Before you blame it on Vista...

Before you blame it on Vista ask yourself, "Was my hardware/software designed for Vista?"

 

My hardware/software was here first! Shouldnt I be asking "was Vista designed for my hardware/software?"

Well the answer is NO! Which brings me to another question: WHY NOT?

 

Technology changes. This includes software. As an analogy, I recall that Charles Babbage's computer was here a long time ago. Should Vista, XP, Linux be supporting that too?

Lets face it, better things are designed as time goes by. Sometimes it may well mean forgoing support for older and even current systems if forgoing this support leads to greater future benefits.

Further more, why just point the finger on Microsoft when it was well understood by non-Microsoft hardware/software designers well ahead in time as to the requirements needed to be Vista compatible.

And I don't hear the same degree of criticism on hardware incompatibility issues on the different strains of Linux.

What Microsoft did as a software monopolist has the biggest and often neglected positive impact on IT and computers, and it is about compatibility. Although ironic as it is, without Mircrosoft, we would not have enough compatibility amongst computers!

 

Therein lies the $64,000 question, for want of a better phrase. The balance between continuing support vs (technological) progress

Software will eventually sort itself out, provided the creators wish to do so

As for hardware, I think Microsoft just about have the balance right. Multi core is pretty standard on the high street (note I am not talking about the individual system builder who would be savvy anyway!), as is 1gb ram, though 2gb is preferable from what I read for Vista. Re businesses specifically and not the consumer, where it costs more to upgrade hardware, well there are more issues like software and products offered. I mean "don't fix what isn't broken" vs being up to date and all that

Signed,
Still using XP

 

Although the issue with Vista is that its backwards compatibility with hardware is a little bit too minimal.

 

I respect your statement, but...

A question to ask is how well have hardware technology advanced in these little years?

And the following question to ask is, should my operating system be compromised in whatever degree (e.g. speed, efficiency) by having code which supports something I do not need or have had?

 

interesting - never ask that question myself since my old beatup eMachines M6805 is flying with vista ultimate - yes; FLYING - not a single issue with devices drivers, with the exception of Bluetooth - and for this i am waiting for the next release of BlueSoleil Vista.

Old games still running ok, supporting my current needs 99.9999999% (BT is the pest).

my 2 cents, pennies ....

cheers ...

 

Every one is right. To begin with, we can’t expect our hardware to last forever, upgrades are inevitable. BUT, MS certainly could have done a better job at supporting older hardware, but they chose not to. And it is not only MS’s fault either, hardware manufacturers, system builders and software developers, they are all in on it. Unfortunately we can’t do anything but play their game.

Before someone says, get linux or something. Think hard, that won't solve anything . We are simply screwed

 

What does that have to do with anything? I didn't have to replace all my hardware when I upgraded to Win95, Win98, Win2k or XP.

The point in an OS, you could argue, is to abstract away the hardware details. That is, it must understand a wide range of hardware devices, and be able to work with them. An OS that can't do that... sucks.

Microsoft already had compatibility with virtually any piece of hardware ever made. If they threw that away with Vista, is it not their fault?

(Apart from that, the problems I had with Vista weren't hardware-related at all)

Your OS already has tons and tons of this. XP had tons and tons of it, and Vista, if anything, has more of such compromises. Don't fool yourself, and don't pretend that Vista is a "fresh start", or that it's a "clean solution".
It's as riddled with compromises and compatibility hacks and dirty tricks as any other OS on the market.

 

I remember using an Amiga, a Commodore, a MacIntosh, a MicroBee, and 16-bit MS DOS, then Windows 3.1 etc. And people adored Windows 95 when it came out despite a significant degree of incompatibility.

