Microsoft Admits Vista Has "High Impact Issues" 520
EggsAndSausage writes "Microsoft has granted, in a roundabout way, that Vista has 'high impact issues.' It has put out an email call for technical users to participate in testing Service Pack 1, due out later this year, which will address 'regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues.' It's hard to know whether to be reassured that Service Pack 1 is coming in the second half of 2007, and thus that there is a timeframe for considering deployment of Vista within businesses, or to be alarmed that Microsoft is unleashing an OS on the world with 'high impact issues' still remaining." In other news, one blogger believes that Vista is the first Microsoft OS since Windows 3.1 to have regressed in usability from its predecessor (he kindly forgives and dismisses Windows ME). And there's a battle raging over the top 10 reasons to get Vista or not to get Vista.
Win XP wins out over VISTA... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is way too expensive to be a business user and wind up "testing" a new OS with no easy way to regress.
Win XP Pro is going to be an option to install on most PCs for a long long time.
One blogger? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when does "one blogger"'s view qualify as "news"? I'm sure at least "one blogger" thinks that OSX sucks or at least "one blogger" thinks that Linux sucks. Would that qualify as "news" as well?
The quality of the "news stories" that slashdot carries has gone downhill drastically in recent months.
Already testing SP1? (Score:4, Insightful)
[1] No I do not count the corporate edition released in Nov because it was simply a stunt to claim to have shipped in 06. They knew full well no same corporate IT dept would do anything other than begin testing with a version they would consider the 'final beta'.
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:4, Insightful)
Just stick with XP until Vista SP one, the same way one should have stuck with 2k (not talking about home users here, though 2k was good even for home use) until XP SP1, etc.
For the OEMs, well...they get Vista for 5$ over the price of the raw hardware, so I guess its consolation. Or just don't buy OEM. For the rest for whom all these options are not possible...well, they're allowed to complain I guess.
Re:One blogger? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"Inbuilt undelete" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently the "Folders" tool on the left is too hard to use. Take a look at his picture, if he just clicked on the "Folders" link on the left he would have a nice, easy to navigate tree right there. Yes, the address bar's drop-down is a sort of history. As for the web sites, mine seem to spawn a web browser (Firefox even) just fine.
Again, the author shows his ignorance. Just click on the breadcrumb of where you want to go, ta-da! you're now there. Granted it's not a button, but it's infinitely more useful. Not only can I go up one level with one click I can go up n levels with one click.
This one I will give him is a wash. The built in search rocks. And personally, I'm used to <Win>+R to open the run dialog. <Win>+R then 'c:' still gets me an explorer window at c:\. Though I tend to use <Win>+E and then using the folder tree to get to the c:\, but to each their own. My major complaint with this is that shutting down has changed for me. I used to use <Win>, U, S, <Enter> to shut down. That's gone now, now I just hit the power button on my laptop.
This one I'll give him. Changing IP addresses is now buried yet another layer deeper. You had to dig enough in XP. This "Network and Sharing Center" is a bit annoying. Though one thing it does have going for it is that you can quickly tell whether you are sharing folders or not, and control it from there. Overall, more of a "meh" than a problem.
And, we're back to stupidity. There is a little box in the upper left hand corner of the Explorer window, oddly labeled "search", it's even visible in some of his screenshots. Type a string of letters in, and Presto! Vista goes and finds any file with the applicable search string (it even checks inside Word, Excel and text documents.)
This is another one I'll give him, copying and the associated network issues are a problem MS needs to fix. For the entire OS to seize up because a network location is unreachable is just stupid.
Overall the author of the article manages to just show that he's only touched Vista long enough to be annoyed with the changes, and not get used to them. I've been running Vista since RC1, and excepting driver support which sucked in the release candidate, but that's to be expected, I've generally liked Vista. Most of the complaints I have heard are either ill-informed or just downright wrong. That's not to say that there aren't still issues with Vista. Driver support still sucks, the network hang-ups should really be fixed (or at least give me a cancel button for when I know I mistyped), changing security and network settings are now buried one layer deeper in almost all cases, and getting used to the security pop-up takes some doing. Though, in defense of the last one, this is something that people have been asking for; just running everything as a local administrator is insane, you wouldn't run Linux as root all the time would you? One thing that Vista does lack in this regard is a non-admin way of viewing settings that should require admin level rights to change. I'd like to be able to view the Computer Management snap-in without running it as admin.
what, no QA dept (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:NTFS's alternate streams (Score:3, Insightful)
Viruses hide in files too. If there was better support for them, they could be as visible there as they are in files. Part of the question I'm asking is why isn't that support there.
