[Reactor]

Here are some selected quotes.....

My efforts to get Media Center working highlighted two big problems with Vista. First, it's a memory hog. The hundreds of new features jammed into it have made it a prime example of software bloat, perhaps the quintessence of programmer Niklaus Wirth's law that software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster (for more on the problems with software design that lead to bloat, see "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Meta"). Although my computer meets the minimum requirements of a "Vista Premium Ready PC," with one gigabyte of RAM, I could run only a few simple programs, such as a Web browser and word processor, without running out of memory. I couldn't even watch a movie: Windows Media Player could read the contents of the DVD, but there wasn't enough memory to actually play it. In short, you need a hell of a computer just to run this OS.

Second, users choosing to install the 64-bit version of Vista on computers they already own will have a hard time finding drivers, the software needed to control hardware sub*systems and peripherals such as video cards, modems, or printers. Microsoft's Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor program, which I ran before installing Vista, assured me that my laptop was fully compatible with the 64-bit version. But once I installed it, my speakers would not work. It seems that none of the companies concerned had written a driver for my sound card; it took more than 10 hours of effort to find a workaround. Nor do drivers exist for my modem, printer, or several other things I rely on. For some of the newer components, like the modem, manufacturers will probably have released 64-bit drivers by the time this review appears. But companies have no incentive to write complicated new drivers for older peripherals like my printer. And because rules written into the 64-bit version of Vista limit the installation of some independently written drivers, users will be virtually forced to buy new peripherals if they want to run it.

 

[binary visions]

You'd think someone going to MIT wouldn't get into a rant on something that is clearly his own fault.

64 bit drivers are NOT widely supported or written yet, and if he wants 64 bit, he needs to figure out if the company that made his hardware has released a driver for it. Vista's "advisor" can only assure him that his hardware specs meet minimum requirements, it can't be aware of every hardware manufacturer's ability to write 64 bit drivers.

I guess being smart enough to go to MIT doesn't mean you have an ounce of common sense. Wow, you didn't check for a sound card driver prior to upgrade, and you're mad that you have to find a workaround. That's definitely Vista's fault. Oh, and gee, you're surprised that your old printer isn't going to have a 64 bit driver written for it? And it's Vista's fault too, huh?

What a dumbass. If you need legacy support or aren't sure that all of your hardware has 64 bit drivers, then don't upgrade to a 64 bit OS.

Memory requirements did seem to be steeper with Vista when I had it installed, but I never actually ran out of memory. Shutting off some services and turning off the glass effects made the system about as fast as XP and in some cases, faster due to the 64 bit processing.

 

[SkaredShtles]

Wow! Shocking. They've pointed out the stuff that's already been pointed out 14,000 times.

 

[Reactor]

Wow! Shocking. They've pointed out the stuff that's already been pointed out 14,000 times.

You'd think someone going to MIT wouldn't get into a rant on something that is clearly his own fault.

Hence the "frothing" in the title.

I'm really interested to see what happens with vista. If it's as bad as teh opponents say there is going to be a minor revolt. If it's a good as the proponents say, a lot of the anti-microsoft crowd is going to lose credibility.

 

[binary visions]

I think it's going to be exactly what 2000 and XP were: right down the middle. The proponents will say, "See? See?! It's pretty good!" and the opponents will say, "See? See?! It's not so awesome." and everyone will go their merry way

 

[stinkyboy]

I heard many people say 2000/XP sucks, but as a company we're stuck with it.

I can see many more people making the switch to Macs when they upgrade their computers. They're comfortable with their iPods, iTunes and soon their iPhones, so why not?

 

[Ciaran]

[RANT]
OK... um... Reactor, you need to quit posting this crap. If you're going to bash Vista at least do it from a first hand account. Quit with this N8 cut and paste crap... it's beneath you. If you wan't a first hand account come on over to my place and use my ROCK SOLID (almost! It is a beta after all!) Vista system. Seems to work OK for me. I am not a developer and am not doing anything super heavy duty but it's done everything I have asked it so far.

The fact is that (As I have said OVER AND OVER BEFORE) Windows requires mucho configuration. It comes with EVERYTHING turned on! If you don't know how to config then maybe you should stick with Apple.

And in addition as we all already know... one should never buy a new flavor of windows untill the service pack comes out.

[/RANT]
Sorry... I haven't had any coffee yet.

 

[stinkyboy]

If you don't know how to config then maybe you should stick with Apple.

I like your insinuation that Mac users are less knowledgeable.

 

[Reactor]

I like your insinuation that Mac users are less knowledgeable.

Especially at some who has been programming longer than he's been out of diapers.

