July 24th, 2008
Once Tricked Into Using It, XP Users Start to Love Vista
By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews
Many have said they’re not interested in Windows Vista, that Windows XP is just fine for them. And in fact, you could go so far as to say some of them actually hate the OS. Still, a new OS, Mojave, may just be the key to a new marketing campaign.
Last week Microsoft told a focus group in San Francisco they were being shown a new version of Windows, codenamed Mojave. Feedback was quite positive; more than 90% gave positive feedback. Afterwards they were told that Mojave was actually Windows Vista.
As C|Net reported, the response from one user was “Oh, wow.”
As I’ve said previously, Windows Vista is just fine as an OS, and doesn’t deserve a lot of the flak it takes, but it also is more evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and doesn’t deserve the hype Microsoft gave it either.
Of course, the focus group members didn’t have to look for drivers, struggle with application compatibility, or any of the the other problems that Windows Vista owners have to deal with, but …
At any rate, Microsoft still hasn’t figured out how to use this as a marketing campaign (Vista: it’s not as bad as you think?), but you can bet they’ll use it somehow.
Badinoff says:
Oh, I think Vista has pretty much earned the flak aimed at it. Yes, some of the criticisms may go over the top but there’s plenty of shills and fanboys on the other side who try to lay the blame on the users for not liking it.
The real deception in this instance was not pretending that Vista was Mojave but instead implying that the focus group’s experience with the OS had any relevance to “real world” usage.
Vista may be “just fine” when you eliminate all the hardware , software, DRM, etc. problems, but “just fine” really doesn’t cut it when you tack on a large price increase and force installation of an OS on inadequate hardware as MS did during their roll out.
Maybe if MS treated their customers a little less heavy handedly they’d be judged less harshly in return.
July 25th, 2008 at 4:36 am
Ed3 says:
I’m curious as to the specs of the system(s) they were running. What would we need in order to have a “Mojave experience”??
July 25th, 2008 at 4:51 am
Live Crunch says:
I guess it’s ok OS but still has problems like XP had at the beginning and nobody wanted to move from w2k right away. I think next OS will blow everything away.
July 25th, 2008 at 4:59 am
Jim Frost says:
I’ve been running Vista since pretty much day one on several machines. While driver problems were rampant early on they’ve settled down, just like with XP. (In fact, I had a lot fewer problems with Vista than XP.)
My principle complaint with Vista is that it’s a pig. There’s nothing that it does that XP doesn’t do that should require 2G RAM in order to run MS Word without long delays. It needs to go on a diet. (SP1 seems better but it is still not pleasant on my 1.5G system.)
There are also some real weirdnesses related to Program Files directory virtualization that took quite some time to figure out, although newer software doesn’t seem to fall prey to that very often.
Lastly, UAC is too chatty. The Mac uses the same protection model and I’m not entering passwords again and again during a single software install. Even so the benefits more than outweigh the annoyance.
So: Streamline UAC and spend some time on optimization and Vista is a win IMO.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Kevin K. says:
If you set up a PC to hum along nicely with just about any OS including Windows Me, a user’s experience is bound to be “just fine”.
This is clearly a faulty exercise that’s nothing more than using statistics to lie.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:04 am
LZW says:
I believe they must have used Vista-sp1 in this trick so the results do not surprise me… I’ve said it before, Vista is no better or worse then a hand full of other unfamiliar operating systems.
Perhaps with sp1, their goal is to create something that XP users will enjoy, which is what it should have been all along.
I think if the original Vista had been named Mojave, people would have disliked it nearly as much… I say nearly because I think microsoft is the only one who ever liked the name vista.
It sounds like a dumb road sign… Scenic vista, 2 miles ahead.
To be honest, I’ve not yet tried Vista SP1…. I completely gave gave up on the OS when it did not fully support my Audigy2 platinum card.
I mean come on MS people… Soundblaster is one of the most famous add in cards of all time! How do you not support a soundblaster?
To upgrade to XP, I had replace my SCSI host adapter from Diamond Multimedia… But who cares? People were like Diamond who now?
Yet everyone has heard of soundblaster…
July 25th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Merk says:
LZW says: “I mean come on MS people… Soundblaster is one of the most famous add in cards of all time! How do you not support a soundblaster?”
As much as I dislike Vista, accurate reasoning should be used when expressing dislike.
In the case of Soundblaster, the problem is not from Microsoft, but from the people who make Soundblaster.
Microsoft makes relatively few drivers for third-party applications such as Soundblaster. The better question you should be asking, is why Soundblaster’s people are not supporting Vista.