Backup software forgets alternate streams. Web servers and browsers forget alternate streams. FTP servers and clients forget alternate streams.
Again, lack of tool support, not a problem with the concept. (In the case of FTP servers, you almost HAVE to forget about the alternate streams (or serialize them) because most other filesystems don't support them.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the same time, there is still a valid criticism here. First, why change a perfectly working UI by not only moving the previous functionality to somewhere completely different and unconnected to the old location, but then using the old location for something else instead of removing it?
Secondly, why is there a web history in the open/save dialog at all? Can anyone think of a remotely plausable use case where this would be helpful?
Re:Why not to get Vista? (Score:5, Insightful)
_______
I'll give you 5 (statement of fact) and 6 (I agree) but the rest of this is wrong, unrealistic or just plain trolling (and pretty badly given your low UID)
1: Wrong. It does have new features. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Wind
2: Unrealistic. Retraining costs, software, utter nigthmare to get it to work on some laptops (I've tried personally). Not possible for gamers. I love linux and have used several distros, and Ubuntu is very, very good but I can't send Mark Shuttleworth the bill for the time I spent fixing things or hunting for solutions in forums. I don't really mind the time and can actually get things to work the way I wan't but a lot of people cannot. I do have a Windows XP desktop and I have had significantly fewer problems with it than my debian box in lab or my zenwalk laptop.
3: Trolling a) So? b) Vista copies several features in OS X c) I can't buy it off the shelf d) Limited games and software - also see 4)
4: Wrong - I agree the DRM is principally to ensure a monopoly in the longterm (I argued this yesterday - see comment history) but it is still exactly as invasive as the content provider requires. OS X will require the same content controls, as will any Linux player to play commercial HD content. Several Linux distros support the TPM yet I don't hear anyone yelling about it.
5: Statement of fact. A lot of things do. Like I said I cannot send Mark Shuttleworth a bill for my time. Linux is free as in speech and maybe avaialble free as in beer but the cost of drinking that beer isn't being fully factored in here.
6: I cannot disagree. C'est la vie. We can all point fingers and you can yell at people to change to OS X/some linux but they aren't going to. I prefer helping them get their windows boxes more secure.
7: I don't see how your point 7 relates to 2 at all. Are you arguing that the retraining costs are offset by the free OS? See 5.
8: Trolling. Most people are getting Vista with a new computer and are junking old systems irrespective. Also you don't have to junk it at all just because you choose to upgrade. I've a 7 year old Thinkpad that happily runs vector.
___
Given 1 there are quite a few reasons to upgrade to vista (and I don't carea bout anything on the top of that page. ASLR and UAC, however annoying it is, itself make it worth it. PatchGuard, irrespective of how the antivirii companies feel is also a great idea. Should these have been there ages ago. Sure. Is linux more secure anyway. Sure. Are people going to change. Nope. Too much depends on Windows and migrating to another OS is not an option for several buisness/gamers and just plain old users. However you feel about that and how MS got their monopoly, it is simply the current situation and is not going to change.
What about XP SP3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares if Vista is broken? Most computer users will not see it on their systems for years. Windows XP is still "good enough" for most everybody, except... The hours of patching and updating after a SP2 install.
Microsoft: Are you listening? This user wants a consolidation of all the XP fixes into one service pack.
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe the grandparent's point was that users expect their software to work on Vista like it did on XP, if Vista is being presented as an upgrade. If users expect their software to migrate seamlessly and it doesn't, then Vista won't meet their expectations, and thus is not an upgrade. Whether or not the non-migration is better for security isn't relevant if the user needs that particular software, since in the eyes of the purchaser, the purpose of an OS is to enable the needed software. If the software doesn't work on the new OS, the OS does not meet the requirements.
I could be wrong, though. Others opinions may vary.
Want to cross our DRM? Pay our toll! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a strong believer in the "Microsoft has no real choice" hypothesis. I don't think MS need the RI/MPAA members of the world as much as they need MS. First of all, MS are a part of, and presumably very active, member of the AACS licensing agency. I know this because it says so in the specifications. Maybe the other members could block them from implementing it, but I consider that unlikely (and why would they want too?).
Secondly, and the real point, MS rule basically every desktop in the world already. Do you believe that computes to leverage FOR or AGAINST Microsoft when negotiation with the MPAAs? Truly, the MPAAs would be at the mercy of MS. "Here's the DRM we're willing of giving you in Vista, be glad you're getting as much!".
