The Windows "Mojave" Experiment [Archive]

Jason Dunn

07-26-2008, 04:29 PM

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9998336-56.html?tag=nefd.lede' target='_blank'>http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9...l?tag=nefd.lede</a> </div>"After months of searching for ways to defend its oft-maligned Windows operating system, Microsoft may just have found its best weapon: Vista's skeptics. Spurred by an e-mail from someone deep in the marketing ranks, Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista. "Oh wow," said one user, eliciting exactly the exclamation that Microsoft had hoped to garner when it first released the operating system more than 18 months ago. Instead, the operating system got mixed reviews and criticisms for its lack of compatibility and other headaches."This is nothing short of brilliant. It's often said that perception is reality, and the perception of Windows Vista amongst Joe Consumer tends to be fairly negative - though Joe Consumer would be hard pressed to explain why. I've heard people complain about Vista, but when pressed they admit they have little to no experience with Vista and they "just heard" it wasn't any good. Apple's attack ads are brutally effective at fostering this notion, and Microsoft was naïve to think that the slick, prime-time ads wouldn't have an impact on the general public. I don't pretend to be clever enough to know exactly how Microsoft should have responded, but they needed to do something and they didn't. I'm really looking forward to seeing the video footage from the Mojave experiment - if Microsoft is willing to spend the big bucks to advertise the results on prime-time TV, they could start to reap some significant rewards in terms of consumer perception.It's also important to note that the demos were done on an HP Pavilion DV2000 notebook with 2 GB of RAM - as in, not a $4000 computer with high-end hardware. The dv2000 is a typical notebook that a consumer would purchase for under $1000 USD - showing that Windows Vista doesn't require massive hardware to run properly.Are you one of those Windows Vista skeptics?

EscapePod

07-26-2008, 05:51 PM

Mojave is just too slow and buggy. Its just a new dress on an old Windows. There aren't any drivers available. All my old equipment (Intel Q6800, 4 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD) is all obsolete.

I want my Vista back!!!

j/k :-)

Rob Alexander

07-26-2008, 10:21 PM

I recently decided that it's time for a new desktop computer (mine is 5 years old), but I was concerned about all the negative things I was hearing about Vista. So I scoured the forums to see if I could find out exactly what it was that people didn't like about it. It was hard to get details because most people in offering opinions don't actually say anything specific. But the details I did find seemed to boil down to two issues: hardware/software compatibility and speed.

Compatibility is something that's pretty easy to assess because I have a finite number of existing peripherals and programs and I can check the status of each to be sure I won't be having any deal-breaking problems. As with any new OS, there will always be something you leave behind for lack of drivers or compatibility, so I'm not too worried about that.

Speed is another issue because it's the main reason I am considering a new system. I agree with the people who say they don't want all the benefits of a new hardware system eaten up by the operating system, leaving them in about the same place as they were with their older hardware and XP. But I also understand that Vista is doing useful things in the background that help to make my computing experience safer and more productive. It's a balance and it's really hard to figure out just where you'll fall in that tradeoff between speed and useful background tasks.

So I am still torn and I find myself not making a decision because I'm unsure of which way to go. Do I just go ahead and get Vista and move on to the next thing? Do I put my copy of XP on a new system (and put Linux on the old one)? Do I just wait a while longer and see how much extra time I can get out of this old system? If Vista didn't have this image problem, I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought and I'd already have a new computer with the new OS. So I can relate to the problem they are having here. If enthusiastic people like me are immobilized by the uncertainty of Vista's reputation, then how many regular computer users out there are too? That impact goes beyond MS to the entire industry. I don't know what they should do, but they must do something to change this perception. This sounds like a good start.

Janak Parekh

07-26-2008, 10:39 PM

It's also important to note that the demos were done on an HP Pavilion DV2000 notebook with 2 GB of RAM - as in, not a $4000 computer with high-end hardware. The dv2000 is a typical notebook that a consumer would purchase for under $1000 USD - showing that Windows Vista doesn't require massive hardware to run properly. Well, that's true now -- but when Vista came out, those kinds of laptops were significantly more expensive. As the price of hardware continues to fall, and drivers are improved, a lot of the initial teething issues around Vista are disappearing. The main question is if (when?) the public perception will change. Initial impressions are hard to fix. :(

--janak

cjhp

07-27-2008, 02:33 AM

Well I guess I would consider myself one of the few Vista advocates. I have some influence over some people as I am an IT admin responsible for about 200 users so I get the question a number of times. I also spend some of my spare time doing a little IT work on the side. I find Vista very stable and really think that you would find Vista to be faster than perception suggests. I have been running Vista since RC1. I also am running Vista on a 10 year old home built desktop (2 year old hard drive), a 5 year old laptop, and a 3 year old desktop. It is a little slow on the old desktop but it only has 512MB of ram and is mostly used for games for my kids all under 8. The system I am on now and is used the most in my house by everyone is the laptop which is running an Intel Pentium M at 1700MHz with 1GB of RAM. Obviously this laptop started out running XP. I loved the upgrade. The power managment, speed and stability were outstanding. I never had any trouble with drivers or anything. I have also just seen a few demonstations recently on the improvement on the networking stack etc and was once again very impressed. I tell people that ask that Vista is really getting a bum rap from the press and people that should know better. I think that people really take the Apple adds to heart as if a competitor is actually going to tell the truth or not stretch the truth a bit...

