Comments on: Vista passes the 'Mom' test

In the first of a series of blogs looking at Vista's first year of consumer availability, CNET News.com's Ina Fried calls on a top-secret source--her mother--to evaluate the operating system's performance.

[Andy kaufman]

Your Mom goes to college?

Vista passed the Mom test, but can it pass the Grandmother test?

[maggiedev]

see above comment for granny test

yes indeed it did pass the granny test. see the above comment. i am the granny.

[dtforever]

mac's game defficiency

All you mac lovers need to get a life. I've been running both for over a year now and to be honest I still prefer my PC.
1. It a pig on electricity.
2. It actually plays games.
3. More support
4. The security is the SAME.
Ever notice on your precious mac that when you go to install a program it asks you for the admin password? Well the folks at Microsoft are doing the exact same thing they just use the cancel or allow screen. NO more need to try to explain because you Mac lovers won't understand because you have been brainwashed by everything white and those stupid commercials, or anything that starts with the letter 'i'.

[dtforever]

mac's game defficiency

It's NOT a pig on electricity. I've done tests.

[jelloburn]

Admin password

Yeah, I'd much rather have the control on my system that
doesn't allow programs to be installed without the admin
password. That way, nobody except for myself will be able to
install programs on my computer. With Vista, all you have to do
is click OK and anybody can install whatever they want on the
machine. That isn't nearly as secure or smart.

Also, my Mac plays games just fine. When I want to really play a
game, I can boot into Windows and play my game. However, if I
owned a regular PC, I would be stuck with running Windows or a
Linux flavor as my only OS.

In regards to support, I'm not sure if you mean there are more
companies to provide support or the support community for PCs
is better. I've never come across a problem that I couldn't either
fix through reading the Apple Support forums or ay one of the
numerous Apple user forums online.

The security is not the same. I have not come across a virus yet
on my Mac, nor have I run across any malware or spyware. The
same cannot be said for Windows.

I don't know why you have such an anti-Mac agenda (other than
you probably being 12 years old) but it sounds like you need to
get a life. I personally prefer my Mac, but I still use Windows
from time to time (mainly for games) and have no problems with
it. You're just as bad as the Mac-zealots.

[Maclover1]

Games

PC gaming market totaled 4% of all games sales last year. Yep 18billion in games sales, 900million for PC's...some of that PC game market was on OS X.

MS is killing the PC gaming market, so you will buy their console, pay more for games, and pay for live.

Who says Vista was not planned out well. Once the MS drones finally all move to the 360 the next version of Windows will probably drop all DX and just be used to do work...imagine that.

[jmartinbsu]

I refuse to buy a mac. . .

...ever since it refused to eject my disc since it didn't have enough memory. Oh, I had other mac issues as well but that one was the last straw.

I installed Vista on my Compaq Laptop and haven't had to reboot due to an error. All my peripherals work perfectly fine and my software functions perfectly.

Sorry Macheads, your world is not perfect and shiny. You're still relegated to a small portion of the market. You always will be since Apple makes the hardware and o/s. That's what makes Windows so appealing and dominate in the workplace, home and abroad. It can be ran on hardware from many different manufacturers. Making an operating system that is compatible with all these different hardware/software manufacturers just adds to the possiblity of something not going "right". Apple tried to let other people make their hardware once. It didn't fly. If mac was easily installable on hardware not from apple then you would see a huge jump up in market share. You'd also see a huge jump up in "issues" with the operating system as well. Everyone that I've known that has had a macintosh has had to ask someone else with a mac how to do stuff too. If they hadn't then they would have been playing around with fancy text editors ...woo! So don't go bragging that their easy to use. Your apple isn't so shiny.

On a side note, I never got my disc back even using a paperclip in emergency eject hole.

[gsmiller88]

Was..

The porn on the disc THAT good?! To make you never use a Mac
again?!

[iKenny]

Man the Mac is popular

Must be, since it's what more than half of these threads are about,
and this article doesn't mention Apple once.

[sanenazok]

new here?

on these forums every time Vista is mentioned someone harps on how great a Mac is and vice versa. These forums are about as representative of broader society as a comic book convention.

[Gunady]

Same..

If you read article discuss about Mac, there'll be half of threads discuss about Windows as well. You must be a new user to CNET.