I'm more a follower of the "Microsoft is doing this for their own, lock-in based, reasons". The history of Microsoft is the history of vendor lock-in and market control through technology.
Maybe MS really want the RIAAs and MPAAs on their side in the fight against the iPod? Maybe if MS give the RIAAs and the MPAAs what they want. One back scratched for another... If I didn't despise the MPAAs of the world, I'd raise a warning about MS long documented betrayalish ways, but I do.
BTW. Do you know what company I didn't see stamped on the first page of the AACS specifications?
Apple.
Lesser members perhaps. Now who is in control?
Re:Want to cross our DRM? Pay our toll! (Score:4, Insightful)
But the question is, how much of the MPAA's market are PCs responsible for? I don't know, but I get the sense that it's not a terribly large percentage. I at least hear a lot of "I'm sick of the movie theatres; it's so much better to watch movies on a home theatre", and I doubt the people saying that are watching them on their computers.
Then, think about what if they didn't support it. They'd have to have something somewhere saying "Vista doesn't support watching HD-DVD or Blue-Ray disks because the MPAA won't let us." But who do you think consumers would blame? Is the average person rational enough to go out, study the issue, and see that MS was the one being reasonable? Doubt it. I bet they'd go "Stupid Windows! Why can't I watch my Blue-ray?" This would leave, say, Apple a nice window in which to say, "hey, we'll capitulate to the MPAA's demands", and now MS is hurting even more. (They're vulnerable enough already. And I don't think it's terribly unreasonable to expect that Apple would take advantage of that situation, though I doubt they'd implement all the restrictions MS has. Apple has already shown willingness to capitulate to some extent with iTunes, and I think Jobs is shrewd enough to notice an opportunity to steal market share like that would provide.)
I'm more a follower of the "Microsoft is doing this for their own, lock-in based, reasons". The history of Microsoft is the history of vendor lock-in and market control through technology.
Maybe MS really want the RIAAs and MPAAs on their side in the fight against the iPod? Maybe if MS give the RIAAs and the MPAAs what they want. One back scratched for another... If I didn't despise the MPAAs of the world, I'd raise a warning about MS long documented betrayalish ways, but I do.
I do think this is a good point though. I don't really buy that MS is in the clear either. They certainly seem over-eager to please to me. Surely they could have put up SOME resistance to DRM. (I just don't think they could have removed it entirely.)
I guess what my feelings are on this is, yeah, MS is at fault here, but at the same time, even if they were run by totally principled, upstanding people who shared the
Re:"Inbuilt undelete" (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I once thought this way, granted 10 MB hard-drives were better than sex back then.
Of course the FBI/CIA/NSA/DHS all feel the same way, that the typical user OS should never, ever forget something completely.
There's nothing like the look on an end-user's face when you show them a 2 year history of everything on and off their hard-drive; maybe not the complete files, but enough to incriminate them.
Re:One blogger? (Score:2, Insightful)
Simple: When it's negative of "Micro$oft". Why does Fox News serve up what it does? Why CNN serve up the kind of thing that it does? It's called know thy audience. Every news outlet probably would love to expand beyond their core, narrow-minded, boringly predictable constituency. But when it's all you've got, you've got to make sure you cater to them and hang on to what you have. Unfortunately it gets to a point of no return as the diversity is driven away, so a network or web site has to resign themself to being content with a steady, albeit stagnant, following.
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you are missing the point. If I need to use specific software, and it runs easier on XP than on Vista, or runs on XP and not on Vista, then Vista is not an upgrade for my purposes, and there is no reason to purchase Vista. Whether or not Vista is an overall superior OS compared to XP doesn't matter for my purposes if Vista is inferior for my specific software needs.
I could be wrong, though. Others may disagree.
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why not to get Vista? (Score:2, Insightful)
The "most people" assumption seems to ignore the corporations and government entities running XP/2000 right now, who *will* have to budget a lot of money, plus the deployment, to meet the hardware requirements of Vista. True, the average home user will just get it bundled with their next PC purchase, but that's not all of the demographic, nor, I'm guessing, the money.
The large scale users will simply wait until they upgrade hardware in a few years. That may give those organizations the time to test all their own apps and custom stuff for usability in Vista. That would be another hidden cost; paying to have those apps redone in whatever way to work with Vista.
XP for another five years+, in that case. It seems like a lot of money to spend on a multimedia machine that office workers don't need.
Re:Seriously? (Score:1, Insightful)
Windows Search Is Broken - Now when I want a simple search for any file that contains the string 'IntelliAdmin' I can't do it.
