My Vista Rant

[AndyWarne]

I have just finished 3 weeks of using Vista for developing and testing some of my apps and I have to say I cant wait to get back to XP!

The security “features” in vista are simply too intrusive. The approach seems to be fundamentally flawed. Instead of encouraging the user to install anti-virus software and set up a daily backup, the approach seems to be akin to making sure all internal doors of a house are locked except when moving from room to room rather than keep the front door locked.
What kinds of mortal dangers are being guarded against anyway? It seems that MS is almost taking some kind or revenge for being accused of security holes in the past, and making everyone suffer.
How many users who have correctly updated firewalls and backup properly have suffered catastrophic loss of data or security breaches? I would have thought very few. The level of inconvenience caused by the security features far outweighs the risks.
Security should always be a balanced compromise otherwise car manufacturers would make drivers press a special button marked “I understand this might cause danger, confirm you want to do this” every time they exceed 30 MPH.
Having several prompts and warnings show up even when copying a file is far over the top. I wonder what a pschoanalyst would make of the benign stress caused by the screen becoming dark and giving warnings of dire consequences every time a user performs an action?
Turning of UAC does not get rid of all these annoying prompts.
The depressing part of this is that most of us will have to suffer Vista, just a matter of when...
Andy

[shardian]

I bought my laptop on Black Friday. It came with XP, but I can get a free upgrade to vista premium or business- can't remember which but is the better upgrade.
I don't want it for sure. I just wonder if I could register it and sell the code to someone else.

[squirrellydw]

I will stick with my Mac OSX for my main computer and XP for mame

[sphetr2]

The depressing part of this is that most of us will have to suffer Vista, just a matter of when...

Ummm...not on my watch. What about a distro of Linux, like Ubuntu?

[saint]

Careful - I read that if/when you upgrade XP to Vista, the XP license key becomes invalid for any future installs....

I bought my laptop on Black Friday. It came with XP, but I can get a free upgrade to vista premium or business- can't remember which but is the better upgrade.
I don't want it for sure. I just wonder if I could register it and sell the code to someone else.

[DarkBubble]

Careful - I read that if/when you upgrade XP to Vista, the XP license key becomes invalid for any future installs....

I bought my laptop on Black Friday. It came with XP, but I can get a free upgrade to vista premium or business- can't remember which but is the better upgrade.
I don't want it for sure. I just wonder if I could register it and sell the code to someone else.

Wouldn't put it past them.  Until they can give me a valid reason to "upgrade" past XP, they can just stick those discs in an uncomfortable place.

[MustardTent]

What, like the back of a Volkswagen?

[Grasshopper]

I'm more concerned about all the inevitable DRM crap that M$ will have built in. But that being said, it's only a matter of time before it gets cracked.

However, in the unlikely event that the DRM can't be cracked then I simply won't be buying/using. I'll either stick with XP, move to Linux, or both.

[DarkBubble]

What, like the back of a Volkswagen?

One minute, eleven seconds.   I think that's a new world's record.

[sphetr2]

I'm more concerned about all the inevitable DRM crap that M$ will have built in. But that being said, it's only a matter of time before it gets cracked.

However, in the unlikely event that the DRM can't be cracked then I simply won't be buying/using. I'll either stick with XP, move to Linux, or both.

Cracks get fixed anyway. You'll eventually come to a choice(if using a crack): latest security update or no DRM?

And that is why I must suggest Linux.

Beryl has the prettiness of Vista already, anyway. It has 3d desktops and transparent windows and animations when you minimize/maximize. And it's customizable.

[ChadTower]

What, like the back of a Volkswagen?

 

[DarkBubble]

[AtomSmasher]

Careful - I read that if/when you upgrade XP to Vista, the XP license key becomes invalid for any future installs....

It's true that they did this, but a workaround has already been found out.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5932

I was planning on getting a full version, but now I'm reconsidering.

