Microsoft: Vista service pack coming in '08

After months of silence, Microsoft finally coughed up details Tuesday about its plans for the first update to Windows Vista, saying the service pack will arrive in the first quarter of next year.

In the next few weeks, Microsoft will start private testing of a beta of Service Pack 1 for Vista as well as a third service pack for Windows XP. The company plans initially to release the beta only to 10,000 pre-selected testers, though it may expand that release later. A small group of testers are already working with a "beta preview" version.

As for what's in the Vista update, it's mostly a collection of existing fixes and tweaks aimed at improving stability and reliability of the operating system, which went on sale to consumers in January.

"It is not a delivery vehicle for lots of features," said Shanen Boettcher, a general manager in the Windows unit.

"It is not a delivery vehicle for lots of features."

--Shanen Boettcher, general manager, Microsoft Windows unit

There are a few minor enhancements, most notably the ability to encrypt multiple hard drive partitions using Vista's BitLocker feature.

"Lots of folks gave feedback that 'We have an OS partition and a data partition and we'd like to encrypt both,'" Boettcher said.

Also being added are support for an emerging removable storage file format known as exFAT as well as for EFI (extensible firmware interface), an alternative to the BIOS (basic input output system) that handles the initial start-up of a system.

Vista SP1 will be a large download: Roughly 1GB, based on current test versions. By way of comparison, Windows XP--the whole thing--shipped on a CD, which only holds about three quarters of a gigabyte. Installing the OS upgrade will require 7GB of free hard drive space, though much of that will be returned to the user once the megapatch is applied, Microsoft said.

The key question is what, if any, impact the contents of the update or its timing will have on the plans of large businesses to move to Vista. IDC analyst Al Gillen predicted that it won't have that big of an effect.

"It doesn't fundamentally change the landscape for Windows Vista adoption," Gillen said.

Related blog
Small things come in big packages

Vista SP1 isn't adding many features, but it sure takes
up a whole lot of space.

Microsoft has set out ambitious goals for business adoption of Vista, saying it expected businesses to move to Vista in the first year at twice the rate they did with Windows XP.

Gillen said that businesses seem to be moving at generally the same pace as with previous releases.

As for the coming Windows XP update, Microsoft didn't give many details, but did say that it is planned to be the last significant update for the operating system, which debuted in October 2001.

"There's not a lot we have to say there," Boettcher said. "It's really an end-of-life (patch) roll-up for Windows XP."

Microsoft's largest prior discussion of the Vista service pack came in a June court filing, in which the company agreed to make changes to Vista's desktop search feature in response to complaints from Google. In the filing, Microsoft said the changes would come in SP1 and that a beta of the service pack would come this year.

On Tuesday, Mike Burk, a senior product manager at Microsoft, said that the desktop search changes would not be part of the beta, but rather would be added at a later date. On Wednesday, the company said the search changes will indeed come with SP1 beta when it enters testing in the next few weeks.

Aside from that, Microsoft steadfastly refused to comment on the service pack, except to say that there would be one. The company also maintained that service packs are not as important these days given all the updating of the operating system that Microsoft does online.

However, despite pleas from Microsoft that businesses need not wait for a service pack to adopt new releases, Boettcher acknowledged that the first service pack of major software releases remains a psychological milestone for some customers.

"It's not a perception that is going to change overnight," Boettcher said.

Microsoft has been increasingly delivering patches one at a time, via various online updating services, but not all customers want things a patch at a time. "Some folks like to see it all rolled up," Boettcher said. "You are going to see us continue to do that over time."

[sanenazok]

It's been some time now

I've been using Vista for two months at work and about five months at home. Everything has worked fine, except I had to upgrade my Acrobat Pro (from version 5 to 8 hah).

Also initially I would get incorrect "driver not installed" errors when connecting to a printer shared from an XP machine. It would print just fine but then afterwards Vista would prompt me to install the drivers. An update last month took care of this annoyance once and for all.

Other than that it's been smooth 3-d sailing for me!

