why is it that there are so many die hard xp users who just hate vista? personally i really like vista. it has many new features and i've never had any problems with it on gaming or anything. it was never unstable or anything. maybe it wasn't very good when it came out but since it's been updated it's gotten better? i didn't get vista when it first came out.
why do so many people dislike vista?
- Thread starter codyz2035
- Start date
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Snapster
Diamond Member
- Oct 14, 2001
- 3,916
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XP got one hell of a bashing before SP1 came out and there was so many die hard 2000 and 98 fans out there that refused to switch, particularly gamers. However back then Apple was not so 'cool' and not around as much to bash XP publicly as Vista is currently getting. Personally I find Vista a fine replacement for XP for my everyday use, but I can understand some of the gripes people are having (although not all), which are mainly created by companies other than Microsoft.
Now that it's starting to bed in some games are actually performing better than they do on XP, where this leave some of the misinformed users out there I do not know.
Now that it's starting to bed in some games are actually performing better than they do on XP, where this leave some of the misinformed users out there I do not know.
nerp
Diamond Member
- Dec 31, 2005
- 9,865
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The tide is turning and people are realizing that Vista is a better choice on newer hardware, especially Vista 64 with 4GB of ram.
Gaming performance is virtually identical now that NVIDIA and ATI have solid drivers off the ground (ATI always had better drivers).
I think most of the Vista bashers are beginning to finally STFU and many of the idiot bloggers who have propogated some of the anti-vista myths and blew the early releases out of proporation have bought new hardware, seen Vista in action and begun to realize that it's not the evil product it has been made out to be.
Vista bashing went from a way of being on the bandwagon and soundling like you know what you're talking about to a way of sounding irrational out of touch.
On the corporate side, it's a different story and there are plenty of reasons to hold off on upgrading. On the consumer/desktop side, the debate is ebbing and more and more people are installing and liking Vista.
Gaming performance is virtually identical now that NVIDIA and ATI have solid drivers off the ground (ATI always had better drivers).
I think most of the Vista bashers are beginning to finally STFU and many of the idiot bloggers who have propogated some of the anti-vista myths and blew the early releases out of proporation have bought new hardware, seen Vista in action and begun to realize that it's not the evil product it has been made out to be.
Vista bashing went from a way of being on the bandwagon and soundling like you know what you're talking about to a way of sounding irrational out of touch.
On the corporate side, it's a different story and there are plenty of reasons to hold off on upgrading. On the consumer/desktop side, the debate is ebbing and more and more people are installing and liking Vista.
- Mar 4, 2000
- 27,370
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- 106
Yep! In the business world, cost vs. benefit is a key driver. When you have a lot of machines with XP, unless Vista presents a big work saving or enhancing value, it is not economical to upgrade.
Also, in many business places, that would require extensive new hardware investment.
As new machines are sold, and they come with Vista, new consumers are using it without major whimpering - that's all they have known in many cases.
I have two Vista machines and two XP Pro machines. Currently I use an XP Pro machine as primary - mainly because I know it like the blind man knows his own house. But, I have no problems with the Vista machines either. It's mostly a matter of learning to use the differences.
a) It is NEW, and it's SUPPOSED to be much more modern, compellingly superior in every way. It isn't. XP you could sort of forgive for some of its lameness since it was designed back when PCs had a lot less capability / power than was the case in 2007 when Vista was introduced. XP lacked a lot that should've been in there, but Vista has even less excuse since times have changed and the bar is higher now.
b) It was/is buggy as hell when it came out. As in embarrassingly bad before SP1. There was just no excuse for it. Even today it is at best comparable to what one might see with XP in most cases, and still not better than LINUX. And the bugs weren't little things, but major "stuff just doesn't work", crashing, data corrupting, in your face annoyances.
c) It is incredibly presumptuously expensive for what relatively little new it offers over XP. Maybe the sorts of prices they're charging for it today might've been justified had it truly been stable, full of compelling well designed, useful, high quality new features / capabilities, but it isn't.
* Can't even burn an ISO image of a CD/DVD to a CD/DVD out of the box? Fail.
* "windows explorer" doesn't even have a much more useful file synchronization / copy support? Fail.
* Windows defender is among the worst of the rated anti-spyware solutions around today. Fail.
* IE6/IE7 -- yet another fiasco of a buggy insecure standards incompliant web browser that is very likely to get your PC owned by malware, and which fails to deliver the same quality as even the free Firefox / Opera in many cases. To pass the bar they should've EXCEEDED in this paid-for product the quality of what the FREE competition offered. They didn't.
* 64 bit missing from the standard distributions. Fail. 2007/2008 was the time to make 64 bit computing UBIQUITOUS. Virtually every PC made in the last several years is 64 bit capable. RAM is dirt cheap and installing 4GB in a mid-range business or home PC is just nothing that's uncommon or unreasonable especially considering what memory hogs Vista and most applications are. Withholding access to included 64 bit install media and encouraging 32 bit only use (often with NO upgrade path for OEM editions) is just incomprehensibly stupid.
* Built in CD/DVD authoring tools are horrible and unstable AFAICT.
* Notepad?! Paint?! Calc?! Wordpad?! Wow they've had like 10 years to improve their utilities / accessories and yet they're scarcely any better than XP's. Massive fail. Windows Photo Gallery is about the best of the bunch and even it is nothing particularly good compared to the FREE tools from 3rd parties like Picasa, Faststone, LINUX, et. al.
* They create a proprietary document format, and its siblings, .DOC, .XPS, .XLS, .PPT, et. al. and their Office 2007 siblings and yet on your brand spanking new Vista PC you can't even VIEW documents in these formats much less CREATE / EDIT them? What are they thinking?! Google office is free online. Open Office, Star Office, Lotus Office, all free downloads of very high quality full office suites. You could make an argument that in some ways OpenOffice (FREE!) isn't QUITE as good as say Microsoft Office 2007 Professional (the several hundred dollar suite), but it is CLOSE, and good enough for about 95% of the people out there. Again, if they aren't even going to support READING their OWN FORMATS in their OWN OS BY DEFAULT, and aren't going to have in 2007 at least the same quality of integrated office / document editing / spreadsheet / document viewer programs as you commonly get FREE, they've missed the mark. I get better out-of-the-box document viewing / processing on LINUX than I do on Vista Ultimate which can't even open a WORD or PDF file!
* Backup tools?! I'll just say that even the Vista ULTIMATE one is a PATHETIC excuse compared even to freeware or modestly expensive home version software from places like COBIAN, ACRONIS, SYNCBACK, et. al. It is WORSE in many ways than the NTBACKUP that XP had INCLUDED, and that is saying a lot. Now one might wonder how they could make it any worse -- well, they did, in VISTA HOME editions. Utter pathetic rubbish, completely useless backup capability that is probably only going to HELP people lose data. This is one MAJOR area they had the capability and indeed responsibility (for an OS vendor!) to improve; they failed utterly.
* DX10 -- pathetic joke. They desperately tried to restrict it to Vista instead of XP SP3 since they couldn't come up with many other reasons for the marketing sheets as to what useful features Vista had over XP. Pathetic.
* Not even any encryption except in Vista Business / Ultimate, and even then not a full set including any good capacity for doing it over email / IM / non-NTFS drives, et. al. Again, freeware like truecrypt, pgp, gpg, et. al. is a million times better.
