Comments

1. ciisco

   
   Posted on: July 29, 2008 at 5:56PM  

   On the video link, you show one person that says you have to try it yourself.  The problem is I HAVE tried it myself and like many was too frusturated and downgraded back to XP.  

   I agree with one post that if you gave others who also tried Vista a chance to respond about this, you would hear a resounding difference in opinion.  

   All I'm saying is this - when a company has to try this hard to 'sell' it's product to the masses to change their minds, that in itself is bad news.  True, going by one person's opinion is not always ideal and should find out for yourself.  But when many opinions that shift toward the same idea, especially those with experience,  its a different story.
2. TorqueDog

   
   Posted on: July 29, 2008 at 7:20PM  

   I love all the nonsense bundled in these anti-Vista sentiments. Some of you sound like you were in the aforementioned focus group and have your knickers in a twist because someone pulled the wool over your eyes, showing you what an uninformed, easily-led twit you really are.

   I performed a similar experiment. I took a Windows Vista Business x64 machine, and loaded a skin that looked exactly like Windows XP. Blue taskbar, green start button, big fisher-price-esque Minimize/Maximize/Close buttons, etc. Changed the background to the standard bluey-grey "Windows XP Professional" BMP that you get with Windows XP. Put all of the standard software that our client requires on it, and showed it to him; he was adamantly against Vista by the way, having never used it.

   I said "Here, try this out. This is an update to Windows XP, it changes some of the interface, let me know what you think." He messed around with it, and absolutely loved it. "Is this Service Pack 3?" he asked. Then I turned the theme back to the standard Vista Aero and said "That's the same Windows Vista you dislike so much."

   All his new machines through us are Vista x64 now, and he's had no complaints. They're rock-solid stable, and very fast.

   A pseudo IT professional will piss, moan, bitch, and complain until they're blue in the face about Vista. A *real* IT professional probably has plenty of deployed systems with Vista on it that give him very little headache, and plenty of time to play Solitare at his desk. I know I do.
3. MarcoAlmondine

   
   Posted on: July 29, 2008 at 7:39PM  

   I was really looking forward to Vista a year before it launched.  Did not get a new computer right away and then my girlfriend's sister was complaining about her computer over Christmas visit a year ago.  Slow, crashy, annoying.  I'm enough of a power user to act as the family computer advisor so I said I'd take a look.  Figured she just needed to clean out some background processes, uninstall buggy shareware, update drivers, scan for viruses, defrag, add RAM, the usual.  Turned out the thing seemed pretty clean and I really couldn't figure out any problem.  Meanwhile, however, in just 20 minutes I hated Vista so much that I still have not gotten a new computer nor put Vista on my current one.  Here's why:

   1) Every time I changed *anything* it would pop up some dialog box asking if I really wanted to do that.  It was so annoying I could not believe anybody would put up with it.  How did this survive even the earliest user testing, or wasn't there any?  When I Googled this problem people talked about UAC and how you can supposedly turn it off, but others complained that turning it off did not really make all the dialog boxes go away.

   2) Performance is terrible.  In the case of the computer mentioned above, the hardware was a one year old notebook (today 2.5 years old) with decent if not great specs like 1GB RAM, yet the owner was complaining about how slow it seemed.  Everything more or less worked but she couldn't believe there wasn't something wrong.  I couldn't see any reason for it to be the case as she had very little software installed, mostly Microsoft Office.  After reading up on the heavy hardware requirements I advised her to turn off Aero and up the RAM to 2GB, but she installed XP instead.  Maybe in another year or two Intel and nVidia will have added enough performace to their chips that Vista overhead will disappear.

