Vista’s death march picked up some pace after a metrics researcher revealed that nearly 35 per cent of PCs built to run the Windows operating system have been downgraded to XP.
In a survey of more than 3,000 computers, performance testing software developer Devil Mountain Software estimated that more than one in three new machines had either been downgraded by vendors such as Dell, or by customers once they bought the PC…
That’s a damning verdict on an OS that Microsoft still wants frustrated customers to love.
The software beast has already admitted it made some pretty big mistakes with Vista. Now, after trying some heavy duty marketing, Microsoft has finally conceded it’s high time to move on by explaining how MS will engineer Windows 7.
I left the wonderful world of Microsoft OS’ three years ago. Never looked back.
1/3 downgrades = 2/3 suckers.
I think XP will be the last decent OS from Microsoft. OS X is just so far beyond Vista and then 10.6 Snow Leopard is adding even MORE stability and speed. No, I think Windows is on the way out. Midori, their online OS may end up being something, but they’d better hire back all the folks they lost to Google and Apple to do it right. Otherwise, the upward trend of Apple will continue. And, like the author, I quit using Windows about 5 years ago and haven’t looked back either. Not to beat a dead horse, but ‘Get a Mac’.
An “upgrade” to Microsoft Vista is a downgrade
It goes to show you that even the largest , most profitable corporation in the world has to keep its “eye on the puck”
Service levels and paying attention to customer’s needs , wants and concerns are everything
Up on the top floor , it was rah rah Bill Bill Bill
Imagine the graphs and charts at Microsoft meetings with all the corporate groupies and yes men attending these meetings
Yet no one had enough guts to tell Bill the truth – which he did not want to hear
Or were they seriously deluded on the top floor ?
Who knows ? Who really cares ?
It all comes down to listening to your customer not the graphs and charts at company meetings with all the rah rah – “best thing since sliced bread “
“Of course the people on the team represent the way we get feature requests implemented and develop end to end scenarios, so the challenge is to have the right team and the right structure to maximise the ability to get those done – neither too many nor too few.”
The people that “requested” hardware-level DRM issues, sluggish performance, and high hardware requirements, peripheral driver unavailability sure weren’t the end users. You know, the ones that actually have to USE the product?
Vista’s beta testers should have been real-life everyday PC users, not software developers and hardware engineers. The public got saddled with an NTFS version of Windows ME as a result.
Would it be too much to ask Micro$oft to get input from average people and not just those who are tech-minded, so Windows 7 doesn’t crash and burn too?
Most corporations I know have a standard image with XP. Many, if not most, have upgraded their versions of Office mainly due to improvements (not my word) in Outlook and the associated server pricing. They are also concerned about external file compatibility with other organizations. Kind of a dumb idea but there you go.
Most of these companies have no reason under the sun to move to Vista. The associated costs would be heavy with little or no financial return. Vista licensing could be free and they’d stick with XP.
One CIO I know said “Why would I want to upgrade to Vista? I don’t need to play Halo 2.”
P.S. Server 2008 may be a corporate winner for MS, but strangely they never talk about it.
FUD FUD FUD, don’t you have other news to cover?
Of course, Windows 7 just may be doomed before it even gets out of the starting gate:
“Microsoft also looks set to walk away from its existing GUI model, and we’re guessing that will probably happen after Windows 7 (a kernel based on Vista) and possibly Windows 8, which brings the arrival of the new OS easily into the next decade.
http://tinyurl.com/5fbhzo
I use XP and Linux so I really don’t know much about Vista. But I hear the new Mojave OS is just the bee’s knees!
Microsoft gambled that PC would keep getting bigger and faster, not more compact and modest as is the current trend.
Vista may work perfectly well, but it’s just a very unfortunate mismatch to current requirements.
When will the FUD end.
We just rolled out Vista on all of our machines at work. It was the most painless Windows upgrade we’ve ever done.
One CIO I know said “Why would I want to upgrade to Vista? I don’t need to play Halo 2.”
