Ron Schenone

Is It Really 'Vista Bashing' If You Dislike The New OS?

Posted by on Jun 9, 2008 | 18 Comments

I was reading an article in Vista News last night, in which there was an article about  ‘Vista Bashing’, which was described as the new  ‘National Pastime’. The basics of what the article was trying to present, was the fact that people have always bashed Microsoft and any of their previous operating systems, and that people forgot how bad Windows XP was when it was first introduced.

One part of the article mentioned that even when Windows was first introduced, people mentioned that they would never give up DOS for a pretty GUI. They felt that they were losing control over their system and would not upgrade.  One particular sentence caught my eye:

As it turns out, much of the problem is the OEM configuration and you can tweak the settings to make these machines perform much better. Service Pack 1 also helps. But the average person who brings home a new computer and finds that it’s slow as molasses doesn’t want to have to figure out how to tune it up. He/she concludes that the system itself is a dud, that the new operating system is a dud, or both.

No Duh! What are they supposed to think? Why is it when it comes to ANY software, that ANY company has the right to dump onto the public an unfinished product?  That it is OK after they take your money to announce that the software is a work in progress?

It’s been over 25 years since the first PC hit the street. Is it really to much to ask that software, no matter who produces it, just works? Or is that to much to ask?  Or if we buy a new car and the doors fall off, should we just accept it, and put the doors in the trunk stating the car is a work in progress?

Last week Symantec was quick to point fingers at Microsoft for problems with SP3 for Windows XP. A few days later Symantec said oops. We be bad. It could be our fault. So using this as an example, is the consumer expected to fix the problem themselves? It does appear that way.

So if you are in a car accident and your air bags don’t deploy, just accept the fact it’s a work in progress! Plus you should of known it wouldn’t work and don’t blame the car company.  You should of bought Airbag Service Pack #1. :-)

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Source.

  • Ryan

    They need to come up with some kind of a Godwin’s style Law for Microsoft fanboys telling me I’m at fault for Windows Vista getting in the way of how I use my computer, I really actually liked Windows 98, 2000, and XP all the way up to where they infected it with WGA and such, and even then I tried to press on with it, despite some aggravating screwups on it’s part.

    Before you ask, I was a paying Windows customer since the days of Windows 3.1, so don’t even start about “Linux fanboy” or “Windows hater”, Vista simply doesn’t do things the way I want them done, and that makes it useless for me.

    The point where I had enough was when I attempted to upgrade some older systems to it, which ran XP fine, but were literally being crushed to death by Vista, I have a Compaq laptop with 1 GB of RAM and a 1.8 Ghz Sempron, which is no speed demon, but should still run an operating system, and with Ubuntu on it, I can even get away with some light gaming, with Sauerbraten, Planet Penguin Racer, etc, those wouldn’t even run at all (Windows versions) on Vista.

    So I guess to wrap this up, I have to say that I don’t hate Microsoft, their products are simply too ineffective for my needs, and disinterest me these days, they could overhaul Windows, but they’ll likely just continue recommending that you simply throw older, useful hardware in a landfill and buy their latest products.

    Side note: They also don’t have anything at all that runs well enough on the minimal specs of a netbook to compete with Linux, Linux scales, Windows won’t (at least without serious loss of features).

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Heh Ryan,
    I agree. Just because you don’t like Vista or any MS product, you have a perfect right to express yourself without being labeled.

  • mhz

    Hehe, like it or not, it costs less in the short run to provide unfinished software, so everyone will continue to do it in perpetuity. It is a successful business model now, isn’t it? I don’t know for sure if Microsoft pioneered it, but the perception certainly is there….

    Even IT professionals constantly unload millions of dollars in contracts for “unfinished software” from various vendor sources, and they (presumably) have the means to investigate ahead of time. Consumers in (banking/healthcare/other? ) have no idea how often they are unwitting participants in software “beta testing.” Software is often developed in realtime, relying on constant feedback to identify bugs.

