Comments on: Microsoft looks to 'Mojave' to revive Vista's image

CNET News gets an exclusive look at what's likely to become a piece of a new Vista marketing push.

[michaelo1966]

What gives Vista a "bad rap" is when I try booting my Vista machine at a presentation, switch to a PPT backup after a couple minutes, and all the executives sit there watching Vista mysteriously updating something or other. Besides that there are the incompatibilities, Microsoft's inability to admit they abused the trust of their early adopters, the slow speed and lack of standards baked into IE, behavior (though this isn't Vista) of doing things like not having a POP option in MSN ... the list goes on. If MS wants to climb back to the top of the perception pyramid -- and I don't hate, or even dislike the company, though feel burned by them -- they must work to regain trust.

[WORSTBABY]

that kind of tactic is about as insulting as it gets. and it prves nothing. these people are not tryying to work with their personal daily use programs . they are just being ushered through flashy crap under perfectly controlled by microsoft conditions. if some mojave moran pulled this shoddy and i say once again insulting garbage on me i would tell them to drop dead.

[HowardParsons]

So,
They haven't actually fixed anything - they're just going to tell you that tripe is turkey and spend millions to do it. Of course, they could spend millions to actually fix the problems but - hey - what do I know?

Moral: Never underestimate the power of corporate stupidity.

[Scrivener_]

I, too, like Vista. I have five machines: four running XP Pro; my newest - Dell XPS 1530 Laptop, purchased approximately 8 months ago - runs Vista Ultimate SP1. It's a solid operating system. But - "AIN'T" there always a "But" - it needs robust hardware to operate properly. So, I understand why so many people are dismissive of Vista. And, compatibility with older software is certainly a problem, especially when the makers of the software do not "update" their programs/drivers, forcing one to purchase the newer software. If/when Microsoft develops a completely new O.S., we're all going to be faced with compatibility issues.

My brother-in-law, who is a mathematician and used to write code (Kernels, whatever that is?) for software to operate hardware, likes the way Vista operates. He is amazed at how the "transparency" works in Vista, and is uniquely intrigued by the "bubble" screen saver and how it functions. (Go figure. Yet, I know he knows what he's talking about) He never worked for Microsoft, only independent software companies.

Interestingly, in his home, he uses only Windows. He and his wife, who is also a Mathematician, teach young kids how to write code in the various "languages". So, when people with their expertise say to me they like Vista and how it operates, I bow to their knowledge.

Yet, I understand the criticism. Microsoft should have been more forthright and maybe waited another year before releasing Vista, as evidenced by the internal emails among the corporate hierarchy.

For what its worth,

Ernie

[Kev Orng]

Someone who writes code was impressed by the transparency of Windows Vista?
OSX had this in 2001-2003, and just about everybody in the industry knows this. Ultimately they phased it back to solid over a few updates because their users got kinda bored of the new shininess. It worked properly, though, didn't seem to cause any slowdowns or use too much RAM. I remember it well, but yeah, I reached a point too, after about 8 months, where it was just like, okay this is cool, can I turn it off now?

[pwhite777]

I've been fooled for the last time by Microsoft so anything they have to say about Vista is so much garbage to me.
I switched to a Mac almost two years ago and haven't looked back. It's nice not to have to reboot the system every 10 minutes and hey everything works!

[PEdlund]

Hexor... This is the most uninformed statement that could be made. You dont have a clue.

[Zaunto]

Vista Basic and the notion that Vista will run on anything with less than 2GB of RAM is part of the problem. The hardware requirements for Vista are too high. There are too many versions of Vista. There should have only been two versions- "Vista Home Premium" and "Vista Business". Vista Basic is crap that runs like crap until you upgrade to any one of the other 3 versions, all of which run snappy in comparison to Vista Basic. After upgrading my Vista Basic Compaq Presario to Vista Business, I got snappy performance and rock solid stability, even with Aero running but after disabling Aero, performance improved even more. As a gamer, I'm perturbed that a couple of my games won't run on Vista, but that is balanced out by the fact that my X-Box 360 controller plugged and played, and works with no problems and all of my games run great.

