Windows Vista: A Retrospect
Mikey 15 comments
Now that Windows 7 is finally official, I think it's safe to say that Microsoft had no intention of Vista ever being a long term affair. Vista was essentially the Windows Me of the WinNT world, and despite its many failings, we needed it to happen. Watching Vista earn a reputation out in the wild was like watching a technical soap opera, and with good reason.
Over promised, underwhelming
Vista, just like XP before it, was met with fierce resistance from both hardware vendors and users alike. The significant upgrade requirements were more than enough to stop businesses from adopting Vista, because that usually meant a costly hardware upgrade or as is the case for Notebook owners, buying a brand new one.
The lack of software and driver support didn't help things either. Nvidia were most notable and rightfully outed for being especially lazy in delivering drivers in an acceptable amount of time, which no doubt contributed to Vistas reluctant adoption by gamers and those who rely on video performance for a living.
Hardware wise, lest we forget the infamous boycott by Intel, who was so disillusioned with the new OS that they decided to dismiss it and stick by XP. This controversy became compounded when Microsoft announced that a downgrade fee would be applicable for those who had purchased a Vista upgrade but later decided they wanted to go back to XP. Ironic, given that Vistas poor record and lacklustre performance meant going back to XP was considered by many to be an upgrade.
But Microsoft managed to turn this negative into a positive. With embarrassing sales making Vista look bad, Microsoft took the 'unique' initiative of fudging the sales figures by counting Vista 'downgrade' licences which could be applied to XP as a Vista sale.
Pick a version, any version
Last but not least there were the confusing version options. Buy the Home Premium version and miss out on joining a domain – fair enough – but buy the Business version and miss out on being able to watch a DVD. It didn't make any sense that a more expensive version of Vista would not include all of the features of the lesser priced versions. These were all essentially different versions of Vista with different feature sets, with barely any overlap between them. In order to have it all you would need to fork out for the Ultimate version, which was so insanely over-priced that it couldn't be justified by the average user.
And for those who did buy the Ultimate version, they were lured by the potential of Ultimate Extras, which Microsoft promised would be released at regular intervals only to Ultimate users, and we all know how that turned out. Microsoft, in a rare display of conceded responsibility, admitted failure on their part to deliver on the Ultimate Extras promise. A few lousy games, video wallpapers and an upgrade to Bitlocker weren't worthy of the title ‘Ultimate Extras', and certainly not worth the price tag that came with Ultimate.
It wasn't looking good for Vista and failure seemed inevitable, but as I mentioned earlier, we needed Vista to arrive where we are today.
Learning from past mistakes
Windows 7 is easily the most robust, reliable, fastest and easiest to use Windows ever, (even I can testify to the fact) and is rightfully being considered by many as Microsoft's most significant OS release since Windows 95.
The reason for that is obvious: Microsoft has had two and a half years of Vista failings and customer regrets to learn from and rectify for Windows 7, and they knew that that if they didn't get it right this time there would be serious consequences.
In all fairness, Vista actually worked rather well for the few who were able to deal with the issues or those who rarely had any at all with it: I fall into the latter camp. I was an early adopter and after a few days using it I never looked back.
Vista, despite its many failings, is the OS we had to have, and unfortunately pay for. Now Windows 7 is here, it's everything Vista should have been and then some.
As an early adopter of Windows 7 (I've been using it as my full time OS since the beta release), I can tell you without any uncertainty that it's a massive step forward for Microsoft.
It's fast, reliable, has a stack of improvements, and best of all Microsoft hasn't made any unrealistic promises this time.
It seems they learned their lesson.
aries
Tuesday 27th October 2009 | 09:31 PMhehe... I'm so un techno savvy that I'm still using XP Pro and will never know what Vista even looked like! Windows 7 may yet get a run if the old pc fritzes out on me any time soon, ten odd years and a few stitches in the finger later eh Mikey???
Papa
Wednesday 28th October 2009 | 04:24 AMI went to Vista so I could operate in 64 bit. Just upgraded my computer to a quad core I7 mother board. Ooh, its fast!
Branigan
Wednesday 28th October 2009 | 06:07 AM...in response to this comment by Papa. I always wanted to go 64 bit but wasn't sure about software compatibility. Are th eperformance benefits really noticeable?
Nice retrospective Mikey!
Just got 7 on my laptop today, and it doesn't seem all that different than Vista to me. There's a couple of differences, but I would count them to be more like 98 and 2000. Cosmetic at most.
Jake Farr-Wharton
Wednesday 28th October 2009 | 07:44 AMJust purchased Windows 7 Ultimate, which the sales dudes were calling "Windows 'Black Label'"... I couldn't tell if they were trying to make it sound sexy and aluring or being sardonically cynical.
Still, there are definately perks associated with being a long term student... i.e. the price of Ultimate was far less than XP, and I didn't ever bother with Vista. You might say I was holding out for 'the one'.
Having been around long enough to have seen the evolution from commodore to 386 to pentium to duel and quad core to i7, and the operating systems that have come with it, it really makes me wonder with equal measure wonder and excitement, just what is around the corner!
TVBIZ(BOB)
Wednesday 28th October 2009 | 09:27 AMI think MS is very clever in how they have turned all the problems of Vista around.
