Vista Named Year's Most Disappointing Product 842
Shadow7789 writes "No surprise here, but to complete its humiliation, PC World has declared that Windows Vista is the most disappointing product of 2007. Quoting: 'Five years in the making and this is the best Microsoft could do?... No wonder so many users are clinging to XP like shipwrecked sailors to a life raft, while others who made the upgrade are switching back. And when the fastest Vista notebook PC World has ever tested is an Apple MacBook Pro, there's something deeply wrong with the universe.'"
What about the iPhone? (Score:4, Insightful)
And while it turned out to be a pretty cool product, it's got the same locked-to-a-cingle-provider, pay-twice-for-songs, proprietary, locked-down, no-3rd party apps attitude as other US cell phones
Vista wasn't the most dissapointing product - we already new how crap it was going to be. The iPhone was, because prior to release, it bought a ray of hope to US cell-phone consumers that was cruelly dashed.
(Yes, I know the iPhone is number 5 on the list, but it's there for the wrong reasons)
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Show me a single claim from Apple that says that. Just one will do. Or are you talking about some know-nothing blogger trying to generate click-ads ? In any event, to make the claim, you have to cite your source, otherwise (given that this is slashdot, and you're a known anti-Apple troll) I call bullshit.
Simon
As a developer... (Score:5, Insightful)
Macbook Pro (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think since 2001 every major Apple or Linux annoucement was met by something along the lines of "Longhorn can already do that in a better way". I was hoping there would be something behind the hype and atleast one improvement over MS Server 2003 and a few more improvements over XP. People really do expect more than a hobby operating system now and a suprising number of people are already being hit by the rather stupid limit of around 3GB of memory in 32 bit Vista. They are upgrading to Vista in the first place to get suppport for new hardware to better run their software and in the same year as release there is a very narrow window between inadequate memory and the top limit with a very poor way of handling what is in resident memory unless it is a machine dedicated to a very small number off application. A kludge like superfetch actually makes sense when so little memory can be adressed and most of it would normally be filled after boot with a lot of applications that may not be used in that session.
Once there are more drivers the 64 bit Vista may be a good option but the 32 bit version is a step backwards for Microsoft in my opinion. My opinion is coloured by having to deal with Vista installed on hardware that is completely inadequate - laptops with slow drives, low memory and sharing memory with graphics hardware that is not capable of handling the effects that got turned on by whoever does the installs.
Re:As a developer... (Score:5, Insightful)
The first heartfelt comment I've seen for a long time on Slashdot.
Go forth, my brother, and touch more.
Re:but this makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:but this makes no sense (Score:2, Insightful)
For those of you who like Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Going somewhat against the slashdot 'groupthink (Score:5, Insightful)
Put simply, it is not worth the cost of upgrading for all of the new features.
I have found a great use for it though. I have officially taken the stance that I will "never buy Vista" and will also "not support Vista", which frees me from the usual role of having to do tech support for anyone that knows I am in IT. I will happily support a Linux distro and most XP problems have solutions on the net by now, so my "personal favours" workload has reduced dramatically.
BFD (Score:4, Insightful)
Leopard is listed, which came as a bit of a surprise until I read this:
Adding insult to injury, some upgraders even reported a Windows-like Blue Screen of Death when upgrading from previous Mac OSs.
There's nothing Windows-like about it. There's a big difference between a kernel panic and simply stalling during the boot process on a screen which happens to be a shade of blue.
In mid-November, Apple released an update to Leopard that fixed some of the bugs, including the firewall glitch. Repairing Apple's reputation, however, may take slightly longer.
It speaks volumes that Apple fixed some problems 2 weeks after the OS was initially released. Their reputation is OK with me.
I don't think anything would please the author of this article unless it wiped his ass or gave him a spontaneous orgasm.
(sorry for the sort of off-topic-ish post)
Re:Boo Vista, A common theme for 2007? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Going somewhat against the slashdot 'groupthink (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As a developer... (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows Whatever is loaded by default by PC system OEMs on just about
any new PC sold. With a deal like that, it's pretty uninteresting to
be on a mere 10% of "a billion-plus potential market".
