as a IT pro i would almost agree entirely with the article
yet vista’s biggest issue wasnt the OS, it was all the 3rd party software makers and drivers (lack of to be more precise) that are currently the biggest headache. Now you can say Micro~1 was greedy and made software companies jump through hoops to develop for vista. But in reality Vista is harder to code for. dotnet even compounds the problem.
vista will either become good after sp1 like win 98. For those who remember win98 stunk to high heaven and was buggy as heck til sp1. Or will be the next ME if the vista name becomes to tainted to carry.
currently XP pro cost more oem on all the sales sights....hmmmmmm
Are you up on Microsoft licensing?
I believe it used to be the case that if you owned a license for a more recent OS / higher level OS, you were legal to run something earlier. In other words, if you held a Win98 license you could run Win95, if you had a Win2K license, you could run NT 4.0, that sort of thing.
Does that still apply today? Has anyone tried to get a WinXP install verified based on holding a Vista license?
Which is just another example of MS foisting a piece of junk off to the consumer. I was one of those that had to wait for the stores to open so I could spend another $208.00 for the sp, just so I could use my new pc without getting the blue screen all the time. Be nice if we could all get rich by ripping people off like that. Whatever happened to debugging software??
vista will either become good after sp1 like win 98. For those who remember win98 stunk to high heaven and was buggy as heck til sp1. Or will be the next ME if the vista name becomes to tainted to carry.
Casaubon, you offered the most insight. I agree totally, especially the underlined parts. The jury is out on Vista until SP1 and maybe SP2, given the investment M$'s made. If M$ really wants to make this work, they probably can. I suspect this is the reason SP1 has been delayed... they're trying to get it right.
The problem(s) with Vista relate to security and compatibility. M$ was trying to respond to criticism about it's security holes, but the solution is almost worse than the problem. Many Vista users end up frustrated or digging into the OS and shutting down many of the security features.
The compatibility issue relates to legacy software. Most M$ OS' were mere window dressing (pun intended) of the basic DOS product. M$ worked on the user interface, but kept the core program in place. Ubergeeks correct me if I'm wrong, but Vista appears to have significant code changes due to the security issues (not sure how much is kernel level and how much is layered). This, in turn, requires significant tweaking from the user (and sometimes even that's not enough) or modifications from the applications producers.
Many software companies seemed to be caught off guard by Vista. A few wrote the necessary code for their products to correspond with the Vista launch, but some still offer untested, incompatible products. When their companies/products weren't prepared, they fell into the typical tech response to any problem (after blaming the user) and blamed a third party (i.e., M$).
For consumers, here's the rub. You could take your ten year old program that you love for whatever reason (personally, I have several) and run it on XP. On Vista, it won't run no matter how many OS hoops you jump through and hours you waste.
While someone, somewhere offers a new version that will run on Vista, it costs a small fortune. It's irritating to pay for something you may only use a few times a year, that involves a learning curve, and may not even perform the one function that's most important to you (and you can't know without buying it, breaking the seal, loading it, and being thereafter, unable to return it).
Personally, I bought a new Vista machine this summer. Within a month, I returned it to the supplier (multiple hardware and software problems) and got a new machine from a different manufacturer, and had the vendor load XP from an old image they had for the same machine.
Independent computer retailers (not the big boxes) often keep digital copies of everything shipped from the factory on the various computers they sell. This is a drive image or load. Buy a machine that was offered under XP and Vista and you can probably get an XP load if you push for it. And NRAlife, your Vista license does cover XP.
I like aspects of Vista and dislike other parts. I'm not sure how much of this is truly OS and how much is familiarity. In all fairness, I know a number of people who have zero problems with Vista (my wife is one and my daughter is another).
XP is a stable system. It's familiar. It doesn't crash (much). Software works on it. Personally, I'm sticking with it for the next couple years. I'll reconsider Vista after SP1 or SP2.
My personal pet peeve at the moment is anti-virus. Because the AV software was using too many computer resources, I switched to a "thinner" package. Incompatibilities caused it to use 50% of my computer's resources (found lots of complaints across the Internet about this particular package, which otherwise works-cough-well).
The next AV package was less resource intensive, but won't work well with Outlook. If I want to scan email and download it, I can't. It's one or the other.
I'm getting a fourth package today. We'll see. Right now the AV packages are worse than the viruses.
The other issue, which is really irritating is the quiet change in standards from the PCMCIA card to the ExpressCard. If you have anything that needs the PCMCIA card slot, you are outta luck. It is not compatible. So be careful when buying a new laptop if this is important to you.
Why should MS write drivers for third party hardware and software?