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Time for a Vista Do-Over?
DigitalDame2 writes "'There's nothing wrong with Vista,' PC Mag editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff tells a Microsoft rep at this year's CES. 'But you guys have a big problem on your hands. Perception is reality, and the perception is that Vista is a dud.' He goes on to confess that the operating system is too complex and burdened by things people don't need. Plus, Vista sometimes seems so slow. Ulanoff gives four suggestions for a complete Vista makeover, like starting with new code and creating a universal interface table. But will Microsoft really listen?"
Indeed there's nothing wrong with Vista. Except of course the operating system.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
You mean like POSIX?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Every 2-bit nerd thinks he knows what's best for Microsoft, why should Microsoft listen to him? Because he has a blog and people read his blog? Like they don't already have qualified people working on their PR problems.
At any rate, Vista's bad image isn't due to perception, I have Vista Ultimate, running on a machine that can definitely handle it, it runs HORRIBLY, this great PC has become my secondary PC which I now rarely use. I'm not the only one like this, I know a couple other people with the exact same "perception" that they got by actually using the operating system.
C'mon. Starting over from scratch on something like Vista seems a bit drastic. How about some fixes instead? Most widely-used software doesn't come into being whole-cloth in v1.0. Most of it is grown on top of inferior prior versions. Eventually it turns into Windows ME and it's time to start over. But by then the start over (NT) had been through a number of releases.
But will Microsoft really listen?
Somehow I'm pretty sure they've heeded the market's opinion but you won't see the consequences of it before Windows 7. Which makes me bet they won't wait 5 years to release that one.
You just got troll'd!
You know, Lance, many of us have first-hand experience with the "reality" of Vista. To argue that "perception is reality, and the perception is that Vista is a dud", in the same sentence as "there's nothing wrong with Vista" gives the impression that our perceptions are not based on reality (to put it mildly). To put it not so mildly, you're calling us either deluded, or liars. Is that really what you want to say, Lance?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Will it run Linux??
I remember these types of articles back in the Win2k days but they didn't last as long. So far Vista looks like it is going through the exact same pattern as previous Microsoft OSs:
1) Wild predictions of doom on the Net before release
2) Smug declarations of the new OS flopping
3) Most consumers start getting the new OS as part of new computers
4) Businesses wait for the first service pack before making the leap
I've yet to see anyone give actual hard and verifiable numbers showing Vista being a marketplace dud anything more than the wishful thinking on the part of some people.
He wants them to throw away all the backward compatibility that all of the big corporate customers really care about.
And he wants them to sell a version that doesn't play music out of the box.
Is it me or are these both _really stupid_ ideas?
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Perception is part of reality, but it's not all of it. Regardless of public perception, either Vista will, or it will not, have drivers for some particular video card. It will, or it will not, let you watch a HD movie over a non-HDCP video channel.
The problem with Vista isn't merely perception. It's the fact that in this case, the general public's perception of crappiness is a pretty good predictor of the reality that Vista is going to cause you, as an individual, lots of problems.
All this does not matter.
Labels love it and they are happy with it and its top-to-bottom DRM. This is what MSFT wanted, this is what it got. Now they will happily shovel it down our throats do we like it or not.
It a repeat of the sad story of Media Center Edition of Microcrapware. If you deliberately remove all functionality that users are interested in you should not expect something to sell. Pick up a MCE Remote and look. It is missing "My Videos", "My Music" and any hint of fetching existing content from the hard disk. Yep. Right, We peones are not supposed to have content that has not been approved and blessed for distribution by a label ya know. Only recorded content for ya. Dumb, idiotic, no-seller from day one, but labels are happy.
Microsoft is not doing pesky Apple (or Hauppage) things and offering the users what they actually want. That is good ya know.
Vista is the same, just on a bigger scale. An OS made to order for the labels. No wonder it is crap.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
...is Windows ready for the *nix yet?
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I've been running Vista 64-bit for over a year. No bluescreens, no incompatible hardware, no problems with media files of any type - divx, xvid, mp3, wma, etc. I don't have any intention of going back to XP.
I wonder how many of the "Vista sucks" crows are trying to run it on outdated hardware. Vista does like a lot of memory - I wouldn't touch it without at least 1.5 GB - but this isn't 2001 any more. There should be an expectation that a modern OS will require more RAM and CPU than an OS released 7 years ago. (I have a Pentium D CPU, so I'm nowhere near state of the art, but I have 2 GB RAM).
MS CEO : What are u saying? i can hear u from up here in mount Olympus. But thanks for your attention...Don't forget to buy Vista the best OS we pulled out of our as...development center
Oh wait...
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
On the other hand, if MSFT can show that it plug the "digital hole" and tell the media giants that "Windows is the delivery platform for digital content that cant be pirated" then all of them will provide content only in MSFT approved format, and they will achieve a vendor-lock in the media sphere similar to the vendor-lock they got in the corporate world. So the thinking goes in Redmond. So they add layers and layers of stuff, signed drivers, protected video path, protected audio path etc etc. MSFT is trying to sell vista to media companies. Not to the poor dolts who own/buy the PCs.
Some of his suggestions look quaint. "Start all over, and forget 100% backward compatibility!" he urges. Vista has already given up on compatibility. So much of old software, libraries and drivers don't work in Vista. Active X is dead. OpenGL support is being eviscerated to supplant it with MSFT owned rendering schema. Office2005 SP3 just announced it is going to stop importing Office97 files due to "security concerns". (Just when OpenOffice started rendering and saving Office97 format files better than MSFT itself. coincidence?). No. It is a myth that the backward compatibility makes MSFT code slow.
MSFT never had long term focus. It flits about from this latest thing to the next latest thing in a desultory manner. As long as the vendor-lock in Office product keeps pumping money into its coffers it does not have any real incentive to find the managers who manage the projects well and those who build empires under them. Right now the bee in the bonnet of MSFT is to get a lock on entertainment somehow. It compromises everything else for that goal. And that is why Vista sucks as a computing platform.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My old man is very stuck in his ways, has worshipped MS since year dot, but after 6 months on Vista on a new PC, drivers crashing and stuff failing he said stuff-it and went straight out and bought an Apple imac! Shocked the hell out of all us! He wanted real stability and safe phone supported software. I don't have time to attempt an Ubuntu brainwashing exercise, but when he went out and just bought an Apple and has stuck to it to the point of almost boxing up his PC ready for eBay, that says something about the average appliance-centric PC user getting fed up with MS and their BS.
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
but what they'll hear are it needs more features. They will try to speed it up and nix of of the most annoying bits but I'll be shocked if much of the bloat goes away. The most we can hope for is being able to more easily turn off unwanted features or if we are really lucky they'll be turned off by default. I don't see security changing much. A lot of the problems seem pretty entrenched into the OS. I'm guessing they'll spit out a less offensive version then try to address most of it in the following release. Given the development cycle on this dog I wouldn't hold my breath on any major fix any time soon. Most people will grin and bear it. We've all seen slow downs from one release to the next but this seems more bloat related than any of the past issues. Some were trying to support next gen processors or needing more horsepower but this feels like a bloat issue. A faster processor may not be a real fix. They may have cut loose DOS but there's still a lot of old support in Windows which is good and bad. I don't want more bells and whistles personally I want both 32 bit and 64 bit support like Mac has, better memory management, and to handle a realistic amount of ram. More than anything I want stable and I'd like to get back to NT stability where if a software happened to crash you didn't have to reboot and at times hard boot. I had to hard boot NT 351 once the whole time I used it. Rebooting is common on my Win 2000 and XP machines. Stable, faster, 32/64 bit support and maybe support 32 gig of ram or more. Is that too much to ask for?
which Steve Jobs regarded as a piece of crap so after a few years development OS X was released.
We can all complain but so long as Vista is being FORCED on the market there will be no options.
There is a saying that "Perception is Reality". Microsoft would be smart to learn that. They could turn Vista around and make it a win-win situation. Right now, it is only a win for them and not customers due to the massive uptake driven by forced adoption and forced EOL of XP drivers, etc. Due to the perception, more will consider Mac and some even Linux for desktops, but uptake will be slow.
Also, as far as stats on Vista vs
I have a pretty good laptop, and everything runs smoothly. Only reason I use Vista is because I need to run Visual Studio for school. MS Should Open Source their Kernel(my guess). Open Source is the future IMO and if MS wants to survive in the OS market that is exactly what they should do. Like I said, my Vista runs fine, but I hate to know that 60%(or more) of the OS is just bloat.
Every 2-bit nerd thinks he knows what's best for Microsoft, why should Microsoft listen to him? Because he has a blog and people read his blog?
Of course not...if he were the only one. He isn't. Every 2-bit, 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit nerd who has used Vista seems to be saying the same thing. That's a problem.
Like they don't already have qualified people working on their PR problems.
Appears it isn't working. PR can't polish a turd.
In my opinion, the only thing good about Vista is the Aero interface. I love how Vista looks but I don't like how it works. I'll be sticking to XP until either another functionally equivelant version of Windows comes out or till I die from old age. I fear the latter will happen first.
"Do an Apple and start with new code. Forget about supporting every piece of hardware and software ever written. For people with major compatibility issues, keep Vista Premium around. You'll be surprised at how many people simply want to move forward."
MS is not Apple. Its software is used far more widely and people depend on it. MS already faces the nightmare of having to support several versions of its OS because if a critical security hole is found in an old windows version MS has to fix or face millions of hijacked PC's and another smear on its reputation.
Vista is in fact the move by MS to go to ONE base, no longer the 9X/NT seperation, one kernel to rule them all! They already broke plenty of legacy applications with it and getting lots of flak because of it. Yes, it might sound smart to just start over but MS really can't do it, because there would be a side effect. IF MS broke backwards support, then when people would finally be forced to move their legacy app from a now unsupported OS, they might CHOOSE a different OS!
By keeping old apps running on their latest OS, they make surepeople have no real incentive to switch their old apps to a different OS. See the recent IE7 and IE8 debate where companies who build their intranet apps for IE6 are faced with having to alter them. Why if you have to pay developer anyway, why not make the app browser neutral and avoid having to do the same for IE9? Force people to chance and they might chance in a direction you do not like.
Anyway, what did Apple really do? They switched their OS9 for one of the oldest OS'es still around? Apple did NOT write new code, they used existing code, existing ANCIENT code.
"Stop trying to make Windows all things to all people. Build it for three core tasks: e-mail, Web browsing, and document creation (which would cover 75 percent or more of the computing world's needs). Sell the OS for $19.99. Then build a dozen or so add-ons that users can bolt on to create the task-oriented OS they want: writing, music, video creation, art work, accounting and business, and so on."
Isn't this exactly what people been bitching about, that MS has to many different versions of its OS? It is already hard enough to get people to cough up once for software, constant upgrades are really going to upset them. It is already a support nightmare because what user really knows which OS version they run let alone what upgrades they installed? BAD IDEA!
"Create a universal interface table for all applications that can be written to by current software manufacturers. It should be small and light, and when you run the new OS, it should automatically collect what it needs from the Microsoft site or the primary vendor site. It would put most of the processing work on the original application and leave the OS safe to act as traffic cop without getting bogged down.
Does this guy even know MS? MS doesn't want third party developers to have an easy time, MS is well known for introducing unpublished API's that its own apps use to make them seem better then third party apps. This idea would totally go against MS business practices. Give a third party an even chance, and why, people might just use that product instead of your own.
"Stop tooting your own horn!"
MS lives by the fact that to a lot of people Computers == Microsoft. It has to toot its own horn very hard to make sure it drowns out anyone who might claim otherwise. They also toot a lot about what their NEXT piece of software is going to do, hoping nobody will be able to hear the spoil sports who point out the software that already does what MS is saying MIGHT happen.
Check up on the history of MS vs OS/2. MS not tooting its own horn would run counter to the way the company has competed.
