More Vista articles

[Alessandro17]

Prediction: Microsoft will leapfrog Vista, release Windows 7 early, and change its OS business, by Jason Hiner:

 

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=664

 

My prognosis is that Microsoft will use smoke and mirrors to conjure up an early release of Windows 7, the next edition of the world’s most widely-used operating system. Then they will quietly and unofficially allow IT departments to migrate straight from Windows XP to Windows 7..........

 

This will be Windows Vista Service Pack 2 but with a new Windows name, a new marketing campaign, and a new release model. Naturally, Microsoft won’t fool many IT departments or hard core techies with this type of move, but it doesn’t have to.

 

Vista's 11 Pillars of Failure, by John C. Dvorak:

 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2286065,00.asp

 

From poor marketing to missing components, here are my reasons why Vista will forever fail.

 

While the public's attention seems to be swinging toward Windows 7 (the next iteration of the OS)—a topic I'll address in the weeks ahead—the fact of the matter is that Vista remains. And it seems that the OS now has two distinct groups of users. One group happily uses Vista, with few concerns or complaints. In fact, many of them are baffled by all the grumbling. The other group is the fist-shaking Vista bashers who condemn each and every flaw the OS exhibits.

 

The latter group is by far the most vocal and easily drowns out the former group. Its complaints stem from the anti-Microsoft backlash, which reflects dissatisfaction with the company's history, business practices, tactics, and bogus announcements. Much of the disgruntlement, however, can be attributed Vista itself—and the poor marketing job done by Microsoft.

[S.SubZero]

I'm not a big fan of Dvorak, and his bandwagoning just reaffirms my dislike. Vista has problems, some which can be lessened and some which cannot be fixed. It's not *quite* as bad as the naysayers make it out to be. If it didn't chew up so much RAM and disk space I wouldn't mind it so much.

 

Dvorak should have been off his Vista hate kick a year ago.

[Urbz]

I hate Dvorak too.

The man, not the keyboard layout.

[Alessandro17]

OK, but what about the first article?

[rollcage]

Liked the first article, don't really agree with the comment he made about UAC. I'm a little split on the second one. Microsoft actually does have a test that users can run to see if their computers will run smoothly with Vista. It's called the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor.

 

I haven't heard too much about the hybrid hard drives though. I know Seagate announced one, but I've never actually seen a computer with one. Same with Sideshow. Good concept, rare (and poor in all the ones I've seen) implementation. Also didn't like the bashing of performance. Almost every new OS I've seen has higher system requirements. People bash Vista for being a RAM hog, but a lot of it goes towards Superfetch. That RAM can be released, but like in OSX it's being held there to increase performance.

[Yuusharo]

I'm not a big fan of Dvorak, and his bandwagoning just reaffirms my dislike. Vista has problems, some which can be lessened and some which cannot be fixed. It's not *quite* as bad as the naysayers make it out to be. If it didn't chew up so much RAM and disk space I wouldn't mind it so much.

 

Dvorak should have been off his Vista hate kick a year ago.

Chewing up ram and disk space while doing various background tasks like MS updates, defender scans, disk defragmenting and other mysterious tasks that the user has no control over furthering degrading performance is indeed quite as bad as the naysayers say. This is coming from someone who tried his best for a year to like Vista and just gave up on it. It's pretty, and definitely has advantages when dealing with video editing, but bottom line its just way too bloated to be of any use. When you have difficulty trying to save a file into a folder you *JUST* created on your drive and gives you permission and security blocks, you have a major problem on your hands.

 

I'm sure Microsoft is going to come up with something fast for Windows 7, and it may be one or two more iterations before Vista is as reliable and stable as XP is today. Remember, Vista is essentially version 1.0. In the meantime, it is just too frustrating of an OS to use regularly. After using a stable Kalyway OSx86 for two months, there's no way I'm returning to Vista willingly. XP has plenty of years left of its support cycle, so I'll just ride it out until the next big thing comes out.

 

I like Dvorak, actually. He's a grumpy old man like so many, but this guy actually know what he's talking about (ie: The internet is not a series of tubes). He's entertaining.

