Information Technology Pros Debate Windows Vista

An anonymous reader writes "As a follow-on to John Welch's widely read review arguing that Mac OS X is superior to Vista, Information Week is running the first in a weeklong series of roundtables where a programmer, networking consultant, and 3 IT managers have a serious technical debate on the pros and cons of Vista. What's been your experience with Vista? More importantly, do you think it will ever gain traction among corporate users, or is its glitzy Aero interface destined to make it mainly a consumer OS?"

Comments

As an IT manager

[Anonymous Coward]

As an IT manager, I can plainly see Vista offers no benefits to my company. The only feature that piqued my interest was the Bitlocker technology but we use PGP's Whole Disk Encryption product already and that works fine.

I see nothing that will make our employees more productive or save us money on IT. We'll be sticking with XP.

Me

[skinfitz]

Having used Vista, realised the issues, then gone back to XP, my perception of Vista now is that it is basically the new Windows Millennium Edition.

Staying with XPSP2 strongly advised.

Roll on 2009 and the next version, however in the meantime if you are going to have the hassle of nothing working anyway, you may as well take a look at switching to OSX or Linux.

Been using it for 3 days now

[Monkeys!!!]

I've been running Vista Ultimate for 3 days now.

So far, my experience with Vista has been mostly positive. The intergrated search is quite useful and the re working of the explorer shell is a noticeable improvement.

On thing I have noticed is that Vista has re-done the menu layout and prompts and it now closely resembles KDE, imo. Not a complaint or a compliment though I do imagine the layout change is going to confuse a lot of people. I can see why it was re-done though and I imagine once I've gotten used to it I will find it an improvement over XP.

Really I can't say much else as I've only just scratched the surface of what Vista can do. Is it better then XP? So far yes. Is it worth years of delayed devlopment and several hundred dollars? That remains to be seen.

Re:sounds like a good discussion

[Tackhead]

> > Information Week is running the first in a weeklong series of roundtables where a programmer, networking consultant, and 3 IT managers have a serious technical debate on the pros and cons of Vista.
>
> Anyone with a job title like that is sure to be a Master Debater.

...for values of "have a serious technical debate" approaching "walk into a bar".

Huh?

[DogDude]

Huh? Of course it'll be widespread. It works fine. It's got all of the features of XP, and then some. MS is gonna stop selling XP eventually. What else are people going to use OSX? Linux? Turn off Aero, and it looks and acts like Windows XP 95% of the time. It's run every Windows XP app that I've tried to use on it. It's really not a big deal from a user point of view.

Sounds like

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista is just not ready for the desktop

Showstopper

[jareth-0205-mobile]

You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means...

What is missing here?

[UnknowingFool]

a programmer, networking consultant, and 3 IT managers have a serious technical debate on the pros and cons of Vista.

I can't tell if that is the setup or the punchline.

Unfortunately

[Greyfox]

I'm frequently subjected to Windows at work. I'm under the impression that it kind of sucks for automated building. Various debugging and other popups frequently hang our build system. If we could just rip the goddamn UI out of that thing and run it text mode only it might actually almost not suck for our needs.

That's not the entire story though. You see, I used to do OS/2 tech support back in the days. I got pretty familiar with the guts of OS/2 and Windows and OS/2 share a lot of early design. And early design flaws. In my opinion the most frustrating one of these is the fact that the application itself handles window frame messages. That means if the application is poorly written and stops handling frame window commands at any point you can't even minimize the window until it gets done processing. Minimize, kill and move should pretty much never stop working for any given window, even if the application is displaying a goddamn modal dialog box (Another pet peeve of mine and Microsoft seems to encourage programming by modal dialog.)

Meanwhile OSX and E17 demonstrate that you can put a glitzy interface on an OS that's quite suitable for server purposes. I'm pretty sure the only way that Microsoft could design an OS that didn't suck would be to tear the whole thing down and start from scratch, though.

Re:Unfortunately

[NatteringNabob]

[I'm under the impression that it kind of sucks ...]

