Consumer Group Demands XP for Vista Victims

thefickler writes "Dissatisfaction with Windows Vista seems to be swelling, with the Dutch Consumers' Union (Consumentenbond) asking Microsoft to supply unhappy Vista users with a free copy of Windows XP. Not surprisingly, Microsoft refused. This prompted Consumentenbond to advise consumers to ask for XP, rather than Vista, when buying a new computer."

Comments

Ok, start the flames

[OptimusPaul]

What is so bad about Vista? I have not used it yet. I've seen it, and I know some people that are using it and they don't complain about it. What's the deal? Is it just that it's new?

Re:Ok, start the flames

[10101001 10101001]

What really irks me, though, is that some people have the nerve to demand XP back.
I can understand being unhappy. I can understand hating it, and hell, we can even pretend for a minute that it really is garbage.
YOU STILL BOUGHT IT. When was the last time you went to the store, picked up a gallon of chocolate milk, and after drinking half of it, decided you like white milk better, so you _DEMAND_ a free gallon of white milk.

If you bought a new car and it was garbage, would you return it for your money back? How about if it was a new TV? When you buy a $5 gallon of milk, you're not exactly going to be using that milk for months/years, nor is that $5 spent much of a real investment--you'll just buy another brand next time.

If you really want to go with a milk analogy, a better analogy would be if a dairy company offered you a discount plan; you pay upfront for 40 weeks of Milk+ (TM) and you get 52 weeks worth of Milk+ (TM). Now, what if Milk+ (TM) tastes horrible? Well, beyond asking for a refund, if the dairy company offers basically the same plan but with milk (that you know is good) instead of Milk+ (TM) and you need milk/Milk+ (TM), wouldn't you consider asking first to switch over the plan*? Especially if the diary company is notorious for being a huge hassle to get a refund on their dairy discount plans?

In short, if no one ever demanded their money back when they felt they were defrauded, either there'd be a lot more legal action by governments or there would be serious economic instability as a result of people being much more hesitant on making large purchases, as there would be no recourse if it turned out the good wasn't nearly worth the asking price.

*Yes, asking for a free XP CD isn't exactly the same thing. But, then, I doubt most the consumers have a Vista CD to swap for an XP CD; rather, if the even have a CD at all, it's likely a recovery CD. So, the whole situation is a huge headache that should really go through the OEM. But, that'd mean the OEM would have to get permission from MS to swap out XP for Vista for individual consumers, possibly refunding the difference (or sink the cost themselves and buy two licenses for every machine). Of course, all of this is why the consumer group recommends avoiding Vista completely and going with XP. Vista might be better for some people, but it's easier to just go with XP (which is known to work) and avoid the possible risks.

Re:Ok, start the flames

[Das Modell]

Vista is extremely slow, bloated and difficult to use, and generally a fucking pain in the ass. User Access Control is the best invention ever: Vista will prompt you twice for confirmation if you rename a file you created, and turning off UAC is suprisingly difficult (having a billion different icons in the Control Panel really doesn't help anyone). Vista also has poor software and hardware support.

My mother, who knows nothing about computers and only uses her Vista laptop for surfing, has on two occasions somehow managed to make Vista suggest a complete reset of the system where all personal files are deleted and the computer is reset to its original post-install state (as if you're starting it for the first time). The second time it occured Vista went ahead with the reset even though my mom chose not to do it (I advised her over the phone). It blatantly ignored the user's selection. Why does such a feature exist in Vista, and how in the nine hells can normal everyday usage (turn on, log in, surf web, shut down) cause Vista to effectively self-destruct? What a fucking joke. I'll install XP on that laptop or die trying.

Re:Ok, start the flames

[Eivind]

My wife got vista for her new laptop half a year back. She didn't know any better. (neither did I, I'd have opted for Ubuntu, but I honestly wasn't aware that Vista is so horribly much more annoying than XP as it is.) (as if XP ain't annoying enough: Wanna reboot now, or should I nag you again in 3 minutes ?)