[ToddWBeaver]

Vista not so Bad, but Office 2007 Stinks

I think those Mac commercials really got to somebody at Microsoft. When the designed Vista, they tried to "out cool" the Mac. Somebody forget to tell them that cool doesn't help with productivity.

Other than being a real resource hog and wireless networking issue, Vista isn't all the bad. Unfortunately, I can't see any reason to use Vista. There is no must have software for Vista, no reason to adopt Vista, except that it's the latest and newest.

Office 2007 on the other hand, is just plain awful. Microsoft changed things just for the sake of change. Perhaps they wanted to boost the business of their training partners. I just don't see any reason for the new interface used by Office.

[brian_real]

Office 2007 Rocks!

Okay if you've used the previous versions sure it may not make you happy, but this version of Office is much easier and friendly than 2003 which wasn't much of a change from 2000.

Your problem is that the jump from 2000 to 2003 is barely noticable whereas 2003 to 2007 seems like a mighty leap when in reality it's not.

After using 2007 at work going back to 2003 is actually annoying and less efficient. I'm getting 2007 for myself soon.

[Andy kaufman]

The main problem with Office 2007

is activation problems and the confusion of people buying new systems, being promised of having a pre-installed Office 2007 software license, and then being asked for a registration key when they run Office 2007 and not having it bundled with the docs in their new system.

Salespeople say the new system has the Office 2007 license.

The software itself says it does not have the Office 2007 license, and is a 30 day trial copy, and asks for a valid Office 2007 registration key or else it holds personal documents hostage until a valid key is entered.

Tech support for the new PC claims they only handle operating system issues, and to call Microsoft about Office 2007 issues.

Microsoft says that they don't give out registration keys for Office 2007 that is bundled with the new PC, contact the OEM for a valid key, or buy a new key ($150 or more depending on Office version) to validate the Office 2007 software so it can be used.

The average person can't understand why their copy of Office 2007 that shipped with the new PC has to be activated and nobody will give them a key to do so without paying for it. That past versions of Office preinstalled on older copies of Windows, came with the registration key installed and there was no activation issues back then.

I heard that this is done on new Mac systems as well as new PC systems now. Mac-Office 2008 is preinstalled, but asks for a registration key to activate the copy.

[irfaanwahid]

Not again Vista haters

I keep reading I had this n that problem with my Vista and i ll move to Mac, guys, y do you buy Vista based PCs. Its jus manipulating guys, that Vista sucks n i ll move on to Mac, giv me a break. I've been using Vista Business for now a year, and i havent come across serious issues with it, of course few glitches here and there, but c'mon, v r getin an OS after 5years, some compromises has to be made. If u hate Vista, don't buy it then!!!! Simple as that

[alskiontheweb]

I didn't buy it...

....It was the only OS offered for the machine at the time I bought it. Of course Microsoft has relented a bit and allowed vendors to go back to selling XP. If I had a choice, I certainly would have stuck with XP...

[sirrobertm]

Ditto

I agree. It does take some getting used to, but overall I like Office 2007 much better than Office 2003. I don't they changed the interface "just for the heck of it" either. I find it much easier to accomplish most common tasks. Some features take a little bit of hunting, but that is expected with any new release.

[ZachThurston-21728418704322188]

I agree

Its tons easier to find an icon in the ribbon than to dig through a menu system to find a feature that you don't know the name of.

[rjw_mpwr]

leave ms alone

honestly, i am sick of all these ms hater posts. mac is not that perfect. look at all the hardware it has to support in vista. you think that is easy? can you take your mac apart and put in different parts and mac still works? look how many hardware mac has to support. with mac, everything has to be mac. can you run games in mac? every OS has pro and cons. if you like mac, fine, but don't put down ms. i've been to apple stores and played around on a mac, personally, i will never switch to mac. i just don't like the interface.
jw

[The_Decider]

Linux supports more hardware then Vista or XP

So what is Microsoft's excuse?

[Zanny_Blowzsteve]

Vista Rocks... No Problems at all !

I bought my 12 year old an HP laptop in August 2007 running Vista & it has been a rock stable OS. She had no issues transitioning from XP, the first Windows OS she'd known, and has said many times how much she loves her laptop. Vista has a lot to offer and does it well.

[ZachThurston-21728418704322188]

ok...