You could have stopped there. Windows is just a bad implementation of VMS + Unix + DOS that, due to Microsoft's successful violation of anti-trust law, is pretty much the only operating system you can buy pre-installed on commodity hardware. Because of that successful illegal behaviour, all the corporate apps (and games) run on Windows, hence all the corporate users are on Windows, adn all the gamers are on Windows. Vista offers exactly nothing to those users. But if you buy a new computer, Vista is what you are going to get because Microsoft wants it that way. It isn't exactly a surprise that nobody is buying Vista 'upgrades'.

Re:Unfortunately

[fabs64]

You're right of course, and it does work (in a very cluggy and unresponsive kind of way), however they don't have to go to great lengths to stop it. As the GP pointed out, goddamned fucking modal dialogs stop this working.
The SQL client I use at work has a modal dialog box pop up while executing a query, unfortunately because of the size of the data sets I'm working on some of my queries go for hours, the program itself also frequently crashes.
bada bing, without too much effort on the developers part I have an application that takes over my screen all the time.

GP is right, having the client process deal with window messages is right up there with Microsoft's worst bad design decisions.

Re:Unfortunately

[TheNetAvenger]

That means if the application is poorly written and stops handling frame window commands at any point you can't even minimize the window until it gets done processing. Minimize, kill and move should pretty much never stop working for any given window, even if the application is displaying a goddamn modal dialog box (Another pet peeve of mine and Microsoft seems to encourage programming by modal dialog.)

You have no idea what you are talking about. I think you are confusing the 'single input queue of OS/2' with Windows, which since Win3.x has always had a multi-input queue.

Vista also has several changes that address this even futher. For example the composer can even redraw unresponsive applications without any I/O lock.

Anyone that has used Windows with an NT base like 2k/XP/Vista knows that 99% of the time you can still 'Close and sometimes Minimize/Move' a crashed application; and in Vista it is 100% of the time on all of the above.

Meanwhile OSX and E17 demonstrate that you can put a glitzy interface on an OS that's quite suitable for server purposes

You are kidding right? Have you ever even seen performance numbers comparing Windows 2003 server to OSX Server? Have you even seen deployments of remote RDP users on a Windows 2003 server with all the themes and UI glitz of XP active?

The scary thing is that Longhorn even takes this to the next level, letting remote users run the 3D Aero interface remotely, fully accelerated locally because the Vista/Longhorn composer is pusing Vector and 3D information over RDP. Lets see you run a 3D application on any other Server OS or even Desktop OS 4,000 miles away with hardware acceleration and with a 3D UI with all the glitz. And this is something Vista does today, and Longhorn Beta will do later this year. I have seen our techs easily using glass and accelerated 3D applications from a Vista or Longhorn server session on a 56K connection, which is past impressive to being a bit scary.

I'm pretty sure the only way that Microsoft could design an OS that didn't suck would be to tear the whole thing down and start from scratch, though

And maybe if you knew what you were talking about you would understand the NT kernel of Windows is considered to be one of the best OS foundations, even from critics in the OSS world, it is the Win32 subsystem that takes a beating and MS could very easily replace it at any point.

But then again, if you had any clue you wouldn't have made the irresponsible and inaccurate statements in your post.

Next time do a google or even ask the 10 year old computer nerd that lives next door before trying to add information on something you know nothing about.

Re:Unfortunately

[Mr2001]

That means if the application is poorly written and stops handling frame window commands at any point you can't even minimize the window until it gets done processing. Minimize, kill and move should pretty much never stop working for any given window, even if the application is displaying a goddamn modal dialog box[...]

Meanwhile OSX[...] Er... when an OSX app stops responding, the window can also become impossible to move, minimize, or close. I see it all the time. The best part is when cmd-opt-Esc brings up the Force Quit dialog box behind a frozen window, where you can't get at it. (Unless you remember to use Expose.)

Re:Unfortunately

[TheNetAvenger]

Apple has done both of the above- a few times

This IS NOT the same. MS has also ported Win32 and the NT Kernel many times; however, replacing the fundamental OS API set is something different.

