Microsoft promises less-annoying Vista OS early next year

A less-annoying version of Windows Vista is still several months away. This morning, with a post to the official Windows Vista blog, Microsoft said that the first Vista Service Pack will likely arrive at the beginning of the year, after the usual far-flung beta test. As SP1 betas continue to turn up on file-sharing sites across …

[Danny Thompson]

I beg your pardon????

"but as always, we're first and foremost focused on delivering a high-quality release,"

So how come Vista came out when it did, and in the condition that it did, requiring no end of online updates to get it anywhere near stable (but not entirely)? If M$ were truly as "focussed on...." as they suggest Vista would still not be released to the public.

Roll on XP SP3 - I'll have some of that.

[Anonymous Coward]

You kidding right ?

"Microsoft encourages organizations not to wait for SP1 but instead [to] deploy Windows Vista today in order to benefit from improved security, management, and deployment benefits,"

Yeah right, if they think all IT managers are idiots. I have been using Windows from the first release, and I must say 2000 were the most stable, still I waited until 2003 before I moved to XP due to more and more software required XP.

Vista is by far, the most annoying, unproductive and the slowest of all, even with dual-core and 2GB of RAM, its still slow, slow and slow. My advice is not to wait for Vista SP1, but roll back to XP, at the end of teh day, the whole idea of computing is to get your work done, fast, and enjoy it while you do that.

[Anonymous Coward]

New Vista edition is even better?

Microsoft promises less-annoying Vista OS early next year

You mean..... Windows Vista ME'08!?!?!? At long last, and to think I never heard a thing about it till now!!!! :-o

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, joy. To trust Microshaft or not...

"Microsoft will be releasing Windows XP SP3 to customers and partners in the next few weeks and is targeting the first half of 2008 for an RTM release,"

I'll be watching to see how much blood flows on this last XP update. How much ya wanta bet they'll be pushing Vista shortly after.

[wim wauters]

yearning for the good old days of windows 2000...

my favourite quote is "additional improvements to the IT administration experience."

Will that mean a change towards windows2000-like minimalism & efficiency? I live in hope...

Maybe Vista's quirks might distract me enough from seriously playing with *nix for another few months after all...

----------------

Happy Daze,

stock keeper of Windows-XP and Office-2003

[Matt]

man

only a retard would upgrade their network to vista.

Hell we're only just replacing the last of our win 2k developer boxes (man what a nice clean uncluttered release 2k was, I only upgraded my machine last month and I was sad to see the old girl go.) XP is bareable once you cut out all the cancerous bloat. But this Vista is the new ME and the only person I've met who likes Vista also liked ME. Funny that.

[Anonymous Coward]

UAC

Hopefully without a UAC click requirement to perform a backup...

[Tom]

They want to make admins happy?

"additional improvements to the IT administration experience"

They are going to remove activation? :P

[Anonymous Coward]

Job Security

As a LAN Administrator, I use XP and Win 2K at work, and XP and Linux at home. All of the OSes I use have varying pros and cons, but I have to admit that MS products are both fraught with more problems, but easier to fix. However I thank the folks at Redmond for their often not-entirely-thought-out or perfected products, as I know I will always be in demand to fix their ills.

[Oisin McGuigan]

Vista POO

Lets face it, M$ have a long running history of mistakes and just when everyone began to love XP SP2 and have a little confidence in M$ they blew it on a biblical scale. Yet, we run into their little mistakes eager and willing to be the tasters of modern computing. Well M$, you got it so so wrong and now were happy with XP SP2 and we are used to computers that simply work and do all the things they want it to do. Vista is more secure but hey, ask yourself this? How many Virus outbreaks have been out for SP2 in the last 12 months? 'Hardly any', Is it unstable? 'No', hows Hardware compatibility doing? 'Bloody Great for XP users!!!'.

This goes to show that newer is not necessarily better and straight jacket style security is not what modern computing is about. What have they learned from XP? 'Not very much in my opinion'.

[mommadillo]

Vista is definitely the new ME

I broke down and bought a Vista machine a couple of months ago - users were starting to drive me nuts asking questions about it, and I figured that was cheaper than taking a class.

What a piece of crap. I lasted a couple of days before turning off UAC - got real tired real fast of clicking through six or eight "Are you SURE?" prompts every time I wanted to copy a file. Without that, it's almost usable.

But then, a company with a special webpage to show you how to open the f'ing box doesn't really get the whole "user-friendly" concept if you ask me.

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/2e680b8d-211e-41c5-a0bf-9ccc6d7e62a21033.mspx

[Andy Enderby]

My first encounter with Vista.....

.... A friends retired mother recently asked advice from me regarding the purchase of a PC. She bought her laptop from Dell with Vista regardless. In her own words, "it would have cost another £130 quid for a Windows XP license buying from Dell".

Between Dell's, "value added software" (ie crap like the Google desktop, amongst others), and Vista itself, it took an estimated 5 minutes to + to finish starting up even after a spot of what can only be termed as decrapification in an attempt to make the beast usable. Despite a dual core processor, and goodly amount of RAM, it ran like a crippled pig in comparison to my full fat P4 (none of your crappy mobility processors for me thanks) 3.2 Mz, 768 MB RAM Amilo D 1845, a machine I have now owned for more than two years.

The overwhelming impression is that Vista as I saw it yesterday, despite all of the appropriate updates being applied is borderline unusable. It reminded me strongly of beta releases of Windows I have tested in the past in terms of stability. Tools that Windows users rely, such as display properties appear to have been hidden away under new applets purely in order to drive training revenues. Basic tools fail to start, despite running under what passes for admin rights. The control panel regularly took 3 minutes or so to finish loading......

Less annoying Windows next year ? Upgrade now.....

..... Let's see, we pay MS in order to be annoyed, increase our hardware and training costs and piss off users when stuff that should "just work" doesn't...... Thank god my buddies mother doesn't want to do much more than browse the web and send emails. Who knows what would happen if she wanted to watch a hi def DVD, or heaven forbid work for instance.