As for Apple, show me an apple product that does NOT display its logo rather clearly. Everyone knows what an iPod looks like. Apple is just better at making their tooting seem subtle.
On the whole I think t
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well, I got so sick of my HP laptop with Vista that I decided to buy a MacBook. Programs weren't running, random pop up windows, security issues, setting up my home wireless, sudden performance drops, UI feature creep, sidebar failures, and more.
I'm serious, it was really bad and with the HP bloatware, the laptop was a nightmare. So, I bought a Mac and I have to tell you, it's been great. There are some minor issues but they really are minor. I'm now drinking the Koolaid.
How to Download YouTube Videos
Windows cloverfield
©weeb inc. 2008"unleash the beast"
I started using Vista Home Premium when I bought my new Toshiba laptop, about 5 months ago. At first I was going to just install XP on the system, as I was quite apprehensive about Vista's compatibility issues with much of the software I need to use day to day. But, as an IT contractor, I knew I would have to start supporting Vista sooner or later, so I took the plunge.
I also expected that the first thing I would do is turn off all of Vista's "pretty" including Aero, and make it look as much as 9x/2k as possible. That's what I'd done with XP (Blue...ugh!) and I figured Microsoft's latest UI-gloss would be the same. Based on what the media had told me, I thought the DRM would be horribly intrusive, the security ever-present and annoying, but useless.
Ehm... whoops! I was a bit surprised. Vista runs quite well on this new but definitely not top-end laptop. It's a bit slow to fall into sleep mode or wake up, but not bad considering the 2GB of ram it has to deal with every time I close the lid. Bootup isn't too slow, and although shutdown is a bit laggy, I shut the system down rarely so that's not much of an issue.
As for DRM... what DRM? I have MP3 files, DivX, MPEG-video, watch DVDs and listen to (and rip) CDs quite often, and have not had it bother me yet. I don't use the frankly horrific Windows Media Player or it's associated store, nor do I use iTunes. Using either of those will of course result in DRM and associated DRM-related issues, but that's YOUR problem, not mine. My CD-quality ripped MP3 files have no DRM, thank you very much.
The security screen that darkens the window when you are installing, uninstalling, updating, changing, or even just copying files into the Program Files directory is a bit overused, but the implementation is great- as far as I can tell, it does a system "stop" and holds everything until you make a decision, possibly stopping malware from auto-installing as easily as in the past. I wish I could select when I want it to happen more specifically then "on" or "off" but maybe in a future patch that'll happen. "Run as Administrator" is a bit vexing in that you can't log in as "Administrator" (AKA root) but you can make shortcuts automatically run specific programs as administrator (Netstumbler requires this as it needs low-level access to the wireless NIC).
The wireless and network connection screens take a little getting used to, as they are new since XP, but the ease-of-use and controllability are still present, and I do prefer it a great deal over Apple's over-simplified system.
Oh, and Aero? Shiney! I actually rather enjoy the transparencies, and most of the transitions are quite unobtrusive. The new start menu is nice in some ways, although I wish it responded faster to opening folders, which is perhaps more an issue with the laptops slow drive speed. Making the task bar 2 level tall works very well, and the start icon expands slightly to fill it's area better.
My major annoyances have mostly to do with the aformentioned wireless connectivity, and with IE7. For some reason, when I load media-rich websites sometimes that window will crash. This doesn't happen on any of the other Vista or XP systems I run IE7 on, so it may be a driver issue. The wireless has problems connecting to open APs sometimes, and for some vague reason doesn't like the occaisonal brand of AP (SonicWall seems to be the worst). I think both of these issues will be fixed shortly, and neither are hugely problematic for me.
Overall, I rather like Vista, for all of it's shortcomings. I wish I had it installed on a powerful-enough system to play games on, though. DirectX 10, anyone? I AM looking forward to Windows 7 though, if Microsoft pulls off most of what it wants to do for that OS, it should be quite the system.
One wonders what Dave Cutler thinks of all the Vista bloat.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
This guy says there is nothing wrong with Vista and then goes on to explain what he thinks is wrong with it? "Too complex", "burdened by things people don't need", "slow", "in-your-face" UAC. Doesn't sound like "nothing" to me.
Ulanoff gives four suggestions for a complete Vista makeover, like starting with new code...
...but is this the operating system we all want?"
According to Microsoft, that is exactly what they did. The biggest reason we were givebn for Vista's delays was a complete rewrite of some of the most critical components. Microsoft has recently made a big deal out of completely rewriting the TCP/IP stack (coincidentally, one of the biggest bitches about Vista is network performance).
So what does Mr. Ulanoff expect? After 5 years and so much rewrite went into the current release of Vista, does he really expect that another rewrite would be any better?
Ulanoff himself said it best:
NO
I use Mac OSX 10.4, Linux Fedora (on my laptop), and Windows Vista Business on my main desktop machine. From my personal experience, yes Vista does come bloated and you have to trim it down. This does not make it a BAD operating system. Vista is a great operating system, I have Opera, Visual Studio, and Outlook running and my machine is currently using 456 mb of memory. My Mac runs at about 520 mb memory and my Linux runs 382 mb memory. All on similar machines...this OS talk is just politics and people supporting their own preference. If you want compare services running, applications running, OS imprint, benchmarks, you will find out that all the systems are identical. If youre too lazy to optimize Vista, use a minimalist distro of Linux. If you prefer a complete streamlined system and conformity with eye candy, use Mac. If you really think about it, Windows is the perfect balance between conformity and configuration. On Mac, everything follows a streamlined look, streamlined interface, and strict apple standards. On windows, there is a standard, but people sometimes follow them and sometimes not. On Linux, you get the ultimate configuration, so you pretty much define your own standard. This is a matter of preference. Execution speeds are more or less the same. I really do not notice any difference between any of the systems after they are optimizedexcept my EFI enabled hackintosh has better benchmarks than my apple machine in every area except thread spawning.lol
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
I remember the cries "OH no! Windows sux because of running as an administrator. That's why we have virii!". Now we're stuck with annoying popups. If I want to perform a "ipconfig /release", I have to create a shortcut to cmd, right-click and "run as Administrator" to be able to do that task.
"Oh no! Windows users are too stupid to protect themselves from hackers and spyware!", so now we have by default this "spyware remover", running on the background, doing most of the time nothing but hogging up memory.
"But they're so stupid, they install everything in their email attachments! YOu cannot trust the internets!", so now I have to "allow" whenever I click a program installation.
After all the criticism, most "features implemented", you now say "yeah, that's cool. But it was better before, when I had all these remarks."
I dislike working with Vista, it's counterproductive, when it should be more productive, and makes me feel less in control of what's going on in my PC; if something hangs, I haven't gotten the slightest clue. "Which obscure process now is behaving badly? Just when I reboot I get a "check for a sollution online", so halfly sell my soul to MS raping my bandwidth sending the dumpfiles to get a "no currently known sollution.".
The seem to have listened to all this whining, and those whining the hardest seem to have been the most hardcore PC user; "oh no, I don't like to spend all this time in managing my PC! Do it for me!" But when they do "ANTI TRUST!" or whatever they come up with. Pounding their chest to distinguish themselves from the "illiterate computer users who need to be protected for themselves on the internets", yet ending up with the same sollution being frustrated they've gotten what they asked for.
In the end, it's still Microsoft. Their implementations will still suck, they'll still have talented people -wherever you can see that or not- who are motivated in what they do (I cannot believe a programmer or project manager is thinking how to fuck you over best, or make the most money. They are motivated to "make a difference", just like many people inhere.)
And yes, most of their products suck, I don't like their marketting strategy. That doesn't change the fact there are geeks working there.
Vista was marketted as "the built from scratch", but it also required to exceed the expectations of a "next generation OS". You can't start over with "DOS Aero" and expect people to wait another 10 years for Web 2.0-like GUI.
Stop whining, if you want perfect software, play Duke Nukem Forever. It's been perfect for years nowThank god for opensource.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Of course MS isn't going to listen to anyone asking them to rewrite an OS from scratch, when they just spent nearly a decade doing so. That's absurd. Now some suckers have participated and provided feedback for their public beta... cough, I mean *release*, they're going to tweak things here and there, maybe rewrite some major problem areas, strip out some of the bloat, and release their next OS.
Anyone else notice where their programming languages are going? Extensibility, re-usability, modularity, and *really* good library support... we're finally seeing an effective implementation of what object oriented programming claimed to be all along. I would not be surprised then, to see that they've taken the same approach with their operating system design.
Their next OS will be better, and though we might complain, most of us will end up with it running on our machines. And you know, after a few years we might actually start to like it. That's my prediction.
Hmm. Is Microsoft's biggest fanboy aiming for a shred of credibility with this article?
My first thought on seeing the title (without reading the post or article) was "I'm sure the Edsel team would have liked a do-over also." After reading the wikipedia article on Edsel & the parent Vista post, I wonder if there are parallels that could be drawn between the failures (design flaws, misalignment with market needs, timing, perception/buzz, etc). Both projects were very long, complex & represented significant investments with disappointing payoffs.
If someone told me I needed "new code" I would be sure I was listening to an idiot. What "new code" would you like? Sheesh......
Boy are we glad that there's nothing wrong with Vista a complete do-over won't fix!
Am I getting his notion right?
Dear Large Advertsing client, I Lance do love your products, and i hate it when people say your product is rubbish. Apple wont spend as much, and that Penguin is mean.
Steve Please Please don't throw that a chair at me, but if you only made a few changes i could tell people that your products are the greatest yet and people who use Vista wont laugh at me like they are currently doing.
I think it is best that i call all users of Vista 'retarded' and my readership too since they do not see the amazing things i see in it. Thus I retain my journalistic integrity and you also win because i cannot never ever upset you.
Please send me a large cash sum, Love and kisses your bestest publisher friend in publishing.
Love Lance
His whole diatribe, while attempting to appear critical of Microsoft, actually seems to push a Microsoft agenda if recent patent applications/awards are any indication.
I don't remember the patent number, but it was reported here on Slashdot that Microsoft has filed (or has been awarded?) a patent that describes a method for selling a stripped-down operating system with an add-on capability to extend the features. Add-on modules included luxury items like a network connection, perhaps at a higher cost for a faster connection, printer connections, faster operating system speed, etc. You would pay an annual license fee for each feature, and the system would rever to reduced functionality mode if you didn't fork over the cash.
But the base OS would be cheap. Or free.
Maybe MinWin is the beginnings of this. The GUI costs extra.
-M
I had to put a Vista laptop on an the wired LAN yesterday while I swapped out a wireless access point.
It took me longer to find the correct dialog than it took me to do everything else - including joining Mac/linux machines and the vista laptop to the new wireless network. I was tempted to try ipconfig, even though I've never used it to bring up an interface on a windows box -- it's more intuitive than Vista's butt-ugly GUI.
It has to be said, there's something SPECIAL about Vista...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Quantifying perception -- that's where things get squirrely. True, gratuitous changes can give bad first impressions, but Vista's more serious problems do nothing to dispel those impressions.
Take a statement like "Vista is slow." There is no single thing that is "speed" when it comes to operating systems. Vista isn't
"slow" in the sense of failing to do many units of computational work per unit time on average. It's "slow" in the sense that you can't rely upon it to respond to input in a consistent amount of time. Serious work has a rhythm to it; you can adapt yourself to a tool that is slow, but effective, but you can't to a tool that doesn't behave in exactly the same way every single time you use it. Using Vista is like dancing with a partner who has a lot of fancy moves, but can't hear the music.
Most of Vista's faults you can adapt to, like it's unnecessarily complicated and cluttered file dialog box. But you can't adjust to the fact that it really needs far more memory than its claimed minimum if you don't want to deal with a user interface that freezes every so often because of swapping. I know swapping is the case because I'm writing this on a laptop with 2GB of RAM that is almost unbearable to use without 2GB of ReadyBoost flash. I'm running pretty much the same workload as was acceptable under 1GB on XP or Linux but as I type this, I can see the access light on the flash drive almost continually blinking as the OS goes for cached pages.
