Vista is Evil!!!!!

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

1) An HP laptop with built in webcam refuses to recognise the webcam (despite the fact it came with Vista installed). Apparently this is not an uncommon complaint (look for "hp webcam vista"). We've uninstalled drivers etc. But to no avail, it just doesn't work with vista (and yes the laptop has a little Vista sticker on it).

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HP's fault. Their drivers suck on all devices anyway. I'm constantly having issues using their drivers with Windows XP and Vista.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

2) The other laptop refuse to remember passwords for our sharepoint accounts despite ticking the little "remember password box". And yes, we've added it to the trusted sites etc. Apparently it will be fixed in SP1!

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I've had this happen constantly in Windows XP despite what browser I use unless I am authenticating through Windows Authentication (i.e. don't have to enter in a username and password).

I thought this was a Sharepoint bug because it does something funky with the URLs making the web browser think it hasn't been to it before.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

3) It keeps asking if you really want to do this etc.

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That's because you're not an administrator and you want to do administrator things. OS X does the samething but no one ever complains about that.

You can just as easily turn UAC off but in all honestly, once you setup the computer you shouldn't see UAC except on rare occasions. Why do you constantly need to elevate?

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

4) The "all programs" menu is now restricted to a tiny portion of the screen, so now you have to scroll through it. Fine with a mouse, but not so fine with the little notepad touchpad thingy.

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You can enlarge your start menu insanely easily but you're missing the greatest feature of Vista: start menu search! Just press the Windows key, start typing the app you want and hit enter. Much faster than clicking around :)

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Originally Posted by Mark Gambo

I am not talking about apps that I have written, I am talking about commercially available applications such as te Vonage V Phone. I rely on this while I am on the road and it doesn't work under Vista. I plug it into my xp machine and it works fine. I need an os that will run all of my apps all the time without gerrymandering them. I am frustrated becaus eI spend all morning with some idiot from Vonage who barely knew how to turn on a machine but she sure could read from that script like a trained monkey.

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Sorry but you can't blaim Vista for this. I know you want to but this is really due to Vonage's poor development rather than Vista.

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Originally Posted by lintz

I had a customer come in the other day with his brand new laptop with the following specs (I did snoop a bit :) )

duel core duo 2 - 2.2ghz
3 gig ram
500MB hard drive

and when I doubled clicked on windows explorer it took (no joke) 8 seconds to open .... what the? :confused:

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Probably a hardware problem or a very poorly built PC. My specifications are no where NEAR that and Explorer opens instantly for me. In fact, Vista starts up much faster than XP ever has.

Though, I have to wonder... could a 500MB hard drive even hold Vista? :p

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Originally Posted by lintz

From all the Vista machines I've seen Windows Explorer takes for ages to open (compared to XP).

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Like mentioned before, you're using poorly built machines or bad hardware. I own 3 machines with Vista on them as well as 3 with XP. All of them open explorer instantly and all of the Vista machines boot faster than the XP machines.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

Er, about the HP camera not working, I don't care whether it's HP's or Microsofts fault, that doesn't make any difference to the end user. The bottom line is that it doesn't work under Vista.

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So you're going to continue bad mouthing Vista for poor development issues on HP's side? That'll get the problem solved! :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

As for the fixes under SP1, yes, that may sort everything out, but it's only just been released under MSDN and hasn't been released to the gen. public as far as I'm aware. If it fixes everything, then great (apart from the crappy little menu thing and all the hand holding), but as it stands I see no reason to inflict it upon my users.

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Wrong, SP1 has been on automatic updates for a while now. All of my machines have already updated it.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

Now, if SP1 does fix my major concerns, then I will be happy to buy Vista with any new machines I buy, but I see absolutely no reason to upgrade the existing machines from XP to Vista. Can anyone give me some? (This is not a rehtorical question - I really want to know if there are any good reasons I should consider it).

This is in contrast to XP's release, which was a no brainer of a choice to upgrade compared to NT and ME.

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In all honestly, for me, an upgrade to Vista was a no brainer. Unfortuantely many of the changes are hard to explain to the general public.

For me, it was due to:

- Drivers have moved from the Kernel space. No more BSODs for a bad driver unless it's really bad. I had my video card driver fail a couple of times and all I get now is a balloon bubble notifying me :)
- IIS 7. I do quite a bit of development and the improvements in IIS are amazing and since I do development in .Net as a profession, I not only needed to learn it but utilize it.
- Media Center in Vista is much better than the XP version and doesn't require the purchase of a new machine. I now have a great DVR :)
- Pre-fetch. Many think Vista is a memory hog since it can use a gb of ram just sitting there but it really isn't. Instead, Vista remembers your most used applications and pre-loads them into memory. Because of this, after you use Vista for a few weeks your applications will seemingly start up faster. I know mine do :)
- Major kernel and underlying code overhauls. Microsoft has re-written much code to comply with their SDL process and to modernize it. Let's face it, XP and Server 2003 included much code that existed form all the way back to Windows 3! With Vista, they re-wrote many components to make them more reliable and secure thanks to their SDL process.
- Accelerated desktop. Now my video card controls all rendering so it can improve visual performance and off cool effects at the same time :cool:
- DirectX 10. DirectX 10 is amazing and fixes a major problem with the previous versions in that it has one set of components that need to work a specific way. Too many times under older versions of DirectX did video card manufacturers implement things different causing different issues among video cards. Now they should be unified and work the same across all cards when rendering in DirectX 10.
- Improved OpenGL. Vista ships with a much newer version of OpenGL. Just wanted to mention this one because I like OpenGL :D

I only scratched the surface. Vista really included quite a bit of changes but, unfortuantely, many will be confusing to your typical consumer. Check out this article to read more on why Vista won't suck.