 

[Reactor]

[RANT]
OK... um... Reactor, you need to quit posting this crap. If you're going to bash Vista at least do it from a first hand account. Quit with this N8 cut and paste crap... it's beneath you. If you wan't a first hand account come on over to my place and use my ROCK SOLID (almost! It is a beta after all!) Vista system. Seems to work OK for me. I am not a developer and am not doing anything super heavy duty but it's done everything I have asked it so far.

The fact is that (As I have said OVER AND OVER BEFORE) Windows requires mucho configuration. It comes with EVERYTHING turned on! If you don't know how to config then maybe you should stick with Apple.

And in addition as we all already know... one should never buy a new flavor of windows untill the service pack comes out.

[/RANT]
Sorry... I haven't had any coffee yet.

The point is that even a senior editor at MIT Technology review with 20 years of experience is frothing. I could have posted the part of the article where he says he's switching to a mac instead of upgrading to vista.

In the end I agree with BV there are going to be windows proponents who love Vista, opponents that point to problems with vista, and the majority of people somewhere in the middle.

 

[binary visions]

The point is that even a senior editor at MIT Technology review with 20 years of experience is frothing.

Actually, the point I got out of that article is that a senior editor at MIT Technology Review with 20 years of experience is making herself look stupid.

She published an article about his frustrations with a release candidate version of an operating system, mentions that many new features mimic OSX equivalents - oh, wait, but Apple wasn't the first to use them either - and spends most of the rest of her time complaining that she doesn't have 64-bit drivers to run on her 64-bit operating system... but somehow Vista providing the choice to upgrade to 64-bit is the cause of that problem

Her only valid beef that I can see in the article is with the bigger memory requirements. Again, though, not everything falls into place there, since I had RC1 running with one gig of memory and never ran out of memory - including doing exactly what she was doing in the article, having applications open and trying to play a DVD.

I like Technology Review's articles for the most part but this is a seriously bad editorial.

 

[Ciaran]

I like your insinuation that Mac users are less knowledgeable.

They ARE less knowledgable... About WINDOWS.

I apologize for the insinuation that mac users are stupid. It was not what I meant. My point about apple was that they (at least this is what you all say)come ready to go out of the box and do not require much config.

Reactor, I respect your length of time in the industry, but programming is not desktop support. While programming is infinately more complex, and way beyond my computer skills it does not automatically make you a good desktop tech. Which is not to say that you are, it is only to say that the cut and paste bashing of a new product from MS, in it's N 8 like fashion, is beneath you.

And if you are a good desktop tech, then you should know that Windows is never good out of the box, so why harp on it?

 

[Reactor]

They ARE less knowledgable... About WINDOWS.

I apologize for the insinuation that mac users are stupid. It was not what I meant. My point about apple was that they (at least this is what you all say)come ready to go out of the box and do not require much config.

Reactor, I respect your length of time in the industry, but programming is not desktop support. While programming is infinately more complex, and way beyond my computer skills it does not automatically make you a good desktop tech. Which is not to say that you are, it is only to say that the cut and paste bashing of a new product from MS, in it's N 8 like fashion, is beneath you.

And if you are a good desktop tech, then you should know that Windows is never good out of the box, so why harp on it?

I'm not harping on windows. I've had a lot of computer jobs over the years, Including most of the time (including today) supporting windows servers, and other OSes. I've used and set up more versions of Linux than I can count, VMS, unix, Novell netware and others. I've been to more mcse classes than I can remember. The first thing I do when I gt a windows box is start peeling software off. At least now they don't come with everything turned on by default (a la code red)

Truth be told, I a lot more upset with resellers who load boxes, particullarly desktop boxes, with all manner of crap and corruption. I spent most of a weekend getting all the stuff toshiba loaded on my wife's laptop off.

 

[Ciaran]

Truth be told, I a lot more upset with resellers who load boxes, particullarly desktop boxes, with all manner of crap and corruption. I spent most of a weekend getting all the stuff toshiba loaded on my wife's laptop off.

And I think that has to be one of the worst things ever. It hurts the consumer, and it hurts the reputation of MS and Windows. (Pretty good advertising for Apple though)
My wife bought a new laptop a month ago or so and I had to do the same... wipe it because all the manufacturers free trial offers and such were too deeply embedded and there were so many of them that it was faster to reblast it. I recommend a reblast on any new PC... laptop or desktop. Always start clean, and config and test at every step as you go. After every app install check and config your registry, services, and startup! And test before installing the next app. It takes forever, but my systems are all rock solid and fast.