Laughable.

The thing about Linux, FreeBSD et al, is that it's free. In the main however it works as advertised. Vista, in its current condition can only aspire to such quality.

What kind of brain damaged corporate IT department would order Vista as the O/S of choice in the condition it os in right now ?

I do hope I understand correctly that MS bloggers are talking about fixing this mess of MS making, rather than, as is implied by comments above they are thinking about a new Vista edition and leaving existing users to their fate.

[Cyfaill]

Return of the thing

I remember this scene from the movie “The Thing”... The thing was a cloning life form the tried to simulate the sibilance of the real life form by displacement of real cells with a cheap knockoff... it didn't even have DNA.

Sometimes it didn't quite work out, if what it was cloning was sick or contaminated.

...So out from under a table came a variation of a failed clone of a person. It has the legs of a crab or big spider and the upside down head of a man. It steps out hoping that no one will notice.

One of the real people (Palmer) turns around and with an astonished look says “you've got to be F**king kidding... R.J. MacReady spins around with the flamethrower that he has strapped to his back and just looks at it for a second. He snarls with disgust and makes the thing all warm and toasty with the flamethrower...

Kind of reminds me of Vista... and maybe the solution does too.

[Anonymous Coward]

I Like Windows Vista

This is to all of the un-educated Computer Users. Learn how to use Windows Vista, it's great. Grow up & quit knocking a good product.

[John Kirkham]

Yeah it's sys admin's who hate it but...

What the hell are so called tech trained/savvy types here on about when it come's to home use for Vista. The first thing you do with any OS from M$ is find out what it is that needs to be taken down/de-cluttered !

Before I started with Vista Ultimate for home use, I already had a list of over 150 things that can done to speed up Vista & sort out the ordinary behaviour of some very lame features.

Vista Ultimate now is so cut down it resembles XP more than Vista. Vlite anyone ?

[Chris Harden]

@mommadillo

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

words fail me! A howto for opening a box?!

Reminds me of...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

[Walter Brown]

RE: Job Security

I'm with you on the job security, i'm a self employed independent consultant, and day after day i sit back and watch all these people bitch and complain about vista this and vista that, pissing and moaning about Microsoft releasing an OS before it was ready.

Just as they keep bitching louder and louder, they keep writing those checks bigger and bigger. I personally want to thank Microsoft for releasing Vista as they did... I think Vista is great! I run it, it doesnt give me too many problems, and thanks to it and M$ i'm on the retire by 40 plan!

[Robin Traylor]

Am I using the same Vista?

I've been using Vista Ultimate for the last four months, apart from the minor glitch of it being a bit slow to copy stuff I've had absolutely no problems with it whatsoever. I'm not saying it's bug free, it obviously isn't but I've not experienced any issues at all.

It was time for me to build a new PC and I built one with Vista in mind, a Core 2 CPU, 8800 graphics and 4Gb of RAM and it runs Vista like a train.

I loved Windows 2000, I absolutely hated XP and it's 'Fisher Price' front end, otherwise known as 'My First Windows' with it's Tellytubby wallpaper and when I was forced to use XP I made it look and work as much like Windows 2000 as I could. I was prepared to do the same with Vista but decided to leave it as it was for a few days to see how well Aero worked. Aero worked well and I left the default Vista theme in place.

With a good system, specced and built for the purpose, I love Vista. It's quick, it's clean, it just feels a lot smoother than any previous OS Microsoft has given us. I had a memory fault so had to RMA 2Gb of the 4Gb I had and while I was running with just 2Gb I noticed no real drop in performance.

People at work knock Vista because it's fashionable to not like Microsoft. I'm not a 'brand' fanboi, I use what I like and am not afraid to try new technology. I've seen Vista running on woefully underspecced PCs (512Mb RAM, crappy video cards) and it looks and runs like a dog.

My bottom line is that I'm fed up with people knocking Vista who haven't even tried it just because it's the thing to do. Get a decent spec system, load it, give it a try. You might well be surprised.

[Ned Fowden]

are they as bad as apple beaters ?

Vista is great, it's that simple

i've been using it alon with my new Tosh laptop for a good few months now and i've had only 1 issue with it and that was only with an application that needed the vista compatibility patch applying to it.

Vista is, for me, the perfected version of XP.....xp annoyed the crap out of me for years with it's instability.

Vista is good, there's no better description for it.

i'm happy with all my applications running on it, i'm happy with the security that it provides alongside the additional security i've always relied upon.

i haven't been this happy with an OS since i got my first Win95 machine.

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf?

"We didn't design SP1 as a vehicle for releasing new features; however, some existing components do gain enhanced functionality in SP1."

Does this mean they are going to fix it?

"but as always, we're first and foremost focused on delivering a high-quality release, so we'll determine the exact release date of SP1 after we have reached that quality bar."

So, it's never going to be released?

"Microsoft encourages organizations not to wait for SP1 but instead [to] deploy Windows Vista today in order to benefit from improved security, management, and deployment benefits,"

Yeah, right.... do they think IT departments are that stupid?

IT departments will wait for SP1 before evaluating Vista to see if it will be usable in a corporate environment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft in it's declining years

Sad to say that for some time Microsoft has been run by sales people, accountants and lawyers for the sole benefit of sales people, accountants and lawyers.

These people are the top of the bureaucratic hegemony in Microsoft. Bureaucracies are the cancerous killers of civilisations and companies alike.

And engineering.

[harreh]

bah!

Anyone remember what spec the original version of XP ran on and what it takes now to run at the same efficiency with sp2?

vista does have some serious issues like bugger all wireless card support..

as for wherer or not you should deploy? see if it works on your system first, then decide if you acctually want it

[Anonymous Coward]

The End Is Nigh!

