According to at least one blogger, Microsoft should abandon Vista before it’s too late. It would appear he’s not alone in this opinion, as Microsoft has begun allowing users to downgrade back to XP. Amongst the reasons? Poor sales figures and shoddy Vista “Extras”.
It’s so ridiculous what people write in there blogs, please don’t post every blog nonsense here. KTHXBYE.
I completely agree. Vista is a better code base.
The current problems microsoft are having is that they left the release of vista too late and so user base got very entrenched in what they were using(XP) which makes it difficult to motivate them to change.
But the user base will eventually come around, give them a year or so and most of them will.
No they won’t, not if nothing else is done to improve Vista. It may be a better code base, but people see the end result. Which is: a hog on resources; a lot of eye candy with no real use; very annoying security model which you either use and hate or disable and benefit nothing from; a lot of incompatibility issues and bugs.
It’s only natural for people to think that the added cost of upgrading Windows and hardware is not worth it. Where’s the real value, when you come right down to it? All I see is a lot of spending and not enough in return.
hmm… no more window tearing, no more frozen apps that bring the system down… seeing the wiondows minimize to the task bar, etc is just useless eye candy… right…
and if the GPU was not responsible for running the window compositing, I would agree, but since the GPU is responsible for the window slider thingy, the live preview, the feedback on minimization, etc, they actually ENHANCE usability.
Nitpick: frozen apps haven’t (at least in most cases) brought the system down since NT, or at least 2k. BSODs in Windows 2000 and XP are a *rare* occurance.
I disagree, quite a number of people that I know have upgraded, or recieved Vista with a new computer and have explicitly wanted to downgrade again, not because they are used to XP, but just because Vista still has too many issues to be useable.
I disagree, quite a number of people that I know have upgraded, or recieved Vista with a new computer and have explicitly wanted to downgrade again, not because they are used to XP, but just because Vista still has too many issues to be useable.
Oh, please. Talk about propaganda and hyperbole. I have to deal with hundreds of customers who are running Vista, and I’ve only run across one person who went back to XP after trying Vista — and it wasn’t because of Vista problems but, rather, because a legacy app wouldn’t work perfectly under Vista. Only Microsoft hateboys (who secretly run Windows games) are sowing this kind of disinformation, in my experience.
“Only Microsoft hateboys (who secretly run Windows games) are sowing this kind of disinformation, in my experience.”
Only Microsoft shills (who secretly run Windows XP) are sowing this kind of disinformation, in my experience
Seriously now, I know no one who currently has Vista installed in his computer, and out of those who I know that have tried it (both friends and co-workers) not a single person liked it (let alone keeping it installed).
It’s just a sample that doesn’t represent an universal fact, but stating that it doesn’t happen just means being in denial.
in my opinion, they should.
Edited 2007-09-27 15:35
They should but they won’t. For pride. They don’t want to look more ridiculous than they already are.
At first sight I thought this news was ridiculous, but I find myself in the same case, I installed Vista and reverted to XP.
Microsoft should have gone the annual subscription way. No need for everending bloat to justify new paid upgrades. Just keep up-to date a better and better product with very little changes, make it more and more secure with no bloat, don’t ask people to upgrade, but charge a yearly fee. Heck, you pay $400 for a Windows XP licence that you keep 6 years, if you charge on a monthly basis a subscription fee, that would be $5.5 a month, it’s something anybody can afford, and Microsoft would make as much money.
If I were to decide for Microsoft, I would offer both Vista and XP, and I would charge monthly or yearly. I would be able to charge even a little bit more, no one would notice, and I would dedicate less staff for development, basically only what’s needed to keep XP up-to-date and more secure. It’s all that’s needed.
People will not pay for a subscription-based operating system because they like “owning” the files on their computer, and if they get locked out from not paying or canceling a subscription, then they lose their files.
People will not pay for a subscription-based operating system because they like “owning” the files on their computer[…]
Why not? Seems to be working pretty good for SkyOS…
[ducks]
–bornagainpenguin
Hi Kelly
I think this is not an issue. You already pay subscriptions for:
– Webhosting: If you stop paying, you lose your site (unless you have backups)
– Telephone: If you stop paying, you lose your number
– etc…
Actually, if you think about it, you can have a copy of your files on an USB key, and there’s no worry of losing your stuff…
Oh, well, I don’t know what happens in the regular Joe user’s mind faced with such a situation.
and Microsoft would make as much money.
That’s the fly in the ointment right there. For Microsoft it’s not about making as much money; it’s about making more money.
–bornagainpenguin
That’s the fly in the ointment right there. For Microsoft it’s not about making as much money; it’s about making more money.
You didn’t read the rest of my sentence:
I would charge monthly or yearly. I would be able to charge even a little bit more, no one would notice
You can definitely make more money with subscriptions (check out the quarterly results of Redhat).
You didn’t read the rest of my sentence:
I would charge monthly or yearly. I would be able to charge even a little bit more, no one would notice
Because the next sentence is irrelevant.
If Microsoft ever goes to a subscription model (and the rest of us follow along like the fools we’d be,) Microsoft would be charging huge monthly or yearly fees.
Businesses have forgotten how to skin a mark, and in place they practice bleeding the customer dry, and fail to understand why he eventually runs out of money to pay them…
–bornagainpenguin
Just two things wrong with your idea.
1. It will speed up the final mass move to Linux OpenSolaris and Mac.
The people at Ubuntu, Mandriva, SuSE, Red Hat, Apple, Sun Microsystems, IBM, etc. CAN HARDLY WAIT for Micro$oft to start charging rent for Windows and Office.
2. Rent would leave Micro$oft open to government regulation as a “natural” monopoly like electric and water companies and that is the LAST thing they want.
Actually I think the only way for Micro$oft to continue as a viable business would be to give up the OS monopoly and OPEN SOURCE WINDOWS XP (and dump Vista entirely) while keeping the Office and other money producing monopolies it owns.
No, they shouldn’t. Get a grip. They should fix the problems.
What alternatives would there be? Surely you don’t mean Linux? Linux is inferior to Windows XP or Windows Vista. It ain’t ready. Windows has the largest user and experience base, more applications and broader support.
There’s an excessive amount of rough edges, ridiculous got-chas and “ooops, missed that bug, better compile the latest source from CVS.. see if that works” attitudes.
I think mini-microsoft blog was the begining of problems for Vista. People working for Microsoft spoked about Vista during beta development stage that nothing good will come out of it and that Vista is more or less a crap OS.
We saw that it was more or less the truth when RTM appeared and now early SP1 reports say it is more of the same RTM.
I have had similar expirience with Vista as did all those folks saying out luod that Vista sucks.
Too bad, 5 years in development should have brought something trully revolutionary to desktop and yet we are faced with situation where Microsoft started downgrade(or upgrade, depends how You look at it) to Windows XP. Does this means Vista can’t be fixed?
Luckily some other OS’es are advancing without show stops, and I might just look for an alternative soon.
Something is wrong with an OS if you have to write from scratch. That is the case of Vista.
