I very much agree with your assessment of Vista. Especially the marketing (too many darned versions!) and the superior driver support.

I did a complete re-install of XP on my T60, and XP was pretty much clueless about the SATA drive on the machine. Hassle City USA getting that figured out!

Vista, on the other hand merrily installed on the very same machine (still SATA but different hard drive) and it took me a 10th of the time to get Vista running compared to XP.

Too bad that my ThinkPads run about 10 degrees hotter with Vista vs. XP. Not acceptable.

I-man, did you see this?

By: dabbler3248
28 Jan 2008, 06:26 PM EST
Msg. 207836 of 207843
(This msg. is a reply to 207831 by rheemer1.)
Jump to msg. #
rheemer, you are the one deceiving investors.

I say that I believe a merger or spin-off is in the works with IBM and that this link has something to do with it.
http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/fetchFilingFrameset.aspx?FilingID=5342095&Type=HTML

And there has been many other filings related to it after that August 3rd IBM filing.

I think you, tepe and others are trying to get Longs to sell so that they won't be a shareholder of record when the merger/spin-off news finally is released. So that would make you guys insiders, but from what company? imo

I agree with most. These I would mark lower:

Security: D
More band aids (UAC) over an inherently insecure design. A redesign with security built in is needed. Finally, Microsoft addresses this issue in Windows 7. IBM told MS to do this in NT. MS's refusal to do so was a major factor leading to the falling out between IBM and MS.

Perceived Value: D
Increased security and added granularity in Group Policy are not sufficient reasons to upgrade. Price is way too high for features.

Performance: D
Won't run on older hardware or the new ultra-portables.

Given that the OS is new, it is expected that device compatibility is an issue.

BUT!.. if device manufacturing companies see that Vista will be huge, they should have provided their firmwares and such -- but there's NONE.

Easy to say, even these device companies have doubt in this new OS. ^_^

I disagree with giving Vista Stability an A. Stability is not only about whether the OS crashes. Vista instability is reflected by driver bugs, which I've experienced (particularly with respect to wireless networking).

I'd also give App Support a C. One of my apps, Deskshare's Video Edit Magic, frequently locks up or crashes. Video Edit Magic is supposed to be Vista-certified.

Joe's grades;

"Application Compatibility. Security and architectural changes break too many apps. C"
-------------------------------------------------
Joe, since application compatibility is the number one complaint of Vista users in most surveys, why do you suppose they deserve a "c" which is generally a passing grade or fair? Clearly F is the proper grade here in this category.

The rest of the categories, I would also think you were generous with as well, and deserved lower grades overall, with one exception.

Marketing.

MS in my opinion did a decent enough job of trying to market Vista, its just that Vista was a dead fish product without proper refrigeration, that already smelled bad, and no amount of marketing was going to make it smell good to most users.

Bottom line, Vista is still a train wreck.

I have to agree, Vista's stability is an A.

Vista has too many baked in tools that record the slightest fault. Any application that hangs in any way is recorded and debits from Vista's reliability and performance rating.

We have noted that our systems, exposed to extreme use, have consistently recorded perfect performance ratings of 10. To achieve that, no errors of any kind can occur. We see this type of performance on media centric systems our family hammers with games and recorded television. If Vista were unstable it would be reflected.
I have posted images of the ratings and a record of how we have used the reliability monitor to solve challenges. The recorder is just to sensitive to miss even minor errors.

Nonsense. Vista is perfect! Microsoft doesn't need to do anything to it. Here's how I figure it:
First of all, there are those folks actually using Vista. Doesn't matter how much they complain about it, the fact is they'd still rather use it than XP, let alone non-Windows products like Linux. So regardless of the complaints, Microsoft has already got their money.
Then there are those folks not using Vista. They may say it's because of the problems with it. But who's to say, if Microsoft were to fix those problems, that these folks would actually switch to Vista? They could very well come up with even more excuses not to use it. All that work improving Vista would have been in vain.
Conclusion: nothing needs to be done to Vista, it's satisfying its customers exactly as it needs to, no more, no less. Vista is perfect! QED.

Good one Lawrence. Micro$oft's Vista marketing could have used something like that! They need to put on the best face when their product stinks.

Technology A
Application Support B
Application Compatibility B
Driver Support B
Ease of Use B
Stability A
Performance B

As I have mentioned before, I have really had a pleasant experience with Windows Vista on my self-built desktop PC. But the only added value I have found is the start menu search and the search in the control panel. It's easier than looking through the icons when trying to find something I don't use much. That said, I would give the following grades to Vista. These are based solely on my own personal experience.

Technology: C

I have found very little that Vista does that I didn't already use in XP. Vista passes, but that is all.