* VOIP / video conferencing? Hello? Where are you? Standards compliance? SIP? No? Freeware from LINUX, Skype, Yahoo, AOL, et. al. certainly competes strongly with the little bits MSN has, and, again, I'd have expected something revolutionary or at least compelling and much improved as compared to what XP could do, and something that integrated well into the OS.
* Calendaring? Compare to, say, Google's free offering, Macintosh's integrated software, Mozilla's freeware, et. al. Very basic utility / application and they failed again.
* Anti-Virus. Nothing whatsoever. Come on, you wrote the OS and instead of making it secure you inflict IE7, ActiveX, lots of new and old security vulnerabilities on us, and don't even successfully make it much more secure or the user experience of security tools / administration any better. 3rd party products are not just a better solution than Microsoft's, they're a NECESSITY.
* Email... give me a break. Again, the target is to improve on what LINUX and Mozilla thunderbird could do. Including a fixed / better version of Outlook might've been a start. They didn't even manage to do anything even that half-arsed good.
* WinFS, metadata, integrated search that's REALLY useful / good? Nope. Macintosh, LINUX, and freeware from google and others completely ate your lunch Microsoft. Another big opportunity wasted.
* Image editing? Well GIMP is free and quite decent. Paint.NET is even free and much more usable than anything Microsoft has. Photoshop elements and Macintosh's iPhoto type gallery would be about the level of stuff I'd expect to be integrated. We get? Nothing. Paint. Yeah. Useless.
* Remote access; not an esoteric feature for enterprise customers, you know, this is the age of the INTERNET, and people want to get to THEIR STUFF remotely, you know, P2P programs with giant popularity even among KIDS. So tell me again why the bright shiny new OS from microsoft can't even let me get at my files or manage my computer over the internet in Home editions? Or why RDP sucks so badly even if you have Vista Ultimate?
* Desktop management... none of the nice virtual desktop, window management, et. al. improvements. Want to know what Microsoft's next OS will do? Look at Macintosh 10 years ago, or LINUX 10 years ago. They should've had integrated desktop virtualization, integrated support for efficient multi-monitor multi-head use.
* Networking that isn't a joke. Ever try to copy files on Vista while you're, say, playing a MP3. Not a pretty sight. XP generally still has much better throughput networking in many cases than Vista.
* DRM, WGA activation nonsense. Mandatory signed drivers. No thanks. I pay you money, you sell me software. I don't want/need your spyware, nagware, big brother fascist "we own your computer and if you're REALLY a good boy we MIGHT even LET you use it in the ways WE approve of. MAYBE."
* An installer that has to be the stupidest one I've encountered in years. Loading programs one bit at a time via a rack of switches on a PDP was more fun. I've struggled HOURS to install Vista on PCs that took literally 30 minutes to install XP. Their installer shouldn't have passed quality control.
* No reasonable ability to slipstream service packs into Vista, i.e. it is harder than it was for XP. Massive failure. Grandma on dialup doesn't want to download 100 megabytes of SP1 whenever she reinstalls her PC. Give her a shiny new disc with it integrated, or make it easy to have stuff download ONCE and be used AGAIN. Windows Update sucks in a lot of cases.
* Non-english variants are second class products. If you're going after a global PC market you need to imrprove the consistency / quality of support for other languages. You should be able to localize Vista to work in ANY language. It sure isn't much of a problem for LINUX, and that is FREE!
* Firewall...networking. pathetic. Is it asking too much for me to control my own machine? Check out IPTABLES the free firewall in LINUX. Check out the network configuration in even a decent home router. Compare to the relatively featureless firewall in Vista. Pathetic.
I'd expect full control, nice support for IPv4, IPv6, VLAN, Multicast, IPSEC VPN, user defined QOS, all with a nice command line interface AND a nice GUI with novice / wizard / expert modes.
Definable QOS PER application.
What do we get? Nothing usable.
* PC / Data migration / installers / Aplication portability -- I have a Vista PC, I have my 3rd party applications, I have my data. A common task set is backup, restore, move to a different PC, move to a different hard disc, add a hard disc, replace a hard disc. You basically can't do any of that effectively due to the utter absence of design of Windows software package management, the curse that is the registry, the curse that is the promulgation of fixed drive letters instead of remappable mount paths, the lack of integration of network / remote storage devices and file sharing. Try installing VISTA on a USB hard disc. Try installing Vista on a network share and having a diskless PC. Try buying a copy of MS office, installing it on (E
, and then dual-booting between Vista and XP and see how well your MS office is going to work for you after you reboot *THE SAME COMPUTER* to XP. Try moving E: to F: and see which of your programs installed on E: still work. Try reinstalling Vista without affecting the installed drivers / applications. Try having application references to a network drive that is sometimes there and sometimes not. Network errors happen, they should be handled GRACEFULLY. Try moving your Vista install from one PC to another. Try just upgrading your NIC and GPU and Hard disc without getting into Vista activation hell. Microsoft, I've got news for you, get rid of the registry, get rid of drive letters, hell, even get rid of the filesystem, it is time for metadata, portability, "the network is the computer", the cloud, distributed data over the internet, the LAN, the cloud, full portability of everything, semantic computing, semantic web, et. al. I feel like slapping your development team every time a copy operation fails because the path can't be longer than 128 characters from the drive letter or whatever -- WHAT, IS THIS 1980?!
I've got TERABYTES of disk space and yet I can't even have decent uppercase / lower-case distinct filesystem with metadata and paths of reasonably unlimited length, and unlimited composition metadata?
I could go on and on...
If you're a multi billion dollar company that is the industry leader on OS / PC technology and after like 8 years of thousands of geniuses developing the thing you can't come up with something a LOT better than Vista, you're in the wrong business.
Basically the only 'good' thing about Vista that I can say without much qualification is that it's nice to have 64 bit version, though even that they made a royal PAIN or sometimes impossibility to achieve, and it is ONLY such a relief to have it because they pathetically didn't even release a 64 bit version / service pack of XP that got any decent product support.
b) It was/is buggy as hell when it came out. As in embarrassingly bad before SP1. There was just no excuse for it. Even today it is at best comparable to what one might see with XP in most cases, and still not better than LINUX. And the bugs weren't little things, but major "stuff just doesn't work", crashing, data corrupting, in your face annoyances.
c) It is incredibly presumptuously expensive for what relatively little new it offers over XP. Maybe the sorts of prices they're charging for it today might've been justified had it truly been stable, full of compelling well designed, useful, high quality new features / capabilities, but it isn't.
* Can't even burn an ISO image of a CD/DVD to a CD/DVD out of the box? Fail.
* "windows explorer" doesn't even have a much more useful file synchronization / copy support? Fail.
* Windows defender is among the worst of the rated anti-spyware solutions around today. Fail.
* IE6/IE7 -- yet another fiasco of a buggy insecure standards incompliant web browser that is very likely to get your PC owned by malware, and which fails to deliver the same quality as even the free Firefox / Opera in many cases. To pass the bar they should've EXCEEDED in this paid-for product the quality of what the FREE competition offered. They didn't.
* 64 bit missing from the standard distributions. Fail. 2007/2008 was the time to make 64 bit computing UBIQUITOUS. Virtually every PC made in the last several years is 64 bit capable. RAM is dirt cheap and installing 4GB in a mid-range business or home PC is just nothing that's uncommon or unreasonable especially considering what memory hogs Vista and most applications are. Withholding access to included 64 bit install media and encouraging 32 bit only use (often with NO upgrade path for OEM editions) is just incomprehensibly stupid.
* Built in CD/DVD authoring tools are horrible and unstable AFAICT.
