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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 agree. aside from needing a lot more memory than what was considered "standard" at the time of its release, vista wasn't bad at all. i think everyone was just riding on the stay-away-from-vista band wagon. it's just sad that the general public believe the opinions of 12-yr-old geek wannabes or 40-yr-old bloggers who don't even know the difference between java and javascript.
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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.
Vista ain't bad, and really Win7 isn't as different as Vista was to XP. I tried very hard for 10 years to use Linux. Not any more; it's too much work. When I'm using my computer, I don't want to spend time fiddling with the OS and desktop environment. So I'm happy using Windows at work, and Mac OS X at home. Each to their own though.
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.
For me it didn't even take getting new hardware to get better performance under Vista. MS released some patches soon after launch that addressed the main performance issues people were having, and it's been great ever since. I'm still using it, after 2 years of no re-installs or cleaning up of my computer, and it's flying. The major problems people had, which were not addressed by Microsoft, were due to the new driver model, which made drivers less able to crash windows and generally mess up your computer (a Good Thing). Pre-Vista drivers weren't compatible, but now nearly everything has a Vista driver, so it's not a problem. The same thing happened when people moved from 98SE to XP - everyone decried XP's 'Fisher Price' interface and screwy drivers, but it was the exact same thing. Now folks are pining for XP, when in a few years Windows 7 will be the new XP. Vista was, in my opinion, rather unfairly tarnished by people spewing utter bullshit about it (which still goes on today on /.), and it'll never get over that. For those who have used it, the majority are still using it, and didn't go back to XP.
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!)
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)
So Vista isn't so bad one you get a more powerful computer, get used to the slowness and upgrade to Windows 7? Was this supposed to be tongue-in-cheek?
I am not a crackpot.
If your brother bought a brand new machine that came with Vista, he got ripped off. Most machines of the day came with at least a gig. And it would have had to have a gig to be certified for Vista.
I never had any problems moving from 98 to XP.
In fact since XP is actually Windows NT 5.1, it was a hell of a lot more stable than the old 95/98/me MS-DOS overlaid-with-a-desktop model which kept crashing or freezing. I'm glad Microsoft discontinued that line.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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....
Another note to add is that Vista was the first OS Microsoft created that wasn't designed to have Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer linked, which was likely a cause for several backwards-compatibility issues.
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
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)
This is one of the biggest PITA with Windows; migrating to a new machine or fresh install. With my home computer (MacBook) I just ran the Migration Assistant and it moved my settings, users, apps and files from my old iMac without any hassles. With Windows you're hunting for the install discs and looking at a day of installs and trying to remember where you downloaded some things from.
Is there anything close to that for Windows (that actually works)? I use Windows at work, and when I get a new machine it is a royal pain to move everything over.
>>>Vista pushed me to Linux, so it's not all bad.
Me too!!!
Then I realized Linux is programmer-friendly but not user-friendly*, so I decided to try Mac OS X. Then I realized I'm not rich enough to keep the Mac constantly upgraded, so I eventually found myself back at seven-year-old XP PC (NT 5) right where I began.
*
* Change Ubuntu Linux's resolution to 640x480.
Now change it back without using secret,
hidden key commands. It can't be done.
That's a non-user-friendly design.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It just works.
[Insert Distro Name Here] support forums would suggest otherwise.
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.
And needing more graphics power than was considered normal in order to display a modern UI.
And UAC being maybe the most annoying thing ever added to any piece of software ever.
And inexpicably long file transfer times.
And backward compatibility.
I used the Vista RCs extensively and couldn't stand them, even on excellent hardware. This past weekend I spent an hour or so helping a friend set up his new Vista laptop and network and was reminded of why I can't stand Vista even on hot off the presses high end laptop hardware. The UI lags no matter how much computing power you throw its way. UAC still requires multiple approvals before executing one task. Even with an SSD traversing directories is still too slow.
I've been running the Win 7 RC and have to say that it appears to fix most all of Vista's problems apart from UAC. It is probably good enough to get me to take advantage of bootcamp, which Vista certainly was not.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
The main reason most businesses stayed away from Vista was because there was no business justification for it. If the only thing Vista can do that XP can't is to run slower and look prettier, why would you want to install it? Remember, a business software upgrade is never free even if there is no additional licensing cost. The IT staff time required to upgrade the PCs and networks along with any user downtime or learning curve is not worthwhile just to install a slower and buggier OS that offers no real improvement over XP.
You complain about both backward compatibility and UAC. Most problems with UAC came from exactly that - the old software wasn't made to support it. New software is. Nevertheless, UAC is the correct direction for securing Windows as OS. People have been complaining that Windows is insecure, and now that MS takes the correct way people complain that it's a nuisance? You can't have it both ways (and you can disable UAC if you're not happy with it).
UAC nuisance goes away when you replace older software with newer one that supports it. But to support it MS had to just throw it in.
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
>>>side from needing a lot more memory than what was considered "standard" at the time of its release, vista wasn't bad at all.
