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.'"
disappointing, it is relative! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk/20071128181/windows-xp-faster-than-vista.html [mobilecomputermag.co.uk]
Going somewhat against the slashdot 'groupthink' (Score:5, Interesting)
As for all the extra "eye candy" ... yeah, it's probably a little over the top. But on that same coin, Linux and MacOS have been getting their fair share of extra processor-eating-eye-candy, too, so what's the big deal here?
Still, if you have Windows XP, there's still no reason to rush out and replace it with Vista (just not worth the hassle, really). But if you're buying a new PC, I wouldn't freak out if it has Vista,...
but this makes no sense (Score:2, Interesting)
My best guess is that MS is licensing to machine retailers at some ridiculously low rate of like $35 for a $299 install, to insure we get it rammed down our throats whether we want it or not. This being the case, MS is taking a calculated loss on Vista, evidently hoping to get more windows users for whatever comes after vista? I don't think it's going to work out that way?
It is the price that is wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I couldn't care less about being locked to a single provider, mostly because AT&T/Cingular is the best provider in my area and thus have no reason to switch (I was on Cingular for years before getting an iPhone). I assume by "pay-twice-for-songs" you're referring to ring tones, which couldn't be further from the truth. If you buy a song from iTunes, you can cut it up into ring tones as much as you like. More than that, you can "easily" make your own ring tones out of any audio you like without having to hack your phone at all:
- Use an audio editor like Audacity to pull a 30 second or less chunk of music from your audio file. Save this as an mp3
- Import the mp3 into iTunes
- Use iTunes to convert the mp3 to AAC
- Rename the new
.m4a file to .m4r
- Re-import the
.m4r file into iTunes and it will go into the Ringtones folder, which can then be synced to your iPhone
"Proprietary, locked-down, no-3rd party apps" is three ways of phrasing a single complaint, and that's changing early next year. In the meantime, you can write useful webapps or jailbreak your phone. While not ideal, Apple has committed to providing an SDK for third-party development, which is a change from their initial plans (from the start they always planned the iPhone to be locked down, rather than being a more open platform like Windows Mobile).I'm far from an Apple fanboy, but I like my iPhone. I bought it knowing exactly what it was and was not. Then again, I also actually like Vista and don't feel that it's the biggest disappointment of 2007. From the list, I also like Office 2007 and my Zune, so perhaps I really don't have any credibility in this discussion :).
Re:As a developer... (Score:2, Interesting)
The whole "Vista is a flop" is 1/4 disappointment about what it could have been (certainly valid) and 3/4ths plain old FUD and buku profitable ad impressions.
Not to rain on your parade (Score:5, Interesting)
Vista 6.3%
Growing at slightly under 1% a month.
This train may have been slow leaving the station, but it is building up momentum.
XP 72.8%
XP's loss is Vista's gain?
The so-called "upgrade" migration to XP is beginning to look like just another Geek fantasy.
W2K 5.1%
Some good news for the die-hards.
Linux 3.3%
Slow erosion all year, and not much to show for four years of "The Year of Linux"
OSX 3.9%
A healthy niche, but ending the year where it began.
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with you 100%. I have for the last ten years or so said that I have grudging respect for MS server OS's. Constant improvement is a good thing. With regard to desktop I had also seen consistent improvement and therefore have said that I have grudging respect there also. Here's where things fall apart. Win2000 desktop was pretty much rock solid on release. WinXP was released with no real driver support and was totally lacking as a new release. Then, after SP releases things got a whole lot better for XP. Okay, now we've got something we can deal with. Then they release Vista and make the same fucking mistakes they've made over and over again. Why should anyone have to upgrade to a new PC to run the new OS? Mac is backwards compatible for a couple of generations. Linux can run on antiquated hardware. Sure, MS fanboys will say "apples and oranges" but my point is that a new OS release should run on current hardware, moderately past hardware, and some short time of future hardware. What is improved if I have to get a new system to run a new OS? As another question, where is the big, obvious improvement? Eye candy doesn't cut it. Any piece of crap can look good but function like shit.
this list stinks and I don't like it. (Score:2, Interesting)
I have never seen this before. Nope. Not ever.
