Vista rant ---- MS must dump it...

[Geo]

At 6 weeks I think I'm justified in saying it ain't being slow; it's broke and won't ever complete. It gets to a certain point and just stops without further progress.

It'd only be a "neat feature" if Outlook doesn't rely on it for searching my email. Since Outlook DOES require it, that makes the functionality mission critical in my book. And, indeed, I've had to go out and get google desktop so I'd have something that would search my email.

Edit: Indeed, the Indexing Options in the Control panel says "4,599 items indexed. Indexing complete" and shows "Microsoft Office Outlook" as one of the included locations (this is Office 2007, btw). Outlook however, when I do a search says, "Outlook is currently indexing your items. Search results may be incomplete because items are still bing indexed. " And then lists a far greater number of unindexed emails than the entire control panel Index Options shows was indexed (remember, including Outlook) with "Indexing complete".

 

[Quitch]

So if Vista crashed on your PC, Vista is broken?

Let's not be ridiculous here. Indexing didn't finish on your PC and refuses to. There's a problem. That doesn't mean indexing is broken.

 

[Geo]

What are you talking about? I talked about the crash only to give a time reference for how long the indexing has been this way.

This is currently a total clean install of Vista Ultimate x64 and Office 2007 on a brand new hdd.

Try googling "Outlook is currently indexing your items" and see how many frustrated people are out there on this particular issue. And having done so if you are inspired to blame Office rather than Vista, then you need to further understand that with Vista the two are the same regarding the search/indexing function. MS integrated them.

Edit: Slight correction: "how long the indexing has been this way" re the current install. I ran x86 (and had the same issue) from the end of January to about June. Then a previous fresh install of x64 from roughly June until mid-September (same issue) and now this install of x64 since Mid-September (same issue).

 

[Albuquerque]

Well now wait...

Outlook is a seperate component from Vista. Are you talking about Vista's indexing being broke, or Outlook's? Because I'm seeing you talk about Outlooks' indexing being broke, which isn't a bug in Vista.

And yes, I read your comment about Outlook using Vista's integrated indexing utility. But that doesn't auto-magically equate to the OS being broke either. Just because my app calls a DLL for rendering GDI effects and then my App's GUI is b0rked, doesn't mean the DLL is the obvious culprit. Sure, I'd start there -- but who's to say I'm using the DLL correctly?

Of course, I have to assume that Microsoft knows how to use their own tools, but the Office team is not the group of engineers as the OS team. Nevertheless, Vista is reporting that indexing is finished -- and Outlook (a 1st party app, of course, but still not the OS) is reporting that it's own internal indexing is not.

I'm still more apt to blame Outlook at this point than Vista...

 

[Geo]

My understanding is that starting with Vista and Outlook 2007, Outlook is now relying on Vista's search/index capability rather than its own. So for the limited case I'm pointing at, to talk about one is to talk about both.

Edit: And to reiterate a point I made above --Vista *admits to the responsibility* for indexing "Microsoft Office Outlook". It's right there in the Included Locations in the "Indexing Options" screen in the control panel.

 

[Sxotty]

Indexing seems to be semi-borked in Vista, since we're talking about bugs. On both x86 and now x64 I'm finding it impossible to get the thing to finish indexing everything. This install (some of you will remember I had a hdd crash about 6 weeks ago) still tells me that my Outlook personal folders have 25,000 emails that haven't been indexed yet. This after 6 weeks. . . And yes, I've forced it to start over again a few times in the hopes that it would finish the next time I tried. . . no luck.

I just turned it off. I hate that stuff. Now I am wondering though b/c I have office 03 and if I went to 07 you are saying I could no longer search my email/?

 

[Geo]

If you run afoul of this problem (I'm not suggesting it happens to everyone, but there are a lot of reports out there of it happening) then yeah, at least using Outlook 07's built-in search which is leveraging Vista's indexing. You can do what I did, however, and use google desktop to do search of your email.

And I do think that MS will get around to fixing this issue eventually.

 

[Albuquerque]

Edit: And to reiterate a point I made above --Vista *admits to the responsibility* for indexing "Microsoft Office Outlook". It's right there in the Included Locations in the "Indexing Options" screen in the control panel.

