Archive for the ‘Vista Backlash’ Category

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Hasta la vista, Vista!

October 22, 2009

Vista busy cursor Never has the name of this blog been more apposite than on the day that Vista’s replacement, Windows 7, officially ships.

Vista has had a very troubled time, as faithfully documented here from early in its lifetime. It earned itself a bad reputation with its plethora of teething problems, having been let out of Redmond half cooked, and couldn’t shake off that negative perception even long after Microsoft had sorted out the glitches. This gave the likes of Apple an opportunity to expand their market share and cement their “we are the choice of the cool dude” image.

But Microsoft realised all they had to do was complete the Vista cooking process, give it a facelift and a few natty new features, rebadge it and push it out to the market to bury the bad Vista Karma as quickly as they could.

And Windows 7 already seems destined to be a hit, repairing the damage to Microsoft’s fortunes inflicted by Vista. Maybe not quite the euphoria of Windows 95 back in the day, but the nearest thing to it Microsoft has enjoyed since. And there will be a palpable sense of relief.

We already know W7 is a stable, quality platform. Many people have been using it in RC form for months. There is no risk whatever of a repeat of the Vista debacle.

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Honestly, Vista is fine nowadays … really it is!

October 23, 2008

Vista busy cursor The genesis of this blog was the plethora of troubles I had as a Vista early adopter. There was no wider agenda (I am no Apple fanboy), it was just a catalogue of genuinely unexpected problems from the perspective of a Windows user who had been hoping for great things from Vista.

I rapidly found myself in good company. No shortage of bloggers ready to put the boot into Microsoft’s new OS.

But that was then and this is now. As I have no axe to grind, and Vista is now perfectly fine and trouble free on a day to day basis, I may as well say so, never mind how this blog got started.

I put down the transformation in life with Vista to three things:

(a) beefing up the hardware a bit,

(b) the various Vista updates put out by Microsoft and

(c) what I call the personal learning curve.

Hardware

The hardware changes were the adding of 4Gb of RAM, to the 1Gb that shipped with the PC, and the introduction of a dedicated graphics card to replace the onboard graphics chip. The latter was up to the job of running Aero Glass, although not gaming, but ate into the limited RAM that came with the computer. The key benefit of the proper graphics card was to free up the whole of the initial 1Gb, and the extra 4Gb made a big difference too. Vista needs RAM to work well, and my biggest gripe is with the Dells and HPs of this world who early on sold Vista PCs that were not really up to the job. They were branded as Vista ready, and technically they were, but not really powerful enough to cope satisfactorily with Vista’s RAM and graphics processing demands. Clearly, they were trying to maximise sales and profits, and coupling a new OS with the lowest possible price/spec would have seemed like the way to go.

Microsoft have suffered from the reaction to PCs which are barely up to the job of running Vista, the OS getting the blame, not the vendors for their avarice. Unlike Apple, Microsoft don’t directly control both software and hardware. But they could and should have seen this coming, and exercised better control over the branding of Vista machines sold by third party vendors.

Vista updates

The various Vista security and performance updates have made a big difference too. Many people still go on about Service Pack 1 as the turning point, but only because they had heard bad things about Vista, had already decided that the release of SP1 would make it all better and did not dip their toe in until then. Anyone who had been living with Vista on a day to day basis from the start would have seen a gradual improvement in behaviour from well before SP1, and the service pack itself would not have brought that much of a step change user experience.

My feeling is that there were still a lot of bugs in Vista, and poorly written components, when it was first released. The code that shipped was only up to the standard of a late Beta, but Microsoft were under pressure to ship because Vista was already running so late. This meant that a lot of code improvements that should ideally have been taken care of before final release were instead put out under the update system as fast as Microsoft could manage it, eventually getting the complete OS up to the standard everyone had hoped for on day one.

Some parts are still maybe not quite there. People talk about bloated kernels and the drawbacks of backwards compatibility, but I think that is quite wrong. I think the problems are in higher levels of the architecture, such as the WIN32 component. For example, I find it amazing that a third party application such as teracopy can do a far quicker and tidier job of copying files around the PC or between different drives than the native Windows copy function.

Learning Curve

Finally, we have the personal learning curve. This includes simple things like sticking with User Account Control until it no longer grates. The longer you have your Vista PC, the less new software you need to keep installing, and UAC intrusions become fewer and fewer. It just stops being that much of a nuisance.

