Rabu, 05 November 2008

Windows Vista Gripes

Gripes and More Gripes


Another reason to dislike Vista July 26th, 2007. Adrian W Kingsley-Hughes (a.k.a. The PC Doctor). Quoting: "The more I roll Vista out at the PC Doc HQ, the more I'm feeling like Microsoft is getting in the way of me doing the work I want. This blog posting was a follow up to Problems arise with Vista’s activation system by Ed Bott. July 26, 2007

Vista draining laptop batteries, patience by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com May 4, 2007. Quoting: "Vista, while touted as having improved power management capabilities that would make it easier for users to extend battery life, isn't to some living up to that promise ... The main culprit appears to be the Aero Glass interface..." Both HP and Lenovo had to come up with their own power management settings and avoided using those in Vista.

Vista Suffers a Lot Of Criticism, but Not All of It Is Undeserved. April 25, 2007. by Lee Gomes in the Wall Street Journal. Subscription required. Quoting: " My complaint ... the apparent inability of Windows to handle very large folders, like those containing thousands of subfolders with tens of thousands of files and hundreds of gigabytes of information. ... in working with files and folders, one of a computer's most basic tasks, the Mac could do in 30 seconds what took Vista at least six minutes for, and which XP couldn't do at all."

Vista experience turns into consumer nightmare April 16, 2007. By Robert L. Mitchell in ComputerWorld. About a consumer interested only in getting work done. Didn't care about the OS at all. Quoting: "And at the end of the day, with her new Vista machine, she couldn't do that. For consumers like Kary, it's really too soon to run Vista.

Start Me Up (While We Are Still Young) April 12, 2007 by Ed Scannell in Redmondmag.com. Regarding comments on a message board, the author says there is "a growing dissatisfaction among users with Vista's slow startup and shutdown times, compared with those of Windows XP. And they aren't jumping for joy over the load times for applications, either. Many are saying it takes 10, even 15 minutes for the system to fully boot ... It's looking like ... if you want to play Vista, come with a 2GB system and a fast (if not dual-core) processor."

Vista Report from Computing At Chaos Manor April 10, 2007 by Jerry Pournelle. Quoting: "...unless you have some urgent and special reason to do so, do not upgrade your Windows XP system to Vista. The gains in general won't outweigh the hassles." Followed by this:

"I'm astonished and disappointed: Microsoft had five years to develop Vista, and when it was over they gave us an OS containing a potential exploit that has remained undetected since Windows 3, and their notion of enhanced security is the obnoxious User Account Control. Years ago I pointed out ... that it is time and past time to develop operating systems with compilers that do strong typing and range checking, and no operating system should be released if it has been compiled with C or other compilers that will compile nonsense. ... primitive assembly language compilers such as C will allow all kinds of exploits. Real computer development languages do strong type and range checking. Five years, and we have buffer overflow exploits and an unusable User Account Control that can't possibly have actually been used by the people who developed the OS. Someone ought to be ashamed."

Vista: Thy name is FUD April 9, 2007 at infoworld.com Robert X. Cringely. A stinging article about Vista, the main point being that Microsoft sells Vista based on Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

Vista: Slow and Dangerous by Stephen H. Wildstrom in Business Week March 15, 2007. The security program in Microsoft's new version of Windows is so annoying you're likely to turn it off. And that's risky. Quoting: "Microsoft (MSFT) claims it will run with 512 megabytes of memory. I had recommended a minimum of a gigabyte, but 2 GB is more like it if you want snappy performance. This is especially true if you're also running resource-hungry Microsoft Office 2007."

Dim Vista by Stephen Manes in Forbes magazine March 12, 2007. Some quotes from the article:

  • Vista is at best mildly annoying and at worst makes you want to rush to Redmond, Washington and rip somebody's liver out.
  • Vista is a fading theme park with a few new rides, lots of patched-up old ones and bored kids in desperate need of adult supervision running things.
  • If I can find plenty of problems in a matter of hours, why can't Microsoft? Most likely answer: It did--and it doesn't care.
  • Vista's irritating and repeated warnings about possible security breaches don't always mean what they say and are usually irrelevant.
  • ...utterly unimaginative, internally discordant and woefully out of tune.

Windows Vista: I’m Breaking up with You by Chris Pirillo. February 27, 2007. His reasons: OS bugs, external hardware not working, essential software not working, slow performance and video driver problems. Follow up article: Where Windows Pundits Went Wrong.

Windows expert to Redmond: Buh-bye by Scot Finnie in ComputerWorld February 7, 2007. Long time Windows XP and Vista user tries living on a Mac for three months. Afterwords, he decides to use a Mac as his everyday machine. Quoting: "After living with the Mac for three months and comparing it with my Vista experiences, the choice is crystal clear ... the value and advantage of the Mac and OS X are difficult to miss ... I am now recommending the Macintosh for business and home users.

The Most Annoying Things About Windows Vista by Edward Albro and Eric Dahl. PC World magazine. February 20, 2007. From screens that mysteriously black out to search that's limited by default, here are the things that really bug us about Microsoft's new operating system.

