Life After Vista
|
Author:
Editor:
Sponsor:
Published:
|
Max Slowik
Beth
N/A
Sep. 20, 2007
|
|
|
|
|
|
What Vista Needs, and Who Needs Vista
Vista is so thoroughly improved that it makes using XP masochistic, and Vista doesn’t even look or feel finished. There are still a couple of fixes, beyond the recent Reliability updates that have made short work of (relatively) old Vista problems, that will make Vista complete. They're the chunks that Service Pack 1 swears it will bring with it.
The file format, NTFS has to go. WinFS is a well-designed, efficient, feature-rich file format that should expand the Searching and Indexing tools to the point of inviolability. It's one of those fundamental changes that, like with so many of Vista's other offerings, will be adopted easily and make XP that much more backwards. The other SP1 improvement I'm waiting for, along with the rest of the technical world, is MONAD, a command and scripting language that will bring Vista the same kind of functionality that Linux users have touted (correctly) so highly.
The latter's benefits will not likely impact most people directly. Who but the vocal few will immediately appreciate a command line interface? But it will make developing for Vista easier, which in turn means people will spend more time with it, and Vista will finally push XP off the map.
Even without that, Vista is ready; finally working well enough that everyone who can use it will be impressed. It is not without flaws, but its strengths and usability far outweigh them. And, in the next few months, those flaws will be mostly gone, except for the compatibility one.
I said, "Everyone who can use [Vista]," right? There are exceptions. Some software probably isn't going to make the jump, but more importantly, there's a hardware bar that needs to be met.
It's not a minimum requirement issue; I had a few problems with my laptop when it only had one gig of RAM, and two gigs is so inexpensive today that there's no reason not to upgrade. It's definitely not a processor or storage problem, because if there's anything else that's cheap these days it's processors and hard drives. It's the driver problem. Since so few manufacturers have the expertise, time, and money to code drivers for the last generation's hardware, it makes upgrading to Vista...uncomfortable.
Suffice it to say, if you've got components that have been made since the release of Vista, you should probably give it a shot. It doesn't fail to impress.
It's time to let XP coast towards its end of life.
The author of this article knows that it’s in his best interest for more users to switch to Vista, because he knows that more support is needed to light a fire under Microsoft to get this OS finished. But he does actually believe that Vista is better than XP.
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Why Vista Isn't ME 2.0
Page 3: XP Limitations
Page 4: Vista Improvements Over XP
Page 5: What Vista Needs, and Who Needs Vista
1 - Posted by
HCP2
on September 21, 2007 - 3:08 am
Reviewer <--- Vista fanboy
2 - Posted by
aireiq
on September 21, 2007 - 8:54 am
As long as TTL has one for every OS flavor, it'll be fine. I count a Vista fanboy and an Apple fanboy so far. I wonder if there are plans to hire a Linux zealot or BSD fanboy soon.
And what about Plan9?
3 - Posted by
Kurtis
on September 21, 2007 - 12:19 pm
I'm a Windows XP fanboy, if that counts for something.
And Brian was an Ubuntu fanboy for like... 2 weeks. :-P
4 - Posted by
Rich
on September 21, 2007 - 4:47 pm
Win2000 is all the OS you will EVER need! Although I will admit I am running XP at the moment.
5 - Posted by
Bbig
on September 24, 2007 - 9:24 am
So biased!
Win as Serversoft? You gotta be kidding me!
You tell (write) so much, but there are no points you make or give examples!
Sum up: Bad article from an Vista Fanboy or payed by very that company!
6 - Posted by
Kurtis
on September 24, 2007 - 10:14 am
Yup, that's it. We were "payed" by Microsoft.
Next time Max writes an article, I'll have him email you to make sure that you agree with his opinions. If not, then we'll have to change his article to agree with your own personal opinions. How's that sound?
7 - Posted by
Bbig
on September 24, 2007 - 11:17 am
I give you an example:
On the 5th page "Stability and Speed":
He says, that XP crushes on his "workstation".
- Eh, Hello? I'm an hardware-enthusiast myself - and XP is stable.
And on this paragraph he does _not_ mention, that Vista _has_ speed "failures", or how do you explain, that copying the same file on XP can take to ~60% longer?!
- That is what i mean, when i say, it is _so_ biased!
==> Sure, there are some "pro" arguments on Vista, but where are "all" the new kliller-feutures - right, you *hope* they come with SP1...
Sry, this is in my opinion bad journalism.
8 - Posted by
Max Slowik
on September 24, 2007 - 12:51 pm
> He says, that XP crushes on his "workstation".
XP and Vista both crash (just like any OS) but Vista crashes to the desktop while the same tests cause XP to BSOD and reboot. Furthermore, they seemed less frequent while running Vista. This was pretty easy to correlate by looking at my uptime logs. The virtualization and improved driver model really do make Vista run better, where the same practice of swapping hardware in XP makes it less stable, to the point where I constantly have to re-install XP from scratch for benchmarking hardware.
> And on this paragraph he does _not_ mention, that Vista _has_ speed "failures", or how do you explain, that copying the same file on XP can take to ~60% longer?!
I did, actually, address this. I said that the recent performance/service & reliability updates corrected this, along with the audio glitches. That was, in fact, the catalyst for this article; those were the two primary reasons for hesitance in endorsing Vista. Once they were corrected, or at least the symptoms abated to the point where they were not noticeable, I thought it'd be OK to tell people it was a worthwhile OS.
> but where are "all" the new kliller-feutures - right, you *hope* they come with SP1...
Even without them, I'd still use Vista; for me the real killer feature is the searching and indexing, with DX10 close behind. I do expect them to be in SP1, because they're a part of the SP1 beta right now.