Well I did that, I ran Vista with 512mb of ram (really 384 after the 6150 GO takes its share) and it ran fine. I didn't (and don't) want to go back to XP. I now run 2 gb and its even better. Did I mention I've had this laptop (with a Turion single core) for over a year now? Oh yeah and it came with XP.
Sorry, but Vista is better. Get over it.

[veggiedude--2008]

12 year old vs 32 yo computer programmer

How nice that Vista passed the mom test as well as the 12 yo test,
but I know a 32 yo computer programmer that makes well over six
figures and is completely dumbfounded and disgusted at using
Vista on his 2GIG laptop - he had to go back to XP.

[veggiedude--2008]

Mac is a universal computer system

Windows is plagued with over 117,000 viruses - it can't be used
for internet use. That's why you need a Mac.

[ScottMo]

Why must we endure fanboys?

Saying you need a $1200 Mac to do the job of a free anti-virus program is like saying you need to move to a remote island because people might break into your house. Or you could lock your door.

This kind of knee-jerk response from Apple fanboys does *NOTHING* to further the appeal of Macs. It just makes you all look totally desperate trying to defend your choice. Macs are nice, PCs are nice, just move along.

[Andy kaufman]

All the best parts of the Mac were stolen from the Amiga

and the Xerox PARC labs. Then when Mac OSX was developed all of the best parts came from *BSD Unix, the Mach kernel, and other open source projects.

If it wasn't for Apple stealing ideas and code from other projects, the Macintosh wouldn't be as successful as it is now.

Though if you really want a Universal Computer System you'd use Linux, FreeBSD Unix, PCBSD Unix, or even Amiga Research OS which can be used on any Intel X86 type PC on the market, including the Intel Macs.

[Vegaman_Dan]

And it's a complete commercial failure

That explains why Microsoft is bankrupt and out of business. Windows is a complete and utter business failure and no company on the planet is using it any more since they went to Apple.

Um, what reality did you say you were working in again?

[veggiedude--2008]

X-box exists

Isn't there something called X-box for games? What about
Playstation or Wii?

Why are you stuck on playing games on a PC?

[Gunady]

Work..

Because I need to do my work too on the same machine.

[tomslik]

Vista is OK by me

I've been an XP user for some time now; before that it was win 2000, 98, 95, and 3.1. I really wanted Vista once I saw the Aero interface. So far, after 6 months of use on my new HP laptop, I can say it's not too bad. I cannot compare the speed to XP (I assume XP would have been faster on this machine), but my system is as responsive as I expect it to be (with 4G of RAM it better be...). I don't mind the system nags, but I hate the difficulty of networking with an XP machine. Other than my assumption that it's slower than it should be, I've had no reason to complain. This doesn't mean I think the OS is the best it could be, or even good...I just haven't had any problems.

[maggiedev]

vista pretty awesome to this 60 year old

as far as i am concerned, vista passed the granny test as well as the mom test. (i am both). with the exception of not being able to use my "picture it" program, i love vista. my grandson, age 15, took vista off his computer and replaced it with xp. my daughter is having her computer built with xp. i will stick to vista. i will have the best of both worlds as i will have both operating systems in the house. i think it is funny that an old lady can work with a more modern operating system than a 15 year old and a 39 year old. you rock granny.

[blitch01]

Uh riiiighhht...

Afraid of not being able to sync her handheld? Give me a break. My mother has a GED and lives in a world where most technology has long ago passed her by. She needs to cruis the net, maybe look at a few bills, and chat when she's lonely at night. I have (unfortunately) Vista Home Basic on my laptop and I can tell you she would probably look at it, turn it off, and then cry because she would be so confused. My general litmus test for whether something is uasbale for the mass is usually, "Can my mom realistically use this"? The answer with Vista is most definitely not. Her next computer just may end up having Ubuntu on it.

[ethana2]

Absolutely.

Ubuntu is, in my experience, /much/ more user friendly than XP, but I don't know about Vista and OSX, 'cause I don't really touch them with ten foot poles.

Neither company will ever get my money again.
Dell and Canonical are awesome.

[close5828]

Been there, done that, bought the T-Shirt

I run an 15" HP DV6500t (Santa Rosa) 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo w/ 2GB of RAM and Vista Ultimate 64-bit. In short, it blows chunks and I've been down for nearly a week. The notebook came on Christmas Eve and worked fine for about two weeks until the random "guess that Blue Screen" error comes up and I'm told to submit my error to Microsoft.