[pfrabott]

Agreed

I too find Vista the best upgrade. When Windows 2000 Pro and XP came out I was very hesitant to upgrade since I am not one to quickly adopt new platforms (software and new technology are a different story) but I was very quick to upgrade to Vista which is a first. I will say the upgrade was well worth it. My computers CPU is a little dated (5 years old) so that causes small lag, although rarely. Other than that it's great! I have been using it for both home and work since January. No complaints. (I had the opportunity to run the OS on a better processor then what I have and I am even more impressed.) I would recommend Vista over XP any day of the week.

[dburr13]

Been running Vista since February

Vista is working fine for me too...and getting better as patches and drivers have been released...I'm happy with Vista and i am glad i came on board with it early.

[Neo Con]

Additional features?

I agree with the other posters that the Vista upgrade has been a breeze. I've had a few issues with the 64-bit edition, most notably with drivers in the first few months, but it's gradually cleared up as patches have come out to improve performance and 64-bit drivers have been released from the various hardware manufacturers.

What I want to know is, where are all the features that Microsoft cut out of Vista prior to release? Most notably, where is the new file system? The one thing I really dislike about Vista is that it seems to be extremely slow on large disk I/O operations -- much slower than XP. I have a suspicion that this is due to their cutting of the new file system and the subsequent retrofit onto NTFS, and I'm chomping at the bit to get the new format! Is that going to be included in SP1 or some other future patch/release?

[frankwick]

WinFS?

If you are talking about WinFS, then this is more than a new file system. This is a merging of a file system plus a relational database. I doubt you will see WinFS in Vista. In fact, I'm not so sure MS is even working on this anymore (someone correct me). This is such an audacious project, it may be one of those demo only projects for several years until it can be proven to be useful and efficient.

[educateme]

Vista security is more work for the user

Vista is merely a new shower curtain over XP and in the process
a new way to have to work, discovering what things are called,
where they were moved, and of course accepting every change
with a UAC alert.

The bad thing about UAC is it isnt very good at announcing
itself, often sitting on the taskbar as a glowing orange bar
waiting for you to find it and Continue...usually after you sit
there for a minute and wonder if the PC has stopped working.
Then Oh!, thats whats goinbg on, it needs me to approve of the
change of the time, or background screen wallpaper..how
protective and valuable...NOT!

If you call Vista Security an advance in technology youd be
mistaken...its merely changed to the USER being the last line of
defense for a PC. If Microsoft cant make the OS safer and less
prone to attack, then it leaves the job up to you to decide to
Continue...how noble of them.

Sure is a lot of hassles for the one good Vista feature...Tabbed
Browsing in IE. Once you figure out where the IE buttons and
toolbar went to, you should almost feel like you are on XP
again....and for that you paid $100-$300, a bargain.

[Maclover1]

Ubuntu and OS X

have the very same pop-ups...but they need a password for all users. So does Vista with a standard user and you can change a GPO for a password for Admin accounts.

UAC has always been screen goes black for a moment righ in my face.

They could make it a lot less prone to attacks if they lost 70% of their market share.

[frankwick]

New kernel

SP1 was to have a new Vista kernel which closely resembled the Server 2008 kernel. Is this still the case?

[StargateFan]

Yes

Vista SP1 will have a new redesigned Kernel which is similar to the Server 08 Kernel. It is not included in the Beta because the kernel is still under developement for installment into Vista. Meaning the kernel has already been developed and is being used in Server 08 as a beta version right now. But for it's use in Vista it still is under developement

[rule405]

