Ouch!

I thought I had said some scathing stuff about Vista. The worst part about this post is that it is 100% accurate.

Many Microsoft fanbois like to point out that Vista will eventually be shipped on 90% of PCs. This more than anything else demonstrates not the value of Vista but the value of a monopoly.

For those that wish to argue that MS doesn't have market power simply need to witness how customers have to beg to keep a product on the market to understand the market power of MS.

Regards

Joe Dokes

Vista is the best thing that happened to Apple. It gave their advertising department a lot of fodder to use in those "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials!

I've only been using Vista a few months -- on a PC I set up as dual boot -- and I just started getting some pretty serious looking indigo death screens the other day. Just in time to delay the preparation of my tax return. After the first one, I ran chkdsk /f as recommended in the error message. After the second one, about a half hour later, I have just been avoiding Vista altogether. I usually only use it to run eBay Turbo Lister.

Anyone know of good tax software that works in Linux? I understand Turbo Tax's browser-based version does NOT. :(

According to CodeWeaver's web site, Turbotax 2007 has "Silver" status under Crossover Office. That is a real dilemma for me since I have been using TaxCut since Intuit's spyware fiasco of several years ago. Anyone know if TaxACT works under linux and Wine?

H & R Block's online version says it doesn't work in the browser, but gives a continue anyway option. I just filed my taxes using it this past weekend on Fedora 8 using Firefox.

Microsoft patting itself on the back for Vista having fewer security holes in its first year than XP is inane; they're patting themselves on the back for learning from their mistakes. Everything that turned up in XP and got patched will have gotten fed over to the Vista development team as something that they needed to test for before Vista made it out the door -- at least, unless Microsoft is so completely clueless that they have no mechanism to check whether a security flaw in one OS is replicated in another. So Vista would have had the easily-found security holes in XP fixed before it was released, and would have a different set of security holes that may not be as easy to find.

I have to agree that Vista is a monster looming that must be delt with at some point. Better buy those site licenses for XP soon.

P.S. I know H & R Block's web-based tax service works well on Linux. I filed mine from home on my PCLinuxOS 2007 laptop.

I'll never understand the vista haters....I bought vista the day it came out and I've never experienced anything that i DIDN'T experience on XP, and i've never found a piece of hardware/software it wasn't compatible with. Maybe i'm in the minority on that one but it's true.
The barrage of "are you sure you want me to do what you just told me to do?" questions is without a doubt a mistake. It should default at "off" and be optional. However, it takes all of 20 seconds to turn it off and you're never bothered with it again.
Stop holding on the past and instead of crapping on vista all the time how about we try to improve it? Where's the improve vista petition...

I work in the digital audio and video fields. The general consensus is that Vista is not worth the trouble. Not to mention there is little or no driver support for our older hardware.

Most of the people in this business support themselves with their computers. They would much rather fight than switch to an OS they can't use. OTOH switching to a OS they can use is acceptable. I've seen quite a few musicians switch to a Mac since Vista was forced on us. It would be different if you could still buy XP bundled with a new machine or better yet no OS bundled with a new machine but guaranteed driver support for the OS you choose.

M$ can not tell a musician he's got to throw away his investment in equipment and software to use a semi-functional OS and get away with it. IMO since Apple bought Logic it's the only place left to get great personal audio software anyway.

Maybe those Mac vs Apple commercials actually do have it right after all. M$ is no place for creative types that absolutely must have a functional machine.

I'm pretty sure I just talked myself into a new Mac If I ever have to give up XP. :)

I don't understand where all the gripes about Vista compatibility are coming from - I built a gaming computer for my son as a grad present last spring and after reviewing all the boards - we decided to build it with 32 bit Vista. He hasn't had any problems with finding drivers and it runs everything we've thrown at it from counterstrike to Crysis.

I know 64 bit Vista has trouble with older programs and equipment but what did you expect - remember when Windows went 32 bit and your old 1200 baud modem couldn't get drivers - yes you spent 800 dollars for it - but it was obsolete and nobody cares anymore.

Anyone who doesn't use the user account control must really trust their spyware solution because its the only thing between you and the next Sony root kit or other unpublished DRM nonsense.

Dave... Your 1200 baud example was pretty lame and quite inaccurate. By definition, Win95 supported ALL of those 1987-88 era internal & external modems...

