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Revisiting the Original Reviews of Windows Vista
harrymcc writes 'We now know that a remarkable percentage of consumers and businesses decided to spurn Windows Vista and stay with XP. But did the reviews of Vista serve as an early warning that it had major problems? I looked back at the evaluations in nine major publications and found that they expressed some caution--but on the whole, they were far from scathing. Some were downright enthusiastic.'
I dont think Vista was that bad OS after a little bit more powerful hardware came out and after you got used to it. It feels a bit more sluggish than XP but that's what Win7 improves with their move responsive UI (which is really important thing that always seems to be forgotten - just compare Opera to Firefox)
Everyone who have started using Win7 already are saying it's great. Even those who skipped Vista completely. Personally I will probably move from Vista once I get a new computer - I dont want to do an update nor move all the files and settings in place and install new programs right now (and more so because I will probably get a new computer soon anyway)
One of the failure points for Vista was that all the drivers had to be redone and released for it. Even if it's a better thing now that it happened, it was bad to be in the first ones. But this time they all work in Win7 too, so that's not an issue.
What comes to UAC, it's the correct direction, but lots of Windows userbase is general audience which would get annoyed with such in Linux and other OS too. Atleast it's there now, and those who dont like it can disable it.
Most of the problems with Vista was actually that it was taking Windows OS into new direction and probably needed that one OS release in between to get there and so that users get familiar and used with it.
It's sucks, it's terrible, I've never used it...
Vista pushed me to Linux, so it's not all bad.
Yeah I occasionally read magazines like PC Magazine (the dead-tree version). Their review was far from scathing as well. Then I notice all of the Microsoft ads and the "Designed for Windows X" labels prominently displayed on any advertisements for desktops and laptops and I think "hmm.... coincidence?"
I'm still using XP. Vista has nothing to offer me, neither has W7.
Next, I'll be using Ubuntu.
Advertisements usually are.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The legacy of Vista is the importance of first impressions.
for the majority of users, their first Vista experience was impeded by a slew of "you just clicked an icon! this is a security risk! are you sure??" messages, and "in order to run this program, you must have administrator privileges. do you want to run this as administrator now?" popup messages. it was very annoying, and blunted what could have been a fine experience with a shiny new OS.
This was by no means the most serious problem with Vista, but it had tremendous impact on its reception.
Most reviews apparently aren't that thorough. They do what the salesweasels do: Install the thing on fancy new hardware, possibly well out of budget for joe average for the next half decade, click around a bit. That's all on a "clean" system, where windows has a well-known tendency to degrade over time, especially in the face of repeated de/installs, like, oh, with games. And that, a mere industry standard review doesn't catch.
What struck me about this crop of "reviews" was that most compared windows seven with windows vista, where most people were shunning the latter because it was so bad. I haven't seen a single in-depth review even so much as mention the thing "everyone" was actually using, windows XP. Curious, that.
More interesting would be who got it right with windows xp and windows vista reviews.
Hey, Harry, you were writing and editing stories about Vista back when it came out, right? What did you say? Um, thanks for reminding me. I wrote quite a bit about Vista in my Techlog blog for PC World, and was smart enough to express caution about its significance and raise questions about compatibility issues, but not savvy enough to guess it would become a legendary flop. (Here's a post from March 2006 in which I'm fairly skeptical, but say "It...seems unlikely that it'll be a Windows Me-style fiasco." Wrong!)
I recall that I had plenty to say about the last quarter, last month, last day, last hour, last minute removal of features that made Vista interesting. What was left was a Windows OS with a lot of hinderances and no benefits over the previous version of Windows. It was one huge empty promise. And I did, in fact say this was the new WindowsME. And quite predictably, I was marked "troll" and "overrated" and heard no end of how wrong I was. What I heard was that Vista was elegant and refined and that if the PC was too slow to handle it, it wasn't Vista's fault.
No one succeeded in changing my mind on the topic and it seems the masses, for once, agreed with me. (How rare!)
you're not looking very hard then
Noone's gay for Vista.
When I see a website that accepts no advertising, buys all it's products for cash, anonymously from retail stores and has a test suite that reflects what actual users actually do, then their reviews will have merit (although I can't see anyone anywhere paying the hue cover price for such a publication) Until then, print and online sources are far too cosy with the suppliers to get anything objective from them. It would be too much to ask for them to criticise their advertisers - the sucking sound you'd hear would be next month's full-page spreads being pulled.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
When I first installed Vista on my MS box it didn't last more than a few hours before I reformatted my new drive along with some colourful language and went back to XP. I've never touched it since and find it infuriating to use. I think the coined phrase "vista aids" very appropriate as it seems like an OS destined to die a painful death along with its users. I'm about to try windows 7 so we will see what happens then.
Neither Microsoft or reviewers made a credible case to me that it was worth paying money for. Windows XP was working just fine for me. The media buzz made me feel like I was having to pay for a shiny, new XP service pack, not an OS that was going to enable me to do things *I wanted to do*, but couldn't do with XP. The scary thing is that Windows XP is STILL working just fine for me!
Gay? No. I don't think we were happy about it, either. For one thing, when trying to connect to a wireless network via the wireless controls, the "Connect" button stays grayed out. WTF?!?! You have to connect via the regular networking software to get it to connect. There are some good things here and there but not gay about it.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
I tried Vista but it was slow and half my hardware didn't work. The same computer runs Win7 without a problem with fewer driver issues. I have it running on 2 of three desktops at home. The wife gives me a funny look when ever I mention upgrading her computer or it would be three for three. This might have something to do with it. http://xkcd.com/349/
Its like win2k and xp. XP was really win2k done right. Win7 is vista done right.
Is he strong? Listen bud, He's got radioactive blood.
But my feeling is: Windows 7 will suffer the same fate that Vista did. It will be still XP in all major Corporates; where they will erase the pre-installed Windows7 and install XP using the Corporate licenses. Software developers will continue to support XP atleast for the next 4 years.
By which time, the OS on the desktop will be irrelevant siince Netbooks will completely change the dynamics of the OS market. It will not be a stretch to predict that Linux will establish itself within the next 4 years in all Corporates where people exect their devices to boot instantly and work reliably consuming less resources like mobile phones.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Vista (and Windows 7) are still plagued with problems. Some are "We made a wrong design decision" (Like the search functionality). Some are "We made a wrong design decision and it causes what appear to be bugs, but are a side effect of said decision" (Maximize a window on your primary monitor will halt the animated background on your second monitor). Then there is the "This is absolutely broken, but we'll probably never fix it" (An application calling LockWindowUpdate constantly [however inappropriate] causes all windows on the screen to flicker when it is called).
I gave one example for each category, but there are multitudes more. They tried to change too much, with a very poor deliverable on the improvements those changes were supposed to bring.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
The bottom line? "All in all, Windows Vista is a great leap forward for the operating system, with a much-improved, far more useful (and pleasurable) interface; faster, better search; beefed-up security that's a big improvement over Windows XP with SP2; and far, far better networking.
