Comments on: Will update drive Vista use?
Microsoft is polishing Vista with a long-awaited service pack in hopes of greater adoption among businesses.
Most Popular
Latest tech news headlines
- Apple to buy Quattro Wireless for $275 million
January 4, 2010 8:25 PM PST
- 'Kama Sutra' most pirated ebook of 2009
January 4, 2010 7:20 PM PST
- Forrester: 5 keys for application development in 2010
January 4, 2010 7:10 PM PST
- See all headlines
RSS Feeds
Add headlines from CNET News to your homepage or feedreader.
More feeds available in our RSS feed index.
- Markets
Related quotes
2. You can still get new computers with XP. Many manufacturers are bringing it back due to demand.
Buy it anyway.
I think Vista SP1 could be better than XP if it uses less hard drive space. Install Vista SP1 and XP on identical systems. If the Vista system has more free space, it could be a better OS.
Vista SP1 could be better than XP if it has less DRM. If Vista lets you have more control of content you paid for, it could be better than XP.
Most of my computers run Linux, BSD and OS-X, however I do own a XP-64 computer. If Vista SP1 is a leaner cleaner OS, I will think about upgrading.
Vista sucks, and you all know it! Why would anyone pay that much for a POS?
I will never buy another desktop. I will build my own and load Win2000 Pro. I can not buy a new laptop. I need an RS-232 port and the ne ones do not have that port. I've tried 4 different USB to RS232 adapters and one PC card to RS-232 addaptor and they do not work. I have indows XP on a refirbed Evo N610C (it has a hardware RS-232 prot) and when I found it, I bought a case of them. When they all break, I'm out of the radio business since all goverment mandated system 25 radios use RS-232 prots for programming.
They also knew that Vista would get lukewarm reception by businesses, at best.
So what did they do? If you guys remember, they pulled out a fair amount of buggy Vista code and told the world it will be part of SP1. This made sense to them, because all they needed was some bug fixes to roll it out. Granted SP1 was supposed to be out about now, but MS is nothing but incompetent.
So what this means, and I think most rational people know this, is that SP1 is really Vista v1.0. Actually it really isn't that since many features were removed because MS couldn't get those features working. Incidentally, many of those features have been available for years elsewhere, and in some cases decades.
So how does MS recover from this train wreck? Simple. They turn SP1 into a psychological and marketing fix, instead of a technical fix.
Will it work? Maybe somewhat, historically MS users and admins have swallowed massive amounts of BS from Microsoft. But many, many people are catching on and sick of the bugs, security nightmares, high prices, and loss of control that comes with a new MS OS. So it might help pick up a few new upgrades, but not as many as they think.
Money is tight these days and how can a company defend spending $800+ for a Vista and Office license, and hardware upgrades for a secretary that doesn't use even 25% of the Office "features"? That is insane. What is there in Vista or Office 2007 that a CEO would need it? Or some random paper pusher? If they bought software from a company that couldn't be bothered with the fairly simple task of cross platform compatibility why not just keep running XP? What does that extra money spent on Vista and Office 2007 buy them?
MS is a lot like our president. Still shoveling the same crap, oblivious to the fact most people aren't even listening anymore, and few of the listeners are buying it.
As for MS, I have no idea :-)
I definitely agree that Vista is a steaming pile of (let your imagination fill in the blank). M$ has been spending a lot of money to make keep their OS market lock in place. However, I disagree with the comparison between Vista and Office 2007.
Office 2007, which M$ has really only been marketing with Vista, is actually a good product. The redesigned interface takes getting used to; the more familiar you are with previous versions, the longer it's going to you take to adapt. However, for new users and people that do not work with Office a lot, the new user interface is, mostly, a lot more intuitive. After I made the adjustment, at last, I found that I liked it and did not enjoy going back to the interfaces of the previous MS Office version and OpenOffice. Yes, this is being written by an OpenOffice user.In addition to the interface improvements, the program is responsive and doesn't hog a lot of memory.
They can shove OOXML as far as I am concerned. It's hindering Office's adoption in the work place. I know this first hand as it is banned from being installed where I work because they don't want to deal with the chain reaction of a new file format. I work for a large educational institution so, this is no small deal. Not only is it a large number of workstation installs, this also effects the perception of the next generation of computer users.
