And Now My Incredibly Detailed Review of Windows Vista, Based on Strenuous Examination of Every Nook and Cranny of Microsoft’s Revolutionary New Operating System That Will Change the Way You Look At Computing Forever!
Posted on February 1, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 61 Comments
Eh. You can wait.
Placeholder for first reply.
:D
Kind of what I was expecting. I’ll just wait for my current computer to crap out.
Snort.
LOL!
You is teh funny, sf-boy!
Saw a suite of benchmarks at ExtremeTech or somewhere that indicated that for almost every single thing you might care to do with a Windows machine (including stuff you wouldn’t, like video and photo editing), Vista is slower — sometimes as much as 25 percent slower — than XP.
GO MICROSOFT!
I actually haven’t noticed much in the way of slowdowns for applications, but I also have a computer that is fairly high up there in terms of capabilities. But I don’t notice any dramatic improvements, other than that it’s prettier than XP, and the included Texas Hold ‘Em card game is fun.
This is where my failure to pay attention to titles bites me: I thought you were talking about the new Harry Potter book.
I have a PC running Windows98, or may 95, what we use for homeschooling. Who needs an upgrade? I’ll just wait till I need a new computer and upgrade then.
Way ahead of you on this one.
Eh. You can wait.Macs had this years ago.
Never buy an initial release of any software from MS. Always wait for the first service pack to be released. In the case of Vista, maybe we should wait for the second one too.
Unless you have a compelling reason/need for DirectX 10 to play games, there’s no need to get Vista. In fact from several reviews I’ve read, most programs will run a bit slower on Vista.
I have tentatively decided that I wont ever be upgrading to Vista. When it’s time for a new system I think I may just go Mac.
It’s funny you should use that phrase. I used that very phrase to myself about the motion-sensing controller on the new Nintendo Wii. Graeme, I said to myself, this will change the way you look at computing forever.
Macs had this years ago.
ROTFL
Huh. I was looking forward to the Scalzi review of Vista, but I can see I’m going to have to set aside a good chunk of time if I want to do more than skim.
Tim:
“I have tentatively decided that I wont ever be upgrading to Vista. When it’s time for a new system I think I may just go Mac.”
I agree with you Tim, I’ve been a windows user since it was created, and I’ve discovered that I’m tired of having my computer crash due to some windows problem or a virus or something else. I think the next big move will be a Mac. Although for all its worth I have used both and I still prefer a pc interface than Macs. Mac really isnt as user friendly as a PC, as others have sworn by, but I like the idea of having a better perfomring machine.
So my old laptop gave up last week (for the 4th time) under warranty and dell finally agreed that I needed a new one. Unlike all the other new ones they have, it did not come with the nice upgrade coupon for Vista…only a pretty sticker that says Vista capable. My question for you all is: am I going to be missing much? Do I need to save up for this because it will change my grad-student experience dramatically?
I wish I could avoid Vista; however since they are tying DX10 to it I probably won’t have a choice.
Jenny:
No.
I’m in the beta program and have been using Vista for a few months now. Some of the reviews are a little too hard on Vista for performance issues. It’s actually not significantly slower than XP, in my experience. And I’m running what was a high end system two years ago. And in those two months of running Vista, it’s never crashed once. I do have to run in a dual-boot mode, though, because my audio-recording hardware doesn’t have a Vista driver yet (grrr).
And with the rise of web-applications, soon it’s not going to matter if you run Vista or a Mac–we’ll all be running the same software over the web.
That said, I wouldn’t encourage anyone to upgrade current systems. Scalzi’s right–you can wait. In most cases, just wait until you buy a new system. XP will be the dominant OS for a few years yet. While it’s nice to have the added security features, it’s not as big an upgrade as Microsoft is claiming.
Thanks for the succinct review, John.
It pretty much decides me. My next box will be a Mac. :)
Sam:
I’ve actually found XP to be really stable. But I may feel that way because of past incarnations of Windows.
I just know that I don’t want anything to do with Vista. I get more concerned about the way MS wants to control how I use my computer. I’m not a big anti-DRM advocate or a big privacy paranoid, but it begins to get intrusive.
I haven’t spent a lot of time researching Macs, so I don’t know if they are much better. If not, that leaves Linux, and I have no interest in using Linux on a daily basis. At that point I think I’ll just give up.
I “might” upgrade (with a new machine) when Vista is at SP2 or so, probably two or three years from now.
Initial releases of any MS product are always to be considered as late betas, and in many instances they are actually quite a bit worse than what they replace (e.g., the last “good” release of Word was 2000: Word XP and Word 2003 are considerably buggier and more unstable).
