finalzero

Thought I would gauge the opinions on Vista as its now out and about.

It sure had the hype surrounding it but it also reared the famous bugs that have plagued previous version of Windows.

Well I gave it a go, being a seasoned Windows users I thought I would get on alright with it but tbh I hate it with a passion. No OS (including Linux) has had me cursing as much as Vista.

Where do I start? The abysmal driver support, it really is shambles and they should be shot for releasing a half arsed operating system. Lack of sound support, have to use intermediary software to enable the sound card resulting in the random stutter or no sound in games.

Incredibly retarded security system. Everytime I want to work, I get asked a dumb question. I want to run a program, I get prompted if I want to run it.. of course I bloody want to run the program, I started it! - it takes a few clicks to completely bypass the security (at least Linux has a proper user/group system in place).

Not being able to access my own operating system, try as I might I could not do simple things like choosing where I wanted an application to be installed, Vista has some fumbled logic about how the Program Files location should be used.

3D Desktop bling... what bling, its minimal at best and makes no difference whatsoever. If they had employed full on 3D effects I would have thought differently but to offer a new graphics api layer and then barely implement it, well its a joke.

Copying files.. now this is more serious, for whatever reason Vista is persistent at screwing over any file copying you try. For example, copying a medium sized file from my desktop to my usb drive took over 10 minutes - the same process in Windows XP Pro or Linux takes a few minutes at best. Copying a file from a network location to my Vista system is completely random, on a 1 gigabit network it takes over 15 minutes to 30 minutes to copy a few files, again same process in Windows XP or Linux takes a few seconds to a minute at best.

Copying files from one folder to another is the same, totally crap. I have seriously tried to hack Vista apart to improve the problem and to no end, I can only save a few seconds at best.

And then there is the DRM, don't get me started on that - its a ********* joke.

Quite frankly its not fit for purpose and at best its in alpha release. As an OS its seriously bloated and I can't help but think its being used to shift new hardware. Take a look at the new systems, being fitted with 2GB of ram as standard just to cope with Vista's serious weight problem where past systems would have run happily on Windows XP Pro SP2. Add to that graphics cards, we have DX10 graphics cards that will only work with Vista due to DX10 only being available on Vista (that is changing soon though).

Then you have the games, I have started seeing games being coined as "designed for Vista" - that makes no sense whatsoever, they do not use Vista's new capabilities as it has none bar DX10.

In a corporate environment I would never recommend it, actually we are not even considering Vista as desktop platform at work.

In all this mess Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2 is starting to show that it is more than a capable desktop system, it had its gremlins but I think XP with Service Pack 2 is probably the best Windows OS that ever came out from Microsoft.

Dell Computers have ditched Vista on their new machines, only offering it on customer request and are considering shipping Ubuntu Linux with new machines - that should say something in itself.

Personally, I dual boot my system however I am fast approaching a time where I think will completely ditch Windows as I can have everything I need in a well configured Ubuntu desktop environment. Right now I have Windows XP and Ubuntu dual booting however I have got multi-desktop display running in Ubuntu with Beryl 3D desktop bling (seriously cool), CrossOver Office so I can install Windows apps like Office 2003 and Photoshop and Cedega so I can play 98% of all the latest Windows games.

Only reason I have not switched over is due to Visual Studio 2005 for work and graphics and design (I develop web sites) where I need stuff like Photoshop CS2 and 3D Studio.

Its funny, for all the hype Vista has backfired on Microsoft, reading the many computing forums its obvious the failings of Vista have prompted more techies to start looking at linux (which is starting to look like a serious desktop system) and the Mac with its beautiful and functional OS X.

Rant over

Daz34

Seeing as this is complete bull I expect the rest of your rant is too?

finalzero

No thats a typo, thankyou for point that out, I was typing away without checking my post. I was referring to XP but I should have linked this article:

Dell offers XP again amidst Vista complaints | The Register

Its a shame that Microsoft will be forcing vendors to move to Vista, Dell has seen sense and started offering XP on customer requests however I don't think this is an option available to the UK.

Dell to ship Ubuntu Linux PCs - vnunet.com

>> namely: Popular Stories - Dell IdeaStorm - before you flame peoples posts do your homework, a number of us have been participating on this site. Its about time companies like Dell started looking at linux more seriously, once they take it on board you will find more and more of the bigger IT players backing linux, which I hope will help the OS mature into a serious system.

