5 Mistakes Microsoft made with Windows Vista
section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 16.8.2007
Windows Vista has kind of gotten a bum rap. Some of the rap is deserved -- Microsoft shipped it too early. But for the most part, the rap is carried on by vocal techies who just like to poop on things because they think criticizing things makes them appear more knowledgeable.
Talking to a techie about the quality of mainstream software is a lot like talking to a film school graduate about the quality of mainstream movies. Sure, you might have liked Pirates of the Caribbean but talk to a film snob and it's the 7th sign of the Apocalypse. So how good is Windows Vista? The answer is, pretty good. Far better than Windows XP. But I can think of 5 big mistakes Microsoft made that has taken a window out of its sails.
Let me outline those 5 mistakes Microsoft made with the Windows Vista launch and talk about how Microsoft might be able to keep Windows Vista from being a sequel to Windows ME.
#1 The UAC. The User Account Control in Windows Vista is a feature that appears to have been designed by a marketing committee. Some casual computer user decided that the way to make other casual users think that Windows Vista was "secure" was to have more prompts. A lot more prompts. And so, even a power user (i.e. early adopters) logged on as an administrator is going to find themselves being prompted regularly. They can turn it off but that defeats the entire purpose of having better security.
The result: Power users turn it off and casual users learn to ignore the myriad of repetitive dialogs.
#2 Windows Vista was shipped before drivers were ready. This, combined with item #1 are probably responsible for the majority of the negative vibe Windows Vista has received.
As a practical matter, the first usable beta of Windows Vista wasn't made available until 4 or so months before Windows Vista shipped (or merely 1 month before "gold". This meant that many drivers, video drivers in particular, weren't ready. But for all those people who have a finicky scanner or Air card or other specialty peripheral had to be guinea pigs.
The result: Early adopters were stung with problematic behavior and a lack of drivers which caused frustration that they shared a lot with others.
#3 The new Start menu. Love the new Start Search. Kudos. Don't love the Start menu navigation which wants to exist in a fixed window. The example screenshot shows Microsoft's own apps being cut off. For those of us who liked to seriously organize our Start menu items into categories and such, this new start menu option is a huge pain.
Solution: Make the All Programs button behavior an option between the classic expanding menu or the new menu container.
#4 Unbelievably bad desktop performance. Another item that really hurt the initial impression of Windows Vista was how horrible basic desktop operations like copying and zipping were. A user would be copying a handful of files and would get this dialog trying to estimate how long the copy should take. Here's your answer: less than a second! At least, that's what it should have taken. Instead, the estimating time dialog would take a few seconds and then the copy would take a second or two. This sort of thing on routine file copying and moving made Windows Vista feel like a pig.
Solution: Service Pack 1 is supposed to address this sort of thing more thoroughly but the good news is that Microsoft did officially release some patches that improves desktop performance significantly.
#5 Upgrade Pricing is a joke. I wonder what color the sky is on planet Microsoft. Because on planet Microsoft, the Xbox 360 is $350 which not only includes the OS (with Media Center), a 20 Gigabyte Hard drive and other goodies, but at the same time Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade lists for $160. Sure, it's not a truly fair comparison (console makers get a piece of revenue from console games) but the point is still valid. One might get the impression that Microsoft has a monopoly in the PC OS market but does not in the console market.
The big problem is that Microsoft's marketing never made the case for what you are actually getting for that $160. I like Windows Vista. I think it's a big improvement over Windows XP. And when I buy a computer, I am glad Windows Vista comes with it. But upgrading my existing computers? The incredibly stingy "Family Discount" (which has expired) wasn't even close to justifying upgrading machines to Vista.
Maybe there is $160 in value buried in Windows Vista Home Premium but Microsoft's marketing didn't make the case. And I can't find it -- especially when you combine it with the above issues. This wasn't a problem with Windows XP. Windows XP was blatantly better than Windows ME/98 and it was noticeably better than Windows 2000 (which only had a tiny share of the market compared to 98/ME). As a result, 7 months later, Windows Vista has less than 10% of the market. By contrast, I remember watching Windows XP's launch and the migration to Windows XP was pretty swift.
Solution: No solution. They aren't likely to lower pricing any time soon. Once Service Pack 1 has been integrated into the OEM versions (the ones that ship with new PCs) you'll see nearly everyone opting for Windows Vista on a new machine while older machines continue with Windows XP.
Conclusions:
I could go on with numerous other items like the terrible icon handling, the fact that development tools weren't ready for prime time, that Microsoft's marketing efforts were seemingly handled by non-technical people (I mean, really, Flip3D is actually one of the first things mentioned on the Windows Vista home page -- how deep are you digging to find compelling features when a fairly useless task switcher is your money shot?), all have contributed to the negative buzz around Windows Vista.
