LF: Windows Vista Experiences, Pro Or Con

[7/4]

March 9, 2008

Digital Domain

They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know.

By RANDALL STROSS, NYTimes

ONE year after the birth of Windows Vista, why do so many Windows XP users still decline to “upgrade”?

Microsoft says high prices have been the deterrent. Last month, the company

trimmed prices on retail packages of Vista, trying to entice consumers

to overcome their reluctance. In the United States, an XP user can now

buy Vista Home Premium for $129.95, instead of $159.95.

An alternative theory, however, is that Vista’s reputation precedes

it. XP users have heard too many chilling stories from relatives and

friends about Vista upgrades that have gone badly. The graphics chip

that couldn’t handle Vista’s whizzy special effects. The long delays as

it loaded. The applications that ran at slower speeds. The printers,

scanners and other hardware peripherals, which work dandily with XP,

that lacked the necessary software, the drivers, to work well with

Vista.

Can someone tell me again, why is switching XP for Vista an “upgrade”?

Here’s one story of a Vista upgrade early last year that did not go

well. Jon, let’s call him, (bear with me — I’ll reveal his full

identity later) upgrades two XP machines to Vista. Then he discovers

that his printer, regular scanner and film scanner lack Vista drivers.

He has to stick with XP on one machine just so he can continue to use

the peripherals.

Did Jon simply have bad luck? Apparently not. When another person,

Steven, hears about Jon’s woes, he says drivers are missing in every

category — “this is the same across the whole ecosystem.”

Then there’s Mike, who buys a laptop that has a reassuring “Windows

Vista Capable” logo affixed. He thinks that he will be able to run

Vista in all of its glory, as well as favorite Microsoft programs like

Movie Maker. His report: “I personally got burned.” His new laptop —

logo or no logo — lacks the necessary graphics chip and can run neither

his favorite video-editing software nor anything but a hobbled version

of Vista. “I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine,” he says.

It turns out that Mike is clearly not a naïf. He’s Mike Nash, a

Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management. And

Jon, who is dismayed to learn that the drivers he needs don’t exist?

That’s Jon A. Shirley, a Microsoft board member and former president

and chief operating officer. And Steven, who reports that missing

drivers are anything but exceptional, is in a good position to know:

he’s Steven Sinofsky, the company’s senior vice president responsible

for Windows.

Their remarks come from a stream of internal communications at

Microsoft in February 2007, after Vista had been released as a

supposedly finished product and customers were paying full retail

price. Between the nonexistent drivers and PCs mislabeled as being

ready for Vista when they really were not, Vista instantly acquired a

reputation at birth: Does Not Play Well With Others.

We usually do not have the opportunity to overhear Microsoft’s most

senior executives vent their personal frustrations with Windows. But a

lawsuit filed against Microsoft in March 2007 in United States District

Court in Seattle has pried loose a packet of internal company

documents. The plaintiffs, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, bought PCs

in late 2006, before Vista’s release, and contend that Microsoft’s

“Windows Vista Capable” stickers were misleading when affixed to

machines that turned out to be incapable of running the versions of

Vista that offered the features Microsoft was marketing as distinctive

Vista benefits.

Last month, Judge Marsha A. Pechman granted class-action status to

the suit, which is scheduled to go to trial in October. (Microsoft last

week appealed the certification decision.)

Anyone who bought a PC that Microsoft labeled “Windows Vista

Capable” without also declaring “Premium Capable” is now a party in the

suit. The judge also unsealed a cache of 200 e-mail messages and

internal reports, covering Microsoft’s discussions of how best to

market Vista, beginning in 2005 and extending beyond its introduction

in January 2007. The documents incidentally include those accounts of

frustrated Vista users in Microsoft’s executive suites.

Today, Microsoft boasts that there are twice as many drivers

available for Vista as there were at its introduction, but performance

and graphics problems remain. (When I tried last week to contact Mr.

Shirley and the others about their most recent experiences with Vista,

David Bowermaster, a Microsoft spokesman, said that no one named in the

e-mail messages could be made available for comment because of the

continuing lawsuit.)

The messages were released in a jumble, but when rearranged into chronological order, they show a tragedy in three acts.

Act 1: In 2005, Microsoft plans to say that only PCs that are

properly equipped to handle the heavy graphics demands of Vista are

“Vista Ready.”