I already wrote a response to this on my blog yesterday:
http://nex6.blogspot.com/2007/09/msft-will-have-to-abandon-windows-…
in short this artical is FUD, sure Vista is not perfect no OS is. and XP when it first came out also
went thru some bumy times before it got really stable. which it achived with SP2, was was years after it was released.
and *I* think *overall* Vista is much better then XP. and there remains alot of drivers issues to sort out, becuase vista has a much different driver model then XP/2k/NT and it will take time for hardware venders to catch up.
-Nex6
Why is it FUD?
At least XP doesn’t make you answer a prompt just so you can go take a crap every time there’s a bowel movement.
Pure and utter BOGUS. Vista doesn’t ask for elevation permission any more or less often than Ubuntu. And I can know, since I run both DAILY.
Maybe, you do use both every day, but you cannot compare them like that.
If you are working as root, Ubuntu will not keep asking for the root password.
Vista still activates UAC prompts when you are logged in as administrator. This is both stupid and aggravating, and a major cause of people turning UAC off, thus removing any security benefits Vista had over XP.
Edited 2007-09-27 19:29
How is turning it off any less secure than running Ubuntu as root? I think you’re the one who needs to check what he’s comparing.
Edited 2007-09-27 19:48
If you turn off UAC, it is global.
I never said to run Ubuntu as root, I said working as root. The difference is plain.
I can open a terminal, su to root, then ctrl-d out of root when I am done.
Then edit the User Policies, and it won’t ask Administrators for UAC elevation.
Problem solved.
Yes, problem is solved….
However, the problem… no, it is not a problem..
The “oversight” was there in the first place.
Had Microsoft fixed all the reported bugs me and others sent them during the beta-testing, this would have been picked up in the quality assessment stages. It was not removed, and made it into the final Joe Public version.
It’s definitely not an oversight, it’s an additional safety net for people who continue to run as Administrator even with a permission elevation subsystem in place.
This is obvious from the fact that UAC clearly distinguishes between the two, presenting a simpler dialog for Administrators.
It’s a needed remedy until people get out of the “Run as Admin” mentality.
As Nelson said, this can be controlled via policy.
The reason you are still prompted is because applications (including Windows Explorer) are still running with standard user privileges, and system-wide changes require greater privileges. This prevents applications from making such changes without the user’s consent.
Another way to avoid the prompts without changing the policy is to execute the app via an elevated process such as a command prompt that was run as administrator. Most applications will inherit the privileges of the process that invokes them.
OS X also keeps asking for your password, even when logged in as an administrator. Ubuntu and OSX make you type your password. This is for security reasons, so if you leave your workstation unlocked someone can’t modify any admin settings.
Vista just shows up a box you click OK to. It’s not even secure – just annoying.
…
Edited 2007-09-27 15:56
But Microsoft didn’t allow OEMs to downgrade to ME or 98SE.
somebody has been reading “user friendly”?
One of the problems though is MS took six years to create what Vista is today. Vista should be an incremental upgrade to what XP was and in many ways it is. When XP was released it finally brought together the stable foundation that was in NT/2000 with the multimedia and ease of use abilities of the 9x series (lets not even mentioned ME) so it seemed more excusable at the time for it to have some issues.
Vista changes a number of things that didn’t need to get changed. Why is it so much more of a hassle to get your network devices or to view wireless networks? Why does the display preferences part of the control panel works so different depending on whether you have aero enabled or not? It’s confusing for no reason.
Vista also suffers because it offers nothing you can’t already get in XP or Media Center addition with free downloads on the web. It simply catches up and adds a bit of shine and calls it a day. Hardly worth six years of wait for.
“in short this artical is FUD, sure Vista is not perfect no OS is. and XP when it first came out also
went thru some bumy times before it got really stable. which it achived with SP2, was was years after it was released.”
True. But I have to wonder, why should Microsoft be allowed to release practically every new ‘major’ version of their operating systems with such insecurities and bugs and that general feeling of “this was rushed to market?” Why do people always bring up the past OSes as some excuse that Microsoft can’t get it right for whatever reason on the first release, and give them the benefit of the doubt saying that it’ll be better later? Sure, it seems to be true for the most part–but is Microsoft really so pathetic, with all their power in the market and money, that they truly can’t release a good product in the first place?
I’ve personally got sick of the cycle myself, and am in awe with the quality and innovation of the many other operating systems out there. I think a typical case of IE Blues is going on in the entire Windows world… maybe a swift kick in the nuts from its competitors in terms of market share will do the trick. Hopefully as more OEMs start selling Linux-based PCs, they really start eating up Microsoft’s share of the market… that’s the only real way I can see to find out any time soon. Unless Macs start coming out of nowhere and tearing Microsoft up.
FUD for sure. The same FUD spread when XP came out. XP was not revolutionary. XP was not even stable at fist, considering driver issues and all. XP was not even accepted by the ‘Nerds’ and ‘Geeks’ until after SP1. XP offered very little over 98/2000. The differences where mostly cosmetic (from a user viewpoint, not a technical viewpoint) and it was hard to find familiar settings. XP was SLOW on average hardware (when it was released)
XP is now the STANDARD in gaming. People want XP becuase it is SO reliable and FAST.
WHY DO PEOPLE FORGET SO EASILY? YOU’LL MOAN ABOUT EVERY WINDOWS RELEASE AS LONG AS YOU LIVE…
Because 5 years is too much for an os release cycle ? But XP happy ending doesn’t mean that Vista one will be.
And i agree that fresh installs of XP are good, but the overall problem is that the os setup quality decrease with time, from slowly for a good level user to incredibly fast for a poor level user. And poor user does not know what ‘format’ and ‘reinstall’ mean.
To compare with mac os x, or even linux (i agree that a poor skilled user won’t be able to do as much things he could in XP or Mac os x), a poor skilled user may not alter the system as fast as he will do under XP.
Writing in ALL CAPS is rude, and in my book is equivalent to offensive language. Modded down.
That’s simply not true, I installed XP as soon as I could get my hands on a (legal) volume licence copy. And after I had disabled all the ‘Windows Media DRM’ crapware services, it performed markedly better than previous versions of windows, without loosing usability.
Vista however, performs, at best, the same as XP, while being far less Usable than XP. This is not progress in any way.
“XP is now the STANDARD in gaming.”
Soo standard that Microsoft are supporting it with DX10?
So standard that Microsoft has to not support it with DX10 to push Vista (besides technical problems).
All I can say is that during this past year, Vista has really improved across the board on my laptop. File copy operations do no longer stall the system, it boots faster, it shuts down faster, those sorts of things. I’m sure SP1 will address even more of these general concerns. SP2 will follow later, which will not only bring fixes, but also some new features. By that time, Microsoft will be releasing tidbits of info on Vienna, and the blog people will be all over Microsoft, saying “Vista is good enough”, “the new features in Vienna aren’t worth it”, and “Vienna is just Vista with a new coat”.
In other words, just like XP. People are so predictable.
