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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?"
I don't think I'm a 2-bit nerd, but I can say this, watching MS languish in the mire that is Vista is somewhat satisfying. Not just because it's good to see goliath having a bad hair day, but because for every day that this continues, more people will begin to realize that F/OSS is not only usable, but valuable. Hopefully, gone are the days when windows defines home computing and the desktop experience.
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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.
Are there any numbers that detail the number of vista machines that are due to retail sales, vs. those with vista preinstalled. And of the ones with Vista pre-installed, how many of those had XP as an option.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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.
>>I think he actually says: Vista is completely flawed. I mean, come on: "starting with new code." He just wraps it into some rhetorics.
This one really gets me. Vista was supposed to be a complete rewrite with all new code. when MSFT bought virtual PC I became happy as I saw it as a sign that backward compatibility would be handled by VPC sandboxing XP. MSFT kept bragging about how new Vista would be I had hope.
When Vista RC1 was released and immediately hit with a virus in an image library that had been directly ported from XP I knew Vista was doomed to be crap. The rewrite never actually happened they just ported the code and added yet another layer of crap on top.
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.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Except... Trends show people are switching to Macs... Which in some ways is even more closed then Windows is. You need Apple OS and Apple Hardware. Yea OSS is getting a few new converts but overall F/OSS comunity has really dropped the ball. Its current poster child Ubentu Linux, (which I never have gotten a sucessful install of btw..., But Debian, Slackware, Fedeora... all seem to work right out of the box) while has all the elments of a modern OS it just doesn't have it in the right place. eye candy for the sake of eye candy is useless. Examin Mac OS X it has eyecandy but it has a pourpose that to help people understand what is going on. OS X pages Finally after many years and decades of existance in Linux/Unix they just this year have virtual screens. When you change virtal screen there is a quick scroll where you see the windows shoot up/down/Left/Right/diaganaly depending how the virtual screen is set and a little box shows which screen you are moving to. Ubentu has this huge 3d Cube thing. It looks way cooler sure, but it isn't as functional because you can only really see up to 3 virtual screens at once and you need to rotate the cube to see the others. Looks cool but less useful, it is just an example of all the parts are there just not in the right spot. Vista seems an attempt to copy Linux and bring eyecandy for the sake of eyecandy, unlike for the most part in Mac OS (There are exceptions) eyecandy is there for a reason not just say cool.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
*shrug* From my personal experience with XP-64 and Vista-64, I don't get the "Vista is a crappy OS" statements. I benchmarked my system with both operating systems using 3DMark06. I turned off the services and other things I do not use (the same thing I do in XP). Vista was about 300 points slower, which equates to about a 4% performance drop on my system. Since everyone is complaining about performance, I would expect Microsoft updates and service packs to increase performance over time. There are a couple of issues that I think will get worked out over time: DX10 performance needs help and network transfers have some sort of bug that makes file transfers slow (which I hear is already addressed in the upcoming SP1). IMO some of these complaints remind me of things said in the Win98 vs WinXP days.
All in all, I would say that Vista is not a better performer. But since when has a new Microsoft OS been faster than the old Microsoft OS that it intended to replace? Sure I am losing 1.5 to 2.5 FPS in games, but I feel that is acceptable given the newness of the OS.
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My thoughts exactly. The "like starting with new code" comment was so blatantly over the top, it makes it clear that the comment that "There's nothing wrong with Vista" was only tossed in there in an attempt to avoid losing income from Microsoft ads.
As much fun as it is to bash vista, I'd have to stand and be counted with the whole "had XP, and went out and bought Vista" crowd. For whatever reason, I actually LIKE the whole 'cancel/allow' mechanism that is UAC. I like getting buzzed when someone like Adobe Acrobat Reader decides that they own my system and just sets about installing crap. I like getting alerted with a little dialog box saying 'are you sure you want to do this' when mucking about with system settings. I have all kinds of network activity and computer monitoring gadgets in the Windows Sidebar. The whole Media Center thing is quite handy for watching TV and listening to music, which I store on one PC and can stream from every other PC, transparently, through the media player interface. Finally, Vista Home Premium came with IIS7, which is turning out to be quite handy and easy to use for my 'hobby' website. I have 4 computers in my home. 2 came with Vista. All 4 have legal Vista installs at this point.