Why cant MS

Why cant MS just update Vista to have a super-bar and a lot of the windows 7 features with a SP?

For instance I hear the way memory is utilized in Win 7 is way better? Why cant a service pack fix that in Vista as well? Why cant the super-bar be added via a SP? etc.

they added windows search on XP, thats basically the same sorta mod to the task bar.

 

They can fix Vista like that, but it would cut into 7s sales, so they are not going to do that.

 

For the same reason that Ford has never reused the model names "Edsel" or "Pinto" - too much negative goodwill already associated with _Vista.

 

DOnt need to re-use the name Vista of course, or cancel win 7... i mean make windows 7 but don't screw over vista users more like... release a SP2 that updates vista to include some 7 features at least.

 

I'm sure they will slip some of the Win7 features into the next _Vista SP; they just won't make much noise about it because, quite frankly, they can't afford to be seen continuing to support an OS that's perceived as such a failure (which is not to say that it necessarily is a failure, just that that's what the overwhelming perception is).

 

Because, if they offered the same features for Vista that they offer for Windows 7, why would anybody upgrade?

Chances are they will make some of the features available in future service pack (more likely in the way of memory utilization, the super-bar has no chance) but nothing major, just enough to keep Vista stable.

 

the problem is, we WOULD GET ALL THAT if people wouldn't moan about vista.

but because they moan, they all want something new and better, they now get vista sp2 (actually sp3) as a new windows.

but we'll get a cheap upgrade (possibly even free) according to current news. so it'll not be as bad. i'll happily pay 50$ per licence for the next windows version each 2 years, or so.

 

Vista is pretty much dead to Microsoft and Win 7 is their chance to move on.

 

And it appears that Microsoft intends to offer a price break for folks upgrading from Vista to Windows 7.

Gary

 

Has MS released any pricing for Windows 7?

 

No sense crying over spilt milk now; no reduction in the amount of moaning now would have the slightest effect on Microsoft's marketing plans for _Vista and Win7.

 

I could care less what they do with Vista.

Win7 looks to be very promising and if it's a success, why worry about what they continue to do with Vista, especially since Win7 will have Vista compatibility?

 

Seems to me Windows 7 will just be VISTA 2.0. Which is fine with me because anyone with a brain knows that VISTA is excellent. Talk about getting a bad rap. If I were MS I would have a long talk with "the media". They got screwed if you ask me.

 

I agree. Vista for me was always awesome. I'm actually going to be putting Vista Business on my laptop soon.

 

I know. Why can't they make everything free for us? Darn them for trying to make money.

I feel your pain, but at the same time it is hard to knock Microsoft for not adding enough features to Vista. They DID bring Aero, start search, favorite folders, etc to Vista. I think they've done plenty for Vista.

The biggest knock I have fro Vista is that they tried to do TOO much. Too much change at one time, and it took the rest of the development community over 6 months to catch up.

 

vista does suck. hope win 7 is better. just becuse you found a way to get it to work, doesn't mean it applies to everyone else who doesn't want to spend 5hrs downloading drivers and getting everything to work.

Heck, I just downloading Ubuntu and guess what, everything worked just fine. No drivers neeeded. My quicklaunch buttons worked from the start, my sound worked. Really don't know why Vista has so many issues with drivers.

Back to the topic, MS wants to forget that this Vista ever happened. I say ditch Vista and move on.

 

^ I think that's like blaming Microsoft because your Nvidia graphics card didn't work well or something.


That's on Nvidia's part

 

Great logic here.

You say because Ubuntuu installed flawlessly for you it is better.

Yet you say, our views of Vista are flawed even though Vista installed flawlessly for us?

Edit: I am now on hasty generalization patrol!!! Beware!!!

I think MS does want to forget the PR disaster that surrounded Vista. Seriously, does anyone remember when they first announced that Longhorn was going to ship back in 2004. This was right after XP was released. I'm sure none of you were around when that happened though. Us old timers can think back and chuckle at this one.

