Over the weekend my son Phil and I built a computer and a server for the test lab I use in my business (building computers is also a hobby we share). One of the machines was a Vista box, the other was a server which I'm testing the Windows Server 2008 RC-1 Hyper-V software that came out last Thursday. I'm sure I'll be writing about the Hyper-V RC-1 software in several upcoming blog posts.
It caused me to think about 2008 and to look back at the 2007 ups and downs of Vista since its introduction earlier in the year. The Vista SP1 service pack is coming in February 2008, while at the same time Vista is being compared to Windows ME, another Windows operating system Microsoft "didn't get right".
I don't really agree with that analogy, and yes, Windows ME was totally useless. That's why I don't agree that Vista falls under the same category. Windows ME was a few features slapped onto Win98 while Vista is part of a rewrite of the entire Microsoft OS code base. But of course Vista has failed to meet expectations on several fronts. I have my own views on what can turn things around for Vista and save what could be another potentially disastrous product upgrade.
Windows Vista SP1 Must Be Solid, Rock Solid. If the Vista SP1 release isn't rock solid, don't ship until it is. One failure is a mistake, two failures means you still don't get it.
The best way to turn something around is to recognize the problem and work hard on it until you get it right. No matter how great the pressure to get Vista SP1 out the door and into our hands, better to get it right than ship premature software.
Microsoft Has Much More Is At Stake Than Vista. If SP1 comes out and is a dud, more than Vista's reputation is at stake. Windows Server 2008 and Vista share a great deal of common code, including the file system and networking, two of the greatest sources of complaints from Vista users. Here's an excerpt about Vista SP1 from Microsoft back in August 2007.
"Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 have been built from the same fundamental source code base since the beginning. Many of the core files are identical between the two products... Examples of common files shared between the two operating systems are the kernel and core OS files, the networking stack, file sharing. In the past year since the Windows Vista public release, the common files in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 have been continually improved based on customer beta feedback, customer deployments, and Microsoft internal testing."
If SP1 doesn't address these performance issues, the market will question if Windows Server 2008 introduction will be a repeat of Vista. Oh, did I mention Vista SP1 must be rock solid? Now you know why the stakes for SP1 are even higher than most think.
It's About Their User Experience. So many of Vista's detractions, slow performance, losing network connections, annoying User Account Control (UAC), relocated and relabeled functionality, etc., etc., boil down to a poor user experience. We could list out countless problems and annoyances but that's been done many times before. Want customers to love your product, solve a valuable problem and do it in a way that delivers a superior (even good can be enough) user experience and you are most of the way there.
There are many other things I could list that would make Vista a better product and the Vista SP1 a successful release, but SP1's improvements are essentially in the can. A majority of SP1's improvements were in the software back in September 2007 when SP1 went to beta with over 10,000 beta users. Improvements have been made since but with the holidays approaching and it being this close to the February, SP1 has pretty much been determined.
Microsoft can start 2008 off on a good foot by releasing a solid Vista SP1, laying out a smooth runway for Windows Server 2008. A stumble with Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 could see a repeat of what Vista experienced in 2007.
Author's note: My passions are user centered design and creating innovative products. Earlier this summer I started a new series of blog posts called Product Bistro on my personal blog, The Converging Network. Product Bistro is where I share my learnings and philosophies for creating products, user centered design and working with high performance product development teams. Feel free to check it out if you are interested in hearing more.
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Mitchell Ashley is principal consultant at Converging Network LLC where he provides product, technology and social media consulting to emerging technology companies. A successful CTO and product innovator, Mitchell has created many successful, award winning products in the networking, security, convergence, Internet and IT industries. In addition to blogging for NetworkWorld, Mitchell regularly blogs at TheConvergingNetwork and co-hosts the widely popular StillSecure After All These Years podcast.
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The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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You Hit the Nail on the Head
Mitchell, I feel that you're decidedly on track with your assessment of Vista and Server 2008.
For just one example, it was stupid for MS to rename the "Add or Remove Programs" control panel applet to "Programs and Features". Not only does this trip-up those who have used Windows for years, but is a less accurate description of the applet's purpose than the previous name. Additionally, there were nearly no changes to the applet sufficient to warrant its being renamed. It's those sorts of blunders that spew forth from the "changes-for-change's-sake" mentality that turns me off on many areas of Vista.
