Jon,
Your comments do put things into perspective. The message I included in
this email was originally sent to our students and faculty as "blunt
instrument" to try and curb the masses from running out and buying Vista
right away. As for my own experience, I have been using Microsoft
products since they were born and I still think this is the worst effort
yet. Here is a little add-on story that happened to me on Friday:
I ran the Microsoft upgrade tool that lets you know about things you
might need to replace or encounter if you decide to move to Vista. It
told me that my video card would not work at all (built-in to the 2.4
GHz motherboard), that I would need more RAM (went from 512 MB to 2
Gigs) and that a gaggle of programs would not work at all (my Kaspersky
Antivirus, a whole bunch of MS programs, half of my Adobe programs,
etc.). So, you see why I was a bit miffed. So.... I did everything the
upgrade tool told me to do (the machine I was upgrading was my testbed
unit). I decided I would be "upgrading" instead of buying the full
product to try and save some money. After finding out that I would not
be able to purchase either of the Home editions and seeing that the
Business edition did not have all the features (my old OS was MS XP Pro
and incompatible as an upgrade for Vista Home), I was forced to
purchase the much more expensive Vista Ultimate Upgrade.
Now, things get interesting. I proceeded with the upgrade. All things
seemed to be going smoothly. When it completed, I booted up into Vista,
discovered that, just like the Apple commercial, I had to answer a
million questions and click the mouse a million times to get anything to
function. I found that a lot of my remaining programs had problems,
either with loading or functioning properly. I, surprisingly, did not
have any problems with drivers. When I tried to use Control Panel to
remove some of the problem programs, it hung up and failed. When I tried
to load new software (ie., the newest Roxio Media Creator or the newest
Adobe Reader), the whole machine hung up and I got the black kernal
screen of death referring me to the system admin.... which is me!
After playing with this for nearly a whole day, I decided to reload the
OS using the clean install path offered near the beginning of the
install process. Here I encountered a major problem. A catch-22, if you
will. I booted off the original CD. I chose the clean install path.
When it came time to enter my registration number, I got an error
stating that I could only use this number for "upgrading". Hmmmm....
was that not what I was doing? It gave me the option to add the number
later and move on. This is what I did. The install continued without
incident. When it was finished, I brought up Vista and started testing.
I now found that previous hardware that used to work (sound card) now
did not work (driver wiped out). No worries, I downloaded a new one.
The rest of the OS worked just fine. I was able to load software and
for the most part had no problems.
Finally, I tried to "Activate Windows" now, as it would cease to
function after 30 days. Again, I recieved the error that my registration
number was for Upgrade only. I decided to call Microsoft as I have a
TechNet subcription. After being moved from tech to tech and put on hold
many times, I was told that I had two choices. First, since I purchased
the "Upgrade" version, I would have to reload my former OS so I could
upgrade again (you can not run a clean install or a re-upgrade off of
Vista with the upgrade package). I explained that my former OS was an
Upgrade, too. And, that I would actually have to make sure I had my
Windows 2000 Pro disks handy. (In the past, if you had to re-install or
do a clean install, Microsoft only asked you to insert the old OS CD to
authenticate.... those days are gone.) He was sympathetic and offered me
choice number two. This choice was to wait until Monday when a
upper-echelon tech would call me to determine if I was worthy of
recieving a new or reset registration number to allow my software to
work. I chose option two and am now waiting for Microsoft to call. I am
not optimistic that things will work out, but then stranger things have
happened. I guess I should thrown caution to the wind, budgets be damned
and put out the money for the Vista Ultimate Full first time load.
My point here is, that why should we be put into this position
everytime Microsoft makes a change. And, by the by, in my opinion, this
Vista is only a flowery, extremely locked=down version of it's everyday
"broken-ware".
That's my story and I am sticking to it!! =;-)
Best,
Roy
> Roy A. Baril wrote:
>>
>> My Vista message:
>
> There hasn't been much talk about Vista on this list so I'm
> glad you brought this up.
>
>> This new operating system (in my opinion) is more trouble than its
>> worth. I
>> have a working (not exactly) version in my office and it is really
>> intolerable. Absolutely everything has changed. You will need to buy new
>> hardware and software to upgrade and if you purchase a new PC with Vista
>> installed, then you will have a very sharp learning curve to make things
>> work the way you want.
>
> When talking about Vista, or any other new operating system, it's
> important to be objective.
>
> The above statement, as a general claim, is clearly false. There are
> many people, myself included, who run Vista on older hardware.
> True, upgrading drivers is a real problem, but in my experience
> the usermode software I run works as well on Vista as it does elsewhere.
>
>> My recommendation is: Do not buy Vista. Do not upgrade to Vista. If
>> you purchase a new PC, ask the vendor if you have a choice between
>> Microsoft XP and Vista. If you do, get XP!
>
> The recommendation I give is that if you're happy with XP on your
> running system, there's no compelling reason to upgrade to Vista.
> If you're getting a new system that comes with Vista, then chances
> are the driver issue I mentioned above doesn't apply, so there's
> nothing to fear with Vista. However, the one issue I agree with
> is that the UI in Vista is different enough from XP that many
> non-technical users might be confused. Microsoft didn't do for
> Vista what they did for XP, which could be made to look just
> like its predecessor OS (Windows 2000). However, this was
> a deliberate choice so it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.
> (Indeed, I suspect the fact that Microsoft also made the same choice
> with Office 2007 will have a much greater adverse effect.)
>
>> As is typical to most Microsoft major updates, you will spend a lot of
>> money to get your machine to accept the new operating system (new video
>> cards,
>
> Unless you're interested in the new Aero interface, this isn't true.
>
> more memory, etc.),
>
> True for memory. As far the "etc", Microsoft has a free program that
> you can run on XP that will tell you what your hardware problems
> will be so none of this will be a surprise. I don't know about you,
> but it's the surprises that worry me the most.
>
>> and you will probably have to replace several
>> computer third party programs because of incompatibility.
>
> Again, although this might be true in special cases, it's not
> generally true.
>
>> It is just not
>> worth it right now. I have talked to several computer support people at
>> different computer stores and none of them were able to answer any of my
>> questions saying that the software was too new and they did not have
>> enough experience in supporting it.
>
> That only says something about how new Vista is, not how good (or bad)
> it is.
>
>> Possibly, in about 6-8 months, there will be a substantial user base
>> and maybe alot of the problems will have been ironed out. But, I repeat,
>> if possible, do not buy Vista!!"
>
> It will be interesting to see how Vista matures, just as it will
> be interesting to see how Mac OS X 10.5 matures, once it's released.
> A major new OS release is nothing to take lightly, but the examination
> of the new release should be based on easily verifiable facts,
> not innuendo.
>
> (This is being posted from my own 1 year old Dell currently
> running Vista with absolutely no problems except a missing
> 3rd party driver.)
>
> Cordially,
>
> --
> Jon Forrest
> Unix Computing Support
> College of Chemistry
> 173 Tan Hall
> University of California Berkeley
> Berkeley, CA
> 94720-1460
> 510-643-1032
> jlforrest_at_berkeley.edu
>
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Received on Sun Mar 18 2007 - 11:45:11 PDT
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