'Vista Capable' case could cost Microsoft $8.5B

[OhioChick]

Source: ComputerWorld

Expert estimates damages based on 19.4 million Vista Capable PCs

January 22, 2009 (Computerworld) Microsoft Corp. would have to come up with as much as $8.5 billion to settle accounts with the customers affected by its 2006 "Vista Capable" marketing program, according to documents unsealed by a federal court.

U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman released the figures yesterday from the class-action lawsuit, which claims Microsoft misled consumers with the Vista Capable campaign in the months leading up to the January 2007 release of the operating system.

Microsoft dismissed the estimate in a filing of its own yesterday, saying it was "absurdly " and if damages were granted, added that it would be a "windfall to millions."

Keith Leffler, a University of Washington economist and expert witness for the plaintiffs, calculated that it would cost a minimum of $3.92 billion and as much as $8.52 billion to upgrade the 19.4 million PCs sold as Vista Capable to hardware able to run the premium versions of Windows Vista.

In a heavily-redacted report, Leffler said he had used data provided by Microsoft to arrive at the number of "Vista upgradeable" PCs sold in the U.S. from April 2006, when the Vista Capable campaign started, to January 2007, when Vista hit retail shelves and the program ended. Of those PCs, 13.75 million notebooks and 5.65 million desktop computers were classified as Vista Capable but not able to meet the more stringent requirements for the "Premium Ready" label, Leffler estimated.



Read more: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9126659&intsrc=hm_list

[sakabatou]

1. Microsoft is still Microsucks

[OhioChick]

2. More like Micro$hit. n/t

[Azlady]

3. Off to the Greatest Page... Ha ha Micro$hit!

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. Shoulda stuck to Win98SE or XP

.
.
.

two of the best OS's they ever did

greed kills

[OVERPAID01]

9. Vista had at least one good result...

I can honestly say that prior to Vista, I would have called anyone "insane" for insinuating that XP was a good Operating System.

[truedelphi]

14. Power bump yah on that one LOL n/t

[merwin]

20. Windows 98 was trash compared to XP. Windows 7 is officially the best OS they ever did.

This is coming from personal experience running it. It's as fast as XP with all of the flash and features of Vista. Plus, it's got easy "homegroup" sharing between PC's, and is rock solid even in Beta.

There's a couple bugs in their Media Center app that need squashing, but other than that it has yet to crash on me.

And before you (or someone else) says it's just Vista SP2, take time to read up on the differences...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7

It's also amusing how easily Apple fans forget how much of a piece of crap OS X 10.0 was... It's bound to happen when a company embarks on re-inventing their OS. From Wikipedia:

"On March 24, 2001, Apple released Mac OS X v10.0 (internally codenamed Cheetah).<56> The initial version was slow, not feature complete, and had very few applications available at the time of its launch, mostly from independent developers. While many critics suggested that the operating system was not ready for mainstream adoption, they recognized the importance of its initial launch as a base on which to improve. Simply releasing Mac OS X was received by the Macintosh community as a great accomplishment, for attempts to completely overhaul the Mac OS had been underway since 1996, and delayed by countless setbacks. Following some bug fixes, kernel panics became much less frequent."

Sounds a lot like the reviews of Vista, huh?

[Best_man23]

30. Windows 7 is their last opportunity to keep me as a Win user

If 7 is as bad (or worse) than Vista, then I'm going Linux 100% (already use Fedora about 80% of the time now). Know one person who made himself a Hackintosh because he got fed up with MS and all its security issues.

[FatDave]

43. If you're using Fedora 80% now....

...you really ought to try Ubuntu. It might take you to 100%.

[Imagevision]

93. I did a dual-boot and end up using XP most of the time - if you've

got current software app's XP runs circles around Vista home premium.

[bitchkitty]

36. So....

Because the OS that Apple released in 2001 was bad, then all people who have Mac Leopard and love it should shut up? That doesn't make sense. It still doesn't make Windows better than Mac, and it never will.

[merwin]

53. It doesn't make Windows better than Mac, but it does show some interesting bias.

When Apple tries something lofty with an OS and fails, their userbase still applauds them for the effort. When Windows does it, people bitch and moan :)

[bitchkitty]

67. 2001-2009 - 8 years is a century in cyber land....

There is no comparison. It's nice that you're brand-loyal and I'm sure it speaks to Microsoft's marketing efforts, but Mac is still better than Windows.

[silverojo]

49. I'm using Win98SE

Glad to hear from another aficionado of the OS! I'd upgrade to XP if I must, but I'm focusing more on learning about Linux.

I'm sick of having to buy new computers every few years. How much is Microshaft contributing to landfills, by making PC's obsolete at such a rapid pace?? :mad:

[slay]

51. XP is actually quite a large improvement over 98

I used to like 98 but it had to be rebooted at least every day or it slowed to a crawl. I leave my pc on 24/7 so that's an issue for me. Current XP is very stable and quite good. However, I do applaude you for trying linux. Idealy that's the way to go. As far as PC's filling up landfills, I just nuke my harddrives when I get a new PC (which is rare - bout every 6 or 7 years) and donate the pc to goodwill. While no longer current, still very capable of email, wordprocessing, etc. :)

[Abacus]

100. 98 was nothing more than adequate and XP is/was too resource intensive; 2000 is my favorite

When XP released, a lot of people had to double their RAM just to run it. 2000 is stable and relatively lightweight (for MS); I think this has been their best OS release yet.

