Microsoft admits Vista failure

[N00b]

LOL
Sorry.
Make a simple test
Install XP and Vista, then start running virtual machines.
Guess which OS will run more and better ?

Vista will run virtual machines much better than XP, especially when using multiple virtual machines that use more memory than your host has available. XP becomes pretty much unusable in such a case. Vista still runs OK.

Last time I tried VMWare Vista warned that the program has known compatibility problems with it, and VirtualPC 2007 was still a beta, has it gone retail with Vista support already?

VMWare 5.5 works with Vista, the virtual machines just take a long time to start up. I'm running VMWare 6.0 here since Beta 1 and have had no problems whatsoever. With the second release candidate released last week, final release should be imminent.

 

[SPM]

If you want an OS to run XP virtual machines, forget Vista and VMWare. Ubuntu 7.04 and KVM does it free.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM?highlight=(kvm)

 

[Frank]

Exactly. And better. You can even run Windows in one or more of them.

 

[Albuquerque]

Why are educated people, well excuse me, supposedly educated people on this forum talking about how Vista is nothing more than XP with a shinier 3D-based shell and more memory usage?

So XP featured multithreading and application-level prioritization of storage and data transfer subsystems' IO?

And then XP somehow started considering the CPU overhead of interrupt requests and context switches when delving out CPU time to applications?

When did XP also start event-logging for performance (and delta warnings) on bootup, shutdown, login, logoff, hibernation, un-hibernation, going to sleep, waking up from sleep and individual application startup and shutdown times?

Hey, and tell me when XP got the kernel enhancement for queuing and batch-processing IO functions versus handling each IO request individually.

None of what I just posted has jack to do with Aero Glass, or the new interface, or a home user versus a work user -- although one of them has to do with DX10. It doesn't matter who you are, or what you use your computer for, the four things I just posted do not exist in XP and are very useable even by the most computer-inept soccer mom.

I'm sure someone will bitch about how I'm wrong and how soccer mother won't care about any four of these, so let me put them in context for dear-ol' mum...

Multithreading / prioritization of IO cycles:
Take XP. Run a full antivirus scan of your entire drive. Now start a video game like Stalker... Play for 30 minutes without ripping your hair out at the hiccups, pauses, delays and nonsense that goes on.

Take Vista and do the exact same thing. The antivirus application doesn't have focus, and isn't high-priority traffic. As such, it doesn't make your game grind to a near-halt like it does on XP.

Furthermore, something that soccer mom might not see (but you very well might at the office) would be CPU overhead during IO processes. Start your XP box, connect it to a 100mbit line, and transfer data to another 100mbit-connected box on the same network. Now check out task manager's Performance tab, turn on "View Kernel times", and take note of where your kernel CPU time is... Better yet, if you have more than one CPU, notice which of your CPU's is being pegged by the kernel... Try this with Vista, and notice the drastic difference, and also notice the load spread to all CPU's in the system. You should REALLY try this with a gig link, as it will completely PEG an XP box no matter your processor speed.

You don't need to be an uber-nerd to see prioritization; hell even the multithreading of IO can help mom and her antivirus scans too. And back to IO priority: the only time that memory paging to disk gets anything other than "very low" IO priority is if the memory kernel goes into panic (kernel has zero free pages and needs to immediately swap to keep from halting) -- which means you're doing a LOT more than a soccer mom would.

Application CPU-cycle handling
This somewhat overlaps the previous demonstration/example, but for a different reason. Let's use an example that isn't disk-limited...

WinXP: Run Prime95 x 2 in the "maximum CPU stress" mode and use task manager to make them both HIGH priority. Now surf YouTube for some good movies... Good luck with that.

Vista: Run Prime95 x 2 in the "maximum CPU stress" mode and use task manager to make them both HIGH priority. Now surf YouTube for some good movies, and you'll actually be able to watch them. In fact, you'll probably be able to watch more than one.

