Comments on: XP era ends--Can we put a sock in it already?

Has the hand-wringing over Vista's shortcomings been overwrought? You bet. Vista is hardly the disaster portrayed by its most severe critics.

[kwhsy82]

Microsoft never got a "glowing" reviews?
Windows 95 and 98 had lines of people outside stores waiting for them.
I'm sure you can find someone who complains about anything, but those OS updates were very popular. It was akin to how Apple OS updates are now received.

[techman21]

They killed Vista by announcing that Windows 7 is hot on its heels, and by making Vista a bloated resource hog. We all know they plan for obsolescence, but to make an announcement before most people have moved off XP was a big mistake. It might be wiser to just use version numbers and increment it a little bit at a time to avoid the psychological impact of a name change with each release.

[sanenazok]

Put a sock in it? You must be new.

Would what the Vista SUXXX crowd do if they had to end these discussions.

[DivingDancer]

The handwringing has definitely been overdone. Vista may not be the spectacular ground breaking release that some had hoped for. But it's hardly a disaster. I upgraded all of my machines to Vista 6 months after its release, and have never looked back. When I have to use and XP machine, the UI seems clunky and primitive. Vista has been rock solid in terms of stability.

That's not just my experience, either. My company has it deployed on hundreds of workstations, and we've never had any problems with it.

Perhaps it isn't everyone's experience, but my experience has been nothing but positive. It's time to move out of 2001, and get with the program.

[Renegade Knight]

I've got Win 95, XP, Vista running now. Vista is on two different computers.

The computers that give me the most issues are the Vista Machines. Why? Vista itself. True the interface on XP is know klunky and win 95...Ugh. But they "just work" for ther jobs and Vista hasn't quite hit the "it just works" stage that every version of windows I've ever had prior has done.

[ScorpionHoney]

Good for you. You have IT support staff. Of course you never have to look back, but what about the rest of us, who have to negotiate this Vista crap alone?

[Penguinisto]

Dunno about this one... XP had actual improvements to justify its purchase: native CD/DVD burning, native zip file handling, and it didn't require you to practically double your RAM, video card, and CPU horsepower just to get the same performance as Windows 2000. The only detraction I had against XP at the time was the stupid Fisher-Price/Barbie style interface (which at least could be quickly remedied by going back to "Classic" mode). Vista OTOH has nothing to justify its expense, and demands far more than it gives.

[gsekse]

It's simple, just use Microsoft products or NOT. Since you have a choice of Apple, Linux or Microsoft, make a choice. Granted I'm forced to use XP at work, but at home, I fire up Linux and forget the issues at work. People just can't seem to make up their minds and go with something.

[Penguinisto]

I did... At home I have OSX on a Mac, and on a homebuilt PC. I use FreeBSD for my home server, and Linux everywhere else. Couldn't be happier about that, really... :)

[mindseyetechaz]

xp will never die, to great of a plateform.

[mindseyetechaz]

XP will never die, to great of a platform.

[bpgveg14]

"plateform" or "platform"? Make up your mind! And...is it "to" "two" or "too" great? We're gonna have to send you back to First Grade on this one!

[k2dave]

I don't ever recall such lasting rejection of a MS OS ever. Yes there were small groups that clung to older versions, but not to this extent. Win ME came close however. Win 95 IIRC was greeted warmly, with a 'it's about time' thrown in. Win 98 was also welcomed. XP did have some issues, but also was welcomed by many and could run well on a computer from the Win 98se/ME timeframe. Vista couldn't run well at all on new computers with Vista preinstalled, it took months for computers to get fast enough to run Vista decently - and that's not allowing for OS bloat. I still predict that a brand new high end computer running Vista will be bogged down and undesirable to use long before a mid range computer bought a year ago running XP starts to show real signs of slowing. I know there are lots of people, including myself, that plan to sit Vista out and wait till the next MS OS hoping their computer lasts till then.

[Renegade Knight]

Excellent Summary.

[catch23]

That is just BS. I bought a machine a few months before Vista came out (with the upgrade coupon). For under $1000. It runs Vista just fine.
No insane hardware needed.

