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Microsoft Admits What Went Wrong with Vista, and How They Fixed It | |
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| Time: 00:20 EST/05:20 GMT | News Source: WinBeta | Posted By: Kenneth van Surksum | ||
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Will Smith @ Maximum PC: We sat down with Microsoft to hear the company’s side of the Vista story. What lessons have been learned following the worst Windows launch in the company’s history? Is Microsoft doing enough to regain PC users’ faith? | ||
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| #1 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 9/11/2008 9:11:28 AM |
| Now I'm completely confused. After hearing about all the problems with Vista, I was reassured by various microbots that any problems with Vista were either imaginary, the fault of stupid users or part of an agenda from the worldwide anti-Vista conspiracy. Now we find out the truth. Imagine that. |
| #2 By 23275 (68.186.182.236) at 9/11/2008 10:34:39 AM |
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Boot Magazine was great - truly minimum BS.
Maximum PC's piece was pretty dreadful. I've been a subscriber for years, but won't renew. Will Smith is the worst editor in chief the magazine has ever had. I'll give you some examples... in a puff piece about how bad Vista was, the mag used the defrag.exe util in Vista as an example of why the new OS was a stinker. They recommended their favorite, Disk Keeper Pro. A year later the mag did a full review of most third party defrag tools and after lab testing, concluded that Vista's defrag util was far better than the costly third party applications. They recommended that people use Vista's defrag and the enhanced command line tools it has to offer. As usual, Latch had not read any of this material and is just beating his gums again. |
| #3 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 9/11/2008 12:05:27 PM |
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#2: Hey, when you're fishing for microbots you gotta use the right bait.
You know, instead of slagging the editor, his choice of ties and his mother's habit of chewing tobacco, you could perhaps say something about the article itself. btw is the defrag util in Vista not a lite version of DisKeeper??? Anyway, don't froth too much. I was just tweaking your nose (and parkker's) about your constant denials of any problems with Vista. It only took 1.5 years to get from "There are no problems." to "There were problems but they're all fixed now." |
| #4 By 23275 (68.186.182.236) at 9/11/2008 12:27:51 PM |
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#3, No, Vista's util is not at all associated with Disk Keeper.
Vista's works alongside SuperFetch and memory managers in the new OS. Vista has always allowed builders, integrators and users to deliver a great experience - it is easier to do that now - more consistently and with a wider selection of hardware. From day one of the business release in Nov 2006, it was quite possible to deliver a great Vista experience. As I have said time and again, the builder/integrator had to have done some work - some testing. None of which was unreasonable and easier than with any previous version of Windows. If done as any professional would and does, even early Vista systems were exceptionally nice. They are even better today. Vista machines were and are great, but so were equally well prepared DOS, Win 3.x, 9x, 2K and XP based systems - each could be made to perform very well - when exposed to the same tried and true processes good builders and integrators follow. None of it was, or is particularly difficult. Again, it is easier today than it has been at any previous time in Windows history. I assess that Maximum PC's early and present characterizations were and are flawed. I judge them to be unfortunate and likely driven by motivations I not only do not understand, but do not care to. Hence the cancellation of my sub. The world moves on. It alwasy does. It isn't better, or worse. It just is. Old men like myself are lucky. We die before the new world fully becomes what we cannot stand. It will happen to you, too. |
| #5 By 144410 (24.6.251.109) at 9/11/2008 12:34:15 PM |
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@1: Summary: It used to be bad; now it's okay.
@2: Aren't you the one who is talking without reading the material? I use Vista day-to-day, and from my point of view the faults in the article are perfectly valid: - The OS was unstable. I used to get crashes up the wazoo, especially iexplore.exe and explorer.exe. And I'm not the type to run exotic programs or add-ons. Through patches, the story has gradually gotten better to the point that I don't worry about it now. - File copying was horrendous! Who can deny this, and how did they mess this up? They scrapped the new file system, so all they had to do was keep doing what XP already doing! - Compat was never a problem with me, but I don't use the variety of apps that a normal user uses. - Overall performance has definitely gone up in a big way since RTM. The article came to the conclusion that as of now, it's about a wash, which is accurate from my casual observations. - UAC is annoying. I don't know what the alternative is, or how they could do it better, but I do know it's annoying. It doesn't help that Windows Installer always triggers the prompt whether or not you are installing for everyone or just you. - The OS doesn't have anything that's new and captivating. If you had to sell an XP user on Vista, what would you tell them? I guess you could say, "If you tired of seeing the same OS for the past 7 years, try Vista!" - One red herring that a lot of articles like to toss around is that the "cripplingly invasive DRM" causes your machine to bog down. This article didn't do that. |
| #6 By 23275 (68.186.182.236) at 9/11/2008 12:57:54 PM |
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Aren't you the one who is talking without reading the material?