Why? Because XP does several things wrong with CPU cycle delegation. First, prioritization under XP has no concept of making sure other apps have ANY access to the system, even to include ring level zero (kernel, base drivers). Second, XP's application CPU preemptive sharing model doesn't account for IRQ's or context switching overhead, so an App may not get ANY CPU time if the processor is experiencing lots of IRQ traffic (busy disks, busy nic, busy sound card, whatever)

Vista "fixes" both of these; high priority, even the highest you can assign in task manager, is still required to give upto 20% CPU time to other applications. If no other apps need / use the time, then the high priority app can of course get control back. Thus if you truly have a high priority app, you aren't limited to 80%, unless you have other apps vying for time.

Performance Event Logging
Yes, even mom is going to get some benefit out of performance event logging. How often has a computer-inpet person in your family mentioned they need to buy a computer because theirs runs "so slow" -- even though they've got an AMD X2 4000, a gig of ram, a 7600GT and a 160GB 7200RPM drive?

If Vista's performance log starts recording slow bootup times, shutdown times, app start times, etc then it will notify you in a balloon tip: "Certain processes caused your computer to boot slowly -- click here to find out what it was". It gives even Soccer Mom the ability to see how her eleventy billion popup apps she's installed makes her Fire Breathing Jesus Machine (TM) grind to a crawl -- and gives her the option to remove them from startup.

For those of the Geek Persuasion, we can dig in and see how long certain drivers took to boot, which apps really are our big time consumers, etc. We can also see trending data (bootup yesterday took 67 seconds, today it took 109 -- what changed?)

Queuing and batch handling of IO requests
This actually overlaps several others, but is important even to Mom too. Each and every IO request under XP required a context switch and immediate handling. A "busy" system that was creating no actual CPU overhead would still grind to a halt because of all the IO traffic. Outside of prioritization and threading also comes a new and better idea: batching a ton of IO's together and then processing them in one fail swoop versus handling them individually.

This maximizes access patterns on "slow" devices like hard drives and USB-attached storage; uses FAR less CPU cycles, it results in higher throughput on all devices, and it results in better battery life due to the previous three (less thrashing, less CPU, higher speed so the transfer gets done sooner). It also paves the way for even more advanced options like SuperFetch and ReadyBoost.

Mom's like when they can quickly open up their email at the same time they're offloading the 1,230 pictures from their daughters' MTV Sweet 16 party...





There. Done. Four real-world examples of shit that doesn't exist in XP, can never exist in XP because of the way it's made, DOES exist in Vista, and which makes even Soccer Mom's life easier.

 

[Maintank]

Doesnt Vista also spawn seperate rendering windows for each application? I believe XP renders all applications in the same space. So if one of your apps hangs in XP, your entire desktop appears frozen.

 

[Albuquerque]

Doesnt Vista also spawn seperate rendering windows for each application? I believe XP renders all applications in the same space. So if one of your apps hangs in XP, your entire desktop appears frozen.

That's mostly due to GDI being thrown in the trash can, along with the much improved application CPU cycle-delegation.

Someone else mentioned reliance on a 3D card earlier in this thread, and that too is untrue. Sure, if you want the "Aero Glass" experience you'll need the card, but you don't need a 3D card if you don't want the fancy UI. And when was the last time a computer was sold off-the-shelf-new without some sort of 3D featureset? 1999?

 

[Malo]

I remember recently running Oblivion for awhile then quitting and didn't realise that I still had Anarchy Online running as well. I never even noticed in Oblivion. No way in hell XP would let me do that without noticing.. or even loading Oblivion?

 

[Rodéric]

Whatever the features Vista have, if you don't experience the improvement, it's like they aren't here for comparison sack...

I bought Vista x64, maybe it's because I'm on the x64 version, but I don't "feel" that the OS is much better than XP, maybe things get less in my way than they used to, but it's not good enough for me to say "Vista is good, go get it", atm it's rather "Vista's a small improvement over XP, think hard before moving".

 

[Frank]

I'll try Vista when I have to, or get it for free on a new computer.

Albuquerque, I totally get your points, but except for the better throughput utilization, they're mostly "meh". Simply not worth the money.

I advise companies to stick with what they have for the foreseeable future. The gain of upgrading is slim, and the costs are high.

 

[Albuquerque]

I'll try Vista when I have to, or get it for free on a new computer.