Felix Torres

07-27-2008, 01:22 PM

Vista needs more RAM than XP.
That's it.
(It really, really likes good 3D graphics but it doesn't need them.)
Performance-wise Vista is about the same as XP on the exact same box as long as you up the RAM a notch. Which is to say, Vista on 512MB is XP on 256; doable but not fun.
XP started shining at 512MB and did well at 1GB; Vista starts looking good at 1GB and shines at 1.5GB. Given RAM prices this is a non-issue.

I've been running Vista on two boxes (a cheap low-end desktop and a tablet) for a while with no issues beyond the ones that usually crop up during a generational transition (drivers and poorly-written software that won't run on anything but the old OS). And even those haven't really bit me; the drivers existed, I just had to get them from the web.
Yes, Vista looks and works differently than XP (that is sorta the point, no?) and yes, it requires users to change some habits. But the habits in question are generally bad. And if you really, really want to persist in those habits, you can tell Vista to stop nagging you.

The switch from XP to Vista hasn't really been all that different from the switch from 3.1 to 95 or 98 to 2000; its just that folks really expected Vista to be a service pack update with some eye candy (like some other vendors issue) and had forgotten what a true generational OS-shift looks like.

Microsoft's biggest sin with Vista was leaving XP in place for 6 years.

(Well, and letting Apple's product libel campaign go unchallenged for two years...)

stlbud

07-27-2008, 02:11 PM

So, Vista needs newer hardware, and Vista needs more RAM, and Vista isn't compatible with older hardware, and Vista isn't compatible with older software.

And NEITHER WAS XP! The same complaints (I've said this before - go look) were out at the same time XP was first introduced.

My only question, why didn't the Vista complaints go away as fast as they did with XP? I can only guess -

* Microsoft didn't deliver Vista on time - way past the delivery date than with XP
* Microsoft didn't deliver what was promised - What exactly did they promise anyway?
* Microsoft took it on the chin when people started complaining - and worse, let Apple lead the chants of how awful Vista was.

These can all be fixed with marketing and PR. It's about time they did something about the marketing.

follick

07-27-2008, 03:04 PM

Vista has had the same teething problems you would expect from any new OS. The driver problems, the increased hardware demands, the software incompatibilities, etc.

For most new OS releases the obvious advantages and new features outweigh the temporary problems. Vista's big problem is that it doesn't really offer any significant obvious advantages over XP for most users. So why go through all the bother?

ptyork

07-27-2008, 05:20 PM

I had to get a new graphics card for Vista to work properly (or so the upgrade adviser kept telling me, though in retrospect, it was probably just for Aero). Finally got the card and installed Vista (even did an XP upgrade) and have had very, very few problems. Far and away the worst issues are with permissions and security and old apps (I still can't properly run iTunes with user account protection running). To me, having the UAP on by default was the #1 reason for the negative feedback on new hardware. That, and making it difficult for average end-users to turn it off. Short of this, the OS is quite good. Better in most ways that XP for sure (though for the most part it is only visibly better in terms of eye candy).

HOWEVER, for 6 years and many billions of dollars worth of effort, this is pathetic...I'd expect far more than nominal improvements (at best) and eye candy for my this kind of investment. Still, I certainly don't see a reason to bash the OS itself at this point. Certainly I wouldn't pay to downgrade to XP, which is the most humorous thing going these days ("XP downgrade included in price!! ** Windows Vista Home Premium subtract $50.").

pocketdoc

07-27-2008, 05:44 PM

I have been a devoted Windows user since Win98. There have been bumps and hiccups with each update and new version, but with Vista, I have become quite disappointed.

Vista needs powerful hardware to run moderately well. Even on a very fast computer, I have frequent lock-ups, shutdowns and all sorts of crashes. And this is on many different computers, not just one.

For the first time in 20+ years, I am drifting toward Apple and Linux. MS really blew it this time, in my opinion.

Vincent Ferrari

07-27-2008, 06:06 PM

Problems with Vista? Honestly, no, but I will say that there are definitely more issues than "marketing" and "perception."