OEMs and consumers alike tend to jump on the "next big thing" that
comes out of Redmond. That's not the case this year (with Vista). It
can't even completely conquer the Dell crowd (like XP did before it).
Re:For those of you who like Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
This DRM complaint thing - what's the deal? Vista doesn't prevent you from doing anything XP will let you do. They added the ability to play restricted formats, which simply isn't included at all in XP. If you don't like HD-DVD playback, then don't use it! It's not like MS could have offered it without DRM (and not been sued to high hell). I can still rip DVDs and CDs with aplomb.
Its true, but as an IT professional I need to stay current on MS technology, or risk unemployment. At home I use Linux and OSX primarily, though I do play the occasional game on Vista. Hardware though? I don't think Windows restricts your hardware options too much... most stuff works on other OSes too.
Yeah Windows is pricey at retail, but OEM copies aren't that bad (similar to OSX pricing). I agree, though. I got my copy through our MSDN subscription of course so it doesn't apply to me.
Their standards (un-) support is extremely frustrating, probably my #1 complaint. Also why I have to keep a Windows machine around - to find out how to get everything else to work with it. Did you know they broke CIFS again in Vista/Server 2008? Yup.
I use Linux because it's so functional, OSX because its enjoyable, and Windows because I have to.
While I do not defend Vista... (Score:3, Insightful)
The gamers, videographers and other hobbyists, they will have more than enough power to run Vista anyway so that won't really be an issue. That there is not enough superior to XP software for them available in Vista, is another matter.
Really, if Vista fails, it is because MS tried to make a market when there was none. The halcyon days of the 90's when people upgraded like buying shoes is over. Somebody just didn't get the memo.
It's called a consensus opinion. (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there anyone outside of M$ that has said anything good about Vista? PCWorld said a few good things but their overall dissapointment carries weight because of their past enthusiasm. What this means is that Vista is so bad that anyone daring to defend it risks their credibility.
Re:Boo Vista, A common theme for 2007? (Score:5, Insightful)
what didn't make the list? (Score:5, Insightful)
This list is just bizarre, what are their top 10 products of 07?
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not to rain on your parade (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:For those of you who like Vista (Score:2, Insightful)
You'll be lucky enough if you can even play content you have bought [slashdot.org] (I know that last one is not Vista specific, but it is strongly related to the topic at hand).
Tasteful, Muted Applause (Score:5, Insightful)
And to those who claim Vista has been treated unfairly at /. by a bunch of snobby, anti-Microsoft uber-nerds, there is is in black and white. One of Microsoft's major sources of free publicity has just offered to speak at the funeral.
It takes one back. The sneaky-peaky buzz about something called, gasp, "Longhorn". The breathless, it's almost-just-about-nearly-any-day-now blurbs.
And now, this. The honeymoon is truly over, and the groom is sporting a frying-pan-sized lump on his forehead.
The editors are still clueless (Score:2, Insightful)
I enjoy a good MS bash as the next
Re:Going somewhat against the slashdot 'groupthink (Score:3, Insightful)
Your operating system SHOULD be using up memory when NOTHING ELSE IS USING IT!
If nothing else is using the memory then the OS SHOULD be using it for caching and whatever else it feels like. As long as it RELEASES said memory when SOMETHING else wants it, what the HELL is the problem with the OS using it?
It's just such a friggen cop out to slam an OS for doing that. I GUARANTEE that if OSX did that people would be quick to point out that it's using it wisely and gives it up when you want it etc.
Just give it a friggen rest.
Pick on Vista for reasons it should be picked on.
I run it at home and these are my gripes:
* DVD Maker, what could easily be a really nice, quick way of putting video compilations on very pretty DVDs, but RUINED by its complete lack of ability to generate anything like what it shows during ALL it's previews. Either it'll burn it in the wrong aspect ratio, or it'll just quit burning at 99% with no helpful error message.