 

To be frank, MS did release a somewhat messed up Vista.
At least that's how I perceive it.
It was (and still remains to a degree) overly bloated and whatnot, and it was greatly stabilized with the SP.
If they just stuck to what they promised (and they had a good deal of time to do so ... or simply wait and releast it delayed) then we'd probably get Windows 7.

MS did not implement a lot of the stuff they said they will.
They do this all the time, and i suppose that people were simply fed up.
Vista was a disappointment because it wrecked havoc on systems that were sub-par, not to mention that compatibility between the OS and older generation programs was nowhere to be seen (which was annoying for A LOT of people and companies alike).

Windows 7 on the other hand is able to run on older systems with less problems and is an essentially improved Vista.
As for older programs compatibility, we shall see about that.

You can't really blame people for using older versions of the software on newer OS-es.
Switching to new versions is always time consuming and costly (especially when you are forced to change your entire system soon simply because of that).
A lot of people are also duped into buying sub-par computers because of cheap marketing tricks.
Yes, I realize that's the people's fault, but at the same time, not everyone are knowledgeable about such aspects, so it's a problem.

 

I jumped on the Vista-hating bandwagon and have since eased up a bit. After eating the switching costs (mainly just adjusting to the new look and feel) from xp to vista I can honestly say that if Win7 is even a substantial improvement on vista, it will be a home run for windows. Especially now that people are realizing how much they depend on MS software because the only thing a non-geek is afraid of more that vista is linux.

 

You obviously don't remember the PDC conferences from 2003 and 2004. Back then this is what Longhorn promised, if I can remember back that far.

WinFS, Powershell, Vectored based graphics on the Desktop, XAML pogramming, just to name a few. That is on top of the new Display driver model, UAC (was called LUA back then), Sidebar (which I think got dropped and THEN added back on)

Exactly, why they should of never promised so much. It was like a concept car show. Those screenshots were concepts and should of never been hyped up to be production models.

This is kind of overhyped. I run Vista ultimate on a slow *** Athlon 64.

I even limit my HP's Turion RM-70 down to 40% when I'm on battery, yet I run Outlook, 20+ tabs, Aero, Mediaplayer, Onenote and Word all at the same time. And I have wallpaper up. Now, if I go to play an HD movie on top of that, I run into a little trouble...

I think there is a lot of misconceptions about computers that the IT industry does not do enough to educate about.

Sleep and hibernate is a good one. I was benchmarking a system that was running to slow (not with 3dmark, but with perfmon.exe). I notice the ridiculous boot time. But he needed all those programs. So I told him to just leave all his programs and documents he normally uses open and just sleep the sucker rather than turning it off. It still takes like 10 seconds to resume, but that's better than the 2 minutes that it takes to boot up. He had thought that was bad for the computer to stay on all the time.

We as an industry, equip our coworkers with enough technology to irradiate a donkey, yet all we schedule is an hour long presentation to educate our users.

 

+1 rep for the good points and making me spit on my lcd in laughter

 

For one thing they wouldn't do that because "Vista" already has a bad name (Its not that bad as they fixed a lot of problems already), but when you mention Vista everyone goes crazy saying "OMG Vista sucks!" etc...

 

Which is why MS should make sure most of the bugs are fixed b4 they release win7. Make sure all the kinks are worked out, software support is there, no stupid driver issues like vista, and they should make it ez to upgrade from xp/vista to win7.

I played with win7 a bit and honestly, its just vista with a little face lift. I don't think it's worth over $50 for an upgrade from Vista.

Unless Win7 beta is just a little preview of what is to expect. So far its just vista with a little graphic face lift. But it does load a bit faster than Vista. Maybe because theres no crapware installed yet.

 

I'm getting it regardless. Slimmer, faster, more rounded icons!!! The ladies won't be able to keep their hands off me!!

 

Windows 7 will obviously ship with less bugs than Vista - it's the same kernel. The development cycle will also be faster, since very little will change under the hood. Vista's kernel is completely different from XP's kernel, with a lot more going on under the hood, so it's completely understandable (for me at least) why that development cycle was much longer.