1. UAC gets in the way. Period. If I'm logged into a computer as administrator and installing an application (by clicking a setup exe) it should not prompt me more than once, if at all. UAC needs some granular control over how aggressive you want it to be. In my company, we use Office 2k3 and installing it on Vista is a painful process. Why? You HAVE to turn UAC off to do it, otherwise you just get a stupid window that pops up and says "Requires Elevation." Thanks, Microsoft. Really.

2. On every single Vista machine I've used from a lowly Dell 1525 to a high-end maxed out XPS M1330, it randomly freezes (it eventually comes back), lags, stutters, jitters, and so on. These are both machines that I have very minimal software on, plenty of RAM (both have 3 gigs) and and are pretty much new out of the box. Is it unbearable? Nope. It's just annoying, and it happens way too frequently for a new machine that had Vista installed. The 1330 is only a few months old and the 1525 is brand new.

3. Application compatibility is perfect. If you have all new apps. If your stuff is a bit older, it's not 100%. They've improved it, to their credit, but that's not a marketing problem. It's a problem. Period.

Vista isn't the end of the computing world like many would have you believe. It also isn't just a marketing issue like Microsoft would have you believe. As usual, somewhere between both sides is the truth, but to say that people just looooooooooooooooooove Vista as long as they don't know what it is is just flat out stupid, and anyone who buys into it is probably already sold on Vista anyway.

Besides, what's the marketing campaign gonna look like?

"Vista... It doesn't suck as much as everyone says!"

Macguy59

07-27-2008, 07:26 PM

My biggest gripes are that some functions require more steps to complete than XP does, terrible looking fonts (default) and the unnecessarily long time it takes Vista to see and connect to a wireless network. This last one in particular perplexes me as OS X handles this function much quicker in my experience. While I still much prefer OS X on Apple hardware, my gripes are not deal breakers and I could still get things done with Vista.

Stinger

07-27-2008, 08:37 PM

Are you one of those Windows Vista skeptics?

Yes, I am.

I had the same reaction as the people in the Mojave Experiment initially. I was generally impressed with the look and feel of Vista when I installed it on my main machine.

However, I then realised that Vista didn't play nice with my (Vista certified) hardware and some of my key apps didn't work with Vista either.

I've got nothing against Vista apart from its driver support. I'll have to wait until I buy a new machine (in 2010 probably) until I jump on the Vista bandwagon.

Adam Krebs

07-27-2008, 08:54 PM

Dan Lyons, a.k.a. "Fake Steve Jobs", has an interesting take (http://realdanlyons.com/blog/2008/07/25/borgs-new-trick-to-get-people-to-use-vista-call-it-something-else/) on the campaign, comparing it to the decades-old Folger's ads (or more recently the Pizza Hutt Toscani pasta ads). I've been a hapy Vista user, and while the eye candy and small improvements are great (such as live thumbnails of windows, Start Menu search, and breadcrumb bar), I really don't see them as compelling reasons to upgrade. There isn't enough here for me as a consumer that affect my day-to-day interaction with the OS.

Paladin27

07-28-2008, 01:25 PM

Well, that's true now -- but when Vista came out, those kinds of laptops were significantly more expensive. As the price of hardware continues to fall, and drivers are improved, a lot of the initial teething issues around Vista are disappearing. The main question is if (when?) the public perception will change. Initial impressions are hard to fix. :(

--janak
Actually, I bought a Gateway laptop with a Tablet screen for $999 at Best Buy about a month before Vista came out. It had the Vista Capable sticker on it, and when Vista was released I upgraded through Gateway's Vista program and it's worked GREAT ever since. So I think you could get a $1,000 laptop even before it came out that works great with Vista.

Vincent Ferrari

07-28-2008, 02:09 PM

So I think you could get a $1,000 laptop even before it came out that works great with Vista.

You could, but the reality is that most of those "Vista Ready" systems proved to be anything but, or "ready" for Home Basic.

There is no aspect in which the Vista launch wasn't botched.

Felix Torres

07-28-2008, 03:16 PM

The other area in which Vista has been maligned is in taking the fall for installed crapware. The poster child is Sony but HP and the other retail vendors are just as guilty.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=429

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=501

First thing I do with *any* new PC (going back to the Win3.1 era) is uninstall anything I have no intention of using and anything that autoloads that I can manually launch on demand. 90%+ of these items are *not* part of the std Windows load.
Makes a huge difference.

Odds are that the bulk of the crashes and lost performance most folks see are from the crapware.

One thing MS is working on is naming names and pointing fingers so consumer know who is ruining their computing experience. Just the threat of doing that got Dell and Sony to (semi) clean up their acts...

Vincent Ferrari

07-28-2008, 03:22 PM

Dell isn't that bad any more, but Sony and HP are criminally bad and I think MS needs to exert some leverage to get them to cool it with the crapware.

