What makes Windows Vista better than Windows XP?

Sorry, if you're going to quote reasons why then you need to state all facts, otherwise it's just half truths.

Vista didn't do well, the reason does make a difference from one simple standpoint, if it was a GOOD OS, then another OS wouldn't be coming out so soon, it's just that simple.

Microsoft is not in the habit of pumping out operating systems unless there is a need, and the needs are as you stated they need to recover, but if it was a good product there would be no need for recovery.

Now let's say this another way, you don't dump a GOOD product and try to build another product to recover. In fact there is hardly a history of any company in America dumping good products and building something else to recover.

Because, how do you know the next product won't be worse then the first? There are simply no guarantees, and you don't bank on a long shot when you have a thoroughbred sitting in the stables...

MS is moving on to recover because Vista is a crap OS, marketing aside, has nothing to do with that truth here, and Vista could never be the best OS because there is just to much crap and bloat going on to gain that type of fame from a wide user base.

YEP it has failed to generated revenue because it's junk, that's all there is to it bottom line.

Regardless of the marketing, once the user base understands a product and sees the quality they are going to use it.

Have you ever heard this saying?

A good product doesn't need marketing because a good product will market itself.

And the bottom line here is Vista failed simply because it's not a good product regardless of what anyone says...

 

What I found amusing was the Microsoft's 'Mojave Experiment' - Once_Tricking_Into_Using_It_Users_Like_Vista, anyone else?

From what I have read .. it's said Vista biggest downfall is the requirement of an high-end computer. Windows 7 suppose to address this! There's couple of other things but another is the very annoying UAC feature that didn't impress many, with Windows 7 it's been said they reduced UAC prompts.

And looky at this .. "Windows 7 is not a whole new OS but an evolution of Vista, and will reuse the old kernel and device driver model. That means it would use the kernel in its newer state, when Microsoft updated it with Vista's first service pack. It also means existing device drivers for Vista will work on Windows 7." And ...;

"* these shots may offer few extra clues. In fact, you won’t even see much difference to a current Windows Vista Ultimate as the Milestone 1 runs on the back of Vista Ultimate SP1 and we hear that most of the software looks and functions “almost identically."

 

Phantom,
you really made me laugh. If having an overall Vista Experience point of 5.9 is not juice enough to run it then I feel very sorry for those with lower ratings...

The mojave experiment is only a marketing promotion trick. Like the publicities, one only makes the others see/focus their attention on what he wants them to see. This way he can be sure that they will not find the week points of the product he promotes...

Well, server 2008 has the same kernel of windows vista sp1. But it performs better than vista. (just as windows xp home and windows xp pro perform better than windows xp MCE 2005)

Panagiotis

 

I'm glad I made you laugh!

.. Wow Vista Experience 5.9! My Vista Experience is only 2.0 and I'm very, very satisfied with it. But everyone has a little Tim the 'Tool Man' Taylor in them ... as do I, GIMMIE MORE POWER SCOTTY!

 

I´ll need to get a new computer, not sure when, but it´s probably going to use Vista. One of the reasons is that I don´t expect MS to support Windows XP for the next 5 years ...

About privacy (including the DRM issue) in particular:
Isn´t it possible to block sending of data to MS by using a good third party firewall ? I have no idea which ones block the system from phoning home to MS or other parties, any suggestions (I´m not a real expert) ?

 

I have to disagree to some extent. I understand your point of view, but I'm trying to stress that it's all about sales and marketing. Microsoft would sell you pure crap if you bought it and they would continue to do so as long as it generated a lot of revenue. Since when has MS, or any other major company, been motivated primarily by selling quality products?

I think Vista is fine, it just didn't go over well. And seeing this after a year or so, MS is simply realizing there is not the sales they desired there, and they're moving forward. Windows 7, sadly enough, will probably be more of the same, but by that time, XP will be showing it's age, and more and more people will be ready to move on and adopt the new toys of Vista and Windows 7. Time marches on.

