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HardOCP Spends 30 Days With Vista
boyko.at.netqos writes "Hardocp.com has published "30 days with Vista" — with the same author from "30 days with Linux" doing the evaluation. And he doesn't like it. From the article: 'Based on my personal experiences with Vista over a 30 day period, I found it to be a dangerously unstable operating system, which has caused me to lose data [...] Any consideration of the fine details comes in second to that one inescapable conclusion. This is an unstable operating system.'"
Is there anything that Vista does right? It's not just that it's more resource intensive, and less stable than XP - it's also less usable. Check out this report, vista is less intuitive, has higher menu latency, and has more "friction" than XP/OS X. This is not just about the OS being "pretty." For a product that is used every day by millions of people this will substantially impact productivity.
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Nice editor's note at the very end that says "Well, it's just this one guy's opinion, obviously Vista isn't unfit for any user like he thinks after EXTENDED REAL-LIFE TESTING. I'm not trying to appease our Masters in Redmond, really."
only people who have actually used Vista comment. These articles about operating systems are already boring enough without the same boring comments. At the very least I would like a few +5 funny comments.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Even if Vista is the gold standard of operating systems, I use Linux and FOSS because once it's on my computer I own it. The data is mine, what I do with it (on my personal system) is mine. I don't have to ask permission from Apple or Microsoft to boot. It's my computer, my software, my content.
I have had Vista running on a machine for about a month and I haven't run into a single issue yet. I hear horror stories (mostly on Slashdot), and I can't claim that they're false, but it does make me wonder what other people are doing that I am not (or what I am doing that OTHERS are not). Maybe the user is unstable, or perhaps there are driver issues.
Love sees no species.
So he's telling everyone about his experiences so we can judge whether we want to try Vista or not based partly on that information.
What I've been trying to figure out is why anyone would use a Windows operating system in the first year of release to begin with? Yes, sometimes you have no choice but to use Windows. Especially if you're a gamer. But that doesn't mean you need to use the newest release. There have been fourteen or fifteen major Microsoft Windows releases and we haven't learned by now that it's unwise to step into the newest version within the first year - or even two years sometimes?
It takes time for software to catch up and for the operating system itself to have some of the crapification sucked out of it. I can't think of a single release since 3.11 that wasn't plagued with significant problems at release. So if you feel like running the latest bloated Microsoft stuff somehow makes you 31337, then go for it and enjoy your misguided self-perceptions. Otherwise, give it a couple years and perhaps your existing software and games will work on it, new games and software will be specifically developed for it and the general stability and security will be much improved over where it is today.
And for fuck's sake, if you move to a brand new OS that was just released and you lose your precious data on it - who's really the idiot there?
"Btw, chances are it was a sound card driver - this is a moderately common problem, but it sure isn't the end of the world."
I agree, no one needs sound on a computer. That's why we have iPods.
The "so what" is that this is a quantified test. The methodology and happenings are described in detail. This is not a case of "some random guy doesn't like Vista". this is a case of "some guy who has been known to do this kind of test in the past has found that vista is unreliable, slow, and ineffective on mainstream hardware which is known good." Your misinterpretation of the situation suggests that you are, in fact, simply flamebaiting since that level of misdirection can only be deliberate.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Maybe all that flash on his site is crashing his vista box?
I like the plug-ins to browsers that replace flash with a button you click to enable flash for just that one part. it really scrubs out all those rotten ads.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I evaluated Vista on a mild machine - Dual Core Pentium D, Intel 950 graphics, 1 GB memory. Surprisingly, 50% of my system memory was being used by Windows and Aero. That was pretty much all I needed to know that I was sticking with XP for a little while longer.
.... But to say that it is "dangerously unstable" seems a bit much. Perhaps this guy had hardware issues that were responsible for the OS being unstable?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I have noticed that Windows fans' excuse for crashing on other people's systems is something along the lines of "Jeez, they must be stupid if they couldn't figure out what was causing their problem". I don't understand how that response is helpful or accurate. If you need to be that smart to use the OS, something is wrong. You said it is probably the sound card driver. Sure, not the end of the world, but how would Joe Shmoe know that? I sure didn't. And here is is, 5 or 6 years after XP is out, and I tried to plug a second monitor into my brand new Dimension E520 at work and the OS crashed when I told it I wanted the second monitor extending my first. Not even a BSOD. Just restarted with no warning. Is that what XP is supposed to do or do I just not know how to use it? I think you need to rethink your response and figure out that something about what you said is incorrect. Or am I just stupid too?