    I’m waiting for a “breaking news” event where a consumer is wronged and subpoenas eventually reveal that software behind the failed system was part of a “beta” or “early adopter” agreement between companies, with the consumer unknowingly in the middle. It likely happens all the time, but the consumer just doesn’t know to ask the right questions.

    The whole question of unfinished software is huge. IT JUST DOESN’T CLICK for most people, whether home/consumers or IT professionals. They have no idea where to set their expectations for computer software quality. Consumers just take whatever they can get, and IT pros often hide the known issues from their customers, and absorb the complaints and delays, building a ridiculous amount of stress in the process.

    Over time, using Windows has made people accepting of the fact that they’ll need updates, so nearly all other vendors just got on that bandwagon, and push a product to market ASAP, hoping that users will accept and get used to it, and endure downtime periodically to patch it.

    On the other hand, there is no possible way that software could be any better than when you have millions of people beta testing it (as long as the mfg always fixes the problems that crop up).

    I mean it would be nice if they incorporated all of the security measures and programming best practices of the mythical Ideal Software Program, but what large distribution software does?

    MS tried to rewrite and make some fundamental architecture improvements for Vista, but they blew it because they
    1. Defaulted to a new UI
    2. Interposed UAC into the software installation process

    Which directly translates to:
    1. User frustration due to loss of ALL familiarity
    –Costs the user time and creates the perception that MS does not care about wiping out existing knowledge and forcing you to re-learn the same things over again.
    2. No backward compatibility with older software installs
    –Companies have to buy new products in order to package their software for distribution on Vista.
    –Consumers must buy newer versions to get Vista/UAC compatible installs for software that they used to use on XP.

    Thats just IMHO of course, and it will be interesting to see if any of MS Vista trouble affects the overall software dev mindset in the future, or has any discernible impact on Windows end user expectations.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    mhz – two thumbs up.
    I sent you an email.

  • mhz

    Ron– this address will work better. I never usually put my real address. Sorry about that. Who knew I would actually need to?

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    OK – I sent a second email :-)

    You are needed!

  • Ryan

    @mhz

    The idea of finished development only applies when the software is abandoned, sort of like “There’s no such thing as a finished movie, just one you stop working on and release”, or something to that effect…George Lucas said it I believe.

    But the problem with Microsoft is that release versions are slow and unpredictable, and that they care more about whether their software has been paid for than if it actually works for the customer, if something is broke, you may just have to deal with it for a year or two before there’s a service pack that still may not fix it.

    In Linux, releases are very very quick, every 6 months when Ubuntu releases it’s essentially a totally new OS that works better than it’s predecessor, and if there’s a widespread bug, you can simply wait a matter of a couple weeks, or pull a new kernel out of Proposed updates, or download the source code from kernel.org if you’re feeling really wicked and adventurous, the idea is a good one though, you can decide just how bleeding edge you want to be, or if you want to stay with a kernel that’s known to be good and safe, and just apply security patches, but in no way does anything fester for years at a time with no improvements.

  • Media-Ted

    Several light thoughts on a very heavy subject – heavy because of all the Promises made, … then broken; heavy because of expectations of users for improvements; heavy because of mounting disappointments. It’s also heavy because of all the history of “new-fangled” things in their day(s). F’r'nstance: the automobile; the first few years were full of noise, dreams, mechanical failures – and refusal to accept the horseless carriage over the tried and true horse which knew the way home, … even if the rider was to tired – or drunk – to find his own way.

    I may be a wee bit rusty here (only 60), but it seems that cars had bad “shimmees” when they went over certain speeds – somewhere between 35 and 55 mp/h. They whined; they were underpowered and there was a mighty push and competition between power, roominess (size and weight increases – which negatively affected the available power), and gadgets. In fact, it wasn’t until the mid-to-late 1950′s that major producers began using 12 volt batteries to start the engines which, by now, were expected to power such things as steering, brake assist, and air conditioning pumps, so the starters had a tremendous load facing them – as well as higher compression and added pistons.