Which is a shame because Windows Vista is really very good. On a scale from 1 to 10, if Windows 98 was a 4, Windows ME a 3, Windows 2000 a 6 and Windows XP a 7 then Windows Vista is easily an 8. It's a worthy and significant upgrade. It deserves a good reputation. Hopefully, Microsoft can get Service Pack 1 out sooner rather than later and address as best they can the issues that many people have brought up.
source:
neowin.net
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Comments(23)
if you say xp was a 7, and vista a 8, why would anyone pay $160 for such a small
"upgrade"? windows me2 stinks, why?, for all you said and more. dump it and stay with xp
till windows 7 comes out!
1. you can turn it off. duh.
2. but there are drivers now.
3. i like it, looks
a lot better.
4. they fixed that with an update.
5. who buys software anymore?
at staying with xp pro
sticking with xp is like sticking with
windows 2000 when xp came out, its idiotic and only a person with a horrible computer
wouldn't upgrade.
1. you can turn it off. duh.
2. but there are drivers now.
3. i like it,
looks a lot better.
4. they fixed that with an update.
5. who buys software
anymore?
at staying with xp pro
sticking with xp is like sticking
with windows 2000 when xp came out, its idiotic and only a person with a horrible computer
wouldn't upgrade.
qft
crap article imo,go do some researches after writing this
pos
the start menu is shi* in vista...plus when you move a exe file to start menu, it doesn
't make a link, but it move the entire exe, that is so so so stupid :( cause some many
apps doesn't work like that,sure, it doesn't find the needed files, uac is a joke of
microsoft... and you need a powerful pc but vista is not bad...
well, this article is obviously written by someone who hasn't had to program for vista,
or most importantly write security apps that are vista compatible. while i freely admit
that they made some improvements, they made some really stupid decisions as well. for
example, cleaning certain temp folder (temp folders mind you) requires admin level and
even then prompts you that you don't have permission to delete junk out of your temp
folders. now, every basic moron knows that spyware likes to hide in these folders - so
why make it difficult to clean them out? it's temp junk!!!
anyways, this is
just a small, small example of the stupidity behind vista. it's crap - and any fanboy
that says it's great doesn't truly understand why people hate it so bad. try really
working with it instead of just looking at the pretty new graphics (which can all be
installed on xp for free by the way).
well, this article is obviously written by someone who has been paid by microsoft to only
point 5 vista failures and say several times that vista is very good!!! lol
after loading up xp today, then throwing my vista ultimate image on (4.0 performance
index), vista feels like a 60's dodge polara station wagon in the pike's peak challenge.
yet i keep returning to it. go figure... just something about it.
i've tried vista and love some of it's features. problem is that it's too much of a
resource hog. microsoft seems to think that since computers are so fast now they can just
put whatever they want into the os and not worry about resources anymore. they should be
making windows use less resources and speed it up not slow it down. that would make
people love windows again. instead they put out an unsupported overly bloated operating
system (that still supports 32bit) that won't run smoothly on most computers.
also they screwed up big time changing the way it handles sound. sound card makers
are having fits with vista to get their existing cards to work. i had to go back to xp
just so i can do recording.
i have a plan for microsoft. stop making 32bit
os's. 64bit is the way to go but every manufacturer won't support it if they don't
have to if ms keeps making 32bit apps. all these multicore 64bit processors are a waste
of time if windows stills supports 32bit.
xp was shit when it came out. i started with xp sp1 and now stuck with sp2. so will i
start with vista sp1 or maybe vista sp2.
ms should know writing loads of codes and
files does not make any difference, its all about techniques. see mac osx its nice and
robust( i only hate it cos i cant maximize it to fill my screen). so if ms wants windows
to look like mac osx, he should call mr jobs and talk to him.
just 5 mistakes?
i can come up with over 50 mistakes just from the top of my
head.
only 5 mistakes? ms made only 1 super wow mistake and that was releasing a crippled os
that spends a lot of time collecting info so it can send it back to ms. ms only cares for
themselves and their big commercial buddies as vista shows. users lose out bigtime with
vista.
read the negatives:
http://badvista.fsf.org/
vista
reminds me of the story of the little green frog who was enjoying his bath in a pot of
water which was coming to the boil... well, the frog did not survive!
vista is very sluggish compared to xp. the new features do not justify this. vista
seems like 3 steps backwards as a result. my pc is 4 gb ddr2 ram, two xeon 3.4 ghz, and
believe me xp is clearly more performance robust. vista performs to much $hit in the
background, too many read and writes to the hard drive, too many services competing.