New Vista firewall fails on outbound security Preston Gralla in ComputerWorld February 7, 2007. It's impossible to practically configure outbound filtering. Quoting: "...the Windows Firewall offers little outbound protection, and it's not clear how outbound protection can be configured to protect against spyware, Trojan horses and bots."

The Trouble with Vista by Scot Finnie in ComputerWorld. February 1, 2007. It isn't the features you can see in Vista, or the lack thereof -- it's the priority shift at Microsoft's core.

The 5 sins of Vista by Steve Wiseman January 20, 2007. This one hit home. Great screen shot illustrations of the points raised.

10 reasons not to get Vista January 21, 2007 by Ashton Mills at APC magazine.

10 reasons you should get Vista January 22, 2007 by Dan Warne at APC magazine. Reason number 10: You have no choice.

To upgrade Windows XP to the bottom-of-the-line Home Basic version is $100. Upgrading to the Home Premium version is $160. The full version is $400.

This person really hates Vista. January 13, 2007.

Things that don’t quite work right in Windows Vista January 12, 2007. by Ken Johnson. Techie oriented.

Lots of bad news from PC World magazine

Flaws Are Detected in Microsoft’s Vista by John Markoff in The New York Times. December 25, 2006. Quoting: "Microsoft is facing an early crisis of confidence in the quality of its Windows Vista operating system as computer security researchers and hackers have begun to find potentially serious flaws in the system that was released to corporate customers late last month."

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection by Peter Gutmann Last updated December 23, 2006. Executive executive summary: "The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history."

Vista crippled by content protection by Chris Mellor, Techworld December 27, 2006. Comments on the above article.

Vista Wins on Looks. As for Lacks ... by David Pogue December 14, 2006. New York Times.

  • "Links for common tasks sometimes appear at the left side of a window, sometimes the right and sometimes across the top."
  • "In wizards ... the Back button is sometimes at the lower-left corner of the dialog box, sometimes at the upper-left."
  • "Microsoft has hidden the traditional menu bar in some programs (you can summon it by tapping the Alt key), but not in others."
  • In the backup program: "you can specify only which categories of things to back up (pictures, e-mail, and so on), not which specific files or folders."
  • Regarding the Sidebar: "If you close one of the gadgets, you lose its contents forever: your notes in the Post-it Notes gadget, your stock portfolio in the Stocks gadget, and so on. You couldn’t save them if you wanted to. How could Microsoft have missed that one."
  • NetMeeting has been removed. I have used it often with my consulting clients. After all, it's free and pre-installed, if a bit dated. The replacement program, Meeting Space, is Vista only and not as full featured.
  • WordPad can no longer open Word documents. Quoting: "... a ham-handed attempt to force you into buying Microsoft Office. (Let’s hope the masses realize that they have a free alternative at docs.google.com.)"
  • The disk image backup feature, called Complete PC, is not available in the two Home editions

Hidden Costs of Vista Upgrade Coupon October 24, 2006 by Rex Farrance. A PC World blog.

Sticking with Windows XP in a Windows Vista World by Paul Thurrott. October 3, 2006. Quoting: "...by skipping Windows Vista, at least for the time being, you'd be left with a PC that was faster, more compatible with the software and hardware you own, and just about as capable as an otherwise identical PC running Windows Vista?"

Businesses in no hurry to buy Vista by Dina Bass Bloomberg News August 1, 2006. 'Let somebody else work out the bugs' in Windows update.

Vista testers to Microsoft: Even the bugs aren't stable yet August 1, 2006 Vista still needs a lot of work. Robert Scoble, until recently Microsoft's voice in the blogosphere. "If this ships [to the factory] in October, I will recommend not installing it and waiting for the first service pack. There’s no way the quality will be high enough to trust it if it ships early. I hope Microsoft takes the time to do this right."

20 Things You Won't Like About Vista June 1, 2006. Computerworld. by Scot Finnie. With a visual tour to prove it. Mr. Finnie says that Microsoft has favored security over end-user productivity, making the user feel like a rat caught in a maze with all the protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes required by the User Account Controls feature." From the article: "In its supreme state of being, Microsoft knows precisely what's best for you. It knows that because its well-implemented new Sleep mode uses very little electricity and also takes only two or three seconds to either shut down or restart, you want to use this mode to 'turn off' your computer, whether you realize it or not. It wants to teach you about what's best. It wants to make it harder for you to make a mistake."

Where Vista Fails Paul Thurrott SuperSite for Windows: April 19, 2006

Promises were made. Excitement was generated. None of it, as it turns out, was worth a damn. From a technical standpoint, the version of Windows Vista we will receive is a sad shell of its former self, a shadow. One might still call it a major Windows release. I will, for various reasons. The kernel was rewritten. The graphics subsystem is substantially improved, if a little obviously modeled after that in Mac OS X. Heck, half of the features of Windows Vista seem to have been lifted from Apple's marketing materials.

Shame on you, Microsoft. Shame on you, but not just for not doing better. We expect you to copy Apple, just as Apple (and Linux) in its turn copies you. But we do not and should not expect to be promised the world, only to be given a warmed over copy of Mac OS X Tiger in return. Windows Vista is a disappointment. There is no way to sugarcoat that very real truth.