• It asks for "confirmation" in literally hundreds of everyday situations. This adds nothing to security, because inside of the first week everyone gets used to automatically click "yes, do it, go away, let me -use- the damn computer, stop nagging me damn it" (the option says something else, but this is what people thing, aproximately)
• it lacks support for bog-standard 2 year old mainstream hardware. Much worse than Linux has been on the hardware front lately. For example, our bog-standard scanner doesn't work, a driver is promised "in 2008", this is a scanner from 2005. One that sold 700.000. Same for our laserprinter, though there it's possible to have it work halfway by using a driver which exist for a smaller model. This loses the functionality lacking in that smaller model though (such as the duplex-unit)
• The backwards compatibility for games suck. This matters, since more games is one of the sole remaining advantages for Windows over the competition at this point. Heroes of M&M IV works, but is buggy, especially the network-support. Capitalism II doesn't even start. SC3K seems to be working, sorta, it's hard to say, the palette is messed up, something I ain't seen on linux since X11 used to run in 8-bit palette-modus...
• It's a resource hog. The laptop of my Wife is a Core-2-duo, 2GB ram and decent graphics. Should be more than adequate. Isn't. It's -swapping- as I write this very moment, There's no programs open other than FF which eats 112MB, if we believe Vista, and Thunderbird which eats 87MB. Don't ask me why it's swapping under these circumstances, but it is.
• Java-support sucks. Yeah, that's probably partly a sun-issue. But Eclipse, under the same version of the same JVM crashed regularily on Vista, never experienced that on XP or Linux or Panther.
• "Fast user switching" is a joke. The -fast- part particularily. ctrl+alt+F8 takes how long on Linux ? A second ? In vista, you click on switch user. It then spins for 10 seconds (with the aforementioned powerful laptop), it then displays a login-prompt. Where you can log in a second user, and in another 10 seconds or so you're good to go. This rigamarole repeats itself on each switch. That's rigth, even if both users are logged in, you still need to wait for the login-screen to load, then click on the user you want to switch to and enter the password. Half a minute for switching a user ain't fast in my book....
• It still doesn't have any of the neat stuff that unix invented in the 70ies. Ok, so maybe I shouldn't have been hoping for that, but it's still a mystery. "shortcuts" are still a hack in the shell and don't universally work like symlinks and hardlinks have for literally 30 years in unix... Disks are still managed with "drive letters", and you've got no way to say move a directory from C: to D: and have the move be transparent to the user.
• It still can't manage to move, rename, delete or in some cases even -read- a file if some other program has the file open. All of this stuff actually worked, literally, in the 70ies on unix.

The biggest problem though ? There is not a -single- actually relevant improvement from a user-perspective. Not one. Lots of drawbacks, no advantages. Oh, I'm sure they're there allrigth. But how splendid are they really, if the user doesn't even -notice- them in the first half-year of use ?

At this point my wife would swap Vista for XP in a heartbeat. Hell, she'd swap it for Windows-98 if given the chance.

Re:*barf*

[Anonymous Coward]

ahem...,

what's that clue that you're talking about. The claim is valid. My scanner worked before and now it does not. That's why I need to stick with XP. Vista reduces the functionality of my hardware.

should have happened long ago

[nerdonamotorcycle]

This is a piece of backlash that should have happened when XP replaced Win2K. Seriously, what did XP add that Win2K didn't have, other than the kiddie-toy "My First Computer" window-dressing and the "phone-home" validation behavior--both of which are non-features as far as I'm concerned?

MS might just have made it a big mistake

[SmallFurryCreature]

The consumentenbond is very powerfull, IF a company has its product rated as best it WILL use that in all its ads, it is marketing gold. Being labelled as bad is the exact opposite, MS just got itself a whole shitload of bad advertising and not by some computer mag or newspaper but by an organisation most dutch people believe.

To give you an idea off how powerfull consumer organisations are in holland, this is the only country in the world were Sony will freely and without question exchange PSP's with ANY defective sub-pixel. The ONLY country in the world. Not after you threaten a lawsuit, not after hours on the phone, turn it into a store, if they make trouble refer them to a letter Sony send to kassa and get your new PSP (did it twice until it went past even dutch warranty). Some stores (not sony itself) still try to make trouble, go ahead ask for the manager and tell them to call Sony, Sony will chew them out for you, Sony doesn't want more trouble.

In fact if you are in the netherlands you don't have to accept dead subpixels on anything. I exchanged my iPod video after 6 months, an mp3 player is a device that should last longer, and Apple just had to replace mine or face a court case it was going to loose by default.

This is the country MS refused to simply give XP (costs them NOTHING) to legit buyers of Vista?

Seriously, MS really needs to hire a better public relations officer. They might be lucky that this is the weekend and as such the free working week newspapers won't carry the story but this is just asking for a whole lot of bad press.

