Vista sure died fast

I just checked Dell and HP's consumer sites, and Vista was hardly anywhere to be found, having been replaced by Windows 7 overnight. I only found 3 models still running Vista, 1 Dell and 2 HP.

So what are the odds the OEMs will bring back Vista as a downgrade option in a couple months?

 

I upgraded to vista about one year ago when I got a new laptop, and to be honest I've gotten to quite like it and really prefer it to xp.
I have no problems with it and find it quite user friendly.

 

There is nothing wrong with Vista. However W7 manages to get things a tad more optimized. Can't go wrong with either.

 

There is nothing wrong with Vista. It was hurt by several things. XP over stayed it's welcome. People didn't want any change. Media over blown compatibility problems, etc.

It's currently a solid OS.

That said I'm upgrading to 7. One reason is I need to be able to sell it

 

They said the same thing of Win 95 when 98 came out.

"That sure was quick"

 

Win7 and Vista run the same hardware and software so Win7 was a direct replacement for Vista no matter if Vista was good or bad. My farm & construction business runs software that interfaces with computers on our equipment that is not compatible with Vista and needs XP or 2000 Pro. Not sure about XP Compatibility Mode in Win7 yet. Anyway, this is a small example of many business software applications that would not work with Vista. My last new Dell notebook that I purchased last spring was ordered without an OS and I installed XP SP3 on it from scratch because of this issue. XP has not overstayed it's welcome as someone has mentioned. Software developers got wind of a new and better OS coming shortly after Vista and saved their development dollars until Win7 was set in concrete. I suspect now that we will see many corporations jump from XP to Seven next year if the budgets allow it. Our business software provider finally moved from a 16 bit interface to 32 bit interface between Windows and Unix this summer. Geesh!! We were running a 16bit application in XP that would not run in anything newer than XP. Glad they finally moved on.

 

I was going to avoid Vista completely if I hadn't gotten a good deal on a Gateway with Vista Home Premium 64. I've deleted much of the bloat and gone through the optimization thread here on NBR, but still find Vista to be sluggish and I hate the constant HDD activity. So now I'm waiting for my free 7 upgrade discs to arrive and then its goodbye Vista and good riddance.

 

Sure Windows 7 is over hyped. I am also not getting all the so bad negative things about Vista. MS had a bad luck with Vista.

 

Still, it seems like Vista outlived Windows ME, at least. Now that OS truly was a nightmare.

People have just had XP for so long that they've forgotten Microsoft usually updates operating systems every 3 years.

 

I should've probably clarified that when I said Vista is dead, I meant in the eyes of OEMs, not in the eyes of end users.

What's funny is that when Windows 2000 first hit RTM, Microsoft considered its 3-year development cycle way too long, and swore to release future OSes much more rapidly, which is why XP came out less than 2 years after 2000 did.

Except we're now back to 3 year releases and everyone seems to be happy.

 

Windows 2000 was heavily limited and quickly eclipsed by the benefit of features from XP.

 

What features? The only thing I really appreciated in XP is improved unicode support. Other than that, the rest just seem like eye candy.

 

Vista is gone from OEM sites 'cause it's all controlled by MS licensing. Probably bribed them to sell Win7 at a discount and sell it for profit. I heard the Sidebar isn't on Win7. That was a great option with Vista. Personally I never had problems with Vista. All my hardwares/softwares worked well with it. Win7 OS is just a modified Vista to satisfy XP users.

 

It's still there. The gadgets function w/o the Sidebar per se in W7 but there's an easy workaround to get the same Sidebar as in Vista if users desire.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/587-vista-windows-sidebar-reinstate-windows-7-a.html

 

Nah, I'm pretty sure manufacturers were eager to be rid of Vista. They were able to carry Vista and XP concurrently. If they wanted to, I'm pretty sure they could have still kept Vista but it has such a bad rep that people were opting for XP instead of Vista. That, I think, is the reason driving their decision to drop Vista.

 

Windows XP over stayed its welcome when it was the only game in town when Vista was released with its myriad of problems. I might add that all of Vista's problems were thoroughly documented and hardly "over blown" by the media.

The reason people didn't want any change was because Vista was a flawed OS at launch. By the time Microsoft got around to fixing Vista, sufficient damage had already been done to the reputation of the OS that no one wanted to deal with it. Thus, they stuck with what worked, in this case Windows XP.

 

Dell actually still has five consumer notebooks offering Vista: http://www.dell.com/home/laptops#subcats=&navla=&a=51800~0~812564. In most cases, the offering is Vista Basic as a cheaper alternative to Windows Seven, but a couple fast track options (which are the same models as the five aforementioned) and one 11" netbook offer Home Premium. In other cases, only Vista Basic is available - upgrading requires choosing Windows 7.

There also are a number of business options with Vista, although you have to dig a few pages deep for them (see page 3 of the list I linked to, and you'll find several Vista machines). However, a lot of the options listed for "Vista" are actually Vista Business-> XP Professional downgrades, including the entire front page. Doesn't exactly give their business customers the message that they want Vista when Dell gives them a whole page of XP Pro notebooks when they ask to see Vista ones.

