Any hope in MS improving Vista?

[gsaldivar]

I don't like the general direction they've taken the OS. Too much resource hogging eye candy. It looks too much like a kids game, and not a productivity OS.

I agree wholeheartedly. :thumbsup:

Most of my machines are XP with the "classic" theme and a plain color desktop. Absolute minimal visual (and mental) distraction - just me and my work... or entertainment!

 

[JackMDS]

I agree wholeheartedly. :thumbsup:

Most of my machines are XP with the "classic" theme and a plain color desktop. Absolute minimal visual (and mental) distraction - just me and my work... or entertainment!

OS is not based on faith like religion, it based in part on what the consumer wants.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) Enthusiasts are Not the majority.

FWIW, the majority of people like Nice cars, Nice homes, Nice human partners, and Nice looking Computers/OS'.

 

[gsaldivar]

the majority of people like Nice cars, Nice homes, Nice human partners, and Nice looking Computers/OS'.

The majority of people can't tell the difference between a computer running at 100%, and one running at 96% with 4% allocated towards drawing unproductive 3D eye candy on the screen.

 

[JackMDS]

The majority of people can't tell the difference between a computer running at 100%, and one running at 96% with 4% allocated towards drawing unproductive 3D eye candy on the screen.

You are right but that what they want and they are the One buying.

I enjoy the Visual look of Win 7 too.

In any case you an easily make Win 7 looking like a washout Win 2000 by changing the visual configurations.

 

[postmortemIA]

BTW. The fastest Windows right Now is a clean Win 7 Starter-N

It is almost as fast as Win 2000 but much nicer and capable.

yeah Win 2000 was/is so responsive that nothing comes even close. Yet it does not use any smart caching techniques.

 

[RebateMonger]

The majority of people can't tell the difference between a computer running at 100%, and one running at 96% with 4% allocated towards drawing unproductive 3D eye candy on the screen.

Some early (1980s) IBM studies found that it took about a ten percent speed difference before people could notice the difference between two computers.

 

[thedosbox]

The majority of people can't tell the difference between a computer running at 100%, and one running at 96% with 4% allocated towards drawing unproductive 3D eye candy on the screen.

You do realise there is still a "classic" looking grey theme available in Win 7?

FWIW, the program-specific jumplists alone are worth the switch to Win 7 if you're serious about productivity.

 

[Tristicus]

I have an ever-growing hate for people that call Vista crap.

 

[gsaldivar]

I have an ever-growing hate for people that call Vista crap.

Which nobody has done in this thread...

 

[Cogman]

Which nobody has done in this thread...

Vista was a failure.

= Windows XP !

(referring to what an upgrade from vista is)

Mind you, it is far less then it has been in the past.

I hear it all the time in my CE/CS department; I can understand Tristicus's want to punch vista haters in the mouth.

 

[Mem]

(referring to what an upgrade from vista is)

Mind you, it is far less then it has been in the past.

I hear it all the time in my CE/CS department; I can understand Tristicus's want to punch vista haters in the mouth.

I remember all those XP haters from 2K users here in AT OS forum years ago when XP was released,we have come full circle,probably same sort thing will happen again down the road,unfortunately its only a matter of time.

 

[t0mn8r]

Windows 7 was released because Vista was sooooo bad that it compared unfavourably to ME.

It should be buried as the heap of garbage it was.

Just my opinion...

 

[Arkaign]

I remember all those XP haters from 2K users here in AT OS forum years ago when XP was released,we have come full circle,probably same sort thing will happen again down the road,unfortunately its only a matter of time.

I don't know, Win7 seems to be very very well received.

My takes on the Windows OS'es over time (initial and retrospective)

Win95 : Initially super impressed, but unhappy with the final direction (IE 4 w/Active Desktop really was an unstable experience, lol)

Win98 : Initially very happy, seemed to only improve with time (98 SE kept me happy for a long time, much more stable than trying to run a fully patched Win95 with USB support/etc).

WinME : Initially somewhat confused, not really any new features that seemed worthwhile, and I had some stability issues with it on the systems I tried it with.

Win2K : Pretty awesome, though some games were a bit tricky to get working properly. Still, far easier to make work as a gaming/home OS than NT4 ever was (SP6 ... shudder).

WinXP : Initially I was taken aback by the default visuals, but after running it for a couple of months it gained my respect, as once you had 512MB it ran really good. If you had a typical system of the era with only 256mb though, Win2K performed much much much better.

Vista : Initially I was excited, we were going to get the first refresh in a long long long time, but after going through the betas from when it was still Longhorn, I started to get worried. The RTM just drove me crazy. It would work great on one box, then inexplicably run like smashed ass on another similar or even more high-end box, with absolutely zero changes to either system's configuration other than installing updates and the latest drivers for video/chipset. Lots of drivers not available. Lots of business apps that wouldn't run correctly, like common versions of ACT!, Peachtree, etc, etc. Most of this wasn't Microsoft's fault, but they could have done a better job at at least getting a convincing compatibility mode for older apps. They should have also brought the hammer down on jerkoff OEM's selling Windows Vista Basic and Windows Vista 'Ready' systems with 512mb of memory AND some of that ram shared for onboard video. The most egregious example I saw was a Compaq notebook that used 128mb of ram for the video, Windows took foreeeeeeeever to boot and then promptly sat there like a melting ice sculpture. Again, not totally Microsoft's fault, but ram was cheap and a limit of 1GB should have been set in stone.