If you're just bashing Vista by making statements like "Vista is a crap OS" then I'd love to see you list all the reasons and details that make it that. I believe that you've just fallen into the mass negative hype that surrounds Vista without really knowing anything about it at all. So please list the reasons why "Vista is a crap OS", and maybe you'll begin to convince me of your point of view...

Btw, I am a businessman, have been an accountant for decades, and trust me, MS's primary motivation is the bottom line, nothing else.

 

I would say MS had it very good with 2000, 2003 and the x64 derivative XP x64 but they went a bit backwards with gimmicks on Vista which initially made a poor impression due to many issues. Also even with the high cost of entry and all the hoopla about its so called enhancements, it didn't really trounce XP or convinced XP users to switch. The so called self tuning TCP stack as well as the slow load of programs and various incompatibilities didn't really do a lot for their sales confidence. The fact that MS had to offer a downgrade choice to new Vista owners proves the fact and admission of Vista's defeat. The only silver lining if any is that Vista 64 managed to regain some of the lost glory as it proved to be more stable and bit quicker than its x32 counterpart. Also MS needs to know in the end........its the speed stupid and XP x64 and 2003x64 as well as 2008 flies through stuff like program load and execute as well as multitasking, hopefully with Windows 7 they will go back to that philosophy.

 

Been running Vista now for almost 12 months and wouldn't go back to XP (although still running it on a couple of machines).

As to the whole downgrading issue, MS has offered customers the ability to downgrade since Win 2000 (i.e., if I buy a license to XP or Vista, I have the right to use that license to downgrade to 2000 or XP).

 

That's because until Vista, MS had been on a cycle of 2-3 years on OS releases. They are just getting back to that cycle again.

XP came out a little more than a year after Win2000 was released and when people saw it had almost doubled the minimal requirements of 2000, there were angered cries of "BLOAT! BLOAT!". Funny how some things never change.

I believe that the long development period is what hurt Vista the most. It gave it time for all the urban myths and FUD to take hold before release (and I see the DRM one hasn't faded away yet according to Fly's post).

 

Consumers are getting smarter, so you can't just shove junk at them and expect them to take it, especially when you are also dealing with the business environments. Dollars might be the bottom line, but remember MS is not selling MP3 players to the masses where bottom line can really matter, they're also selling a tool that is greatly needed for the business world too, and not just some toy for the kiddies to surf and rip mp3s only on.

Let's be real honest here and try not to be biased at all, and just simply look at facts for an Operating System, and let's be real clear here on the understanding of what makes a great OS, not just the tools needed on the OS, but first and foremost the OS itself, and based on those OS X is a far superior tool then Vista. Next comes that Penguin many have come to know as Linux, and the user base for that world has grown greatly, possibly thanks in part to Dell bringing it to the forefront on some of it's desktops, but I won't give Dell all the credit, just some. Also when you look at Linux from the OS point of few as well, it is also a superior tool over Vista. These other tools have also lead to the downfall of Vista as well, because part of the world saw the other side, and waited on Vista to compare it, and it never stood up to those others...

I'm an old school Geek I know an OS, and the many flavors out there and have used them for well over a decade, Unix/Linux/Mac, and others I'm sure you've never heard of.

Microsoft blew it in many ways.

Resource requirements was one failure, along with the typical path of bloatware that Microsoft keeps treading down, and Vista becoming the biggest bloated OS in Microsoft history. Bloat in whatever way you want to categorize it, simply can be a problem, or not, depending on hardware/software/drivers/etc., and the way a system is setup and running, and how all the parts try to integrate and work together, but the simple undeniable truth is that more, sooner, or later starts to pull at a system. Are we going to now say software is perfect? Because it's not, and when you have an imperfect bloated OS, you are going to run into problems, that's the short explanation for it.

When you come from the Unix world you've seen that systems can be full on in many ways, and not be bloated, you then start to understand why this part of the world keeps yelling bloat, because they know something others don't, where as the typical Windows users simply say, RAM is cheap buy more, with no understanding of what real implications lay waiting ahead, even with more RAM, because buying more RAM isn't the answer to escape problems.

