It's Official: Microsoft Vista Sucks. Just ask Microsoft Execs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know.

By RANDALL STROSS
Published: March 9, 2008

ONE year after the birth of Windows Vista, why do so many Windows XP users still decline to “upgrade”?

Microsoft says high prices have been the deterrent. Last month, the company trimmed prices on retail packages of Vista, trying to entice consumers to overcome their reluctance. In the United States, an XP user can now buy Vista Home Premium for $129.95, instead of $159.95.

An alternative theory, however, is that Vista’s reputation precedes it. XP users have heard too many chilling stories from relatives and friends about Vista upgrades that have gone badly. The graphics chip that couldn’t handle Vista’s whizzy special effects. The long delays as it loaded. The applications that ran at slower speeds. The printers, scanners and other hardware peripherals, which work dandily with XP, that lacked the necessary software, the drivers, to work well with Vista.

Can someone tell me again, why is switching XP for Vista an “upgrade”?

Here’s one story of a Vista upgrade early last year that did not go well. Jon, let’s call him, (bear with me — I’ll reveal his full identity later) upgrades two XP machines to Vista. Then he discovers that his printer, regular scanner and film scanner lack Vista drivers. He has to stick with XP on one machine just so he can continue to use the peripherals.

Did Jon simply have bad luck? Apparently not. When another person, Steven, hears about Jon’s woes, he says drivers are missing in every category — “this is the same across the whole ecosystem.”

Then there’s Mike, who buys a laptop that has a reassuring “Windows Vista Capable” logo affixed. He thinks that he will be able to run Vista in all of its glory, as well as favorite Microsoft programs like Movie Maker. His report: “I personally got burned.” His new laptop — logo or no logo — lacks the necessary graphics chip and can run neither his favorite video-editing software nor anything but a hobbled version of Vista. “I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine,” he says.

It turns out that Mike is clearly not a naïf. He’s Mike Nash, a Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management. And Jon, who is dismayed to learn that the drivers he needs don’t exist? That’s Jon A. Shirley, a Microsoft board member and former president and chief operating officer. And Steven, who reports that missing drivers are anything but exceptional, is in a good position to know: he’s Steven Sinofsky, the company’s senior vice president responsible for Windows.

Their remarks come from a stream of internal communications at Microsoft in February 2007, after Vista had been released as a supposedly finished product and customers were paying full retail price. Between the nonexistent drivers and PCs mislabeled as being ready for Vista when they really were not, Vista instantly acquired a reputation at birth: Does Not Play Well With Others.

We usually do not have the opportunity to overhear Microsoft’s most senior executives vent their personal frustrations with Windows. But a lawsuit filed against Microsoft in March 2007 in United States District Court in Seattle has pried loose a packet of internal company documents. The plaintiffs, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, bought PCs in late 2006, before Vista’s release, and contend that Microsoft’s “Windows Vista Capable” stickers were misleading when affixed to machines that turned out to be incapable of running the versions of Vista that offered the features Microsoft was marketing as distinctive Vista benefits.

Last month, Judge Marsha A. Pechman granted class-action status to the suit, which is scheduled to go to trial in October. (Microsoft last week appealed the certification decision.)

Anyone who bought a PC that Microsoft labeled “Windows Vista Capable” without also declaring “Premium Capable” is now a party in the suit. The judge also unsealed a cache of 200 e-mail messages and internal reports, covering Microsoft’s discussions of how best to market Vista, beginning in 2005 and extending beyond its introduction in January 2007. The documents incidentally include those accounts of frustrated Vista users in Microsoft’s executive suites.

Today, Microsoft boasts that there are twice as many drivers available for Vista as there were at its introduction, but performance and graphics problems remain. (When I tried last week to contact Mr. Shirley and the others about their most recent experiences with Vista, David Bowermaster, a Microsoft spokesman, said that no one named in the e-mail messages could be made available for comment because of the continuing lawsuit.)

The messages were released in a jumble, but when rearranged into chronological order, they show a tragedy in three acts.

Act 1: In 2005, Microsoft plans to say that only PCs that are properly equipped to handle the heavy graphics demands of Vista are “Vista Ready.”

