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Windows Vista - Still Fresh After 19 Months?
MyStuff writes "ZDNet blog Hardware 2.0 looks at the effect of having used Windows Vista for over 18 months. It Windows Vista the indispensable upgrade that Microsoft wants you to think it is? Writer Kingsley-Hughes says 'Having been using Vista for over 18 months I believe that it's a huge improvement over XP and even though I still use XP I find that I miss many of the features that Vista offers.' Just the same, he goes on, 'I wouldn't call any of the changes earth-shattering. When I'm using XP systems I miss some of the features but not so much that they push me to upgrade any faster.' He then goes on to give a feature-by-feature breakdown of all of the improvements Vista has over XP, and what long-term use of these features can net." A possibly useful guide for gamers or administrators thinking about upgrading sometime soon.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Not counting the "beta" versions given to special corporations and colleges, I don't think its fair to judge Vista just yet. Asking if Windows Vista is still "fresh" after 19 months is like asking if the PS3 is still "fresh" after 12 months.
From the article:
Maybe it's just me, but I hardly use the Start Menu. I assign keyboard shortcuts to all my commonly used applications. I might go digging around in the Start Menu a couple times a week, but's hardly a reason to change operating systems.
Is that really a huge efficiency boost? I use Windows Search even less than I use the Start Menu. It's very rare that I don't know where to find something on my own machine. Does anyone else use the Search function that often? For what are you typically searching?
Yikes! Large icons are the first thing I usually turn off. What a waste of screen space. Once again, is this really a huge efficiency boost?
So in conclusion, "beats XP hands down" translates to two features I'd never use, and larger icons that I'll want to turn off. Think I'll wait a bit...
I don't get it.
Between work and home I have two Win2000 boxes and two XP boxes (and a Redhat as well). I remember still running NT when XP was introduced.
Unless you have an application that can't be run on an older system, and by then you usually need a newer computer anyway, is upgrading really worth the hassle? A workstation for me becomes like an old pet. You're used to it. You know how what its quirks are.
Personally, I've never felt a compelling reason to upgrade. I like shiny toys as well as the next person, but I have never upgraded a Windows OS in my life.
Best Windows Freeware
Looks like I'll stick it out with Win2k, nothing interesting here =)
Reboots: I reboot my 2k media PC once a month maybe
GUI: I still can't find a person that can point out why XP was so much better than 2000. If you can convince me, please do. There just aren't any productivity advances that I can see. The article author pointed out the vast productivity benefits from the start menu, but honestly, if you're spending more than 1% of your time in the start menu you're not being productive period.
I think everyone who upgrades and claims it substantially better are under self-hypnosis. The 'beautiful graphics' are deluding you into believing the OS is so much better. If Microsoft had updated their driver compatibility layer like they did in XP, I don't think there'd be a single justification to ever buy XP. But like I said, I dare the community to say differently. Give me a reason to enter graphics country!
Price: How much for media center edition? Ouch.
Bye!
The problem with the new mac ads is it doesn't show the OS, the system or anything useful. Even worse most of what they say is blantantly false. Yeah a Windows machine is a full work system and has no entertainment value, that's why 90 percent of computer games are still available on the PC. When mom and pa see the commercial and see "mac is fun, PC is work" they think about their system and realize it's not that much work. Adopting a mac would be more expensive to them, be more work and they don't want to spend 1000-2000 for a mid level system.
...." Stop. Realize that people don't use dos based systems any more because they don't want to do that, running 1-2 programs just to get a third working isn't cool, and won't work for most people unless Microsoft disappears, and from the look of it Microsoft is going to be here to stay.
You can lie your ass off to a consumer but the minute they realize what you said isn't the whole truth you're screwed. What Mac has said in their last round of commercials has hurt it because people started smelling the BS, and because people looked into it and see the problems.
Hell their switch ads tried to bandwagon people on with famous faces. However looking back at them I can tell you. I only knew one or two of them. Bandwagoning commercials slowly faded away in the 90s. There's a reason for that, it stopped working so well... except in politics of course, when you're forced to choose if you're going to vote.