You know what, in your support for MS Vista you have inadvertently supported my thoughts on Linux. Yes, it's stable too and several distributions can be installed by general users. No complete neophyte will be able to fully install any OS, that is why computers come with the OS pre-installed.
There are a few driver issues with all OS software!
Now, since they are more or less equal, why use the one that cost you big money? Why use the OS that wants to report what you do and prevent you from playing your content?
Yes, I'm saying that if Dell and others shipped computers with some version of Linux pre-installed, it would be a very short time before everyone (nearly) was asking themselves why they should spend big dollars on MS software... assuming we get around/over the MS Tax. That is a problem that probably needs some investigation, perhaps legislative action.
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Any software or hardware in its 1st release will have issues. Can you name me something that in its 1st release was perfect? As for the data I agree if you are going to try a 1st rev of something back up your data. THis logic applies to any OS. I've had friends go from OSX 10.2 to 10.3 and hose their system and lose their data. Ask them where the backups are and you get the blank stare.... Nothing perfect...plan for the worst
It's habit for most people to complain about windows.
I usually find that people who bitch about it use it exclusively. They mostly don't even understand just how complex a job it is that operating systems have to do.
Me? I use Linux most of the time, and have XP for games and other trivial stuff (if games are trivial). Linux is far ahead in the server arena, an pure number cruncher stakes (which is what I use it for), but still behind in the home user experience. Unfashionable as that statement is, its true. Yes there are all the pieces, but how many versions of Linux are there? Is the Linux Standard Base adopted across the board yet? Nope? Well stop whining, Linux isn't ready for the the mainstream desktop. It needs to standardise.
I don't plan to buy Vista, simply because it does nothing I need.
That hasn't stopped me saying some people I know should quit bitching and buy it. After all, since they use Microsoft stuff anyway, they might as well get the next incarnation.
Go back and you'll see the exact same comments when Windows 2000 came out, when Windows XP was released, when the first Xbox was released and when the Xbox 360 was released.
I work as a usability consultant. Your post is the epitome of someone who is a computer apologist. You may feel overcoming difficulty with something that is not intended to be difficult, but the vast majority of Average Joe's are not apologists, they are survivors.
"I've been running the 64-bit version of Vista since it was released and it hasn't crashed on me once."
"I'm not having problems; therefore, nobody else could be having any, either."
" This guy couldn't figure out which driver/piece of hardware was causing this instability in a MONTH?"
He was using it as a common user with OEM hardware. You're telling me that Joe Six-pack can troubleshoot a driver problem in any timeframe? Remember, MS is marketing this as a retail, for-the-masses OS. The review chose to review the machine as a typical end-user.
"Btw, chances are it was a sound card driver - this is a moderately common problem, but it sure isn't the end of the world."
So now you admit sound card drivers are a common problem? You're right, it's not the end of the world, but the reviewer did claim it was the end for a lot of his data -- which goes against the whole reason to use a computer in the first place -- to store your data.
"This isn't 1994 anymore. The arguments against MS for making unstable operating systems ended when NT was released. Since Windows 2000, MS has made stable operating systems that really are usable by the average joe without difficulty."
Except for the fact of this relatively common sound card driver bug causing crashes. You have openly admitted as much yourself. Sounds like 1994 all over again.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I've been using the Business edition of Vista since November. At no time has the system crashed on me, or become overly unstable. When I first started using it, my "Vista Ready" laptop (HP nc6320) only had 512MB of ram, and most of the hardware devices were not recognized and HP did not have Vista drivers either. The first few weeks were a pain, but Vista was usable.
Slapping in an 1GB XD card that supported Vista Ready Boost really made a difference while I waited for the new memory chip to come in. Got the unit up to 1GB, and disabled non-recognized hardware until Vista drivers were available and I was good to go. Vista recognized the most important things to me, my wireless card and CD burner. It did not recognize my video chip set, but still gave me the option of 1024x768, so I was fine. I don't do gaming on this laptop, as it is a work one, so the features I needed were there. Eventually, sound drivers, proper video drivers, and the annoying finger print reader drivers were released.
Now, I will state that Vista should really be run with at least 2GB of ram, as it will use every bit it can get, but even with 1GB, my system has been very stable. Sure, I don't get the fancy Aero features, but I would likely turn them off anyways. On my work system, I like to run as much on the lean side as possible.
