Exclusive Interview: Microsoft Admits What Went Wrong with Vista, and How They Fixed It
Posted 09/10/08 at 12:15:00 PM | by Will Smith
Update: Be sure to check out our thoughts on what Microsoft MUST change for Windows 7
We sat down with Microsoft to hear the company’s side of the Vista story. What lessons have been learned following the worst
Windows launch in the company’s history? Is Microsoft doing enough to regain PC users’ faith?
Way back in January 2007, after years of hype and anticipation, Microsoft unveiled Windows Vista to a decidedly lukewarm reception by the PC community, IT pros, and tech journalists alike. Instead of a revolutionary next-generation OS that was chock-full of new features, the Windows community got an underwhelming rehash with very little going for it. Oh, and Vista was plagued with performance and incompatibility problems to boot.
Since then, the PC community has taken the idea that Vista is underwhelming and turned it into a mantra. We’ve all heard about Vista’s poor network transfer speeds, low frame rates in games, and driver issues—shoot, we’ve experienced the problems ourselves. But over the last 18 months, Vista has undergone myriad changes, including the release of Service Pack 1, making the OS worth a second look. It’s time we determine once and for all whether we should stick with XP for the next 18 months while we wait for Windows 7. But before we answer that question, let’s review exactly what’s wrong with Windows Vista.
What Went Wrong with Vista’s Launch?
We’ve seen worse launches over the years, but not from a multibillion dollar product that was a half-decade in the making. Here are the seven biggest contributors to Vista’s dud of a debut
Instability
At launch, we complained that Vista was significantly less stable than its predecessor. We experienced more hard locks, crashes, and blue screens in the first weeks of use than we had in the entire year prior using XP. Sadly for Microsoft, our experience was shared by many early Vista users.
The problems weren’t limited to high-end, bleeding-edge hardware, either. People with pedestrian, nonexotic hardware configs reported crashes, instability, and general wonkiness with Vista on laptops and desktops, in homebuilt rigs and OEM machines, and in PCs that originally shipped with XP. Considering that improved stability was one of the biggest promises Microsoft made for Vista, users were understandably upset.
The Problem Reports and Solutions wizard finds lots of problems but few solutions.
Incompatibility
Microsoft didn’t make any big promises about application compatibility, and it’s a damn good thing. If a desktop application didn’t follow Vista’s rules for behavior, Vista wouldn’t let it run. The program would fail to load, crash on use, or eat the user’s data, depending on the development infraction. And to be clear, we’re not talking about shareware apps created by some dude in his basement, we’re talking about Acrobat Reader, iTunes, Trillian, and dozens of other programs, not even counting the antivirus programs that are rarely compatible with a new OS.
Getting hardware working could be just as challenging. If you had one of the millions of perfectly serviceable, but suddenly incompatible printers or scanners, you probably felt pretty raw. We know we did.
Additionally, if you needed to connect to a VPN (virtual private network) that isn’t supported by Vista’s built-in client, you were probably out of luck. Vista shipped without support from major VPN manufacturers, including Cisco, leaving work-at-home types out in the cold.
The massive number of compatibility problems ensured that every user would be touched by at least one disappointment.
Performance
We would expect a new version of Windows to be slower than the previous one, given immature drivers and new features that drain CPU cycles and absorb memory. However, the performance differential has always been less than 10 percent in the past and only really evident in hardware-intensive apps, such as games.
At Vista’s launch, our tests revealed worse-than-expected performance in many different tasks and applications. Gaming performance suffered notably; using drivers from the launch time frame, our tests showed as much as a 20 percent performance difference between Vista and XP on the same machine. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Even common tasks suffered. Large network file transfers took a ludicrous amount of time, even on systems hardwired to gigabit networks. On affected machines, Vista could take days to transfer a full gigabyte of data! While that was a worst-case scenario, many users complained that file transfers took twice as long to complete in Vista as in XP.
The Reliability Monitor provides a general idea of how stable your machine is. All our rigs are unstable.
User Account Control
Vista brought marked improvements to the overall security of Windows, one of the few areas in which the OS actually lived up to Microsoft’s promises. Unfortunately, one of the mechanisms that helps enable that security comes at a high cost—it’s incredibly annoying.
That’s right, we’re talking about User Account Control, aka UAC. Even if you don’t know what it’s called, if you’ve used Vista, you’re undoubtedly aware that you need to prepare your clicking finger when the desktop darkens and your trusty PC starts asking whether you really meant to install that application you just double-clicked. UAC prompts you whenever an app tries to write to an area of your hard disk or registry that Windows finds suspicious. This seems like a good thing, right? It would be, except UAC prompts every time the installer does something suspicious. We’ve had Vista prompt us no fewer than five times before completing installs it questioned.