* Notepad?! Paint?! Calc?! Wordpad?! Wow they've had like 10 years to improve their utilities / accessories and yet they're scarcely any better than XP's. Massive fail. Windows Photo Gallery is about the best of the bunch and even it is nothing particularly good compared to the FREE tools from 3rd parties like Picasa, Faststone, LINUX, et. al.
* They create a proprietary document format, and its siblings, .DOC, .XPS, .XLS, .PPT, et. al. and their Office 2007 siblings and yet on your brand spanking new Vista PC you can't even VIEW documents in these formats much less CREATE / EDIT them? What are they thinking?! Google office is free online. Open Office, Star Office, Lotus Office, all free downloads of very high quality full office suites. You could make an argument that in some ways OpenOffice (FREE!) isn't QUITE as good as say Microsoft Office 2007 Professional (the several hundred dollar suite), but it is CLOSE, and good enough for about 95% of the people out there. Again, if they aren't even going to support READING their OWN FORMATS in their OWN OS BY DEFAULT, and aren't going to have in 2007 at least the same quality of integrated office / document editing / spreadsheet / document viewer programs as you commonly get FREE, they've missed the mark. I get better out-of-the-box document viewing / processing on LINUX than I do on Vista Ultimate which can't even open a WORD or PDF file!
* Backup tools?! I'll just say that even the Vista ULTIMATE one is a PATHETIC excuse compared even to freeware or modestly expensive home version software from places like COBIAN, ACRONIS, SYNCBACK, et. al. It is WORSE in many ways than the NTBACKUP that XP had INCLUDED, and that is saying a lot. Now one might wonder how they could make it any worse -- well, they did, in VISTA HOME editions. Utter pathetic rubbish, completely useless backup capability that is probably only going to HELP people lose data. This is one MAJOR area they had the capability and indeed responsibility (for an OS vendor!) to improve; they failed utterly.
* DX10 -- pathetic joke. They desperately tried to restrict it to Vista instead of XP SP3 since they couldn't come up with many other reasons for the marketing sheets as to what useful features Vista had over XP. Pathetic.
* Not even any encryption except in Vista Business / Ultimate, and even then not a full set including any good capacity for doing it over email / IM / non-NTFS drives, et. al. Again, freeware like truecrypt, pgp, gpg, et. al. is a million times better.
* VOIP / video conferencing? Hello? Where are you? Standards compliance? SIP? No? Freeware from LINUX, Skype, Yahoo, AOL, et. al. certainly competes strongly with the little bits MSN has, and, again, I'd have expected something revolutionary or at least compelling and much improved as compared to what XP could do, and something that integrated well into the OS.
* Calendaring? Compare to, say, Google's free offering, Macintosh's integrated software, Mozilla's freeware, et. al. Very basic utility / application and they failed again.
* Anti-Virus. Nothing whatsoever. Come on, you wrote the OS and instead of making it secure you inflict IE7, ActiveX, lots of new and old security vulnerabilities on us, and don't even successfully make it much more secure or the user experience of security tools / administration any better. 3rd party products are not just a better solution than Microsoft's, they're a NECESSITY.
* Email... give me a break. Again, the target is to improve on what LINUX and Mozilla thunderbird could do. Including a fixed / better version of Outlook might've been a start. They didn't even manage to do anything even that half-arsed good.
* WinFS, metadata, integrated search that's REALLY useful / good? Nope. Macintosh, LINUX, and freeware from google and others completely ate your lunch Microsoft. Another big opportunity wasted.
* Image editing? Well GIMP is free and quite decent. Paint.NET is even free and much more usable than anything Microsoft has. Photoshop elements and Macintosh's iPhoto type gallery would be about the level of stuff I'd expect to be integrated. We get? Nothing. Paint. Yeah. Useless.
* Remote access; not an esoteric feature for enterprise customers, you know, this is the age of the INTERNET, and people want to get to THEIR STUFF remotely, you know, P2P programs with giant popularity even among KIDS. So tell me again why the bright shiny new OS from microsoft can't even let me get at my files or manage my computer over the internet in Home editions? Or why RDP sucks so badly even if you have Vista Ultimate?
* Desktop management... none of the nice virtual desktop, window management, et. al. improvements. Want to know what Microsoft's next OS will do? Look at Macintosh 10 years ago, or LINUX 10 years ago. They should've had integrated desktop virtualization, integrated support for efficient multi-monitor multi-head use.
* Networking that isn't a joke. Ever try to copy files on Vista while you're, say, playing a MP3. Not a pretty sight. XP generally still has much better throughput networking in many cases than Vista.
* DRM, WGA activation nonsense. Mandatory signed drivers. No thanks. I pay you money, you sell me software. I don't want/need your spyware, nagware, big brother fascist "we own your computer and if you're REALLY a good boy we MIGHT even LET you use it in the ways WE approve of. MAYBE."
* An installer that has to be the stupidest one I've encountered in years. Loading programs one bit at a time via a rack of switches on a PDP was more fun. I've struggled HOURS to install Vista on PCs that took literally 30 minutes to install XP. Their installer shouldn't have passed quality control.
* No reasonable ability to slipstream service packs into Vista, i.e. it is harder than it was for XP. Massive failure. Grandma on dialup doesn't want to download 100 megabytes of SP1 whenever she reinstalls her PC. Give her a shiny new disc with it integrated, or make it easy to have stuff download ONCE and be used AGAIN. Windows Update sucks in a lot of cases.
* Non-english variants are second class products. If you're going after a global PC market you need to imrprove the consistency / quality of support for other languages. You should be able to localize Vista to work in ANY language. It sure isn't much of a problem for LINUX, and that is FREE!
* Firewall...networking. pathetic. Is it asking too much for me to control my own machine? Check out IPTABLES the free firewall in LINUX. Check out the network configuration in even a decent home router. Compare to the relatively featureless firewall in Vista. Pathetic.
I'd expect full control, nice support for IPv4, IPv6, VLAN, Multicast, IPSEC VPN, user defined QOS, all with a nice command line interface AND a nice GUI with novice / wizard / expert modes.
Definable QOS PER application.
What do we get? Nothing usable.
* PC / Data migration / installers / Aplication portability -- I have a Vista PC, I have my 3rd party applications, I have my data. A common task set is backup, restore, move to a different PC, move to a different hard disc, add a hard disc, replace a hard disc. You basically can't do any of that effectively due to the utter absence of design of Windows software package management, the curse that is the registry, the curse that is the promulgation of fixed drive letters instead of remappable mount paths, the lack of integration of network / remote storage devices and file sharing. Try installing VISTA on a USB hard disc. Try installing Vista on a network share and having a diskless PC. Try buying a copy of MS office, installing it on (E
, and then dual-booting between Vista and XP and see how well your MS office is going to work for you after you reboot *THE SAME COMPUTER* to XP. Try moving E: to F: and see which of your programs installed on E: still work. Try reinstalling Vista without affecting the installed drivers / applications. Try having application references to a network drive that is sometimes there and sometimes not. Network errors happen, they should be handled GRACEFULLY. Try moving your Vista install from one PC to another. Try just upgrading your NIC and GPU and Hard disc without getting into Vista activation hell. Microsoft, I've got news for you, get rid of the registry, get rid of drive letters, hell, even get rid of the filesystem, it is time for metadata, portability, "the network is the computer", the cloud, distributed data over the internet, the LAN, the cloud, full portability of everything, semantic computing, semantic web, et. al. I feel like slapping your development team every time a copy operation fails because the path can't be longer than 128 characters from the drive letter or whatever -- WHAT, IS THIS 1980?!I've got TERABYTES of disk space and yet I can't even have decent uppercase / lower-case distinct filesystem with metadata and paths of reasonably unlimited length, and unlimited composition metadata?
