Why Windows Vista failed (or so people say)

Originally Posted by kevin from Chi-town

they'll finally get the XP holdouts to upgrade.

Yo... That would be me...

Actually I just can't see the point of buying Vista now that 7 is just around the corner.

That would mean me too!! well they already got me to upgrade!! eejejeje All i can say is this from personal experiences. I have had 2 laptops in the last year. one was a dell wich had a 2ghz dual core and 2gb ram with Vista ultimate, and the other had 2gb ram with a 1.6 dualcore also with Vista ultimate! And both ran like crap, super slow, took fore ever to boot, no to mention it took ages to install and remove programs. Right now i own a Acer one netbook, wich only has 1gb ram, and a 1.6ghz Intel Atom processor with 120gb hd. It came with xp installed, and out of the box it ran twice as fast as my other two laptops. I recently went ahead and installed Windows 7 beta build 7000, and WOW! i am really impresed!! This windows blows both Vista and Xp out of the water!! My net book is even faster now, and i havent had any problems so far, everything is running great!! I,ve installed Firefox, flash, java, quicktime, realplayer, Live messenger, avast anti virus, Cooliris extension for firefox etc, etc. And Windows 7 is super fast compared to Vista!! I mean if i installed Vista Ultimate on my netbook, it'll probably blowup during bootup, or at least bring it to a halt!! Remember this is a Atom 1.6ghz and only 1gb ram! Vista is just too sluggish of an OS, and windows 7 in my opinion has remarkably totally surpassed Vista in every way imaginable, and it is only in beta!!!

Ok Folks -- lets step back 18 months or so.

Microsoft really couldn't do too much more with XP and definitely wanted to move forward to a 64 Bit OS. I think Gamers also wanted faster and faster hardware -- and if you are going to use Video cards with a HUGE amount of memory in them you are going to have less RAM over for the OS. Dual Core 64 bit processors were coming out so Microsoft wanted (bad mistake IMO) to get VISTA out ASAP.

This resulted in most new computers people were buying at that time to be shipped with VISTA already installed -- no choice -- you got VISTA that was it - and even more of an irritant you rarely got a proper install Disk but just an OEM Image usually installed on a Hidden Paritition. The recovery software often didn't work -- and if I had trouble with this (and I've used computers for quite a long time) I can just imagine the horrors of a relatively inexperienced user trying to recover a "Broken OS" with no proper install Disk.

Even on this board (and I've had problems with this as well ) a load of users report problems in getting XP computers to share files with VISTA / W7. This in a lot of of cases is by no means trivial problem to solve --especially for inexperienced users who often had zero experience of Networking,

The initial implementation of Vista also wasn't very well optimized and on typical hardware available at that time DID RUN LIKE A DOG. Most home users don't have the time or inclination to tinker around improving VISTA - and by all accounts it could have been optimized but requires some expertise way beyond a typical users skill set to do - especially if you break something and there's no decent way to re-install the OS.

SP1 on modern hardware is a different animal - better but still not as good in my (and loads of other people's) experience as W7. At the very least VISTA should have been released as the SP1 version even if it meant a 6 month delay.

So not unnaturally Vista got a bad reputation to start with -- introduced too early for the average level of user competance, and once a product / brand gets a bad name / image then it's almost impossible to redeem it.

Microsoft would as far as VISTA is concerned done better to have introduced it the other way around - Corporates first and then Home Users. A lot of people would have got used to it in the workplace so would then have been able to handle it on their own computers.

What we've got now is a VERY VERY poor take up of VISTA by corporates -- at least "for the masses" even though some I.T support staff might have a VISTA computer or two around . Shell where I have often done some Free lance work for is still using a huge number of computers running believe it or not Windows 2000. They will go straight to W7 and they are not the only large corporation running Windows 2000.

So one might question whether Vista deserves its bad reputation from a purely technical point -- however BAD MARKETING, TOO RAPID INTRODUCTION, AND NOT ENOUGH USER EDUCATION hobbled the project from the start.

Anyway the end outcome is fine --we've got Windows 7 which seems to address most of the negative issues users reported on with VISTA and looks like it WILL be a winner all the way.

Cheers
jimbo

Originally Posted by OS Master

Well my laptop has a 1.73 Ghz processor, but I think 2 GB should now be the recommend amount of RAM for Vista.

But you can optimize Vista's performance without modifying your hardware. You can gain some performance by disabling Aero, for example.

We know that.

But it doesn't take a lot of impact.

Originally Posted by MsYau

We know that.

But it doesn't take a lot of impact.

That,s exactly my point! im runing W7 right now with full aero, 3d the works on my measly Acerone netbook no problems or glitches at all, and i didnt even have to tinker with it a bit, didnt disable anything to make it work like it should, it just runs great period! Vista on the other hand is a total mess1 thanks god that MS has gotten it right so far with W7, and i bet that when W7 comes out more people are gonna jump to W7 than the amount that jumped from xp to Vista! But it still depends on wether MS stays on the right track, or decides to mess it all up! My money is on staying on the right track!

