Consumer Group Demands XP for Vista Victims 592
thefickler writes "Dissatisfaction with Windows Vista seems to be swelling, with the Dutch Consumers' Union (Consumentenbond) asking Microsoft to supply unhappy Vista users with a free copy of Windows XP. Not surprisingly, Microsoft refused. This prompted Consumentenbond to advise consumers to ask for XP, rather than Vista, when buying a new computer."
Ok, start the flames (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:*barf* (Score:3, Interesting)
what's that clue that you're talking about. The claim is valid. My scanner worked before and now it does not. That's why I need to stick with XP. Vista reduces the functionality of my hardware.
should have happened long ago (Score:2, Interesting)
MS might just have made it a big mistake (Score:5, Interesting)
The consumentenbond is very powerfull, IF a company has its product rated as best it WILL use that in all its ads, it is marketing gold. Being labelled as bad is the exact opposite, MS just got itself a whole shitload of bad advertising and not by some computer mag or newspaper but by an organisation most dutch people believe.
To give you an idea off how powerfull consumer organisations are in holland, this is the only country in the world were Sony will freely and without question exchange PSP's with ANY defective sub-pixel. The ONLY country in the world. Not after you threaten a lawsuit, not after hours on the phone, turn it into a store, if they make trouble refer them to a letter Sony send to kassa and get your new PSP (did it twice until it went past even dutch warranty). Some stores (not sony itself) still try to make trouble, go ahead ask for the manager and tell them to call Sony, Sony will chew them out for you, Sony doesn't want more trouble.
In fact if you are in the netherlands you don't have to accept dead subpixels on anything. I exchanged my iPod video after 6 months, an mp3 player is a device that should last longer, and Apple just had to replace mine or face a court case it was going to loose by default.
This is the country MS refused to simply give XP (costs them NOTHING) to legit buyers of Vista?
Seriously, MS really needs to hire a better public relations officer. They might be lucky that this is the weekend and as such the free working week newspapers won't carry the story but this is just asking for a whole lot of bad press.
On a side not, might Vista's uptake lack because it is harder to pirate? The only people I know who use Vista are those who got it with their new computer for "free". I build my own (and run linux anyway for desktop) so for me Vista would cost a shitload of money. Piracy seems out, wich makes me not use it and therefore I get no experience with it, except for when my friends ask me for advice and I can't give it because I don't know Vista. This actually matters to some as I have helped two people reformat and install XP to get rid of Vista.
I wish just once there was a story from MS that doesn't make it sound like it got some kind of horrible fascination with shooting itself in the foot.
Re:Flamewar anybody? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It depends upon the system. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not the eye-candy which eats processor cycles, RAM and network bandwidth. It's the DRM.
Vista was made for record companies and movie studios, not computer users.
Re:Vista and XP (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista issues? HA! (Score:4, Interesting)
I installed Vista, used the HP Driver Disc that came with Vista to upgrade all my drivers, and waited. After everything was done, I checked the system, and two or three devices weren't working. I went to HP's website, and there were no new drivers for them. To make a long story short, we reformatted her computer, and I wiped the drive on mine and we both went back to XP.
Vista is part of the failure model... (Score:5, Interesting)
2) It provides little or no functionality that consumers actually want over XP.
3) It's more complex than XP, due to the "secure-path" code in the kernel.
4) It's less reliable than XP, due to the additional copy protection and secure-path code in the kernel.
5) It has higher kernel overhead than XP, due to the secure-path code in the kernel.
The reason that people go on about the "horrible DRM" is not because the DRM itself is the problem. It's because the changes that were made to support that DRM are most of the real kernel level differences between XP and Vista.
In addition, the new user-visible security features (UAC and the sandbox for IE) are bandaids. They have not made any attempt to address the real problems in the network services, Win32 APIs, and user-level applications that provide such a large surface area to attackers.
Microsoft's real problem is that they did too good a job, for the desktop at least, with Windows 2000. The only shortcomings to Windows 2000 are features that should have been shipped in feature packs... most of them were originally developed on 2000... and everything they've done since then have been attempts to artificially create the appearance of "newness". There were no fundamental changes in XP, and the only fundamental changes in Vista are things that provide no real benefit to the consumer (and actually hurt them).