The rest of it is finding alternatives for the software that ran under XP but doesn’t run under Vista. Software vendors behave like PC vendors – they see the launch of a new OS as an opportunity to boost sales. So they don’t offer fixes to make existing versions of their programs Vista compatible. They try to sell you new Vista compatible upgrade versions at added cost. Again, Microsoft get the flak but it is third parties who are to blame.  Over time users find alternatives.

Meantime, the public perception of Vista is badly tarnished … and Apple continue to trade on that in their successful Switch adverts, long after Vista ceased to be the pig it is portrayed as.

Microsoft have tried belatedly to repair the harm, with their Mojave stunt and their own new advertising campaign.  But it’s too late for Vista.  It will go down in technology history as a turkey, regardless.  Microsoft need to learn the lessons of the Vista debacle to be sure they don’t repeat them with Windows 7.  They are big and dominant enough to survive one poorly received OS, but two in a row would not be so clever.

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No end to the Vista hate mail

December 19, 2007

Vista busy cursor Following on from CNet UK dubbing Vista one of their “Top ten terrible tech products”, PC World have declared Vista their “Biggest Tech Disappointment of 2007“.

I can’t argue with that given the scale of the product, the long wait and Microsoft’s own hype.

I don’t agree with everything PC World say about Vista. In some cases they’ve been too nice about it:

“… the Aero interface is as whizzy as it gets …”

No way! There’s far more “Wow!” to be had from Mac OS X, even, or Ubuntu Edgy in harness with Beryl/Xgl. Aero Glass delivers little more than could have been achieved under the XP CPU-centric user interface. Putting the graphics card’s 3D capabilities in charge of the UI should have yielded more than some semi-transparent window borders and a gimmicky flip 3D window selector that you play with once then never bother with again. Utterly devoid of flair and imagination, and above all playing it “safe”. That is what I call truly disappointing.

“Despite its hefty hardware requirements, Vista is slower than XP.”

Erm … surely it’s because of its hefty hardware requirements that Vista is slower than XP. Vista demands more resources so on the same machine it runs slower.

Well, some of the points made in the article were right. Who knows? Maybe PC World are top of Microsoft’s list of “disappointing journalists of 2007″. Or more likely second behind CNet UK.

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Posted in Computers, Microsoft, Technology, Vista Backlash, Windows, Windows Vista, XP, vista | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

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The public lambasting of Vista goes on

November 28, 2007

Vista busy cursor More public criticism of Vista courtesy of CNet UK. This time Vista’s qualities are celebrated by inclusion in CNet’s alarmingly alliterative “Top ten terrible tech products” parade, alongside all time venerated designs such as the Sinclair C5 and Amstrad’s E-m@iler Telephone.

From CNet’s Crave column:

“Any operating system that provokes a campaign for its predecessor’s reintroduction deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that quietly has a downgrade-to-previous-edition option introduced for PC makers deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that takes six years of development but is instantly hated by hordes of PC professionals and enthusiasts deserves to be classed as terrible technology.

Windows Vista conforms to all of the above. Its incompatibility with hardware, its obsessive requirement of human interaction to clear security dialogue box warnings and its abusive use of hated DRM, not to mention its general pointlessness as an upgrade, are just some examples of why this expensive operating system earns the final place in our terrible tech list.”

I really can’t argue with any of these points. They are borne out by my own experiences and conclusions as reported in this blog.

The best thing you can say about Vista is that not everybody hates it. Hardly “The WOW Starts Now!”

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Vista backlash goes Dutch

October 16, 2007

Vista busy cursor That backlash against Vista I predicted back in June is going from strength to strength, despite the fact that hardware is in general catching up and Microsoft’s performance and compatibility updates have helped a bit.

This time it’s the turn of the Dutch Consumers’ Association, Consumentenbond, who have recommended customers insist on XP with their new PCs in preference to Vista.

“The organization’s spat with Microsoft began when it conducted a survey on Vista’s performance. According to the survey results, the OS performed quite poorly, racking up 5,000 consumer complaints in less than five weeks. Commonly reported issues center on printer and hardware compatibility, system crashes, and slow peripherals.”

The full story, reported by ars technica, is here.

Earlier Vista Backlash posts:

The backlash goes on.

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Lucky Vista user gets to sock it to Ballmer

October 11, 2007

Vista busy cursor There were many times during my early experiences with Vista that I would have relished the opportunity to tell someone high up at Microsoft exactly what they could do with their new OS.