Not bad??? My brother bought a brand-new machine with 1/2 gig of RAM which Microsoft claimed was enough. It wasn't. It was slower than a snail through molasses, even worse than my old XP laptop on 96 megabytes. After he upgraded to 1.5 gig it did work a bit faster, but then he started having problems with Vista accusing him of using an unauthorized copy & refusing to startup.
After he removed the RAM the problem went away, but it was again slow as a snail, and MS calls this "usable". Hardly. Vista is the worst OS I've used since the Windows 3. Perhaps even worse than that, and I'm glad it's been replaced with Windows 7.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
So Microsoft should, what, remove the feature because geeky people (defined as: people who already know how to disable UAC) want to do all kinds of geeky, potentially insecure, stuff?
"Throw the average user to the wolves! Cater only to the uber-geeks!" That's the philosophy they should use?
And yeah, the UI is dog slow on a machine on which linux absolutely flies. Still. Core2Duo, Nvidia 8400GS, slow as crap.
There's no reason Vista should be "slow as crap" on that machine. Maybe you've just broken something by installing low-level crap.
Comment of the year
Thank you astroturfer! I feel so much safer now I'm gonna go out and buy more MS products!
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.
...(XP didn't have the same kind of just-show-ui-quickly-while-its-loading thing either)
The hell it didn't! If one logs into the computer as soon as the login screen is displayed, (if the "welcome screen" is enabled) you'll see the "Welcome" line rise in a jerky fashion. That will disappear, and the taskbar is displayed right away. Because XP uses Terminal Services to show you your desktop, you'll see that the Start button, QuickLaunch area, and system tray will be blank (for only a few seconds, or longer) while your hard drive grinds away trying to furiously load everything at the same time. Win NT4 took a while to give the login screen (on slow computers), but at least when it did, one knew the OS was loaded completely.
I do like the idea of 'delayed automatic startup' in Vista (and 7 I hope)...
I remember the good old days of 'the operating system loaded', then 'you can use your computer'...now, it's a mash. So many people I know start clicking stuff and don't understand that their computer is still loading (there's no clear indication that services/apps are still loading damnit!), and they ask me why it's taking so long...then they click it again. Sure, there's a HD light that few (as in 10-15% of all computer users) people understand, and the hour glass sometimes...but nothing definitive...why is that so hard?
And I have no doubt that you'd be doing exactly the same if they were running Linux. No amount of technology can overcome user error.
No root password is a damn good start, though.
I am not a crackpot.
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
UAC still doesn't stop a user from clicking "okay" "okay" "okay" as they install a trojan.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
...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.
Dude, that's 90% of Slashdot comments. What do you want a bibliography for each comment on here?
Can't somebody give their own person opinion of something.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
What the guy got stuck with was a Vista Basic machine, and that is entirely MSFT's fault. They put out frankly ridiculous system requirements for Vista Basic and for quite awhile after Vista was released Worst Buy was pushing Vista Basic machines with really underpowered Celeron or Sempron chips and a measly 512Mb of RAM. considering folks were used to the "XP Home/Pro" way of doing things Vista Basic smelled like a way for MSFT to push their new OS onto PCs that were WAY too underpowered to ever run it.
So don't blame the guy, blame MSFT. After all how many average Joes are gonna know the REAL system requirements of a new MSFT OS, or the difference between the SIX versions of Vista? And lets be honest here, Vista Basic should have NEVER been released. It was obvious from day one that Vista Basic was a screwjob intended to let OEMs get rid of old stock by putting a version of the new OS on a machine that simply couldn't handle it and get it out the door. if you ask me a LOT of the Vista hate can be laid directly at MSFT's door for allowing machines that never should have had anything but XP walk out the door with Vista Basic and a "Vista Capable" sticker.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It's actually the move from Win2K to XP.
I'm still on Win2K at home. Came with my dell laptop that's dead now, and I've been installing it on every new dell computer I get (I only have one machine at a time, so there's no license breech there). I don't need the fancy window dressing. The extra stuff is all fluff to me, including and especially Windows Media Player and Windows Update improvements. I have my own antivirus and firewall software, so the BS Microsoft's included with SP2 is irrelevant to me (and annoying when it pops up every 5 minutes telling me my computer isn't secure when it can't find my antivirus or firewall).
A lot of people say WinXP is good enough, and I think that's probably accurate for most people. I think Win2k is good enough.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
However, users don't default to Administrator in an Active Directory domain, which is somewhat standard for mid-size businesses or larger running Microsoft products.
Yes, and having worked support at one of these sites, I can tell you that figuring out which crazy permissions had to be hacked-together and applied for all of those buggy non-multiuser-aware apps was a huge pain in the ass. One of the reasons I like Vista: it'll save future generations from that pain.
Comment of the year
All of these "challenges" are third-party software issues, not Linux ones.
I challenge you to understand what Linux actually *is*, and not what you suppose it to be.