[Penguinisto]

Indeed... most large corps are doing the same thing (hoping that Windows 7 isn't the arguably bloated and bug-ridden pig that Vista turned out to be). I can't wait until the service packs, registry corruption, and general degeneration of a typical windows install starts to dig in.

[The_Decider]

@catch23: Put XP or Linux on that machine and you will see how much Vista slows it down. You think it runs fine because you don't have anything to compare it to.

[educateme]

Obviously Ballmer didnt wake up smarter, Microsoft is going ahead on Vista only sales, with or without its customers, and wants to pick some more pockets...their passion is your wallets potential. The sooner you get a Mac, the sooner you will escape the forced upgrades that Windows pushes on you, that is of course, unless you like getting pushed, and if you do, you know who you are....

[TheManInDboX]

Mac is hardly the answer to MS-Vista!, Let's be at least honest here... Go buy a 700 dollar MAC!, tell me how its performance is... you get what you pay for... Now Linux, i have nothing to say, linux is fantastic... But MAC... or "Cr-apple" is in the same boat as vista, if you buy a 4 grand mac and compare it to a 4 grand vista pc, you will notice not much of a performance diffrence... The issue here is that people who have used vista, have tried to use it on a bargain machine, you just simply cannot do that... Now i am not saying vista is better then XP.. it isnt, but what i am saying is, Vista, and MAC go hand in hand... they are both designed to run on expensive "server quality" hardware.

[rmva]

"You have unused icons on your desktop."

[BigOldNerd]

I would put a sock in it and move on to other OS but it seems that M$ and the BIG PLAYERS in PC manufacturing want me to pay A OS TAX to M$ first. Go to any of the big PC manufactures web sites and pick out one of their top of the line consumer PC or Laptop and call them up and explain to them your interested in buying one but you do not want M$ OS. They will explain to you that in order to purchase the system you have chosen, YOU MUST PAY M$ OS tax to buy it. The funny thing is that they are going to have to assemble the system you have chosen and they could easily drop a hard drive in that has no OS on it, but they will not do it. No matter how hard you try your going to pay THE M$ OS tax to get a system unless you build you own but that only applies to desktop. If you want a good laptop you going to pay that OS TAX to own one. Now I know I am a simple person but does anyone else smell something wrong with this.

[QMT]

The reason this is so, is because the OEMs receive kickbacks on all of the shovelware such as AOL, the countless parade of toolbars, and the crippled demo apps preinstalled on a new PC.
All of these programs need the Windows OS. No Windows, no shovelware, no kickbacks to dell/hp/acer/etc.

[prototerm]

IMHO, XP was, and always will be, a bloated pig. Vista is an order of magnitude worse. Neither one is worth the grief they cause.

I'll stick with Windows 2000, safe behind a router, hardware firewall, and security applications that *don't* come from the same company as the operating system. After all, if you cannot trust them to get the OS right, why trust them to get the rest right?

Windows 2000 is Good Enough. It keeps me off the new-computer-every-few-years merry go round, and does everything I need it to do. I don't need XP *or* Vista!

[sanenazok]

I was the same way- I stuck with Windows 95B until I needed to start using wireless and USB - around 2001. Then I switched into Windows 2000. Vista, on the other hand I got the week it came out to make better use of a wide screen monitor. No complaints from me.

[cschrade]

Thank you Charles for this article. I can't agree more that Vista has been far over blasted. I switched to Vista immediately and have had very few problems. I've run into a couple of application incompatibilities but nothing critical. I even run large amounts of open source software and it all works just fine.

Every Windows release is met with scorn. To the poster above, even windows 95 and 98 were not received with fanfare by all. And when I was working for an electronics retailer, we had lines of people waiting to buy Vista on launch day. I distinctly remember one of my computer science professors shortly after Windows XP was released scorning the O/S stating: Who the hell has 128 megs of ram to run this crap?