Microsoft probably could make Vista a viable platform if they simply made 4GB the minimum required RAM. Or if they could make it possible to use Vista with the rated minimum RAM requirements. I had an open mind, because people always complain when Microsoft changes things, excepting maybe Windows 2000 where they were ready to try anything after the stability nightmare that was NT 4. And maybe Windows 7 will be that kind of improvement over Vista. But for now I can say I started with an expectation that Vista would be at least OK once I got to use it, but after almost a year I have to say it's the first operating system I've ever used whose performance is a serious problem for my productivity. These are greatly alleviated by ReadyBoost, but even so it's a relief to boot into Linux and not feel like I'm constantly fighting the operating system. In fact, I've begun to boot into Linux and do my work in an XP virtual machine, which feels faster than running the same user tasks directly on Vista.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
3 weeks ago I bought a Dell M1530 laptop with Vista home edition.
I was concerned at first because of all the negatives I'd been hearing about Vista.
Again... I've only had it for 3 weeks, but I can't seem to find any big problems.
I can run Firefox fine. I can run HalfLife fine. BZFlag works fine.
It can see my network fine. UltraVNC viewer works fine.
I guess I will start seeing the problems later?
I think Vista really did get a bad rap. I've been using it for a year now. I believe one of the major sources of complaints was early driver support. Even some big name companies, like NVidia, had really shitty drivers at first. This is not really an issue any more.
The other major complaint, UAC, really ceases to be a problem once the system is configured. Sure, when you first set it up, you get a lot of pop-ups when trying to change settings, but once things are pretty much the way you want them, you rarely see a UAC pop-up anymore. About the only time I see them is when installing a new program.
I gave Vista a chance, bundled on a new ThinkPad X61. It didn't run my old programs properly (specifically on Paint Shop Pro 7, some smaller buttons were not rendered), and the default wi-fi radio driver was incompatible with the hardware - which meant that when the radio would basically turn itself off at random intervals, requiring a complete reboot to turn it back on. Those are tangible, real things wrong.
As for matters of opinion, I hated the system alerts and turned off as many as possible. I hated that Vista CONSTANTLY thrashed my hard drive, whether it was for virus checking or search indexing or whatever - it drove me nuts. And because of the hackneyed way that Vista is backward compatible with other versions of Windows (creating junctions, kinda like symlinks, for the system folders like Application Data and Local Settings, etc.), instead of being able to leverage my pretty decent knowledge of XP, I found myself wondering things like why the fuck I couldn't change permissions on these directories. "What? They're not directories? Oh they're junctions. WTF is a junction? Oh, WTF."
If the next Windows is like Vista then I will go pure Mac or Linux, or just stick with my someday unsupported versions of XP. Microsoft's next Windows should cut all ties with the past. The current Windows is hobbled like Harrison Bergeron, with vestigial remnants of OSes all the way back to DOS.
Microsoft should throw away the old, release a new OS built from the ground up, and bundle a virtual machine running Windows XP to create a classic environment for old applications, same way Apple did when moving from OS9 to OS X.
I agree, nothing whatever wrong with it. That's because I'm not forced to put up with it, like I am with other MS programs. YMMV.
If they downgrade* from XP to Vista at work then I'll probably be singing a different tune. But the fact that I not only had no use for Vista nor am forced to use it at work
Thank God for GNU.
-mcgrew
*I must not be new here (I'm not new, I'm GNU)
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
"Do an Apple and start with new code."
This isn't too bad an idea. At least when combined with "Create a universal interface table for all applications that can be written to by current software manufacturers.". A smaller simpler self contained API would be a good idea. A compatibility layer can be written for this for legacy applications. Prevent developers from mixing and matching old and new code. Few people run applications that are more than a few years old. The compatibility layer could be deprecated after a few years.
"Sell the OS for $19.99. Then build a dozen or so add-ons that users can bolt on to create the task-oriented OS they want:"
They do this. Except they charge a little more than that for the OS. The Add-ons are called "applications". I'm not sure what he's suggesting MS take out of Windows, or why he thinks Microsoft would consider doing this. Sure, it would be better for the customers. But why would MS make put themselves out? They exist to make money. This would make them less money.
Oher developers would love it, of course. Provide the bits that aren't in Windows default. Carve up that 25% of the market between them.
For example, FTA:
As I was saying, the UAC. For everything I do, and I mean everything--whether I'm installing an app, a game, or a Microsoft product--the UAC is always jumping in to warn me. It appears with such jarring regularity, and I do mean jarring--what's with that crazy screen shift, Bob?--that I no longer read it. I simply say 'OK' to everything. Is this what Microsoft intended? I ratchet it down in the OS, but then, am I disabling a key portion of Vista's security features? No feature should be so in-your-face that it becomes faceless. So whom am I to believe? If someone could provide some credible evidence to the contrary, I'd appreciate it. No, I'm not trolling here, I'm just trying to figure out the reality of the UAC situation, because it seems everyone is firmly planted on extreme ends about its functionality.new code == forget Vista - new operating system on its way
Are owners of a flop OS owed anything by the software company that makes it?
Is anyone that uses OS2 Warp owed anything by IBM because their OS didn't take off?
Don't like the OS? Buy XP before it goese extinct. I have every trust that MSFT will make it available again after whatever artificial deadline they set when they see that no one is accepting Vista.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Is it just me thinking that increases in computing power are much slower this days? I know that Moore's law is an observation about the number of transistors in a chip and not about the power of that chip, but Moore's law as usually thought as increases in computing power seems to have slowed down a lot.
I think a part of what has happened to Microsoft with Vista is that they expected computers to be much more powerful this days from what they really are, so they bloated the operating system to dead with DRM and visual effects thinking that the extra power would take care of the extra bloat.
That is not the case and now M$ has a problem.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Why?
It is essentially doing the same thing as 7 years ago. Anything that's bolted on shouldn't influence performance or requirements when not in use and at the very least it should be possible to disable.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Using Windows Vista is the most unpleasant experience I've had with any OS, including Windows 3.1. That may make it a dud. No one who has used it has said "gee, this is an improvement!". Everybody I work with who has used it says "this is slow...does it have to ask all these questions? how do you get to , it was so easy in XP".
Then Microsoft tailored their OS with lots of DRM-crippling technology in the kernel for the movie industry and not for their, uh, customers... Its not a surprise that even die-hard Windows customers like corporations are turning away Vista.
What does Microsoft need to do? Retire the NT kernel or relegate it to an emulation layer, adopt a unix-based core, and take only the good UI elements from XP, ignoring Vista's design completely. Wait, that would be OS X... So yea, Microsoft needs to repackage OS X, that would solve their issues.
For things you'd expect to have to su/sudo in Linux, expect to get UAC in Vista.
That said I've noticed bugs with it; specifically deleting entire folder structures of my desktop with files buried in there with non-standard security rights assigned seems to send UAC a bit mad. It's a rare case, but I've seen it.
And acutally, it's nice knowing that UAC is inescapable sometimes. Without disabling it completely, can can never actually be root - just approve root-level actions as they come up.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I should note that this system came with XP, and that ran fine on here before Ubuntu. Given that everyone I know uses their PC for word processing, email and web browsing, why should they drop $1000 on a new PC when they can upgrade to Ubuntu, and get all the eye candy. Did I mention that they can stop paying for anti-spyware and anti-virus, too?
Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
I can't give you evidence I guess, but just logic should do it.
::slap:: ). Ok, that last one is a bit harder to avoid...guess I've been lucky so far.
UAC will pop whenever you install anything through Windows Installer (regardless of what it installs), access anything admin-only (like changing any system-wide settings), and any files that your user isn't given access to (and thus require admin priviledge).
If you're an idiot who work on the C drive at all time, instead of in C:\User\(YourUserName), its unbearable: it will popup constantly.
Otherwise, it will pop whenever there's a windows update to install, whenever you install software through Windows Installer, or in Program Files, and whenever you ctrl+alt+delete and choose to see "process by all users", or any equivalent system-wide task.
Thats it. So when I develop with IIS, I make sure the web site isn't in C:\wwwroot, but is in my user's directory. I put all my files there. And I don't use software made by idiots (read: games that put save files in the root directory instead of in your user folder...COME ON developers
That final point is really what pushes things to "either extreme". If you use software that constantly write to their executing directory, it gets very troublesome. Imagine in Linux if a software did that. You'd have to run it as root or give yourself special priviledge all over the place. Microsoft has been trying to tell those morons to stop doing that since the dawn of times, and they still do... fact remain, its where UAC succeeds or break: you have a lot of poorly written software, UAC will pop constantly. You don't have such software, you'll only see it once or twice a week.
In the end, you can just turn it off though.
I think Vista was released by Microsoft as a marketing ploy to boost sales of XP.
Has anyone else noticed sales of XP have skyrocketed?
Maybe that was Microsoft's intention...now if we could only figure out why...
"Know but never fear the consequences of your actions."
It's the OS we all love to hate. Vista is the greatest subject for those cute Apple "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" commercials! Fixing it is the last thing Slashdotters want!
What's a "universal interface table?"
Stupid sexy Flanders.
...but not practical. Ain't gonna happen.
Is full of retards. The amount of 'IT-professionals' that spew their shite across this website are an embarassment to the trade.
"My windows keeps asking me stuff, which is okay in Linux, but in Windows!? FUCK NO THATS STUPID IDEAS"
"I heard a rumour about some drivers not working awesomely, and now telling other people that it's a) true, and b) Microsoft's sole responsibility, is the purpose of my life"
"Who needs 64-bit?"
"Wagh, I need to upgrade, which despite being a monkeys task, is suddenly too hard for me because of the existance of Microsoft, curse their eyes, I just want to go back to smashing spinning-jennys with my stone club"
"I am a cunt, read my next post and try to prove otherwise. I dare you."
"Everyone should go Linux, because it is a solution that will suit every last human on this planet, and any other"
"I can't make windows work"
"I can't wipe this drool from my chin"
"I have drool in my PC, which Microsoft broke"
"Microsoft stole my bike"
Utter fucking idiocy. I though Digg was full of gobshites, but you guys are giving them a run for their money.
I feel sorry for the handful of intelligent people here.
They get it from it not working for them.
"...Won't get fooled again."
These are the words of our Dear Leader and they apply just as well to Microsoft Windows Vista. It's not going to be my job to "give Vista another try" even if MS gives it a complete makeover. I'm gonna need a fair amount of greasing up before I lay out my money for a new Microsoft OS. Maybe dinner and a movie. Some flowers would be nice. Definitely, a deep price reduction.
"SP2"?? What, do I look like I just came in on the turnip truck? Like I just came down with the rain this morning?
Tell you what, Microsoft: You come up with an OS that outperforms XP Pro SP2, has some useful new features, is efficient, compatible, maybe even costs less, and then blow me, and I'll give your new OS a try. How's that sound?
I mean, I don't want to sound bitter or anything. I'm willing to let bygones be bygones.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The problem with Vista is that Microsoft decided to get down on its knees and give a nice Lewinski to the entertainment conglomerates. Aside from the usual tendency toward Bloatware, which could be dealt with largely as the author suggests, all the stuff that makes Vista run like an 85-year-old with a bad knee is linked to DRM in one way or another.
No "do-over" that doesn't strip every bit of that crap out of Vista and put the operating system first, last and always at the service of the user is going to find acceptance. The average person isn't necessarily aware of all the technical stuff, but they're starting to figure out that Vista is spyware. And since just about everybody has something on their system that might violate copyright, they don't want Vista ratting them out. There's actually an article by some lawyer documenting how just going about his legitimate daily on-line activities exposes him to copyright liability in the millions of dollars because the law is completely insane on the matter. A lot of people are simply afraid installing Vista will lead to a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate siccing a slime of lawyers on them (That's my collective term for lawyers...like a flock of birds or a swarm of bees) and grabbing their house, their car and their kids' education fund.