In my view, MS's efforts on Vista should have been focused simply to fix those things that were broken in XP and add the new features that were needed to earn the respect of potential new users, and leave the rest of the OS alone to retain the familiarity and loyalty of current users. Doing neither very well, MS simply alienated everyone when they released the Vista incarnation of Windows.
I think that MS is darned lucky that OSX is locked to Apple-produced motherboards and lacks decent driver support, otherwise there would now be oceans of PC enthusiasts toying with the Apple OS on their rigs, much to the ruination of MS. I know that I would. Only the unjustifiably steep price premium of the Apple hardware and the associated TPM restriction prevents me from checking out OSX on my custom PC rig.
I have an entirely separate yet similar rant about the utterly stupid changes made my MS in Office 2007, which are another bunch of rotten fruit from the "changes for change's sake" mentality. Why break what wasn't broken? For the foreseeable future, I and my users do not want to and will not migrate to using Office 2007. There's no point, until MS tombstones Office 2003, due to insufficient improvement in function and the learning curve and costs involved.
Performance
I agree with some of your points but FIRST I'd say performance is just as important as stability - although neither is significant without the other.
I'd sum up things that would make Vista even a close second to XP since XP is a hell of a lot cheaper
1 - MAKE IT FASTER THAN XP - what the heck is the point of the new OS if it isn't faster that includes:
1 Faster file transfers - network and local drives not just faster than the incredibly poor performing Vista pre SP1 - but make it actually faster than XP - always comparisons between vista machines - want to see how bad it is compare between XP and vista machines.
2 Faster for gaming - don't claim it is issues with ATI, nVidia, and all the game developers - "the fault lies in ourselves, not in our stars". They tried this when vista was released for poor performance - network drivers, antivirus, firewalls - everything but it couldn't possibly be their own fault - did MS just hire all the ISP employees they could find?
3 Faster in starting up (completely).
4 Faster in shutting down (completely).
5 Faster in opening applications.
A P4 3GHz HT XP should be able to do EVERYTHING in Vista as it can in Vista. If you want to talk about Core2 3GHz machines with 4 gigs of ram than it better beat the hell out of an XP machine so that you can say - look we make cutting edge hardware run even faster if you decide to buy new equipment. Frankly who wants to buy new equipment and put it on a leash - slowing it to a crawl with Vista.
At this point, I'm afraid to allow any more automatic updates to the XP machines I support because I'm sure some Weasel in marketting at MS said - "hey let's make XP run slower so Vista doesn't look as bad"
It would explain a lot ...
I'd always suspected that MS was installing weasels in my PCs over time, causing the PCs to run slower. ;-)
Seriously, if one assumed that XP was as well optimized as humanly possible, any subsequent OS would by necessity require more resources to operate if there was any increase in feature set, when fully optimized. Simply stated, more features require more clock cycles. That's one reason PCs seem to run more slowly over time -- coders will use every available clock cycle that's made available for their use to add more features and more wow factor with each progressive version. It's a built-in bloat factor in the software development life cycle.
I suspect that if one attempted to install Windows 95 on a modern Core Duo 2 or Athlon 64 X2 machine, provided you could even find drivers for the modern hardware compatible with the old OS, the PC would nearly hurt itself from running so fast. Of course, given the plethora of vulnerabilities that have gone unpatched for a decade, it would simply become utterly infested at break-neck speed.
Vista in theory should be faster than XP
Actually Vista should be faster in theory than XP - XP has patch after patch after patch - since Vista is a NEW OS they should have incorporated all those patches into CLEAN code but if you look at Vista even when it was fresh released it was just patch work - it wasn't a clean OS - it has tons of patches from various big companies that wanted a feature in Vista. Even if you turn off all the crap like UAC, all other security that you can and the aero interface, VISTA is a dog compared to XP - it was designed flawed and frankly really can't be fixed. It would have to be gutted and created again from scratch.
Even after SP1 for Vista is released and if you turn off every single bell and whistle in Vista it won't copy or transfer files between hard drives and network drives as fast as Vista - it is damaged goods.
They really should let it die like Windows ME and move on to XP 2009 - vista was a spectacular failure and it is time for MS to move on to better things.
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