Lucky Yvonne Genovese got to do exactly that to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the Gartner Inc. Symposium ITxpo conference in Orlando. The article in Computerworld is here.

And here’s a snippet:

“I’m one of those early adopters of Vista,” said Yvonne Genovese, an analyst who was interviewing Ballmer along with fellow analyst David Smith on stage at a conference forum. “My daughter comes in one day and says, ‘Hey Mom, my friend has Vista, and it has these neat little things called gadgets — I need those.’”

Said Ballmer: “I love your daughter.”

“You’re not going to like her mom in about two minutes,” said Genovese, while the crowd laughed.

She went on to explain that she installed Vista for her daughter — and two days later went right back to using the XP operating system.

A woman after my own heart, with no qualms about saying “Hasta la vista, Vista!”

The backlash goes on.

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The Vista backlash gathers momentum

September 28, 2007

Vista busy cursor Back in June I predicted a user backlash against Vista. That prediction is being borne out, with ever more strident criticism from well-regarded sources.

In July the president of Acer voiced his concerns to the Financial Times Deutschland.

Now we have Don Reisinger on CNet, no less, calling for Vista to be scrapped!

From Don’s blogpost:

Never before have I seen such an abysmal start to an operating system release. For almost a year, people have been adopting Vista and becoming incensed by how poorly it operates. Not only does it cost too much, it requires more to run than XP, there is still poor driver support, and that draconian licensing scheme is a by-product of Microsoft picking on the wrong people.

The road ahead looks dangerous for Vista and Microsoft must realize that. With Mac OS X hot on its tail, Vista is simply not capable of competing at an OS level with some of the best software around. If Microsoft continues down this path, it will be Vista that will bring the software giant to its knees–not Bill Gates’ departure.

Well I really don’t see Vista getting dropped by Microsoft. That would be even more damaging to their credibility than keeping it. But Vista is clearly not going to go down in history as Redmond’s finest achievement.

Just to emphasise the point here is another post on similar lines from Torontomatic – Is Microsoft Vista on life support?

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First concrete signs of the Vista backlash

July 31, 2007

Vista busy cursor On 21 June, I ran a post predicting a consumer backlash against Vista. The basis of this was the disconnect between the PC resources really needed to extract decent performance out of Vista and the typical spec of Vista PCs actually being sold in the market.

The first concrete evidence of that backlash is starting to materialise.

On 23 July, Financial Times Deutschland ran an interview with Gianfranco Lanci, president of Acer. The original is in German but there is an English translation of the whole article below (courtesy of Jonny Wright).

Gianfranco Lanci President Acer

Acer, the world’s fourth-largest computer manufacturer, has accused Microsoft of making serious mistakes with its new operating system. “The entire industry is disappointed with Windows Vista,” Acer’s president Gianfranco Lanci has told Financial Times Deutschland.

Never before has a new version of Windows had so little effect on PC sales, according to Lanci: “It won’t get any better in the next half year, either,” said the Acer president.

This is the first time that the new Windows operating system has been publicly criticised by a major computer manufacturer, and it is a blow for Microsoft, the world’s largest software firm. Speculation about possible alternatives to Vista now rages, particularly as Lanci claims to speak on behalf of the entire industry. Currently, about 90% of privately-owned desktops and laptops run Microsoft’s operating system; the rest use either Apple or the free system Linux. Computer manufacturers and retailers had hoped to see a growth in sales once Vista was launched at the end of January, but Lanci now feels differently: “I really don’t believe that anyone would buy a new PC because of Vista.”

Business customers are particularly likely to continue with the old operating system, Windows XP. Although Vista had been eagerly awaited for years by the industry, Lanci believes that it was launched before it was truly ready. “Stability is a major issue”, says the Italian, who runs the Taiwanese firm together with founder Stan Shih and CEO J. T. Wang. Acer’s turnover last year was $11.3 billion.

Microsoft made just $3.8 billion from sales of its operating system in the past quarter, barely reaching their own lowest estimate. Nevertheless, Microsoft’s head of operations in Germany, Achim Berg, was optimistic about the figures during a telephone conference on Friday. He claims that Vista has been “a great success” in Germany. According to market research firm Gartner, Vista doesn’t have enough unmissable features for home users. Ranjit Atwal, an analyst for Gartner, sums it up: “Vista is hardly revolutionary.” Vista offers more functionality than its predecessor, but requires far more computing power to run.