And there's a lot of people out there who know just a little about computers, but all their friends and relatives who hardly know how to turn one on constantly look to them for advice. What do you think that advice is going to be? I'll give you a hint: "Hmm...Vista might try to rat my granny out to the RIAA, I don't know how to configure the security stuff to stop it from squealing without leaving her vulnerable to all kinds of malware, and I don't have time to visit her twice a day to make sure everything's working OK. I think I'll get her a nice, up-to-date copy of XP and sleep easier."
Fuck Vista. Next stop after XP: "X"-nix.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
They turned things into virtual device drivers or privileged services unnecessarily. Like Offline Files, it has a service and a device driver and runs by default? Do most people need it by default? No. They won't let you completely remove IPv6 if you want to, just disabling it the driver is still loaded.
I can get XP down to a bare 12 processes (in task manager) without using removal programs like nLite, bu using vLite in Vista it still stays the same, some 30+ services running, some persistent WMP services that run when not needed or when WMP isn't even open, plus many things that they made into device drivers that weren't in XP.
Add that to every Tom, Dick and Harry software developers who think that a privileged service or device driver is the holy grail to making their program Vista compatible.
It would certainly seem that for the Geek at least his perception of reality is the only reality.
Otherwise, how else could he ignore Microsoft's standout performance in fiscal 2008? 20% growth in the Windowa client division alone.
Microsoft's results contrast with disappointing forecasts from technology companies such as Apple Inc., Intel Corp. and Motorola Inc. The Standard & Poor's 500 Information Technology Index has fallen 12 percent this year, the second-worst performance of 10 industry groups tracked by the S&P.
About 75 percent of the Windows programs sold last quarter were the higher-priced versions. Unearned revenue, which tracks signings of multiyear corporate contracts for Microsoft software, rose $500 million more than CFO Chris Liddell had forecast. Sales in Microsoft's business unit, which includes the Office applications, advanced 37 percent. Microsoft Shares Rise on Profit, Forecast Increases [January 25]
This is really KEY in my opinion. At home, I run games, taxes, Quicken, web surf and do email. I'll pay another $20 for CD burning and music creation (or let iTunes do it for me). I'll pay $20 to incrementally boost my PC's capabilities. I don't need, or want everything built into Windows for home use.
At work, I don't need music editing or games - I need OpenGL for Autocad, PSpice, OrCAD and the typical Office suite.
Let me econimically customize my OS for the specific needs I have. Don't charge me $400 for Office so I can write letters at home. I won't pay it. I'll use a copy of Office 97 I have lying around (gift from a previous employer).
While I may not agree with everything the author said, I do think he has many valid points.
The perception that Vista stinks stems from two things:
a) Vista likes memory and it won't work well without 2 GB
b) when you install Vista it installs every single feature there is. This obviously eats up CPU and memory. Marketing features and not installing them by default is not the best way to promote them so marketnig is to blame for this one.
Once I disabled full text indexing, snapshot backup and a few services it runs like a champ. The Windows Explorer is slighly annoying because I'm used to the XP one. I'm sure if you added all the features that come with Vista Ultimate to Ubuntu it would make Ubuntu slow down as well.
In addition, I installed Ubuntu on the same laptop as Vista for comparison purposes. While Ubuntu was running OK, I was taken aback by the amount of manual customization it needed to get simple things going (like the special keys on the keyboard and the scroll button on the Trackpoint, hotkey to turn off and turn on the wireless card). I also had some weird lock-ups when running Ubuntu. Obviously, OEM support for Linux is lacking and it shows. Ubuntu did not feel faster than Vista when booting, hibernating or "sleeping". Otherwise, Ubuntu performed well except my favorite applications are not available on it and I don't have a lot of time to invest finding similar apps. Not impressed with Ubuntu, but v7 is light years better than the version I tried a few years ago when it comes to driver support and look/feel.
When copying from a samba share on my local network, Vista restricts the destination folders that are allowed. You can have Full Control on a folder, and Vista will refuse to let you copy from the network directly to it. You have to save to the desktop first and then move it. That is sheer, unmitigated stupidity, and is one of the many reasons I think Vista is a usability nightmare.
I bet this guy also lectures the delivery boy about how Pizza Hut should make pizza.
I bought a cheap ass HP notebook ($300), the only thing I did to it was add a gig of ram ($30) so that instead of 512M of shared RAM between the computer and video card it now has 1.5G. I think this is the trick. People are buying cheap hardware and don't have enough RAM. My computer sings :) I am pleased with Vista. One of the first things I did was partition space for XP and try to run them side by side. I do a lot of computationally intensive programming (I'm an engineer) and some gaming. I really couldn't tell a speed difference between XP and Vista if I tried. So there was no reason to keep the XP partition and a few niceties that came with the Vista one.
Overall, I'm satisfied.
I have Vista running at home. As a whole, Vista seems significantly more stable that previous versions of Windows. I have had no blue screens. I have had the screen driver crash at one time and all that happened is that the driver restarted (again, no blue screens). However, I cannot recommend Vista to anyone because of the support Microsoft has been giving the product. I started out with one major problem. I had Vista Premium. Unfortunately for me, I found that fax support has been removed from all Vista versions except Vista Ultimate. Score one for Microsoft marketing. I also started learning Russian and decided I could justify an upgrade to Vista Ultimate because of both the fax and language support. I finally purchased the upgrade to Ultimate. There was some problems because I only had a single DVD in my disk set. You need a second upgrade DVD to to the upgrade and getting this ran into some minor issues which were resolved. After successfully installing the Ultimate upgrade, I decided that since I paid for all the language packs, I should install all of them. Attempting to select all the language packs and install them doesn't work. Most fail. It took me over an hour to get two language packs installed at a time. I did this for several days and eventually had about 20 language packs installed. I then started getting an error code 2. I checked the Internet and found a hotfix that was supposed to deal with this. After installing the hotfix, my system became unbootable. After paying about $60 for a MS support phone call, the only solution they could come up with was for me to reformat my C drive and reinstall. I was not very happy but since I needed my system, I complied. About two weeks later, I started getting threatining system messages saying that I had an invalid license key and my system was going to be deactivated. Again I called MS. I spent two hours on the phone talking with people that agreed I was entitled to a valid license key but had no idea as to how to obtain one. Eventually, there was apparently one woman at the company that was in charge of assigning license keys. I eventually got a new license key. The problem was caused by my doing the install from the upgrade disk. I guess I was supposed to know that I should have installed the original Vista Premium before I installed Vista Ultimate. Sometime after the second install, I tried connecting a camera I have to my system. The use of this camera is very important on this system. Apparently, I connected the camera before I installed the camera driver and a MS default driver was installed. I then tried to install the correct driver written by Canon. The system refused to use the Canon driver. I contacted Canon. It turns out that I hade two registry entries under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USB. The problem is that you could just delete these entries under previous versions of Windows but Canon knows of no way of deleting an entry under Windows. Canon suggested getting a flash card reader for my system to solve this. I purchased a flashcard reader but the reader hung when reading a card. I may be looking to try another reinstall. The bottom line is that all new complex programs have bugs. MS is not addressing the fixing of their bugs. I paid to have the language pack problem looked at by MS. The impression I got is that the customer service techs had no access to the code and were not allowed to bother the programmers. The second registry problem under Vista is a fairly common. It is a major problem for things like cameras and no one at MS has made any hint of addressing it. So ever since Big Bill left, it looks as if MS is becoming business incompetent.
Escape + Meta + Alt + Control + Shift + Tab = Flip3D
DATABASE WOW WOW
If Microsoft had a total monopoly, they would be very vulnerable to government meddling. A few years back they avoided that with a $150M loan to Apple (and got the added benefit of handsome profits from their loan). Today they avoid a total monopoly by pushing out Vista. They get everything they want from this approach:
(1) keep a large marketshare/influence due to vendor lockin
(2) make OEMs happy by helping them peddle more hardware
(3) keep themselves in the consumer's head by releasing a shiney new OS
(4) give Apple & Linux a chance to regain marketshare
(5) give tech sites something to argue about (now that the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD death match is over)
(6) give the New Fascist Order more control of Joe and Jane Sheep
(7) automatically make people interested in Windows 7: It's Not Vista! .
Sales of Windows 7 ain't guaranteed til Windows 6 won't run.
I come here for the love
Issues? When a "modern" Operating System will install printer drivers that render it unable to uninstall said drivers, and unable to print, and unable to ever install another functioning printer, ever. One has to ask, WTF?
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
The guy is obviously an imbecile.
Take, for example: Vista. KDE. Mac OSX.
Any complex software undergoing major rewrites *will* be buggy and "unpolished" if suffering from a deadline.
Period.
Vista SP1 will be a major improvement, insofar as it *can* be, but Vienna (Windows 7) will be the "next" Microsoft OS to get for most. Vista is a dry-run. Just like KDE 4.0....just like MacOSX.
Well no, I would expect the application to 1) create a user for the application 2) set the permissions on the executing directory to that user and 3) run the executable as setuid to that user.
This would allow the application complete access the the files under it's own directory, but no access to systems files or anything else. Just like how postgres and a whole load of other linux applications do it. No need to be root, no need for "special" privileges. I suspect windows *could* do it like that, but doesn't
And he wants them to sell a version that doesn't play music out of the box.
Up until now, the RIAA has not sued Microsoft for making software that enables the average joe to so easily pirate music. I have a strong feeling that there were some private discussions held that unless Microsft gets serious about enforcing strong DRM in Windows and also doing something to rid the planet of all older non-DRM-enforcing versions of Windows already out there in users' hands, that the lawsuits against MS were going to be in the billions of dollars and that the RIAA would stand a very good chance of convincing a jury that one of the main uses of Windows had become to play music without even the tiniest semblance of respect for copyright control, and that MS had made it work that way intentionally. The "preponderance of evidence" they'd need to show is out there for all the world to see.
Now with the later versions of Windows Media Player for XP and also Vista itself having DRM in its prime design, MS can claim they took "reasonable measures" in the direction of discouraging their customers from using Windows to illegally pirate music.
All of the above also applies, although in a slightly lesser amount, to digital movie files and the MPAA.
How long till the Microsoft effect kicks in and people simply lower their expectations and get used to it?
It's a pattern: W95 -> W98, W98 -> NT3, NT4 ->2000, 2000->XP, and XP->SP2. Battered spouse syndrome?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Don't hold your breath. They don't have to, remember?
Yes, most people have probably heard that alternatives to Windows do exist, but I figure that unless any next version is outrageously worse than the previous one, most users will still be too lazy to jump ship. The overall effect reminds me of Al Gore's story of the frog that eventually gets cooked because it does not notice the gradual rise in water temperature. In this case, however, the consumers and the rest of the industry won't die, but they will be forever miserable unless the US government finally recognizes the situation for what it is, steps in and does something about it, like split up the company and open-source much of the source code.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I know that is an old saying, but I'd say overall Linux is cheaper, even including training time for new users. The lack of crapware of any kind alone seems to negate the benefits of the users knowing how to use windows. Considering how much time is *lost* due to reinstalls, slowdowns, etc of badware I still say Linux is cheaper over the long haul.
I've been supporting and administering Microsoft networks for over a decade now. With every new Microsoft operating system release I can think of (except Windows ME) there have been a few features that could sell the operating system.
This time, with Vista, there are none. I don't really know what Microsoft spent 5 years developing, but from a user's perspective, there isn't much reason to buy Vista.
I've got Vista in the lab right now, and I can't really justify the expense to start moving our network (a mix of machines, some approaching 5 years old) to Vista.
That's Vista's real problem.
-ted
It was called Windows NT (well originally it was called OS/2). They completley diteched Dos and Win16 and wrote emulation layers (I believe they called it Windows on Windows or WOW) for them to maintain application compatibility. Just like Apple did with OSX.
