HardOCP Spends 30 Days With Vista 662
boyko.at.netqos writes "Hardocp.com has published "30 days with Vista" — with the same author from "30 days with Linux" doing the evaluation. And he doesn't like it. From the article: 'Based on my personal experiences with Vista over a 30 day period, I found it to be a dangerously unstable operating system, which has caused me to lose data [...] Any consideration of the fine details comes in second to that one inescapable conclusion. This is an unstable operating system.'"
Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Going to green text on a white background for a "Yes, I want to" or "No, I don't" was a bad UI choice.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is there no ability to set the color scheme used? Perhaps there's a better choice? Granted the one you're using sounds bad as a default selection.
Re:Some random guy doesn't like Vista (Score:2, Interesting)
It takes time for software to catch up and for the operating system itself to have some of the crapification sucked out of it. I can't think of a single release since 3.11 that wasn't plagued with significant problems at release. So if you feel like running the latest bloated Microsoft stuff somehow makes you 31337, then go for it and enjoy your misguided self-perceptions. Otherwise, give it a couple years and perhaps your existing software and games will work on it, new games and software will be specifically developed for it and the general stability and security will be much improved over where it is today.
And for fuck's sake, if you move to a brand new OS that was just released and you lose your precious data on it - who's really the idiot there?
My experience (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Instability? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah whatever (Score:4, Interesting)
I usually find that people who bitch about it use it exclusively. They mostly don't even understand just how complex a job it is that operating systems have to do.
Me? I use Linux most of the time, and have XP for games and other trivial stuff (if games are trivial). Linux is far ahead in the server arena, an pure number cruncher stakes (which is what I use it for), but still behind in the home user experience. Unfashionable as that statement is, its true. Yes there are all the pieces, but how many versions of Linux are there? Is the Linux Standard Base adopted across the board yet? Nope? Well stop whining, Linux isn't ready for the the mainstream desktop. It needs to standardise.
I don't plan to buy Vista, simply because it does nothing I need.
That hasn't stopped me saying some people I know should quit bitching and buy it. After all, since they use Microsoft stuff anyway, they might as well get the next incarnation.
Not seeing the same issues... (Score:2, Interesting)
Slapping in an 1GB XD card that supported Vista Ready Boost really made a difference while I waited for the new memory chip to come in. Got the unit up to 1GB, and disabled non-recognized hardware until Vista drivers were available and I was good to go. Vista recognized the most important things to me, my wireless card and CD burner. It did not recognize my video chip set, but still gave me the option of 1024x768, so I was fine. I don't do gaming on this laptop, as it is a work one, so the features I needed were there. Eventually, sound drivers, proper video drivers, and the annoying finger print reader drivers were released.
Now, I will state that Vista should really be run with at least 2GB of ram, as it will use every bit it can get, but even with 1GB, my system has been very stable. Sure, I don't get the fancy Aero features, but I would likely turn them off anyways. On my work system, I like to run as much on the lean side as possible.
As for TFA, I'm not sure what to think. It's obvious that he has some hardware issues on his machine that he needs to look into, and he should have known better than running software like QuickTime that had known issues. I really wonder how much of his problems were caused by Vista, and how much were caused by trying to run legacy/non-updated software.
Normally, I'm all for bashing Microsoft, being a Linux/Mac OS X user normally, but even I can't agree with this article.
My Vistaring (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, some of this is down to the software manufacturers for not being on the ball, some of it is due to things like MS moving all the IIS stuff so that older apps can no longer find it. Not to mention the fact that the Exchange 2003 tools are a Microsoft Product and they're not intending to provide an installation method under Vista *at all*. Even the Exchange 2007 tools have been looking a bit flaky where Vista is concerned.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:2, Interesting)
How about needing >1GB to basically do nothing but sit there? How about it being on average 10-30% slower than XP on the same hardware? Some of that will improve over time, some of that won't.
We all accept that new OS=you need to upgrade your system. It's not that Vista is so slow on fast hardware, it is btw, its that it is so slow while offering so little above XP. Sadly there just isn't any payoff for even having hardware that is fast enough to make Vista perform as well as XP. Here's to hoping SP1 is one hell of a service pack...
i've had BSOD with vista 64bit (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yeah whatever (Score:2, Interesting)
Not to pile on, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
This computer dual boots XP, where this never happens. The RAID driver is exactly the same on both OS's so I blame Vista.
Re:Yeah whatever (Score:1, Interesting)
It's human nature! If we have nothing to complain about, and we live in a perfect world, it would be just boring. In the ideal future, when everyone uses Linux... people will complain because of something is wrong with it.