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."
Vista is not horrible. Is is great? Not really. But it works and it works pretty well. It is a bit overly secure (but that is because of install base that makes Microsoft OS worth attacking; Apple is expected to be targeted within the next 2 years due to increasing popularity) and overly prettified (but so is everything. I hate all the animations of OS X and now even Linux flavors--they add nothing; my attention span is not that short that I need my windows to be all fancy in minimizing and restoration.) But it works.
People be all acting like Vista is the worst thing ever. It is not. It is not even the worst thing released this year.
Office is 10x worse. The "ribbon" interface is horrible. It went from usable and known to clunky and confusing. I hate it. It would be a good package otherwise.
Re:Going somewhat against the slashdot 'groupthink (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm also very cynical about their multi versioning ultimate, basic etc. They're just trying to segment the market to maximize revenue, it's software - it isn't costing them anymore to produce ultimate than basic.
Extra DRM restrictions on HD content etc just makes me want to puke.
I just expected more. Vista and Bill Gates can go to hell.
have you even tried 64 bit Vista? (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, it KILLS me that Microsoft plans on releasing a 32 bit version of Windows 7. That absolutely, 100% blows my mind, and deserves every ounce of scorn that anyone can muster...
Still don't get the Vista hate (Score:3, Interesting)
1. An excellent home OS where applicable
2. An OS that has no place in the enterprise
The hardware constraints (somewhat beefy hardware, drivers issues, etc...) make it nearly impossible to considering implementing in the enterprise in the near future.
But for a home OS I fail to see the problem. It's stable. It has a lot of nice little features (great indexing and file management (probably best I've seen by default in any OS to date), finally something that nicely uses previously wasted RAM and CPU cycles, improved user management and security, nice built in backup features, much better multi-media management (this one sorts goes with indexing and file management I supposed) etc..).
I know, there's ton of issues out there even for those where it should work. But there are for any OS. And for every "my network slows down when I play music" on Vista there's a "if you lose your network drive in the middle of a file move, your file goes *poof*" on another OS.
Sure, your old sound card might not work with Vista. So don't upgrade to it. I don't see that as a knock on the OS. Legacy support is always a give and take when upgrading. The "beefy" requirements to run it are always overstated around here. Turn off aero and your middle of the pack 4 year old CPU will run it just fine with a gig of ram. I don't know if there's enough of a reason to want to upgrade over XP for the cost. But surely after using both a lot I'd much rather have Vista, it's sandbox, and it's interface (even without aero, window thumbnails, and transparent windows) then XP.
Generally I think Vista just gets railed because no real "geek" should run windows, and because for some reason it's not OK for MS to release *new* software only meant for *new* hardware. The negativity isn't based on the actual product because the actual produce isn't that bad.
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I understand the whole 32/64 bit situation with Microsoft correctly, the 64bit model that MS chose (LLP64) may cause some issues beyond simple driver replacement. LLP64 creates a new integer type called long long which is 64bit and keeps long as 32bit. LP64 (Unix version) redefines long as 64bit. The advantage of LLP64 is that overflow will not occur since there are two distinct types but casting a pointer to a long will not work. The opposite would be true for LP64.
The end result is that software for LP64 software needs to be ported by being recompiled to either 32bit or 64bit systems but for LLP64, the software needs to be specifically written for either 32 or 64bit. I'm not an expert here. Can someone else comment?
Start menu has always sucked (Score:3, Interesting)
And here's why:
Every GOD DAMNED vendor in the world has their own fuckin' menu! Instead of programs grouped by function or task, you get "Adobe Acrobat" and "Adobe GoLive!" and "Microsoft Office" and "McAfee Virus Scanner" and SO WHAT THE FUCK IS THE POINT OF A MENUING SYSTEM?
Sorry. I get really het up about this issue. It's one of the simplest, most fundamental problems with every version of MS-Windows. It's the most concise indication of the target audience of MS-Windows.
