PC World rates Vista as the #1 Biggest Tech disappointment

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 7:06 am

Here it is:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,14058 ... ticle.html

It seems Microsoft claims 3 of the 15 spots, or 1/5 of them.

Could you guess the other two without looking?

Err · Post by **Err** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 9:32 am

On the Zune:

But Microsoft failed to lose the Zune's proprietary DRM scheme or remove all its restrictions on wireless music sharing

Has this guy ever used an iPod? Does he know that you can only install iTunes 5 times under the same account?

On Vista:

We have no doubt Vista will come to dominate the PC landscape, if only because it will become increasingly hard to buy a new machine that doesn't have it pre-installed. And that's disappointing in its own right.

Go back in time ~ 5 or 6 years and replace "Vista" with "Windows XP".

Don't get me wrong. Vista is disapointing based on the Price alone. I also think there are too many flavors. However, the driver support is not entirely Microsoft's fault. 3rd party vendors have had 5 years to get drivers ready. I actually like Vista and plan on upgrading to it on my next build.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 2:04 pm

We have Vista on one of our work machines & that's the one that has locked up about once a day every day. That's before anyone got to surf the internet on it. Of course, it could be Compaq's fault.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 2:16 pm

Problem is that Microsoft had been changing Vista around for five years. Vista just isn't worth the money, I just do not see value in it. Each person has different tastes I suppose. I don't need something bulky when XP does everything it can do.

One of the biggest issues is that companies are selling laptops with 512mb of Ram loaded with Vista. That is the minimum requirements right there, plus don't forget some is gone so you have less than 512mb! That is less than the requirements! If you have ever seen one of those, they are just slow as hell. It is like installing XP and trying to run it on a computer with less than 64mb of Ram. 64mb is slow enough, even less would be ridiculous for XP.

Err · Post by **Err** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 2:50 pm

ZYFER wrote: One of the biggest issues is that companies are selling laptops with 512mb of Ram loaded with Vista. That is the minimum requirements right there, plus don't forget some is gone so you have less than 512mb! That is less than the requirements! If you have ever seen one of those, they are just slow as hell. It is like installing XP and trying to run it on a computer with less than 64mb of Ram. 64mb is slow enough, even less would be ridiculous for XP.

I wish Microsoft would raise the specs on Vista. You really need 2GB Ram for it to run well. My sister-in-law's laptop has it ant it runs great (2GB RAM). I have a friend running 64bit with 4BG Ram and he loves it.

However, it isn't worth it unless you're buying new or building new. What's really holding me back is soundcard support and "why". I have an Audigy (1st gen) and it's an excellent card. However, Vista no longer supports Direct Sound or EAX. Vista really offers no reason for me to upgrade a stable XP installation. I have a DX10 compatible Video Card but there's really no DX10 games that offer much over DX9 right now.

Key Keeper · Post by **Key Keeper** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 3:17 pm

Most people bash Vista because of its high mem usage and say that you must have more than a gig of mem for it to run efficiently, I dont agree with this. Dwm.exe (desktop window manager) is the core feature of vistas appearance and it uses a large amount of memory compared to other applications but........................................When gaming or other high demand video applications are engaged, dwm.exe usage noses over hard which frees up large amounts of memory. I have had it installed on my MAIN GAMING rig for a while and have had ZERO crashes (and im using hacked version-bios clone). Not to say that certain hardware doesnt work well with vista (lack of driver support, blame the driver writers). XP was just as much of a pain in the ass when it first came out but after a few patches and service packs we have all come to love it. After using vista primarily I agree that it is has quite a bit of bloat and the controls take some getting used to but for an operating system somewhat new on the market, it does pretty good. Besides at the price of memory now days I dont understand why people complain about using 750mb of mem tooling around on the net and doing other common tasks. I do agree that it is completely retarded to install vista on a machine with less than 1 gig of ram but with that, vista turns all the "bells n whistles" off it it doesnt have enough system resources. Basically, if you want all the visual effects/aero glass/ect... then take your cheap ass to the store and buy some memory for that machine that should have been equipped with it when you decided to purchase it or we could all go back to win 98 if you want to run minimal hardware. Just my oppinion though so shoot holes in it.

Key Keeper · Post by **Key Keeper** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 8:23 pm

Guess I killed this one LOL!

