Windows Vista - Still Fresh After 19 Months?

MyStuff writes "ZDNet blog Hardware 2.0 looks at the effect of having used Windows Vista for over 18 months. It Windows Vista the indispensable upgrade that Microsoft wants you to think it is? Writer Kingsley-Hughes says 'Having been using Vista for over 18 months I believe that it's a huge improvement over XP and even though I still use XP I find that I miss many of the features that Vista offers.' Just the same, he goes on, 'I wouldn't call any of the changes earth-shattering. When I'm using XP systems I miss some of the features but not so much that they push me to upgrade any faster.' He then goes on to give a feature-by-feature breakdown of all of the improvements Vista has over XP, and what long-term use of these features can net." A possibly useful guide for gamers or administrators thinking about upgrading sometime soon.

19 Months?

[orkysoft]

So, has he actually been able to run Windows for 19 months without reinstalling? That's amazing!

Vista Accomplished Its One And Only Needed Task

[Anonymous Coward]

Virus, malware, security is no longer a driving force away from Windows like it was pre XP SP2.

As a long time Mac and Linux user who despises Windows I can honestly say that I would be content to use Windows. Which is the complete opposite of two to three years ago when every single person I knew who ran Windows at home was under constant security and virus problems crippling their machines. Back then almost everyone was actively eyeing a Mac as their next machine.

Microsoft accomplished what they needed to do. So what if reviews or people on around the Net say such and such feature was copied or the UI isn't as refined as OS X. There is no longer a constant and compelling issue making users want to get the hell off the Windows platform. Shame on Microsoft for taking so damn long to get to this point but they have and that is the reality.

There will be no mass migration from Windows to OS X. But there will continue to be the constant trickle to Linux.

I don't know about you guys?

[codepunk]

I read that article and no where in it did I see any evidence of what is so earth shattering about it. He did mention stability but only a gut feel that even that may be better than xp.

So what was MS working on all those years?

Re:The Bizaaro World

[rizzo420]

your 2 months pales compared to his 19 months. you have to let yourself become acquainted with the new locations for things. my guess is you didn't reach that point. i will say that the first time i saw vista to support someone's issue, i couldn't find where something as simple as add/remove programs was, but then i did. i'm making the switch next week and i'm sure it'll hurt my productivity a bit at first, but once i'm used to it, i'll be good.

Re:Is that the best he can come up with?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I assign keyboard shortcuts to all my commonly used applications. I might go digging around in the Start Menu a couple times a week, but's hardly a reason to change operating systems.... Is that really a huge efficiency boost? I use Windows Search even less than I use the Start Menu. It's very rare that I don't know where to find something on my own machine. Does anyone else use the Search function that often? For what are you typically searching?

This was almost exactly my attitude when I started using Mac OS X 10.4. Spotlight indexed searching, well okay, but I don't really do that. I now use spotlight every day for both finding some document and quickly starting applications. In less than a second, using only the keyboard, I can do a search for some string and open that PDF file I was reading about the MPLS adoption in Europe. I don't need to know if it was in my e-mail attachment inbox, saved to the desktop, or if I was a good boy and actually filed it with my research materials. In less time than that I can search for and open some program I rarely use but recall the name of. Imagine if your search was globally accessible from the keyboard and faster than going to the start menu and selecting something for items you haven't made shortcuts for. For those items you did make shortcuts for, there is no need. Photoshop is "cmd-space+p+h+enter" and it is open.

Now my experiences with Vista RC1 were somewhat less encouraging, but I'd have a hard time giving up my indexed search at this point and I imagine in a year or two when MS has ironed most of the bugs out, you may find yourself feeling the same way. I would seriously try using these features for a while and see what your opinion is then, rather than pre-judging them.

Re:I don't know about you guys?

[twiddlingbits]

I agree. Nothing there to make me run out and buy Vista. The things he mentioned as "improvements" are not things that bother me, I rarely use the Start Menu at all, I don't use sounds as I find them annoying, and the XP fonts look fine to me, I don't do graphics work and my speed is just fine! So, with nothing really cool added and with all the bugs, the embedded DRM crap, the 9 levels of OK boxes to click to change settings and strange quirkly things that software packages that run fine on XP do on Vista, I'll stay away. Plus I don't feel like springing for new hardware.