That being said, I’m still waiting for more third-party support before I give Vista a try, considering how much bad press it has been getting.
July 26th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Grandpa says:
Come on people, Vista 32 sucks period. It does everything Xp does only with much more headache. Now then, if you have the hardware, Vista 64 does everything Xp does but with less headache. Either way it’s a rip-off. And YES, a new Windows OS should support Soundblaster as well as most hardware made for the Windows platform. But hey, don’t listen to me, keep pushing an OS like Vista that doesn’t play games well, doesn’t support the most common hardware, nags the shit out of you and on and on and guess what happens? People will move to a lesser DRM’d platform like Linux. If you don’t use your PC for games, why in god’s name would you use Windows?
July 28th, 2008 at 7:48 am
WMB says:
The thing that I’m still wondering about is why Microsoft never explained to the mainstream public why Vista was necessary. They fixed many bad and archaic features of XP. These architecture changes are what cause most of the incompatibility problems. Now that they are fixed they should open the road to much more powerful and robust software. The problem is M$ has been largely quiet on the entire issue. The sound and graphic subsystems have been massively overhauled. Silly things like having a 12 point font being the same size regardless of the display device are now possible on Vista. Believe it or not Vista is the first Microsoft OS to move out of the 90’s with it’s design. (or 80’s even with some aspects.)
July 29th, 2008 at 8:10 am
mike d says:
Its not that VISTA is a terrible operating system, its just that it doesn’t really bring any real benefits and is such a resource hog. Yes it has Aero, but that is just pretty. Yes it is a big safer, but at the expense of pinging you for absolutely everything you do. The typical user who buys a new PC will be happy with Vista as long as they buy enough horsepower to back it up and don’t go from from the basic Microsoft configuration. The focus group was basically rigged and it just goes to show that Microsoft doesn’t know what they are doing.
July 30th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Dan Lauber says:
When VISTA first came out I convinced one of our sons to use it on the new PC he was building. As of July 2008, he still hasn’t forgiven me.
Frankly, I haven’t learned anything about VISTA that is so compelling that I should switch over my company’s PCs from XP. Windows XP Pro works just fine — all our applications, utilities, and hardware work great with it. I can’t figure out what VISTA offers that would make an “upgrading” to it worthwhile.
July 30th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
David Hutchins says:
I am sure Vista is just fine if you have the horsepower to use it AND if it works with all your old hardware and software that you rely on and don’t want to replace.
Security is supposed to be better, which is a big plus. It has a lot more eye candy and some spiffy new features, which are nice but certainly not necessary. My old system with XP works just fine and no compelling reason to update hardware or software. If I was to buy a brand new PC, then I would welcome Vista.
My older system would probably choke on it. My system does everything I want it to, so why upgrade?
July 30th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Ben says:
I Insta;lled 6 vista Home Premium packages on 6 family PC’s on the day Vista was released, there was 3 Dell’s, 2 HP’s and a Home Brew, each has 2 Gig’s of ram and the processors are 1.8 GHz to 2.6GHz, all have various model Sound Blasters all of which work just fine, Vista is faster than XP by a considerable margin, Vista doesnt crash weekly like XP nor does it have to be reformatted semi annuly or more often andI have never had a blue screen with Vista which is still a common occurance with XP (I still have an old XP machine here with all the latest drivers and service packs), the only software problem I have is Roxio Media Creator 7.5 would not work with Vista but it was an old product when Vista came out, you Vista Basher arre like a bunch of sheep, you echo what other uninformed XP users say without getting the facts and most will claim they used Vista when they havent, try and think for yourself, try it dont just say you tried it, you just might find you like it.
July 30th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Brian says:
Dan said it perfectly: “I can’t figure out what VISTA offers that would make an “upgrading” to it worthwhile.”
MSFT proved only that Vista works fine when setup by pros on cutting-edge machines in the lab while running limited applications. OK. So what is the advantage over XP that would justify the money, time and uncertainty of upgrading?
What feature overcomes the 20% to 30% performance hit that every speed test shows? If I wanted my new notebook to be no faster than a 3 year old notebook I wouldn’t have purchased a new one.
In the words of that old Wendy’s commercial, “where’s the beef?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug75diEyiA0
July 30th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
jonrichco says:
Good on ya, Ben
Makes a change to find someone who actually likes Vista. As for me, I have no complaints. Apart from having to upgrade Acrobat Pro, and find a new alarm clock, it has done everything I want it to do. Few crashes, apart from a sporadic failure to reboot from sleep mode after a week or so of use. No blue screens, no need to reimage after 6 months or less, which I always had to do with XP. My 2 MB Vista notebook is a quick now as when I bought it 14 months ago. MUCH better security. But I dislike Office 2007 and have gone back to 2003.