Edited 2007-09-27 15:49 UTC
The sorry state of a person that cannot see reality. Is true people will whine over the next MS release, because at lest we hope Vista will get better (hardly tough in my opinion) ans say why a new so revolutionary system. I am/was running Vista (I’m doing backups and moving everything to Linux) but we have to face reality Vista File copy operation is still slow most of the problems it has cannot be listed here cause are too much, yeah they fixed boot and shutdown speed but what a deal if my PC is turned on 90% of the day. I used Windows XP since it was RTM and I remember it wasn’t perfect but it was solid, not rock solid tough (SP2 has made it ROCK SOLID). Vista cannot be called solid still as of today, just a bit improved since RTM. We should wake up and see the truth, we will not go anywhere if we just keep saying yeah, maybe SP1 and SP2 will fix things. as the Spanish saying goes: If you pay the musician before he plays, the play will be bad. MS is just overconfident on how no matter what they do wrong we will pay for their product cause we’ve made them believe we need them.
Just my Opinion.
-Thanks for Reading
It really is a matter of personal experience. Personally, I was using Linux during the ME/XP years, because I always found windows to be an archaic piece of crap. After giving the OEM Home Premium version that came with my laptop a try, Vista is what got me back on to windows.
RTM XP had very similar things going on. Not quite to the same level, but similar. Games didn’t run well, people on different hardware configurations got vastly different experiences. I tried it out pre-launch (downloaded a leaked copy) and had no problems. A friend of mine bought it at launch, and found the perfomance and stability unacceptable, he didnt upgrade until sp1.
If it took XP until SP2 to become “rock solid”, and XP was an incremental upgrade over 2k, then why is Vista to be dismissed pre-sp1 for not being perfect for everyone?
If it took XP until SP2 to become “rock solid”, and XP was an incremental upgrade over 2k, then why is Vista to be dismissed pre-sp1 for not being perfect for everyone
Because 6 years since XP is a very long time, and a lot of the people who went out on day 1 and bought Vista were users who had only ever tried XP.
Us oldies knew better than to expect Vista to be all things to everyone.
I just want to ask a question:
Are some of these near and future improvements are not meant to be features of the Vista instead of errm… “fabulous improvements made across the board” on Vista because the infinite benevolence of MS?
Just my $0.02 btw…
Edit: Every programmer makes typos and forgets statements c’mon!
Edited 2007-09-27 19:21
never Assume that there’s gonna be another SP after this one,, lets see what Service pack 1 brings first
Edited 2007-09-28 07:39
Am i allowed to… ROFLMAO???
Development is done (mostly, anyway) so the time to abandon ship is long gone…
Vista may not be the perfect OS, or even the success Microsoft was hoping for, (and everyone hoping to increase whatever sales figures depend on it) but it *will* catch up, eventually…
MS does not need to abandon the product. they need to simplify the product choices and lower the price. 2 versions, HOME or PRO. That’s the way it should be.
Not simple enough. One version, one disc, both archs, all features you can install/uninstall by ticking the right box in ‘add/remove features’ (including IE). That’s how it should be done.
I’m really damned glad that Apple seem to understand this with Leopard – one version, PPC, x86, 32-bit & 64-bit all on one disc. The consumer (and developer) doesn’t have to arse around with what version they have, or having to buy a new disc just to use 64-bit. How can a developer be expected to migrate to 64-bit apps, when the consumer is going to have a hard enough time getting there as it is! It’s backward and arcane; nothing different at the Microsoft shop, clearly.
They’ve got two advantages working for them.
One, the media is DVD instead of CD (which until Tiger was the norm) so they’ve got at least 4.7Gb to hold it.
Two, the executable format (Mach) is multi-arch by design and has been since Steve Jobs was running NeXT, so technically the disc only needs one installer app.
Sounds like a good idea, Vista can share shelf space with Windows ME, and we all know how great of an OS that was
After having spend five years developing it? That’s just plain crazy!
I do think they need to rethink they’re design process and backwards compatibility fetish. No sane OS should have to bend over backwards to maintain this level of hit or miss compatibility.
The Mac model, although much gripped about in the beginning, turned out to be a better solution for backwards compatibility than what Vista is trying to do. Maybe MS could base they’re next operating system on Singularity and add an NT kernel running in a sand boxed, virtualized environment? Just an idea.
As for Vista Extras, I was notifies yesterday of DreamScene and language packs being available for immediate download. Now, can we please have some real extras? You know, something that actually adds value? I’m not talking about language packs as any sane operating system provides these without extra cost.
All in all, MS could do worse than learn from the Vista experience though I doubt Vista will remain a flop after SP2. The only question I have is, why do we have to wait for at least one major system update to get a decent OS for our buck?
We have to wait until the major updates for three reasons, the last two having to do with time:
1) Microsoft and the first wave of beta testers only have N configurations to test the software on… the broad user base has 10N or 100N configurations, of which some will simply have problems.
2) XP became rock solid over the years because of a convergence of what Microsoft was doing with patches and what OEMS, ISVs, and IHVs were doing with their systems, programs, and drivers. After XP became broadly adopted, these three groups would lose business against their competitors if their systems did not work reliably with XP. The onus was on them as well as Microsoft to provide a full system which works, so driver and system quality improved. This is not the case yet with Vista. The rest of the world hasn’t had enough time to get their stuff working on the new system. Apple writes their own drivers and pretty much all of the system-level tools for the Mac. Microsoft does not write so many drivers and a lot of people write extensions, AV, screenreaders, and lots of other programs that interact deeply with the OS.
3) Microsoft designs their new releases to perform adequately on extant hardware. On future hardware it is supposed to fly. This is true for Vista more than before. Vista is designed for large RAM machines (over 1 GB main system RAM). This is the obvious trend in the computer industry and we see already that cheap systems are coming with this much memory. When you get this much RAM you start to see big perf improvements over XP in app launch times and in system startup (unfortunately hibernate takes longer).
Al three are very good points, I just have one issue with your post. MS is the richest corporation on the planet. N configurations are not an excuse to turn your customers into paying beta testers when you can easily afford 10N systems.
Personally, I find that Vista has gotten much better over the past year with many HW and SW developers working hard on releasing updates and new products to fully utilize everything that Vista has to offer. It just seems crazy that I had to install two unsupported patches to get the underlying OS to actually start behaving itself in a consistent manner.
I, and many others, have had to deal with MS updates breaking Vista to such a point where a complete system restore has been the only option to get Vista up and running again. These are updates that break because of other, mainly driver, updates released by MS over they’re Windows Update service. If MS, with all the money they have, cannot even test the compatibility of they’re updates vis a vis each other, then what In the name of the creator are they doing with the money they get from the exorbitant prices people are paying for Vista?
It’s not the cost difficulty of purchasing 10N systems that prevents MS from doing that. The main issue is that it is hard to get enough people to make use of those machines. It’s the same reason why Mac Office took so long to get into release shape… there just aren’t enough people and it’s hard to find more qualified candidates.
I have to say I’m inclined to disagree with you on that one. If you stop to consider the amount of willing, educated workers in easter Europe and the Indian subcontinent, two areas MS has already a large established presence, you will find that that argument does not hold up.
It seems to me what is actually happening is that MS do not want to spend anymore then is absolutely necessary to get their product to market. Arguably, this is one of the main reasons MS is the richest corporation on the planet as it’s not the first time we see them pull a stunt like this.