Lanci is speaking on behalf of the industry rather than consumers directly, but it is clear from his choice of words that he is reporting underlying consumer dissatisfaction.

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The majority of Vista PCs being sold right now aren’t powerful enough to run Vista

June 21, 2007

Vista busy cursor Just imagine what might happen if the majority of Vista PCs now being sold were not up to the job of running Vista. If users were experiencing unacceptably slow performance, although the published minimum specifications were met. And we’re not just talking about gaming; this is using email, common applications such as iTunes and even emptying the recycle bin. In that situation you might expect there’d be a lot of dissatisfied customers right now, and the ranks of the disgruntled would be growing daily as Vista PCs continue to be sold in large numbers.

Well, this is exactly what is happening at the moment. Maybe it has yet to hit the collective consciousness in a meaningful way, but it will and when it does there is going to be an almighty backlash.

My bold assertion is based on the observation that the most common version of Vista, Home Premium, does not run satisfactorily on a PC with less than 2Gb of RAM whereas a clear majority of Vista Home Premium PCs sold today have only 1Gb of RAM.

There is supporting evidence for all of this, and corroboration from actual users.

Vista laptop

Let’s look at the evidence then consider the consequences.

Vista Home Premium needs a good 2Gb of RAM to deliver an acceptable user experience

The point was first made to me by John Thomson of Roundtrip Solutions in a comment to this post – viz “Vista runs like a dog with only 1GB. Get yourself at least another 1GB and it will run much better” – but there is no shortage of evidence on the Internet. From a quick Google, here is a fairly random selection of quotes and associated links:

Tech.Blorge: A simple and easy rule of thumb for the amount of memory your computer should have installed is to take the minimum memory requirement for Vista, in this case 512Mb of RAM, then double it… and then double it again. This takes you to 2Gb of memory. LINK

Boston.com: Unfortunately, while vista may be more stable, other outside factors cause it to crash. For example, Vista took up over 490MB of my RAM, even with no programs running!! To get premium performance, especially with Aero, you are going to need at least 2GB of RAM. LINK

Computerworld: Microsoft’s on-the-box minimum RAM requirement “really isn’t realistic,” according to David Short, an IBM consultant who works in its company’s Global Services Divison (sic). He says users should consider 4GB of RAM if they really want optimum Vista performance. With 512MB of RAM, Vista will deliver performance that’s “sub-XP,” he warned. LINK

Gotfrag hardware: You do need a better system for equal performance with Vista. With XP 1GB might be fine but if you’re on Vista you’ll want at least 2GB of RAM. LINK

The subject was also addressed in Vista’s Voracity for RAM.

Opinions do differ to some extent, but there is quite a strong consensus that Vista needs at least twice as much RAM as XP for the same level of performance and, in general, with Aero Glass you really need 2Gb if you don’t want Vista to be annoyingly slow for far too much of the time.

The “standard” Vista Home Premium PC sold has only 1Gb of RAM

Let’s start with Exhibit A, the Dell Computers website (home and home office desktops).

Along with HP, Dell is a leading vendor of domestic PCs worldwide. Dell offers two ranges of desktops to home and home office users – the lower budget Dimension range and the higher spec XPS range. [Update: July 6 2007 - since this post was first published Dell have ditched their Dimension range and revamped their offerings - DMW]

Don’t take my word for it. Just browse the packages on offer and look at the number of packages on offer combining Vista Home Premium with just 1Gb of RAM. There are some 2Gb offerings, but relatively few and at price points which will be unattractive to everyday users wanting a general purpose home PC. Even looking at the “performance” XPS range, starting at $899, 2 of the 3 bundles displayed have Vista Home Premium in a 1Gb PC.

Given that it would probably not occur to most PC purchasers to worry about whether 1Gb was enough for Vista, and given that people can only afford to spend so much on a PC, what are the chances that the vast majority of Dell Vista Home Premium sold will come kitted out with 1Gb of RAM? What is there on that website to indicate that 1Gb might not be enough?

The irony here is that Dell CEO Kevin Rollins himself said “I think they tell you maybe one gig of memory is OK. No. Two gigs of memory would be great” when speaking about Vista in Shanghai last year.

As for Exhibit B, the HP website, the picture is very similar. They also offer Vista Home Premium PCs from 1Gb RAM although they tend to leave it up to you to customise rather than present definitive packages. Their recommended system does have 2Gb but they do rather imply that 1Gb is fine for general use, recommending 2Gb for “graphics and multimedia intensive tasks”.