Forbes:
The bottom line? "Vista is at best mildly annoying and at worst makes you want to rush to Redmond, Wash. and rip somebody's liver out...
But Midnighte's gay for Noone!
I am not a crackpot.
And MS in general.
Interestingly - I tend to assign gender, mentally, to almost everything I deal with on a regular basis and in my mind, /. is very male (as is WinXP), while Vista is female. But then, maybe she (he) is a cross-dresser.
Or, by gay, did you just mean happy?
I really haven't encountered a compelling feature exclusive to XP, Vista or 7 to upgrade beyond 2000.
2000 has a clean efficient interface and is unencumbered by all of the bloat and runs 32 bit apps.
Except for Cleartype, what real improvements do any of the above offer?
XP was really win2k done right.
What, pray tell, was wrong with 2K? I'm still running 2K on my home box, and you'll have to pry it off of my cold, dead, harddrive.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Vista sucking has a lot more to do with sociology than technology. The problem was that marketdroids severely understated Vista's hardware requirements, tried to segment the market too finely with too many editions, and outright lied about the user experience at some levels of hardware capability. What's what marketdroids do: they lie for profit.
But marketdroid lies notwithstanding, the underlying technology behind Vista wasn't bad: far from it, actually. For the first time, there's a half-decent security model for the average user. (I don't buy that UAC sucks.) There are a ton of kernel and API improvements behind the scenes. We have symlinks, even!
Sure, there were a couple release-day bugs, but every OS has those. XP had a similar number of pre-SP1 issues. And hell, it had fewer than the first version of RHEL5 (that OS paused for a full five minutes on every boot, polling SATA drives that never came, until a patch fixed the issue.)
The "Vista sucks" meme, however, spread virally because 1) we all love to hate Microsoft, and 2) most users really can't tell the difference between good technology and bad, but they can certainly parrot what their friends say. It doesn't help that Vista really did suck for some users who were running on underpowered hardware. (If you want to argue that Vista's hardware requirements are too high, we can do that, but Vista doesn't suck on the hardware for which it was designed.)
Really, Microsoft could just rebrand Vista as Windows 7 and release it today to great acclaim: in fact, that's precisely what they did. Since Vista's release, even low-end hardware has caught up to Vista's original requirements, so despite the inevitable lies from marketing, Vista^H^H^H^H^HWindows 7 will now run fine for a lot more people. The new name kills the old meme, and forces people to reconsider whether Vista sucks.
tl;dr: Vista doesn't suck on the hardware for which it was designed. In fact, it's a vast improvement. Marketing sucks for lying about what hardware you need for Vista, however, which put a bad taste in people's mouths.
The security pop-ups were certainly (sorry...ARE certainly annoying) when running in non-admin mode. But I'd almost say they were a necessary evil. Most users, even after you explain it to them a hundred times or have to reformat their computer because of a virus, still don't get the idea that running with full admin privileges is a bad idea. These annoying pop-ups may or may not have helped them figure that out, but it went a long way to keeping computers clean of viruses.
I have Vista, and have been using it for a year or two now. I had issues early on, but discovered that it wasn't Vista but a bad RAM stick that was giving me grief. I really have no qualms about the operating system. Personally I think Apple is the one to blame about the public perception of Vista. Microsoft's marketing has focused on their own product and tried to keep the mud slinging to a minimum while Apple decide to directly speak to Microsoft and bash them during their marketing campaign. I guess we can see what the public responds to better. No wonder politicians campaign the way they do.
I hate to knock on wood but I have to wonder if Apple will stick the course with Windows 7 as well.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Vista (and Windows 7) are still plagued with problems. Some are "We made a wrong design decision" (Like the search functionality)
What's the "wrong design decision" in this instance?
"just compare Opera to Firefox"
people often don't realize the difference between Opera and Firefox. While they both are browsers, Firefox is also an application foundation. The XUL engine in Firefox allows for a very rich application foundation based on web interfaces and standards. And it allows alot of additional features to be added to Firefox but like everything, these things use CPU cycles and memory.
Opera and Firefox are very different forms of browsers. So maybe it would be better to compare Gecko-only based browsers to Opera - something like Skipstone( http://www.muhri.net/skipstone/ )
Here's where you can get an overview of what XUL is and does and how it's an application base and how Firefox could be considered a XUL application:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL_tutorial
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Easy_Transfer
The question isn't "Is Windows 7 better than Vista"?, it is "Is Windows 7 better than XP"?
When first starting to build a new PC, I used to install my Windows NT 4.0 license (purchased in '97 or so) on it, and wiped and installed Linux on the old hardware. In '02 I purchased a license for XP and continued doing the same thing. I'll buy the next MS operating system when a better one comes out.
- real hackers don't have sigs -
AFIK, most of Vista's problems came from a decision Microsoft made.
For the entire history of Windows, backward compatibility was king. They even emulated old bugs in newer versions.
In Vista, they decided to eliminate the absolute requirement for backward compatibility. Yes...Apple had done this several times already, but for Microsoft, it was a MAJOR philosophy change.
Because of the lack of backward compatibility, users who needed to run old programs stayed away.
Windows 7 is also not backward compatible, but more time has passed, so presumably, less users care about running their aging software.
is that it does not run Windows legacy software like Windows XP and earlier versions did.
My brother is a Gamer, and he bought a Windows Vista Home Premium Laptop, it would not run his old games like Warlords IV and we tried a VirtualBox machine with Windows XP Pro in it but it had limited 3D support and Warlords IV would not run under it. His only option is to run Warlords IV on his old Windows XP Pro desktop, but then he cannot take the game with him on his laptop.
Not just Gamers are affected, but business owners. Many have custom written software they paid for development on older versions of Windows or even MS-DOS that Windows Vista won't run. Some software needs special hardware that does not have drivers for Windows Vista and the XP drivers don't work too well in Windows Vista. Windows Vista does not have hardware drivers for a lot of legacy hardware and thus many machines even if they meet the RAM, CPU, Video, and Hard Drive requirements cannot run Vista without the needed hardware that lacks drivers.
For example my son's Windows XP Pro system has a Texas Instruments Wireless adapter, and Windows Vista and Windows 7 lack a proper driver for it. TI never made a Vista or 7 driver, and neither did Microsoft. So in upgrading him to Windows 7 I'd need to buy a new wireless card. Now if it was a hardware dongle, TV tuner, AM/FM Radio card, or multiple port serial port adapter that lacked Vista or 7 drivers it would be more expensive to buy a newer one to replace the older one. In that case most people just stick with an older version of Windows.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Deep down, I think that the real reason that Vista flopped was the absence of "Windows Vista Parties".
I think the question is "What search functionality?"
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Vista (and Windows 7) are still plagued with problems. Some are "We made a wrong design decision" (Like the search functionality).
In what way is the search functionality "a wrong design decision?" That's my favorite feature, and it works tons better than the similar feature in XP. (For example, it's fast enough to use as a launcher. The XP one never was on my machines.)
(Maximize a window on your primary monitor will halt the animated background on your second monitor).