Jason Dunn

07-28-2008, 04:37 PM

Speed is another issue because it's the main reason I am considering a new system. I agree with the people who say they don't want all the benefits of a new hardware system eaten up by the operating system...

Vista's speed "problems" are almost purely myth. There are still, I think, some minor speed hits with video drivers in gaming, but we're talking usually less than 5%...things that hard core gamers might care about, but you and I? Probably not.

As for Vista's day to day speed, since SP1 came out, I have no qualms about saying that Vista is faster and more responsive than Windows XP. The way Vista uses available RAM to pre-cache programs is superb. On XP, if you had 2 GB of RAM, at boot you might have been using 500 MB or so, and you'd have 1500 MB free. Well free RAM doesn't benefit you at all - it's just sitting there doing nothing. Vista will fill that free RAM with executables for your most recently used programs, etc...so when you launch Firefox, it will launch fast.

And there's also the issue of not swapping out to the hard drive. You know with XP if you leave a few windows (programs) open, you minimize them and go to lunch, then come back in an hour and when you maximize them you have to watch your hard drive grind and grind as it loads the program back into active memory? That issue completely vanishes with Vista.

Jason Dunn

07-28-2008, 04:39 PM

Well, that's true now -- but when Vista came out, those kinds of laptops were significantly more expensive.

Are you saying that 2 GB of RAM on a laptop was significantly rarer or more expensive than it is now? I disagree. My mother-in-law got one of the first Vista-based Dell Inspiron laptops, and if memory serves the 2 GB RAM upgrade was free. RAM has been dirt cheap for a couple of years now.

Jason Dunn

07-28-2008, 05:46 PM

Vista's big problem is that it doesn't really offer any significant obvious advantages over XP for most users. So why go through all the bother?

I agree that Microsoft did a bad job at educating users about the advantages of Vista over XP, and the confusing number of versions didn't help, but Vista offers much, much more out of the box than XP does (when we're comparing XP Home vs. Vista Home Premium). Heck, the Media Center interface alone for looking at pictures and interacting with music is enough to wow most people. Better Movie Maker, real DVD burning with menus, Photo Gallery, instant search, much more stable (especially in dealing with video driver crashes), better performance with the right hardware of course)...there's a lot in Vista to like. But it's hard to articulate that to consumers, and Microsoft needs to do a better job at that.

Jason Dunn

07-28-2008, 06:08 PM

Far and away the worst issues are with permissions and security and old apps (I still can't properly run iTunes with user account protection running).

That's interesting...I run iTunes on my wife's computer, a Vista Home Premium HP Slimline system, and I have zero problems with iTunes - I certainly never see a UAC prompt. So is that a problem with Vista, a problem with iTunes, or a problem with your system? This isn't the right thread to debug it, but if it were a problem with Vista specifically, something that happened with iTunes + Vista, I'd be seeing it...so maybe there's another problem with your system.

Jason Dunn

07-28-2008, 06:20 PM

Vista needs powerful hardware to run moderately well. Even on a very fast computer, I have frequent lock-ups, shutdowns and all sorts of crashes. And this is on many different computers, not just one.

I think Vista needing powerful hardware is a myth. I think Vista needing *compatible* hardware is a reality. I'm running Vista on an old 17" Fujitsu laptop: 1.86 Ghz Pentium M CPU, 2 GB RAM, some old ATI video card. It runs very nicely on it, and that's with the stock Microsoft drivers - Fujitsu never released any Vista-compatible drivers. Usually installing Vista on old hardware is asking for trouble, but in this case it worked out quite well. Heck, I installed Vista on my little Fujitsu P7010D, with a 1.2 Ghz Pentium M ULV CPU and 2 GB of RAM, and it ran quite well (sans Aero). Vista does not require high-end hardware, and if you don't want Aero, you don't need to use it - so you don't need a powerful video card.

I've certainly seen Vista have trouble on powerful hardware, but I don't know if it's fair to blame Vista. For example (and I'll go into this in more detail on the front page this week), I had a system based on an Asus MN32N motherboard with an AMD 6400+ CPU. It worked quite well, but I had a few niggling issues and performance issues (specifically related to hard drive access) that I just couldn't nail down. So I decided to pick up a newer motherboard, something that's really designed for Vista (the first Asus motherboard was an XP-era board). The new Asus motherboard (an M3A78-EMH HDMI) was a complete and total disaster. Performance was in the toilet, I had a dozen different issues with it, and the only thing I changed was the motherboard - the RAM and CPU were the same, and the video card and hard drive were actually upgraded. I fought with it for a month, and last week I threw up my hands and put in an Intel motherboard and Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, and it *screams* now.

Bottom line is I think that chipsets and motherboards matter: and if Asus decides to release a piece of crap motherboard, there's really nothing Microsoft can do to stop them. I've certainly found that I've had more problems with my DIY machines running Vista than the pre-built systems and laptops running Vista.

