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.'"
I didn't find it disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I didn't find it disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
Great job, guys!
Interesting Thing No One Mentioned --- (Score:4, Insightful)
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Poor, cheap, no-nothing 3rd party developers that can't figure out how to write a program that doesn't run as admin / root are the biggest problem with Vista
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
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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
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My DS, Wii, and PS2 will provide plenty of entertainment, thanks.
I'm going to stay away from the 360 (crap hardware quality and ga
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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).
I dislike Microsoft as much as the next slash-dotter, but I have to disagree with you now. The Xbox 360 is probably Microsoft's biggest success, and they did a damn good job on it. The 360 games are now very mature, and it shows (Halo3, Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed all run and look fantastic on it). Additionally the 360 can stream music from most music streams, and can now play DivX movies (finally). I used it for a few months to play movies and tv shows on my living room tv via Tversity transcodin
What Vista-only game is not also on a console? (Score:3, Insightful)
In all seriousness, the only way I'd ever "upgrade" is when suddenly all my latest video games REQUIRE Vista to run.
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 ne
Re:I didn't find it disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
Nihilism means nothing to the dancing peasants.
Re:I didn't find it disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Destructive Amoralism: Windows Vista, just kill yourself!
Etc, etc.
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Re:I didn't find it disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great Expectations (Score:4, Informative)
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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 a
disappointing, it is relative! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk/20071128181/windows-xp-faster-than-vista.html [mobilecomputermag.co.uk]
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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.
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"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 is
Re:disappointing, it is relative! (Score:5, Funny)
And I only have a detailed, working reproduction of a 15th century torture chamber, complete with drain in the middle of the floor.
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I just discovered a new argument against the crazy change in terminology for no good reason:
"Here come the Men in Black!"
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Re:I didn't find it disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
I was hoping for an install CD completely full of ones myself. I got ripped off- half of them are missing.
I did (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I did (Score:5, Funny)
Boo Vista, A common theme for 2007? (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the full PC World Magazine's list http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,140583/printable.html# [pcworld.com]
*The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007*
#1. No Wow, No How: Windows Vista
#2. What Is It Good For: The High-Def Format War
#3. The Anti-Social Network: Facebook Beacon
#4. In a Sorry State: Yahoo
#5. The Great, The Bad, The Ugly: Apple iPhone
#6. Un-Neutral: The Broadband Industry
#7. Cannot be Completed as Dialed: Voice Over IP
#8. Needs To Change Its Spots: Apple "Leopard" OS 10.5
#9. Sorry, We Already Gave: Office 2007
#10. Is Anyone Listening?: Wireless Carriers
#11. Singing an Old Familiar Zune: Microsoft Zune
#12. Just Another Oxymoron: Internet Security
#13. Web 2 Woe: Social Networks
#14. Screwed up to the Max: Municipal WiMax
#15. Box Unpopuli: Amazon Unbox
Re:Boo Vista, A common theme for 2007? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Boo Vista, A common theme for 2007? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Boo Vista, A common theme for 2007? (Score:5, Funny)
Just install Vista; it practically bashes itself.
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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:It's called a consensus opinion. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:It's called a consensus opinion. (Score:5, Interesting)
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You have EIGHT Vista capable computers in your house that were running XP????????????
Re:Boo Vista, A common theme for 2007? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
That is fantastic news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Tablet PC (Score:5, Funny)
No, the word agnostic is actually used with the two distinct meanings of personal ignorance and intrinsic unknowability in the same context. They are distinguished when necessary with a qualifier.
WEAK agnosticism: I have no fucking idea who fucked this shit up.
STRONG agnosticism: Nobody has any fucking idea who fucked this shit up.
There is a certain confusion with weak atheism which could (and frequently does) arise, but that is properly reserved for the category of theological noncognitivists,
WEAK atheism: What the fuck do you mean with this God shit?
STRONG atheism: Didn't take any God to fuck this shit up.
which is different again from weak theism.
WEAK theism: Somebody fucked this shit up.
STRONG theism: God fucked this shit up.
An interesting cross-categorical theological belief not easily represented above is
DEISM: God set this shit up and it fucked itself.
And of course, theological Slashdotism,
SOVIET RUSSIA: This shit fucks YOU up!
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:this list stinks and I don't like it. (Score:5, Informative)
No way to auto install security updates w/o also auto installing all other updates.
No built in support for hd-dvd or bluray playback, even with Microsoft's own hd-dvd hardware.
The price.
No support for unencrypted digital cable tuners in media center.
No good visual configuration options for REALLY BIG displays (I'm on a 47" at 1080p and it is always difficult getting the fonts balanced for readability and usability) Now, most of the issues exist in xp and linux as well. I'll reserve my final judgment for vista until it gets a bit past sp1.
P.S. I'm not an MS fanboy nor an MS apologist, I just call them like I see them. I am a professional Solaris/Linux system administrator with over a decade of nearly exclusive use of linux. I think that there just really isn't much serious innovation left to be had on the desktop, but vista makes a pretty decent living room OS...
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Mine here measure their uptime in fraction of a power maintence interval :) That's normaly less than a year. And my Linuxes measures uptime on fraction of kernel updates interval.
