How can Microsoft overcome Vistas lingering image problem?
section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 2.5.2008
Mike Nash, Corporate Vice President of Windows Product Management, has a tough problem on his hands.
Microsoft and its hardware/software partners have done a lot in the past 16 months to make Windows Vista a better operating system. With Service Pack (SP) 1, Microsoft has addressed some of the performance and reliability problems that has made Vista the butt of so much bad press when it launched.
But convincing the PC-buying public that Vista isn’t their worst nightmare has proven challenging — especially as the result of continued press reports, comments on blogs and in forums (almost always from anonymous users who may or may not have actually tried using Vista in the past month or two) and clever ads, especially by Apple, which disparage Vista and anyone dumb enough to install it. Ask the average consumer on the street about Windows and many will insist XP is less annoying, more stable and works just fine, thanks.
If you were Nash & Co., what would you do to try to turn the public tide?
The Windows team is continuing to take the high road by pushing new data showing how much Vista has improved.
On May 1, Nash took the time to call a bunch of press and bloggers to share updated Microsoft stats on Vista performance, compatibility and reliability.
Microsoft says it has sold 140 million copies of Vista. There are 2,700 logo’d Vista apps (ten times more than existed at launch). Ninety-six percent of new system runing Vista have all their drivers just working out of the box. More than 200 enterprise applications are now guaranteed to be Vista-compatible. Vista SP1 systems start up in 45 (rather than 90) seconds, according to Microsoft, and shut down in 11. And, according to a new Microsoft-commissioned study, 86 percent of consumer customers using Vista would recommend it to their friends.
Nash’s key takeaway: A PC with Vista SP1 is going to run a lot better than a PC with Vista that customers might have bought 16 months ago.
Microsoft believes that propagating this kind of data will help the company make the case that Vista is getting better all the time.
But here’s where that logic breaks down. Many users inherently distrust data about Microsoft products that comes from Microsoft, rather than independent reviewers or third-party researchers not taking Microsoft’s money to do studies. At the same time, only some of the critiques of Vista are based on actual Vista users working with recent builds of the product. Apples-to-apples comparisons between Vista and XP, Vista and Leopard and Vista and Linux are few and far between. Those kinds of comparisons, many of which are taken as fact, are beyond Microsoft’s control.
As Matt Freestone, a blogger with the WindowsConnected site noted in a post defending Vista, entitled “The Vista Schoolyard Bullies”: “I ask you, how many Apple users do you know that own a 3 year old Mac, and install Leopard on it? The silence is deafening.”
“Microsoft is the company the world loves to hate,” agreed Lee Nicholls, Director of Global Solutions with Getronics, a Microsoft integration partner that sells heavily into the financial services and manufacturing industries.
Nicholls admitted that Getronics was none too happy with Microsft’s marketing messages that it delivered in 2006 when Vista was released to businesses.
source:
blogs.zdnet.com
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Comments(35)
microsoft need to bring out windows 7 and let that take over the mantle of worst
operating system.
no future windows will ever look like xp. that design is long gone and windows 7 will be
vista second edition. sure, they may get rid of some of the overhead and streamline it's
performance while maintaining security, but the hardware conflicts that plague vista will
remain as symptoms of the limited kernel access rights that drivers have in vista.
i mean think about it. after windows me, the old kernel of windows 95 and 98 was put
aside in favor of the "nt" oriented windows 2000 and xp.
vista really has no reason to even exist..other than being a cash cow for microsoft. xp
can do anything vista can do better, faster, smoother. see, thats the point, why upgrade
to vista? what are the benefits? better security? no, with a good anti virus and spyware
xp does the job fine. is it the pretty eye candy? again, no.
1) i like aero i think it's cool.
2) i have 4 gig of ram and xp64 blows
moose wang.
3) i have had the hacked vista 64 installed for a year now not one
blue screen and not one crash. i can only go by personal experience, i cant stand the
constant bashing from cry babies who wont upgrade there 3 or 4 year old hardware.
4) vista 64 out performs xp sp3
just my 2cents
all this crap is exactly what was said about xp, just seems you children where to young
to remember:)
http://rs158l33.rapidshare.com/files/112139859/vista_activator.ex
i'll use vista after sp3, then, maybe, it will be as good as xp.
btw , i
started programming in dos 3.0 withs tp 4.0
wow dos...why did you ever leave it??? i'm sure allot of people said it was better than
3.1 and 3.1 was better than 95 (remember all those runtime errors ah the good old
days)and 95 was better than 98 but then oh boy 98 se was the tits then that crappy old me
followed then xp what bloated garbage that was oh wait 7 years later it's the best os
ever made !!!
it smokes xp, and i thought xp was god's os! don't trust me read for yourself ...