Don't nag HP too much. I have an HP laptop, and Windows Update has never failed to get everything I need, even after a clean reformat. Granted, the engineering of the computer sucks, but it's a tough little machine. It should probably be dead with the amount of stuff I do to it, but it just keeps working great. I've had it for almost two years now and the only problem it's developed is sketchy contacts for the screen.

in my laptop repair experience, I get a lot more broken dells than HPs.

I have no idea what the ratio of laptops sold between those 2 companies are, but I get a lot of dells with just broken hardware (lots of charging ports and bad screens).

A friend of mine had problems getting his network printer to work with Vista. I don't have Vista, but said I would help. After figuring out where stuff went I still couldn't get it to work. A quick search of the Web provided the answer. Stupid me, of course, a printer attached via Ethernet is not a network printer, it is local.:afrog:

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Originally Posted by dbasnett

A friend of mine had problems getting his network printer to work with Vista. I don't have Vista, but said I would help. After figuring out where stuff went I still couldn't get it to work. A quick search of the Web provided the answer. Stupid me, of course, a printer attached via Ethernet is not a network printer, it is local.:afrog:

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:confused: How is that not a network printer? Was it somehow directly attached to the Windows machine via ethernet?

I think this is the post I found. I didn't believe it either, but it worked.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/comp/suppor...p-network.html

I had some trouble with network printers as well, but I also found a resolution after about 5 minutes worth of online research...

Odd, all of my network printers worked as expected... oh well. I wonder if it's an issue with Vista, the printer driver or the printer itself that shows it that way.

Sorry. Double Post... probably Vista's fault ;)

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Originally Posted by kasracer

HP's fault. Their drivers suck on all devices anyway. I'm constantly having issues using their drivers with Windows XP and Vista.

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In fairness, I've never had any problems before now with our HP laptops. But I don't care who's fault it is. I cannot justify moving our staff to a system that doesn't work. That's like saying Ford has released a new car, but it doesn't work with 50% of the gas stations out there. But we should buy it anyway because it's not Fords fault.

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Originally Posted by kasracer

I've had this happen constantly in Windows XP despite what browser I use unless I am authenticating through Windows Authentication (i.e. don't have to enter in a username and password).

I thought this was a Sharepoint bug because it does something funky with the URLs making the web browser think it hasn't been to it before.

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It works fine on all of our XP machines. It's only the vista ones it doesn't work on. Again, when the user clicks on "Remember My Password?", it should remember their password. That seems pretty straightforward to me.

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Originally Posted by kasracer

That's because you're not an administrator and you want to do administrator things. OS X does the samething but no one ever complains about that.

You can just as easily turn UAC off but in all honestly, once you setup the computer you shouldn't see UAC except on rare occasions. Why do you constantly need to elevate?

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I'm pretty certain those users are local admins (though not Domain admins). Our users are constantly installing and de-installing different versions of our (and our hardware suppliers) software depending on the configuration of the client site. However I will look up the UAC stuff, as if I can switch that off, that would be a great help. Thanks.

P.S. If I used OS X, it sounds like I would be complaining about it too :)

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You can enlarge your start menu insanely easily but you're missing the greatest feature of Vista: start menu search! Just press the Windows key, start typing the app you want and hit enter. Much faster than clicking around :)

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Can you point me in the right direction for that, that would be a good help. Thanks. A number of our XP installations (HMI's on control panels) are touchscreens.

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Sorry but you can't blaim Vista for this. I know you want to but this is really due to Vonage's poor development rather than Vista.

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Once again, I don't care who's fault it is, I don't want to blame Vista for anything. I have a job to do, and part of that job is deciding our corporate strategy for IT. I don't care if it's XP, Vista or Linux (I do refuse to look at macs :) ). My responsibility to the company is to enable the staff to do the jobs they were employed to do. It's as simple as that, I don't care about fancy graphics or peer-pressure. The bottom line is that if software we have already bought and that is used daily by my users doesn't work on Vista, then why would I upgrade them to Vista? I have a company to run. :) [That sounds like a rant, sorry, but it isn't a rant, I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from]

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Probably a hardware problem or a very poorly built PC. My specifications are no where NEAR that and Explorer opens instantly for me. In fact, Vista starts up much faster than XP ever has.

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So, because it works for you, it can't possibly be Vista's fault? I'm not saying that it isn't the hardware, but neither of us has enough information to simply dismiss it as a poorly built PC. People are listing reasons why Vista isn't right for them. You seem rather quick to dismiss these things without any discussion or investigation.

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So you're going to continue bad mouthing Vista for poor development issues on HP's side? That'll get the problem solved! :rolleyes:

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I've gone over this already, but lets be very clear. I'm not bad mouthing Vista for anything. I'm saying that Vista doesn't work for my comapny (yet). Far too many things are wrong and not enough things are improved (over XP). My users won't care if it's Microsoft, HP or Misses Miggens Pie Shop thats to blame. All they care about is that their stuff (be it cameras, networking or software) doesn't work.

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Wrong, SP1 has been on automatic updates for a while now. All of my machines have already updated it.

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Actually I'm right. I've checked both machines and it hasn't been automatically uploaded on to either (yes, auto-updates is enabled). A quick check on the net shows that it is a staggered upgrade.

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In all honestly, for me, an upgrade to Vista was a no brainer. Unfortuantely many of the changes are hard to explain to the general public.