You actually *use* DreamScene? Wow, that's like finding Bigfoot.
Comment of the year
Every review of Windows since 1994 has been the exact same. Just fill in the variables:
" I have seen the future: Windows $NEXT_VERSION Milestone $MOCKUP.
"I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they’re finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF.
"Also, there’ll be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It’ll be awesome!
"I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Um, yeah, but in its defense, there is quite a bit in Linux you cannot do unless you do an su or log in as root. Go ahead and try installing a video driver or something in Linux as a standard user, and see what happens.
Also, it takes a whole 15 seconds to turn UAC off, so that is a poor argument.
"Personally I think Apple is the one to blame about the public perception of Vista"
Do you have any verifiable third party references to support those claims?
In what way is the search functionality "a wrong design decision?" That's my favorite feature, and it works tons better than the similar feature in XP. (For example, it's fast enough to use as a launcher. The XP one never was on my machines.)
That is because it only searches INDEXED content on a small subset of your system drive. Want to search a non-indexed directory/drive? Total massive huge pain in the ass. You have to get to "advanced mode" (Which you have to open search explicitly to do, in which case, you lose the context of where you wanted to search), and there you have MOST options you would with Windows previous search functionality... except SEARCHING *IN* FILES, case sensitivity, and whether to spider subdirectories, to name a few.
You actually *use* DreamScene? Wow, that's like finding Bigfoot.
Firstly, no I don't. An animated background image is completely possible outside of the DreamScene abomination. Regardless, lets say I DID use it... does it mean because you don't that it is any less of an issue? Obviously, some drawing optimizations are getting in the way, and Windows isn't as multi-monitor aware that it should be.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Were they gonna give that liver to Jobs to make sure Apple didn't die and leave only MS? Pretty smart, these forbes guys.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
That is because it only searches INDEXED content on a small subset of your system drive. Want to search a non-indexed directory/drive? Total massive huge pain in the ass. You have to get to "advanced mode" (Which you have to open search explicitly to do, in which case, you lose the context of where you wanted to search), and there you have MOST options you would with Windows previous search functionality... except SEARCHING *IN* FILES, case sensitivity, and whether to spider subdirectories, to name a few.
So, extremely unusual use-cases are slightly more difficult to use. And the 99.9% use-case is extremely quick and easy. Shocker.
Firstly, no I don't. An animated background image is completely possible outside of the DreamScene abomination.
Then what makes you think it's Windows' fault and not the fault of whatever program you're using to animate the background?
Regardless, lets say I DID use it... does it mean because you don't that it is any less of an issue?
Nope. I was just making a joke. Also: fucking relax.
Obviously, some drawing optimizations are getting in the way, and Windows isn't as multi-monitor aware that it should be.
Possibly, but at least it can hot-swap monitors when you use it on a laptop. I've never been able to get Linux to pull that one off without a reboot.
Comment of the year
That and it sucks.
The marketing firms working for M$ pull this shit every release: wait a while and then pretend the flop was a success. Remember XP SP2? XP?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I had used XP for years and was quite happy.
My wife needed a new PC and it came with Vista. Never had I seen Vista. No manuals. So out of the box it was fully functional in 30 minutes with no confusion and all for Dell's cheapest mail order $400. Now it is a year later ... no crashes or other issues, she doesn't even know what OS is on the machine, she just uses it.
When I needed a new machine, I bought a no-name eMachines from Costco on a whim. Came with Vista and had a trivial experience setting it up and using it. I'd say its actively used 12 hours a day over the last 6 months and I don't recall a crash despite more than a half dozen external peripherals via USB. For $379. I do use a UPS on both machines and they do have 2-3GB of memory but no high end graphics or high speed CPU..both low speed dual processors.
As one whose OS experiences go back 40 years and who did a load of an alfa from floppies of W95 that took over 24 hours, I know OS horror stories. To me...Vista isn't one of them. I've had and have zero issues with it.
IMHO, YMMV
"just like" as in "copy and paste"
Mossberg on Vista: "I believe it is the best version of Windows that Microsoft has produced."
Mossberg on Win7: "I believe it is the best version of Windows Microsoft has produced."
http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/10/08/whats-wrong-with-windows-7/
mod me funny
Win7 Dragged me back into the Collective. Yes I started playing with Linux back when Caldera had released v:1.3 and I've still got my copy of it. Hell I've even got a copy of RH5, Mandrake 7 & 8 on Disk (commercial CD's). In 2003, I switched almost full time to Gentoo as it gave me the control I wanted of My computer but after K3B failed on me in April, I gave up and grabbed the Win7-Beta images and gave it a spin. Currently, I'm using the Win7-RC as it's proven itself to be stable and supports all of my games without problems and you know what? It's unlikely I'll go back to Linux due to the loss of control and don't mention Debian to me.
I actually like Win7 over Vista due to many improvements and yes it's closer to SP3 for Vista then a brand new OS. Of course as I didn't pay for Vista (got it through the Uni for free), I'm quite happy to pay for Win7 as it is a big improvement.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
1) Vista is vaporware. Microsoft scrapped all of the really revolutionary parts from Vista, because they just couldn't deliver those fancy things like database-driven filesystems and other vaporware that was announced years in advance of the release. MS even renamed its OS many times, in hopes people would forget all that was promised.
2) Vista requires MUCH more RAM than XP. At least 1 GB, in order to run at adequate pace, where with XP you could even get away with 256 MB in some cases. If Vista added anything revolutionary, that would be OK, but instead the OS takes away features found in XP and adds new problems. What's the use of having gigs of RAM if the main OS is taking it all? I'd rather let Photoshop, a game or some other application I _want_ to run, use it properly.
3) Vista requires much more CPU for reasons probably found in the other problems listed here. No, disabling Aero and the dozens or so services doesn't make Vista "as fast as" XP. This is probably because of DRM. Even with everything disabled to the bare minimum, Vista is noticeably slower than XP, even on brand-new hardware. Why give all your CPU over to a bloated and DRM-crippled OS?
4) The DRM-hacks in Vista causes numerous every-day practical problems like: Running a game, you can't switch audio-sources with the game running. You have to quit the game. Switch the audio-source in Control Panel, and then restart the game. XP handles this just fine, so this "new" behaviour is totally retarded, and is just a land-grab against the rightful owner of the machine. Btw, "switching audio source", may mean just wanting to hear the audio using earphones instead of the loudspeakers on your laptop! Wtf where they thinking??
5) With all the DRM in Vista, you can bet your sorry ass Microsoft has planted several backdoors and several ways to spy on you. This is probably a problem with an updated XP too though, and I wouldn't think W7 is less "advanced" in that area either. But where do you think W7 comes from? It comes from people starting using Windows _Server_ 2008(?) as a desktop OS, because it was less bloated than Vista! Microsoft quickly realized the codebase of Vista was a sinking ship and abandonded in with W7. So there may be a bit of a hope in W7.. But I wouldn't bet my business on it.