Actually the ads only hurt Mac OSX

[kinglink]

The problem with the new mac ads is it doesn't show the OS, the system or anything useful. Even worse most of what they say is blantantly false. Yeah a Windows machine is a full work system and has no entertainment value, that's why 90 percent of computer games are still available on the PC. When mom and pa see the commercial and see "mac is fun, PC is work" they think about their system and realize it's not that much work. Adopting a mac would be more expensive to them, be more work and they don't want to spend 1000-2000 for a mid level system.

You can lie your ass off to a consumer but the minute they realize what you said isn't the whole truth you're screwed. What Mac has said in their last round of commercials has hurt it because people started smelling the BS, and because people looked into it and see the problems.

Hell their switch ads tried to bandwagon people on with famous faces. However looking back at them I can tell you. I only knew one or two of them. Bandwagoning commercials slowly faded away in the 90s. There's a reason for that, it stopped working so well... except in politics of course, when you're forced to choose if you're going to vote.

As for Linux the steady trickle I've seen going to Linux won't matter, it's still too small, and I still see people returning to windows, most people will continue to use XP. I'm all for using Linux as a back bone to coporate systems, but it's still not good enough to be a platform for business/work, nor one for productivity. People still don't want to do everything by hand, they want the comfort of Windows, and XP has given them a perfect surrounding. The minute you can't run program X from linux, it fails in people's minds. You can start by saying "well you can just run it under ...." Stop. Realize that people don't use dos based systems any more because they don't want to do that, running 1-2 programs just to get a third working isn't cool, and won't work for most people unless Microsoft disappears, and from the look of it Microsoft is going to be here to stay.

Re:Quality questions

[Livius]

I would go farther and say that if this article is really the result of 19 months of research, then the reviewer is hiding something.

Every point made is vague and subjective, and completely meaningless. If Kingsley-Hughes thinks that the 'Start Menu' is an indicator of performance, I have to wonder if he even knows what an operating system is.

Windows Vista: It's still not a Mac.

Re:Am I missing something?

[SEMW]

Price: How much for media center edition? Ouch.

$119 [amazon.com]. Hardly "ouch".

The article author pointed out the vast productivity benefits from the start menu, but honestly, if you're spending more than 1% of your time in the start menu you're not being productive period.

I think the thing with Vista's start menu is that it has accessed to the full indexed search of your system, and so acts kindof like Spotlight on a Mac -- i.e. you can get to any application, control panel applet, email, document, file, folder, IE favourite/history, etc. by pressing the windows key and typing a few letters from it. I can see how that could be a productivity boost.

Re:Actually the ads only hurt Mac OSX

[trimbo]

This is the best comment I've read in a while. Many people don't want a Mac because of exactly what ou describe.. it's more of a hassle and more money to change and buy all the new software than to just stick with what you've got. For most people, incrementally better solutions are just not worth the time. It's the significantly better solutions that make people take notice, but more on point integrated solutions are what businesses want.

That's exactly why your final points about Linux are great. I think all corporations would love to have the non-vendor locked solution of Linux with generic hardware; but, a really powerful integrated yet vendor-locked solution can usurp the hopes of independence because it often ends up actually being cheaper. Microsoft's offerings fit into this category. Office and Windows are only part of what businesses buy from Microsoft. They also buy into SQLServer, ASP.NET, .NET, IIS, Sharepoint, Exchange, their Business intelligence, etc. From 3rd parties, you can buy 10x that which integrates into all of these easily. People who have used any of these together know it all works pretty well together straight out of the box. When this gets compared to cobbling your own together on Linux, it will often lose. We can wax poetic about Linux all day long, but there's a free market out there that keeps deciding to buy from Microsoft for the very reasons mentioned.

I just don't see inroads being made against Microsoft until someone can come up with a platform that gives businesses the power of Windows and all of Microsoft's solutions for it for cheaper. On the home/consumer side, I don't really see it happening until a major new product comes along. MacOS X can't do it. It's arguably better for the average consumer, but only incrementally so.

Worst. Upgrade. Ever.

[Roadkills-R-Us]

You left out nicer fonts!