I could go on and on...
If you're a multi billion dollar company that is the industry leader on OS / PC technology and after like 8 years of thousands of geniuses developing the thing you can't come up with something a LOT better than Vista, you're in the wrong business.
Basically the only 'good' thing about Vista that I can say without much qualification is that it's nice to have 64 bit version, though even that they made a royal PAIN or sometimes impossibility to achieve, and it is ONLY such a relief to have it because they pathetically didn't even release a 64 bit version / service pack of XP that got any decent product support.
PS oh and Media center (Ultimate / Home Premium) is the joke of the century.
a) Massive incompatibility with lots of older tuner models.
b) They're just MONTHS away from TURNING OFF analog TV in the whole USA, they've had digital TV on air for YEARS, and yet I can't even get ANY WHATSOEVER digital / HDTV TV listings in Vista's brand new next generation Media Center?!
c) Recorder storage that can't be directed to spread across the LAN or even multiple local drives or *gasp* the internet.
d) So let me get this straight, you buy TWO PCs with Vista Ultimate Media Center, and you can't even share the recordings or live TV or control the scheduling of recordings from EITHER PC. Isn't that what, oh, NETWORKING is for? Yet I can buy an X-BOX or dedicated media center extender PC and have it work better (still not FULLY WELL, but BETTER) than my 2nd $1000 PC on a gigabit LAN with Vista Ultimate can? I'm confused. I thought you wanted to promote Vista PCs for DRM, video, audio, media, media center, video games, et. al. So what's the deal that an X-Box does better than my quad-core 4GB RAM 1TB disc space VISTA ULTIMATE PC with a high end GPU?
e) Cable card = joke. What's the point of all the draconian DRM in Vista if I can't even use my Vista Media Center with my Cable TV and have it work?!
f) Oh wow it is 2008 and Vista finally plays DVDs by default if you buy the $400 or whatever Vista Ultimate. Wow, DVD playing, I'm so excited, my $1500 PC can do what a $29 DVD player from Walmart can do ten times as well. Did you, oh, forget about HD-DVD, BLU-RAY? Is there some good reason my shiny new VISTA ULTIMATE MEDIA CENTER can't even play the 2007 CURRENT DVD formats BY DEFAULT? What, is this 1980?
FYI, the FREE MythTV software that has been out for YEARS is like a MILLION times better than the Vista Media Center software. Why am I wanting to PAY for Vista again?
a) Massive incompatibility with lots of older tuner models.
b) They're just MONTHS away from TURNING OFF analog TV in the whole USA, they've had digital TV on air for YEARS, and yet I can't even get ANY WHATSOEVER digital / HDTV TV listings in Vista's brand new next generation Media Center?!
c) Recorder storage that can't be directed to spread across the LAN or even multiple local drives or *gasp* the internet.
d) So let me get this straight, you buy TWO PCs with Vista Ultimate Media Center, and you can't even share the recordings or live TV or control the scheduling of recordings from EITHER PC. Isn't that what, oh, NETWORKING is for? Yet I can buy an X-BOX or dedicated media center extender PC and have it work better (still not FULLY WELL, but BETTER) than my 2nd $1000 PC on a gigabit LAN with Vista Ultimate can? I'm confused. I thought you wanted to promote Vista PCs for DRM, video, audio, media, media center, video games, et. al. So what's the deal that an X-Box does better than my quad-core 4GB RAM 1TB disc space VISTA ULTIMATE PC with a high end GPU?
e) Cable card = joke. What's the point of all the draconian DRM in Vista if I can't even use my Vista Media Center with my Cable TV and have it work?!
f) Oh wow it is 2008 and Vista finally plays DVDs by default if you buy the $400 or whatever Vista Ultimate. Wow, DVD playing, I'm so excited, my $1500 PC can do what a $29 DVD player from Walmart can do ten times as well. Did you, oh, forget about HD-DVD, BLU-RAY? Is there some good reason my shiny new VISTA ULTIMATE MEDIA CENTER can't even play the 2007 CURRENT DVD formats BY DEFAULT? What, is this 1980?
FYI, the FREE MythTV software that has been out for YEARS is like a MILLION times better than the Vista Media Center software. Why am I wanting to PAY for Vista again?
Frankly I think there's problems all around regarding our expectations of OSes. All of this talk of Windows 7 recently makes me think that Microsoft really just doesn't get the fact that they made a good enough OS for 97% of users already with XP. IMO that's the #1 reason people aren't upgrading. Windows 7 will not fix that at all and in fact it will just exacerbate things because they will now have THREE main consumer OSes to support in addition to the server OSes. They already extended XP support until 2013. Most people do not need or want to spend money to upgrade!!!
The #2 reason that people don't like Vista IMO is the UAC (user account control) popup windows. I disable it almost immediately when I install it on a new machine now. It's just terribly annoying.
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Me personally, I upgraded to Vista almost immediately - mainly because I fix computers as a job on the side, so I wanted to become familiar with it. I think it has become a great OS in the year or so since its launch. Out of the box, though, Vista was a bit bloated for anything but cutting edge hardware when it launched. If you put it on a single core system with less than 2GB of RAM, you would have been sorry. Also, distributions of Vista from companies (*cough* Dell *cough*) often contain 3rd party bloatware that just turns Vista to a slug.
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But as for Vista itself, I think it's a great OS that people expected way too much from. It's a prettier, nicer XP that's a lot more bloated. You need at least a quick dual core with 2GB+ of RAM to make it worthwhile.
Some good Vista features: the Gadgets are nice. Being able to preview windows by holding your mouse over the start menu is a huge bonus (if I'm installing software that takes awhile on my PC, I can just use it like normal, hold my mouse over the installation icon on the start menu and see a mini preview of its progress bar, rather than Tabbing in and out of the window and interrupting what I'm doing). The network control panel is nicer, better, more intuitive. In general the control panels are much better, with a control panel for Device Manager (no more going to System), and Programs being called Programs, not "Add/Remove Programs." Icons in windows look better, and the My Computer window has more information (like coloured bars illustrating how full the disks are). Vista is a bunch of little improvements over XP, and a fat 10GB+ OS installation (which frankly makes no difference in this day and age, with fast 500GB drives being so cheap). Also, vista redraws of moving windows are much smoother than XP in general, due to Aero Glass using the GPU rather than the CPU for window redraws.
As for 64-bit: if you bought a legal copy of Vista, you can order a 64-bit disc direct from Microsoft for ~$10. I got my copy from them, and I run Vista 64-bit on my desktop now, and Vista 32-bit on my laptop.
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As for built-in security (antivirus, firewall, etc) - it's crap like before. What do you expect?
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As for not being able to slipstream SP1 into existing Vista installs - I agree totally and it pisses me off too. Apparently the Vista "install" disc isn't really an install like XP but more like rolling out a clean image. Still, shame on MS for not making an easy way of creating discs with service packs/network updates already included.
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As for the Vista install being stupid - it is WAY better than XP's, and best of all it requires no user input after you pick the disc it's going to go on.
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As for WGA activation - it sucks but it's been added to XP as well, so you're kinda screwed both ways.
