Why Microsoft must abandon Vista to save itself

[Carl Martin]

CNet's Doug Reisinger wrote in yesterday's blog:

While Vista was originally touted by Microsoft as the operating system savior we've all been waiting for, it has turned out to be one of the biggest blunders in technology. With a host of issues that are inexcusable and features that are taken from the Mac OS X and Linux playbook, Microsoft has once again lost sight of what we really want.

Why Microsoft must abandon Vista to save itself | The Digital Home - Don Reisinger blogs about the tech closest to home - CNET Blogs

Although he makes some good points, I don't think Vista is beyond redemption. We'll just have to see what SP1 brings.

Carl

[Dread]

I kind of agree with some of the responses he got down below. His points are what people are talking about, but none of them are 100% valid.

My biggest problems with Vista are:

Pricing tiers and the Draconian Removal of Media access.

I still won't be moving to Vista anytime soon, less of course I'm given the Ultimate version for free, or really close to free.

[Jokerswild]

Funny I have had no problems other than 1 old game not running right. As far a user access control that can be disabled easily. Another point he makes about movie back-up is not true also.

[Redleg]

Originally Posted by Jokerswild

Funny I have had no problems other than 1 old game not running right. As far a user access control that can be disabled easily. Another point he makes about movie back-up is not true also.

And on the other end of the spectrum, I've had nothing but trouble with my 'free' version of Ultimate (for being a member of some feedback panel for M$), I still can't get my all-in-one HP C5180 to install, because something with Vista doesn't like it. On every attempt, I get an error stating that the install can't find the path to the c:program files to load to, and, I'm not sure if it's the computer or heat issue (don't think it's heat tho), but I keep getting a message to install the latest driver for my video card, even tho I have it installed already. I'm still getting weird lines throughout my monitor quite often. I'm not geek/nerd enough to explain all this properly, but ya'll get my meaning, I think.

[RA1D]

i've had no problems with vista...






ever since i reinstalled xp!

[Dread]

I was fortunate enough to get a free (legal) copy of Vista Ultimate 32/64.
Got bored (and a little curious) one day and decided to load it up on an older Toshiba Tecra S2 laptop.

Everything worked from the first boot, modem, NIC, controllers, GOU etc, not one item didn't work and I actually expected at least one thing to require a downloaded driver from the OEM. I'm not a big fan of Vista for a few reasons, it is more bloated than XP and all of my games won't run under it without taking too much of a performance hit (games are the only reason I'm still using Windows period). The UAC panel needs some serious work IMNSHO, but as mentioned above it can be turned off pretty easily (is anything really 'off' under MS apps/OSes?), but it should be able to be left on, but tweaked heavily by the user/admin.

I think MS did some neat things for Vista, but I can't help but think that what attracts the most users to upgrade to it is cosmetic stuff rather than the nuts-n-bolts underpinnings of the 'engine'.
Didn't care for XP when it first came out, and switched over to it once SP1 was on the street, but I really dislike Vista down deep where it counts and probably won't switch over to it until it's required to continue gaming, and that's sad, not just for myself, but for MS too.

[Stormcrow]

Is that good ol' Computer Ed in the comments section?

[onebxr]

Don, Seriously what are you smoking and di you bring enough for everyone. Your conclusions are based on hesteria that has been created by tech wantabes that lack any real skill of experience. Experienced techs are finding Vista easy to use and it works solid. I personally have had zero glitches and have done 143 upgrades to date as well as build 172 system.

To quote you:
"Never before have I seen such an abysmal start to an operating system release"

I would say this shows you have been in computing what, a year? Seriously how about the mess that was called ME or lets go back to the release of Windows 95 with the HUGE numbers of headaches it delat with early on. Even further back to DOS 6.0 which was the most useless update ever done.

quote:
"As a daily user of Mac OS X, Ubuntu and Vista, I'm keenly aware of what works and what doesn't."

Yes I am sure your vast 1 or 2 years computing experience makes you an expert. Sorry bub but if I want to actually USE my computer I still find Windows the better solution at providing me the options and choices I desire.

MOST Vista issues come down to crap software or drivers. Vista itself is stable and solid and I have had ZERO issues with anything I want it to do.

I would say a better artilce is CNN needs to abandon bloggers with no clue of the reaility of computer usage.
by Computer_Ed (See profile) - September 27, 2007 5:50 AM PDT

Complete with misspellings and run on sentences. And ripping cnn on a cnet server!HA
-1

[Jokerswild]

Nice find Rich.

[fstroupe]

I'm gonna need to buy an O/S later this year. Its got to be Windows, for various reasons. Don't really want to buy XP, since support runs out next year. Be honest...I don't do a helluva stuff, PS, Dreamweaver, a couple of graphics programs, a couple of digital music recording/editing progs, some games, and the standard benchmarks. Is Vista really that bad for me?