The problem is compounded by the fact that those five prompts look and behave differently, even though they’re all asking for basically the same thing: permission to write to a protected area of your system. To make matters even worse, none of the UAC prompts actually tells power users what the app is doing. When you click that Allow button, all you’re doing is adding a speed bump to whatever malware you might be installing.
Executed properly, UAC could have been a savior for people wont to install every application they find. Unfortunately, the UAC prompts quickly become so annoying that most users either disable them (the power-user option) or mindlessly click Allow (the mom option).
Activation
Activation has been a hassle since Microsoft first included it with Windows XP. Microsoft’s never really honored its stated 90-day limit for discarding activation information either. After installing the OS once or twice, you inevitably have to call some poor sap manning the activation hotline to enable Windows. What bothers us about Vista is the inclusion of the Windows Genuine Advantage software, which periodically checks in with Microsoft to ensure that the copy of Windows you’ve already activated remains genuine.
That’s all well and good, unless something confuses WGA. Unfortunately, just about everything confuses WGA. It could be something as simple as a BIOS reset that sets the clock back a few years. Or it could be that Microsoft’s entire activation process shuts down for a few hours—like it did last August. But at least Microsoft curbs piracy of Vista and other activated software by treating its customers like criminals, right? Well, not so much. Hacked versions of Vista that simply bypass activation are available on BitTorrent sites around the world.
Version Overload
In the old days, there were two distinct versions of Windows: one for home users and one for corporate users. For home, you bought Windows 98; IT departments bought Windows NT (at least the serious ones did). With Windows XP, this trend continued, despite the fact that both the home and enterprise OSes used the same core.
With Vista, the old home and enterprise distinctions went out the window, as Microsoft added three more versions of Windows, removing crucial features like the 3D UI from the low-end release and forcing power users who want access to both work-friendly and enthusiast features to shell out for the $400 Ultimate edition. To help justify that exorbitant price, Microsoft promised Ultimate Extras, the first of which didn’t materialize until months after launch, and those that did appear were disappointing. A bad Texas Hold ’Em game, a backup utility that should have been included in every box, and support for other languages do not “ultimate extras” make.
Oh, and if you used Windows XP Professional at home and wanted to upgrade to a less-expensive home version of Vista, you were out of luck. The only upgrade path that worked from XP Pro to anything with Media Center capability was the spendy Ultimate edition.
‘One More Thing’
If the last eight years of watching Steve Jobs smugly introduce “one more thing” have taught us anything, it’s that no matter how technically sound (or alternately, how fatally flawed) a product is, every major release desperately needs one or two supersexy features to incite lust in geeks everywhere. Every time Jobs rolls out a new product, he teases the audience with a feature or two that you simply cannot wait to use. These features not only leave customers clamoring for the new product but also give those pesky users sitting on the fence a rationale for upgrading. While Vista had the technical chops in the form of the Aero renderer to deliver some potentially astounding apps, Microsoft’s best effort was Flip3D—a gimpy knock-off of a feature that OS X implemented infinitely better.
Aside from that, most of the apps included with Vista are rote updates of their forebears—from Movie Maker to Photo Gallery. There’s very little that’s new, even when the apps themselves are brand-new (see Windows Mail). Worse than nothing new, there’s not much in a stock Windows install to inspire anyone—even the stereotypical dullard PC user.
Next: DirectX 10, and XP vs. Vista: The Benchmarks!
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derya baykal
Submitted by derya baykal on Thu, 2009-01-01 04:13
Thanks Admin.
Submitted by yuki.n on Mon, 2008-10-13 02:43
Some time ago, I had tried to tell an application (TortoiseSVN, to be precise) to write some things under C:\Program Files on Vista. Until then, I had no idea of that new restriction and needed to fetch the SVN version of that freeware program I sometimes use.
It's understandable that an application might not be allowed to write to C:\Program Files for security reasons. However, on my case, things went really wrong. The application started downloading and downloading to the new directory it had just created, but suddenly stopped, stating that the file it had written doesn't exist. Puzzled, I tried to open this directory, but Vista told me that it didn't exist. I even wanted to delete it and let TortoiseSVN start fresh, but I couldn't. However, when trying to create a new directory with the same name, Vista told me that it already exists. In short, the files were actually written to C:\Program Files , but I had no way to access them. It almost sounded like I had installed a rootkit.