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Good. I'm glad. And you know what, if I was buying a new machine for myself, I would have no problems buying one with Vista on (I especially want DirectX 10). But (and this is a really big but) I see little advantage to upgrading my users to Vista, and a whole world of pain if I did. Now we will revisit the situation with SP1, but I still haven't heard any really good reasons for moving my organisation to Vista. That is still not a rehtorical question, if anyone has some good reasons then I'm all ears.

Let me explain my situation.
When we moved from NT and ME to XP it was a no brainer [We skipped Windows 2000 for the desktops - though it's still running on a couple of the servers]. NT lacked driver support and ME was flakey and lacked a lot of the more advanced networking that NT had. We bit the bullet, retested all of our software, our suppliers software, upgraded our hardware, installed the OS and retrained our users. No problem, it was an easy choice despite the cost involved.

Everything is working great on XP.

Now let's look at Vista. Actually most of our current hardware is probably capable of Vista, so that's not a problem. We now have 3 times as many users... so our costs on the retraining side have escalated, but still not insurmountable. Now we need to test all of our software that we use (some of which is really expensive to buy and to have our guys trained on). Ones that would concern me would be AutoCad, the Allen-Bradley PLC control logix software back to the 90's (which is really expensive and I doubt they will bother rewriting for Vista), our internal software, our vendors software, our customers HMI's, our VPN and PLC networking software (some 10 different versions based on different client sites), Adobe Acrobat Writer etc.

That is going to cost big time. And you know what, if it doesn't work on Vista it's not going to be an acceptable excuse for me to say to the user "but that's not Microsofts fault!". Like me, they don't care who's fault it is. Now I will have a multi-million dollar project falling behind because our Cad guy's software desn't run, or the PM is on the road and he can't access our VPN or the Commissioning engineer can't get his laptop to talk to the PLC because of driver problem. That's not acceptable.

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For me, it was due to:....[abbreviated]

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Again all good reasons for you and I, but not going to cut any mustard with the management when the systems don't do what they have been bought for.

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I only scratched the surface. Vista really included quite a bit of changes but, unfortuantely, many will be confusing to your typical consumer. Check out this article to read more on why Vista won't suck.

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Thanks for the link, but I still don't see a conclusive reason to upgrade (unlike when we moved to XP).

As for the typical consumer not being smart enough to understand why they need Vista.... doesn't that suggest that it isn't going to sell very well. I mean if your typical consumer is confused by the product, he ain't going to buy it.

I think it was because there were not specific Vista drivers for the given printer. All I remember was it had something to do with setting up something as a local port. It was not my equipment, it was at a client office.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

In fairness, I've never had any problems before now with our HP laptops. But I don't care who's fault it is. I cannot justify moving our staff to a system that doesn't work. That's like saying Ford has released a new car, but it doesn't work with 50% of the gas stations out there. But we should buy it anyway because it's not Fords fault.

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What if Ford said to gas stations "We made our fuel system way way more efficient and secure, which will serve the end user better, but you will need to make adjustments to your fuel pumps in order for our cars to be gassed up at your stations" to all the gas stations. Then 50% of them either were did not need adjustments because they were doing things correct the whole time, or they made the adjustments, and then 50% didn't bother, even though Ford gave them literally a few years to get it right, and offered to work along with them to ensure it would be right.

Why get mad at Ford?

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Originally Posted by kleinma

What if Ford said to gas stations "We made our fuel system way way more efficient and secure, which will serve the end user better, but you will need to make adjustments to your fuel pumps in order for our cars to be gassed up at your stations" to all the gas stations. Then 50% of them either were did not need adjustments because they were doing things correct the whole time, or they made the adjustments, and then 50% didn't bother, even though Ford gave them literally a few years to get it right, and offered to work along with them to ensure it would be right.

Why get mad at Ford?

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I'm not mad at Ford/Microsoft :)

Why should the pump manufacturers/garages pay to do rework to help Ford out?

If the Ford gave me fantastic improvements, then I would consider changing my fleet of cars. If it didn't then I would at least wait until all the pumps had been changed over and all of the problems ironed out before considering scrapping my existing fleet and replacing them.

Vista is very much in the second category I'm afraid.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

Why should the pump manufacturers/garages pay to do rework to help Ford out?

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I think the whole point is that manufacturer/garages did it wrong in the first place but still Ford/Microsoft are offering to help them through it.

The problem with software not working on Vista is due to bad development on the developer's side. XP just happened to let sloppy things slide much better than Vista.

Microsoft offered to help people who developed their software incorrectly for a few years before Vista's release.

I think that was kleinma's point.

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Originally Posted by kasracer

I think the whole point is that manufacturer/garages did it wrong in the first place but still Ford/Microsoft are offering to help them through it.

The problem with software not working on Vista is due to bad development on the developer's side. XP just happened to let sloppy things slide much better than Vista.

Microsoft offered to help people who developed their software incorrectly for a few years before Vista's release.

I think that was kleinma's point.

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Yes, I get that. However, at the time they developed the software they had XP. They wrote their code to work on XP. It worked on XP fine. To then change the OS and say that it's sloppy programming if it doesn't work, doesn't help the end user in any way. And it's the end user that Microsoft wants to go out and buy Vista. The original software vendor doesn't give a hoot if they buy Vista, they don't get anything for their trouble.

