A developer from Microsoft explains Vista

A link to an ongoing forum discussion in South Africa where one of the developers of Vista has had the time and balls to voice his personal feelings about the product he helped develop. Don't be mislead by the thread title "Why Windows XP must be saved". It is a very interesting read and was an eye opener for me. OK, it's not Vista on laptops but is still a debate about Vista as an OS. And it's quite a short thread (so far).

I really hope this link works for you folks:

http://forums.prophecy.co.za/f16/why-windows-xp-must-saved-43538/

Thanks,
Theo

 

here's a link to the article talking about saving XP:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/14/02FE-why-save-xp_1.html

well worth reading the developer's posts in the forum...thanks for the suggestion TeeJay

 

I like Vista! Running with my laptop since august or september, i've not had one issue with Vista.- set me in the typical/average user category since all i do is websurfing, music, movies, light gaming and pix/videos. I've read somewhere before, that "Vista was just as bad when XP first came out". and look how many uphold XP years later. what might become of Vista...

i like it! i just wish i could have the 64 bit version for fun-and a better lappy to run it!

 

It's not the same thing - only the "Why XP must be saved" is the same.

The one I linked to was(is) a forum discussion. And please read this whole linked thread. Very short but still interesting

Cheers,
Theo

 

sorry, just edited

i like vista too, its got a little bit for the power user and just needs some TLC. i have high hopes in MS delivering the goods in the service packs.

 

No problem buddy

Cheers,
Theo

 

Yeah, the only problem I've had with VISTA was incompatibility with software we use at work, softwares that were optimized for Windows XP... not VISTA. Even with that, our software are being tweaked and tested to be compatible with VISTA... almost there. Once we can optimize the softwares that are important to us within VISTA, everyone at work will be switched over to VISTA. At home, I use VISTA on my desktop without any problems. It even did a great job recognizing my old ATI HDTV Tuner card that is not suppose to be supported in Vista.

I don't know much about "upgrading Windows XP to Windows VISTA", but I'd say don't do it. I've heard my shares of horror stories about how people decided to upgrade their Windows XP that they have been running flawlessly for several years to VISTA only to find out that the operating system did not function right after the upgrde. Just back up your data, wipe out Windows XP completely and install VISTA from scratch. Everything that happens between the direct upgrade from XP to VISTA could throw a wrench into what should be an adjustment in new features to pain, torture & rage against Microsoft. It's a nice OS "in progress".

Back when I was using Fedora Core 2 for the first time and Fedora Core 3 came out, I decided to "upgrade" it, boy was I in for a shock at the mess and problems it gave me. I don't recall exactly how many hours I had to work on all the problems, but I finally gave up and just wiped it clean and installed FC3... worked just fine after a clean install.

I just wanted to add that it's surprising that the Microsoft developer from that forum recommends VISTA 64 for the average user, because not a whole lot of drivers are out there for it. I wouldn't recommend VISTA 64 bit for any system unless you are sure all the necessary drivers are available for it.

 

vista home premium runs 64 bit right? i'd reaally like to switch to it sometime so i can 2 more gigs of ram.

 

Thanks for the article TeeJay...

I tend to agree with the developer.....for old hardware vista is a problem....but for new hardware it works gr8.....better than XP !!

 

Are you using engineering/CAD softwares? I know that for those, it was nvidia & ATI not having OpenGL dirvers until June 07, and everyone still blamed it on Vista =/

 

Well, I used Beta 2 on 1GB and my dad has it on a 1GB laptop. I wouldn't use for a gaming computer but if the only thing (as almost 75% of users) you are doing is internet explorer, tax softwares and a bit of word/excel, it does the job easility....

 

Vista is a premature baby

 

No, I don't think Vista is a premature baby. I think Vista is a baby who got dumped in the streets. Microsoft made a decent-to-good OS, and people didn't write the drivers for their hardware. Honestly, if you have ATI graphics but Vista sucks because of the drivers, complain about ATI, not Vista. The problems you hear about Vista are almost always software or driver issues, not OS issues. Microsoft is getting the blame for things that aren't even remotely their fault.

 

All true, except perhaps for the Vista Firewall and UAC

 

Maybe true. I don't deal with the firewall, and i don't mind the UAC. Honestly, on the average day I don't even have the UAC pop up.

 

True, that reminds how people complained about vista not working with the CAD/Engineering/Multimedia softwares while it was just ATI & Nvidia not releasing OpenGL-competant drivers.

 

I configured ZoneAlarm to turn off the Vista Firewall; no sense running two. And turned off UAC, too. The Program Control built into ZA suffices for me.

