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Title: They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know
Source:
N Y Times
URL Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/b ... ner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Published: Mar 9, 2008
Author: RANDALL STROSS
Post Date: 2008-03-09 12:43:18 by Horse
Keywords: None
Views: 392
Comments: 28
ONE year after the birth of Windows Vista, why do so many Windows XP users still decline to “upgrade”? Microsoft says high prices have been the deterrent. Last month, the company trimmed prices on retail packages of Vista, trying to entice consumers to overcome their reluctance. In the United States, an XP user can now buy Vista Home Premium for $129.95, instead of $159.95. An alternative theory, however, is that Vista’s reputation precedes it. XP users have heard too many chilling stories from relatives and friends about Vista upgrades that have gone badly. The graphics chip that couldn’t handle Vista’s whizzy special effects. The long delays as it loaded. The applications that ran at slower speeds. The printers, scanners and other hardware peripherals, which work dandily with XP, that lacked the necessary software, the drivers, to work well with Vista. Can someone tell me again, why is switching XP for Vista an “upgrade”? Here’s one story of a Vista upgrade early last year that did not go well. Jon, let’s call him, (bear with me — I’ll reveal his full identity later) upgrades two XP machines to Vista. Then he discovers that his printer, regular scanner and film scanner lack Vista drivers. He has to stick with XP on one machine just so he can continue to use the peripherals. Did Jon simply have bad luck? Apparently not. When another person, Steven, hears about Jon’s woes, he says drivers are missing in every category — “this is the same across the whole ecosystem.” Then there’s Mike, who buys a laptop that has a reassuring “Windows Vista Capable” logo affixed. He thinks that he will be able to run Vista in all of its glory, as well as favorite Microsoft programs like Movie Maker. His report: “I personally got burned.” His new laptop — logo or no logo — lacks the necessary graphics chip and can run neither his favorite video-editing software nor anything but a hobbled version of Vista. “I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine,” he says. It turns out that Mike is clearly not a naïf. He’s Mike Nash, a Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management. And Jon, who is dismayed to learn that the drivers he needs don’t exist? That’s Jon A. Shirley, a Microsoft board member and former president and chief operating officer. And Steven, who reports that missing drivers are anything but exceptional, is in a good position to know: he’s Steven Sinofsky, the company’s senior vice president responsible for Windows. Their remarks come from a stream of internal communications at Microsoft in February 2007, after Vista had been released as a supposedly finished product and customers were paying full retail price. Between the nonexistent drivers and PCs mislabeled as being ready for Vista when they really were not, Vista instantly acquired a reputation at birth: Does Not Play Well With Others. We usually do not have the opportunity to overhear Microsoft’s most senior executives vent their personal frustrations with Windows. But a lawsuit filed against Microsoft in March 2007 in United States District Court in Seattle has pried loose a packet of internal company documents. The plaintiffs, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, bought PCs in late 2006, before Vista’s release, and contend that Microsoft’s “Windows Vista Capable” stickers were misleading when affixed to machines that turned out to be incapable of running the versions of Vista that offered the features Microsoft was marketing as distinctive Vista benefits. Last month, Judge Marsha A. Pechman granted class-action status to the suit, which is scheduled to go to trial in October. (Microsoft last week appealed the certification decision.) Anyone who bought a PC that Microsoft labeled “Windows Vista Capable” without also declaring “Premium Capable” is now a party in the suit. The judge also unsealed a cache of 200 e-mail messages and internal reports, covering Microsoft’s discussions of how best to market Vista, beginning in 2005 and extending beyond its introduction in January 2007. The documents incidentally include those accounts of frustrated Vista users in Microsoft’s executive suites. Today, Microsoft boasts that there are twice as many drivers available for Vista as there were at its introduction, but performance and graphics problems remain. (When I tried last week to contact Mr. Shirley and the others about their most recent experiences with Vista, David Bowermaster, a Microsoft spokesman, said that no one named in the e-mail messages could be made available for comment because of the continuing lawsuit.) The messages were released in a jumble, but when rearranged into chronological order, they show a tragedy in three acts. Act 1: In 2005, Microsoft plans to say that only PCs that are properly equipped to handle the heavy graphics demands of Vista are “Vista Ready.” Act 2: In early 2006, Microsoft decides to drop the graphics-related hardware requirement in order to avoid hurting Windows XP sales on low-end machines while Vista is readied. (A customer could reasonably conclude that Microsoft is saying, Buy Now, Upgrade Later.) A semantic adjustment is made: Instead of saying that a PC is “Vista Ready,” which might convey the idea