I personally take issue with the fact that Microsoft will not add OpenDocument support. Note that, I don't care if they make it the default or not; just that it is supported. I won't adopt it as my primary Office tool until there is OpenDocument (ODF) support. *Hint, hint, Microsoft* I'll probably have to wait until Novell releases an ODF plugin for Office 2007.
Many of the "improvements" they have touted cause more trouble than they help, just like the new interface in Office 2007.
Even Millennium wasn't this bad, at least they didn't make getting around and doing things more trouble and time consuming. Like the changes they made to the All Programs option on the Start menu which is just horrible. The Aero interface is lame at best.
From what has been said SP1 is just going to be all of the patches rolled in to one download with very little else and certainly nothing that is going to correct Microsoft's bad usability and interface choices.
This is the first version of Windows that has really made me think about going Mac. Now that Apple has gone Intel and the Mac is getting to the point is has as many bugs and security issues as Windows I can finally feel at home with it, but end up with a better interface and more frequent and intelligent OS updates.
Vista is a let down. 5 Years waiting for this, please...
Robert
chunks or promised features, and still cant.
More bugs, more "cant find driver", more DRM.
With all their Billions you have to ask why their product is so
FOS.
Who do they hire as Software Engineers-
first year Computer Help Desk students?
Whoever, they dont seem to be the sharpest codeweavers on the
block.
Why don't you go out and buy the competing, better OS? Not too many are there? You'd think if so many not-so-sharp codeweavers could put together something vaguely workable over so many years (i.e. Windows 3.x/95/98/2000 etc. etc) then someone 'sharper' would've put them out of business by now with an all-conquering product. But no. And please don't bother me with anti-competition conspiracies.
In most of these comments, just replace "XP" with "2000" and "Vista" with "XP" and we have deja-vu back to 2001. New things scare people. "OMG, I have to ACTIVATE my OS?? Or I can't USE it any more???"
I'm quite happy every time I boot into Vista and am operational on my desktop in seconds, as opposed to minutes in XP (same PC).
64 bit. Individual users don't need or want DRM or 64 bit systems to access terabytes of info. M$ is BB for BB. That's where the money is. Mac is a close second for BB. You want a home puter go with a home friendly OS. You want a BB puter go with M$ or Mac. Don't complain if your M$ puter runs slow, or uses a lot of memory, it's busy supporting BB.
by BB.
It is even more business unfriendly then it is home use unfriendly.
Only Micros**t would say something so idiotic.
Vista was not ready for users - NOT the other way around.
Hopelessly outclassed by Apple, Micros**t continues its path to
mediocrity.
trying to make it sound like you must get a service pack to keep
your computer running nicely, like buying and oil and filters
service pack for you car or other hardware that needs to be
serviced. Microsoft's Service Packs are just to fix their own bugs
- it's their responsibility, not the owners. In software, we have
"updates" - enough of the fancy terms. Like IBM had a TLA
(three letter acronym) for everything, including AMD for Air
Movement Device, a TLA for a three letter word - fan. People
aren't fooled by this compugeek terminology any more.
I just want to test out applications with it and see what kind of things break and what kind of things work. I also want to see what development tools still work under it.
I won't upgrade my other systems to Vista until:
#1 Microsoft proves Vista is stable, has no bottlenecks, and has fixed all of the bugs with service packs. (Most likely it could be around Vista SP2 before this happens)
#2 I can afford to upgrade my current systems to be able to run Vista, or buy new systems with Vista already on them.
#3 After many commercial games are converted to Vista or have Vista updates in order to run on Vista. The same with many applications that I use, converted to Vista or updated to work with Vista.
If not I'll migrate my machines to Linux, or I might buy a used G4 iMac and run OSX on it. I also got my eye on a Macbook Pro after my tax rebates come out and the Vista problems still aren't fixed, I'll just go to the Mac side of things for a while.
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.)
P.P.S. Why does a "mere" Athlon 64 3800+ with 1GB of RAM have occasional skips playing mp3 files when nothing else is going on in the user space? I used to play mp3s on my pentium 100! Fortunately, WinAmp seems to be okay; iTunes had skips, Windows Media player was the worst, and Foobar2000 needs more playlist handling. Perhaps one of these barely noticeable updates will have fixed the problem, but I probably won't bother to go back and check.
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/997749520
The topic is, will the SP drive Vista usage.
try disabling "audio enhancements" in your audio settings.
Sick of it.
We're playing with Band-aids here.
It's obvious.