Act 2: In early 2006, Microsoft decides to drop the graphics-related hardware requirement in order to avoid hurting Windows XP sales on low-end machines while Vista is readied. (A customer could reasonably conclude that Microsoft is saying, Buy Now, Upgrade Later.) A semantic adjustment is made: Instead of saying that a PC is “Vista Ready,” which might convey the idea that, well, it is ready to run Vista, a PC will be described as “Vista Capable,” which supposedly signals that no promises are made about which version of Vista will actually work.

The decision to drop the original hardware requirements is accompanied by considerable internal protest. The minimum hardware configuration was set so low that “even a piece of junk will qualify,” Anantha Kancherla, a Microsoft program manager, said in an internal e-mail message among those recently unsealed, adding, “It will be a complete tragedy if we allowed it.”

Act 3: In 2007, Vista is released in multiple versions, including “Home Basic,” which lacks Vista’s distinctive graphics. This placed Microsoft’s partners in an embarrassing position. Dell, which gave Microsoft a postmortem report that was also included among court documents, dryly remarked: “Customers did not understand what ‘Capable’ meant and expected more than could/would be delivered.”

All was foretold. In February 2006, after Microsoft abandoned its plan to reserve the Vista Capable label for only the more powerful PCs, its own staff tried to avert the coming deluge of customer complaints about underpowered machines. “It would be a lot less costly to do the right thing for the customer now,” said Robin Leonard, a Microsoft sales manager, in an e-mail message sent to her superiors, “than to spend dollars on the back end trying to fix the problem.”

Now that Microsoft faces a certified class action, a judge may be the one who oversees the fix. In the meantime, where does Microsoft go to buy back its lost credibility?

 

Any trader should stay with XP

 

A total black-eye for Microsoft.

They are notorious for releasing half-assed products on to a hostage marketplace, but this is just obscene.

I hope the lawsuit gains momentum and actually teaches them something.

Really greedy bastards

 

In the long run microsoft will suffer if it does not change. When money comes too easy to you, you get complacent and thats when you get burned.

Proof that microsoft sucks:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9NqLljaHc80

 

I've been (and remain) a fan of Microsoft for many years. But upgrading from XP was never a consideration. And it's not about price, since I could get it for $40 or whatever the current employee discounted price is. Maybe $60 at most. But why? I only run 2 gig of core and don't even fill that up (except at work). MSFT hasn't built the "killer app" functionality that I need in order to upgrade. And cycle hogging slick graphics just isn't enough.

Now give me a hardened OS that is spyware/virus free and I'll pony up.

 

I just ordered a new Thinkpad T61 from Lenovo (yes, I miss IBM, too).

Ready for this fun FACT?

They wanted to charge me an extra $50 for Windows XP Pro, in lieu of Vista Premium.

Now, if that doesn't tell you something, NOTHING will.

People ARE AFRAID of Vista, and for good reason.

Maybe I should have finally bought a Mac.

 

I run Vista on my desktop but would not even consider it on my laptop or on an older desktop. I had no problems with vista on my new pc.

 

It seems like a lot of those problem stem from earlier days (2007).

Here's a link for an exhaustive review of Vista. I have been postponing a desktop and a laptop purchase until Vista was ready: I hate to buy new computers with a generation-old OS.

http://www.activewin.com/reviews/software/operating-sys/vista/index.shtml

 

I think I'll just run XP for another 5 or 10 years. SP3 is rather nice and I am quite happy to select products that are XP compatible and buy my PC's free of manufacturer loaded OS's.

In 2015 we'll be able to buy Vista's replacement -- hopefully without the kiddie porn eye kandy. Or I'll just use ??nix.

 

I just bought a new Lenovo as well, but I didn't pay for the XP downgrade discs. I simply told them that I wouldn't buy the machine unless they gave me the discs for free. They said no problem. Make sure you don't pay.

Also, do not believe them when they tell you that you can downgrade right from Rescue and Recovery without wiping the drive first. Use Drive Fitness Test to wipe the drive, and then if you are installing XP from the Lenovo discs, they will create the hidden partition and install all the correct drivers you need for the wireless, etc.