Windows Vista has been around for more than a year already. And it has received unusually high amounts of criticism, even from loyal fans. It seems pretty much anyone who tried Vista has already complained in public. Except me 
. Believe me, I tried hard NOT to complain. I waited for more than a year. But now I have had enough of it. Let’s discuss it, and see for ourselves that there’s clearly no WOW Microsoft keeps talking about!
First off, Vista is very demanding. It has unusually high system requirements. But what do we get for this? New graphics subsystem with 3D window compositing? User Account Control? Instant search? Widgets? (oh no, they’re called Gadgets in Vista, that must be completely different thing! </sarcasm>) C’mon, equivalents were present in Mac OS X and Linux for ages, and they do work fine on a much lower-end PCs! I know for sure, I ran that 3D Compiz thing on Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 on a Pentium 3 PC (1GHz) with an ancient videocard ATI Radeon 7200 (32 Mb VRAM, no shaders)! And that thing worked quite fast in Linux, I was pleasantly surprised. Damn, I was blown away!
I remember first time I installed Vista (on a decent Core 2 Duo PC with 1 Gb RAM), it worked faster than XP. And at first I liked the beautiful Aero UI. Huh! Well, after a year of use Vista slowed down noticeably, and that glassy transparent window decorations had bugged me so bad that I turned transparency off. The whole new UI is so bright and flashy, I think it’s hard on the eyes. Similar to the first release of Aqua on Mac OS X 10.0, but Apple since then has toned down the interface considerably. Oh, and Microsoft never learns… Overall, I personally think that Aero GUI is the usability disaster! And don’t get me started on UAC, Flip 3D and other things. Others have said it all already, so spare me the details, please People hoped that at least SP1 will speed up things, but it seems it won’t significantly change anything, just add more bloat. Ah, and things like draconian DRM are really annoying! Even more so, they are outright devastating to our culture and society in the long term.
Seriously, Vista is a lackluster OS! All the usability troubles aside, it can do the job for you, depending on your needs (at work I use it mostly for software development and Internet communication, and it does its job more or less OK), but there’s obviously no WOW-factor at all. But if you just look at the competition (Mac OS, Linux) and the REALLY long development time of Vista, you’ll start to wonder why bother with Vista AT ALL! XP works the same to me (and for many other people it works much better than Vista), so I can’t really find any viable reason to shell out so much money for Vista. And why complicating the issue with so many versions? What’s so special about Vista Ultimate?! Marketing it for some unique Extras, and still not delivering anything serious – to me, looks like Microsoft regards it’s customers as completely retarded… No wonder that smart people generally choose either to stay with XP, or go Mac/Linux way!
And you know there’s something completely wrong with Windows ecosystem at the whole, when you realize that the fastest notebook with Vista is in fact Apple Macbook Pro (according to PC World)!
So, for the average consumer (or for creative professionals and even software developers) Mac is the way to go, for a hacker/power user Linux is the best choice. Maybe for someone even Windows XP is still the best choice, due to habits or some special needs. But who in this world REALLY needs Vista?! I can imagine only a small crowd of hardcore gamers, longing for DirectX 10, but then again, Xbox 360 or Sony PS3 serves gamer’s needs far better, in my opinion. So, it seems almost the only ones who REALLY need Vista are Windows software developers – they need to make sure their software works with it, or use some new technologies like WPF. Or maybe a few more niche cases that doesn’t matter anyway. Yes, I see it this way now! And THE ONLY reason I have Vista on my PC at work is that I’m exactly software developer who needs to test my own software for Vista compatibility (because some of our clients already run Vista – they got it with new PCs). That’s all. I have also Ubuntu Linux “Gutsy Gibbon” installed at work (I use it for our company’s Linux-related project), and I actually enjoy using it! Ubuntu with Compiz Fusion has all the WOW that Vista doesn’t really have. Get the facts, you dirty M$ marketing department!
So, if the system has failed, history teaches us that a revolution will come soon. We’re not as dumb as Microsoft believes. It will result in a huge boost in Mac and Linux adoption. In fact, it looks like it’s already happening right now. Just look at these new Intel MacBooks flying away from the shelves to buyers’ hands in vast amounts, or numerous new mobile devices coming with Linux inside, Google’s Android platform, ASUS Eee PC, etc… I see all the signs of the world changing. I hope these changes are for the better!
And here’s my long-awaited response!
Sure, I need an admin rights for this blog – my comments are as long as your posts, man! Just kidding. But I found it particularly interesting way of blogging: major poster and major comment provider. It’s like a dialog, but the initiative always goes from one side.