[DrewKaree]

I just got done earlier this evening with setting up my brother-in-law's brand-spanking new Gateway he bought from Best Buy

Vista's "security features" they've implemented will quickly cause more problems, IMO, than it's trying to fix.  I got SO tired of the constant "this is trying to do "X", do you want to continue or cancel", I quickly stopped caring what the boxes said and clicked "continue" as soon as they popped up. 

Think about this.  Some clown thinks it's funny to spread a virus, and figures out a way to make it look innocuous to JoeDolt so that they do the same thing.  "Jeez, just CONTINUE already and leave me alone!".  They WILLINGLY choose to infect themselves because they've gotten so pissed off at the constant "OMGAREYOUSURE?!?!?!?" that they stop paying any attention to what those boxes really say.

Yeah, it's the user's fault, but everybody should be able to understand how big a PITA this can and will quickly become.

[Tailgunner]

No rush to get it here, I'll wait till I buy a new system or they've released the first service pack for it.

[clanggedin]

I've been running Vista on a test PC here at the office for a month or so now and it seems pretty stable. Those security pop-ups can be annoying, but they can be turned off. If you are the admin then turn them off but leave them on for the other users.

I just picke dup a new PC a month ago that came with the free upgrade. I am just waiting for them to ship me my copy of Vista.

I encountered more issues with things breakign when I installed Office 2007 than with Vista. Palm Hotsync with Outlook broke and my unified mesenger with Outlook broke too. Waiting for patches from Palm and Inter-Tel to fix these issues.

[ChadTower]

I have no plans to upgrade beacuse I have no compelling reason to do so. 

[Zero_Hour]

I've been using Vista pretty much exclusively on my main desktop system at home since Beta 2. I still have RC2 running as I type this. While I agree that the Security popups are a bit of a pain, all I can tell you is that in my experience, early setup of the system is the most annoying, because that is when you are performing the most activities that will trigger the popups. Once initial setup of the OS, and applications is taken care of, the popups become much less intrusive, and the average user could probably get to a point where they virtually never see them outside of software installation - and then only for certain titles. I suspect as more software developers begin to write specifically for Vista that this may happen even less. Overall I've been very happy with the OS, and can't think of anything from XP that I "want back".

There are still some driver availability issues, so I would not recommend rushing out and buying it unless you know all your hardware is supported. If you use software that depends on OpenGL, I would say to definitely stay away for now.

Actually, I wouldn't really recommend anyone run out and buy it now unless you do windows desktop support for a living, as the ability to be ahead of your users on the learning curve can be a good thing.

I do suspect that Vista may push a few more users in to the Linux and OS X camps, which is certainly not a bad thing, but my overall impressions of Vista are largely positive thus far.

[jhanson]

I will stick with my Mac OSX for my main computer and XP for mame

I'm sticking with OS X as well.  I will eventually have to use Vista, since I work in IT, but it won't be touching any  of my personal machines.  The look, heavy system requirements, and integrated DRM in Vista really turn me off.  I don't do any serious PC gaming anymore, so Windows doesn't have much to offer me anyway. 

I currently keep an XP machine around for compiling Windows versions of some of the apps/games I develop in my spare time, but I'm thinking of just dropping the platform altogether.  I literally spend more time patching it than using it.  I mean, I turn it on, install the past few months of patches, reboot to install them, compile my program, copy the program back to the Mac for packaging and upload, and shut it off again.

[leapinlew]

Vista looks to be a pain to me as well. From an IT point of view - I can't really see what it's bringing to the party. It seems that a lot of the major improvements were yanked. If this follows the previous trends, our vendors will force our hand and we'll upgrade to continue using their software.

I'm not even so sure it's all that pretty.

[squirrellydw]

No rush to get it here, I'll wait till I buy a new system or they've released the first service pack for it.

I heard the first service pack will be out the 2nd half of 07.  M$ knows people and companies like to see the first service pack, this tells them it's "READY".  However this was really only true in NT and maybe XP.  Service packs don't mean what they use to anymore.

[ChadTower]

NT wasn't ready until NT4... NT3.51 was a ---smurfing--- nightmare that cost a lot of companies a lot of money.  It never worked properly and most of the dev organizations that tried to migrate large scale apps onto NT3.51 never got it right (because the OS wasn't right) and lost large amounts of capital in the failed efforts.