[DAMANgoldberg]

5. I don't get it...

Microsoft said that all of these computers were "Vista Capable". There are multiple versions of Vista, so I don't see where MS is at fault. The lawsuit said that not all of these computers run the "Vista Premium" version. MS did not make that claim, Vista capable refers to Vista Basic, which is the version of Vista that doesn't require the processing power of Premium and it's User Interface. The savvy consumer knows not to upgrade a Windows-based OS, it's not a pretty experience. If you desire Vista, buy a current system with it Pre-Installed.

[mwooldri]

8. Seems straightforward enough to me...

and a big windfall for some lucky lawyers.

The lawyers point is that Vista is Vista, doesn't matter if we're talking Vista Basic or Vista Premium, if a computers' labelled Vista Capable, it should run any flavour of Vista.

The closest analogy I can think off the top of the head is like going to a car rental place, renting a Buick Lucerne for a month and the rental place telling you "We can upgrade you to a Mercedes next week". You turn up to claim your upgrade and you get put in a Mercedes A-Class rather than that SL Class you might have been thinking of. Here the question is "is the Mercedes an actual upgrade to a Buick?"

Yep, you are a savvy consumer, because we know NOW that upgrading from XP or earlier to Vista can be a PITA, just as upgrading from Windows 98 to XP was a PITA at times too. However it was billed as an easy process anyway...

Mark.

[OVERPAID01]

10. ^^^Corporate shill reply alert:

Daman, you are FOS, microsoft said these were "Vista Premium" capable. Don't be like the bush admin and try to rewrite history the story id write there to read dude.

[Cronopio]

11. Amazing how many Microsoft shills there are lurking around the net.

Are the online MS shills next to be outsourced to India?

It'll be fun reading their mangled Indianified English syntax ... "Vista work for me! Maybe buy preinstall next time or read manual."

[CRF450]

17. I have it on two computers, doesn't give me any problems.

A gaming computer and a $800 laptop. It would offensive if you call me a MS shill when I'm just an ordinary person.

[Hugabear]

39. If you continue to insist on defending MS, then you are indeed a MS shill

Microsoft has a long history of fucking people over. Whatever it took for Microsoft to gain its dominance in the computing world, it was okay with them.

If you use Microsoft products, fine. But don't sit here and shill for them.

[CRF450]

48. What I'v said has been my honest experience with Vista, nothing more.

If I have a major problem arise, I'll let you know:eyes: The way I see it, when it was first released lower end $600 computers with a low end cpu and no more than 1gig of ram slowed a Vista machine to a crawl. Then their were the compatibility issues of older hardware, NTM hardware/software makers draggin their asses at releasing proper driver support.

It works for me, so I'm not using anything else. I'll gladly upgrade to Windows 7, the Beta has very high praise from most others who've tried it, it even runs fantastically on my HP laptop.

[merwin]

54. So if you genuinley like a product, you're a shill?

Nice.

[Cronopio]

74. No, we're saying that only a shill could geniunely like Vista. nt

[roseBudd]

72. I am not a shill, nor someone who never used a Mac, I have an iMac at work running Bootcamp...

the top two reasons why my Mac partition is virtually never booted up are.

Thumbnail view. I have had Thumbnail view since Win 2000. I could not function without it.

My applications that were only created for the PC market.

Homesite HTML/CSS/JS/ASP/CFM editor, lightyears better than BBEdit.

WinSCP better than Filezilla

And all my Adobe apps of course are available for the PC.

[kenfrequed]

44. Oh gods

Obvious corporate shill poster. With patented site appropriate analogy. I bet the scum goes to the Freep and says: "X you R FOS, Don Be like dem Dirty Dems and rewrite History"

[DS1]

38. It shouldn't have to matter whether or not it's an upgrade or pre-installed

that's the point. You missed it. Try again.

[BanTheGOP]

6. Makes me want to change the name...

...of my favorite news network to "MacNBC". It burns me up that Bill Gates is getting rich off of our station.

[BrightKnight]

7. That will cost good jobs and damage a lot of retirement accounts. - n/t

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

25. ...therefore, when a company does anything questionable, we must let it slide.

Won't someone think of the children jobs? :eyes:

[BrightKnight]

45. No, but the people responsible will not be paying the price.

Prosecute the people responsible.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

12. And you know...

I just got done putting Mandriva 2009 on my laptop, 1.6Mhz single-core Turion and it runs like a raped ape. On my quad-core, it's just stupid fast.

Why anyone would inflict Vista on themselves is beyond me. There are just better choices out there.

[cliffordu]

13. The penguin laughs a little, shrugs and goes back to running the innernet tubes.

[merwin]

22. And Microsoft laughs, shrugs and goes back to running corporate networks.

Each OS has its place. *nix was designed as a server operating system, and hasn't been able to gain much ground in the desktop arena. OS X has a footing in graphics design and related fields. Windows has the upper hand in corporate and home networks, as it is easy to use and easy to manage networks and has a stronghold on LOB applications and gaming.

[cliffordu]

41. M$'s dominance on the desktop is a fluke.

A combination of an early lock on the market, (Thanks, IBM!) a predatory set of practices that make Dick Cheney look like a pussy, (Dr.Dos, Novell, Netscape) Contracts with hardware manufacturers that locked in drivers as proprietary when they NEVER should have been.