Use a Mac? Play….nothing! Well, World of Warcraft anyway.
Agreed, no real reason to upgrade to Vista….at this time. The same thing happened with XP. There was no need to upgrade until enough stuff came out that was exclusively for XP.
If not for several applications that have only Windows compatibility, I’d have gone to a Mac more than 10 years ago. I suggest that Apple encourage application developers to create Mac compatible versions of their S/W, especially business oriented programs.
#10
Out of curiosity, why did your company upgrade? Obviously there was some cost/benefit rationale, I’m genuinely interested what that is.
I like the part of the interview where Vista is compared to a work of art. ROTFLMFAO. Which bit to remove? How about the DRM.
#10 obviously works for Fantasy Island, Inc. At this company all Microsoft products work flawlessly and nary a bug is found. At Fantasy Island even Microsoft’s “marketing” works.
#14
We use a lot of software with 64-bit variants (AutoCAD and our own proprietary software) and we were buying a few dozen new machines. 64-bit XP was a pain to deal with and we didn’t notice any performance loss moving to Vista, so we went ahead and moved completely to 64-bit Vista. Now we can run all of our software on any system. Other than getting new anti-virus software we didn’t have to change much. Our IT guys seem to like it a lot.
The hardest part for most people has actually been Office 2007. I like it, but a lot of people were really confused by the new interface until they had a chance to play with it for awhile.
The Upgrade for both XP and Vista is of course, GNU LINUX !!! And with OpenOffice, you can outfit a complete “business workstation” – FOR FREE !!!
#12
My developers do code on Vista and one the whole there is no difference to XP. However, IIS7 is a pain. I know that my biggest complaint is that for all of Balmer’s ranting about “developers, developers, developers” Microsoft never seems to consider them when designing an OS. If they had, you would have the ability to run IE6 side-by-side with IE7. Developers want the *exact* same functionality that will exist on the production server.
#18
I agree that most complaints about Vista are really directed at Office 2007. Other than general “where did they hide it” problems, I find that most users have no trouble transitioning to Vista. However, Office 2007 is a bigger hurdle.
I have a new laptop with vista home premium ( go figure what that is ) I expected the worst but so far I am very pleasantly surprised it has run almost flawlessly the only problem I have had so far is the preinstalled Mcaffe wont update, other than that it has been surprisingly robust. I admit it is much more difficult to navigate when working on and setting up commercial networks and it asks 5 millions times if a really want to do something but over all I have been pleasantly surprised.
I have a laptop with xp and desktop that I do not plan on upgrading anytime soon in fact the desktop is going on 5 years with a single install of xp and is functioning perfectly (that is a record among the people I know for longevity )
I’ve got XP-ME on two machines. One’s fairly good, and the other’s merely a little flaky. XP was a lot more stable…. That said, I like the thumbnail view of a minimized window and the sidebar. I don’t like being unable to access most of the nominally shared files on either machine from the other. (A “server” of sorts on an XP box is a little help, but….)
(The Vista version of Solitaire is dumbed down to the point of silliness….)
I had to replace my A/V software and a couple other things, but, other than WP8 refusing to save files, most of that was minor.
It’d be nice if I could get SP1 on one of these boxes, but it refuses to install. If I let “Auto-Update” do it, it says it did, but only takes a minute or two. Trying to do it manually results in a barf about halfway through, with an incomprehensible error message and useless follow-up.
I have a retail copy of XP I could subvert (the machine it was running on is deceased), but pure inertia (and the “maybe” factor of finding drivers) have kept me from swapping it on that machine.
“Disappointing” is a polite statement.
I can’t switch to Linux or Apple – my clients are running mixes of Win98 and XP, and, well, aren’t about to switch out 20 machines just to keep me happy.
Same old same old here – push in a bunch of “it would be nice” features, without fixing other issues, and with bugs in the new stuff, too.
