Slashdot Mirror
PC Magazine Editor Throws in the Towel on Vista
MacNN caught this incredible defection and loss of faith by a former Vista booster, PC Magazine editor-in-chief Jim Louderback, as he steps down from his position. "I've been a big proponent of the new OS over the past few months, even going so far as loading it onto most of my computers and spending hours tweaking and optimizing it. So why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn't work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain't cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system: I expected it to get the kinks worked out more quickly. Boy, was I fooled! If Microsoft can't get Vista working, I might just do the unthinkable: I might move to Linux."
A silly AC writes:
Apparently there are more people reading Distrowatch with Vista than they are with Debian, ... The ultimate irony here - Distrowatch.com. It just kills me.
Vista owners are looking for a new OS. Why does this confuse you? If Vista is as bad as Louderback says it is, gnu/linux is the only upgrade option that will work. Large numbers of Windoze users looking at a site like Distrowatch is bad news for M$ and good news for software freedom.
I guess all this nonsense about Vista being a flop is far from true.
Visit the Vista failure log and wake up. M$ can't push Vista. It's SP1 won't fix things and I doubt they can come up with a new OS people will really want. They have gone too far down the digital restrictions path to recover.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Perhaps the news is that, since this person is leaving his job at a magazine paid for by advertising, he is finally free to tell the truth.
The [allegedly] slow adoption of Vista is not due to DRM; it's because the OS is a resource hog.
Have you ever considered that it's not just memory state? You have to bring all devices to their previous state as well, which happens on a per-device basis. Please learn about what you're talking about before bitching. Thanks.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
If you'd bothered to read the article, it isn't all due to driver issues. He has problems also with the way they redesigned the network settings, how responsive the system is reconnecting to wireless after waking from sleep (if they do at all), as well as shared drives not being found by one computer on the network when a different one sees it just fine. His problems are with the UI, the networking protocols, as well as drivers. On brand new hardware, no less. It isn't like he was trying to support a P2 400 or something, brand new Dell workstations, which I'm sure had Vista Ready or even Vista Premium Ready stamped all over them. Vista has been out for more than 8 months now, and they still haven't worked out these annoyances and broken features. Vistas problems go well beyond drivers and into the realm of what others like to call here "defective by design".
today is spelling optional day.
"I expected it to get the kinks worked out more quickly. Boy, was I fooled!"
Lots of people make the mistake of thinking that Microsoft is a software company. That's wrong. Microsoft is an abuse company that uses software as a method of delivering abuse.
My opinion. Maybe even partly a joke, maybe not.
Vista has actually become usable for me over the last few months. I got a free evaluation copy a few days before the release, and it started out rather poorly. Sleep mode kinda worked, with the mouse, or networking, etc not coming back after it went to sleep. I got random reboots until ATI finally released a driver that didn't crash my whole system.
Now it's pretty smooth sailing.
With that said, I'm still considering just going to Ubuntu. Vista is OK I guess, but there's nothing in it that's terribly compelling. I like the look and feel of it, but I prefer all the software available a click away with Ubuntu. (I'm no newcomer to Linux, the Vista box is my last Windows machine). Whenever the next Ubuntu version comes out I'll try it out on the workstation and see if sleep mode actually works. Then just run vmware for the one or two remaining Windows apps I can't live without.
AccountKiller
I have been an MS supporter and developer since before Win 3.1 but Vista has me very frustrated.
I bought a great new machine, an Acer E700 quad core with Vista. I try to use it for various purposes and it just doesn't work or has some subtle compatibility bug that I cannot work around. So I try to install a new $300 XP Pro on the machine... Kaboom, I cannot get around the blue screen even using SCSI disks and other PCI cards. SOOOOO I put Ubuntu on it and VMWare Server with XP in a VM and the machine is now usable.
If I had been given an option to buy the machine with XP, I would have taken it 100% and what really bugs me is that we are being forced to use Vista when there is no significant end user benefit to upgrading to the new OS. Simbuddha
Wait for SP2 before wasting your time.
Yes. After SP2, you can waste your time much more efficiently.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The engineering computing* group at my company don't like Vista. I trust their opinion, thus I don't like vista.
