Microsoft's Vista Certified lawsuit is just the tip of the iceberg of unrest about Vista. The drumbeat of dissatisfied users who've tried and given up on Vista is building fast. And it continues to reflect in poor sales numbers for Vista. Microsoft has been forced to extend sales of Windows XP from January to June of 2008. Performance testing comparing Vista and Windows XP show XP with the beta SP3 has twice the performance of Vista.
We've grown to expect a shakeout period when Microsoft releases a major new version of the Windows operating system. The experience with Vista has been more different than previous generations of OS releases. Vista is an OS rewrite from the ground up and while the OS may have better security, the user experience is where many of Vista's problems emanate.
Here are my user driven reasons why Vista is suffering the shame of bad software in users' eyes.
1. Vista lacks user centered innovation that benefits users directly
Vista lacks innovation that benefits users directly. Aero was touted as the new innovation for users. While it provides eye candy like a new glassy look, see through window edges, the true benefit to end users is lacking. We are bombarded with more and more documents, email and web pages and applications to manage. While the Windows Explorer has improved organization and search, very little is done to help end users make their computer experience better or more productive. Users are forced to hunt for common everyday tasks like adding a printer or connecting to a wireless access point. These should be easy. Managing multiple windows and documents on the desktop haven't been solved by Vista.
2. Vista and Office 2007 impose a big productivity loss
Relearning and unlearning familiar tasks in Vista and Office 2007 is frustrating and infuriating end users. More casual users are likely to give up upon being frustrated or place a call into the IT help desk. Microsoft has suffered a big setback in understanding how to help end users increase productivity and instead has worsened the problem. Users are more likely to downgrade to Windows XP unless there is some external incentive to go through the learning curve of Vista and Office.
3. Vista performance is poor
Boot times to come up to a fully functional desktop are still long. Basic file copy operations that takes seconds on XP can take minutes or tens of minutes on Vista. Applications like Outlook freeze and going into "Not Responding" mode with a mouse click performing a basic task. While hardware and software in the industry continues to work faster, Vista steps backwards and is slower.
4. Vista has a high user annoyance factor
Message balloons from past Windows operating systems are still annoying users in Vista. In many cases, cryptic messages tell users that a "host process has stopped working". What's a user to do? User Account Control is the equivalent of putting an automatic look on every door inside your house, so you must use a key to enter the kitchen, study, bedrooms or closets.
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Vista problems
My personal nit with Vista is the fact that my system hangs with blank screens when in dual monitor mode and the screen saver is up for more than 1 hour. I suspect it is because my Samsung SyncMaster 213T does not have a native Vista driver.
Microsoft needs to prod vendors along to develop Vista-compatible drivers for older, high volume products.
Vista has been an upgrade for me
My experience with Vista has been fine. I actually see less BSOD than with my previous XP, as a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time I had an app hang in Vista. As far as the simple task example given in the article taking minutes, I certainly haven't had anything resembling that.
I have a fully stocked desktop, multiple HDs, DVD Burners, Soundcard w/external I/O, tv tuner/capture device, multiple USB devices and my Vista system boots up in about 20 seconds after the MB post messages. Most of my hardware is just over a year old, some a little more. At first I had to scrounge for drivers, but everything worked and driver updates have came from hardware vendors. I usually update my drivers frequently anyway, so it was no big deal, just go online and download.
I use office 2003 including outlook with multiple user accounts, exchange server, outlook connector with hotmail, etc., with no problems.
I think if you want to point fingers you might also want to include hardware manufacturers who had plenty of time to develop drivers and didn't do it, or put out buggy drivers. I've had more problems with hardware incompatibility with nforce chipset and MB Bios than with Vista itself.
As far as user benefits of Vista vs. XP, there really aren't alot for the average user, but the same could be said for a lot of the upgrades of application software over the years; you pay for incremental change, not order of magnitude.
Upgrading for Microsoft's sake
I've been running Vista since its release at the beginning of 2007 and have been pleasantly surpised at its stability. I've been able to run Vista as my main OS on my laptop I use for work everyday. My only reinstall was after running into a bug between AOL AIM and Vista , which is surprising given all of the software I run on my computer as well.
Don't mistake criticism for bashing. Lets face it, retail, home, small business and enterprise users and organizations need a good reason to upgrade, not just because Microsoft decided to keep its revenue stream going.
Apple Mac OS X has changed the game somewhat with end user who now expect a better experience with the operating system upgrades, not glossy overlay on the same functionality. Better security is great, but unnecessary productivity loss and little user benefit don't go far to endearing users to the Vista upgrade. Those issues are now harder for Microsoft to ignore, thanks to Mac OS X.
Mitchell Ashley
Converging Network, LLC
Personal blog: http://theconvergingnetwork.com
Personal podcast: http://www.clickcaster.com/ss
Oh please, can someone keep the Microsoft employees from posting
What a lame post. Clearly this poster is a Microsoft mole. Vista is a horrible upgrade experience with many issues. To blame hardware vendors for not upgrading their drivers is a typical Microsoft excuse for an inadequate and poor third-party testing process. Besides the immediate obsolescence of many popular hardware options, you also have to deal with poor user usability and incessant security prompting to do things you told the O/S to perform. I know what I want to do, I don’t need the O/S to ask me if I’m sure three times in a row to get it done. My personal peeve is the random loss of my wireless router. Just because I choose to not broadcast my SSID, why does Vista constantly lose it and show me my neighbor’s router instead? I’ve used a Windows O/S for years. This one is the “Windows Me” version of modern operating systems.
Vista - tactical blunders
Great article. I'd like to add what I believe are the tactical blunders behind Vista:
1. Security has never mattered to Microsoft's audience. They pay for cool features instead. Good on Microsoft for making the improvements, but tactically it was a poor marketing decision. Sadly people worry about how vulnerable their PC is long after they've walked out of the store.
2. The removal of the Graphics subsystem from the core was always going to hit performance badly, but OEM system builders have not put enough grunt into the machines to compensate. Unlike the first point, Microsoft carried on with an old successful ploy - that inferior performance in the OS, relative to competitors, would be hidden by rapid advances in hardware. Unfortunately for Windows, people are buying value machines. 512MB of Ram is most common, and Vista runs awfully on that.
3. Vista is the fruits of a design structure out of control. There are teams just to design the software to make all the other teams software work together. Vista is the most unfocussed OS in history. In particular Microsoft needs to settle on where it stands regarding whether the PC will be the home's entertainment center. Currently it's neither here nor there.
Vista died on third validation
I was going to write that Vista is workable at least after 6-7 hours of configuration but the validation process killed my computer this morning.
This is after running and validating successfully for months and no problem on our end. We are an EA with zero issues so imagine my shock when the machine came back with invalid license.
Microsoft is giving me a free support call (whoopee) but I can't have 1500 machines DOA over a freak validation problem...Not for a mere $200,000.00 When they cashed the check we became validated, Bill needs to get that message.
Upgrading to XP.
Vista -Ground Up
Your statement "Vista is an OS rewrite from the ground up" very misleading and almost a outright lie.
Much of vista has been enhanced the 'user session' security and caused much of the code based to be touched, but not re-written. If Vista had been written from the ground up it would be a new OS and nothing from XP would work. duh.