    Along with that came the problems associated with wheels, tires (usually “bias-ply” versus “radial”), balloon tires, the furious development – and errors – of various transmission types (Clutch, double clutch, synchronos gears, … after seemingly endless crunching and grinding; “automatic” transmissions – gear/planetary/belt/”dyna-flo”).

    In the decades since the first experimental systems there were many people/companies vying for customers. Many high quality manufacturers went under because others sold cheaper models. That left many customers with decreasing choices and decreasing quality. Also, many people were drawn off of basic quality issues by such nuances as sound systems (radios, 4-track & 8-track tape, followed by cassette, AM/FM radio – then Stereo FM, … later stereo AM – now satellite and CD/MP3/iPod, DVD players). Serious issues began surfacing with safety in too many of the “basic” automobiles, i.e. gas tank explosions on Pintos, etc.

    The major (rich) producers began a program of denial, followed by accelerated advertising, attempting to divert dissatisfaction to other pleasant ideals. In many cases it seemed to work, … until TV news began investigation procedures which alerted the public to the undeniable dangers of certain models.

    Let me switch to that now. Radio and Television, in the early days was very patchy; crystal sets with little rocks and a “cat-whisker” moved along the surface until a signal was strongest.

    Later manufacturers began to amplify both the RF and the audio. They also began working on tuning devices so one could select from the growing number(s) of signals. Some chose to use induction tuning – carbon rods moving in and out of a coil & capacitance tuning – which finally won out. Little metal sleeves moving in a semi-circle with a locked inductance coil. Later, super-heterodine radios produced their own signals which added to or subtracted from the incoming mixture of signals in order to keep the radio receiving at 455 KC (kilo-cycles – before Hertz). This gave a fairly even signal strength and sound quality to stations from the broad spectrum.

    We had AM and Short-Wave radios. We could listen to “Hams” or the local police/fire departments. We could hear broadcasts from halfway around the world (how much further can you get???).

    Soon people were using radio/TV to entertain, inform, and advertise.

    Then came the push for better sound and more strength so we didn’t become annoyed with “skip and fade” as signals interplayed with the atmosphere.

    I could go on, but the idea here is that we are still in a period of infancy/toddler development in computers. There is much to be learned. There is a great deal which has already been learned, but forcibly discarded by the greedy so that we must put up with their schedule of “improvements” and pay more for less at each stage.

    In all the examples above – and many, … many more, there is the problem of those with money and power who keep the best out of reach; who deliberately discourage and dismantle true inovation in order to make great profits from crap. I could have gone into depth on the airline industry, but “The Aviator” has already told that well enough. A study of Tesla will reveal that we are still centuries behind where we ought to be in safety and reliability in our power needs – but probably will never see.

    The lust for money, power, control, and the ability to bully everyone with no fear of consequences is what drives too many to put their time, effort, money, and “industry” into creating shortages of everything to insure them a “place in history”.

    Unfortunately, it seems to take around 100 years for those people to lose their grip. Witness the decline and fall of the American Automobile industry. In fact, consider the decline of all manufacturing in the Occidental world in contrast with the increase of products and services from the Oriental world. Ford and GM really needed to be investigated decades ago for unsafe – knowingly unsafe – productions, but it took the importing of Toyotas and other high-quality products, combined with high performance products from Europe (remember when “Cadillac” was the “best”? That has been replaced with BMW, Rolls-Royce, – well, you get the idea. One of the best autos produced, … ever, was the Citroên, but that has been “banned” from the US. Imagine!)

    OK, so C/PM was one of the best. It’s dead – killed, not by competition, but by aggresive war against its existence – its quality. DEC/VAX was – by far – superior to anything M$ has yet produced, … or ever will, but it’s also lying in a heap of dinosaur bones; buried so deeply that today’s IT’s do not even remember it.