Marketing: F

Are you kidding? If I wasn't into technology, the only way I would even know about Vista would be by seeing it on PC's in the store, and perhaps a few news articles in late 2006 and early 2007.

App Support: B

Apps not broken by Vista work fine. No better than XP though.

App Compatibility: B

Of all the software I use, I have none that has made Vista cough up blood. I have a couple that warn me they have compatibility issues, but I have been using them for a year with no problem. The aero-glass will abruptly change to Vista basic with these "rogue" programs however.

Supporting Apps: F

Don't know of any.

Driver Support: B

In my case, every hardware device I have hooked up just works, except one: My HP Color LaserJet 2600n. I had no problem getting the driver and the printer works fine.

Security: B

I have not had any security issues with XP for over 3 years. I update Windows regularly, use AVG and use auto updates for it and varying anit-spyware/anti-adware programs. Vista's UAC annoyed the heck out of me, so I turned that off right away. Vista has been no security problem for me. I just can't say it is because of Vista.

Partner Ecosystem: D

It is not what it should be and it is not acceptable, but I wouldn't say it is totally non-existent.

Perceived Value: D

I bought Vista pretty much because I like try new things out. After purchasing, I don't see much value in Vista. I haven't found it to do that much more than XP did. However, based on the software I have and use, if I were buying a new PC and were given the choice of Vista or XP, I would choose Vista. My choice would be only because it is newer and will be supported better and for longer by MS.

Ease of Use: B

With UAC turned off, Vista is very easy to use. I find it slightly easier to use, probably due to the search in the start menu and control panel. For mom or grandma, they aren't going to be digging around system controls, so for finding and running their favorite apps, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

Stability: C

It probably didn't help that my desktop PC froze while writing this! That is the first time Vista has ever froze on this PC. Stability is actually quite good on this PC and my wife's. However, I tried running Vista on a couple laptops (that met the specs for Vista Premium) and another desktop and had terrible stability problems. All were installed with Vista through a clean install, proper drivers were installed. I have to assume some of the drivers are not mature, but nonetheless, my experience with Vista stability has taken some wild swings.

Performance: C

On my PC's that run Vista well, it seems to run fast, but since it is no faster, and possibly slower than XP, I could not give it a grade any higher than a C. I give it a C because from a user perspective on my PC, the performance is acceptable.

Let's see... So I give Vista a 1.92. That's not good. Especially since I am someone who actually likes Vista.

Stability. Vista is rock solid. A.

HAHAHA You're kidding me! I'd give it a C-, at best!
It's not consistent, and unfortunately in today's world - that's what it needs to be to succeed.

Sorry Vista : Fail.

If Vista were a job applicant fresh out of college with a 2.42 GPA...would Microsoft hire it?

God what is it with the Vista bashing!!! Vista works fine, it's just as compatible as when XP came out (in fact it's more so). People moaned about XP at the time, just google around for early XP reviews, it was full of people saying Windows 98 was better and faster.

Microsoft are up against a very difficult task, creating an operating system which can run on thousands of combination's of hardware and 3rd party applications and they have done a pretty good job.

Yes Vista may not be as fast on older hardware as XP is but XP wasn't as fast as Windows 98 was on the older hardware of then. you cannot design for the future if you are stuck clinging on to the past. Why do people have such short memories. Vista, like XP was designed for the current and future hardware. Just deal with it!! I am running Vista on a nice brand new PC and it runs like lightening, far quicker than XP. XP starts slowing down dramatically once you install a few 3rd party apps and most stability issues with Vista are caused by bad drivers...this is not the operating system's or Microsoft's fault.

There is no such thing as the perfect operating system as you cannot please everyone, someone will always like OSX or Ubuntu more. Just take Vista for what it is and realise it wasn't designed for your old hardware. Just like at the time XP wasn't!!!

You know, honestly, the application compatibility FUD is getting a bit thread-bare. Take the VERY SAME applications and install them on an XP box under a non-elevated user account. If they don't work there, it is hardly Vista's fault. (For the Linux world, this just like complaining about a repository application failing to install because I didn't know enough to take apt-get through sudo.)

In other words, many of the applications were broken before Vista ever hit the scene. They do STUPID things like writing temp files inside the Windows and System32 folder, rather than simply using the user profile areas properly.

No one noticed because everyone ran their XP box as an adminstrative user. I'm happy that Vista prevents bad install behavior.

Performance: You should not punish Vista because it runs badly on old hardware. Sometimes you have to break clean and start a new stage in technology. It is like giving Apple a C for killing the floppy with the Imacs, yet it had little if no effect on people buying them, it was irrelevant. You want better graphics, new elelmetns on the kernel, fancier multimedia capabilities, this, that, something has to give, and that will most probably be the hardware.

Vista is going to be pre-installed on most computers. And it does work absolutely fine.

