Microsoft admits Vista failure

[RobertR1]

Since everyone is a critic, what suggestions do you guys have to make Vista better? I mean really, it's easy to sit and slam nothing but how would you make it better? For me, UAC was a pain in the ass, esp. as I was trying to learn the system. Turning it off made life a lot better. The Media Center extender with my 360 makes me happy (aside for lack of DVD streaming). Normally, I'd complain about gaming but since 90% of it has shifted to the 360, it's not a big concern. For something that I use all the time, OS aeshtics are a big thing to me and Vista finally delivers where as XP now looks quite dated in comparison.

It's really not MS' issue that 3rd party software still have compatiablity issues. Even the public beta had been out for so long that companies being lazy and blaming MS is just silly. Having worked with two specific medium sized software vendors, it's amazing how they stay in business. They haven't even started testing with Office 2007, nevermind Vista. Vista at this early stage in it's life is leaps and bounds ahead of where XP was at this point of it's lifecycle. It'll only continue to get better.

Having said that, there is no compelling reason for most to switch. Sure, if you get a new machine and stick with basic software usage, Vista is fine but if you're not willing to do the homework on the 3rd party software compatibility with Vista, you might be in for a rough ride.

 

[Rodéric]

To me an OS should be minimalist, allow applications to access the hardware to the best, and take as little resources as possible.
It shall not need to reboot except for service pack (which would mean kernel change), and absolutely not when installing/updating drivers.
The OS will ship with good default options, that most users shouldn't have to change, and the options would be in a handy place easy to understand and tweak (should the need arise).
It should follow the K.I.S.S. principle throughout.

And yes such an OS existed, and Windows just fails all tests.

 

[nutball]

And yes such an OS existed

BeOS, per chance?

 

[pjbliverpool]

A bit of convenience, but not really an important feature. And XP has hybarnate as well, so meh.

Sleep Mode

Hibernate is nothing like Sleep mode. My PC comes on literally about 10x faster from Sleep than from Hibernate. Its in the order of about 2 seconds from completely off to fully operational. Call that unimportant if you want but its sure as hell more important to me than an extra hundred quid or so on the next fastest available CPU and so Vista already paid for itself in that regard.

All non-features, just useless crap.

- More aesthetically pleasing GUI
- Icons which represent the files beneith
- Previews of minmized windows in the task bar
- Representitive icons in Alt-Tab
- That roladex windows switcher (yes I actually like it!)
- Nicer Start Menu
- The games explorer (flawed but still better than nothing)

Says who? You? Sorry, you don't get the right to tell me what is or is not useful to me. They are useful features to me and im sure to other people. End of story.

This is not a feature, but an insult. I'd sue them for that.

- IE7 and MP11 as standard (I know you can get them for XP, but their is still something to be said for them coming as standard)

The're both improvments on the standard XP versions which makes it an advantage. If you prefer to use older inferior versions of those programmes then great but I hardly see the logic in holding it against MS.

Not even worth mentioning.

- Built in Media Centre
- Much better handling of CD/DVD copying without using a 3rd party programme

A built in media centre isn't even worth mentioning . Apart from it being a feature that previously required you to buy a whole different OS, for anyone with their PC plugged into a TV, which is becoming increasingly common, its an excellent addition.

As for the improved DVD writing, tts an advantage and its a useful one. Therefore, its worth mentioning in the context of my post.

Remains to be seen.

- Better Security

Just about the only comment I can agree with.

LOL, are you serious?

- Improved calander date searching (selecting a particular months or year is far easier), plus Vista comes with a full calander programme built in unlike XP
- Better speech recognition
- Better slideshow transition effects

Umm yes, why wouldn't I be? The speech recognition in Vista is excellent and actually comparable to some very expensive stand alone programmes. Its not a feature that everyone will use but its a huge deal for those who will.

As for the other things, they may only be minor (actually slideshows are what I use for a screensaver so thats a fairly big deal for me) but if you read my post, you would know my intention was to show Vista had many small improvements which add up.

Well yeah, but that's just forced Vista-only, if they wanted, they could have done it in a somewhat similar manner for XP. Of course, I wouldn't expect them to invest money in developing that for XP, but nonetheless it's just their choice and a tool for forcing Vista on customers.

DX10 benefits from the new Vista architecture. Had they made it backwards compatable with XP then it would have suffered as an API. Im sure any of the devs will back that up. Whether you think it would have been worth it is a different matter but the fact is that its technically a better API for it.

None of those (besides DX10) are substantial or even important in any way, it's all just smoke and mirrors.