I also turned off the System Restore Points and Indexing.

I have not tried my old USB 35mm slide scanner yet, so don't know if the drivers will load. The drivers for my flatbed scanner and all my printers are OK as is the Wacom tablet. And, of course, the more common USB devices are all perfectly fine under Vista as well (e.g.: External Disks, PDA, Card Readers, ...).

I like the more structured organization of where Vista locates data and programs compared to XP.

All in all, Vista is definitely an improvement over XP.

 

]

I completely agree with you.

 

Same, this is just so true.

 

But what it comes down to for the consumer is, their operating system doesn't work right. And Microsoft is the one who's putting their name on the operating system. And if you have new hardware, you expect it should work with a new OS. It's a reasonable enough expectation, and if it doesn't work properly, you're going to blame whoever sells the OS first and foremost (Microsoft). They're marketing it as a finished product, so why isn't it working?

Now I know that the drivers are relatively often the issue, but considering how important they are for the OS operating the way it should, Microsoft should have invested the money necessary to get good drivers. Game companies often work together with ATI and nVIDIA to get slightly better performance, no doubt at some cost to the game company, so surely Microsoft, the $40 billion company, could've invested several million to make sure everything worked right, couldn't've they? True, they would've had to invest in better Intel, AMD, etc. drivers as well, but it sure would've made their product a lot better if they had. And it wouldn't have got rid of their profits, either.

Actual program compatibility is another problem that probably wouldn't have been entirely alleviated with excellent drivers. I'd have been really impressed if Microsoft had gone to the effort to ensure every game from, say, 2001 on that worked on XP also worked on Vista just as well - something I'm sure they could have afforded - but they left it up to the individual companies (sometimes not even fixing their own games). And while, yeah, ideally the individual companies would fix compatibility problems themselves, they aren't the ones making gazillions in profits. They also aren't the ones taking what works off the market and replacing it with something that doesn't work (how's that "not remotely their fault"?). So I'm going to blame Microsoft.

 

if your really having problems with OS shift to a Mac lol. that should lessen your driver problems. oh wait thats right you cant install Mac on a pc. -.-

about the UAC, if you want your life to be easier, have a seperate partition for your system and for everything else. like gaming and CAD and stuff.

about windows vista, i love it, works great on my laptop havent had a problem at all, i just game, work, browse and occasionally scan and defrag. seriously why is everyone so pissy with every new os?

be glad there is an OS out there that does its best to work for everyone be it XP or vista.

we all moved from win 98 to XP, nobody thought of using 512MB ram back then why whine about 2GB RAM now? i look back and laugh at the specs JUST 7 years ago, seriously more = better. even for an OS at least the memory is managed better now.

 

Did you read the thread and what the Microsoft Developer said about the OS? He says, and its so true that its not even funny, that the OS is just a platform for other software to run on. Microsoft has no blame in things not working on their software. Microsoft can only be blamed for their code not working. When you have a problem with Aero, Microsoft is to blame. When you have a problem with network transfer speed, Microsoft is to blame. When you BSOD because of a bad video driver, (insert Graphics Card Company Here) is to blame. Microsoft could write an OS that has literally no backward compatibility, and according to you they are to blame for people's laziness about making their programs work on that platform.

Hardware manufactures have the burden of providing drivers for their users. If they don't, the people that use their hardware should revolt against them. Same for the software people. Just because they were too lazy or arrogant to write new code doesn't mean Microsoft should take the hit.

Vista is a decent-to-good OS. This thread has shown little to nothing that is wrong with it, especially compared to previous OS. I have been in Vista for 10 months, with literally one BSOD, which was caused by bad code that I wrote. Can't say the same for XP. Microsoft gave out Vista early enough for people to write new drivers and software patches, they did their part. Other people need to do theirs too, instead of just blaming Microsoft, since it makes more money for them.

 

I'm referring to our database interface integrated with several other networking tools we use at work.

It's unfortunate that many people have to rely on the old, tried and true applications that they have been depending on for years. When change comes and breaks their software, people obviously will become upset. The anger at Microsoft is not totally uncalled for either, because upgrading software is not cheap nor is it hassle free. Why mess with something when it isn't broken?

That being said, it's not something we can totally avoid. Microsoft gets a lot of hassle because of the holes in Windows, so they implement new features to make it better. On the same course they cut off functions that previous "older" software had complete control of.

Microsoft would go bankrupt if they had to use their resource to make sure all software companies' software were fixed & up to par in compatibility with their VISTA operating system. I also agree that Microsoft is building a platform for software to run on... so I don't see why they should be completely responsible for third-party software incompatibility.