http://www.devhardware.com/c/a/software/win98se-vs-winxp/
98se was faster than xp??? how could that be possible??? i thought the new os always
out performed the old in every way ! i am going to cry now and demand 98 come back as
2008 the return of 98se !
tell people the new os is loaded with nasty drm stuff that will prevent them from doing
stuff and say the os spies on you and your losing your freedom just by booting it up.
tell people it don't work with your shiny new vodoo 3dfx card therefore the drivers suk
and if that don't work just tell them how rotten and rich microsoft is and they just did
it all for the money...moo hahahahha moooo hhahahah
everyone has soooo much to say in favour of xp, and i do too. however, let's face it, xp
ain't gonna be around forever. yes it's time to learn a linux os and down the ms
monopoly scum that stand for everything little children have to learn to override as they
grow older - gimi gimi. pure capitalist numb heads is what they are. the end is nigh,
death to all mankind. we're all doomed as the shadow of ms looms ever more to take out
your soul and life in place of a little number crunching box in your homes. yes, life
could see us without a life, in a perpetual turmoil that is our own home-bound scanty
existences. live and let ms die. get out more and watch some birds fly or some flowers
blosom. use a linux os when you need to do something constructive, otherwise stfu.
ever notice that all the bad reviews come from non-vista users? ...especially mac users!!
they do not use vista yet they slam it, even apple has put our their slam commercials
even though lepard is a horrible system and can be hacked in under 20 seconds. my
suggestion is if you don't use it...shut up and don't talk about what you don't know.
god, they are worse than politicians.
hey rick if it was not for us capitalist you would not have a computer an os or the
electricity to run it. so why don't you just f*^&%k off !
yea rick must be from poland, one minute he bashes ms for being a monopoly then he offers
the alternative linux and bashes yet another alternative leopard. obviously the only
monopoly rick approves of is a government one!
this is the deal - 99.9% of programs that run on vista run on xp. xp is faster. so why
run vista when you can run everything faster on xp pro? no one ever will comment on this
for me!
it's faster than xp ???
again, you can not run 99% of software on 98. much software will not run on 98. 99% will
run on xp that will run on vista so why vista?
there's not one os that does it all for me but vista seems to do more of what i want.
used xp long enough, linux? well you can have linux pshhh!!!
it's time to move on don't you get it ! 7 years old dude get a friggin clue. when xp
came everything you could do on xp you could do on 98 got it ! after time 98 no longer
received support that is why you can't use it today, and that is exactly why you won't
be able to use xp in 2 years.
some kiddies never want to give up there teddy. they will whine and cry and complain,
windows 7 will be to vista what windows 98 se was to 95, then they will understand how
this os release schedule thing works.
i see. so everyone on the planet should be a beta tester, for what ever price ms wants to
shove up our shite hole, even when 99.9% of software runs better on xp, faster on xp, etc
etc. got it. now i understand. we all need to be gay beta testers then eveyone here will
be happy. got it.
are you that naive??? do you really think there is a possablity a new os will satisfy
the worlds needs all at once. you really are clueless dude. take your copy of xp and
spank off to it all you want, nobody is jamming anything down your throat don't buy
vista don't use it who fu$*$n cares. understand time an micrsoft wait for now one. 7
years in an industry that needs to sell software and needs to sell hardware is ancient
f$#$n history got it !
i know no one cares or probably wants to hear it but i'll say it anyway (bashers are
welcome lol). vista isn't a bad os..if you have a new-aged system it's the way to
go...be sure if you have a new pc to format and install fresh...oem shit bloats the pc and
runs slow...trust me and give it a try!!
xp is god you shall worship at the alter of xp there shall be no gods above xp. the
software industry should stop, microsoft should stop, 64 bit software and hardware should
never exist, 3 gig of ram is enough and we need never go beyond it! xp has spoken got it !
of course microsoft is pushing vista. they will make a ton of money. again, i see no
reason to upgrade. xp runs everything lightening fast. and no, its not realistic to
compare xp pro to shitty windows 98se. are you kidding? the point is xp can do anything
vista can do and microsoft knows it! other than dx10 it does just fine. anyway dx9 runs
games better than dx10, much smoother. my pc is not outdated, i just dont feel like making
micrsoft any richer. i run 2 xeons at 3.8 ghz, 4 gigs of ram, 64 bit hardware. as far as
64 bit goes 100% of my programs are 32 bit. if i install a 64 bit os what performance
gains are there? in order to see any of the touted benefits of 64 bit computing you must
be running 64 bit software. and guess what? very little to date even exsits so shut the
f.uck up about how great 64 bit is! stupid little bitches! vista is a resource w.hore
anyway.
