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- renegadeafk, on 05/01/2008, -64/+219Code size? Retarded reason, MacOS has more lines of code than vista. You can't determine the speed/reliebality of an os by "code size"
WinFS? Are you kidding me? most features made it into vista and winFS IS NOT AND NEVER WAS A FILE SYSTEM.
Missing drivers? Developers had plenty of time to get ready for vista and failed to do so.
Performance? Really depends on hardware/drivers. Vista is no slower than XP on my machine.
Another pointless vista-bashing article. - mark076h, on 05/01/2008, -96/+246if vista fails for you then it's time to upgrade, i have been using Vista64 since December for my main gaming rig and i have not had a single problem, it is actually an awesome experience.
- MellerTime, on 05/01/2008, -26/+123Agreed. I've never had a problem with Vista, and I quite enjoy many of its new / improved features.
After reading the list of failures, this reeks of a standard Dvorak column. Half of them are nonsense, most of the others hardly Microsoft- or Vista-centric.
The only one I agree with him on 100% is the multiple editions. XP Home vs. Pro caused enough confusion. How do we tackle that? Triple it! - killbert24, on 05/01/2008, -39/+103I have Vista Ultimate and have used it since it first came out. I play games, use a variety of programs, and do everything perfectly fine and have only had a total of two crashes-- each because of my own user error.
I don't think it is as bad as ME or as bad as people make it out to be.
I've also used XP and multiple Linux distributions but Vista is fine for my needs right now. - Philodox, on 05/01/2008, -17/+73"It seems incredible that all of the Windows drivers that worked with XP did not necessarily work with Vista. How does that happen?"
I'm no vista fan, but seriously does this guy have any clue how hard it is to write backwards compatible software? And that's just for stuff in user space.
This article is just unsubstantiated, mindless vista bashing. - TRScheel, on 05/01/2008, -14/+60For all those multiple page haters like myself:
While the public's attention seems to be swinging toward Windows 7 (the next iteration of the OS)—a topic I'll address in the weeks ahead—the fact of the matter is that Vista remains. And it seems that the OS now has two distinct groups of users. One group happily uses Vista, with few concerns or complaints. In fact, many of them are baffled by all the grumbling. The other group is the fist-shaking Vista bashers who condemn each and every flaw the OS exhibits.
The latter group is by far the most vocal and easily drowns out the former group. Its complaints stem from the anti-Microsoft backlash, which reflects dissatisfaction with the company's history, business practices, tactics, and bogus announcements. Much of the disgruntlement, however, can be attributed Vista itself—and the poor marketing job done by Microsoft.
I mention the bogus announcements above because, at some point, you do get a little tired of Microsoft making exaggerated promises and then never coming close to delivering the goods. In the case of Vista, it has to do with the three "pillars" that were announced early on. The OS really delivered on only one of the pillars, and that pillar was nothing but Windows dressing: Aero, the resource hog and performance sapper.
With the "pillars" in mind, I decided to take a look at the 11 reasons why Vista remains on shaky ground:
1) Market confusion. From the beginning, everyone moaned about the fact that there were simply too many versions of the OS for sale. Who needs all the variations? It's stupid—plain and simple. What you want is the one best version, not a slew of namby-pamby ones. This happened because the folks at Microsoft know only how to merchandise and, seemingly, not how to market.
2) Code size. I've got two words for you: TOO BIG. Enough said.
3) Missing components. Yes, WinFS, the promised file system and a core pillar of Vista, isn't there. The promises regarding the development of this file system go back to 1991. And Microsoft cannot make it a reality? Why?
4) Laptop battery-life drain. This was supposed to be fixed with special code and hybrid hard disks (HHD). Still, users have to resort to expensive silicon drives.
5) HHD fiasco. I'm still irked about being told by the HD industry that the benefits of the new generation of hard drives will "make people flock to Vista." That was over two years ago, and suddenly there's silence about the whole thing. One of these days, someone will tell me what really happened. My guess: It never worked correctly, and no one could make it work.