that, well, it is ready to run Vista, a PC will be described as “Vista Capable,” which supposedly signals that no promises are made about which version of Vista will actually work. The decision to drop the original hardware requirements is accompanied by considerable internal protest. The minimum hardware configuration was set so low that “even a piece of junk will qualify,” Anantha Kancherla, a Microsoft program manager, said in an internal e-mail message among those recently unsealed, adding, “It will be a complete tragedy if we allowed it.” Act 3: In 2007, Vista is released in multiple versions, including “Home Basic,” which lacks Vista’s distinctive graphics. This placed Microsoft’s partners in an embarrassing position. Dell, which gave Microsoft a postmortem report that was also included among court documents, dryly remarked: “Customers did not understand what ‘Capable’ meant and expected more than could/would be delivered.” All was foretold. In February 2006, after Microsoft abandoned its plan to reserve the Vista Capable label for only the more powerful PCs, its own staff tried to avert the coming deluge of customer complaints about underpowered machines. “It would be a lot less costly to do the right thing for the customer now,” said Robin Leonard, a Microsoft sales manager, in an e-mail message sent to her superiors, “than to spend dollars on the back end trying to fix the problem.” Now that Microsoft faces a certified class action, a judge may be the one who oversees the fix. In the meantime, where does Microsoft go to buy back its lost credibility?
Poster Comment: One of these days I will migrate to Linux.
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#1. To: Horse (#0)
I have a lovely HP printer/fax/scanner that Vista has reduced to a very expensive copier. Vista bites.
I read enough horror stories re: Vista, that for once in my computer life did nothing, and am glad that I didn't. With the freebie programs from www.iobit.com both my Win2000 and XP machines work swell.
Before anyone upgrades anything, even linux, the question is "why should I do this?" As the saying goes, if it's not broke, don't fix it. How many people need to have fancier graphic capability? Gamers, and that's about it. Vista for $130? Get real. For MS OS products, good rule of thumb is don't even touch it til it's 2-3 years old. You'll probably know the right time when you need software that requires the new OS. By THEN it's probably reasonably safe to upgrade.
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BTW I have used Mandriva linux the past few years but have now started using Ubuntu Linux at home. It's the smoothest linux version I've yet seen, with very seemless upgrade abilities. For not techies, I can recommend ubuntu. It's free to download a DVD ISO image file which windows should let you burn onto a DVD. I found mandriva and numerous other (slightly to somewhat dated linux brands) unable to work with my newer panel monitor.
Pinguinite.com EcuadorTreasures.ec
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. ubuntu send me the DVD, gratis. I haven't had the guts to try and run it.
I got a new laptop with Vista on it...not by choice. The joke is on gamers. Most of my gaming and work software refuses to run on it. I'm now the proud owner of a $800 coaster. The funny thing is I know a husband and wife team that work for microsoft. Shorty after Vista came out they told me they were both switching to Macs.
"The more I see of life, the less I fear death." - Me. "If violence solved nothing, then weapons technology would have never advanced past crude clubs and rocks." - Me.
I haven't tried ubuntu in a long time and they may have improved it but I didn't like it when I tried it. I use PCLinuxOS 2007 final release and it works very well. The following is from the PCLinuxOS website. Texstar and the Ripper Gang are pleased to announce the final release of PCLinuxOS 2007. Featuring kernel 2.6.18.8, KDE 3.5.6, Open Office 2.2.0, Firefox 2.0.0.3, Thunderbird 2.0, Frostwire, Ktorrent, Amarok, Flash, Java JRE, Beryl 3D and much much more. Almost 2 gigs of software compressed on a single self bootable livecd that can be installed to your hard drive provided it is compatible with your system and you like the distribution. Over 5000+ additional packages available after hard drive install through our Synaptic Software Manager. Please note PCLinuxOS does not ship with Win32codes or DVD decryption software. Proprietary Nvidia and ATI drivers available after hard drive install. In addition we'd like to give out a special thanks to the PCLinuxOS community who stepped up last month to help us out and kept us going. Thank you for all your support and we'll keep working hard to bring you a good Linux distribution you can be proud of. We also want to thank Enki Consulting for providing hosting for our website and ibiblio.org for hosting our distribution. Torrent: http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrents&category=262 Download mirrors: http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?option=com_ionfiles&Itemid=28 Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. I'm a Mac user, have a Mac Pro that I got just after they were released. I recently upgraded to Leopard, and after having serious problems with graphics related issues (look up ati x1900xt problems for the Mac) I ended up reformatting my hard drive and rolling back to Tiger. PC's give you tons of hardware options, but you get stuck with Microsoft software - ick ick ick.... At this point in time, Linux is looking better and better to me....
