Aah the joys of Vista

[Buffy]

I bought my kid a new computer last week, and of course it had Vista on it. So it becomes my Guinea Pig. I did not have much to move on to it: she mainly has a bunch of Word files for school, and then there's all her Barbie games.

 

This was a machine pre-installed with everything, but the video support was sucky and it had to be wirelessly connected, so I had two install these two *new* pieces of hardware. Neither came with Vista drivers (remember they were new off the shelf!), so those had to be downloaded. The video card (a GeForce 6200) in particular was very flakey, and ended up needing the "unsupported beta" version of the drivers before it properly displayed on a very vanilla Viewsonic 19 LCD. The network driver install program (Netgear) hung twice during the installation.

 

The machine does have to be the print server and the answering machine, as well as the fax machine. This was an adventure:

• Printers moved over okay, and Vista had the drivers built in for the HP6M, but I had to download the HP DeskJet drivers from HP.
  
• I have a not-that-old HP 4400 scanner, but HP says they're never going to release a Vista driver for it. That's totally sucky. Got to hook up the fax to a different machine, which is going to be fun to coordinate with this machine running voice mail...
  
• There's apparently enough funky changes in TAPI that most Voicemail software that works fine on XP simply does not on Vista (if you know of any, please let me know!). Now I have to find another machine to run all the time to run the voice mail!
  

 

She's been really happy that I set up a wireless because she has all her Barbie games on her XP laptop, so we haven't gotten into seeing if any of those work yet, but I'm starting to wonder...

 

Glad some of you are having fun! :)

 

Fighting configuration,

Buffy

[Thorshammer]

I'm sorry to hear of your trouble, Buffy. What kind of machine did you buy?

 

I ended up getting a Sony Vaio Laptop, which appears to have had all the necessary drivers installed. The Vaio itself appears to "update" a bit, but the OS hasn't had to update much yet.

I had to install separate drivers for my recent model Epson printer, but it only took a second.

 

I can't speak to the Barbie games, but I'm running Warcraft, Spellforce 2, and age of Mythology with no trouble. I hope it will end up working! If there is a conflict, Vista may automatically disable Aero for the program to work. If it doesn't, disable it manually. (I actually don't mind how the system looks as long as it works)

 

Also, my office 2003 Pro works with no trouble, though I've heard of others having problems with Outlook for some reason.

 

Maybe it depends on the pc maker. It's sounding to me like some pc manufacturers are turning them out without caring whether or not the machines are really ready. This would be about normal:(

 

I had alot more trouble with XP's compatibility with various hardware a few years back than I'm having with Vista now.

[Buffy]

Its an e-Machines (Gateway) and is being sold in every Best Buy and CompUSA in the universe, so its a big seller. It did work out of the box, so its not Gateway's fault. The problem is in the peripheral manufacturers not keeping up. The 6200 is nVidia's current "good for everyone for moderate gaming" board, and the fact that *they* are having problems shows that Vista is *not* easy for third parties to play with.

 

I'd say that Vista comes with more "in the box" drivers, but that's still *way* short of "all drivers". More importantly though, the drivers themselves *all* have had to be updated because Vista is much more incompatible with XP drivers than XP drivers were of WinME/98. Digging deeper into MSDN, its clear that a bunch of problems have been caused by Vista's "security" features that force everyone to make things work differently. Its not a tweak to a driver: in some cases they have to be rewritten from scratch (I suspect like my HP scanner), which means that although Vista "comes with more drivers than XP did", there's an awful lot of not that old hardware that will *never* work with Vista, and that's a lot of investment going out the window.

 

Hey, if you've got simple needs and you get all new everything every time you buy a computer, I'm *sure* you're going to be happy. I don't think that represents the majority--or quite frankly even a big minority--of users....

 

Open Wallet,

Buffy

[Thorshammer]

Well, I gave up on Emachines entirely, about 5 years ago, after having to return 4 in a row from 2 different stores. Those don't even handle XP very well, so I'm not surprised you are having trouble.

 

I *apologize* for saying how *happy* I *am* about Vista on my *own* machine. I'll *stop* now.

[Buffy]

Well, I gave up on Emachines entirely, about 5 years ago, after having to return 4 in a row from 2 different stores. Those don't even handle XP very well, so I'm not surprised you are having trouble.

Actually virtually none of the problems I've had are a result of the eMachines system! All low-end systems are hit or miss: I won't touch Dell's and I wouldn't have bought this one other than the fact that it was only $300 and could have been reused for parts even if the motherboard blew. I generally build my own, and won't buy anything but Toshiba's for laptops, so I can definitely be called a hardware snob! ;)

I *apologize* for saying how *happy* I *am* about Vista on my *own* machine. I'll *stop* now.

Aw, lighten up Thor, I'm really glad you're having a good experience! Honest! :)

 

The real theme of this thread is that with all that money, MS could do *so* much better, but they *don't*. I personally don't care--as some do here--that they do nothing but copy other's ideas (heck, as a software product manager I always used to say "its much easier to let the competition make all the mistakes first"). What I do dislike is that they've never really sat back and questioned what they were doing, and as a result have built some of the most bloated, ill-designed software ever. I was offered a job in Redmond many years ago, but turned it down mainly because of the fact that they've got this pervasive sense of superiority and entitlement. They can do no wrong, and it shows.

 

This is not to say that what they build is worthless--they've got extremely good talent--its just that a complete questioning of everything is exactly what you need if you're going to really move forward, not unlike what Apple did with OSX (although remember, it took Steve Jobs coming in after the Scully years and *telling* everyone that they had a pile of crap in OS9 and had to start over from scratch).