Was Microsoft offering to pay for the rewrite of their software? I don't think the likes of Allen-Bradley (who are primarily a hardware vendor) would care to go back and rework their 1990's code, which works fine on 98, ME, 2000 and XP, so that Microsoft can look good. They would be more than happy if their customers scrapped their million dollar PLC setups and had to buy new ones that are "Vista Compliant"?* As the customer, I'm not going to scrap all my existing equipment. As the vendor (Allen Bradaley) they have no real incentive to make their code Vista compliant. The only person who's worried about it is Microsoft.

*Note: I'm just using AB as an example, I don't know if their software works on Vista 100% or not.

Okay, so after mentioning that I don't think Vista provides enough of an improvement over XP for an IT department to justify upgrading, I thought I'd think of some of the things that (had they been included) that might have made it worthwhile for us.

Things that would make me consider Vista if included (out of the box)
- Inbuilt virus checking

- Some sort a scalable user setting (Novice to expert - to easily enable/disable admin functions). So, as an admin, I can log into the users profile on the domain and move a slider between "Admin" - "Power User" - "Expert" - "Average" - "Novice" - "Absolute Newbie" -"Civil Engineer". Based on this setting, the options that appear under the start menu and the control panel vanish or appear and the amount of hand holding that goes on, either increases or decreases.

- For novices, get rid of the c:\ folder structure altogether, restrict them to saving to "My Documents", "Shared Documents" and network shares. Don't allow them to run .exes etc. Basically shelter them from the computer beyond Word, Internet and Email. More advanced users can have wider freedoms, right up to the expert user setting who doesn't get any "Are you really really sure that want to do this?" pop-ups.

- Seamless VPN support. I strongly recommend anyone doing remote work to look at Hamachi. Really easy Virtual Private Networking (Free for home use, and really reasonable pricing for business). If this was integrated, then it would be a huge seller. Sitting at work I can view my home server without having to configure anything on the firewall. This is how easy remote networking should be. Remote Desktop Connection also works a dream over it (Hamachi). I strongly recommend it.

- Much quicker boot up time. Vista's faster than XP, but it's still way slower than my DX100 running Windows 3.11. I would deem 10 seconds or so as being an acceptable boot time. For example. My wife has a PC in the kichen (XP). She checks her emails about 5 to 10 times a day depending on her schedule and maybe uses it for surfing the web over lunch. Yet, she keeps it on all the time because it takes over a minute to boot. It's not a slow machine (It's an FX-55 processor), it used to boot really quickly. But once it got bogged down in service updates etc. the boot time crawled to a snails pace. We've all seen this I'm sure. I suppose she could set it to standby, but I'm using this to illustrate the point. These machines should be capable of booting in no time at all with their 7,200rpm SATA2 disks and multi-core processors.

- Built in telephony support. Okay, I know there is a little bit, but I'm talking full business PBX functionality. I would love to have seen the ability to connect either via VOIP to our PBX, or simply be able to route calls to users from reception based on their login status. There is so much that could be done on this for a corporation. Imagine being able to click on an icon and have the receptionist see that you don't want to be disturbed so all your calls go to your voicemail (which is a .wav file in your outlook). After computers, telephones are the 2nd most used equipment we have in each office. They should be far more integrated at this stage. Microsoft does have a big corporate solution for sale, but to be honest, this would have been a big seller if it had been integrated into Vista. I'm sure the home version could also use a smaller system for managing the house phone.

- License management built in. At present we have all sorts of little routines for checking the license keys on our systems, and ensuring we have purchased enough of each software license. It would be nice if we could have the OS copy all of it's license keys up to a central server say once a month, and have the server verify that we don't have more duplicates than licenses (this is tricky as some licenses allow multiple installs, such as Autocad where it can be installed on a desktop and a laptop as long as only one is used at any time (and the same user)).

- Better OS integration into Sharepoint. It's pretty good, but it could be much better.

- A more proactive (as opposed to defensive) approach from Microsoft. For the first time ever they have released an OS with the attitude that "because we built it, they will come" without making any quantum leaps over the previous version of the OS. Look at the backlash this has produced. They have been forced to extend the life of XP (and release another service pack for it). How much is that costing them? They should have spent the extra on making Vista more desirable.

- I would like to see more centraised settings for Domains etc. It would be nice if each OS could go to the Domain servers and see what the current list of Trusted Sites is, whether there's any new virus definitions to download and what updates to install (this can all be scripted at present, but it would be nice to see it tightly integrated as a simple option during the Vista install).

- This might seem like a strange one, but will strike a cord with anyone who has dealt with a corporate wide virus infection (not our company I hasten to add). But the ability to schedule a corporate wide offline virus check. So all the computers disconnect from the network. Run their virus checks and only go back online once all viruses have been elliminated. I (and 5 other guys) once had to go through a company and find (no easy task) and disconnect every p.c. (some 1,000 of them) run anti-virus on them and then go around checking which ones had finished and reconnecting them to the network. It took us a whole weekend (and yes when I say the whole weekend, I really do mean we were there for 48 hours). Touch wood it hasn't happened to us, but we have 100 p.c's. It would be a nightmare to try and tackle. Maybe there are already solutions for this, this was 16 years ago.

Nice to haves
- RSS Newsreader screensaver.

- Distributed computing screen saver - not sure what I would use it for - but I'm sure some large corperations could figure out a use for it.