You got most secured house in the world. All doors and windows have been equipped with most secured technology. But you as the owner of the house, left the door open all the day, even when you are not around.
Most software shouldn't require admin rights. There are some exceptions like some low level system utilities, but generally software that requires such privileges should be the exception, not the rule. Anything that wants such rights should be viewed with suspicion. The flaw with UAC is that it requires authentication for seemingly benign tasks: opening the device manager, change the time, etc. When you receive UAC prompts for benign tasks people don't heed the warning and consider whether I really should allow this program to elevate privileges. That is the real flaw, not that there is UAC.
You also foolishly assume that a system can be completely secure. While you can prevent security exploits that allow something to happen without the users' permission, you have to allow the user to approve certain low level changes to system files otherwise users would never be able to update their hardware drivers, add hardware drivers, etc. If you created a closed system where the end user could never allow these changes the system would be more secure, but then it would be little better than an embedded system that can't be changed. While there are some situations where this is desirable, most customers wouldn't want such a limited computer.
Please fix
Only occasioanlly will it connect to the office network either on cable or wireless. If it does, speed in a crawl. Then he complains, won't use the office provided XP box because he wants to work form home on the Vista box most of the time.
Bah!
Not gonna "fix" the network becuase we have great connectivity and bandwidth for 100% of everyone else, and the contractor's XP box.
I sure as hope to expect they addressed the issues of extreme network hogging by just playing a video and such.
My only wish is that when something loads be it a program or a different website that it doesn't freeze any title menu bars. Why should the task bar freeze while IE loads?
In-between, though, I'll run XP and Linux until XP is no longer supported and my programs don't do what I want them to without an upgrade ($$$). Then I'll use Linux only until I get a new computer with Vista (or the next version just coming out) pre-installed.
Until then, I'll enjoy toying with Linux either when I visit my parent's house or if/when work moves over to Vista (out of no choice).
A sad world. But then, I'm a penguin-- so, basically, they can shoot your pc to hades and, besides my pity for you, I could care less, 'cause I'm, well, not you. All the good excuses for not switching are nearly gone now, so... You are where you choose to be, imo.
Then there's messing with my settings. I put them that way for a reason. Figure out how to recreate a reasonable facsimile with a new tool bar arrangement? During odd moments in those 12 hr days? You betcha.
But, even if I did not think the Redmond building would look great as a centerpiece for a remake of "Towering Inferno", SP-1 being rushed indicates they left a lot of patches and fixes out, and have not fully tested the patches they've added. Under my work conditions, the only thing worse than a new program that will work reliably once it's figured out, is a new program that will not work reliably at all.
Your company should wait for SP-2, IMO. Or add psychiatric care to your company insurance policy.
..."Parental controls" - that dont really seem to work..?
...Higher hardware-requirements..?
...Unproven, and highly-questionable, "Improved Security"..?
...Lower, slower, Performance..?
...Useless "Eye-candy"..?
...A, well-established, and continuing, lack of "driver", and "software", support..?
...The claims of, eventually-providing, better "Game-play" support..?
...Providing even greater computer-usage, control, to Microsoft..?
...More ubiquitous and intrusive, not to mention ever-changing, "DRM", "Product Activation" and "monitoring", schemes..?
Higher implementation, and support, costs..?
What positive-benefit, exactly, will "Vista" provide, that you currently do not have..?
Frankly, most IT-professionals are still, heavily, recommending... battening-down-the-hatches on what youre currently running. Or, if you still insist upon changing what youre using, now... Then, look for a true-improvement. Do not just run after a company that is clearly becoming more, and more, desperate (and whose products are clearly less relevant)... daily.
Also, you do know that "SP1" for "Vista" is mostly just a few, currently already-available, bug-fixes... which, apparently, still fail to fix several major-problems in "Vista"? And, that, almost every single analyst has, flat-out, said that "Vista SP1" is obviously little more than a marketing-ploy, designed to fool purchasers into believing that "Vista" is more "mature", and "usable" than it actually is?
Frankly, I share the industry-wide opinion that, Microsoft is rushing this out for one reason... "Vista" is a major industry-flop, so far... And, Microsoft is trying to convince an almost entirely unreceptive-market... that, for some incomprehensible reason... they really should want to buy this failure.
- Vista = Windows Me Revisted
- by Too Old For IT September 1, 2007 7:33 AM PDT
- word
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 2 of 3 pages (141 Comments)