This sort of behavior is fine when there is no where else for a consumer to go, but with the rise of Linux on the desktop, coupled with the new upsurge in interest for the Mac, MS could be digging they’re own grave. For me, the problem is simple. The more you treat your customers like guinea pigs (and the more you treat them like criminals, but that’s OT) the less likely they are to come back.
I was just gonna post almost the same comment. MS’s real problem now is that the other options are usable. I mean Mac and Linux in 2002 didn’t hold water. Linux was still far from user friendly and Mac was falling apart. But now both of them are in Fighting shape and MS doesn’t have time to waste working out the kinks as people Can and Will move to others OS. Also as Transgaming gets more work done the last advantage of Windows is being taken away from them.
Vista, after sometime will probably be better then XP this is true but will it be able to compete with OSX and Linux distros like Ubuntu and Fedora as time goes on?
There are lots of Europeans and Chinese people and Indians at Microsoft, I’m sure. But you’d be surprised at how hard it is to get even qualified workers into the US. Many of my friends just graduated from a very good US university and were able to land extremely lucrative jobs in Wall Street, but had to forgo those offers because of the government’s refusal to give them even an H1B visa. Take a look at the news of Microsoft’s new office in Vancouver. That’s about 2 hours from Seattle by car, so the only reason it exists is to deal with the visa problem.
And even though Eastern Europe and India are huge talent pools, the cream of those crops is still not huge. I’m the son of an Indian immigrant, but I’ll be the first to tell you that the majority of Indian IT people I’ve run into are not that impressive, just like with IT people from anywhere else. It takes a lot of effort to get the right people and reject the wrong ones… especially when from overseas because mistakes there are especially costly.
I’m puzzled by the moderation of this post. Why would two people wish to mod it down? It doesn’t seem to have anything particularly controversial in it. It looks like someone went through all my posts from the last few days and dinged each of them. It seems like moderation (at least negative) should need to be accompanied by some sort of comment.
Welcome to the club.
Vista is designed for large RAM machines (over 1 GB main system RAM).
This is true, but that’s a design decision that has been part of the modus operandi that has made Microsoft rich.
This is how it works. A new version of Widows comes out with fanfare and dancing icons. Most people want to stay abreast, so they buy an upgrade copy of Windows and upgrade their PC. But the new version is always designed to perform poorly on older hardware, so everyone suddenly notices how old and outdated there PC is and so they go buy a new PC, including another copy of the new version of Windows.
They just bought a copy of the new version of Windows for themselves, so why do they need to buy another copy? Because Microsoft say so. The decision to design for large RAM machines doubles their income in many cases.
When did Microsoft start selling computer hardware for upgrades ?
I will let them sell me a mouse, or a keyboard, but I have never seen a Microsoft Processor or Microsoft Memory ?
Where can I get a pricelist for these please ?
When did Microsoft start selling computer hardware for upgrades ?
Reread what I wrote. Until recently, Microsoft received some money from virtually every PC sold in the US if not the world, regardless of who made it or sold it. Only recently has anyone been able to buy a PC without buying a new Windows license–whether they used it or not.
But you knew that, so why harass me about it?
In that case, you are correct, I was harassing you, as the original post was worded in such a way, it made the reader think you meant Microsoft were also supplying hardware upgrades. Sorry, I picked you up wrong.
“A new version of Widows comes out with fanfare and dancing icons. Most people want to stay abreast, so they buy an upgrade copy of Windows and upgrade their PC. But the new version is always designed to perform poorly on older hardware, so everyone suddenly notices how old and outdated there PC is and so they go buy a new PC, including another copy of the new version of Windows. ”
Most people get Windows with a new PC anyway. Most of the normal users I know who have upgraded Windows have “borrowed” the new version from work or a friend. Then they complain about how it runs and they buy a new PC, or go back to what they had. I don’t know if that’s true everywhere, but it seems pretty common.
Backwards compatibility is nothing like the priority it once was. Look at all the stuff which doesn’t work on Vista.
Can’t believe every single rant can be posted around and appear as “credible”.
This guy:
1) has no idea what’s in Vista;
2) has no idea what he’s talking about when he talks about downgrades which Microsoft is offering. Can’t believe he’s so dumb to think that’s because of poor sales (expecially when “poor” means Vista is 2nd most used system all over the World) or “Extras”
3) has no idea what it means “abandon” for a company.
Useless rants.
First, I admit that I didn’t read the actual articles, since the summary itself is so ridiculous that I question whether it even meets OSNews’s threshold to be posted here. So maybe there is some great insight in the linked articles that I’m ignorant of.
I’ll just say that XP matured with SP2. OSX matured with Panther. Win9x matured with Win98SE. Mac OS 7 matured with Mac OS 7.5x. Win3 matured with Win3.3x. See the pattern? Whenever a new OS is released it takes a few updates over the next 1 to 3 years (or so) to work out all the kinks. It’ll be no different with Vista.
I’m hoping that it’s faster for Vista due to all the diagnostics and feedback that end-users and devs can get just by looking at the Reliability and Performance Monitors.
If memory serves me right, Win3 actually matured with Win3.78x
)
If memory serves me right, Win3 actually matured with Win3.78x
Is that the edition that comes standard with Calmira II?
–bornagainpenguin
Win 3.3x ?
Whats that then?
I did like Win 3.11 though
This article is pathetic. It says nothing new and manages to ramble for a long time while continuing to say nothing.
1. Price: We all agree the price is high. MS is a near monopoly and that is a serious problem. But this is hardly a reason to abandon Vista.
2.Extras: The article says for $160 extra for Ultimate gives you “complete backup and restore option, BitLocker Drive encryption, the ever so popular Windows Fax & Scan, and the “Ultimate Extras”. And then cribs about the delays with Extras. Now is I had bought Ultimate, it would definitely have been for Backup & Restore and BitLocker and not for the Extras.
3. DRM: We can keep arguing whether DRM is right or not. I think it is wrong and that might be largely influenced by the fact that I don’t create movies and music. But it is a little silly to say that MS is wrong in preventing you from doing something essentially illegal. If it is not allowed in Vista it is probably because it is allowed by the stupid licencing systemwe all seemed to have agreed upon. All we can hope for is that a lot of people will be affected by this and will hassle media companies to stop using DRM.
4. Sales: It is crazy to compare Vista sales with XP sales. XP sold so well because its predecessors really stunk in comparison. But after SP2 XP is pretty decent and stable so people have very little reason to buy a new OS. They will probably wait for their next computer.
5. UAC: I definitely agree that UAC pops up a lot more times than necessary but from what I understand it has advantages over the sudo option in my Ubuntu machines or the equivalent in OS X but I don’t know enough to make a cogent argument. But it does not come up when you “open a third-party app from a well-known software company”. It just does not. Unless the version you are running is not compatible with Vista. And even then Vista does give you the option of running the program in “XP compatibility mode” or “as administrator” – which has worked for all my incompatibility problems. Now for me, UAC is a pain since I do nightly updates on Thunderbird and Firefox so I hit upon it a couple of times a day but more most regular users, they will probably never see after they are done setting up their machine unless some malware tries to do a silent install or something like that.