[Tailgunner]

I heard the first service pack will be out the 2nd half of 07.  M$ knows people and companies like to see the first service pack, this tells them it's "READY".  However this was really only true in NT and maybe XP.  Service packs don't mean what they use to anymore.

There's still bound to be security holes in it that need fixing, and I want to see how the DRM sillyness plays out before taking the plunge. I figure M$ has presented their vision of the future, now it's a matter of seeing how the users respond and what M$ does to keep them happy.

I gave up living on the bleeding edge of computer tech a long time ago, my current computer is going on 3 years old and I don't see a "killer app" in Vista that I can't live without at the present. This box is past the point that it still has any room left to be upgraded, but it still does everything I use it for just fine. That'll change sooner or later, but in the meantime I'll keep chugging along with it and let others have their turn being guinea pigs.

[danny_galaga]

i only got xp because i needed a new computer, otherwise id probably still be on win98! i think this machine should last me another 5 years or so...

[DrewKaree]

i only got xp because i needed a new computer, otherwise id probably still be on win98! i think this machine should last me another 5 years or so...

...and I think danny is like many people.  I no longer play PC games (other than the stupid flash games people throw up as time-killers), and really only use my PC for surfing the net.  There's some extraneous stuff like ripping music or movies that I do, and some basic word-processing, but other than the time it takes a newer system to do these few "extras", I could easily get by with a 1 GHz system to do these things on my day-to-day system.  Heck, I'm betting I could do with half that processing power! 

What will Vista add, security-wise, that a company couldn't get with XP (or 2000)?  I'm not sure what Vista's security measures have added, so I'm wondering.  Seems like MS often makes the defaults less secure so things work "out of the box" for people.  Is this the case with Vista, or have they gone in the opposite direction and locked everything down by default?

[Dervacumen]

I still play games and that may be the only reason I ever upgrade - to get DX10 when I need it.  That was a slick move by Microsoft to get people on board.  Love it or hate it, it's going to happen for us gamers.  Think about it.  The significant demographic plays, or wants to play, cutting edge games.

But that kinda sucks since I'm happy where I am.

[ChadTower]

The significant demographic plays, or wants to play, cutting edge games.

That same demographic is the highest percentage of pirates and few if any of them will use a legally licensed copy of Vista.

[shmokes]

Few if any gamers will use licensed copies of Vista?  As in . . . zero?

[ChadTower]

Sure, why not.  It would be funny to see, right?   

[RayB]

Andy, etc, let me ask you this: The warning prompts, do they have the checkbox "don't ask me again"

[DrewKaree]

Turning of UAC does not get rid of all these annoying prompts.

Andy

[Zero_Hour]

UAC popups can be completely disabled by using the Group policy editor, where a more specific list of options concerning UAC control can be found.

Run gpEdit.msc

Go to : Windows Settings | Security Settings | Local Policies | Security Options |

Sort by Name, and all the UAC related stuff should be on the bottom of the list. You can change their properties from there.


Much the same as MS, I take no responsibility if you machine is Hax0red. 

[Donkey_Kong]

I have just finished 3 weeks of using Vista for developing and testing some of my apps and I have to say I cant wait to get back to XP!

The security “features” in vista are simply too intrusive. The approach seems to be fundamentally flawed. Instead of encouraging the user to install anti-virus software and set up a daily backup, the approach seems to be akin to making sure all internal doors of a house are locked except when moving from room to room rather than keep the front door locked.
What kinds of mortal dangers are being guarded against anyway? It seems that MS is almost taking some kind or revenge for being accused of security holes in the past, and making everyone suffer.
How many users who have correctly updated firewalls and backup properly have suffered catastrophic loss of data or security breaches? I would have thought very few. The level of inconvenience caused by the security features far outweighs the risks.
Security should always be a balanced compromise otherwise car manufacturers would make drivers press a special button marked “I understand this might cause danger, confirm you want to do this” every time they exceed 30 MPH.
Having several prompts and warnings show up even when copying a file is far over the top. I wonder what a pschoanalyst would make of the benign stress caused by the screen becoming dark and giving warnings of dire consequences every time a user performs an action?
Turning of UAC does not get rid of all these annoying prompts.
The depressing part of this is that most of us will have to suffer Vista, just a matter of when...
Andy

Dang Andy!! You ARE human! I was starting to wonder if you weren't some kind of fancy Euro Frankin Joy-Bot.   

pssssst andy can't figure out his vista...

