vista Archives - Page 2 of 4

The Bogus Vista vs. Windows 7 Debate

Posted on January 2, 2009 ·

If you love Windows XP, you’ll hate Windows 7 – says Ed Bott on ZDnet. Windows 7: Mojave My Ass –complains Jason Perlow. Dwight Silverman confirms: Sorry, but Windows 7 isn’t a return to Windows XP, while others don’t refrain from some name-calling.

Sorry guys, you’re all wrong.

You’re debating the merits of an operating system based on it’s UI. Sure, if you migrate from XP to Win7, some of the changes can be confusing – but it’s an initial change, the learning curve is not that steep. I actually side with Ed Bott here, the search box to launch programs is a more user-friendly approach than having to remember the names of all *.exe files a’la XP.

But it does not really matter. Mojave my ass? Mojave was a bogus experiment (in fact a PR blitz dressed up as an experiment) showing happy “users” who liked the Vista UI – but hey had no chance to assess what fails in a short demo, and that’s what doomed Vista, not appearances.

Windows in all flavors, be it XP, Vista or 7 is not an application. It’s a friggin’ operating system whose job is to get us into applications and get out of the way. In today’s flurry of blog posts Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has the right approach, presenting performance tests – yes, performance is key to judging how good an operating system is.

The other key criteria is how invisible it stays. Think about it: any time you have to get down to OS level typically means something does not work right. It’s the stupid unexplainable little things like:

Vista and XP computers not finding each other on a home network until you apply an undocumented patch to the XP machines
Simple copy or delete operations taking forever
Not being authorized to move / delete files on my own computer even after elevating to Admin mode, killing UAC and a number of weird cryptic options that take an IT deapartment to deal with, not a home user
Windows upgrade failing if more than 3GB memory is installed
The latest Windows upgrade causing printer and camera drivers from several vendors reinstall themselves (some take 30 minutes or more, kinda big deal)
…

The list could go on, but I think you get my drift: Windows 7 (and any other OS) will be judged on how well computers will run, let users interact with real application without having to touch the OS itself.

Finally, to address the speculation about Windows 7 upgrade paths, let me just reiterate this:

Win7 should be released as Vista Final (meaning it works)
It should be provided it as a free upgrade to Vista
It should come with a letter of apology to all Vista victims

OK, I know we have fat chances for the apology – but I really mean the free upgrade part.

(Cross-posted from CloudAve – to stay on top of Cloud Computing news, analysis and just our opinion, grab the CloudAve Feed here.)

Filed Under: Software · Tagged: applications, microsoft, operating system, os, ui, vista, vistasucks, Windows Mojave Experiment, windows 7, windows bugs, windows performance

Ready for Vista Final? (Code-named Windows 7)

Posted on October 31, 2008 ·

For two days in a row TechMeme was overflowing with Microsoft news coming out of PDC: Azure, Windows 7, Web Office (whatever the MS name will be). But on the very day that supposedly all belonged to Microsoft there was a stream of seemingly unrelated items on TechMeme all pointing in the same direction, none too good for Microsoft.

Joe Wilcox @ Microsoft Watch declared that Windows Vista No Longer Matters :

Contrary to ridiculous assertions recently made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Windows Vista is a flop. If businesses aren’t buying Vista, after waiting six (now seven) years, it’s no success. Yet, during the last day of the Gartner 2008 expo 10 days ago, Steve asserted that Vista “has been extremely successful.”

Success in terms of revenue does not mean actual product acceptance. The fact is, most of the Vista revenue comes from consumers, not the corporate Market. Consumers don’t intentionally buy Vista, they buy computers: good luck trying to buy a system without Vista on it – unless it’s a Mac or the refreshingly new category of Netbooks. And if you cough up the extra $50-$99 most OEM’s charge you to “downgrade” to XP, it is still booked as a Vista sale! Like I’ve said before, don’t be blinded by Vista sales numbers. No wonder MS omitted the Vista licence count during last week’s earnings announcement.

PDC has shown that Microsoft is now eager to forget about Vista, a bad dream, fully focusing on Windows 7. They must have realized that no multi-million-dollar marketing campaign can fix Vista’s badly tarnished reputation.