Driver development issues in the beginning, software compatibility, Admin UAC issues, spyware/malware as big a problem as ever, something users were really hoping was going to change and when it didn't and was just as prevalent with Vista as XP, users weren't very happy here either. Then there is the same old filesystem/registry issues Microsoft should of done away with and built a system without the need for a registry and built a new filesystem, these areas are more of concerns on the higher tech-side of users, but it also has it's share of the market too.

Now let's step back here a second. Look at the progression from Win2k to XP? What happened there? The same scenario, getting into greater resources, bloat and eye candy the world just didn't want to accept at first, and it didn't, but because people eventually started to see beyond these things and noticed the stability, and performance, XP later on became more widely accepted, and the Win2k crowd started to jump ship, but this never really took off with Vista, and the same thing could of happened here with Vista but it didn't because it just didn't commit anything worthwhile to people over what they were seeing in XP, and that's a real bottom line here too!

DX10 with gamers helped to get some of this crowd migrated from XP over, but when it came to matters for the business world, to much trouble in the beginnings plagued with software and driver issues scared off a bit of this market that never looked back.

No I don't fall into any hype because I'm a PC Tech/Geek I make my living in computing, I'm not biased in any way, I only look at it the way it should be, these are tools, and do they do the job like they should? If so I use them, if they are more problems then they are worth, then I don't and the REAL bottom line here that killed Vista is simply it is more trouble then it's worth as a tool!

PEACE

 

What hurt vista was the bad choices of microsoft.
Vista was under development from may 2001 under the name LongHorn. Five months before the release of XP!
But on August 2004 they revised their plans and started from scratch!
Vista was probably the mosts tested beta OS ever; from houndrends of thousands of volunteers and companies! And even though it was tested that much and although they knew it was not ready, microsoft rashed it in the market because they saw that people got tired of waiting and started to try linux.
So they released a beta OS and now they pay the conseguences of their choises!

Urban Myths and FUD is what "THE VISTA LOVERS" say about those that blame vista and microsoft for the problems they had for over a year without having the ability to put XP on their machines because of the microsoft decision to not support xp on the new systems. This made it extremly hard to find drivers for their laptops/desktops and in a lot of cases they couldn't find any drivers at all! Their Vista OS did not work as it should, their hardware did not work as it should and they had no alternative solution but to pray for a service pack!

Panagiotis

 

They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know.

Panagiotis

 

And for adding a bit more info about microsoft's bad decisions

Panagiotis

 

Well, you said a lot there, but you didn't make a list of the problems with Vista that make it a "crap OS". I'm not surprised, because I don't think you can. I'd like an item by item list of issues, problems, or other specific details why it's "crap". Not just "it's bloated, man is it bloated, and that's bad!".

I think the public is NOT smart in general. Most buyers are idiots. So yes, MS can sell pretty much whatever it wants to them. And they will buy, trust me.

Linux... yes I have been distro hopping for 2 years now too, I am pretty familiar with it. It's not got the "bloat" you refer to, but in my humble opinion and experience, it has 300% more "bugs" than Win. And it's not nearly as polished in general as Win, although it IS getting better slowly. If Linux were truly that great, it would indeed have a far larger desktop market share than it does now. It's had plenty of time to get there, yet it just doesn't. One last word, after all that criticism of Linux, I love it too, and I love to mess with and experiment with all the distros, but that's because I'm a geek, and not because it's better than Win. "Better" depends on how you measure it too. Remember that.

Let's see, what else.... Not much. I have yet to see anyone post an itemized LIST of problems and issues in Vista SP1 that make it a "piece of crap OS". I really would like to see that list, and see if it makes any difference to me. I don't think it would. But please folks, I'm sure we'd all love to see that list.

Something like this:

Vista is a piece of junk and crap because:

1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Like that. With specific details as much as possible. Not just 1) it's bloated. Who cares if it's bloated when you have 500 gig HD's, 4 gigs of ram, and quad cores? Come on folks! XP is massively bloated when you compare it to Win2K, but do I hear you guys saying XP is bloated?