Windows measures it on fraction of a week.
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
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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
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.
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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. W
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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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:What about the iPhone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:5, Informative)
That doesn't work for those iTunes songs that are still DRM-protected. There is no *legal way (according to the DMCA) to convert such songs to ringtones without buying them again or going through the cumbersome process of burning them to CD and then ripping them back to MP3 before editing. Also, Apple has tried several times to block users wanting to put in their own home-made ringtones.
Re:What about the iPhone? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:iPhone is #5 on the list (Score:5, Insightful)
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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 g
never thought (Score:3, Funny)
As a developer... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:As a developer... (Score:5, Funny)
Be careful of the advice you give. You can get arrested for that.
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.
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I'm sure most developers know better than to reinvent the wheel. Sadly, our current legal BS forces them to.
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They could choose to do the right thing, and spend a little more money here and there to make
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http://www.nothingbutiron.com/images/SL%20Asleep%20at%20Computer.jpg [nothingbutiron.com]
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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).
Glass half full (Score:5, Funny)
Macbook Pro (Score:5, Insightful)
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,...
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.
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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
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As for benchmarks, I really wonder when the last set of benchmarks have been run to compare Windows XP
Re:Going somewhat against the slashdot 'groupthink (Score:5, Informative)
So, I decided to downgrade (upgrade?) back to XP. HP's own website basically said "DON'T DO IT, MAN, IT'LL NEVER WORK" and provided exactly no XP drivers, only Vista. Yeah, like I'm going to believe that. So I did, and after nearly ten hours of collecting drivers from other sources (occasionally having to change vendor IDs and the like to get them to load), I had it running perfectly.
The thing that bugs me most is that HP has the drivers - the hardware in this new box isn't anything all that revolutionary, or different from what was found in their old XP offerings. There's no reason they couldn't have put up the necessary XP drivers - most of them I got from HP's site, just under other models. The only possible explanation is that MS is sitting in the background, threatening to flog them mightily if they dared not do everything possible to push this steaming pile known as Vista upon us.
Oh, and yes, it dual-boots into Ubuntu 7.10 just fine.
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From my
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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
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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
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
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Re:Start menu has always sucked (Score:4, Informative)
You have apparently managed to seriously screw up your menu. I suggest you go back to the defaults, which are much, much easier to use that what you describe. Look at my current K menu (Kubuntu 7.10):
At the top level, we have three sections:
The Applications sections contains:
The only thing I think could possibly be improved there is perhaps the "Settings" and "System" -- it's not always clear which one I'm going to find the setting I'm looking in.
Now to address the core of your complaint, let's look at the contents of one of the categories. I'll pick "Multimedia":
How much clearer and simpler can it be?
Of course, this being KDE, it's configurable. If you don't find the application names useful, you can turn them off and have only the description. In fact, there are four options:
The second is the default, obviously.
GNOME handles things differently, of course, but uses the same concept. Programs are categorized sensibly, and then both names and descriptions are available.
So, please tell us, just how can this be improved? And in what way could either the Windows or OS X approaches possibly be better?
You seem to have chosen to criticize one of the things that the major Linux desktops get most right.
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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 subfolde
It is the price that is wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
No surprise here, but ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No surprise here, but ... (Score:5, Funny)
I think he's retired. His successor is a drinking bird [wikipedia.org] that periodically presses the "Approve submission" button on whichever article is currently pending approval.
For those of you who like Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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)
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.
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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.
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.
what didn't make the list? (Score:5, Insightful)
This list is just bizarre, what are their top 10 products of 07?
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.
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.
teh irony (Score:5, Funny)
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
Sysadmin hell (Score:5, Informative)
One user got a new Lenovo top of the line T61, with nVidia Quadro in September this year. With Vista Business. To support possible future Vista installs, I got and installed Vista Ultimate on a Mac Pro tower (Quad Xeon), where, after careful tweeking, it runs quite well, albeit far slower than OSX or WinXP on the same machine. Vista on the Lenovo Laptop, coupled with the usual insane amount of crapware that comes with Thinkpads preinstalled, is an absolute abomination. The GUI is actually less responsive than the first release of OSX 10.0 was on my old 333MHz PPC Lombard Powerbook 6 years ago. You can cure the slashdot "I'm sittnig here at my freelncer gig.." trolls here.
Vista on that laptop, a 2.2Ghz Machine, 2GB Ram, etc, is so bad, it almost makes me cry. The UAC nightmare, while supposedly making the system more secure, also makes it almost impossible to do any normal work (any control panel stuff requires a UAC clickfest from hell). Turning UAC and Lenovo's Account management crap off is an improvement, but it brings up the point of why one would use Vista anyway. A lot of software, such as our Inventory clients, will simply not run. Working through custom DNS or DHCP settings is a major PIAS.
Every time I have to use Vista, I am more convinced that Microsoft has lost its edge. I can not see ANY company interested in productivity and efficiency using Vista. Microsoft has more than enough cash to last it through years of losses, but if that does in fact come to pass, MS will lose its standing business and get a bad reputation that will be harder to fix than merely better products will do.
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:but this makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://offi [microsoft.com]