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Why isn't Vista loved as much as XP? | |
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| Time: 09:47 EST/14:47 GMT | News Source: Neowin | Posted By: Michael Dragone | ||
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Just goes to show that Microsoft may not have much of a say in that sector as we all thought it did. I know first hand by speaking with Microsoft developers how unhappy they are at failed promises by certain hardware vendors to deliver good drivers. Given time Vista will rock as much as XP did and still does for many today. | ||
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| #1 By 2960 (72.196.195.185) at 1/17/2008 10:39:31 AM |
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Once it's fixed, Vista will do fine.
SP1 is a huge swat at all the issues. Paying attention to those that paid big money for the Ultimate Extra privilages will help too (if they ever do it). Some have compared Vista to Windows ME. That is somewhat understandable in the RTM release of Vista, but there is a big difference. Vista is fixable. ME was NOT fixable. It was rotten to it's very core and as a transitional OS (it only existed because Microsoft dropped the consumer version of Win2K during development) it had no chance of ever being fixed. It wasn't going to be around long enough. Smart people just stayed with Win98. TL |
| #2 By 2201 (212.117.228.133) at 1/17/2008 11:12:24 AM |
| You're right about Vista. ME though... "smart people just stayed with Win98" hahaha don't be silly, as if 98 was any better! Crashes, blue-screens, couldn't stay up for more than a few hours at a time. Yep, that was 98 alright. |
| #3 By 2231 (72.5.151.4) at 1/17/2008 12:56:55 PM |
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For the Windows 95/98/ME user Windows XP solved a lot of known problems. People don't see that from Vista. They see few tangible improvements, but a lot of change just for change's sake.
After using Vista for a few months it reminds me too much of Star Wars I. Lots of special effects but little that's worth writing home about. |
| #4 By 37 (192.251.125.85) at 1/17/2008 12:59:14 PM |
| Windows 98 SE worked pretty good for me. |
| #5 By 88850 (221.128.147.202) at 1/17/2008 1:28:05 PM |
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At least for me as a computer enthusiast and ardent OS lover, I found XP to be a dream come true. It was absolutely fantastic or rather just the way I wanted an OS to be. I remember in 2001, I loved every bit of it, especially the eye candy icons, lovely sounds/music, superfast booting and shutdown, best of both worlds (9x compatibility-2000 features). Also, MS took a lot of efforts with XP updating/touching up stuff they did with previous Windows versions..like bringing old TweakUI back for instance. Not to mention, technically it was superior to the then available Linuxes and OS X. It may have been buggy (though I honestly didn't find it as unstable as Vista RTM and certainly nothing like "not usable till SP2 came along crap") but the competition was not killer since OS X had just started and Linux GUIs (GNOME and KDE) and apps were also maturing. By the time Vista arrived, competition in the OS space has increased again and MS isn't doing everything to please users (like removing some well-liked features from the OS, unnecessarily redesigning entire programs and UIs, not updating its entire ecosystem quickly enough to work with Vista, not living up to its promise of Ultimate Extras etc.) Again, this is IMHO. This post was edited by tuxplorer on Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 13:34. |
| #6 By 8556 (12.208.163.138) at 1/17/2008 2:22:24 PM |
| From various people, and my own experience with Vista, the biggest problem isn't looks, changes, or poorer test bench scores. The problem is the lack of sensible design of UAC. No program that has already been given permission to be installed should pull up a comment every time it is run telling me that a program needs my permission to run. Acronis True Image and Ccleaner have an annoying box pop up every time they are run. Run as Administrator does not get rid of the annoyance. If cars made people wait while the dashboard went dark and a little box appeared that told them that the car needs their permission to start after the ignition key had already been turned that would drive people nuts. Streamline UAC so programs that are already installed can run without wasting time and Vista will acceptance from many, if not most, people due to its being less annoying. Our tools should not annoy us. |
| #7 By 2960 (72.196.195.185) at 1/17/2008 3:07:56 PM |
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#2,
Windows 98 (original, not SE which I HATED), was a very stable OS if you treated it right. And either one was magnitudes better than ME. ME was a depressive nightmare you had to experience to understand. TL |
| #8 By 2960 (72.196.195.185) at 1/17/2008 3:13:23 PM |
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XP was indeed a dream come true. For one thing, it FORCED manufacturers to start writing proper, stable, well-performing 32-bit drivers and software.