Vista decides to BSOD every so often for no reason. Every memory diagnostic and hardware diagnostic I run, it all boils down to a sleep issue where Vista just doesn't like to go to sleep. I'm told to re-format/install, and the recovery disc takes 3+ hours to install Vista; the supplemental disc ended up being bad, so I'm waiting for another one in the mail from HP.

I'm far from enamored with Vista and think it is the biggest POS I've ever seen/used. 3+ hours to install an operating system is INSANE.

I am now typing this on the replacement notebook I bought last weekend so I could get back to work.

In short, I hate Vista.

[BigGuns149]

I am not so sure Vista is your problem.

I am not so sure that your blame of Vista is well placed. Have you ever considered that this is a hardware problem? I installed Vista during the public beta on an relatively ancient Athlon XP 2800+ with only a gig of RAM and it took under an hour to install. 3+ hours to install Vista is an aberration.

While installing software from optical media is always going to be slower on a laptop (despite that mass ignorance laptop drives are virtually always 8x DVD drives whereas desktop drives are 16-20x) your optical drive may not be spinning up to its full potential. I used to work at a major electronics vendor and I had customers who brought in dead or failing laptop optical drives several times a week. Having a laptop with a defective laptop drive that never spins up past 2x or 4x wouldn't be a first. Without swapping the optical drive or at least trying to install from an external DVD drive I don't know how you ruled that out.

As for the BSODs sometimes hardware is a factor. Some of the first laptops that HP shipped in February '07 with Vista would bluescreen almost daily on Vista. None of the other vendors, Fujitsu, Sony, Toshiba seemed to have the same issue. If it were a Vista issue than we would have seen the problem across the board, but instead it seemed to be isolated to HP machines.

Considering HP's reputation as being near the bottom of the barrel for reliability across multiple surveys(Notebook Users Mag, PC World, PC Mag, etc.) I really wouldn't be surprised if at least one piece of hardware is giving you the middle finger. It sounds to me that HP is giving you the run around trying to deny that there is any hardware problems with your laptop, which considering that HP has also historically been near the bottom of the barrel on quality of support I am not surprised.

BTW, what memory diagnostic tool did you use? The virtual de facto industry standard that most techs use is MemTest86+. Most linux distros include a copy on the disc. Oddly instead of just including MemTest M$ wrote their own memory diagnostic tool. The one Vista includes isn't worth your time. A lot of users, myself included have found that MemTest86 is a lot better at finding errors in your DIMMs whereas the writers on Vista's memory diag tool didn't do nearly as good of a job. I had a machine that couldn't even finish the install of Vista so I decided to try Linspire on the machine. It took well over an hour to install Linspire when similar hardware usually required 15 minutes! Even once it was installed it took forever to boot. It turns out despite Vista's memory tool saying that my machine was just fine that one of the DIMMs had thousands of errors on it. It was defective memory. Linux seems a more resistant to crashing with significant memory errors, but it takes a lot longer to get things done. I pulled out that bad DIMM and I was able to install XP and Vista on the machine without any major issues after that. Moral of the story: bad memory can cause problems on any OS not just Vista. Don't blame Vista or any other OS for defective hardware!

In addition, why are you running Ultimate 64-bit when you only have 2GB on the machine? Contrary to popular belief 64bit doesn't make anything magically run twice as fast. In fact in some cases depending upon the drivers it may run slower. I am writing this right now on a desktop on Enterprise x64 and the performance for 3d graphics on my Geforce 7900GS is actually slightly slower than on 32 bit Vista! I guess Nvidia hasn't put as much polish in optimizing the drivers for 64bit yet. Maybe a later update on Nvidia's drivers will make the gap between the 64bit and 32bit drivers disappear, but the point is unless you need to run 64bit software, highly unlikely since 64bit software on Windows is still pretty limited, why did you pick Ultimate x64?

One final bone I have to pick with your post is that restoring Vista or XP for that matter is usually significantly slower than installing Vista. This is common misconception that 90%+ of people have is that having a recovery disc is the same thing as having an OEM or retail disc. Most OEMs that include recovery discs as opposed to a standard vanilla OEM disc(which is about every major vendor you are familiar with). The big difference is that recovery discs often install several gigabytes of additional programs on the machine because in theory it adds value. While it may add value to the machine it also adds time to the recovery to not only copy the data to the hard drive, but also the obligatory uncompression of all of the information. Most people I have met that installed a vanilla install of Vista off of the OEM media were far happier than those that purchased a consumer machine with all that excess junk. It was the same thing on XP. Virtually every business model from the likes of Lenovo or Dell or even HP tend to be running Vista business as opposed to Ultimate.