Back then, all 1200-baud modems were 8-bit ISA with no PnP and used dip switches to set Port/IRQ/address. They appeared to the OS as nothing more than a COM port and given the cards didn't have PnP, Win95 had no idea what the item was--or cared for that matter. All it saw was a COM port. You also had to find and set the appropriate initialization string--not a big deal. And even if you couldn't get Win95 to work with your modem*** (the usual reasons were COM port, address, or IRQ conflicts), you could pick up a brand-new 28.8K ISA modem in 1995 for ~$50, a speed improvement of ~20x.

The issue here is that Vista's "upgrade adviser" is, IMHO, Vista's undoing. Why should I throw out a perfectly good HP printer (and replace it with one that has their customer-oriented "oh, your cartridge is too old so I won't print with it" technology), scanner, video card (good luck with doing that on a laptop), wireless/network card, etc.? Companies would have to replace more than just their PCs--especially networked printers.

Microsoft should have paid hardware companies to write drivers for Vista, like they did with Win95 and WinXP. There's a reason those operating systems were so popular--they didn't require someone to throw out 80% of their 2-3 year old hardware to work with the new OS. In fact, you could load DOS/Win3.1x drivers under Win95 & you could load Win9x drivers under WinXP. While technically, you can do the same with loading 2K/XP drivers under Vista, I doubt all of those people are spreading FUD.

So, I do call your bluff. I doubt people would be complaining about Vista's hardware compatibility if they had to replace only one 7-year old piece of hardware...

***BTW--Win95's "Terminal" application was crap so if you complain about it not working with your 1200-baud modem, 3rd party apps were there to fill the slack.

Yes Mark you caught me in a bad example - I kneel in awe of your superior geekdom.

I am sorry that I don't remember all the issues I had when I converted my office from Windows for workgroups to Windows 95. Thinking back, I think the biggest problem was finding a driver for the SCSI external CD rom drive that our advertising department had made me buy so that they could use the clip art from Corel Draw. For a blast from the past go to

http://www.byte.com/art/9507/sec6/sec6.htm

to remind yourself just how much fun it was to be the sys admin back then.

I still stand by my main point. People with new equipment will use Vista without many issues. Most people that I talk to about their compatibility problems with Vista are talking about old printers. HP could fix this in a heartbeat but they would rather sell a new printer.

You talk about previous versions of windows being more popular but as I recall most businesses did not switch over existing PC's in the first year - It is always just too big a pain.

Most businesses lease in 3 year cycles. After an OS has been out for 2 years businesses will have switched over about 60 percent of their hardware to stuff that is compatible. Then as they start to replace the next 30 percent they will begin ordering them with the new OS and will start converting the hardware they have.

Microsoft's biggest problem is that XP is a solid operating system and Vista doesn't have features that provide anyone a reason to upgrade. Win 95 was different because it was such an improvement over Windows for Workgroups and there were finally an overabundance of programs that required the GUI interface.

Not sure I understand the complaints here. I have a seven year old laptop that's been painlessly, easily, quickly, and successfully upgraded through six (6!) different operating systems since I bought it. With each new operating system it runs faster and better than it did before, and I've had no issue with drivers or older hardware.

Oh, wait. You guys are talking about Windows and PCs. Mine is a 17" Titanium PPC Powerbook that started out on OS9 and now runs Leopard like it was built for it from the get go. My bad.

I find it amusing that a company that builds the hardware AND writes the OS has such a stable product. I mean, you'd think that it would be to their benefit to release an OS and require people to buy new hardware to drive their own sales. On the other hand, M$ writes software that obsoletes 2 year old hardware and they don't see any real benefit from the sales generated when consumers are forced to upgrade.

Oh, and did I mention that my 5-seat Mac OS upgrade cost me under $200. $35 per license, compared to (based on a quick search on Amazon) anywhere between $50 and $320 for an UPGRADE to Vista. Leopard only comes in one flavor--the fully functional, all features enabled version. Who knows what each version of Vista gets you.

To all those that say that Macs are too expensive, I submit that my pre-9/11 laptop is still as viable for my business as it was when I bought it. Even after the switch from PPC to Intel, I'm still supported by all of the software I use (Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Logic, Dreamweaver, Flash, Final Cut Pro). When I make presentations using Keynote, I have Windows users raving and wondering how I did it.

Looking back over the past seven years since I made the switch, I can say that if you want to see what Windows will look like in three to five years, look at Apple's OS now, then subtract the about 50% of the features, the intuitive interface, speed, stability, compatibility with prior versions, and reliability.

I have had no problems with Vista except Adobe Acrobat 5.0 (not Adobe Reader) won't run. It's an expensive program and I don't use it enough to justify an upgrade to get features I have no use for.