-nB
* NOT IT, vastly different purposes in life. IT is about mainstream hardware, standard servers, only having to deploy 2-3 images across 90% of the company. Engineering Computing is about the other 10%. Almost as many images as users, custom hardware specs, support for *every* OS available, back to Win3.1 and across 17 different linux distros. If they say "no way" to Vista, then I'm sold on the opinion and won't touch it (incidentally, nor will IT for the same reason).
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Thank you very much, but Linux doesn't need "friends" who use it as a Horrible Fate that they'll threaten to inflict on themselves as a way to get Mommy Microsoft's sympathetic attention.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Networking is not that important or useful these days so what the heck is the author crying about? ;-/
There obviously is little incentive for Microsoft to spend much time and effort in this area over the last 5 years of developing this "new" operating system.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
You know we like to joke about signs of the apocalypse, but wow. I would almost look forward to that. Can you just imagine the Louderback articles we'd get with him on Linux?
vi v. emacs: The exciting new controversy
How to protect your children from The Gimp
Why won't anyone explain what GNU stands for?
However, it seems to me that it's likely that there are people who dislike Vista who've never even touched it, nor are informed about it. They dislike it because others, whose opinions they're willing to trust, do.
Tha'ts what viral marketing is all about ... trusted people influencing others. But it works both for you and against you.
I understand people change their minds, but I'd be lying if I said I question whether or not his change of heart on Vista would be public if he wasn't leaving the magazine world (dependent heavily on MS for ad revenue and stories) for another field.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
By general users, i'm talking about every day non-computer-techy types ... like my wife, my parents, my in laws, and brother. All of them use computers, but for little more than looking up general info like movies and wikis, email, some gaming and word processing. My mother is the prime example, she is the least computer literate, and when things suddenly "change" on the screen, she freaks out thinking that she broke something. While i've convinced her that a random popups window are OK (for passwords) .. the fact that the whole screen in vista flickers and the background changes (the password overlay) really gets to her. My brother, wife and i can't get out games to play correctly (video drivers for my nvidia 7800gs play games like halo 2 with horrible graphic glitchs, and even some lag in games like oblivion that i didn't have in XP, Medieval II crashed on me at least once an hour...). That's not even mentioning how vista itself seems to take up more memory which slows down the games. My father who is a minister, couldn't get some of his old files to work properly (which he needs for work). The new office (2007) actually messed more things up for him than fixed, and i had to install open office for him just to get some of his old files to OPEN so that he could then use them in 2007.
In the end... It's not that i hate windows, it's that it looks like vista was not thought out to be easier on/for the user... instead it looks like it was just planned look better on paper (BETTER SECURITY! BETTER NETWORKING! BETTER ETC!). Now add in the fact that we have to pay a TON of money just to get this stuff on our computers and it still doesn't work properly? For my parents, i actually installed (k)ubuntu for them about a month ago (KDE). They went to linux because they told ME they didn't want Vista anymore, but they didn't have money to spend on another set of MS licenses just to go back to XP. Go figure... after showing my mom for an hour how to open a browser, and open up gaim to chat and how to go into her home folder.... i've actually heard her complain LESS than when she had XP.
Allegedly? So are you saying that vista adoption is not slow?
Gotcha. So it's not selling slowly, but that's only because it's a resource hog. I guess MS have realised that what the consumer really wants is bloat, and that if they hadn't made the OS so greedy then no one would be buying it?
Or did you just mean that it is selling slowly, and that's because it does need too many resources, but that it's very rude of us to go around saying so. Perhaps you meant yes it's not selling, and yes it's bloated, but don't go around bad mouthing DRM?
The trouble is, really, that to pin Vista's woes (alleged, if you insist) on any single factor is probably a gross oversimplification. Vista's problems include patchy driver support, a confusing pricing scheme, the lack of any compelling "must-have" feature for the OS, the fact that a lot of people don't want to change from XP, dislike of the licence terms, fears of added expense in terms of new software and hardware that may be needed to run the damn thing.
