“Windows Vista has been dragged through the IT industry mud for most of its life, in some cases for good reason. But Microsoft’s OEM chief believes that Windows 7’s success will help repair the damage to Vista’s reputation and polish its legacy.
Windows 7 and Windows Vista share much of the same code, and over time, this could cause Windows Vista bashers to soften their views, said Steve Guggenheimer, vice president of the OEM division at Microsoft. ‘I think people will look back on Vista after the Windows 7 release and realize that there were actually a bunch of good things there,’ Guggenheimer said in a recent interview. ‘So it’ll actually be interesting to see in two years what the perception is of Vista.'”
In my opinion Vista is just fine.
IMO Vista is fine after two service packs.
The first service pack fixed a lot, now after the second it just feels more like a finished product.
Much like Windows XP. In my opinion, it wasn’t until SP2 that XP really started to shine.
I’d say that ship has already left, and those perceptions are hard set. In two years, no one will be writing about Vista except in some likely “Retrospective of Microsoft’s 21st century failures” article.
Too many of those frustrated users have long left for *nix OSes like Linux and OSX, and will never give Vista a thought, much less Win7. Win7 will be the last Microsoft OS as we know it, as users will squat on it for ten years like they have XP.
You’re right about one thing: Microsoft will sit on Win7 until competition from OS X (and Ubuntu, probably/hopefully) forces them to do better. Microsoft, in my assessment, has something of a habit of sitting on the same product, flawed or not, for as long as they can possibly get away with. Not that any corporation wouldn’t do the same.
But I doubt that users have been deserting Windows in droves. It’s way too entrenched, and many see Linux/BSD as being too technical and too unstable, and OS X as being unafordable — and then there are gamers, like me, who like Linux, and even run what we can in Wine, but still have Windows installed on our main systems, because there just isn’t a viable alternative for a decent gaming experience. Most, I suspect, have not had a bad enough experience with Vista to actually switch to a different O.S. They either use Vista and gripe, or use XP and gripe.
those 20 people that turned to Linux or OS X because Vista sucked so bad are not any worry to MS.
Yeah, it’s all the people who stuck with XP instead of upgrading to Vista that MS was worried about.
Of course they could always make Windows 7 stink so bad that we’d all appreciate the Vista we have.
Just a thought
they already did that with Vista, it made XP look like the second coming of OS’s
I agree with other posters in that Vista perception will never change, Microsoft has to accept the fact that Vista will be considered the Windows Me of this decade.
It wasn’t all bad PR, Vista before SP1 is slow and has an incredible amount of bugs for an RTM OS.
Yeah I thought that was what he meant by saying: “I think people will look back on Vista after the Windows 7 release and realize that there were actually a bunch of good things there.”
There were a few things that debuted in windows me that were actually decent. But, as a whole it stunk. Years later people don’t praise me, and I don’t think the situation will be that much different in a few years time for vista. However, windows ME did make me appreciate windows 98 SE more. Just like Vista has increased my appreciation for windows XP SP >=2.
I know Microsoft hates how much people dump on Vista, but they have to be careful trying to tie 7’s presumed success to Vista. It might make people think twice about upgrading to 7, if execs are saying its just like the hated Vista.
There’s too many “me”s in there for me to understand what you’re trying to say.
Yeah. A lot of me. I was never sure if it was an uppercase M or lowercase. Is “Me” easier to read than “me”?
Edit: Wow: Me, me, ME; I was really indecisive as to how to write the name.
Edited 2009-07-23 21:22 UTC
It’s ‘Windows Me’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Me) but that doesn’t make sense since it’s meant to be Millenium Edition so unless clippy thought it should have read, ‘Windows Millenium edition’ then it should be ‘Windows ME’.
Oh I have a headache.
And you’re putting commas in places they should never be in.
Isn’t that just a Wiki thing where it only capitalises the first letter? Considering the name is Windows Millenium Edition, the short version should be Windows ME, or WinME.
I’m not going to get drawn into a debate other the _correct_ way to capitalise in English, but MS do have the capitalisation the same as the wikipedia URL (check the screen shots in the wiki article).
So regardless of which method is “correct”, MS’s branding has it as “Me”
There is a big difference, though. Windows Me was an evolutionary dead-end – the last 9x Windows.
On the other had, Vista is the foundation of Windows 7. Although Vista had many rough edges, I think it was a solid and secure platform, underestimated by many. I believe Windows 7 will prove that.
While I highly doubt anyone would look back after using Windows 7 and think to themselves “Well it really wasn’t that bad after all!” I hope no one does.
Windows XP, while great, has been like pulling teeth to get people to move (and for many good reasons). I really think the last thing they would want is Vista to suddenly appear nice and then have to yank people off to get onboard with Windows 7.
Leave Vista alone perception wise… what has happened cannot be changed and with Windows 7 on the way, put the focus on that and let Vista fade.
What does Windows 7 have in store for us that will make anyone look back wistfully and wish they were using Vista? After using the Windows 7 Beta, I see nothing Vista does better. I see many features that were nascent, broken or half-implemented in Vista that have reached usability in 7. Like Office 2007, Vista was an interim release, and Microsoft’s sales division was able to get consumers and businesses to fund the second-phase of its product development at some damage to the company’s reputation.