I don’t do serious development work - so I sympathise with you Vista users who do - but please stop trying to undermine Vista for the average user like me who (I think) would enjoy working with the system.
July 30th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Andy says:
I have been avoiding Vista since launch and have finally jumped on the band wagon. For one reason only to set up my Media Center. When I first booted up the final install it nagged my like hell with the UAC so DISABLED. A million and one usless services hogging resouces DISABLED. AERO DISABLED. Side bar DISABLED. Set everything to Classic. Latest drivers for everything. Now on initial boot the memory used is a respectable 250MB used and shoots to 1GB with media center open. But the tracks still stuttered in the last 20 seconds, after research “vista sound enhancements” DISABLED. Why oh why do we have to disable so many crap/broken/bloated features to have a Vista machine that runs well. If they aimed hte O/S at being a sturdy O/S and get people to install what they use they wouldn’t get all the bad press they have now.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:28 am
Mike says:
I’ve been using and being annoyed by Windows Vista. Why is IT that Microsoft think that they released a brand new O/S that EVERYONE is going to dump their old computers in favor of it? I’m running a network with various Windows O/S version and NONE of them can communicate with Vista! I tried that Link-Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder ONLY to be told I already have a newer version already installed. Did a search for it, and I turned up nothing. I’ll reserve my comments for Vista till Microsoft sends me a fix for the network problems.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:26 am
Rick says:
It amazes me how many people think that it’s Microsoft’s job to support all of the legacy hardware out there when it releases a new OS. In fact, it’s up to the hardware vendors to provide the necessary drivers to make their hardware compatible. If they do, great, if they don’t you’re screwed. Case in point is the gentleman with the Audigy 2. Creative offered a solution for a price, but it’s a relatively old card and Creative was going to do as little as possible to keep it current. (HP is also notorious for this.) The new cards are cheaper AND better. As for memory requirements, memory has never been so cheap. You can buy 2 gig for about $50.00. When you’re spending so much on an OS what’s another $50.00 to make it run better? Relatively speaking XP had higher hardware requirements than Vista when it was released. When the old hardware finally turned over, the complaints went away. Hopefully the same will happen with Vista. It’s a good OS.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:09 am
Daryl says:
I have been building and repairing computers for 18 years and when Vista came out I thought “ok i’ll give it a go to see what it was like”
I did this for 2 mths and I had all sorts of troubles with it. Firstly I had driver problems but this was not entirely Vista’s fault.
I am what you would call a “power user” and I use my computers for things most people would never think to use them for.
I found that Vista was a hog, it was slow and not very flexible and it was always nagging you for something. I am still using Windows XP Pro and will continue to for sometime to come.
Only last week I had a 2Gb laptop with 2Gb ram come it and the customer was not happy with it. His main complaint was it was so slow and he couldn’t run his software he wanted to on it. The poor little laptop took 3 minutes to loadup to desktop once it was there it was just like running Windows 95 with 16Mb of ram, it was that slow.
I formatted his hard drive and installed Windows XP and now he is very happy with his laptop.
So in my opinion Vista is just another MS blunder we poor end users are now getting stuck with.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:10 pm
William H says:
I was VERY VERY much against Vista. But I bought a new pc and it came preloaded with Vista. All my old programs and every piece of my hardware was seen by the OS on the first try and everything works great.
Only a few minor annoyances like icon size and other cosmetic display issues, all resolved.
Vista is GREAT !!!!!!!!
July 31st, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Herm Harrison says:
I simply ain’t buying it. On a high horsepower system with lots of memory, a powerful graphics card, and carefully selected hardware, I’m sure Vista is fine if you don’t mind all of the speed bumps Microsoft has built in to try to idiot proof the operating system (eg UAC), but as an upgrade or on a “typical” system or a laptop, the eye candy extracts too high of a toll on performance without really delivering any benefit. I’ve not even mentioned the fact that if you have an older peripheral you probably won’t find a driver for it.
An upgrade to the operating system should not obsolete your existing hardware, or force a hardware upgrade simply to power the OS.
While Apple and Ubuntu have made great strides, much of their success derives from Microsoft’s fumbles. If Windows 7 isn’t better than Vista, Microsoft could find itself in some real trouble.
July 31st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
DRS says:
Daryl , if you have been around PC’s for 18 years you should be able to overcome problems…like a person like me who has been around them just as long. Who has the experience of XP when it fist came out, or 98 when it first came out.