As to why you're having crashes and lock-ups, I'd suspect hardware failure rather than the OS...but Vista's certainly not perfect, maybe it's having trouble with a piece of your hardware. Was this an XP-era machine you installed Vista on?

Rob Alexander

07-28-2008, 06:33 PM

Vista's speed "problems" are almost purely myth. There are still, I think, some minor speed hits with video drivers in gaming, but we're talking usually less than 5%...things that hard core gamers might care about, but you and I? Probably not.

Well I'd have to say that their little ads worked in at least one case, even though I haven't seen them. This discussion got me looking at the Vista issues again and reconsidering whether there is any further reason to delay my upgrade.

So I have pulled the trigger on a Dell XPS 420 system to replace my aging desktop. With a Core 2 Quad CPU (Q9450), 4GB of RAM, 1TB RAID0 array and a fast video card, the system should easily have the resources to take advantage of the Vista features you talked about. This couldn't help but to be a substantially faster setup than my current XP system.

The only things I'll have to wait and see on are some software compatibility issues. It's really hard to know how things will work in real life because so few companies want to make a clear statement of compatibility for software that was released before Vista. That's actually fair enough since I understand they don't want to go back and retest all their old products, but it makes it hard to know what will and won't work so I'll just find out when I install it and deal with whatever arises when it does.

One pleasant surprise is that my 8 year old HP slide scanner (S20) actually has Vista drivers available. I thought I'd have to give that up for sure because it's so old. I haven't had much good to say about HP in recent years, but I'll give them credit for that one.

Anyway, I'm sure there will be some bumps along the way, but it'll be fun to have a fast computer again, and to explore the new (to me) OS.

Jason Dunn

07-28-2008, 06:37 PM

1. UAC gets in the way. Period. If I'm logged into a computer as administrator and installing an application (by clicking a setup exe) it should not prompt me more than once, if at all.

Yeah, I agree that UAC is too aggressive. Changing the clock requires a UAC prompt - why? I will say though that when I first set up my mother in law with her Dell Vista laptop, I explained UAC prompts to her thinking she'd run into them and get frustrated. Two weeks later, she still hadn't seen one. So I think geeks run into UAC prompts far more often than regular users, and our perception of how often they pop up is quite distorted.

2. On every single Vista machine I've used from a lowly Dell 1525 to a high-end maxed out XPS M1330, it randomly freezes (it eventually comes back), lags, stutters, jitters, and so on.

I have an XPS M1330, and I haven't seen random freezes, lags, stutters, or jitters. Maybe we define those things differently. About the only thing about the M1330 that I think sucks is how long it takes to resume from sleep mode. Oh, and frequently the screen overlays for hardware controls (brightness, etc.) don't appear. But other than that, it works really well. Is Vista perfect? Nah - I'll still see it do the occasional strange thing on my computers, but what computer doesn't? People seem to look at Windows XP with rose-coloured glasses, like it never crashed or had performance issues. Heck, I've been OS X computers with issues too. ;)

3. Application compatibility is perfect. If you have all new apps. If your stuff is a bit older, it's not 100%. They've improved it, to their credit, but that's not a marketing problem. It's a problem. Period.

Everyone's experience varies here I guess, but I haven't run into any significant issues with application compatibility. And I guess that question is, where does Microsoft's responsibility end when it comes to applications developed by third parties? If you have an application that's only compatible with XP, and vendor refuses to upgrade it, you either stay with XP or you find a new vendor/application. I've been more than a little surprised at how bad some software developers were when it came to updating their applications for Vista.

Jason Dunn

07-28-2008, 06:47 PM

So I have pulled the trigger on a Dell XPS 420 system to replace my aging desktop. With a Core 2 Quad CPU (Q9450), 4GB of RAM, 1TB RAID0 array and a fast video card, the system should easily have the resources to take advantage of the Vista features you talked about.

Wow, nice system! :) That system will have absolutely no trouble with Vista. Since it's a Dell, you may have to uninstall some junk and update a few drivers here and there, but it should SCREAM with Vista on it. I will say that with all the indexing and optimization that Vista does, your first few boots will involve a lot of hard drive trashing - you'll want to keep it on for a few hours after you move all your data over. Vista needs some time to optimize itself and smooth out performance.

Be sure to have a very solid data back up system in place: RAID 0 is rolling the dice with data failure...but the speed is fun. :D

The only things I'll have to wait and see on are some software compatibility issues...but it makes it hard to know what will and won't work so I'll just find out when I install it and deal with whatever arises when it does.

What kind of software are we talking about here? I've found that a lot of software has Vista patches to smooth out Vista-related problems. And in almost every case I've seen, the developers will tell you what works and what doesn't. Remember you have the right-click "Run in Compatibility Mode" option as well.