As for TFA, I'm not sure what to think. It's obvious that he has some hardware issues on his machine that he needs to look into, and he should have known better than running software like QuickTime that had known issues. I really wonder how much of his problems were caused by Vista, and how much were caused by trying to run legacy/non-updated software.
Normally, I'm all for bashing Microsoft, being a Linux/Mac OS X user normally, but even I can't agree with this article.
Yes. First, get this and this. Then try this URL to read it ad-free.
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I had Vista installed on my PC at work for about a month, but in the end I had to go back to XP. It wasn't a performance issue - the PC wouldn't do Aero but it ran pretty well even with the default Vista interface - it wasn't even UAC (which was switched off on day one). The biggest problem I had by far was that nothing would run: Exchange 2003 tools won't install. The Landesk Management console won't install. The ELM management console won't install. NT User/Computer manager won't run (Yes, I know). Even our call logging software (Sunrise) had serious install issues that could only be resolved by installing it as a Domain Admin. Put bluntly, it got to the point where I couldn't do my job properly because none of the tools I use on a daily basis would install or run under Vista.
Now, some of this is down to the software manufacturers for not being on the ball, some of it is due to things like MS moving all the IIS stuff so that older apps can no longer find it. Not to mention the fact that the Exchange 2003 tools are a Microsoft Product and they're not intending to provide an installation method under Vista *at all*. Even the Exchange 2007 tools have been looking a bit flaky where Vista is concerned.
The default in XP is to reboot and log the error in the Event Viewer when you get a BSOD instead of actually showing you the BSOD. Microsoft realized that since maybe 1/10,000 people actually can act on the BSOD data that shows, there's really no reason to show it to everybody else.
There's a checkbox to turn that feature off, if you want to see BSODs, in the System control panel I believe. Or just check your Event Viewer when you have a mysterious reboot.
Comment of the year
I haven't used Vista at all yet, but for the sake of argument I will assume that this review is a good indication of Vista's quality: a bit less good than XP. Now I have used XP, extensively, and I have used Linux extensively, and in my judgment the quality of a distribution like Fedora or Ubuntu is about on par with the quality of XP. You get roughly the same number of annoyances, the same amount of flaky behavior, and the same number of breakages, some of which you can fix and some of which you can't.
With Vista, apparently I need to knock it down 10% or so from XP in terms of its quality. Plus (and this is a big one) it actively works against the user with intentional breakages. DVD burning tools that produce discs only readable on Vista? Come again? IE7 objects to downloads from Sourceforge? Nice. So I'll take off another 10% for these shenanigans. That means Vista is about 80% as good as Ubuntu.
Where did the billions of dollars and years of development go? Why can't Redmond put out an OS that is at least as good as the freebie alternative? They should be selling an OS that is dramatically better than anything else available. Why aren't they?
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Could he not find an activation crack or something?
If you need to be that smart to use the OS, something is wrong.
More to the point, if you need to be that smart to use the OS, wouldn't you rather use an OS that puts those smarts to use through powerful tools like shell scripting, built-in command-line accessible compilers, and more? I thought the whole point of using Windows was that anyone can use it. Tell somebody's grandma that she should debug her drivers, you know?
it was ATI's latest driver (release, not beta). i've had three confirmed reports of BSOD from this release. and it's not just ATI, Nvidia's drivers have been seriously lacking. what the hell is going on at ATI/Nvidia? the OS was in PUBLIC beta forever, and now it's two months in release, and the drivers are still screwed.
This computer dual boots XP, where this never happens. The RAID driver is exactly the same on both OS's so I blame Vista.
Apparently Microsoft not only tried to copy the Unix security model and make an advanced Unix like shell, they also copied the Linux user mentality as well!
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For me, the most striking feature of his review concerned burning DVDs. He claimed that Vista uses a new file format for DVDs that isn't backward compatible with earlier Windows versions, not to mention being incompatible with Linux, Mac, etc. I'm puzzled about why I haven't heard more about this problem if it's real. For those of you running Vista, have you had problems writing data DVDs that work with non-Vista systems? Did you have to choose specifically to use the traditional format when burning the DVD? Is it really non-obvious how to make the traditional format the default as he suggests?
This seems like a show-stopper to me for anyone wanting to exchange data with non-Vista users, especially if the default is to use the Vista-only format. The fact that I haven't heard this complaint before makes me suspicious that it's something unique to his setup, but not being a Windows user I have no basis to judge.