 

Many of the problems that have shown up in Vista have been because of this innward looking arrogance, and a lack of both vision on how the problems could be solved better as well as a lack of cooperation with the rest of the software world on coming up with the best strategies for solving them.

 

So honest. I'm really glad you're doing well, and keep posting, but there's a lot of pain that's going on as well, so try not to take the negative responses here personally! :)

 

Only the bottom line matters,

Buffy

[Buffy]

Today's Cringely blog in Infoworld ("we don't need no steeenkeen paper to publish on eeenymore!") Vista FUD puts out the warning on new PCs shipped with Vista on them that don't work out of the box...read the comments to the post too...

 

Whee!

 

What hath Bill wroght,

Buffy

[alexander]

lol.... that is funny...

[Buffy]

[Warning: Dead Horse Being Beaten Below]

 

So this week's Infoworld asks:

 

Vista SP1 a Performance "Dud?"

 

And the answer? Even the just released Vista SP1 with its supposed "performance tweaks" is twice as slow as XP on the same hardware...

 

I know, I know, all the fanboys will scream that its "built for the latest hardware."

 

I'd just like to know why I should keep buying faster hardware every two years just to get the same or worse performance?

 

For all this money I get....Aero?

 

Stop making sense, :phones:

Buffy

[alexander]

Hold on i have a new bomb for you buffy.

It deals with the eledged "security" enhancements in Vista...

 

Ok, first of all they totally screwed up the TCP stack code, so now the machine does not know what to do when it sees 2 default gateways, so a simple dns spoof and its DOS on a massive scale....

 

Second, the permissions are all weird, its like "You do not have enoiugh permissions to view the contents of this folder" OK, OK, oh i can see the contents of the folder.... that's secure

 

*El new bomb* The administrator account is disabled by default, making most users still operate as administrators.... one question, doesn't disabling the administrator account just seem counter intuitive? It's like disabling root on a nix box.... can be done, but why

 

*El bomb number dos* It has also recently come to my attention that the windows support functionality is closely built into the OS. Now, my problem ofcourse aside from why the hell support functionality is built into the OS, is that Norton AV (and there are probably others, this is the one that came to my attention) by default allows the inward traffic from the M$ support to use the RDP (which we all know is "very secure"). So here is another story of a simple dns spoof, and oooop, you got pwnt :phones:

 

I don't know what M$ is thinking...

[Theory5]

people say Vista sucks but i find it really challanging.....unless im upset and want to kill people in a video game that I havent installed yet on vista..... but yea i find it to be challanging and somewhat amusing.

but part of me cant wait until some companies come out with Vista patches. (very few acually have vista patches) i wont say names. *cough* EA(and Activison for COD2) *cough*

[Buffy]

...so sucky that now Infoworld is promoting a campaign to "Save XP"....

 

Sign the petition! Tell your friends! :shrug:

 

Regards to Captain Dunsell,

Buffy

[Zythryn]

I heard the guy on NPR. Agreed with him right up until he said "... and Vista requires you to learn a whole new operating system. It isn't the same as XP"

What a weak statement. One of the big complaints I seem to recall is that it wasn't anything new.

Personally, I find very little that actually requires you to relearn anything. Sure, there are enhancements but nothing really changed from XP.

I do think it is a mistake to eliminate XP as there is a lot of hardware out there that runs XP better than it runs Vista.

[freeztar]

Sign the petition! Tell your friends! :eek2:

 

I signed it. It will be a sad day when XP is gone and we are left with only Vista. :(

 

I know they plan to stop selling XP this year, but will they continue support? I heard from someone that MS is going to support XP for 5 years. Is that true?

[alexander]

I hate windows, but i signed it.

[Buffy]

Rumor mill grinds: "Windows 7" has been released to "key partners" for feedback. Likely available within 18 months, meaning IT shops who have been scared to death of having to deal with Vista may skip it all together!

 

Given that most IT shops are only now starting to consider their Windows Vista migration plans, the not-so-distant arrival of "Version 7" gives further credence to the idea that these shops could actually skip Vista altogether. Add to this the generally tepid response to "Windows 6" - plus efforts like the "Save XP" campaign here at InfoWorld - and it seems clear that the XP option will remain viable for some time.

 

Frankly, this is a good thing. Microsoft needs to be shown that, at least in enterprise computing circles, they can't simply force-feed their customer base a new version. Release software that provides no compelling reason for us to upgrade and we'll ignore it. Period.

 

Saddling the latest version of your company's flagship product with a name that reminds old-timers like me of the Dodge Colt Vista or the even more ancient Oldsmobile Vista-Cruiser? At Microsoft, that's what passes for innovation. In his opening speech at a recent Microsoft analysts meeting, CEO Steve Ballmer uttered the 'i' word no less than 24 times, B)

Buffy

[nikgod]

I agree that Vista is nowhere near ready for mainstream adoption into the enterprise market. I already had a very spirited meeting with management at my office and told them that if we switched to Vista anytime within the next year, I would quit. It's bad enough that I have to deal with Office 2007, massive memory leaks and all.

[alexander]

Crash, i think i have figured out what hell for IT professionals looks like:

 

A network of unpatched Vista boxes, running Office 2008, and Symantec AV, with windows servers, and d-link switches and routers, a single dsl line running in, and an unpatched 2000 box that is hidden on your network, but is badly infested with viruses, worms, etc, that are updated every day with new ones, by dedicated hackers....