Edited 2009-07-23 21:34 UTC
In 2 years time we’ll have 16-core monstrosities with 32 GB of RAM common. I think Vista will look like less of a dog on that hardware, if that’s what they mean. I know, I exaggerate a little, but a few friends of mine already have 8GB of RAM. Not that much of a stretch to say the high end gaming systems of two years from now will have 32 or more.
Hmm… Both Windows 7 and Vista only offer a max memory of 4 GB if you are running the more common 32 bit variety.
Do you find that many of your friends have taken the 64 bit windows plunge? Has driver support increased? My surviving windows box is still 32 bit XP.
Most of them are using 64 bit. I don’t know how they’re going with their drivers though. One of them went back to 32 bit and took out most of his RAM, so that could say something of the quality of the 64 bit experience
I’ve been fine with 64-bit Vista. A buddy of mine is fine on 64-Bit vista, but had tremendous trouble with 64-bit XP; Getting a stable 64-bit windows was his major motivation for upgrading to Vista. Basically, my experience, which I do not think is atypical, is that 64-bit driver issues have been mostly ironed-out — at least in Vista, and therefore probably also Win7.
Good to know. It seems more than a bit ridiculous these days to run a 32 bit Os on 64 bit multicore processors. I’ve heard that >2 gigs was the sweet memory spot for vista, which doesn’t leave much headroom when constrained to 4 gb.
Vista logo qualification requires 64-bit driver support, so there has been parity for most hardware for the last few years. In the last year or so, IIRC, over 60% of Windows OEM systems have shipped with 64-bit versions of Vista, so there’s been even greater incentive for IHVs to have 64-bit drivers.
The major holdouts when Vista shipped were printer and scanner vendors, many of whom only made x64 drivers for newer hardware (or higher-end business models). So if you have an older printer or scanner you should check the IHV’s website, though it’s unlikely they’ll have a driver for pre-2004/5 consumer hardware (particularly scanners).
You can check these sites (along with vendor sites) to see if your hardware is supported.
Windows Compatibility Center
Vista
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/
Windows 7
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/default.as…
Windows Logo’d Products List
http://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/Default.aspx
I’ve been rocking the Vista x64 for almost a year now, and no driver issues, including almost a 1GHz OC on the CPU.
Oh, I remembered why I thought it still had issues. It does with Cisco’s VPN client. Stupid Cisco won’t fix it. We can’t switch away from IPSec authentication.
IMO Vista’s done for. Even MS praisers are moving back into XP and placing their hopes in Win7. In two years no one will be talking about Vista, just as now no one talks about ME anymore.
Everyone talks about ME though, when things like this roll around! In a couple of versions’ time, so maybe Windows 9 or 10, we’ll be saying “This is as bad as ME and Vista combined!”
I disagree. I think most people will realize that Vista was an important link in Windows evolution, although it was released somewhat unfinished.
I think it is more fair to compare Vista to Windows 2000 than to Windows Me.
Also, Vista has a more search-friendly name than 7, so it’s not without any advantages.
Fair or not, the bashing is how it will be remembered. We might see kinder reviews of it in retrospectives a few years from now, but I don’t think it will ever be remembered fondly.
However as I recall Windows 2000 really didnt have a bunch of stability issues or major bugs .. But I do sortof agree on the comparison ..
Actually Windows 2000 was unusable until SP2 was released. SP3 and SP4 made it rock solid.
Ah ok, I mostly used Win2000 SP4..
…I’ve had with Windows 7 it is a marked improvement over Vista and really quite nice to use in comparison. It is in all likelihood the OS Microsoft intended Vista to be…
…is the ability to switch back to the “classic” Start menu.
Other than that, it’s the current ME. Sure, the service packs may have improved its performance somewhat (and damn were they needed…), but IMO it’s still a disaster. The damage is already done; people dread the word “Vista.” It’ll make for some entertaining “worst products of recent history” articles in the coming years though, I’m sure.
I’m a late comer to Vista (just bought this computer 2 weeks ago so my Windows 7 upgrade application has been sent to Acer) and i don’t see the problem.
Yes, if this machine was limited to 1GB of ram i might see problems but with the service packs and a sane system administrator (a lot to ask from standard users) Vista is a fine system and feels much more secure than XP.
If it’s only been two weeks, you won’t see one of the nastier surprises yet. Wait until you windows folder balloons out to an enormous size.
It’s kinda sad, but the 64bit version of Vista is quite good. I had nothing but problems out of 32bit, and rolled back to XP many times. The vast majority of my stability and performance issue completely disappeared when i switched over to the 64bit version. You would think it wouldnt be that big of a deal, but it was really night and day for me. The server code apparently amounts to alot more than one would imagine.
Try 64bit, if you’re hardware supports it. But yeah the 2 service packed helped alot, but the 32 vs 64bit was night and day for my setup.
The code base for 64Bit Vista is the same as 32Bit Vista. It’s not like XP 64 which was really win2k3. Windows server (all bits) and Windows Vista are based on the same code.
I think your conclusions are incorrect, there must have been another reason you had so many problems with the 32B version.
….but probably won’t.