One pleasant surprise is that my 8 year old HP slide scanner (S20) actually has Vista drivers available.

Wow, that is a bit surprising - nice one HP! :)

Jason Dunn

07-28-2008, 06:49 PM

Jason Dunn

07-28-2008, 06:52 PM

Oh, and I hope no one things I'm blindly defending Microsoft here: I'm just out to bash some Vista FUD. :D

Rob Alexander

07-29-2008, 03:17 AM

Wow, nice system! :) That system will have absolutely no trouble with Vista. Since it's a Dell, you may have to uninstall some junk and update a few drivers here and there, but it should SCREAM with Vista on it. I will say that with all the indexing and optimization that Vista does, your first few boots will involve a lot of hard drive trashing - you'll want to keep it on for a few hours after you move all your data over. Vista needs some time to optimize itself and smooth out performance.

I figure if I only allow myself a new system every five years or so, then I should make it solid when I do get a new one. (My wife can't understand how it can cost so much more than the $499 ones she sees in ads, but people here understand.) This should put me in good shape for another five years or so. Thanks for the suggestions about the indexing and stuff; I'll definitely do that. Luckily, Dell seems to be better than most on the junkware front. The only things going on this one that I didn't specifically request are some version of Roxio DVD Creator and the Google toolbar. They wouldn't let me leave those off, but I might just wipe it and reinstall the OS again myself.

Be sure to have a very solid data back up system in place: RAID 0 is rolling the dice with data failure...but the speed is fun. :D

Yeah, at least twice the risk of failure... perhaps more, but I'm pretty solid on setting up automatic backups. I've been using Carbonite for about the last year and, although I am giving it up due to some problems, I'll find myself another solution to keeping things safe. Perhaps Mozy. And I generally have local backups of really important stuff as well. But even with a fast disk, I find myself very impatient waiting for hard drive stuff to happen. I'm looking forward to this! :)

What kind of software are we talking about here? I've found that a lot of software has Vista patches to smooth out Vista-related problems. And in almost every case I've seen, the developers will tell you what works and what doesn't. Remember you have the right-click "Run in Compatibility Mode" option as well.

Mostly non-mainstream stuff. I run an older version of a program called Mathcad for building mathematical models. The latest version runs in Vista, but is about 3-4 versions later than mine. Since mine 1) does everything I need and 2) it the last version that doesn't require server-side authentication (I don't trust that with a small company with models that I've spent years building), I've just stayed with the older version from 2001. Odds are that it'll work fine, but of course no one can tell me since I'm the only person in the world still using a version this obsolete. ;) I also run a modeling program called Berkeley Madonna that I can't find any information on as to compatibility. There's always a risk that something like that won't work. It's a little fiddly anyway, requiring a specific version of Java runtime to be running. There are also a few little useful utilities and stuff, but I'll deal with it as it comes. Most of it will probably run just fine.

I'm expecting an experience similar to the one when I moved to XP. It's been so long that we've all forgotten that we waited for drivers, had software conflicts, wonky hardware issues, etc. But most things worked and the few things that didn't either had upgrades or competing applications available. I'll be surprised if I end up not liking it even more than XP.

Rob Alexander

07-29-2008, 03:30 AM

I had a further thought about speed. It's funny, when you think about speed on a computer, with most modern machines, what exactly do you wait for? I doubt any of us are running systems to underpowered that we have to wait 60 seconds for our favourite program to start up. For me, about all I really wait for any more is booting up, shutting down, and ripping/encoding/processing of media. The latter is more a function of the CPU/RAM/hard drive more than the OS.

Well, I must say that Adobe applications take a while to start up on my computer. For me, though, it's more about smoothness of multitasking as I often have multiple things going on at once. My current system (Pentium4 HT 2.6 GHz) is fine for light multitasking like printing or downloading in the background, but if anything CPU or disk intensive is going on, then everything else labors and feels like when you try to run in thigh-deep water. It's one of the reasons I wanted the quad core processor in my new system. Even if no single application on my system is written to use all four cores yet, I'll still get the benefit of different applications getting their own core. That should makes things run much more smoothly for my style of computing.

Janak Parekh

07-29-2008, 03:38 AM

Well, I must say that Adobe applications take a while to start up on my computer. Yeah, Adobe's bloatware of the worst kind. :(

Re 2GB of RAM and pricing: Jason, I'll take your word for it, I guess I've stopped tracking it closely enough. There were certainly other problems, drivers first and foremost, e.g., typical teething issues for any OS not made by Apple (and in the latter case, hardware control gives them a head start, so it's not really a fair to Microsoft to compare as such).