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 9:17 pm

One big issue is that people just aren't loving the first service pack all that much. You want to blame the hardware manufacturers for not being prepared, but Vista has been changing all throughout its development, then you are asking hardware manufacturers to go back for products they don't make anymore, and create drivers for them so stuff works because Microsoft changed that part too much.

Vista just isn't necessary, that is the biggest problem. It hasn't met any demand or done anything uniquely special.

Key Keeper · Post by **Key Keeper** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 10:19 pm

I am curious though, what has changed in Vista since it was released that would cause driver writers to have to go back and rewrite their drivers? (not being a dick, I really am wondering) Isnt that what Nvidia does when it releases a new driver (backwards compatability)? Most hardware manufacturers had vista for testing hardware and writing drivers long before it was released to the public (non beta). Simple fact is XP is still the mainstream and why spend the manhours writing software for an OS that is going to take a year to really take off. I agree that Vista really doesnt have any more features that are critical than XP, but the same thing existed when xp came out. Win 2000 can do same tasks as xp so why did we switch to xp? Maybe direct X had something to do with that....Well when DX 10 becomes mainstream, then there wont be an option other than vista. I do believe that xp is more than good enough for anyones machine, but if good enough was all we needed then we could have all stayed on win 2000.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 12:20 am

By the time DX10 is necessary, Microsoft will have likely released a new OS. We could hope anyways... XP had better backward compatibility than 2000 did, Though it was not far superior, it had its advantages compared to 2000. The ones who saw the biggest difference were those Win98 and ME users (OMG ME was evil...)

Key Keeper · Post by **Key Keeper** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 4:11 pm

ZYFER wrote:By the time DX10 is necessary, Microsoft will have likely released a new OS. We could hope anyways... XP had better backward compatibility than 2000 did, Though it was not far superior, it had its advantages compared to 2000. The ones who saw the biggest difference were those Win98 and ME users (OMG ME was evil...)

LOL @ millenium edition! I cringe every time I see it on a machine. I cant believe people still attempt to use it.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 6:06 pm

Most of what pisses me off in Vista is that things are named differently or moved around FOR NO GOOD REASON. Some of my nitpicks when working on client's PCs:

- Typing CTRL+F in an explorer window no longer only brings up a file search for ONLY the directory in the explorer window - it searches the whole drive.

- "Add and Remove Programs" icon in control panel has been arbitrarily renamed "Programs and Settings" so not only does it take me an extra few seconds to find it but my clients are always calling me up asking me "Where did Add and Remove Programs go?". It's been called this ever since Win95 so WTH change it now?

- UAC - don't even get me started. Annoying as hell and useless for techies. Doesn't protect non-techies because they just click "OK" without reading it and have no clue if they did a good or bad thing.

- IE7 - why they hell are ALL the icons in IE7 in a completely different place than IE6 and why can't you easily skin IE7 to look like IE6? You can even move the icons around anymore or customize them in any useful way.

- Takes too many clicks to do techie things that used to only take 1 or 2 clicks.

Feel free to add your own nitpicks to the thread.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 9:18 pm

I think you mentioned some of mine. The other is associated more with the manufacturer, ratehr than Vista directly. Ones like HP tend to put the system recovery partition on the PC and size it just big enough to fit it. The issue is that Vista whines and complains about not being enough space (Way more so than XP) Also, Vista sucks up so much more space for recovery partitions.

I don't like the System properties as it seems to tell me less information than XP does while still providing alot of information. (That make sense to anyone?)

I don't like the organization of the Start Menu either, it seems overly bulky in that respect.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 11:38 pm

Ah I had that problem recently on a client's new Dell XPS system. Vista started nagging about low space on the recovery partition. For some reason Dell doesn't hide the recovery partition from the OS anymore like they used to under XP.

I called Dell, and their recommendation was "Buy Partition Magic and make the D partition larger". You believe that?

I wasn't about to repartition a client's PC if I didn't have to. There's always some risk of data corruption and I would have insisted on imaging the drive first to be safe. All this would have cost them a lot of money (this was a residential job - a retiree). So instead, after explaining the two options, I did the alternative recommendation I found on some newsgroups, which is to disable Vista's low drive space warning in the registry.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 1:02 pm

It is bad you have to disable stuff so it will stop nagging you. If you wanted a wife installed on your PC you would have installed Wife 1.5.