6) Bogus Vista-capable stickers. Microsoft's "Windows Vista capable" campaign was an incredible marketing botch. Computers were sold with an indication that they were "Windows Vista capable" when they were not. This did wonders for goodwill.
7) Missing drivers. It seems incredible that all of the Windows drivers that worked with XP did not necessarily work with Vista. How does that happen?
8) Conflicting advice. There was no consistent advice for users about implementation, and Microsoft did nothing to help. Some people said that you should get a new computer only with Vista preloaded and not upgrade. Others said upgrades were fine. Others upgraded and complained. Microsoft should have put up a specialized Web site that could test machines remotely and tell users whether it would be a good idea—or not—to upgrade. A promotional/test CD-ROM that could boot Vista (like those Knoppix Linux disks) would have been a good idea, too.
9) XP mania. You'd think that the world was in love with Windows XP. Everyone wants to keep it on the market, and this makes Vista look even worse. What's more, there were far too many reports about people reverting to XP after an "experience" with Vista. If Microsoft had the testing service that I mention above in place, this would never have happened.
10) Mediocre rollout. Unlike other rollouts of important Windows products, Microsoft did not put on much of a show with Vista. While there were some weird posters placed in subways and maybe a few TV commercials, none of it compared with the rollouts from a few years back, where the company got worldwide attention. By comparison, the company seemed almost sheepish or embarrassed by Vista, something that was also reflected in the recent lackluster rollout of Server 2008—a total snooze. This sent the wrong signals to users and may have made them hypercritical.
11) Performance. You're not supposed to deliver a new operating system that's been in development for more than four years yet performs worse than the previous OS. Performance should be at the top, not the bottom, of the to-do list. You get the sense that Microsoft just piles code on top of code and somewhere in the middle of it all is MS-DOS 1.0.
I could probably put another dozen items on this list. The point is that it's a big list already. With all the resources in the world at Microsoft's disposal, you have to wonder why the company cannot get everything right even once. - sockpuppets, on 05/01/2008, -2/+45The digg comment system still slows my system down if that's any consolation.
- Ramble, on 05/01/2008, -18/+59He's complaining that drivers for XP don't work in Vista?
That's because it has a new kernel, and new driver models. If it didn't he'd be complaining Vista isn't new enough. - ctrlfreak13, on 05/01/2008, -12/+4564-bit Vista is not really an upgrade from the standard 32-bit Vista...
- Scynet, on 05/01/2008, -14/+44Bah, I've got a standard 32-bit version for gaming and it hasn't failed me. Even BF2 doesn't really CTD anymore (gasp). I really doubt most people have anything against it other than "I heard it sucks so it must be true".
- afx1, on 05/01/2008, -1/+31the jehovah's witnesses on my block are pushy with the freebsd
- sockpuppets, on 05/01/2008, -1/+29I'm running 64-bit as well. I had to because I run >4gb ram and volumes > 2tb.
- Hayes, on 05/01/2008, -7/+34Relax, Dwight.
- superkendall, on 05/01/2008, -8/+34Regardless of what WinFS was, the fact remains that it was promoted pretty heavily for a while and then poof! It was gone.
- BadseedJR, on 05/01/2008, -2/+26I run 64 bit as well. I have used 32 also. We have a mix of it here at our office. I can tell you from my experience, the 64 bit runs better that 32. Why doesn't the entire industry start making a move to 64 bit?
- whitesaint, on 05/01/2008, -4/+27Why are we still reading anything written by that idiot Dvorak? He writes only for traffic and controversy. Here's a video of him admitting to writing BS to piss off mac users (and thus get more hits):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAWDYaWAVQQ - lex0nyc, on 05/01/2008, -4/+25There are sub-categories under each pillar.