The "Vista Ready" campaign, however, was an absolute publicity nightmare. Microsoft should have resisted caving to Intel. Also, as someone else (Vincent?) said, I would very much like to see Microsoft hold a much harder line with OEMs about bloatware that's bundled with new machines. It's definitely giving Windows itself a bad impression, it did with XP, and does with Vista. For some reason, Microsoft really doesn't push hard enough with OEMs about the out-of-box user experience, either on Windows desktops or with Windows Mobile devices. Why, I don't know.

--janak

Jason Dunn

07-29-2008, 11:15 PM

Mostly non-mainstream stuff. I run an older version of a program called Mathcad for building mathematical models. The latest version runs in Vista, but is about 3-4 versions later than mine.

This might seem like a mildly crazy solution, but if the program turns out to not be Vista-compatible, what about running it inside a virtual machine? Download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, use your old copy of XP to get it running, and run your XP programs on XP...virtually. :) Your new computer certainly has the grunt to run a virtual OS on top of the real OS.

Jason Dunn

07-29-2008, 11:24 PM

There were certainly other problems, drivers first and foremost, e.g., typical teething issues for any OS not made by Apple (and in the latter case, hardware control gives them a head start, so it's not really a fair to Microsoft to compare as such).

Certainly, I won't argue that there weren't drivers issues - in fact, I'd say driver issues were the #1 problem with Vista at launch...but how much can I blame Microsoft for HP not having a driver for my 2600n laser printer until almost six months after Vista's launch? I think Microsoft shares some of the blame because I heard the driver model was changing up until the last minute and vendors didn't have much time to get drivers ready for Vista's launch, but ultimately HP has to bear the brunt of the blame for not having drivers ready for customers that own their products.

If Apple were to radically alter their driver model like Microsoft did with Vista (that's what I've read at least), I suspect OS X computers would have the same trouble with printers, scanners, etc. In fact, when OS X first came out, I think they DID have the same problems, didn't they? And didn't OS X receive a lot of damnation from Apple users for the first couple of years? People who had old Macs running OS 9, thinking they could keep using the same hardware with OS X, etc...is this starting to sound familiar? :D

Also, as someone else (Vincent?) said, I would very much like to see Microsoft hold a much harder line with OEMs about bloatware that's bundled with new machines.

Agreed. As for why they don't push harder against OEMs, the last time they did that they got sued. Microsoft is reluctant on many levels to throw their weight around, even if it's for doing something good for their customers like this.

follick

07-30-2008, 02:00 AM

... but Vista offers much, much more out of the box than XP does (when we're comparing XP Home vs. Vista Home Premium). Heck, the Media Center interface alone for looking at pictures and interacting with music is enough to wow most people. Better Movie Maker, real DVD burning with menus, Photo Gallery, instant search, much more stable (especially in dealing with video driver crashes), better performance with the right hardware of course)...there's a lot in Vista to like. But it's hard to articulate that to consumers, and Microsoft needs to do a better job at that.

I'm running XP Media Center on two PC's and Vista Home Premium on my third. I don't see any new significant features in Vista. Media Center is available in XP and Vista, but not in all versions of either. Vista certainly doesn't seem more stable to me. So educate me, what are the top three features that Vista has, that are not available in XP? Do they justify the typical problems in an operating system switch?

Rob Alexander

07-30-2008, 04:40 AM

This might seem like a mildly crazy solution, but if the program turns out to not be Vista-compatible, what about running it inside a virtual machine? Download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, use your old copy of XP to get it running, and run your XP programs on XP...virtually. :) Your new computer certainly has the grunt to run a virtual OS on top of the real OS.

Hey, that's not crazy at all. I haven't tried virtual machine software since I had a Pentium II and tried to run the original VMWare under Windows NT. I wanted to run some of my old Windows 98 games. It was so slow as to be all but unusable and I really haven't given much thought to the technology since. But with today's hardware and improvements in virtual machine software, this would be a real option. It could really save me a lot of trouble if something ends up just not working at all. Thanks for the suggestion!

Jason Dunn

07-30-2008, 06:03 PM

Jason Dunn

07-30-2008, 06:04 PM

It could really save me a lot of trouble if something ends up just not working at all. Thanks for the suggestion!

Good to hear - let me know how that works out for you. I don't have a lot of experience with VMs, but they seem like a perfect solution to your problem of wanting to use older software that works well on XP.

Janak Parekh

07-30-2008, 10:22 PM

Certainly, I won't argue that there weren't drivers issues - in fact, I'd say driver issues were the #1 problem with Vista at launch...but how much can I blame Microsoft for HP not having a driver for my 2600n laser printer until almost six months after Vista's launch? I didn't say you should blame MS for that. I did classify it as "typical teething" problems. ;)

If Apple were to radically alter their driver model like Microsoft did with Vista (that's what I've read at least), I suspect OS X computers would have the same trouble with printers, scanners, etc. Indeed, they did. The one advantage Apple has, however, is that their PC drivers themselves are highly controlled, and therefore upgrades generally are better (although not perfect).