I’ve got a MacBook, so Vista means nothing to me. However, for those thinking of switching to a Mac, I would like to caution that while current computers come loaded with enough stuff that your computer will record music, video, edit film and quite possibly do your vacuuming, the current version of the MacBook at least, comes with a really sucky wordprocessing system. They stopped supporting Appleworks, which was awesome, and instead are giving you TextEdit, which is really meh. It’s basically notepad, as far as this semi-luddite can tell. They have a replacement product for Appleworks called iWorks, but you have to shell out $80 for it. Allegedly there’s a freeware version of Appleworks out there that I may try. Otherwise I may ask for iWorks for my birthday this year.
Eh. What with everything I’ve seen about Vista’s DRM breaking all sorts of stuff, I’ve promised myself not to upgrade from XP to Vista. Ever.
Good thing I’ve already started playing with Ubuntu.
Cathy, there’s a load of apps Apple used to give away for free that you have to pay for now. I don’t see Microsoft giving away copies of Word either.
John, you’re a tease!
Cathy, try AbiWord, or NeoOffice. They’re free. Sadly, they don’t look as good as the non-free applications. You might also try Scrivener, which is supposed to be a really nice tool for writers, but it costs something like $40 if you try it and decide you like it.
Okay, I know I’m living in Bizarro World when someone switches to Mac because it performs better and in spite of the UI.
ern said:
It’s actually not significantly slower than XP, in my experience.
And that’s excusable how, exactly?
Last night at the NESFA clubhouse, there was a review being passed around that described Vista’s DRM as “the longest suicide note in history.”
OTOH, I’ve been a dedicated PC user up to this point because my experience with Macs has been so bad. Much more prone to crash, and dedicated to the Truly Useless Error Message. (Mock DOS’s “bad command or file name” however you will; it was a lot more informative and useful than “An error of type 53 has occurred.”) (At the time, I was regularly using four machines: two versions of Windows, DOS, and a Mac. The Mac was the source of 90% of my computer frustrations.)
I understand some of this has changed in recent years, since Apple went over to Unix, but as long as Vista isn’t my only alternative, why should I care? When I can’t avoid Vista on a PC, then maybe I’ll look at a Mac.
I’ve been telling people what Joel Spolsky had to say about Vista (in this blog post): Don’t try to upgrade an XP machine to Vista; instead, wait to upgrade until you get a new computer. But don’t buy a new computer just to get Vista, if your old one still suits your needs in other ways.
As for DX10…I know MS will probably make it a requirement for the “Games for Windows” logo, but it doesn’t really offer any advantage over DX9. At least, not according to John Carmack (the genius programmer behind the DOOM and Quake games), and he oughta know.
For what it’s worth, OS X is only superficially UNIX, though the stability tends to apply.
The Macintosh still crashes. It crashes much less than Windows (all variants I’ve tested, which means everything but Vista), but it still crashes plenty too often for me. (My workhorse UNIX boxes don’t crash. At all. But they ain’t as portable as a G4 laptop with a WACOM tablet is.)
My rule of thumb with Microsoft OSes has been (and remains) that “any new OS shall be treated as beta software until at least the second service pack”.
Sebastian:
“Okay, I know I’m living in Bizarro World when someone switches to Mac because it performs better and in spite of the UI.”
I know what you mean, I love PC, is just over the past couple of yrs I haven’t had good experiences with them. I’ve had two labtops that have crashed and when its sent in the problem is found out to be a windows application missfiring or other. And quite frankly its annoying having to deal with that. Its not like im downloading movies or porn (hehe), I use it to check email or listen to music. So I figure it might be time to give MAC a try.
So after hearing everyone else post, its seems there is no software panacea when it comes to comps…so basically we are all screwed.
Tim from way upthread said: I have tentatively decided that I wont ever be upgrading to Vista. When it’s time for a new system I think I may just go Mac.
I did this, about a month ago. My old laptop was getting increasingly feeble, and my options for a new laptop were probably going to involve Vista, so I decided to make the switch. I’m not a gamer — my home machine is primarily used for research and writing — and the thought of a less-sucky warranty plan was blissful.
It’s only been a month, of course, but thus far I’ve been very happy with the decision. The Mac is stable, fast, and lets me get things done. It was an adjustment, but not nearly so much as Linux was.
On word processors: right now I’m using AbiWord (free), which does pretty much everything I need it to. I tried the free trials for Pages and MSWord For Mac, but wasn’t impressed with either. I’ve also got betas of Scrivener and WriteRoom, which are both pretty cool.
Scalzi: Thanks :)
Give it a couple weeks. I’ve been using it for several months now and like it better than XP.