Act 2: In early 2006, Microsoft decides to drop the graphics-related

hardware requirement in order to avoid hurting Windows XP sales on

low-end machines while Vista is readied. (A customer could reasonably

conclude that Microsoft is saying, Buy Now, Upgrade Later.) A semantic

adjustment is made: Instead of saying that a PC is “Vista Ready,” which

might convey the idea that, well, it is ready to run Vista, a PC will

be described as “Vista Capable,” which supposedly signals that no

promises are made about which version of Vista will actually work.

The decision to drop the original hardware requirements is

accompanied by considerable internal protest. The minimum hardware

configuration was set so low that “even a piece of junk will qualify,”

Anantha Kancherla, a Microsoft program manager, said in an internal

e-mail message among those recently unsealed, adding, “It will be a

complete tragedy if we allowed it.”

Act 3: In 2007, Vista is released in multiple versions, including

“Home Basic,” which lacks Vista’s distinctive graphics. This placed

Microsoft’s partners in an embarrassing position. Dell,

which gave Microsoft a postmortem report that was also included among

court documents, dryly remarked: “Customers did not understand what

‘Capable’ meant and expected more than could/would be delivered.”

All was foretold. In February 2006, after Microsoft abandoned its

plan to reserve the Vista Capable label for only the more powerful PCs,

its own staff tried to avert the coming deluge of customer complaints

about underpowered machines. “It would be a lot less costly to do the

right thing for the customer now,” said Robin Leonard, a Microsoft

sales manager, in an e-mail message sent to her superiors, “than to

spend dollars on the back end trying to fix the problem.”

Now that Microsoft faces a certified class action, a judge may be

the one who oversees the fix. In the meantime, where does Microsoft go

to buy back its lost credibility?

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San

Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

[JSngry]

Jim, your posts often show keen vision, but when it comes to computers.....well

Macs will run your flawed Windows, too. That said, their Leopard easily outruns anything the Gates people can try to emulate.

Afterthought: What happens when computers crash? It's been years since that happened to any of my Macs.

I've never used a Mac, but the repeated claims of superiority by all who do have not gone unnoticed!

But we need compatability between work and school and home, so that means sticking with (or as you'd no doubt say, being stuck with!) PC.

At some point, though, when I can have a machine just for me and my own world, I'd love to get into the Mac world, just to see what the deal is. I mean, so many people being so enthusiastic about the platform, that's not accidental.

[Christiern]

And don't forget, Macs can handle Windows as well as Tigers and Leopards.

[JSngry]

Hey, if I see tigers and leopards out side my windows, you best believe I'm calling Mack!

[Christiern]

[A Lark Ascending]

The one problem I've had with Vista is that my year old HP printer-scanner won't work with it.

Managed this morning to download the necessary from the HP site and it's now going perfectly.

Took a bit of patience trying to find the vital things to click amidst oceans of geek-speak but got there.

[Dave Garrett]

Just got a new HP laptop for my wife for her birthday this week. 1.9 GHz dual-core AMD Athlon 64 CPU, 2GB RAM, DVD burner, 160GB HD, Vista Home Premium. So far no problems, although we haven't really used it for anything serious yet. The sole issue seems to be the amount of resource-hogging crapware that comes preinstalled - Vongo (from what I gather, some sort of video-on-demand service) is particularly insidious as it resists most normal attempts to uninstall it to the point where some people are calling it a virus. Googling around, I think I found the solution to get rid of it, but haven't had a chance to try it yet.

The first thing I did was install Firefox and the free version of AVG Anti-Virus. Will probably also upgrade from 2GB to 4GB of RAM at some point. Vista sure looks slick, but I haven't seen a whole lot so far beyond looks that would justify the bump up in hardware specs from XP required to run it.

[7/4]

I installed it on my parents machine two weeks ago. I happen to be staying there every night, so it works out for both parties. Except...

• problems transferring their old email & address book from the old Thunderbird that was on Win XP.
  
• problems setting up their 2nd HP printer.
  
• problems with user rights opening Word documents with multiple users setup on the machine.
  
• problems with user rights using Retrospect backup.
  
• problems with Vista installing older programs. I thought MS OS were backwardly compatible.
  

[Cliff Englewood]

[*]problems with Vista installing older programs. I thought MS OS were backwardly compatible.

That is probably the biggest crock of shit Microsoft has ever come up with, none of their products are ever really backward compatible. I'm sticking with XP though, better the devil you know.