"Windows XP SP3 is a roll-up of previously released updates for Windows XP including security updates, out-of-band releases, and hotfixes. It will also contain a small number of new updates." ...Including an update to BREAK XP AND INTRODUCE A VISTA ADVERT EVERY 5 SECONDS. you have been warned people! this patch will be the end of windows as you know it!

[Anonymous Coward]

more of the same.

A number of years ago I used to run a music studio and as you can image the recording machine can't fall over (ever!) so I built a Windows 98SE ( the OS of the time) machine and tweeked it for a few weeks. It ran dam fast, never crashed , could record 24 tracks of 24bit audio without breaking into a sweat. All on a AMD Athallon 1Ghz with 512 MB of RAM.

I would now be lucky to do that on a Quad Core, 4GB of RAM. Exactly where is the progress?!?!?

I only moved to XP last year and have bugger all intention of moving to anything else for at least 5 years.

/Moan off

Also I wouldn't hold your breath for SP3 for XP as that was meant to come out just before the Vista release and then was 'put on hold to get Vista out on time' and if they think for one minute that SP3 will effect Vista sales then you can kiss it goodbye. i

[Cameron Colley]

I am so glad...

...that I decided to go with preloaded XP when I bought a Dell laptop recently. I actually went with XP as I heard that some games (one of the only reasons I went with Windows at all) didn't work properly under Vista. Reading the comments above -- I'm glad I chose XP.

I agree with those above who comment that W2K was the best version of Windows so far -- with XP being second if you remove some of the junk.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the problems really matter?

The size of the existing installed base of Microsoft products means that Vista won't fail. Microsoft will fix most of the problems in the service packs just like they did with XP -- all of the arguments above about Vista you could apply to XP in 2001, word for word. There are a lot of problems with Vista but such is the profit motive behind it and the fear of losing any traction to another OS, Microsoft will fix them. The number of times Microsoft products are written off could fill volumes. All things being equal given the supposedly intractable problems with Vista shouldn't we all expect the numbers of Linux and Mac desktops to grow? If they grow by 1% because people are switching from Vista I'll give a hundred quid to the Dog's Trust. I reckon my 100 quid is safe.

[Jarrah Mckenzie]

Whats in the Box?

Instructions on how to open a box? Even in todays world of litigation gone mad, never should have this been made...thinking on why some one made this or need it is making my brain hurt.

[James Bassett]

slag off Ms blah blah blah...we're all so clever

Ho ho ho. How smart and self congratulatory we all are with our witicisms and criticisms. Particularly such well thought out comments such as "I refuse to switch to vista....it's the worst yet". Que? Quick tip. Think, then type!

I've been using Vista since the end of January. I've never had a crash (okay, once. I didn't fit a new heat-sink correctly and the CPU went to 86C!), the machine flies (E6400, 2GB RAM), the search facility is lightening fast and saves me hours etc. etc. Okay, I'd prefer if it didn't ask me to enter the admin password every time I update a driver or add/remove a new piece of software, but I'm an advanced user so do this stuff often. For your average drone who runs an £800 PC to browse the internet, read email and type out letters, they aren't going to get the nag-box.

But, of course, it's trendy to criticise the big guy and we wouldn't wish to accidentally set off the independant thought alarm by straying from the pack now would we?

[Anonymous Coward]

SP Now!?

Why can't they bring out some kind of service pack now? Can they really wait over a year from initial release to first Service Pack?

As a developer Service Packs are good because they represent a baseline OS build, I dread to think how many combinations of applied patches there are out there. And that's before you start tracking the five editions of Vista you have to target now.

I ran Vista for 6months before getting fed up with lock-ups and slow-downs and reverting back to XP SP2. The UI is a lesson on How NOT to produce a GUI, as another poster already mentioned why move the display properties after over 10years of it being in the same place? What have they done with the network connections window - why is it modal?

This isn't progress!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you using the same Vista that I am? ;)

I've been using Vista pretty much since it came out (I got a free copy after attending a developer event - whether I'd actually pay for a retail pack/upgrade it is another matter - although I'd be happy for a new machine to come with Vista).

I have a 2GHz Athlon XP machine at home with 1GB RAM (with 2GB ReadyBoost) which is now a few years old. Putting Vista Ultimate on it made no significant difference to performance compared to how it used to run XP. Stability wise, never had a blue screen or other hang/crash etc of the OS. Previously on XP I had a number of issues, particularly with removing USB devices. Probably a driver issue (Vista had built in drivers, vs NVidia ones on XP) but still, it works perfectly for me, and gaming performance is just as good.

My work laptop is a 2GHz Core 2 with 2GB RAM and came with Vista Business. This again works perfectly. Other machines of the same model had XP put on them (we're evaluating Vista for our developers at the moment) and appear to be just as fast as the Vista machine.

UAC? I don't see that normally. Yes I saw a lot in the first few days - installing drivers, apps etc - but now I've had it for a few weeks, installs are few and the machine just works.

The only problem I had with my new laptop was after a day or so I started getting Explorer crashing a few times a day. It always restarted gracefully with nothing other than my File Explorer windows being lost. I was impressed at that - but not at Explorer crashing. After some help on the MS newsgroups I traced it to a shell extension added by an application I installed (HHD Software's Free Hex Editor). Whenever it crashed, WinDbg showed that Explorer was calling into the Hex Editor shell extension. When I checked HHD's website, it didn't specify it was Vista compatible. Uninstalled the Hex Editor and the problem went away and now have had a crash free PC for a week or so now.

In this case the problem was caused by a bad piece of 3rd party software - but what I was pleased with was how Explorer restarted without any problem, loss of functionality etc. In XP, whenever Explorer crashed, I usually had to manually restart it via Task Manager, and all my tray icons were lost when it restarted.

So, personally, I'm happy with Vista. In my experience, it's better than XP, and UAC etc has not been an issue for me. I'll happily bash Microsoft when it's due - but I cannot agree (from my experience) that Vista wasn't fit for launch, is worse than XP (or is comparable to ME!!!) and cannot be used in the enterprise.