The that fact that it's a resource hog isn't helping, either, and neither is the DRM (because like it or not, an awful lot of XP users also use P2P) and neither is the fact that it's had some scathing reviews, many of them from writers normally counted among the Redmond faithful.
Still, at least the resource problem will go away as machines get faster. I suppose if you had to pick a single cause that's the one that lets the OS still seem like a viable concern. Maybe sales will take off next year if and when XP really gets retired.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
If you say you have had no problems with it, then you really shouldn't start off your next sentence about a bug that's a show stopper for you and caused you to reinstall the previous OS.
Of course, like any new laptop, it comes with Windows Vista. Despite my misgivings about Vista, I decided to keep it for a few days before nuking it (and the 20GB of recovery partitions that Toshiba stuck on there).
Put simply, it is slow and inefficient, broken in a number of ways and seriously crash-prone. I booted it up; ran the first-time wizard; started Vista up and watched Explorer crash (and come up with the "Report to Microsoft" dialog). So, I rebooted the computer, thinking that maybe the Toshiba recovery needed a reboot to get things working. Explorer didn't crash after reboot, so I assumed everything was OK.
Later, I'm attempting to edit my network config for the static IP (DHCP is disabled on my router as I run a server, and the router lacks the "static DHCP" option). UAC comes up (about 6 times throughout this process), but on one instance manages to permanently hang the network settings window, requiring that I kill the process.
That's an annoyance, sure, especially as it is a new system with no additional software (except Toshiba's stuff). I eventually get the networking going good (though Vista still refuses to see the SMB shares on my Powerbook G4, even though it sees my PC's shares just fine, and my PC [running XP] sees my Powerbook's shares just fine). So, I go on the Internet and obtain Firefox (what, you think I was going to use IE7? You must be joking.), which installs smoothly and works flawlessly on Vista. I'm quite happy about this.
Later, I'm playing Warcraft over LAN with some friends over, and, in the middle of a game, Vista's firewall decides that it should start blocking Warcraft's communication. Keep in mind that I've been playing for, oh, 4 hours at this point, and Vista has given me no trouble. Suddenly, the firewall dialog appears in the middle of my screen, and requests that I block/unblock the program. Of course, I choose Unblock, and a minute later, Warcraft crashes (some kind of network failure in CNet.cpp I think). Odd, of course, as it had been working fine for 4+ hours, so I reboot Warcraft, and half an hour later, the same thing happens (firewall dialog, Warcraft crash, etc.). Evidently, Vista has forgotten that I wanted the program to be unblocked.
Frustrated, I go to edit the settings for the firewall, but Warcraft is already listed as unblocked. We play some more, for maybe 2 hours, and it happens again. Annoying, sure, but I can't do anything about it anymore.
Well, OK, that might be the fault of Warcraft (III) not being updated for Vista or something.
There are other problems: Vista will not go to sleep when I close the lid (probably Toshiba's fault, but XP, which I recently installed, seems to handle that just fine); Vista randomly loses an Internet connection sometimes on a wired Ethernet link; Vista's window manager takes up a lot of RAM (300+MB private bytes) and a constant 3% CPU usage on both cores (on a 2.0GHz Core Duo processor); etc. etc. Even my old Sony VAIO (whose harddrive suffered a major crash after 3 years of service) with XP SP2 worked better and had fewer random bugs/crashes.
Summary: I am extremely displeased with Vista. Microsoft had 5 full years to improve their operating system, and instead, they have something that's less usable, less stable and more bloated (7+ GB for a fresh installation?) than their aging Windows XP system.
Personally, I'm almost inclined to think that Microsoft is trying to drive continued sales of XP from Vista. True, I haven't given Vista much time -- there are some things nice about it, like the revised Start Menu -- but in that short time it has utterly failed to please me.
- An unhappy Vista user, for the record.
I've spent almost 30 years in tech (started when I was 11 yo with a teletype, keep your friggin jokes to yourselves), and the last decent product MS made was called DOS 5.0 ! Even that was just playing "keep up" with the market. Anyone that says,"Microsoft made this or that great product!" might want to check again. They either bought it from someone else, aped their design, or hired someone else to create it for them. They are serious, old-school, "buy and conquer" business people, not dedicated techies. They would rather get paid a billion $s for raping customers with a pile of crap, than invest the time and effort into making a good product.