#2. To: Jethro Tull, Horse, all (#1)
#3. To: Horse (#0)
#4. To: Horse (#0)
One of these days I will migrate to Linux.
#5. To: Horse (#0)
Lord Acton
#6. To: Pinguinite. all (#4)
#7. To: Pinguinite (#3)
How many people need to have fancier graphic capability? Gamers, and that's about it. Vista for $130? Get real.
#8. To: lodwick (#6)
Lord Acton
#9. To: Pissed Off Janitor (#7)
(Edited)
The funny thing is I know a husband and wife team that work for microsoft. Shorty after Vista came out they told me they were both switching to Macs.
Macs give you OS X, Tiger is fantastic. Leopard... not really ready for primetime IMHO, and you also get stuck with virtually no choice in graphics card upgrades, and every piece of hardware you go to buy from Apple is going to cost you a serious premium over PC hardware. Arrrgh...
 | Gold and silver are REAL money, paper is but a promise. |
#10. To: James Deffenbach (#8)
As long as this XP box keeps performing well, I'm going to sit tight with what's working, and keep my fingers crossed.
Good information - thanks.
#11. To: Pinguinite (#4) (Edited)
We have Fedora on one of our machines and use that machine strictly as a carrier of several servers. I find that Linux (any flavor) is not matured yet (lots of bugs, primitive graphic, general sluggishness) for prime time. Vista is terrible OS. In January we purchased 3 Dell machines with preinstalled Vista on 2 of them. Scary. We uninstalled Vista and installed XP. Didn't work, because XP lacked support for SATA drives (now, after XPSR3 is out, SATA support is in). We returned machines and ordered ones with XP on them, which cost us additional $2000. Also, once you install Vista on the HD, Vista will always be there, no matter what you do. Only way is to trash that HD. XP is good system Is matured and is better choice than Linux.
One of these days I will migrate to Linux.
#12. To: lodwick (#10)
Sure, if it works all right for you there is nothing wrong with that. You have already paid the Microsux tax when you bought it so you might as well use it as long as it is working I suppose.
As long as this XP box keeps performing well, I'm going to sit tight with what's working, and keep my fingers crossed.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton
#13. To: Horse (#0)
You can buy a pretty damn nice laptop for $700 nowadays. For $2100, it better give you oral.
“I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine,” he says.
Shut your whore mouth, Mr. President.
#14. To: lodwick (#6)
You can boot up in ubuntu from the DVD without installing on the HD, so you can at least run it.
ubuntu send me the DVD, gratis. I haven't had the guts to try and run it.
Pinguinite.com EcuadorTreasures.ec
#15. To: Pinguinite (#14)
Well, I've learned something today - thank you.
You can boot up in ubuntu from the DVD without installing on the HD, so you can at least run it.
#16. To: James Deffenbach (#8)
I've no experience at all with ubuntu prior to the past 4 months, and I'm using the Fiesty Fawn 7.04 version. Not their latest 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, I think it's called (mistakenly downloaded the second most current version) but it seems to pretty much take care of itself. There are a few things that I like better in Mandriva but I don't mind the tradeoffs. One very nice feature is updates and new software downloads. It's much easier to do than mandriva. Pretty much idiot proof.
I haven't tried ubuntu in a long time and they may have improved it but I didn't like it when I tried it. I use PCLinuxOS 2007 final release and it works very well.