The solution was to disable UAC, and then the directory I wanted appeared automagically. I repeat, it's fine to not allow access to C:\Program Files for security reasons. However, I would prefer a clearer implementation, since the problem was quite cryptical. Instead of writing the files and then hiding them, I would rather have write access denied outright, preferably with an informative message. I needed a way to know what went wrong. The ideal solution would have been a message: "TortoiseSVN is trying to write some data to C:\Program Files , allow or deny?"
Getting Better All The Time...
Submitted by Kromaethius on Fri, 2008-10-10 07:47
Vista like any other OS by Microsoft, and for that matter, many of the applications they do lives and dies by the Service Packs. Vista isn't nearly as bad as "everyone" is saying. I've been using it for some time and been having an overall "good" experience with it.
Of course, I have high end PCs running it and can't imagine using public assistant or low end boxes to run this powerful operating system.
Submitted by kingofbadlands on Sun, 2008-10-05 12:03
I build custom Gaming PC's and only use vista 64 bit, never had an issue with the os.....I always have a highend cpu with atleast 4 gb of ddr2 in the systems.
but personally I prefer XP Pro 64
Submitted by MS Beta Lemming on Wed, 2008-10-01 20:29
In my office we use some programs which are not Vista compatible, in addition there is very little VPN support from other vendors for Vista so we wouldn't be able to use VPN anymore. Not to mention the hardware updates you have to make so the computer itself is Vista compatible. Our IT department shudders at the thought of having to convert to Vista.
If Vista is so great why does Microsoft have to run adds telling people they are using a new Mojave program and then tell them its really Vista? Does Microsoft have to change the appearance of Vista in order to sell it?
Submitted by MaximumCurt on Thu, 2008-09-25 15:05
I know it is, because, for months, I believed the bad hype, and wouldnt' go near it. But then, I got a copy of Ultimate at work, and was allowed to also install it at home. (Keep in mind, I am the guy everyone comes to, to fix their computers, and "make stuff work"). I admit, it took quite a bit of effort to make Vista even install (it didn't like the way my HD was partitioned). I also had to fight furiously with it to make it work with my legacy XP apps, the ones that did not have Vista versions, yet, and some of my "old" XP hardware, such as my MS game controllers. We (Vista and I) fought like crazy for two weeks, until, one by one, I got everything I wanted and needed to work on Vista, to work! As for games, once I shoved Quake III down its throat, and tweaked both the game and the OS, I got amazing performance from that old clunker QIII, over 70 fps, in some games. Also, on my gigabit network at home, I experienced none of the lag in the transfering of large files from one machine to another. I do admit to having experienced quite a number of the problems mentioned in the article, but, then I had most of those problems with the release of every new OS! I remember the issues I had with 98, 2k, ME and XP! The problem is not Vista, per se, but the general public's unwillingness to migrate to a new OS with a new learning curve, combined with growing complacency with technology.
Submitted by pungieEC on Thu, 2008-09-18 14:31
2 words to think about: "Backwords Compatibility"
Microsoft probaly forgot this promise they did with their previous releases of their OS's.
Submitted by Si_sedan07 on Tue, 2008-09-16 04:47
I actually had some experience with Vista. I must admit Im pretty glad I did not install Vista on my gaming computer. I really felt dissapointed on how a new OS (which newer thigns are supposed to be BETTER) could be that slow buggy and certainly annoying. My friends computer had twice the specs of my xp pc at the time, and boy my computer ran so much faster than his. I could not believe how much a computer could suck. It almost felt like running XP on a pentium II. (did u ever try that? really slow...) Crashes due to not enough memory, lots of hardware was not compatible with Vista either. I really hope Windows 7 is more focused on improving performance rather than making windows scroll (i guess...) or something stupid like that. Sure we love graphics, but if we need a $2000 dollar machine to run a OS, I dont think they're worthed.