Ah, hadn't seen that.

So, one bug down , but "a horribly buggy OS" this doesn't make. I'm not even suggesting that you (Geo) were anywhere near that train of thought. I'd still like to hear some more about the huge and incessant bugs that make it the Buggiest OS evAr since WinME though

 

[Geo]

I just turned it off. I hate that stuff. Now I am wondering though b/c I have office 03 and if I went to 07 you are saying I could no longer search my email/?

Btw, saw a reference tonight that suggested if you shut off Windows indexing service entirely that Outlook 2007 will then use its own search rather than rely on Vista's index. So that might work for you. Didn't try it myself.

I fooled around with Outlook search some more tonight and got it sort of working by turning off Outlook indexing inside Outlook, shutting down Outlook, and then restarting Outlook and re-enabling the search. So, yay tight integration, who the f**k really knows on which side of the wall the problem is. Still, "sort of working" in that I get a goodly number of search hits now in Outlook, but not all that I'd expect. Yet, anyway, maybe it will catch up.

 

[_xxx_]

So Albuquerque, you're telling me that broken SW is "okay" because it is not bad programming but "bad design decisions"? And bugs are okay since, err, it was a bad decision? And they don't result out of bad programming, the clean coding will produce buigs just lie that?

Hello, earth centrall calling? Seriously, are you really even using a computer for other things but forum posting? (yeah, I know what your work is supposed to be but truly find that hard to believe seeing what bull you write here)

Forget it, no point in arguing with someone living in his own reality. Bye bye thread.

 

[_xxx_]

Well, from what I see it was only Home that was ever in doubt in anyone's mind there.

Just one more: why are we talking about business and networking etc. at all? I thought we were in the "gfx-enthusiasts and 3d gamers" corner here. And that is my point of view when I talk about Vista, as a home user and gamer. Businesses can use OS2 as far as I'm concerned, why would we care about that here?

 

[Geo]

Why do we have RPSC, GD, and Hardware & Software Talk forums AT ALL? Same answer to both questions.

Tho you've tangentially put your finger on one of the things I like about Vista vs XP --it's visually prettier, particularly on big hi-res monitors.

 

[Albuquerque]

So Albuquerque, you're telling me that broken SW is "okay" because it is not bad programming but "bad design decisions"? And bugs are okay since, err, it was a bad decision? And they don't result out of bad programming, the clean coding will produce buigs just lie that?

No, but after that reply, I am telling you that your reading comprehension is broken. That, or you're simply too far into the "HATE HATE HATE" category to even fathom what someone else might have to say.

Several apps that I've built have encountered terrible performance, not because they were full of bugs, but because management wanted them to do certain things in a certain way. That way wasn't intelligent, wasn't well thought out, and in fact the decisions were made by people who shouldn't have been in the position to make them.

Nevertheless, the decisions were made, and I was required to implement them. So the end result was slow and often unreliable. But it wasn't the code, it was the method in which I was forced to implement the tasks which was unreliable.

There are bugs in code, they always exist. But your only supposition is that Vista is 100% chock-full of bugs -- although you've yet to come tell me what specific bugs you're speaking about. I say that there are bugs, but a large part of Vista's problems likely aren't programming at all: they're bad design decisions.

Why does Windows Media player have anything to do with network transfer performance? Because it's a design decision of the OS -- to allow Media Player to trump other apps when media is being streamed. It shouldn't happen that way, there are more intelligent ways to handle it. But it was a design decision, and those sorts of decisions are typically not left to the people doing the programming.

But since you're in the HATE HATE HATE frame of mind, you won't even see this -- you'll skim right over it, make yet another strawman attack about how I'm in LOVE LOVE LOVE with Vista (where have I said that again? You made a point to say you hated it, but I made no such overture) and I can't see the forest for the trees.

If you've developed applications for half as long as you let on, then you know that programmers don't get to make the big decisions -- and sometimes, those big decisions are made directly in the face of a programmer's common sense.

 

[Frank]

Most programmers and system administrators I know don't like Vista at all. Some do like it. I think they're all entitled to their own opinion.