I've been running the 64-bit version of Vista since it was released and it hasn't crashed on me once. This guy couldn't figure out which driver/piece of hardware was causing this instability in a MONTH?
Of course, everyone's mileage may vary. Also, I do not think a driver or hardware issue is unreasonable to extend into a month or more, especially if you consider end-users who have next to no technical skills. I refused to upgrade with my free upgrade from Dell after I read they refused to guarantee my hardware or software would work in the new OS. Why would I want to upgrade if the programs I paid for (including AV) don't work! Same for my hardware. I do not want to spend hours debugging some damn driver issue.
Btw, chances are it was a sound card driver - this is a moderately common problem, but it sure isn't the end of the world.
I find your statement here a bit funny for two reasons. 1) You say this is a moderately common problem, yet you think he is crazy for taking a month to fix it and 2) it shoots your next point right in the foot.
This isn't 1994 anymore. The arguments against MS for making unstable operating systems ended when NT was released. Since Windows 2000, MS has made stable operating systems that really are usable by the average joe without difficulty.
This comment is wrong for a few reasons. First, see the previous point. Two, NT wasn't usable for home use until Windows 2000, which was released in, guess what, 2000. Even then 2K was still not great for home users, especially those wanting games. Finally, the statement is blatantly wrong because the worst OS released by MS to date, Windows ME, came out after 1994. Of course, problems like this might have Vista challenging ME for "Worst MS OS ever".
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I don't know how we can get out of the vicious circle of declining expectations.
I know nobody believes it, but there was a time when beta versions were called betas, and Version 1.0 meant a product that was finally finished, SQA-ed, and working.
Users have a right to a version 1.0 that works. Shrugging your shoulders and saying "hey, what do you expect, it's version 1.0" wouldn't be tolerable in any other product.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Amusingly enough that's an often-used retort to people who claim Linux is not working for them for whatever reasons. But I guess here it's perfectly valid, right?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I'm quoting this article a lot today...
l
"WinFS, advertised as a way to make searching work by making the file system be a relational database, ignores the fact that the real way to make searching work is by making searching work. Don't make me type metadata for all my files that I can search using a query language. Just do me a favor and search the damned hard drive, quickly, for the string I typed, using full-text indexes and other technologies that were boring in 1973."
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.htm
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Besides any talk about how you figure out it's the sound card driver, I think there's something wrong with the attitude that, "Windows is completely stable. If it's crashing, it's probably just the [software/driver]!"
To clarify, I acknowledge that, very often, people having serious problems with Windows stability have usually installed some kind of 3rd party software (or driver) that has messed things up. My problem is that this acknowledgment isn't a solution. Blaming the sound card doesn't make the system run any better. For example, Vista has been having lots of problems with sound drivers. Vista is lacking drivers altogether for many Creative cards, and from what I can tell, even when you have one of the Creative cards with drivers for Vista, the drivers are unstable. In fact, I would say that, in my experience, Creative's drivers have always been unstable, even when Microsoft has certified the drivers.
Now, you might be inclined to say, "That's not Microsoft's fault!" I guess it might not be, but this is cold comfort to the people who have problems because of faulty drivers. After years of Microsoft dominating the market and having nearly unlimited resources to deal with these problems, the situation doesn't seem to have improved substantially since Windows 2000. If you ask the people who have been displeased by Windows, almost none of their complaints have been addressed in the past 7 years, and Vista does pretty much nothing to improve the situation. Even if it isn't Microsoft's fault, they've shown an inability to formulate a solution. It would have been better if Microsoft had used their position to bully Creative into producing better drivers, but instead they used their position to bully their own customers.
I'm a ridiculous jargon consultant. You guys are doing great.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Is something merely intuitive if things are where you expect them to be? If so, then intuitive is simply a synonym for "familiar" and progress stops in the name of keeping things "intuitive". There has to be some measure of usability that takes out the abstract human factor of previous experience. Has a test ever been done where you take 2 computer illiterate people and give them a task to determine which can figure it out faster?
I think a better measure of the effectiveness of the UI would be that given 2-3 weeks to familiarize yourself with the interface, can you perform the same tasks you used to in less time. ie, is it efficient once you overcome the learning curve?
