[LINK] Even thieves don't want Vista

Frank O'Connor foconnor at ozemail.com.au
Tue Sep 2 13:54:21 AEST 2008 

My complaints with Vista (and I've got it installed on one of my boxen):

1. None of the good stuff (new file system, more advanced network 
services, better OS kernel integration) made it into the final 
release.

2. The front end looks prettier than XP, but has a huge number of 
overheads in terms of system performance. That said, some aspects of 
the new GUI are less helpful and intuitive (try uninstalling an 
application using the control panels for example) than their 
predecessor - XP.

3. The UAC is next to useless the way it was implemented (click the 
boxes as they come up, or copy files you want to mess with the the 
desk top and you circumvent it completely), and annoying in normal 
usage.

4. The DRM 'features' get in the way of normal usage, fail to achieve 
what they set out to do in a bit torrented world, and in no way 
represent added value to the user. Thankfully they are pretty easy to 
circumvent.

5. Still no way (unless you use third party utilities - which I do) 
to mount common foreign disk formats, easily auto-open foreign file 
formats in default applications, or handle the information 
interchange capabilities that other OS's (variants of LINUX, MacOS, 
Solaris etc) seem to handle by default.

6. Slowest formatting in its native formats of any OS I have used - 
especially aggravating in these days of terabyte hard disks. Slowest 
copying between volumes/partitions of any OS I have used

7. Memory management seems worse than XP - and that was pretty bad anyway.

8. New video and sound codecs and architecture way unstable and cause 
many application crashes with high end applications. In addition the 
new sound codecs and drivers seem to be something that actually 
reduce the capabilities of your sound hardware rather than add to 
them.

9. Same primitive error trapping as XP ... with even more 
catastrophic results. It's almost as if they use some algorithm like 
"if error then don't bother about even producing one of those old 
error info boxes (that just irritated them anyway), just crash the PC 
so fast the error can't be logged and leave them in the dark"

10. The OS based firewall and network services still suck big-time 
compared to other OS's.

My <faint> praises for Vista:

1. The GUI is better, contextual menu support is way better, and 
Vista native applications look way better.

2. The disk caching is way better.

3. Better user account setup means more inherent security in a 
networked environment.

4. Much easier to revert to older/more stable versions of Vista and 
disks, and to undo installs.

All up, I'm less than impressed. MS really needs to abandon the NT 
kernel (on which XP and Vista are still based), develop a much better 
file system, radically revise the driver architecture (it's still in 
the kernel - where an error can crash the OS - rather than the 
application heap), improve memory management, debug a lot of the 64 
bit code, and just work on their codec architectures. If I was them 
I'd license a variant of 'NIX, write a Rosetta like Windows parser, 
and develop their own front end and install their own codecs on top 
of it to give it a Windows look and feel, and interoperability with 
older versions of their software - which is what they were originally 
gonna do with BlackComb.

With Vista they forgot a few basic things, let a number of desirable 
features lapse, added about 30 million lines of code to the already 
overloaded Windows NT code base (and each line adds overheads and 
represent new possible points of failure), failed to provide the 
really cool OS level stuff they said they would provide, and 
essentially ended up putting a new front end on XP and adding a few 
utilities.

There is NO WAY Vista can be considered 'a great leap forward' any 
way you look at it.

And Dave ... I admire MS for the way in which they have managed to 
produce their OS's that run (fairly seamlessly) on such a wide 
variety of hardware, with such a huge (legacy and other) software 
library to support, and I alos like many of their codecs (eg. 
DirectX) and low level libraries (eg. MDS) that enable some cool 
applications and facilities.

But with Vista they failed spectacularly (and we should have all been 
warned when the 'feature shrink' started in the development phase). 
I'm running it on a high end quad core box with lots of RAM, a 
terabyte of hard disk space, some serious added specialised cards and 
other hardware ... and almost daily consider reinstalling XP.

					Regards,

At 9:05 PM -0700 31/8/08, David Goldstein wrote:
>So Karl... what are the facts? I assume you know them? I don't claim 
>in any way Microsoft is perfect, but it's not as bad as made out on 
>this list either. So I guess it's a case of you think you know 
>what's right, or what I was saying. But then, I guess, your 
>prejudices don't make for your story.
>
>As for Richard - some of your complaints are about Office 2007 and 
>not Vista. So some of your complaints are to do with getting to know 
>Office, and while I've never tried to work out if it could be done, 
>I was under the belief you could revert to the pull-down menus if 
>you wanted. And as for the "Microsoft nag screens, and partner nag 
>screens", in over 12 months of using Vista I've not had one of these.
>
>David
>
>
>
>
>----- Original Message ----
>From: Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au>
>To: Link List <link at anu.edu.au>
>Sent: Saturday, 30 August, 2008 1:52:07 PM
>Subject: Re: [LINK] Even thieves don't want Vista
>
>David Goldstein wrote:
>>  > Ahh, the usual Microsoft bashing exercise on Link...
>
>Ah, the usual "my opinions are facts, other people's opinions are
>prejudices" line.
>
>Regards, K.
>
>--
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
>http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)
>
>GPG fingerprint: DD23 0DF3 2260 3060 7FEC 5CA8 1AF6 D9E3 CFEE 6B28
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