Vista - Even The Experts Are Giving Up On It

You’d better get one of those BadVista shirts quick. Looks like they’re going to be popular!

In the end I think all these Vista problems are a good thing for the computing world, because it makes one thing very clear: a good OS requires the collaboration of many groups and Microsoft can’t do it all on it’s own anymore (if it ever could).

Xp solved the stability challenge to Windows. But now the challenge, I believe, is going to be security because the majority of desktop users are now on a network –broadband internet. If Vista can do for security what Xp did for stability, then Vista will be a success.

But I don’t think Microsoft has the creativity or inclination to build a secure Windows, even if it were possible. It may just be in everyone’s best interests to start all over with Linux and build on that platform instead.

Hi Tim,
Agree about XP and stability. I can’t remember when the last time I had a lock up.

Security - I think we will find that Vista will not be any more secure than XP.

Thanks for the comments. Ron

I bought a Dell Dimension XPS 410 Media Guru Model (12-31-06) and am trying to redeem my upgrade for Windows Vista. I went to http://www.dellvistaupgrade.com and am told that I am not eligible to receive my Vista Upgrade. They say my Service Tag # “BYWHBC1″ is not eligible. I have tried for a month to solve this problem.
One would think that Dell would, and should, solve this problem.
I can’t even get a reply from dell about this problem.
If anyone has help, please contact me. Dell Won’t answer my request.

If I knew about this mess before ordering a $2000+ computer from dell, I would have bought a different brand. If they won’t correct this it will be the last time I buy any Dell product. Oris Matherly

Hello Oris,
Question for you. By any chance did Dell provide you with a order number for the express upgrade?

It may be located on your invoice.

I’m not laying down 200.00 on vista even if the performance was spot-on. I’m tried of MS and the strangle hold it has on the entire industry! There is no room for any real competiton so MS reigns supreme. This type of monopoly (that’s right I said it) must come to an end!

I hope I live long enough to see them crash and burn, then maybe there will be some fair competition and several different major OS’s for people to choose from…not to mention some drastically reduced prices (200.00 for an OS is highway robbery) especially when it’s really only worth about 79.99 in my opinion! That price BTW is only the premium version not the 400.00 ultimate…ultimate rip-off is what it should be called!

Bad hardware support, problems running essential software, difficult to configure and use.. Sounds a lot like the reasons people use for not switching to Linux. As to Vista being a revolution in safety and security.. Deja Vu time I think. Every version of Windows is supposed to be more secure and stable than the last one. right up until the first major holes are found.

I haven’t tried Vista myself. I wouldn’t even consider switching to a new version of Windows until at least a year after launch. Too many problems with hardware and software. You have my sympathy during the great Vista bug hunt.

Perhaps its a bit too early to pass judgement on Vista just yet. Every version of Windows has had compatibility problems, and we can’t really expect hardware vendors to support their old products indefinitely. I’ve never got the first run of any OS, so I don’t know if this is any worse than a big jump like the one from 9X to XP/2000. Moving code base is bound to cause problems. Some of my 9X hardware had no drivers for 2000 or XP either, and some programs that I used in 9x didn’t like XP. So casualties of the upgrade process are inevitable.

It strikes me as strange that Nvidia of all people would drag it’s heels in such a high profile market. specially as the very people who buy their most expensive cards are the same ones who will be first in line to download DX10 and play the first batch of DX10 games. So perhaps the delays are because its just too complex to program a working and backward compatible set of drivers, or perhaps instead of working with them, Microsoft told them what it wanted the drivers to do, Presented them with the API, and let them get on with it.

If the driver system is too complex, it could be one explanation for the delays with some video cards. And if the drivers for these and other hardware are expensive to write, say goodbye to a fair proportion of your old hardware. Only time will tell.

Another very unlikely, but amusing possibility is that it is just so much easier to write for XP, so the hardware and software vendors have decided to put less resources into getting the support ready for an OS that will only have a profitable share of the market in a few years from now.

Business users and the average home user only buy a new computer when the old one doesn’t do what they want any more. That is 3-5 year life span. So the number of people buying new computers with vista this year will still be quite a small percentage of the Windows user base as a whole. Vista will be a minority OS for quite a while yet. So everyone who writes software for it will write XP compatible versions too, or make it backward compatible. Anything else would be financial suicide.