The question is: Is it that much better than XP?

Another question is: If you have a relatively new XP computer with specs that meet/exceed Vista Premium, is there any compelling reason to upgrade, even if it will work fine on your system?

I've been using Vista Premium now for a month. I upgraded from W2KPro. I purchased the academic edition upgrade version for $73, including shipping. My hardware is almost four years old, and my system only gets a 2.0 on the performance scale. And yet, I'm very pleased with my experience thus far. If MS fixes the parental controls web filtering as part of SP1 so that it works, then I won't have any issues. My recommended feature addition for W7 would be software RAID 5. And in my book, IE7 on Vista is faster than FireFox. So for $73, I get a very Mac like UI with all the bells and whistles and what appears to be a pretty hardened O/S with a well above average first year security / hotfix record.

Lee Archer very interesting you wrote. Yes, various articles say, that comparing xp and vista when they were out of the box comes to conclusion, that vista is overall more stable. Now, this is not a fair comparison. We need to take in account that microsoft was making xp a year or something, while it took them almost 6 years to make vista. If it was not for that, vista would not deserve much criticism, but taking in account so long developing period, I think Redmond dissappointed very much. In that time they could do much more proffesional work. Just my thought, running vista on a very capable sony vaio laptop, but totlly dissappointed with performance.

Is Windows Live Write a headline on a VCSY website?

Or do you think the whole world is a scam?

site.siteflash.com.br

What do you think is happening, softee?

If Microsoft was smart enough to join the IBM open-commerce community, all you open-source scabs will either have to join the club or die in isolation. What a shame. What a shame.

Sure looks like it to me, boys and girls. Have you thought through what a Wordpress system would be able to do if fitted with the claims of 6826744?

An application publishing ecology for the common user. That's what.

If it works out that Microsoft has gone over to the VCSY way of doing things, open-source is toast because IBM will be shepherding the open-source movement into the corral like so many goats... goats that need a bath.

Is that what site.siteflash.com.br shows? Who knows? VCSY's not talking. Microsoft's not talking. And Ray Ozzie's lips were slammed in the closet door. He's not even scheduled to speak at MIX 08.

Oh well. Another day. Another wonder.

38 days to March 7, 2008.

Microsoft has a choice to make by then. Will they, as one open-source fanatic says, cleverly throw the fight and put open-source in a terrible position? Or will they continue the fight and lead Microsoft's developers and partners to ruin?

Big decisions weighing on that slick head of Steven Ballmer. Somebody better wax that thing before hitting the high surf.

(more at url)
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_M/threadview?m=tm&bn=12004&tid=1336350&mid=1336350&tof=11&rt=1&frt=2&off=1

How about separate grades for Vista-32 and Vista-64? It sounds like the latter has greater driver and compatability issues.

HP started shipping Vista-64 as the default operating system on one consumer desktop unit, although Vista-32 is an available option.

Vista grades are measured against what??? XP?

Here is my partial comparison against GNU/Linux;

I like the fact that;

(1.) that Linux so far has never ever crashed on me.

(2) it has never been infected with malware, of any sort.

(3) no need to spend time scanning for Malware, ah the endless scans of windows virus programs. Yes can install virus scanning programs in linux that scan your email so you don't pass on a windows virus to a windows email reciepent. Windows email viruses do not affect Linux systems.

(4) no reason to defrag in linux

(5) stable like rock solid, never crashed on me, even makes XP look unstable, and that was MS best.

(6) I have run linux under heavy load of programs for weeks on end without ever turning the machine off, and it run just as fast as when I first turned it on. The same treatment with XP on the same machine, I would be lucky to be able to reboot after 3 days.

(7) seldom ever having to reboot after installing software or patches in linux.

(8) the price, its free, and better than Windows

(9) the licence, I can put it on as many computers as I want to.

(10) no activation or serial number pains.

(11) Big Brother Bill Gates is not looking over my shoulder with all his spyware, DRM, and WGA thats installed in ViSta.

(12) GNU/Linux will run circles around the performance of Vista.

(13) not only is GNU/Linux free for most users, but so is the software for it, like OpenOffice for example.

(14) I like GNU/Linux community distro's that make "live cd's," as these can be freely downloaded, and tested to see if you like them, and if they work with your computer hardware, before you install them.

(15) updates are not forced upon you, you elect to get them, as opposed to the "sleath" updates from M$

(16) free help is available on the community forums for most distro's of Linux.
--------------------------------------------------
maybe I am just tired of watching all the computers coming in the door with more windows malware on them for cleaning. It could be that, or just the software glitches of xp and vista when MS updates them and they stop booting up, or just crash.

There is a better world out there for Windows users, its called GNU/Linux. distrowatch.com it will set you free.