On a side not, might Vista's uptake lack because it is harder to pirate? The only people I know who use Vista are those who got it with their new computer for "free". I build my own (and run linux anyway for desktop) so for me Vista would cost a shitload of money. Piracy seems out, wich makes me not use it and therefore I get no experience with it, except for when my friends ask me for advice and I can't give it because I don't know Vista. This actually matters to some as I have helped two people reformat and install XP to get rid of Vista.

I wish just once there was a story from MS that doesn't make it sound like it got some kind of horrible fascination with shooting itself in the foot.

Re:MS might just have made it a big mistake

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the country MS refused to simply give XP (costs them NOTHING) to legit buyers of Vista? It will cost MS plenty.
Unfortunately, this is not like the embarassment of Windows ME. That was the "end of the road for that particular "consumer" line. They pulled Windows ME and pushed Windows 98SE in its place. Not a big deal when their new business+consumer flagship Windows XP was just around the corner.
Now Windows Vista is their flagship product, and its not doing well.
MS is in a tight spot - if they allow these Vista users to easily/cheaply change to XP, they are almost admitting Vista is a failure. Other people will then either not "upgrade" to Vista or buy new computers with only with XP, which equates to lost Vista sales.
MS is trying to stay the course and promote Vista; it's attempt at damage control is obviously not doing too well.
Having personally seen the bloat of Vista, no amount of words can make it run faster.

BigFig

Re:MS might just have made it a big mistake

[houghi]

If Sony gets bad press, people will buy something else. If Apple gets bad press, people will buy some other brand.

But seriously, what alternatives do people have instead of Vista for a pre-installed system. Seriously?

I like Linux and I am convinced that it is ready for the desktop right now. However there is no serious choice of pre-installed Linux PCs. And that is what people want: A pre-installed system

So due to their monopoly position, MS does not have to care what anybody tells them, advices them or advices their customers. Everybody already knows that Vista is not good, but why would MS care? Again, people want pre-installed systems. They want to run the software that they already know, preinstalled.

They are not able or do not care to find out what a distro is, what distro they should download, or how to boot that distro after burning it.
People generaly do not care to learn what program replaces their own program, let alone learn how to install things, no matter how much easier it is in the end.

People are lazy and will look at the short term gains. So offer an alternative. Sell pre-installed systems. That way you will learn FAST wether people are seriously interested in an alternative or not.

Re:Flamewar anybody?

[ais523]

Actually, it is possible to get rid of the 'Windows Tax'; if you don't accept the licence agreement on Windows and then uninstall it, it's possible to get a refund (see this BBC News story). Presumably this applies whether you want to install Linux, an older version of Windows, or even another OS.

Re:It depends upon the system.

[ozmanjusri]

WinVista also has lots of eye-candy which eats up processor time.

It's not the eye-candy which eats processor cycles, RAM and network bandwidth. It's the DRM.

Vista was made for record companies and movie studios, not computer users.

Re:Vista and XP

[porkThreeWays]

I recently bought a laptop with Vista on it from newegg. I knew I was going to have to try and get an XP disc from the OEM, but I didn't realize how easy it would be. I just called and asked and they are sending it for free. I guess there must be considerable demand if it was that easy. Two of my friends bought computers when Vista first came out and tried to get XP on them from the OEM. It was basically impossible and just ended up putting pirated copies of XP when the computers came. Funny how there's such a change of attitude from the OEM's when they start losing customers because they are selling something very few want.

Vista issues? HA!

[crowbarsarefornerdyg]

I applaud their efforts to get M$ to let the consumer trade in Vista for XP, especially after my experience with my wife's computer. We bought her a Compaq SR2010, which came with a "free upgrade" (LOL!) to Vista Home somethingoranother. Anyway, when we got it, I went ahead and installed it, because she wanted to try it. She'd already experienced it on my new computer. The damn thing even had the little "Vista Capable" sticker on the front. Cool, it's worth a shot.

I installed Vista, used the HP Driver Disc that came with Vista to upgrade all my drivers, and waited. After everything was done, I checked the system, and two or three devices weren't working. I went to HP's website, and there were no new drivers for them. To make a long story short, we reformatted her computer, and I wiped the drive on mine and we both went back to XP.

Vista is part of the failure model...

[argent]

Vista is a pretty good operating system. The worst things about it are that: 1) it's new.

2) It provides little or no functionality that consumers actually want over XP.
3) It's more complex than XP, due to the "secure-path" code in the kernel.
4) It's less reliable than XP, due to the additional copy protection and secure-path code in the kernel.
5) It has higher kernel overhead than XP, due to the secure-path code in the kernel.