Albuquerque, I totally get your points, but except for the better throughput utilization, they're mostly "meh". Simply not worth the money.

I advise companies to stick with what they have for the foreseeable future. The gain of upgrading is slim, and the costs are high.

Well, to be fair, I never said anyone needs Vista, nor did I ever impune that it's worth the price tag. There are a hundred more things that Vista does 100x better than XP, but none of them mean that the OS is a required upgrade for anyone.

As for me? I'm buying a copy. In fact, I'm buying three copies -- one Ultimate, and two Home Premiums. (Taking advantage of that buy one, get two 67% off deal they have going.) And this is the first Windows OS I've purchased with my own money since ... well, ever.

I have a single legal copy of WinXP that I inherited, and several legal copies of Win2K and 2K3 in various flavors thanks to some MS classes I took. I personally feel that Vista is enough of a move in the right direction to spend my hard-earned moolah on it.

That doesn't mean everyone will agree, or that everyone has to agree. My response was only to those dolts on this forum who were spouting about how Vista really has nothing over XP except some "gooey-er" GUI and some extra bloat. There are a LOT of technological advancements under the hood that can never be back-ported to XP, simply because it wasn't designed that way, and mostly because it couldn't have been designed that way. The fact that you can't look directly at it doesn't mean it's nonexistant...

Most of the features are things that you, me and every other Jon and Jane Doe will take for granted and never once think of. Much like the four biggies I posted above... That doesn't make them less impactful or important. Anyone who says otherwise has their head burried in the sand and/or has too much of an emotional attachment to discuss the topic logically.

 

[Frank]

Don't hold your breath.

The home users who buy it bought a new PC with Vista preinstalled, have to upgrade, or they already have a top of the line PC and they don't care very much about the money.

For the first and second group, they expect things to be faster anyway. Simply because they just bought a much faster PC.

The third group simply wants the best and latest, whatever.

But all those groups will flip out about the access restrictions. It's new, and it might be safer, but it's a major pain. Simply because they aren't used to it.

So Aero looks nicer (a bit, to some people, etc), but the access restrictions are a major inconvenience. Let's call that a draw.

Most every other speed increase goes the way of any Windows system that is changed regulary: the way of the Dodo. Things will slow down.



As for companies: how much work did you and your team do to be able to deploy Vista? How much money needed to be spend on upgrades? And that's disregarding the lost worker time of users who have to do something else while they're upgraded, and take quite some time playing around with it to adapt.

That's also why I strongly discourage companies to upgrade to MS Office 2007. If they really want to upgrade, they're better off with OpenOffice any way you look at it.

 

[demonic]

That's also why I strongly discourage companies to upgrade to MS Office 2007. If they really want to upgrade, they're better off with OpenOffice any way you look at it.

If you actually worked in a real company, that actually used all the office features, you wouldnt say that.

I've tried getting one such department to use openoffice side by side with Office 2003. It just couldnt be done. You have to remember, not everyone is as good as you with computers.

Unless OpenOffice is exactly the same as Office 2003, with features and getting things to work out of the box. It wont be a competitor.

2007, is another issue. It will be a long time before I upgrade my company to 2007, Vista... Vista Server, hmm thats probably as soon as it comes out

 

[Skrying]

Office 2007 is a massive improvement over both Office 2003 and OpenOffice, just simply massive from a usability stand point. The interface is finally truly usable and I can actually write documents, make presentations, maintain databases without feeling slowed down or given headaches from endless drop down menus. They're still there in some cases, but not nearly as bad as it use to be. Frankly the move from Office 2003 to 2007 was much easier and quicker than any time I've given OpenOffice the chance, OpenOffice just feels weird and the naming of features never clicked in my mind.

 

[Albuquerque]

As for companies: how much work did you and your team do to be able to deploy Vista? How much money needed to be spend on upgrades? And that's disregarding the lost worker time of users who have to do something else while they're upgraded, and take quite some time playing around with it to adapt.

That's also why I strongly discourage companies to upgrade to MS Office 2007. If they really want to upgrade, they're better off with OpenOffice any way you look at it.

I'm not going to bother with your hypothetical user situations, we can both make up hypothetical situations until we're blue in the face and neither of us be correct.