Ok, let’s get down to business!
1. About Vista.
The situation with Vista reminds me the time when Microsoft released XP. There were so many “banish this OS” voices! To name a few:
- It’s just too eye-candy. No one needs this crap!
- It’s demanding – you’d better upgrade your PC to run it smoothly! 64 MB of RAM just to run the OS – that’s ridiculous!
- Why do we need Home and Pro? What’s the difference?
- I can’t reboot to DOS! I need DOS! Please, bring the DOS back!
- My recovery floppy disk can’t read this crappy NTFS partition! My Linux live CD can’t change anything in it!
- Blue screen of death? AGAIN ?!!
- My favorite game doesn’t run in it!
- New disk checker sucks!
- ACTIVATION? WTF ?!!
- That’s SP2 is a crap: it downloads updates and eats my bandwidth! This red or yellow shield is annoying!
- I’m an end-user, why the hell I need that dot NET?! It’s for developers!
- Still no tabs in IE?!!
Enough said. You see, every new version of Microsoft OS meets a lot of complains. It simply takes time to adapt, to master and, ultimately, to admit that it’s quite good and revolutionary. I used Win98 for strait 3 years after XP was released. And, you know, after three years I saw the gap between the older crap and a new reliability and performance (yes, performance!). I think it’s quite important to become an OS power user before justify the OS. And with each new release it actually becomes easier to be a power user.
It took me about 5 years to become a Win98 power user. And it took me another two years to power my XP experience. I’m an XP power user for about a year and a half only, I admit it. XP is a great OS, man. And I bet Vista is, too. You wrote “on 1GB of RAM it [Vista] worked faster than XP”. So it’s capable of being faster! And I bet I could make it run faster for the strait 1 year, after that I would reinstall it several times and it would be faster for strait 2 of 3 years which is more than enough for a desktop OS. How often do you reinstall Linux?
I found that you have to upgrade for each new version of MS OS, but that’s primarily because of long release cycle, so for me it’s not the point. Currently I haven’t got Vista yet, because I’m not going to buy a new PC for a while. And that’s the only reason for me not to upgrade. Vista is expensive to by a standalone copy, but it comes significantly cheaper with the hardware. I have tried several Vista applications on my XP machine, though. I liked the new media player and Windows Defender works fine either. I haven’t tried the EI7 yet, but it seems pretty good. One point is https connection: you get a green background in the address bar – that’s significant usability improvement over IE6 where we got only a small lock sign at the bottom. Oh, and it doesn’t break anything. I mean that everything that worked in IE6 still works in it. That’s great!
As for SP1, it won’t change anything much. Remember XP SP1? Me, I don’t!
As for Vista versioning it’s also quite reasonable: they got profile-based versions, so one can pick up an OS according to her needs and not pay too much. For example, for a business environment there’s no need in media center capabilities, so one can get Vista Business, which gives the same level of system and data protection as Ultimate. And there’s a Home Basic, which is particularly interesting because it aims to become an XP replacement for older hardware. Pros: you’ll get all the real power of Vista (UAC, DerectX 10, etc.) without wasting resources. Cons: if you’re a PC admin when XP can be sufficient, and you’ll have to pay for OS.
So, if you got a problem with Vista, than tweak it a bit (or ask your admin, if you don’t have enough rights).
Reinstall it, install some supporting tools (like improved defragmentation utility), tweak page file size, and be sure to install only the software you really need. And don’t use IE or Firefox for web browsing: the former is dangerous; the later eats all your memory and kills the OS performance (I bet you use FF). Use Windows Media Player instead of others – surprisingly it works greatly to save the OS performance in a long run. If you don’t like it keep it minimized as a media panel – it’s great. Don’t install codec packs – use separate installer for each codec, usually you need only one or two. Don’t watch movies on the OS with Visual Studio, that’s just stupid. Don’t run Linux live CDs on this computer – it turns out that they are not that “live” – on my laptop live CD kills the DMA till I reinstall XP.
Some other questions to think about:
Do you really need Office (MS or OOo, it doesn’t matter)? Do you need to keep your local copy of MS SQL Server? Do you need multiple Java VMs and JDKs? Do you need both .NET 1.1 and 3.5? Do you need Kaspersky or DrWeb instead of Symantec? Do you really need that picture viewer application? Got no Photoshop installed? Do you need all those small apps that make your live more convenient, but in fact make it harder? Do you need to burn CDs and a tool to do it? Do you need that Google toolbars, Accelerators, Picassas, Packs, etc.?