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As for no improvements to remote desktop, etc. I agree completely, MS has kinda fucked the dog here and should have improved this extremely useful feature. Headless boxes connected to the network by wire or wirelessly should be WAY easier to control on a safe network by now!
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As for DX10, it's a mixed bag. Aero is great and a much needed evolutionary change to the OS. The 3d part sucks balls and is still marginally slower than DX9. The whole point of DX10 was supposed to be that it's faster!!!
The #2 reason that people don't like Vista IMO is the UAC (user account control) popup windows. I disable it almost immediately when I install it on a new machine now. It's just terribly annoying.
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Me personally, I upgraded to Vista almost immediately - mainly because I fix computers as a job on the side, so I wanted to become familiar with it. I think it has become a great OS in the year or so since its launch. Out of the box, though, Vista was a bit bloated for anything but cutting edge hardware when it launched. If you put it on a single core system with less than 2GB of RAM, you would have been sorry. Also, distributions of Vista from companies (*cough* Dell *cough*) often contain 3rd party bloatware that just turns Vista to a slug.
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But as for Vista itself, I think it's a great OS that people expected way too much from. It's a prettier, nicer XP that's a lot more bloated. You need at least a quick dual core with 2GB+ of RAM to make it worthwhile.
Some good Vista features: the Gadgets are nice. Being able to preview windows by holding your mouse over the start menu is a huge bonus (if I'm installing software that takes awhile on my PC, I can just use it like normal, hold my mouse over the installation icon on the start menu and see a mini preview of its progress bar, rather than Tabbing in and out of the window and interrupting what I'm doing). The network control panel is nicer, better, more intuitive. In general the control panels are much better, with a control panel for Device Manager (no more going to System), and Programs being called Programs, not "Add/Remove Programs." Icons in windows look better, and the My Computer window has more information (like coloured bars illustrating how full the disks are). Vista is a bunch of little improvements over XP, and a fat 10GB+ OS installation (which frankly makes no difference in this day and age, with fast 500GB drives being so cheap). Also, vista redraws of moving windows are much smoother than XP in general, due to Aero Glass using the GPU rather than the CPU for window redraws.
As for 64-bit: if you bought a legal copy of Vista, you can order a 64-bit disc direct from Microsoft for ~$10. I got my copy from them, and I run Vista 64-bit on my desktop now, and Vista 32-bit on my laptop.
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As for built-in security (antivirus, firewall, etc) - it's crap like before. What do you expect?
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As for not being able to slipstream SP1 into existing Vista installs - I agree totally and it pisses me off too. Apparently the Vista "install" disc isn't really an install like XP but more like rolling out a clean image. Still, shame on MS for not making an easy way of creating discs with service packs/network updates already included.
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As for the Vista install being stupid - it is WAY better than XP's, and best of all it requires no user input after you pick the disc it's going to go on.
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As for WGA activation - it sucks but it's been added to XP as well, so you're kinda screwed both ways.
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As for no improvements to remote desktop, etc. I agree completely, MS has kinda fucked the dog here and should have improved this extremely useful feature. Headless boxes connected to the network by wire or wirelessly should be WAY easier to control on a safe network by now!
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As for DX10, it's a mixed bag. Aero is great and a much needed evolutionary change to the OS. The 3d part sucks balls and is still marginally slower than DX9. The whole point of DX10 was supposed to be that it's faster!!!
XZeroII
Lifer
- Jun 30, 2001
- 12,572
- 0
- 0
Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
a) It is NEW, and it's SUPPOSED to be much more modern, compellingly superior in every way. It isn't. XP you could sort of forgive for some of its lameness since it was designed back when PCs had a lot less capability / power than was the case in 2007 when Vista was introduced. XP lacked a lot that should've been in there, but Vista has even less excuse since times have changed and the bar is higher now.
b) It was/is buggy as hell when it came out. As in embarrassingly bad before SP1. There was just no excuse for it. Even today it is at best comparable to what one might see with XP in most cases, and still not better than LINUX. And the bugs weren't little things, but major "stuff just doesn't work", crashing, data corrupting, in your face annoyances.
c) It is incredibly presumptuously expensive for what relatively little new it offers over XP. Maybe the sorts of prices they're charging for it today might've been justified had it truly been stable, full of compelling well designed, useful, high quality new features / capabilities, but it isn't.
* Can't even burn an ISO image of a CD/DVD to a CD/DVD out of the box? Fail.
* "windows explorer" doesn't even have a much more useful file synchronization / copy support? Fail.
* Windows defender is among the worst of the rated anti-spyware solutions around today. Fail.
* IE6/IE7 -- yet another fiasco of a buggy insecure standards incompliant web browser that is very likely to get your PC owned by malware, and which fails to deliver the same quality as even the free Firefox / Opera in many cases. To pass the bar they should've EXCEEDED in this paid-for product the quality of what the FREE competition offered. They didn't.
* 64 bit missing from the standard distributions. Fail. 2007/2008 was the time to make 64 bit computing UBIQUITOUS. Virtually every PC made in the last several years is 64 bit capable. RAM is dirt cheap and installing 4GB in a mid-range business or home PC is just nothing that's uncommon or unreasonable especially considering what memory hogs Vista and most applications are. Withholding access to included 64 bit install media and encouraging 32 bit only use (often with NO upgrade path for OEM editions) is just incomprehensibly stupid.
* Built in CD/DVD authoring tools are horrible and unstable AFAICT.
* Notepad?! Paint?! Calc?! Wordpad?! Wow they've had like 10 years to improve their utilities / accessories and yet they're scarcely any better than XP's. Massive fail. Windows Photo Gallery is about the best of the bunch and even it is nothing particularly good compared to the FREE tools from 3rd parties like Picasa, Faststone, LINUX, et. al.
* They create a proprietary document format, and its siblings, .DOC, .XPS, .XLS, .PPT, et. al. and their Office 2007 siblings and yet on your brand spanking new Vista PC you can't even VIEW documents in these formats much less CREATE / EDIT them? What are they thinking?! Google office is free online. Open Office, Star Office, Lotus Office, all free downloads of very high quality full office suites. You could make an argument that in some ways OpenOffice (FREE!) isn't QUITE as good as say Microsoft Office 2007 Professional (the several hundred dollar suite), but it is CLOSE, and good enough for about 95% of the people out there. Again, if they aren't even going to support READING their OWN FORMATS in their OWN OS BY DEFAULT, and aren't going to have in 2007 at least the same quality of integrated office / document editing / spreadsheet / document viewer programs as you commonly get FREE, they've missed the mark. I get better out-of-the-box document viewing / processing on LINUX than I do on Vista Ultimate which can't even open a WORD or PDF file!
* Backup tools?! I'll just say that even the Vista ULTIMATE one is a PATHETIC excuse compared even to freeware or modestly expensive home version software from places like COBIAN, ACRONIS, SYNCBACK, et. al. It is WORSE in many ways than the NTBACKUP that XP had INCLUDED, and that is saying a lot. Now one might wonder how they could make it any worse -- well, they did, in VISTA HOME editions. Utter pathetic rubbish, completely useless backup capability that is probably only going to HELP people lose data. This is one MAJOR area they had the capability and indeed responsibility (for an OS vendor!) to improve; they failed utterly.
* DX10 -- pathetic joke. They desperately tried to restrict it to Vista instead of XP SP3 since they couldn't come up with many other reasons for the marketing sheets as to what useful features Vista had over XP. Pathetic.