Let's call that a draw.

However, I can answer the question that I quoted above. I work for a Fortune 300 company (eh, last I checked, I know we're in the upper half of 500, howabout that? ) and my position is actually squarely in the middle of the Vista design, development and deployment cycle.

So, let's take it one step at a time:

Time spent? We're aiming for calendar Q3 of this year. That gives us about six months, give or take. Nearly all of that time will be spent on our developers testing their little apps, and us checking with our shrinkwrap vendors on if they're compatible or not. Surprisingly enough, we've had no showstoppers yet with any of our stuff.

Money spent on upgrades? Zero dollars and Zero cents. Yes, really. We lease all of our hardware, which means no piece of hardware in our environment is more than three years old. But we're not shoving Vista on every machine simultaneously, in fact we're not shoving Vista anywhere. As machines come off lease, we're deploying Vista with the new machine going out. In fact, equipment that we've been deploying since last Q3 has been fully Vista compliant -- 3D card, CPU, memory and all. But there's no need to slam-dunk every computer in our world straight over, nor should anyone really try IMO.

Lost worker time while upgrading? Huh? Let's say we did want to upgrade people with old hardware -- the only upgrade needed would be memory. And last time I checked, it took me about five minutes to put two Micro-DIMMS into a Thinkpad laptop; even less on one of our Dell desktops.

Lost worker time while fiddling? With what? Vista? Are you kidding?

Tech: Hey Joe User, where is "Microsoft Word" in XP?
Joe User: Gee, let's think, it's in Start, Programs, Microsoft Office...

Tech: Hey Joe User, where is "Microsoft Word" in Vista?
Joe User: I, uh, dunno... Let's look: Start, uh, Programs, uhhhh, Microsoft Office, uuhhhh... yeah, same place.

Time wasted: uh, 5 seconds?

Tech: Hey Joe User, where is My Documents in XP?
Joe User: On my desktop, oh and at the top of my start menu.

Tech: Hey Joe User, where is My Documents in Vista?
Joe User: Uhhhh, I bet..... Yeah, on my desktop, and in my start menu too. Cool...

Time wasted? 3 seconds?

Why does everyone assume you have to "get used to" Vista? It's not some radical, fundamental change. Start button? Check. Start menu? Check. Right-clickitude? Check. Standard My Docs, My Pics, My Music, My Movies, My blah blah blah folders? Check, minus the "My" moniker -- but in the exact same places as before.

Now, your very last comment: You suggest people "upgrade" to Open Office rather than 2007, and it's better no matter how I look at it? Let me point some things out:

Group policy configuration of Office components? Can't do that with Open Office.

Training dollars spent to teach someone Office 2007? I'd have to spent it with OpenOffice too (we're based on Office2003 right now)

Internally developed applications that are dependant on Access databases? (lots more than you may realize) OpenOffice = Bzzzzt.

MSI packaged so that it snaps directly into our pre-existing SMS 3.0 deployment structure (that currently penetrates 98% of our client base)? Big zilcho on OpenOffice there too.

Cost for support of Office 2007? It's built into a huge contract we already have with Microsoft for servers, desktop OSes, SQL databases, web servers, you name it. Centralized and pre-existant billing = 1, OpenOffice and a second check to send to someone else whom we have no previous business track record = 0.

Care to reanalyze your comment on how it's better no matter how I look at it? My company has looked, more than once, and we're not convinced. We do have some OpenOffice in our environment for specialized uber-lowest-cost point-of-sale or Kiosk systems, but that's a rarety.

 

[Frank]

I did do such a project 7 years ago for one of the biggest Dutch companies. I think I've got a pretty good grasp about the do's and dont's, and what it takes. It's a huge (and very expensive) effort.

 

[Albuquerque]

I did do such a project 7 years ago for one of the biggest Dutch companies. I think I've got a pretty good grasp about the do's and dont's, and what it takes. It's a huge (and very expensive) effort.

Ok, so how does technology and software development seven years ago compare today?

Seven years ago we didn't have broadband in essentially every home. We didn't have reliable push technology that could reach 4500 machines within 30 minutes. We didn't have anything like the centralized control and auditing over workstations that are so widely dispersed as we do today.