 

[D_D]

and spends most of the rest of her time complaining that she doesn't have 64-bit drivers to run on her 64-bit operating system... but somehow Vista providing the choice to upgrade to 64-bit is the cause of that problem

I see it as a big problem. If an os doesn't make full use of my hardware it's failing one of its fundamental duties. Currently on many 64bit systems windows is not an option if you want to use it to its full potential.

With the phenomenal amount of resources Microsoft have it's pretty embarrassing that in many cases linux / apple etc. have better 64bit support. It's only going to get worse as more any more people switch if they don't get themselves in gear.

 

[binary visions]

I see it as a big problem. If an os doesn't make full use of my hardware it's failing one of its fundamental duties. Currently on many 64bit systems windows is not an option if you want to use it to its full potential.

Um, how about putting the blame where it belongs, on the shoulders of the hardware manufacturers? Tell them that you think it sucks that they aren't supporting a major upcoming movement in the computer industry. Tell them you're not going to support their company if they can't see their way to supporting devices that are a few years old.

With the phenomenal amount of resources Microsoft have it's pretty embarrassing that in many cases linux / apple etc. have better 64bit support.

I don't know anything about Apple's 64-bit support, but linux isn't comparing apples to apples. The reason linux supports this stuff is because it's completely open source so all the geeks write their own drivers. Or, hack in some workarounds. Either way, the drivers typically take a lot of time and energy to implement, and it's really no better than the editor's workaround for Vista. Again, blame the hardware manufacturer who writes the driver in the first place.

Linux has come a long way but it's still far, and I mean FAR from being a mainstream OS. When you have to spend an hour researching a solution, post in a forum, and spend another 10-20 minutes manually editing a configuration file in order to get, say, your scroll wheel to work... well that's not going to happen for most people.

 

[Reactor]

Linux has come a long way but it's still far, and I mean FAR from being a mainstream OS. When you have to spend an hour researching a solution, post in a forum, and spend another 10-20 minutes manually editing a configuration file in order to get, say, your scroll wheel to work... well that's not going to happen for most people.

I accept your post as having a valid point, but I've had Microsoft tech support, under premium contract, tell me there was nothing they could to help me with a problem, even after admitting it was their software causing the problem. There are problems on both sides, they are just different problems.

If there is a fix, you'e likely to get it faster from microsoft. If there isn't a fix, it's likely a fix will be written and put out faster by the open source community. Microsoft has massive resources to solve problems but it's a massive company, and often hard to get their attention, and when you do it's hard to get them to prioritize your problem. On the other hand some parts of Linux are supported by ah handful of individuals, if there are problems they can be overwhelmed.

 

[binary visions]

I agree that there are problems on both sides. Wasn't really my point, though, it was that simple, widespread tasks are often not natively supported and require extensive research and configuration to get them to work properly.

 

[Reactor]

I agree that there are problems on both sides. Wasn't really my point, though, it was that simple, widespread tasks are often not natively supported and require extensive research and configuration to get them to work properly.

Yeah.

I think a problem some people face, regardless of OS, is during major OS upgrades like XP -> Vista there is little incentive for hardware manufacturers to update older hardware drivers.

If you have a five year SCSI card used for a specialized scanner it can be a major hassle to complete any OS upgrade. That's not directly Microsofts (or other OS vendors) fault but it can be maddening if you have a custom scanning program that your business depends on. It's more a matter the short hardware life cycles, and the overhead in the hardware sector. An laptops are the worst...

 

[binary visions]

Laptops are frickin' awful. All proprietary, non-upgradable...

The fortunate thing is that Microsoft, for better or for worse, has been careful about maintaining compatibility with older programs and operating systems. It has caused a lot of problems in the OS and results in a lot of bloat in the code, but it does mean that businesses can still run old systems to maintain hardware like you mention while following a regular upgrade path for the normal business machines.

We had several Windows 98 boxes controlling some very large and old plotters the last place I worked. About the only time MS actually broke the back-compatibility was when they went from a command line shell (Windows for Workgroups) to a true graphical, multitasking environment in Windows 95, and even then there were workarounds to keep old programs running.

 

[blue]

Always start clean, and config and test at every step as you go. After every app install check and config your registry, services, and startup! And test before installing the next app. It takes forever, but my systems are all rock solid and fast.

But...I didn't do that...and my system is rock solid... irate2:

 

[johnbryanpeters]

But...I didn't do that...and my system is rock solid... irate2:

If you buy through small business channel rather than home channel, you can get a system without all the marketing crap with which companies like to clutter the desktop. My optiplex systems start clean without rebuilding.

 

[sanjuro]

I just think it is pathetic how Microsoft makes it difficult for security companies like Symantec to develop wonderful software, like Norton Internet Security, for Vista...