   3) Too different from XP means there's a lot to learn to get familiar with it.  Even the Control Panels are so rearranged that just taking a look into what was going on with this Vista computer left me ill at ease that I could figure out the state of affairs, let alone feel confident taking charge of the machine.  On XP I feel comfortable editing registry scripts etc.  Moving to Vista would require an investment of easily tens of hours of reading up to regain the same level of proficiency.  Not insurmountable, but I've already been through this type of thing going from DOS to Windows, 3.1 to 95, 98 to 2k.  In all those cases the upgrade in features or stability was quite noticeable and worth the effort.  But let's be honest, it can be several months of on & off frustration as you bump into things that don't work the way you expect them to.  Fortunately there's now Google to help you find other frustrated users who already solved the same problems.  The upshot is that changing from XP to Vista is probably best done when you have a month or two of downtime (say between projects at work) so you can learn to use it without bogging your work productivity or destroying your emotional health.  Frankly I have not heard anything about Vista that makes it seem like enough of an upgrade over XP to make me willing to undertake the effort.  I've invested so much time in learning how to set up an XP computer so it'll be as fast and stable as it can be that starting over isn't appealing, which by the way is the same reason I don't want a Mac even though my girlfriend's Macbook Pro is a beautiful product.

   4) Expensive.  I got a retail copy of XP Pro because I wanted full control over a clean install, no crapware.  My Thinkpad was $3300 and XP Pro retail was $200.  Today a decent basic notebook is $750 and Vista retail is ~$300.  Yes a new computer comes with Vista preinstalled, but if you know what you're doing you almost have to reinstall clean once a year or so to keep things working smoothly.  I won't bother talking about how it would be nice to have an OS that doesn't require maintenance because we'll probably see cloud computing first.  Meanwhile I don't see any reason why Microsoft can't separate the install bits from the license: you ought to be able to download the latest build of the install disc from microsoft.com, and if you own a license key it will work, and if not it won't.  That's how retail software works today, at least all the utilities I use.  I really hate that you've paid for a license key when you buy a computer, but only for the OEM version, and all you really get is a restore image full of crapware, not the ability to decide how to set up your machine.  You either have to submit to a bunch of bad decisions made by other people who have money at heart rather than the user's interests, or shell out a bunch of extra money so you have control.  Yes it's the hardware vendors installing crapware but it's Microsoft's fault you can't use the key on the sticker on your hardware to clean install from a retail CD.

   5) No obvious reason to upgrade.  The marketing materials show 3D Alt-Tab.  Maybe some stuff for photos or videos that I already use other software for like Photoshop Elements.  In other words I don't have a problem that Vista solves.  It certainly looks prettier than XP and if it were small work and expense to change, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but that's not what I gather it will be like.  It is going to be very expensive in both time and money and I can't tell you one reason why I want to do it, even though I'm open to finding one.  

   I'll buy Vista when I see bloggers and journalists and IT nerds saying things like: it used to be bad but now it's great.  The average comment today seems like: SP1 made it a lot better than it was, it's still got noticeable problems, but I can tolerate them because it's too much work to do a clean install of XP.  Personally my opinion is that a 5 year old Thinkpad T40 is getting a bit long in the tooth and I'm looking foward to a new W series when they ship, but I'll be keeping my retail copy of XP around in case I don't like Vista.  Official support for XP with a full set of working drivers downloadable from the manufacturer website is a requirement for buying any computer.  I'm open to trying Vista by having it as the default install on my next computer but I want to make sure I can fall back to XP if I still hate it.
4. Synner

   
   Posted on: July 29, 2008 at 8:29PM  

   I read an article about the Vista how it is supposedly a better OS than to XP. I wondered if this assertion was correct?

   I am a gamer by nature and the only way I am going to spend an exorbitant amount of money on new hardware for Vista and for the OS itself, is for Microsoft to do a comparison with two PC's running with the exact same hardware, drivers, etc, and with the latest benchmark software and games, i.e., 3DMark, Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3, Company of Heroes and World in Conflict, etc. Now have this done by an independent agency that gamers' can trust. Once the results are posted and if Vista is shown to be the better OS, then I think more gamers will jump on board, but until then, I will stick with XP.
5. spin54

   
   Posted on: July 29, 2008 at 11:34PM  

   I have played about every game released on both xp and vista and about every single game runs just fine or better in vista x64. Other than driver incompatibiilities, I really have had little to no problems with gaming.