6) Vista has horrible driver-support. Where in XP you can adjust bass, treble, all the speakers, equalizer etc., in Vista often the drivers leaves you with just the generic controls, even for expensive cards people have spent hundreds of bucks on. You may say this is not Microsoft's fault, but that's not my point either. If you can't find proper drivers for Vista, why use it, or even PAY for it?
7) Vista requires MUCH more harddrive space than XP. In some unlucky cases, the OS itself may use up to 20-30GB of harddrive space. This is due to the SxS (side by side) DLL service, which makes a unique version of every DLL in the system, for every program, or something like that. Basically, the more you install and uninstall something in the system, the more space this system requires. Check the "WinSxS" folder under "Windows". On my XP it is using 50 MB, which is amazing compared to the 10-15 GBs Vista used on me.. I've had friends coming to me with a brand-new Vista laptop with 40GB harddrive, where SxS uses 15-20 GB, and there's nothing you can do about those files other than delete Vista and do a complete reinstall. If you think a pagefile of 4GB and hibernationfile of 4GB was bad (both tunable), then this feature may hold a surprise for you! One may say a Vista laptop should be specced with more harddrive space, but why use Vista when XP handles this just fine, and even has SxS too. Every "feature" in Vista seems to just blow up in some way or the other, where XP handles it just fine.
8) That reminds me, Vista seems to constantly read and write to harddrive also. Reading and writing to harddrive is the slowest operation a computer can do, and Vista maximizes its potential! I have tried to locate all the dozens or so services, lik
"Vista sucking has a lot more to do with sociology than technology. The problem was that marketdroids .. outright lied about the user experience at some levels of hardware capability", QuoteMstr
:)
"More internal Microsoft e-mails were unsealed today in the Windows Vista Capable lawsuit, detailing the wrangling that took place inside the company and across the industry before and after the operating system's January 2007 launch. The plaintiffs are using the messages to support their contention that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was involved enough in decisions to warrant a deposition"
'The "Vista sucks" meme, however, spread virally because 1) we all love to hate Microsoft, and 2) most users really can't tell the difference between good technology and bad', QuoteMstr
The "Vista sucks" meme spread becasue Vista did really suck, really
"From: Stevan Sinofsky
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 12:08 PM
To: Steve Ballmer Cc: Bill Veghte; Jon Devaan
Subject: Re: Vista
A lot of changes led many Windows XP drivers not really working at all - this across the board for printers, scanners, wan, accessories (fingerprint readers, smartcards, tv tuners), and so on"
Sorry, not all Vista drivers are 7 compatible. I just tried to set up a webcam with Vista drivers...no go.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
The problem was that marketdroids severely understated Vista's hardware requirements, tried to segment the market too finely with too many editions, and outright lied about the user experience at some levels of hardware capability.
I don't think that was the whole problem. Yes, that was a problem: Vista did not perform well on all the machines that were advertised as being supported by Vista. However, that also indicates that there was another problem: Vista's hardware requirements were too high for the time when it was released.
There's also the too-many-editions problem. Home vs. Business vs. Server is about as much of a breakdown as I'm willing to entertain. Also, I won't put up with having to activate my OS under any circumstances. But those are just my views, admittedly, and those weren't really the problem either.
I'd like to claim (and have been claiming since Vista came out) that the big problem is that there wasn't a big enough problem with Windows XP. Or to be more direct, of any of the problems people actually had with Windows XP, Vista didn't solve enough of them to make it worth the trouble of upgrading, let alone the cost of buying new licenses.
I had some free upgrades to Vista available, and never used them. I tested it, but there were compatibility issues with hardware and 3rd party software, and there was nothing Windows Vista did that Windows XP didn't that I needed to do. Vista itself was fine, but upgrading would have meant a whole lot of trouble for me, and the only benefit I could see from upgrading was a cooler-looking interface.
Yeah, I was all "WTF IS THIS SHIT" when I had to set up wireless on a Vista install the first time.
Have to enable the connection, set your network mode to semi-private or some other bullshit, then actually configure the wireless.
Retarded.
Let's take a brief spin in Professor Peabody's Wayback Machine, shall we? When it first came out, I took the new version of Windows for a spin, and hated it. It required more resources than I felt it deserved (particularly memory). In addition to all the bloat, I thought the user interface was the ugliest I'd ever seen. Plus, it didn't give me anything I didn't already have with the old system. Other than some DRM, that is.
That new operating system was called XP. I decided to stick with 2000 Professional. I still use 2000 to this day for all my work and some games. I keep it away from the Internet (no browsing, and no email), and have no problems. Oh, and I'm still using Office 97 on it as well.
Now, tell me again why Windows 7 is so much better than Vista, when I don't even feel a need for XP?
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
I have a grudging respect for XP professional edition that grew on me as I managed to turn off all of the rubbish and secure the system. I have not used it on since the Zone Alarm screw up, by which time I had migrated all my systems to Ubuntu. I just got completely fed up with the obscure methods of networking or anything to do with servers, apache and mysql - all much easier in the big U. I still use XP in a VM for my employers access database which really can't be migrated and since they are using Vista (comes with the new PCs) conversations about what to click on over the phone rapidly descend into farce.. (with apologies to Vista professionals, which I imagine, there must be.)
"Ok click on Tools"
"Where's that?"
"It's in the menu bar,oh wait a minute you don't have that. Can you see it on the left hand panel?"
"I can see the list of tables..."
"No that's the wrong view. Is it in the blobby display along the top of the screen?"
"What's the blobby display?"
"All those sort of chunky yellow icons at the top of the access window."
"Are they yellow?"
"I'm not sure, I thought they were sort of yellow the last time I looked at your GUI."
"My gooey? Where's that?"
"It's okay, it's your screen, along the top of the window, they're about a centimetre tall and chunky."
"No, I can't see anything called tools."
"Try clicking on the big MS circle in the top left-hand corner of the screen."
"A circle? I don't have a circle."
"It's a 3D ball, in blue with the Microsoft logo."
"What's a logo?"
"Hello, are you from the past?"
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
We can sure spot the astroturfers here.
Say what you will about Vista, that ship has sailed.
The real story here is how badly the early reviews missed the mark. The Ed Botts of the world bought it hook, line, and sinker, as many suspect they are paid to do.
The press failed US, their READERS, in their gold-rush to the Microsoft advertising bonanza. How are we to trust them going forward?
Yes its popular to bash anything Microsoft while giving Apple a pass for farm more egregious failings and a far more combative attitude. But EVEN in that environment, where bashing is expected, the overwhelming majority of articles were positive. Those two or three posting negative stories are no longer with the organizations where their review appeared. Coincidence?
We would have been better off listening to Joe Random Blogger, who were out there with not a great deal of good to say about Vista. We would have been better off shunning any outlet that took any Advertising money from Microsoft, or were owned by a company that did. We would have been better off evaluating sources for thin reviews, outlandish claims and clear bias. Joe Average Reader is a pretty good judge of content character over time.
The Release Candidates were getting seriously bad reviews on many blogs, and even some of these very same publications. But somehow by the time it came to review the RTM release all of mainstream press guys stood at attention and saluted. The bloggers' voices were drowned out by the clicking if heels.