Microsoft works harder at making people pay for upgrades and "new" features than it ever has at an operating system that works.

How do ya like that Innernet Exploder? that M$ Outbreak?? have they secured those two 'must-haves-for-the-business-professional' yet???

Vista is a 64 bit kludge to a 32 bit hack for a 16 bit patch on an 8 bit fix to a 4 bit operating system by a two bit company that cannot handle one fucking bit of real competition.

By the way, your marketspeak above is pretty touching but people are really waking up after this latest Vista fuckup....

And.....
The only part of your statement that is really true is the part about being strong in the gaming world.

The only reason they are ahead ANYWHERE else is due to predatory business practices..."embrace and extend' or, in the case of any partner they've ever had, "embrace and extinguish" Ask Novell.

I can't wait for the next kludge, Windoze 7. Why does anyone think it'll be any better than Vista or Win95 was??

Because the Marketing Department at M$ says it will. Get out your checkbook.

They should just put the MS graphical shell on a Linux system and be done with it.

Me? I've been using Linux since '95. I haven't had to use any M$ products since about 1999, and I could give a shit if they go out of business tomorrow.


BY the way. Has anyone at Microsoft found the guy who knows what everything in the Registry actually does??

The answer is no. no one knows what everything in the Registry does. That's because there's so much garbage left over from the fixes, kludges, hacks and eraser marks that some of it is completely unrecognizable. Gibberish.

Microsoft is like one of the Big Three American car makers. Long on advertising and bullshit, short on efficiency and real value.


It's not the fault of the brilliant and hard working people that work in either industry, either.

It's the business model, it's how they roll.

[merwin]

55. Windows 7 IS better than the rest. Try it for yourself and see. It's an open beta.

Or do you just enjoy bashing them.

[cliffordu]

62. I enjoy bashing them and will not use their products if I can possibly avoid it.

They disgust me as a corporation and thier software is sophomoric.

I hope they fail miserably.

[merwin]

78. Well then, I guess our conversation is over :)

Hard to have a reasonable discussion with someone who is so full of hate toward something. I prefer the Thom Hartmann approach rather than the Randi Rhodes approach (civil discussions with people who disagree with you vs closed minded yelling).

I go back and forth between Linux, Windows and OS X and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. The company I work for does network engineering for both OS X as well as Windows, our servers run off of VMware ESX Server, and our Webhosting part of the business (which we recently sold) was run on Linux.

Each OS has it's strengths and weaknesses. If you can't even admit that, then there's no hope of a semi-civil discussion.

Sorry.

[cliffordu]

81. well...Using the argument a while back that your grandmother couldn't use

linux because she couldn't roll her own Kernel sounds EXACTLY like the marketspeak they used to use...

It's a bogus argument.

If you were really using linux to any degree you'd know that it can be set up to be geared towards a new user or a computer illiterate..it can be as simple or as complex as the sysadmin wants it to be. Priveleges and all that.

SO let's not stress how egalitarian and wonderfully balanced we are in our arguments, Mkay??

Because so far you've responded with doubletalk and M$speak and "I'm like Thom hartman, and you aren't"

When all I really wanted to know was how much of the Registry is a complete mystery to everyone at M$.....I imagine there'd be tens of thousands of lines of complete shit in there by now....

[merwin]

84. Having worked with one of the lead developers of SBS 2008 (we were one of the Beta TAP clients)

their internal staff knows their shit when it comes to the down and dirty with the registry

Pretty much all of the important low-level registry tweaks and hacks have been documented and are used by the many system tweaking applications. There's huge parts of it that are for drivers and system-specifc settings, which 99.9% of users and admins will never delve into as their are GUI's for anything that should be changed.

The main difference (other than the fact that the registry is a single file while linux has individual files) that I have seen is that the registry populates most of the keys with default values, while Linux prefers smaller configuration files and if you want to customize it you add in configuraiton values. There's good and bad to both ways of doing it. Each is equally complex, as one requires you to go through the documentation of each specific service to learn how it works, while the Registry exposes most of it to you by default and you have to often guess at its meaning if you don't want to look up the documentation.

As I have ADD and have to often reference either my own notes or online documentation, it is much easier for me to have a GUI to change settings rather than command lines. I commonly misspell, swap parameters, etc. Auto-completion and parameter hints in Visual Studio make life as a developer so much easier for me. Their are probably similarly powerful IDE's for Linux, but I haven't done any real Linux programming in a few years, and when I was doing it I was using simple development-oriented text editors that would do syntax highlighting but not much more.

My wife actually put up with me for a good chunk of last year while I messed around with Ubuntu (and ultimately got rid of it because of the shitty nvidia multi-monitor support) and buggy KDE4. As is normal with community devleoped software, one release can vary hugely in performance and stability from the next, as their is zero budget for testing on a wide range of hardware configurations other than what the volunteers provide.

And to note, I wasn't rolling my own kernel. It was standard kernel updates that breaks some kernel drivers.

[cliffordu]

86. Another myth:

"As is normal with community devleoped software, one release can vary hugely in performance and stability from the next, as their is zero budget for testing on a wide range of hardware configurations other than what the volunteers provide."

IBM spends about a couple million a year testing LINUX...I used to work about 150 feet from the lab. Just because you aren't aware of the development in Big Software on the Linux front doesn't mean you get to spread the "hippies in their basement" myth.