(On a tangent, I think the Gnome dev team has been wrestling with this problem. Trying to follow a design process which they believe is more efficient once you commit to using in the way they intended instead of allowing rampant customization. Obviously, that attitude doesn't work for everybody.)
..is alone reason to use Vista. In nutshell, superfetch pre-fetches to RAM commonly used data from disk at idle time, so response is stellar for commonly used applications. It is a shame that Microsoft hasn't implemented such feature earlier. Yeah, there was some bland effort in XP that was limited to small executable files.
Because 1GB of app/user data (assuming you have more than 1GB of RAM) is always ready in RAM, is being read from disk just once; the Vista does feel faster.
Any software or hardware in its 1st release will have issues
Vista is not a first-release product, though. It is Windows NT Version 6.0.
After 15+ years of development, I would hope that the issues that surface with each new release would be relatively few and mild, even for major revisions like Vista.
I agree that the wireless thing is a bit of a pain, but I've heard great things about the improvement on Feisty. The only reason I had to move away from Feisty is a break (its a beta folks) in a 32 bit compatibility library in a large update push. I would encourage you to give it a try when Feisty goes gold (sometime this month).
The big focus in feisty seems to have been on drivers working out of the box. I still had to install ndiswrapper, but at least I only had to use the package out of synaptic instead of (as I can tell from your command line example) the package direct from source.
Once you get ndiswrapper going, they've included network-manager-gnome by default, which handles all of the connecting for you (ie no iwconfig, ifup, etc).
You hit on the biggest pain (as the competing faq's will show you) in the Ubuntu world. This, however, is not particular to Ubuntu, and is also BY DESIGN of the hardware manufacturers. The cards are designed such that the have to have the firmware to run them loaded runtime. That built in wifi card has no idea what its supposed to do except for wait for firmware. They then do not release any details to folks willing to do driver development for linux FOR FREE!
So, the fact that we get them working at all under Edgy (which, if you take a careful step, by step approach, there's a hell of a success rate) and that its *almost* automagic under Feisty, is actually a pretty impressive feat.
My Babylon
OS instability is almost always a case of drivers, and in anycase can be expected shortly after a major release. In that context this review is being really quite unfair. He's found himself a nice little excuse to be negative about Vista that really isn't inherent to Vista but to any OS that is open to 3rd party drivers, nor will it be true for more than a little while.
Even if one points to win32 'event' based synchronization objects as a source of instability Microsoft have introduced support for condition variables, effectively addressing that problem. So the longer term looks quite a bit brighter for windows developers: especially server developers. Windows server software could now actually become dangerous to other manufacturers (IBM/Sun etc)
Ironically the only OS that I know of that is genuinely unstable - independent of drivers and 3rd party causes - is Linux 2.6 (at least until recently), and has been for several years. That perhaps explains why webhosts have been so reluctant to upgrade from 2.4 even despite the scalability advantages which should be a big advantage to shared hosts. Even my recent taiwanese adsl-router is based on a 2.4 kernel. And no amount of moaning from the masses seems to have changed that situation possibly indicating a flaw in the open-source model.
Ever since I installed them, I've been getting Blue Screens Of Death multiple times per day on both my work computer and my laptop computer. It could be something with the SQL Server 2005 update or the "critical" vulnerability fix, I don't know. It was always stop 0x00000050, with the third number 0x89E773DE. I would think my memory was going bad or that it was a driver issue, but the only change on my computers was installing those updates, and it has happened on both consistently. It doesn't matter what I'm doing on the computers, it usually happens when I'm away from them. A friend of mine had just started getting BSODs too and hadn't made the connection, but he just performed the updates before it started happening also...
You can hold it against "Windows" when there are alternatives like OS X where drivers are rarely an issue. If you are just looking for someone to blame or bitch at, then maybe it doesn't make much sense to blame Microsoft for driver problems. But if you're are looking at Windows as a whole, that is a different story. Lets say you were to put together a pro/con list of using Windows vs. Mac (No, i don't want to go into the actual list here). Wouldn't it make sense to put "flaky Taiwanese drivers" as a con against Windows? Does it really matter what specific company is to blame? The fact that a video driver or sound driver is causing your computer to crash is all that matters. Unless you're one of those PHB's who gets some vague satisfaction out of merely having someone to point a finger at.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Nobody who isn't a drooling zealot expects Linux to be easy to use. (I say this as someone who's spent the last three days up to my elbows in configuration files persuading Ubuntu to work with a proper keyboard; I can fix Linux when it goes wrong, and I know damn well that Joe Average could not.)