* Deleting things is sometimes PAINFULLY slow. I mean, how can deleting one shortcut from the desktop take around a minute before the message goes away?
* Copying things can be horrendously slow. Unless you're copying from a local disk it seems to have some serious file management issues.
* It took me a LONG, LONG time to stop the darn thing bringing itself out of standby, no matter how many places I told it not to.
Here is what I actually LIKE about it:
* The games folder is very nice, nicely displayed, good info, very nice, look forward to increasing my games collection on it.
* The photo gallery is GREAT, really easy importing and tagging of photos and great organisation
* It does look pretty
* All my hardware has just worked straight away with it (gamepad, scanner, printer, camera)
* The start menu quick search feature is indeed cool, much quicker to find things that way.
* Live thumbnails of the programs you have open on your taskbar, actually quite handy to see what's going on with other apps.
And what I couldn't care less about:
* The sidebar... waste of resources, never have it on
* The funky task rotating 3D task switcher, pretty, but completely pointless
If they'd just fix the darn bugs I'd be very happy with Vista, it's just a case of having one of them come up and thinking 'How in the hell did this pass quality control?'. It's amazing to think that a company with that many employees doesn't come across the bugs that so many of us actual users do.
Re:iPhone is #5 on the list (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As a developer... (Score:2, Insightful)
The only people who seem highly concerned with said 'market share' figures are Microsoft types. The rest of us just use what works.
Which happens to not be Vista at this time. It's a great time to explore alternatives.
As another developer: (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody at Microsoft who spent the last 5 years on Vista either already knew it would suck (before it was even released), or is at least finally learning a valuable lesson about software development. Nobody said life had to be easy; you don't win every time.
If you're working on the flagship product of the world's biggest/richest software company, releasing a "lackluster" product years late, and making every mistake enumerated by a 30-year-old book which is essentially required reading in the industry, that *is* horrible. I mean, that's practically the definition of how to be horrible. Short of going out of business over the fiasco, I can't imagine how to be horribler.
Alan Kay was right: "I don't think you could find a physicist who has not gone back and tried to find out what Newton actually did. It's unimaginable. Yet the computing profession acts as if there isn't anything to learn from the past". If they were a hardware engineering team and nobody happened to know how to apply Newton's results, would anybody be similarly apologetic?
Or a mathematician -- practically everything they do is standing on the shoulders of their predecessors. If you start from first principles in mathematics (like, say, Peano's Axioms), you're pretty much guaranteed to never produce anything innovative. If a group of mathematicians said "well, no, nothing new to report, but look, the old stuff again with this pretty 3d effect!", they'd be laughed out of the room, and rightly so.
So no, sorry, as a developer, I don't have a lot of pity for those guys. When you're 2 guys in a garage, it's fine to make rookie mistakes. When you're a $50B company, people expect more than "lackluster" results and a rehash of the industry's greatest blunders from the 1970's.
Web developers, you clod. (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if that statistic represented the whole market, almost all new PC's come with Vista preloaded (due to customer demand? HARDY, HAR, HAR!), and the PC market is still growing. Vista's share WILL grow, because the market is stuffed to the gills with Vista PCs. It'd better be growing pretty damned fast before you start trumpeting Vista's success.
This is my favorite part though. The very page you linked to sums it up best:
You cannot - as a web developer - rely only on statistics. Statistics can often be misleading.
Global averages may not always be relevant to your web site. Different sites attract different audiences. Some web sites attract professional developers using professional hardware, while other sites attract hobbyists using old low spec computers.
Re:Start menu has always sucked (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you have about nailed the description of linux on the desktop, with 1325134 programs that start with the letter K or G followed by names that do not have anything to do with what the program is about (konqueror/internet explorer, krita/photoshop, amarok/windows media player, need I go on? Aren't the names on windows just a tad more descriptive/obvious?).
