How Vista Disappoints

MCSEBear writes "Writer Paul Thurrott has given Microsoft a verbal dressing down for what has become of Windows Vista. He details Microsoft's broken promises over the years since Longhorn/Vista was first previewed back in 2003. He demonstrates where current Vista builds fail to live up to Microsoft's current hype of the much reduced feature set. From the article: 'I don't hate Windows Vista, and I certainly don't hate Microsoft for disappointing me and countless other customers with a product that doesn't even come close to meeting its original promises. I'm sure the company learned something from this debacle, and hopefully it will be more open and honest about what it can and cannot do in the future ... It some ways, Windows Vista actually will exceed Mac OS X and Linux, but not to the depth we were promised. Instead, Windows Vista will do what so many other Windows releases have done, and simply offer consumers and business users a few major changes and many subtle or minor updates. That's not horrible. It's just not what was promised.'"

Comments

Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[yagu]

Well, in summary, the new Vista:

• Introduces the new user security model similar to Un*x, only 30 years later. But it is (so far) incredibly inane in its interaction model with the user (from the article):

  The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. It's the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions. The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of warning dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. That these dialogs pop up repeatedly for the same action would be comical if it weren't so amazingly frustrating. It would be hilarious if it weren't going to affect hundreds of millions of people in a few short months. It is, in fact, almost criminal in its insidiousness.

• they've taken the "windows" metaphor to its (in their opinion) next logical step, i.e., "glass", offering translucent and transparent windows. But (FTA):

  Anyway, the reality of glass windows is that they stink. The windows themselves are translucent, meaning you can see through them partially. But the visual difference between the topmost window (that is, the window with which you are currently interacting, or what we might describe as the window with focus) and any other windows (i.e. those windows that are visually located "under" the topmost window) is subtle at best. More to the point, you can't tell topmost windows from other windows at all. And don't pretend you can.

• they've added a "Media Center", but (summarizing the article), it stinks.

Thurrott says he still doesn't hate Microsoft for not delivering on all of these promises:

I don't hate Windows Vista, and I certainly don't hate Microsoft for disappointing me and countless other customers with a product that doesn't even come close to meeting its original promises.

The world needs friends like Mr. Thurrott. He's a pretty forgiving guy. But, it would have been nice had Microsoft really been able to deliver this as promised. I was looking forward to buying a new upgraded computer!

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[IAmTheDave]

It's funny how one of Microsoft's biggest champions (and, despite that, a man I highly regard) really liked OSX and is honest enough to come down on MS when necessary.

This article and its points (good ones) make me respect Paul even more. Not to mention TFA has some really well thought out points. MS is blowing it, hard.

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[ConceptJunkie]

I think the biggest problem with Vista is that it doesn't really give us anything new. Just mild improvements (or not based on your comment) to what's there now. From what I've read, it sounds like Windows NT 5.3... some performance improvements (much needed, but will they be overshadowed by the inevitable additional bloat?)... lots of eye candy (wild monkeys must have designed much of XP's look... I hope Vista isn't so hideous)... and improved security (something we've been promised, and were owed, for many years).

I'm sorry. I don't see any compelling reason (or hardly any reason at all) to move from Windows 2000 or (for those couple of laptops of mine that have it) XP.

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[Jugalator]

People consistently bash Paul Thurrott on pro-Windows forums these days and I find that sad because I think he's one of few people left that write thorough, and actually rather unbiased, reviews of Microsoft products these days. Heck, with this review he even got an MS employee (that I'll avoid naming the username of to not point fingers) to call him a "douchebag" in a one-liner flamebait as an opinion about this entire article. Such non-existant motivation behind a flame can only come from one with little to defend himself with.

Re:Mr. Thurrott forgives Microsoft

[drinkypoo]

RunAs doesn't work properly when you RunAs a process which spawns another process, unless that program was written specifically to work with RunAs. The second process will run under your user context, not the context of the program which launches it. This is done by design, although I have a hard time imagining what the design purpose was...