Most of Vista's scorning does come from original overhype but I also believe it comes from people's irationality of backwards campatibility. Yeah you can run the latest Linux flavor on a 300 mhz box with 64 megs of ram. But so many people complained when they tried to upgrade an XP box to run on Vista. Sure it may have met the minimum specs, but since when has any piece of software run well under minimum specs? Try running XP on a 300 mhz processor and 64 megs of RAM (its minimum reqs). See how much its loved.

I personally believe any person who aproprietly researched Vista and understood you need 2 gigs of ram and a dual core processor (a standard configuration to just about any machine built today) to run it well have few or no issues. I did that from day 1 and continue to enjoy a stable and fast OS. It isn't perfect, but I do feel it is a step up from XP and anyone looking for a new box should look into getting Vista.

[k2dave]

XP,s min requirement was 64 Mb, IIRC 128 was recommended, Today it is understood that 512 - 1 GB is a reasonable recommendation for XP, that's a 4 to 8 times increase due to OS bloat (service packs, updates). Vista needs 2 GB's today as a recommendation to run today, I suspect that the 4x-8x increase is not unreasonable based on past history, so I hope all those Vista ready boxes are upgradeable to 8-16 GB's. Then we have the processors.

[gerrrg]

95 was revolutionary. 98 was horrid. 2000 I skipped at home but at work it was great. XP was golden both Home and Pro. Vista? When WinFS comes out with one of those SPs, I'll consider it. Mac? Only if I have to, because there are too many limitations on specialized software for the OS, and the market is still teeny.

[open-mind]

I found it kind of humorous that Coop defends Vista as "hardly the disaster portrayed ", then he provides an extensive laundry list of things that are "screwed up about the product". Then he even says that Microsoft's success is based on their customer's willingness to tolerate bad products until they are eventually become not too bad. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to lose the desktop and browser monopolies that have become the foundation of their profit and success. Hmmm...



Makes me wonder what constitutes a disaster. Maybe if Vista was causing PCs to explode?

[supoman]

Isn't the bigger issue that the age of endless OS upgrades has come to an end. The internet has shown that the OS is not the headliner that it used to be. Heck, the PC is not what it used to be. Now with iPods, iPhones, Blackberry's being able to do so much why would you keep dropping $100+ for an unwanted and unnecessary OS upgrade? Not to mention the gaming Consoles have left PCs in the dust as a platform. Computer owners are smarter now. CNET dude you should know this mannnnn.........

[sanenazok]

Better not tell Steve Jobs...

[shikarishambu]

Vista suffers from a perception issue. MSFT over-promised and under delivered on Vista. Then, bending over backwards for hardware guys did not help.

Is Vista better than XP? Yes. Has MSFT made these improvements into a compelling story to the user? No.

I got an HP AMD64 bit desktop in 2006 with the idea of upgrading to Vista 64 bit ultimate when it came out. I called HP support in 2007 to confirm that I had a 64bit machine since the signature seemed to be different from what some websites said. I was told by HP support not to install Vista and certainly not the 64bit. I went ahead and installed it anyways in March 2007. No crashes till date. I had a driver or two missing - got it from planet64.

[ethana2]

Pssh. Mac OSX is still tied to apple hardware.

I'm getting pissed Vista users taking a really good look at Ubuntu, more every month. We may be close to fixing Bug Number One. ...which will be awesome ^_^

[T38]

Quote: I'm with Larry Dignan when he says that the complainers should either move away from Windows or just "shut up."

Easier said than done. I'm a big Linux guy, but my wife, who runs two businesses, isn't. She has two products that make up her core business software, and no, they aren't something that you can pick up at your local Best Buy. Guess what? Both require Windows and both specifically state "will not work with Windows Vista."

This makes it a real PITA when it comes time to buy new computers for her business, since all you can get anymore is Vista. What do you suggest people like her do? Move to Vista? Not if the developer won't support it. Hmmm....maybe run the software under Wine? Unfortunately, Wine or Cedega aren't 100% compatible. Some software works, some doesn't. IME, most doesn't.

So while your post *sounds* like a reasonable position to take, it ignores a lot of practical realities. Sometimes you *can't* migrate to another O/S -- Vista or otherwise -- even if you want to.