Hi John,
Thank you for posting your thoughts and your comments. It should be interesting to see how long it does take for new drivers to be written.
Thanks once again, Ron

Well John let me just answer your question, yes vista IS very problematic. I took it for a test drive for about a month, to make a long story short there are many gamnes that don’t run right on the current vista build. Lets not even get into the app’s which a friend of mine is now spending much $$$ to buy new “vista” ready software like anti-virus and disk defragmenting so on and so forth. Your absolutely right, all windose OS’s start this way; I don’t completely blame MS for it however it would be nice if there could be a several other MAJOR OS’s available to choose from.

What i simply do not understand is why there is not a larger uptake of Apple Macs. I was firm windows users and had been since i migrated from my Commodore Amiga at the age of 12. I built my own machines and then even built them for friends and family and perhaps was more exposed to the trials and tribulations of Microsoft products. I really first felt the burn having saved up for months to get a copy of Millenium which was absolute cack. I learnt my lesson the hard way and continued with PC’s as whilst i was aware of Macs at the time they were more expensive than PC’s. Anyway after many problems with XP i decided to get a Mac since there prices had dropped inline with those of PC’s. When i swithced over, my 6 year old son and non-IT literate wife were dragged against their will with me. 18 months later and I am a complete convert, as is my son and even my technophobe wife. I have recommened over 5 relatives the mac platform and its fantastic OS and everyone has gone and bought one and have thanked me. I would say if you are on the fence on this one and if Vista is for yu, please go to an Apple Store and give it a whirl you owe it to yourself…Matt UK

Hi Matt,
Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. Your comments are appreciated.
Ron

Since I have heard and seen so many issues of backwards compatibility and driver compatibility with Vista, I decided to instead try a Linux Distro, Ubuntu 6.10, and everything works right after install, including video, sound, network cards, dialup, and even wireless, the help files and support are rather large and extensive, the amount of freely available programs for it is immense, and even some windows things will run under the Wine Windows Emulator. Due to the monopoly and lock-in on some programs and things, I am still stuck with having a Windows XP partition however. But instead of getting vista and losing backwards program and driver support anyways, now would be a good time to begin migrating to a Linux based system…

Couldn’t agree more Lawrence. There should be at least two distinct operating systems. More would be better. A monoculture hurts everybody but the company in the driving seat.. Personally I don’t think that one OS can provide everything to everyone. Computers are just too flexible to be boiled down to one system and one set of apps.

I can see the reason that Apple doesn’t get the kind of market share it deserves. The majority of people don’t actually make a choice when they buy a computer. They have a budget, a list of vague things they want to do, and perhaps a little experience at work or a friend who “knows about this stuff”, which can be a blessing or a curse. Then they are at the mercy of the sales people at the computer store, which is usually Windows only.

Hopefully the increased numbers of Mac users will be able to recommend their platform to friends, and get a bigger market share. Same thing applies to Linux. Although that’s better for those of us who have already got a fair investment in PC hardware.

Who knows.. If Vista’s problems are not temporary, other OS platforms might yet get a look in. If nothing else, it will be interesting to see who Steve Ballmer blames for the slow uptake next.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people think they gotta have the latest version of Windows and then find that it’s a piece of crap. Windows 95 was not bad as an OS, and Windows 98 was even better. I personally never had ME, which was a real pain in and of itself, but nothing like Vista. Windows XP isn’t too bad, although I passed on putting that on my own computer due to the activation system, although my wife has that on her computer plus it’s on our laptop (she insisted).

But as for Vista — I want NO part of Vista whatsoever. It sucks so bad it could suck a golfball through a garden hose. Vista is proof that Microsoft has completely lost sight of the needs of its customers and has gotten concerned about nothing else other than making money and forcing everyone else to spend like crazy so that they can make more money and upholding their monopoly — and that’s all they seem to care about anymore.

Bill Gates ran a pretty decent show at Microsoft. But Microsoft’s board of directors or whatever should FIRE Steve Ballmer if they wanna stay in business, because I believe Vista will be the downfall of Microsoft. And with Ballmer’s FUD about how Linux violates Microsoft intellectual property, how about all the ideas MICROSOFT has stolen from OTHERS? Ballmer will be in deep doo-doo if he tries to act on his claim and he knows it. Steve Ballmer, can you say pot? Kettle? Black? Good — I knew you could.

As for me, I’ve been a Linux user for the past two years (I have MEPIS, which seems to be the best distro I’ve ever tried, and I’ve tried quite a few), and all of Vista’s problems make me glad I defected to the Linux crowd a long time ago. In fact, I don’t miss Windows one little bit. And believe it or not, even though my wife has been a die-hard Windows fan, whenever XP bites the dust on her computer or our laptop, she is thinking she may eventually switch to Linux, too.

Hi Elroy and Fred,
Thanks for your comments.
Ron

Just came across the site. Interesting thoughts.