But almost everything he said could have as easily been done in XP- better fonts, faster startup, improved search... all this could have just as easily been in SP2, or at least SP3, if MS hadn't been expending all that money and energy on Vista.

Here's my favorite quote: ``Some programs still have problems with Vista but the blame for this really falls on the vendor and not Microsoft.''

I wonder how he arrives at that? If the program already existed, and Vista didn't, and MS wrote Vista with backward compatibility in mind (did they?) it's hardly the app vendor's fault. But even if MS didn't care about backward compatibility, that's not the app vendor's fault. They can't write programs to an OS that hasn't been written! So this was just a goofy statement.

On the flip side, an employee here just bought a laptop with Vista on it. Another admin has spent at least a day working on the stupid thing over the past week or so, just trying to get it to work properly on a network that has been supporting several versions of Windows as well as OSX, Linux and Solaris for years. Granted, he hasn't used Vista before, but he knows Microsoft OSes prior to Vista just fine. (One of the things that pisses me off about MS is that with every release you have to learn where things are all over again.)

And there is NO excuse for scrolling something like a start menu using standard sized fonts. None. Ever. Morons.

Re:19 Months?

[HermMunster]

He's a paid blogger. His list of features are less than stellar and hardly warrant the bluster he gives them.

It isn't uncommon to have someone gain familiarity with something, and then when switching feel a loss for some things or feel that the old way was better. Humans shun change.

I am entitled to 10 licenses of XP Pro, 10 XP Pro 64 bit and 10 Vista Business and I use Ubuntu on my main box with XP Pro on all the others. This isn't because of not wanting to change, it's because Vista sucks that bad. He doesn't even honestly talk about the draconian nightmarish DRM infections in Vista. No way am I going to relinquish my computer rights to Microsoft and the pathetic content providers. I want less of Microsoft entwined in my system; not more.

BTW, FYI, the WGA Notification program (remake, take-two) has been released and you all should be careful about going to Microsoft's site and accidentally installing it. It does prompt you to install, but it still is malware in the keenest form. The installer uses very deceptive and manipulative language by offering enhanced security when WGA Notification has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with security of any kind.

Re:Is that the best he can come up with?

[Anonymous Coward]

I too never thought too much about full searching with Spotlight until I started using it. Now I can't live without it. I have thousands of email messages and documents and need to locate relevant information, often years old. Spotlight does it for me in a flash. Hopefully Vista users will enjoy this feature as well.

Two good things in Vista

[flyingfsck]

NFS Client.
New TCP/IP stack that won't overrun or lock up for interminable periods anymore.

Re:You've got to be kidding me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard this every time a new operating system comes out. It is so old.

I'm not going to use Windows, DoS is just fine.
I'm not going to Windows95, it has too many bugs and slows your machine down.
I'm not upgrading to Windows 98, Windows 95 works just fine for me and Windows 98 doesn't offer any improvements.
I'm not going to upgrade to Windows ME, it's too buggy and doesn't offer anything new (ok, you got this one right).
I'm not upgrading to Windows XP, it doesn;t offer me anything new and it slows my machine and uses too much memory.
And now.. ta da.. I now hear the same thing about Vista. I remember a friend of mine telling me his Macintosh didn;t NEED a color display. The hi-res B/W was better for everrything and he had stereo sound.

Admit it, people just don't like change and even the techno savey users here fall into that catagory.

Change.

[daviddennis]

Most of us like change.

The MacOS X types will be lined up around the block and across the street to buy Leopard ... and an iPhone(tm) to go with it.

The Linux people will install their version of Umbu... um ... however you spell it ... minutes after it hits the mirrors.

Unfortunately, the Microsoft people have learned from bitter experience that a Microsoft upgrade means misery. And most Microsoft people are pragmatic; they use it for their job, and know upgrades will interfere with things while they get up to speed.

So Microsoft people don't act like computer enthusiasts, because they are not enthusiasts and think the WOW! will turn into WAHHH! faster than you can count.

D

Re:19 Months?

[TeraCo]

This isn't because of not wanting to change, it's because Vista sucks that bad.

If it was because vista sucked, you'd be using XP instead. It's really because you're a linux advocate. Which is cool, I know kids today like to use linux on the desktop, but please be honest.