I swear last week I had to resort to using yum search to figure out just which k* program was a no-frills command line picture viewer because doing an ls
Re:Going somewhat against the slashdot 'groupthink (Score:3, Insightful)
Neither was XP. And when Windows 2000 came out I didn't see people leaping from NT4 like ants to a sugarbowl either.
Other than Windows 95/NT4 which was an amazing upgrade from Win3/NT3, no Windows release has been terribly exciting. Win98 from Win95? No big deal. Windows XP Pro from 2000 Pro? No big deal. Windows ME from 98...nothing could be less compelling. Windows XP Home from Win98? A boost in stability to be sure, but 'worth the cost of upgrading' for the new features? Hah!
The only real issue with Vista is that its just an evolutionary step. All the Vista hype was monsterously out of proportion to the actual product. Some of that is Microsofts fault... and some is just the internet doing what the internet does.
Hell, even in the Mac world... really, other than MacOS6 to MacOS7 in the early ninties and MacOS9 to OSX 10.0 each release hasn't been a wondrous new dawn upon the world. (Although in Apple's defense the OS 10.x revisions have come out more rapidly than the revisions to Windows. But then again...even Vista Ultimate at full retail is a fraction of what it would have cost to upgrade to each 10.x revision. (Although to Apples credit the family pack pricing is an excellent idea I'd like to see from Microsoft.)
Re:I didn't find it disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Start menu has always sucked (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is one of cultural norms. They do it because everyone else does. Also, no company was interested in letting the shortcut to their product be sat next to that of the competition. I guess this is why some have up to three layers of subfolder in their start menu entry. Microsoft do it too though.
I get annoyed by overuse of modal message boxes (they have their place, but that place should be a rarely visited one) and programs that insist on stealing and in some cases holding focus, even though it has no bearing on the true needs of the program. It's just about 'look at me, I are an important!!!!'.
Timewarp 2001 (Score:5, Insightful)
Not when XP came out and everyone was all "I love my 2k and I will never upgrade ever. Fucking XP is rubbish. I will never ever ever use it ever."
I did a lot of computer repair work back when XP first came out AND handed out a lot of advice. I am also as uncomfortable with Microsoft as the next guy. When someone would buy XP back then. I had to admit, it was a step up from 98. Now I did not want to change from 98, it was plenty stable for me and used less resources.
But I could understand why people upgraded. It was more stable for the average user who did not know how to tweak his machine. Some people even liked the fisher price interface. A good laptop or desktop ran XP decently.
Of course spyware and drive by downloads made XP a disaster for the average lo-tech user. Since 2004, it takes less than 3 months to reduce XP to such a mess, that it has to be reloaded.
Flash forward to today and I could not say the same thing. Anyone who is in the market for a computer I warn to not try vista, especially if they are comfortable with XP. It runs slower on hardware that would make XP fly. If you are an average lo-tech user, you will be confused by how everything you are used to has been moved around. Many new features are downright invasive.
Being objective about things. I have gone from "upgrading from 98 to XP, well to each his own" to "upgrade from XP to Vista, you will regret it".
We have one Vista laptop user left at work and he is begging to get back to XP. Lets face it. Vista is a dog no one wants to take for a walk.
Re:Great Expectations (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Open Office (getting really OT ;-) (Score:3, Insightful)
personally I really hope that OO.org do adopt something similar to office2k7's ribbons. finding features I havent previously used has never been a simple task for me in oo.org, or any previous version of office, but in office2k7 things seem to be grouped with a little more sanity than previous efforts. office was never the pinnacle of interface design, and OO.org was more or less a crappy copy of that design. sometimes you just have to know when to throw a design out and start over
Re:this list stinks and I don't like it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Interesting Thing No One Mentioned --- (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:disappointing, it is relative! (Score:3, Insightful)
One thing I would say about Vista, is that if compatibility issues are what it takes for Windows programmers to at last write programs that can function with reduced privileges, this is a good thing.