Goto the Linux Resource Center at ibm.com to see what ONE company is doing.

My current UBUNTU system lets me know every couple of days that an upgrade is possible for any number of programs....and I simply give it permission to do so.

"And to note, I wasn't rolling my own kernel. It was standard kernel updates that breaks some kernel drivers."

I have NEVER had this happen. NEVER.

it's odd-

Microsoft has spent YEARS tying peripheral manufacturers and their drivers to NDA's so Linux couldn't gain any market share with cutting edge hardware....and the Linux hippies STILL get the hardware to work....

Check this out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11ubuntu.html

[silverojo]

50. This is news to those of us who use Linux on our desktops

Linux is kind of like Obama running against Hillary in the primary: Starting out slowly, but gaining ground as people tire of "the way things used to be" and become desirous of "change".

(ON EDIT: This isn't a jab at HRC, just a comparison to the primary itself.)

[merwin]

56. It won't gain any significant desktop share until it is at least as easy to use as a OS X

You should NEVER have to drop to a shell to do anything. An example, every time I would update my kernel I would have to recompile the VMware kernel driver.

Pretty much anything that's not in the repository has to be manually installed and fucked with to get it working properly.

Until it's easy enough that my grandmother can use it, it's market share is going to stay with hobbyists.

[cliffordu]

63. Hobbyists and professionals worldwide.

You sound like someone from M$ marketing. Hobbyists?

I dunno, when I helped integrate Linux into IBM, I was a 90 thousand dollar a year hobbyist.

And your fear of the shell for grandmother is bullshit. Grandma doesn't really need to roll her own kernel, now does she??

It's funny. I don't have anything remotely microsoft on any of my computers and I suffer no lack of connectivity, productivity or ability to work with anyone worldwide.

M$ and the myth of their superiority is all advertising and hard sell by the computer magazines.....who have at various times been caught fudging results in M$'s favor.

Windows is just television with a word processor. How's that Innernet Exploder working out for ya??

[Moochy]

95. Linux Linux Uber Alles

&1&2>>/dev/null

[cliffordu]

96. That's right. Freedom thru penguins.

[Moochy]

97. I use CentOS @ work

But using at home would really annoy me. I have several music programs that don't have an equivalent on linux, plus I play the occasional windows high-end graphical game every now and then.

Windows Vista has not crashed down to the kernel,EVER, unlike centos did several times last week from a simple firefox plug-in... (Firecookie..grrr)

A computer is a tool, lets' not quibble about who killed who lets just all compute if we gotta :) the penguin is all right. Gnome/GTK/etc is still a royal p.i.t.a to get setup perfectly, but its come along way.

[CRF450]

15. Current computers run Vista just fine.

The low end ones from early 07 when Vista was first released ran like hell, not enough processing power, and not enough memory including compatability issues with older hardware/software.

What computers needs more than just ditching Vista is a solid state hard drive. Just that alone would turn a computer that runs Vista so so, would turn it into a blazing fast pc.

[Grinchie]

23. Vista mey run great, but when there are no drivers for thousands of Peripherals

Then it is nothing more than a fancy paperless adding machine.

MSFT totally blew it when it came to drivers, and even MSFT acknowledged it internally, which is why this case has legs.

I'm sure that MSFT Vista is great, but it is doomed as an Albatros as it was released during the era of the Patriot act, while simultaneously outsourced to hundreds of shops around the world.

XP is just fine, Office 2003 was great untile a Service Pack came in and wiped out Document imaging. It's still broken, and Microsft refuses to cough up a fix to the product they broke, most likely to force an upgrade to Office 2007 et al.

I dont want to udgrade my OS every 2 years. Call me old fashioned, but software usually gets better with maintenance, not by bloating it into 10,000 DLL's that you never use.

But god forbid you get a stale DLL and the whole system goes ape. Microsft Windows is now the Ultimate Buick, run by executives with a GM mentality. Built to break!

[CRF450]

26. Thats up to the 3rd party software.hardware makers, not MS

MS doesn't and cant write drivers for products they dont make. Thats the job of the companies who's computer products are sold on the shelves or those computers that are being built, those same hardware makers were dragging their asses the first several months or made crappy drivers that werent worth a crap. Most any peripheral products that cant work with Vista right now is an outdated hardware that should be replaced anyways, anything else thats within 3 or 4 years old, you can find compatible drivers for Vista.

BTW, I am using Windows 7 Beta on my laptop right now and have been for the last week and a half. So far it works great and is much much quicker and smoother running than Vista.

[merwin]

28. Apparently Microsoft is responsible for making sure people's 10 year old scanners still work.

I too am running Windows 7 on my two home PC's and it's been rock solid... at least it was once I swapped out my 2 year old nvidia card with an ATI card. I got fed up with nvidia drivers causing random BSOD's every time I would update to a new driver version (which happened in Vista as well). I can't understand how nvidia is still in business when they're responsible for 30% of Vista BSOD's.

People have preconceived notions about Vista that just aren't true. Most of my customers who say they dislike Vista either haven't used it for more that an hour or two or hate change. They're so used to the way things were done in XP that they don't bother to notice that the way it's done in Vista is usually better, just different.

One thing Microsoft does very well is focus groups. I've participated in several of them myself when I lived in the Redmond area, and they do actually listen to customer feedback.