It's a shame that more people (and hardware manufacturers) didn't give Vista a fair shake. I have it installed on all of my computers and it runs better than XP ever did. Battery life is better on my laptops, my desktop is more stable, VMC is better than XP Media Center by an order of magnitude, etc, etc, etc.

Us old timers remember the crying that happened when XP was released. "My hardware doesn't work!", people yelled from the roof tops. "The interface is terrible!", they whispered in dark corners. "Why did they change from FAT32 to NTFS? I can't boot into DOS and access my files!", naysayers complained over coffee.

I don't plan on upgrading to 7 - no reason to fix what isn't broken.

 

Ditto. XP had far more ACTUAL issues than XP ever did.

Greg

 

Ummmmm, what?

 

Think he meant Vista instead of XP again. XP pre SP2 was pretty much garbage.

 

Yeah, I remember following that immensely-the "mock demo" done during PDC 03, etc. All of the things that were promised for Longhorn, the many UI changes throughout the early beta's, the "real" SideBar that was going to replace the taskbar, etc. The pressure on vendors to create more interesting and futuristic systems. It was quite fascinating, and I think, really got the tech community excited. To see development fall apart because they "overdid" it was quite a disappointment. I think after people started seeing how watered down Vista would be, after they reset and started over using Server 2003 as the base, the delays, etc., tech fans got a bit disinterested.

Factor that in with the fact that "techies" (I really can't stand that word, LOL) tend to be "early adopters" and that most of the time, less technical people tend to look toward them for opinions on things like operating systems, and you could see why people became disinterested and even frustrated in Vista. If the tech people were bored and disappointed by it-had a bad compatibility experience, surely they wouldn't tell people they care about to buy a Vista system, they would (and did) just the opposite-tell them to avoid it like the plague. Hence, the issue they face today with many people refusing to even touch a Vista system and either switching to the Mac, or wiping Vista off their new PC's and installing XP as soon as they get off the delivery truck.

 

Bingo.

I've read several threads of people who haven't even given Vista a try; looking to install XP because they 'heard' Vista sucks.

That's what Mojave is all about. Hey you 'think' our product sucks? Well try it without knowing what it is. Oh it's good eh? Well maybe you shouldn't listen to your buddy.

The 'Vista' name is associated with negativity and the only way out is a new OS with good press out of the gate. Windows 7 is already getting that.

 

I'm really not feeling 7's start menu/dock thing. I find it ugly...I prefer the vista or xp kinda thing. The new one tries too hard to look like OS X, but it just didn't come out right.

 

i agree, plus it doesn't look like a bar anymore. And it takes up more space than the old vista/xp bar.

 

It's all about the green thing, money. Microsoft will get much more money to their pocket by release a brand new os rather than giving free their added feature on Vista SP2.

 

I just like shiny new things.

 

You know ... one of the annoying things in Vista is that the surrounding window was made to have the glass effect.
I wonder, why can't MS make the ENTIRE window area to be darker glass/transparent with white letters on it?

that would have been a much better 'eye candy' than the 'frame-like' result we got.

 

What would happen if the colour behind the window was white, eh?

Im personally not getting 7 because I find Vista to be the perfect OS for me, its just had a really bad press and I dont think thats fair.

 

It's not Microsoft's fault that Vista was such a failure. Blame it on the $700 OEMs that sell laptops and desktops with graphics 2-3 generations behind. I see laptops at Best Buy selling with a GeForce 7150 that comes with Vista. Get better hardware...

 

Microsoft had a large hand in that little snafu as well, in particular they made it very difficult for a lot of device vendors to get the info they needed to write the proper drivers.

 

WRONG! That is absolutely false. As a certified partner I know for a fact that anyone who wanted it, could get the information long before Vista hit the streets. That is an urban myth foisted off by lazy hardware manufacturers who didn't want to revisit drivers for pieces of equipment they no longer made.

Sorry to be so strong, but if that were true how is it that some of the manufacturers were ready on day one?

Gary

 

Nice potty mouth. BTW, as I said earlier, Microsoft wasn't solely to blame, but it did play an active role in the foul-up, as the discussion (and the included internal emails from MS - released during the Vista-Capable lawsuit) in this blog posting make pretty clear.