My Experience: Vista?s Initial Introduction Should Have Been Delayed

I have been running Vista for Business since April 2007. Since installation in my powerful new computer (Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6700 at 2.67GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4M Cache, Asus Striker Extreme motherboard, 2GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-5400C4PRO DDR2 675MHz Memory, and nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB DDR3 @575MHz), I have had several problems with it, including (1) after sleep idles of 2 hours or more, the computer refuses to ?wake up? and the only way of getting control is to hold the power button in for several seconds and do a cold start; (2) sometimes it would just crash into a blue screen of death; (3) it would not permit me to do Windows Updates; and (4) oftentimes the operating system would not ?see? my floppy drive or the card reader. I sent the computer back to the manufacturer, and the manufacturer, too, is now experiencing the same problem re the failure to awake from long sleeps; after a week of testing, the service department tells me that they have had this complaint before, it is a Vista problem and it seems that the only thing to do about it is wait for Microsoft to make a Vista fix. (One writer refers to his computer running the Vista OS as ?Chip Van Winkle.?) It is my opinion that Microsoft should have waited to get the bugs out of its new Vista platform before it was introduced earlier this year and that the multi-millions of dollars that Microsoft earns as a result of the premature introduction speak louder than those computer users who have the misfortune to own computers that malfunction due to the flawed Vista OS.

[Renegade Knight]

Agreed

I'm using Vista Ultimate on a Vista Ready Laptop. Vista wasn't ready for market. I give SP1 a 95% chance of not fixing the problems I've been having.

[The_Decider]

See the problem is

That MS had already delayed the OS for several years and had to pull out the few interesting features because they couldn't get it right. Those features, mind you have been available elsewhere for years, and in a few cases decades.

Vista is already behind OSX circa 2001. Vista is already behind Linux circa 2003. So they are already 4-7 years behind.

Sure they should have waited, but greed comes first. Never mind that nothing was better for the adoption and interest in OSX and Linux then Vista is.

In a professional and competent development house Vista today would barely qualify for an Alpha release.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

You're just getting bad support

Blue screens have a cause, most always they are caused by a bad driver so your support people ought to be looking at your blue screens to determine where the crashes occurred and checking for newer drivers in the (normal) case where a driver is found to be causing the crash.

That's also likely the cause of the "wake up" problem you're seeing as well though based on experience you may need a BIOS upgrade to fix that problem since that's one of the most common problems fixed by patches to the BIOS.

See the problem isn't necessarily with Vista here as it may be the support people giving the same lame line they've been using since Windows 3.0 where they paste the blame on MS all the while they're scrambling behind the scenes to fix the actual problem they caused themselves. I've been watching a long time and frankly this is exactly how most "support" lines work.

[technewsjunkie]

Is that 2008 or 3008?

By that time I'll probably be using Vista.

[hounddoglgs]

Only Microsoft...

can get away with putting out a crappy bloated OS and then take over a year to put out the first service pack.

[inachu]

My first install of Vista only lasted a week.

I did not try to break it or do nefarious things to its inner workings.

The whole tcp/ip stack and driver just up and dissappeared. Even a reinstall of the driver and the Vista OS prooved to be fruitless. Vista barked back that no hardware existed for network driver... Grrrr!

I changed no hardware then proceeded to reisntall XP Pro and now everything works as it should.

[rapier1]

More than likley

Is that your driver was hosed. Especially if it had been recently
updated by the company. I will say that the TCP/IP stack in Vista is
*far* superior to the XP stack - or the Mac/BSD stack. Its almost on
par with the Linux stack. No support for multiple congestion
control algorithms though.

[embleau]

RE: My first install of Vista only lasted a week.

<sarcasm>Of course it had NOTHING to do with the possibility that your NIC driver wasn't updated by the manufacturer or it was a poorly written and tested driver right? It's ALL Microsofts fault. They should be able to test EVERY piece of hardware and driver and the hardware manufacturer should have NO responsibility in this... right?</sarcasm>

[zackinma]

microsoft's entire product line up sucks.

as a microsoft network administrator for many years i had high hopes for the new products:
vista
exchange 2007
server longhorn (2008)
office 2007

lets start with exchange. i recently migrated our network from exchange 2003 to 2007. boy what a mistake that was. besides being the most difficult migration i have ever done, exchange 2007 is a DISASTER. STAY AWAY!