Its clear your not even willing to entertain the possibility that Vista is better. For whatever reason you clearly hate it and thus I see no point in going round in circles.

 

[nutball]

Sleep Mode

Hibernate is nothing like Sleep mode. My PC comes on literally about 10x faster from Sleep than from Hibernate. Its in the order of about 2 seconds from completely off to fully operational.

Windows XP supports this already (suspend-to-RAM, or S3 STR). It's not hibernate... just tickle the spacebar and in a few seconds you're typing.

 

[Frank]

Since everyone is a critic, what suggestions do you guys have to make Vista better?

The best way to make Vista better is to turn it into a real OS. Most of the things it does/tries to do aren't the responsibility of an OS. Vista is an OS, with lots of crappy tools and bloatware integrated. Get rid of those.

And make it easier for the power users and programmers to actually access the underlying and very well hidden OS functionality (preferrably through a programmable text interface), while presenting the average users with a simple and streamlined interface that makes it easy for them to start and stop applications, and a bit visibility tuning thrown in for good measure.

Like how Linux has developed in the past years.

Most of the things users are expected to do and know when using Windows are there to tune the crappy build-in tools and mini-apps. And part of that is, because free/OpenSource software is as much discouraged as possible: they're in it to make them and their supporters the most money possible, not to make things easy on the users.

 

[Frank]

To me an OS should be minimalist, allow applications to access the hardware to the best, and take as little resources as possible.
It shall not need to reboot except for service pack (which would mean kernel change), and absolutely not when installing/updating drivers.
The OS will ship with good default options, that most users shouldn't have to change, and the options would be in a handy place easy to understand and tweak (should the need arise).
It should follow the K.I.S.S. principle throughout.

And yes such an OS existed, and Windows just fails all tests.

Agreed.

 

[Frank]

DX10 benefits from the new Vista architecture. Had they made it backwards compatable with XP then it would have suffered as an API.

I don't see why.

 

[Rodéric]

BeOS, per chance?

That's the one I had in mind, indeed.
(I think MacOSX might become such an OS, maybe it is already, didn't try it yet.)

 

[Frank]

(I think MacOSX might become such an OS, maybe it is already, didn't try it yet.)

I think Linux (Ubuntu) is pretty close to that mark as well, especially now they have made it easy to run Windows apps.

 

[Frank]

Btw, I think that in a decade from now, people will see Microsoft forcing China to adapt Linux as their greatest faillure. Because China will produce the next generation of programmers and game developers. And they grew up with Linux.

We will get lots of uniquely new games for a few dollars apiece. And Linux becomes the platform you need to run them. Business apps are already available.

 

[nutball]

That's the one I had in mind, indeed.
(I think MacOSX might become such an OS, maybe it is already, didn't try it yet.)

Dunno, I think there's maybe a bit of apples v. oranges comparison.

I had BeOS way back when, I have OSX right now. I find it difficult to compare them. OSX uses a whole lot more resources, but then computers are a whole lot more capable now. BeOS didn't really have a whole slew of applications written for it (if it did, it'd probably still be around now). Lastly, what would BeOS have become by now had it continued to be developed at a level to compete with Windows, OSX, or Linux? Would it have remained lean, mean and clean?

BeOS was great, so far as it went. Great fun to write code for. It would be nice if Linux became what BeOS should have become, however given the lack of focus and social issues that plague the Linux community I think that this is impossible.

 

[Gelanin]

OEM versions are more restrictive on their licensing, especially with regards to activation/reactivation in the event you change motherboards or otherwise upgrade enough hardware. Not that MS actually tells us the limits or guarantees that they won't move the goalposts at some point in the future.

I know very well the limitations, but in my honest opinion, they are not a problem for most normal users. Even if your mobo is broken, aslong as you get the same brand/type (if it exists) and phone microsoft, you will be able to activate it again. So yes, its more restrictive, but not enough to become a real problem unless you change motherboard.

 

[Gelanin]

So $200 a pop for a usable OEM Vista OS is not _that_ expensive?

I also need 3 system. No way am I spending $600 for that.

Well, i paid about $140-150 for mine, so i doubt you'd pay that much more for yours, considering Norway is normally semi-expensive when it comes to software.

 

[Gelanin]

You don't get any support with OEM versions. You need to contact MS for some reason they tell you to take a hike.

True, but so far in my 20 years of using a PC, i've never ever needed to contact Microsoft due to some support issue privately. I've contacted them several times in a work-scenario though.