What I can tell you is that working with a large pharmaceutical co. as with most large corporations, custom apps and a conservative attitude is common. Most rollouts to the “next version of windows” occur quite a ways after it is released due to inherent difficulties with such custom applications, but for the first time, there is serious concern over Vista as there is custom hardware involved too for scientists deskside. (most of these guys forcefully install linux since windows can’t handle their tests, so we turn a blind eye on the IT side)
All to say simply that the words “Mac” and “Novell” have been officially thrown out more than once when at planning sessions for 2-3 years down the road, and this has never happened.
We’ve tested Vista just as a preliminary step, and with tweaking, it bombed on all tests. That’s never happened before either.
It’s true that MS does release decent patches and updates once windows has been out in the wild for a bit,
but if Vista is having such tremendous difficulty even with the most rudimentary settings and software, MS is indeed going to have to play catch up with some pretty serious elements.

I myself stopped using windows personally over a year ago and drifted to Ubuntu when my wife said, “I think you need to fix the computer again”.
I don’t need an IT job at home, thank you very much.
The most that’s happened since is “where’s the spreadsheet program?”

Hello Adrian,
Very interesting. It makes one wonder how many other companies are facing a similar situation. It does appear that between the hardware requirements and software incompatibilities that Vista may pose more of a challenge than previous operating systems have caused. I personally do not recall any MS operating system facing such a large hurdle. And as I stated in my last Linux article, this is going to be a great opportunity for Linux to step up to the plate. Providing the Linux community takes advantage of the situation.
Thanks for your thoughts and comments. They are appreciated.
Ron

Vista brings a problem that goes beyond computer science in particular and computers in general. It’s about absolute power over the information that flows around the world. It’s about pressure against any country that feels not compelling to US way of behavior.

With the help of the NSA, Microsoft developed an e-weapon not more not less. NSA is the US Agency responsible for spying electronic communications (both friends and foes) around the world. Their accomplices are the UK (trojan horse in the EU) and New Zealand, and the tool is Echelon.

The NSA has surely installed Echelon related code and procedures into Vista. Instead of analyzing hundreds of terabytes of communications for keywords with the possibility that interesting flow can be lost among the huge amount of data spied, let us imagine a mini Echelon system in everybody’s home. Whenever a keyword is detected in Vista, the Echelon sub-system is activated and data is sent to the NSA. Easy and very efficient, thow cost free (the user pays all the fees).

Therefore, Microsoft has become a very dangerous thing. The Vista delay has surely been orchestrated in order to add after 9/11 stuff to spy more and spread more terror around the world and to match the Patriot Act obligations.

Microsoft/NSA has invented a new business: spy everyone and make money out of this business.

For this reason, Microsoft should be definitely banned from the world computers.

The Operating System development should be done by an international team, and the complete source code always available to anyone. No company should be allowed to control an operating system.

MS products are not better than the competitors softs: MS always adds sabotage code in their OS to make competitive software crash often and run badly in order to fake the users. But the truth is that Microsoft products are not good at all. Remember the time when the company developers were wasting their time hidding pinball games in word, instead of fixing bugs. This shows only one thing: producing high quality software has never been a priority at Microsoft.

Microsoft has never invented anything, except the way to make mountains of money out of poorly designed and beta grade software. Microsoft is the best marketing company in the world. They could sell you the worst toilet paper in the world and convince you to ugrade your toilets each time they change the color of the flowers of the paper.

Steve Ballmer wants to squeeze more revenue out of emerging countries. Of course, with a fortune estimated to 14 billion dollars, he is a poor man.

Vista is defective by design, eg., this box is a DRM based spyware that has to be paid for. Since a spying agency interests itself in such a system, one should apply a precaution principle and put all the company’s products in quarantine until we analyse the risks.

Hello Jacques,

This one line says it all:

“Microsoft is the best marketing company in the world. They could sell you the worst toilet paper in the world and convince you to upgrade your toilets each time they change the color of the flowers of the paper.”

Thank you for your comments. And your thoughts are very much appreciated.

Take care, Ron

Couldn’t agree more with all said. However i’m once again apathetic.

If this OUTRAGE could be brought into the intense light of public scrutiny, then maybe I would ‘lock n load’ against Microsoft.

I would gladly send e-mails to Media News Shows and the like, asking them to bring the Monster out of the shadows.

How about providing links to any and all Media.

Microsoft and it’s “Flunkies” (those in Media who tout Vista as ‘good’) remind me of old Soviet Style Propagand machine.

Death to Monopoly!!!

Sorry for rambling.