 

different architecture.
Windows XP and Vista have used Windows NT/2000 as the barebone foundation.

However, I believe Windows 7 is basically written from scratch.

 

Yeah it's not MS fault for not making vista backwards compatible and it's certainly not MS MS fault for releasing Vista b4 current and previous hardware and software were compatible with t. So you can't blame MS for the complete and total failure of vista...

Heck, when Win7 is out, MS should make the same mistake and force people to upgrade their hardware and software. Forget that, they should just buy a new computer/laptop pre-loaded with Win7 to make sure things work properly.

Everyone else can stick with XP or OSX.

 

Nope, Vista was written from the ground up, hence why it had so many hardware issues to start. Win7 will be based on the Vista core, which is already stable.

 

You know that 95, 98 and ME all used the same kernal right? ME was the biggest pile of crap ever to grace a hard drive. Lets hope history doesn't repeat itself because if Vista was as bad as people think then Windows 7 will be dire, and Windows 8 won't even be worth looking at.

Vista is a very good OS and it's had fewer problems than XP - Like others have said, before SP2 it was a bug ridden pile. Maybe the naysayers should speak to people who can remember way back at the beginning of XP, where a 5gig installation was considered bloated and the recommended 512Mb of RAM was a big ask, combined with the fact that it had major hardware problems for months because the drivers had to be written from scratch being as it was a new NT based OS (hey, that sounds familiar - new Windows having driver problems?? nah. Never happened before Vista did it.)

 

You have any idea how much hardware Vista supports out of the box? That's why Windows is GBs rather then MBs like Ubuntu.
Yes, Ubuntu's awesome, but be reasonable.

Exactly.

haha, ya a tad late, eh?

 

No need to defend Vista, MS admits it is garbage. Lets move on to Win7.

 

I think Windows 7 will be a significant improvement for Microsoft. It sounds very promising so far, and it will be received well after the perceived failure of Vista. It gets them a chance to come back hard, let's just hope they actually have a product that is worth it, perhaps a product that overperforms even.

 

^ It's also good to hear that Microsoft has put a little more planning into developing and launching 7. That should ensure a smoother transition from Vista (keeping in mind that Vista had a big hole to fill up; XP was a one-time exception in terms of shelf life).

 

Not really. MS definitely screwed up when they released Vista to OEM's when Intel did not have a fast enough GPU ready at launch. The whole "Vista capable" ordeal was a disaster and rightfully so. Putting out a bunch of duds in the beginning that did not have the power to run aero or the ram to even boot the OS was something MS knew full well would happen. MS knew the system requirements to run Vista and they allowed it to get installed on poor performing machines anyway and then to have the gull to put a 'Vista capable" sticker to boot. That set the wheels in motion for a poor user experience from day one. The only thing the media reported was the crappy vista experiences that users were experiencing. The bottom line is MS needed to wait for Intel to release the X3100 graphics and for manufacturers to develop stable drivers. MS knew it would happen and against their own better judgement they released Vista early with the vista capable sticker so they could sell more in the short run.. In the long run they lost more then that from people moving off the windows to Apple. MS did more to sell Apple then Apple and that is a fact at this point.

Vista is decent but I don't agree that its great. Mainly from some of the annoyances like UAC and the huge amount of code that gets loaded with superfetch disc thrashing what have you. From what I am reading 7 will be leaned out with faster boots and many of the annoyances tamed. Vista was and is a bloated since it was never really optimized and leaned out. Vista was basically a rush job after a failed longhorn project and a last minute start over with Vista. Hopefully all the performance tweaks from 7 will be applied to vista via a SP. To be successful windows needs to be able to run on slower systems like all the netbooks etc.. as well as faster machines. The fact is people are now using netbooks with linux because MS does not have anything other then a very old XP that can run on it is embarrassing to say the least. For MS to force huge hardware demands across the board will only lead to one conclusion.. a diminishing market share. I still think MS will shoot themselves in the foot when they discontinue XP next summer before seven comes out. They need to keep XP around at least until seven is available.