Submitted by laner399 on Sun, 2008-09-14 07:30
This was a pretty big stumbling block in the stairwell of progress, and I'm afraid that bill has poorly navigated that stairwell, hit his poorly designed stumbling block and has managed to stumble down, hitting his head real hard (how else do you explain those million dollar Seinfield "ads" that should just resign on a video sharing service as a pipe dream for other aspiring richer-than-you types such as MTV's Sweet Sixteen and should be renamed M$'s Bill's Antics With X-Gen Favorite Celebritry, actually, bill if it wasn't technically an ad, you should syndicate the show.) But the FACT OF THE MATTER IS that though M$ is flush with cash, the whole of the IT industry is now unplugged from M$ (except maybe INTEL--we haven't heard from INTEL). The IT world, sorry to say say it, bill, is a zero tollerance feild, and you, due to your two year screwup are no longer part of the party, just a neccessary guest that is excluded from most of the talk, for now or at least a while until those planning a "planned obsolescence" solution for you have finalized their plan and it is more or less ratified and executed by the industry. Maybe there is a future for you in the peripheal/input devices market, who knows? Also your press releases are largely discredited as "phishing expeditions", most developers out there are profiting immencely from the open source model, and have no intention of using C#, PC manufacturers are already testing alternative OS's, IBM, and others are developing Linux as their PC platform of choice, and SUN NOVELL is openly calling vista a "legacy" OS. IT managers are even calling vista everything short of a disease, because it doesn't play nice on mixed networks and they are tired of chapter 6 of "DLL Hell". AND, there is talk of STEAM and that flock GOING LINUX! Maybe, on second thought you had better syndicate that thing you have going with Seinfield, as you might have a lot of years left, and you might need something to live on when you grow old. (Most likely this M$ thing is going to eat all your billions in the next decade!!!)
Linux=the Future NOW!!
Submitted by Dersimli on Wed, 2008-11-05 15:49
I read everything I could find on Vista in '05 and built a new box to be ready when I could start with Vista.
I started with;
GIGABYTE GA-8I955X, 2gb PC-6400 RAM, Intel 840EE CPU, 3 WD Raptors in a RAID 5 and a Sapphire 800GT 256mb video card. From the first CCP vista through the final release it has absolutely flew. this box had XP Pro in the beginning and adtech ile reklam 2.0 dönemi başlıyor ve Trkycmhrytllbtpydrklcktr r10.net seo yarışması Vista is much faster for the apps I run. An electrical surge took out m,y GIGABYTE GA-8I955X so I replaced it with a GA-965P and have went to 8gb RAM 4.4.4.12 timings, web tasarım an HIS IceQ 3850 with 512mb video card and use RAID 0 with my 3 Raptors. I am overclocked to 3.8 and it flys! There is no comparison to running XP. How can MS keep making new OSes with backwards compatibility.
Maybe your last point...
Submitted by StormEffect on Wed, 2008-09-17 22:48
Why do people always connect Bill Gates so closely with Microsoft all the way till Vista? He barely even works at Microsoft anymore, he just works on marketing at tradeshows. Stop bashing the man who followed his dream and SUCCEEDED at putting a PC in every home. Without him you wouldn't be on this site waxing on about Linux and how much Vista sucks, we'd be at least 10 years behind. So forgive me if I think the first half of your wall is completely pointless.
Open-Source blahblahblah. I love my FireFox, and my Chrome, and my GIMP, and Ubuntu, and all that great stuff, but it will still be a few more years until Linux OSes really move full force into the consumer market. We are moving toward that now, but we certainly aren't there.
Your best chance is with Steam. Get Steam on Linux, and I'll honestly consider moving there full-time. Truth is, the VAST majority of games are written in DirectX these days, OpenGL is an absolute disaster. We are talking the absolute WORST example of Open-Source. DirectX 9 practically destroyed OpenGL, when DX11 comes out, that'll be the finishing blow. After that, maybe we will move away from GFX APIs altogether. MAYBE then Linux will handle gaming. MAYBE.
My games, native on Linux, not using craptastic OpenGL, if the next version ever gets released.
Submitted by BrookV on Sat, 2008-09-13 10:33
I very vividly remember when Windows 95 came out, how people started on how it was bloated, slow, a memory hog etc. They protested by sticking to Windows 3.11 and Dos. Through every version of Windows, people always loudly protested each new release. With Vista, it's the same tired, empty and nasty comments all over again. Do you think Windows 7 will be immune?? No way!
XP is great, but Vista is the future. There are no new additions planned to update XP except for service packs to keep the OS going. If people want to stick with the old, let them. They will have to upgrade sooner or later. Do you really think there are still Windows 98 users that refuse to go to XP? or even Windows 2000 users that refust to upgrade becasuse XP is "bloated"? No! The future will keep going forward with or without them. They can either jump on and be a part of it or get lost in the dust! ..as a matter of fact, I'd like to grind these Vista detractors to dust! ;)
I've been running vista without any issues for over 5 months and loving it. I ran it with 1 gig of memory on an AMD chip for 3 of those months with absolutely no issues. It's not slow. It's not bloated. This is just the haters talking and spreading empty lies.