You may not have had to replace all your hardware when you upgraded to versions predating Vista, but have you ever thought about how the pace of technology has evolved lately? Have you ever considered what the future of technology is becoming? If everything is stuck to the past and present, how can you eventually take a larger step? Vista is not a revolution, but at some point you have to draw the line of where to move on. Aside from this, it boils down to the driver that sits between the operating system and hardware it is meant to drive - as it is - a driver. Have you ever thought about contacting the manufacturers to ask them if they will release the driver for Vista? Just because your hardware is not working does not mean that Vista will never work with it. It is just that your hardware lacks the driver for it. So it is the manufacturers that have the ultimate responsibility. As such, it further propels my point "Was your hardware/software designed for Vista"?

By the way, the operating system acts as a director. It controls how certain things should behave at the basic level.

Do not put the blame on Microsoft as they did not throw away the compatibility. I am extremely certain that they have warned developers to change their piece of coding to adjust to the way the new Operating System communicates.

And have a think about this. Is it profitable for manufacturers to keep supporting legacy hardware by releasing new drivers if these hardware are no longer on the market or are getting phased out? Where manufacturers are not legally obliged to, they do not need to. And where they cannot make money from it, they probably shouldn't need to. The same go with software.

Each operating system comes with its own sets of library, whether it be fonts or drivers, etc. Most are not made directly by Microsoft, but have been certified by Microsoft to work to the acceptable level. Thus they are included in the official O/S release. Therefore, it is up to the manufacturer to make their drivers to suit the O/S.

Sure you may have your gripe. Why not, since you have a treasured machinery that once worth $$$? But then again, the reality is that technology has its life reduced by quite a margin, unless you are satisfied with retaining and running the same programs in which case the state of the system remains functionaly the same but perhaps relatively quite slower to alternative solutions/systems. Therefore no need to upgrade anything if that fits your scenario. And thus, there is no need for Vista. Therefore no point of complaining about Vista not being compatible with the old hardware/software.

It very much also explains why the computer prices depreciate so much quicker, besides newer technology superseding it.

 

My computer has a sticker saying "Windows Vista Capable"

Since the computer manufacturer has not yet posted Vista drivers, doe the sticker really mean that the computer will work with vista provided I write the drivers?

John

 

John Ratsey - Well, it boils down to the manufacturer. But I do remember reading somewhere that "Windows Vista Capable" means that it can run Vista but there maybe some function limitations (e.g. Aero may run so poorly on some Windows Vista Capable computer because it has a graphics card that does not meet Vista's grade). If you can write drivers for your computer for the reason that your manufacturer has not yet posted Vista drivers then you will be go down in the history book quite famously.

 

I love Vista, but the only damn thing I hate about it the HUGE ram consumption. Luckily I got 2gb of ram so I don't notice the difference. And I think software companies out there need to catch up and start making their game run on Vista easily and more compatible.

 

Vista compatability? My Dell came preinstalled with it. In. 6400 (1.73*2,2 gig ram,160gb) yet it still feels slow. Nothing going on, I removed all the non essential software, disabled everything in msconfig, yet my D600 1.6,512meg XPP boots faster and feels more robust. People complain about compatability, I complain about it being too fat already.

 

in my opinion, if you want an advanced os with tons of features, then it'll be large on your harddisk and taxing on your ram. for example, you could get a copy of linux that will run on an ipod, but you wouldn't want that for your laptop os would you?

 

Micro$oft may be largely responsible for the level of compatibility which we enojoy, however don't imagine that we wouldn't have achieved something close to it without them. Without M$ office having a near monopoly, initiatives like the Open Document Format would simply have been developed sooner.

Yes it will, but Vista Home Basic has less functionality than Windows XP, but is more demanding of hardware. Other than DX10, Vista Ultimate offers no more functionality than XP Pro with a few 3rd party applications running.

It is legitimate to expect that a more advanced, feature packed operating system should be more demanding upon hardware, but Vista is vastly more demanding and doesn't really let users do much that they couldn't already.

This applies to the OP as well, you shouldn't expect to have to buy new hardware for Vista if it isn't significantly better. By way of analogy imagine that DirectX 10 was actually far slower than DirectX 9, it didn't offer significant graphical improvements, and all new games were suddenly DirectX 10 only. Would you be willing to pay more for expensive hardware just to allow you to play the similar games with the same graphics?

