Decision ‘08

Windows Vista: A Disaster

Well, if you follow this blog closely, you know I had a lot of problems with the Windows Vista Beta 2 program. You also know that I didn’t have any more luck with Windows Vista Release Candidate 1.

Now, I’ve got the real deal: the offical Windows Vista Home Premium, clean installed. Yep, I wiped my hard drive…and guess what?

It sucks.

In the first 24 hours, I’ve had 4 Blue Screens of Death, had to reboot more times than I can count, and have tried to install one “important” update from Windows Update at least five times now unsuccessfully.

When I had my earlier problems, people weren’t very sympathetic. “What did you expect? It’s a beta” was a typical response.

Well, this isn’t a beta. It’s a released product.

And it’s a fiasco.

If you own Microsoft stock, I suggest you sell it quickly, because when word gets out how buggy this piece of crap is, it’s going to tank…

16 Responses to “Windows Vista: A Disaster”

1 Josh Says:
January 30th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Hmm I suppose I shouldn’t install Vista on my new laptop just yet then.
2 Mark Says:
January 30th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Absolutely not…trust me, XP is a wonderful operating system…but Vista is simply horrible. It might work well if it’s pre-installed, but I’m at my wit’s end…since I’ve posted this, I’ve had another Blue Screen of Death already…
3 darcy_lane Says:
January 30th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
um excuse me fo rsaying, but anyone who installs a brand new just released OS on their primary computer is, no offense, an idiot.

I recall the same thing said about Win98, 95, XP, ME etc. There are going to be bugs. I don’t give a shite if its a released product. We are living in the real world here. There were myriad problems with Ipod when it came out. There were problems with VCRs. There were probably issues with the wheel. Its just a fact of life, that any sane and sensible person knows, that you let the bugs get worked out of a new product before you compromise your main work tool by implementing it. If you want to play with it, fine. But its unreasonable to expect it to be perfect from the get-go.

Jeez dude, I thiought you were computer savvy? And you are shocked Vista doesn’t work perfectly Day One? Really, sometimes I think you just do stuff like that on purpose so you can bitch on your blog, I mean that seriously. What did you really expect would happen? Grow up. They will release some updates and fix the problems. I like your blog but sometimes you act like a 5 year old child.
4 Mark Says:
January 30th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
You know, darcy, here’s what I expect - when I spend $250 on a product that has been tested for over a year and half, it should work.

Period.

End of story.
5 Mark Says:
January 30th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Let me expand on that, since you accuse me of acting like a child.

Computer products such as Vista are the results of hundreds of millions of dollars of development costs. The program went through an alpha, two betas, and a release candidate.

This is the version that is sold to the consumers after all of that effort. The expectation is that any flaws would be very minor.

I’ve now had seven (7) Blue Screens of Death in less than one day.

That’s not a minor flaw, it’s a complete and utter disaster.

You would not accept a television that turned off in the middle of your favorite program every 10 minutes.

You would return that television, and you would call it a piece of junk.

And you would be right to do so…
6 Scrapiron Says:
January 30th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
I ran the program to see if Vista would work on my computer and it came back with a lot of problems that should have been cleared before release. I have two printers loaded and it indicates that one will have problems and the other will not work at all. I have several other pieces of equipment that weren’t hooked up and i’ll bet they won’t work either. I’ll stick with XP on all three of my computers until Vista is cleared by the bloggers.
Thanks for the heads up on this one. Almost purchased a copy today.
7 Josh Says:
January 31st, 2007 at 12:53 am
Not to mention Vista has been in the pipeline for 5 years Darcy… Your rant in and of itself is the very reason we have to settle for sub-standard products that are pushed out with far too little regard for quality. If there were more consumers like Mark, who would stand up and say this is unacceptable perhaps we wouldn’t have companies like Microsoft and Sony (to name only a few) more concerned with meeting a release date rather than having a late better product.
8 Fred Says:
January 31st, 2007 at 1:54 am
Unfortunately, Microsoft traditionally settles for a late not-so-good product.
9 Aaron Says:
February 1st, 2007 at 4:38 pm
Did Vista wipe out all of your posts since Tuesday? When I cam to D’08, this was the first story posted.
10 Mark Says:
February 1st, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Nope - got hacked! You missed the excitement - see my latest…
11 Spencer Says:
February 1st, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Hmm…this seems to be a problem on your end, actually. I’ve been heavily enlisited in the beta since just prior to the public beta’s beginning, and have tested it on a wide range of hardware and with countless bits of software and everything from alpha drivers to the full things. (It’s been a long road).

I haven’t recived a BSOD or hard-crash since RC1, and even that was my fault. I’d be curious as to know your hardware, and what kinds of installs you have done. I’m not sure what the probelm would be, i’m not a tech-support guy, but i know hardware and am incredibly pleased with the way vista’s finally been released (after extensive testing and lots of work on stability and lots of feed back from the tech community.

If you want some help, drop me an email at the address i entered, it might just be that vista doesn’t like your hardware, if it’s the same system you tried the betas on. If that’s the case, i’d look into updated drivers, ATI JUST released their final drivers the day after release, and Nvida’s are still coming.

Headaches aside, vista’s not a bad system, it’s got a lot of small little things that youy wont even notice for a while
12 Mark Says:
February 1st, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Spencer, thanks for the offer, I might take you up on it later (today, I’ve got big-time issues with my blog - it got hacked earlier).

I will say this (but I’m jinxing myself) - I haven’t had one BSOD today (the third day) - yet…
13 Paul Says:
February 2nd, 2007 at 10:39 pm
I installed an upgrade to my operating system and it worked great-first time. No problems with peripherals, video cards, ram, anything. I have been running this for two years now and it’s been flawless. Did I mention-its a Mac OS 10.4. I use a Windows (Dell) machine for work, but the Mac is my favorite. Less problems, no popups, spyware and yes, it does play well with Windows. Just a thought, Maybe time to switch.
14 Charles J. Budde Says:
February 5th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Purchasing a new machine from today forward means Vista. Dell offers no way to option out. I buy half a dozen every month or so and this is particularly bad news. Microsoft has made no descernable effort to educate users or IT people about this OS. Good, bad or great I just don’t care. I cannot integrate this platform across the board and bringing this OS into my domain is straight out. My core complaint is with the way in which this software has been foisted on the hardware people. To my knowledge there are no print drivers as yet. I know for a fact that there are none for my array of printers which are mostly top of the line HP. Vista could be the greatest OS ever but I don’t want it and won’t have it on my network for any reason. I will buy around the problem.

Buddesatva
15 leo Mahon Says:
August 6th, 2007 at 9:51 am
I was one of the ‘testers’ of Vista. Nothibg but trouble - haven’t space here to list them. However, thinking that when the finished version was available all would be well. Bought Vista Home Premium. My laser printer, flatbed scanner and film scanner gone! Two or three blue screens a day. I could go on. WinXP is a great version,sees all my hardware and software. I paid 350 Euro on a rubbish app. If it were any other product I could get my money back. Unless you have a basic setup without add-ons, stick with XP, it gets better all the time. (they said the Titanic was unsinkable-Microsoft should ditch Vista and continue developing the new one, they are nearly finished)
16 Kino-Eye.com » Blog Archive » Boston Media Makers Meeting, January 6, 2008 Says:
January 6th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
[…] Andrea Mercado is the blog co-manager of PLA Blog, the official blog of the Public Library Association, her show and tell was her new Xotic PC laptop, it’s light, white and sassy, has a camera, they offer custom skins, she’s really happy with it (of course she’s running Windows XP, not the disaster known as Windows Vista). […]