Sounds like an apologist

[thewiz]

'I don't hate Windows Vista, and I certainly don't hate Microsoft for disappointing me and countless other customers with a product that doesn't even come close to meeting its original promises. I'm sure the company learned something from this debacle, and hopefully it will be more open and honest about what it can and cannot do in the future ... It some ways, Windows Vista actually will exceed Mac OS X and Linux, but not to the depth we were promised. Instead, Windows Vista will do what so many other Windows releases have done, and simply offer consumers and business users a few major changes and many subtle or minor updates. That's not horrible. It's just not what was promised.'

Hmmm... Sounds like something I've heard before from a sister-in-law:

'I don't hate taking care of the kids, and I certainly don't hate my husband for disappointing me and the kids with his actions that don't even come close to meeting his original promises. I'm sure I learned something from this debacle, and hopefully he will be more open and honest about what he can and cannot do in the future ... In some ways, my husband actually will exceed other men, but not to the depth we were promised. Instead, he will do what so many other husbands have done, and simply promise us a few major changes and many subtle or minor ones. It's not so horrible that he misleads me and the kids. It's just not what I was promised at the alter.'

Both sound like someone trying to apologize and explain away someone elses bad behaviour.

I still waiting.

[jellomizer]

Heck I am still waiting for MS to give us what they promised us in Windows 95

Re:I still waiting.

[nine-times]

You're right. The quote shows the author to be naive/uninformed:

I don't hate Windows Vista, and I certainly don't hate Microsoft for disappointing me and countless other customers with a product that doesn't even come close to meeting its original promises. I'm sure the company learned something from this debacle, and hopefully it will be more open and honest about what it can and cannot do in the future

This has always been Microsoft's MO. Late and with most of the intended features dropped out. They promise the world when they start development, but the new versions of their software tend to be the old version with a few tweaks, updates, fixes, a new skin, and all the controls in different places.

A credibility problem

[clevershark]

It's hard to trust the reviewer when he writes about how disappointed he is, but still gives the product 5/5.

Sorry but we are a Microsoft shop

[LWATCDR]

We tried out the live distro of GLX and most of us liked the new 3d accelerated Linux GUI better than Vista's Aeroglass. Since pretty is a big selling point that is very important. I have to admit I was shocked by how useful it was and how much Vista drove me nuts.

Don't care. Don't want to care.

[plover]

Frankly, I don't want to get excited about Vista.

Since they're building DRM right into the core of the OS (including crap such as the Protected Media Path and all its ilk) I have absolutely no reason to think they won't allow corporate partners (RIAA, MPAA, BSA) to abuse this to kill pieces of "unapproved" media or "rogue" apps. What happens when the .*AA tells them Azureus is being used to pirate software or media? Shut 'er down! Even if you've only ever used it to share the latest fad video or big open source distribution, it won't matter. And that's wrong.

Whether I agree with them on issues of piracy or not (I don't approve of pirating software myself) I refuse to allow my computer to participate in extending or enforcing their policies, and I refuse to install DRM based media players. I'm going to keep XP on that machine for as long as it runs, or until I replace it with an open OS.

This just in...

[Kohath]

This just in:

A product's performance doesn't live up to the hype.

I know we're all shocked that he unthinkable finally happened.

"The Bad Old Microsoft"

[mrchaotica]

As I've noted in the past, the Windows Division retains, as employees of the software giant have told me, the last vestiges of the bad, old Microsoft. This is the Microsoft that ran roughshod over competitors in order to gain market share at any cost. The Microsoft that forgot about customers in its blind zeal to harm competitors.

He talks about it as if they've changed, but Microsoft is the same as it ever was -- and it always will be, because the core of those "bad" ways is the upper management, including Gates and Ballmer themselves.

My Vista sucks

[VAXGeek]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Vista fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Windows Vista PC (Pentium 4/3000 w/64 bits of power) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than Windows Vista, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Firefox will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Windows Media Player 11 is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Vista PCs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Vista machine that has run faster than its XP counterpart, despite the translucent interface. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 3000 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Vista is a superior operating system.