There are some annoying things about Vista that I don't like and that many others don't like. Being that I'm an IT Technician, I was able to fix all of my Vista issues, but the average computer user just wants everything to work and this is where Apple has been kicking Microsoft's a$$, both with a user experience that is quite simply wonderful and an add campaign that Microsoft has yet to respond to in any way. I'm not sure why Microsoft has just been sitting around for the better part of 2 years doing no advertising while Apple has been increasing market share and selling more Macs than ever before, but it's going to take more than fancy named bait and switch tactics on film to get the public perception of Vista to change. I personally won't have my computing future tied to whatever the next version of Windows is or isn't and I'm sick of having to upgrade or buy a new computer every 3 years just to run the latest Microsoft OS. Experimentation with Ubuntu is about to begin for me and my next laptop will be an Apple.

[Heebee Jeebies]

Heaven forbid they actually fixed the issues that people have with Vista. No instead it has to be a marketing issue. For god sakes Microsoft Vista is a horrible in so many ways. Far more ways is it horrible than it has good points. Deal with it.

[battmail]

This means very little as Vista was loaded on machines that were picked to have total Vista compatibility. Part of the problem with Vista is not only the operational specs to get it to work, but the still massive incompatibility with drivers.

I am not surprised the people in this test had a great response, but it is not the everyman example Microsoft is desperate to show. The everyman example would be to have people load Vista by themselves on a selection of different branded computers with different third party accessories, of course this is what happened in the real world and is one of the biggest reasons people don't like Vista.

Too little, much too late.

[russkeller]

Well this is gonna be funny. If Microsoft's the Ads are put together as competently as Vista they'll just be more Mac Ads.

[mcarrieri]

I have a new concept for the Vista Ad Campaign. Seeing the Placebo test is very encouraging, both in Microsoft's ingenuity, and Marketing potential. By simply getting people to "feel good" about Vista, they can get 90% of people interested. Not bad! Please contact me anytime if interested.

Mike
[e-mail]

[compudoc318]

I love this article, there are so many idiots out there who downtalk vista to be cool, and have never even given it a chance. Now if youve tried it for awhile and hate it, i have no problems with that, its the people who bash it to look cool that bug me. Ive used ultimate vista since day one, had a few problems with my printer at first, but no problems since. I work in i.t. and i run a cpu repair/virus removal company, and i wouldnt use vista yet at in a large company yet, but its fine for home use. On the virus side, i remove 2-3 viruses a day, and guess what, only one vista machine infected so far, so security is better. I just remember all these same people hating xp when it came out.....its the computer industry, change happens, get used to it...lol.

[Robynsveil]

My wife bought a laptop with Vista on it. She's an XP user - was very comfortable with the OS - and absolutely hates Vista. She's had virus attacks despite her AV software and the new Vista security system. I've had to order a copy of Windows XP Professional for her laptop, since Microsoft won't allow a downgrade.

I run Windows XP - dual boot with Ubuntu Linux. XP *purely* is for running Windows graphics software such as Poser 7 and Vue Esprit 6. I don't do anything 'dangerous' in XP - boot to Linux for email and internet and virtually everything else. XP is okay - it's fast enough now that I don't run any AV software on it... and of course, Ubuntu is brilliantly fast for the same reason. Oh, and absolutely *nil* infections. None. And that's with no AV software running in Ubuntu. Yeah, it's available, but why? Pointless. No, I'm not an IT expert - I just know what works. The system track record speaks for itself. As CompuDoc said: it's the computer industry, change happens. Microsoft is resisting this change with FUD and taste tests, but on a grass-roots level, it *is* happening.

[sanenazok]

It sure says something about the critics that were fooled in this way. How could they not like Vista and yet know so little about it to the point of not recognizing the OS. I don't like the cost/ROI on Macs but sure as heck I would be able to recognize OS X.

[Penguinisto]

Clue: They probably didn't use real "critics". They just used tech-illiterate folks off the street, put them in a controlled environment, and probably excised footage of the majority of folks who took one look at the thing and went "yuck".

[jcrumble]

Vista is a new paradygm for people who don't just use an OS out of the box. The transition from Win 2k to XP was minimal as enhancements were made to the OS that followed the same navigation and menu structure as Win 2k. With Vista changes were made that make navigation more difficult. like changing display settings for instance, instead of right clicking on the desktop, selecting a tab and making a change on Vista the same change requires a couple of screens more clicks. This is one example and requiring more effort to do the same thing seems counter productive. I don't call that an improvement.