It's so popular to hate Microsoft, yet most all of those same haters use Microsoft products every day! Oh the irony!
Whether the Mojavi experiment was staged or not, it still shows how the ignorance spreads. I love that Microsoft gave those Vista haters a big tall glass of "shut up" juice!
..I also use OpenSuse and Fedora on another pc and absolutely love them as well. Linux is the future as well and I am embracing it fully. But I know I will always have a Microsoft OS on my pc now and in the future!
Submitted by suc on Sat, 2008-09-13 01:21
this news is pure FUD because it's not an interview by Microsoft
Submitted by brokenmoth08 on Fri, 2008-09-12 22:31
I have home premium 32-bit on my newish laptop, and it is so buggy I am dualbooting ubuntu.
Vista is great on New PC's with decent hardware
Submitted by forumdude123 on Fri, 2008-09-12 18:51
I use vista and I love it!! I first installed it on my older (2005) hp pc with a gig of ram and a pentium d dual core cpu, and it wasn't a good experience, so i downgraded to xp. But then, i got a new notebook with two gigs of ram, and a core 2 duo cpu, and vista ran so smoothly. And when i built another pc, i used a vista home premium instead of xp. It runs like a cheetah. Vista is good if you give it the right hardware. If you have older hardware, that's when vista becomes a problem. Especially older RAID cards, printers, scanners, etc. Driver support for vista has gotten better, especially since it has been out for a year and a half. There is so much s#!++y talk about vista out there, but these people are just saying what they hear everyone else say. Vista is great, no doubt about it.
If UAC is a problem, disable it. If xp is safe without UAC, then why wouldn't vista be? If you have an older pc, don't buy vista since there is no compelling reason to, but if you buy a new pc, get vista, and you'll be happy.
Vista feels more modern, xp feels like windows 2000 with blue title bars and fancier buttons. Soon, all new software will be vista compatible, so if you have xp, you may end up being able to use older software and having trouble with newer software and games. If a program has compatibility issues, 70% of the time , you could use compatibilty mode and it'll work.
So people, don't b1tch about vista unless you've used it and actually hated it. I love vista. Nothing can change that (except when it crashes or gives a random BSoD)
Submitted by mangotango on Fri, 2008-09-12 13:13
For me, it was all about the user interface. It was like going to my favourite grocery store only to find everything was moved about. I just could not be bothered with the new learning experience. For example:
First thing I tried was edit/select all, only to find no 'edit' or anything else
I renamed a file only to find the folder list automatically sorted alphabetically so i 'lost' my file in the sorted list
I tried to copy 500mb of files onto my 256mb usb stick - on XP it will copy until full, on vista it worked out they would not fit on the stick and so refused to copy any files
The list goes on
I don't care what's under the covers, how much memory it user or whatever, I want to user interface (which i know backwards so that driving it is almost automatic) to stay the same
Submitted by hackworth on Fri, 2008-09-12 09:40
For my main system, I installed Vista Ultimate 64-bit. As with XP, I waited until SP1 was released before taking the Vista plunge. Perhaps that was why I had no problems whatsoever. It was the easiest Windows installation I've ever experienced, and my system is fairly old (Athlon X2 4400+ Socket 939).
The only drivers I had to download was for a generic b/w laser printer/copier combo from Canon, and of course the latest-and-greatest driver from Nvidia for my 9600GT card.
I love the GUI, and the system is quite zippy AFAIAC. The UAC really didn't bother me much, although the onus should not be on the average Windows user to decide whether or not some vague message represents an actual danger or not; MS really needs to come up with a better system, such as allowing only "registered and approved" applications to be installed.
Since upgrading my main system, I went on to install several other versions of Vista on various machines in the family. So, I don't know what else to say. Speaking only as a personal user and not an IT guy, I have to say that I and my family are really enjoying Vista. :-\
Submitted by siksthrillz on Fri, 2008-09-12 05:44
I have found linux to be a lot less stable than Windows. I found OS X to be awkward to use. I run linux and Vista on all of my pc's and I dread any time I have to go near a mac with their stupid one button touch pads. IMO Vista has the best interface. I don't have any trouble finding anything, and unlike on gnome, hovering over an icon won't launch the app 500 times. I can eject a cd on Vista w/o getting an angry message. I don't hate Linux, I just prefer Vista. I haven't had to hunt down drivers for hours on Vista. Multimedia buttons actually work on Vista. The cube is kind of neat but quickly becomes a pain. I had to go find another browser to download when I installed Linux because firefox sucks so much. I do like the Linux command line better, but I don't have much use for the command line on windows. Linux's silly acronyms get annoying and kind of show that a lot of people who worked on it just see it as a toy and the entire project isn't composed of serious developers. The argument over which Linux distribution is best will never end. I never understood this whole mac vs. pc business anyway since a mac is a pc w/ OS X installed instead of Vista or Linux or whatever. Stop with all the Microsoft hating. Vista is a good OS. Linux is good too. If you like OS X, then more power to you, it just wasn't working for me. Use whatever you like but there's no reason for pc related site our there to be ripping Microsoft and hailing the iphone as messiah 2.0.