Yea, I know the mantra,"If they didn't have to provide backwards compatability for third-party hard/software, it would be a better system." Wake up. They DON'T provide backward compatability! They're just tacking new crap on top of old, and they break shit all the time! If your app from DOS or Win95 still works you're lucky, that's all. I've had several apps that broke on new OS releases,
just like they're doing with Vista, and XP before that, and NT before that. If you want backwards compatability, the only good way I can think of to do that is to run the old OS in a VM. That way you get the benefits of the new OS, and can run all your old stuff on the old OS.
I've talked about Linux with my family and friends, and they all bring up the same points: their games (or Apps) won't play on Linux; who cares about whether it's free or not, they just pirate windows and its' apps anyways. When I point out that Linux has very few (effectively none) virus or spyware weaknesses, they just say that they use (pirated) Norton. Why should they use GIMP when they've got the latest (pirated) Photoshop? Windows has built up an accepted culture of theft in modern society, and conditioned people to think that it's okay.
I used to pirate. I used to collect software and cracks and trade them with others. Then I found free/shareware programs that were really good, and I started looking for and using more of it. It felt good to not have to be afraid of getting caught with $80K worth of stolen software on my machines. I've gradually moved to using legit and free software, and it feels good. It wasn't quick or comprehensive, there are still apps we use that are proprietary, but they are getting fewer as I find freeware replacements.
MS has given us a fairly consistent (fairly F*ed up) computer environment for the last 20 yrs, yet it has also made thieves of most everyone I know. Has it been worth it?
No.
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
You might be happy with a seven year old OS, but most of us would like something a little more modern. Most GNU/Linux distributions have been through two stable releases since 2001 and each brought real improvements and features.
I don't begrudge your happiness but that kind of thing is short lived. Sooner or later XP users are going to join w2k, ME, 98, 95, 3.1 and DOS users who can't find new software or replacement devices that work with their OS. The non free software forces are working on new formats and devices that won't work with XP. If you wait too long, your work harder to transfer and your losses will mount. The waste of your time and effort is intentional and is the way the upgrade treadmill works. Those who think otherwise live in a fool's paradise.
Free software is the only upgrade that escapes the non free data trap and upgrade treadmill. The purpose of non free software is to make money for it's owners. To do this, the owners must keep users helpless and divided. Free software has a simpler purpose, to do what users want.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Funny posts!
Poor little windows users must feel so trod upon.
The only thing is Linux is ready for prime time. And users can run it dual-boot if they still need their wondows training wheels.
There is a really good GUI interface for configuration and the stuff isn't that hard. Really. The fact that Linux allows people to customize and configure doesn't mean they have to or have to know all about it. Microsoft hides that stuff from users and makes it hard to do your own configuration. There was another thread here about how all the ad servers slow down web page loading and it was mentioned there that Vista won't let you add offending sites into the hosts file. I did it on a Linux machine and an Apple laptop running OSX - and it was easy. now I don't have any more offending popups or ad junk and my pages load really fast - just with blank spaces where the ads would have been otherwise.
But people don't need to know how to do that stuff but they can if they want. Lots of stuff comes with step by step instructions. People can go with the stock setup - which right out of the box is much more secure and capable than windows - or they can *if they want* learn more and actually administer and configure their own computer. I will take the path of choice rather than have my hands tied by Bill and Steve.
But the windows crowd needs to take a powder. Their fav OS is getting knocked because it sucks. They need to accept that and get on with their lives.
Well, the famous one is A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection by Peter Guttman; which goes into great detail.
Its not really the DRM, so much, as it is all the "features" (cough cough) that supports the DRM, especially how Vista encrypts alot of traffic crossing the system busses...and how Vista checks the "tilt bits" many many many times per second. All this needless "housekeeping" slows the system down.
You should see how long Vista takes to boot up and run on a Sempron 3100+ with 512mb of ram...
Ye Gods, it's so damned sloooowwwww...