 

I'm glad someone is asking these questions. I'm amazed that I'm on my second computer with Vista and I can't believe what a nice piece of beta it is.

Bluetooth drivers was mentioned before. Mine keep getting corrupted. My mouse won't work. This is progress? No wonder the Mac guys are all over us. We suck.

 

you work at ms or something?

 

My computer was touted as being "Vista Ready" when I bought it. It does run Vista, but not to an acceptable standard.

I keep hearing "upgrade to 2GB of ram and everything would be fine." But I wonder whether to pay $110 for an extra 1GB of ram, or go back to XP/Linux and save the hassle. Being strapped for cash as I am, I think I know whats better value.

 

$110! what are you using DDR2 1000?

 

No, I just live in Australia.

 

Vista is an operating system. its not designed to operate for a specific set of hardware. u can only blame the hardware manufacturers for not releasing the drivers for vista and not the vista designers themselves.

 

Don't Windows users complain that Linux users are copping out if they say that?

The thing with Vista is, they have completely overhauled their driver architecture, and added a lot of overhead processing that doesn't need to happen for any valid reason other than they want to kiss up to the media companies. But this overhauled architecture, because Windows is so dependent on 3rd parties writing drivers for their hardware, has broken compatibility with a TON of older hardware, and a lot of new hardware just doesn't work quite right because the 3rd parties haven't learned the new stupidities of driver development under Windows.

It is Microsoft's fault that things don't work as well as they could under Vista, because they insist on controlling things so much. It was a bad business decision that has predicated bad engineering necessities.

 

Exactly.

Microsoft is not responsible for making their software work on your hardware. Instead, it is the manufacturer's job to release the appropriate drivers. However, when drivers don't work properly, most people falsely accuse Microsoft. Complain to your manufacturer, not Microsoft.

Matt

 

The fact that Vista consumes more system and power resources than XP has nothing to do with my hardware, and everything to do with Vista. This is indisputible - even Microsoft does not contest this. Thus, I have chosen not to use Vista. My computer can run it fine. But the "advantages" of Vista compared to XP don't outweigh - for me, at least - the disadvantages it presents running on my computer. So it's gone.

 

Unlike Mac OS, which is designed for a specifc hardware-based platform. Vista is designed to recognize most hardware out of the box, while some others not recognized will need the drivers by manufacturers.

 

Vista consumes more system resources, true. But wouldn't you rather have your computer's power being out to use instead of doing nothing...? Sure, XP may not be using as much RAM at idle as Vista, but unlike Vista, XP is not indexing your files to speed up searches, prefetching your programs to speed up launch times, or defragmenting to keep your hard drive up to speed.

What good is unused RAM? Wouldn't you rather use the memory you paid for? I would...

 

Indexing, prefetching, and defragmenting? I thought XP already did all three of these things, if ordered, in the background. Granted, the prefetching feature seems more advanced in Vista than XP, but all three features already existed in the previous OS.

With regards to what you're saying about putting the power to use, I wouldn't mind it if I could actually discern an increase in speed of the computer using Vista compared to when using XP. But if anything, the computer seemed to either operate at the same speed, or slightly more slowly. Programs didn't open any faster in V than they did in XP, and I soon got tired of seeing the little swirling teal circle (the new hourglass) whenever I tried to copy a file, delete a file, open a program, etc. Basically, the computer felt the same to sluggish, while more resources were consumed. Downgrading to XP produced a lower resource count, and equivalent or faster performance.

 

XP doesn't defragment in the background. Both, the indexing and prefetching features, are far more advanced and useful in Vista than XP.