Windows 7 will be to Vista as OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) was to OS X 10.0 (Cheetah). People will love MS again, and in a couple of years nobody will be using XP unless they have to.

It's funny how when Apple comes out with a buggy OS that's a major revision, it's received as revolutionary, with a few flaws. But when Microsoft does it, it's considered a colossal blunder.

[CRF450]

31. I'v heard about how bad nVidia drivers are.

Luckily I havent have any problem with that either, well... than again I RARELY ever upgrade video card drivers so I dunno. Lovin the GTX 280 so far! For Windows 7 did you do a clean install? I installed it over Vista that was preinstalled in my HP laptop so everything that was on it before is still their and working great! Deffanetly a good speed increase over Vista, my only "little" complaint about it is how its hides multiple windows under the same box icon in the taskbar. Thats pretty much it.

[merwin]

52. You can disable the grouping, but honestly I'm getting used to it.

I decided I would give it a shot and I'm liking it. If you mouse over one of the windows, it hides the others and shows the window. I also like that it shows the title of of the app. Very quick for switching tasks.

[CRF450]

70. I figured out how to disable that

Works better for me anyways.

[merwin]

79. I couldn't stand Vista's grouping, because I couldn't see which window I was going to.

A list of windows in IE doesn't help when they've all got similar titles :)

[cliffordu]

66. Ever see that report on lost productivity and Microshaft software??

And you never answered my first question to you:

Is there anyone at Microshaft that understands what everything in the Registry does??

The answer is no. They ship software with hundreds of thousands of lines of code that NO ONE knows what it does.

So what is it?

Virtual gibberish, digital smegma, garbage leftovers from Win NT ("not today") NSA backdoors and super secret encoder ring decoders and practical jokes by the Database Department....

I'm surprised the shit boots at all.

How much did you have to spend on security software last year??

[merwin]

69. Is there anyone who understands what EVERY configuration file and parameter in Linux does?

Other than Linus, I seriously doubt it. And I really doubt he knows everything there is to know about it, considering linux is a piecemeal operating system of various open source projects that is changing daily.

[whopis01]

73. Of course there is not. n/t

[cliffordu]

76. Again with the M$$peak.

Thousands of people worldwide understand what every line is about in the linux kernel.

That's what Open Source is all about.


Fuck it. Even I know what a good deal of them mean, and I'm what did you call it.....

A hobbyist....:rofl:

Keep up the party line, though, your naivete is touching.

[merwin]

77. Thousands of people understand what every line is about in the linux kernel?

All 10,000,000+ lines?

The registry is well documented by MS and others.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc778196.aspx
http://www.beginningtoseethelight.org/ntsecurity/index.php

Besides, you can't compare the registry to the kernel. You'd compare the registry to the combination of /etc, /usr/local/etc, plus application configuration.

[cliffordu]

80. Every Linux file you've mentioned AND all the libs that connect them

are well understood and completely transparent. It's the GNU way.

Again: Is there anyplace where I can find out what everything in the Registry does?

Those two links you posted are really kind of bogus.....The M$ knowledge base is a contradiction in terms - you get to know what THEY think you should know.....and in the second link:

"I just thought it was time to consolidate some stuff." is what the author of the article says in the THIRD LINE of the second link.....You know, the one where he's trying to explain what SOME of the stuff in the Registry does.

He doesn't even know......he mentions using a test machine if you're going to fuck around with it......which means apparently you can kill your system if you fuck around too much.


Odd you waited this long to come up with that. Someone over in engineering have to give you the heads up??

Here's the real question:

How much of the Registry is garbage and leftovers that people forgot to purge from Win3.11, WinNT??

Can anyone over there actually tell???

[merwin]

85. Not much of it is garbage, but there is a lot there for compatibility.

For some reason, there's a few people who still want to use 16 bit programs in Vista, which leads to hard-links all over the filesystem and registry entries that are there for compatibility.

I work for a 4 person small business that does Apple and Windows business network administration and support.

I agree with Microsoft's argument of not exposing every single hack in the Registry to end-users, as that would cause endless issues with every new OS they put out. That's why they provide well documented API's to do everything.

[slay]

16. Ah Vista... the piece of crap that just keeps on giving

Giving people more and more crap to deal with. Everyone knows Vista sucks - which is why Microsucks is beta-testing it's Windows 7 OS right now in hopes for an end of the year release. That's how much people hate Vista. My new pc came with Vista 64 and 4 gigs ram, but I have it boot to XP 32 even though that leaves over half a gig of ram unused cause yes, Vista sucks that bad. What Microsoft really owes people is an apology for even releasing such a horrible OS - the worst since Winblows ME. :puke:

[CRF450]

18. Just curious, what issues did it give you?

[slay]

19. None personally with mine because I only booted to it twice...

to mess around and install xp and dual boot proggie. I had seen it on my mom's pc and it was such a resource hog - using over 1 gig just to start up and run the OS. It was all very pretty, but i'm not a dainty little girl - i want my pc's functional and fast. vista seemed more like it was aimed at pc noobs who wanted something nice and shiny to play around with while forwarding chain e-mails to each other. after watching my mom struggle with figuring out Vista, and a bunch of BSOD's early on (that may have been HP's fault) i decided i'd pass. in fact i was gonna just dual boot to linux but had long ago tweaked XP so that ran awesome so decided to just go with that. i've heard many vista horror stories from friends who do tech support, but in my case i'm more like The Doctor with his old Type 40 TARDIS - if it aint broke, why fix it. (And if you do, don't try and do it on Logopolis... doh). :)

[merwin]

21. So you are calling Vista crap without any actual personal experience with it.

Other than listening to your mom complain about how different it is? As for blue screens, it's most likely caused by the HP drivers than anything else. For reference, over 80% of BSOD's are caused by non-MS drivers:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-20/

And as for memory requirements, Vista uses memory caching, so it eats up your RAM on purpose, in order to speed up application launch. It also gives it back when another application uses it. I will say that it requires a minimum of 2GB to run well... their 1GB minimum is a bare minimum requirement to run. Windows 95 would run on a 386, but that doesn't mean that it would run fast.

