Re: [Thinkpad] Vista naysayers: what don't you like?

Hello,

I have been running Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Edition since it was
released on MSDN to developers in November of last year on both my ThinkPad
T43p (x86) and on my desktop PC (x64). I have had no insurmountable problems
with the OS, but one of the things I did was plan my deployment very carefully
by studying what was said about Vista while it was in development and being
careful to purchase mainstream components from first-tier manufacturers.

Here are the main complaints I have heard about Windows Vista:

1. Lack of drivers, especially for older printers and scanners, and x64 in
     general.

2. Increased system requirements and slower performance compared to previous
     operating systems XP/2000/98/Linux/BSD and so forth.

3. Reduced battery life and increased heat (a notebook-specific issue).

4. The implementation of the least-privilege model (called Universal Account
     Control) is overly invasive.

5. Problems with stability and performance of network connections.

6. Concerns about DRM.

7. Concerns about lost productivity and training costs associated with
     learning a new UI.

Here are my responses and/or workarounds:

1. I only had one piece of hardware in my desktop computer, a RAID PATA PCI
     expansion card with two 80GB PATA drives running in a RAID-1 (mirror)
     configuration, that the manufacturer said they weren't going to support
     under Vista. It was several years old and I think I paid $60 for it, so
     the cost was amortized out over several years. I was actually planning
     on switching to SATA RAID and pulled the card. I never got around to
     building a SATA RAID array, although I eventually did stick the
data I had
     on the array on a 400GB eSATA drive. I just looked and noticed the
     manufacturer now has RAID drivers out for the card.

     Outside of my PC, there wasn't a specific driver available for my printer,
     so I ended up using a similar one from the manufacturer. So
far, I haven't
     had any troubles printing.

2. What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away, so the saying goes.... Vista
     requires a faster processor and more RAM than previous versions
of Windows.
     I'm really not sure why anyone is surprised by this, given that something
     like six years have elapsed between XP and Vista being
released. I remember
     reading the same type of complaints about Windows XP, 2000 and
95 when they
     came out, too. This is not really anything that
Microsoft-specific, either.
     I suspect if one were to compared the system requirements for a
six year old
     application versus its current version the results would be the same.

     When it does come time for me to upgrade to a new ThinkPad, I shall pay
     close attention to the hardware selection to ensure it works well with
     Vista before I make my investment.

3. A default install of Vista consumes more resources and basically runs a
     3-D GUI all the time (except for the "Home Basic" version) so
this, coupled
     with immature power management and video drivers, did result in reduced
     runtime for a lot of notebook users. On my T43p, I had disabled some of
     the services I didn't need to free up memory as well as most of the 3-D
     effects in the GUI to reduce the heat being generated. Likewise, I have
     updated the drivers for my hardware as new ones have been released, which
     seems to have improved things on the power side. On the other hand, I
     rarely use my notebook without it being plugged into AC power,
so it is hard
     for me to judge.

4. Whenever you run a program that has the ability to make global changes to
     the system, Vista opens a new Desktop and displays a single User Account
     Control dialog on it asking the user to allow or deny the operation. UAC
     can be modified in several ways, including disabling it or displaying the
     dialog on the same Desktop. When I was initially installing software, I
     disabled UAC to avoid prompts, but re-enabled it afterwards.

      Right now, I am getting UAC prompts on two applications I run, a disk
     synchronization program I use to copy my data files to an external drive
     and an old game from around 2000 that likes to run as Administrator. I'm
     managing to deal with these issues, but it was really annoying until I
     thought about the implications, e.g., "The OS is prompting me to allow a
     program to run that could affect the system globally. Do I want to be
     notified when such a thing occurs?" I decided I did want to be
notified of
     such things, so it is less of an irritation for me. Perhaps others run
     more software that requires Administrator (root-like) access than me, so
     it is more of an issue for them.

5. Part of this is driver maturity issues, but the other part is that Vista
     automatically enables TCP window scaling and dynamically changes the TCP
     receive window size, amongst other things. As I understand it, these are
     things which are not new to networking (the RFCs for some of them date
     to the mid-1990s), but are new or now enabled by default in Windows Vista,
     which has caused problems with a lot of residential gateways that don't
     support them. The features can be disabled, though, to work with older
     residential gateways. There's also an issue with slow copying of files,
     but I think there is a hotfix out for that now, and that will make its
     way into the Service Pack for the OS.

6. I have had no trouble transcoding audio CDs to MP3s, even "copy protected"
     ones and no trouble watching DVDs under Vista. There is one DVD I have
     a lot of trouble accessing the menu on, but the problem also occurs on my
     Samsung DVD player, so I think it is just a poorly-designed DVD interface.

7. I disabled the new Start Menu in Vista so I could use the "Classic" one.
     I also did the same thing under XP. :-)

Just to keep things in perspective, I overall have a good relationship with
Microsoft. I use and like a few of their products, I use and don't like
some other ones and I also have a number of friends who work there. I also
work at a company which competes with them, so while I am less enthused
about that, I have to say I haven't seen any of the earlier misbehavior
associated with the company.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

At 12:48 PM 11/16/2007, you wrote:

>Message: 1
>Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:00:32 -0500
>From: "Scott Matthews" <scott@turnstyle.com>
>Subject: [Thinkpad] Vista naysayers: what don't you like?
>To: <Thinkpad@stderr.org>
>Message-ID: <000e01c8287a$94f34070$0301000a@x40>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>I'm still open to liking Vista, but also curious to know what you don't
>like.
>
>Apart from some device incompatibility --ie, some printers, etc. not having
>Vista-friendly drivers -- what else don't you like?

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Received on Mon Nov 19 01:10:48 2007