Other corporations.
Not the end-user. MS-Windows wasn't designed for end user ease-of-use. I've used computers, and helped other people use computers, for 25 years, and MS-Windows is the worst to have to teach. It makes the least sense, and is the least pleasing. It's a sad state of affairs when the biggest MS-Windows proponents say, "But I have to use MS-Windows, since that's the only thing MS-Office runs on," rather than (as most Mac users say), "Of course I use a Mac. It's fun."
The "Start" menu shows just how fucked-up and disorganized MS-Windows really is. It's hard to find a specific program, and when you are looking for a program to do a specific task, you have no idea how to find it. You have to "know" which programs do what, and which corporation makes each program. It's a corporate mash, and it tastes bitter, with a lingering sour aftertaste, like bad wine in a good bottle.
That's why MS-Windows is painful to use, and you'll find very few people who love to use it, even among fanbois. You can tell by how they defend it they don't really love it. It's just the sports team they chose to back.
Tablet PC (Score:3, Interesting)
They obviously didn't try running Vista on a tablet PC. On my wife's TC4400 with a dual core 1.83ghz celeron and 2GB memory it's the duck's nuts of mobile computing. I absolutely love the upgrade from XP in every aspect - battery performance, usability and especially how wonderful the pen interface is. I've been using it all day to get through a difficult spec and am wondering why I never tried this before - beats the print outs any day.
The only place where WinXP is still better (given reasonable hardware) is games. That'll probably be changed around with 10.1 and the next generation of graphics cards. This is why I multi boot my main PC (3.8ghz Q6600), it's better for games not to have a full application base installed alongside it anyway so a separate partition makes sense.
For the record (karma whoring?
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:3, Interesting)
As for my good self being a troll - I deny the accusation completely. I tend to be pro-Apple because of their products, which are generally (there are exceptions) well-designed (as in: well-thought-out, not as in 'pretty'). I tend to be anti-Microsoft because *their* products (with the exception of 'Office' perhaps) seem to me to be actively user-hostile. I could never see there being an 'Apple Genuine Advantage', for example. I still haven't forgiven MS for that one...
If the world spun in the opposite direction, if it was Microsoft that had a solid UNIX OS with a fantastic GUI front-end, and it was Apple who thought that corporations were their customer, not users, I'd probably reverse the sense of the pro/anti statement above. It's the products (the end-results) that I like, not the corporate entity that produces them. That's what I spend cash on, after all...
Trolls don't tend to admit their bias, or accept that not everything is perfect in their reality-replacing fantasy, I am happy to be corrected if anything I write is wrong. Just because I disagree with your statements doesn't make me a troll. Posting blatant untruths, hyping up one aspect of a story to bolster a preconceived opinion, that's what makes someone a troll. Oh, look [slashdot.org], this is what you did - as you yourself admit [slashdot.org]...
The case for the prosecution rests, m'lud; in summary: "Whiney Mac Fanboy" is indeed whiney, but no mac fan-boy. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Simon
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows ReadyBoost is what was meant above instead of superfetch - makes sense when you can't add any more real memory.
Re:Office 2007 made the list? Seriously? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100444751033.aspx [microsoft.com]
And the ribbons? I'm sorry. I'm glad you're happy, but for many of us who knew the keystrokes, and took the time to learn the capabilities of the software, it's a huge step backward. I heard the hype and I gave it a chance, but I agree with PC World on this one. If the ribbons are optional, I have no complaint. But they take up a huge amount of precious screen real estate (esp on a small notebook) and they practically force you to use a mouse, which some don't mind, but it slows me down enormously.
And WRT those little icons that you claim have menu counterparts: where is the menu item "Accept all changes in document" when you're tracking changes? Seriously. If it's there I would like to know.
Re:dx 10 on xp (Score:2, Interesting)
I imagine they've already coded DirectX 10 to well past the point where it could be merged back into XP. That's the Microsoft Way!