Ok, all these questions are controversial, but I don’t insist everyone should follow them? If you need Office, why not to have it, right?
So, wait a bit – 2 or three years before crying out laud. Take it easy! One more thing. I haven’t quite caught, why do you need Vista to test your dotNET applications, are they incompatible?
2. Eee PC
I decided to speak about it a bit. Imagine you’re living in the UK. Do you know how you get paid there? If you earn $2k in the US you’ll get 1k GBP – that’s a fair deal. But the prices are organized a bit different: if iPod Touch costs $300 in the US it would cost about 300 GBP – is it a fair deal? So, for most people in the UK your MBPro is too expensive, and they got nothing to do but to buy an Eee PC. Today there’re two trends in PC manufacturing: to sell a cutting edge next gen devices, or to produce a low-cost commodity hardware. It should be obvious that the low-cost segment is not that attractive for manufacturers. But today the concurrency in this segment is so high (IBM was unable to compete successfully), that they have to search for other ways to gain profit. The low-cost hardware (running Linux) was an obvious choice. That’s why we see gPC with Eee PC now.
Would I buy one? For now, no. the price is not that low as I would expect – I could by a powerful Xbox if I add a few bucks. Besides, I got my commodity hardware already, all I need is to configure my LAN and get Ubuntu for it. But the move is good, especially for those who seek for productivity without performance and costs.
3. Google Android.
I like the idea behind it: today the performance of mobile devices grow fast. And there’s no reason to stuck with Java ME and its restricted capabilities. Android gives us a lot more power, Open GL, new UI, better networking, mush-up-ability, etc. what I don’t like is its platform forking. Honestly, I expected something like this to happen since IBM initiated Apache Harmony project. I would love to see OpenJDK code as Android basis instead. And I bet Google could agree with Sun about the price.
Also Android provides us with great web capabilities, and that means that a user can easily gain a desktop web experience. I bet Flash and Silverlight are not far away, and that can bring us a nice way to develop Desktop-Android-Web-XXX apps and as a result we’ll see a lot of Facebooky and Google Mappy stuff. And the Adds, of course.
That brings me to Google App contest. You heard that story about the prices. I’m afraid that wouldn’t be as successful as Google expects. Certainly there would be thousands of RSS feeders and millions of media players, but there’s nothing brand new in it. Also they’ll get a couple of social networking ports, but despite location awareness these things won’t bring anything new. There would be some 3D casual games, and they are certain to get a dozen of prices, And only about 5 to ten really innovative products.
But the most important would be disappointments and failures of millions of developers who are spending the whole nights trying to create something that would seem revolutionary to them, but not to jury. Less than 1 percent of projects would be successful, more than 99 percent of developers would be angry and depressed. Don’t be evil, you say? Tell that to Steve Ballmer!
Android is good, but it would be truly innovative about a year ago, not today.
So, I’m done this time. I hope not to disappoint you, although I provide opposite points. It’s not a flame, of course. Besides, don’t you think it’s boring to read “Me too” comments?
My two cents.
Hey, man, can I request a post? Could you write about your windows experience: what software do you keep installed, what do you use, how do you maintain your environment? I know do use it not often, but still. Also, which web sites do you visit? That could be interesting.
Andrew, to me (and many other people), Vista is NOT revolutionary.
Vista cannot be tweaked so it will run significantly faster and consume decent amounts of RAM – it’s simply impossible! Because Vista is flawed in design, not in implementation!
IE7 still stinks, and doesn’t fully support open Web standards like all other major browsers do! Take a recent Opera lawsuit against Microsoft as a proof…
Vista Ultimate is ridiculous no matter what – 500$ for an OS?! Excuse me! Apple’s Mac OS X is really innovative, and it costs just 129$! It’s “ultimate” for all!
I don’t have to tweak Mac OS or even Linux these days to work normally! And I don’t need to reinstall’em either, only when new version gets released, if I want to upgrade. And I actually run only the applications that I need for work in Vista, nothing more!
As for why do I need Vista for my .NET apps testing… Because .NET does not cover everything, we have to use native Windows libraries for some things, like DirectShow for video playback and capture. So we need to test apps in Vista. We had already found few bugs which were Vista-specific.
Vista stuff aside, I also feel that Android is a bit late in the game, but hopefully not everything is lost yet. And we’ll get tons of software for this platform quickly, due to community involvement in this Google App contest.
Well, thank you, Andrew! I always enjoy reading and answering your comments! Yes, there are some opposite points, but that’s great to have a healthy discussion!
And about new post idea… I’ll think about it