* Not even any encryption except in Vista Business / Ultimate, and even then not a full set including any good capacity for doing it over email / IM / non-NTFS drives, et. al. Again, freeware like truecrypt, pgp, gpg, et. al. is a million times better.
* VOIP / video conferencing? Hello? Where are you? Standards compliance? SIP? No? Freeware from LINUX, Skype, Yahoo, AOL, et. al. certainly competes strongly with the little bits MSN has, and, again, I'd have expected something revolutionary or at least compelling and much improved as compared to what XP could do, and something that integrated well into the OS.
* Calendaring? Compare to, say, Google's free offering, Macintosh's integrated software, Mozilla's freeware, et. al. Very basic utility / application and they failed again.
* Anti-Virus. Nothing whatsoever. Come on, you wrote the OS and instead of making it secure you inflict IE7, ActiveX, lots of new and old security vulnerabilities on us, and don't even successfully make it much more secure or the user experience of security tools / administration any better. 3rd party products are not just a better solution than Microsoft's, they're a NECESSITY.
* Email... give me a break. Again, the target is to improve on what LINUX and Mozilla thunderbird could do. Including a fixed / better version of Outlook might've been a start. They didn't even manage to do anything even that half-arsed good.
* WinFS, metadata, integrated search that's REALLY useful / good? Nope. Macintosh, LINUX, and freeware from google and others completely ate your lunch Microsoft. Another big opportunity wasted.
* Image editing? Well GIMP is free and quite decent. Paint.NET is even free and much more usable than anything Microsoft has. Photoshop elements and Macintosh's iPhoto type gallery would be about the level of stuff I'd expect to be integrated. We get? Nothing. Paint. Yeah. Useless.
* Remote access; not an esoteric feature for enterprise customers, you know, this is the age of the INTERNET, and people want to get to THEIR STUFF remotely, you know, P2P programs with giant popularity even among KIDS. So tell me again why the bright shiny new OS from microsoft can't even let me get at my files or manage my computer over the internet in Home editions? Or why RDP sucks so badly even if you have Vista Ultimate?
* Desktop management... none of the nice virtual desktop, window management, et. al. improvements. Want to know what Microsoft's next OS will do? Look at Macintosh 10 years ago, or LINUX 10 years ago. They should've had integrated desktop virtualization, integrated support for efficient multi-monitor multi-head use.
* Networking that isn't a joke. Ever try to copy files on Vista while you're, say, playing a MP3. Not a pretty sight. XP generally still has much better throughput networking in many cases than Vista.
* DRM, WGA activation nonsense. Mandatory signed drivers. No thanks. I pay you money, you sell me software. I don't want/need your spyware, nagware, big brother fascist "we own your computer and if you're REALLY a good boy we MIGHT even LET you use it in the ways WE approve of. MAYBE."
* An installer that has to be the stupidest one I've encountered in years. Loading programs one bit at a time via a rack of switches on a PDP was more fun. I've struggled HOURS to install Vista on PCs that took literally 30 minutes to install XP. Their installer shouldn't have passed quality control.
* No reasonable ability to slipstream service packs into Vista, i.e. it is harder than it was for XP. Massive failure. Grandma on dialup doesn't want to download 100 megabytes of SP1 whenever she reinstalls her PC. Give her a shiny new disc with it integrated, or make it easy to have stuff download ONCE and be used AGAIN. Windows Update sucks in a lot of cases.
* Non-english variants are second class products. If you're going after a global PC market you need to imrprove the consistency / quality of support for other languages. You should be able to localize Vista to work in ANY language. It sure isn't much of a problem for LINUX, and that is FREE!
* Firewall...networking. pathetic. Is it asking too much for me to control my own machine? Check out IPTABLES the free firewall in LINUX. Check out the network configuration in even a decent home router. Compare to the relatively featureless firewall in Vista. Pathetic.
I'd expect full control, nice support for IPv4, IPv6, VLAN, Multicast, IPSEC VPN, user defined QOS, all with a nice command line interface AND a nice GUI with novice / wizard / expert modes.
Definable QOS PER application.
What do we get? Nothing usable.
* PC / Data migration / installers / Aplication portability -- I have a Vista PC, I have my 3rd party applications, I have my data. A common task set is backup, restore, move to a different PC, move to a different hard disc, add a hard disc, replace a hard disc. You basically can't do any of that effectively due to the utter absence of design of Windows software package management, the curse that is the registry, the curse that is the promulgation of fixed drive letters instead of remappable mount paths, the lack of integration of network / remote storage devices and file sharing. Try installing VISTA on a USB hard disc. Try installing Vista on a network share and having a diskless PC. Try buying a copy of MS office, installing it on (E
I've got TERABYTES of disk space and yet I can't even have decent uppercase / lower-case distinct filesystem with metadata and paths of reasonably unlimited length, and unlimited composition metadata?
I could go on and on...
If you're a multi billion dollar company that is the industry leader on OS / PC technology and after like 8 years of thousands of geniuses developing the thing you can't come up with something a LOT better than Vista, you're in the wrong business.
Basically the only 'good' thing about Vista that I can say without much qualification is that it's nice to have 64 bit version, though even that they made a royal PAIN or sometimes impossibility to achieve, and it is ONLY such a relief to have it because they pathetically didn't even release a 64 bit version / service pack of XP that got any decent product support.
Many of these can be addressed by 3 simple letters: DOJ
Microsoft can't even use the bathroom without the DOJ wondering what's coming out. If they bundle ANYTHING even close to competing with something that's already out there, they get pounded.
VinDSL
Diamond Member
Originally posted by: corkyg
Agree! A clear case over overly pedantic TMI.
OMG!!! I *thought* it was just me!
I'm becoming mainstream, just like Vista...
Juddog
Diamond Member
- Dec 11, 2006
- 7,851
- 6
- 81
Let me start off by saying that I currently use Vista 64-bit at home, but we still use XP at work.
Most of what I would have to say about Vista is already covered by other posters, but one thing that pisses me off to no end is the folders not remembering your preferences with them. Mac OSX handled this functionality perfectly with the button you press that auto-resizes the view to fit what is in it. I hate having the OS change my view of the folder after I have changed it already, take for example switching a folder to be viewed as pictures / videos, then reboot and the OS somehow chose a different view for me, and resize it so that once again I have to drag the window. Just either auto-size according to what's in the folder if you're in detail view, or leave the window as is.
File / user permissions: Already covered above, but seriously why is the UAC so messed up? Where is the "remember this setting next time" button? Is it that hard to add in a button or a function that says "do this for this type of activity and don't prompt me again"? The UAC looks like it was purposely written to annoy people.
My other main beef is that the hard drive light is always constantly blinking. I don't know what it's doing but it's annoying when trying to watch an HD movie and the OS drops a frame here and there because of hard drive activity.
IMHO, Microsoft overreached what they were trying to do with the OS. In my mind, the OS needs to do the following:
* Maintain files in a way that's easy to search without constantly pegging your system. Abandon NTFS and allow meta-data into the file structure; have the file structure itself be created like a database (e.g. use a binary tree structure combined with meta data, searches would be blazing fast without having to constantly run the bullshit indexing all the time).
* 64-bit and only 64-bit. By allowing the Vista 32 bit version to exist, it causes driver developers to have to do twice the work. If you're building an OS from the ground up, just make everything 64-bit dammit. Seriously there is no excuse here, the 32 bit systems are too slow to run the damn thing decently anyways.
* Web browsing. Repeating the same mistakes as before, the web browser is still one of the top exploits for hackers to look at to get your system infected. The browser should be entirely separate from the computer.