I think the major problems I have seen on the web and in my own experience with Vista are the lack of compatible drivers and minor compatibility issues when running older software (as I mentioned above). I did not face the former since I bought a laptop with Vista preinstalled and the latter seems to be largely disappearing with patches and updates at least with software that is still actively supported. I think the price is high but most of us get ours with the machine and don’t pay retail.
Edited 2007-09-27 16:21
Backup copies are protected under the Fair Use provisions of copyright.
DRM also adds overhead, which is never a good thing.
Thanks a lot. I did not realize a complete backup copy of a movie or album is allowed under Fair Use. Does anyone know why no media company has ever been sued for this.
On your other point, DRM IS DEFINITELY added overhead and is bad (as far as I can see) but my point was that people are agreeing to it when they buy DRM’ed stuff so pointless blaming MS for covering their ass. I am guessing half the idea behind MS’s implementation might just be their legal dept saying that we better include it before RIAA sues under DMCA for “facilitating violation” like they did with DVD X Copy, etc. Because when you think about it MS has limited gains from implementing DRM in Windows.
Depends where you live – here in Australia, there is no such thing as “fair use” under our copyright laws.
True, but the overhead is so negligible that it will have no discernible effect on anything, and certainly not while you are not playing DRM afflicted media.
Then your copyright laws are defective, and should be amended.
I wouldn’t be so sure.
Who the heck is this guy? Take a look at his older articles. They’re all pretty inane and seem to be purely focussed on superficial marketing-level discourses. “BlahCo has only sold fjsd million copies of baz. This could mean trouble for foo.” Seriously.. this guy is just trying to drive his own fame through the ever-popular Microsoft bashing. I wonder when the raging crowds of angry Mac and Linux users will get tired of this insult to their intelligence (ooh, let me post something dissing Microsoft so that it can get posted to Slashdot and bring traffic).
Actually, this forum has posted several examples of people disagreeing with his POV, and not all of them are MS fanboys.
Blogs are not typically useful articles if their sole opinion is that a recently released product is useless.
However, Vista’s had half a decade in the pipeline. It was hyped beyond belief, and in the end what was delivered was underwhelming to the end user because most of it is infrastructure the common user will never know about.
One of the reasons OS X keeps being released on a roughly 18 month schedules is because the underpinnings are upgraded. The inane glitzy eye candy apps are the window dressing to convince people to upgrade, but the real changes are things like moving window compositors completely to graphics processors, abandoning kernel extensions, adding the Spotlight indexing system to the filesystem code, changing how Mail.app stores mail, etc.
Had MS included some killer apps with the basic edition of that relied directly on Vista-specific technology, it would sell the upgrade. They didn’t, and promises of a more stable OS aren’t sexy enough to convince the public.
Microsoft frankly stinks at “sexy,” and their in-house satirical “How we would ruin marketing the iPod” video shows they know it.
Under the hood, Vista may be great…but the people right now defending it against XP sound no different than Mac users defending their OS against XP. Until there’s sugar to take the medicine with, people will resist taking the medicine.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the “sugar with the medicine” point. I feel that with the display technologies they did not build quite the right thing. Instead of WPF, which relies on .NET, they should have built something that could be used from C++ to do vector graphics and animations. Then they could have released some really cool and snazzy resolution-independent technology incrementally with the OS release. This would have been a sugar-coated peach: there would be some substance behind it.
The real guts of WPF are in milcore.dll, so hopefully that will be leveraged in the next release to produce something nice and useable by people who want small footprint or legacy compatibility.
Maybe the presentation of Volume ShadowCopy can be improved too so that the feature gains some relevance for the average user. There are lots of things that could have been done to make Vista a more relevant OS for Joe Blow, but I think it’s an important release for the industry and until the ecosystem around it stabilizes, it’s a bit of a bitter pill. Maybe a “soft launch” would have been right as someone suggested.
Well, one doesn’t need to look any further than Cairo Graphics; Microsoft could turn around, create a new operating system based on OpenSolaris, and using those opensource components.
It confuses me how Microsoft has this NIH syndrome where they boast about investing ‘billions’ into Windows and yet no one ever has the back bone to ask ‘is this a good investment’? ‘where are the results’? so far the billions claimed to be invested into Windows has resulted in an operating system that is in a worse shape than when Windows 2000 and XP were released.
I remember when Windows 2000 was released; it was NEVER as buggy as Windows Vista. I remember when Windows XP was released, again, it was never as buggy as Windows Vista – sure, it was worse than Windows 2000 in some regards, but never as bad as Windows Vista.
Microsoft needs to draw a line in the sand; throw away backwards compatibility; bundle the ‘new Windows’ with a copy of ‘old Windows’ on a separate cd/dvd to allow backwards compatibility. Once you make the break – then its home free; its up all hill from there.
Short term pain for long term gain. Apple made that move, it hurt them initially, but look where they are now.
I never understood why Microsoft didn’t choose to follow the same route of Apple with MacOS X, that is, taking an open Unix-like kernel, implementing a sensible user interface on it, and obtaining in output the best of both worlds, probably also cutting down on development expenses. Plus a Classic-like environment for old apps.
This could have slowed down the Vista adoption even more at first, but in the end (in the after-Vista) it would have been a smart move.
But they already have a very good kernel, many people say that. I haven’t had any problem with the kernel that I know of (it’s kinda invisible) and that’s more than I can say about the Linux kernel.
What does the Linux kernel have to do with this? Please keep your trolling for Linux articles…
Backwards compatibility is sacred at MS. There’s an entire Shim database inside XP and Vista devoted to recognizing legacy apps which rely on undocumented behaviors and maintaining their performance.
A Unix-based OS with a truly divided security model doesn’t play well with that. The graphics kernel in Windows is tightly integrated into the OS kernel, which is verboten in Unix-based systems. This is the bane of Cedega, which has to be continually patched app by app for compatibility.
XP could, as you suggested, have to be run in a sandbox, but they remember what happened to OS/2 when it offered Windows compatibility: no one had an incentive to develop for OS/2. Apple could have implemented XP compatibility when the Intel switch occured (they have legal access to the entire XP API), but they stayed out of that issue entirely.
Technically, Microsoft has an out they could take if they wanted to, which is to repeat what they did with NT. Fork the platform between end users and business users, make the substantive changes in the business OS and pressure vendors to port their apps to it…then a few years down the road merge the consumer and business OSes.
NT was a good idea.
I never understood why Microsoft didn’t choose to follow the same route of Apple with MacOS X, that is, taking an open Unix-like kernel, implementing a sensible user interface on it, and obtaining in output the best of both worlds,
Because Windows system design is ages better than any Unix, except for Solaris, maybe. That would then be a downgrade.
Apple was able to use Unix kernel because that was an evolution to its old system. Understand that Unix design was a 70s concept and didn’t evolve much since then. Windows NT design was a mid-80s design, when role of computers was almost very clear.
Because Windows system design is ages better than any Unix, except for Solaris, maybe. That would then be a downgrade.
Ha, you really made me laugh? Windows system design being better than the Unix approach? Have you ever actually looked at the Linux approach?
One question: Can you install a new version of Windows over an existing version of Windows while you’re working on that machine at the same time? Just one example of things you can do with Linux which you can’t do on Windows.