That's why it's surprising when Windows fans slag people off for having difficulty using it. Today both Linux and OS X are faster, more stable, much prettier even than Vista (seriously, a tastefully-configured Beryl on Linux beats even OS X hands down for eye candy). Windows has just two killer advantages: more of the standard software works on it, and it's easier to use. Those are the only two valid reasons left to choose Windows. So when a new version of Windows is less compatible and harder to use, that's kind of weird - and not something that any Windows fan should be defending, given that it's a trend that could kill the Windows platform completely if it continues!
"Your trite response misses the point - I'm providing anecdotal evidence to refute the anecdotal story presented by the author of the article that is the subject of this slashdot discussion. Don't you think you should be directing these comments towards the article, and not me?"
No. I should be directing these comments to you, because you are making logic errors in your argument.
The fact that you haven't had a crash doesn't 'refute' the author's experience. He had crashes, you didn't. These anecdotal pieces of evidence don't wipe each other out. Was the author lying to us, or making up his crash stories, simply because you never had a crash? No, that's silly. He had a bad experience with Vista, you didn't. Your story doesn't make him wrong, any more than his would make yours wrong. Only if he were lying or misrepresenting would that make his story wrong.
"Why don't you name me a single OS that won't become unstable with faulty drivers. "
Irrelevant. What we are talking about is how stable Vista is for the general public, on common hardware in typical scenarios. You claim never to have had a crash with any OS aside from DOS 6 -- so what? Does that mean no OS has ever crashed, except DOS 6? No, that's an over-generalization. Because you never had a problem, that doesn't mean that Windows ME wasn't a shitty, buggy, lock-up-and-crash-prone OS that should never have seen a retail shelf.
You have said yourself that there is a *common* problem with sound card drivers. We both agree that faulty drivers cause problems. But should it be a *common* problem, especially for MS' flagship product, released to the public? Shouldn't MS make better drivers, or only allow well-tested, signed drivers? If faulty drivers are a *common* problem, doesn't that show some problem in MS' development or distribution methods?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
has been no trouble at all. I have been running it on an older Toshiba A10-S169 laptop. It installed all drivers without the slightest problem. Out of a gig, it runs with about 350 to 400 megs of ram used by the OS. Some old software has not worked at all and some has worked flawlessly. I run it in basic due to integrated 3 year old crappy graphics. It has locked up a few times. It has not totally crashed once. It seems to come back from errors much quicker than XP ever has. It works very well for a new OS. I can not say the same for XP in it's first six months. I might start recomending it to friends and customers soon. I have yet to encounter the DRM boogyman. I am using it to type this post. If you haven't tried it yet, don't discount it because you really don't know what you are talking about. Some problems are bound to occur with some hardware this early in it's life. Thats how it is with something new. Not everything in the world will work perfectly, but many problems that people are having now will be worked out in the next year. It's probably not for everyone and thats OK. My Vista rant.
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.
That was a little clumsy. The least you could have done was tangentially address his point, first, before erecting and triumphantly knocking down your strawman.
That's quite a heavy qualification when ordinary users buying a brand new computer will expect the OS that comes with it to run at least as quickly as their previous computer did running Microsoft Windows XP. By all the standards thrown in the face of free software activists (all the while ignoring software freedom), Vista simply isn't worth it. These users won't know or care what "well supported hardware" is, they'll make the logical assumption that whatever they were sold should be "well supported".
On a new Compaq machine straight from Best Buy (purchased by someone else, not me), Microsoft Windows Vista felt slower to me in all respects: it took much longer to boot up, took far more time to do things than I could do on free software OSes, and it had far higher resource requirements than other operating systems (again, in particular free software OSes). I checked email, browsed the web, and watched a few videos with the machine and the machine was consistently sluggish to do everything. The UI (left on the default settings, of course) asked me if I really wanted to start some program which was constantly annoying. Installing a Linksys wireless card (WMP54G) was a huge hassle and ultimately required going back to the store to buy another wireless device that would work out of the box (I don't remember the make or model, but it was a USB-based device).
And all of this to lose one's software freedom in the process? No thanks.
Digital Citizen
So when the same driver that has been shipped to customers gets bundled with the OS, it goes from a driver problem to a software problem?