What!?!?! How long have you been at awin, mallow? Do you really want to understand Vista? Nothing new, huh? I have never had a NW I/O/Throughput issue that I could not tune in Vista, or on the thousands of machines we hand build, http://blog.libertech.net/blogs/lketchum/archive/2007/06/23/holy-toredo-vista-networking-rocks.aspx Vista is truly *new* and quite unique in many ways, http://blog.libertech.net/blogs/lketchum/archive/2007/05/23/top-ten-things-i-love-about-windows-vista.aspx There is no reason to guess about what is happening in Vista, http://blog.libertech.net/blogs/lketchum/archive/2007/05/27/windows-vista-performance-and-reliability-monitor-silencing-detractors.aspx If you're having any IE problems read this, http://blog.libertech.net/blogs/lketchum/archive/2008/01/29/gritty-nits-fix-internet-explorer-7-crashes-in-vista.aspx |
| #7 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 9/11/2008 1:25:47 PM |
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#5: File copying was horrendous! Who can deny this,
Ketchum, for one. He has repeatedly stated that he's never seen any of the problems that early Vista plagued users with. #6: How long mallow has been here is irrelevant. He answered the major points the article made while you're busy shooting the messenger. Do you really want to understand Vista? Nothing new, huh? I suspect that he means visible, tangible benefits. The average user doesn't care about the rewritten network stack, or the latest acronym doing something behind the scenes. He's talking about what you can see in Vista as compared to XP. I have never had a NW I/O/Throughput issue that I could not tune in Vista, or on the thousands of machines we hand build Good for you that you can do that. Too bad for the other 99.9% of Vista users that can't. And, with XP, I don't remember ever having to tune network settings. Is that a Vista benefit? You have to twiddle with the network settings to get decent performance? Why is tinkering with the OS bad when it's Linux, but somehow it's now good when it's Vista? Strange world we live in. |
| #8 By 23275 (68.186.182.236) at 9/11/2008 2:12:10 PM |
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Latch, it is not just me... it is on every machine we build and in early Vista cases, it was bum network interface devixce drivers.
In our case, our images were clean and optimized for Vista - so no one had to tweak a thing. Systems shipped optimized for them - like any good builder does. |
| #9 By 16797 (65.93.149.163) at 9/11/2008 3:00:13 PM |
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#8 Well, Ketchum, I'm so on your side usually, but.. I don't care if YOU can fix the problems -- good for you,. Why should I need (to pay for) your expertize when some of those problems should not have been there in first place. No, I am not talking about crappy video drivers, it is hardly MS's fault.