- SilverhammerMBA, on 05/01/2008, -5/+26Honestly, my only problem with Vista is that it seems completely unnecessary. XP works fine for pretty much everyone and it seems to me like the handful on new features added by Vista don't merit rolling out a completely new OS. Oh but then Microsoft decided that DX10 won't be backwards compatible with XP. That is just a dick move, plain and simple. Forcing people to upgrade to your flagship OS is NOT the way to get a dedicated user base.
It's understandable to have some minor flaws in your product but I find it ridiculous that Microsoft is expecting people to upgrade from the passable Windows XP to the shiny, but equally mediocre Vista. I wonder why I dual-boot with Ubuntu now? - calebb, on 05/01/2008, -6/+25http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsv ...
Loading an app from RAM (ns access times / Gbps throughput) is much faster than loading from disk (ms access times, Mbps throughput)
The problem with many benchmark sites is they use a fresh install of Vista and reimage it for each test. In every case, SuperFetch is reorganizing their disk and optimizing for best performance...while they are running the Halflife 2 Timedemo.
Most people that dig through the FUD & give Vista a chance end up staying with it. (check out some polls on popular tech forums for some non-scientific polls) - PueSi, on 05/01/2008, -2/+20Hmm photo editing is not rocket science, i'll hardly call a Photoshop user a "poweruser".
- Bloodburn, on 05/01/2008, -14/+32Same here, works flawlessly for me, no problems at all.
Most people instal it on 512 ram computers and then bitch that its slow... - TheMidnight, on 05/01/2008, -4/+21What are you running, NASA in a box?
- PueSi, on 05/01/2008, -6/+23I agree that it uses more resources but from that you get a much more stable system, a more responsive GUI (it's pretty too), better security, faster loading apps (superfetch), a much quicker Explorer, etc.
I'm not saying you should go and upgrade just for Vista but if you already have the equipment, why not take advantage from it? - briansearles, on 05/01/2008, -3/+20All my games work on 64 bit Vista.
- MioTheGreat, on 05/01/2008, -0/+16App start times are generally better on Vista. Also, the UI doesn't require as much repainting, because things are drawn to offscreen buffers, so yes: faster.
- inactive, on 05/01/2008, -16/+31SP1 made Vista a decent OS, it's the first Microsoft product I've ever bought. Not as good as XP yet but maybe with time.
And even failing it's being used much more than OSx and Linux.
I'm not a MS fanboy either, used linux for the last few years on my main machine. - NathanCH, on 05/01/2008, -0/+15How does this article relate to Leopard?
- Dylson, on 05/01/2008, -11/+25That joke is over used and isn't really that funny anymore.
- jakem1, on 05/01/2008, -1/+15ZDnet did the other day and found Vista 64 SP1 was faster than XP SP3. http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1772
- sluddy, on 05/01/2008, -13/+277) Missing drivers. It seems incredible that all of the Windows drivers that worked with XP did not necessarily work with Vista. How does that happen?
stopped reading at that. Idiot.
Also he says that the product is fundementally flawed because they didnt make a big song and dance about launching it? OOFT! - grumpyrain, on 05/02/2008, -1/+14Crysis on medium?
- jub0r, on 05/01/2008, -0/+13Remind me again of these myriad versions of Windows 2000. I only remember Win2k Pro and Win2k Server.
- klisejo, on 05/01/2008, -18/+30I lost 10%-30% FPS when I put Vista on my gaming rig. The new features didn't do much for me to be worth the loss.
- h4ppydotcom, on 05/01/2008, -0/+12I think you made the point by accident...
"Not as good as XP yet but maybe with time." - it needs to be BETTER than XP (from day one) to justify its existence! - devophl, on 05/01/2008, -1/+12The reason XP was so quickly adopted was because of ME and issues with 95 and 98. ME was a horrible OS and clearly Microsoft was trying to do too much with an OS model that wasn't meant for multitasking. The whole 95/98/ME OS model was amazing in that it even worked. Nothing like a 16 bit OS running 32 bit applications. It had to jump through hoops it wasn't meant to do. XP being based on NT solved all these problems.