What's funny is that we have had close to no problem with Leopard. I'm always stunned when I go to help out a friend or a client on Windows by the amount of annoyances Windows users have to go through. It's just not serious.

Windows as an individual computer getting on the internet might be work, and at what cost. But when I consider my experience with OSx, windows is a sad and frustrating thing.

But I guess that's just me. I like quality over emotions. If it works very well and looks good, then why go to the other limping OS?

Great post. I agree MS has always congratulated themselves for being better than the worse they came out with before. Kind of a neat way to say: "We were bad, we are getting better." Always compare yourself to the worse, never the better OSs out there. Oh, and yes, with your financial participation and help:)

I saw the price in $ and the cost in disk space and the misery of a tether to the mother ship and just said no. I bought an iMac and will probably invest in an Apple laptop at some point.
In my company, one of the executives went with Vista, and thought it was great at first. Now he wants to go back to XP.
If Microsoft wants to survive, they should quit looking outside and start looking inside for ways to make the OS leaner, better, more functional, clearer, etc. Bigger is not necessarily better.

I saw the price in $ and the cost in disk space and the misery of a tether to the mother ship and just said no. I bought an iMac and will probably invest in an Apple laptop at some point.
In my company, one of the executives went with Vista, and thought it was great at first. Now he wants to go back to XP.
If Microsoft wants to survive, they should quit looking outside and start looking inside for ways to make the OS leaner, better, more functional, clearer, etc. Bigger is not necessarily better.

I suspect that a lot of the machines which are being shipped without Vista are going to offices in government and education. I work at a university, and our budget is so tight, we can't afford much in the way of hardware or software upgrades. And staffing is so limited due to budget cuts that we can't afford the lost productivity while the staffers learn something new.

Vista is fine if all you want to do is send email and surf the web. But if you need your computer to communicate with an old piece of research equipment that is being used for a multi-year grant project, or are trying to run custom-build software, upgrading to Vista can be costly and time-consuming. And impossible if you have no budget for upgrades.

So what's the answer here? Keep XP forever and ever? Should we NEVER expect to switch an OS without every piece of old hardware and software still humming along like nothing happened (forever)? I wonder if that's even possible. But then the big question: Beyond the "security fix," what was the BIG, BIG thing that M$ was trying to do with Vista that caused it roll the dice on backwards compatibility? I'm not tech-savvy like most of you, but it seems madness to expect us to throw away mature, working software and hardware every 3 or 4 years because somebody wants to replace the supporting OS (rather than build on it).

I want to like Vista but Microsoft has failed to deliver on its promises. For example, I'm in the process of building a new gaming PC. Prior to the launch of Vista there were many articles talking about the new power and features of DX10. It was to be MUCH faster than DX9 and enable superior graphics. Funny how reality came around and destroyed that myth. Identical games running on both DX9 and DX10 run at about HALF the speed on DX10. Even when running in DX9 mode on Vista you pay at least a 10% penalty compared to XP. Then we can move to sound cards. Creative with EAX is by far the most popular standard. What did MS do? They intentionally dropped all support for DirectSound leaving EAX unable to run on Vista. Okay, there is a half hearted support for OpenAL but when you break something this big you don't just tell everyone else to clean up the MS mess. Remember all those Office benchmarks where Vista runs so much more slowly? MS in their finite wisdom removed the hardware acceleration from the screen drawing API. I have a friend who has a shortcut to a file on his local hard drive which he frequently edits. He claims that 20% of the time he uses that shortcut, Vista can't find the file! He double clicks the link again and it works. Perhaps Vista is so slow because it has to retry every operation? I won't go into the intrusive mess that is UAC. Is this the OS of the future?

When it came time to pick an OS for my new gaming system the answer was sadly too clear. The promise of DX10 being playable "some day" just isn't worth penalty of giving up so much. I'm sticking with XP. Perhaps some day Vista will ready for prime time but for me it isn't yet.

UAC in vista actually makes it less secure, the first thing users do is turn it off then they notice that something else keeps popping up telling them its turned off. So they turn off that warning as well and now they don't even get notified if there antivirus software is out of date

Just thought I'd let everybody know the "improve Vista" petitions are on a roll in the bathroom next to the porcelain appliance. Submit them frequently, I'm sure Microsoft will take them all under advisement just as soon as the accounting department figures out which software product to release next. Its obvious the software isn't released to serve a customer need, but rather to provide a Microsoft revenue need. Vista provides nothing so much better than XP that it can justify its price, let alone the headaches of switching machines/software/applications/drivers/hardware etc. Microsoft Vista - the Oww starts Now!!