MS is actively moving developers to managed code, and with a long term reason, so they can drop Win32 as secondary subsystem on NT with a new main system API.

Apple did VERY LITTLE when it comes to transitions making life easier on users. Their idea of compatibility was basically using a System9 VM on OSX. This is not creative, nor easy on the end users. MS on the other hand back in 1992 implemented the Win16 subsytem for application compatibility with Win 3.x while developing Windows NT. This was NOT an emulation environment, but a seperate Win16 subsystem that runs on the desktop side by side Win32.

MS is already doing this to a certain extent with .NET and other technologies like WPF. However, when MS decides to move away from Win32, as they HAVE DONE on the 64bit version of XP and Vista, it runs as a separate subsystem along side the replacement, and again with emulation.

NT's core is a client/server kernel technology and it is in the NT layers where what is kind of cool about Windows exists. NT's subsystem model allows for MS to move in or out any Subsystem that is equal to the main OS subsystem, this is also why a BSD *nix variant runs NATIVELY as another subsystem on NT, without EMULATION or VM.

Microsoft doesn't do any of the above because they don't have to.

Again, this is simply not true. First, XP64 and Vista 64bit do NOT USE the Win32 subsystem as the main OS subsystem. So they have done this, not only 1992 with the Win16 subsystem, but today on the 64bit versions.

I don't really care what you think of MS, as they both suck and do things well depending on what you look at. However to try to use Apple as a 'shining' example when it comes to OS architecture or API implementation it is VERY laughable.

Even Quartz2D continues to fall on its face with no default hardware accleration, pushing developers to use the very old QuickDraw API to maintain performance in applications.

Even 10.5 hasn't delivered an accelerated version of Quartz2D, yet Vista REPLACED their entire video subsystem while adding in WPF and other technologies. And Vista's new video subsystem is SO TRANSPARENT to users and even nerds, that people don't think Vista is any different than XP.

So with regard to the video, MS did too good of a job of creating a new video foundation/system, as most people don't even get all of it is NEW and think Vista is just like XP because all the applications look and run just fine.

Re:Im sorry....

[Toreo asesino]

one word:

"cache"

Vista will pre-load stuff it thinks you might need next. It's using your RAM to speed up your computer, which shockingly, is the idea of RAM.

Genius idea if you ask me; and I believe UNIX has been doing it for a while too - or at least something similar?

Re:Im sorry....

[MeanMF]

It's called SuperFetch and it puts your RAM to good use when it's not needed for anything else. You can disable it if you'd like.

Re:As an IT guy also

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between 98 and XP was huge in comparison though. The whole architecture was different - and thus XP (and indeed its predecessors 2000 and NT4) is a lot more secure than 98.

Real features like NTFS filesystem, properly done process separation, a more robust TCP/IP stack, better support for windows domain features etc made it worth upgrading 98 to XP.

I can't think of any such compelling features for business IT in moving to Vista from XP.

Idiots

[realmolo]

Am I the only one that thought all the interviewees were idiots?

There's a huge number of so-called "IT Professionals" that just don't have a clue. Lots of middle-aged guys who managed to get a job running the FAX machines at some corporation 20 years ago, and eventually ended up being the "IT guy". But they don't know ANYTHING. They buy whatever new hardware they think is neat, and that the salesmen from their vendors tell them they need. And then they pay for all-encompassing support contracts, so that they don't have to configure anything, or troubleshoot anything, because they don't actually know how to do that stuff.

I sometimes wonder if those guys are the majority of the IT employees in the United Stats. Guys that use the company's money to hire other people to do their jobs. The only reason they get away with it is because their boss is even MORE clueless about how IT should work.

Sorry, kind of off-topic, but I just can't stand the attitude of rags like "Information Week".

Sounds like a joke to me

[drsmithy]

Information Week is running the first in a weeklong series of roundtables where a programmer, networking consultant, and 3 IT managers have a serious technical debate on the pros and cons of Vista.

The Aristocrats !