Regards
i was forced to get vista with a laptop that i purchased, and honestly i havent really had any problems with it. i have and will not purchase vista with free alternatives like open office.
This means that i am unable to sync my windows mobile device to windows mail, because you need the version that comes with office to be able to sync. Luckily I was able to find a program (finchsync) to sync my windows mobile device with thunderbird.
I agree it’s a lot of FUD… but not all of it.
I have Vista because it came preloaded on my Toshiba… and once I killed the UAC BS and set up Kapersky, I never had another problem.
The only reason I haven’t kept Vista onto my desktop is simply because of compatibility issues… but those issues are more logically blamed on drivers from a few hardware vendors (I’m looking at you, Creative Labs) and on the fact that I still run a number of apps that are long in the tooth.
I think Vista is fine. Kill Aero and UAC, set up your own security, and turn the desktop back to the Win2K appearance (if like me, you want absolute simplicity), and its fine.
But that is, just the problem. It is fine. And fine is a word that typically means the same as, “there just isn’t anything new or innovative, but it works.” So in fact, Vista, which works fine, offers me no features or benefits over the existing OS (aside from cosmetic stuff), eats up more power, and costs more.
Essentially, it’s only real problem is that no one needed an upgrade from XP in the first place.
But it works just fine.
#24 True. In addition it requires more hardware than XP did to run fine. On these threads I haven’t been able to get one person to list the real benefits of using Vista over XP for the average home or business user.
So, higher h/w requirements (more $) & no additional benefit = crap product.
I would, I gave my new Dell Vista computer away to another group at work.
I’ll keep my old XP machine
I gotta agree with the comments about the new office being confusing. I really don’t like the ribbon, it just isn’t working for me.
As far as development, virtual machines are the only way to go. I use VMWare but there are lots of good options.
The other problem with Vista in the enterprise is that many corporations have some critical third party apps from small vendors that were written 10 years ago (or more) in technologies like VB6 and Delphi. These things are a pain in the ass to test and upgrade.
I’ve got Vista on my current desktop machine. Some things work just as good as they did in XP, but performance stinks (it’s not a bit better on a dual core 2.2GHz system than Linux on a 1.7GHz Centrino).
Only reason I currently still use it: it’s fully configured with apps and stuff and has my calender on it.
pj
#27
For home users the biggest change is mostly the added security. Other than the recent .net and activeX issues there have only been a handful of security issues with Vista, compared with literally hundreds for XP. Plus 64-bit Vista isn’t affected by most of them, including the .net and activex bugs.
#25 and anyone else who turned off UAC:
Have you tried turning UAC back on once you got your computers all set up? When I’m working on a new system I turn it off while I install everything and then turn it back on when I’m done. I very rarely see the UAC popup after that.
I actually prefer the way UAC works to having to type in my password every time I want to do admin stuff in OSX and Ubuntu.
My experience so far is that Vista is the most frustrating piece of software out of Redmond to date. Hardware or games not developed in the past two years? Forget it. And you can forget about modern games, too. Vista is a massive resource hog that eats up your system memory like the blob.
My loathing for all things Microsoft is fading quickly when the criticism is unfair. Heck… I tried my darndest to boycott them back in the days when Linux really sucked… but couldn’t get my dial up modem to work and gave up. Now, however, this time around, things are actually unfair. Yes, they are monolithic. Yes, Vista isn’t perfect… but, frankly, it works very well.
I’d run Vista on the following specs:
Quadrule XEON Dual-Cores 3.2Ghz
16 gigs of ram
(server MOBO with PCI-X)
8×250 SCSI HD’s in RAID-10 (4xRaid-1’s JBOD) with dedicated backplane and controller (PCI-X) with 2G of backplane RAM
NVidia 8600GT 512M
Dual power supplies
However, I doubt I could get the Vista drivers for the MOBO & SCSI for such a setup.
Friends of mine actually upgraded from XP to Windows Server 2003 R2 on their laptops.
Runs really well.