the product is incomplete. half of what you need to do to administer the server can only be done from the command prompt now (power shell) where in past versions going back to exchange 5.5 i could do everything in the GUI. the power shell is nice, and makes scripting a lot easier, but damn it if i wanted to administer my server using the command line all the time i would run linux. GIVE ME THE OPTION!!! prior simple tasks like importing and exporting public certificates for OWA are much more difficult and time consuming. exchange no longer uses smtp servers, now it uses "cobnnectors" and setting up prior simple tasks like configuring the server to accept mail relay from another server is now very time consuming and down right frustrating.
also exchange 2007 doesn't let you carry over any of your custom recipient policies you may have set up under 2003 to manage mailboxes. at least not with out another power shell script containing no less then a few thousand lines of code.
NO THANKS
STICK with EXCHANGE 2003, DO NOT UPGRADE. you will regreat it, trust me.

now lets talk about the disaster they call vista. I installed it on my computer first. since i was going to have to support it, i should check it out first.
never have i ever had so many problems. my copy and paste blows up and stops working after an hour or so after reboot. it takes 20 minutes to boot up, 5 minutes just to LOG OUT, never mind actually shut down.
it takes massive amounts of space on the hard drive and runs severly slower then XP. i have since rolled it out to a few of our web developers. their work productivity DECREASED almost 40%. these are people who have been working with microsoft products all their careers. they develop web pages using visual studio and .net framework. they struggle to work in this operating system. I have since rolled them back to XP per their request. i could talk about how slow the system is, how much extra traffic it generates on my network, how often it crashes, how many times a day i have to reboot, but you get the idea. they screwed vista up so much i really am scared to even roll up to SP3 for XP. i heard they are adding some "vista features" i am scared, very scared.
our vice president of IT came to me and asked about upgrading the entire company. i put together a spread sheet showing how i spent my support time. since we upgraded a few users in febuary i spent on average 60 % more time supporting these same users then before the upgrade. that continues to be the case more then 6 months after the upgrade. on average vista users require almost twice the support time per month then xp users. they are also nearly 40% less productive.

lastly lets talk about office. oh my god what a freakin nightmare. you know how many users call me because they can't find an icon on that stupid ribbon. "it was there yesterday"
why don't they let you go back to the old style text menues? don;t they realize this is a productivity suite... don;t they realize it is hurting and not helping productivity? also i would like to say that the new office doesn;t support some of microsoft's OWN PRODUCTS. let me save you the time of explaining the nightmare of getting outlook 2007 to work with project server 2003. good luck with that plug in. it never imports projects or updates calendars correctly.

in closing i can say:

stay away from exchange 2007. i would rather run exchange 5.5... that is saying alot. nothing short of an absolute incomplete disaster of a product.
vista is good for lowering productivity and increasing support time, and congesting your network with un-needed traffic but thats about it.
the new office looks pretty, but thats about it as well.
all said and told, i think my company sill pass on this ENTIRE ROUND of microsoft releases. i hope they do better next time.

i knew there had to be a reason OEM computer makers started to sell XP again...

[StargateFan]

RE:

Excuse me I don't want to be nasty. But if you are a network Admin shouldn;t you know alreayd not to ever roll out new Microsoft products without having a service pack on the product first.

[sanenazok]

wowser

It sounds like you bought and installed products without any research and at an institutional level???

You need a visit from phoney mc ring ring:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWCTToIyKjI

C'mon, you didn't know about the ribbon interface on Office 07 before you installed it. Of course changes like this will require extensive training, but people find it's worth it.

[netlord80]

Try proper testing before rolling out new products

Let's go after your issues one at a time.

1. Exchange 2007
While I'm not thrilled with this product either, give it hits where it diserves them. The fact that you had to use the power shell should have been well known to you long before even considering putting it into production. Also, that is something that is slated to be changed at some point. You simply should have tested it thoroughly before ever considering an upgrade. Besides version upgrades have always been spotty with MS products. It simply is not a good practice to get into.