.NET as the main API.
Start from scratch and write a decent implementation of Win32 as an emulator. Switch to
Windows 7 is the working title for Vista's successor. Microsoft has now released the official name of their new operating system. May I present to you Windows Mulligan.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Every vista thread on /. lately looks like this:
I've never used Vista (maybe for 5 min at my parent's house), so I don't have my own opinion, but can we just admit that apparently SOME people have problems with it? I mean, sure some are probably exaggerating, and some are probably having driver issues (which I don't see any reason to ignore, actually), but are you really ready to claim that ALL the complaints are groundless just because YOU didn't have a problem? And what is a problem to one person may not be a problem to others. Someone could at least link some data to make their case: Here are some tests of XP vs Vista on the same hardware.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Vista is in fact the move by MS to go to ONE base, no longer the 9X/NT seperation
Wasn't that XP? The last OS to use the 9x kernel was windows ME, 8 years ago.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm not trying to start a fight, but blaming the user is a common mistake and is actually a pretty blatant logical fallacy on the part of developers and users alike. The point of good design is to make something as transparent to the user as possible. Consistent confusion and problems popping up, regardless of how stupid you may think the operator is (or how stupid they actually are), are grounds for reconsidering the design.
For comparison's sake, in Mac OSX, I rarely consider the ramifications of where I'm putting files -- it just happily lets me put stuff wherever I like. I may occasionally get some user privilege weirdness, but only once in a blue moon. In Windows, I'm restricted to putting stuff exactly where it is supposed to go (as opposed to something convenient like the desktop), even if it is a complete mystery where that exact spot is. Poorly designed and inconsistent installer apps don't help the problem either.
I feel confident I'm right when I state: ... starting with new code" is not something one does when "there's nothing wrong with" the product. /. summary is quoting the article, since I can't bring myself to clicky TFA.
A "complete Vista makeover
This statement is so far from reality that it's even out of range of the orbital nukes. I'll assume the
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
I was looking to buy a Media Center recently. Microsoft's view of the way "TV" should be sucks. Every Media Center PC I looked at had a large case, loud fan, and hugely complicated remote control or worse, a wireless keyboard.
Great for geeks, horrible for the rest of the people living in my house.
I bought an Apple TV, and I couldn't be happier. Sure, it doesn't record live TV, but for $9.00/month I get an HD DVR from my cable company.
I put all my DVDs, music, and photos on the Apple TV, and it is easily navigated with a simple remote.
Microsoft just doesn't get it. They need to fire their product designers and hire some guys that think like normal humans do.
-ted
Sorry, since this is Slashdot, I posted assuming everyone reading is a "Slashdot" reader. If someone has the required "background" to "appreciate" Slashdot, and they stick everything on the C drive, they're stupid. If my mother puts everything on her C drive, she's only mislead.
That being said, you have something like 10 ways of accessing your document folders, and ONE (as a normal user) to access your C drive, and when you do, the computer will freagin tell you not to play with it. If you try to put something where you shouldn't, UAC will pop up telling you not to. If you do it anyway, you really, -really- tried. Really, if you put your files anywhere that the UI lets you access without resistance, you're fine.
Ironically, when I used the word idiot, I was thinking about one of previous boss (a developer with a master in software engineering) who insisted on putting everything on the C drive. That got problematic pretty fast.
Are those the kind that grow from the ceiling or the floor?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I just can't believe they have rewritten Vista from scratch. Yesterday I spent 40 minutes mapping one network drive and setting up two network printers on a Vista Laptop. The printer driver dialog still only shows four lines of choices. There is no way to increase the size of the dialog, you have to scroll, scroll, scroll. This has got to be the same dialog we have faced since Windows 95 days. They may have changed the pictures but I find it hard to believe that they have "re-written" the whole OS. Remember that pre-release Vista was subject to the same WMF bug as all the other versions of Windows. cheers
Oh, and sorry for double posting, but..whats wrong with putting stuff on the desktop in Windows? Call -me- an idiot if you will...but my desktop is filled to the brim :)
I've got a serious dev box that doubled as my primary gaming box for nearly 5 years. It runs XP on a pentium4 2.5GHz and 512 MB ram and 80 GB HDD (bought refurbished in Jan 2003, when 3 GHz machines were already out). That's plenty powerful to run several virtual machines. The machine reboots only 3-4 times/year on average (service packs, power outages, and vacations).
This summer I got a new machine that runs Vista on a quad core "core2" at 2.4GHz with 2 GB ram and 320 GB HDD. The sticker price is the same as the old XP machine -- except with inflation, that means it actually cost less. Every stat is 4x as high, so it literally runs rings around the old XP box. In fact, XP in a virtual machine on the new box runs about the same speed as the old box (there's no noticeable difference). The new machine even runs 30 watts cooler idle!
My only complaints with Vista: (1) no option to change the color of the task bar, and (2) why did they have to rearrange all the common tasks in the control panel? oh yeah, and a weak #3: vmware takes forever and a day to start on Vista. Thanks windows defender! Not.
I was talking about user applications. You speak of Postgres, so the MS equivalent is SQL Server. Does it do that? -YES-, it does. It creates a COUPLE of roles for various features, assign them to the required users, and it works fine. It indeed writes to the app's directory, and you won't see a popup aside during install. Those are services though. "You" aren't running Postgres: the system is. It runs even if you log off.
Applications that you use directly though? They write to your home directory. Your personal KDE/Gnome/whatever user settings aren't in the same directory as the libs, are they? Well, a lot of stupid windows software written by wannabes do that, and it will make you see UAC.
Yup! XP ended the Dos/NT split by bringing the NT kernel to the masses.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
A mulligan is a perfectly respectable tactic performed a limited number of times by reasonably respectable sportsmen sufficiently proficient at their avocation not to trip over their putter and tear the green to shreds. Which of those adjectives possibly would be applicable to the purveyors of the hype that is Windows 7?
Seriously, Lance is a fanboi from way back, working for a "news" organization that have been incurably overexuberant cheerleaders for all things Microsoft since well before they fired Will Zachmann for telling the truth. They should stop calling themselves "The Independent Anything" and just stick a big red "Microsoft-Approved Propaganda" stamp on every cover. I started reading them way back with Volume 1 Number 1 - which I still have - but I haven't bothered for at least the last four or five years. It's not that I'm implacably anti-Microsoft; I've been developing for and using Microsoft software since the days of BASIC on casette tapes...but my clients pay me to do things right, and being constantly deafened by the Microsoft echo chamber is a sure way to lose clients when things don't work as expected on schedule.
Pity.
Micro-soft and major pharmaceutical companies have joined together to bring you a solution for Reduced Vista Interest Syndrome. This new pill should not be taken if you suspect us of making up syndromes just to over-medicate you into conforming mediocrity. New VistaGasm(TM). YOu are fRee tO dO As WE teLL You, yOu aRe fRee tO do As wE Tell YoU.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I've been around since before the DOS days. I've used literally hundreds of pieces of software. Some were better than others. But Vista is, without a doubt, the worst operating system I have ever had the displeasure to use. I have a Quad core on my primary home PC running Vista Home Premium, and it performs no better than my 2-year-old laptop single core running XP SP2. To the contrary it runs worse. It locks up, it obsoletes hardware, it takes 5 MINUTES to fully boot-up, etc. etc. At first I was impressed. Vista is beautiful to look at. And after the first install it boots up in about 10-20 seconds. But just start adding stuff ... and what the hell else are we supposed to do with a PC??? and it takes longer and longer to do things. uSoft needs to stop playing around with Zunes and game machines and start rewriting Vista - FROM SCRATCH. I hate Vista with a passion.
I am coming from a desktop with an Athlon XP 3200+ and a Geforce 6800GT video card running Windows XP. You know what? The laptop running vista is way smoother. It boots up faster. It opens file folders faster. It browses the web faster.
Now granted, my desktop isn't top of the line any more by a long shot, but it still ain't no slouch for normal things, like surfing the web and navigating file structures.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Vista. It updates just fine. It runs games almost as fast as XP, but that is because those games are specifically optimized for XP. And Vista can still run them almost at the same speed. Newer games will run faster on Vista than XP. Its not quite the same bitching that was going on during the switch from Windows 98 to Windows XP, but its close.
... just think how long a do-over is going to take if they're running Vista instead of XP on the dev machines now.
"Windows 7 will have a really awesome mini kernel, and then they will shove everything into the kernel so it runs as fast as possible."
You just keep believing that okay?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Visual clutter. Not that I can throw stones, as my Windows desktop is butt-ugly with clutter too.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Exactly, and where's all that "think for yourself"?
So your criteria for a 'media center' does not include 'records media'?
OS X uses the Mach kernel, a project which didn't start until 1985. NeXT was founded in 1985, so NeXTstep is about the same age. The imaging layer in OS X is entirely new and based on PDF, because they didn't want to reuse the licensed NeXTstep Display PostScript from Adobe. Also entirely new are Core Image, Core Data, Core Image, Bonjour, and so on. So other than the core BSD tools, most of OS X dates from the late 80s at the earliest.
Sure, it implements APIs that date back to v7 Unix. But then, Windows Vista implements APIs that date back to 86-DOS aka QDOS in 1981.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I like Vista (sure, especially the added features that were in OSX first) and think it would not have gotten such a bad reputation if MS had been (1) more honest about the steepness of the upgrade and (2) showed off the feature changes. I think MS needs to take a page from Apple's playbook but not from the ground-up approach. Actually it is something they used for Office 2007, so its not copying something that is uniquely Apple. Train your users with videos while riding the hype. Apple says it is a revolution so that it is off the hook for not being compatible. If Vista says it is a step forward, don't try to pretend there will be no learning curve and that I should expect my old computer to perform or behave in the same way. Is the iphone or Leopard quirky, does it require adaptation. Certainly, but a chunk of the users went through the learning curve--read the manual as it were--BEFORE they even bought the device.
The free ride of automatic upgrades is over for Microsoft - just like as it ended for Novel in the not too distant past.
Vista's biggest problem is that "nothing is wrong with XP".
Vista is not offering anything spectacular, that motivates either businesses or individual users to voluntary upgrade.
There is no good return on investment for the customers.
Microsoft's bigger problem is that none of the new versions of their traditional flagship products (desktop OS, Office, mail and file/application servers) bring any significant innovation, which makes it worth even to consider the upgrade.
Everybody understands that Microsoft has to come up with new products to meet the expectations of The Street - but if those new products don't bring significant value, customers don't care to buy them. Just like with any other products and services.
Not to mention, that the public and corporate leaders have started to realize that Microsoft is not the glorious technology wizard of the Universe as they were led to believe: Apple and Open Source can create equally valuable products, which might even be more innovative and better value for the money.
I find it mildly amusing that Lance Ulanoff contradicts himself pretty blatantly. Saying 'There's nothing wrong with Vista', but confesses that it's too complex and slow. Doesn't the latter imply that there IS something wrong with Vista?
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
Like everything else MS produces, it will be renamed, repackaged and all the yukyuks of the world will rebuy the exact same product, once again, proving without a fraction of doubt, that the masses are incredibly dumb.
Me? I'm still holding out for Microsoft Windows Bliss 2010 v1.0 to drop, their new OS. I'm so excited. Apparently its unhackable.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Joe Sixpack makes up the majority of the computer market. Joe Sixpack doesn't know a thing about Linux, and doesn't want to bother learning how to use it. Joe Sixpack doesn't want to spend $1300 for a comparable Apple computer when he can get a "really good" Dell for $700. What's on that Dell? Vista. What's on almost every prebuilt machine nowadays? Vista.
/. crowd. And once (if) they cut off updates for XP businesses will have to switch too, good luck trying to teach 500 employees of Acme Whatever Inc how to use Linux. Better hire some more tech support.