- Ship the OS with a BASIC interpreter/compiler. I know this one sounds silly, but hear me out. Remember DOS used to ship with a programming language, Amiga, Atart ST, Commodore 64, Sinclair Spectrum etc. When we were growing up every computer could be programmed straight out of the bag. Now, I know someone's going to point out that you can download Visual Studio Express for Free (or use VB for Word etc.), but that's all too complex. I honestly think they need to ship some simple introduction to programming type language that kids today can play with, get them interested in programming. teach them For-Next, If-Then structures. And then when they reach the limitations of the language dive into the wonderful world of delegates and classes and inheritance and all that good stuff. But at present it must be woefully overwhelming. Give them something like VB 1.0 where they can put some buttons on a form, draw some graphics, maybe even some very basic sprite commands.

- How about a better file folder system? The basic folder structure hasn't changed since the 70's.... I can't believe they got it perfect first time around (having said that I can't think of a better way), but there's a lot of smart people out there... how could it be improved, rather than just a tree structure?

- Totally drop the three letter extension. Commodore had it right with the Amiga back in the 80's. The file header decided what type of file it was. You could rename a graphic file to anything you liked ("fred.wav", "George of the Jungle", "Jimmy.pdf") and it would always be identified as a bitmap. Isn't it about time they did the same with Windows? Obviously there would have to be backwards compatibilit, but they should start implementing the change now.

- On a similar vein how about allowing the file header to carry the authors signature. So if I create an .exe on my computer and send it to a co-worker, their computer recognises my computers signature as trusted and allows the file to run without any warnings.

- What about using a USB key as part of the user login. So you have to insert a USB key with a code on it and type in your username to be allowed access to the system. Pulling your key out logs you off.

- Multiple Desktops. I have two big screens set up. When I'm programming in Visual Studio I often have say Internet Explorer open in a portion and the IDE open in another. When I'm doing sys admin stuff, I have my Server monitor open in a section and a folder pointing to whatever I'm working on in another, and maybe a performance window or some such. My point is that when I want to switch tasks, it's not like the old days when we simply switched between windows, now I switch between multiple windows. Having seperate desktops (like Linux) would be a real boon for this (actually the Matrox Parhelia graphics cards give you this functionality already - but they're $700 a pop).

Things that Vista must have for my to consider it
- For it to work as you would expect "Click here to remember password"

- 100% Backward compatibility. If it doesn't then why don't I think about moving my users to Linux.

Things they got really right with Vista that I love
- RAID support without having to use a floppy during the install procedure.

- The calendar app that ships with Vista, while not particularly useful for corporations with Outlook/Sharepoint is still a great wee app.

- .Net 3.5 - Okay, I know it's available on XP too, but this really is excellent.

- I'm glad they have integrated Media Centre. I have an XP Media Centre at home, I had some hardware driver problems with stuff that worked fine on XP home/pro???? Go figure.

- When you see a powerpoint file in a folder it shows you the first page in the icon.

- BitLocker full drive encryption. This is almost a reason enough to move the laptops to Vista.... almost,

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Originally Posted by kasracer

I think the whole point is that manufacturer/garages did it wrong in the first place but still Ford/Microsoft are offering to help them through it.

The problem with software not working on Vista is due to bad development on the developer's side. XP just happened to let sloppy things slide much better than Vista.

Microsoft offered to help people who developed their software incorrectly for a few years before Vista's release.

I think that was kleinma's point.

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Agreed there and to add...

When Ford created the first car and put the requirement of needing gas out there, stations came to be and provided what the consumer needed at that time. When times change, business needs to change along with it or die.

Many people are afraid of change, programmers included.

Link for Hamachi if anyone is interested.

https://secure.logmein.com/products/...pn.asp?lang=en

I cannot stress enough how good this software is :)

To respond to SurfDemon (I wont quote him as its a long post lol).

"Inbuilt virus checking" - Vista has Defender built in and you get daily definition updates via Windows Updates.

"For novices, get rid of the c:\ folder structure altogether" - Vista is a partial step in that direction but just as you bash Vista for its changes you are asking for a change that would make many users cry 'foul!". Vista has more security and protection on the Program Files folders as well as trhe root drive. You need Administrator permissions to write to it. this is part of what you are asking but you fail to realize that this is what is breaking many programs from being Vista compliant. So which is it? You bash Vista for breaking programs that write to the areas that are protected or you are praising Vista for having part of what you are wanting?

"Much quicker boot up time" - Well you cant compare Windows 3.11 boot time to Vista or even a Server. Thats just well lets just say its a bad comparison logic. Its all relative as 3.11 had less things to initialize and run during boot up while Vista has exponentially increased what is run at boot up.

"I would like to see more centraised settings for Domains etc" - There is a Server version called "Windows Home Server" - http://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer .


Bottom line as Im not going to take an hour to debunk all the points being made but it really sounds to me like you are calling Vista bad because it doesnt have EVERYTHING you want it to have or do. Oh come on. :rolleyes: "I think Vista is bad because it doesnt have Virtual Telepathy Alternate Input" :lol:

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Originally Posted by RobDog888

Agreed there and to add...

When Ford created the first car and put the requirement of needing gas out there, stations came to be and provided what the consumer needed at that time. When times change, business needs to change along with it or die.

Many people are afraid of change, programmers included.

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Very true. But the car provided the end user with big improvements over the horse and cart. The incentive to move to Vista isn't very great.

But the first car was very expensive and that was part of the drawback and kept many people from "upgrading" to get one. They just didnt see the improvement as beneficial over the cost as their horses could also plow the fields and go off roading across the country whereas the car could not (at least for many years).

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

Yes, I get that. However, at the time they developed the software they had XP. They wrote their code to work on XP. It worked on XP fine. To then change the OS and say that it's sloppy programming if it doesn't work, doesn't help the end user in any way. And it's the end user that Microsoft wants to go out and buy Vista. The original software vendor doesn't give a hoot if they buy Vista, they don't get anything for their trouble.