Yeah, thats why Windows is SO much better.
The NT kernel is a pretty good design and has really solid code (as you can learn by reading reports of those who looked at the leaked Win2K source). I don’t know how exactly the kernel suspend/hibernate code works, but it seems to be much more solid than the Linux kernel’s and not quite as good as Apple’s (probably since apple doesn’t have many third-party drivers in the mess).
The graphics code is not as tied into the core kernel as you might think. It’s in a separate dll in the kernel (win32k.sys) and there are only a few dependencies there. NT is a good kernel… it’s not unix, so you don’t get processes as cheap, but it’s more thread-oriented and there’s a different design for handling things asynchronously than on unix. In many ways, NT learned the lesson of Unix and Linux learned the lesson of NT (all the while claiming superiority
). NT is not down and out… it still has some flexibility to improve in some ways.
Yeah the NT kernel is pretty robust, it does not need to be Unix like.
I think that both kernels share many of the same features. NT is a very modern, robust and secure kernel architecture. Arguably, the userland of both NT and Linux are very different but all in all, I don’t think that the NT kernel needs all that much work.
I think that, if MS does want to make a break with the past, a good reason would be the discontinuation of the NT kernel in favor of Singularity. That way, NT could be virtualized for backwards compatibility and Windows could move to another level altogether without needing to worry so much with running old software.
Just my €0.02 😉
There’s a slightly better approach. Singularity can run alongside NT as a special kernel-level process. The main NT scheduler would schedule the threads, but the singularity runtime could execute in a kernel code segement and allow direct calls into the kernel entrypoints rather than the usual hardware-protected system call mechanism.
I don’t know how long it will be before the Singularity technology makes it out of Research. I read an interesting paper by the directors of the project and they seemed to be saying that the research codebase will never go directly into a product.
If a Singularity-style product goes into the market, though, it looks like it will be hard for anyone to compete. It doesn’t take a genius to predict that MSR is patenting all of the core technologies needed to make that work, especially the code verifiers and the theorem-proving compiler.
“I never understood why Microsoft didn’t choose to follow the same route of Apple with MacOS X, that is, taking an open Unix-like kernel, implementing a sensible user interface on it, and obtaining in output the best of both worlds, probably also cutting down on development expenses. Plus a Classic-like environment for old apps. ”
MS’s bread and butter is compatibility, and if they did that, they would lose a lot of business from err…businesses, who want to make reasonably sure their stuff will run. And I’m not talking about driver compatibility, but application, which is not too bad on Vista, and will get even better
Do you really think that Microsoft would do such a thing when they employ one of the main architects of VMS who moved on from Digital to Microsoft to create WNT with his team of developers?
This is a serious case of wanting to be different at all costs, in fact it’s just a modern version of UNIX vs VMS. Before Microsoft would ever do this they’d have him and other senior developers create a new operating system instead, WNT the next generation. There is no UNIX in Microsoft’s future.
my new computer came with vista. i played with vista a while before i formatted it and installed ubuntu. vista actually isn’t that bad for a windows version. though it did seem only a little more bloated than xp. it was stable and seemed pretty good. the graphics were very pretty too.
i had been using ubuntu for 2 years and i had planned on formatting vista anyways, but i was pretty tempted to keep it. the things i don’t like about vista are the things i don’t like about all of Microsoft’s platforms. for example, security, is easier on linux. especially installing updates. Linux is free software, and will always be free, this is the biggest draw to linux for me. I don’t like being told how to use my software, and i don’t really approve of Microsoft’s software license.. Windows is missing the repositories to install software really quickly. honestly it’s a nightmare to have windows on my home computer. it takes forever to do things that takes minutes on linux. Plus the problem with viruses and spyware.
Is if they did something really nice with XP, but we can only dream on, Microsoft dont give nothing for nothing when it comes to Windows. I bet SP3 will be the same old, but wouldn’t it be funny if they put extras in it that Vista ultimate STILL lacks.
You can be pretty sure that Microsoft have not done some proper extras because it’s sales are crap, after all why should they waste more money on it after five years. I myself use XP 64 for gaming, just a whole lot more stable and have the Vista card games running for my wife in XP, so best of both.
To be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if MS failed to incorporate IE7 and WMP11 into XP SP3. They didn’t in Windows XP x64 SP2. Although to be fair, it does share it’s code base with Server 2003.
We will see…
They can’t – it’ll get them into trouble again, and this is the way it should be.
The browser and OS should never be tied together to begin with.
Nor should Media Player.
As long as I have an alternative to Microsoft, I couldn’t care less what they do.
I just wish I had an alternative at work.
I don’t see MS ditching Vista,
but they could really, dump Vista in favor of the Windows Server Codebase, which has IMHO seen some impressive improvements, in order to compete with Linux in the server space.
Just my thoughts.
wtf? vista is based on windows server 2003 code
As much as some of us dislike monopolies like Microsoft, it would be worse for them to abandon a product that people are embracing and need reliable support for.
I agree with the authors main points: Vista sucks and people are switching back to XP (which also sucks).
When you compare Vista to Mac OS X 10.4 it just sucks so bad it’s not even funny. Let me count the ways:
1) Protected Video Path – Who the hell would want that? Kiss your freedom goodbye because Big Brother doesn’t trust _that_ module your trying to use. OS X doesn’t try to “protect” your video path.
2) “Genuine” Licensing – Mac OS X doesn’t call Apple back just to let you run the OS, nor does Apple have a “Ultimate” version full of crapware.
3) Vista is NOT UNIX. There is a reason Unix-like systems are better, people have been hacking on the kernels since 1969. You think MS’s overpaid tards are going to do better in just 5 years, think again.
4) Stupid messages all the time! OS X is not going to ask you whether of not you want to trust the mouse driver.
5) Resource Hog! Mac OS X is very quick and efficient, it also has little effects. Also, when OS X 10.5 comes out with Core Animation, Vista is not going to have anything comparable.
6) Wasted screen real estate. Windows has always encouraged people to use one big window coving the whole screen. Why?
7) Windows Registry. Vista still has it, it still sucks.
Edited 2007-09-27 18:07
1) OSX isn’t immune to DRM aswell
2) Agree with you on that
3) NT kernel (started 1988) is a good kernel. Mach is a good kernel (started 1985). A better argument would have been the userland.
4) Like Windows(es) don’t have a stock USB mouse driver now… About stupid (coder-oriented) messages one must agree anyway
5) Silverlight
6) That’s a looong debate
7) Backward compatibility. But yes, it was a bad idea to start with.
Free to not like it. And to buy Apple.
But don’t whine please
“1) Protected Video Path”
Joe User doesn’t care.
“2) “Genuine” Licensing”
Joe User doesn’t care.
“3) Vista is NOT UNIX.”
Joe User certainly doesn’t care.
“5) Resource Hog!”
Joe User doesn’t care.
“6) Wasted screen real estate.”
Joe User doesn’t care.
“7) Windows Registry.”
Joe User doesn’t care.
Your points have merit…from a technical point of view.
However, whether Vista will be a consumer hit or not have little to do with it’s technical merits (or lack thereof).
It’s all about marketing and pre-installation.