As for Linux the steady trickle I've seen going to Linux won't matter, it's still too small, and I still see people returning to windows, most people will continue to use XP. I'm all for using Linux as a back bone to coporate systems, but it's still not good enough to be a platform for business/work, nor one for productivity. People still don't want to do everything by hand, they want the comfort of Windows, and XP has given them a perfect surrounding. The minute you can't run program X from linux, it fails in people's minds. You can start by saying "well you can just run it under
Complaints:
For some reason they fucked up the defragmenter and now it's just a big "defrag my hard drive now!" button with no progress indicator or something to show how fragmented your disk is (this *really* pisses me off). Startup/shutdown time is better, but hibernate/sleep is a problem - when I come out of them it doesn't remember I have a second monitor, and I have to reboot to get it back. Thus, they're mostly pointless.
Surprisingly it runs a little faster on my notebook than XP did, I assume because of the caching (2GB RAM) and Aero offloading stuff to the GPU.
All in all, I wouldn't want to go back, but I don't know it's worth the hassle of upgrading for everyone. Especially since not all software works quite right yet. YMMV.
One often over looked "benefit" of Vista is that it's Control Panel is completely redesigned and made much more confusing. So confusing in fact that my mother (after having upgraded and I don't know why) is unable to break her PC anymore by messing with the Control Panel. Under XP she knew where things were and would adjust them. Now she can't find anything, so I get fewer calls.
On the flip side of the coin, the poor guys in my IT department are also lost as to where the hell the controls they need have gone in the new Control Panel.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
I would go farther and say that if this article is really the result of 19 months of research, then the reviewer is hiding something.
Every point made is vague and subjective, and completely meaningless. If Kingsley-Hughes thinks that the 'Start Menu' is an indicator of performance, I have to wonder if he even knows what an operating system is.
Windows Vista: It's still not a Mac.
You left out nicer fonts!
But almost everything he said could have as easily been done in XP- better fonts, faster startup, improved search... all this could have just as easily been in SP2, or at least SP3, if MS hadn't been expending all that money and energy on Vista.
Here's my favorite quote: ``Some programs still have problems with Vista but the blame for this really falls on the vendor and not Microsoft.''
I wonder how he arrives at that? If the program already existed, and Vista didn't, and MS wrote Vista with backward compatibility in mind (did they?) it's hardly the app vendor's fault. But even if MS didn't care about backward compatibility, that's not the app vendor's fault. They can't write programs to an OS that hasn't been written! So this was just a goofy statement.
On the flip side, an employee here just bought a laptop with Vista on it. Another admin has spent at least a day working on the stupid thing over the past week or so, just trying to get it to work properly on a network that has been supporting several versions of Windows as well as OSX, Linux and Solaris for years. Granted, he hasn't used Vista before, but he knows Microsoft OSes prior to Vista just fine. (One of the things that pisses me off about MS is that with every release you have to learn where things are all over again.)
And there is NO excuse for scrolling something like a start menu using standard sized fonts. None. Ever. Morons.
He's a paid blogger. His list of features are less than stellar and hardly warrant the bluster he gives them.
It isn't uncommon to have someone gain familiarity with something, and then when switching feel a loss for some things or feel that the old way was better. Humans shun change.
I am entitled to 10 licenses of XP Pro, 10 XP Pro 64 bit and 10 Vista Business and I use Ubuntu on my main box with XP Pro on all the others. This isn't because of not wanting to change, it's because Vista sucks that bad. He doesn't even honestly talk about the draconian nightmarish DRM infections in Vista. No way am I going to relinquish my computer rights to Microsoft and the pathetic content providers. I want less of Microsoft entwined in my system; not more.
BTW, FYI, the WGA Notification program (remake, take-two) has been released and you all should be careful about going to Microsoft's site and accidentally installing it. It does prompt you to install, but it still is malware in the keenest form. The installer uses very deceptive and manipulative language by offering enhanced security when WGA Notification has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with security of any kind.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
No way am I going to relinquish my computer rights to Microsoft and the pathetic content providers.
Psst. You don't have to. The "DRM" in Vista is hardly more than what's in XP or OSX; it's just that the on-disk versions of MS-apps support it, rather than the on-update versions for XP.
He doesn't even honestly talk about the draconian nightmarish DRM infections in Vista.
Probably because, like 99% of people, he'll never, ever have to worry about them.
No way am I going to relinquish my computer rights to Microsoft and the pathetic content providers.
Then don't use DRM encumbered media. Whether or not you are using Vista is irrelevant.