Don't even get me started about Windows Explorer that simply forgets its settings (like, I set it to ALWAYS use "Documents" template and "Details" view for ALL folders. It works. For 2 days.). This one can easily be fixed by going to registry, but.. How many people can do that? Or do they need to pay somebody to fix it for them? Why? Until I found registry fix on the net this was really really annoying. I almost switched to another file manager just because of it. Oh yeah, it still is not fixed - I always have to apply that registry fix to make it work properly. I am willing to pay people like you to solve some problems for me, but some things should just work out of the box, especially if those worked fine in Windows XP. And no, I am not asking for perfect system. |
| #10 By 144410 (74.1.90.146) at 9/11/2008 3:09:22 PM |
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Here's a link to Mark Russinovich's blog post about the file copy issues:
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/02/04/2826167.aspx lketchum, I just read your ten things you love about Vista, and I've been to other places TRYING to find reasons to get excited about it, but it doesn't change the fact that my everyday experience is "runs my apps the same as XP. have to click a bunch of dumb dialogs." And this is now, after two years of patches finally brought the OS up to par. My opinion wasn't so kind when I first started using it. |
| #11 By 23275 (68.186.182.236) at 9/11/2008 3:22:28 PM |
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#9, Gonzo,
I submit that it is the responsibility of the OEM/Builder/Integrator/MS Partner - NOT/NOT the end user. That is and has always been my point and at no added fee. A great experience MUST be delivered out of the box. I also submit that with Windows Vista delivering that great experience has and is possible and doing so is similar, but easier than it has been with previous versions of Windows - despite the incredible diversity that Vista offers in hardware, software and peripheral devices, which is manyfold greater than it was with any earlier version of the OS. People are the focus with us. They always have been. We build around "their" needs. It is possible to do that with Vista and present a system that really does serve and please people. There is no mystery to any of it. It is not particularly hard. So it is just not about ME fixing problems. It is about US fixing them up front for the people that trust us to build, deliver, integrate and sustain great computing experiences. I do agree that there were, are and will always be problems - some of them are serious, too. I do offer that problems are not *new* to this industry and that less work is now needed to get more done across a more diverse platform. I think it will be helpful to write up and share about our failures - what really tanks and what we go through when we ramp any new design. Some are stinkers. Some components (8600M GT's and associated drivers) are simply awful. Then share what we did to solve such challenges *BEFORE* customers see them. Don't think that building great systems is at all easy. It isn't. It is miserable sometimes. Sometimes it is all but impossible and it can take weeks to get the right balance of hardware components, drivers and software that offer a *perfect" PC (or as close as men may come to that). Would something like that help? |
| #12 By 23275 (68.186.182.236) at 9/11/2008 3:52:18 PM |
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mallow, you have good reason to look at available apps for Windows and find them wanting.
That is the real world people are facing - few reasons to be excited. The shine went off PC's a long while ago and candidly, XP went well enough along in reliability, compatibility and in some cases, security that most people settled into a kind of "meh" comfort zone. Not much was new in any regard. What we do with computers is so much more important and also with whom, when and from where... that is why the systems we ship come with managed services, too - Decision Control Panels and Custom software that is integrated to Hosted/Managed Exchange/Outlook Anywhere, Custom Sharepoint Collaboartion sites, and of course, end to end service. The PC, the OS and software - none are enough to Wow anyone. One has to deliver an experience... and we wonder why Apple is doing so much better? We shouldn't. We started delivering a total experience years ahead of the likes of Apple - so we get that. What really has to happen is that RIA's and WPFe have to be used and built on - that is coming and 2009 will see a ton of it. I think that will, alongside great services in MESH, Marketplace, etc.... will become very popular tools for all devs and users. I'll put up some examples we've done and maybe that will help you see where we are taking things and where we expect others to do the same. |
| #13 By 1896 (70.146.35.114) at 9/12/2008 7:55:07 AM |
| IMO recognizing that Vista had some issues and that they are fixed now is a very smart move by MS: it will improve the image and the credibility of the company in they eyes of customers and potential ones. Denial of the obvious has never worked out and, at the end, only lower confidence and trust in the evangelist of it; this debate is a clear proof of it. |
| #14 By 2960 (70.177.180.170) at 9/12/2008 8:51:17 AM |
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#2,
IMHO, Maximum PC is imploding :( This used to be, by far, the best enthusiasts magazine out there. Now it's getting just plain boring. The worst thing they have done is, and this is recent, ripped out 90% of the reviews making you go to the web for them. What a shame. I really liked their reviews as they tended to really _test_ stuff instead of just reading off the sales brochure. This used to be my favorite 'library' magazine. When I start finding Popular Mechanics more interesting, something is very, very wrong over at Maximum PC. TL |
| #15 By 2960 (70.177.180.170) at 9/12/2008 8:57:24 AM |
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Here's one of my biggest problems with Vista right now...
I have to do a lot of management within Novell sites such as iManager. To this day, after 1.5 years of using Vista, I STILL cannot get the Novell iManager pages to come up in IE, and IE never would tell me why. It would just sit there and sit there and sit there, and finally fail with a 404 error. I was finally able to get in with FireFox, but only after, again, a long wait. However instead of just failing with a 404 error, it actually told me the issue was with non-standard or bad site certs. Ok, our bad. I can't get that fixed but at least in FireFox I was asked if I wanted to add an exception, which I did. For the life of me I cannot figure out how to do this in IE/Vista, and neither can anyone else. I can't change the certs situation, but I should be able to except them in IE. But how? TL |
| #16 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 9/12/2008 12:12:29 PM |
| #13: So true. In this Internet age, you can only suppress the truth for so long until it inevitably comes out. Those who seek to spin & deny do so at the risk of their own credibility. |
| #17 By 23275 (68.186.182.236) at 9/12/2008 12:31:47 PM |
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#16, all.