I worked on a Vista computer, and I found it as much as XP, a bit slower. If you think about an office person, using an office suite, they look all alike, if you put solitaire, hearts, etc, in MacOS, Linux and even SCO... they will look all the same. So if I can keep downloading "free" software for my windows XP and easily install it (no compilation required)... I'm happy.
Re:Yawn (Score:2, Interesting)
The installed base of Windows NT was relatively small compared to the other DOS-ish Windows versions (Win95, Win98, etc). Windows 2000 was a refinement of Windows NT, and it still had a smaller user base (mostly non-Joe Sixpack users). Windows XP was a refinement of Windows 2000, at which point it was pitched to Joe Sixpacks.
I hope I have spelled out how inappropriate your analogy is. Years of refinement for XP verses a one-shot gamble for Vista.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:4, Interesting)
Searches (Score:4, Interesting)
"WinFS, advertised as a way to make searching work by making the file system be a relational database, ignores the fact that the real way to make searching work is by making searching work. Don't make me type metadata for all my files that I can search using a query language. Just do me a favor and search the damned hard drive, quickly, for the string I typed, using full-text indexes and other technologies that were boring in 1973."
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.htm
What is "intuitive" anyway? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think a better measure of the effectiveness of the UI would be that given 2-3 weeks to familiarize yourself with the interface, can you perform the same tasks you used to in less time. ie, is it efficient once you overcome the learning curve?
(On a tangent, I think the Gnome dev team has been wrestling with this problem. Trying to follow a design process which they believe is more efficient once you commit to using in the way they intended instead of allowing rampant customization. Obviously, that attitude doesn't work for everybody.)
Superfetch (Score:2, Interesting)
Because 1GB of app/user data (assuming you have more than 1GB of RAM) is always ready in RAM, is being read from disk just once; the Vista does feel faster.
Re:My two days with Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
The big focus in feisty seems to have been on drivers working out of the box. I still had to install ndiswrapper, but at least I only had to use the package out of synaptic instead of (as I can tell from your command line example) the package direct from source.
Once you get ndiswrapper going, they've included network-manager-gnome by default, which handles all of the connecting for you (ie no iwconfig, ifup, etc).
You hit on the biggest pain (as the competing faq's will show you) in the Ubuntu world. This, however, is not particular to Ubuntu, and is also BY DESIGN of the hardware manufacturers. The cards are designed such that the have to have the firmware to run them loaded runtime. That built in wifi card has no idea what its supposed to do except for wait for firmware. They then do not release any details to folks willing to do driver development for linux FOR FREE!
So, the fact that we get them working at all under Edgy (which, if you take a careful step, by step approach, there's a hell of a success rate) and that its *almost* automagic under Feisty, is actually a pretty impressive feat.
Irony - in context of linux 2.6 (Score:2, Interesting)
OS instability is almost always a case of drivers, and in anycase can be expected shortly after a major release. In that context this review is being really quite unfair. He's found himself a nice little excuse to be negative about Vista that really isn't inherent to Vista but to any OS that is open to 3rd party drivers, nor will it be true for more than a little while.
Even if one points to win32 'event' based synchronization objects as a source of instability Microsoft have introduced support for condition variables, effectively addressing that problem. So the longer term looks quite a bit brighter for windows developers: especially server developers. Windows server software could now actually become dangerous to other manufacturers (IBM/Sun etc)
Ironically the only OS that I know of that is genuinely unstable - independent of drivers and 3rd party causes - is Linux 2.6 (at least until recently), and has been for several years. That perhaps explains why webhosts have been so reluctant to upgrade from 2.4 even despite the scalability advantages which should be a big advantage to shared hosts. Even my recent taiwanese adsl-router is based on a 2.4 kernel. And no amount of moaning from the masses seems to have changed that situation possibly indicating a flaw in the open-source model.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Self contradictory (Score:3, Interesting)
You can hold it against "Windows" when there are alternatives like OS X where drivers are rarely an issue. If you are just looking for someone to blame or bitch at, then maybe it doesn't make much sense to blame Microsoft for driver problems. But if you're are looking at Windows as a whole, that is a different story. Lets say you were to put together a pro/con list of using Windows vs. Mac (No, i don't want to go into the actual list here). Wouldn't it make sense to put "flaky Taiwanese drivers" as a con against Windows? Does it really matter what specific company is to blame? The fact that a video driver or sound driver is causing your computer to crash is all that matters. Unless you're one of those PHB's who gets some vague satisfaction out of merely having someone to point a finger at.