[David]

win 2k

I miss that OS. After SP4 It was stable, maintainable and always worked.

I got a new Acer laptop last week with Vista on it. The bundled NAV won’t even update as im not logged in with an admin user account. Weird because its the only account on the machine.

The aero crap sucks 20 meg of RAM (looks nice tho) and the wireless is the most annoying b*****d to configure. My house has 5 (yes 5) unsecured networks around it. Trying to configure Vista to not connect to the nearest open network, and connect to my secured one was a nightmare. It just keeps reconnecting to the unsecured ones. I even had a prompt open up advising me to goto Mshit website and learn about wireless security, and how not broadcasting a SSID is more of a security risk.

Apparently connecting to open networks is against the law, yet the operating system takes serious configuring to stop it doing so. At one point I had accessed my neighbours router and added my MAC address to the deny list. Its was the only way I could stop it connecting long enough so I could connect to my own. What a load of crap.

The worst thing is there are no disks with the machine. Vista install is on a hidden partition of the machine. So if I repartition and install another OS I lose Vista source, perhaps not a bad thing but I bloody paid for it. Some day Vista might be worth installing, after SP100 perhaps.

[Anonymous Coward]

XP SP3, will it be safe?

As it appears there is going to be some resistance to upgrading to Vista (and rightly so), you got to wonder if MS are going to pull the trick of making XP SP3 degrade the performance of the OS and make Vista look more attractive.

I've already see this happen with one of their fixes for XP, so I would not put it past them.

[Anonymous Coward]

...works fine - stop complaining

I'm sure I'll probably be alone here, but I've been running Vista Ultimate for a couple months now. Granted I make sure that it's up to date and my drivers are too, but that would be the same with XP. Vista works nicely once you turn off the User Account Control that asks you if you sure you want to do everything you just asked it to do. Performance is quick, games work well (hotfixes installed), GUI is very nice and startup and shutdown are a LOT quicker that XP was for me. Media Player seems vastly improved and the whole system is more than stable. As a matter of fact, I've seen more crashes with XP that I have Vista.

When I first installed XP before it's SP1, I remember it being unstable, buggy and just "not as good" as Win2000. Now... I wouldn't dream of using 2000 at home and XP is nice and stable. Considering this, Vista is a lot lot better than XP was at the same age.

Rather than spend your time and effort slating Microsoft for "vista this and vista that", either use a Linux distro or something or upgrade your hardware and run an update. It works fine people!!

[Anonymous Coward]

My Encounters with Vista

I use Vista both on my work PC and at home on my main PC. The work PC is stable, so apparently Vista's definately usable enough to write documents and code on. The home PC is less stable, but then there's a large amount of crap on there that doesn't help. My laptop will forever remain an XP machine until I get a new one - I know it's just not going to be able to handle Vista.

So Vista, as it stands, is usable if the PC is of a decent spec (more to do with RAM than processor from my experience). My worry is that SP1 will do what XP SP2 did - cause more compatibility issues and require a much higher spec machine again. Other than that, I look forward to installing the SP1 Beta on my home PC when it comes out. Anything that brings more stability and better performance is a good thing.

[Corrine]

IT departments and Vista...

<quote>What kind of brain damaged corporate IT department would order Vista as the O/S of choice in the condition it is in right now ?</quote>

Mine, around November, the day before I quit.

[Anonymous Coward]

So Steve Ballmer was lying then

Asked about the timeline for Vista service packs, Ballmer quipped that as it is the highest-quality, most secure and reliable Windows operating system ever, there should be no need for a service pack.

I assume that's gone into the stupid Microsoft Quotes book along with "No-one will need more than 640K of memory"

[Thomas Schulze]

I might be alone here...

... but I don't think Vista is all that bad. I'm running it at home and have also just joined the first Vista machine to our network and after a bit of a learning curve it seems to be running pretty smoothly. There are a few glitches running more than one monitor and adding network printers, and of course it's pretty damn slow for the spec of the two laptops I'm using (Sony FZ11S and HP dv2350) but in general I'm fairly happy.

Then again I used to work for MSFT and I'm used to dealing with their betas ;)

[Pascal Monett]

The inevitable finally happens

So, XP SP3 is finally on its way. How are the odds that DX10 will be in it ? I wonder.

[Trevor Hannah]

1gb Service Pack

Taken from the Blog

"The standalone package will be large (1 GB for x86)."

Crikey!

[James Summerson]

Vista numbers

From the site reports I use, based on around 1,400 visitors yesterday, 9.5 to 10% of users use Vista, about the same overall percentage of those that use Firefox. Is this a case of a well balanced system?

The vast majority of visitors use XP and IE [1], of course, so I can see how the lower than expected take-up might be a worry, even though 10% of a big pile of cash is still a big pile of cash, IMHO.

[1] 90% of these users still have their default language set to en-us, so go figure their want or need for easy tweaking of the OS.

[Bobak Fakhraee]

you guys moan faaaar too much

You guys really do moan too much. "my old system worked better". "it's totally unusable". "High Def DVDs don't work". "Why do they need updates". "Linux is free and better"

Right... keep your old system then, its more usable than ever, high def DVDs work absolutely fine on my system - what are you doing wrong. they need updates because its an enormous piece of software and nobody's perfect... and finally. GO USE LINUX THEN. No-one cares if you do or not.

I think you guys that spend vast amounts of time on here complaining about how bad Vista is either a) don't know how to work a computer b) so set in your ways that a small change totally throws you c) don't have a computer that is good enough for Vista and are too tight to upgrade or d) (and i think d is definitely the case) expect the world on a plate and don't want to move a muscle to adapt.

[Colin Millar]

The off switch....

....is the only not annoying thing about Vista. Even with UAC off it wouldn't let me create a BIOS disk (permission denied when run as admin), download updates to Ad-Aware (the download couldn't trigger the 'do you want to run this' dialog) or run my firewall. Kept switching off my email scanner.