They got a pass with XP because they presented it as the upgrade path from Windows 9x. They could have done that with Windows 2000... my "Wintendo" (my Windows gaming box) runs Windows 2000, and the first program I found that wouldn't run on 2000... that actually required XP... was a couple of months ago. Something like 8 years after release and 5 years after XP came out. I don't know why they bothered with Windows Me and didn't just push EVERYONE to Windows 2000 as the upgrade path, but I guess they wanted the income from another upgrade cycle. Anyway, XP gave people something new. Vista can't do that.
With Windows 2000 Microsoft has put themselves out of the "operating system company" job. They've reacted by trying to force people to upgrade, and people don't like that. Unbundling Windows and selling the bundled components as separate packages would get them out of this trap, but after fighting so hard to keep that from happening against their will I don't figure they'll do it.
In the meantime everyone who depends on a stable Windows ecosystem is the loser.
Re:MS might just have made it a big mistake (Score:1, Interesting)
Unfortunately, this is not like the embarassment of Windows ME. That was the "end of the road for that particular "consumer" line. They pulled Windows ME and pushed Windows 98SE in its place. Not a big deal when their new business+consumer flagship Windows XP was just around the corner.
Now Windows Vista is their flagship product, and its not doing well.
MS is in a tight spot - if they allow these Vista users to easily/cheaply change to XP, they are almost admitting Vista is a failure. Other people will then either not "upgrade" to Vista or buy new computers with only with XP, which equates to lost Vista sales.
MS is trying to stay the course and promote Vista; it's attempt at damage control is obviously not doing too well.
Having personally seen the bloat of Vista, no amount of words can make it run faster.
BigFig
They aren't kidding (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought this was news for nerds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I'm personally not an MS hater per se, and am very happy with working in C# and Visual Studio over using Java and Eclipse. However, when I tried Windows Vista, it lasted all of one month on my computer before I went back to XP. I did really like some of the interface improvements. The Aero interface does look nice, and I liked the screen preview feature of the taskbar. But that was about all I liked.
Why did I switch back to XP?
1. Half of my games wouldn't run in Vista.
2. I quickly got sick of having to click "OK" on 3 different security validation popups every time I'd want to run a program.
3. I got sick of having to acknowledge that I'd turned off security every time I booted up (see number 2).
4. I got tired of having to install half of everyting I bought twice, because it would fail the first time due to the Vista "protect the user from himself" theology. Even though my logon acct was Administrator, it wouldn't install apps as administrator mode until it failed the first time. What the?
5. Of the half of the games that did run, graphics performance was about 15% worse than on Vista. Even when I upgraded to a dual-core and was running two ATI cards in Crossfire mode.
I'm not able to give you a lot of technical "this process was x because they did y in Vista" but the above were my experiences with what was bad about Vista versus XP. Personally, I consider Vista to be on par (as far as MS OS's go) with Windows 98 First Edition. I liked 2000 because it stopped me from getting he "buffer underrun" error every time I'd burn a CD. I liked XP because it gave me a lot more "home" and gaming functionality. Vista is a downgrade from both.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista 64-bit is a nice OS. Its not perfect, though (Score:2, Interesting)
Otherwise, its a rather nice os, thats been quite pleasant to use. It uses more resources, but in general on my quadcore it flys.
It is better than XP, security wise, it is also nicer to finally have the GPU doing a lot of gui tasks.
Vista 64-bit is a step in the right direction. I do not like the DRM features, and absolutely performance could be improved a bit, but its not bad at all. I think people like to bitch about things they dont use. I have legitimate complaints about Vista, as a user... but in general i enjoy the OS more than XP.
Yes, it needs more drivers... yes... it needs to have the DRM ripped out of it... but give it a try before you hate it.
Re:Logical question: (Score:4, Interesting)
People are portable and they expect their devices to be as well and though Windows can work on portable devices, as usual, they are late to the game and this time I doubt Apple will make the same mistake they made the first time by letting Microsoft step all over them. But then again, they also need Microsoft otherwise they will becoem just as evil (*cough* iPhone *cough*).