This same thing is happening with regard to other products, other major software release today. (The latest versions of Office, KDE4, Kindle, some Blackberries, etc, come to mind). Lots of carping, even some quite nasty, but uniformly glowing reviews in the major publications.
Mainstream press wants to play gatekeeper of information. They belittle the blogosphere, decry the lack of filters, and insist on professional credentials. Yet they deliver major misses on some topics where there was clear indication of trouble ahead.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Just look at that list of reviewers. BusinessWeek (Steve Wildstrom), CNET (Robert Vamosi), Forbes (Stephen Manes), The New York Times (David Pogue), PC Magazine (John Clyman), Paul Thurrott’s Windows Supersite, PC World (Preston Gralla and Richard Baguley), USA Today (Ed Baig), The Wall Street Journal (Walt Mossberg), and ZDNet (Ed Bott). These are all people I expect to eagerly whore out new versions of the OS so they can write more articles, books, and magazine covers on how to make it not suck. And by the time Vista came out, XP was looking mighty weak in that department because it generally ran quite well.
Then Vista got into the hands of the users, and right out the door it sucked. There's no softpedaling that unless you're a hardcore apologist. I burned it from my systems with fire and stocked up on XP licenses.
With Win7, the users have been able to try it in advance, and more to the point I have been able to try it in advance thanks to the extremely savvy beta/RC program. The Tech Journalists will go 'wow, this is great' but I just ignore them - that's what they'd say anyhow.
I think you're *almost* right.
1) I disagree about UAC. I was only ever able to be happy with Vista after I turned UAC off. Effectively, it gives you a chance to say 'no' to something running, which isn't a bad thing, but for users who know what they are doing, generally they know what's installed on their systems, and what's running, already, and don't need an additional 'grant permission' window. For users who don't really understand much about computers, they have no real notion of whether something *should* be allowed or not, so they're either going to deny things they shouldn't (then wonder why something isn't working right), or allow everything, at which point UAC has given them extra prompts for no *actual* security benefit.
UAC also has the drawback of, potentially, extra user confusion in terms of where files are stored. What do I mean? There are a number of programs which, right or wrong (mostly wrong), store data files in their "Program Files" program directory (e.g. c:\Program Files\Publisher\ProgramName\Data). Now, with UAC turned on, when programs try to do that, the files will actually be saved into the user's profile directory (in a sort of 'mirror' of the program files directory structure). Now, on the surface, that seems like a great idea, BUT - if the user then goes to a manual or tech support page which says that the data files are located in c:\Program Files\Publisher\ProgramName\Data, they might not backup their data correctly (in an ideal world, every user's userprofile directory would also be backed up, but the world isn't always ideal).
2) Part of the problem isn't just marketting - it's that Microsoft designed a system whose minimum requirements were far beyond what almost all but a small percentage of existing systems had, at the time. Most people expect that a year or two old system should reasonably be able to upgrade to the latest release. Heck, brand new systems should have no problem.
Now, I know this is anecdotal, and so is not scientific proof or anything, but I think it does illustrate the problem pretty well - I bought a brand new Dell laptop right after Vista was released, which came with Vista. At this time, most computers, except for high-end gaming rigs and workstations used by people doing pretty high-end computing tasks, had about 512M RAM.
I decided to buy the laptop with 1G of RAM (I think I could have bought it with 2G, but I would have had to pay like an extra $150 or something - Dell likes to advertise systems cheap, then have badly overpriced upgrades to increase their margins, it seems). I honestly thought 1G should be more than enough, even for a Vista system. Well, if all I was doing was web browsing, email, and word processing - and not having *too many* open processes/web pages, at the same time - that probably would have been about enough, I guess. But, I also like to play games on my computer, have 6 or 10 web pages open at a time, sometimes, watch full-screen video, etc.
1G of RAM just didn't cut for Vista. Vista used almost 700MB of RAM with nothing but a few system-tray apps, and normal system services, running. That is, boot up the laptop, and 700MB or RAM was already in use before opening a single application or game. When I did play games, the system usually had to start paging to disk, which of course kills performance.
I now have 4G of RAM, and Vista basically runs without any problems. But, considering the state of systems when Vista was released (very few people had 4G back then, though it's a bit more common now, but still probably less than 50% of computers have more than 1G).
So, Microsoft basically dropped the ball on providing an upgrade which could work well with smaller systems. They apparently thought it wasn't important, because Moore's Law would mean that within a couple years, everyone would have systems with more than enough memory. The problem is, the product has to work well *at release*, on existing systems, in order to get a good reputation, which Vista largely failed to do.
I always found Tiger (OS X 10.4) and Leopard (10.5) were at the sweet spot of prompting for admin authority when I thought they should and not doing so when I thought they shouldn't need to.
In Snow Leopard (10.6) Apple has tried to follow in Microsoft's footsteps with several things, including the software/system updates where they really, REALLY want user's to just enable auto-pushed updating and leave the driving to Apple. This has led to throwing UAC-like unnecessary requests for admin authority at the user.
Previously a non-admin userid could launch the check for Software Updates from the apple menu, be presented with the list of eligible software updates, select which ones to apply and only at that point where it was actually necessary be prompted for admin authority before applying the updates.
As of Snow Leopard, Software Updates requires you give it admin authority before it will even show you what new updates the machine is eligible for. And even then it won't show you the updates -- it just says there are updates of some kind and would you please let it apply whatever Apple has decided is good for you. Of sure, if you really insist then Software Updates will eventually allow you to ask it to show you the list of updates and let you decide whether they've been released long enough to have been shaken out by other folks.
This type of look back is great for one thing. It outs the shills. All of the glowing reviews around this pre-release stage for Vista were done by MS shills and partners who all sought to convince people to go buy-buy-buy. People's real experiences started to get in the way after it was released and the balance changed. Then MS's perception management had to start earning their money by trying to shout louder than real users and of course mod bombing sites like /. and digg to ensure reality never gets much attention. The sites who did glowing reviews had to gradually shift their initial praise in the face of losing credibility with their readers.
./ are gonna mod this down as flamebait, they're only doing their jobs after all but the evidence is there for all to see. The interwebs is good at archiving evidence. Watching how those sites handle Windows 7 now, and comparing that to the user perception of Windows 7 will be another indicator.
Switch forward to the same point in the Windows 7 pre-release, and it's history repeating itself, with all the same sites doing glowing reviews of Windows 7. The agenda is the same, they just hope you won't notice it. If MS are to be believed, Windows 7 is an awesome release with a lot of improvements. In that case the paid shills will (for once) be reporting something close to the experiences real people will have. If however Windows 7 is what many suspect it is, the Mojave Experiment in a box, then they will have exposed themselves as MS shills once again.
The Mojave Experiment for those who don't know was an advertising ploy by MS to try and reverse peoples perceptions about Vista. They told people who had a negative opinion about Vista that they were getting a chance to play with the new OS from Microsoft called Mojave, and that Microsoft wanted feedback to make it better. They secretly filmed people playing with an OS for a short time, then afterwards asked them what they though of it, only to reveal it was actually Vista and capture their "wow" responses on film. Like all MS ploys it's based on deception.