It blocked AVG and Adwatch at every startup without offering a 'trust this forever' option so you have to activate the blocked programs every time.

Wouldn't run my Graphics card (GEForce 7800) no matter what driver I tried - and what a time I had changing drivers. You know the routine - uninstall old driver, restart, install new driver, restart. Except on the first restart Vista goes all smartass and reinstalls the Windows bundled default driver (without asking if this is what I wanted) - took an age to work out how to stop that happening.

Defender scanned and happily reported no threats, Ad-Aware (unupdated) found about 300 data miners and trackers.

For some reason Vista kept dropping my wireless connection - never did fathom that one out.

Clean install of XP Pro - everything works just fine almost straightaway.

[James]

RE: My first encounter with Vista.....

I don't understand this bit:

"She bought her laptop from Dell with Vista regardless. In her own words, "it would have cost another £130 quid for a Windows XP license buying from Dell"."

I have just double checked on the Dell website and they charge the same for Vista or XP installed on their systems. What's this £130 extra all about!?

[Mat]

massage my buttocks

"additional improvements to the IT administration experience."

That would be the buttock massagers then.

"...the whole idea of computing is to get your work done, fast, and enjoy it while you do that."

Not sure if it could be said Microsoft ever really got that concept but it's lost I think irredeemably at this stage - they have gone too far and beyond that now for sure where it cannot be spotted anywhere on the vista at all.

[D. M]

You will find many

brain dead IT managers around. the bigger the org, the easier they can be located. It is simple because the one who make decision usually knows next to nothing about IT.

At my work place (a big place), we finally changed from win98/win2k to XP about 3 years ago. It is still now a bad decision. The best option would be a full Linux desktop environment, the second best would be staying with win2k. Moving to XP offer nothing but trouble over "existing win2k".

[LW]

Upgrade advice from Microsoft

"deployment benefits", they say?

What exactly are the benefits of deploying an OS that doesn't work over one that does?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really given a chance....?

I'm posting anonymously because i'm sure if I don't i'll get a load of abuse and/or hatemail but I really have to question whether people have actually sat down and tried to used Vista for more than 10 minutes before jumping on the internet and posting a load of screaming abuse about it. Either that or they have never used it and are attempting to exceed m$'s level of FUD with their own.

I'm no m$ fanboy, in fact if anything i'd say I was a bit of a linux fanboy, but I installed Vista on a new machine a little over six months ago and have been using it every day since. At first I found it hard to use and it didn't seem intuitive and I wasn't really blown away by the new look but I can't say that I found anything inherently broken or unusable, it was just different.

Fast forward 6 months and i'm a big fan, I love the new style and I would say that my productivity whilst using Vista is approximately double that of using XP. I couldn't put my finger on any one thing that makes the experience of using Vista better than xp but it really is such an upgrade over xp, I can't believe that I didn't see it straight away. In comparison, xp now feels clunky, slow and old and when I have use it, I really miss my shiny new Vista.

I never thought i'd say it, but i'm really starting to get sick of people jumping on the band wagon just to bash m$ over this....really, just give Vista a chance...in my opinion, it's the best O/S i've ever used

[Euan Brodie]

Rubbish!

Vista just peed me off from the moment I let its sorry underdeveloped ass on to my computer. Now I upgraded from XP to Vista 64 bit (1st Mistake), then I tried to watch a .avi file using media centre on my TV (2nd mistake). How can an OS thats advertised as being better for the media performance and ease of use expect me to go and look on the internet for a set of codecs from a random dodgy site and then have to also apply a x64 patch to make them work. Granted now I still get the occasional hiccup but at least it works. Simply put, why wasn't it in the first release?

I'm not going to even go in to talking about trying to copy a few gigs back and forth. After much gnashing of teeth and the like I installed vmware and use that or duel boot back to a small XP footprint on the other drive to do essential maintenance and the like.

Pain in the proverbial!

[Anonymous Coward]

Used it, its still rubbish...

>I'm fed up with people knocking Vista who haven't even tried

>it just because it's the thing to do.

>load it, give it a try. You might well be surprised.

Er, been there, done that. Its total cack. items: I needed to run as an Admin account to allow my aged father do even trivial stuff, the super-annoying UAC feature is worse than useless (it pops up so often people will simply click "ok" every time to shut it up) and Windows defender wins prizes for annoyingness ( why is it impossible for an Admin to trust a new app?). And how anyone who hated XP can like the UI is beyond me - its like a wittle googoo baby fwend of XP. Stop wasting my screen realestate with enormous icons and useless 'taskbars', please !!

>Get a decent spec system, .

Pardon? I'm expected to spend more money and generate more landfill, just to enjoy Vista? Hmm, who benefits most from that I wonder?

[Graham Bartlett]

@Robin

Quote:-

"I've seen Vista running on woefully underspecced PCs (512Mb RAM, crappy video cards)"

Excuse me? This isn't some hardcore app here, this is just an OS and front-end. Video cards, fair enough - if you want the glitzy Aero interface then OK. But why should 512MB of RAM be "woefully underspecced" just to run the OS and trivial (non-processing-intensive) tasks?

[Matt]

Vista goodness...

I dont know what sort of people comment on here, but im a sys admin, and I enjoy vista... yes its resource hungry, but with a 2ghz dual core and 2gb ram Vista business runs like a dream... cetainly no slower than XP used to...

Domain integration isnt an issue, volume licencing helps with activation issues, all in all a dream to use and end users like it too...

that being said, my machine of choice is not my nice T7200 HP laptop, but a 1.67ghz Powerbook running OSX :D now thats a polished, fast, clean OS :D

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista sucks

This is to all of the un-educated Computer Users. Learn how to use Windows Vista, it's great. Grow up & quit knocking a good product.