We can make good technical arguments against Vista all day but in the end it wont matter because Joe User will use whatever his computer came with, what is in the ads he has seen or what the sales person says he should use.
I installed vista on a new laptop and after doing the updates and a bios flash to address some known issues things are running very smoothly.
I think like every MS OS release vista is going to need some time to get the kinks worked out.
XP was the same way, people were screaming that you should stick with Win2k. Now those people are on XP and screaming that you should not move to vista.
Give it 12-24 months and they’ll be talking about how good vista is. lol.
So what you are saying is that Vista sucks now and people that have payed a bucket of money for it should wait up to two years on the hope that it will get better.
That sounds very *sensible*. I hope car makers begin doing the same.
Or you could look at the alternatives, such as downloading a Free CD of the internet and seeing whether it works well with your hardware and satisfies your needs. If it doesn’t, you can also try it again every six months and see if it really improves and all of this will cost you nothing.
If people started demanding better products, end-users would not have top up with the wasteland that the IT industry is becoming. It’s pathetic to see all this verbal diarrhea justifying the unjustifiable.
So what you are saying is that Vista sucks now and people that have payed a bucket of money for it should wait up to two years on the hope that it will get better.
I’m not saying people should do anything, I’m just pointing out that in my experiences windows releases need time to mature and vista is no exception.
Or you could look at the alternatives, such as downloading a Free CD of the internet and seeing whether it works well with your hardware and satisfies your needs.
I know a few people doing just that, I looked at moving to a non windows platform on all my machines but at this time its not feasible with the work I do.
For the first time there are some great alternatives to running windows that really deliver. I advocate trying out other options to everyone I know and have no problem telling someone the cons and pros that I see with each one.
If it doesn’t, you can also try it again every six months and see if it really improves and all of this will cost you nothing.
So what you are saying is that alternatives suck now and people that value their time should install a different OS every six months in hopes that it will get better.
In the interest of disclosure, I am an avid Linux user. With that being said, I couldn’t imagine sinking billions into a product and then, basically, giving up the ghost. So, I do believe that Microsoft should forge ahead with Vista but, like someone stated earlier, should pare down the choices and possibly the price.
As a Linux user, I like choice but, at least in the case of home users, Windows is marketed based on simplicity and familiarity. Telling people they can choose from up to 5 versions of the same os by the same company may be daunting.
However, I did find comments indicating that Windows Vista will take a year or so to be a “stable” platform very interesting. If I pay up to $400 hundred dollars for an OS or buy a computer ranging from several hundred to several thousand with that os, why should I need to wait a year or more while a company, with tens of billions in revenue, works out the kinks? To me, that sounds like an expensive beta test.
Sorry to put it that way because I know that there are users who are extremely well-versed in the ins and outs of Windows who, like us Linux users, work around issues. But, to put the onus on customers in that way may be the reason that fewer people are adopting Vista at this point in time.
It would have been nice to see Windows XP SP5 or Reloaded by now. MS said they would be making incremental changes from now on, and I think this is what they should have done from the start. Activating Windows is a PITA, but a one time thing. The Genuine Advantage pogram is an insult. I hate jumping through the hoops everytime I want to download a patch from MS. I hated it so much that Ubuntu is the OS I use the most. I’m only in Windows now because Windows Movie Maker is a fairly brainless way to edit movies. I tried Vista Beta 2, and it was very pretty and shiny, but felt very weird. I was using Open Office, the Gimp, and Thunderbird and pretty much asked myself why I wasn’t using Ubuntu.
I’d like to see MS release XP Home or some variation as a free .iso. I think MS should release their base OS freely, and have paid support available as Linux distros do. It would make millions of pirates legitimate overnight and give them an even bigger market share. I’m still sticking with Ubuntu as my primary OS for the near future. Vista just doesn’t appeal to me.
1) I completely disagree with the article posted. I’m the first to believe that Vista is a definitely different beast from the one we were promised long ago. I won’t upgrade for that matter but for microsoft to ditch Vista would be a terrible and death-bringer mistake. They simply can’t. They HAVE to go on and push the upgrade down our throat.
2) Xp is good, Xp is stabel is mature… Guys I’ve been working on XP from almost day one, never used anything else in all these years and I simply cannot find enough words to express how BAD this operating system turned out to be. Let’s say we’re customed to it. We like it because we use it every single day of our computer life. But come on, it really sucks. Usability is abysmal due to tons of interface mistakes, contradictions and limitations, the system gets slower and more unstable the more you use it… Which brings me to..
3) Now that Vista is out and it sucks pretty badly, let’s try not to repeat history for a chance. When Xp got out everybody complained about how slow and bad it was. Time passed and two service packs later everybody is happy. But does really Xp got that better? Or is it just the fact that we lost any mean of comparison? I fired an ancient Windows 2000 on a obsolete dual PIII 300 just a few days ago… And surprise surprise! I was astonished about how fast and responsive the system was. I could connect to the network and use all the apps that I normally use on my core2. Sure it didn’t came without its huge share of shortcomings, but as a productive environment it really rocked. So how about it? Let’s try not to fall again in the same circle, and find ourselves ranting about how Vista got better with sp2, only because we don’t have an Xp installation at hand.
4) Microsoft shouldn’t fear no Linux nor Mac. They should fear Google, Nokia (or Apple if they prove to be smart enough) or anybody else who’s able to provide basic PC functionality (office productivity, blogging, photo and video charing creation) over the net (so that you can do it wherever you want and on whatever gadget you like, provided it’s powerful enough). On the other hand they should fear the xbox360 and Ps3, as these machines are converting some (not all) Pc gamers to console gamers, and one of the core windows technologies (DirectX) MIGHT become less and less useful as a mean of differentiation between OSes.
There’s little way Microsoft could justify scrapping the billions of dollars and years that went into Vista to their stockholders. They have to make the best of it regardless.
That said, why couldn’t they have done better? They employ many of the brightest people in computerdom, and have cash resources exceeding those of many third-world governments. You constantly see little blurbs about incredible technology being worked on in their labs. Then they put out a product that appears to be only moderately better than XP at most, takes considerably more potent hardware to run, and has several of its potentially coolest features deleted before its launch.
Things like UAC are a good idea, and an idea long overdue, but the more I think about it, those kinds of incompatible changes should have been made when they released NT. The DRM? I don’t agree with it, but if they want to play cops, it’s their right. It doesn’t make Vista any more attractive, though.
I’ve played with a couple of Vista machines, gotten irritated with what I perceived as even more “dumbing-down” of the interface (though I’m sure there are “classic view” options), and basically concluded it’s not worth the potential reformat/reinstall on my laptop to use it right now. It’s kind of sad that the world of free software is better than the world’s richest and most powerful software company in bringing me innovation and suitability to my needs without any fluff. I’m glad I have a choice at least.
I think Microsoft needs to lower the price, probably reduce the number of versions out there, fix the incompatibilities, and keep their promises about the “Extras” (and maybe even restore some of the deleted features). In short, make it compelling. They’re more likely to do all that than drop Vista entirely, and it would be better for them.
Some guy on the internet says a big company should abandon it’s flagship product that took years of development and millions of dollars to produce.