Where public opinion is more divided is whether this was just a perception issue, or actual product problems. Count me in the latter camp – no Mojave Experiment can convince me otherwise. The problem with Vista has never been appearance, or features as originally designed: it’s the zillions of inconsistencies, little things that fail every day turning us Vista-users into Vista-sufferers.

The stream of messages coming out of PDC appear to confirm this: it’s clear that Windows 7 does not mean major architectural, infrastructural changes – that’s what Vista did. Win7 is all about the user experience – in other words, putting the finishing touches on Vista. I said over a year ago: we don’t need another desktop OS. But I guess I am OK with Windows 7, provided Microsoft:

Releases it as Vista Final (meaning it works)
Provides it as a free update to Vista
Attaches a letter of apology to all Vista victims (yeah, fat chances…)

Whether it’s Vista or Windows 7, almost doesn’t matter – it will likely be the last major desktop OS MS releases, and as such it represents the end of an era. Obviously Microsoft themselves recognizes it (finally!), this years PDC is all about moving to the Cloud, be it the Azure initiative, or the announcement of moving Office to the Web. (To be precise it’s the announcement of a future product announcement).

This trend will only be accelerated by the shift in what devices we use for our (cloud-based) computing needs. Time to Leave the Laptop Behind – says The Wall Street Journal, joined by Coding Horror’s Jeff Atwood who declares: The Web Browser is the New Laptop. Every day another Netbook is announced, at lower and lower prices, and they change how we access information forever. I’ll be devoting the next post to this subject, in the meantime leaving you with another post from Henry Blodget: Microsoft Windows: The Beginning of the End.

(Originally posted @ CloudAve)

Filed Under: Business, Software · Tagged: Azure, Desktop OS, microsoft, Mojave Experiement, netbooks, notebooks, operating system, os, PDC, vista, web office, Windows, windows 7

Why Vista S**ks

Posted on September 25, 2008 ·

Vista isn’t really that crappy – says Gizmodo this morning. Well, I won’t tell you what I think ( I’ve done my fair share), I’ll just let you decide. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words… well, then how about a video?

Yes, all I was trying to delete empty folder structures from my own computer, using an account with full Admin rights. Makes me wonder whose permission I need.. Bill Gates? Steve Ballmer?

The Shortest Windows 7 Wish-list

Posted on August 19, 2008 ·

Ed Bott compiled a detailed wish-list for Windows 7. Mine is shorter:

Call it Vista Final (meaning it works)
Provide it free of charge to all Vista victims
Attach a letter of apology from Microsoft

Filed Under: Software · Tagged: microsoft, vista, vistasucks, Windows, windows 7, windows vista

Blinded by Vista Sales Numbers

Posted on August 18, 2008 ·

This is one of those rare occasions when I can pull up an old post, dust it off, and voila! – I’m done. Yes, I am lazy – but hey, I can’t help, this is one of those “I’ve told you” moments. Here’s what I wrote last year:

Time for a reality check. Product quality, customer satisfaction and market success have very little to do with each other when you have a monopoly.

The Vista problems are real, they are not fantasies created by bloggers. But how exactly are consumers supposed to revolt? They still need computers, and despite Apple’s respectable growth, they still represent a fraction of the consumer PC market. Try to buy a PC today, it’s hard to NOT end up with Vista (even I got one)

Customer demand for Vista? No, it’s customer demand for computers, in a market with no choice. I’m not “making this up”, Donna. It’s all in Microsoft’s 10-Q:

…Client revenue growth correlates with the growth of purchases of PCs from OEMs that pre-install versions of Windows operating systems because the OEM channel accounts for approximately 80% of total Client revenue. The differences between unit growth rates and revenue growth rates from year to year are affected by changes in the mix of OEM Windows operating systems licensed with premium edition operating systems as a percentage of total …

The increased “demand” for premium versions comes from another well-documented fact, i.e. Microsoft’s new segmentation, castrating Vista Home Basic and essentially making Home Premium the equivalent of XP Home – a hidden price increase, by any measure.