Vista addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Windows Vista over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

Re:My Vista sucks

[mrchaotica]

Not quite; it was a Mac troll (from the "old" Mac OS days, when it didn't have proper scheduling). This would never have applied to Linux, since it was multitasking from the get-go.

You Have to Have to Have to

[bogie]

Watch this video

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-413444611 2378047444&q=Motorrider&pl=true

I've always been of fan of each OS borrowing from one another, but this is just sad. MS ripped everything out of Vista that was truly innovative and we are left with XP rethemed and few nice subsystem tweaks. Frankly Vista is a decent update if it had be released in 2003. WTF have they been doing for 6 years?

exceeding OS X and Linux

[kaan]

"In some ways, Windows Vista actually will exceed Mac OS X and Linux..."

For example, with Windows Vista, you will get more:
- system instability
- viruses
- application crashes
- lost data
- maintenance time
- security patches
- bug fixes

But it doesn't stop there! In order to take advantage of all new features in Vista, you will also get to spend more money on fancy hardware, including juiced up graphics cards to render the fancy new user interface.

Re:Promises

[eln]

So when people tell you they'll do something, you expect them not to do it unless they explicitly say "I promise?" Or do you require some sort of pinky swear?

Microsoft marketed a load of vapor to people for years so they would wait for Vista. And if someone is waiting for Vista, they aren't installing Mac OS X or Linux.

Either Microsoft did this to intentionally slow the growth of other products while their product was in development, or they screwed up so badly in their development that they were forced to strip out all of these planned features. Neither one of those options says anything good about Microsoft.

Easy

[MarkByers]

Can anyone here name any Microsoft product that lived up to its hype? Anyone?

Word 2007 will easily live up to the hype. I've heard it's going to be absolutely amazing.

Disappointing? Certainly. But...

[zapf]

• Most Windows users won't even know what Microsoft was promising two and a half years ago. They'll be happy with their shiny new glass windows and amazing alt-tab feature. Vista is ultimately going to be successful, despite the glaring development problems it's has had.
• What Microsoft should really be concerned about is the poor current implementation of the User Account Protection feature. It is really annoying as is, and there's a night and day usability difference between it and OS X's implementation. This is something that regular end users will actually notice and complain about.
• A deeper problem is interface consistency. Thurrott points out how Microsoft has basically turned into what it once despised: a reactive bureaucracy in the model of IBM in the 70's. This is really reflected in the current builds of Vista-- the interface is incredibly inconsistent compared to OS X, Gnome, or Windows 2000. It feels like twnety different teams worked on fourty different things without any real coordination or a common set of user interface guidelines.

Re:Disappointing? Certainly. But...

[dbc001]

Interface Consistency = Business Model
How does Microsoft make money? 1. Selling software. 2. Selling Books for that software. 3. Selling Certifications.
So what happens after everyone who is going to buy an OS, Book, & Cert has bought them all? What does Microsoft do? They announce that the old stuff is no longer supported, everyone has to buy the new stuff now! Then the mayhem starts. Applications slowly begin to break. Interfaces are no longer "flashy" or "in style". Then it hits the mainstream. "You don't have the new version yet? Wow, that OS is like 6 years old. You must not be on top of the IT world after all." Adoption hits critical mass, consumers start to flock to the new software. Now even the hard-core techies have to learn the bullshit new interfaces, programming languages, etc.

Point is, Microsoft's business model relies on breaking things. They can't sell the new stuff until they break the old. This is why Microsoft is dangerous to business on the whole.

Re:Vista will dominate

[clevershark]

A place I used to work for (very large bank) was using NT 4 as recently as 2004.

Then they relented and let *some people* install Windows 2000 on their machines, if it was determined that they really needed it. That's not an uncommon practice with very large companies. All the PCs we had had license stickers for more recent versions of Windows, but we still had an OS which had been released back in 1996.

I've nothing against using Windows, as long as someone pays me for it...

Insightful

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Actually, you are correct on this one. Win 95 was cobbled together from parts of the Cairo project that either fell apart. You can see exactly what cairo was supposed to be here Ironically, enough the part that still hasn't been introduced is Winfs. Yes that's right winfs is over tweleve years late.