My Vista pros/cons

[daybot]

Pros:

• Scheduled defrags without third party software
• Aero interface looks less dated

Cons:

• Regardless of memory usage, it's slower than XP. Games are slower (see Tom's Hardware), CAD/CAM apps are slower (same again)...
• A great deal of Windows software doesn't work on it yet. PGP has just reached beta, iTunes is having trouble, I can't get Cygwin to work properly, VMWare server doesn't have a released version that allows it to work as a host OS. That's most of the programs I run!
• UAC is broken. It slows down your system, bothers you far too often. If you've seen the Mac advert slagging off Vista security - well, it really is that bad.
• Games are slower
• It's DRM crippled to the extreme
• Aero doesn't run smoothly on mid-range Quadro cards...
• That stupid Windows-Tab animation keeps getting shown in the media when they talk about Vista's innovative new features - sorry, it's a very slow tool to use; press F9 on OSX to see how it should work (someone's done a hack to make this work in Vista, but it's bloody slow on Quadro).

My Experience with Vista has been great!

[Hawthorne01]

It looks just *awesome* on the shelf in the local computer store.

I'm sure if I actually bought and installed it, though, I'd have a different opinion...

Re:Media Center

[pavera]

I've seen it. It looks OK, but here's my story.

I was over at my friends house, he's all excited "I just got this new Vista Ultimate! Check out the Media Center". He turns on his TV, grabs the remote and starts up media center... goes to his recorded TV shows, hits play on a show from a couple days ago... we watch it for a couple minutes, then he goes back hits play on another show and.... Crash "Do you want to send a message to Microsoft?", no, start media center back up, hit play again on a different show, plays for about 3 seconds, crash again.

Then he says "Yeah, I can't get it to play more than one show per reboot... I don't know why, once you hit play on a show you have to watch that show all the way through, if you stop it or try to play another show it crashes. Once that show is done, it crashes, and you have to reboot to get it to play again"

His is just set up on a whitebox that he built and I don't know the stats or hardware he's got in it... but seriously, after seeing that and my other friend had it on his laptop (uninstalled and went back to XP after 2 weeks, couldn't get his development environment working under vista, also HATED UAC) watched him work for about 30 minutes one day, he had to have 15-20 UAC warnings in those 30 minutes, all for very normal things to do (like joining a wifi network) I'm never installing Vista, I'm glad I've got a non-OEM copy of XP that I can install on new hardware.

Not quite

[einhverfr]

I maintain one Vista machine for testing purposes. I do as little work as possible on it because quite frankly I prefer Linux. In particular, I make sure that LedgerSMB runs on Vista. LedgerSMB in turn depends on PostgreSQL, Vanilla Perl, and Apache.

Compared to XP, Vista is a mixed bag. There are some user experience improvements, and way the menus work on the start menu is an improvement. Aside from the initial disorientation, the UI is closer to what XP's should have been.

However, there are many complaints I have about Vista. UAC is the biggest one, and this can result in corrupted installs of some software (including Apache), and it is simply way too tempting to turn off every security improvement that Vista offers. Whatever Vista does, it will *not* make Windows that much more secure-- it just allows Microsoft to blame the users.

I also find Vista to be surprisingly slow (granted I only have 512MB RAM in this system) and some settings like UAC are hard to find. I think that Vista is going to be a support headache for everyone, and I do not recommend that people upgrade.

Yes.

[edunbar93]

More importantly, do you think it will ever gain traction among corporate users, or is its glitzy Aero interface destined to make it mainly a consumer OS?

Yes, because in 6 months, you won't be able to buy a new computer without Vista on it. And in two years, you won't be able to get support for XP. And then in about 4 years, you won't be able to get software compatible with XP for love or money.

Corporate users never really saw a lot of value in XP either. Moreover, it took about that long for it to "gain traction", in both the consumer and corporate markets. I've been working in the ISP industry since 1994, and tech support has watched as every new OS Microsoft has produced in that time get snapped up by a small percentage of early adopters, followed by the rest of the computing population as they upgrade their computers over time.

