Slashdot Mirror
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.'
>>>>> When I'm using my computer, I don't want to spend time fiddling with the OS
>>
>>That's one of the reasons I use Linux. It just works.
Challenge - Connect to this ISP (with webaccelerator) on a Linux machine. I tried and tried and tried and could not get it to work on my Ubuntu Linux laptop, and it's kinda crucial since many places I travel have no other internet access - http://www.getnetscape.com/getnetscape/?
I also had problems getting my Atari Stella and NESticle emulators to work properly (they ran but only played 1/3 of the games). Plus when I tried to use VLC Media Player to open some songs, rather than play one song at a time as you'd logically expect, Ubuntu tried to open 100 copes of VLC at the same time. My ancient Amiga OS 1.0 had the same stupid flaw. What is this? 1985?
I was forced to yank the battery of my laptop to rescue it. Linux doesn't "just work".
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I don't know what hardware your friend has, or how you set it up, but Vista flies on my machines. The file transfer issue you talk about was fixed years ago - it can easily max out our gigabit ethernet at work. Backwards compatibility was indeed broken for drivers, as it uses a new driver model to increase stability. I've used vista for years, without re-installing it, and it's fine.
This is the same old complaints over again.
And needing more graphics power than was considered normal in order to display a modern UI.
Slightly, perhaps. But that's because of backwards compatibility, not some sort of horribly conspiracy against the public. OS X has the advantage that all the apps written for it knew they'd be rendering to the GPU.
And UAC being maybe the most annoying thing ever added to any piece of software ever.
Except you only really get UAC prompts:
1) When you first install all your software. After the first two weeks, and all the programs you're likely to use are already installed, you only see UAC when patching. (This is what gave people the bad impression, but what's the alternative? If Microsoft game installers a pass, like Apple does, they would have been crucified for insecurity.)
2) For buggy applications. Applications that break the multi-user contract pop-up UAC prompts often, yes, but those applications were already broken-- Vista is just exposing their brokenness. (And, UAC enables them to run *at all* automatically, without you having to use "Run As... Admin" like you would on XP and Windows 2000. In Windows XP, a broken app like that would just fail with a vague error message.)
And if UAC is throwing up multiple alerts for one task, you're tinkering with the guts of the OS. Stop doing that.
And inexpicably long file transfer times.
Patched over 2 years ago.
And backward compatibility.
Possibly worse than other Windows releases (although the compatibility from Windows 98 to Windows 2000/XP was pretty iffy, too), but still better than any other OS on the market.
Comment of the year
This has nothing to do with "depth of Microsoft's problems". Your school probably pays for MSDNAA as a benefit to students (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/academic/default.aspx/). This program has been around for a long time. I used it to get windows 98/2000/xp from my university back in the day.
"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"
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