I call shenanigans.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Look, I don't love Vista. I've actually decided they'll have to drag my dead body to a system running Vista before I touch it; nor do I have any love for Mister Softie.
But his claim of data loss is completely unsupported by even anecdotal evidence. He says the 'stability issues' (two allegedly spontaneous reboots) caused 'loss of data' but doesn't provide (that I saw) any clue as to what is was he was doing. Was 'lost data' a lost Quake match? Was he working in Word? If the latter, I doubt his claims; I think autorecovery would handle that kind of situation. Furthermore, his very claim of unprompted reboots strikes me as suspicious. If it were simply recycling (ala a reset switch), I could buy it, but he claims that the system "went into shutdown mode" without giving him the chance to save his data; I understand this to mean that it was as if the 'Reboot' action were invoked. This seems unlikely to me. Perhaps the auto-updating he mentioned got something that required a reboot, and he simply was too quick on the trigger, hitting 'yes' to a reboot prompt. Perhaps it really did reboot of its own accord and - as a result - lost him some of that thar' data stuff; it is not my intention to cast aspersions on the character of the reviewer. But by leaving out some rather crucial bits of info, he opens himself up to credibility attacks.
His claims of this happening on both systems could also be explained by possible use of his USB key. He says he lost data: if I were actually working on something (data) and all my 'stuff' was on a USB key (he says this was the case), I'd probably have it plugged into the system I was working on. Maybe it's bad; maybe doing certain things cause the USB subsystem to freak out; maybe it takes the system down with it. Maybe it had an accident and sleeps with the fishes. Uh... what were we talking about?
"Why don't you name me a single OS that won't become unstable with faulty drivers."
Minix 3?
The biggest instability issue is that spontaneous rebooting. Since this guy had it on two different computers running the same applications, it's probably an application issue.
And if it is, Vista is absolutely, unacceptably unstable. It should simply not be possible for an application to cause a spontaneous reboot without prompting the user. And in that context, your more positive experience is pretty meaningless: you don't have any applications that cause this problem now. But Murphy's Law says that you will eventually install a new application, or update an old one, that triggers this problem. Or some other buried problem.
Here's the bottom line: MS spent two extra years swatting bugs in Vista, and it still has a beta-level product. (Maybe even alpha.) This OS is a nasty, useless failure.
Those articles from five years ago were correct. Unless you are a gamer (maybe), it really is not worth upgrading from win2k to XP.
I dual boot Debian and Win2K. Win2k is fast and stable, works with all my hardware, and runs all of my windows apps. The default interface is less cartoonish, and IMO more logical and functional. Win2K does not have that annoying authentication crappola. With Win2K, I don't have to learn a new interface.
I have no idea why people want to bother with XP, much less Vista. I assume everybody has just learned to jump when msft snaps their fingers. I have been using the same PC for over 5 years, I just have no reason to upgrade.
Honestly, I just found XP to be the most annoying and "in the way" OS out there. Linux may take a bit of work to get going on occassion, but it stays out of your way when you want to do work. OS X is braindead easy to get going and doesn't annoy the piss out of you by default either. No need to turn off all sorts of "features" to keep sane.
That said, a customized XP is also a useable desktop, especially given all the FOSS software out there that runs on Windows. It may not be my favorite choise of OS, but it can be made to work with some effort. But for me, why would I put in the effort of customizing XP and installing a bunch of 3rd party stuff just to get the most insecure desktop on the market? It would work, but why bother? The only reason to do so would be software that only runs on Windows; and for me, there is nothing there that I can't live without.
As much as I dislike Vista, I have to say you are wrong. Vista is precaching your most frequently used apps to RAM. When you open an app that requires 50% of your physical RAM Vista gives it the 50% it needs. If Vista needs to take it from the cached programs it does.
Having an OS with 2 gigs of RAM and 1.6 gigs free is a waste. Its good to have the OS cache apps and make use of ALL the RAM. Just as long as it gives it up to running apps, which Vista does.
Windows isn't, either. How many different versions of Vista are there? And that's just Vista.
Look, if you have a real complaint about "Linux", either direct it at the kernel (and know what you're talking about) or direct it at a specific distro.
Otherwise, stop whining that you have *gasp* too much choice! If you really feel that way, get a Mac -- that way, you won't even be burdened with choice in hardware.
And if you think it's not about you, then stop whining, period. Get an actual, typical desktop user who has gone back to Windows to complain about why Linux sucks, or bring us real complaints that affect you.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!