WHAT!!!??? I had Vista on my tosh laptop, dual core 1.6Ghz 1GB ram which runs XP like a dream and it lasted 2 days before I had to trash it. It was too slow, the security rubbish just gets in the way and it is soooo bloated that even thinking about putting photoshop on there was out of the question.

At work, what can I say? Virtually none of the MS network management tools work on Vista. Why would I upgrade my desktops to Vista when I cant load the Exchange 2007 tools onto it?!

What a piece of crap it is. Slim it down, take out all the pro holywood stuff and then line up against a wall and slap whoever thinks a 15 Gb system drive for a nbarebones OS was a good idea until they start crying like a little girl

[Simon Westerby]

My first encounter with vista

I tried Vista on my old AthlonXP2600 2gb ram Gforce 6600 gfx when it was in TC stage (I think itv was RC 1 ) and although it looked pretty, performance dropped trough the floor. . . WoW wnt from 50fs in 1280x1024 to about 18fps in teh same res, and memeory usage at the same time went from 600mb to the full 2gb (I think thats the way Vista uses memeopry for disc cache though.

Well it lasted < 1 day before I went back to XP.

However, it did make me upgrade to a dual core and a better gfx card, just in case i HAD to upgrade to vista sooner rather then later.

I'm sticking with XP until I really NEED Vista (the same as i did with '98)

I've been running XP for 5 or 6 years now and it does all i need it to.

PS I also run unbunto, so I'm not a M$ fanboy...

[Dean Burrows]

Pfft...

As far as I am concerned the only good copy of Vista OS is one in which the computer is still running XP w/SP2 and the cd of Vista is a little pile of molten plastic and flames on the floor next to it....

I cant believe that MS having spent so long delaying the release of Vista, released a hashed together, shoddy product then say 'Microsoft encourages organizations not to wait for SP1 but instead [to] deploy Windows Vista today in order to benefit from improved security, management, and deployment benefits'....

XP as it is now is far more secure now than Vista will ever be for the next 2 years at least...

Microsoft should listen to ACTUAL customers and get their act together...

Because as far as I am concerned I have wasted my money so far buying Vista....

-Dean Burrows-

[Hayden Clark]

I bet XP becomes unusable after SP3

... and you won't be able to roll back, and Windows Update won't give you anything else.

Ker-Ching!

[Karl Lattimer]

Simple statement of truth

You can't polish a turd

[Norman Wanzer]

Request for Custom Vista

Ever since I first used Vista I have wanted to go to MS and commission a custom OS. I highly doubt they would be willing but I want to try. MS seems to have gotten away from supplying what the customer wants to telling the customer what they want. In short, the used car salesmen have taken over the company.

My custom OS would have only two requirements: Must have all the FUNCTIONALITY of Vista (really the same as XP). Must fit in a 1 Gb footprint on the Hard drive. The 1Gb footprint would hopefully force them to write clean and concise code (do they even know how?) and maybe rethink the idea of having a pretty yet somehow less functional interface. Personally I would be happy with a 2d monochrome GUI as long as it works (350MB memory to do nothing?? I think not). Let the Applications do all the fancy graphics. DirectX 10 is a wonderful thing but I should not need it to run my desktop.

I can imagine that Server 2008 will be just like Vista. But, does any admin out there really care if they have a nice 3d clock and local weather reports on their sidebar? Or, would they really like to be able to deploy applications, update user profiles, and run it all on the low end hardware they have to work with due to the ever shrinking IT budget? A lot of companies are shying away from Vista not because it is a dog (which it is) but because they can’t afford to upgrade all their hardware just to run it.

MS has forgotten that they build Operating Systems. An operating system is meant to control the hardware of the PC and act as an interface between applications and hardware. What Vista has become is a collection of applications that happens to also be an OS.

[Jackson Capper]

Vista is fantastic!

I bought a Vista laptop with full aero glass and I have never been more pleased. I knew as soon as Vista was released it would be picked at and criticized for everything, so i think all your negative/bias comments (and this article itself) are typical cheap shots at an extremely good product.

The aero glass is awsome and everything looks soooo nice, and even just checking my email is a nice experience. Vista is not slow, in fact i have NO delays in doing ANYthing that i do. i dont know how many megahertz or ram or memory or resolution it has, i dont care! I bought a laptop to use and actually get work done and Vista has let me do that perfectly and looks beautiful at the same time.

I dont know what everyone is complaining about, Vista is excellent and I recommend it to everyone. It really looks after its user in every way possible. Dont stuff around worrying about hardware specs, just buy a laptop that supports vista aero glass and you will not be dissappointed.

[Ross Fleming]

@Robin Traylor

"it runs Vista like a train."

I assume you mean it runs well - I wouldn't compare it to a train then, especially UK ones! :-)

[Rolf Carson]

Try this with Vista

Moved from AMD XP3200 proc w/2 GB to AM2 X2 4600 w/4GB. Before imaging W2K to new system removed all device in devmgr. Fired it up on new system, recognized devices and loaded drivers and away we go with good old Windows 2000. It even recognizes 3624 of my memory. I doubt Vista would do that smoothly if at all.

I too prefer Linux, but the plain fact is that too many of my customers are using Windows and I know they will be switching to Vista. So I installed Vista 64-bit and after a bit of tweaking I believe it is not half as bad as XP was. Turn off all the fancy visual effects to get some actual work done.

[Mark Rendle]

Rubbish

Well I for one won't be upgrading, SP1 or no. Even Windows XP barely runs on my 450Mhz Pentium II system, and that's *with* a 256Mb upgrade. I'm sticking with Windows 2000; it does everything I need, and that's the point of an OS after all.

[alistair millington]

For all you people that consider vista good.

\rant on

I just read this about a better version of Vista. So as everyone in the world guessed, Vista SP! will be the actual release state of Vista, the one we should have got.