As for my post, well thats your perogative, you can believe what you like. Vista is crap, quite frankly its not fit for consumption however the sad truth is the average consumer doesn't know that. They will happily accept it as the norm as it comes shipped with their PC or laptop, oblivious to the fact they are buying into an OS that is crippled and seriously flawed from the outset.

» Long list of Vista bugs that will keep me off Vista | George Ou | ZDNet.com
The “Break it Down” Blog » Blog Archive » Vista is a Failure - Microsoft’s Actions Agree

i8gtmf

Iv'e been using it since it's official launch started off ok but the downwards spiral of system lockups and crashes is now getting beyond a joke.
I had to wait 3 months for drivers to be released so i could at least print something. My soundcard still has only about a 3rd of it's functionality do to diabolical driver support from creative, i have a 200 quid sound card with most of it's features and all of it's software rendered useless unless i switch back to XP or sit tight and wait for creative to get themselves into gear. Most annoyingly of all it takes several attempts to install anything as Vista will freeze at somepoint during the install leaving me with no option but to turn of power at the mains as nothing else works. I even have a spare hard drive with a clean install of XP on it to pop in to prove theres nothing else wrong with my system, which there isn't everything else is fine. Stick the Vista drive back in and it all goes pear as soon as you do anything more serious than browsing the net. I don't play games apart from one, which doesn't work properly either. It freezes at random leaving a high pitched screech from the speakers probably caused by the half an attempt at drivers creative put out. Again only fix is to turn off power.
I really can't see how with all the Beta testing that went on that most companies weren't ready with drivers for Vista, i only wanted to print a letter and couldn't even do that untill last week.
Not impressed at all, it does look better than Xp but that doesn't make it better at the moment

djuk

Our hugely successful 350,000 PC Vista Enterprise rollout is probably a fluke then?

MattW

Mine is ok, the only issue I have is no drivers for my scanner yet (HP) and it doesn't seem to like sleep mode when two users logged in.

ScoobyDoo555

mine seems to be working fine....

Still, given a choice, I'll boot into OS X


Dan

wrx-kris

mine works perfectly-never had any probs with anything *touches wood*

i think its all down to a certain criteria of system setup, user etc
but like i said works perfect for me and i couldnt go back to xp not now......

AllanB

Interestingly enough the governmet body responsible for security is ditching all its Windows PCs and replacing them with Macs. First few have been done in the last wek with the rest to be done during the summer.

I understand serious security flaws in Vista are one of the driving factors for them making this decision.

We've seen a very poor uptake in Vista and have many customers asking for road maps on manufactuerersd phaisng out of XP machies so they can stock pile them before Vista is the only MS option.


AllanB

wrx-kris

some interesting tweeks for vista here

Vista Tweaks Thread - techPowerUp! Forums

my comp is now as fast as it was when i had xp

Iain Young

Well, all my devices had drivers from the day of release, although I appreciate that wasn't the case for everyone. One thing to bear in mind however is that this is not the fault of Microsoft or the operating system. MS had the specs (and beta / release candidate versions) of Vista available for a long time before release (over a year I think), so the fault lies with the hardware manufacturers being very slow.

.

It doesn't bother me at all. You can always turn of UAC if you want to.

Not fumbled logic at all. In fact, it makes a lot of sense from a software development perspective. You can install software to other locations than program files if you want to however.

It's a pleasing an mature interface. If you add too much "bling" then the pretty graphics start to get in the way of the operation. Personally, I like it the way it is

Sounds like you might have naff drivers for your usb and network devices. It's always been very quick for me when copying stuff, quicker than XP was in fact.

How di you do that then?

It's called copyright. Don't blame Microsoft for trying to stop piracy.

Utter rubbish.

That's not entirely true either. Vista will run quite happily on 1gb. Don't forget that the memory management on Vista is completely different to that of previous operating systems. When you first turn the machine on it appears to be using more memory than xp would in a similar situation because it automatically caches frequently used apps / data ready for invocation. If you then run something different then is will free up this memory for use by the new app. What this means fo the user is that stuff generally appears to load much quicker than before. It's really quite clever.

Why is that a problem?

How do you know that? Unless you have spoken to the development teams or seen the code, how do you know what features they have or haven't used?