I used Vista from the early stages and yes it was difficult to get particular drivers but by the time of its official release I was fully operational.
I have used it full time up until the beta release of Win 7.
My wife now has Vista on her computer and I am not upgraded it to Win 7, well at least not for the time being anyway. Oh and bye the way she is very happy with it!
Why did I state that MS is clever?
Well you see Vista was no different from when Xp started. I had more problems with XP then what I did with Vista as far as drivers go.
Vista has been bagged by the media from day one. Normal users were told not to buy it because of the probability of having to get a more powerful Pc. It was a scare campaign which worked well right up to today. In fact it worked so well that now everyone is willing to give Win 7 a go direct from XP. A bold move that will have driver issues still.
To me Win 7 should have been service packs release for Vista not a whole new Version.
MS is clever in it's psychological strategy. Reduce the size of the software by not releasing the normal extra packages that came with Windows. In reducing the software size the boot up time becomes slightly quicker because there is less to load. Everyone loves that!
It's ironic because people will now download the extras that were taken out via the internet. This way it is costing them more because of the internet download usage. The shut down hasn't change - well not for me anyway. It has always been quick and I cannot understand how people complained about there machines taking longer.
Good on you MS! Change a few things and everyone will be happy in the end.
I will not go back to Vista as I do like Win 7 64bit home premium. I didn't need the ultimate version as the little extras do not warrant the higher costs especially for the general home user.
Congratulation Microsoft on being able to weather the storm by the populist who are easily led by a minority of so call computer gurus......
Papa
Wednesday 28th October 2009 | 10:46 AM...in response to this comment by Branigan. Well I switched from Vista 32 bit, duo core 2.3 gig processor. To Vista 64 on a highly upgraded platform with a quad core and about twice the amount ram as before. So I can't say for sure it is faster, but I have no software compatibility problems. Even with XP software.
Marvin the Martian
Wednesday 28th October 2009 | 01:46 PM...in response to this comment by Jake Farr-Wharton. Unfortunately the ultimate version is the same as the professional version with additional language pack support. It even shows that on the box.
Personally I think it is a 'screw you' to the European Union.
As for the 64-bit version, there are some unique advantages like supporting more than 3 GB of ram out of the box, taking full advantage of processor capabilities (this includes increasing the total thread usage) and increased stability of the overall system.
Adobe does not 'officially' support 64-bit, but in my office we have already installed CS4 onto two of our systems and it works without a hitch.
Windows 7 is still flawed, but it is a significant improvement over Vista. I have been a Ubuntu user for the last two years in order to get away from the Vista complex, but after using Windows 7 for a while in a test environment, I think I might actually switch back to Windows.
Kudos to Microsoft for finally listening to the public and making an OS that actually works the way it was intended. Now if we could only get them to accept web standards, IE might come out of the dark ages an into the 21st century.
...in response to this comment by Marvin the Martian. Did you use Ubuntu before trying Vista at all? I did, and I think it helped with the way Vista "thinks." Vista felt more like a Linux setup than Windows. I think that's why everyone was unhappy with it at first. MS was tasked with trying to change their platform to compete with Apple, but seemed to go too far towards an Apple format.
The Baremason
Wednesday 28th October 2009 | 07:30 PMA nice little reminder of the OS that was. I didn't have much luck with Vista but Windows 7 RC1 has been sublime 3 months on.
Marvin the Martian
Thursday 29th October 2009 | 05:26 AM...in response to this comment by Jim. Yes I have been using Ubuntu for over two years. I think Vista was Microsoft's attempt to make a linux style OS. Unfortunately they completely messed up the UAC as well as the user interface.
The only issue i have with Windows 7, at the moment, is the terrible Control Panel. Anything that is really important is buried under their stupid category based system and there is no option to go back to the 'classic' or 'this works' version.
Mikey
Thursday 29th October 2009 | 05:32 AM...in response to this comment by Marvin the Martian. Agreed about the control panel - it's a mess. I hope they sort it out in the final build.
...in response to this comment by Mikey. There's a "view by" box on the top right, change it to big icons. I think that's what you're looking for... It looks more like the traditional setup to me, but I don't spend too much time in there to begin with.
Mikey
Friday 30th October 2009 | 05:20 AM...in response to this comment by Jim. Yes I know of that view state (it's the default one), but unfortunately it doesn't categorise all the available options in the control panel. I think OSX has the nicest laid out control panel.
Rodney
Tuesday 27th October 2009 | 07:55 PMIronically, Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1 - i.e. an upgrade on Vista (like XP was 5.1; being an upgrade on 2000). Functionally, it's not a hell of a lot different to Vista SP1+.
Post Service Pack 1, Vista improved drastically and became very usable. None the less, I have been on Windows 7 for some time now (since Build 7100) and have to say - something about it "just works" in a way Vista never seemed to. A combinations of so many little improvements makes for a very big overall effect.
So far, Windows 7 is a stand out favourite Windows desktop platform for me, of all time and my favourite desktop OS so far too - and I do count OSX and KDE (one of which I like - and it's not OSX).
Vista will be doomed to being "the Ramones" of the OS World (The Ramones were a 1970's punk band that never enjoyed any level of commercial success but were influential for many bands who followed, such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc). The good features of Vista will live on in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 Server and OSs to come but the name Vista will forever be tarnished in the computing world.