Ya'll can run right out and upgrade now!
Posted on 05/27/2008 4:54:06 AM PDT by Zakeet
It's been more than 16 months since Windows Vista was first sold to consumers. Since then, Vista has developed a reputation that's been, um, less than stellar.
Whether Vista is a success or a failure depends on who's making the assessment. Microsoft says it's sold more than 140 million copies — most of them preinstalled on new PCs — and that it's starting to gain a foothold in the traditionally conservative business market.
Many tech bloggers and pundits will tell you it's a disaster, with users suffering through nasty bugs and poorly thought-out features. Some even blame Vista for the steady rise of Apple's Macintosh market share.
Most users I talk to give mixed reports. Some have no problem with Vista, and many even — gasp! — like it. Others hate it and ask me whether they can fall back to Windows XP on the new PC they just bought.
The fact is that Windows Vista, installed properly on a machine with hardware powerful enough to support it, works quite well. Many of the problems people have with it come from either a) buggy hardware drivers that haven't been updated, or b) the junkware that most mainstream PC makers put on computers sold at retail or online, or c) attempts to make it work with outdated peripherals and software.
The recent release of Vista's first service pack — a roll-up of tweaks, security patches and bug fixes — smoothed out a lot of bugs. And it's been long enough that hardware developers have worked the kinks out of flawed drivers that were released early in Vista's life cycle.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Ya'll can run right out and upgrade now!
16 months for the first real service pack... 16 months for users to flail about looking for an answer (or many answers). 16 months for folks to truly get to hate Vista.
Microsoft is about to put itself slam outta business...
And we’re from the government, we’re here to help.
And the check is in the mail.
And I promise I won’t...
I’m really glad I stuck with XP.
If Vista is all peaches and cream why the rush by Microsoft to get their next Apple wannabe Windows 7 out the door? Could it have something to do with the huge number of businesses downgrading back to XP?
Windows 2000 is even way better, it runs like a charm and without the bloat or DRM infestation.
I’ve got an old XP machine of about ‘03 vintage, so I know I need to do something before too much longer.
All this commotion about Vista has made me contemplate doing something I would never have contemplated 18 months ago: Buying a Mac. Microsoft has made the extra cost worth it.
” c) attempts to make it work with outdated peripherals and software”
Okay, this may be the most backwards statement I’ve seen on a news site it awhile. Excuse me? Exactly whose platform was it that made these peripherals outdated?
Of course people are frustrated when their printers and scanners that worked perfectly well before don’t work at all for Vista. Especially when the thing gobbles a gig of RAM!
Blaming the customers is always a good business policy.
Same here, I’m also looking at Linux. I don’t like the direction Microsoft is going, why the need to phone home to the mother ship for every little thing? And they also have this strange habit lately of taking away useful features instead of adding to them or making them more efficient. People are being forced to downgrade to older versions simply to have software that’s more functional.
Pure BS, point in fact, a new machine with vista installed, 4 gigs of ram, 2 500 gig SATA drives, runs most, if not all, games and apps, 30-70 percent slower than Xp on an older machine.
We have tested this on over 15 different machines with different hardware, software combos. To say nothing of the constant dropping of USB devices.
Lipstick on a pig, comes to mind.
Yeah, assuming that "outdated" = "existing."
weve all got ibm clones in the house - except my son - just bought a new mac - its intuitive and easily configured right out of the box....
I'll never buy a clone again
I’m a natural born contrarian. I like Vista. I like the way it looks, I even like the color of the blue screen I got yesterday.
Gee, I can't imagine why businesses might be slow to upgrade to Vista, when business critical applications that the company's been using for years suddenly stop working.
This is very dangerous for Microsoft: If a company has to re-evaluate their business applications in order to use a new OS, there's nothing that would stop them from deciding to use an entirely new platform as well.
And don't even get me started on home users.
Mark
“And I promise I won’t...whoops!”
There, *finished* it for you.
PC’s and the internet have become indispensable, both to business and home. Bill Gates was visionary to see this coming and sell into it with “more and cheaper” as opposed to Steve Jobs’ “less and better.”
Now the tables have turned. These indispensable tools have to work and work all the time. Once television and the internet morph into one distribution system, reliability will be much more in demand than quantity.
Ballmer hasn’t figured this out yet.
Lol considering the price of Vista and hardware upgrades might as well run Windows 98 with IE, that was blue screen heaven.
“Ballmer hasn’t figured this out yet.”
IMO he’s figured that out long ago. What they haven’t figured out is how to manage large software projects or how to salvage the mess they’ve created.
I’m not buying all new software and I’m not buying all new hardware so I can run slower. I’d move over to linux first.
Right like we're supposed to run out and spend thousands of dollars on new software when what we have works perfectly well. That on top of the costs for new hardware and operating systems. I read that all the time and it really smacks of arrogance, they act as if people are loaded with cash to spend and it's burning holes in their pockets.
I’m currently running Vista on several computers and XP on about a hundred. The XP machines have at least 2 gigs of RAM and the Vista machines have 4 gigs of RAM. We reboot the computers at least weekly. With only a couple of exceptions, they all have single SATA or EIDE drives. We are running Office 2007 and Outlook from the Exchange server. Most use the building wireless network and many use a VPN to access the Exchange server.
We have had no significant problems of any kind. I can’t stop users from reflexively clicking “Yes” on crapware/malware/adware offers, but they are slowly learning. I haven’t tried running Doom on any of the Vista machines yet.
I have some Macs too. Users aren’t smart enough to dual boot so they don’t have the same variety of site licensed software to use. Since most users don’t do more than Internet, word processing and email, it really doesn’t matter.
Every current operating system is extreme overkill for most current users. Word, Excel, Firefox and Outlook are all they run anyway.
Vista is a disaster.