Win7 : Initially a bit worried after various mishaps related to Vista, but particularly after getting the RTM I've been very very very impressed. Smooth, and it's predictable in performance. I can look at a PC's specs, and like the old days, can tell with confidence how it's going to run, whereas Vista was anybody's guess system to system. Also doesn't frag the crap out of your HDD for the indexing. Nice.

So yeah, I'm sort of a Vista 'hater', but the only other Windows OS I've disliked was ME. 95, 98, 2K, XP, and Win7 have all been great for their era IMHO.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Vista will go the way of Windows 2000 Professional.

Microsoft will continue to support it for the standard life cycle, but 3rd party hardware and application developers will focus on compatibility with Windows 7 first and foremost. Most stuff will be backwards compatible, but technical problems that are anything more than trivial to resolve may result in the developer simply dropping support for Vista.

 

[tcsenter]

As has been proven over and over (by informed persons), there was an anti-Vista bandwagon that for whatever reason became very enticing for people - mostly uninformed people - to jump on without much basis for their complaints. When there was a basis for their complaints, it was just as often (if not more often) because their hardware completely lacked Vista drivers, the early Vista drivers were buggy, or their Windows XP applications were buggy (or just wouldn't work) on Vista because the vendor hadn't released any patches or updates for it (e.g. trying to run an older "designed for Windows XP" application that was released in 2003 or 2004 but had long been replaced by a newer version, which the user didn't want to pay for). None of these factors can be blamed on short-comings in Windows Vista.

People are still complaining about Windows 7 on slower, lower-end computers and downgrading to Windows XP. Check the support forums at HP, Dell, Gateway, and all the other OEMs. Downgrading to XP is still happening, even though many of these downgraders are using newer hardware with substantially better performance than people were trying to run Vista on two and three years ago. Here is a great example that I recently encountered: Windows XP and HP G61-511WM

Even if Microsoft literally relaunched Windows Vista as Windows 7 without any modifications at all (and let's be honest, it comes so close that Microsoft couldn't even come up with a new name for Server 2008, it just appended R2 at the end), you would still expect far fewer people to complain about the performance of Windows 7, the lack of drivers for their hardware, or application compatibility, because THREE FULL YEARS worth of new hardware and software launches have come and gone in the meantime.

 

[Maximilian]

Vista's UI was garbage. Windows 7 improves it massively with libraries and the superbar, who cares if they copied apple, it works.

 

[theevilsharpie]

As has been proven over and over (by informed persons), there was an anti-Vista bandwagon that for whatever reason became very enticing for people - mostly uninformed people - to jump on without much basis for their complaints. When there was a basis for their complaints, it was just as often (if not more often) because their hardware completely lacked Vista drivers, the early Vista drivers were buggy, or their Windows XP applications were buggy (or just wouldn't work) on Vista because the vendor hadn't released any patches or updates for it (e.g. trying to run an older "designed for Windows XP" application that was released in 2003 or 2004 but had long been replaced by a newer version, which the user didn't want to pay for). None of these factors can be blamed on short-comings in Windows Vista.

In other words, it's everyone else's fault but Vista's

Microsoft continually pushed back the release date of Vista to the point where their release schedule lost credibility, they made architectural changes throughout the development of Vista that forced partners to redesign their software mid-stream, and then they rushed Vista to the market before their partners (and Vista itself, for that matter) were ready. The end result? Customers that bought computers with Vista found their applications ran substantially slower than they did under XP, if they ran at all. And ultimately, application performance is what the vast majority of users care about.

Yes, Windows 7 is very similar to Vista, and in a lot of ways, Vista's failure laid the foundation for Windows 7's success. That doesn't make it any less of a failure.

 

[tcsenter]

In other words, it's everyone else's fault but Vista's

Microsoft continually pushed back the release date of Vista to the point where their release schedule lost credibility, they made architectural changes throughout the development of Vista that forced partners to redesign their software mid-stream, and then they rushed Vista to the market before their partners (and Vista itself, for that matter) were ready.

That has always sounded really nice the other 1000 times it has been parroted, but nobody thus far has come up with any evidence or support for it. Vista had a longer RC phase than Win7. And the numerous applications and hardware developers who got it right far (e.g. MONTHS) sooner than others (e.g. Creative Labs, NVIDIA, et. al.) is proof that ample technical information about Vista's specifications, architecture, and APIs were available for those developers who put their best foot forward soon enough to match Vista's release date.

OEMs were as much to blame by offering Premium Vista SKUs on low-end configurations that wouldn't even run Windows 7 to anyone's satisfaction (an example of which I've provided above).