A true measure of “demand” for Vista would be corporate licenses and retail sales, and both are behind. But not for long: eventually, after the release of SP1 corporate IT will give in, too – who wants to be “left behind”, after all.

Today InfoWorld burst the Vista Sales Bubble (if you ask me, there never has been a bubble, but that’s another matter): 35 percent of mainly enterprise-class users “downgrade” their Vista systems to XP.

The numbers speak for themselves, let me just add this: next time you look at Vista Sales figures, remember: these customers did not have the choice to buy XP directly, they had to get Vista on their systems, then “downgrade” (upgrade, if you ask me) to XP. But by then their transaction is booked as a Vista purchase!

Vista sales figures are inflated, these transactions were not real purchases, just ransom paid to the monopolist for the privilege to use the OS that actually works- XP.

Filed Under: Business, Technology · Tagged: microsoft, microsoft monopoly, oem, vista, vistasucks, windows market share, windows vista, windows xp, xp

Apple vs. Windows Pricing: It’s All About TCO

Posted on August 6, 2008 ·

The debate du jour: should you pay twice as much for a Mac than you’d have to pay for a Windows PC?

(Data source: NPD)

Just about everyone attributes the price difference to Apple’s marketing, Brand Power. But I think by focusing on out-of-the box prices, they all miss the boat: it’s all about TCO. Total Cost of Ownership.

I started to chronicle the hassle of just running a Vista PC and dealing with random, unexplainable failures, but more or less gave up. Compare this to the anecdotal evidence of my Mac-user friends, who, despite occasional hiccups all agree: it just works.

I don’t know how you value your time (heck, sometimes I wonder about mine), but most computer users probably are not in the minimum wage bracket. Considering the days and nights I spent trying to fix this Vista monster, I’m quite sure I would have been better off paying more upfront for a Mac. My TCO would have been lower. And not even my Virtual Invoices can make up for that.

See today’s debate on: Apple Watch, DailyTech, TechBlog, Mark Evans, Microsoft Watch, Technovia , jkOnTheRun, The Digital Home, Hardware 2.0,

Update: Finally, some sanity – here’s Jake:

Focusing on out-the-door pricing seems too narrow to ask such a broad question. It would be very interesting to see a comparison of expected full costs (not just OOTB) for each of the major O/S.

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, Technology · Tagged: Apple, computer prices, desktop, laptop, mac, pc prices, virtualinvoice, vista, Windows

MS Money: Old Financial Data May Not Be Accessible on Vista

Posted on June 30, 2008 ·

You’d think at least Microsoft’s own products are compatible with Vista. Well, sort of. MS Money users who converted from Quicken may be out of luck.

I have a lot of financial data in Microsoft Money and prior to that in Quicken files. Both applications used to recommend you keep the data files small by archiving earlier years. With today’s faster computers archiving is no longer an issue, but if you’re a long-time user like I am, you probably have a few old archive files.

Every time you “upgrade” Money (hardly any new value, but if you use online services, MS forces you to upgrade every 2-3 years) your current data file is upgraded to the new formats, too. But what happens to the archive files?

I decided to convert all my older Quicken files to Money, just in case… after all, Money supports Quicken conversion. Or not: crash. Crash again.. and again. I tried several data files, even rebooted the system, to no avail: Money consistently crashed at all conversion attempts.