Re:disappointing, it is relative! (Score:3, Interesting)
"Complexity" isn't a good thing. It's a necessary evil, a means to an end. As for security...
Well, in my basement, I run a 1982-vintage VAX-11/785. It's rated at approximately 1.5 MIPS, has 16 MiB RAM, and supports 16 simultaneous, active users, without much complaint It could support several hundred, if not thousands, if you've written your app well enough.
And I'll be damned if VAX/VMS 4.0 isn't more secure - and a HELL of a lot faster.
...And I like the GUI better, too.
Re:As a developer... (Score:3, Interesting)
They could choose to do the right thing, and spend a little more money here and there to make the applications and systems and whatever positively shine. Instead, the business drivers want to do whatever they can to promote the monopoly, lock-in, and anything proprietary. I get the feeling that there is actually animosity between the MS research branch (they have some awesome stuff) and the business drivers. The developers would be on the side of research (3/4 Utopians, as opposed to the full Utopians in Research), just tell us what to build and we will make it awesome. The marketing people (1/4 Utopians, who have to take the anti-consumer spew and make something decent out of it) would get their inspiration and direction from the business drivers.
In other words, I would never work at a company where the primary directive of the developers is to make something that is not quite compatible with a standard. That would piss me off every single day I came to work. Let's make an OS with inferior proactive defragmentation, then point people to a third party who sells a defragmentor, Then we put a stripped down version right in the OS, which is just a less-capable version of the third-party one. Let's cap off our most awesome MSVC 6 by including Dinkumware STL headers which are horribly broken, and because of license disputes cannot be updated in a service pack.
Software has bugs, and people make mistakes, but there are a lot more mistakes from MS which are rooted in either extreme short-sightedness or malicious (or selfish to the point of being self-destructive at best) intent.
The best thing that could happen is a large number of devs simply leave, giving as a reason something along the lines of I can't work for a company that makes me implement standards poorly, or I can't work for a company with such a huge disconnect between management and what's actually happening with the code. But the benefits will keep them placid...
Re:Start menu has always sucked (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's called a consensus opinion. (Score:5, Interesting)
Personal opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista is a heap of rubbish. We looked at it when it first came out, and didn't even bother to keep the OEM-installed Vista image on the hard disk on the trial computer that we used. After ten minutes of trying it out, we wiped it back to XP. Nothing new, nothing useful, nothing that saves us time, in fact the exact opposite. Verdict: No benefit.
Later, having moved schools and been given more time and complete say in a new network, I installed it on a laptop that, ironically, we'd specified as XP only but happened to come with OEM-installed XP and a Vista Business Key/Disk. Install procedure was fairly unobtrusive. I remember one or two quirks though, where I heard myself say "I'm not an idiot, just do what I want."
Got into Vista and followed my standard "join to domain" procedure. This involves installing the usual Flash, etc. players and Office and configuring network interfaces, turning off certain options etc. Installs went fine (albeit blighted by the UAC which I eventually turned off completely because I couldn't have that bugging me, so my users certainly weren't going to tolerate it) and then I got round to doing things like setting IP's/DNS, proxy servers, setting up local users, etc.
Then it just turns into a nightmare. Everything's moved, quite often to even more nonsensical places. "Classic" modes for anything don't actually put things back how they were in older versions of Windows. Some options gone completely (like turning off that "new" Login window which, incidentally, totally stopped my usage of the machine - if my users have to type RANDOMSERIALISEDMACHINENAME\theirlocaluser they aren't going to bother. Instead of just selecting from a drop-down box like in XP... there I was thinking that computers were supposed to save you time and having to type in long, obtuse commands. And what happened to the double-Ctrl-Alt-Del classic login? Or the option in GP to turn it back?), some just weren't powerful enough any more.
There is no way that my users could do some of the things that Vista demanded of it. They are not going to sit and click through twenty-odd UAC dialogs that make absolutely no sense just to install their local software (this is why they get a local login for out-of-school use - so they can install their own software for testing, evaluation etc. for the next academic year without buggering up their network profile), nor are they going to remember to type in the machine name, or even have a clue where that was stored when they do need it.