There are also some advantages of XP that just aren't present with Vista. As a program developer, I am able to completely customize the way XP looks and functions by adding context menus, skinning out the OS, enhance the OS by installing third party tools (that function correctly on XP), and change the default location of My Documents and other default OS folders to match how I work with ease. As far as an OS goes I customize the OS so much that they could rename the OS and package it as something altogether different. This can't easily be done with Vista. Vista is so counter intuitive that even asking long term users of Vista how to do various things usually leads to a google search. The learning curve from navigating XP to navigating Vista is steep enough and so wrought with differences that a person could learn OSX with nearly the same effort. With Vista you have to turn more off in order to get the Operating System functioning how you want it to function as opposed to XP where you can install it and begin tweaking and for that to happen you have to know where to get started in turning various things off on the OS.

Bottom line. The reasons Vista has not been excepted by the world at large is because in order to do the same things that you were able to do in XP you have to go into Vista with certain knowledge of the OS. You have to know how to turn off the annoying security prompts and where to locate certain functionality within the new menu structure. In other words Vista wants to dictate how you work where XP can change to match how you work.

Vista is a decent OS for people who want to run something right out of the box "as is" with Microsoft Controlling every aspect of how their computer runs and manages everything. XP runs fine out of the box "as is" but still allows those people who want to have more direct control of how their computer looks and functions to make changes.

Unfortunately, Microsoft will eventually win out with Vista (Or force the populace over to OSX) because a lot of the newer faster hardware doesn't have XP driver support.

Not knowing what kind of people were polled for this 'Mojave' study, I challenge Microsoft to convince people who actually know what they are doing with an OS to switch over to Vista. You are as likely to convince die hard Mac people to switch to PCs because they are prettier.

[Commandoclone87]

lets see about that - XP = right click, Display , click on display tab, adjust resolution. On Vista = right click, personalize, click on display settings, adjust resolution. Last I checked, that was the same number of steps.

As for customizing your OS, how about Stardock's WindowsBlinds or their ObjectDesktop customization.

About those third party tools, how long has it been since you updated those applications? Have you contacted the programmers to verify if they support Vista? or are you one of those lazy guys who sits on his butt when a problem pops up and never bothers to actually learn how to fix it.

BTW, been using Vista since the public beta and the only thing I have that doesn't work after being updated or patched is a copy of the original Warcraft for DOS.

[jcrumble]

While I appreciate your Vista enthusiasm I've got to say it's misplaced. My example may not have been the best to use regarding # of clicks, but it's obvious from the number of negative comments in this discussion that I'm not alone in how I feel about the navigation of VIsta.

No I am not one of those lazy people who doesn't keep my toolset up to date. In fact, using Object Desktop I can make your PC look like a MAC. Quite familiar with it thanks. I also happen to be a programmer, network and server admin, and PC tech with an MSDN subscription having experience going back to Windows 3.0 and DOS 5 all the way up through Windows 20008. If my job involved only playing games then I would be in fine shape, but as I am a developer creating Windows and web apps with a variety of tools as well as administering network and server resources using tools that work great but are not yet updated for Vista, Vista is not a good option. To be honest for my job the main OS I run is Windows 2003 R2 with the Compatability toolkit or VMWare allowing me to run XP apps.

No everything does not work equally between the two platforms. Why should I have to stop using tools and applications that work better than the competative tools that do run on Vista just to move to an operating system that doesn't allow me to customize it the way I want to? Try installing Solarwinds, Hyena, or just desktopsidebar. Can the Control Panel items be renamed easily? No. These things can be done but only by digging.

For myself I just don't see any gain in going to Vista?

[DonBurnett]

Look you guys who are maligning Vista are full of something.. and those of us who love Vista and have been using it for close to 2 years know what that is, and most of us are probably of the opinion that you are lacking some computer knowledge about how you have your system configured. That's the only real probem that is going on here..

Why should you upgrade to Vista (or why I don't DOWNGRADE TO XP). It's simple way cool 3rd party software that doesn't run anywhere else accelerated..

1) Hardware accelerated graphics in WPF Applications.. If you don't know what WPF is and you are clueless watch this video sometime.. It brings new UI technology that makes applications look better and the UI works nicer and is more feature filled than the Mac even.

Look at the WPF application up on WorldWideTelescope.org sometime, it's just one example of what can be done with Vista's accelerated graphics and will definitely show you better performance on Vista than XP.. Try ZOOMING in on something too.. The thing is it doesn't take a game programmer to do these things with stuff they have added.