I have found that Vista is great for those that have a good understanding of computers but is a bit of challenge for those that are new to the computer world so the friend down the street or the one you know on the internet who is not willing to learn about Vista is saying it is no good even though that person has no idea how good it can be.

I have Vista business on my three desktop computers as well as my laptop and with my internet provider NOW offering top level security, I love it.

Driver Support is a bit of problem due to hardware companies lack of offering drivers. HP is absolutely terrible. I bought a printer 11 months before Vista was released and HP says it is too old to provide a Vista driver. I bought a Xerox printer that is Vista compatible and offered the HP (the last one I will ever buy) to charity along with my XP software. It is an upgrade for them from Win98.

I remember when Windows first came out, a mentally challenged client of mine saw it as a program for the idiots that could not type c:\dir yet today she uses Vista.

I am also a fond user of Office 2007 and find it saves me a lot of time over the previous versions of Office.

Time to get out of the shell and experience the WOW. Of course the WOW is Office 2007!

Technology = Vista doesn't do anything I couldn't already do with XP, with the exception of DX10. F.

Marketing = Microsoft seems to have abandoned Vista (Which is fine by me), unless you watched a Dell commercial you won't see much about Vista on TV/Radio. D.

Application Support = Several of my applications will not run under any circumstances under Vista. However I will say Vista 64bit is vastly superior to XP 64bit. C.

Application Compatibility. See above (Application Support)

Supporting Applications = Unless you include Office 2007 as a Vista supporting application. (End rant here on Office 2007). F.

Driver Support = I only needed to upgrade two drivers on my Vista installation. Video went through just like any other installation. My Audio drivers function but show up in the device manager as having issues (yellow exclamation). B

Security = Pathetic. Everyone I've met within 15 minutes of using Vista was Googling ways to turn off UAC because of the incessant nagging. The implementation of UAC should have been much better but we're right back to where users were in XP, admin without justification therefore leaving themselves wide open. F.

Partner Ecosystem = Every vendor on the planet pushes Vista in your face as the OS de jour, sans Apple of course. A.

Perceived Value = There is none, Vista's only selling point is that it's end of support will be farther out than XPs. In every other way XP is superior. D.

Ease of Use = The needless changes to control panel (finding out what Add/Remove programs had been renamed to was fun) as well as cluttering the start button and quickstart tray with unused icons was inexcusable. I was under the impression that there was more to Vista than changing the XP start button from a Rectangle to a Circle. Yes they added Search and confused the Shut Down / Log off / Reboot options but you know those are improvements. C

Stability = Running XP this system went 9 months with no bluescreens. On Vista I've had over 20. Firefox has caused a bluescreen, multiple games, Word 2007, OpenOffice Writer, Photoshop CS3, and multiple times Windows Media Player. F.

Performance = Complete failure.
Using XP as a base for comparrison I can honestly see no reason to run Vista.
Boot times and Shutdown times are slower on Vista.
File transfer: Performance is inexcusable 29M/s on SATA 3G/s drives and that is after installing Microsoft's performance hotfix for slow file transfers. There is absolutely no excuse for that. I can actually within Vista load a virtual machine of my XP installation and copy faster within the VM than I can in the host system.
Gaming performance: Running DX9 slightly less performance vs my XP installation. Running DX10 my system slows to a crawl. This is using an Nvidia 8800GTX.

Now many people will read my review and say I'm overly critical. Well I am. I've been a loyal Microsoft supporter (yes a pun) since 1994 when I started in the desktop support field with IBM. After 8 years with Blue I went rogue as a consultant. My responses are based on my experience and the questions and issues I'm asked to fix or explain to users on a daily basis. I'm not basing all my opinions on 1 installation of Vista in an isolated environment but as a person who supports Microsoft products for a living. Microsoft has let me down with Vista and Office 2007.

I give Vista (on your scale) a 2.54. I am very impressed with its stability, security and overall "fun" factor. I have it on three PC's at home and all run and network very well. I have had some minor issues like long pauses when selecting a lot of files and right clicking for the context menu. And some of the permissions are annoying as you are always asked to do this or that. My main system is an Intel Core 2 Duo, 1.86 MHz, 3 Gigs of RAM, Intel DG965RY Motherboard with 1066 FSB, GeForce 8500 GT with 512 Megs of RAM, two 500 GIG SATA Hard Drives, Vista Ultimate. It also networks very nicely with my XBOX 360 via Media Center. I am a very happy Vista user.

Brandon;

See my review above.

Even with my good experience with Vista on my desktop, I still didn't give Vista very good marks. Even working well, it doesn't do anything more or better than XP, other than some search enhancements and pretty windows.

But if I had first attempted my laptop for a Vista install, I would have lambasted the stability, driver support and performance. I probably would not have even attempted to install it on my desktop.

