Final Conclusion - Vista Bites
by
on January 11, 2008,
I finally decided to jump on the Vista “hate” bandwagon, so here goes: “I freaking hate Vista!” I know I am not alone in the world because I hear everyone complaining about the same things I do. We complain about incompatibility, graphic intensiveness, complicated, too different and on and on. How could so many of us have been fooled into believing that the first of any operating system released by Microsoft would reveal anything but trouble? One would think that these guys would get one right from the get-go for once, but Vista has proven to be more than disappointing for millions.
In the news today I read a story that illustrates just how screwed up this operating system is. So screwed up in fact that British schools are being asked not to use the upgrade. The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency made this recommendation in view of the conflicts particularly with older systems. Essentially, the report reflected that the cost for upgrading the school systems there to Vista would be too high given the relative benefit the OS would provide. As for upgrading to Office 2007, the report said: “There remains no compelling case for deployment.”
No Mas!
I would list 20 or 300 reasons why Vista sucks but it has been done already . The point I would like to make is, just how many times does one “mega” company have to screw up initial releases before we get fed up? As a personal nightmare story , let me relate my own experiences with Vista.
- Office 2007 - New PC loaded with Vista offered only the trial *whatever happened to actually getting Office?” and there was the learning curve / why such a departure?
- Vista discoverability - The thing runs so slow it is like using the Flock browser on a P3 machine, plus why does think people like heavy learning curves?
- PC Webcam - No dice! Incompatible with Vista / massive driver download.
- HP Scanner - Suffice it to say I no longer have this scanner.
- HP Deskjet - Another adventure in searching the Web for solutions, but it now works.
- Counterstrike Source - Good thing I have no time for first person shooters.
- FTP clients - After downloading 5 I finally got one to work.
- Sony Digital Camera - Still more time installing and uninstalling.
The list actually goes on and on, but it is fair to say that fully 80 percent of the hardware I tried to load failed on this brand new PC because of Vista conflicts . This says nothing of the dozens of online programs I have tried to install that are in conflict. Vista is quite frankly the most aggravating and frustrating OS I have ever worked with.
Conclusion
We are so thrilled that Web 2.0 and all these innovations have taken us afar beyond what was possible 10 years ago, but MS cannot even get an OS right the first time. It makes me wonder if either MS is a 1.0 company or if there is some method to this madness? So there is the technology news for today. In 2008 an entire national school system could not see the value in a new MS product. Well, neither can I and I just reformatted this PC with XP Professional in case you wondered.
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Alan Kodzasov
Shallow
Bob
CopyrightLawSucks 
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Michael Fidler 
I hated Vista so much that I got a Mac, but…. What does Vista have to do with Web 2.0? Even talking about operating systems is so pre web 1.0…
Wow! I digress….but I do use an OS to access Web whatever. In a broad sense everything that resides on the Web has to do with Web 2. oh! Vista was one of the most touted operating systems ever devised and we all use it. Web 2.0 is supposed to be about people and the technologies that can help them do more and experience more.
The original tag line for profy was Web 2.0 and technology blog, so I cannot see how spreading valid news about MS or any other viable company is outside the realm of what readers want to hear about.
Phil
Even if that’s the case, Vista sucking is hardly news either…
The education system of Britain decided to not use Vista, this is the supportive news my friend, and I am very sorry the story and opinion was not to your liking. “The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency made this recommendation in view of the conflicts particularly with older systems.”
We sometimes write stories that may not seem appropriate to everyone I am sure. It is an unfortunate aspect of blogging that one cannot always please everyone.
Phil B.
You may have reverted back to XP, but Microsoft still counts you as one of the 100 million who use Vista.
I wonder how long “vista haters” put into the system before giving up. I for one have no problems with it. I am running the SP1 release but even before that I liked it. Yes I still have an XP machine but I hardly use it, right now I have Ubuntu on it. As for hardware drivers blame the manufactures for not updating their drivers, they had plenty of time. Most companies want their drivers to run at kernel level which vista prevents so the manufactures are just too lazy to put a little effort into updating them. There are work around for some of the HP printers. Most software developers are catching up and releasing updates to run their software on vista. I use Flashget for FTP, it is free and works on vista.
PC
Oddly enough, I’ve never had to go out and get an upgraded driver with OS X. You’d think with the market share Microsoft has, they’d have moved faster? Unless it really IS a problem with working with the OS.
Also, the massive underestimation that Microsoft makes of its users is downright insulting. Out of the box Vista allows for what? 2 or 3 routers? God forbid you have a different router, because you are going to spend a good HOUR trying to find the workaround after Vista tells you that your router doesn’t exist. At least Steve trusts me to set up my own network and know what equipment I have it running on.
Nothing to do with hating Vista (or not) but when was the last time MS ever shipped a full version of Office with a new PC? I can’t ever remember that happening for free.
If you wanted the full version you had to pay for it.
I know MS Works ships almost ubiquitosly with new PC’s but I’ve not seen one with a full version of Office pre-installed unless I specifically asked a company like Dell to ship one to me with it installled.
Oh one more thing. Not thinking of sofwtare compatibility, but isn’t the fact that drivers for your hardware don’t exiist or don’t work you hardware suppliers fault and not Microsoft?
It’s not as if your hardware provider (HP or whoever) didn’t have years of time to write drivers that work.
Microsoft has no obligation to support hardware. It writes Operating Systems. It’s the hardware manufacturers job to support the operating system.
Oh and with regards to the eduction system of Britain dropping Vista. At the end of the day it’s a finacial descision.
As you quoted in your comment above:
“The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency made this recommendation in view of the conflicts particularly with older systems.”