From personal experience, as a network engineer/consultant, the techs who complain about Vista have had as much experience with it as you have. They get frustrated because the interface doesn't behave like what they're used to, and give up on it. Same goes for Office 2007. It's radically different with the ribbon bar instead of the regular menus, but once you learn how to use it, productivity increases.

In terms of a corporate environment, Vista is rock solid, simple to manage, and causes far fewer headaches for a system administrator.

Windows 7, on the other hand, does everything Vista does plus a crapload more and runs as fast as XP.

[slay]

24. No, I said on MY computer - I have used it on others

many others - didn't know i had to justify my credentials and experience in detail here so i won't but go ahead and suck on microsofts vista tit if ya wanna, but i have seen more than enough of vista to know it blows - well at the very least it's not for me. i don't want my shit pre-loaded so it eats up ram - i'll load it when i'm ready. vista is a mess, and everyone knows it. oh and office 2007 sucks too. why were either necessary? oh well, whatever, we'll just have to disagree on this.

"Should Microsoft Throw Away Vista?

Posted by: Laurianne McLaughlin in News
Topic: Applications

Blog: Inside Tech

Current Rating: 5 Comments: 145

Throw Vista away. That's what my colleagues at our fellow IDG publication InfoWorld have now argued that Microsoft should do. Give it a dignified resting place, as a stepping-stone OS, and come up with a replacement that's more sensible for enterprise IT. There is historical precedent in the consumer OS space for such a move; look at Windows ME and how it became a footnote in Microsoft history.

"Microsoft should toss Vista in the trash, as the company did with Windows Millennium eight years ago,"

/snip

http://advice.cio.com/laurianne_mclaughlin/should_microsoft_throw_away_vista

http://whyvistasucks.blogspot.com/

[merwin]

27. Why have lots of RAM if you're only using a small portion of it?

The typical user only uses a small number of applications on a regular basis. There is no valid argument against having those available in RAM when you launch them. If an app needs more RAM, it will start purging from the cache. One thing that Windows 7 does is let you know how much is actually being used and how much is cached. Right now on one of my Windows 7 computers it says I'm using 1.5GB RAM (I've got a bunch of apps open at the moment), and 1.9GB in "Standby", with only 20MB of free RAM.

Vista was necessary for the same reason that OS X 10.0 was necessary. It was a huge jump in technology. It has its flaws, but overall it is a huge step forward. As I posted in reply to someone else, OS X 10.0 was equally criticised for many of the same reasons as Vista. From Wikipedia:
"On March 24, 2001, Apple released Mac OS X v10.0 (internally codenamed Cheetah).<56> The initial version was slow, not feature complete, and had very few applications available at the time of its launch, mostly from independent developers. While many critics suggested that the operating system was not ready for mainstream adoption, they recognized the importance of its initial launch as a base on which to improve. Simply releasing Mac OS X was received by the Macintosh community as a great accomplishment, for attempts to completely overhaul the Mac OS had been underway since 1996, and delayed by countless setbacks. Following some bug fixes, kernel panics became much less frequent."

Windows XP was also buggy, insecure, and slow when it was released. It wasn't until SP2 that they resolved those issues and it became the rock solid OS that it is now.

Windows 7 being so fast and well received could only have happened by learning from the downsides of Vista. Although, pretty much any computer made in the last 2 years is able to run Vista just fine, if only by bumping the RAM to 2GB (which is what, $30 now?).

That blog link you posted is about as non-biased as Free Republic. It's a hate-on-Vista blog. To that person, there is nothing that Vista does that would be acceptable or an improvement over XP. I can name plenty of features, especially those for corporate users where Vista runs circles around XP. More robust folder redirection, sync that actulaly works, mass OS deployment to dissimilar hardware, asking for admin rights to perform an administrative task when logged in as a standard user (which XP doesn't do), built-in image based backup, vastly improved group policy support, better protection against viruses/trojans, just to name a few.

And what is it about Office 2007 that you don't like? Apparently enough of their focus groups like the ribbon interface enough that they're sticking with it for the next version. There's very few features that are inaccessable directly via the ribbon interface, and all of the old keyboard shortcuts still work for those who use them.