I think that it is going to be 90% or more of Vista installs will be pre-installs on new machines. Like I have said, on a new PC it works, it works well, but I don't see anything great it does that XP doesn't.

Windows needs a breakthrough product.

This is a very fair eval of Vista. I think those railing against it indiscriminately simply haven't used it enough to realize it's an improvement over XP, just not an earth-shattering one.

I'd give app compatibility an A. I haven't had any programs refuse to run or run poorly on Vista. And what can we say about performance? Have we ever had an OS require LESS of a computer than it's predecessor? With more features comes more resources. Vista runs fine (not playing Crysis or anything, obviously) on a P4 1.7 w/ 768mb RAM, i.e. a 7 year old computer. If that doesn't deserve an A, then expectations for Vista's performance are unrealistic.

Microsoft didn't knock Vista out of the park, but it makes no sense for OEMs to be offering an old OS on new hardware. There should be no compatibility issues for Dell if they're the ones building the system. Don't use legacy hardware.

Preceived value: F
My new XP-Pro laptop from Dell works fine. The current XP-Pro computers at the work site meet the company's organizational objectives.

Supporting apps, App Compatibility: F
When I read that SQL Server 2005 would not run on my newly ordered laptop with Vista Business, I canceled my order and created a new laptop order with XP-Pro. I know it probably runs fine now, but at the time I just did not feel like putting forth any additional effort. Especially since my work weeks had been spiking to 80 hours at the time. Why bother with the extra hassle? I give it an F because Vista is an MS product and should have run seamlessly with any supported MS product at the time of release.

I can't speak to the other items since I never used Vista, but I can tell you I am surviving quite fine without it. The buzz in Vista is gone and so is any excitement on my end (on getting a better OS).

Overall GPA that I think Vista is worthy of is a 3.0 on a 4.0 scale...none of the categories deserve an F for sure, but seriously, it's not that bad that it should receive lower than a 2.5.

Then again, that GPA you gave could get you in a few colleges...

I think our biggest obstacle is stability. We use all new Dell computers with no extra hardware and find Vista just locks up or crashes for no reason at least once a day. Are we just lucky that we seem to be able to run XP pretty much indefinitely now without it crashing? Not sure what the bar here is, but Vista seems much worse than XP, Mac or Linux.

Another area it rates badly is standards compliance. Why is it hard to burn DVDs in standard useable ISO format? Why doesn't it support internet international standards properly? Generally this lack leads to a lot of extra work and lost productivity with workarounds.

I tend to agree with those assessments. The internals of Vista are actually pretty solid. If I could come up with a Worst of Vista, though, it'd be the Start menu. Someone over there decided the categorical flyout navigation was cumbersome, so they decided to replace it with a scrolling, linear list of programs mixed in with groups and put the focus on the search box. Makes it seem like DOS with Intellisense...too many of the new stability tools are buried in there, and unless you know what MS decided to call the particular tool, good luck finding it by browsing. If any part of the OS needs a Jobs-ian sense of unilateralism on what it should be, Start Menu is it.

Stability: A?!?!?!?
Stability: Vista is rock solid?!?
i thought all your articles were about vistas problems lol
i think my managers got something to say aswell

Yes, I do have something to say about Vista stability. And as Puppet's manager, it's not only my own frustrations I have to endure.

At best, Vista stability is 50-50. With no third party software at all, on a brand new machine, in the middle of writing an email, Vista collapsed and needed to be re-installed.

Since then my machine has frozen at least twice a day, my apps crash, my start menu is never the same twice, my desktop has no idea what it's supposed to be doing...

In order to get anything to work, I pretty much have to turn everything related to Windows off and rely on third party software - which served me excellently on 98, with mixed success on XP and with hopes and prayers on Vista.

There are far too many useless decorative components which over bulk and destabilise the platform making it little better than overpriced ornamental garbage. It's a revisitation of the CE/ME nightmare - hardly surprising since it's built on the bones of the NT platform.

When Microsoft build a decent operating system, it will have been a direct rip from Linux.

In response to Thomas, I didn't actually say Vista was more stable than XP, not in those words anyway.

With regards to development life cycles, the original Windows XP (not SP2 version etc) was only a relatively minor development in the great scheme of things. In this I mean that most of the hardwork was done in Windows 2000 and XP just extended and fine tuned it (hence why it is only Version 5.1). Vista was a re-write from the Kernel up (Version 6.0) to close security holes etc.

Technically Vista as we know it today was only in development for around 3 years as the longhorn project had to be reset due to over ambitious plans (this ambition being hindered due to the fact that Microsoft had to urgently re-direct resources into making Service Pack 2 for XP) and to swap to the Server 2003 component based kernel architecture as a foundation as the XP one had too many issues.