    The unfortunate and unhappy truth is that M$ will continue to bilk people of billions unless and until someone more powerful, more evil, more (fill in the blank) comes along and does to M$ what it has done to its “competition”. It will happen, but it may not be soon. To be sure, M$ is wounding itself rather irrationally with the continual betrayal of its customer base. This has done much to help Apple and a small bit to help the Open Source movement, but O.S. is not really an industry, but rather a consortium of really nice, smart people, all bent on providing good stuff for people who want to use it. I’d love to see them prosper – but prospering is not their goal; providing service is, … and that will always be forced to “fail” by those too interested in “succeeding” by winning wars and destroying any potential competition.

    As long as there are ignorant people, … in massive numbers; there will be bu$$ine$$e$ to take them, their money, their time, their labor, their lives – whatever can be taken.

    So, call me a M$ basher. Why not? They have been bashing me ever since I was given my first DO$ machine. What’s good for the goose is good for the goosed.

  • http://www.dardin.net/ Bruce Dardin

    Yes, it is “Vista Bashing” if the author hasn’t bothered to use the product for a reasonable amount of time or if they get the majority of their “expertise” from the untold thousands of articles on the web denouncing Windows Vista as a failure.

    I’ve used Vista since its release (purchased two retail copies of Vista Ultimate) and have had no discernable issues with the exception of network file copy performance (which has been fixed in SP1). The only issues I’ve had have been caused by third-party software (Flash, Quicktime, Yahoo Messenger), not the OS.

    Yes, it requires recent hardware and more memory than XP for similar performance but when has that not ever been the case for a new operating system upgrade? Memory is dirt cheap now and hardware as well. Most recent motherboards even have integrated graphics chips that are capable of running the “Aero” UI.

    And to “mhz”: “ALL familiarity”… you’re joking right? Honestly, how different is Vista from XP? Better Start Menu – check, more intuitive “breadcrumb” navigation in Explorer – check, missing menus? – Alt key. There are far more similarities than not. Did you upgrade from Windows 3.11? That might explain this remark…

    And “No backward compatibility with older software installs”? Ridiculous. I use Paint Shop Pro 4.12 and Microsoft Image Composer 1.5 – both written for Windows 95 – and they install and function seamlessly. UAC is a huge improvement over the (lack of) security model used in Windows XP and will prevent millions of systems from being hosed by unauthorized malware installs. However, I wish they’d take it a step further and not allow Administrator account login period.

    Any complex software has unknown issues and “bugs” at the time of release. This is not indicative of some conspiracy to dupe the consumer, it’s just the nature of software.

    In summary, the majority of articles and comments on those articles appear to be from people who haven’t used Vista at all or try to run it on out-dated hardware and/or install poorly written third-party applications.

    If you are in this camp, you are indeed “Vista Bashing”.

  • http://www.baldguyweb.com/blog Ron Enderland

    I agree with Ryan. I thought 2000 was a quantum leap for MS, finally putting NT reliability on the home user’s computer. And I didn’t like XP’s flowery interface, but when a fellow geek showed me how to turn all of that off by adjusting the system for best performance, I became a fan, especially of its very fast bootups.

    But the appearance of WGA, and all that it implies, put a very bad taste in my mouth. Plus, Ubuntu Feisty finally made Linux easy enough for a lifelong MS user.

    Now, Vista is a foul DRM-laden monster that makes the hottest hardware run at mediocre speeds. And people like me, moderately geeky types, are finally getting fed up enough to join the FOSS movement.

    I REALLY like to find instant answers to issues that I’m having via web searches. That is simply not the case with proprietary products, even non-MS ones like Zend Studio (which is too great of a product to drop for a FOSS alternative).

  • http://www.myladyweb.com Teresa Bohannon

    If you currently own, or have owned and dumped Vista after losing valuable productivity time, work, and the ability to use certain programs that you depend on or worked with regularly for years, plus the irritation, headache and trauma of major system crashes and lock downs…it’s not Vista bashing…its more a matter of having earned the right to speak out against a company who released an unfinished, unstable product and who compounded that error by attempting to force you to buy their system.