Re:Going somewhat against the slashdot 'groupthink (Score:3, Insightful)
As for benchmarks, I really wonder when the last set of benchmarks have been run to compare Windows XP to Windows Vista. Driver support from NVIDIA and ATI/AMD has improved quite a bit, and I am curious at this point if the differences in performance have become minimal between the two operating systems or not.
Keep in mind that if you test with computers that only have one gig of memory, you are unfairly penalizing Vista in the same way that running Windows XP with only 256 megs of memory will be unfair if you compare it to a Windows 98 machine. If you starve the OS during testing, then you can't expect to get fair results. Vista has a number of additional services running for various things, and they do take a bit more memory and CPU power. How much of the reduced performance is caused by all of these services(many that may not be needed)?
So, Vista may not be fantastic, but if you compare Windows XP to Windows Vista with four gigs of system memory, Vista may not seem quite as bad as many would have you believe. If you tested the OS a year ago, the improved drivers may very well change how well it works for you. Just don't give me that garbage that it doesn't run well on your three year old computer, because Windows XP ran like crap on older computers too if they didn't have enough RAM.
Re:this list stinks and I don't like it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I didn't find it disappointing (Score:3, Insightful)
My DS, Wii, and PS2 will provide plenty of entertainment, thanks.
I'm going to stay away from the 360 (crap hardware quality and game patches... it really does bring the PC gaming experience to consoles) and PS3 (game patches and high price tag).
Re:Interesting Thing No One Mentioned --- (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhh, no, that's not the "biggest" problem with Vista. To be fair it is a problem with both Vista AND XP (try running all your users as lusers without at least admin/power user rights on their machines in the business world using Windows -- hint: doesn't usually work if you use any non MS software) but it's not the "biggest" problem with Vista.
How is it the fault of 3rd party developers that Vista isn't stable? How is it the fault of 3rd party developers that Vista uses more system resources when idle then my XP workstation does while running 10-12 apps during a typical workday? Explain to me how KDE's memory usage (at idle) gets lower with each new release yet Windows gets higher and higher.
No, Vista sucks quite well enough without any "help" from 3rd party developers.
What Vista-only game is not also on a console? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft Halo doesn't need Windows Vista; it's also available for Xbox or Xbox 360. Nor will any Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, or Super Smash Bros. game be likely to require Windows Vista. The closest thing to a Windows version requirement for games on consoles that I've seen is the requirement of Windows XP (and not Windows 2000) to use Nintendo's USB Wi-Fi adapter ($40), but a cheap wireless B/G router (also $40) works around that problem handily.
So this narrows it down to PC-exclusive games that need DirectX 10. I am not convinced that those will come out in the next three years because nowadays, many PC-exclusive games are either MMORPGs or games from smaller studios, which need all the customers they can get.
Planned obsolescence (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Interesting Thing No One Mentioned --- (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's not a problem with Vista at all. It's a problem with crappy 3rd party developers. The fact that you realize that it's non-MS software that doesn't play well with standard user permissions in XP / Vista shows you probably know this. My applications continue to work just fine, but then I never stored settings in \program files or \Windows.
How is it the fault of 3rd party developers that Vista isn't stable?
Vista has been stable for me. Of course, 3rd party drivers can cause instability. That's nothing new, and it happens in any OS. Some drivers are worse than others, and it seems companies building sound card especially suck when writing drivers, which is why Vista moves sound drivers out of kernel space completely.
How is it the fault of 3rd party developers that Vista uses more system resources when idle then my XP workstation does while running 10-12 apps during a typical workday? Explain to me how KDE's memory usage (at idle) gets lower with each new release yet Windows gets higher and higher.
Try comparing apples to apples. Do a base install of a distro that has KDE 2, and then one that has KDE 3. Vista includes SERVICES as well, and you're counting the memory they take for Vista, but you're NOT counting memory when you talk about KDE's memory requirements... you're only talking about KDE usage. I think it's fair to say that newer Linux distro's require more memory than they did five years ago too.
Re:Tablet PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Interesting Thing No One Mentioned --- (Score:2, Insightful)