Originally Posted by djwayne

Ya right....I had the "opportunity" to wait a year for Vista compatible drivers for my sound card.

I also had the "opportunity" to spend a couple of days messing with printer drivers that were supposedly Vista compatible, that wouldn't work for anything.

It was amazing that as soon as I went back to XP, all my stuff worked !!

Windows XP, An OS that's uhm, 7 years old, Vista, An Os that's about 2 ... Hmmmm which do YOU think is more mature?

I'm not making excuses for the lack of driver support for VISTA but. Since WHEN is it the responsibility of the OS Manufacturer to produce drivers for the many millions of hardware devices out there? MS does a fantastic job of providing the basic drivers for MOST hardware but asking them to make optimized drivers for all the different hardware devices that are out there is being a little unrealistic.

If the hardware manufacturers want to SELL their hardware, they'd better provide DECENT drivers for the operating systems their audience is using.

While I'm on it, the state of driver development out there today is just beyond pathetic.

HP Drivers take 15-20 minutes to load and quit eating 90+% of the CPU after a cold boot on my wife's Dual CPU 2.4 GHz 2GB RAM Windows XP SP3 PC. Is that REALLY Microsoft's fault? Not a chance people. that's HP's fault. And, why are the Drivers for her MFC Printer 238 MB

Why are Logitech MOUSE drivers (SETPOINT 4.7) 60 Megs That's INSANE!!

AMD buys out ATI and suddenly ATI's drivers just SUCK. CCC throws 15+ exceptions / second on that SAME PC. I've gone back to 6.9 catalyst drivers that actually perform MUCH better than ay of the driver releases since for her 9800 Pro.

These are but 3 examples. I have thousands more at client sites all over the Denver Metro Area and the Colorado Front Range. And I do have to say that IF all those drivers worked without issue, I'd probably be out work. BUT, be that as it may I find it UNACCEPTABLE that everyone blames Microsoft for these CRAPPY drivers. Microsoft has released a VERY nice Driver Development Kit (compare that to writing drivers in Leopard or Linux!!) with VERY well laid out RULES ABOUT what is and is NOT accetable in driver development under their operating systems. And, all these hardware manufacturers do as LITTLE as possible to get their hardware to "WORK" under whatever operating system they're targeting and nearly everyone on the planet blames Microsoft for the problems and issues that arise from purely LAZY Manufacturers and Driver Authors.

Bottom line though is that of ALL the operating systems I've used over my nearly 40 years in the computer industry, Microsoft provides the MOST drivers for the MOST number of harware products out there. AND, you get those OUT OF THE BOX not having to hunt some source code line down only to have to COMPILE it then figure out where to install it THEN to find that you have the Rev 2 product not the Rev 1! and it just won't work

AND - is it Microsoft's fault that my PC under Windows XP SP3 will REBOOT when I fire up VPC 2007 SP1? The stack trace (obtained via WinDBG) CLEARLY shows it was VIA's fault with their HD Audio driver trying to call IRQ 0 with NULLS!!
I think not!

Nice rant, but the fact remains my soundcard and printer would not work with Vista. I had no choice but to revert back to XP, as I had to have my soundcard for music production. The question was asked "why did Vista fail ??," well that is the reason it failed for me. I bought Vista when it first came out, and I liked Vista, it's a great looking program , and I really wanted it to work, but after several months of not having my hardware, I had to go back to XP. The compatibility program in Vista did NOT work with my soundcard and printer drivers. Now fast forward two years later, and drivers are available, so that issue is a mute point.

With Microsoft changing the OS requirements for driver manufacturers every couple of years, this makes keeping up with Microsoft a difficult thing.

I remember having an XP Pro student copy and trying to run it on 256Mb of RAM.. what a joke! Of course back then that
was a socket A m/board and under 1G CPU. Now I have a much better PC and have 2G of RAM.So my point is XP was a dog back then too. I can`t comment on Vista because I haven`t used it yet.

Originally Posted by iroken22

Agreed ME was a complete disaster that no cover story, blanket, service pack could repair. People that think Windows XP is the greatest OS have to look back to when it was first released. There were serious problems with the OS that people did not like. In the case of XP though the software engineers from various companies actually FOLLOWED the directions set forth by Microsoft. Oh and with VISTA most companies did not and still have not followed the complete guidelines set forth by them. So literally VISTA and XP are merely the same disaster the only difference is in the fact that in XP other people helped by following the rules while in VISTA they didnt

I love how people love to say that Vista flopped, even though it broke XP's sale speed record.

Originally Posted by Hidavi

I love how people love to say that Vista flopped, even though it broke XP's sale speed record.

That's because it flopped after I bought it and discovered my hardware wouldn't work with it. I was all gung ho for Vista before that.

Now that drivers have been developed for it, it's still going to flop as I'm going to switch to Windows 7 as soon as it comes out. I doubt there will be a lot of loyal Vista users hanging on for years like there was and still is with XP. But then again, if Microsoft gets crazy with the price of W7, maybe Vista will be a viable alternative.