Vista had its short-comings and flaws, but relative to the universe of problem reports, a substantial proportion of discontent over Vista was not attributable to Microsoft. With SP1, Microsoft had fixed nearly all of Vista's flaws and yet the cacophony of anti-Vista sentiment (including people blaming MS for issues that we repeatedly saw traced back to drivers, firmware, BIOS, applications, or user-stupidity) continued without abatement.

 

[theevilsharpie]

That has always sounded really nice the other 1000 times it has been parroted, but nobody thus far has come up with any evidence or support for it.

The typical desktop computer being sold at Vista's release was running a Pentium 4 (maybe a Pentium D) with 512MB and a cheap Intel onboard chip that didn't support Aero.

Compare Vista and XP on that class of machine, and let me know how it goes.

Vista had a longer RC phase than Win7. And the numerous applications and hardware developers who got it right far (e.g. MONTHS) sooner than others (e.g. Creative Labs, NVIDIA, et. al.) is proof that ample technical information about Vista's specifications, architecture, and APIs were available for those developers who put their best foot forward soon enough to match Vista's release date.

Interesting choice of examples, as Creative faced a backlash from customers who suddenly found that 3D audio no longer worked, and Nvidia's drivers were so unstable that they were the number one cause of Vista's crashes early in its life cycle.

OEMs were as much to blame by offering Premium Vista SKUs on low-end configurations that wouldn't even run Windows 7 to anyone's satisfaction (an example of which I've provided above).

Are they? Microsoft stopped selling XP licenses to OEMs, yet OEMs still had plenty of product incapable of running Vista sitting in their warehouse. What did you expect them to do?

Vista had its short-comings and flaws, but relative to that proportion of problem reports which could be traced back to third-parties, they were relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.

You don't get it. Microsoft obtained their operating system hegemony by building a massive ecosystem around their product. Compatibility with a vast amount of third-party hardware and software is Windows' primary selling point. Windows problems caused by third parties are Microsoft's problem.

By SP1, Microsoft had fixed nearly all of Vista's flaws and yet the cacophony of anti-Vista sentiment (including people blaming MS for issues that we repeatedly saw traced back to drivers, firmware, BIOS, applications, or user-stupidity) continued without abatement.

It's funny you should mention SP1, because Microsoft had to make so many changes to Vista in SP1 to resolve customer complaints that it essentially became a new operating system. This broke compatibility with WAIK, Vista's primary automated deployment tool, and an update for it wasn't available right away. Considering that SP1 was the trigger that kicked off Vista migration pilots across the corporate world, I don't think I need to elaborate how the inability to use Microsoft's own tool to deploy Vista went down, particularly in light of Vista's compatibility issues at launch.

This is just one of the many 'fails' that comprised the train wreck that was Vista.

 

[JJChicken]

As a consumer, all I can say is:

Loved XP, hated Vista, SUPER LOVED Windows 7.

PRetty sure there's many out there just like me.

 

[Mem]

As a consumer, all I can say is:

Loved XP, hated Vista, SUPER LOVED Windows 7.

PRetty sure there's many out there just like me.

I like them all (well maybe XP is longer my favourite due to age and poor security) including Vista which I use on 3 different PCs ,never had any issues (its not rocket science to get any OS running great even Vista was easy as pie)oh and good old Ubuntu 9.10 which is an excellent OS if you want to go away from Windows based OS...I have removed XP since its no longer needed on any of my PCs since Vista/Win7/Ubuntu covers all my needs.

 

[CKTurbo128]

Why MS thinks its ok to release a new OS every 2 yrs now is beyond me.

Actually, MS is back on their typical 2-3 year OS release cycle from the 90s.

9X: 95 (1995) -> 98 (1998) -> ME (2000)
NT: NT4 (1996) -> 2000 (2000) -> XP (2001) -> Vista (2006) -> 7 (2009) -> 8 (2011-2012?)

XP to Vista was the exception, due to Longhorn (codename for Vista) being completely overhauled and the release of XP SP2 getting a higher priority. Longhorn was originally scheduled to be shipped out in 2003, two years after XP. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista)

MS pushing out 7 soon after Vista's release is probably not due to poor public reactions to Vista; 7 was already in development and was on track for release. There are rumors that 8 will be pushed out in 2011-2012, a mere 2-3 years after 7's release; does that mean MS thinks that 7 is a failure? I think not.

 

[theevilsharpie]

There are rumors that 8 will be pushed out in 2011-2012, a mere 2-3 years after 7's release...

I doubt this.

 

[CKTurbo128]

I doubt this.

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/11/21/windows-8-is-coming-in-2012/

Whether MS actually makes that date is up in the air.

 

[theevilsharpie]

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/11/21/windows-8-is-coming-in-2012/

Whether MS actually makes that date is up in the air.

Microsoft will not release a major follow-up to Windows 7 so soon. The business world will not put up with it, and if Microsoft attempts to do so, it could very well be the catalyst of a wide-scale migration to web applications that don't depend on a particular OS.

The only major OS's I can see Microsoft releasing in 2012 are new server releases, or an embedded-style OS for ARM-based PCs. If Windows 7 does see an update, it will be a minor release (e.g. Windows 7 SE). Microsoft knows that they have a hit on their hands with Windows 7, and they're going to milk it for as long as they can.