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The problem with this situation is that is was still wrong in XP. There are many security policies that make applications that choke in Vista choke in XP.

I haven't programmed for as long as many of the other people here but even from my limited experience, I've learned that developers will sometimes take shortcuts that are not the best way to do something. I think a lot of that happened more so in the 2000/XP development days when RAD was taking off where as now, we have to be more careful.

I understand from a consumer's standpoint that "It doesn't work on Vista so boo on Vista" or from an IT standpoint where it's sometimes "The app we need doesn't run on Vista so we have to stay with XP". Unfortunately, I almost always hear the former even from IT people.

While I don't think Vista is the best OS (Linux, OS X and Windows all have their flaws), I just can't stand it when people say "Vista sucks" or anything similar because an application was developed poorly. I understand you're not one of those people but my whole point in participating in this thread was to debunk and/or head off a lot of that type casting. I also understand if someone doesn't like Vista for a reason other than 3rd party software applications.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

Very true. But the car provided the end user with big improvements over the horse and cart. The incentive to move to Vista isn't very great.

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I think the change from XP to Vista is almost as radical as a horse and cart to vehicles. The problem? Most of the great changes are under the hood so there is no way to show the user all of the improvements other than saying better security and showing them the pretty interface.

About XP... anyone remember all the bitching and complaining when service pack 2 came out and added the firewall? It broke sooo many programs. But now a days you dont hear a word about that transition or people saying "I'm staying on XP SP-1 because SP-2 just plainly sucks because my antivirus or other programs wont work on it!" :lol:

Remember, the firewall also makes it easy to allow exceptions. It was a matter of hitting one button when the firewall intercepted a communication, and the exception was set. Didn't have to bother with it again.

until the version number or digital signature changes ;)

And if you browse smartly, you can just disable the firewall. I haven't had that thing on in a long time.

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Originally Posted by timeshifter

And if you browse smartly, you can just disable the firewall. I haven't had that thing on in a long time.

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Browsing "smart" is no reason to disable the firewall, I've seen what a lack of firewall and other security can do to a computer, at university :eek:

But the point is that the introduced firewall caused havoc until the software developers wrote better code and code that worked with it. Its all part of evolution to get to something better. If you dont change then you will be left behind using old legacy unsafe underperforming software and operating system.

If I need to visit a website or run a program and I am not sure if it will cause any problems to my system, I simply do it in a virtual machine. That means there is no way I can get a virus or something of that nature to infect my actual PC.

I use a VM that has internet access, but no access to anything on the network, so it has no where to spread if I do get one. Although I have yet to.

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Originally Posted by RobDog888

To respond to SurfDemon (I wont quote him as its a long post lol).

"Inbuilt virus checking" - Vista has Defender built in and you get daily definition updates via Windows Updates.

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I thought Defender was just for Spyware, I didn't realise it did viruses (viri?) as well. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by RobDog888

"For novices, get rid of the c:\ folder structure altogether" - Vista is a partial step in that direction but just as you bash Vista for its changes you are asking for a change that would make many users cry 'foul!".

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Okay, I thought I was being very even handed and constructive in my critisisms of Vista, but apparently if you say anything negative (no matter how true) about Vista, then it's "Bashing" and "Vista Sucks" etc. :ehh:

So, I'll try again. I believe I stated at one point that I would quite happily install Vista on my next home computer. Does that sound like the sort of thing I would do if I thought "Vista sucks"????

But the point I am trying to get across, is that in it's current incarnation it does not have enough improvements over XP for me to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in checking our systems and retraining our staff. I am obviously failing to make this point, so if you would be so kind as to imagine yourself in my shoes.

I'm sitting in a meeting with the board of directors.

Director 1: "We were 3 months late on the xyz project because our Allen-Bradley software kept crashing on that crappy new computer system we just spent quarter of million bucks on."
Me: "Yeah, but that's Allen-Bradley's fault. Not Microsoft's."
Director 1: "No it's your fault."

or maybe I could go with.

Me: "Yeah, but there's lot's of cool things happening under the hood that you can't see."
Director 1: "But it doesn't do what we need it to do."

or how about

Me: "It gives us lots of other advantages."
Director: "Like what? The XP system was super stable. Why did you spend all this money to break everything? Are you trying to screw us over? Do you work for our competitor? In fact why aren't you wearing any clothes?"

er, okay maybe not the last one. But do you see where I am going with this?

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Vista has more security and protection on the Program Files folders as well as trhe root drive. You need Administrator permissions to write to it. this is part of what you are asking but you fail to realize that this is what is breaking many programs from being Vista compliant. So which is it? You bash Vista for breaking programs that write to the areas that are protected or you are praising Vista for having part of what you are wanting?

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Please re-read my post. I'm was attempting to make some constructive suggestions as to what I think they could have added to make it worth my while spending hundreds of thousands of my company's dollars. I am not suggesting that you stop programs from writing to the disk, I am suggesting that for very novice users you restrict where they can save their files. And for power users you give them a bit more freedom.

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"Much quicker boot up time" - Well you cant compare Windows 3.11 boot time to Vista or even a Server. Thats just well lets just say its a bad comparison logic. Its all relative as 3.11 had less things to initialize and run during boot up while Vista has exponentially increased what is run at boot up.

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I fail to see why a fresh install of XP boots in a fraction of the time that XP with all the service packs does. I think it is a reasonable request that the computer be accessible as fast as possible. Just because Vista doesn't boot up quickly at present, doesn't make it a bad idea. I think it would have been a major selling point for them.