Everything was suddenly more complex, like going back ten years. I could seriously look at Vista and XP and if I didn't know better I'd say that Vista was a first over-reaching attempt to improve on Windows 98/2000 and then people complained and it was replaced a few years later by the much calmer and more friendly XP. It really is that bad.
And that's before I even bothered to look at activation, program compatibility, etc. which would (from my own research) be killers for the types of places that I work. We run a lot of different programs. At least 25% just weren't avilable/updated/ready for Vista at all and still aren't - but the fact of the matter is that most of them were nothing more than a few webpages stored on a CD with a simple executable interface or children's games using things like Shockwave to display. I don't mind Vista breaking compatibility, so long as it provides advantages. We had to upgrade most (not all) software in the 98 -> XP era anyway because of similar problems but we got advantages by doing so - better security, better network integration, etc. Vista just takes
Re:It's called a consensus opinion. (Score:3, Interesting)
You have EIGHT Vista capable computers in your house that were running XP????????????
Re:Great Expectations (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed ME was quickly replaced by XP, 2K was availible to those who wanted it and many people unofficially downgraded to 98 even though they weren't meant to (since piracy protection was nonexistant in 98).
OEM vista buisness and ultimate come with downgrade rights but you need to already have the media/key to excercise it and if you end up using retail or system builder (whitebox OEM) media/key then you will have to telephone activate. Those who got vista home basic or home premium with thier machine and don't have a volume license agreement they can use to get the machine up to professional and onto software assurance have to either buy XP retail or bend the rules on system builder packs. Using a pirate copy of XP is another option but that brings problems of it's own (if you don't have access to a legit XP corp key that hasn't been widely leaked and you don't very carefully control installation of updates then you are likely to run into wga). Then you have the whole issue of drivers etc to consider (though presumablly this was an issue going me-98 as well).
So for the most part non techincal home users who get vista with thier PC are stuck with vista until MS releases thier next os
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a stylish rival to Vista (Score:3, Interesting)
There are inexplainable issues, they simply make no sense and I am not speaking about that "move files" bug, I never moved any file on any OS, I always considered it a risk.
In my case, OpenGL is 40% slower (tested multi, multi tools) than Tiger 10.4.11. As Nvidia says "it is up to Apple" for drivers, I reported to Apple and never heard back except one really redundant and irritating question.
Those people doing a massive job to port thousands of open source tools to OS X have to start over. Developers never had final version before it hit shelves by a childish (I think) reason as "They are leaking them". There is a blame game going on and those tiny Mac fanboy fascists are trying to censor every kind of feedback on web. I am not speaking about posting a security issue to public forums and whine to slashdot when it is deleted.
I am patiently waiting for 10.5.2 update, I will see if it fixes anything or gives slightest hope and if it doesn't, I will do my first OS downgrade since Atari 800XL DOS 3.0 back in 1985.
I don't like to post bugs to public but I have seen some idiots modded down (using overrated censor) some posts making sense here.
Vista? I have used it for 3 days, I haven't seen major issues but it was a professional developer machine.
Re:I didn't find it disappointing (Score:3, Interesting)
For what it's worth, none of my dozen friends with a 360 has had it brick or gotten the red ring of death. I know it exists, but I think it occurs on only a small number of consoles. I wasn't able to find numbers. Lets say it affects 100,000 consoles. There are 13,500,000 xbox's in the world today. That would be a 0.75% failure rate. Much less terrible than it seems. Also, Microsoft has publicly acknowledged the problem and is prepared to spend over a billion dollars to repair broken machines!
The bottom line is that the 360 isn't a disaster like Windows Vista. It might just be the best consumer product out of Microsoft. Definitely a worthy competitor and middle ground to the Wii and PS3. Your blind hate doesn't accomplish anything.
Re:As another developer: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure most developers know better than to reinvent the wheel. Sadly, our current legal BS forces them to.