The reason that people go on about the "horrible DRM" is not because the DRM itself is the problem. It's because the changes that were made to support that DRM are most of the real kernel level differences between XP and Vista.

In addition, the new user-visible security features (UAC and the sandbox for IE) are bandaids. They have not made any attempt to address the real problems in the network services, Win32 APIs, and user-level applications that provide such a large surface area to attackers.

Microsoft's real problem is that they did too good a job, for the desktop at least, with Windows 2000. The only shortcomings to Windows 2000 are features that should have been shipped in feature packs... most of them were originally developed on 2000... and everything they've done since then have been attempts to artificially create the appearance of "newness". There were no fundamental changes in XP, and the only fundamental changes in Vista are things that provide no real benefit to the consumer (and actually hurt them).

They got a pass with XP because they presented it as the upgrade path from Windows 9x. They could have done that with Windows 2000... my "Wintendo" (my Windows gaming box) runs Windows 2000, and the first program I found that wouldn't run on 2000... that actually required XP... was a couple of months ago. Something like 8 years after release and 5 years after XP came out. I don't know why they bothered with Windows Me and didn't just push EVERYONE to Windows 2000 as the upgrade path, but I guess they wanted the income from another upgrade cycle. Anyway, XP gave people something new. Vista can't do that.

With Windows 2000 Microsoft has put themselves out of the "operating system company" job. They've reacted by trying to force people to upgrade, and people don't like that. Unbundling Windows and selling the bundled components as separate packages would get them out of this trap, but after fighting so hard to keep that from happening against their will I don't figure they'll do it.

In the meantime everyone who depends on a stable Windows ecosystem is the loser.

They aren't kidding

[Heliode]

The Consumentenbond is taken very seriously here. Today I found an ad folder in the mail from the Mediamarkt (big computer/electronics store here in Holland) with a large ad in it advertising new computers with XP. "We have them again!". I can't find anything about it on their website. I scanned the ad, and I would upload it if I had some place that could handle the load. I'm open for suggestions!

I thought this was news for nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, having read the comments on this article, I would have thought I was reading a Microsoft forum. Isn't this slashdot? Where are all the M$ haters?

Well, I'm personally not an MS hater per se, and am very happy with working in C# and Visual Studio over using Java and Eclipse. However, when I tried Windows Vista, it lasted all of one month on my computer before I went back to XP. I did really like some of the interface improvements. The Aero interface does look nice, and I liked the screen preview feature of the taskbar. But that was about all I liked.

Why did I switch back to XP?

1. Half of my games wouldn't run in Vista.
2. I quickly got sick of having to click "OK" on 3 different security validation popups every time I'd want to run a program.
3. I got sick of having to acknowledge that I'd turned off security every time I booted up (see number 2).
4. I got tired of having to install half of everyting I bought twice, because it would fail the first time due to the Vista "protect the user from himself" theology. Even though my logon acct was Administrator, it wouldn't install apps as administrator mode until it failed the first time. What the?
5. Of the half of the games that did run, graphics performance was about 15% worse than on Vista. Even when I upgraded to a dual-core and was running two ATI cards in Crossfire mode.

I'm not able to give you a lot of technical "this process was x because they did y in Vista" but the above were my experiences with what was bad about Vista versus XP. Personally, I consider Vista to be on par (as far as MS OS's go) with Windows 98 First Edition. I liked 2000 because it stopped me from getting he "buffer underrun" error every time I'd burn a CD. I liked XP because it gave me a lot more "home" and gaming functionality. Vista is a downgrade from both.

Vista 64-bit is a nice OS. Its not perfect, though

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

I like Vista 64-bit. It is a very nice OS in general. It works very well in general, although my biggest problem with it so far is how Vista caches memory. It doesnt work well when rendering large 3d scenes, that use lots of ram. I have 8 GBs of ram and Vista caches 4GBs most of the time. That tends to piss me off.

Otherwise, its a rather nice os, thats been quite pleasant to use. It uses more resources, but in general on my quadcore it flys.

It is better than XP, security wise, it is also nicer to finally have the GPU doing a lot of gui tasks.

Vista 64-bit is a step in the right direction. I do not like the DRM features, and absolutely performance could be improved a bit, but its not bad at all. I think people like to bitch about things they dont use. I have legitimate complaints about Vista, as a user... but in general i enjoy the OS more than XP.

Yes, it needs more drivers... yes... it needs to have the DRM ripped out of it... but give it a try before you hate it.