Microsoft won't really be shooting themselves in the foot with Vista until retailers like Dell refuse to bundle it with new computers, or offer XP by default and Vista as an option. I don't think this is likely to happen, no matter how bad Vista may seem to the more computer literate
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
XP takes about 1.5 GB of hard drive space. Vista takes somewhere between 8 and 11 GB.
Thats somewhere between 5.3 - 7.3 times as big as XP for something that offers practically identical functionality in the user space!
So what the heck takes up all that extra space?? It seems especially odd given Vista is clearly just XP with a few tweaks and addons, such as a new gui and a few extra unwanted crapware apps like UAC and DRM (that can't really be that big) but it brings nothing really new to the party as far as I can see.
You are aware that Microsoft doesn't make any media PCs. They make the software. When I visited their website I can't see any mention of storing the movies/pics locally. So I am curious with Apple TV you can load it with movies without a PC/Mac or are you pairing it with an iTunes on computer? Because if not I use my Xbox 360 (made my Microsoft) to access all the videos, pictures and mp3s on my PC. It is probably noisier then the apple TV but it isn't too bad without the DVD drive spinning up. Plus it plays games.
I suppose a person's expectations determine their reality. I did not have an expectation that a modern OS would require soooo much more hardware cost and it didn't. In fact it ran better and faster with more functionality than the old OS. You did have that expectation and you got what you expected.
-- QED
Anyway, what did Apple really do? They switched their OS9 for one of the oldest OS'es still around? Apple did NOT write new code, they used existing code, existing ANCIENT code
.Then, OS X gives credence to the saying, " they don't make it like they use to!"
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Before XP release I read the technology press, and while XP didn't get stellar reviews, the overwhelming opinion seemed to be XP was a worthwhile upgrade that would take a little bit to grow into it's own. On this sentiment, I chose to buy and install XP on release day, and I never regretted it one bit. Yes I had minor issues, but it ran a little faster and much more stably on my 3 year old computer than Win 98SE.
Before Vista I read the technology press, and was surprised at the specific and vitriolic reaction. On this sentiment I didn't even consider upgrading my old computer. And I resolved to avoid purchasing Vista on a new computer until I started hearing more specific and positive reactions. When I finally got to use it on my girlfriend's new computer, I was absolutely abhorred at its utter lack of speed and usability.
Release Vista may be safer than release XP, but cyber-criminals as well as security researchers were also much less savvy 6 years ago. I would expect Vista to be safer.
In every other way release Vista is less than release XP.
If you think Vista is a dud, why not choose a competing OS. Does anyone find it odd that the only recourse for a "dud" OS is to write a superficial article why Vista sucks and hope MS makes a better one in 3 years? Just, buy Mac or a PC with Linux and get on with your life.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Starting over is sometimes a good thing. When I made the break from the MSDOS-based Windows to NT oh-so-many years ago, it was pretty much a clean break. I had a lot of old software that no longer worked, but NT was stable and allowed me to do so much more. It was a significant change in platform, a lot of drivers just didn't exist (so I had to be choosy about hardware), and there was a learning curve involved-- but once I figured out the basics, I found the losses to be far outweighed by the gains, and after the first week or two (during which I started wondering what I'd gotten myself into and if I should just forget about it and reinstall Win95), I never looked back.
Fast forward a few years, I repeated that process with Linux after suffering through one XP-reactivation call too many (I change & upgrade hardware frequently, so sue me! Oh, wait...please don't!). I've been on Kubuntu for going on two years now, and haven't looked back. The bad taste from the reactivations caused me not to even look back during the first week off Windows. That, and Wine runs many Windows applications better than *real* Windows did, so there really wasn't any problem there.
So what does this have to do with Vista? I think Microsoft made a huge mistake in their approach. They failed at everything in regards to this project. If they wanted a revolution, they should've basically started over from scratch, and left the end users with choices or options to bridge the chasm. By clinging to some legacy functionality, they hobbled the developers, and I think we've all heard how poorly-implemented the backwards compatibility is despite their efforts. Vista wasn't a matter of having one's cake and eating it too, as they tried to hawk it, it was more of a case of dropping your cake on the ground and having a filthy cake you wouldn't want to eat anyway. I've used Vista, I've supported end users who use it, and I've experienced firsthand how unremarkable, bloated, and annoying it is, despite the gimmicks. Microsoft may have gotten somewhere if only they'd revisited the NT development model, reinvented their flagship OS technology, and put a team of developers on making a compatibility layer like Wine to allow users to run older applications. Vista really just seems like XP with some new gimmicks and security measures cobbled-on, and a whole lot of marketing hype. It's apropos to draw parallels between Vista and ME, because ME had basically all of the same attributes and was a failure for the same reasons.
By keeping old apps running on their latest OS, they make surepeople have no real incentive to switch their old apps to a different OS. See the recent IE7 and IE8 debate where companies who build their intranet apps for IE6 are faced with having to alter them. Why if you have to pay developer anyway, why not make the app browser neutral and avoid having to do the same for IE9? Force people to chance and they might chance in a direction you do not like.
:D
Thing is people are learning that backwards compatibility isn't working very well with Vista. I've been telling my neighbors who purchased a brand new computer with Vista pre-installed to stop bugging me about reinstalling/recovering Vista. They have their programs which worked fine in XP loaded up and crashing Vista to the point of no longer even booting.
It's frustrating software and my recommendation is to stick with XP or move to Linux / Apple. No reason to stick with Windows... unless you just must have the latest games too
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Longhorn.
Have gnu, will travel.
After reading quite a bit of Vista hate in the last few days, I'll throw in my $.02: I really rather like Vista.
/.), but so far my experience has been generally positive. I can't see that it needs anything in the way of a radical redesign; as other users have observed, it seems at least as stable as XP was at release, if not more so.
I purchased it (as many people have) pre-installed on a new laptop designed to be Vista compliant. So far, I haven't really had any problems with it. No serious software incompatibilities. No crashes. No horrible slowdown that I couldn't find an explanation for. It found my printer very quickly, and without having to download new drivers. (My parents recently purchased a new iMac, and getting it to talk with their printer was a two day ordeal. And before the catcalling starts, I do not work for Microsoft.) I was a little worried making the laptop purchase because of some of the things I had heard about Vista, but so far there have been no screaming, red-faced moments that have made me want to go back to XP (knock on wood).
Many of the people I know who did hate it (not all, but many) had problems with a new install on pre-existing hardware. Yes, Vista is resource hungry. (I'm running fine on 2 gigs of RAM.) Yes, it's designed (at least in significant part) to move new hardware and drive upgrades. No, I'm not entirely comfortable with that as a business model, but MS is what it is.
I like the interface, and am not terribly bothered by having to verify that yes, I really do want to install whatever program I just popped into the drive. The file management and media libraries are pleasant, and in my view an improvement over previous versions. I'm not trying to downplay the serious trouble other consumers have had with it (perhaps a large majority--hard to know from straw polls on
I think that vista is good...
*Ducks*
But I think they need to remove most of the features in the initial install but include the option to install those features later. Or at the very least an option to select what features to install when first installing the OS from the disk. With these improvements in the installer than maybe the vista would seem faster because there are less features.
At the same time as Gates plays philanthropist in Africa, Vista indulges the old myth that each new OS must consume more resources. Meanwhile the Asus Ee gives the lie to the myth. We should be looking for new OS releases to comsume less energy, and run faster on yesterdays hardware. They could still be made to do more - it's called good programming.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
Um, I think 10.5.2 is being seeded to developers for comment. By all accounts, it is something like a 450MB "update"; so give 'em a LITTLE bit of a break on the roll-out schedule. Or would you rather have 10.5.2.1, 10.5.2.2, 10.5.2.2a, 10.5.2.3, 10.5.2.3a, 10.5.2.3ab, etc?
And you do realize that Apple was mercilessly taken to task for the the iMac's removal of the floppy disk (remember floppies? I hardly do!) and the inclusion of USB ports at the expense of RS422/232 serial ports (remember RS232 peripherals? I hardly do!). And now, they are being taken to task for removing the optical drive from the Airbook.
Do anyone else see a pattern here?
...how many people complaining about Vista do that, because they really worked on it and dislike it, and, how many didn't use it but join in and do some Microsoft bashing. I, myself, don't have any experience whatsoever on Vista, but the opinions I heard from experienced PC-users or coworkers /-students give me the impression, that I wouldn't like it very much. However, when asked about Vista, my answer is, that I myself wouldn't buy it for this reason and for that reasons, but I'm pretty sure, there are as well users, who like it and for whom Vista might be the right choice.
What I want to tell you is: you're free to criticise Vista or Microsoft or Bill Gates' weird haircut, but stay fair. In the interest of all of us and in the interest of the not-so-experienced users, who might rely on your comments.
..at work that is. I work at one of the major oil companies, and when MS said that Vista (uhm.. Longhorn at the time) was due in, what was it, 2004, 5?, they actually believe it and decided to skip XP. fast forward to 2008.... I just hearded that the roll-out of Vista which was scheduled to commence this month has been postponed, possibly for a year, because the pilot users encountered serious problems (don't know the details). I work in geophysics (fortunately on Linux for now) and am supposed to move to Win, but we need 64-bit to work with out multi-GB datasets. Last year IT actually scrambled to test a limited roll-out of XP-64 for so-called Power-users, and it appears they're now making that available to a much larger group, since Vista-64 is nowhere near ready for roll-out, or so they say. But because XP was never planned for, and it will only be an 'interim solution' (we'll see about that...), they won't test and deploy all our software on it, so we'll get an XP-64 box for technical work, next to our standard Win2k box for office work. Talk about duplication of hardware, support, etc.... believe me, if Vista were anywhere near half-usable in a business environment, they'd be upgrading now rather than mucking about with such 'interim solutions', which nobody is really waiting for.
But it is important to remember that Apple did NOT do a re-write as this author proposes. They simply added to an existing code base, a code base that is older then windows.
There is a suggestion that windows sucks because it has so many old parts, this is not the case, it sucks, because it is just plain crap, old/new it is all crap.Even the bits that work have so much tacked on for all sorts of reasons it becomes a bloated impossible to maintain mess.
But age itself has nothing to do with it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Does this mean they'll come out with an edition called Windows Vista Mulligan?
In the past year Microsoft is up 10% while the NASDAQ is down 7%. A big reason is that IT shops are forced to migrate to Vista whether they like it or not. Heck, I was forced to migrate and 98% of my work is on Apple and Linux. Why should MS care if they peddle junk? The name of the game is planned obsolescence and barriers to switching. An OS rewrite would be a disaster. It would be late, defective and offer an incentive to switch. The simple truth is that mediocrity pays for monopolies.
It will probably include not only gluttony (bloat), sloth (crappy performance), envy (poorly reimplemented stolen ideas), pride (disregard for customer satisfaction), and greed (exorbitant prices), but also wrath!
I just hope it also comes with lust (a good collection of pr0n).
personally. Vista is not worth the bandwidth to download. (Even if it was free) Maybe they'll start shipping them out like AOL cds, I mean coffee coasters.. I mean, wall decorations. Oh what ever, you get my point.
Pining for the fjords.
...
It has joined the choir invisible.
Oh, darn, my video card needs to be upgraded again, time to buy a fresh Vista OS copy, since they count that as a new machine
Let me put it this way, Vista is Bill G's gift to his wife, so we'll stop talking smack about Microsoft Bob.
Yes, it's that bad.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So you mean all that time I spend fixing Windows crap is just my imagination?
So which is it:
or
(This guy's my nominee for Person Making the Most Hilarious Statement of the Day Award.)
No siree! Nothing wrong with Vista that a complete rewrite won't fix.