Business dynamics change over seven years; you of all people should understand that. Making a comment along the lines of "OpenOffice is the better solution no matter how you look at it" is misguided best, or at worst, purely ignorant of true business driving factors.

Price tag is a business factor, to be sure. But it's not the only one, nor should it ever be. If every business did only what was the cheapest to implement, the whole world would be a vastly different place -- and likely not for the better.

The additional "cost" of Microsoft products in our environment is offset by the massive personel-knowledgebase we retain both in technical staff and user base. It's also offset by the far superior support we get when things need immediate attention. And it's a cost that isn't a major impact to our bottom line; I'd be willing to wager we spend two times more on Autodesk and Adobe software than we do on the total of our Microsoft software.

 

[Tahir2]

Tech: Hey Joe User, where is My Documents in XP?
Joe User: On my desktop, oh and at the top of my start menu.

Tech: Hey Joe User, where is My Documents in Vista?
Joe User: Uhhhh, I bet..... Yeah, on my desktop, and in my start menu too. Cool...

Please apply same for resolution change between XP and Vista.. had me stumped for a few 10's of seconds

 

[Albuquerque]

Please apply same for resolution change between XP and Vista.. had me stumped for a few 10's of seconds

Well, I could agree, except all of our users are on LCD screens. Vista picks the native resolution of the display device as a default when you're on LCD, so it's a non-issue for my client base But you are right, there are some things in different places, but none of which is more than a minute worth of work to find.

I know everyone (including me) hates using built-in Help features; it's just "un-manly". But if you type in resolution, it gives you a place to click that takes you directly to the screen to change.... Neat!

 

[Skrying]

That's actually a "feature" of Vista I don't like admitting to, the Help is much improved and actually helpful this time around. There were a few instances were I've used it so far, but it actually solved my problem so it was a pleasant surprise.

 

[poopypoo]

...I work for a Fortune 300 company (eh, last I checked, I know we're in the upper half of 500, howabout that? ) and my position is actually squarely in the middle of the Vista design, development and deployment cycle....

your earlier post about Vista improvements made plenty of sense. I don't feel these improvements enough yet to appreciate them -- but that doesn't mean they're not there. At some point, if Vista becomes my primary work platform and I have the opportunity to unRAR a halfdozen files whilest copying data over the network, playing some windowed 3d app and watching youtube simultaneously, and it's fast, I may ome to appreciate the advantages Vista offers. For now, though, I've just toyed about with the g/f's laptop, and it's pretty unimpressive.

The post of yours that I quoted, however, is pure bollocks. I mean, even in there, you have some points -- OpenOffice is clearly no replacement for MS Office in a managed environment -- and you're always bringing intelligent ponts to the conversation -- but implying that the rollout cost of Vista is zero is effectively equivalent to saying that the IS's job is simply to rollout new operating systems whenever MS makes one. Maybe in your company, without Vista to deal with you'd all be sitting around twiddling your thumbs, but in the offices I've worked in, any time we don't have to waste rolling out "improvements" is time that we can finally be productive and actually rollout our own, real, improvements to the network infrastructure -- or I guess we could theoretically even have time to go explain to Jebediah Springfield in cubicle block D that the mouse didn't stop working, it's just slightly off-screen, to the right. If you haven't had any problems rolling out Vista yet, all I can say, and I say this without any ill will whatsoever, is wait. Wait and pray.

Anyway, most of your points are well-taken. There are undoubtedly significant improvements under the hood-- I'm not one to think MS has been wasting their time all along -- but the changes above the hood is pretty anoying, from my vantage point. Vista seems primarily targeted toward the "power user", but most of the new, visible, features are those that power users don't really need. Any performance increases will have to wait to be seen until the OS & driver support matures a bit, I guess. I think what spurs a lot of these arguments (needlessly) is MS's attitude that everyone (every OEM especially!) should stop, corroborate, and distribute their brand new OS to everyone in the world, costs be damned, maturity be damned. But ooo, did you say buy one, get two at 2/3 price? That's a step in the right direction ;9