Re:Logical question:

[Foofoobar]

2 out of 5 laptops sold last year were Apples. Apple realizes that the 'static' desktop market is not the future; the portable market is the future. This is why they are focusing on portable music players, portable computers and portable phones.

People are portable and they expect their devices to be as well and though Windows can work on portable devices, as usual, they are late to the game and this time I doubt Apple will make the same mistake they made the first time by letting Microsoft step all over them. But then again, they also need Microsoft otherwise they will becoem just as evil (*cough* iPhone *cough*).

Vista on digg and slashdot

[S3D]

I have impression that digg users generally more tolerant of Vista (or even pro-Vista) than slashdotters. I'm wondering if what I've seen just random fluctuation or the reason is that /. and digg have different demographics. The diggers are predominantly Windows users, but that still not explain why they prefer Vista to XP.

Should be "Microsoft Gets Its Wish"

[Kainaw]

This is what Microsoft wants. Users are told ask for XP instead of Vista - which doesn't really change the amount of money Microsoft receives in any way. Then, in a few years, Microsoft stops supporting XP and forces everyone to buy Vista. So, in the long run, Microsoft loves the "buy XP instead of Vista" hoopla. They're going to double their profits.

You fail at life

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes he does grasp the difference. Observe

even the average consumer doesn't like Vista, not just the geeks. In short you have restated pherthyl's point, and added nothing to the discussion.

learn to read

Re:It depends upon the system.

[howlingmadhowie]

i don't know many people who have an irrational hate-on for Microsoft. i do know a lot of people (me included) who have a quite rational hate-on for Microsoft, as you put it.

Re:It depends upon the system.

[mikael]

It's not the eye-candy which eats processor cycles, RAM and network bandwidth. It's the DRM.

Our research lab has some high-demand 3D graphics applications. With XP they run at a decent frame rate. With Vista, if the eye-candy is turned on, they run like molasses. That's with all the standard optimisations (display lists, triangle strips, texture atlases etc...)

Re:It depends upon the system.

[cojsl]

"Not all of your apps will run with WinVista, unless you use "compatibility mode" or do some extra steps." "Since Vista automatically offers to re-run most programs in Compatibility Mode if they didn't work without it, and since MS provides step-by-step instructions and a helpful wizard for resolving compatibility issues, and since it literally takes 5 clicks of the mouse to set compatibility mode to XP SP2, and since the vast majority of apps will run fine on Vista without any Compatibility Mode at all, this really doesn't seem like a major issue to me." How about Quickbooks? Can't use compatibility mode here, you MUST upgrade to version 2007 or newer if you have Vista ($500-++?? for multiuser versions). MANY other industry specific apps are the same in my experience.

Re:Vista and XP

[Almahtar]

A friend of mine almost did the same as well. He owns two restaurants, and has PC-based terminals in the more recently made one. He wanted to get the same system installed in his first restaurant, so he called up the company that makes the software and they told him to buy 3 PCs and they'd come get everything set up. He buys 3 PCs which come with Vista, and they tell him that 'for security reasons' he has to purchase XP Pro licenses (at $170-$220 a pop, depending where you get them) for the systems before they'll install the software.

He didn't know any better - good thing he had me to call.

Re:Slashot Reality Distortion Field

[Almahtar]

This seems to be the theme on slashdot so much that you would think it was true, except that out in the real world, I've seen and heard very little about Vista one way or the other. All in all, it seems to be a fairly ho-hum release that people don't care too much about. I work for myself, so many days I just go to a random cafe with free wireless and do my work there. I've had a fairly large number of encounters where someone would hear me on the phone with a client and say "Hey, you sound like you know something about computers - I can't figure out how to get the Internet working on this thing. Worked fine on my last laptop" - sure enough, it's Vista. Usually the issue is something simple (for geeks) like IE7 staying in "offline" mode even though there's a perfectly active connection (I know, IE7 is for XP too, I'm just stating the latest example I encountered), but it's hard for them. While I'm getting them online I routinely hear complaints about speed and usability. I only used to hear people complaining about speed when they'd had XP installed for a few years and it was bogged down with spyware.

Vista really is a different case. I haven't met anyone that's satisfied with it, and I've met a lot of mom'n'pop end users that were pretty vocal in their criticism of it.

Anecdotal? Possibly. I could have a superhuman ability to attract people that have problems with Vista, or perhaps people that use the WiFi in cafes are demographically more prone to disliking Vista than everyone else, but I'm inclined to believe this is an indication of a larger trend.