Except that I have doubts that a complete rewrite would actually fix it. Ooh! Maybe SP2 or SP3 will contain all that new code? Then it wouldn't be a complete rewrite, merely a set of patches. Anything to buy time for Windows 7 development.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
i use vista ultimate on my work machine (intel 2.4 dual core, 4GB RAM) and vista home premium on my home machine (intel 2.4 quad core, 3 GB RAM). i have no idea what you idiots are talking about, unless you're upgrading your old 486s to vista. then i could understand performance issues. if you have the proper hardware, vista is not only eye candy, but also an excellent, reliable, secure operating system. now, let the stone casting commence!
Vista doesn't get to pick its competition. In order to succeed it has to beat OSX 10.4.10 or 10.5.1 and XP SP2, because that what's the major audiences are comparing it with. Tiger's solid but unexciting, but iLife is in some ways a step up from most bundled applications in Windows land. Although I'm typing at a copy of Leopard, that's in some ways an easier target --- FIX MY BLUETOOTH, STEVE, I WANT MY MACHINE TO SLEEP WITHOUT HAVING TO BUY A USB MOUSE --- but Apple get a free pass because of the sublime industrial design and everyone loves iPods, right. (Yes, I know that in /. land they're lame and no match for a Nomad, but we're not the audience that any vendor cares about).
But XP SP2 is a hard target. For a lot of the market, it's the only OS they've used, so it *is* computing. The economy is tightening, and a 2GHz, 2GB, 200GB machine is enough for anyone who doesn't want high frame rate first person shooters or huge amounts of copyright-dubious downloads. The competition Vista faces isn't people buying XP SP2 machines, ebcause that's something Microsoft can control. The competition it faces is people not buying another machine, but just staying with the perfectly decent machine they already have. And the losses retailers have taken on huge inventories of PCs that they expected to sell on the back of Vista but are now unloading at firesale prices shows that's what's happening.
The acid test is the retail figures for the Christmas just gone, the first `holiday season' (as you Americans have it) where Vista has been in the market place. Does it look good? The only reason corporates are going to adopt Vista, which offers essentially nothing beyond pain and expense, is if users in their droves claim that it's the only thing they know and they can't work without out (a significant factor that kills corporate adoptions of non-MS desktops is user (un)familiarity). So the home market drives aspects of the corporate market.
And speaking as someone who runs the infrastructure and desktops for 1200 users, I've not had a single request, from a user or a manager, for Vista or Office 2007. Back when we bought laptops with XP but imaged them with a standard build of 2000 SPwhatever, we had the odd protest: we don't get a single squeak when we put XPSP2+Office2003 on newly bought machines.
So Vista's out there. It exists. There's no Wow!, no buzz: no one cares one way or another. XP SP2 works sufficiently well for most people that they have no reason to care if their machine isn't running the latest and greatest bits. For non-geeks, computing's plateau'd: we're now in a position where, like cars, new models are only of interest to obsessives and those who need a new car for other reasons.
ian
I work in a public library. We use barcode scanners to keep things moving. The one box that has Vista installed on it suddenly slowed the input of those scanners to the point where it's actually faster to type the barcodes in with a keypad than use the scanners. This isn't a perception problem. It's a PROBLEM problem!
"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand." - Mark Twain
suggestions for a complete Vista makeover, like starting with new code
;-)
In my view, Microsoft has missed this boat some years ago.
Dave Cutler probably has retired, and so did other senior engineers capable to do this.
To paraphrase an Indian Chief's saying, "... then you'll eventually notice that marketing people and lawyers can't write a single line of code."
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
required reading for ANY discussion of Vista cost/performance issues. I was kind of surprised not to see the URL come up in the discussion thus far, so I dropped my mod points for this story in favor of posting instead.
Bottom line: if Microsoft had put the focus of Vista development on actually making the best-performing OS they could, instead of making digital restrictions the number one feature, the OS would very likely have been one of the best releases in recent memory. Instead, features and performance came in _explicitly_ behind DRM at every level of development and marketing (including Vista Compatible branding).
illum oportet crescere me autem minui
Microsoft as been getting a bad name for products. Some people even like to enjoy the companies troubles. But it is this company and it's marketing/profit seeking executives that (for all their evils) brought us into the mass-use of personal computers.It would seem that money and concepts of "controlling the market" have gotten in the way. But they may get it right yet. They have gotten big enough that not even a large setback like Vista will be enough to pull them down. Next is MinWin. It is exactly what they need. They have to tame the PC and the many applications that fight for attention of both the person and the computer's resources. They need to strip the PC back to a state that smoothly presents a simple yet workable design. In other words see to it that the computer adapts and works for the person. Every great step the PC has seem was when this cold and impersonal machine was made more able to serve and adapt to the person's needs. Not loads of frivolous extras. There is nothing wrong with all those extras, they just need to be what the person WANTS, not what was forced on him and takes his computer away from being of help to him.
The IE team is all over this one. To fix Vista, Microsoft simply needs to introduce a new meta tag at the operating system level similar that proposed for IE8. Without the tag, Vista and all future Microsoft operating systems would default to be XP, anyone wanting the full Vista experience could simply add the tag and viola, Windows Vista, 7, etc.
Microsoft is subject to market forces too. Though they blunder continuously, you'd think they'd be out of business.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Absolutely. I could probably tolerate many of the shortcomings of Vista, but as far as I'm concerned, an Operating System should never ever intentionally cripple a user's access to their computer unless that's the intention of the user. As soon as the OS does that, it's no longer an Operating System.
We've been creating a new Vista Enterprise Desktop build at work and I've been trying to work with an experimental image of it, mostly because I have to update some of our internal software. The stupid thing locks up and claims to be counterfeit every time I try to install drivers for the various cryptography devices that we need. It's causing no end of frustration, because we don't want to have to re-activate it every time someone has to install new driver software and I'm now getting paranoid about installing anything just in case it chokes.
Microsoft has finally put its priority of controlling everyone and everything for their own commercial gain above my own right to control my PC, and that's why I'll never install Vista on my home computer unless they disable this DRM and "Genuine Advantage" crap, or at the very least fix it so that it never has false positives, which I personally don't think is possible. Admittedly this is easier for me because I haven't been running Windows at home since Windows 98, but Microsoft's crossed the line if they ever wanted me to come back. All of that putting up with the issues of not as easily being able to open proprietary Microsoft documents and videos and use cheaper proprietary hardware suddenly became well worth it, because at least I know my PC isn't going to randomly leap out at me one day and arbitrarily decide that I'm not worthy of using it for the things I need to do.
I'm not a techno but I will give my take on Vista. I've been running it for three months now on a brand new Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop with a 2.8 GHz Duo Core, 4 GB RAM and a nVidia 8600GT 256Mb video card running Windows Vista Ultimate. I also run MS Office 2007. I've been a PC/Microsoft advocate for a long time. Even after reading the negative reviews I was willing to give Vista a try. Honestly, the exeperience has been mixed. While I do like the new Aero interface, the needless complexities introduced and application crash issues (with MS Outlook and Explorer especially) have left a very sour taste in my mouth. Why does it take 4 clicks to change desktop settings when it used to 3? Why does it take four or more clicks to select a program from the menu when it used to take one? And why is the shut down now in a menu rather than a button. Heck, when the community has to write gadgets with shut down buttons and people rave about having it does this not tell MS that the way it is implemented in Vista is poor. Quite frankly, my next computer, which I will purchase this spring, will be a Mac. While I have long been one to defend MS against Mac, I find that I can't do this now. As a long time loyal customer of MS, this to me is most definately FUBAR and, in my opinion, seems to have been rushed out the door (even though it took five years) to stave off the on-slaught of Open Source, Mac and Google. My suggestion would be to go all hands on deck in MS and quickly release a new version of Windows that fulfill both the promises made and simplfies the interface better than XP. I agree the Aero interface and icons are much more contemporary and less cartoony as the XP, but at what cost? I feel the longer they leave this out there, the more damage it will do and the more will move to Linux and Mac. Right now, the biggest thing they have going for them is Games on Windows but how long will it take developers before they are releasing Mac versions of games at the rate that Mac is gaining market share.
SINGED hair day. Singed pubic hair? Nappy, knotty hair?
It IS gratifying, isn't it, though? I'm going to be converting my housemate to PCLOS2007, installing it in Chinese on HIS rig, while side by side in English on mine in VirtualBox.
Then, he can surf in his native language. Be nice if I could find him an actual Chinese keyboard to spare him of the overlays, but at least he won't be paying for (nor pirating) any vista Chinese. Even if vista premium HAS Chinese add-on packs for free, he is sensitive to any need for a/v s/w and malware issues.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I have a media center. Using Microsoft components. But running Linux.
One huge box tucked away in the loft with storage (2TB and counting). Diskless clients hanging off it. No noise. No heat. A P3 with a AGP Nvidia can easily drive A 1366x768 Screen (most common size in HD-ready EU TVs in the 22-30in zone). For a smaller screen you can even get away with a factory made thin client. Cost - around 120 quid per client, 400 quid for the storage.
Works a treat. Video and Music the way I want it at the touch of a remote. No pesky ads, no stupid DVD menus, no mandatory previews, no 20 minutes searching through the DVD collection for something to watch. All with off the shelf stuff from Debian (using the multimedia apt store). I wrote all in all around 10 lines to fix for various sillies here and there to get it working.
All of that at around 10% of the cost of a branded MCE PC system. And with 10 times the capability.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Even ms was spun. And THEY think of THEMSELVES as masters of spin. Dead or Alive, he spun them round like a record, baby...
So, ms' next windows roadmap will look more like a NASA orbital plot we would see in the background of Mission Control. But, ms will add some wormholes/jumpgates....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
"quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur"
I SAW: squid squid, latrine, dick, shit, alto sonata.
I SEE Alien, They Came From Within, Squirm, alien reproduction, and lots of screaming... out the ass!
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Windows Media Center can also handle a vast variety of formats, which is a capability I need.
I was looking to buy a Media Center recently. Microsoft's view of the way "Music" should be sucks. Every Media Center PC I looked at had a large case, loud fan, and a power cord or worse, a UPS.
Great for basement dwellers, horrible for the rest of the people who want to take their music with them.
I bought an Apple iPod, and I couldn't be happier. Sure, it's not a fucking computer, but for $9.00/hour I get a terminal at the local internet cafe.
I put all my CDs, music, and photos on the Apple iPod, and it is easy to carry around in my pocket.
Microsoft just doesn't get it. They need to fire their product designers and hire some guys that think like normal humans do.
-another guy who likes to compare disparate products
Well, windoze is MUCH more expensive (relatively speaking) and it makes time for many worth much less, if not much more worthless. Sure, it all depends on what they're trying to DO with an OS, but if I could part with Lotus SmartSuite (I can't) I wouldn't need windows for it. If CAD interfaces for Unix/Linux looked as polished as those in windows (most don't), again, I'd need windows less.
But, for e-mail, surfing and other things which I don't need to run in a VirtualBoxed vista, Linux wins hands down. Even tho my wireless, bluetooth and multimedia keys are still dead. But, I have redundancy: CAT5, and GUI buttons. So, in that regard, windows still wouldn't beat Linux--for me, at least.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Corporeal... To BE, or NOT to be...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
MS might be able to license it for cheap. Oh, wait.. They aleady own it. Yes. Windows 2009/XENIX base. Good idea MS. I know you have been secretly maintaining the kernel all these years. Do it.
while offering absolutely nothing new in the way of end-user features,
I have to disagree on only one feature: Vista adds scalable, anti-aliased screen fonts. XP is still stuck with bitmapped fonts. (When Mac had scalable fonts in, what, OS 9 almost a decade ago?)
Do you know how many big corporations out there buy expensive 19" and 20" LCD screens, and then run them at 800x600 resolution (causing horrific pixel interpolation) because the non-scalable fonts of XP appear too small at the full screen resolution?
I've spent many, many hours trying to explain the effect of pixel interpolation to corporate execs who look at websites I've designed on their poorly-set-up monitors and complain that the "fonts look fuzzy". When of course the problem is how their display is set up, not that I've chosen some inexplicably blurry font.