Submitted by demmith on Fri, 2008-09-12 05:33
"We sat down with Microsoft to hear the company’s side of the Vista story."
I was expecting to read a transcript of the actual conversation. Instead, I get two pages of review before I read anything about what Microsoft had to say. When I began reading this article I was having trouble discerning whose voice it was written in. Was it Microsoft speaking about themselves as if they were someone else or was it the author's voice? I think it should have been stated up front how this article was to be presented.
Submitted by AzMonguse on Thu, 2008-09-11 17:28
I still see people bitching about VISTA I have used VISTA starting with RC2 and the only problems I ever had even with the early version was drivers for my sound card and no support for an older scanner. Drivers for my sound card came out soon after the retail version was out - I have Vista installed on 4 computers 2 Dell laptops, 1 Gateway desktop and my own home built rig. I use the ult. 64 bit version on mine all others use the 32 bit Home Preium version, I have only ever had one blue-screen and that was just a few days ago on my laptop. Other than that I have had no major problems and only a few minor ones.Overall I find VISTA to be better than XP - but it could use a few tweaks in speed area - internet and file Xfer. Just my 2cents worth.
Submitted by zoroaster on Thu, 2008-09-11 22:24
not everyone is using dell or gateway. The big boys make their own machines that can trash dell, gateway, and hp in ACPI sleep mode
Submitted by XP pwns Vista on Thu, 2008-09-11 16:37
Why are they pushing Vista on us?! First they remove XP from the stores, and then, at the end of July, they made it next to impossible to buy an XP over the internet. I had to pay about $200 extra dollars to get a new XP laptop over the internet. Where I live, there are a few small computer dealers nearby. One sells only used XP computers, and when I asked how buiness was going, they said that buiness was now booming. Then there were two other stores nearby, and on their billboards, were the words, "WE SELL VISTA TO XP DOWNGRADES!" And they too were flooded with buiness. Someone would buy a new Vista system, and then go over there, and have XP installed. Either Microsoft wants to run their company into the grave, or else, make people not want to buy their products.
I mainly got my new Vista for writing reports, and gaming. I had this new release game with high end graphics, and got a supposedly super powered Vista that would play them. So I installed it, and a list came up of items not installed. I needed a new graphics card, memory card, etc. It would have cost me an extra $450 dollars to get those items.
Finaly, most of the games I played on my XP don't run on Vista. My older XP is too slow to play the games now. I end up selling most of these games at yard sales because they won't work.
There are a few good parts to Vista, like security. I once got locked out of my own system because it didn't "recognise' me.
And the gadget bar is awsome!
For those who like Vista, good for you, but I'm going to try to hold out for another year or so.
Submitted by zoroaster on Thu, 2008-09-11 15:58
My biggest problem with vista is the third party support from manufacturers who make drivers for their hardware. So far I've come across so many blue screens from Nvidia it makes me sick. It's either their video cards or their chipsets tanking my vista system. It took them a long time to come up with 64bit drivers after x64vista came out. This whole year I thought my board was crapping out, but upon returning to my old 2007 drivers everything was stable.And let's not just fault nvidia who's notorious, but also Asus and Abit and all the rest of those motherf$%&*ing taiwanese companies that are selling their $hit on our shores at sky high prices without doing QA on their products leaving the US consumer with dead unlisted phone numbers to call.
That just really pisses me off.
However, at least M$ has a phone number you can call even if it is spelled 1800-fai-lure
Submitted by silutrion on Thu, 2008-09-11 06:47
I for one welcomed vista. To me it is helping bring about a rift between computer users that is long overdue. It is time for people to realise thata great percentage of these issues are USER CREATED ERRORS. i have used vista since late beta and i will agree that ther are a few flaws that should be addressed, but vista is no lame horse. UAC is a major issue but it can be disabled. Missing data? probably brought on by UAC and vistas virtual store feature. (moves some program files data to a hidden folder in user data) Blue screens can be read and fixed. the point here is, if youre not willing to LEARN how to use your computer, you shouldnt use a computer. To call windows vista a failure is to call yourself a failure. Need i remind everyone of how windows XP was hated when it first came out, and how people hung on to 98 way too long? (And in my opinion impeded the growth of the industry as a whole.) if you arent comfortable with these issues then please, move on to mac. Dont even begin to tell me that this statement is too harsh. Would you read my reply any differently if this article was about some linux distro and i told people to step down to windows? The short answer is no. TL:DR Step up and learn, or step down and float.
