Vista Indicates A Shift in Microsoft's Priorities 499
jcatcw writes "After hundreds of hours of testing Vista, Scot Finnie is supremely tired of it. And of Microsoft. Although 80% of the changes in Windows Vista are positive, there is nothing about Vista that is truly innovative or compelling; there's no transformational, gotta-have-it feature in Vista. But the real problem isn't with Vista. It's with Microsoft itself. His opinion is that Microsoft has stopped focusing on end users. They 'now seemingly make many decisions based on these two things: 1. Avoiding negative publicity (especially about security and software quality) 2. Making sure the largest enterprise customers are happy.'"
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
Stop me if I'm wrong, but the "largest enterprise customers" are end users
I have copy of Vista Business, so I installed it on a spare disk. The hardware compatibility test app GPFed, which wasn't a great sign. I went ahead with the install to see what would happen. The installer archived all of the XP files on the disc, then installed Vista without any problems - or so I thought. Turns out there were no Vista drivers for my brand name NIC. Bought one of the few NICs with native drivers, so I was able to connect to the net. But what? No sound? No drivers for my sound card either.
That was as far as I wanted to go at this point. The stark reality about Vista is that driver support is minimal at best. Rather shocking considering XP had drivers for much more hardware. I'm really curious if anyone knows why driver support is so minimal at this time. Does the consumer version have more? If not, all of the people who bought Vista are in for an uncharacteristic surprise.
<tinfoilhat>Is the lack of drivers a conspiracy to get people to upgrade hardware?</tinfoilhat>
Why are the hardware vendors so far behind supplying drivers?
Re:Just sayin' (Score:4, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=217328&cid=17
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=212480&cid
Problem is, i didn't really care about microsoft. Bought a bundled office back in 1997, seen the first bomb on my new mac after 5 minutes, uninstalled it, manually removed files that the installer forgot about, started realizing people weren't bashing microsoft for nothing.
Then at work I had to use XP and the hate slowly mounted.
Re:Newsflash (Score:3, Informative)
Most people are under the impression that UAC is primarily intended to stop the user from doing something. To me that is a secondary goal. The real purpose of it is to prevent programs from harming the system. In other words, it's not really there to stop a user from doing something stupid like deleting files from C:\Windows (but it may have that effect), instead it's intended to stop malicious/broken code from harming the system.
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
Also, in order for all the DRM to work, only software drivers that are secure enough are allowed to run on vista if you want to use "protected content". This means that all those old XP drivers (many of which don't meet the requirements vis a vis protected content) wont work if you want DRM.
Re:Something else too (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ummm. enterprise are their customers (Score:5, Informative)
Sure the OS costs $189 or less per station if you buy a VLK for it, but the server it talks to needs the right licensing to be legal.
Terminal server, for example, is stupid expensive per remote access license. Oh you want Exchange server? Thats $N. Want to actually CONNECT to it? Thats ($Y * (number of connections)).
-paul
Re:And this is a surprize how? (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft has given me absolutely the best support of any vendor.
I find the training from the classes I have taken to help me do a better job installing small servers and desktops.
I find their products, though buggy initially, to be far less buggy then almost any other application the size of Microsoft's and they definitely improve over time.
I ENJOY participating in the beta tests and I will bet that most of the Beta testers do also, despite our occasional gripes. We do not do this only to help Microsoft. We influence the way the final products evolves, we help make it a better product for our clients, we enjoy seeing things WAY before others do, and many of us are absolutely addicted to this thing called a PC.
When I call Microsoft for help in solving a problem I cannot, they stick with me until it is solved, no matter how long it takes and occasionally no matter how high up in the engineering they have to escalate it. They certainly do not support me because I make them millions, because I am a small fry. They help me because their employees are motivated to do the best job they can. Try getting that support from Dell, Gateway, HP, Adobe, Symantec, Autodesk, or any of the other big companies: forgedaboutit!
Could Vista be improved upon? You betcha. I also am willing to bet that it will improve, that Microsoft will make a fortune from Vista's eye candy and improved (though certainly not infallible security), that those of us who sell to and support small and large customers will find that our customers DO like the product, and everyone will benefit from the clever way they market the product and put pressure on the hardware manufacturers to keep their drivers working.
So, there you have it from a 68 year old geek. I complain also, but I do like Microsoft and their products. I bet that those of you reading Slashdot do also, but do not like to admit it.
Albert
Re:Join the bandwagon (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In other words (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
For enthusiasts and box builders, sites like Tech Report have useful articles like their Vista System Guide [techreport.com] that includes notes on Vista support for various pieces of hardware in both 32 and 64 bit flavors. Interestingly the current video card king, the GeForce 8800, only has preliminary support for Vista [nvidia.com]. Updates are no doubt in the pipeline, but it's good info to know before going shopping.
Re:What a load of... (Score:5, Informative)
"The minor effort that it required for them to add a 3D UI"
Go read just the userland API details on that "minor effort". If this is all a minor effort to you, you should be writing the Windows killer right now and release it by the end of the year, why deprive the world of your incredible kung-fu programming skills?
As for the DX10/Games thing, that's more of an Anti-feature. Updates to Direct X are normal as graphics cards improve. The news here isn't that Microsoft is releasing a new version of Direct X - that's normal, the news is that they're *not* releasing it for XP.
Did the fact that DX10 is a complete rewrite escaped your attention? The whole thing is redone so the API has much less overhead, can multithread and allow videocard virtual memory (swap)? And this is the reason why it's not ported back to XP, it's a completely different architecture.
But let me calm you down: Microsoft ported back all the new *shaders* capabilities to a DirectX9 release called "L". The same one that will also run in Vista alongside DX10.
Aero itself runs on 9L as DX10 cards aren't even done or out yet. So what exactly are you spreading FUD about?
Re:The thing that really irks me is.. (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Editio
Same thing when I was trying to decipher the differences in recent intel chips:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core2 [wikipedia.org]
largest enterprise customers happy, wtf?! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In other words (Score:5, Informative)
It was a Dell box (surprisingly quick delivery, ordered Monday, delivered Thursday). The nvidia display driver sucked and the fonts were disgusting (looked just fine post XP).
Replaced it with stale piss (XP-legal) the next day.
It is still not ready, and M$ is just turning end users into free beta testers yet again (shame on Dell for bowing to M$ and eliminating customer choice on some models).
Anybody who think aero looks good must have also loved all those chromey bits on 1970s - 1980s japanese cars).
Re:You forget (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MS-Basic ?? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, that's the crux of the problem when people (not to single you out) tend to promote nearly any Microsoft product : they have no outside reference to similar system / language / application, because they only used Microsoft idea of those applications. MS-Basic is a classic symptom of that. Burned in ROM in those 8 bits time, with other languages (sometimes just other basic dialects) coming at a premium, most people tended to stay with what they had at hand, had fun with it and mostly found it to be "the way to go". But for those who had exposure to true basic incarnations, MS-Basic was already an unbearable antic in its prime.
Just for your information, C-Basic was the brainchild of G. Eubanks, later CEO of symantec, and the first p-code Basic. It stands for Commercial basic as numerical computations were conducted internaly in Binary Coded Decimal (BCD), therefore wasting memory but giving great accuracy. C-Basic was targeted at and very successful in business applications, much like cobol (without the hassles) on minicomputers. C-Basic came with a true compiler too, giving a very professional finishing touch to your programs. In a sense, today's basics, VB / .Net included, owe their legacy more to C-Basic than to MS-Basic.
Re:In other words (Score:3, Informative)