Most Windows users will welcome the introduction of the new operating system, Vista. Others will no doubt ask if it’s yet another attempt to separate us from our cash. It’s not as if there’s much wrong with Windows XP, at least not after Service Pack 2.
There are five different versions of Vista: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate, as well as Enterprise, which will be sold to big companies.
One of Vista’s new features, the Aero Glass user interface, is going to require a fairly powerful graphics card with at least 64MB of memory.
Critics have also questioned the grand promotion campaign — saying that the company spent about $6-billion and five years to create something that has been available on Macs for years.
“Not that I have a hate-on for Microsoft or anything … but I think this Vista was just a joke,” wrote a blogger at Microsoft-operated Windows Live Spaces website. “Just like [Windows] XP it’s gonna take like two years to work out all the kinks. And by the way, I’m still finding problems with XP!”
But then again, the view from our particular versions of Windows has perhaps become a little stale, and it will be nice to see what non-Apple users have been missing.
| FULL SPEED AHEAD |
NOT SO FAST |
Adelaide Tambo
A flood of eulogies followed Tambo’s death on Wednesday night at her Johannesburg home, with the Presidency saying that she had devoted her entire adult life to the struggle against apartheid and the creation of a democratic non-racial and non-sexist society. When asked how she would like to be remembered, Tambo had said: “As a servant of my people.” |
 Linda Mti
Howls of outrage have met the appointment of former prisons chief Mti as security chief of the 2010 World Cup. Opposition parties wondered whether Mti knew “the right people in the right places” and drew attention to his 2006 drunken-driving incident and the fact that the Department of Correctional Services received qualified audits five years running under his administration. Mti also received a R30 000 ‘performance bonus” during his tenure. |
Most-read stories
January 25 to 31 2007
1. Windows is dead; long live Windows
Windows XP, the current dominant operating system, has met its successor. Vista will launch its bid to conquer PCs worldwide under the Microsoft banner starting on January 30.
2. What Tokyo said to Zuma
Businessman Tokyo Sexwale has declined to respond to information that he met with ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma to ask him for his assistance in elbowing out Cyril Ramaphosa from the party’s presidential race.
3. Battlefields legend David Rattray killed
Legendary tourism personality and Anglo-Zulu War expert David Rattray was attacked and killed at his lodge at Rorke’s Drift on Friday evening, KwaZulu-Natal police said.
4. ANC Youth League in crisis
A confidential internal report has painted a grim picture of disarray in the African National Congress Youth League, with seven of its provincial structures collapsing or in deep crisis.
5. How the White House put its own spin on research
The Bush administration was on Tuesday accused of systemic tampering with the work of government climate scientists to eliminate politically inconvenient material about global warming.
6. White SA struggles with African identity
Generations too late to be classified as Europeans, white South Africans are fighting for the right to be seen as African amid doubts about their loyalty, fuelled by a growing white diaspora.
7. Mugabe’s ‘great lie’ exposed
Former Zanu-PF strongman and co-founder, Enos Nkala, is on a ‘Mugabe Must Go” campaign, saying the Zimbabwean leader has become a political ‘Frankenstein” resistant to democratic change.
8. SA tourism mourns murder of David Rattray
The murder of tourism personality and Anglo-Zulu war pundit David Rattray has shocked leaders in the South African tourism industry.
9. Veteran journalist Perlman quits SABC
Veteran South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) journalist John Perlman has resigned, shortly after the news that Nikiwe Bikitsha, his co-presenter on SAfm’s AM Live, was leaving the public broadcaster, Business Day reported on Tuesday, citing “SABC sources”.
10. Report attacks SA crime and corruption
African governments have warned South Africa that growing corruption, rampant violent crime and xenophobia are undermining confidence in the continent’s largest economy and threaten the stability of post-apartheid democracy.