Submitted by knowbase on Thu, 2008-09-11 12:46
The majority are not USER CREATED
ERRORS... poor memory management, poor pricing/version model, poor
implementations of good ideas... all fall on the shoulders of
Microsoft. It's a fact that when an OS comes out of the gate it
will always have a wide range of issues Vista simply had more.
Foolishly blaming these issues on Users simply because you are a MS
fan boy is just pathetic. I mean come on... why should someone
have to learn OS internals just to fix Vista enough for it to be
usable. Buying a computer or more to the point an OS is no
different than buying any other product, it works when you buy
it or you return it. If you want to learn how an OS works get Slackware for free, if
you want a OS that works out of the box you get Ubuntu or buy a Mac,
If you need a MS OS stick with XP, and if your a fan boy who wants
pay for the right to fix a poor OS you get Vista.
Submitted by Paulette on Thu, 2008-09-11 03:48
I never felt myself so lost when using an OS in all my proffesional life. The whole control of everything is in the hands of other people. Backdoors and calling home are now an essential part in the OS. No need of viruses!
I really havent had many of
Submitted by Strongbad536 on Wed, 2008-09-10 18:59
I really havent had many of the problems that people would complain about with vista, even with a P4 and 2gigs of DDR2 667. Now I got a quad core and 4 gigs of 1066 and I really don't even notice a difference, except I can play Crysis now. And yeah, I never really had any problems and SP1 only made it better. I am having trouble finding a good, free antivirus for 64 bit Vista, anybody got any suggestions?
Submitted by strykyr on Wed, 2008-09-10 18:29
except people who don't know how to use it or buy it. And yes I'm using 64 bit. Works fine. SP1 just made it better.
Submitted by bdub2 on Thu, 2008-09-11 10:41
The new audio mixer only removes control users used to have. Really, there was never anything preventing apps from having their own per-ap level control, programmers could always put a slider control to scale audio within a program if they wanted to include it. But previously, we could control different input ports and sources and control monitoring functions and disable interference from Windows sounds. And a program used to be able to record and restore mixer settings so that the system hardware could be restored to EXACTLY the same state as when it was recorded - very important for audio mixing or test and measure work. But no more. Now there is just a lame slider for each app that mixes in with other sliders that can't be controlled from the one app, and that's it. Even finding a balance control takes a series of mouse clicks in this turkey.
Worse, the designers of the new Vista audio scheme clearly didn't understand the reasons for having recording level controls. You have recording level controls to maximize the dynamic range of the recording converters in the sound hardware- the goal is to record at the highest level that doesn't overdrive ("clip") the converter, because that is what gives you the highest signal to noise ratio and the lowest distortion. There is NO other reason to adjust record levels going into (or appearing to go into) a single soundcard, this data can always be scaled again later, if desired, from a highest quality recorded track. So why on earth does Vista provide a "software" record level slider (assuming you can find the controls page for recording at all!) that can be adjusted to clip the digital data stream before the converter is out of dynamic space room; or to clip the converter without reaching the fullscale value the stream is capable of? In fact, Vista makes it impossible in some cases for the user to even KNOW whether the input is clipping or not, until after he tries to play back the mess that is recorded. (Back when the audio recording setup was still designed by someone who understood audio hardware, you could know whether the converter was clipped when it reached a full scale digital word value, and applications could put a clipping indicator to tell you when that happened. Now the app has no idea whether the record data it sees is near maximum or not, the useless software recording level control can scale it to be anything at all! So now we get to adjust levels by trial and error by reocording and playing back over and over. What fun.).
While I'm on an anti Vista tirade (and yes, I do have to work with it, and yes my hardware is capable, and yes, I have yet to find any good reason for Vista to exist other than to require better hardware): It seems to me that the issues from older software using "C:\Program Files" and "C:\Windows" could have been better handling by letting new apps (and the Vista system) use SOME OTHER NEW FOLDER/DIRECTORY NAME and let the legacy apps still have access to places that they could use before. Why make existing names be special and priveleged, when making up new names costs nothing (and wouldn't have crushed all the apps that used to work)?