Seeing as I work in a software development company, we have Vista installed on loads of machine (mainly because we have to ensure that our software works on the new platform as well as XP, Win 2000, unix etc). All the machines I have installed Vista on have generally run faster than they did with XP, and they have certainly been just as stable

They are still shipping XP with some machines, although they are trying to phase it out. Microsoft are ceasing to sell new licenses for it in January, so it makes sense to try and migrate. As for Ubuntu (horrible OS in my opinion - clunky interface and it's not even a proper version of Linux), Dell is considering offering this on a few machines because the geek community is asking for it.

All of which run very well on Vista

It's interesting to see that the only people who are really laying into Vista are people who also run Linux or OSX. Their rants (and your one to be honest) sound like they are using it to try and promote their own OS of choice instead of being an objective and balanced opinion. Personally I'm very happy with it. I've even installed it on my old Dell laptop (about 2.5 years old now), and it runs like a dream on there

As I said I'm running the various flavours of Vista (32bit and 64 bit) on 6 different machines, and haven't had a single problem with any of them. Only my free Dell printer was lacking drivers when I first installed, but even those have been released now so all is working very well.

Iain Young

Nice to see the government is wasting our money again. Replacing one perfectly good system with another at vast expensive (don't forget all the software would have to be rewritten as well). There have been a few gaping security holes reported in OSX over the years as well (although these don't get the publicity of the MS stuff), so the argument simply doesn't make sense logically or financially. I suspect some backhanders are involved myself

What flaws?

Surely even if there were some security holes in Vista (which I'm sure there are even though nothing major has been reported yet), this shouldn't affect the government security department. I would hope they had their machines sat behind firewalls etc, making any operating system problems almost trvial. Then again, this is the government...

The same thing happened with NT4->Win2k, Win2k->XP etc. I wouldn't expect corporate customers to start buying machines until next year, (when business critical functions are concerned, you need to detailed checks of the software before putting it live, a process that can take months).

wrx-kris

i'm running 1gb of ddr400 pc3200 ram
never puts the lot in use...

on a normal day i have these apps running:
windows media player-listening to music 24/7
msn-with say 3 to 4 convo windows
firefox with 4-8 tabs
utorrent
kaspersky internet security
windows sidebar-inc 6 gadgets
various explorer apps such as-music, my docs etc

like i say, ive never maxed out my ram-this is my everyday run. sometimes ill use nero too or connect my nokia n95.

ScoobyDoo555

I'm interested Iain, who else is "Vista-bashing"?

I predominantly use OSX, but Vista is more like OSX than any other Windows platform gone before. And for this reason, it's great

I will still boot OSX first due to the software availability on PC (for my particular needs), but Vista is very good. A little flaky in places, but I would expect that with a new OS.

dan

Markus

The software might not have to be rewritten, there could be a mac specific version of the software, plus it's possible you could use Crossover (WINE implementation for Intel macs) to run the application without the overhead of having to install XP/Vista. Then again you could dual-boot/VM the machines with XP/Vista, but that is some what defeating the purpose of switching to the Mac.

Gaping security holes? Do you perhaps mean the alleged virus/trojan situations, one of the classic ones being where you would be asked for admin password when opening a jpeg file? If not, then what other gaping holes were there and are they still open, or have they been addressed in security updates by Apple. If this one of the gaping holes then I'll grant you it was an issue, but Apple addressed it very quickly, plus, it required user interaction to do anything, and also required entering a local admin name and password (it used privelege escalation at this point to do whatever it wanted as it could then run as root).

Ideally you'd want to be running as a non admin user for the majority of the time (alas OS X's defaut istall creates the default account as an admin account, but then this is primarly a consumer not corporate/eductation machine, so you'd want full access to everything). Also, a litte bit of common sense should apply. Why should opening a picture require an admin name and password? You should never just enter your password when prompted without first checking why you are being asked for it.

Certainly OS X isn't perfect and there could well be a few holes here and there, but at least it's not as easilly overrun with malware/spyware/viruses/trojans as an XP (not sure about vista viruses) computer is.