Seriously, the number of people who are still running their monitors at 800x600 just because of XP's fonts is tremendously large.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Some businesses might consider it:
- exploitation
- insult
- coercion
- outright theft of resources
for msoft to have played into the hands of economists and hardware manufacturers. The ms upgrade treadmill of ever-increased resources expectation just facilitates the
-- shoveling of sloppy, space-consuming code
-- increase of landfill volume additions
-- spin about "greener" computers when some are not necessarily greener
Individuals AND businesses want --generally-- to contain costs. Buy human psychology of "keeping up with the *x's" makes it all to easy for s/w writers and h/w maker/contractors to push the newest, shiniest thing available. If needed hardware dies, yes, replace it if you can afford to.
My housemate cannibalized my old year 2001 Sony Vaio PCG-FX-215 for parts: MOBO, floppy, battery, and they fit nicely to his year-earlier model, and all I had to do was scalpel off a bit of drive cage cushioning. He spent HOURS gutting those two laptops, and added his LCD, keyboard, and my old DVD RW (which I cannibalized from an old TOSHIBA, by removing laptop plastic from around the drive itself...) and now he can continue to study English in some old 1993 Chinese program that won't run even in compatibility mode in or outside of VirtualBoxings of vista.
Still, he before that plunked down money for a desktop, but that rig may soon have PCLinuxOS2007 on it. I think is eyes lit up when he saw all that stuff (3GB or more) that he can use to learn English, play games, and surf in his native language from time to time.
Now that it seems legal to buy wrapper software (Mandriva for one is including) to watch encrypted DVDs, I hope the rest of the stage curtain begins to tear and either expose windows as not all it's cracked up to be, or that Linux is not nearly as bad or irrelevant as pundits and spin doctors claim it to be.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
"network transfers have some sort of bug that makes file transfers slow"
You're not looking for what's making it not work. When multimedia of any sort plays, the network performance drops DRAMATICALLY. It's a wannabe DRM feature to prevent piracy. You see nothing wrong with Vista because you're not looking deep enough for what IS wrong ith Vista, you're just looking at the surface when far beneath the skin is where you should be watching.
XP-64 outperforms Vista, as it's based off of Win2k3, which is rock fucking solid, including driver emulation. Try Win2K3. I ditched XP, permanently. Everything I need works fine on 2K3.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Troll?
I think 140Mandak262Jamuna was SPOT-ON!
This seems like what ms is always after: obfuscating the path for competitors, and looking like savior. It's too bad there is no universal karma maul & mallet to knock down idiots.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Why? An Operating System should let a user control their computer, and Vista doesn't even do that half the time if you consider all the places where Microsoft has decided that DRM and faulty counterfeit detection is more important than their users' freedom to actually be in control of their own property. I'd much rather the memory was reserved for applications which I could choose to have installed or removed at my own discretion.
The whole concept of Vista and its design goals is to give corporations control over how people do things, to force people to spend money unnecessarily, and to make people's legal rights meaningless. It's not an Operating System, or at best it's a horrible Operating System.
But, what pangs/pains me is that they get away with foisting all these ridiculous system minimum requirements. Like, WHY should Aero require at least 2GB of video RAM to do what it does? Does Apple require that much? I know Compiz/Beryl didn't seem to do to badly in 128 MB on the right card (but, I didn't NEED such graphics, and I returned the card for that and for cost reasons), and yet KDE and Gnome seem to blaze ahead. Linux GUIs seem to offer an insane number of options that only a weirdo perfectionist might want. I may be wrong, but does Compiz or does Beryl *require* 2 GB to provide an experience comparable to a WEI of 4, or of 6?
If Open Source FANS can provide for whiz-bang graphics in a market where *most* of the available graphics cards are deliberately with intentional exclusion (redundant?) of Linux users, in vastly or at least 1/2 of what Aero/Vista require, then what is microsoft's problem?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I haven't used Vista so I don't know if its great or really bad. I would say that in the time I've used XP (since its release date) and the few times I've used Windows Server 2003, I would say 2003 is a massive improvement on XP - less resources used, faster boot time, seems faster overall. If a fix is needed for Vista, MS should just release a SOHO Windows 2003 (w/o all the server stuff) for OEM distribution for the same price as XP and Vista are selling right now.
No, actually, that's Using.
Re-using would imply that it could be employed for something useful in the first place, before formatting the disc and burning new data.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The problem I have with UAC isn't the messages. It's the fact that Vista asks me TWICE if I'm sure I want to do what I'm trying to do. There's the annoying message that grays out the rest of the screen telling me what's happening, and then there's a message telling me I need to allow the action to happen. I like the second message. I want to know when I'm doing something that requires me to be act like an administrator and think about whether or not I really want to do what I'm trying. Fortunately, there's a simple enough registry setting (that's available through a Vista application if you have a version that's higher up the scale than Home Premium) that disables that first message, while leaving the second one intact. So right now, I've got Vista working pretty well. If Microsoft can iron out some speed and networking issues, I think I'll grow to actually like this thing.
Your perspective comes from people that used only Win2k.
My family upgraded directly from Win98SE to XP Pro. We tried ME right away when that came out, but when it fucked up my dad's partition with all of his spreadsheets (fortunately he backed them up on tape,) we went back to 98SE until XP came out.
Compared to 98SE, XP was golden. It worked great. The only times that I recall having problems with it were when trying to run some programs in 95/98 compatibility mode, but that was unnecessary for the majority of our programs, and companies provided XP compatible releases fairly quickly. As it is now, many software companies have held off on developing for official Vista compatibility, probably because they foresaw the disaster better and better each time Microsoft announced that $feature would be removed from Vista in order to get it to ship within 5 years of its original release date. Once features like WinFS or whatever was supposed to be the successor of NTFS was dropped, all of the major players knew this was going to be a dud.
Actually, I understand the technical reason why it isn't optimal to put stuff on the desktop, especially in a multi-user environment. But I have to question why Microsoft keeps it that way. As with most things, we have to learn the Microsoft way, and adapt our work habits to fit, when it should be the other way around. It's like Microsoft revels in making things more difficult than they have to, as sort of a nerd badge of honor.
Methinks 'plays media' would be the primary concern.
I've got a story for you. A few years ago we installed an exchange server. A feature of the motherboard we were using was a bios raid (one of those highpoint controllers). Since we though it would be better than nothing we decided to activate it. A few days later, we find some CRC errors in the exchange store (only in the store, not anywhere else). We search a bit and find reports of the same problem, with no answer at all. We email MS support (you get nothing more than that if you don't pay extra). A few days later we get a reply saying that our raid is not supported, and a link to a few articles we had already found. No explanation at all and no useful data on fixing the store ("not in our HCL", guess they can play the blame game too). And no more support, since they give you ONE free support request by mail with each exchange. We managed to get the store up on our own (we had found that information before emailing support) but even a few years later there are still a couple of places with errors (that seem harmless, fortunately).
Blame anyone you want, however shifting blame does not fix a malfunctioning program (and making it work again is what's needed then). Without a support contract, you're on your own, commercial software or not. And when asking for help with FOSS, you get some useful help, instead of ending up talking to a drone.
Oh, BTW. When Ubuntu does not work correctly you blame Canonical, it works just as fine as blaming Sun or Microsoft (that is, not at all).
GPG 0x1B479C78
The major problem however is a widespread "I've finished school so I don't want spend any time learning how to do anything else" attitude. Fair enough in many situations I suppose but it really does limit options since many things can only be dumbed down to a certain point before they become useless.
You're stuck in the Apple ecosystem
Uh, no i'm not. I have about 10 computers in my house, one is a mac. The remainder run a mix of Linux and Windows.
The machine I use to sync my Apple TV is a Windows Vista box that is a member of a Windows 2003 domain.
-ted
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
It really isn't, I want my media center to playback all my media.
I have a place to store it (my server), and I have a place to record/encode/create it (my desktop). I want an easy way to get to my media, and to use my media.
-ted
It could also be that the "commoditization" of operating systems through virtualization will relegate Microsoft to an application vendor, not an operating system vendor.
They do some things well. Exchange is pretty good, users seem to like office, xbox is doing well....etc. Maybe it is time for Microsoft to move focus away from operating systems.
-ted
Readyboost is nice, but I run with 2GB main RAM and under 1GB of Readyboost (sometimes none at all) and the only difference is that EVE Online takes a second or two longer to start when it must pull some stuff from the disk rather than Flash. It's still faster than on XP.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Well, there is at least one point where I agree with the writer.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
adequate.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
To fix Vista, Microsoft simply needs to introduce a new bootloader at the operating system level similar to the one used by Ubuntu. With the bootloader, Vista and all future Microsoft operating systems would default to Linux. Anyone wanting the full Vista experience could simply go to the zoo and let the monkeys throw poo at them.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
I tasted the new coke - it was too sweet, and reminded me of DrPepper, which I didn't like. After the fiasco, Coke and new Coke were sold side by side for awhile.
I toured the USS Lexington (old, trainer aircraft carrier) some months later, and discovered what happened to most of the new Coke: on the flight deck were large areas (20 foot square, approx) chain linked and gated for holding commissary supplies. One of these areas was filled, floor to ceiling way up there, with pallets of New Coke for the ship's vending machines. All I could think was, these poor sailors have to put up with all the limitations of living at sea, and the Navy adds New Coke to their troubles.
(I still where onions on my belt)
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
The 'Ubentu' thing should be enough to tell that this guy's just trolling. Moderators should pay attention, though, and don't give a +5 (interesting) to someone who won't even properly spell the names of the operating systems he's writing about.
Personally I dont see what all the fuss is about - it runs just fine on my $500 Dell. Sure I had to turn off UAC to get back my sanity but Suse was just as annoying that way.
:)
Is it that much better than XP ? Probably not in terms of functionality but it looks cool
Yes, I know that. But in Windows, the swapfile is kept in a file in the regular file sytem, it helps tremendously with swapping pages in, even if it doesn't help with swapping pages out.
ReadyBoost makes a MASSIVE difference if you are running virtual machines, or a number of large processes like a development system plus an Oracle database server.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The machine I use to sync my Apple TV is a Windows Vista box that is a member of a Windows 2003 domain.
Why the heck are you comparing home theater PCs (the Media Center PCs you were complaining about) to a media extender (Apple TV). If you have a Vista box (I'm assuming it's Home Premium or Ultimate since you use it to sync with Apple TV), then wouldn't an extender like the Linksys DMA2100 be a more appropriate comparison? It's small, quiet, and does the things you say you do with the Apple TV (DVDs, music, photos).Heck, if you already have Vista's Media Center, then I think the $300 Linksys product (and Amazon Unbox) is much better than Apple TV (and iTunes). Add an HDTV tuner to the Vista PC and the Linksys media center extender becomes a PVR with no monthly rental or subscription fees. Like the Apple TV, the Linksys streams protected content (Amazon Unbox). It also streams up to 1080p over 802.11n or wired ethernet.
Ulanoff is seriously clueless - he makes Dvorak seem insightful. PCWorld is barely a step above Network World for 'meaningful' content ... but a great place to see the current print ads!
Front-Row/Apple TV is easy to navigate with one simple remote.
All the windows based devices i've seen are too complicated with ugly interfaces.
Apple TV passes the "wife and daughter" test. The windows based products I looked at did not.
The linksys device does not have internal storage. That's nice to have so I don't have to rely on server software or another machine to play my media. I just sync it to the box, and it is always there regardless of any other computer on the network. Apple TV does not "stream" the content from another PC, it has a built in hard drive. It plays the media right of its own hard drive.
By the way, my Vista box is a Vista Business edition x64 box (not premium or ultimate), but that does not matter. iTunes runs on any vista machine.
-ted
Screw Vista. I'm gonna make my OWN operating system. . . . with blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the operating system!