The whiners here are most likely individuals who have not really given Vista a shot…or they are your typical MS hater who sees black helicopters and thinks Bill Gates has the number 666 tattooed on his head.
Once figure out and once you obtain the proper 3rd party software and/or upgrades… Vista is a blast.
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:32 am
Rick says:
It is funny how people just blindly repeat everything they hear.
Sure, Vista runs better with more horsepower available to it, but that is no different than when XP or W2K or NT or any previous version of Windows first came out. And it’s no different from any other OS.
Anyone who’s ever put a music CD in their XP machine, only to find that it mysteriously installed a root kit without their knowledge should appreciate UAC, but I guess some people are too stupid to see that until they get burned themselves.
Drivers are primarily the responsibility of the hardware vendors, not Microsoft. I don’t know why people don’t understand that. But then it is obvious that a lot of people simply don’t understand much at all about how computers work.
August 5th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Jim says:
Isn’t it amzing how gullible people can be?
If you notice the article says these people were “shown” this new operating system. That is marketing speak for “they were given a glitzy sales pitch.” Nowhere is it even implied that they were actually forced to try to learn or use Vista for even the most trivial task.
Remember all of the “focus groups” MS crowed about as having been heavily involved in the development of Vista?
They all loved it and said “Wow” too.
The function of an operating system is hardware integration, file management and and a set of basic API’s. Security and entertainment are the function of the user and their chosen applications. We don’t need fancy new eye candy, we need something as old and boring as a screwdriver and hammer that have been around for centuries, but just work.
Hey MS, here’s an idea. Just fix XP64 so that it works as well as XP32. Get some real drivers and plug the functioning holes in it so it works with the powerful new generation of hardware and people will worship you for ever.
August 7th, 2008 at 6:13 am
andar909 says:
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August 10th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
John says:
I couldn’t agree more with Jim’s comments on the glitzy sales pitch angle that underlies this “Phony” sales pitch the ‘users’ were given about Vista, or Mojave, or whatever they’re calling it these days.
I’ve been repairing, building and selling computers since the Windows 3.0 days (yes, I’m an old fogey). I’ve been through it all including the Windows Me disaster. Here’s some real stats from someone on the ground face-to-face with customers on a daily basis.
I average 3-4 computers a month from ‘ordinary every day’’ customers with Vista who come to me to remove Vista and install XP. My customer base numbers in the hundreds and it’s a mix of home owners to small/medium businesses. NONE of my business customers want Vista in their offices.
Currently I have about 30 customers with Vista machines. Of those 30 customers there are 2 that actually like Vista. The remaining customers do not like it at all but continue to use it because they either can’t afford to go back to XP or they’re determined to ‘stick it out’. In some cases they’ve spent $1,000 - $1,200 for their Vista system from one of the major retailers in town. I NEVER make a sales pitch to a new customer that includes Vista - they have to specifically ask for it in order for me to install it!
While it is true that Vista has ‘calmed down’ in the last few months, and the Service Packs have helped, I continue to find odd issues like the ATI Control Panel which fails miserably on some systems after installing the most current Vista Service Pack. Luckily, the ATI drivers function properly and most users are unaware of the ATI Control Panel functionality so disabling it isn’t a REAL issue.
Another fact: I have 6 customers who’ve purchased MACs because of their frustration with Vista. Several others have asked for my opinion with respect to purchasing a MAC.
These Mojave commercials are annoying at best and misleading in their intent, bordering on deception, in my opinion. Walk into any major retail store such as Best Buy and look at the VISTA machines. They’re mostly, if not all, 64-bit machines. As 64-bit machines they don’t take well to popular programs such as QuickBooks. This is a problem (among others) I encounter with customers at least once a month. The Fix? They go back to XP!!!!!!!…
Will the Vista replacement OS be a winner? Who knows? If I had the attention of the MS engineers who developed Vista I’d suggest that they stop the glitzy sales pitches with average users where they feed them lunch and sodas for a few hours to show them “MOJAVE” and then create a commercial with ONLY those who responded positively. How many negative responses did they receive during the Mojave Experiment? How many tech types like me did they talk to with this bogus Mojave thing? None is my guess!
Next time create an OS that’s FUNCTIONAL and one that increases a user’s productivity and forget the pretty colored MAC-Like backgrounds and screen savers. BTW -give the new Microsoft OS a name and stick with it! Changing the name to Mojave if only for commercials reinforces my opinion that Vista is inheritably BAD. As the saying goes “A rose by any other name smells just as sweet” In the case of Vista “A Vista OS by any other name still stinks”
November 19th, 2008 at 7:52 pm