Win2K did too, but as Microsoft didn't target that to consumers, consumers lost out and continued having to live with the 16-bit architecture and underpinnings of 98. ME tried to force the issue, but the underlying infrastructure was shit and no one bit. Thankfully. XP changed all that. The real shame with XP is how it became a huge attack vector for all the numb-nuts, criminals and pinheads on the planet. Unfortunately it was an easy, and plentiful target. #6 wrote: "Our tools should not annoy us." Winner! give that man a doggie biscuit :) -TL |
| #9 By 37 (66.188.104.250) at 1/17/2008 5:31:47 PM |
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"not SE which I HATED"
Without the SE version of 98, my screens were as blue as smurfs. SE hands down fixed many stability issues. |
| #10 By 17996 (131.107.0.105) at 1/17/2008 7:45:06 PM |
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#6, I've been over this before... Let's say you gave Windows permission to bypass the UAC prompt for CCleaner.exe. Now, whenever CCleaner.exe is run, it is automatically run as administrator.*
*(assuming that you're elevating from protected admin --> regular admin (the prompt with the Continue button). If you're elevating from a standard user account to an admin account (the prompt with a password), it would be very bad for Windows to remember the password, especially on a multi-user system.) Say you visit a specially-rigged web page comes along and tries to exploit an unpatched code execution flaw in your web browser. And let's say that CCleaner.exe accepts certain command-line flags that cause it to do stuff. Boom, the web page executes CCleaner.exe with some flags and your box is owned. THAT is why UAC is there. Now, the question is, why does running CCleaner or [insert app here] require UAC when you first run it? It can be for two reasons: 1. The application has a manifest whereby it requests administrative privileges. 2. Windows uses heuristics meant to detect setup applications and assumes it needs administrative priviliges. (e.g. does the filename or description include the word Setup.) For #1, blame goes entirely to the app. Simply running an app shouldn't require admin privileges; instead only specific actions should require them. Apple actually does a good job here with its Apple Software Update -- it doesn't require admin privileges to run the app, only to actually install updates. This is how most apps should be. Vendors with less time (or motivation) can simply flag their app to always be run as admin; this is at the expense of annoying their users. For #2, sometimes these heuristics are wrong. For example, what if it is a program that developers can use to generate setup packages? That app doesn't need to run elevated. The best thing is for these app developers to embed a manifest that specifically says *don't* force me to run as admin. Alternately, an end user dropping a foo.exe.manifest with that flag next to the exe should work the same. Also, there is a group policy setting for disabling the heuristics entirely. UAC is necessary for the reasons I describe above and in previous postings. App vendors need to do their part to design and develop their apps properly to minimize the parts that need admin access. |
| #11 By 82766 (202.154.80.82) at 1/17/2008 7:51:43 PM |
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#6 - although the UAC can be an issue at times... Acronis True Image and Ccleaner were known "major pains in the behind" during the beta testing. Actually during the beta testing phases, Microsoft bent over backwards to get them to even run (to the level they do these days).
Instead of hassling Microsoft about this, maybe you could consider that Acronis are not correctly programmed?? and thats why you get the UAC prompts? While in regards to CCleaner, its not the greatest piece of software out there either!! In the end, I still want to know if ANYTHING touches my registry... and thats basically what UAC is all about (and yes, not just the registry but anything to do with the OS itself) OSX has had a verison of UAC for years... except the prompts are less and less these days because their programmers are accessing the system correctly. The whole UAC thing just had to be done IMHO. Too many people are not running as standard users and too many people are getting software installed without them knowing about it... Microsoft just HAD to bite the bullet and implement this. Sure it may not be the greatest implementation but its a good start. On one of my PCs that has Vista, I *might* see a UAC prompt once a week during my NORMAL working life. Of course, it's not like I'm going to run CCleaner or Acronis EVERY DAY. |
| #12 By 8556 (12.210.39.82) at 1/18/2008 1:32:20 AM |
| #10: All but one of my Vista customers use Home versions where group policy is "not easy" to set. The registry needs to be manually tweaked. Why can't MS simply put in another box that says "Let the program start every time it is executed locally?", or maybe "Yes and Forever More". I didn't say UAC doesn't work. UAC works well. I advise customers to leave it on as they will get used to it over time. Trouble is, it has just become annoying as hell over time to many people. I'm impatient at times. That's why it often bugs me. Until MS supporters, and Microsoft itself, accept that half of the population is below average in intelligence and strives to make UAC easier to work with, Vista will not develop the street creds that it needs to keep people from asking for XP on their machines. I don't think MS cares one bit about annoying its customer base. So, #10 you may be entirely correct. That doesn't prevent those that do not have your knowledge or patience from choosing XP over Vista because XP is not tyrannical. |
| #13 By 17996 (66.235.18.153) at 1/18/2008 3:24:04 AM |
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#12, why can't they put that box in? Because if you click it, you are opening yourself up to elevation of privilege holes, wherein code running as a non-admin can silently get code to run as an admin.