Hi John,
Thanks for the comments. I’m going to be doing some investigating into just how Linux can receive more public attention.

Thanks, Ron

I made the mistake of upgrading to Vista. Bad, bad move. I have digital studio recording toys and my SB Extigy soundcard isn’t allowed to transfer info from my digital studios to the computer. Vista won’t “allow” mt S/P DIF connections. Stupid DRM. Who needs it? What a complete waste of money. Right now I’m downloading an .iso from Jacklab.net. It’s a free OS built on SUSE that is specifically tailored to the computer musician.

I’m also going back to XP. At least there all my toys worked.

If Linux is going to capture a larger audience, now is the perfect time.

Hello Brian,
Thanks for sharing with us your experience. I hope Linux works OK for you.
Thanks again, Ron

I have been a beta tester myself, of the last two operating systems that microsoft has put on the market. XP and Vista. Windows Vista is still far from stable, and Xp being the stablest OS that mircrsoft has to offer, is still not completely stable. Since the turn of the century I have also been testing a few gun/linux distros, and I must say that I am very impressed with what I have discovered. My current is Mandriva. I love all the extra options. I love the stablity. I love the fact that now the Linux OS’s support most all Windows hardware. I love, I love, I love. I can go on and on. By the way Ron, I like the toilet paper bit.

Hi Larry,
Thanks for your comments. I thought the toilet paper bit was funny, true, but funny none the less. And I’m glad you are happy with Mandriva.It’s a great distro. I used version 2006 for quite a while myself. And 2007 is even better.:-)

I discovered GNU/Linux in 2000 and since then I saw many of them (Red Hat, SuSE before its mormonization, Mandrake/Mandriva, Fedora). This year I also installed and worked with a FreeBSD 4.1 on a Pentium 233 MMX and ran a news server, an ftp server and sendmail on our intranet. The uptime of this old computer no one wanted was superior to our prod server running NT4.

After that I used Slackware and now I switched to Debian (I still run Slack on a server).

Today the Vista thing shows I was right to switch to GNU/Linux. Dell is beginning to take Linux users into account. I hope the other manufacturers will follow this intelligent decision.

Hello Jacques,
I believe that you may see more OEM’s offering Linux as a alternative. However, there may be some consequences that could occur. If MS sees to many offerings and a erosion of their server or desktop base, they may just file a suit against Linux for code stealing. Whether true or not. Since MS had bank rolled SCO with their failed attempt to get IBM to buckle under, MS may be left only with this option.

If M$ wants t lay the “stealing code” game, who is to say that they didn’t steal it from the free, open source community and then claim they worte it. . . It’s a two-way street. Only problel is, the golden rule. . .”Whoever has the gold, makes the rules!” Or, “He who rules the word is he with the biggest club!” and it isn’t only the club you can beat someone with but also one that you can belong to!

Hi Doug,
Thanks for your comments.

It occurs to me that the DRM issues and the hardware driver issues may be related. My understanding is that the DRM stuff is very complicated; it enforces quite elaborate behaviours on hardware if the hardware is to be “trusted”. This may be quite hard to write drivers for, especially if you don’t want performance and stability hits. To make matters worse, I believe Vista interprets instability as intrusion, potentially causing it to disable offending hardware.
So hardware makers may be in the situation of having to write far more difficult drivers *and* having to make sure they’re very stable before they’re released, rather than putting out initial flaky versions for bleeding edge consumers. Given that, hardware drivers for Vista may continue to lag.

Hi Rufus,
Interesting thought. That darn DRM is going to be a nightmare.
Thanks for the comment. Ron

i had nothing but trouble with vista. icrashed 2 brand new p.c.s and took them back to the retailer for credit.i found a unit at a discount store with windows xp in it. so far so good. i like that vista wallpaper and what vista really means,because that is exactly the same problems i was having. vista is absolute garbage!!!

Hi Dave,
Thanks for sharing your experiences with us. It is appreciated.
Ron

I bought a new dell dimension E521 with dual amd64 chips and 1 Gig ram. Recieved box monday 19-03-2007. Started Vista and it was read my lips: S-L-O-W and cumbersome to work with if you’re used to xp…different desktop setup. I installed ubuntu on this box (necessarily wiping vista) and it worked SICK FAST. I’m not done testing everything yet but at worst, I’ll re-install xp on this box, or at best, a very user-friendly distro of LINUX.

