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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.
Visualize the world of wine
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.
"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.'"
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?
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.
Windows will use what it can until something else needs it. Unused Ram is wasted ram.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
"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
Perhaps your experience with much of the system memory being used is due to SuperFetch. See the article below for more information. Bottom line, however, is a.) Vista may be using your system more efficiently and b.) if you don't like SuperFetch, it's easy enough to turn off.h tml
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.
Yes. First, get this and this. Then try this URL to read it ad-free.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
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?
This computer dual boots XP, where this never happens. The RAID driver is exactly the same on both OS's so I blame Vista.
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 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!
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.
"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.