It seems that most of the arguments against Vista come down to three things.
1) People not liking change (having to learn a new interface)
2) Its memory requirements, which are easily met by any computer built in the last couple of years. The average company churns through computers every 3 years, and Vista plays very nicely in a mixed environment with XP, so I don't really see the problem of a gradual migration as computers get replaced.
3) Support for legacy devices. This is a problem with ANY operating system, and Microsoft only has so much control over it. As operating systems mature, driver developers must keep up with new releases of drivers if they want their shit to work. Same goes for LOB software. Since Vista moved to limited user accounts by default due to UAC, certain applications that were poorly written to require administrative privileges when they aren't necessary stopped working. Of course, most of the time this can be fixed by checking the "Run as Administrator" box, but people would rather complain that their software doesn't work :)

Remeber, Vista was based on the more stable Server 2003 codebase, not the XP codebase, and they added in enhanced security features, so there were bound to be issues with some drivers.

If you haven't already seen it, I would recommend checking out The Mojave Experiment.

[Cronopio]

35. Interesting.

Does MS pay you by the word? When a company needs online essayists to burnish the image of its products, it's bad news for that company.

"Remeber, Vista was based on the more stable Server 2003 codebase, not the XP codebase ..."

And XP was based on the even more stable (compared to WS2003) WS2000 codebase, and somehow third-parties were able to get reliable XP device drivers out to their customers in less than 2 years. It wasn't because third-parties weren't capable of this.

Having detailed knowledge of both sides of that fence, I can assure you that Microsoft alienated more than just end-users between the release of XP and Vista.

[slay]

47. Thank you

for pointing out the fact that this dude sounds like a shill for microsoft. Seems Vista has been a huge disapointment to most people, microsoft included.

"Microsoft layoffs: Is Vista to blame?

Fri Jan 23, 2009 1:56PM EST

In Microsoft's public speeches and press releases, CEO Steve Ballmer has portrayed Windows Vista as nothing short of a wild success, an operating system that has sold millions of copies to adoring fans worldwide.

Alas, reality has finally come into sobering focus: Microsoft's recent earnings report show not just a $900 million revenue shortfall vs. earlier projections, but a serious weakness in one critical part of its business: "Software client revenue" (aka Windows Vista and remnant sales of XP)"

/snip

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/116923

[merwin]

58. Is that why most every other tech company is laying off people too?

We're in a recession. Most every large company is laying off employees right now.

[merwin]

57. I remember horrid problems with drivers when XP came out. Also when W2k came out.

W2k broke most every driver in existence, because it was based on NT instead of DOS.

[slay]

46. I have GOT to call you out as a Microsoft Vista shill at this point - the Mojave Experiment?!?!

You mean that thing where they tricked people into thinking Vista wasn't a piece of crap... er.. i mean tricked them into thinking Vista wasn't Vista? LOL. Focus groups? Wow, you are hooked up with Microsucks in some way arent' you? XP was fine, Office 2003 was fine, and everyone knows it. Vista and Office 2007 were not huge leaps forward, but huge drains on peoples wallets. I use lots of RAM - and get more use of my 3.5 gigs in xp than i did the 4 in Vista. I am by no means your typical user. Granted you make some good points about syncing, imaging, etc - but that's not a priority for me. So sure Vista's fine for Joe Q. Moran and i'm sure corporate people like it well enough, but then again, I don't like corporate people. Don't get me wrong, you sound like a smart dude with some good points bout Vista, it's just that those points mean little to me and do not offset the cost up upgrading for my needs. Open source is generally where it's at for people like me. You will never convince me that Vista is worth the price while XP is still fine - more than fine it's quite good at this point. Oh, and Microsoft, well, they aren't too convinced bout Vista either.

"Microsoft layoffs: Is Vista to blame?

Fri Jan 23, 2009 1:56PM EST

In Microsoft's public speeches and press releases, CEO Steve Ballmer has portrayed Windows Vista as nothing short of a wild success, an operating system that has sold millions of copies to adoring fans worldwide.

Alas, reality has finally come into sobering focus: Microsoft's recent earnings report show not just a $900 million revenue shortfall vs. earlier projections, but a serious weakness in one critical part of its business: "Software client revenue" (aka Windows Vista and remnant sales of XP)"
/snip

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/116923

[merwin]

59. If Vista isn't for you, and XP is working great, then by all means don't buy it.

Everyone has their own needs with an OS, and obviously Vista doesn't fit it :)

[cliffordu]

65. ...And yet, didn't deny being a shill, or a paid professional....

[merwin]

68. I'm a paid professional in the fact that I've been a network engineer for the last 15 years.

Along with being a software developer (both *nix and Windows). I live, breathe, eat, sleep, and shit hardware and software. If my preferences make me a shill, then so be it.

[cliffordu]

64. Another advertisement for M$.

[Ms. Toad]

33. Sorry, NOT

>>Same goes for Office 2007. It's radically different with the ribbon bar instead of the regular menus, but once you learn how to use it, productivity increases.<<

Been using it for over a year. Functions that logically belong together have been separated, and the ribbon/tab system requires multiple additional clicks to do things that were single clicks, or at most two clicks, on the old system.

[Ms. Toad]

99. Just had to reply again after the less productive experience

I just had.

I had to create a table, with random shaded cells, with the contents cut and pasted from a long list (so I didn't know in advance how many cells I needed).

Insert Tab needed to create the table.
Back to the Home tab for the button to cut and paste the contents of the first column
Over to the Design tab for the button to shade the randomly shaded cells in the first column.
Back to the Home tab for the button to cut and paste the contents
Back to the Design tab for the button to shade the randomly shaded cells in the first column
Repeat for multiple columns.
Now back to the Layout tab to insert the additional rows I needed, since the number was not easily determined ahead of time.
Somewhere in the process, go search for the Cell formatting so I can center the contents of the cells.