1 - They deceived people that it wasn't Vista when it was.
2 - They tweaked the (no doubt REAL high spec) PCs to ensure all the hardware worked perfect, with all the UAC warnings etc already pre-configured not to give any hassle.
3 - They have plenty of MS employees floating around to ensure the users only play with the parts they are intended to play with, leading their actions.
4 - They only allow people a short time with a pre-configured PC so the likelyhood of any normal "Windows reality" events like a new infection alert happening in that time frame are almost zero.
I wouldn't be surprised if the experiment used an intranet and blocked the internet to make double sure.
5 - They gloat about the ability to deceive people. It was designed as an advert.
Mojave did teach them a couple of things, the result is Windows 7.
1 - Vista is skinable.
2 - People are gullible enough to believe slick deceptive sales staff feeding them a heap of BS.
These people are shameless. They will say whatever they feel they need to to get their pay cheque from Microsoft. They will also never admit to being paid to praise Windows. The label of "independent" carries more weight in the readers eyes. These reviews put the spotlight on who has sold out, and consequently should receive a backlash in terms of readership, sponsorship, partnership etc
They also serve as a fortune cookie, as you can bet these same sites will already be gushing over Windows 8 in draft documents, no doubt without ever having seen or heard anything about MS's next vaporware OS.
Obviously the MS astroturf army on
Remember that MS try the same tricks with EVERY new version of Windows. Up until Vista, people's perceptions haven't been so at odds with the marketing image. Yes ME was very bad, but the size and affordibility of a PC with an internet connection has changed dramatically since then. The world ME was released
Many reviewers are probably making the same mistakes and oversights with Windows 7 that they did with Vista.
Any reviewer who is not pointing out how severely flawed UAC is in Win 7 is not thinking clearly and/or not doing their job properly. I've been putting Win 7 through it's paces and I can't help but marvel that Microsoft still thinks that it is okay (during the initial install) to have the user setup a single administrator account. Once logged in on this account, whenever UAC needs privilege elevation, it simply presents a dialog with "Yes" and "No" buttons. No password entry is required. Why is this a problem? Think of the millions of users who will setup their PCs this way and then let friends and family use them? Should the trojan that your 15 year old's best friend just downloaded to the family PC get its privileges elevated? Sure, no problem, because all Billy has to do is click "Yes" when he's using your computer- he doesn't need to talk to you or know your password before proceeding. I searched and can find no option to require password entry for UAC privilege approval/escalation on admin accounts in Win 7. The fix, is to create "Regular User" accounts, log out of the administrator account and then use those. But, seriously, how many people are actually going to do this? And, how hard would it have been for Microsoft to write the OS install wizard to set things up this way? It's almost amazing how poorly designed things can be coming from that company. It's almost like they strive for mediocrity.
Oh, and while I'm thinking about it. Win 7, while better in initial performance than Vista, will eventually suck as bad as any version of Windows. Why? Because the global registry is still there and still subject all of its flaws and rot problems. Programs are still too entwined with the OS and able to update, change, or corrupt it. And, because too many processes run as "Administrator". The viruses, worms, trojans, adware, etc. will not be stopped and your system will still spend a considerable portion of its CPU scanning for that shit in the background. And, there will be millions of users who neglect to have any, or at least any that's up-to-date, anti-malware detection.
Windows 7, slightly better out of the gate, but still arriving at the same destination due to poor design decisions in its underpinnings.
english is my first language, but my only formal education in it was from U.S. public schools, so you may forgive me for
Really, Microsoft could just rebrand Vista as Windows 7 and release it today to great acclaim: in fact, that's precisely what they did.
Exactly. Windows 7 is just Vista SP3.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Hundreds. And they're not pretty. http://www.microsplot.com/vista
About a year ago, I was asked to be the guinea pig and test out all our engineering applications in Vista. I immediately cringed at the thought of running our 3D Solid Modeling software in the new OS.
My fears were quickly put to rest though. It turns out Solidworks ran flawlessly, and turned out to be far more stable than it was in XP64. Additionally, I found that it would start in a fraction of the time every morning, and I was no longer subjected to 5 minutes of hard disk grinding if I left the application open when I went to lunch. AutoCAD and our 8 year old ERP software had no issues, either. I make frequent use of the improved search features to find a particular drawing or part file lost in a sea of many thousands of engineering files and directories across a network in a couple of seconds.
Today, our entire department is on Vista. Given the opportunity, would we go back to XP? Not a chance.
I've been using it for years now, and have yet to bump into any "major problems".
I've had to reinstall my Wife's XP about 5 times since then to wipe malware, and only had to reinstall Vista once since then. Thank you, UAC!
People need to stop taking such a simplistic view of memory consumption.
ON MODERN OPERATING SYSTEMS, TOTAL MEMORY CONSUMPTION IS MEANINGLESS.
In fact, if there is "free" memory, you have a problem. When you see 700MB already used, most of that is buffer cache. If a program needs to use memory, the operating system will gladly discard part of that 700MB and use that freed memory instead for your application. It can discard that memory because it's "backed" by a file somewhere, and the operating system can reload data from the file as needed. On the other hand, when an application calls malloc, the returned memory isn't "backed" by anything but the swap file. Linux works the same way. All modern operating systems do. You want most of your memory in use.
Yes, this makes memory hard to track. But it also makes the system much faster.
...is that it ignores the fact that every Microsoft OS prior to Vista ran slower and looked prettier than its predecessor. Well, OK, they didn't all look prettier.
Even recently released games didn't work right on xp. They actually ran faster on 98 with less crashes. But overall, the system was more stable when not playing games, which was a big reason why I didn't go back. I think ntfs over fat32 was worth the price of admission, right there.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Rule about Windows new versions: Always wait for service pack 2.
The magazines lie about new versions of Windows because the advertisers want you to buy a new computer.
Why is it so hard for the fanboys to understand?
It's not so much that Vista sucks. It just that Vista does not offer any substantial improvement. There is no compelling reason to upgrade.
It is like saying: "Obama is not a terrible president, but certainly has not done anything to deserve a nobel prize."
I have been forced to use vista at work for the past month or so. Here are the things I hate, mostly from the first week. Keep in mind this is based on using 2000 and XP, and having certain expectations about how Windows in general is supposed to work. No one's going to read this, that's fine, I'm just spitting in a hurricane.
- duplicated functionality, users have to retrain their muscle memory. Makes sense, but loyal Windows users are
That is 50% truth and 50% microsoft apologist bullshit.
The truth is, it takes time to load all that crap into memory, and it takes time to discard it and fill it with real program when you launch a real program, and then it takes time to fill it back up with crap when you close the real program. Performance during all the swapping is bland. Obviously it *wasn't* worth the theoretical speedup, since 7 changes the algorithm to keep those operations from being so noticeable.