This is where Vista’s Problem Reports and Solutions comes handy, and yes, a few days later it shows “solution found”. Hm… if they found it, they certainly are not sharing it. Here’s the user-friendly stuff I found:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-16″?>
<DATABASE>
<EXE NAME=”MSMoney.EXE” FILTER=”GRABMI_FILTER_PRIVACY”>
<MATCHING_FILE NAME=”adapt.dll” SIZE=”109360″ CHECKSUM=”0x24BD92C0″ BIN_FILE_VERSION=”16.0.0.1303″ BIN_PRODUCT_VERSION=”16.0.0.1303″ PRODUCT_VERSION=”16.00.1303″ FILE_DESCRIPTION=”MSN Money Adaptation DLL” COMPANY_NAME=”Microsoft(R) Corporation” PRODUCT_NAME=”Microsoft(R) Money” FILE_VERSION=”16.00.1303″ ORIGINAL_FILENAME=”adapt.dll” INTERNAL_NAME=”adaptation” LEGAL_COPYRIGHT=”Copyright © Microsoft Corp. ” VERDATEHI=”0x0″ VERDATELO=”0x0″ VERFILEOS=”0x4″ VERFILETYPE=”0x2″ MODULE_TYPE=”WIN32″ PE_CHECKSUM=”0x25BFE” LINKER_VERSION=”0x60000″ UPTO_BIN_FILE_VERSION=”16.0.0.1303″ UPTO_BIN_PRODUCT_VERSION=”16.0.0.1303″ LINK_DATE=”01/04/2007 07:49:53″ UPTO_LINK_DATE=”01/04/2007 07:49:53″ EXPORT_NAME=”Adapt.DLL” VER_LANGUAGE=”English (United States) [0x409]” />
<MATCHING_FILE NAME=”adaptres.dll” SIZE=”13104″ CHECKSUM=”0xA99DDA54″ BIN_FILE_VERSION=”16.0.0.1303″ BIN_PRODUCT_VERSION=”16.0.0.1303″ PRODUCT_VERSION=”16.00.1303″ FILE_DESCRIPTION=”MSN Money Adaptation DLL” COMPANY_NAME=”Microsoft(R) Corporation” PRODUCT_NAME=”Microsoft(R) Money” FILE_VERSION=”16.00.1303″ ORIGINAL_FILENAME=”adapt.dll” INTERNAL_NAME=”adaptation” LEGAL_COPYRIGHT=”Copyright © Microsoft Corp. ” VERDATEHI=”0x0″ VERDATELO=”0x0″ VERFILEOS=”0x4″ VERFILETYPE=”0x2″ MODULE_TYPE=”WIN32″ PE_CHECKSUM=”0x4855″ LINKER_VERSION=”0x60000″ UPTO_BIN_FILE_VERSION=”16.0.0.1303″ UPTO_BIN_PRODUCT_VERSION=”16.0.0.1303″ LINK_DATE=”01/04/2007 07:00:04″ UPTO_LINK_DATE=”01/04/2007 07:00:04″ VER_LANGUAGE=”English (United States) [0x409]” />

This looks like the problem report sent to Microsoft, not the solution. There’s one hint though: the filename is AppCompat.txt. Perhaps it’s a Vista compatibility issue? Luckily I still have an XP laptop around, the data files are there thanks to Foldershare sync (more on synchronization in the next post), all I have to do is install MS Money on the XP machine and try conversion there.

Voila! Half an hour later I have the Quicken files converted to Money on the XP computer. Money’s import/conversion routine is incompatible with Vista! The whole exercise, including search on the Money Group took me about 2 hours, so dear Microsoft, here’s my invoice for lost productivity:

Oh, wait, we’re in the US, perhaps I should have presented a properly Americanized version.

My poor experience was with MS Money 2007, but with Money Plus, the 2008 version of the product line Microsoft shows true ignorance to users’ legacy data needs. Money Plus comes in four editions: Essentials, Deluxe, Premium, and Home & Business.

Microsoft offers a nice comparison chart, which neglects to mention a small detail, available only at the footnotes:

* Important note – Microsoft Money Essentials will not be able to open previous Money or Quicken files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of Money or Quicken, Money Plus Deluxe may be the right solution for you.

Not opening Quicken … well, it’s their decision. But not opening data from their very own previous releases? And this is hidden in the small print?

I rest my case.

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, Software · Tagged: compatibility, data conversion, data portability, intuit, legacy data, microsoft, Microsoft Money, money plus, MS Money, ms money plus, quicken, virtualinvoice, vista, vistasucks, Windows, xp, zoho invoice

Microsoft, the Walking Dead

Posted on June 24, 2008 ·

Over a year ago Paul Graham caused quite some uproar calling Microsoft Dead. Unlike in the 90’s, none of his startup Founders fear (or even respect) Microsoft. They have their eyes on Google and other startups – so Microsoft must be dead. Cash-rich, wildly successful – just not a future force to reckon with.

