Vista, bloody Vista!
I was having a friendly discussion in the pub at the weekend and was introduced to a college lecturer. He spoke quite fluently about IT in his college even though he admitted he is not very technically minded.
Then it came…Why Vista he asked, it knackers things, so his techie people tell him? Windows 98 which he has at home is fine 
GRRRR!
Except, it isn’t fine. His PC was falling apart at the seams, things just weren’t working. The more I questioned the more it became like a broken record. Why had Microsoft not left things alone. The fact that his quite clearly 18million year old dial-up modem wasn’t working was obviously Microsofts fault. They only update things in order to screw money out of poor victims like him. (This did stay friendly I hasten to add and many more pints were sunk during the discussions!)
And then the explanation of why Vista is so bad. According to his techie department, Vista had made printers stop working! Oh really. How about the fact that the printers in question were well known branded lasers of years ago vintage. Who makes them? It doesn’t bloody matter, it is not Microsoft thats for sure!
Forgive me for stating the bleeding obvious but love or loathe Vista, it is not Microsofts fault if half-arsed software and hardware companies do not bring out updated product for this operating system.
It has been on sale for over a year, beta’d for many years etc etc.
Like all operating systems before and probably in the future, people just do not like change and moan.
Get over it, buy a decent specced PC with Vista on it or seek out XP if you must but remember, would you choose to drive around in an old bashed up car that has been patched to the hilt or a new shiny ‘reliable’ one 
James Senior Said,
January 16, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
New Small Business Oriented blog - Microsoft Police (entry on licensing) and Vista bloody Vista (who's fault is it when things don't work on Vista) - David Overton's Blog Said,
January 17, 2008 @ 10:09 am
[...] Vista, bloody Vista! [...]
Paul Broadwith Said,
January 17, 2008 @ 11:57 am
While I agree with your comments about not blaming Microsoft for your old hardware not working (that is after all the responsibility of the manufacturers), I would ask you to look at it from the point of view of the average Joe in the street. They have purchased their printer, scanner, nice applications, shareware software, a bit of freeware software and their fantastic whizzy 300 button keyboard that does everything. It all works great with XP. They buy a new machine and none of it works!
To use your analogy It’s like buying that new shiny car only to discover your Sat Nav doesn’t work (wrong size of connector), your MP3 player doesn’t plug in anywhere (it only works with iPods) and your old familiar petrol only clogs up the engine and stops it working.
At the end of the day it’s not the car manufacturer that is to blame, however it worked with the old model so who would you immediately look to blame?
Your comparison of Vista as a shiny new ‘reliable’ car I hope, with the smiley, was a joke. Vista is far from perfect. XP is far from perfect. But to again use your analogy of cars again, Vista is the Aston Marton. It’s a beautiful looking car, luxurious, has all the bells and whistles and very powerful. It does however have a very bad reputation for reliability. XP on the other hand is that old mini that sits in the garage looking dirty. You get in and it’s not a pleasure to drive. It’s old, has no bells and whistles (as you haven’t added any from the many many available
) but it starts every time and has never failed you yet. When you need to pop out at 3am on a life or death trip, do you use Aston Martin and do it in style or the Mini because you know it will get you there and back.
I’ll be using XP for some time to come as that’s my choice. Rather than hark on about those people who moan about Vista and how bad it is, try and get to the real root of the problem and resolve it that way. In doing that you may help people move over a little easier.
Rob Said,
January 17, 2008 @ 1:17 pm
Funny, that. I’ve been saying exactly the same as yourself since Vista was released. It’s pretty much the same thing that happened when XP was released too, but funny how people’s memory fades over time…
I quite believe that in several years time when everyone’s using Vista and the next OS release comes out we’ll replay the whole scenario all over again!
Bill Malthouse Said,
January 17, 2008 @ 8:47 pm
I’ve been in IT since 1965 or so, starting on IBM mainframes and continuing through Suns, HPs, other Unix, DOS 1.0 on a PC, through Windows 3.0 … Windows 2000. I froze most of my machines at Windows 2000 when Microsoft created (De)Activation, but I gave up and got an XP Media Center Box as a primary machine a couple of years later. Just last month, I bought my wife and myself a “refurbished” Dell laptop and was too lazy to have them deinstall Vista. Biggest mistake I have made in years! Wife and I hate the “Aero” interface, so I had to customize it back to look somethingh like 2000/XP before she would even use it. Then I hit the Powerpoint 2003 crashes on open bug that appears to be “MS Data Asistant 1.0 is not compatible with Office 2003 SP1 or beyond”. Then we noticed that Office Assistant (Pronto Pup) could not be changed “Out of Memory… in 2 gB!” (Davesbs blog had the answer: Msagent…) no answer was to be found on Microsoft’s support board. Now I’m chasing how to reenable the true administrator account so I don’t have to run “forever” with UAC turned off. (Oh yes, VISTA killed my Symantec “real-time” virus protect feature (incompatible driver) to protect itself I guess), and Symantec does not offer a fix for my “ancient” virus engine release.
In short, Vist is a POS! I am not some “standard user” (read dumb as dirt) but have spent half a career administering PCs at work as well as at home, and I have never seen anything as bad as Vista in terms of defaulting to limit functionality and annoy people with “do you really want to do your job?” questions, especially if they run UAC and buy the “standard user” setting. Anyone who has run a UNIX box knows that there are only two classes of user, “God (root)” and “Dirt (user)”, but there at least you can let users do something by correctly configuring “silent” “SU root” access. The bigest Vista UAC mistake is that it prompts for everything rather than silently doin what it has been told to do by elevating to “root” level and then returning without user intervention (or knowledge for that mater).
dwhyte Said,
February 17, 2008 @ 7:59 pm
Bill,
Whilst I do not agree with you about Vista being a POS especially with the examples you have given (Symantec, as you say, it is an ancient engine you are using; Aero, personal opinion), there are things that may ‘evolve’ with time and Service Packs.
Elevating to Root or Admin silently is a good idea but what if it does that on the authority of some rogue process.
We are talking about most average joe users as Paul suggets.
If they ignore UAC now and or just click willy nilly to get rid of that damned pop up, then what help will silently elevating to Root do?
dwhyte Said,
February 17, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
Paul,
Thanks for commenting.
When did these average Joe’s buy these hardware devices/software etc?
Certainly not in the last year or if they did and it doesn’t work with Vista then again, back to my argument that it is the hardware/software makers fault.
I know that XP just works (mostly) and maybe doesn’t look as good as Vista.
(The looking good part is not hugely high on my agenda and I do think that too much is made of it. Just look at the Apple interface for instance or Apple hardware. These people are zealots because ‘Apple looks so good and never crashes’. Bollocks, it crashes all the time like any human made computer system and as for looks, that is personal opinion. Have you ever had to do any work on the inside of an Apple machine? It doesn’t look so good then I can tell you!)
I have problems with Vista like eveyone else however, I stick to my assertion that all this discussion is too much like what happened when XP came along. A few years later and everyone used it, possible now even love it (especially compared to Vista) and all the pains were forgotten about.
Dave