To be sure, Scott, I don’t dislike it, and so far have been pleased with it. I just don’t know that people who are as geeky as I am in wanting to try out new stuff will find a need to upgrade anytime soon.
Do you have the new Word? Like Vista, the new Office isn’t something everyone needs to rush out and buy, but it’s definitely nicer than that last few versions. (Master Document feature is still crap, however.)
I upgraded my desktop to Vista last night. It took six ‘effin hours and was mostly nightmarish. I also have a MacBook Pro and Vista is so very much like OS X its not even funny. Vista will be interesting but it is quite problematic. And I remain an unapologetic Mac fiend.
For those of you using AbiWord and other free word processing programs: How well do those documents work with people who only employ Word and similar programs?
That is, can Word users actually open and use AbiWord documents?
I used Apple/Mac products from 1984ish until about 2001. Never really had a significant problem. Then, due to getting a free hand-me-down PC and also all the other blind people pointing and laughing at me because I couldn’t use JAWS or Window-Eyes on my Mac, I switched to PC.
So, yes, Windows based screen readers are better, BUT…when using them in conjunction with Windows OS’s, it sort of craps out the benefits. Because you know what happens when Windows freezes/shuts down/otherwise misbehaves? Your screen reader becomes completely useless and you can’t even get yourself out of the mess Windows put you in without a sighted person to help you.
All this is to say that I will not be switching to Vista EVER. I will be switching back to Mac as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Furthermore, I do second the recommendation that no one upgrade to Vista until the second service pack comes out.
Lisa:
Depending on how your screenreader craps out on you, you can always load up Narrator (don’t laugh) to do some basic troubleshooting. You hit the Windows-Key and U to bring up the Utility Manager that loads the built-in accessibility features of Windows. They’re not great but they can be passable — and they’re also supposed to have improved some in Vista, though I haven’t checked them out myself.
(The new narrator works with the new inbox games, I’m told though. Important datapoint, I’m sure.)
If the screenreader craps out because the OS has frozen, then no, nothing will help. But I don’t think there’s any screenreader that will let you get out of lower level hangs and crashes.
(Talk about sidetracking a thread! Sorry.)
Yes. Sort of. But then again, no.
AbiWord can read and write .rtf files.
OpenOffice.org (OOo) can read and write all the binary MS Office formats (et al), but sometimes doesn’t get it exactly 100% identical.
But they both have their own preferred formats that MS Office won’t read (event though, in OOo’s case, MS was on the panel that worked up the (Open, XML) format that OOo uses by default).
The brand-spanking new MS Office has a new set of formats based around XML, but they bear little relation to the OpenDocument formats.
If you want to know more, there’s a lot of discussion about it on the web, and there’s a book called ‘OOoSwitch: 501 Things You Want to Know About Switching To OpenOffice.org from Microsoft Office’ that purports to help (I haven’t read it, so I can’t tell you if it really does).
I’ve been saying that for months.
But mostly to my clients who really don’t need the headache when they don’t use 99% of Windows features anyway. Until dental practice management software requires it, we won’t recommend it to any of our clients.
I still haven’t tried it out.
I can wait. I can wait forever. I’ve got a Mac that dual boots Mac OS and Ubuntu, and a desktop at work that dual boots Windows and Ubuntu. I rarely use Ubuntu on the Mac and I never use Windows on the desktop.
Especially after spending the last 4 years developing Unix software on a Windows computer (done that, moved on), I am ready to bid M$ goodbye, and never look back.
I tried Vista when the release candidate was made public, by installing it to my second hard drive. My impressions at the time were:
– the drivers didn’t support some aspect of my hardware (6-month old computer), so it crashed every 10 minutes, including once when running minesweeper
– it took significantly longer to boot (at least a few minutes compared to ~30 seconds)
– the new UI (“Aero”) wasn’t that nice (noticeable aliasing when using “expose”)
– took multiple hours to install vs 40 min for XP
– clean-up of the hard drive after I switched back to XP took about 5 hours spread out over multiple days as just a simple switching of permissions didn’t let me delete the install
My experience has been so bad, that I’m not sure I would even upgrade to Vista for games. Now that console games can output resolutions that match or exceed what my computer can do, I don’t see the point of DX10.
Lisa,
The next version of Mac OS X, due around June, is going to have an improved speech synthesis which can do screen reading.
Supposedly it’s much improved, and more natural. It was demoed last year at a Mac convention, but I didn’t hear that presentation.
“For what it’s worth, OS X is only superficially UNIX, though the stability tends to apply.”
cygwin on Windows is “superficially UNIX”, OS X is significantly more ‘UNIX’ than that.