2. Vista
While this OS has little benefit to offer buisness users, it is far from a total disaster. Quite simply, it works for what it is meant to do. Granted if you run it on an underpowerd system you are going to have problems. This is what I think happened to you. I ran it for over a year through the pre release cycle and had few issues with it. File management was horribly slow for some stupid reason, but that was my biggest issue. It was stable and ran well for me, but I had an appropriately powered machine too. Again, it looks as though standard testing methods were not used here. If you want to gripe about performance, talk about the insane hardware requirements, that one is legitimate.

3. Office 2007
This works quite well actually. yes there is a major change in the interface, but once you get used to it, it is far more productive. Again, this is something that would not have been an issue if it was properly prepared for. Users need to be trained for the new interface.

The simple fact is that things change. You simply cannot throw out stuff that has just been released without proper research and training. All of these products do have their issues, but you didn't cite a single one. I am by no means an MS cheerleader, but if you are going to gripe, make them real issues with the product, not items that can only be attributed to user error.

[ntotten]

Wow

Maybe a new career would be good for you and the users you support.

[IAmScottD]

That's For Sure!

I couldn't agree more!

This software is suppose to increase productivity in theory correct? How productive is it to field support calls from your users that are trying to find their way around the cutesy Fisher Price like interfaces of these "new products" ? Could moving elements from menus, hiding things and creating chaotic looking interfaces be productive?

Now, on top of the Bloatware that has been crippling or slowing down my best hardware for years; we're faced with a forthcoming service pack that's bigger than the original install of Vista? Is Rod Serling standing behind me?


Perhaps the bigger mystery is where we keep paying for this ever changing crap when Linux is available.

Rant Complete,

>Scott

[fred dunn]

Agreed... Bloatware at best

Totally agree. Microsoft is heading down the wrong roads.

[zackinma]

added vista problems

oh i also forgot to mention how vista blows up when i try to copy a small file over the network, it just hangs on esitmating time. we are talking about files of 10k here, it would take less time to copy then to estimate how long the copy will take.
we can also talk about how almost every application blows up in vista if you have your "my documents" folder mapped to folder on a network drive.

[netlord80]

You have to be kidding

I'm sorry, but you really need to take some clases man. Having "my documents" on a network share is a bad idea. That is what a home directory is for. If you are disconeccted from that share for any reason, you will have tons of issues, including some apps that will simply stop working as they store user data there.

The stuff you write reminds of an MCSE I knew once. He had all the certs but didn't even know what the spooler service was on NT4. Brain dumps will be the death of us all.

[ntotten]

That was fixed a few weeks ago.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938979

[dburr13]

One fix at a time is fine with me

I'd rather get my patches as they are created...I don't like waiting for a ginormous service pack...So Microsoft's policy of releasing them a few at a time is fine with me...By the time SP1 is released i hope to have much of it already running in my computer.

[StargateFan]

They Usually Do Both

Large updates that usually take time to run through what they are designed to do are included in the Service Pack. While patches and hotfixes that Microsoft can design to run through their processes fairly quickly are released on Tuesdays.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Um, try reading the instructions?

Wow. Your comments were long and rather intense. The problems you described can easily be resolved if you read the instructions for migrating from one Exchange version to the next. These issues have all been addressed. You can find the answers online or even in the 'Help' menu.

I'm sorry that you had such difficulties. Others that read the instructions did not have these problems.



To everyone else- yeah... this is what happens if you just install things without first reading the readme or instruction files. Research what you're going to do first and it will be so much easier. Installing blindly and you'll end up like this. I'm not saying that this person didn't read any of the information, but the problems they are running into are clearly covered and could have been avoided by preparation.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Wrong replay

This was a reply to:

microsoft's entire product line up sucks.
zackinma -- Aug 29 2007, 3:50 PM PDT

[zackinma]

wrong..

um... your wrong
i did read the "read me" and all the instructions. i also read the COMPLETE white paper on tech net.

just because someone has difficulty and doesn;t like the product doesn;t mean they aren;t reading instructions.

just because i don;t like the fact that they made doing things more difficult doesn;t mean i didn;t read instructions.
just because i think exchange 2007 is an incomplete product becaue the gui doesn;t allow you to fully administer the server doesn;t mean i didn;t read the instructions.

clearly based upon my prior posdt which clearly shows i WAS and AM familiar with all the changes and limitations of the product shows i DID fully research the migration.

just because i don't like the product doesn;t mean i didn't read up on it first.

despite what you claim, there are those of us who don't like everything that microsoft does.

nor do we enjoy spending 10 grand on exchange 2007 licensing to get an incomplete product.