If anything the disappointment isn't caused by Vista itself, it was by Microsoft promising too much in the early days before the project was reset. They should have kept quiet until the feature list was finalised.

as i havnt got vista yet, sometimes i wonder if i will be saying what everyone else is saying: "vista sucks" but for the moment i still love vista :P

My experience of Vista is only on my laptop but, while I would not disagree with most of the grades you gave it, I would mark it down sharply on stability. Installing new software often results in a message announcing Vista will close in one minute when restarting - although bizarrely it allows you to do anything you want apart from close it down in that minute. The logs show nothing, and the problem clears after restarting five or six times. It also freezes all too frequently, again with no problem logged. And just moving to a different network causes it to close down on startup. Stability - C- or lower

Vista upon release:
Technology C
Application Support B
Application Compatibility C
Driver Support C
Ease of Use B
Stability B
Performance C

XP upon Release:
Technology B
Application Support B
Application Compatibility A
Driver Support A
Ease of Use A
Stability B
Performance A

I give the whole Vista an F
ITS EXACTLY LIKE WINDOWS ME!
And there is no real need or use for vista. It does not do one single thing better then XP. Besides make your hardware incompatable with slow performance and hog resourses. Vista is pointless who in there right mind wants it? Or even needs it?

it took a year to get driver support ! XP had it on Launch! one year in XP had more so I give Vista a D on drivers.

ease of use and Percieved value both D- I keep haveing friends buying new computers - mind you I am not telling them anything about vista pro or con. and they come back to me asking if I can put xp on the new machine a couple weeks later ( 6 people now) one of these is a 2500 quad core sli rig,

nope not much good here- c for most of the rest, even security - UAC is a joke - teatimer has a white ;ist in XP I only have to agree on new installtion not already approved ones. - sigh

Unfortunely, I have been using Micro Soft (MS - Mickey mouSe) for 20 years (NOT by choice). Not only does Vista suck, all of Micro Soft SUCKS!

The greedy, aggrandizing culture of Microsoft is what angers me - and its universal acceptance by industry and consumers is nothing short of a pandemic. You buy multiple licenses of Office 2003 or Windows XP and you're coerced to ditch them within three to five years? Defective merchandise is never truly upgraded or fixed, simply trashed and replaced with a new generation of garbage. Support as it applies to nearly every other area of business/consumer products just doesn't exist. So what if it doesn't work?! Cheer up, there's a newer, more fully-featured catastrophe just around the corner!

Vista is bloated. I've seen areas where it would crap out. And I'm going to continue to run it in a VM until application and stability issues improve.

To George: I don't think MS is putting a gun to your head to use MS products.

To Perry T: Upgrade Office every 3 to 5 years? Not really. Office 2003 has been out for 5 years and you can install it on Vista. Which means that with MS's extended support [security updates], you can still use it without a security issue for another 5 years.

I don't think I agree with the stability "A". For one thing, about one in 6 boots results in a very strange condition whereby web browsers (and apparently ONLY web browsers, as far as I can tell) can't complete loading of web pages. Firefox and IE both do it when it's happening.

Other apps (such as online games) work fine. A reboot fixes it.

Second, Windows Media Player immediately crashes EVERY time I accidentally try to use it. Other players using the same codecs run fine. The same codecs installed on an XP machine cause no problems for WMP.

Oh - and performance: the graphics memory patch is mandatory if you have a card made within the last decade; otherwise 3D mode (always on, thanks to Aero!) chews up a very sizable fraction of your RAM. Thanks for that. Thought I was going to need another 2GB of RAM, of which only about a gig would actually be available to me since MS does not see fit to provide the 64 bit version alongside the 32 bit version unless you have ludicrously deep pockets or wish to pay for a second copy of the OS. Thanks for that too.

Other than that, it's a damp squib. I don't hate it's guts, but I won't be rushing out to upgrade the other couple of PCs around here. Came preinstalled on my new box... cheaper than XP. :(

Why does one have to boot a Microsoft system everytime an application like media player or Internet Explorer is patched?

Look at the one year patch records for the last four Microsoft outings. The newer the release, the greater the number of first year patches (yes, you must include IE & MP patches since they are part of the OS).

MS' problems continue to compound as they persist with the practice of integrating programs into the OS.

Provide substance and continuity - not confusion (e.g. where's add/remove programs) and fluff.

Grade: F

I would rather have seen a comparison of the adoption (conversion) rate by businesses of XP vs Vista post launch.

I can't say that Vista is really all THAT bad. Of the few times I've had any experience with it was on brand spanking new laptops owned by other people. I do like the desktop and after getting over the learning curve, getting arouond isn't any more difficult than XP. Speed wise it seemed a bit slower than XP. The fastest I was able to get to the desktop after power up was a little over 2 minutes. I have a couple of P4 1GHZ machines with just 256Mb RAM (nowhere near the requirements of Vista) with XP that boot up from power on to the desktop in just 17 seconds. For now, I'll stick with XP. Vista just hasn't proven itself to be of real value.