Pinguinite.com EcuadorTreasures.ec
#17. To: Elliott Jackalope (#9)
Linux has a strong advantage over mac in being completely capable of being installed on former Windoze machines and otherwise standard computer architecture, and that means saving $ on hardware. BTW, I use vmware to run windows on my linux PC. With vmware windows is a mere application inside of which you can run regular windows software. There are excellent advantages, like being able to delete a screwed up windows OS and restoring from an earlier version without having to reinstall lots of software. With that I can run almost any windows or linux software on my single PC.
At this point in time, Linux is looking better and better to me....
Pinguinite.com EcuadorTreasures.ec
#18. To: lodwick (#10)
Exactly the way to do it.
As long as this XP box keeps performing well, I'm going to sit tight with what's working, and keep my fingers crossed.
Pinguinite.com EcuadorTreasures.ec
#19. To: gord (#11)
I can agree with the graphics ability not being the best, but bugs? Sluggishness? linux servers are known for their stability, in part because server don't have to deal with graphics. This is news to me. You can't use linux utilities to change the filesystem?
I find that Linux (any flavor) is not matured yet (lots of bugs, primitive graphic, general sluggishness) for prime time.
Also, once you install Vista on the HD, Vista will always be there, no matter what you do. Only way is to trash that HD.
Pinguinite.com EcuadorTreasures.ec
#20. To: lodwick (#15)
Most linux distros, at least the ones I know anything about, can be run from the cd. That way you can know for sure if you like it before you download it to your hard drive and it doesn't change anything on your computer unless you do download it to your hard drive.
Well, I've learned something today - thank you.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton
#21. To: Pinguinite (#16)
Thanks for the info. I might try it sometime. It has been a long time since I tried something based on ubuntu (can't remember the name of it, just that it wasn't very "user friendly" at that time).
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
Lord Acton
#22. To: Pinguinite (#19)
Yes, linux is the ultimate OS for servers (that's why we use it). It's sluggish with both video and audio and in float calculations. IMF, linux is, in general, about 30% slower than XP.
linux servers are known for their stability
#23. To: Pinguinite (#3)
That is the price for an UPGRADE copy of Vista Home Premium and requires an existing copy of Win XP. A full install retail copy of Vista Home Premium costs about $219. It is major league slow MS bloatware. There are now reports that MS is readying a successor to Vista (code name Windows 7) for release next year, moved up from 2010.
Vista for $130? Get real.
#24. To: nolu_chan (#23)
If true, it seems vista will go the way of Windows ME...
There are now reports that MS is readying a successor to Vista (code name Windows 7) for release next year, moved up from 2010.
Pinguinite.com EcuadorTreasures.ec
#25. To: Pinguinite (#24)
Windows ME! OMG! Slllllooowwwwly I turned.... step by step.. inch by inch..... Windows ME was the final straw for me, where I hit my personal breaking point. I went Apple at that time, and have not looked back. I just wish Apple offered me more hardware choices at better prices, and to be honest Leopard is, IMHO, NOT ready for primetime yet. But I love Tiger, best OS I've ever run in my life, hands down.
If true, it seems vista will go the way of Windows ME...
| Gold and silver are REAL money, paper is but a promise. |
#26. To: Pinguinite (#24)
Attributed to unofficial online sources, it is reported in the April 2008 issue of Maximum PC, page 9. Vista deserves to go to a somewhat deeper level of whatever hell ME was banished to. Its main features seem to be a play-pretty interface and non-stop security nag screens.
If true, it seems vista will go the way of Windows ME...
#27. To: nolu_chan (#26)
those are soooo annoying!
non-stop security nag screens
#28. To: christine (#27)
One of the "improvements" in Vista is enhanced security. The implementation yields all the nag screens from the User Account Control (UAC). The security policies can be modified with a program called "secpol.msc" but MS does not include that with Vista Home Premium. Apparently, Big Brother at MS decided that the home user couldn't be trusted to configure security the way they like it. All they get is an "on/off" choice, "on" by default. The UAC can be turned off altogether from the User Account Control Panel and that should end the nag screens. However, it also eliminates the added security. Changing it to "off" requires a reboot. The user can create two accounts, one a Standard User account and one an Administrator account, leaving Standard User with added security and Administrator with the UAC disabled. Switching accounts would turn the UAC on and off quickly and eliminate the need for reboot.
those are soooo annoying!
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