I bet they soaked you good for it too. JK man.  Good luck with whatever new high buck  fancy OS you settle on and get back to work and keep us in the goodies!!

   

[RayB]

Turning of UAC does not get rid of all these annoying prompts.
Andy

Maybe you IT geeks know what a UAC is, but I sure don't.

[patrickl]

People interested in or using Vista will know and otherwise google knows.

[jbox]

Turning of UAC does not get rid of all these annoying prompts.
Andy

Maybe you IT geeks know what a UAC is, but I sure don't.

In this context the letters AC usually refer to Access Control. Presumably something like Universal Access Control? Constants prompts are pointless, since people will always just learn a pavlovian response of clicking OK without reading it, and then sooner or later something bad will get through and MS will just be like "we tried to warn you!"

Installing new software apps should be the only thing that triggers warnings. Everything else should either be running properly sandboxed just below your user level or else they don't get to claim they have "the 733t security". 

[Zero_Hour]

My Apologies for not expanding the acronym when discussing it. - jbox was on the right track -

User Access Control

[jhanson]

My Apologies for not expanding the acronym when discussing it. - jbox was on the right track -

User Access Control

Actually, it's User Account Control, though User Access Control would kind of make more sense.

[Zero_Hour]

Right you are, I need to proof my stuff better. 

Thanks for the correction mraxle. 

[NinjaEpisode]

Turning of UAC does not get rid of all these annoying prompts.
Andy

It does if you do it via Local Machine Policy.  You're right, doing it through the control panel does not, but there are LMP's that do.

[Glaine]

Does anyone else feel like they don't beta test this stuff because they expect us to perform that function? Think about XP - you know they expect you to do the "testing" for them when your crash screens have a "Gee, would you like to send us a report and help us figure out what we did wrong" button right next to the "End Task" button.

Yeah, I see that going over really well:
"Dear Microsoft, why does XP keep crashing all of my illegal roms? Hugs and Kisses, The Glaine".

Oddly they don't write back. I thought we were a family. The Microsoft Family.

And I agree with the consensus, I'm not upgrading until I have to buy a new machine that comes with it and right now I don't see anything all that great about it - the only change I've noticed in screenshots is the 3d view of all your windows. Woopie.

And all the reviews on Amazon I've seen are people saying that when you upgrade from XP, it deletes your XP install and for many it didn't work right the first time so they had to reinstall XP and the patches, then try the upgrade again. Reminds me of the huge stack of floppies you used to have to insert to install Windows back in the day.

[ChadTower]

Mostly it's because they couldn't possibly QA every possible action in every possible part of the OS in every possible configuration.  We're talking infinite variables here.

[Glaine]

Too bad it crashes in all of them.

[Zero_Hour]

There are certainly issues with Vista, I'm not arguing that there are not. But from my experience (Running public Betas and release candidates daily since August 06), this is the most stable windows client MS has released. It certainly is the easiest installation I've done - though as a rule, I never do upgrade installations. I always backup my data, wipe the drive and do a clean install from the get go. SO I can't speak to users who have had trouble with upgrade installations. I had enough issues with upgrades under 9x that I gave up the practice. I use my Vista system everyday, and honestly have only had a single crash of the OS, under Release candidate 1, which was months ago. There have been hiccups with applications, but part of being active in the beta testing was to send automated reports back to MS. I knew what I was getting myself into, and it wasn't anywhere near as bad as I had originally anticipated.