> Sry, this is in my opinion bad journalism.
This is an editorial, just take it for its face value.
One of the things I stressed, and continue to argue, is that Vista will only run well on hardware made with Vista in mind. It, in every case where I tried to install it on older hardware, hardware that far and away exceeded Vista's requirements, didn't run well at all.
Still, it was much easier for me to switch over to Vista than from XP to XP x64, which was probably because of the fact that x64 didn't bring any new features, just incompatibility. Such is the nature of being an enthusiast; the willingness to accept problems in the face of being an early adopter. Sometimes this is disastrous, often it's merely painfully disruptive. But I'd rather be an early adopter than accept the popular standard.
Switching to Vista was far from cut-and-dry, but once I got it right, it became clear to me that it's a more featured, polished, and modern OS.
9 - Posted by
Rich
on September 24, 2007 - 8:04 pm
Since when do we get "payed"??? I have been doing this for free all this time???
10 - Posted by
Brian
on September 26, 2007 - 9:27 am
When do you get paid... when do I GET PAID??!!?!?!?
If we're sellouts like what's-his-face says, I want my cut first!
11 - Posted by
Rich
on September 26, 2007 - 12:28 pm
Oh come on, what do you REALLY do anyway.....IF selling out was an option how comes I am just hearing of it??????
12 - Posted by
BCSchnei
on September 27, 2007 - 4:14 am
I always find it funny that some of the most fanatical people are the first to label someone else a FanBoy if they don't agree with them. Like it really matters. If someone likes a product for whatever reason, then I would say they ARE a fan. So what, is that a bad thing!?
I think a persons preference to a OS is highly dependent on what they want to do with their computer. In my case I use it for browsing, email, some music and video tasks, capturing pictures from my camera and play games. For me being able to play the latest kick ass FPS, RTS, or RPG I only have one choice in OS's and that is Windows. I know it’s possible to get other OS's to play games. But that takes work, I already work in the IT industry and have to solve software and system problems all day. When I get home I don't want to have to monkey around for an hour or more to get to be able to play the game I just bought, or have to wait months or years for someone to make a port. Screw that! I just want the damn thing to work, and I find that Windows works best for me and the things I want to do. Now there are many people out there who don't play games so that may make a different OS a better option. Good for them!
I loaded Vista about 3 months ago. I have to agree with Max, it is a very nice OS, but not without its problems. The UAC is rather annoying at first, but after 3 months of use and having all my day-to-day software installed, it rarely pops up anymore. I have had a couple of old programs that I haven't been able to get to work, but I'm ok with that. I probably really need to upgrade that old Broderbund landscaping program from 1995 anyway. It is also a little annoying trying to find where some of the admin tasks are now located, but that is just a little learning curve and I am fine with that. If that scares you then don't use Vista.
Even with these issues, I still have no plans on ever going back to XP on my home computer, in fact I have started upgrading my kids' system so that I can take advantage of the built-in Parental Controls that Vista offers. I also really like some of the new troubleshooting and monitoring tools. I have had less problems with this upgrade then I did going from 95 to XP.
Nice article Max. I’m glad to see a review that is something other than just performance problems on old hardware and a list of issues that some whiney reviewer had getting a driver for a old scanner or camera to work.
Ben
13 - Posted by
Rich
on September 27, 2007 - 3:01 pm
Now if you could just get a Site license for Vista, I might consider changing...
14 - Posted by
Max Slowik
on September 27, 2007 - 4:49 pm
"Nice article Max. I’m glad to see a review that is something other than just performance problems on old hardware and a list of issues that some whiney reviewer had getting a driver for a old scanner or camera to work."
Thanks. I know I said it, but I'm right there with you with just wanting my computer to work; I knew I wasn't alone.
15 - Posted by
Reflex
on November 30, 2007 - 5:24 am
Max -
Just wanted to point out that Monad has already been available for a while now. Monad was the code name for PowerShell, and Vista versions of it are up on the Microsoft website. It is not getting integrated into Vista, although it will be integrated into Windows Server 2008. Go check it out, its worth the download.
As for WinFS, it is not in the SP1 release and at this time is not scheduled for any Windows release. The last statement made about it was back in 2006, and its dev team was essentially folded into the SQL team. It may make a comeback, but it won't be during the Vista timeframe unfortunatly.
16 - Posted by
Max Slowik
on November 30, 2007 - 7:56 am
I've been slowly learning how to use Monad, even back when I was rolling XP x64, and I know it's been available for a while as an option. But I had no idea WinFS got dropped that hard. That's a real loss.
I'm going to look into this some.
17 - Posted by
Reflex
on December 6, 2007 - 12:11 am
The official list of Vista SP1 updates/additions is up. I'd post a link but the forum software won't let me. DailyTech has a news article up about it now...
18 - Posted by
Kurtis
on December 6, 2007 - 4:36 pm
19 - Posted by
ND06
on December 10, 2007 - 4:48 am
Max, about WinFS, you can find a good FAQ on the WinFS blog that was posted last June. Since I cannot post a link, search "msdn winfs" on Google and it should be the first result.
20 - Posted by
Kurtis
on December 10, 2007 - 1:28 pm
21 - Posted by
aln12483
on January 9, 2008 - 12:29 am
Well written article and all of my hesitations regarding the upgrade to Vista has been shed
:)
Add Comment
To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields.
|
VICE Nov. 20, 2009 - 7:17 pm
Wired Nov. 20, 2009 - 7:07 pm
BBC Nov. 20, 2009 - 6:38 pm
Wired Nov. 16, 2009 - 11:56 pm
|