And, we're back to stupidity. There is a little box in the upper left hand corner of the Explorer window, oddly labeled "search", it's even visible in some of his screenshots. Type a string of letters in, and Presto! Vista goes and finds any file with the applicable search string (it even checks inside Word, Excel and text documents.)
How is it stupidity to expect the "Search" box in the Start menu to function as a...ummm... search? While I appreciate the tip on where to find the functional search function, it's hardly stupidity to expect something labeled search to actually work as a search.
I've been doing testing with the release version of Vista, and I concur with the opinion of waiting until at least SP1 before adopting.Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
But still, how is someone supposed to know what the 'search' field does? It's not intuitive that the search string will actually search the contents of a file. Plus, having a look at his screenshot of the search dialog, it's bad interface design having the search field separated from the rest of the search criteria. There's very little visual indication that they're all related.
He also raises a very good point about the broken search feature in XP SP2. Once, I tried finding a string in a directory tree of php files. The search function found nothing, so I assumed that there were no files that contained the string. I was wrong. The string was in one of the files, but the windows search feature did not bother looking inside php files. That cost me many hours of time, until I finally came back and searched files by hand. I was extremely pissed at Microsoft, and was wishing wholeheartedly that I had easy access to 'grep'.
The blog author seems to indicate that this is still broken in Vista. If it is, then there is legitimate concern here.
Just delay the fu**er again (Score:3, Insightful)
WinXP works well in its current stage, for what I need it to - work stuff, and play at home. Haven't tried any of them on the RCs of Vista because I couldn't install it in the frist place. Seems like Vista did not like my SATA HDD. Talk about lack of hardware drivers.. it was RC and all.. but if XP works on it, shouldn't its successor work too?
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:3, Insightful)
What I want to know is why the file browser doesn't have this capability on its own? Finder in OSX does burning well enough. Gnome is actually the easiest -- just right click on an iso and choose "burn", or drag a bunch of files to the CD icon and burn those. You would think that MS could afford to have cd/dvd burner built right in. The CD/DVD is today's equivalent to the floppy you know, seems a major oversight to leave out the ability to write data to removable discs.
Deja-vu (Score:3, Insightful)
I can keep going... (Score:5, Insightful)
The notation used on Windows is... interesting. If you are in D:\ with a file called C, does C:foo refer to a stream on D:\C or to a file called foo in the current directory of the C drive?
On a Linux or MacOS system, all characters except '/' and '\0' are valid in filenames, so we have nothing to spare. No, you can't steal the ':'.
Today I can copy a file with the dd command. I can copy a file using the cat command and shell redirection. Multi-forked files would lose data.
It looks like you need a directory... why not use one? This is how MacOS X apps work.
There are fundamental difficulties with on-disk data structures related to fragmentation and bloat. You add complexity for little gain.
Do these extra streams get permission bits? Can you solidly justify your choice?
Can a stream have a stream? If not, why the limitation?
Can I move a stream from one file to another? Can I move a stream to be just a regular file? Can I move a file into another file, to become an extra stream?
Why should everything become more complex (buggy, slow, insecure, confusing, etc.) for this barely-useful feature?
Stop the plague! Give consumers a real choice. (Score:2, Insightful)
One way the plague might be stopped is for the US and EU to re-open their anti-trust cases against Micro$oft with a minimum goal of having any system where an MS OS comes pre-infec^H^H^Hstalled boot up the first time to a screen that gives the customer a choice of alternative non-MS (FOSS) operating systems. Since none of the major vendors, Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway, Toshiba, Sony, Lenovo, etc. provide much in the way of technical support unless a customer pays them outrageous prices, they really wouldn't have anything to lose by pre-installing one or more flavors of Linux or Unix on the new boxes they distribute via the major chain stores.
My point is that the typical PC buyer has little choice but to pay for and try to figure out how to deal with the Microsoft crapware that comes on almost all new systems. I suspect that many computer vendors would welcome an opportunity to stop wasting money on lame MS products and distribute FOSS equivalents. The neat thing is that MS has already implemented a system whereby it can charge only those customers who actually decide to use its buggy bloatware instead of one or more of the other OSes and office suites that manufacturers decide to allow the consumer to select from when she first boots a new computer.