TextEdit on the Mac is basically an advanced programming example – the source code comes with the developer tools.
It’s not the most functional word processor, though it can use all the typographical features built into OS X (which WordPad certainly doesn’t have).
Ironically, it seems the new WordPad-equivalent in Vista can no longer open Word files, but TextEdit can (though of course not Office 2007 Word files.)
“OpenOffice.org (OOo) can read and write all the binary MS Office formats (et al), but sometimes doesn’t get it exactly 100% identical.”
Not 100%, but pretty darn good.
I’ve been using it for documents, presentations et al for a couple of years now and I’m NEVER going back to MS Office. Sure, Word/Powerpoint et al. do some things a bit better – but at the expense of spectacular bloat and non-trivial financial outlay…
And they can keep Vista. I’m not sure what’s next – Mac probably because I’m fond of certain Adobe apps and I’m feeling wimpy about the Linux learning curve.
I’m thinking of switching to apple, but my question is… what is a good review site (in plain english) that will tell me what kind of bang I get for my buck. Also, I have TONS of pics on my XP, will I be able to transfer them…? I don’t plan on getting rid of my laptop, just and additional desktop to add to the mix.
alkali:
Eh. You can wait.
Macs had this years ago.
Yep, have to agree – I’ve been waiting for Macs to do stuff for years too…
“cygwin on Windows is “superficially UNIX”, OS X is significantly more ‘UNIX’ than that.”
I could also say that bash on BeOS is more superficially UNIX than OS X, but what would the point in doing so be? Doesn’t change the fact that OS X is far more superficially UNIX than, say, IRIX.
In the most part I still stick with good ol’ win2k on most of my Intel boxes. Solid as a rock, and nice and snappy performance-wise. It’s too bad MS is end-of-lifing it.
As for Vista, and the remarks regarding Macs having had the new Vista-features years ago, you actually need to go back to Sun Microsystems and their Project Looking Glass to see the original versions of all those nifty features. All of the 3D window stuff was part of that project since the latter 1990s. Guess Gates et al. just can’t help stealing ideas from others – some things never change…
Ricki,
Can’t help you on a plain english review site of any kind. (Seriously, I don’t know of a single one. I read Ars Technica, though, who have a reputation for being honest and down to earth.)
You will absolutely be able to transfer over your tons of pictures, plus macs come with some very nice photo management software.
In response to earlier questions about the Open Office suite – the file import filters are very, very good, and include support for word document formats that have been abandoned by Microsoft. (There was a period where Word wouldn’t open the doc files from two generations ago.)
I guess this is going to be a quasi “in the defense of vista” post, though with the caveats that a lot of it may not matter to a lot of people.
So why an upgrade might be worth while:
– Parental Controls. If it is important to keep tabs on what your kids do with the machine, to set limits, to restrict what they can and cannot install, you will not find a better solution anywhere than the built in parental controls in vista. Personally, I am a fan of educating kids and trusting them once properly educated, but for the more paranoid this is a good solution.
-Security. XP sp2 was the best you could get security wise for a consumer os for the common man (Don’t laugh apple fans. Go read some articles by security researchers, or check out the month of apple bugs. OS X is safe only because modern malware is designed for economic benifit rather than malisciousness, and economically it makes sense to attack the 95% home user base rather than the 5%. It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with any inherent security, as there are typically far more remote code execution exploits discovered in OS X than XP per month). Granted, on any OS if you have someone who knows what they are doing the OS will be secure, but for most users they will find that Windows Vista has the best security in existance right now.
– Media Center. This probably only applies to a percentage of people, but the Vista version of Media Center is unrivaled in the living room. I will take my Media Center PC over a Tivo any day, but I am pretty much the target demographic for such a product.
– Search. Windows finally has a search that rocks (and no, Google Desktop isn’t it)
Not good reasons to buy Vista:
-Eye Candy. Sure, Aero looks spiffy with everything enabled, trying to compete with OS X to make things more pretty and less usable, but functionality wise, other than the application chooser, it doesn’t effect anything. Oh, and the new implementation of the “all programs” part of the start menu enrages me
-Performance. Meh. If your system can run aero it can run Vista without noticable (to the user) performance hit. Ram is good. On less capable machines things will be a bit slower, though with prefetch and super caching enabled you can actually get better program responsiveness in things like office than you will get in XP.
– Driver support, application compatibility. It is surprising the amount of initial support you see out of the box for what is really a fairly dramatic change in kernal architecture. That said, Vista can’t touch 5 years of development for XP.