A different view: I have tried a number of software programs supposedly able to run under Vista and they crash. They do run well on my other, less capable PC, which runs XP. I'm sorry I ever upgraded to Vista. As far as I can tell, Vista is like Windows ME: A so-called "improvement" to generate sales, but with many flaws. It is a step backward. Hisss! Boo! Oh, well; maybe Vista SP1 will help.

Complaints about lack of Vista advertising are off base. There is plenty of advertising. The problem is that that's the only thing found in Knowledge Base and other "support" resources at Microsoft.
Useful information is completely absent or hidden.
A complete change in the "language" that describes functions makes it impossible (for me at least) to find known and expected functions. The "all the same size, same shape, pastel blobs" that are called icons are unintelligible except by actually reading the labels.
Functions previously all in one menu are now arbitrarily (and irrationally in my opinion) splattered all over the place. (The "COW SPLAT" gives no clue that it replaces the simple word "File." It's supposed to be "cute?")
I have Vista on a laptop that was an emergency purchase when an older one failed. I've achieved "Internet Connection" so it sits running to receive updates, but beyond that, until I completely relearn everything I've used for the past 20 years it is otherwise USELESS.
(Didn't that exec from Apple say he was going to leave? And I don't blame Bill for heading for the hills, for the reasons Dvorak suggested.)

This is how I rate Vista:

Technology. C
If there had been a mark for look and feel then maybe I would have graded B but really there's nothing so out of this world to warrant a higher grade than a C.

Marketing. D
I would go with D myself.. Microsoft doesnt really worry much about their products in this part of the world anyways

Application Support. B
So far it works well with everything so I would stay with the B nothing exceptional to warrant an A

Application Compatibility. Security and architectural changes break too many apps. C.
agree with author on this.

Supporting Applications. Where are they? Have you seen any? F.

Driver Support. C
Yes it ships with a lot of drivers but looks like there isnt much support for hard ware you purchased a year ago

Security. User Account Control is a nuisance, but Vista is more rugged than XP. To get an A, Microsoft would have needed to make security measures less complex. B.
Agree with the author

Partner Ecosystem. Dell offers XP on every build-to-order system, hardware manufacturers have slowly released drivers, and supporting apps are MIA. F.
Totally agree

Perceived Value. It's not enough compared to Windows XP, and Vista upgrades require heftier hardware. C.

Ease of Use. C
Microsoft should have been wary of change management issues. The sudden changes in where you would find things you were familiar with in previous windows were like moving us from 2% concentration heroin to 5% all of a sudden, addicts die from that kind of change!!!!

Stability. Vista is rock solid. A.
well??? it's hung up on a couple of applications but the recovery is brilliant.

Performance. Vista does well, if the hardware is right. The score would be higher if not for heftier hardware requirements. C.

Drum roll, please. Vista's first-year grade point average is ******* well i didnt know what weighting to use for various areas so no GPAs .

Technology - I agree. The underlying OS (though incredibly annoying via UAC and the propensity to bury the admin console one layer deeper in each succeeding OS) is pretty solid. B.

Marketing - I agree. First, MS should have learned their lesson from XP and NOT marketed anything short of a full OS (XP Pro). I don't have any objections to Vista Business and Vista Premium, but the others are a waste of time. The other note is that absurd packaging. Whatever happened to the simple CD case? The new packaging is a disaster. D.

App Support - Disagree. Microsoft should have had more apps lined up and ready to go - especially for AV. I don't know if they intentionally stonewalled vendors, but the lack of initial support for basic AV, as well as Adobe, left a sour taste. D.

App Compatability - Disagree. I realize the need for change, but anyone expecting to deploy Vista on day one with existing apps - especially internal apps got a rude surprise. Worst of all was Outlook 2007 - which if run at all forced a format/re-install to use a previous Office version. D.

Supporting Apps. Agree. Enough said.

Driver Support. Disagree. From HP's MFP's having no scan support to this day to drivers for cell-phones to many others, driver support should have been pushed harder by Microsoft. If I can't use the device because of the OS, I place equal blame on MS for making their driver certification program such a mess (driver certification requires months of time and hefty fees). D.

Security. Agree. B. If UAC weren't such a pain I'd give it an A.

Partners. Agree. The lack of drivers, supporting apps, etc. all speak to Microsoft's hubris. MS needs to learn that they aren't a 500-lb gorilla despite their clout. F.

Perceived value. Agree. There just isn't enough there to make me want to upgrade. C.