Submitted by StarWolf on Wed, 2008-09-10 16:08
Vista is still crap...
No offense, but the only thing that it offers is a pretty Gui.
Depending on hardware it is slow, and far from stable. Many applications freeze up when they shouldn't. It goes on and on. I am using Vista 64. And Vista 32 is just as bad as 64.
Vista could have been great, but I believe they rushed it.
Hopefully Windows 7 (and yes I know it is built off of Vista) will be better than Vista is.
Vista
Submitted by Badger1 on Wed, 2008-09-10 14:32
I read everything I could find on Vista in '05 and built a new box to be ready when I could start with Vista.
I started with;
GIGABYTE GA-8I955X, 2gb PC-6400 RAM, Intel 840EE CPU, 3 WD Raptors in a RAID 5 and a Sapphire 800GT 256mb video card. From the first CCP vista through the final release it has absolutely flew. this box had XP Pro in the beginning and Vista is much faster for the apps I run. An electrical surge took out m,y GIGABYTE GA-8I955X so I replaced it with a GA-965P and have went to 8gb RAM 4.4.4.12 timings, an HIS IceQ 3850 with 512mb video card and use RAID 0 with my 3 Raptors. I am overclocked to 3.8 and it flys! There is no comparison to running XP. How can MS keep making new OSes with backwards compatibility. They cannot move forward if they keep supporting old hardware. If you use a strong system with Vista, you'll never look back. It is fantastic!
Submitted by joshland on Wed, 2008-09-10 20:34
How can MS keep making new OSes with backwards compatibility.They cannot move forward if they keep supporting old hardwareThis is a categorically stupid argument. Linux has more hardware
support in 2.6 than it's ever had before. There are precious few
drivers which have passed away. Windows supporting old drivers
is one thing. Supporting old hardware should be a matter of course.
The bottom line is that people who use Windows are opening
themselves up to whole new world of pain. They get drivers
from vendors who apparently will never update them to new OSes.
This is the legacy of closed source: Needlessly deprecating hardware.
Even Mac has a better hardware support record than Microsoft. This
whole Vista thing is buried in bad policy and stupid "sales-centric"
decisions. They made back door deals with vendors of all sorts, and
they lost. They changed driver spec just before final publication
which seriously confused hardware/driver developers. Couple that
with an unfortunate year for Nvidia, and you have the driving force
of this debacle.
BTW: Raid0 is the dumbest effing idea ever, for anyone but a fanboy.
SRSLY, good luck when the first drive fails.
Submitted by cjohnsen on Thu, 2008-09-11 07:21
well, you're obviously a Linux fanboi and therefore will probably not listen to anything positive regarding anything but Linux, but let me educate you on one (cross platform) thing.
RAID-0 is not meant to provide any sort of data protection. It's useful under very certain circumstances but it does increase your chances of experiencing failure on a volume. That's why those who are serious about data protection but need RAID-0 use RAID 1+0.
Use of RAID does not make one a "fanboy". Every modern OS (Linux, Mac, Windows, BSD, etc.) supports RAID.
Before you implement something, you should read up on it and see what it actually does. Just because it's called "RAID" doesn't mean it's going to protect your data.
Submitted by fredblotnic on Thu, 2008-09-11 09:04
I am a linux fanboy and have been for atleast before windows xp. I do use windows at work. I do feel vista was rushed out the door and was a guarded secret from the hardware vendors till the last year before release. the reason for most of Vistas problems was they just have a good OS they have a decent base and went in the wrong direction for security, stability etc. It is frankly not great for older hardware. Microsoft has been chasing its tail for sometime and always releasing updates the first 6 months after selling it because they seem to use people as guinea pigs. The inside person at Microsoft who stated that the OEM's are to blame as well has forgotten that bundled software to drop the price was something that has kept them the dominate OS because it always appears to the laymen that a windows PC is cheaper than any other option when its really more expensive. so he better not bite the hand that feeds him. In summary Vista is just aweful and the only thing keeping it afloat is the hefty marketing they do, not to mention the fact that windows is for the most part crammed on a pc when you buy a new one so what other choice do people have. dell has atleast changed that. I just bought one of the new Ubuntu Laptops and I love it. it just runs even after 6 months without me having to wipe the OS and start over.
ps
the raid 0 commentary is just stupid. I used to use it on my gaming machines without problems because I wasn't looking for Data protection. Raid 0 has its problems but also has its benefits. Raid has nothing to do with OS but is a standard across not only OS's but types of Hard drives. Scsi SATA and PATA.
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