[yarlq]

Vista ... SP1 of how many?

First off, let's face it: those 'updates' are NOT updates - they are CORRECTIONS. An update meets a new external problem or opportunity - MS 'updates' mostly fix internal code errors that let the flies in even with the screen supposedly closed. Also, these fly-swatters also bring their own flies - the last three 'update' sessions all produced new problems in my WinXP SP2 - the most recent took a week of my time and 4 and 1/2 hours with Bombay to get mostly corrected. The machine still feels wonky to me -- how do I get rid of 'Windows File Protection'? I never had it before, now MS says I can't live without it! In the time it takes to identify, retrieve and install one MS update package (one fix) I can cold install Linux with Open Office, Gimp and Firefox -- and have all the software fully updated (by my watch: under 30 minutes - well under). With thin clients and web-based apps starting to roll in like tsunami, MS might want to look at fixing that big, bloated, semi-unworking behemoth it calls the MuthaShip.

[ralfthedog]

Two ways to disable Windows File Protection.

The preferred method is not to run windows. another method is listed below. Understand that I have not tried the second method if it slags your computer, it is not my fault.

http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/790/

It might be fun to crack the system that windows uses to hash its system files. If you could hide a virus in the cache folder version of a system file, Windows would restore the virus each time your AV software tried to remove it. Fun!

similar approaches have worked with system restore functions that keep a restore image on a hidden partition. Microsoft makes it far to easy to infect other peoples computers.

[texty32]

packs

Vista for packs .. the same like 2000, XP etc

http://www.textypisni32.com/pisni/k.php
http://www.textypisni32.com/pisni/l.php
http://www.textypisni32.com/pisni/m.php

[J H F]

Slower because I have to do more

My number one problem with Vista is that I have to do more to make it work. I have to click more times to change my screen settings to change my network settings to use Windows Explorer . . .

It is great that they put in all of these wizards for the novice user, where is the Expert Edition where we who know how to do these tasks don?t have to waste time going through wizards. Maybe that could cut down on the overhead that slows even the faster made for Vista machines down below the performance that you can get from Windows XP.

I went through the beta, ran two machines side by side my ?Vista Capable? home computer running Vista and my older company laptop with Windows XP, and I would find myself not wanting to use the Vista machine because I knew it would be a hassle to do something simple.

Got a new company laptop and they gave me the choice of Vista or XP; I didn?t even hesitate and told them XP.

Maybe SP1 will provide shortcuts around the wizards, and then I can think about adopting it.

[Ted Miller]

Wow!!!!

You actually got that right. I have been complaining about my Vista for so long concerning various things. But you hit the nail on the head.

Thankyou!

[ColdMast]

Your right

instead of all those wizards it should of just came with video professor!

every time you click the mouse or touch the keyboard it says "are you sure"

M$ should of just made that the start button {and the desktop background}

[zCos]

Vista is annoying

I bought an off-the-rack new computer for my kid a few months ago, and even though I was very dubious about Vista, I tried to give it a chance. My first hassle was with the wireless; I went with externals and the first one, Vista said it worked, but it didn't. That's marginally acceptable, so I ordered a cheaper one online. Surprisingly, that one worked, but to get it configured properly, I had to switch between multiple networking screens several times. It was very counterintuitive, from my perspective.