Re:Insightful

[telbij]

Ironically, enough the part that still hasn't been introduced is Winfs.

Far be it from me to be a grammar nazi, but even so I gotta say:

"Worst... Comma... Placement... EVER!"

Re:View from a non programmer

[The-Bus]

"But basically Microsoft will bring Flash like GUI programming for real programs"

I know you meant to have that line as praise, but you've put the fear of God in me and anyone that's ever used a Flash-based UI.

On the Programmers View

[ratboy666]

You look forward to exploiting the "3D interface". But you won't be able to. Here's why:

The "home" edition of Vista won't support the interfaces. So, any software oriented toward home use cannot depend on the feature.

Corporate desktops are plain. The investment in the required dx10 infrastructure won't happen for years. So, the feature cannot be exploited in corporate applications either.

After eliminating home and coporate, what is left? AERO really won't have much of a place, outside of enthusiasts. Unless there is an application that can start in the enthusiast domain and drive the migration.

My prediction: the ONLY application that exploits this feature will be Vista itself. Possibly Microsoft may update some applications, but it must remain an optional part.

Microsoft will offer .NET updates and maybe force MS IDE users to use the interface (not as many desktops to migrate, and its a minor part).

Don't count on this feature as a platform for 3 to 5 (or more) years, though.

Ratboy.

I understand, but don't agree.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

It would be very fun to program in avalon, but utlimately the best applications are the ones with the simplest interfaces. Too many comapnies try to be innovative and cool with their UI design and its crap. Its all nonstandard and does not behave the way all of the other controls in windows do. MAYBE avalon will entice those compaines to write all their crap in avalon, which will bring standardisation and a higher level of stability to these programs, but nto for a good 2-3 years after vista. Probley just in time for the update. I can't wait that long, as a user or a developer. I'd just rather use things ina simple elegent way without animated 3-d buttons. I'm not going to buy another computer, for a nother year at least. Even if vista is out then, I might have to take a real look at getting an intel mac Mac.

Re:So just for perspective...

[tehshen]

Halo?

Hi!

Re:Vista will dominate, maybe, maybe not

[slashname3]

From what has been described so far there does not appear to be any major features that will get the corporate world to jump on the upgrade bandwagon for Vista. If anything there are features that will cost a lot to use if you do upgrade. Many many companies will opt to continue to use XP for most of their systems for some time to come. Unless Microsoft can give corporate users a solid business reason to spend millions upgrading there won't be as big an uptake as Microsoft is hoping. The product has been delayed repeatedly, features have been cut, and there are viable alternatives available. As another writer wrote in another thread the reasons for the delay may be due to the software assurance deals they managed to get many many corporate users to sign up for a few years ago. Now that they have delayed the release of Vista long enough for those contracts to expire they can release the new version and charge those companies again. If they fall for it a second time shame on them. They deserve to through away that money on something that is not going to provide any real benefit to the end users. Eye candy is not a valid business reason to upgrade OS and hardware.

Most likely the biggest market for Vista will be cosumers buying new systems from the likes of Dell or HP which will bundle the new Vista OS with the hardware. They won't have a choice. Unless those vendors continue to sell lower priced systems with XP and reserve Vista for the high end systems which are apparently is needed to see all the eye candy.

He overlooks the biggest crime of all.

[Captain Rotundo]

I am not very familiar with this guy, as I dont ussually read microsoft press, but how can he link to a dialog like this: http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/vista_5 342_rev5_00.jpg (it says 'You dont currently have permission to delete this file." and then offers the choices "Continue", "Skip", and "Cancel") - and not point out what a total usibility disaster it is? How can a company like microsoft in today's world put up something that abnoxious and unusable?

In case you don't get it its making a decarative statement and then presenting options that have no correlation to the statement, I'm a professional in computers, and have been using them for well over 15 years and couldn't possibly even guess what each of those options should do. Continue what? if I dont have permission to do it how can I continue. Cancel what exactly?, as far as I can tell it just said it wasn't going to do anything anyway. Skip? skip the delete I was just told I can't do? I am baffled... based on the article I guess that it should have said something like "You currently don't have permission to delete this file, what would you like to do?" and given choices like "Grant Permission", "Don't Delete" etc...