I truly wish new systems came bare by default, with consumers getting to choose which operating system(s) and office suite(s) they want to put on them. I fondly recall when systems came with complete sets of installation disks (not discs
Basically, in order to end the Microsoft monopoly and stop the spread of Microsoft Buggy Bloatware(tm), the anti-trust regulators need to force the supply chain to change so that costly MS operating system and office suite software is no longer the default. As much as I dislike MS these days, I have little doubt it could deliver a very high-quality OS (far superior to the flashy junkware known as Vista) if it had to compete on an even playing field. This would be especially true if big companies such as Google or Sun could put their own (new) OSes on new systems as options, right alongside the MS product, since all existing contracts MS has with hardware vendors that pre-install its OSes would be nullified as part of any reasonable anti-trust settlement.
Re:Check out the below - im horrified (Score:3, Insightful)
Further, once Microsoft's DRM system has been beta-tested on HD content like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, it will be used to lock down software sales to prevent piracy and eventually make us all rent our software.
If you think the RIAA is big into the subscription model, how many software developers do you think would JUMP at the chance to charge rent for their software?
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:1, Insightful)
Thats exactly how it works in the Finder too. One of the few things it does well.
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:3, Insightful)
They cheat and access low level routines and hardware
They want you to pay for a real copy and not keep using the OEM version that came with your drive so there is no real reason to try to guess what might work in the future
Just my thoughts I could be wrong
Why "rm"? (Score:1, Insightful)
Multi-session is always going to be awkward. If you discard the capability, then surely the eject command should fixate.
PS what does it mean when I rm
The "everything is a file" works well in many cases. It doesn't ALWAYS work, though...
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stop the plague! Give consumers a real choice. (Score:2, Insightful)
True and true. But many versions of *nix don't require a reboot after all but the most trivial updates. Unix (and to a slightly lesser degree, Linux) was originally designed by computer scientists and ostensibly, originally for use by geeks. Windows is a many-fold kludge as an operating system, and it shows.
Also just because you dont have problems with linux doesnt mean other people dont either. Also Mcirosoft would be much better if they didnt get sued from people. Also want to know soemthing? If windows goes down microsoft would just create a windows based off of linux sort of what apple did.
I have a buttload of problems with Linux, even a friendly flavor such as Ubuntu. It is *NOT* intuitive. Just try to do anything at the CLI level. That is arguably the worst flaw of *nix OSes -- they utilize cryptic commands to accomplish routine tasks. Mind you, I am very aware of the distinction between the Linux kernel and the various distros based upon it. Ubuntu works for me, mostly because there are enough other folks using it who desperately want to avoid MS Buggy Bloatware(tm) that a serious Ubuntu user community support group has sprung up. Ubuntu has a 64-bit edition, which is sort of a must for me as I enjoy programming down to the bare silicon occasionally.
I am rambling.
Re:Vista is a clusterfuck - from _my_ blog (Score:3, Insightful)
nope, cos if you did you would know that Windows does indeed pick up "cruft"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruft [wikipedia.org]
Very, very, very, very few windows applications install nicely and uninstall 100% leaving a system exactly as it was before, registry bloat ensues.
If your point of view were true, there would not be several commercial applications designed specifically to ensure that windows does not pick up cruft, very expensive commercial applications that are fairly widely used in anger in commercial enviornments.
Microsoft's own knowledgebase is replete with pages detailing how to uninstall Miscrosoft software that does not uninstall properly
powershell is an example of this, an MS product that MS Vista cannot upgrade over, and cannot uninstall or simply ignore. Not a Symantec product, or a Macromedia product, or a creative product, that MS cannot uninstall, but a MS product.
The motoring analogy to your comment is "I would not employ you as a motor mechanic if you are rebuilding your car every six months." Amongst others, you would exclude all the top mechanics the world over who are constantly tuning and tweaking their vehicles, and to whom your bog standard sedan would be a piece of cake.
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess the issue for MS is, that you and I (computer guru's) have picked up and embraced the XP paradigm but people like my wife never get it no matter how many times it is explained to her. So MS tried to move to another paradigm (am I using this properly?) to help more non-technical people understand how to find "basic" information.
I understand where you're coming from, but I think you're wrong. I don't think changing these names and rearranging things is more usable to people with a different overall viewpoint of using Windows. I think they are changes that happened because some middle manager wanted to make their mark. Both these examples are steps backward in usability based upon existing best practices. It is remotely possible that MS did extensive and well performed usability tests and concluded that this is beneficial to some subset of users, but I think it highly unlikely. From talking to ex-MS employees and simply looking at their changes and lack of changes over time I suspect MS has a number of good UI experts who work for them, and whose work is constantly undermined by marketing and management that insists on changing or not changing things that the UI people recommend.