Vista (I was conned to buy the Vista ultimate - 32bit as I want to install stuff but I can't run more than 3GB of RAM because MS lied about that. Ultimate can run 128GB of RAM.... NOT and the american conversion rate meant I could get OEM far cheaper than the small mortage the full price costs.) Doesn't work out of the box with the two largest graphics manufacturers, It took three months for a beta for SLI. Yet MS said it would, they said it would run as they had worked closely with leading manufacturers of hardware (except NVIDIA)

Halo2 crashed seven times for me and of them 2 were Vista's "let me report the problem" crashing that caused the issues. It was written by Microsoft. Games work fine six months later.

At work I have vista business, it doesn't work with PCanywhere, server editions for small business, network connections that require certain permissions remopved (like admin or shared hard drives and complains ever time you connect to an older OS. Or anything on win2k.

Dial up modems don't work for those older and more mature businesses out there. IAC / UAC (who cares) causes most of these issues because they ban by default the drivers for none supported kit. Once CACk is turned off you can't run certain features anyway.

and Vista ready is definitely not a sticker I believe in. My system has 768 MEG RAM and is fine with XP. 21 minutes and counting from power on to doing something work related. With a fresh brand new install with Vista upgrades installed.

My home system is a INTEL core 2 duo (2.66) 4 GB 800mhz RAM, dual SATA 2 drives, Dual SLI Nvidia 7950's and Vista is pants to work (but is pretty.).

Vista is a joke. I know I work on a helpdesk as the companies Vista and 2007 tester for all our clients in the legal profession (some have only just upgraded to 2k) and guess what, I am very busy at the moment solving this junk.

but these comments are a treat.

"In addition to updates we’ve previously released, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues we’ve identified via customer feedback, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards," wrote Vista product manager Nick White.

- Get existing standards working first...

"Microsoft encourages organizations not to wait for SP1 but instead [to] deploy Windows Vista today in order to benefit from improved security, management, and deployment benefits"

- WHY? Who would want to risk their business and livelihood on something that doesnt' work with existing hardware and technology. REAL LIFE means old tech and lots of people have the view if "it ain't broke don't fix it." So why have a view of "well it's pretty and MS say so so I will upgrade my 400 PC's and my 40 printers because Vista tells me." Get real.

"but as always, we're first and foremost focused on delivering a high-quality release, so we'll determine the exact release date of SP1 after we have reached that quality bar"

- What a load of..... Is this quality bar higher or lower than the Vista release. Are the same idiots involved in it's calculations as Vista release. I wonder.

I used to like Ms, I used to support it against people that criticised. Then I got a job in IT.

Roll on UBUNTU

\rant off

[Anonymous Coward]

The lack of drivers is still issueful

I have an Intel 915 chipset. This chipset sports the Graphics Media Accelerator series of IGPs, and stopped being sold on Febuary 2007. However Intel treats their premiere line of IGPs as legacy devices and has removed support for it from their drivers. We can never expect a Windows Vista (WDDM) driver for our graphics chips!

[Andy Enderby]

@James

It may just be that the person that ordered her lappie (her son I believe) couldn't find the option to order XP, or that it wasn't offered on her particular product. I don't know what the exact circumstances were. Either way she didn't order with XP.

Whilst she's certainly no techie, she isn't unfamiliar with previous editions of Windows, and as a returning user her overwhelming opinion is that practically everything is more difficult with this edition than what she is used to from XP for example.

In terms of ease of use, which has, I would submit moved forwards from one Windows version to another, this represents a step back for MS. Whilst this particular user is distinctly none technical her opinion is as valid as anyone elses with regards to usability.

At those posters who claim that this is the best release ever.....

Being here tends to suggest that you are technical users at the very least, have some respect for those users who lack your technical background and have spent substantial time and money to find that Vista is not the amazing experience the marketeers told them it would be, and that even though they bought in their eyes high spec machines (ie RAM > 1GB, dual core processors etc etc) found that this release runs far worse their old XP/2000/.... machines and is more difficult to actually use.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista is the best

I won't hear a word said against Vista. I've been running Vista on a ZX80 with dual 1.44Mb floppies for, ooooh, months now, and the Aero interface puts Mac rendering to shame. How anyone can sneer at the endless tirade of techno-bollox flowing from Redmond is beyond me. That's because I'm an IT professional, I guess, whereas as anyone who disses Vista is clearly a basement dwelling geek. And if you don't believe me, you should read more ZDnet

[Morely Dotes]

Re: I Like Windows Vista

"This is to all of the un-educated Computer Users. Learn how to use Windows Vista, it's great. Grow up & quit knocking a good product."

I have published software in the International market. I have written programs in Assembly and then hand-assembled (e.g., I converted each opcode to the Hex necessary, and punched the nubmes in directly, without using a compiler). I have built driver disks for the network interface cards manufactured by the world's largest chip maker (both for their own brand, and OEM products for Compaq and HP). I have owned and used computers starting with the Z-80 processor back in the early 80s, and ranging up to today's AMD64 and P4 chips. I have used every version of MS DOS and Windows ever released, and a few that were never relased.

I am hardly an un-educated computer user. I can say, based on my own extensive experience *and* education that Windows Vista is by far the least user-friendly product ever released by Microsoft, and it is the worst choice for an operating system available on the market today. *ANYTHING* else - including old copies of OS/2 Warp - is better in terms of productivity and usability.

[Anonymous Coward]

ZX-80 with floppies?

Wow - that's some meaty ZX-80 you've got there. I don't remember it ever having more than a weird floppy tape thingy.

Have you got the 4GB RAMpack to go with it? I would have thought you would be needing it for Vista.

[Anonymous Coward]

UAC

User Account Control was stolen from the good, solid OS known as Linux. Originally, on Linux, it was a good security Idea, but the M$ implementation of it

is too restrictive. Also, many other parts of vista were stolen from Linux and adapted to the "pay for everything" nature of windows. Again, these implementations are NOT paying a complement to the original ideas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wow . . .