I haven't really used windows extensively in a very long time so maybe if I did I would be used to figuring out these obscure dialogues, but I don't think I would ever stop cringing when I saw them. It reminds me of the dialog windows used to put up when you went to access help for the first time in an app, it would ask how big the search database should be (or something) and give you three choices similar to "small (recommended)" "medium" "large" and no other info, not even a clue as to how this would effect your help at all. do they still do that nonsense?

Re:It'll exceed OSX and Linux eh?

[TheRaven64]

This windows NT 4.0 will kill Linux

I was using NT 4 back in 1996. Back then, it has SMP (scaled up to 32 processors, although the cheap version was limited to two). Linux was just starting to get SMP capability.

It had native threading, which Linux only got last year.

It had full support for ACLs in the filesystem. Linux got that in, what, 2000? Does it even work with the standard filesystems? I've been using ACLs with UFS2 (the default FS) on FreeBSD for a couple of years, but I've not seen them in common use on Linux.

It had a GUI with a single, consistent, user interface toolkit. Linux got one of those in 2030?

It had support for hardware accelerated OpenGL and later DirectX. I can't remember the first time I got 3D acceleration of anything other than GLide working with Linux, but I don't think it was before 2000.

It had a stable ABI and component system that allowed some basic introspection and management of reference counted objects. These objects still work on current versions of Windows[1].

Did NT4 kill Linux? No. It was, however, a long way ahead of the competition. Now, let's look at MacOS of that era; it had the consistent UI toolkit (and a set of HIGs people actually used), but no security model, no memory protection and no pre-emptive multitasking. NT4 was pretty far ahead of that too. Apparently OS/2 was in a similar place, but I didn't use it so I can't comment.

Now, let's look at Vista. It's got the same VMS-lite kernel. A nice architecture - much nicer than UNIX, in my opinion - but they haven't really done anything interesting with it for a decade. It's got a 3D accelerated desktop, which may be slightly better than OS X 10.4 (although 10.5 will probably be out before Vista), and fairly similar to Cairo on something like XGl. It will have a horrible mish-mash of visual styles and behaviours that will make a GNOME/KDE hybrid look like the paragon of usability. It will have...uh...

Vista may be ahead of the competition when it launches, but if it is then it will be by such a small margin that it will be the last release that is. When Microsoft originally announced Longhorn, people thought they might actually deliver. Their competitors were worried. They started developing the same sorts of features Vista promised and eventually came very close. Meanwhile, Microsoft started dropping the same features from their version until Vista became so anticlimactic that even Windows fanboys stopped caring.

[1] I think. I haven't actually used Windows for two years, but I haven't read anything to the contrary.

Transparent Windows: learn from Apple's Mistake

[Aqua OS X]

There are a few useful nitches for transparent windows, but applying them to system windows is a giant no-no.

You'd think MS would learn from Apple's mistake... instead they took it to the next level of ridiculousness. When OS X first came out it was littered with transparent menus, menu bars, dialogs, etc. A lot of the elements have either been removed, or brought up to about 98% opacity. You might not even notice the transparency unless you really look closely.

Drastic transparency looked -awesome- in marketing screen shots, and it was promoted as a way to know if content existed behind something such as a window bar. However, it was really annoying. Interface elements become difficult to distinguish and it hindered the speed in which it took to accomplish a task.

But, at least MS gives users the option to turn this crap off. Apple never did that. Mac users needed to wait for Apple to slowly remedy the UI elements we were complaining about.

Re:Posix and security

[IntlHarvester]

This is "role-based" security, not "user-based"

So, no, Linux/Unix has not been doing this since inception. There's been military versions of Unix that have done it for a long time, but it's hasn't been a generally available feature (and still isn't on the desktop even for SELinux distros).

Re:Filesystem

[ickoonite]

Nice troll.

I've karma to burn, so just a couple of points:

Vista doesn't look vastly different...