I don't know what you mean by "executed locally." Ran from the start menu? from an explorer window? from cmd.exe? Are you trying to distinguish between a user choosing to run something, and malware choosing to? Unfortunately there is no way for Windows to know where the execution is originating from (see "Don't trust the return address", http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/01/01/47042.aspx). There are tons of different ways a user can execute something today, and it would be trivial for malware to simulate those paths. The only secure way is to turn around and ask for confirmation. |
| #14 By 6859 (192.44.136.113) at 1/18/2008 7:56:22 AM |
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Ya know... I never understood the hate that ME got. The version I had, which apparently was "special" in some way...was totally stable. I went from 98SE direct upgrade to ME and never once had a crash. It just worked. For all I know, all I got was a pretty new interface to look at. But I never had an issue. That system ran until I bought my XP box. And we all know how good XP is.
Vista? Not going there. On a test rig at work, we had one with a fresh boot just sitting at the desktop that would use 699MB of RAM. What's up with that? Seriously?! The bosses looked at that, did some metcric checking and came to the conclusion that it was smarter and cheaper to downgrade all the new PCs to XP than to buy extra RAM to bring every new Vista box up to 2GB of RAM. So that's where they went. |
| #15 By 8556 (12.208.163.138) at 1/18/2008 9:38:57 AM |
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#13: The thread is about WHY people choose XP over Vista, not about how and why Vista works. Typical users don't care about how and why. They want ease of use on a new PC. XP's ease of use is well known and is expected to be unchanged on a new XP loaded machine. Vista brings no such expectation and therefore is avoided by many people purchasing a new PC.
#14: This sounds like typical Dilbert style management. Logical reasons or otherwise, XP was chosen over Vista by the pointy haired bosses at your company. |
| #16 By 96953 (167.203.158.141) at 1/18/2008 2:56:58 PM |
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#15, hear hear!
Vista is a pain in the rear end for tech folks to deal with - the ordinary non-tech users who I deal with daily do NOT want to relearn computing ground up -which is almost necessary with most Vista istalls. IMHO, that is where the mess happened - too much re-design without too much attention to usability. Sure, MacOS got it wrong - they forced the app vendors to recode to conform, or lose. Today, their UI is still as friendly (in the user's mind) as it always was - and an app is either available or not. What is there functions as it should, and what is not - well , Apple tells the user to ask that question of the app vendor. If that is the wrong way, all I can say is - Apple, keep it up! I fully understand need MS's need for change - maybe they need to rethink their backward(in)compatibility strategy though. And I continue to use MS products and will do so as long as they are used commonly - but MS needs to wake up to some modicum of reality too. |
| #17 By 28801 (71.58.231.46) at 1/19/2008 10:06:28 AM |
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#16: Although different, I hardly think Vista requires "ground up" reeducation. In fact, I was a little disappointed in the lack of differences. Sure, the Aero skin is welcome change, the start menu is different, and a few things have been moved around, but on the surface Vista is still pretty much the same animal as XP. The real changes are under the covers, concealed from most users.
Now reeducation for Office 2007 may be needed but not for Vista, especially when you can display an XP-like start menu, revert to a classic control panel, and turn off UAC (although not recommended). |
| #18 By 92283 (64.180.196.172) at 1/19/2008 11:01:48 AM |
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"According to CDW's latest poll of Vista adoption, 48% of the 772 companies polled are either currently using or evaluating Vista, a 19% increase from this time last year.
Some other interesting things to note: "Of respondents evaluating or using Windows Vista, almost 50% note that it performs *above* their expectations on key features and benefits." 30% of companies are either in the middle of, or have completed their Vista rollouts." http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/default.aspx |
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