Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mossberg - Vista Is Worthy, Largely Unexciting

Posted by Zonk on from the it-cannot-slice-tomatoes dept.

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walter S. Mossberg says Vista is the best version of Windows yet, but doesn't represent a major step forward: 'Overall, it works pretty much the same way as Windows XP.' More from the review: 'Nearly all of the major, visible new features in Vista are already available in Apple's operating system, called Mac OS X, which came out in 2001 and received its last major upgrade in 2005. ... in my tests, some elements of Vista could be maddeningly slow even on new, well-configured computers. Also, despite Vista's claimed security improvements, you will still have to run, and keep updating, security programs, which can be annoying and burdensome. Microsoft has thrown in one such program free, but you will have to buy at least one more. That means that, while Vista has eased some of the burden on users imposed by the Windows security crisis, it will still force you to spend more time managing the computer than I believe people should have to devote.'"

6 of 398 comments (clear)

  1. He likes it, but doesnt want to say he likes it by derrickh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Have you ever felt that sometimes people go out of their way to put down Microsoft.

    Basically the article says:
    Vista is the best version of Windows ever...But its not.
    Vista is very secure...But only if secure it.
    You get a free Antivirus program...Buts its not as good as the ones you have to pay for.
    Vista is very easy to use...But I still had to click on stuff, so it sucks
    Vista has a cool search feature...But Apple had it first.

    D

    --
    The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
    1. Re:He likes it, but doesnt want to say he likes it by Vellmont · · Score: 4, Insightful


      I wonder, maybe XP was just good enough, and didn't really need to many improvements, besides the security patches it has been receiving, not mention two full service packs.

      Well, I'd disagree that XP is an OS that doesn't need improving. One thing that I simply HATE is the
      constant rebooting you have to do when you either upgrade some critical part of the OS, or re-install a piece of software.

      The rebooting problem is a major flaw of the OS. It was designed with the philosophy "rebooting is OK, since updates are infrequent and won't affect the user experience". Linux/Unix was designed with the opposite philosophy, i.e. "this is a multi-user system that needs to be available 24/7. Rebooting is just plain terrible and should be used as a last resort".

      This flaw has been improved somewhat in Vista with the new driver model, but it still hasn't really been fixed.

      There's also some things I'd love to see Microsoft support in the UI. Why can I get a weather report, stock ticker, dictionary lookup, etc from out of the box on a Linux machine.. but I have to go download spyware laden 3rd party apps (or try to dig through multiple free windows apps) to get the same thing on Windows?

      If I can come up with a few things that's improve the Windows experience in 5 minutes, why can't Microsoft develop some actually usefull stuff in 5 years? I'll withhold final judgement until I actually try Vista, but so far the reviews I've read haven't exactly been stunning.

      --
      AccountKiller
  2. Congratulations, Microsoft Users! by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm glad that you can be welcomed to the world of the-rest-of-us, with Operating System features we've had since 2005 or so.

    Now, I can only hope that Microsoft got this security "issue" fixed, so that you PC users will stop spamming me with sexually explicit crap and drug sales, and maybe my shared cable modem speeds will go up, with the worms circulating the internet being fixed in Vista.

    Hopefully, in time, I can welcome you all to the world of computing with minimal/no time spent on security and maintenance. Either way, I'm glad the world is catching up.

    --
    WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
  3. Re:Someone is alittle too idealistic... by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Uhh...

    Unix users don't really worry about these things. As an admin, I occasionally poke around to make sure everything is okay (verify checksums once in a while), but invariably, everything is fine.

    I ran a virus scan for fun, once. (ClamAV).

    Once you setup a Unix-y network, you just leave it, and things tend to keep working until the machines rust. I'm including Apple in this category, but we've got plenty of Linux machines around, too.

    It's not so much a mother still makes the bed for me, as it is a I enjoy city-provided water and natural gas supply. I don't like lugging propane cyclinders, I hate chopping wood, and I wouldn't stand for no-running-water.

    Why should you spend ANY of your computing time. If you're going to waste your time, at least waste it on Slashdot, not Norton Anti-virus.

    --
    WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
  4. Re:And OSX Tiger isn't much different than OSX 10. by sootman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This has nothing to do with fanboyism. The difference is, OS X from 10.0 to 10.1 (faster) to 10.2 (smoother looking) to 10.3 (expose) to 10.4 (dashboard, spotlight) has had lots of improvements, and each previous release was only a year or so apart, and 10.4 came out over a year ago, while Vista took the largest software company in the world 5 years to come up, stripping features the whole time, which is is just coming out now. (Where by "now" I mean "soon.") So of course the differences in each version of OS X are smaller, and of course it's more impressive to have had a product with most of the same features out sooner, and of course MS looks like crap for taking so long to deliver so little.

    Add to that the system requirements, the many different versions, and Microsoft's abysmal security record--their response to which is mostly to ask users "Are you sure you want to do this?" before every trivial operation, AND NOT EVEN REQUIRING AN ADMIN PASSWORD TO SAY 'YES'--and you can see why people aren't getting excited about it.

    On a related note, I think it would be the funniest thing in the world if Apple announced tomorrow that 10.5 would be released on Monday the 29th. :-)

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  5. Resource requirements by ChrisWong · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does anyone know why Vista is such a resource hog? I don't mean the fancy UI/eye candy. I mean basic OS functionality: even Vista's most basic mode without the fancy features has a bare minimum RAM requirement of a half gig. At home, I have a Linux/KDE box with Windows 2000 running in a VMWare image -- hardly a minimal environment -- all with 384M of RAM. Apart from the exotic graphics stuff turned off, what is it about Vista that is hogging all that RAM? Can that junk be turned off?

    Most of the time, I want an OS to boot up and get out of my way so I can open up my applications where I do my real work. I'm not sure I'm too excited about an OS that wants most of my RAM just to wake up, leaving me with little room to do real work.