"All modern operating systems do," is, again, bullshit, especially the claim that Linux does it. When XP on fresh startup is using 250 MB of RAM, Ubuntu (any version from 7.10 to 9.04) is using 400, whereas when I boot Vista it'll be in the 1.2 to 1.6 GB range before I click anything, clearly "all modern operating systems" DON'T do it the same way. Modern operating systems buffer-on-load, whereas Vista's obviously preloading a ton of crap based on some unknown aggressive algorithm that makes poor choices.
Ok, I'll agree there's some truth to that. But there's also truth to the point that my laptop, with 1G of RAM, had on several games, worse performance under Vista, than later when I formatted and installed Windows XP on the same laptop. XP just seemed to give me better performance with only 1G of RAM, and my main point was, that at the time Vista launched, I believe there were a lot of machines that only had 512M - 1G of RAM, and that because of Microsoft's design, performance seemed, to a lot of people, to suffer on those machines when running Vista.
The Vista Sucks Meme spread because, for many people, it really did suck. There are a couple sharp lines in hardware requirements such that, if you exceed them all then Vista runs fine, but if you fall short on any one of them Vista runs poorly. It ran pretty much exactly as smooth as XP for me on a 4-year-old system (which I'd upgraded to 3 GB of RAM), but it ran like crap on a new laptop with a faster CPU and 2 GB of RAM - probably due to the standard 4krpm hard drive in it and Vista's penchant for super aggressive preloading. It'll also suck slightly if you have only 1 GB of RAM, and suck mightily if you're stuck with only 512. The thing is, when it came out, the 512 MB to 1 GB range was average to high end. (You could already get more memory at that time, but it was kinda unusual to do so since XP plus a heavy duty game would still run in under 1 GB).
On the other hand, Win7's beta in a VM under virtualbox in Ubuntu runs faster on my laptop than Vista ran on the bare metal. (And the XP VM runs decently, and the Win2K VM I put on there just for laughs runs unbelievably fast)
XRandR lets you do that and there's a little application you can ask to be put in the command bar to do this.
PS if you do that so often, why not use Kubuntu? KDE uses Control Centre. Display -> settings -> change them.
Or did you buy basic and complain that it wouldn't connect to an AD?
So why didn't the problems Vista BETAs and RCs ring alarm bells?
I don't recall reading or hearing of anyone raising concerns at the time. Infact many people were saying how great Vista was, singing the praises of the pervasive search and other features. Also I guess if you had reasonable hardware you'd not be aware of the performance issues.
Were we overlooking problems because, after all, Beta testing is garunteed buggy unfinished code? Was it because beta testers are usually power users and therefore experience less problems generally?
Even though Windows 7 is better code fundamentally (Vistas problems being rooted in quality control), could we be looking at the same snafu with Windows 7?
The real test comes when mom and pop users without the skills to work through issues install RTM.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
UAC was written to make it the users fault not microsoft's.
Just like uninstalling and the "This DLL doesn't seem to be used. However, it may still be. Shall I remove it?".
How the FECK is the user supposed to know? If it showed something about when it was installed and what API it exposed, maybe they could answer (even if "it says adobe_print_finagle_whoople() exported. I guess it's adobe's stuff").
It was done to make it the users fault if it failed.
Seriously. Have you tried it? A major improvement over every vendor slopping their own clunky interface together, the only thing I've used that comes close is the Network Manager in Ubuntu. Otherwise Windows XP is rather spartan in value and the best part of Vista (the Windows Sidebar) can be backported to Windows XP but needs to run in two instances of memory!
Truthfully there really isn't anything not possible in Windows 2000 you'd need to upgrade for that isn't an external limitation imposed by Microsoft in gambit to force upgrades. The lack of updates? That's a choice Microsoft made in order to force people to "upgrade" to Windows XP and higher. This includes system components like Direct X and driver issues by corporations seeking people to purchase new hardware, while not wanting to support older hardware that still works. Much of the above is artificial though and can be worked around by way of using modified dll thunking to get those things running on Windows 2000 despite supposedly not being capable of performing in that operating system.
Meanwhile I've found I can pretty much get all the features of Windows XP and Vista by upgrading to Linux and making use of Wine to run some of my applications and by using more and more native Linux applications as I go on. This way I get all the cool toys (Compiz with Virtual Desktops is something you'll never want to give up once you start using it) and still stay within reasonable memory usage. I have an entire gig of RAM on my desktop and my netbook--I have yet to see either exceed 500mbs despite doing things that would easily have me hitting the swap file in Windows XP or 2000.
So there are options forward, but if Windows 2000 works for you and you don't need cleartype or use WiFi you shouldn't upgrade until you hit the application availability and lack of security updates wall. Personally I think it sucks we should have to make these kinds of choices at all, but at least with Windows 2000 you still have those options. Once Microsoft decides to stop activating our copies of Windows XP I expect there will be a lot of people in for a world of hurt!
--bornagainpenguin
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
Can't believe you people are still talking about this.
At work, I had to take the standard Dell purchase. It came with vista. Dealing with unix servers all day, I much prefer a linux desktop. However, try making ubuntu work with this:
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV516 [Radeon X1300/X1550 Series]
I can't upgrade to 9.04 because there is no driver for radeon that works well without tinkering in 9.04, and my sound goes out every other day and requires a restart. Try spanning monitors also. Things in the secondary monitory, when minimized, won't come back up. (eclipse mostly).
Absolutely standard install. Things do not work.
Vista, everything worked (although it lacked the tools I wanted).
Neither linux or windows is rock solid if you can't control every aspect of the install. Which is a situation that many people find themselves in. If I were able to build my work machine from parts that I knew had good linux support, I probably would have had less problems. The same could be said of a vista install.
Would I get less "its broken" calls if I installed Linux on my parents computers? Maybe. But I'd get a ton more calls saying my new printer won't work, I can't play this movie, my sound goes out.. my camera won't attach, etc..
Now if I could control everything they bought, to guarantee compatibility, sure... it would "just work".
Here's a blownup and labeled screenshot of my handy little System Memory Monitor. http://i36.tinypic.com/290y3ad.png
The problem is that Windows doesn't tell apart the light green bit (cache) from the dark green bit (memory actually being used by programs). Which one accounts for the 700MB? You can't tell, on Windows. That is what the GP was complaining about.
Note: I was 13 when I wrote most of this. Take with several grains of salt.
There must not be any Windows admins here today. I can't believe that no one mentioned the difficulties with Vista on domains with logon scripts. I expect the same problem to exist in Windows 7. Until we can get this reliably fixed (because MS can't tell you how to reliably fix it), I don't see Windows 7 taking over the IT department either.
Windows 7 has extremely low compatibility with past Windows software and hardware. Basically, it cannot run any pre-Vista software unless you use the virtualized Windows XP ('XPM') add-on and that has some major limitations: 1) requires a cpu with virtual extensions 2) requires maintenance of the XP add-on as if it was another installation, and 3) even XPM has very limited legacy software support. As for hardware, pre-vista hardware can not be used unless it is supported by a vendor who will release Windows 7 drivers which will likely only be the case for newer hardware that had a high original cost. I wanted to run Windows 7 but it will basically require all new hardware and software which will limit its use for me to browsing the web and running Office until I can find Windows 7 replacements for all of the little apps that it will not run. Hopefully, 3rd party companies will quickly develop software that will allow legacy apps to run until Windows 7 substitutes appear.