Vista is said to need 7200RPM disks to have acceptable performance.

In Explorer, the places where files use to live has been changed.

Six versions of Vista is too many.

Where has all my stuff gone? by Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research. March 7, 2006. He doesn't like the new user interface. Quoting: "It seems like several decades of UI guidelines were tossed out the window. Worse, it seems I'm required to have even finer degrees of mouse dexterity in order to hit all the tiny little targets on the screen .. it feels like there's a lot of change for the sake of change."

Why Windows Vista Won't Suck By Jason Cross at ExtremeTech February 28, 2006. This article could have been written by Microsoft's Public Relations company. It loves every new feature.

Why Windows Vista Will Suck By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at ExtremeTech March 2, 2006. Alternate Link. A rebuttal to the above article. Vista requires a lot more hardware horsepower - the author says if you didn't buy your computer in 2006, don't even try to install Vista on it. Vista can put part of a running application on a thumb drive. Remove it and, well, oops. There is nothing in Vista that will make it significantly better than Linux or the Mac OS X.

Windows Vista Feedback by Chris Pirillo May 24, 2006. Feedback? No. Gripes? Yes, indeed.

65 More Windows Vista Mistakes by Chris Pirillo May 28, 2006. More gripes.

Seven Vista Flavors? NO NO NO NO NO NO NO from the WServerNews newsletter from Sunbelt Software March 6, 2006.

  • Quoting: "When Vista hits shelves you'll have a bunch of Windows 2000 Server flavors, Server 2003 flavors, W2K Pro, XP Home and Pro, couple of Media Center 200x's and SEVEN?! flavors of Vista. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!."
  • The articles refers to this as the "unixification" of Windows (meant as an insult). And perhaps this is what techies can expect when dealing with questions from Vista users (quoting again):
  • "Oh sorry, you bought Vista home, no you can't do remote desktop."; "No, you needed to buy Media Center edition to use that swanky new remote control you bought off the shelf"; "How the heck do you turn off Simple File Sharing--oh you can only do that with Vista Pro, darn".

My Beta Experience

July 2006. Celeron 1.2GHz, 640MB ram. Dell PowerEdge server running Windows 2000. Video card is ATI Rage XL PCI with 4MB video ram.

Vista needs a graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable. Is mine? How are normal people to find this out? Microsoft has a utility (Upgrade Advisor) that you can download and run to analyze how well it meets the requirements to run Vista. Gripe 1: you have to install the .NET runtime to run this utility. It only runs on Windows XP, not Windows 2000.

Twelve seconds after putting the Vista DVD in my computer, I had a gripe. I ordered the Vista beta on DVD from Microsoft. The root directory of the DVD has a file called readme.html. It says to get up to date instructions on what you should know before installing Vista to see file xxxx. The file doesn't exist.

Vista failed to install.

I tried a second time.

Again, the C disk is Windows 2000 with just over 5GB of free space. The V disk is set aside for Vista, its 30GB, NTFS and empty. This time, Windows 2000 has a permanently assigned network share, the G drive a DVD-ROM drive of another computer on the LAN. Also, this time I took all the installation defaults and opted to connect to the Internet to get Vista updates (which it did).

Basically, this installed failed in the same way as the previous one.

There is no disk in the drive. Please insert disk into Drive A.
CANCEL CONTINUE TRY AGAIN

Drive A? You must be kidding me. A Google search on this error message turned up two hits, neither having anything to do with Vista.

Continuing led to the fatal error on the Installing Windows screen. Windows Setup wasn't happy:

An error occurred while preparing the install drive

This was after I pointed the installer to the empty 30GB V disk.

What to do next? It doesn't say.

Eventually Vista tries to rollback its mess, but instead:

Windows Setup Rollback encountered a problem. Please see setup's logs for more details

What logs? It doesn't say.

FYI

May 21, 2007. You can test drive a virtual copy of Vista for free using Microsoft's Virtual PC Microsoft Windows Vista 30-Day Eval VHD

Vista includes disk imaging based backups. The output is in the same format as used by Virtual PC.

Microsoft has some general guidelines that outline good, better and best hardware to use with a future Vista system at www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/evaluate/hardware/vistarpc.mspx.

Tell us what you think about this pre-release version of Microsoft Windows from Microsoft. This requires entering the build number. Of course, if Vista never installs, you can't tell the build number.

Vista Boot Pro is an easy way to edit boot data

How to uninstall vista from Windows XP News September 5, 2006. Pretty darn difficult.

  1. Put your Windows XP installation CD in the CD-ROM drive and reboot the computer (be sure the BIOS is set to boot from CD).
  2. Start the Recovery Console from the CD (
  3. At the Welcome to Setup screen, press F10 or R for Repair.
  4. On a dual boot system, you're prompted to enter the number of the Windows installation that you want to log onto.
  5. Enter the administrator password when prompted.
  6. Run Fixboot from the Recovery Console.
  7. Run Fixmbr to reset the master boot record.
  8. Exit the Recovery Console and reboot the computer.
  9. Edit the boot.ini file to remove the Vista entry.
  10. Format the partition on which Vista was installed
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