All of these features were accessible on my old bar without moving about from tab to tab, and without having to remember that the buttons for creating, designing, and expanding of an object had for some mysterious reason been separated onto three different (il)logical tabs.

That is decidedly NOT more productive - even had I gotten used to it.

The alternative, of course, is to recreate the old bar by placing all of the buttons above the ribbon - which would be as productive as the old one, but that sort of defeats the purpose.

[Best_man23]

29. South Park got it right

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ntr-pw_6C0&feature=related

[Eurobabe]

32. Oh, class action lawsuit?

I have one of those little stickers on my laptop.

[Hawkeye-X]

34. Even though one of our computer was "Vista Capable" - kept crashing like a mofo..

I decided to wipe the damn thing out yesterday and start from scratch - running XP as it was intended to.

[merwin]

60. That would most likely be due to your computer manufacturer's drivers sucking.

It might run slowly, but if it's crashing like a mofo it's either a hardware failure or a driver problem. And since XP works fine, it's a driver problem.

[DS1]

37. My machine at work certainly isn't. I hate this box with the fire of a thousand hells

I wish I could throw it off the roof, then watch it get hit by a convoy of cement mixers.

[snooper2]

40. Remember when the forced everyone to STOP selling XP?

That was in like March or something when Vista came out. I was in Fry's 2 days after the "cutoff" date and every XP machine was pulled from the floor. Luckily, one of the sales guys found a refurbished XP machine in the back and sold it to me- gave a pretty damn good deal.


I was happy as shit- then 2 months later Microsoft realizes Vista is a POS and has to start letting XP machines be sold again.


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[high density]

42. Vista Home Basic is Vista

Cheap hardware (i.e. cheap graphics adapters) lead to lesser results. This lawsuit is absurd. It's like buying a MP3 from Amazon.com and then suing because it doesn't have 5.1 sound.

The Aero UI looks nice, but the real functionality it provides is very minimal. If a person wanted to run Vista with Aero, it was up to the consumer to research the hardware specifications required to do so.

[merwin]

61. Damn you and your logic.

:)

[fedsron2us]

90. Is the lawsuit absurd ?

I suspect that the courts might want to look at the advice Microsoft gave to manufacturers about hardware specifications and whether the hardware and software combinations being sold were fit for purpose. The question is what the statement 'Vista capable' means and whether the products being sold really met that criteria. This is going to be more important than whether the OS was any good or what was the best spec to run it on. Microsoft probably have not helped their cause by releasing so many versions of the same product which caused much of the confusion in the first place. The products should really have borne the logo 'Vista Home Basic Capable'. I think there may have been some collusion between hardware and software suppliers to muddy the waters on this point to get the product away. The correspondence between Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers might be interesting to read. perhaps the courts will ask for it to be released.

[roseBudd]

71. I have 64 bit Vista w/4GB of Ram & dual core processor & I love it...

for home. I think XP is more appropo for work computers.

Vista should have only been for tech savvy power users who had the hardware to match it.

[merwin]

75. Actually, it tends to be the opposite in my experience.

Vista & Server 2008 added a bunch of corporate management features that make life a breeze. However, it requires newer hardware than XP, which usually happens about every 3 years in a business.

On the other hand, XP runs on lower-spec hardware and runs all of the games and home apps that Vista does.

The only reason that home users are primarily using Vista is because it's pushed by MS. I think that many more home users would choose XP over Vista if given the choice.

[CRF450]

82. XP might as well die anyways cause games are moving to DX10 soon nt

[AZCat]

87. They are?

That's news to this gamer. I checked the list at wikipedia and it confirms what I thought - there are not very many games out that support DirectX 10, nor does it appear that gaming companies are moving to support it in the future. The widely anticipated sequel to F.E.A.R., due out next month, is a DirectX 9 game as is last year's blockbuster, Fallout 3.

[CRF450]

88. Really now... I was under the impression they would.

Especially seeing the capable DX10 graphics in Crysis I thought others would follow. Are they gonna skip to DX11?

[merwin]

89. I think it's more about waiting until the DX10.1 drivers mature and the fact that most gamers have

embraced XP over Vista... at least the hardcore ones.

[AZCat]

92. I think they'll eventually switch to DX10...

it just isn't happening soon. In my opinion, there are many gamers still running XP that the gaming companies don't want to alienate by requiring them to switch operating systems. There was a huge uproar over the PC version of GTAIV because it required Service Pack 3 for XP and Service Pack 1 for Vista. I think widespread acceptance of Vista will lead to increased support of DX10, not the other way around.

[roseBudd]

83. By more appropo for home I meant it's pretty in a frivolous way & made for pics & music

XP seems more serious and businesslike

[rangersmith82]

98. Vista works fine for me

I would have never upgraded, but a friend gave it to me as his Compaq laptop wouldn't run it.

Its great for a free operating system, but nothing worth dropping real cash for.

Several buddies got Vista as a upgrade for their laptops, but they didn't have the specs to run Vista.

Windows 7 is looking pretty good from what a friend told me, he has been running the beta for 2 weeks now.

[Buns_of_Fire]

91. Damn. And here I am, fresh out of popcorn.

But at least I have some (cheap) beer left... :beer:

[davidinalameda]

94. Vista is the reason I bought my current MacBook

I knew it was going to be a piece of crap program