Vista on digg and slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ok, start the flames (Score:2, Interesting)
If you bought a new car and it was garbage, would you return it for your money back? How about if it was a new TV? When you buy a $5 gallon of milk, you're not exactly going to be using that milk for months/years, nor is that $5 spent much of a real investment--you'll just buy another brand next time.
If you really want to go with a milk analogy, a better analogy would be if a dairy company offered you a discount plan; you pay upfront for 40 weeks of Milk+ (TM) and you get 52 weeks worth of Milk+ (TM). Now, what if Milk+ (TM) tastes horrible? Well, beyond asking for a refund, if the dairy company offers basically the same plan but with milk (that you know is good) instead of Milk+ (TM) and you need milk/Milk+ (TM), wouldn't you consider asking first to switch over the plan*? Especially if the diary company is notorious for being a huge hassle to get a refund on their dairy discount plans?
In short, if no one ever demanded their money back when they felt they were defrauded, either there'd be a lot more legal action by governments or there would be serious economic instability as a result of people being much more hesitant on making large purchases, as there would be no recourse if it turned out the good wasn't nearly worth the asking price.
*Yes, asking for a free XP CD isn't exactly the same thing. But, then, I doubt most the consumers have a Vista CD to swap for an XP CD; rather, if the even have a CD at all, it's likely a recovery CD. So, the whole situation is a huge headache that should really go through the OEM. But, that'd mean the OEM would have to get permission from MS to swap out XP for Vista for individual consumers, possibly refunding the difference (or sink the cost themselves and buy two licenses for every machine). Of course, all of this is why the consumer group recommends avoiding Vista completely and going with XP. Vista might be better for some people, but it's easier to just go with XP (which is known to work) and avoid the possible risks.
Should be "Microsoft Gets Its Wish" (Score:3, Interesting)
You fail at life (Score:2, Interesting)
learn to read
Re:It depends upon the system. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ok, start the flames (Score:2, Interesting)
My mother, who knows nothing about computers and only uses her Vista laptop for surfing, has on two occasions somehow managed to make Vista suggest a complete reset of the system where all personal files are deleted and the computer is reset to its original post-install state (as if you're starting it for the first time). The second time it occured Vista went ahead with the reset even though my mom chose not to do it (I advised her over the phone). It blatantly ignored the user's selection. Why does such a feature exist in Vista, and how in the nine hells can normal everyday usage (turn on, log in, surf web, shut down) cause Vista to effectively self-destruct? What a fucking joke. I'll install XP on that laptop or die trying.
Re:Ok, start the flames (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife got vista for her new laptop half a year back. She didn't know any better. (neither did I, I'd have opted for Ubuntu, but I honestly wasn't aware that Vista is so horribly much more annoying than XP as it is.) (as if XP ain't annoying enough: Wanna reboot now, or should I nag you again in 3 minutes ?)
The biggest problem though ? There is not a -single- actually relevant improvement from a user-perspective. Not one. Lots of drawbacks, no advantages. Oh, I'm sure they're there allrigth. But how splendid are they really, if the user doesn't even -notice- them in the first half-year of use ?
At this point my wife would swap Vista for XP in a heartbeat. Hell, she'd swap it for Windows-98 if given the chance.
Re:It depends upon the system. (Score:3, Interesting)
Our research lab has some high-demand 3D graphics applications. With XP they run at a decent frame rate. With Vista, if the eye-candy is turned on, they run like molasses. That's with all the standard optimisations (display lists, triangle strips, texture atlases etc...)
Re:It depends upon the system. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Vista and XP (Score:3, Interesting)
He didn't know any better - good thing he had me to call.
Re:Slashot Reality Distortion Field (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista really is a different case. I haven't met anyone that's satisfied with it, and I've met a lot of mom'n'pop end users that were pretty vocal in their criticism of it.
Anecdotal? Possibly. I could have a superhuman ability to attract people that have problems with Vista, or perhaps people that use the WiFi in cafes are demographically more prone to disliking Vista than everyone else, but I'm inclined to believe this is an indication of a larger trend.