 

[N00b]

I have been using Vista since December and while I think that it is still a mixed blessing right now (mostly because of drivers and not-yet-fixed-bugs) there is no denying that Vista is better than XP in many areas (and worse in a few) and the improvement between vista and xp is much larger than the improvement between xp and w2k.

I would like to point some obvious improvements that have not been mentioned here before (and that I think make vista better than xp):

• Vastly better memory and virtual memory management
  IMO that the single best feature that vista brought along. In scarce memory situation Vista performs *a lot* better than XP.
• SuperFetch
  I you have enough memory, Vista will preload your most often used application into unused parts of the memory, which can tremendiously shorten startup times. Cool stuff.

BTW, more improvements in the Vista kernel can be found in this interesting article by Marc Russinovich. Very nice read.

And last not least I'm a bit amused by the people here who claim that Vista's biggest evil was the built-in DRM. It's not. Vista's biggest evil is the fact that you cannot use unsigned driver under Vista 64 by default. Think about it. ;-)

 

[_xxx_]

That's the one I had in mind, indeed.
(I think MacOSX might become such an OS, maybe it is already, didn't try it yet.)

I loved BeOS, it's a shame it had no chance to reach the wider audience. It was all Windows has never been and will never be.

pjbliverpool, all the crap you listed (sorry for the choice of words, but I just can't find any expression that would fit better) you can have for the XP, mostly as freeware. And such exotic features like "better speech recognition" are used by 7.5 people worldwide - why would anyone care?

I want a simple, streamlined OS which allows me to be a power user with access to everything, not a bloated bunch of widgets, err, gadgets and messengers and whatnot. None of those "features" are of any real-world use to anyone.

I do hate Vista, just as I hated XP. Win 2000 was on the right track somewhat, but they managed to kill the good ideas and replace them with abusive rubbish.

As for media player and IE, who in the sane mind uses those anyway? There are so many better apps for that out there, it's not even funny. And they don't phone home or open security holes as big as grand canyon either.

And CD/DVD burning is nice and all, but I prefer more competent SW like Nero or such.

As for better memory management, nice. But it's not like anyone still uses 256 MB of RAM or such, so meh. I also don't care if my apps need 0.3 seconds longer to load either.

All your arguments are just about shiny visual stuff and essentially non-features, but hey, if you're happy with it, all the power to you.

 

[nutball]

And CD/DVD burning is nice and all, but I prefer more competent SW like Nero or such.

Personally I can't stand the idea of 3rd party s/w being required to write a CD. Would you accept the idea of having to download a 3rd party piece of software to write to a floppy drive? Or a USB memory stick? CDs are commodity today, it should just work out of the box. It does under OSX.

In that respect MS is right to integrate the functionality into the OS. The fact that they make a half-arsed job of it *and* lock out anybody else from doing a better job is a separate issue I think. Any competent OS which proclaims to be desktop and PC friendly should be able to write a couple of files to a CD without causing user-trauma IMO.

 

[Maintank]

If the OS takes more memory that leaves less memory available for the applications, which goes against the principle of an OS, those being that the OS must allow greatest access to the hardware while consuming as little resources (CPU, RAM, HDD space) as possible.
Simple as that.

I already suffered from that effect while playing games and having noticable longer load times (paging love)...

Vista releases memory that isnt core to the OS when an application requires it. To me that is how an OS should act. It doesnt make sense for the OS to sit there doing nothing smart in terms of memory management and forcing me to hit the disk every time I fire up a commonly used application.

I had no problems with games loading while using the release candidate. OS would show ~1GB out of 1.5GB used. When i fired up DAOC, it would takes its 900MBs without issue.

 

[Kaotik]

Uh oh, I haven't read the whole thread, not even close, but I'm shocked on how negative attitude some people have against Vista.

For the memory usage, someone actually did a quite good test on it - on a very same system with fresh XP Pro first, and then on fresh Vista Ultimate installation, both at default settings etc (meaning Vista had Aero on and so on).
He ran two instances of a memory tester program at once with setting "all available memory" for a while and checked how much memory was left for OS and it's services (no extra programs running of course)
The test result might seem surprising to some, Vista used only around 50MB more than XP.

Yes, Vista caches a lot etc etc, but that cached mem is also flushed down the toilet when needed

The OS has so many things done just simply better, that I don't see how anyone can actually see XP as a better OS, unless you take into account things which aren't dependent on Microsoft, like 3rd party driver support and so on, which is still lacking with some hardware.

Sure, there are programs that don't work, but most that work on XP work on Vista too, if not "by default", then via XP SP2 compatibility mode.