service pack one better be good, although i doubt that anything can save vista at this
point in the public's eye. its full of horrible things, drm, worthless eyecandy,
micro$oft spyware, uac, its high priced garbage.
the real reason is that vista was first talked about a very long time ago and in that
time they have had to restart the project but people still assume that this vista what we
see now has been in the working that long so expectations are too high
if you think
of it as just another os and forget about the time it seems to have taken it is actually a
good os
you have also got to remember that everyone said xp was the worst os ever
made when it came out and that they would never go to that os either and now around 80%
use it.
it just taskes time
having said that i do not think vista will do as
well as xp because i doubt we will have the same gap in time between now and thwe next
windows
well for me i bought a new puter just to run vista on my score is i the high 5's but i
can not leave xppro on the shelf so i run a dual boot........xp is by far a beter overall
os than vista but i use vista ultimate 64 bit 95% of the time why i don't know just
mt.02cents worth!!
m$ has successfully designed vista to keep the mac and linus alive.
if they hold
back the patches more users will switch.
vista rocks the only downside is the uac which you can switch off. xp was rubbish was
never that good and it faced the same issues as vista when it was released
microsoft xp-pro & xp-mce run like a racing ford mustang on my amd athlon 64 x2 4800.
microsoft vista ultimate has the pretty look of the ferrari enzo ferrari but
vista doesn't have the performace of the ferrari enzo. vista runs like a lawn-mover and
like the ford pinto at best.
xp needs to gtfo and anyone still on it has a garbage pc which makes it impossible to
upgrade or they're afraid of change and don't know wtf they're talking about. use vista
and stfu about the minor things wrong with it which will be fixed in time. shit you
phuxx0rz are crazy if you think xp is pefrect lolz!
dam, i'm so glad that i stuck to windows 3.11 :d
^ i'm glad you stuck to windows 3.11 too, now go and hang with the other n00bs who still
use outdated trash.. :p
when will you start to realize that the security of uac is not delivered by the prompts
but by lowered user privileges?
the whole puropose of uac is being able to use
windows with a user level account, that blocks most attacks (for example, torjans) and
this happens all the time. the prompts are just a convenience to have temporary admin
privileges without having to log off and log in with an admin just to set the time.
the prompts pop up when you are abou to expose yourself and your computer,
interrupring the security of a user account.
vista maybe be a so called "upgrade", but what is the upgrade in it really? one would
think that it would be about more advanced code that uses less resources and delivers more
power, but vista has proved that it is merely a way to keep people shopping (for a better
looking desktop) & the m$ employees' salaries rolling.
it may be better in
some ways, eg, uac would be nice if it didn't pop-ups constantly, cause pop-up fatigue
(m$ is creating things that people actually pay to have stop - anti-spyware, firewall, etc
apps!). why would m$ introduce the equivalent of internet pop-ups? sure it's
"security", but wow, it's irritating. now one must deal with their firewall, which
isn't so bad (if you have a good one), + constant os prompts? shouldn't things be moving
towards self-evaluating systems that complain when there's something to complain about?
all i can honestly say about the start menu is that it'd be better if all of
it maybe was filled with the program list (ie, at least to have 2 rows). it's far to
narrow & one really needs to focus to see. basically it feels cramped.
as for
those oh-so-eager to fork out cash for the next best pc (that'll be obsolete in a year),
don't you think that a "new" os should allow you to use more of that power you're
buying? or is it all better to have your apps/games/whatever work at the same performance
level as they did in a pentium 4 with 2000, or a pentium d with xp? wouldn't you prefer a
system that would give you all the extra power? what's the use of having quad core if
it's just for a little os make-up?
really "aero" & the like are just looks
which artists like those that create windowblinds or stylexp skins can out-do by far; the
main task, really making a powerful os that has security automation, app performance
boosting, and delivers the power to the user, not gobbles it all up (halting progression)
is what i'd term as an upgrade.
if you disagree tell me, what's the use of
having a weak pc with lets say 256mb left over ram for lets say a game, then paying tonnes
for a super-up-to-date, powerful, gaming pc that is being used so much by the os that you
still get that same 256mb?
upgrades means getting more from less. in history,
it wasn't an ugly bullet train with a tiny engine that was invented, then the big bulky
steam engine with a sleek look, so why should this (which should be the peak of
technology) go from manageable, to unnecessarily bulky? one extra theme and pointer set
(aero) is hardly worth it.
just my opinion... and all due respect to those that
worked hard on it.
only 5 mistakes????? hahahahahahhahahhahahhahahahahhahhahhahh this guy does not know to
count beyond 5!!!! :d
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why pay $160 for 1 point on your own scale
By staying with XP PRO on 17.08.2007 - 01:08