Less clear cut, but still there is a reasonable expectation that many or most users wanting general purpose home PCs will buy 1Gb models to save money having no inkling that they really need 2Gb, as the website leads them to think only gamers or people who do a lot of video encoding will need more.

Anecdotal Corroboration

My recent post “How real people are getting on with Vista” talked about how this website is acting as a honeypot for users suffering performance problems with Vista. This is because “Hasta la vista, Vista!” is quite likely to come up in searches by people looking for solutions to the same issues as I’ve experienced with my own 1Gb Vista PC and blogged about here.

All this shows is that there are many users having the same issues as I’ve had, but that says something in itself. It is a form of corroboration in the absence of a scientific survey.

For the record, here is a selection of Vista gripes taken from searches over the last couple of days:

  • vista disk thrashing june 2007
  • nero 7 slow start vista
  • windows vista works itunes slow
  • windows vista blocking adobe programs
  • taking windows defender off of start up
  • Vista superfetch sucks ram not enough
  • vista startup not yet classified
  • vista superfetch freeze problem
  • vista recycling slow
  • why does windows vista freezes
  • vista adobe update blocked
  • adobe update causes vista to freeze
  • vista itunes freezing
  • nero 7 slow vista
  • vista freezing on sleep
  • vista itunes freeze during sync
  • startup programs not yet classified vist
  • itunes runs slow on vista
  • netsh interface tcp set global autotunin
  • itunes running slow vista
  • firefox +vista +freeze
  • vista freezing itunes
  • Nero 6+Windows Vista
  • itunes slow vista
  • itunes slow in vista
  • vista itunes you do not have enough acce
  • superfetch Vista Disable
  • nero 7 vista update blocked by windows d
  • itunes sync freeze vista
  • itunes vista freeze
  • itunes vista slow problem
  • vista itunes memory
  • vista itunes slow
  • adobe update manager blocked vista
  • itunes freeze vista
  • itunes renames podcast files
  • nero vista freezes
  • what’s so great about VISTA?
  • itunes vista slow
  • why does Itunes run so slowly
  • vista run blocked program every time
  • where does vista file startup programs
  • vista defender is blocking adobe update
  • firefox vista freeze
  • run firefox withour user account control
  • install nero 6 on vista
  • disabling superfetch
  • does nero 6 work in vista
  • nero will not install on vista
  • windows vista nero won’t install
  • windows vista runs slow

Where will this all lead?

This is the crunch, will it make any difference to Microsoft if there is indeed an ever growing contingent of non-Wowed Vista users?

I think the answer is “yes”. Microsoft have had a stranglehold on the OS market for years, but people are starting to wake up to the fact there are alternatives. There has been a devout band of Mac afficionados for a long time and although the Mac market share is only around 5% at the moment it will rise as, increasingly, being a Mac user is seen as fashionable. The much talked about “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” adverts play a part but Apple won’t need to advertise if word gets around that most Vista buyers are gnashing their teeth in frustration, staring at rotating blue bagels. Also the Linux contingent are starting to get their act together and moving away from the home hobbyist market. There are now “hands free install” Linux offerings that the man in the street might seriously contemplate.

You could blame Dell, HP and the other PC vendors for not upping the specs to meet the demands from Vista, and there is something in that, but Vista is bloated and resource-hungry beyond the trend line in terms of hardware performance advances. And while more RAM helps, Vista is inherently a poor performer.

Microsoft have fouled up and bigtime. They needed a “Wow” new OS to compete with OS X on the Mac which was starting to pull away in terms of the user experience. Their answer was Vista (nee Longhorn) but the project was too big, too ambitious, badly mishandled and running very late. They had to get something out there for credibility’s sake. They could see it was over-bloated and poorly performing, so they threw some features out such as the long awaited successor to the NTFS disk filing system. Still, Vista was a pig but they had no choice but to get it as usable as they could, release it, indulge in a lot of hype and hope no-one would notice. Oh, and schedule an early replacement – the next version of Windows (codename Vienna) is due out only 2 years after Vista!

But I think people will notice. It is early days but history will look back on Vista as the start of the long inexorable dilution of market share and eventual loss of Microsoft’s vice-like grip on the home OS market. The damage has been done.

POST SCRIPTUM added 31/7/07: First concrete signs of the Vista backlash

POST SCRIPTUM added 28/9/2007: The Vista backlash gathers momentum

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