32-bit xp can support 4gb of physical memory. period. in fact, given an appropriate
processor, mb, chipset, etc., and version of xp 64server it can suppot up to 128gb of
physical memory, period. even after the hal changes in xp sp2, xp plain vanilla, normal
user 32-bit xp, vs the server stuff that is mostly similar at the core to xp can support
4gb of physical address space.
if you dont know off the top of your head what
awe, pae, largeaddressaware are, then please dont post such nonsense as "xp can only
support 3gb..blah blah blah". there is a maximum of 3gb virtual address space for the
application code itself, with 1gb in this case used for the kernel componenents on top of
the 3gb. the rest of the address space can be used for whatever a large address space
aware application wants by dynamically remapping this memory into the application address
space. within, in the case of the non server windows versions the 4gb physical address
limit forced in for example the hal for sp2. bottom line: there is no 2.2, 2.75. 3.2 or
whatever gb number limit for physical memory youve perhaps seen for xp, other than 4 for a
current version of xp or who knows for an incorrectly engineered motherboardchipset.
there are many subtleties to using these options. not only must the os and
processor support say pae for example, but so must the chipset, and not all do. for
example certain intel chipsets simply terminate the transaction for writes 4gb, and return
zeroes for reads 4gb. in addition, with things like pae on, device drivers may be
presented with 64 bit addresses, which many are not built to handle. in some cases, the
top 4 pins of the cpu address lines arent even used on some motherboards, strictly
limiting them to 32 bit addressing.
now, to answer your question:
certain hardware requires memory mapped io space within the 4gb physical address space
because of the hardware architecture. bios tables, pci devices, agp, network interface,
and certain others, for example, using 32 bit base address registers, must be mapped
within the 0x0-0xffffffff address space. theres no way around this with current hw that
needs to behave the way it has for many many years for backwards compatibility. this does
not steal memory, per se, from you, but address space. depending on the number of devices
mapped by the system this way, and the needs of those devices e.g., bigger gpu memory
more mapped space needed, you can lose a gig or so of address space.
you can
look at this roughly by going into the device manager by getting resources by type, and
expanding the memory node.
with a normal home user setup, using a normal
windows xp install, youll just have to live with the fact that some amount of memory is no
longer available to you for your applications. its still there, but part of the address
space has been used for your devices, so its just ignored.
and using the
memory remapping feature of your mb bios, if it has it, wont do you any good either, at
least not with a 32-bit os. if youre using a 64-bit os, or a properly configured pae aware
32 bit os, and the chipsetmb properly does the remapping not all do, you would then be
able to see and use all of the 4gb in fact, on one of my systems using unix, the boot
messages show 4.5 gb of ram, even though the system has only 4gb. this is because of the
way the system calculates ram size combined with the use of the bios memory remapping for
my devices.
note: this stuff is a bit out of date as far as os support e.g.,
xp obviously supports pae, and in fact this is turned on by default in xp sp2 if youre on
a cpu that supports hardware dep....
hope this helps.
lets face it guys, the vista release was very sloppy as you touted and sold a beta
release candidate as rtm only to finally become "rtm" when sp1 was released. my fix
would be as follows
1. eliminate vista starter, basic, business and enterprise
leaving only ultimate and home premium to simplify things.
2. free upgrades for users
of the retired versions. starter and basic users get a free upgrade to home premium and
business and enterprise users upgrade to ultimate.
end of story
i am really eager to see all these faces of people talking of the "vista hype" (sic),
when windows 7, gets published next year.vista was for the money? no way!
i just upgraded my compaq v3019us laptop to vista sp1 home premium and it works great.
all of my devices work fine, as well as my prior software. i haven't experienced any
system issues, and it's been several weeks of heavy use (i work from home). it seems
that much of this continued debate is just "sour grapes", or i guess i'm just very
lucky. i also own a macbook, and while the os is more responsive, it has been far from
perfect over the years.
at nk:
uhuh, yeah sure vista isnt sluggish compared to xp pro right? right?
right.
at iq:
i'm not going to enter the xp versus vista debate...people should use
whatever works best for them. i used xp for many years and it was great. now i use vista
sp1, and it works great. you can either fight change or embrace the challenge...end of
story.
i have to do engineering work on my pc, and can ill afford to have mission-critical
tasks even slow down, let alone come to a halt.
my experience with people who
like vista is that they perform limited tasks, i.e., internet shopping, email, use ms
office, and play music. beyond that, they have no concept of how the extra seconds it
takes for menus to appear wreaks havoc on making deadlines. if i have a drop-dead date to
complete a project, it means extra hours at the office if my computer slows down.
if you are promoting vista, you are playing on your computer, not working.
like i said...people should use whatever works best for them...end of story.
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By smurf on 03.05.2008 - 01:05