Front page news here folks.
Yes, some people seems to avoid thinking before write.
Folks, I run Vista on a 2.8ghz Prescott and I have seriously no complaints. I prefer it seriously over XP. I still don’t like the Control Panel arrangement, but I find myself using it less as I’ve got everything set the way I want and so that’s not much of an issue. All my software works (including Jeskola Buzz, which is an amazing thing.)
Why would Microsoft ever consider abandoning Vista? At this stage in the game, that is purely illogical.
I don’t understand how so many people can find so many things to bark about in this system.
There is no reason for Microsoft to abandon Vista. No matter what Vista is or does, no matter what its faults or deficiencies are, Windows customers will buy it (whether a new license or pre-installed on a new system), and will run it, eventually.
They should EOL Windows XP, if they want to increase Vista revenues. Before Microsoft ever releases an OS, people take to the internet and adopt this resistant pose like they’re not going to “fall for it again,” and are going to stick with what they have. The overwhelming majority of this crowd never do.
Whether or not they get it for free on a new computer or pay to upgrade because some new game won’t work with the previous OS, eventually, Windows users *will* run it. Three years from now, anyone who insists on running Windows, will be running Vista. There is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop this. Everyone bitches about DRM, but only a statistically insignificant number vote with their wallet in protest.
There’s basically nothing Microsoft can do to alienate its userbase sufficiently to try something new. (And yes, there is probably a disproportionate number of us here for whom this is not true, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this doesn’t represent the situation at large)
This is not a troll, nor is it sarcastic. It is reality. While Microsoft is not technically a monopoly, for all practical purposes it serves as one, and that will continue to drive peoples decisions.
In point of fact, Microsoft could abandon Windows altogether and revert back to MS-DOS 6.1, and so long as vendors were apt to write drivers for it, and ONLY for IT, in many cases, and so long as gaming and enterprise software companies wrote for it, it would continue to dominate. It is not a moral issue. It is a practical one for the vast majority of computer users.
I think Microsoft is a safe stock buy, for the long term. Consumer discretion, when it comes to operating systems, is irrelevant and non-existent. The market pushes it along as it pushes the market along.
Frankly, what probably did this is IBM and OS/2. When that faded, the game was essentially over. I really wish I could go back in time and get IBM to open up OS/2 so at least there were two players in the market. If you look back to then, there was a lot of enthusiasm for OS/2 – even over Windows – except in the sense of lack of development tools (see the old Computer Chronicles episode on archive.org for more on this) and other proprietary concerns.
It saddens me to say so, as a Linux user and advocate. I really do think Linux is better. I don’t have enough experience with Macs to say whether they are “better” too, but I’d probably feel that way if I was.
My feelings are irrelevant. Windows it is. Vista, it will be, no matter how people feel about it now.
Isn’t the DRM component directly related to the Media Centre component in Vista?
That being the case, you can rip it out or bypass it using either vLite or Vista Business Edition. Nothing seems to indicate that using 3rd party apps i.e. VLAN to play HD content will invoke the gods of DRM.
I have had no issues with DRM and Reaper when creating music but then I ripped Media Centre out of Vista Ultimate as I prefer Foobar2000 and VLAN for audio/Video.
Ditching Vista, not needed although I’m disapointed that we still have the Registry to deal with but MS could make some dramatic changes to Vista with Service Packs that would allow us to have a base OS with additional uninstallable components. Now that would be great.
source: CNET
When I read a line like “XP–it’s not nearly as bad as Vista” then I know that I am reading something by someone whose point of view diverges profoundly from own. In my experience, XP is an first-rate, reliable, and capable OS. And having read the line I have quoted, there is no way that I can take the rest of the article seriously either.
Edited 2007-09-28 11:45
The funny thing is you got modded down (I modded you back up). There’s a lot of Linux trolls back on OSNews lately.
The funny thing is you got modded down (I modded you back up). There’s a lot of Linux trolls back on OSNews lately.
Hmmmmmm. Why do Linux trolls think that suppressing debate is a good thing — but closing source code is a bad thing? What a bunch of brownshirts.
Because trolls are trolls, no matter their color?
As you all know Vista will end up on most users computers sooner or later. It doesnt matter if it sucks or not, it WILL end up almost everywhere just like with Microsofts previous operating systems. Microsoft knows this very well, of course, so why would they bother writing the perfect OS? Yes I know this suck, but this it the way it is.
A lot of people on here claim that Vista is doing great.
If Vista is doing so well, then why is there a need for a downgrade to XP program?
“If Vista is doing so well, then why is there a need for a downgrade to XP program?”
There’s a significant difference between not doing great and being such a dud that you should abandon a product you spent years and billions creating.
Any one that says Vista is a great operating system, is a more than likely a novice computer user, a “Microsoftie”, or hasn’t really USED the operating system.
I’ve seen lots of comments comparing how Vista is similar to Windows XP in it’s early days. I remember using Windows XP back in 2002, my eXPerience was much better than Windows Vista, but I still hated it. Windows Vista is much slower, has much more garbage, and includes technologies that limit what you can do with your computer.
Unless your using an “optimized” or “nlite’d” version, Windows XP SP2 is still just as bloated and full of crap. I used Windows 2000 SP4 until I discovered nLite a year ago. Windows XP suddenly became useful after all the crap was removed.
Until vLite (nlite for Vista) can catch up to nLite, Windows Vista just isn’t work the trouble, time, or the money. It’s not even worth pirating!
I’m seeing lot’s of posts defending Vista and it’s shortcomings. That’s all well and good, and they all make good points.
But it’s the same people, or the same kind of people, that will absolutely flame Linux, saying it’s “not ready for the desktop”, when something does not work as expected (even though that something is usually very easily fixed/configured, or the person simply isn’t used to the Linux way of doing things), when they try it (if they actually try it) for the first time.
I’m just saying be consistent, folks. All technology has positives and negatives, and when something new comes out, there are going to be bumps, with Windows, Linux, Mac, or anything else.
As for Vista, my main concerns are threefold:
1. Built in DRM, that will restrict copying, and restrict what kinds of formats can be used.
2. Huge resource usage.
3. An always on “monitoring” service, which phones home about what you are doing with your computer.
As for all the other complaints people make, like driver issues, bugs, security issues, etc, all that stuff will eventually work itself out with service packs, and are to be expected with new releases.
1. Built in DRM, that will restrict copying, and restrict what kinds of formats can be used.
Red herring. The DRM only applies to the included multimedia utilities (Windows Media Player, Media Center, etc). You’re not at all prevented from running your own tools that contain no such DRM.
2. Huge resource usage.
Wow, operating systems continue to grow in size and resource allocation. I’m shocked. /sarcasm
3. An always on “monitoring” service, which phones home about what you are doing with your computer
Nonsense. This is pure hyperbole.
It engages in politics bullshit including. Why Vista is like it is? Because traditionally it didn’t matter as MS could push any previous OS just on its marketing and business arm alone.
Now people start to realize how they are being deceived and begin to resist. Why to spend not that small amount of money on something what basically doesn’t provide much (if at all) perceivable improvements? What about those which have found XP is perfectly fine for their uses?