So yes, I do expect Vista to disappear quickly - you have to search it out even now. It looks like Vista Basic may actually be the longest-lasting offering at this rate. I also expect XP to be the second-most-popular OS choice from major OEMs, lead by the business offerings. Note that the business options include "Windows 7 with downgrade to XP", in addition to half the Vista offerings actually being XP.

The main consumer page also has a link to XP Pro downgrades under "Special Laptop Offers", with the only mentions of Vista being one under the laptop choice limiter, one for operating system information (both of those being next to Win7/XP links, and one being by an Ubuntu link), and one in note at the very bottom of the page mentioning that Windows 7 PCs will start shipping on October 22nd. So even in the consumer space, XP is getting secondary billing, with Vista having fallen to tertiary.

And really, I don't see there being demand for Vista downgrade options in the quantities there were (and still are, for that matter) for XP. Vista and Win7 are far more similar than XP and Vista, and there should be far fewer compatibility problems. Windows 7 is Windows 6.1, after all. With Vista, there were major changes that caused compatibility problems - it was 6.0 after XP's 5.1.

On the whole, there probably still will be more demand for XP downgrades than Vista ones due to the major architectural changes between 5.1 (XP) and 6.0 (Vista)/6.1 (7). And XP Mode will help with that, but it's more complex than a native XP install, doesn't give as much performance as a native XP install (relevant to networking and graphics, for instance), and price is an issue. Native XP Pro costs the same as Windows 7 Pro (via downgrade rights), but you don't need to spend for Virtualization Technology support. Which wouldn't be much of an issue if AMD processors were more common - all except some Semprons include AMD-V support - but the vast majority of offerings are Intel right now, and it does cost a decent amount to get VT support in Intel processors.

 

Not anymore. Intel's already fixing that issue. The newer processors being released now support VT-x (e.g. the $43 Celeron E3200 and the CULV dual-core Celeron SU2300). True, some of their older processors are lacking VT support, but the newer ones are coming with VT standard.

 

When you dumb the entire desktop experience down to the absolute bare minimum, you end up with a blank screen with a few small boxes that are clicked on to run programs.

EVERYTHING outside of that is just eye candy. Everything.

And I like eye candy.

 

Well when Vista came out it did not kill off XP. Manufacturers started selling XP notebooks as well as Vista notebooks, and some Vista notebooks came with a downgrade CD.

Vista is getting killed off because of public perception of Vista. Vista will be in the same boat as Windows ME in terms of retail life cycle.

95 - Retail Aug 1995
(3 years later)
98 - June 1998
(2 years later)
ME - Sept 2000
(1 year later)
XP - RTM Aug 2001
(5 years later)
Vista - RTM Nov 2006
(3 years later)
7 - RTM Oct 2009

People got too accustomed to XP and forgot what XP started out as. If you came from 98 to XP you had massive compatibility issues with hardware and software. It took a while before software makers came on board. XP also fought with 2000 where some people actually opted for the "more stable and secure" 2000 over XP. XP was bad before SP1.

I use Windows 7 RC and at first I couldn't help but think that it was a more polished Vista. However, after putting it on some old machines and see it run well I understood the hype. People are running FOR Win 7 machines where people were running FROM Vista machines. Businesses will sell what people want and people will want Windows 7 for Christmas.

 

Nah. XP was bad before SP2.

 

But SP2 has been around for so long that people tend to forget that. XP worked, even before SP2, which is more than you could say about ME.

Oh, I fondly remember having to reinstall ME on a family computer a few years back just to use the OEM XP upgrade for it. Darn thing blue screened within two minutes of my booting it up the first time.

 

ME was an absolute travesty. I remember the "good ole days" of Windows 98. Routine format/reinstall just seemed normal. I would back all my stuff up to floppy every month and wipe my system.

 

Exactly. ME was fast. Faster than Windows 98 on similar hardware, even. Unfortunately, it BSODs way too much.

Vista just had some teething issues which is the same as happened with XP. Alas, it gained such a bad rep that even when most of those issues were ironed out, people still wouldn't give it a try.

 

I thought the #1 rule was to NEVER EVER discuss ME.

 

We can't have that rule. We MUST remind these young whipper snappers of the dark days Microsoft Operating Systems and how they have evolved. Many here have never used anything on a notebook but XP. ME was junk, but I have a Pentium 3 in the basement for playing old games. With ME, I can easily use USB devices whereas 98SE is a big hassle. That is the only thing ME is good for. My 8000 Inspiron came from Dell with ME. Back then, we were removing ME and installing 98SE before XP SP1 came out.

For old times and really old software, I have a Compaq 1700 Armada that boots up into DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1. Eeeekk!!!

 

Microsoft agrees with that rule. Even they're trying to erase ME from history.

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20091022/microsoft-video-omits-me-from-windows-history/

 

How long do you guys think windows 7 will last?

 

2 years easily