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It's time to say sayonara to Microsoft's Vista
Submitted by SHNS on Tue, 07/15/2008 - 15:43.
I already have my plans booked for the coming weekend. No, I am not going to take my kids to the park for some summer fun or check out "Hancock" at the theaters like I had planned.
Instead, I will probably we wiping my laptop of the last shreds of Windows Vista and reinstalling Windows XP Professional and trying to find all of the drivers I need to get everything working right again. No, it does not sound like a lovely weekend but it is not like I didn't give Vista a chance.
My laptop actually came with Vista Business edition pre-installed, so I didn't exactly expect a lot of problems. I had the choice of leaving it that was or installing my corporate load of XP Pro but being an early adopter and a beta tester has its advantages when you're in IT for a living. I should "eat some of my own dog food" I thought, assuming I planned to move my company's employees to Vista at some point in their professional lives.
The second time the PC booted I got a warning message "Windows Media Player has stopped working". A small button offered me the option of more information. I clicked it. It opined that Windows Media Player is a product of MICROSOFT CORPORATION and I should contact them for help. It hasn't worked since, more than a year later.
When Service Pack 1 came along I was pretty full of hope but the PC was only moderately faster and still much slower than my 4 year old PowerBook despite 2 GB of RAM and the latest goodies. The boot-up time was slower than my similar XP machines; the shut-down time often took more than a minute while Vista was doing something odd.
I could not connect to some share drives on my corporate network without using their fully qualified names; other times I could not connect to any shared resources at all after the computer went into standby and came back. The internal NIC would shut off periodically in an effort to save me energy, which is a nice touch except when you're using it. Then it can get sorta annoying.
I disabled the constant warnings that I was going to launch nuclear missiles against the Russians if I changed a setting; the constant "are you SURE" warnings popped up by Vista certainly drove more than one person batty.
Finally after more than a week of domestic travel I have basically had it with Vista. I tried to connect to a couple of foreign printers and found no drivers and no hope of finding any. I tried to connect to a scanner at my sister's house; no drivers.
Vista may be pretty but Microsoft has to fess up that they have released upon the IT world a product that few really want nor have the horsepower to adequately run. A 2 GB laptop should not be pokey; it should be a rocket.
So I will be reformatting this weekend. (And spare me the Linux letters ... I am too old to go fully geek.)
James Derk is owner of CyberDads, a computer service company and tech columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail is jim(at)cyberdads.com
So true, So true.
I work with Jim, and we've experienced the same vista woes together. I am a big follower of microsoft products (even their games & sidewinders gamepads) so when Vista came out, I was ready to bite the bullet and learn the headache. After a year, I too gave it up, and went back to xp. I was amazed, and a bit saddened, at how fast my laptop ran again. Stuff worked? I didn't have to use terminal servers to do the oddball things vista couldn't do? Even to this day, a month later, I still forget that I can actually do what I want to do, and I'm not limited by my crutch of an OS. Sorry vista.. Thou wert pretty, but ... that's about it.
I learned that whenever I
I learned that whenever I jumped to conclusions without much experience I always failed.
Try my blog. I am a real user of Vista, used XP for 6 years, 2000 for 3 years, etc. A power user since 1988. Started with Mac K512.
Give yourself a chance. There's nobody else to please.
Carpe diem!
ilovewindowsvista.blogspot.com
Enough with the complaints
Look, I understand Vista has problems. Name an OS that doesn't. And please, no MAC anecdotes. If I had one half of one percent market share, I could write a secure operating system too.
The same complaints running rampet on the Internet are identical to those when Windows XP came out. No support, slow, hardware incompatibilities, etc., etc.
I'm not defending Microsoft, the marketing department should be replaced entirely for rushing out the door like they did, but, it's not as bad as people talk about.
I've used Vista on 2 year old laptops, and brand spanking new Xeon Quads, and it performs fine. My biggest gripe is file access/copying/etc. It is much slower, but for the purposes of work, it runs very well.
Gamers have problems with Vista, but show me a time when the so called "hardcore gamer" doesn't have a complaint?
Bottom line, like it or not your stuck with Vista. XP support is "officially" done, but will probably continue for awhile, but we are already seeing hardware vendors putting out equipment that has no driver support for Windows XP. What are you to do then? Just not use parts of your hardware because you refuse to use an OS?
Look, we know Vista has bugs to work out, hell, so does XP. There has been thousands of articles stating that fact. Enough already, get back to work! :)
Thanks
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