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"I would like to see more centraised settings for Domains etc" - There is a Server version called "Windows Home Server" - http://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer .

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I've been keeping an eye on Home Server, and I'll probably get one for my home, but I doubt if it would play nice with our Domain servers. :)

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Bottom line as Im not going to take an hour to debunk all the points being made but it really sounds to me like you are calling Vista bad because it doesnt have EVERYTHING you want it to have or do. Oh come on. :rolleyes: "I think Vista is bad because it doesnt have Virtual Telepathy Alternate Input" :lol:

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Okay, please take the time to re-read my post. They are not points to debunk, nor do I say that I require EVERYTHING. Hell, I don't even call Vista bad. They are suggestions of things that I think they could have put in to persuade me that the upgrade is worth the substantial cost and the risk to my company.

Let's go over the points again quickly, as they seem to be being ignored in the rampant "Vista doesn't suck!" panic.

1) I never said Vista Sucks/was bad
2) I even said I would happily install it on my home computer
3) What I did say was that it does not provide enough of an improvement over XP for me to justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and to expose my company to the potential risk of finding a software problem that delays a project at this point in time.
4) It has driver problems - which whilst they will hopefully be sorted soon doesn't help me one bit.

Does that make sense? All of the software we have may work 100% with vista. But I can't just swap everyone over without doing extensive testing before I deploy that software into the field. So, we're left with, "what advantages does my company get from Vista that will encourage me to spend all that time and money NOW?"

I'm still waiting to hear of a good one? All I get is "Vista doesn't suck. Microsoft says that we should upgrade, we should all do what they say right NOW! and stop questioning their authority?" :(

I offered a number of suggestions as to what I thought would make the system attractive to corporations, but apparently they're just "complaints" and things that I want before I make the switch. Please re-read it. They are constructive comments as to what they could have done to make it more attractive to corporations.

The way I see it, we'll download SP1. We may even test some of the software with it. But unless it really blows us away, there is little incentive to upgrade to it, other than "Microsoft wants us to". That's not going to fly with the board.

I'm sure we will upgrade eventually, as support for XP wains, and bugs in Vista are ironed out. But there is no sound business reason to do it now.

As for the comments about XP firewall problems with SP2. Yes, and for that very reason we test all major updates before we put them out to the staff. We actually delayed the SP2 rollout by a couple of months (as did many many IT organisations) until we had workarounds for everything.

So any reasons to upgrade? ;)

I haven't seen any yet.

STOP POSTING LONG POSTS!

It makes me sad because I'm too lazy to comb through it and respond :(

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Originally Posted by kasracer

STOP POSTING LONG POSTS!

It makes me sad because I'm too lazy to comb through it and respond :(

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Sorry :D I do find it a fascinating topic though.

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Originally Posted by timeshifter

Why does everybody fail to mention Microsoft Update for drivers? It hasn't failed to get everything I need yet.

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you evidently don't have the network adapter i have. I've never had that site find a modem or network driver.

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Originally Posted by kasracer

I've been using Vista 64-bit for about 9 months or so. Zero issues. In fact, it works much better than XP ever did and to top it all off, I haven't had an issue with any pieces of software other than iTunes (you know, before they "put in" support for 64-bit. I just think they suck at making Windows applications) which works fine with the latest version.

I think it's a problem between the keyboard and the chair.

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i've been running xp64 for about 9 months with no issues, and it runs faster than vista 64.

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Originally Posted by penagate

The issue with laptops is that they usually come with pre-loaded crap courtesy of the manufacturer.

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that and they sometimes are shipped with 512meg of shared ram and vista needs more than that.

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Originally Posted by Atheist

wouldnt HP be to blame in this case? I dont like HP, from personal experiences.
Personally I think the new startmenu is a relief, whereas the XP one could grow very large, covering the entire screen easily.

From what I've seen on the internet, as soon as a guy going from XP to Vista finds that something isnt done the same as it was in XP, and cant be arsed figuring out how its done in Vista, he bashes Vista as if there was no tomorrow. I'm not saying that you (SurfDemon) are doing this, but most people are.

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you can set the xp start menu to scroll, as well as give it sub-categories. It this doesn't suit your purpose, there are 3rd party options.

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Originally Posted by RobDog888

I have been running Vista for 16 months with no crashes and no problems.

Why is it that everyone wants to stay in the past. We dont say "Oh but XP doesnt run all my DOS 6.22 apps. So XP sucks!"

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Runs all of mine, thanks to an open-source program called dosbox. But then again, i run them all under mac osx as well thanks to the same program.

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Originally Posted by kasracer

1- Drivers have moved from the Kernel space. No more BSODs for a bad driver unless it's really bad. I had my video card driver fail a couple of times and all I get now is a balloon bubble notifying me :)
2- Media Center in Vista is much better than the XP version and doesn't require the purchase of a new machine. I now have a great DVR :)
3- Pre-fetch. Many think Vista is a memory hog since it can use a gb of ram just sitting there but it really isn't. Instead, Vista remembers your most used applications and pre-loads them into memory. Because of this, after you use Vista for a few weeks your applications will seemingly start up faster. I know mine do :)
4- Major kernel and underlying code overhauls. Microsoft has re-written much code to comply with their SDL process and to modernize it. Let's face it, XP and Server 2003 included much code that existed form all the way back to Windows 3! With Vista, they re-wrote many components to make them more reliable and secure thanks to their SDL process.
5- Accelerated desktop. Now my video card controls all rendering so it can improve visual performance and off cool effects at the same time :cool:
- DirectX 10. DirectX 10 is amazing and fixes a major problem with the previous versions in that it has one set of components that need to work a specific way. Too many times under older versions of DirectX did video card manufacturers implement things different causing different issues among video cards. Now they should be unified and work the same across all cards when rendering in DirectX 10.
- Improved OpenGL. Vista ships with a much newer version of OpenGL. Just wanted to mention this one because I like OpenGL :D

I only scratched the surface. Vista really included quite a bit of changes but, unfortuantely, many will be confusing to your typical consumer. Check out this article to read more on why Vista won't suck.