Ease of Use. After the initial shock of "where did they move things THIS time?" it isn't bad. Widgets and toolbars are nice, but hardly worth the upgrade pain. UAC again is the biggest damper. C.

Stability. A if comparing against XP, only a B if comparing against *nix. I mean come on, when installing software requires a reboot, that's a ding in my book.

Performance. Agree. The eye candy is just that: eye candy. For business users like me, however, Aero is a distraction and CPU hog, not an improvement. Then there was that particularly damning report that XP runs better.

All in all, I'd give Vista a D on launch. We'll see if the service pack improves anything, but there is just so little of substance in differences between it and XP that I'm sticking with the one I can still find all my drivers for.

The only problem I have with Vista is that it is slow. I'm running a Compaq v6402 laptop with a Celeron 1.6Gh with 1G ram. For example, the other day I inadvertently deleted 300M in 5 directories. To restore from zipped files using Vista would have taken about 3.5 hours. XP took 5 minutes.

Most people don't spend much time worrying about the OS, as long as their apps run and the OS doesn't get in their way. Given this, Vista will do a fine job for most people.

But so will XP. And OSX. Vista does nothing strategic to set itself apart from anything else out there. I actually have both XP and Vista on my machine and find myself in XP most of the time. There is no compelling reason for me to go to Vista, when XP does a marginally (sometimes more than marginally) better job of letting me get on with the things for which I bought a computer: working with photography, writing software, building websites, designing graphics, and a host of other activities. When do I find myself in Vista? When I have to give a software demo of something I've built, and I want it to look just a bit more flashy. That's about it.

When people ask me if they should upgrade to Vista or not, I tell them to spend their money instead on a couple more gigabytes of memory. Cash spent in this way will net much bigger productivity gains than blowing it on a non-descript OS that brings nothing better to the table over other offerings.

I'm not sure how you came up with the 2.42 "GPA". In our institution, A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, F=0. Using that scale, I come up with 25 total points/12 categories=2.08. Barely passing, definitely not a stellar performer :-)

I've never used Vista and have a very jaundiced view of MicroSoft's backward compatability.

With XP (& XP Pro) MS abandoned the excellent text search capability that it had in 98SE and Millenium. In a test with 46 short ASCII files ("how now brown cow"), identical in every respect except each had a distinctive filespec extension, 98SE found 46 of them with the search word "brown"; XP found THREE. This despite the fact that there is no difference in the two search launch displays

Also, XP Pro's DOS facility is seriously degraded from that of 98SE. With XP Pro I had to design a special routine to run 4DOS in a DOS window.

Does Vista resolve either of these indefensible disorders? I suspect not.

Performance gets a C?? Vista is 1/3rd slower than XP. I think that warrants a big fat F--!

I have had Vista for about a year...and I'm as miserable today as the day I bought it. First of all, I bought it at Circuit City and was not given a choice: they only had Vista and I could not get XP (which is what was required of me from my school). Okay, I'll be honest - I am no computer guru. In fact, my necessity for computers was practically nill until I decided to take my entire degree online. So, what I needed from Vista was simple: speed, more speed, iTunes compatability, and ease of use. What I got... was a machine that refuses to operate. When I right click to copy something it could take up to 2 minutes to respond. Microsoft Word? Only when it wants to open! Oh and if it's a saved file, good luck because it may not be "able to find the file." Then I had all of this extra crap which I did not need - and my brother (who's the computer expert) tells me not to buy more ram because that's just covering the problem and not fixing the problem. What the hell can I do? If you have any ideas please let me know - my email is fmgwacs317@aol.com (please put "Vista" in the subject, thanks!) M.

Grade: F

2 times more hardware power to run 2 times slower then xp that gives it a FAIL.
vista offers nothing new FAIL.
with all the bugs and still incompatable with many things FAIL.
marketing i give it a B. it was advertised..
but it was marketing hype so yeah a FAIL
security is annoying! does it really help? no i dont think so FAIL.

ladys and gentlemen welcome to the new windows ME with a paint job!

I don't know how you can give Vista an A in stability.

I give it a D.

XP with SP3 was far more stable.

Linux blows it away.

The basic functions of an OS is file management and to provide a STANDARD environment to acces programs. The utilities are a bonus, but should follow suit.

There are so many incosistancies in Vista it's hard to believe you have to buy it.

The file integrity and indexing scheme is horrible. There are major delays in indexing, screwed up file deletion if the recycle bin has too many files in it (without providing an warning message like XP did), and more. With SP1, Vista crashes on my NEW computer at least twice daily. All the hardware has been checked out so no it's not hardware issue.

If you treat it like glass, it's probably ok, but I treat an OS like a workhorse and have many file conversions, updates, deletes, etc. It just doesn't hold up in this environment.

I've used vista for longer now and it just wobbles all over the place. D...