmental Issue (Score:3, Insightful)

    by giafly ( 926567 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @09:13AM (#17826914)
    The real environmental issue is, from the article:

    Vista requires more expensive and energy-hungry hardware, passing the cost on to consumers and the environment
    I don't think anyone could seriously argue with that. But assuming most people don't upgrade until they would have bought a PC anyway, the following claim is exaggerated:

    There will be thousands of tonnes of dumped monitors, video cards and whole computers that are perfectly capable of running Vista - except for the fact they lack the paranoid lock down mechanisms Vista forces you to use.

  • Computer-related activites already spoil the envir (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Electric Eye ( 5518 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @10:22AM (#17827776)
    While their claims MAY be a bit exaggerated, you have to look back and see how destructive widespread computer use has really been. Remember 10 years ago or so everyone was saying more computers would = paperless society? Quite the opposite has happened, actually. The use of paper has skyrocketed to new proportions since 1995. Billions of tons of computer scrap has already been dumped, but mostly in China because they'll take anything we send over there. There have been plenty of articles about the mercury-laden landfills and communities there, with people scavenging around looking for valuable metals, etc. while the environment is ravaged by all the contaminants present in older computers that have been dumped.

    I still don't see why the world is going to rush out and buy Vista. I wouldn't recommend to ANY of my customers to even consider upgrading for a minimum of six months because there is going to be quite the bug-fest with Vista 1.0. Besides, what's the real upside over XP? Security? Ha!

  • Vista SAVES on electrical usage. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Wednesday January 31, 2007 @11:52AM (#17829144) Homepage
    I got Vista as a free trial a few days ago, and it's the first Microsoft OS I've run on a desktop that actually supports sleep/suspend mode properly. I keep my PC on 24/7 because I don't want to wait for it to boot to get some simple task done. Until now that's meant full power on at about 110 watts idle. But Vista actually supports sleep mode properly. Sleep mode, if you didn't know, turns off the processor, hard drive, and suspends everything to memory. It consumes about 10 watts. My PC comes back to a fully operational state in about 2-3 seconds. It's also on by default in Vista. Previously there's always been some component (usually my video card) that didn't support it properly.

    So the dumb-ass greens should be ENCOURAGING Vista use, because there's a LOT of people that just keep their machines on 24/7 for the same reasons I do. Instead they get all caught up about DRM on HD-DVD and Blueray (which almost no one has anyway, so no one is going to throw away) and a little more power usage from Aero. If you don't like the increased power usage from Aero, turn it off.

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