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1. I was not aware of this but it would be nice to have this as an xp upgrade. I have had a tuner card lock the system up.
2. That's not an improvement. It's a marketing ploy. And you can in fact buy it "oem" from the right people.
3. XP HAS PREFETCH
4. It actually goes back to nt4. It doesn't share code with windows 3.
5. High-end video cards do this anyway.
6. dx10 shouldn't have even been called directx. It's completely new code.
7. I like opengl as well.

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Originally Posted by kasracer

Odd, all of my network printers worked as expected... oh well. I wonder if it's an issue with Vista, the printer driver or the printer itself that shows it that way.

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common issue. I never have been able to get my mother-in-law's hewlett packard to work. And when i tried to download printer drivers, IE refused to let me make hewlett packard trusted enough to allow a file download.

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P.S. If I used OS X, it sounds like I would be complaining about it too

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no you wouldn't since it is implemented totally differently. For example it doesn't lock the computer up waiting for your answer. You have padlocks on all settings windows you need to enter the admin password to unlock, but you can turn that off.

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why get mad at ford?

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this sounds like the argument when the EPA gave every gas station in the united states ten years to come into compliance with their new standards. Many stations could barely afford to keep the building painted, let alone shell out $20,000 a tank. If you have five tanks (standard) that's $100,000. So your mom-and-pop business suddenly needs to save $10,000 a year average over ten years. Is it any wonder so many of them went out of business?

Also as for boot-up times, my xp64 system boots in about 20 seconds with all patches and updates. My wife's mac mini tops in about 30 but she's got the bootloader running first (mac's OpenFirmware) running xp32.

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Originally Posted by kasracer

:confused: How is that not a network printer? Was it somehow directly attached to the Windows machine via ethernet?

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It depends whether the printer is also a server or not. A true network printer has built-in server capability that allows it to function as a network node without being attached to a computer. Printers that need to be attached to a computer are always local from the point of view of the computer that they are attached to, regardless of how they are attached.

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Originally Posted by SurfDemon

I thought Defender was just for Spyware, I didn't realise it did viruses (viri?) as well. Thanks.

But the point I am trying to get across, is that in it's current incarnation it does not have enough improvements over XP for me to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in checking our systems and retraining our staff. I am obviously failing to make this point, so if you would be so kind as to imagine yourself in my shoes.

3) What I did say was that it does not provide enough of an improvement over XP for me to justify spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and to expose my company to the potential risk of finding a software problem that delays a project at this point in time.
4) It has driver problems - which whilst they will hopefully be sorted soon doesn't help me one bit.

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My mistake. I can admit that. Defender is mainly for spyware, yes.

Well security improvements, DX 10 support, having at least some systems running Vista will allow you to gain experience in testing the apps you develop on in a real world environment. Bottom line is like what most companies think: "if there isnt anything that will make a benefit for our company then we will continue with what we are running." With that logic I can understand why some companies are sstill running Windows 98 but they are problematic and are insecure and also require more $ to maintain due to system issues like the BSOD and virus' due to low securty, etc.

Driver issues for the most part are no longer a major issue as the vast majority of manufacturers now have a Vista version.

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Originally Posted by Lord Orwell

5. High-end video cards do this anyway.

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But they can't, because the pre-Vista window manager doesn't use hardware acceleration.

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Originally Posted by Lord Orwell

2. That's not an improvement. It's a marketing ploy. And you can in fact buy it "oem" from the right people.
3. XP HAS PREFETCH
4. It actually goes back to nt4. It doesn't share code with windows 3.
5. High-end video cards do this anyway.
6. dx10 shouldn't have even been called directx. It's completely new code.
7. I like opengl as well.

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2. No because no regular person can just "upgrade" to XP media center edition. You have to purchase it OEM. It's a Pita. The Vista version is much nicer anyway, though I can't remember all of the specific changes.
3. No, it isn't anything like Vista's. XP's doesn't do the samething and works like crap.
4. No, the Windows project manage announced during one of the delays that is actually does contain code all the way back to Windows 3. Sure, it was based on NT more so than ME/98 but NT still contained some very old code.
5. No they do not. If they do, then they would have had to either intercept the Win32 API calls and render them themselves or applications would have to use a new GUI toolkit specific for the graphics card. See, Windows before Vista would render the desktop and all standard component via the Win32 API which used the CPU.
6. It's a logical upgrade path with many similarities to DirectX 9. I would think DirectX 10 would be most appropriate but this is a very minor detail and mostly a matter of opinion.
7. :)

my ati graphics card has a "accelerate desktop" option. I don't have any idea how it works, but it works. It also gives me transparency settings in xp. And yes the vista version of media center is nicer, but buying it "oem" isn't that hard for a standard consumer. It's on shelves at my local computer store. And prefetch works fine on my system. I have had issues with it in the past, but my install was corrupted. I can tell the difference in load times the 2nd time i run a program.