    Except for my first Tandy 1000, I’ve been a Dos/Microsoft user for well over 20 years and more than once have publicly complimented them for bringing ease of use to the non-techy masses. Simplified, menu driven computing was truly a boon to people everywhere and particularly to the army of women working in offices who couldn’t afford to retire and who had to to go along with the computer revolution in order to remain in the workforce.

    After dumping my extremely disappointing Vista computer back on the vendor who meekly went along with the Microsoft marketing ploy, I special ordered a laptop and then a desktop with XP. Hopefully, I’m set for the next couple of years and by the time Microsoft will have rolled out a reliable new product.

  • http://woolf2k.spaces.live.com/ woolf2k

    this idea that software companies can sell beta software to the public with owning up to it is a growing problem. Specially with MMO games today. A recent sample is FunCom’s Age of Conan. Just this past weekened I learned that there Character creation process was broken so anybody coming in after puschasing the game for $50 would not be able to play the game cause they couldn’t make a character.

    This is a brief blotch, I’m sure they’ll have it fixed if they have already but that is just one of many many things wrong with the software that existed from launch day.

    So what are we to do. How can we as consumers show software companies that they CANNOT sell software in such a state without warning us it is in that state.

    And how long before this behavior propagates to other types of software.

    Something needs to be done. Something should be done.

  • MikeWill

    Who cares anymore? What is, is, and that’s the way it is. If people are bashing Vista, then there must be reasons for it. Just because some people have no problem with Vista, doesn’t mean other people aren’t having a frustrating time with it. When a consumer pays big bucks for something that doesn’t work the way it was promised, then bash away, it’s well deserved.

  • Pingback: Vista Bashing - The Comments Were Superb ~ The Blade by Ron Schenone, MVP

  • mhz

    @Bruce,

    My comments are based on a couple of things:

    1. Packaging software for mass distribution (and requiring new and expensive tools to handle UAC)
    2. My own perception that all useful utilities have now moved into harder to find places in the UI….(and I probably should not have said ALL familiarity, since there are a few familiar things remaining)
    3. The issues that I hear when customers, friends and family who have used XP finally ask for my help with their new Vista laptop.

    In my world, both in an Enterprise environment, and in my personal life, most people are struggling with Vista.

  • Paul

    This is kind of off the subject, but I cannot remember the last time I had a good experience with contacting the software manufacturer to find a solution to my problem.

    Now here is where it is off the subject. My Weber grill’s lighter quit working, so I went to their website for the part. Couldn’t find it, so I called them at about 8 pm. on a
    Saturday. A person actually answered the call, told me the
    part I needed and sent it out the next day! I was shocked that someone actually answered the phone and apparently they do that all the time. In fact, my buddy called them on the eve of Thanksgiving and they provided turkey grilling tips.

    I don’t sell Weber grills, don’t have anything to do with the industry, but, when was the last time you called anybody for help and they answered it on the 2nd or 3rd ring? What grill do you think I will buy next time or recommend to someone? It would be nice to see other companies provide service like that. Investing in good customer service and not get a bad image actually makes companies money. You would think the likes of Microsoft would learn after the debacle they have been having with Vista.

    It’s like going into a restaurant and you get terrible food and service. On top of it, they charge you an extra 15% service fee. You going to go there again or tell your friends what a great place it is? Probably not.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Thanks for all of the comments and for sharing your thoughts.
    Regards, Ron

  • E2001

    I don’t run Vista for (1) simple reason: I don’t feel like building yet ANOTHER COMPUTER because the latest incarnation of MS bloatware won’t run on my current hardware. I did the “upgrade your hardware” thing with every release of Windows up to this point, and have NO intention of doing it again! I’ve got better things to spend my money on… like Twinkies… or Budweiser… or the occasional prostitute.