Agreed. As for why they don't push harder against OEMs, the last time they did that they got sued. Microsoft is reluctant on many levels to throw their weight around, even if it's for doing something good for their customers like this. Yeah, but the past push-harder-on-OEMs was viewed as monopolizing, right? I think Microsoft could make a different case this time. (How about asking OEMs to at least give users the choice as to whether the apps should be installed?)

--janak

Jason Dunn

07-30-2008, 11:29 PM

Yeah, but the past push-harder-on-OEMs was viewed as monopolizing, right? I think Microsoft could make a different case this time. (How about asking OEMs to at least give users the choice as to whether the apps should be installed?)

I don't disagree with you at all - I hate crapware - but in some ways this is something that the OEMs would be even MORE up in arms about than IE bundling or anything else...if Microsoft were to go to HP or Dell and say "We won't let you license Windows until you stop bundling crapware", HP and Dell would be up in arms because they make an extra $50+ on every system they sell with crapware on it. So how can Microsoft "encourage" them to stop this practice? Hard to say...I think it's up to the customers to complain about it, reviewers to complain about crapware in the reviews, and put pressure on the OEMs to change. Maybe there's a way Microsoft can help, but I think it's an unfair assumption to make that it's up to them alone.

Janak Parekh

08-01-2008, 01:10 AM

Hard to say...I think it's up to the customers to complain about it, reviewers to complain about crapware in the reviews, and put pressure on the OEMs to change. Maybe there's a way Microsoft can help, but I think it's an unfair assumption to make that it's up to them alone. True, but MS has by far the biggest leverage to work with, and they are the ones being unfairly tarred about Windows slowness, etc. {shrug} I'm not optimistic the OEMs will do much, although Sony's recent movements are a start.

--janak

follick

08-03-2008, 01:04 PM

Vista certainly doesn't seem more stable to me. So educate me, what are the top three features that Vista has, that are not available in XP? Do they justify the typical problems in an operating system switch?
If Vista isn't more stable for you than XP, I'd say you either have an unstable install of Vista (home brewed hardware perhaps?) or you had the mother of all stable XP installations - I see less problems, overall, with Vista than with XP (it's not perfect, but it's better - the way Vista handles video driver crashes alone is vastly superior to XP).

The Vista system that I have is an expensive ($2500) Sony that comes only with Vista. That's why it has Vista. You seem to be of the opinion that a custom made computer, i.e. "home brewed hardware" is necessarily less stable than a system made by a major manufacturer. Perhaps you are thinking of overclocked computers which do trade off stability for speed. My main system is one I made myself with a design goal of stability, then speed. It's more stable than anything I could get for the same price from Dell or HP, etc. and B"IH it's never had a video driver crash. Major manufacturers tend to skimp on the quality of any parts not mentioned by name in their sales blurb. For example, I'm using much higher quality RAM than you would get from HP.

I have a Vista license as well as an XP license for my main system and XP is undoubtedly faster for me.

So for me, Vista is more stable. And faster - I feel like I can do much more, much quicker, on Vista than I could on XP. If you don't see the differences between XP and Vista (having both) then we're looking at very different sorts of things.

Obviously, which is why I asked my question. You are a knowledgeable person whose opinion I've listened to before and you seem to be very happy with Vista. I was wondering if there was some advantage to Vista that I have been overlooking.

It sounds like you're perfectly happy with XP, so trying to convince you otherwise is a waste of time. I can only tell you that I'd never, ever go back to XP. You seem to be looking for some sort of a "silver bullet", a killer feature that Vista has that will blow your mind...there isn't one. There are just 100's of small things that are better than XP (like being able to edit my Media Center TV shows easily in Movie Maker), and those small things add up to a better computer experience.

If the biggest feature advantage of Vista over XP that you can think of is easier editing of Media Center TV shows in Movie Maker, then Vista's public perception problem is easily explained. Why should anyone go through the typical pain and expense of an operating system switch just for that? More expensive hardware, upgrading all your software, lower overall system performance, working through driver problems just so you can do that?

Of course Microsoft didn't help itself with the whole Vista Compatible/ Vista Ready thing when Vista launched. Most consumers are not going to spend alot of time examining the nuance of such distinctions. They would expect that if a computer has a sticker on it from Microsoft saying it's good for Vista then it will work well with Vista. At Vista launch, most of the advertised computers with Vista I saw coming from HP and other major manufacturers had 512MB of RAM or even less and many had video cards that were less capable than you really want to see with Vista. This, combined with not giving hardware manufacturers enough time write drivers led IMHO to the public perception that Vista is even more slow, unstable and buggy than it really is.