I'm sitting here reading all these comments running my PowerBook (similar to Matt's above) and just shaking my head in bewilderment, while my IBM T42 gathers dust in my closet.

[cmsix]

What are y'all griping so about.

I mean sure, Vista is annoying, expensive, and bloated. What the heck? Look on the bright side, it's slow.

cmsix

I'm still happy with my decision to not even steal Vista.

[Mike Lovell]

Troll Alert [Morely Dotes]

God damn Morely, I've read a lot of comments in my time but that is by far the most blatant trolling I've ever seen! :o)

Well I invented the microchip and designed the first GUI. I also made the software that runs the Hubble telescope... And this was all in the space of a day!

It's a nats slow (which they're about to address) but apart from that I'm reasonably taken. Loads of changes to get used to, which is always a shock to the system.

[Robert N Olson Sr]

Wow....

...you know a product is bad when pirates and hackers even stay away!

I gotta say, my brother runs Vista and says it's great, so long as you stay away from Aero. LOL. Isn't that half the reason that everyone gets it? Oh wait, its security!

C'mon, lets be serious. Anyone who knows anything about computer security knows that it only takes a couple of steps to control any computer security issue at home. A good virus checker and a hardware firewall (like one found in any good home router). Ok, so then, business can use it right?

There aren't very many WELL RUN IT departments that will upgrade to Vista before all the bugs are worked out.

Vista needs to get better before any serious users or admins will use it. Just like XP. Just like 98. Just like 2k. MS has always been guilty of releasing a new OS 2 years too early. Just wait for it and everything will come together.

Rob

[Dean Burrows]

Just an after-thought...

One thing that I noted when installing Vista is it's appauling back-catalogue of drivers... at least XP recognises old equipment and installs a generic driver which makes the hardware usable... Vista doesnt even do that...

Backwards compatability is a major issue these days with the climate of rapid-changing technology and there are many instances of backwards compatability being a bloody good selling point...

Sony Playstation 2 could play PSX games and use PSX hardware - It sold and sold well...

Sony's PS3 runs some PS2 games and most if not all have some glitches on the new system but the PS3 is incompatible with old pads etc... major turn off...

I could go on and on but I am sure you get the drift....

Maybe MS could incorporate a larger driver database with Vista SP1 or at least give us the option of downloading one rather than hunting the net for driver updates for old'ish hardware...

[Anonymous Coward]

ZX-80 with floppies?

Wow - that's some meaty ZX-80 you've got there. I don't remember it ever having more than a weird floppy tape thingy.

Have you got the 4GB RAMpack to go with it? I would have thought you would be needing it for Vista.

[Anonymous Coward]

ZX-80s && RAM packs

"Wow - that's some meaty ZX-80 you've got there. I don't remember it ever having more than a weird floppy tape thingy. Have you got the 4GB RAMpack to go with it? I would have thought you would be needing it for Vista"

--- SInce first posting I've updated the hardware to a cluster of ZX81s. The RAM packs have been fitted but try not to joggle them as it can make the whole lot crash. At least I assume it was joggled RAM packs which caused the recurrent Vista crashes. It could be relevant that premium Hollywood content was being played on a DVD player in the flat downstairs. It could be that Vista DRM immediately detected this potential loss of earnings to a Hollywood studio, by dint of yet another Vista user being a dyed-in-the-wool thief, and took appropriate action. Within 30 minutes the BSA had kicked my door in and had confiscated my video player for "auditing".

So please don't knock Vista, it does what it was designed to do - protect Hollywood studios from thieving Windows users.

[Jeffrey Nonken]

Too stupid to use Vista!

"This is to all of the un-educated Computer Users. Learn how to use Windows Vista, it's great. Grow up & quit knocking a good product" and other similar comments.

A rather disingenuous remark, that. Why do you assume that everybody who disagrees with you must be ignorant? Or stupid?

Either you're self-centered and have tunnel vision or you're a paid shill. Either way, I do not respect your opinion. Present a reasoned argument if you want to convince people. This way all you earn is contempt.

"It works fine for me" is almost as bad. It's bound to work OK for some people. The fact that so many are complaining means it's not working for a lot of people. The remark is unhelpful and just makes angry those who are trying to solve their problems.

[Graham]

Works for me

Vista works great for me.

DVD holds my coffee cup nicely.

Box for my PDA to sit on.

What more can you ask for.

What, you want me to use the software? why? what's wrong with the OS I've got?

Vista=ME in my book.

[Don]

Vista drains most donkeys scroto sacks dry

What a remarkably useless OS. Whenever some consultant brings his laptop into my shop with that garbage on it, I almost feel like lecturing him and not supporting it. Some are smart enough to apologize and they blame their wife or snotty teen for getting it preinstalled with Vista instead of XP. As for the troll above who said learn something new, try Ubuntu. So easy a Vista user can learn it.

[Ghost]

12 step solution for a better OS...

1) Go to www.ubuntu.com

2) Download a version of Ubuntu Linux that works for your system.

3) Burn said ISO download into a CD.

4) Boot system with CD in drive.

5) Test to make sure everything's compatible.

6) Click the INSTALL ICON.

7) Follow the step by step installation procedure.

8) Get to know your new GUI.

9) Ask questions to the community and get answers and solutions to any issues.

10) Laugh at the ease of use.

11) Learn the new software that can do everything MS can do, only free.

12) Burn your copy of XP/Vista and rejoice.

Cheers.

[Peter Labrow]

I moved to Vista early - and then bailed big time

Vista was the last straw for me, I installed it, hated it, and I moved to the Mac and haven't looked back. Vista is a broken, slow, painful OS, much worse than XP - two steps forward and ten steps back. No wonder readers of FHM magazine voted it the most disappointing thing of 2007. I'm not a Mac zealot, I have used PCs for twenty years, and I wouldn't be adverse to Linux, but there are more mainstream apps available for Macs, plus great Windows support for the few instances when you need it.