Apple now sells 66% of PCs costing more than $1000, up from 16% when Vista was released!
LOL... but seriously, the BSOD is back???
I’ve been pricing new PCs and I find that if yu want XP on a new box, it generally costs more and choices are limited. Microsoft “sold” 140 million copies by insisting that it’s about the only choice you get if you want a PC.
As for upgrading an existing PC, why, all I need to do is pay for Vista and buy four times more memory and upgrade all the software and drivers. How simple! I have loads of spare time and money to buy new software and find “appropriate drivers”, DL and install them.
“What’s a ‘service pack’? :~)”
yeah Apple never has any problems and never issues any updates. /vomit
I bought a new DEll with Vista and SP 1, it’s awesome.
The only real problem I had with my VAIO was with WinDVD, the software you use to watch blu-ray movies on the machine's blu-ray drive. This software is a complete horror show. Before I successfully could watch a movie, I had to (1) figure out how to change the "region" of the player software, (2) download a 90 MB firmware upgrade, (3) figure out how to use the controls of the player, which do not respond to mouse operations, (4) figure out that the reason the movie couldn't play was I had the output on my TV at the same time as on the computer's screen, which is forbidden, and (5) I had to figure out how to change the contrast and brightness on the computer's graphics card because the movie was dark and drab in color. It astonishes me that Sony, or any other company, would ship products this frustrating and poorly designed.
I hear you. Every time I log onto a Winblows rig I get nauseous........
“Every time I log onto a Winblows rig I get nauseous.”
Nice try
Must be nice — but mine won’t allow me to install SP1.
I just replaced my own 2003-vintage machine with brand new hardware running Vista 64-bit Home Premium. Yes, you will need to replace your current box to use Vista. At idle just after boot, with normal stuff running (anti-virus, a few other small utilities in the tray, no browser or anything else open) the operating system eats 1.2 GB of memory. That’s just ridiculous.
If you do get a Vista machine, get 4 GB of memory, MINIMUM. Vista itself will run happily in 2 GB, but won’t leave you a whole lot of room for demanding applications. And if your printer is more than four or five years old, assume you will have to replace it. Vista shipped with drivers for my printer (HP Deskjet 722C)...but they don’t work. The bugs are documented, and Microsoft has no plans to ever fix them. So now on top of $2600 in hardware to build two computers, I have to spend extra to replace my perfectly-servicable printer.
That having been said? I’ve had no trouble with Vista. My new machine is so much faster than my old one, I can’t tell if Vista is slowing it down or not. It’s bloatware for sure, but so far, it’s worked quite well, does everything I’ve asked, not crashed on me yet.
}:-)4
The problem with Vista is simply this, it was incomplete... MS wanted to move the entire OS to the .NET world, virtual etc... but they ran into all sorts of problems, and realized they could not do what they wanted and hit the marketing deadlines.. so you wind up with a half implemented kludge.
Also, because its all MSIL stuff, you better have memory up the wazoo...
All of this and it offered little visible benefit to the typical end user.
I suspect 7 will be what Vista was originally speced to be. Why anyone would willingly take Vista knowing these facts is beyond me.
That explains why my USB printer keeps "disappearing" on me. Have to stop what I'm doing, Save everything, and do a complete reboot to get the printer back. My USB drive is quirky, too.
Well I think you're right, there's no real benefit to Vista and on the opposite end it requires a substantial investment in new hardware and software to run it. The result is a smaller than expected move to the platform. For businesses it's a wait and see attitude untill the next version.
But I keep asking, why the need for forced upgrades if Windows 2000 or XP do the job well and most are happy with it? To me it makes no sense and one would think if Microsoft wanted to keep its customers happy and still make money they would consider the idea of reselling the licenses for the older OSs for a specified period of time to ensure that security updates continue.
It's because I suspect they want to force users to newer technologies where there's more DRM control with encryption chips like TPM built into the motherboard. In other words they don't consider the computer yours anymore but a device where you have to ask permission to do anything.
Well I don’t agree with that reasoning, I think its more the simple fact that MS wants everyone on the .NET based platform and away from all that legacy code that has hindered them for ages.
Like I said, I think 7 will be what Vista was spec’ed to be, but marketing and sales wasn’t going to give them another 2-3 years on top of all the time they had already taken to come out with the next OS upgrade, so you would up with Vista.
That’s true also, I don’t disagree with that. But I also think they want to force these newer technologies onto people, maybe not so much Microsoft as it is the entertainment industry that’s pressuring them.
My son has vista on his laptop. I can start my (older) XP laptop, shut it down and start it again in the time it takes him to start up his laptop.
Other than enhanced security are there any improvements in vista?
I have yet to see an incarnation of Vista.
Of course, I have yet to see Flying Monkeys.
Or the wolfman.
Or them worm things that crawled into Chekov’s ear in “The Wrath of Khan”.
do you sell used cars too?
Dual booting is still superior imo to virtual machines because it allows easy access to the other operating system if repairs are ever needed. Several times in XP the registry got corrupted (system in config) and by simply booting into the alternate I could easily replace it. No bothering with consoles and repairing with the XP disk or any of that sort of nonsense. For ease of use however virtual machine does come in handy.
Yes, there are those advantages of dual-booting, but with daily back up of a VM, you can just reload the whole file in a few minutes remotely without a second thought. Get a PC virus on a VM? Wipe and reload and continue on. I don’t even USE any of that invasive bloatware so-called protection on my XP VM. Runs even faster without it. Of course I rarely do any net stuff with my VM anyway. Email and surfing is much safer on the Mac proper.
For a mac an XP virtual machine would almost be a given for me since I’ve got older programs that probably wouldn’t run on the mac platform. I don’t know for sure since I haven’t used one in years but did like them back then.
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