[Alessandro17]

I like Dvorak, actually. He's a grumpy old man like so many, but this guy actually know what he's talking about (ie: The internet is not a series of tubes). He's entertaining.

 

Good reply, Yuusharo.

 

I agree with you about Dvorak: I believe he knows what he is doing and he does it on purpose. He likes to be provocative.

[S.SubZero]

Chewing up ram and disk space while doing various background tasks like MS updates, defender scans, disk defragmenting and other mysterious tasks that the user has no control over furthering degrading performance is indeed quite as bad as the naysayers say.

MS Updates are controllable, and don't use much RAM. Note that OS X *and* Linux both have facilities that function like MS Updates, and just like MS Updates they default to being on.

 

Defender scans similarly don't use much RAM. Yes they are controllable too.

 

Disk defragmenting? NTFS and the OS work together to prevent fragmentation, but OS's and filesystems have worked together in this capacity for decades. If you picture this grinding hard drive every time the user is idle for a few seconds, I've had my Vista x64 install quiet as a pin for hours.

 

On my old XP installs I used to disable the firewall and all the frilly security stuff, because I thought it took RAM and clock cycles. To be honest, it really uses very little of either. In Vista I disabled them and couldn't tell the difference. So on my current Vista x64 install I left all the security stuff running, even UAC. Performance is unaffected, and any resources these things use is small enough that given Vista's odd caching features (which chew up all the RAM), I can't even determine how much RAM turning those things off really saves.

 

For the record, Leopard 10.5.2 isn't exactly a lightweight. I can get it up to a gig of RAM used without much effort.

[CLiDE FTW!!1]

For the record, Leopard 10.5.2 isn't exactly a lightweight. I can get it up to a gig of RAM used without much effort.

Agreed, Leopard is a huge resource hog, just as Vista. They both use relatively the same amount of HDD space, and consume relatively the same amount of ram on a cold boot. However, Vista seems a bit more sluggish when under heavy loads (though I've never used SP1).

 

Then again, there's a reason why OS X and Vista use all of your ram - explaining it (again) would be redundant and ridiculous. People bashing Vista because they think it "eats up all your ram" are foolish, uneducated and don't deserve a response.

[S.SubZero]

Then again, there's a reason why OS X and Vista use all of your ram - explaining it (again) would be redundant and ridiculous.

Enlighten me.

 

My Vista x64 sits in about 750MB at idle with nothing running. I disabled superfetch. Note: I site in 750MB idle, with superfetch **DISABLED** (I have to stress this, since people say superfetch is what takes all the RAM). I also have indexing **DISABLED**. So what's taking 750MB? XP64 takes about 200MB at idle. What's Vista x64 using an extra 550MB for?

 

Note: Server 2008, which ships with superfetch disabled, also takes similar amounts of RAM at idle.

[Forceman]

Agreed, Leopard is a huge resource hog, just as Vista. They both use relatively the same amount of HDD space, and consume relatively the same amount of ram on a cold boot. However, Vista seems a bit more sluggish when under heavy loads (though I've never used SP1).

 

Then again, there's a reason why OS X and Vista use all of your ram - explaining it (again) would be redundant and ridiculous. People bashing Vista because they think it "eats up all your ram" are foolish, uneducated and don't deserve a response.

 

When I last used Vista months ago it leaves about 1200Mb free from 2Gb and the rest is cached, can you explain to me where that 800Mb went?. Last time I checked leopard it had 1600Mb free.

[Superhai]

If you know what a CPU is capable of doing and see what Vista is doing you know something is wrong. It is not all MS fault, it is also because of all corporate developers who have learned that "time-to-market" is more important than quality. Thats why we have bloatware in first place. The problem is that the tops in MS knows that those who pay best money for their OS is also those who needs that everything works especially the bloat. So the top executives are afraid of changing their core too much. The problem with that strategy is now afloat with an OS that is so big in its core that it is nearly impossible to have a clear overview of what it does. So bug fixing and improving it is breaking it.

 

I don't know how many programmers that are employed in redmonds halls, but I am sure there are a few and it is time for MS to just realize that drop the old and make something new from the first byte.