Most of what I would have to say about Vista is already covered by other posters, but one thing that pisses me off to no end is the folders not remembering your preferences with them. Mac OSX handled this functionality perfectly with the button you press that auto-resizes the view to fit what is in it. I hate having the OS change my view of the folder after I have changed it already, take for example switching a folder to be viewed as pictures / videos, then reboot and the OS somehow chose a different view for me, and resize it so that once again I have to drag the window. Just either auto-size according to what's in the folder if you're in detail view, or leave the window as is.
File / user permissions: Already covered above, but seriously why is the UAC so messed up? Where is the "remember this setting next time" button? Is it that hard to add in a button or a function that says "do this for this type of activity and don't prompt me again"? The UAC looks like it was purposely written to annoy people.
My other main beef is that the hard drive light is always constantly blinking. I don't know what it's doing but it's annoying when trying to watch an HD movie and the OS drops a frame here and there because of hard drive activity.
IMHO, Microsoft overreached what they were trying to do with the OS. In my mind, the OS needs to do the following:
* Maintain files in a way that's easy to search without constantly pegging your system. Abandon NTFS and allow meta-data into the file structure; have the file structure itself be created like a database (e.g. use a binary tree structure combined with meta data, searches would be blazing fast without having to constantly run the bullshit indexing all the time).
* 64-bit and only 64-bit. By allowing the Vista 32 bit version to exist, it causes driver developers to have to do twice the work. If you're building an OS from the ground up, just make everything 64-bit dammit. Seriously there is no excuse here, the 32 bit systems are too slow to run the damn thing decently anyways.
* Web browsing. Repeating the same mistakes as before, the web browser is still one of the top exploits for hackers to look at to get your system infected. The browser should be entirely separate from the computer.
Microsoft engineers behind UAC have stated this is exactly what the UAC prompts were designed to do. They want UAC to annoy users to the point that programmers of third party software will do a proper job of programming to alleviate the UAC prompts by removing the need for the software to require admin privileges. It is also there to annoy users to the point they will learn better security practices to avoid the unnecessary prompts.
People wanted better security from Vista and they got what they said they wanted.
And what's with the lack of ACLs / usable account associated permissions for files, directories, shares, et. al.? The Business / Ultimate / Enterprise editions had these. Win2k had these. WinNT had these. XP Home, Vista Home does not.
If the big push for UAC and Vista was to get people to use limited user accounts *at home* for increased security, what is with making the user accounts NOT able to be secured in terms of file ACLs / permissions, group policy settings, et. al.? If they're going to suggest I create limited accounts to help isolate security threats from compromising my system / data then they should've provided *at least* the same tools that have been present in their OS for around a decade to help me take advantage of that. I have no problem creating an limited account called "banking" and running my Quicken / MS Money / Excel / online banking programs from that account. I darn well want that account's files NOT READABLE from other accounts that may be used for other purposes, but have the choice to selectively share them for backup purposes, with my partner, whatever. Sometimes I want files like a digital photo collection to be shared with some other accounts or over the network, but be read-only or invisible depending on the user credentials in question.
Basically full ACL support at least, and ditto for group policies, et. al. Not that I think these are the most comprehensive designs for these tools / features, but they're better than nothing. They act like Vista is a great step forward in security yet they cripple or fail to make usable even their most basic and pervasively useful/appropriate security features like ACL, group policy, bitlocker encryption, user level controls on network sharing, IPSEC, Kerberos, et. al. for most 'home' users.
It isn't as if ACLs or mandatory access controls are somehow elite enterprise features. They're right there in LINUX, SELINUX, XATTR, ACLs, et. al. A paid-for OS ought to offer at least all the compelling features of their free competitor OS, or for that matter, their own previous generation OSs like Win2k / NT.
If the big push for UAC and Vista was to get people to use limited user accounts *at home* for increased security, what is with making the user accounts NOT able to be secured in terms of file ACLs / permissions, group policy settings, et. al.? If they're going to suggest I create limited accounts to help isolate security threats from compromising my system / data then they should've provided *at least* the same tools that have been present in their OS for around a decade to help me take advantage of that. I have no problem creating an limited account called "banking" and running my Quicken / MS Money / Excel / online banking programs from that account. I darn well want that account's files NOT READABLE from other accounts that may be used for other purposes, but have the choice to selectively share them for backup purposes, with my partner, whatever. Sometimes I want files like a digital photo collection to be shared with some other accounts or over the network, but be read-only or invisible depending on the user credentials in question.
Basically full ACL support at least, and ditto for group policies, et. al. Not that I think these are the most comprehensive designs for these tools / features, but they're better than nothing. They act like Vista is a great step forward in security yet they cripple or fail to make usable even their most basic and pervasively useful/appropriate security features like ACL, group policy, bitlocker encryption, user level controls on network sharing, IPSEC, Kerberos, et. al. for most 'home' users.
It isn't as if ACLs or mandatory access controls are somehow elite enterprise features. They're right there in LINUX, SELINUX, XATTR, ACLs, et. al. A paid-for OS ought to offer at least all the compelling features of their free competitor OS, or for that matter, their own previous generation OSs like Win2k / NT.
I dont get the complaints about the UAC. These are the same people who years ago pissed and moaned about the open security on an XP box when you run with an admin account.
It isnt that annoying, honestly. It serves a very good purpose. To keep installers and hidden malware from auto installing without letting you know.
It isnt that annoying, honestly. It serves a very good purpose. To keep installers and hidden malware from auto installing without letting you know.
QuixoticOne:
Most home users don't want or need the type of group policy and encryption offered in Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate. It is just added bloat to these people for features they will never use. Don't even try to compare Linux users and Windows users because they are completely different types of users (for the most part) to begin with. If a person knows what these are and needs them then buying the right version of Windows with your system is not an issue. If they don't know what they are, they don't need them anyhow.
The only feature I actually could see value for the home market is the disk imaging that the business and Ultimate versions provide. Fax service, group policy, and bitlocker encryption are not needed by Grandma for her digital photos and emails.
I don't mind the concept of role based access control / mandatory access control. UAC is a pretty piss poor implementation of it. In LINUX with SELINUX when I get a permissions alert it shows me what the specifically attempted function was that was denied, by what specific program, and what command I can run to change the permission to allow that program that right.
In Windows you typically have no idea what programs are doing what on your system. On LINUX it is easy to use tools like 'lsof', 'netstat', 'tcpdump', 'strace', and 'top' and so on to see what programs are doing what on your system -- what files they have open, what network connections, how much memory / CPU they use et. al. What's more the programs themselves are usually designed to live encapsulated in their own private subdirectories, to put most or all of their files in that particular directory tree, and to function with fairly well defined / limited abilities to access / alter the devices and operating system.
In Vista you'd have to install a load of sysinternals tools like process explorer, handle, network monitor, use perfmon, et. al. to even have a clue as to what various programs are doing to your system. Microsoft encourages programs to spew their files all over your system in places like Documents And Settings/User/Application Data, Program Files, Windows/System32, the registry, etc. etc. even if you TOLD the program to JUST install in D:\AdobeReader or whatever. If you do get a UAC alert it is usually by no means clear WHAT program really caused the alert, and WHAT specifically it is trying to do that is privileged, and WHETHER that action is really normal or abnormal and necessary or unnecessary.