In response to digs against windows stability, I dare you to find a crash caused by windows rather than a third party driver or low level malware. Drivers MUST run close to the system, and if there is any flaw in the driver code, which MS has no control over (though signed drivers have been verified by MS, users often run unsigned ones), your system will crash. Same holds true for any other OS. I have been running several machines 24 hours a day pretty much constantly since windows 2000 and I have only seen a handful of bluescreens, each one of them either because of hardware failure (which is a darker blue blue screen) or driver flaws. Nocks against windows stability either come from people who have their system so infected with crap that it is amazing it boots, or from people who last used windows back in the 9x days.
“It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with any inherent security, as there are typically far more remote code execution exploits discovered in OS X than XP per month”
No.
FIRST:
Holes in which one might actually conceivably be able to cram in a remote code exploit — more of those are discovered in OS X.
Approximately zero of them are discovered in XP. Except for those which are discovered except by crackers, who then exploit it, leading to its discovery by everyone else.
No one ever gets an opportunity to do to XP what people do to unix, linux, and OS X all the time – find holes without intending to exploit them. Then sending in fixes.
Which makes people like you think that somehow that makes the systems LESS secure.
SECOND:
who cares? Safe for exogenous reasons is still safe.
Windows Hasta la Vista! This is the right name for that kind of …
See, I was actually speaking from some level of experience in the field as I write various security probing tools for a living. Things like file fuzzers, attack surface analyzers, that sort of thing. I may not be a seasoned security guru (and I admit slipping up and saying exploit rather than vulnerability in my previous post), I don’t have the knowledge to write undetectable root kits, but I do keep abreast of the overall security field.
Do you know how 95% of the XP exploits get distributed in the field? Someone reverse engineers the changes in a critical update, figures out what changed, and then anticipates that a large population of users won’t have the patch installed. This is a problem with ANY platform, and any piece of software. Reverse engineering patches takes a trivial amount of work (or in the case of OSS, none at all since you can just look at the changelist). There is no way at all to avoid it, other than to have fewer vulnerabilities found. Try looking up the number of vulnerabilities found in Windows vs. OS X in the past couple of years. Nevermind, I will do that for you: from USA Today. Granted, a bit out of date, but moreso in favor of MS than Apple.
So your assertion in point one is pretty much entirely false. Unbiased research will net you that conclusion. Try looking up reports from Gartner or IDC, who have millions to lose if they are wrong, on their stance on MS security. They will tell you it leads the industry. EVERY PM, Dev, and tester at MS must have security training before the project they are on is released. Every project MUST be reviewed by the dedicated security team before being released, and a response plan must be in place before it is released in the event that a zero day is discovered in the field. Microsoft has pulled major features from Vista (Castle for one) because it could not be engineered in both a useful and a secure way. The mentality of the company is not the same as 2000, and you will not see that level at any other large software vendor (though I will admit a level of bias here. I often work very closely with MS which is what has given me the insight into their process, but it also means I am closer with them than apple). Look up the SDL (Secure Development Lifecycle) and you can get an idea of the process mandated at the company.
now for your point 2, that is a ridiculous position to hold. Not locking your doors because your car hasn’t been burglarized yet just makes you more vulnerable in the future. That stance alone defeats any crediblity you have on the subject.
So to finish, my post was meant to general being informative and well intentioned, while your response was caustic and ignorant. Your comments attacked me implying that I really didn’t know what I was talking about, but of the two of us I think it is fairly apparent that I would be the one talking with any level of experience in the field. Rather than being a single OS user that checks out turtleneckeddiety.org for all of my security knowledge mine stems from actually working in the industry as a dev, reading several different security distribution lists a day, and being abreast (and able to understand) the actual security underpinings of multiple OSes. It is pretty hard for you to asail my position from yours, especially when defending a company that SHIPPED A VIRUS on its ipods a hand full of months ago. There are reasons for a person to want to use OS X, but security is not one of them.
OMG Don’t get vista it can’t be reversed i don’t think it is crap! Ma brother got it and now he can’t even use World Of Warcraft! I crapped all he computer up and he even wiped his harddrive still its there!
Also i’ve heard if you want to use it on otehr computer you have to buy a new version!
DO NOT GET IT!
1) That one word change really makes a difference, doesn’t it? The difference between exploit and vulnerability is like the difference between being shot in the head and using the door-handle lock instead of the deadbolt.
As for the rest… some of my facts were a bit out of date about MS security. Well, good. It’s about freaking time.
2) Bad analogy. Not locking your car is dumb. Not locking your zeppelin-helicopter-submarine hybrid… not so much. Exogenous reasons still stand, if there actually are reasons. How hard would virus-writing be if the plurality OS had 5% market share?
In conclusion, what are the many zombie clusters running? Oh, right.