DSLR wars...

[bfitzgerald]

Greg there is a way around this driver issue and it's worked for me pretty well. I have a logitech webcam from some time ago it was pricey at the time but still usable despite being older tech. You can install drivers in compatibility mode and I did this for the webcam and erm well it works just fine on Win 7 (drivers are for Vista). I also have an older Canon scanner and that only has XP drivers nothing newer availabe perfectly decent scanner works fine so I did the same again and the XP drivers run fine. You just have to opposite click in the installation software hit the compatibility tab and pick the OS the drivers are from. It works well on windows 7 better than it did on Vista I've done this with a number of older hardware including printers etc.

To be fair I can't blame MS for this completely as they have a fairly good driver database built into the OS (found my hardware no problems no drivers needed for motherboard etc etc) It's the vendors who don't update their software. My film scanner works fine as Plustek bothered to release both 32bit and 64bit drivers. MS are guilty of changing things too much but I would not let this put you off Win 7 as I'm running non Win 7 hardware no problems on it.

Vista was too heavy for the normal average pc at the time which is one reason it got criticism from users Win 7 is not as bloated and it's certainly obvious that it's optimised quite a bit better from start up to shut down and uses less resources. It's not quite as super lean as some suggest though XP runs better on older hardware. Vista runs pretty poorly on 1Gb where Win 7 runs ok.

[Birma]

All in all sounds like a great advert to go Mac

[bakubo]

IMO, the software is the computer. I think that these days most people don't care too much about the hardware inside the box as long as it works. If you prefer Mac OS then you get a Mac. If you prefer Windows then you get a PC. My first home PC in 1998 was a custom build with components that I selected. I then upgraded the cpu, memory, and hd in 2000. Later I gave it to my sister. My next desktop in 2005 was an HP that had what I wanted and I never changed anything. I gave that to my sister also. Since 2001 though I have been buying notebooks since they are much more portable and fit my lifestyle better. I have had two 15" notebooks, two 17" notebooks, an 8.9" netbook, a 10.1" netbook (current), and a 17.3" notebook (current).

Oh, by the way, before my first home PC in 1998 I had been using them for years at work, but until the combination of the internet and affordable film scanners/editing software did I ever feel like having one of my own.

[bfitzgerald]

The only reason I don't go Linux is the photography side of things for almost everything else it's improved quite a lot over the last few years even more printers work off the bat with newer releases. But there are some limitations to be found.

Windows is a proprietary OS and Mac OS X is a proprietary OS too!
The difference is MS don't sell you the PC where as Apple retains control over their hardware. A lot of PC folks have said for a long time that Apple don't have the guts to go head to head with MS by releasing just the software as a direct rival. It might be more apt to say they're making too much money off of massive margins on selling the hardware to users.

From a hardware perspective you're getting ripped off no question. I like OS X too but at that price they can keep it. I can build far better machines using better quality components from the ground up for significantly less.

A computer is a computer so it's not really accurate to suggest it's the software. Linux is free too so that kinda opens a door if you want to go that route.

[bakubo]

The only reason I don't go Linux is the photography side of things for almost everything else it's improved quite a lot over the last few years even more printers work off the bat with newer releases. But there are some limitations to be found.

In 2009 I spent quite a bit of time with Linux on one of my old 17" notebooks. It took awhile trying various distributions to find one that I could get the wifi working. The one that overall was the easiest to set up and worked pretty much immediately without lots of fooling around was Linux Mint. The big problem is the photo software. Several packages had potential gimp, digikam, showfoto, krita, etc. but, at least in 2009, they all were lacking in serious ways. Bibble is available for Linux (not free, of course). I finally decided that Linux was way, way too much trouble for no real gain that was relevant to me. Linux is great for hackers and people who like to play with computers. I just want to use mine with few headaches. For my uses Win7 does that and it runs all my software. Mac OS may be easier for connecting certain peripherals, networking, etc. but I don't need to do that much.

Oh yeah, I recall now that using Japanese (being able to type Japanese and display Japanese) was a problem and I don't recall ever being able to get that to work with Linux. That was a showstopper for me. It is trivial with Windows since it is all included.

By the way, in 2002/2003 I spent about 1.5 years designing and writing several multi-threaded SQL (using MySQL) servers communicating with clients over sockets and also a comm router for the same system (all written in C). For software development Linux is great! It reminded me of writing software on Unix back in the early 1980s.

A computer is a computer so it's not really accurate to suggest it's the software. Linux is free too so that kinda opens a door if you want to go that route.

That's my point. The computer is the software. Linux is one of the other choices.

[bfitzgerald]

Over a period of time the Linux community has worked out that just making an OS for "techy computer geeks" was never going to work for most users. And they needed to make linux genuinely easy to install and without the user needing a fairly decent understanding of either computers or code. Personally I'm not expert on OS's nor am I a programmer or anything like it (unless you count playing with basic on a ZX spectrum..ah the days!) I'm much more into the hardware myself.

Ubuntu got that part of it right moving linux towards easy to use and the end user. I like Mint too which is a fork of Ubuntu looks nice and has some useful additions. Longer term I do honestly think the days of paid for operating systems might not last forever. I know some Linux fans have said that for years but with Google getting in on things too shortly I would not want to say the future of proprietary OS's is certain.

There will always be commercial software of that there is no doubt but the OS? I'm not so sure 10 years+ from now you can only re-invent the wheel so many times add gloss and polish!

[Greg Beetham]

Yeah Barry I know about the installing of drivers under compatibility mode but I’m not overly fond of it because it introduces another translation layer and sometimes a loss of functionality, or worse a ‘generic’ driver for a similar model etc. but I guess you do get some use out of a legacy unit. I think the next step with OS’s will be a fully self diagnostic OS, one that has an inbuilt capability to examine the performance of all the hardware and it’s relationship with that hardware on an ongoing basis including it’s own hardware ‘footprint.’ Vista does that to an extent with quite a few diagnostic and updating features automated in the background but there is room for improvement I think, if and when Microsoft comes up with the OS that does that fully it’ll be a must have OS.
Greg

[Lonnie Utah]

Since this has migrated beyond camera talk into computer talk, I'd respectfully ask that those taking computer wars take that discussion to a new thread.

Thank you.

[bfitzgerald]

Yes we did wander but still some references are useful I believe Sony was trying a bit of an Apple type camera with the NEX myself looking at the design I can see how they came about that.
Back to DSLR wars what pans out over time entirely depends on how the top 2 players respond to the market in particular SLT type cameras or the NEX ones. Until then we'r e just guessing. But I think the industry as a whole will have to get used to less makers and not so frequent updates. The market is fairly saturated.

[pakodominguez]

Since this has migrated beyond camera talk into computer talk, I'd respectfully ask that those taking computer wars take that discussion to a new thread.

Thank you.

Well, for some people, any war is a good war...

[bfitzgerald]

So said George W Bush

[bakubo]

So said George W Bush

And so said Cameron, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, and Obama.