Look also a WCF (Yet something that's in Vista), it's called Windows Communications Foundation and it adds a lot of new functionality, for making windows applications that are connected to the web via Web Services.. This means applications which are smart talk to each other cache data when not connected to the internet, etc..

There are just things there that weren't built-in to XP and acceleration you can't get in XP..

The third reason is better security. With the sandbox around the IE web browser, I don't have to run malware removal software every week as I did with XP to clean out my system and I have had very few if any attempts to invade my system.

You guys still staying with XP need to do a reality check and a serious one.. The driver issues are gone, the speed issues well that's overblown garbage. It's a non-issue. The OS is far from slow.. It does do more things in the background it's nice to type something into any search box and have it come up with very fast results.

The people putting up the comments here and I have counted them so far are mostly Linux users and Apple Fan Boys.. One of the responders said "My copy of Vista is in the drawer"..

Someone else posted .."Unfortunately, as much as I want that I can't justify paying the license fee just for that, and I'm damned if I can see anything else in the product that makes me want it over XP." ..

I get confounded everytime I hear this kind of garbage, take it out of the drawer buy a new license.. Maybe Microsoft should have a sticker for all this new software that says "RUNS ONLY ON VISTA" on software. I can hear the "complaints" about that one already..

Most of you have never tried the worldwide telescope application (it's free at WorldWideTelescope.org) , or probably ran the new CRM Windows Platform application called RAVE, that is beating web browser based Salesforce.com at "buy rates" that is based on this new technology that only comes out of the box with Windows Vista and is a fast moving "enterprise" business application that represents the next generation of line of business applications.. (read more at this other company's blog--- http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=553)


That's just a couple great examples (of many that I can think of) of how the new windows applications that only run "out of the box with Vista", that are changing things and people who don't even use Windows opinions of Windows.. Keep watching you might see your software update to Vista only functionality sooner than you think..

Already selling 140 million copies or more (that's tracked independently) isn't a bad number. I suspect there are more than this actually sold. I didn't just pull that number out of the air..

I have given you both two very different and reasons, one for home and education and one for business to take a fresh look. There are many others.

I like Vista, have no problems with it on current non-legacy hardware, and it's features outweigh me still being on XP.. I can run XP for free inside of it with the free Virtual PC 2007 at full speed if I need to (for those really OLD 16-bit applications that I don't use anymore but don't want to throw away either..

If you want to see more vista goodness go over to MSN and watch this video, it's from even last year, but it will clue you in further..

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=5cb61b78-fa49-4309-9ac9-f7ee5e0d5487

[Penguinisto]

Your first reason? I get better eye candy from OSX (Aqua) and Linux (Compiz). Neither of them costs me $400 to get the full "experience".

Your second reason? Where did that one go?

Your third reason? I get better security (and zero malware/viruses) in OSX and Linux... again, no massive price tag or massive hardware requirements.

BTW, you "140 million" copy claim counts XP installs - MSFT counts every OS install from Vista's launch onwards as a "Vista" sale because of "downgrade rights".

[Imalittleteapot]

If Vista is doing so hot then why does Microsoft have to run this ad campaign? Did you ever think that if so many people don't like it that MS has to run ads telling you no no it's really ok. That maybe something was really wrong with it?

[mattumanu]

DonBurnett basically said, "Vista is way cooler than you think"... Can anyone say MMX?

[rcardona2k]

The oasis that Microsoft showed a few unlucky souls is the DEMO. A wolf in sheep clothing. Then there's reality.

[zclayton2]

Ok - so the slimes tweak the best that money can buy and get the WOW effect. Yawn. It doesn't change how the dog runs on my computer.

[rfar7]

Too late. I returned my Vista machine then bought a Mac. Very happy and will never go back.

[SteamChip]

?To be sure, the focus groups didn't have to install Vista or hook it up to their existing home network.?

But That is where many of the complaints lie.

A polished turd may look like a gold nugget and Microsoft can swear that it is, and convince their focus groups that is GOLD and all the wonderful things they can do with all that bullion, but once these focus groups do the smell and touch test, that turd is getting flushed.

[Bubba_Satori]

"Vista. It's not as bad as it used to be." Sorry. Too little. Too late. And nobdy really cares.