Today I read evidence that Paul Graham is right. Todd Bishop produced a Bill Gates email from 2003, in which the Microsoft CEO complains about his own systems usability (or lack of).

—- Original Message —-

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com.

…

This site is so slow it is unusable.

…

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

…

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11

I tried to selectively quote from this email, but it’s impossible. This email is a goldmine, you have to read it in its entirety.

It sounds like John Doe Windows User spilling out all his frustration with a useless, unfriendly system. Or like me, ranting about Vista. Which brings me to my point: although we’re blinded by the sales success, a result of monopoly, nothing changes the fact that Vista is widely considered a fiasco. If this is the best the world’s richest company could come up with 5 years after the CEO’s angry rant – well, that speaks for itself. Microsoft is dead. Rich, powerful, but without a future. A Walking Dead.

(And now you can call me crazy.)

Update (6/25): Jeff Nolan feels sorry for Citizen Bill: Of course he’s right about the usability… too bad he can’t switch to a Mac.

Phil Wainewright is wondering whether Gates is “a secret cloud convert, or have I been drinking too much of my own Kool-Aid again?”

Michael Krigsman points to this PDF which shows some of the follow-up email correspondence – you’d think after the CEO /Chairman rants so explicitely, they rush to find a solution. Instead, what we find is fingerpointing, politics, total corporate inertia. That’s what kills (formerly great) organizations.

Update (10/7/2010) – Good read @ Computerworld: Microsoft’s coming heart-attack moment

Filed Under: Business, Software · Tagged: microsoft, monopoly, paul graham, vista, walking dead, Windows

Windows 7: Multi-touch and Salt in the Wound

Posted on May 28, 2008 ·

Today the world is raving (not really) about Windows 7’s multi-touch capabilities. Yet the overwhelming feeling I have about the latest Bill & Steve show is disappointment. I feel betrayed…abandoned. They created this turd Vista, then instead of fixing it they move on to the next thing. I’m left behind with this piece of junk. Incidentally, here’s another telling Vista screen, captured today:

You know, the famous Vista copy problem supposedly fixed in SP1. (OK, I realize this is deletion rather than copy, but it’s file manipulation nevertheless … I assume it’s the same problem)

I really wasn’t kidding when I said:

Windows 7, whenever it comes, should be released as “Vista Final”, free to all Vista victims along with Microsoft’s letter of apology.

Filed Under: Software · Tagged: microsoft, multi-touch, vista, vistasucks, Windows, windows 7, windows vista

Gmail Faster? Are You Sure?

Posted on May 18, 2008 ·

Great performance has always been an obsession at Google and it’s something that we think about and work on everyday. We want Gmail to be really fast, and we keep working on ways to make it faster

– says the Official Gmail Blog. They go on:

One of the areas we worked on was the initial loading sequence: everything that happens behind the scenes between the time you press the “Sign in” button on the login page and the moment you land in your inbox. While the improvements we made won’t resolve every “This is taking longer than usual…” message you might see when loading Gmail over a slow connection, we’ve seen a real reduction (up to 20%) in overall load time compared to when we started.

Hm…so the initial loading sequence got faster. Great news – I have only one question: Why do I now always see this previously unknown progress bar every time I sign in to Gmail?

Btw, I created the account specifically for this test, so it has absolutely no email to be pre-processed. Truth be told the progress bar flashes up and disappears quite fast in the empty account, but it stays there long enough in my real accounts with a lot of data. Not exactly a sign of progress, if you ask me (pun intended).

Update: A sure sign that Gmail must have gone through some changes is that the very popular Gmail Manager Firefox add-on is now knocked out: it is unable to login to any Google Apps email accounts. Regular Gmail accounts appear to be unaffected.

Update#2: I guess I should point out the positive side of the story: this approach is a lot better (transparent) then the Microsoft approach to their slow copy problem, where Vista SP1 improved (perceived) performance partly by rethinking the progress-bar.

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: firefox, gmail, gmail manager, gmail slow, gmail speed, Google, microsoft, performance, SaaS, vista, vista sp1, windows vista