I don't think Vista is a terrible operating system but I don't believe it is an improvement either. Microsoft continues to stuff more and more into the OS and the bloat is often overriding the benefits. And I have trouble with an OS that spins more cycles trying to do security than running programs. From what I've read, the kernel rework will help Windows immensely down the line but do people really see that today? No!!
My next Windows computer will be Vista but I can't imagine why anyone would upgrade an older PC to Vista. You're just asking for trouble. - Rotzooi, on 05/01/2008, -17/+28People who say 'XP adoption was slow at first', don't know their computing history.
Vista is like Windows ME. Heralded as the next big thing, but a product that is not very good and that rather sooner than later needs a replacement. - oldhick, on 05/01/2008, -2/+13Can someone explain why WinFS "IS NOT AND NEVER WAS A FILE SYSTEM"? It certainly was a file system and I've seen demos on multiple occasions. WinFS was originally touted as one of the driving factors to move to the Longhorn code base. Microsoft hired some IBM folks out of the AS400 team to develop it. The AS400 OS was one of the first and to my knowledge, still one of a very few OS' to use a relational database as the file system. Its gorgeous and performs awesome. Of course costs were high on the proprietary AS400's and most customers switched to AIX.
However, I'm not quite sure why people don't think WinFS was a file system and wasn't supposed to be a part of the Longhorn code base...
Just do some quick research... *****, read the wiki - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS - ryodoan, on 05/01/2008, -4/+15You made it to point 7? Damn, I stopped at him complaining about the size of the code, Gimme a break.
- jakem1, on 05/01/2008, -1/+12Programmers are the real power users :)
- johnomaz, on 05/01/2008, -3/+14That is one of the major reasons why Vista is so big. People in general dont' want to give up their old hardware/software. Vista had to be programed to be backwards compatible with age old *****. Most new computers are ready for 64bit, but programmers of software you would buy don't code for 64bit. Thats why Vista64 has to run in compatibility mode for its legacy 32bit apps. Microsoft is trying to move forward, but it can't as much as it wants because of the industry as a whole holding it back. Apple has an advantage because they are Nazi's about its software and what gets put in the OS. Apple OS on Apple hardware. There is no deviation from it so they can do whatever they want and programmers have to follow. For Windows, its not the same.
- Rotzooi, on 05/01/2008, -28/+38If you use your PC for gaming, sure, it's great. If you are a poweruser, however, Vista is very, very bad indeed.
- Jexie, on 05/01/2008, -0/+10If the jehovah's in my neighborhood pushed freebsd I'd probably convert.
- grumpyrain, on 05/02/2008, -2/+12It is actually even lower then 4GB on Windows because of the I/O mapping for video cards etc.
- PabloMac, on 05/01/2008, -2/+12Nice shot of your mirror.
- daldredge, on 05/01/2008, -6/+16How long ago was this? Both nVidia and AMD fixed most, if not all, of the slowdown issues in drivers released after Vista shipped.
- TheTommyD, on 05/01/2008, -2/+11It is if you have/want more than 4gb's of memory. 32 bit can't use it. http://digg.com/software/Maximum_Memory_in_32_bit_ ...
- TotalHalibut, on 05/01/2008, -37/+46Oh yay, more silly propaganda. This kind of thing reminds me of Jehovah's witnesses forever knocking on my door, begging me to switch to Linux or something..
- OptimisticCynic, on 05/01/2008, -9/+18Buried for being authored by John Dvorak. The biggest blow hard that anybody still pays attention to.
- greevar, on 05/02/2008, -0/+9Wow now that I read that 7 hours later I see why it was dugg down. What I meant to say was, 64 bit OS utilize the 64 bit extensions of the AMD 64 and Intel Core architectures. 64 bit CPU's can address more than 4 GB of RAM. Only AMD 64 and newer CPU's are 64 bit. They are 32 bit CPU's with 64 bit extensions as are the Core line. Thus not true 64 bit CPU's.
- Beatmiser, on 05/02/2008, -2/+11Tell that to a Mac User.
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