Bottom line if everybody who had a bad experience with a computer blamed it on the OS we would have a lot more people still expousing the virtues of DOS or some other ancient OS because they had a bad experience that had nothing to do with the software in many cases. Far too many people immediately blame Vista as bad because they bought a machine that was far too cheap to run it or worse yet as appears in your case you probably bought a lemon.

[ellis feigenbaum]

pda synching

this is not a vista problem- its a date problem
your pda is not recognising old appointments and thereore is not synching
go into outlook and delete anything more than about 2 years old- then try synching
this link may help
http://www.everythingtreo.com/forum/introductions/outlook-calendar-sync-error-7136.html
solved the problem for me.

[purple-haze]

But it doesn't pass the "Dad Test"

I have XP on my laptop, on of my two desktops and my computers at work. The computer I have by far the most problems with is that bleeping Vista machine. The two desktops are for my kids. They fight over who gets to use the XP machine, and often ask to use my laptop because Vista is such a problem (the answer is always "no" on the laptop).

The first problem is that there are always problems booting it up. It never wants to give a clean start and often locks up. The solution is never to shut it down and simply waste electricity when they aren't on it (which sometimes is up to 14 days at a time).

Then there is the security problem. My kids can't even play their "Daddy Approved" educational games, because they can't install them and can't get them to run if they manage to get them installed, they can't get online and in general they can't do anything... without having to call me to the computer to put in my password every 2 minutes. I eventually gave up and told them flat out don't log in to their accounts, took the password off my admin account and told them to use it. If I had time, I would upgrade the Vista machine to XP, but I don't have that kind of time. Believe it or not, I actually have a job and other things to do and don't have time to just sit and wait on the computer hand and foot.

I'm not a great fan of XP, but Vista makes it look great. I wish I could afford a whole set of Macs for all three of us. Could somebody bring back an affordable and findable version of the Amiga? I miss my Amiga.

Vista? What a piece of garbage.

[Fil0403]

I think you meant "Dumb Test"

Boy, you have some dumb kids, LOL. I guess they got it from their dad. And I guess it proves a lot the fact that some dumb kids supposedly (very important word here and on most anti-Vista comments) don't know how to work with Vista and their dad is too ignorant to learn how to or make up more convincing arguments.

I (as many others) have an XP and a Vista PC and (as with most others) the XP PC is by far the one I have most problems with. XP is for IT ignorants. What a wonder that you (supposedly) have problems booting up Vista when you give an admin password to your dumb kids (if you dislike Vista's protective behaviour you're gonna love Macs, LOL). What a wonder that your dumb kids can't install a game with their limited user account. What a wonder that an idiot (supposedly) has problems with Vista when he creates limited user accounts for his kids when he wants to allow them to install anything without permission.

The mere fact that you use the word "upgrade" to describe going from Vista to XP just shows how ignorant you are (I know it actually sounds like you know what you're talking about, I know). And how interesting that you (supposedly) don't have time to "upgrade" to XP (didn't you mean to say you simply don't know how to do it? Why don't you ask your dumb kids, LOL?) but have time to write such an idiotic comment bashing Vista.

I'm not that pretensious but people like you make me feel rather smart, LOL. I wish you could afford a whole set of Macs for you and your dumb kids too. Would love to see them install a single game on them, LOL. Ah, what can you say to someone who'd rather have an Amiga to a Vista PC, LOL?

Vista = garbage? What a piece of ignorance.

[laustrian]

Vista DOES NOT pass this Mom

The Search Engine in Vista is a total FAILURE. Try seaching for anything OTHER than the first word in the file name. Unless what you search for is separated by spaces or dashes or underscores etc., it does NOT find it. If the file name if MomTest_Vista.doc, it will not find it if you search on Mom; it will NOT find it if you seach on Test. It will only find it if you search on MomTest. Search fails even if you seach non-indexed files. This is UNACCEPTABLE and USELESS! It worked perfectly under XP. Maybe it is just my high-end Dell. Please let me know if anyone else has this problem or not. THANK YOU!