 

No problems with Vista here on my notebook. My current hardware is: Asus G2S-A1, 2.2GHz x 2, 2 GB, 160 GB HD, 4 partitions, M-Audio FireWire 1814, 8600M GT 256 MB. I don't see where all the criticism of Vista comes from. Everything installs fine and loads almost instantaneously, not much faster than XP (except for audio production programs), but how much faster can it get when everything just comes up? I only see a flash of the startup splash screen for Ableton Live, which is amazing because I used to wait 15 min on my retired Alienware. Just still getting used to the new look and menus so far. I think people are just overreacting to those new security popup things.

 

You're one of the luckier ones.

 

Hehe. Guess what I'm blaming on Vista? An inability to reduce the scale of the DPI by even 1%. You can make things larger - up to 5x larger, but don't even think about trying to scale down the DPI to increase screen real estate and reduce fonts. Try it in Vista, and watch it not work. Then try it in XP (which came out half a decade ago), and watch it do it. On the same computer.

Yup. Pretty sure this is a Vista shortcoming, and not a hardware defect.

 

"Microsoft is not responsible for making their software work on your hardware. Instead, it is the manufacturer's job to release the appropriate drivers. However, when drivers don't work properly, most people falsely accuse Microsoft. Complain to your manufacturer, not Microsoft."

True, MS doesn't have to design according to hardware specifications, but they DO have to design according to agreed specified standards, such as the 802.11 wireless protocol. In order for the OS and driver to work together and provide functionality for the user, both Microsoft and the hardware manufacturer must design their software around this specified standard.

The problem with such an agreement is that Microsoft and hardware manufacturers must agree on something for once. What a conundrum! Where MS has a monopoly on the software sector, hardware manufacturers are jostling for market share.

In the end, Microsoft more often than not gets it's way when it comes to designing and agreeing to such standards. Microsoft calls the shots and makes up the standards, and when standards are designed apart from MS, often they must be compatible with Windows to start with. In turn, this means that driver designers often get the hard side of the bargain; instead of collaborating, MS ends up doing less of the work and sending the software requirements to the hardware makers, who in turn get screwed.

This is somewhat ironic since Microsoft is the company claiming to work so hard for compatibility, when in fact driver developers are the ones doing the real work.

 

I'm with you. It took me about a week to acclimated to the Vista environment, and also during that period of Vista completing its indexing and my computing habits, and for the past 2 months or so I have had a 100% painless experience Vista computing. Is it faster than XP? Bootup times, yes. Shutdown times? yes as well. Normal computing tasks? Not much of a difference from XP, however no complaints.

On top of that, some things that have made my life easier over XP:
--Vista file explorer is a lot more intuitive. Say I had to search for a file 4subfolders deep. In XP file explorer I had to dig four folders down, and the same for Vista. But what if I had to go back and search in the 1st subfolder? In XP, that would mean hitting back thrice. In Vista, the "breadcrumb" tree up top means I already see the entire trail of subfolders, and all I have to do is click on a subfolder to bring it up.
--The tags for file searching are a lot more comprehensive than in XP. I can sort things based on 50-60 different tags, whereas in XP I have maybe 10 tags I can search files on.
--Significantly less freezing and blue screens. Actually I haven't had a single blue screen in Vista after 3 months. Luck? Maybe. But the lack of freezing is definitely a Vista thing. No more cold boots. Vista somehow is able to shut the guilty program down w/o me having to reboot.
--The backup/restore center is very simple, intuitive and integrated into Vista.
--Mobility Center is also very nice and let's me control all the critical notebook functions in one place

With regards to UAC, I agree. Once you have your PC set up pretty much the way you want it, it becomes a non-issue clicking on an extra dialog box. When you first install Vista and you're loading up drivers and such UAC can be pretty annoying. Nowadays I barely notice it's there anymore.

In any case, early on when I first got Vista I tried to defend it but the tide of anti-Vista sentiment just got to be too much on these boards. As a matter of fact I fully expect to be shot down or counterpointed to death after posting this.

However if you're a Vista user and you're happy with it, then more power to you. It's all about choice in the end.