I'm not telling the people that like it that they're stupid, and they don't tell me either. We don't all drive the same car either, but that's a lot harder with OSes in a business environment: all specialist things (VMs, routing, firewalls, clusters, kiosks etc) are done with Linux, all the general stuff (FP and email servers and desktops) are done with MS Windows.

Btw, I really like MS SQL server 2000, and most of my co-workers agree. Programming environments is a mixed bag, like Vista.

Btw2: I don't like MS SQL server 2005, and most agree with that as well.

 

[Albuquerque]

Most programmers and system administrators I know don't like Vista at all. Some do like it. I think they're all entitled to their own opinion.

Split bag here -- most programmers I know don't like it either. Sysadmins are another story: the ones who've used it seem to really like it, but they don't specifically think we need to run to it. I really don't disagree, and in fact our corporation is simply using our general lease refresh cycle to "cycle in" a Vista OS as the XP OS leaves. Given our lease refresh timelines, all the boxes that need to be Vista (for support reasons) will be when the XP sunset date arrives.

But that's not to say that Vista will be on every PC either.

I'm not telling the people that like it that they're stupid, and they don't tell me either. We don't all drive the same car either, but that's a lot harder with OSes in a business environment: all specialist things (VMs, routing, firewalls, clusters, kiosks etc) are done with Linux, all the general stuff (FP and email servers and desktops) are done with MS Windows.

We really aren't much different here... VM's are all on VMWare ESX boxes (SUSE host) and nearly all our firewalls are Linux-based. Routing is entirely handled by some Big-Iron Cisco. Our "kiosks" are really more point-of-sale equipment, and they're split pretty evenly between Linux and WinXP Embedded. All our servers, clusters and desktops are Windoze of some sort.

Oh, and we just moved our SQL 2000 boxes to SQL 2005, and for the small amount of DB work that I actually do, I didn't see a lot of difference. But I'm far from any sort of DBA

 

[Frank]

Agreed. That's about what I see as well, although clusters, Big Iron and most dedicated stuff almost universally use Linux nowadays.

The main problem with MS SQL server 2005 is the bad management console and tools. The engine has improved, but the user interaction has gotten a lot worse. And too many arbitrary restrictions.

Edit: like Vista, if you're a real power user (like a programmer).

 

[_xxx_]

After I installed Vista at home friday and used it for a couple of days now, I can loudly say that it definitely sucks major arse for a home user/gamer. What an awful POS. Only one really good thing about it so far, it can indeed kill hanging apps via ctrl+alt+del confidently.

 

[L233]

After I installed Vista at home friday and used it for a couple of days now, I can loudly say that it definitely sucks major arse for a home user/gamer. What an awful POS.

Could you be a bit more specific with your criticism.

 

[_xxx_]

Don't even know where to start, seriously. Very limited way to change anything manually, the new Windows Explorer is an insult, control panel usability and layout are a joke, having to turn on WLAN manually after every start (with "repairing..." message box to boot) is just awful, and on and on. Windows own programs and control panel apps produce a warning of sorts "do you really, truly want to run this potentially seriously dangerous app" every time you start them, I mean wtf? Also, where are the services/computer management? Or is this also masked out somehow?

It does run stable though and I had no troubles with drivers. Bioshock demo won't run at all for whatever reason, but I haven't looked deeper into it since it runs fine on XP on the same machine.

 

[CarstenB]

Don't even know where to start, seriously. Very limited way to change anything manually, the new Windows Explorer is an insult, control panel usability and layout are a joke, having to turn on WLAN manually after every start (with "repairing..." message box to boot) is just awful, and on and on. Windows own programs and control panel apps produce a warning of sorts "do you really, truly want to run this potentially seriously dangerous app" every time you start them, I mean wtf? Also, where are the services/computer management? Or is this also masked out somehow?

Ah, looks like any change is bad for your blood pressure. All the tools are there, but they are slightly more hidden away.

Your comments echoes the Windows 2000->Windows XP days where the first thing many "powerusers" did was to switch to Windows Classic look - not because it was "better", but because it was what they were used to and didn't care to learn the "new ways". The proclamations from them were ofcouse that Windows XP was bloated, crappy, buggy and generally useless.