Early adoption certainly isn't for everyone, but much of the grumbling I've been hearing (and I'm not being specific to these boards) sounds eerily familiar to the early days of XP, and 95. As Chad mentioned, MS has the disadvantage (compared to Apple) of making their OS run under a ridiculous number of hardware configs, with a fairly impressive amount of backwards compatibility. They could hold back the release another year, and still have major technical hurdles upon launch. I'm of the belief that sooner or later, they have to ship it and get ready for the hotfixes and service packs. And nothing will prepare them for this better than getting it out to "real world" users.

I like the interface tweaks, I like the ease of networking config. I'm happy with the state of the OS this early after public release. That said, I would still not recommend it to the average windows user. Driver support and application compatibility being the main reasons. If you are a big time PC gamer and have a lot of titles that depend on openGL, then I would have to say don't even think about it, as the implementation is not particularly good, compared to what is already available under XP.

[Howard_Casto]

My main complaint about vista is all the versions, and the unusually high cost of all the versions. 

Generally, when you order an upgrade cd it is around 100 bucks.  You save 100 by just upgrading.  Vist in the other hand, starts at around 150, which seems a tad high to me.  On top of that there are like 6 versions, and I am pretty sure all the versions are just there to confuse the user into buying the 230 dollar upgrade istead of the 150 one.  I looked on the back and with the exception of home basic edition (which seems to be crap) they all come with the same stuff, save some "plus!" like packages. 

I'm the biggest m$ fanboy you are gonna find.  When I say that I'm waiting something must be wrong. 

p.s.  These suggestions of "just install linux" are kind of like suggesting to "just use an antenna" rather than order cable.  I don't mean to offend our linux users out there but if you want to run the latest software and games you are pretty much limited to windows.  It doesn't mean windows is the best, it's just the only real choice we have.  So unfortunately, we are all vista bound, at least eventually. 

[Buddabing]

Perhaps someday we can use ReactOS.

[Howard_Casto]

Unlikely....

Emulating/simulating an entire operating system is a huge task, especially when the os in question is closed source.  Considering xp is now dead and they are just in the alpha stages of supporting xp apps, I wouldn't hold my breath. 

[ChadTower]

XP is far from dead.  Hell it wasn't that long ago they stopped supporting 98se.  I'll probably still be running XP in 5 years.

[Howard_Casto]

No, don't misunderstand.  It's dead because upcoming directx10 games aren't going to run (or run as well) on xp apparently.  M$ can support a os until the cows come home, but once the first killer app that only runs in vista is released it is essentually dead as the masses will all migrate to vista.  That is apparently sooner than later. 

[Grasshopper]

Unlikely....

Emulating/simulating an entire operating system is a huge task, especially when the os in question is closed source.  Considering xp is now dead and they are just in the alpha stages of supporting xp apps, I wouldn't hold my breath. 

It's certainly a big task but by no means an impossible one. In any case you don't have to emulate the whole OS just the API which is (mostly) open source and well documented.

There's already WINE on Linux which does a pretty good job on most non-games apps so that proves it's doable.

[ChadTower]

No, don't misunderstand.  It's dead because upcoming directx10 games aren't going to run (or run as well) on xp apparently.  M$ can support a os until the cows come home, but once the first killer app that only runs in vista is released it is essentually dead as the masses will all migrate to vista.  That is apparently sooner than later. 

Many, many of those masses of machine are in corporations, and those corporations will never give a crap what version of DirectX goes with what OS.  It takes corporations years to migrate to a new OS.  A lot of them still haven't migrated to XP.

[Howard_Casto]

Yes but the standard os isn't what corportations use, it's what users use.

So the two points you two just made are rather invalid (wine doesn't let you play games and users play games, users don't use the same os as corps so it doesn't matter).

Regardless, that wasn't my point.  Xp is at the end of it's development cycle (does that wording suit your nit-pickers?) And they aren't even close to having wine or reactos support everything xp can do.  Now vista adds a whole new slew of commands and api layers.  By the time wine or Ros are caught up with xp, vista will be at the end of it's life cycle.

And since I stated above that if you want to run the latest games and apps you are going to have to eventually upgrade to vista, it doesn't matter if either of these apps get better over time as then the latest stuff will be old, thus defeating the purpose.