Ok, I'm done for now.......

 

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1330874&postcount=13
It is there. And as I already wrote I could continue like that for all day long.
But what would be the point? As they say in greece "the worst deaf is the one that does not want to hear"!!!

Over and out!
Panagiotis

 

I hate to say it, but you have not listed anything there at all that would bother me in the least.... nor do I consider any of that to be of any significance or consequence. Mostly air my friend.... The only item of any possible interest is longer file copy times, but come on, do you really sit there all day copying files?

Like I've said in other threads, been using Vista x64 here for 3 months now, no issues, no problems, no complaints, no annoyances, and performance is fine. It looks better than XP to me, and I find it nicer overall.

Posts like yours are pretty much nonsense..... they prove nothing and only serve to show your attitude and bias...

But I suppose we all will have our opinions.... Your final quote there applies to you as much as anyone else sir....

 

Go back and READ, I stated many reasons for Vista problems.

300% more bugs, now you're just throwing numbers to the wind, and talking to a hardcore Unix geek, go run Slackware and come back and tell me about bugs, but don't confuse the bugs of the software to have anything to do with the OS.

Linux is a far superior OS over Windows, if you don't understand this, then you don't know the technical differences as to why, and there are plenty.

Many Linux distros are just as polished if not more. To say Linux is not just as polished is not a technically correct analogy, Linux is the kernel, and most of the tools are GNU, and then there is the 3rd party software vendors, everything thrown in makes what they called Linux, and whoever makes their own version as I'm sure you know is called a distro, so please stick to the facts, and don't categorize every single distro as the same, because they are far from in these terms of polished.

Linux is just as great, the problem is, it's opensource there is no one consortium running the show, hence the NAME "DISTROS", so whoever handles those distros makes the impact, and let's face it there aren't to may giants out there with the marketing power and dollars to market against Microsoft, like you said before the name of the game is dollars.

Simply put Linux is a lot bigger then most people realize and run many systems behind the scenes that people are not aware about, don't confuse the OS with only the desktop world, there is more to it then that.

I guess you are not aware of the biggest business loss of MS in Europe to Suse with IBM backing it for the German government, one of the biggest losses in Microsoft history? Microsoft at that point in history lost out to the biggest technical part of Europe and Suse won.

Better also depends what your needs are.

Look at OS X? What type of OS do you think this is? Do you know what it is?

Just to let you know I'm not some kid, I'm a middle aged 20+ year PC geek. I know my business...

If you'd like to learn about Linux I wrote a TUT that I posted at many forums across the net, here it is at EVGA:

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=175951

 

And Vista Bashers always state this even though XP went through the same birthing pains and it took 2 service packs before it finally came to it's own. You are just part of the paradigm and don't even see it.

Something else happened along with the FUD building during that time in development. Somehow Vista negativism came in vogue, "Hey man I'm cool--I bash Vista!" Whether it started from the "Gotta-Have-It-Now" Generation done in spite because of Vista's late release or other OS fans (or may I say zealots) I don't know. But it is acutely evident. More than once I have read people's testimonials who proclaimed (sheepishly) to have been Vista bashers but changed their minds once they spent more time and got to understand Vista. They always state that they just "heard" Vista was bad.

All of this reminds me of when I first got into the dealership parts business back in '81. At that time auto technology was going through a drastic change with on-board computers, fuel injection, and front wheel drive. Several old-time mechanics refused to work on these vehicles saying along the lines of "why did they have to change all of this, the old ways worked fine for decades" and "it won't last". Most of them eventually got out of auto repair all together because of their stubbornness. Nowadays these technologies in vehicles are hardly even thought of anymore. Back when XP came out there was a lot of flak about Activation ("I rather stay with Win98 the rest of my life than go through activation!"). Now you hardly hear anyone complain about it.

Anyway what I was really referring to was these:

FUD

FUD

FUD

FUD

FUD

And on and on...