IMHO they should have designed Windows and its application model to keep applications in their own private little sandbox directories, to have a very clear set of permissions applicable to those programs controlling what kinds of files they can read / write in what specific locations, what kinds of network activities they can do to which remote hosts, what level of control of which devices they should have on your PC, whether they're enabled to auto-start or change system/user wide file associations, install shell extensions / browser helpers, et. al. THAT would be clear and meaningful security that is easy to enforce at the system level and easy to present / control at the user level. "Quicken.Exe wants to open a HTTP network connection to BackdoorYou.RussianBusinessNetwork.ru; Approve? [No] ".
"Quake.exe wants to open MyDocuments\CreditCardStatement.pdf; Approve? [No]" etc.
By default applications should live with the ability to read/write within their own private data directory, get keyboard / mouse input when they have focus, display their own windows, and that's about it. Instead of a 10 page long EULA / Privacy policy in undecipherable legalese when I install an application how about showing me a REAL security / privacy policy that I can EDIT MYSELF -- "May I contact my own list of servers via the internet {aol.com, aim.com, ...}? May I read files in 'My documents'? May I print documents? May I attempt to self-update? ......
In Windows you typically have no idea what programs are doing what on your system. On LINUX it is easy to use tools like 'lsof', 'netstat', 'tcpdump', 'strace', and 'top' and so on to see what programs are doing what on your system -- what files they have open, what network connections, how much memory / CPU they use et. al. What's more the programs themselves are usually designed to live encapsulated in their own private subdirectories, to put most or all of their files in that particular directory tree, and to function with fairly well defined / limited abilities to access / alter the devices and operating system.
In Vista you'd have to install a load of sysinternals tools like process explorer, handle, network monitor, use perfmon, et. al. to even have a clue as to what various programs are doing to your system. Microsoft encourages programs to spew their files all over your system in places like Documents And Settings/User/Application Data, Program Files, Windows/System32, the registry, etc. etc. even if you TOLD the program to JUST install in D:\AdobeReader or whatever. If you do get a UAC alert it is usually by no means clear WHAT program really caused the alert, and WHAT specifically it is trying to do that is privileged, and WHETHER that action is really normal or abnormal and necessary or unnecessary.
IMHO they should have designed Windows and its application model to keep applications in their own private little sandbox directories, to have a very clear set of permissions applicable to those programs controlling what kinds of files they can read / write in what specific locations, what kinds of network activities they can do to which remote hosts, what level of control of which devices they should have on your PC, whether they're enabled to auto-start or change system/user wide file associations, install shell extensions / browser helpers, et. al. THAT would be clear and meaningful security that is easy to enforce at the system level and easy to present / control at the user level. "Quicken.Exe wants to open a HTTP network connection to BackdoorYou.RussianBusinessNetwork.ru; Approve? [No] ".
"Quake.exe wants to open MyDocuments\CreditCardStatement.pdf; Approve? [No]" etc.
By default applications should live with the ability to read/write within their own private data directory, get keyboard / mouse input when they have focus, display their own windows, and that's about it. Instead of a 10 page long EULA / Privacy policy in undecipherable legalese when I install an application how about showing me a REAL security / privacy policy that I can EDIT MYSELF -- "May I contact my own list of servers via the internet {aol.com, aim.com, ...}? May I read files in 'My documents'? May I print documents? May I attempt to self-update? ......
Grandma (or in my case Grandpa -- I'm LITERALLY repairing his PC as I sit here) *IS* the home user that is getting owned by spyware, malware, trojans, et. al. Much moreso than business users because typically businesses already KNOW they need to have information security policies and procedures and tools in place.
Grandpa had about eight kinds of "Dialer" and "Spyware" programs on his system, and I think it is pretty safe to say that any sensitive files that he did have that weren't encrypted may well have been read by botnet author was running the exploits on his system.
Don't tell me he didn't NEED the ability to run as a limited user. Don't tell me he didn't NEED the ability to make certain files encrypted, read only, isolated from other users / programs on his own PC.
Don't tell me that someone doesn't need an easy way to make their own files read only even against themselves considering all the "undelete" or "recover from backup" help I've given to typical home users who've accidentally deleted or overwritten their own precious files.
The average home user may know not that they know not about the available tools to help them keep their data safe / secure. Many know that they don't know, and wish they had better options / solutions.
It is up to a vendor like Microsoft to make security tools, procedures, and concepts accessible, palatable, feasible to users of their OS, and to inform them of the benefits of these things. It is not their job to arrogantly take away even the possibility of securing someone's files just because they arrogantly assume that people are too stupid to even realize / care about what they're missing!
Again, computer hardware and OS software is supposed to improve radically every generation; grandma may not need a 3GHz dual core CPU and 4GB of RAM, but chances are that's what she has since it is the baseline level that IT technology has evolved to provide commodity home users. Things are supposed to evolve and improve, not regress. Features present in Win2000 should not be ABSENT in Vista, at least unless there's something MUCH better there to replace and supercede it.
Granted, MMC, ACLs, and GPEDIT are HORRIBLE user interfaces for Grandma, but they're better than nothing, and rather than admit that they're not that usable / user friendly and remove them, they should've kept them in a developed even higher level GUI tools to make them more user friendly and usable by non-technical users. Technical users shouldn't be without the low level controls.
What we're buying here is a MS OS, and to me that means things like functioning ACLs, ATTRIB, CMD / PowerShell, NTFS, FDISK, whatever tools. If we were buying Macintosh systems, well, we wouldn't expect those things, but we're buying Microsoft and we should get an evolutionary increasingly capable set of Microsoft tools with our OS.
Grandma whose needs were met by Win98 / WinXP doesn't need Vista. They're selling Vista as an IMPROVEMENT over XP / W2k / Win98 / WinNT, and that being so, it should have a superset of the best features of all of those.
I'm at home, I count as a home user even if I'm smarter than Microsoft might think I ought to be. I need security and sysadmin tools as well. Vista just insults my intelligence by dumbing everything down under the assumption that I couldn't handle a "real" OS. At least on Macs you can pop into a UNIX shell if you need / want to.
What a crock of shit you have just posted. All versions of Vista already run with limited privileges out of the box. Setting up a limited user account on any version of Vista is a easy thing to do. (and recommended) If you are being owned by malware on a Vista box then you are just plain stupid.
I never said that a user does not have the need to run as a limited user. It is easy to set up a limited user account on ALL versions of Vista.
If a users is advanced enough to know he needs to encrypt files then he is advanced enough to know what version of Vista he needs. Your logic in all of this fails because all you have proven in your diatribe is you just don't understand average users or know what you are talking about.
soonerproud, how much is MS paying you per post?
because 90% of user I've talked to, either hate vista, or feels vista doesn't offer enough over XP.
because 90% of user I've talked to, either hate vista, or feels vista doesn't offer enough over XP.
I think the crock belongs squarely to you.
So you're touting the fact that Vista "by default" makes users LIMITED.
Well obviously it did not occur to you that the systems for ACLs, Group Policies, et. al. *ARE* what *MAKES* the limitations of user permissions existent in the first place. You're saying that it is good that Vista allows users to be limited while arguing for the absence of the controls that lets people PLACE the limits on the accounts to begin with. Having issues with logical consistency today?
So you're touting the fact that Vista "by default" makes users LIMITED.
Well obviously it did not occur to you that the systems for ACLs, Group Policies, et. al. *ARE* what *MAKES* the limitations of user permissions existent in the first place. You're saying that it is good that Vista allows users to be limited while arguing for the absence of the controls that lets people PLACE the limits on the accounts to begin with. Having issues with logical consistency today?
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