Most people find installing an operating system too much work, too time consuming, too difficult, or they just don't think about it at all. It *came* with the computer after all. Isn't it just a part of the computer? IT departments in companies see it much the same way. You have to upgrade the computer to get the next version of windows, so why not just let Dell or IBM do the install when you do your next upgrade? To install a new OS across an existing network of any size is too disruptive to the users, and too time consuming. A user would have to do without a computer for the better part of a day at the very least if you upgrade an existing system.

Two Weeks w/ Vista, From a Mac User.

[rizzo320]

My day job is supporting Macintosh computers. However, due to the ever changing IT market, I always to stay up to date on what's going on with Windows and Linux. It's in my best interest to be cross platform, especially when I need to explain to a Windows user how to do a specific procedure on the Mac, and vice versa. I have been a Windows user much longer (3.1) than I have been a Macintosh (didn't get involved with Macs until circa OS 7.6.1) user, so I've seen my fair share of kernel, UI, graphics, and other changes on both platforms over the years.

I was excited to hear that our Windows Vista (Business) Licenses had arrived via our MSDNAA account at work. So, I grabbed a license for testing and went at it. I wanted to leave my Mac alone and not try to force a Vista boot with Boot Camp + hacking. My original test box was:

Dell Optiplex GX270 P4 2.4 GHz, hyper-threading enabled.
1.25 GB DDR 400 RAM
80 GB HD (7200RPM/8MB Cache)
GeForce 4 MX 400 64MB Video Card (AGP 8x)
17" Flat Screen display

Install went perfect. After installation was complete, there were three or four Windows security updates awaiting me. After installing those, I started to play around. Unfortunately, my computer scored a 1.0 on the performance scale, mostly because of the video card. I was also disappointed that Aero was not supported on my video card as well, so all I had was the "Windows Vista Basic" theme available to me, without any of the new eye candy I was looking to see.

I really wanted to see what Vista had to offer, so I didn't want to settle for the reduced package. This is significant though. Microsoft wonders why they haven't seen to many upgrades to Vista yet- well this is one of them. A large amount of users with existing computers will not see the biggest UI improvement that Aero has to offer. This is different in comparison to Mac OS X 10.4, where, except for not being able to run a few screen savers, and not getting a few fancy effects here and there, your experience is pretty much the same visually, from a G3 iBook, right on through to the newest Mac Pro. Sure, there are applications that need core image, but, for the basic OS X install set, your experience is pretty much the same right on down the line.

Getting back to Vista... I decided to upgrade the computer as much as I could to get the full Vista experience, so I bumped myself up to 3GB of RAM, a 250GB 7200/16MB Cache hard disk, and, a GeForce FX 5200 128MB video card (best I can get for a low profile card w/bracket for this Dell). This brought my performance rating up to a 2.5, again, with the video card being the weak point.

Now I was getting Aero in all of its glory. Despite my video card being the bottom of the barrel for Vista/Aero, I haven't had any performance issues with any of the special effects (all of them are turned on). The only thing I'm kind of peeved about is the lack of NVidia support for this class of video card. NVidia has newer drivers out, however, but I had to use beta drivers from November for this card, because it looks like NVidia is in the process of dropping support for it. Despite being beta drivers, I haven't had any BSOD's or issues with them, and they are still faster than the default Microsoft drivers.

As for applications on Vista, its a mixed bag. Most things installed and worked OK. All my typical Internet applications and plugins (Firefox, Adobe Reader, Flash Player, Sun Java JRE, etc) worked without a hitch- even Gaim/GTK worked. Divx and RealPlayer are giving me issues where Windows has to switch out of Aero mode when they are running. It's kind of weird... the screen goes black for two seconds, and then comes back in Windows Vista "basic" mode. When you close the application, the reverse occurs, and you are back to Aero, with transparencies etc. VLC won't show most movies, just a bunch of changing colors in its window. iTunes worked OK for me, but I don't have my library saved on this computer. Office 2003 worked as well.