 

With all its bugs, a distro like Ubuntu or SuSE or others are far better than Vista any day, any time and to an extent even better than XPx64. The Linux bugs are there because thousands of dedicated developers are honest enough to take them out. The other hurdles with Linux is drivers and that is not the OS's fault but the parochial attitude of hardware manufacturers and there is no cure for that except customers forcing the hardware manufacturers to make the drivers. With all its so called bugs, Linux continues to be used in industry as embedded OS as well as being backbone in many corporate environment. In fact for companies like RH, its their bread and butter.

As for Vista, I got it as a gift from one of my students, the x64 version. Even with my hardware, I was hesitant to use it having heard so many horror stories. However I was pleasantly surprised to find that it installed and ran well with no issues. I ran it for a month but then I started yearning for the response of my XP x64 which is way snappier than Vista. Also I missed the freedom to customize and tweak, don't get me wrong, Vista allows it as well but in a limited way. Vista needs to improve its I/O which is among the poorest of all the OS out there. Its strange to see that MS made 2003, XPx64 based on NT 5.2 2003 and the latest 2008 which are way faster than all their hyped Vista. It seems that MS Vista was made for the marketing department rather than for end users. Its a shame with all their beta testing, project Longhorn didn't deliver. Maybe next time they should listen to the user feedback rather than their marketing department.

 

DasFox,

We're mostly home users here. So we're talking about DESKTOP OS's. Linux is used all over the internet on servers etc, that's a given. I'm just saying, as a desktop OS for the home user, it's time has not come yet. Win is far better. That is my experience with it. On a new triple core amd here with 4 gigs ram and 2 500 gig HD's, in 3 months I have slapped on over a dozen distros. Only 2 were any good. Ubuntu and OzOS. The rest sucked in varying degrees mostly due to bugs and issues. 2 out of 12 or 14 isn't very good my friend....

Your "list" of Vista problems doesn't impress me at all, nor do I experience any of it. I base my opinions on my own experience, not what a bunch of other people have said or told me. Is your opinion of it based on your experienc with it? Did you use Vista x64? Did you have brand new hardware and SP1? Or are you just passing on things you've heard?

This has pretty much degenerated into a useless exchange, I will move on at this point and just say that we all will use what we like best, and percieve to serve us best. I use them all, Vista x64, XP x64, Linux, BSD and Macs on occasion, as well as Win Server 2003 and Win2k. I like Vista x64 a lot. I have no problems or issues with it whatsoever. I also like XP x64 a lot. It performs even better. But you just won't find me saying things like "Vista is a crap OS" because that's nonsense and only meant to inflame and start arguments.....

Feel free to think otherwise and disagree...

Edit: And thanks Arup, that's a much more level headed commentary on Vista....

 

You're right, Kerodo. I never thought this would happen but these XP/Vista discussions are getting a lot like political and religious debates that I usually tend to stay out of. One hardly ever changes the other's mind and the endless back-and-forth dialogue gets monotonous. I have no qualms about anyone using whatever OS they prefer as I have also played around several different flavors of Linux, BSD, and even BeOS (never been on an Apple machine though, they're scarce around these parts, lol). Live and let live as the old saying goes.

EDIT: Besides I have a more pleasant chore to do. ATI has released it's new Catalyst 8.10 64 bit drivers today and I am off to install it (well I hope it will be pleasant anyway )

 

There is no air to anything, I guess you have not been paying attention to the business world of computing and Vista.

I wrote small basic descriptions of problems, I didn't break it all down into fine details, it would take to much time to write. You did not pay attention and read, I was also explaining problems with Vista from a marketing standpoint too, and how the business world took it.

The business world that spit out Vista didn't think it was all air....

Yeah no kidding, who cares what anyone uses, I certainly don't. Like they say use the best tool for the job.

But to sit around spouting off, and simply ignoring facts is foolish, after all what are you hanging on to?

 

DasFox, you're quoting my reply to someone else, that wasn't directed to/at you.

Let's move on.....

 

Hey Midway, thanks for the heads up! I am right behind you....

 

Oh I just meant the reply about where you said it's getting like Politics and Religion was all...