   And My networking performance in vista is nearly doubled that xp pro.

   that said, it's still not as amazing as this stupid marketing ploy makes it out to be.

   And someone mentioned there is a part that says "You have to try it foryourself."...

   That's the funniest part of all of this. Not even the people in this horrible "experiment" tried it for themselves. they sat there and wantched MS employees show them things.

   One thing this little project did absolutely 200% well was exacetly what they are claiming it wasn't for... which is pure BS. It is creating tons of exposure and hype for Vista. That is exactely what they wanted from this no matter how much they deny it.

   People aren't stupid. they know how big corporations work (I digress. Not ALL people are stupid. Some people in this little focus group seem pretty ignorant).

   Anyway, we know how they think. There is so much subterfuge and purposeful misleading behind the scenes. this was nothing but a publicity stunt. not a little sweet innocent experiment. Trying to say it is one is an insult to our intelligence.

   Overall, I reccomed making the jump to vista to anyone with the hardware to handle it. I had been dual booting on my old p4 3.2 and on that prefered XP for the stability and speed. that is also with 2gb of ram. I have only vista on my quad core now and it's great. That said, it was pretty bad with only 2gb or ram. Since upping that to 4gb of ddr3, it's great.

   And as stated before, that machine isn't the standard yet that they were running it on. When everyone is on Cor2Duo and Quad cores, then I will support telling more people to step it up to vista. Till then, Xp is fine. It gets everything done vista does.

   I do see the validity of the claims of this little nauseating stunt though. My dad "hates" vista and he has never used it. It's pretty funny how bad of a wrap it's gotten from word of mouth. i tell him over and over it's a good OS but he refuses. He had me build him a new OS and wanted XP Pro or nothing. I happily obliged since it was a budget system and XP gets the job done very well.

   I am happy with my vista machine and my XP machine. I just think this publicity stunt labeled as an experiment is a bunch of BS.
6. someone

   
   Posted on: July 30, 2008 at 12:41AM  

   What about power users who know Windows inside out, who've used Vista and haven't liked it at all? What about those who're concerned about removed features and GUI redesigns which take customizability away? What about those who have authoritative knowledge on Windows yet they are annoyed with Vista?
7. dovella

   
   Posted on: July 30, 2008 at 12:49AM  

   @MarcoAlmondine

   and you wont work phooshop elements with  1gb ram????

   PLS go to HOME !!
8. dovella

   
   Posted on: July 30, 2008 at 1:45AM  

   http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2008/06/29/randall-stross-jumps-the-shark.aspx

   The 4 real problem Vista

   M.T.F.I.

   Misinformation

   Troll

   FUD

   Ignorance
9. Xepol

   
   Posted on: July 30, 2008 at 2:41AM  

   I'll grant that Vista is better than its reputation, but that said...

   I'm suspect when the fully story behind this comes out, MS is going to seriously regret this "experiment".

   Amazing how people said exactly what MS wanted, almost like they were reading scripts written by a marketing department.  Just like the late night tv infomercials...

   You could put it on after the absizer and before the car wax that is fire-proof.  I don't think it should follow a chef tony infomercial tho... you know the one where everyone in the audience is supposedly a professional chef but looks more like street people in badly misfiting chef-like-outfits?  People might get "the wrong impression"
10. chakkaradeep

    
    Posted on: July 30, 2008 at 5:33AM  

    @Mkyte, your statement looks so so funny, lol

    "Already have. Thank you. OS X 10.5 with XP in Boot Camp (Vista takes up way too much HD space)."

    Vista takes up too much space? OMG, how about this? Check the default MAC OS X 10.5 which comes with Macbook/Pro/iMac and see how much space it takes? And also put a fresh installation and check the space...what you have written is FUD. This is why Windows Mojave is there. May be you could join the Mojave team and ask for a test schedule.