If you're worried about issues with OS X computers and people doing what they should not be then there are a few solutions out there to lock things down, and they are not that expensive, and the support for them is excellent

As for Vista bashing. Right here and now, Vista does not offer me anything I need above an beyond XP. If I use a windows OS it's usually 2000/2003 Server rather than the client versions of the OS. When I do need to do something PC specific, I'll run Parallels with XP, or I'll boot into XP using BootCamp. I would only advise people to stay away from Vista simply until there is a major revision to it, say SP1. This rule also applies to OS X too. I advised people NOT to go to 10.0.0, and to wait for 10.1. The initial release of OS X was not a pleasant experience. I told people to wait for 10.4.1 when 10.4 came out, and the same will be true for 10.5. I will be running it, mainly as I need to learn how it works, plus I'll have to develop and support products running on it, but unless a machine ships with it, I'd steer clear of it for at least a few months until issues are worked out, and quite possibly until 10.5.1 comes out, which will probably be in December.

mike1210

thats quite a few machines , we are currently testing Vista Enterprise in the Uni where I work, out of interest what methods did you use to roll it out

djuk

We used a variety of methods to be fair - from early (pre internal IT supported) self installs amongst more tech savvy users, RIS images, to guided 'install fairs' where non technical users could come and be talked through understanding the process and ensure they were joined to the domain with all the appropriate drivers when they walked away.

mike1210

Tidy, I've got as far as making Win-PE 2.0 and pulling it off a network share so I have a fair way to go yet, our activation server is up but I doubt we will even look at deployment until summer 2008. Also unsure wheather apps will be deployed through LanDesk or AD or via answer file then build script.

I am not using Vista at home yet due to Creative driver issues on my X-FI

HankScorpio

300,000+ to be deployed using HP Radia.

Not a decision made lightly, the consequences of deploying a shambolic OS are to scary for words.

When you start to look at TCO including support etc, no one gets close to MS at the moment.

Even traditional Unix strongholds like web, db and grid are migrating to MS.

If the workplace of the OP is "not even considering Vista as desktop platform at work", I would suggest you've got the wrong people managing your IT and your business. As the big corporations do, every company should look seriously at all the options, not even considering it is just stupid.

finalzero

Unfortunately the landscape of IT is not so rosey for everyone. TCO as you mentioned is a big one, even though it makes sense to move to whatever platform is the majority in your workplace it doesn't happen due to beurocracy and other political issues.

However it also depends on the environment and not every scenario fits the textbook Microsoft enterprise paltform. I have worked in organisations where we had a pure MS platform right the way through and it worked very well, mainly due to the skilled IT staff but also because there were not bottle knecks in the system in the form of foreign systems like unix/linx or bespoke systems that usually throw a spanner in the works.

We primarily use a bespoke environment, integrate into several foreign systems internally and externally which means we don't have a typical windows environment, more mixed back of AIX, Windows and legacy systems. As such it has proven to be very difficult to see an upgrade path, as anyone knows, migrating legacy and bespoke systems can increase TCO exponentially which is a shame.

I am not beating the anti-MS drum mate, I am a certified Windows administrator and have been backing MS for a very long time however I have lost faith in their products of late, especially with Vista. I am sure with time, it will become a viable system however I was more concerned with the consumer versions of the product. In a corporate environment where you have things like MS Management platforms its not hard to work out a strategy to roll out the OS and then support it with skilled staff however consumers are usually ignorant of whatever OS they are using and will happily use whatever is thrown in their face.. regardless of the fact that it may not be fit for purpose.

I still have a document from yester years listing the dream specs of Vista and on paper it really was the next gen system, however what we have now pales in comparison to that.

You can't really blame MS for this though, if they released a totally alien system, regardless that it would be revolutionary and evolutionary, they would have committed commercial suicide.

So for ourselves and many other organisations, Vista is not an option. There are many factors in this decision as I mentioned above, cost being one of those and usually some political pressure within the organisational food chain. Windows XP is a tried and trusted platform, proven by how many people are still asking for Windows XP.

In my organisation we are moving to an enterprise paltform now as the company grows and our strategies change. This includes the likes of SAP, Weblogic and other integration tools so we may well stick to a mutli-coloured OS landscape or we may move into a tightly controlled and admistered environment that embraces the MS paltforms but I doubt it as our development team are still waiting for the powers-that-be to agree to a MSDN subscription!

As for linux, unfortunately its plagued with its own issues, still has problems with basic hardware support and abysmal wifi support however in other areas its improved alot. I really like the modular architecture of X Windows (which OS X shares), I just wish MS has taken a look at things like *nix and OS X when they were decided on a new OS, they would have ended up with a lean mean OS in the end.

Adios,

Fz