Possibly, but at least it can hot-swap monitors when you use it on a laptop. I've never been able to get Linux to pull that one off without a reboot.
I can get it to work reliably these days, as long as I don't mind typing xrandr commands. Complete with incomprehensible mode lines generated with cvt or gtf (they produce slightly different ones for some reason?) to set the resolution, after which I have to fiddle with the physical buttons on the monitor to get the image to be centered and the correct size. And I end up running a shell script on every boot to get my monitors actually working since I don't know how to get the settings remembered. Which is okay since I never reboot, except that sometimes I have to when I get erratic lock-ups that I suspect are kernel bugs of some kind. Which is annoying because my alarm is in cron and it doesn't go off, so I sometimes oversleep.
So, um. Not a ringing endorsement there, granted. But hey, still fun for me so far.
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
This is a new meaning of the word "reliably" with which I was not previously familiar.
Comment of the year
XP sucks, it's been well established in great detail. Though
it can be made to work well enough.
Vista sucks. Vista is NT6.0
Windows7 is NT6.1 (still Vista)
Windows8 dont exist.
Seems Microsoft is hard at work paving the way for Linux...
Microsoft truly drives people toward higher quality
safer more secure more economic technlology. sweet
This is a new meaning of the word "reliably" with which I was not previously familiar.
How so? Reliability is orthogonal to ease of use. I do get it working every time.
MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
I use Linux except for games, and the games I have some of them dont run on anything but XP, so I will not be buying Vista or Win7. In fact I just bought another Windows XP Machine just to be safe. If you could run my apps I would switch but if not I have no reason to use it.
I can't say Vista was the best OS I ever ran, but I ran it at least on my main system for 2 years and I never found myself hating it. Hell, I even did real-time software development on it. Couldn't have been that bad.
The Forbes guys are a little bit confused here: the one with a liver problem works on a different company...
An alternative to UAC is the complete resource virtualization: a user may seem to change the system files, but in reality he changes his own copy of system files, leaving the system intact.
This would allow much greater compatibility with older software, and it would not change the way software was developed on Windows. There wouldn't need be a 'home directory', since Windows users are accustomed to have the root directory as their home folder.
So, I don't think that "UAC is absolutely needed". UAC is one solution, but there are other solutions as well.
If you don't think Vista has severe technology-related problems, you must either
(1) have never used it, or
(2) have never used anything else so you just don't know any better.
To start with, it absolutely does not run normally with anything less than (at the very least) 2 GB of RAM, whereas XP, Mac OS X *and* Linux work fine with 1 GB. I for one would certainly call this a technology-related problem. (And yes, I have watched Vista crawl on a semi-recent cheap HP laptop with only 1 GB of RAM. It works just great with XP).
Also, I'm sure all those oft-reported reasons regarding high CPU usage during network transfers, *extremely* slow network file copying (sure...somewhat addressed in later SP's) have absolutely nothing to do with technology, but are just due to "bad marketing" then?
I'm not even going to go into the further user interface experience.
But, I'm sure everything is OK if you just keep drinking the Kool-aid.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
What you talkin about Willis?
True, but the hardware for which it was designed didn't exist until 2009!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Vista's big problems vs. Win7
1) Drivers. Driver model changed from XP to Vista. Lots of devices at Vista's beginning either didn't have drivers or had buggy/crappy drivers. Win7 uses Vista's driver model, so most Vista drivers will work on it. And since Vista has been "gold" for almost 3 years, drivers exist for most devices made in the last 4-5 years. (Past that, well, still good luck. If a device was really popular or the device/chipset manufacturer is good, maybe you have drivers.)
Note that this may changes a LOT if you go from 32-bit to 64-bit. 64-bit drivers may or may not work well on your system. My personal experience was with a Toshiba Satellite laptop. Utterly unstable BSOD city with 64-bit Win7, even with official drivers. Installed 32-bit instead and the system is rock solid stable. I'd rather be running 64-bit, but not if the system becomes unbootable within a day.
2) File copying. For me, pre-SP1 Vista was completely broken just for the file transfer issues. Transferring files to/from my corporate network took 20x (more?) that of XP. Completely unacceptable and a total deal breaker. (And I don't know how or why this critical bug ever escaped beta. Don't people at Microsoft actually transfer files on their networks???)
3) Performance. Vista was significantly slower than XP, and was pushed onto machines that were completely overwhelmed by this. Even more "hefty" systems struggled. The internal memos on this at Microsoft were classic. People bought $2000 laptops that were much slower than their 2 or 3 year old previous laptops. Vista performance stank. And RAM requirements were underplayed. XP runs fine with 512mb - 1gb of RAM (depending on your usage). Vista needs double that, but some of the original Vista systems had only 512mb.
Vista after SP1 (and some more updates) improved quite a bit on it's performance. Win7 is faster than Vista as well. OK, it's not as fast as XP. But the gulf between XP and Win7 is nowhere as vast as that between Win XP and Vista back in 2006-2007.
We're also 3 years along with Moore's law. Dual-cores are common. Some even have triple and quad cores. Graphics cards are much better as well. So average system power is much higher and more capable of shouldering additional computing burdens.
So Win7 should run well on most 2007+ systems (except for lower-end netbooks), especially if you up the ram to 2gb. Ram is dirt cheap these days, and almost all systems come with at least 1gb of ram. Even many consumer systems sell with 2gb or 3gb of ram.
I still wouldn't try to use it on anything other than really high-end "workstation" systems from pre-2006 (e.g., got a Dell Precision with dual socket Xeons?).
And if you bought a low-end early non-dual core Vista laptop -- sorry, just downgrade the system to XP. You got screwed.
4) UAC. Yes -- UAC sucks, especially if you need to do any real adminstration on a Vista system. I setup group policy on my corporate systems so that any administrator accounts had silent elevation, so UAC still ran but silently in the background. For home systems, sometimes I just turned the annoying bugger off.
It's easier to tone it down in Win7. At these levels, it doesn't pop up constantly, and probably is no more annoying than security prompts in OS X or having to sudo everywhere in Linux.
5) The UI.
And yes, I've been using Win7 on my laptop for a month. I'm still not completely happy with some of the UI changes vs. XP. (Vista of course had the same problem. Microsoft broke design conventions that existed since Windows 3.0 or so. Vista made items harder to reach -- requiring 5 clicks instead of 2 or 3. And so forth.) But the UI in Win7 is more polished and less annoying than Vista. I still miss the classic start menu, but I'm missing it less and less. And I couldn't live without the Quick Start bar. It can be somewhat easily faked in Win7. And no, pinning icons to the task bar is not the same -- they take up lots, lots more screen real est