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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?"
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.
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
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?
My Journal
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/
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).
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
Computer makers have never switched back to offering earlier versions of Windows before.
Q.E.D.
That was pretty much my reaction, read premise: "Nothing wrong with Vista", read .... read middle. Ahh the premise ... gotcha.
conclusion: "Completely rewrite Vista". Errm
was wrong
Belthize
"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.
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
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......
I think much of the "Vista failure" is the herd mentality. People raved and raved about the Blair Witch Project. Was it really a good movie? I hated it, and I think most people looking back today hate it. But everyone was agreeing with everyone else, because they wanted to be part of a group.
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.
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.
personally have never met a person who has actually purchased Vista in a store. I have fixed lots of computers with Vista on it and I don't hate it as bad as many people, but I will not use it myself.
When XP was newer I would meet lots of people who purchased it off the shelf, still waiting a year later for one person to have bought Vista.
"...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.
You know, I'm happy for you.
Vista does run on some older machines. It wouldn't work on my Athlon 2200+ based laptop because there wasnt' a Vista compatible driver for the video chip.
I needed a Vista machine, so I bought one. It's a dual core AMD TK-55 which runs at 1.8GHz. It has 2GB DDR2 memory and 256MB dedicated video RAM. Yes, it works, it's been reliable; but, it IS slow. Setting it up side-by-side with an equivalent Ubuntu or Windows XP machine and it looks bad. To me, speed matters. I can't sit around waiting for a program to compile or the machine to finish crunching numbers.
Re: 2) Both Windows 2000 and XP had problems with driver availability at the start. Also with their resource hunger compared to the predecessor. But I cannot remember as much complaints about user interface (UAC?) and backwards compatibility as with Vista.
Re: 3) There are many reports (admittedly without statistics) of users disliking Vista enough to remove it and install XP instead. This is something I heard last in connection with WinME, which people dumped in favor of Win98.
Re: 4) True, and it will be interesting to see how the numbers change when SP1 is out. At that point, any parallels to Win ME will break down:
Windows 2000 was the best way to upgrade from Win ME. Microsoft gave up the Win9x line soon after, introducing XP Home instead. This time, there is no such architecture switch in sight (I assume Windows 7 will take a few more years and won't be released in 2009).
So I think Vista SP1 will make or break Vista in the business world. If Microsoft gets it right, they will get to enjoy their dominant position for a few more years. If it doesn't make much of a difference, I expect more news like this: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/30/2341206&from=rss (French police moving to Linux)
C - the footgun of programming languages
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
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
So you don't have a single feature that those of us using Linux as our desktop OS don't have. Did you at least get Windows Vista for free?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
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.
Now I know things have changed and are better than they were six years ago. (Hell, even BSD automatically detects my wireless card settings these days.)
Can it be done with Linux? Yes. Easily, not in my experience.
Sorry, but anytime I get around to administrating Linux, I get quickly reminds me why I ditched it for BSD and Mac in the first place. (I mean no php5 build in repository for CentOS, because php5 is "Still in development", I mean really WTF!)
That being said, welcome to the club. I've been downloading and streaming movies and TV from via iTunes from my Powermac to the Mini hooked up to my LCD TV's DVI port for a couple years now. Coupled with a 360GB external FW HDD and it's a pretty effective DVR too.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Unacceptable. Computers going slower while doing NOTHING is unacceptable. Compare the time it takes to boot, open the word processor of your choice, and print a business letter with Vista, XP, Mac OSX, MacOS7, an Apple IIc, and a C64.
Vista is the worst. I don't need a nanny state OS. I need to make little letters appear on my screen as fast a humanly possible, without pointless graphics effects and dialog boxes wasting my time. AT least with XP, I could turn that shit all off and make it look like Windows 95.
I've been using Windows since my first job 14 years ago. Vista is slower than Win 3.0 running on a 25Mhz 386, and produces no output that is superior.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Adobe Acrobat Reader decides that they own my system and just sets about installing crap.
One of the things I hate most about living in a Windows World is that every program has a second program that installs as a system service that does nothing other than check for updates... and these programs load at boot and stay resident eating memory and occasional CPU cycles. You have the Adobe update, Java Update (JUSCHED.exe), iTunes Update, Antivirus update, etc. If windows actually had a common update notification API (you have version X software installed and registered with the computer and it checks website Y if there's a version newer than X), we could probably get rid of a dozen programes running on every computer. These update programs take memory and slow down boot time and they mainly exist because 99.9% of windows software ships so buggy you need autoupdates to be on.
After all IMHO, a pdf reader going on a rampage is something that I'd consider simply unacceptable, rather than something I'd want to be informed of...
How exactly do you define Rampage?
Adobe Reader just installs itself...
oh... and a little service program to speed up loading that runs on load (Adobe Reader Speed Launch)...
oh... and a little service for shared reviews and subscriptions that runs on load (Adode Synchronizer)...
oh... and a small background utility that automatically checks for updates and pop up a window asking you to install a new version...
oh... and by default (unless you click NO I DON'T WANT THIS) an Internet Exploder Toolbar (Yahoo or Google depending on who's paying) to take over^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^B help you out with searching and browsing.