What?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??! So you're going to shape every PC ever built by anyone, in the context of the lowest common denominator and refuse to accept that it was in any way possible to build a great Vista PC in Nov 2006? And act like you're in possession of some great inevitable truth? A take a fat deuce on months of hard work applied to create and sustain such systems? To any man holding such a position in my company I would ask one question: "how long have you worked here not counting tomorrow?" |
| #18 By 16797 (65.93.149.163) at 9/12/2008 1:19:55 PM |
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#17 He doesn't have to claim that - I will do it for him, Lloyd.
Vista had too many serious issues to say that it was possible to build great Vista PC in Nov 2006. File copy was really really broken. Any operating system with that kind of problem is broken. It is not some random bug in Windows Movie Maker, this is FILE COPY operation. I expect that one to work. Perfectly. It didn't until they fixed it later. How can you possibly build a great PC if you can't copy files efficiently. Sometimes it worked OK, sometimes it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too slow. Please... Or did you somehow manage to work around that problem too? Mind you, this was affecting simple copy operations from one LOCAL drive to another. Not just network related operations. You want another example? I think this one was just fixed last month or so. It is about ConIME.exer locking the files... just for no reason. I've run into the problem too many times - almost every time I compile & run console app in .NET, ConIME.exe will appear out of nowhere and put a lock on a whole folder where compiled/tested exe is. Once I'm done testing conime.exe just stays in memory and keeps folder locked so it can not be removed. And it stays like that.. well like forever. You know what I had to do? I had to use that free utility (Unlocker) to remove the lock EVERY f@&*! time. It is free utility though and integrates nicely into right-click context menu, but still.. In the end I got fed up and "simply" renamed conime.exe so that it can not be started at all. Oh, that is not all. You can't just go into System32 and rename it even if you're an admin. That's right. You have to go with something like: takeown /f %windir%\system32\conime.exe icacls %windir%\system32\conime.exe /grant %UserName%:F I had to google for that too :) And only now you can rename the file --- having said that, I understand why it has to be done that way. (see how I even have that script saved in case I need it again :)))) BUT the fucking thing is that it is broken and I shouldn't be doing it in first place. Conime.exe shouldn't be locking files and folders all over every time I compile and run console application. Please stop excusing them all the time. It makes *you* look bad. Seriously. This post was edited by gonzo on Friday, September 12, 2008 at 13:23. |
| #19 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 9/12/2008 3:32:27 PM |
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Wow, you can really hear the grass growing now, can't you?
And act like you're in possession of some great inevitable truth? No, the truth is something that cannot be "possessed", as information yearns to be free, but it can be attacked, masked and hidden by those with an agenda of their own. But only for so long. I've been building my own systems for about 20 years now. I've used Windows 2.0 and every version of Windows since (other than their supercomputing edition). And in all that time, I've never needed an MS partner to hand-craft some PC of the Gods just so that I can expect decent performance from Windows. |
| #20 By 23275 (68.186.182.236) at 9/12/2008 5:58:09 PM |
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#18, We did this: File copy issues did exist when used with interface drivers from many sources. They nearly all used many forms of off-loading and were largely optimized for the old stack.
Even with those drivers we would and still do, adjust properties to allow Vista to handle the stack. It was not hard and it was easy to repeat. We made them part of our WIM images. Users enjoyed not only as good I/O as with XP, but better - particularly if they were on W2K3SP1 domains (Frame scaling and RDC being present). Finally, where CONE NAT was fuly supported (on even cheapo home networks - like 25 bucks cheap) we'd explicitly enable ECN. Again, not hard to do, repeatable and part of our WIMs. No excuses. No bunk. No huge hurdles and finally, nothing we had not done for XP, W2K, and or 9x based builds. Ok, so now it is better out of the box, but what drivers and what version of Windows wasn't after nearly 2 years? I shared a lot of this here openly and privately fixed a couple hundred builds and networks for Awin visitors (free of any fee). |
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