So the only way you could use either as a vista replacement is if xp support is brought up to 100% (or as close to it as possible) and then they move onto vista and get its support up to 100% before vista's lifecycle is over.  Like I said, don't hold your breath.

[Santoro]

I'm with Zero_Hour.  I like Vista.  It has some warts, but all and all it's a good, reliable and modern OS. 

I blogged about it a few weeks ago.  Since I wrote this I have installed it on an old Athlon XP 2200+, and a new Lenovo X60 laptop.  Each install was smoother than any XP setup I had ever done. 

Here's what I wrote:

I have been running Windows Vista for a month or so as my main OS. I have to say that overall I truly like it.

The computer press has been down-talking Vista lately because it doesn’t have dramatically new functionality. I generally agree with that sentiment, but it’s not that black and white for me.

As someone who spends 10+ hours a day at my PC, I find that Vista just ‘feels’ nicer. The Aero interface provides subtle but effective feedback on what is going on. The high-res icons are more scalable and legible for my sad middle-aged eyes. If XP was like wearing sneakers, Vista is like wearing slippers.  (For further comparison, Windows 98 was like wearing lead shoes.)

I am running the “Released To Manufacturing” or RTM version. I subscribed to Microsoft TechNet Direct in order to get it, along with test licenses for most other MS products, including Office, Windows Server, SQL Server, and Exchange Server. You get ten license keys for most products as long as you agree to use them ‘for evaluation purposes.’ This is an incredible value if you tinker with MS products at all. The software is not time-bombed or crippled in any way and is certified as “Windows Genuine” so it can get full security patches.

Certainly compatibility is an issue. MS has a tool to evaluate your machine to see if you can benefit from Vista. Make sure to use it.

If your PC and apps can handle it and you can afford the license, I think you will be happy running Vista.

Of course it's not MacOS or Linux, but it ain't supposed to be those things.  And I probably wouldn't drop 3-400$ on a copy just to have the latest and greatest.  But if you have an opportunity to get it free or cheap, I say do it.  All the small improvements add up to a much better OS. 

[johnm160]

I ran vista for about two weeks before I went back to XP. The security warnings were annoying but in the end I did not have it there long enough to look into turning them off.

Stability was fine untill i loaded the norton 360 beta on it....then all hell broke loose  So off it came untill there are some stable apps for it.


Oh and don't even get me started on the lack of print drivers for vista..... WOW

[Santoro]

Oh and don't even get me started on the lack of print drivers for vista..... WOW

Yeah, I have to agree on this one.  A big F.U. to HP, how hard can it be to get these things out on time?  You only had like five years notice this thing was coming out.

[tommy]

I just installed the Vista transformation pack to my PC with XP, all the look without the problems. Looks and works great btw.

http://www.windowsxlive.net/

The download link is at the very top of the page.

[johnm160]

Oh and don't even get me started on the lack of print drivers for vista..... WOW

Yeah, I have to agree on this one.  A big F.U. to HP, how hard can it be to get these things out on time?  You only had like five years notice this thing was coming out.

Yeah a big one to Canon also for not having drivers for their very expensive digital copiers. 

[ChadTower]

It all depends on when M$ got their SDKs out to them.  M$ has a habit of keeping their SDKs closeted until the very last second so that no one can "out" bugs before the OS ships.  If those companies just got their SDKs recently, as tends to happen with M$, then it's not their fault they are lagging in supporting the new OS.

[Buddabing]

This related article is interesting.

"Virtual Windows to Run Unmodified on Linux
Device drivers from Novell and Intel allow unmodified Windows Server 2000/2003/XP to run in Xen virtual environments on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and Intel® Virtualization Technology"

It doesn't say if applications can install and run under the virtual Windows OS.

[billf]

Just saw this on TV tonight and thought it fit into this thread nicely.  I'm not a mac person at all, but these commercials are funny.

[ChadTower]

It doesn't say if applications can install and run under the virtual Windows OS.

Man, if you think actual Windows takes up too much physical resource, try running it inside something else!