[7/4]

[*]problems with Vista installing older programs. I thought MS OS were backwardly compatible.

That is probably the biggest crock of shit Microsoft has ever come up with, none of their products are ever really backward compatible. I'm sticking with XP though, better the devil you know.

I needed a new copy of XP and they don't sell them anymore.

[Quincy]

[*]problems with Vista installing older programs. I thought MS OS were backwardly compatible.

That is probably the biggest crock of shit Microsoft has ever come up with, none of their products are ever really backward compatible. I'm sticking with XP though, better the devil you know.

I needed a new copy of XP and they don't sell them anymore.

Well if others are in the same boat, there's always eBay. Every flavor of craptastic XP you could ask for.

[Rooster_Ties]

I'm sticking with XP though, better the devil you know.

That was my thought too, exactly.

[7/4]

Now I'm thinking of going back to XP.

...

[JSngry]

Zero problems for me so far with all new machine/software...actually somehow got the dreaded "secure network" virus a few weeks ago & once I got over that initial WTF fear-and-dread was able to disable it simply be dragging the folder from the Start Menu to the Recycle bin & then going back and cleaning up. No need to restart in Safe Mode or anything... Pretty cool shit, that wsx.

Sounds like (both here and everywhere else) that virtually all the issues w/Vista are with backwards comparability, especially w/installs over pre-existing installs. Since that was not a factor for me, I must say that I've been pretty darn pleased with Vista myself.

So far. And someday I am going to try a Mac.

[Chuck Nessa]

So far. And someday I am going to try a Mac.

[JSngry]

You smile now, but I am going to use it to create hour-long house remixes of the AEC box, because Macs got it like 'dat, yo.

Edited September 8, 2009 by JSngry

[Chuck Nessa]

Gopherit.

Then you can get the complaints about adding too much music.

Edited September 8, 2009 by Chuck Nessa

[JSngry]

Are you serious, you got complaints like that?

Dude, sir, that is just plain wrong.

[Chuck Nessa]

Are you serious, you got complaints like that?

Dude, sir, that is just plain wrong.

See the recent Signal to Noise review of the Congliptious reissue. Hard to find at the end of the reissues page.

and...I've received complaints on this board about my upcoming Bowie reissue with all the material.

I'm going broke delivering the music and no one is happy.

Edited September 8, 2009 by Chuck Nessa

[JSngry]

Nah, I don't/can't read stuff like that any more. Cats are getting too far removed from the real time and place to talk to me about stuff like that in terms that matter to me. Not that they shouldn't be making terms that matter to them, I'm just saying...It's like I'll never hear Benny Goodman like my Uncle Doyle did, and they'll never hear Roscoe like I do. No matter how much everybody gets "right", after a certain age gap, like it or not, it becomes "history" instead of "your life" It's all good, that's life, but...I'm sure you can understand. I'm still writing my own "reviews" of this music, and probably will be until I die. That's the only ones I care about at this point.

Are you serious, you got complaints like that?

Dude, sir, that is just plain wrong.

See the recent Signal to Noise review of the Congliptious reissue. Hard to find at the end of the reissues page.

Sounds like cause for a complaint that they are giving too much review!

[Chuck Nessa]

Whatever.

If I hadn't seen Roscoe, Muhal, etc this week an had encouragement from then, I'd stop. As long as they are happy I'll try to sublimate the other stuff.

Forget all this and give prayers to whoever you admire for Mr Earl Lavon Freeman. He played the fest but is not well. I am praying for him. Thanks to Bill Gates for this thread so I could spread this word.

Apologies to all if I sound line Allen Lowe.

[Free For All]

Forget all this and give prayers to whoever you admire for Mr Earl Lavon Freeman. He played the fest but is not well. I am praying for him.

Very sorry to hear this. Thinking positive thoughts for him....

....and for you too, Chuck!

Edited September 8, 2009 by Free For All

[Uncle Skid]

Forget all this and give prayers to whoever you admire for Mr Earl Lavon Freeman. He played the fest but is not well. I am praying for him.

Very sorry to hear this. Thinking positive thoughts for him....

....and for you too, Chuck!

Seconded.

[Chuck Nessa]

sorry to mess with this thread.

back to the topic at hand.

sorry.

[JSngry]

No, Von is more important than Vista. Easily.