Sadly, the linux community has VERY FEW distros, eg. PCLinuxOS, simplymepis and (less so) ubuntu, that are really making moves toward anything windows users are accustomed. Once this feat is accomplished, then they’re be converts in droves. Sadly, LINUX distros don’t follow a structured commercial release schedule, it’s more of a symbiotic process where developers run the show, not greedy money-makers….that’s what you call a ‘catch-22′

Regarding your answer above -
where you are wondering why it takes NVidia so long to get their drivers set up…
I am astonished that so few people know of the real costs and problems all that enforced DRM crap is causing.
Please read the long, but very detailed article linked below - there’s maybe the answer as to why it takes so long:
“http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html”

Well as each machine around the house dies (usually the Windows slows to a crawl from virsus, spyware, or what I dub “Windows Cancer” which is this ineveitable but inexplicable steady slowing in performance) it is getting replaced with some form of LINUX. The two machines I used seemed to have a huge boost in speed and have been rock solid stable, running weeks on end with no degradation; one is Freespire, the other Ubuntu 6.06. The 3-year old is now a LINUX (Edubuntu) user, his machine has it with the suprisingly widely available set of open source kiddie apps for it. The spouse I am transitioning in the slow way way using Firefox in place of Explorer and OpenOffice in place of MSOffice, when the machine dies I’ll probably use the XP-like interface of Freespire or Linspire LINUX to replace Windows.

Hi Steve,
Thanks for the info.

Winfred,
Thanks for the link.

Oteast,
Interesting concept replacing Windows with Linux as the need arises. Thanks for the comment.

Ron

Microsoft says that Vista is the most secure Windows ever.

Big deal. They don’t care about security. They care about controlling what executes on Vista (i.e. DRM) so that they can own Hollywood. Like Apple has done to the music industry. However, Apple managed to do it without screwing up their operating system.

At the end of the day, Vista wasn’t designed for you, the customer. It was designed for Microsoft, and it shows.

I honestly can’t think of a single reason to get Vista over Windows XP, besides it being preinstalled on a new PC. It eats up your CPU, and has the potential to stop working at any time because Microsoft decides that some of your hardware isn’t kosher.

Sure, it has some eye-candy (big deal), and a few nice iLife-like applications that you could have just bought for XP anyway.

It’s laughable. Mac OS is now clearly vastly superior to anything that Windows can hope to be within the next 10 years.

Even Linux, with its scary multiple distributions (scary to non-IT-professionals), and all of it’s n00b unfriendliness is looking like a better choice for almost everyone (if you don’t agree with me about n00b unfriendliness, go try and tell Aunty Raeline what ‘ls -la’ means).

The fact that Microsoft has so clearly failed to produce the best OS is great for me. I only use their systems at work, where they’re provided for me, maintained for me, and if they don’t work, it’s not my problem.

At home, it’s MacOS all the way.

Hi Kim,
Thanks for sharing with us your thoughts. Your comments are appreciated.
Regards, Ron

How did you wipe Vista Steve? I’m trying to help my 60+ year old sister remove Vista and replace it with XP, but nothing is working, Any help is appreciated…email me please

>>How did you wipe Vista Steve? I’m trying to help my 60+ year old sister remove Vista and replace it with XP, but nothing is working, Any help is appreciated…

Prior to wiping Vista I would recommend getting information on the PC’s hardware; like the type of LAN, video, sound, modem and any other thing, and download their drivers for Windows XP. The motherboard manufacturer will have drivers for all integrated peripherals available for download. Keep all downloaded drivers on a pen-drive or a CD for later.

And this is what I did with a brand new PC purchased from big box store with pre-loaded Vista on it. First I established that the HDD was a Hitachi SATA drive. Then I downloaded a HDD installation tool from Hitachi support site (all other manufacturers have a HDD tool to d/l) and following their instructions burned it as a bootable CD. I chose boot from CD in BIOS and ran the installation tool with advanced options. I formatted the HDD with NTFS and divided it in two partitions, which I always do to be able to write image (ghost) of the primary partition in a folder on the secondary one, and to keep crucial data away from the OS partition.

I rebooted PC with XP disc in the tray and began XP installation in the usual way. Voila!

Hi Goldfinger,
Thanks for sharing your experience with us. I am sure this will help those who are considering to reverting back to XP.
Ron

Unless you are a big gamer, or perhaps an AutoCAD operator, there is no need whatsoever to use any version of Windows. It’s time has passed, and Vista only hastens its decline.

LINUX is the way to go- it’s easy to install, it has a full range of mature applications available, it’s very secure and reliable. It is a pleasure to operate and use.

Even if LINUX weren’t free, it would still be a superior choice over Windows.

Hi Kurt,
Thanks for your comments. Linux is getting more and more press.
Ron