This is such bollocks it's hard to know where to start. As Thurrott laments, one of the most fundamental features of a windowing system - the idea of depth in a 2D space and so marking out the active window - has been thoroughly fucked up by a team whose sole goal seems to have been to chase the teh pretty crowd. Those screenshots were damning. Usability has gone to shreds.

...even though most of the OS has been rewritten...

Do you actually have any evidence of this? Judging by the icons in some of the dialogue boxes (try here), some of the stuff hasn't seen an update since Windows 95. There's a reason it "'appears' to not be different to push away current Windows Users".

...and has tons of new protections and features that just work..

Evidently not. Evidently they are so poorly implemented that even fanboy Thurrott is banging his head on the table.

Vista is a new OS with the first radical change in Windows since Windows 3.0.

You're a fucking idiot. A first class fucking nutcase.

Then I read the rest of your post, where you start talking about this fire bollocks, or something, and I realise that you actually are a fucking nutcase...

...you need to prepare, learn and even USE some of the ideas Microsoft has recreated in development, and bring these to other OSes.

OK, I'll give you that. Apple brought decent search to Mac OS X in 2005 after Microsoft announced it would implement it in Vista, then Longhorn. Alas, Windows users will get their hands on it in...2007. Hmmmm...

iqu :|

(And, just one thing, moderators, before modding me down, take a moment to read and consider the parent's post. I am normally a rational and controlled type, but sometimes things just have to be said...)

Re:Resistant to change

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Nobody wants a change for the worse. But chances are that, just like Win95, 2k and XP, everybody will learn the new features, understand why the change is better and will be thankful they are past the old days of the previous OSs.

The problem is, most of the actual features were ripped out and mothballed, while most of the anti-features were left in. For features you get a graphics card accelerated UI, some security enhancements that reviewers claim are really annoying and poorly implemented, Some dev tool improvements, and that is about it. For anti-features you get DRM restricting use of your data, intentionally crippled OpenGL performance, a built-in proprietary replacement for the open PDF standard in an attempt to lock you in even more, etc. You do get indexed files (done less well than Google desktop or OS X), you don't get a database file system, you don't get resolution independent UI, you don't get a usable shell environment, etc. All the reasons to get it were ripped out while all the reasons to avoid it were left in. This makes sense for Microsoft. You have to buy a new computer eventually so you'll be forced to buy a copy of Vista bundled with it, regardless of the feature set. It just sucks donkey balls for users.

Re:It'll exceed OSX and Linux eh?

[rossifer]

You've got a bunch of points (many of which are valid to one degree or another) but I'm only going to respond to one.

It [NT4] had full support for ACLs in the filesystem. Linux got that in, what, 2000? Does it even work with the standard filesystems?

ACL's are a filesystem feature, not an OS feature. NTFS has them, FAT and FAT32 do not. Ext2 does not have ACL's, though hooks were left for ACL's from the beginning and support can be patched into 2.4 and 2.6 kernels for Ext2 and Ext3. AFS (Andrew File System), which is the original king of ACL's, could be used on Linux in 1998. ReiserFS has them (don't know for how long). SGI's XFS is the same (I think this was pretty recent).

I've been using ACLs with UFS2 (the default FS) on FreeBSD for a couple of years, but I've not seen them in common use on Linux.

Evidently, people don't miss them, because the option has been available to Linux users about as long as NTFS has been on the scene. I would hazard a guess that ACL's aren't the "make or break" feature for most people's filesystem choice.

Now, I'm not going to seriously rain on your parade as the point of this argument seems to boil down to: NTFS is a great filesystem. I agree. NTFS is some sweet technology that works real nice in the here and now. But it isn't the only game in town for high performance journaling file systems (with ACL's no less). The fact that people don't really seek out ACL's on linux is simply that ogw permissions are so well understood by so many unix admins, and most of the time, ogw permissions are good enough.

Regards,
Ross

Not the first time they haven't met expectations

[Locke2005]

Imagine how poor Melinda Gates felt on her honeymoon, when she discovered what Bill had been promising her for years was going to be "the greatest thing ever" could be summed up in two words -- "micro" and "soft".