I activated parental controls. This is a somewhat useful feature, but I don't seem to be able to say, "I want to allow access to this website right now, but not later." It's all or nothing. A number of kid sites won't work right unless I dug out all the different site names they were using, and there was no easy help figuring out which sites I actually needed. I wasn't impressed. The time restrictions are nice enough, but if my kid let the computer go to sleep, sometimes the next day it would log out, because it was after the time I set (for the night before). Sometimes it doesn't; maybe there was an update that fixed it quietly.

Windows zip handling is atrocious. Running as admin it didn't even warn me when I tried to copy 2 small files from a zip into a folder in the program files directory. It just sat there trying for all eternity. I installed 7zip, which at least triggered an error message. Last I checked, I still get ridiculously unreasonable and inconsistent delays trying to delete files (or move some of them).

Then there's the indexing program. It went crazy every chance it got. I tried to ignore it, but it was far too happy at maxing out my CPU and thrashing the hd when the computer wasn't in use. I had no idea when it would ever stop this behavior, with no feedback. I finally turned it off, and now I still get something that's half as bad that I haven't bothered to track down yet.

There's performance. I bought a middle of the pack, probably towards the low end, with only 1GB of RAM. It does have integrated video, which sucks, and my computer has a better graphics card, but performance is a lot slower on Vista running games that aren't graphics-intensive. I haven't done a lot of comparisons or tweaking, except to turn off the HP inclusions and a lot of extraneous stuff.

Then there are the pop-ups. Even though I haven't ever had a spyware or virus problem at home, I decided to let UAC stay for a while. It's bad enough the small amount of time I use it on my admin account; it's truly annoying when the kid gets multiple popups because of UAC and parental controls. Just unplugging a webcam and plugging it back in, I have to go type in passwords again. Thanks a lot, Vista. I'm about one more bad day of warnings from disabling UAC too.

I see almost nothing I like in Vista. The reorganization of the tools wasn't helpful, they didn't improve some of their confusing interfaces from XP. The see through windows I find downright stupid and distracting (and they're no longer transparent on my account). Under the hood "improvements" with WDM and such are unlikely to be helpful in the next year. I somewhat like the little arrows in Explorer, ripoff or not, but the rest of explorer pisses me off.

To be fair, I didn't rush to XP either. When I did get XP, I turned off the Fisher-Price interface. Still, Vista has me thinking about Linux, and the Mac commercials have my wife wanting a Mac. I'm likely to stick with XP as long as I can, because most of the time I am tired of fiddling with DLLs and ini files and services and registries, and even a perfect Linux install would require a lot of configuration. It's sad how unimpressive Vista is. Perhaps that's a tribute to how usable, if unremarkable XP is, as much as it still has problems and design flaws.

(P.S. It's Home Premium Vista.)

[frankwick]

We'll see

WinFS will require a ton of computing resources. I'm actually glad it didn't make it into Vista. By the time Win7 ships, maybe processors and memory will be so cheap that we can load up and not notice the performance hit.

[JasonCe]

Dear Linux zealots, please go post on slashdot

Seriously. We are not interested in your Linux zealotry. We don't want to read comments like "OMG! M$ is so lame!@# Windoze sux! Linux is so awesome!@# If you don't run Linux, you are an idiot!" kind of crap.

Go post on slashdot, where Linux zealots rule.

[gubbord]

They should have just delayed Vista until it was ready

then maybe people would actually be lining up to adopt Vista, instead of waiting for the real OS to come around

[guest86]

Not good to buy Vista! :-(

Oh my god! Many people complaint on Vista! Whoa!!! :-O That sad! Bill Gates maybe going fired and kick out of Microsoft company. I suggest people must get XP only. That all.

Please wait until Vista Service Pack 2 or 3 come out! We need test Vista with SP2 or SP3 which will pass the test. We will add strict rules on Vista. We don't want Vista crash or ruin itself and make us mad. XP have no problems so far! XP beat Vista right now. Bill Gates are fault to make mistake files inside Vista. Vista have missing files for right now. Vista will going cheaper price from highest price soon. Let us ingnore Vista product now and in the future. We must keep XP now and in the future. XP is very value than Vista do.