-matthew
Windows Vista for me... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Self contradictory (Score:3, Interesting)
So when the same driver that has been shipped to customers gets bundled with the OS, it goes from a driver problem to a software problem?
I call shenanigans.
Loss of data claim (Score:2, Interesting)
But his claim of data loss is completely unsupported by even anecdotal evidence. He says the 'stability issues' (two allegedly spontaneous reboots) caused 'loss of data' but doesn't provide (that I saw) any clue as to what is was he was doing. Was 'lost data' a lost Quake match? Was he working in Word? If the latter, I doubt his claims; I think autorecovery would handle that kind of situation. Furthermore, his very claim of unprompted reboots strikes me as suspicious. If it were simply recycling (ala a reset switch), I could buy it, but he claims that the system "went into shutdown mode" without giving him the chance to save his data; I understand this to mean that it was as if the 'Reboot' action were invoked. This seems unlikely to me. Perhaps the auto-updating he mentioned got something that required a reboot, and he simply was too quick on the trigger, hitting 'yes' to a reboot prompt. Perhaps it really did reboot of its own accord and - as a result - lost him some of that thar' data stuff; it is not my intention to cast aspersions on the character of the reviewer. But by leaving out some rather crucial bits of info, he opens himself up to credibility attacks.
His claims of this happening on both systems could also be explained by possible use of his USB key. He says he lost data: if I were actually working on something (data) and all my 'stuff' was on a USB key (he says this was the case), I'd probably have it plugged into the system I was working on. Maybe it's bad; maybe doing certain things cause the USB subsystem to freak out; maybe it takes the system down with it. Maybe it had an accident and sleeps with the fishes. Uh... what were we talking about?
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yawn (Score:2, Interesting)
So, in other words, Microsoft hasn't learned a single thing about shipping software in 8 years.
Sounds about right. Me? I'm sitting here on a Win2K machine I built that simply works. I've added loads on to it over time, and it still functions beautifully. Just lately, I've thought about upgrading it to Win XP MCE. I _might_ go the Ubuntu/MythTV route, but that's still problematic to set up. I run Ubuntu full time on my laptop, so it's not like I'm scared of Linux, just not sure I have the time to get things functioning properly.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, Instability!!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
And if it is, Vista is absolutely, unacceptably unstable. It should simply not be possible for an application to cause a spontaneous reboot without prompting the user. And in that context, your more positive experience is pretty meaningless: you don't have any applications that cause this problem now. But Murphy's Law says that you will eventually install a new application, or update an old one, that triggers this problem. Or some other buried problem.
Here's the bottom line: MS spent two extra years swatting bugs in Vista, and it still has a beta-level product. (Maybe even alpha.) This OS is a nasty, useless failure.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course it isn't quite as bad now that I know how to turn off all the useless crap that supposedly made XP better. By the time that most power users are done tweaking XP, it isn't that far off of Win2K anymore, which by the way, I think you'd like a heck of a lot better than XP.
The one (only) place I have liked XP more than '98/2K/Linux has been on laptops. Part of that is because the vendor has a lot of Windows specific software, but part of it is just that XP handles the power features and other laptop issues a bit better. Though hibernation is hit and miss - it is great on some models, and useless on others. I think OS X is the best here, but of course that limits you to one hardware vendor.
If you love Win98 and hate XP/Vista, you may want to consider running something like Linux and then running Win98 in a virtual machine (Win4Lin works great for 98, and there are plenty of other options). Modern hardware is plenty powerful enouth to run the VM and Win98 at good speeds (that is the nice thing about having an OS that doesn't need tons of resources). The other option would be to downgrade to Win2K, but unfortunately vendor support is pretty much done for that OS too. Too bad, because 2K was a great blend of the 98 interface we were used to, with the stability of NT. Unfortunatlely it also had the security of NT...
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't mine, just something I found with a Google search:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Cur
"EnableBalloonTips"=dword:00000000
I carry it on a USB stick, so I can run it whenever I use someone else's machine. I don't know how people use Windows with all those pop-ups (kind of like browsing the web with IE6, I suppose).
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:3, Interesting)
I took a look at the Win95 effort to make MSDOS look pretty and then installed linux - initially because I was too cheap to install OS/2 or buy a Mac. Win95 was a great steaming pile of garbage. NT, Win2k and Server2003 are a completely different story. XP is too resource hungry for my liking with no benefit over Win2k if you have drivers for both (it's very rare not to have drivers for both).