That’s not an attack on the OS, but rather an comment on how old their computers and how they lack the power to support the new OS. Systems which would take a lot of money to replace / upgrade.
Finally operating systems are tools and not everyone is to everybodies liking. They ALL have their strengths and weakness. Just use the right one for the right job.
That said.. I’m off to try to get 3d accelleration working properly on my linux box
Phil, first of all, Vista is not Web 2.0 news.
But wait a sec… Yahoo develops a YM platform for VISTA (bad YM vista link)? OK… who is beta testing THAT, my friend? I suggest you stay away from the crap. Let someone else, more skilled and refined do the dirty jobs. I could recommend a few people if you are interested. Heck, they might even do a non Web 2.0 entry about a non Web 2.0 development like YM for Vista or… isn’t Google doing anything in this direction?
Okay, I am taking issue with this now buzzards! Using some basic logic here, we cannot remove the proverbial chicken from the egg totally, in an effort to rationalize a fragmented existence on a platform that for all intents and purposes may or may not even exist.
This being said, I have taken some heat now and in the past about whether or not a slim few of my articles are indeed Web 2.0 or not. My contention has always been that the real Web 2.0 is about people and the things (any thing) that we are interested in, provided that these interests intertwine with what we term the new Web or Web 2.0.
Vista is perhaps the most touted and advertised OS that has ever been and our unextricable ties to it (even if we don’t use it) are quite obvious. If nothing else it is now a part of the fabric of both the Web and Web culture. How can Vista news not be a part of Web 2.0 if the latter exists at all? Millions of PEOPLE access the Web via this OS, and therefore it IS important. It is perhaps even more important than YIM or any other startup or intrinsically Web 2.0 story if you think about it from a simple utility standpoint.
If I invented a processor that allowed for a paradigm shift in the way people accessed graphically intensive extenisons to operate within the Web framework, then I think that also would be Web 2.0 news. Perhaps people would rather hear about a new video startup, but would this be more important than the means by which the accessed it? I think not! I always attempt to write about things that people are interested in and Vista is of import to millions. Obviously those millions are not here to enter the discourse, but the simple fact that all of you comment indicates that what we might call “a Web 2.0 nerve2 has been struck.
As always, I hold all of you in the highest regard and I hope you can expand your vision of the Web to encompass the entirety of it. I know you are way beyond me in your endeavors (Mig) on Web 2.0, but in this instance I am correct. Saying that Vista is not Web 2.0 news (particularly since one giant Web educational segment is against it) is tantamount to saying that three fifths of the Earth is terra firma. I hope you will accept my most sincere apologies if Vista or any other offering I submit injures your delicate Web 2.0 sensibilities - this was not my intent obviously.
Please consider that an author how has written rather prolifically about this subhect just might have a rather clear conception of exactly that entity of which he or she opens a discourse about. We are all way too far beyond petty semantics to dispute one another so vehmenntly at first glance - think please, just for me.
Aways,
Phil Butler
I’ve known too many writers to blindly believe that they know much of anything they write about. How about you trust us, the community of people building web 2.0 apps, to judge for ourselves what is and isn’t web 2.0?
I know tech. I work in tech. I build web apps. I use web 2.0 web apps. I never, ever, touch Vista, even at the big corporation I work for (who, like most big corporations, is sticking with XP).
I don’t know which writers you are familiar with but most of the ones I am associated with have a keen intimacy with the things they write about. This is not to say I am an expert in most of these realms but I do have a passion for knowing about what my readers care about.
This discourse is not productive in the least and I do not claim to be the end all for Web 2.0 I just have lived it for some time and have my view. Perhaps I see what many others do not and perhaps I cannot see. In the end we are just here for a time and there is no sense arguing small semanitics…..it is better that we see where the road takes us.
Always,
Phil
My main gripe with Vista is that every time my wife reboots her machine it tries to install another copy of her printer driver. This, of course, screws up the network sharing on said printer and causes all sorts of bad things.
This never happened under XP.
When my old XP PC died I thought it was finally time to buy a new one… a dual core with plenty of RAM. My initial contempt for Vista came when some 6-8 of my old software would not run… WS-FTP, Zone Alarm Pro, System Mechanic, Nero… just to mention a few.
I found the new Windows Explorer to be a file MISmanagent system. How MS could get rid of simple access to commands like move/copy is beyond belief. Moving files now is tedious because the target folder moves with mouseovers.
When I first got my new PC I worried about the constant disk chatter. After nine DAYS of it I finally researched it and suspected the indexing service. It was indexing everything… hundreds of file extensions. And it’s not as if this service provides any useful info. When we use a search engine we get to see our keywords in context. All Vista’s search engine does it point us to a file. Big deal! With XP I used a search program called FileHand that DID show keywords in the context of the target document. Of course FileHand doesn’t work with Vista.
Numerous programs just stop responding… even the MSN browser/mail client!!!
Many programs can’t even be shut down in Task Manager.
CTRL-ALT-DELETE… a command introduced some 25 years ago, is gone.
Vista often won’t shut down when told to. It often takes 3-4 attempts.
MS again leverages its virtual OS monopoly to gain an unfair advantage in the market. Vista search goes to MS Live Search. Vista is a beta release masquerading as a market ready-release. Vista reminds me of another piece of Microsoft kludge: ME. MS should be ashamed of itself… but it what does it care! It has the muscle to force Vista down the throats of vendors and consumers.
An infuriating if not scandalous side note. My new PC came with an Office 2007 trial. I had no use for it and I continued to use an old version of Word. When the trial ended, Office hijacked my Word file extension back to Office07 and would NOT let me manually switch it back. I had to uninstall the trial just to be able to use my old version of Word. This is just another example of Microsoft’s intolerable exploitation of their OS monopoly to force consumers to use other MS products and services.