Works with Windows Vista

[Sekani]

So I started working with this computer repair company this week, and I've noticed an alarming trend.

Four separate times over the last week I've come across software or hardware that say "Works with Windows Vista" or "Vista compatible" right on the box, and yet they either require a massive level of tweaking that's unreasonable for all but the most advanced users, or they simply don't work at all.

I demand to know who is responsible for this madness so that I may publicly flog them with a spiked chain.

[Randomness]

Corporations of course, acting as usual on greed.

After all, if it can be MADE to work with massive amounts of tweaking, they can TECHNICALLY say its works with Vista.

[KodiaX987]

For the same reason the "minimum specs" make a game run at an abysmally low framerate. They want people to think it's compatible with their rig. If there's any way it'll work even to a degree, they'll claim it's compatible.

[Sekani]

Let me explain what I mean by "massive level of tweaking"....

On a DVD drive install, I had to do a registry edit before Vista would recognize it.

A publishing program fresh out of the box had an update for Vista you could download from the company's website, but it had to be installed under Windows XP.

A PCI wireless card has Vista-compatible drivers on its company's website which quite simply do not work at all.

There's really no excuse for this.

[rogue_robot]

As far as I can tell, it's mostly Microsoft's fault. A friend of mine had to wait several months for nVidia, a normally reliable company, to produce drivers for one of their DX-10 compatible graphics cards designed specifically for Vista to work at all.

Opening anything, be it a game, Windows Media Player, or sometimes even MS Word would earn him an instant BSoD.



EDIT: I believe it's just something to do with the massive internal changes Microsoft made between XP and Vista. Everyone's just having a lot of trouble adjusting to the new framework, and Microsoft isn't doing a very good job of spreading helpful information.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rogue_robot on 2008-02-17 12:22 ]</font>

[Nitro Vordex]

I'll stay with my XP, thank you. Until all or most of the bugs in Vista are ironed/hammered out, I will not get Vista.

I don't think my poor computer could handle it right now anyway.http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif

[Randomness]

On 2008-02-17 12:35, Nitro_Vordex wrote:
I'll stay with my XP, thank you. Until all or most of the bugs in Vista are ironed/hammered out, I will not get Vista.

I don't think my poor computer could handle it right now anyway.http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif



Sadly, all the new comps are Vista...

[Shiro_Ryuu]

I use Vista, it runs PSU fine, although I'm sure I might be getting more out of my laptop if I downgraded to XP. A friend of mine did that and it's working just fine with him.

[Broodstar1337]

Your pre-packaged computers that were advertised as "Vista Compatible"... they don't work with Vista. They were built to handle XP and thus shouldn't really use much else besides XP (Now if you're gonna use dual-boot with stuff like Ubuntu, that's your business).

What I'm trying to get at is the hardware has to go with the software. Vista works fine if you got a strong computer.

[rogue_robot]

Ubuntu/XP dual-booter myself, Broodstar. Each O/S brand (Linux/Windows/Mac) is useful for certain tasks. It just so happens that none of the tasks for which Macs are suited are anything I do on a regular basis.

As a CS student, though, Linux is invaluable to me - just about all my CS homework is performed on Linux machines.



...Vista, however, is useful for nothing; as much as "computer" people complain about earlier Windows, MS sure did a damn good job proving they can, in fact, make an O/S even worse. 0.5 gigabytes of RAM used for what? Nothing?!? Yeah, that's Vista for you. (And yeah, it really does chew up an extra 512 MB for absolutely nothing. It was originally intended to be pre-allocated for memory-intense apps like games, but a critical bug in the system causes it to just sit there unused.)

[MetaZedlen]

I am a victim of Vista myself, being that I got a new desktop in november, but man, it is the WORST OS I have ever used, I swear Microsof needs to be shot in the head, just because it looks nice doesn't mean jack-shit. They have reached a new low in the phrase "polish a turd, it's still a turd." As for the requirements, my desktop can kick two asses with any program or OS, but my god, I fucking HATE vista!!!

And also, I have had to use system restore 3 times now, just because I had installed AIM, and it fucked up my entire internet connection and rendered WMP unable to play any of my songs or videos.

But luckily, MS has decided to abandon Vista and create an expansion called Windows Seven, from what I have heard from some of my friends in my college class.

So all-in-all, DO NOT GET VISTA IF YOU HAVE THE OPTION NOT TO!!!!!!!

[rogue_robot]

Windows 7 isn't planned for release for another few years. Three at minimum. It's the tentative name of the OS that follows Vista.

We're stuck with Vista, at least for now. You've got to keep in mind, MS just hacked Vista together on short notice when they realized that it's been a while since the last released a new O/S. At least we can take comfort in knowing that Windows 7 is actually being developed behind the scenes during the entire time we're being fucked over by Vista, as opposed to Vista being worked on only toward the end of XP's lifetime.

How much comfort, however, is the debatable part...

[Reynard]

I can speak first-hand the headaches of Vista. I work a Tech Support job at the company I'm at and let me put it this way...most calls I get take 15-20 minutes, 30 minutes tops. If it involves Vista? An hour. Almost always, because of all the stupid "security" settings and what not that Microsoft has set. I feel bad for anyone who works for Microsoft Tech Support to be honest...

Regardless, use XP. For the love of god people, USE XP.

[rogue_robot]

I have XP, and will continue to use it until my entire system dies. After that, I'll probably go completely over to Linux, using whatever Windows is available then strictly for gaming, as that's all it would be good for (with that new little part of MS's EULA, starting with Vista, that, from what I understand, allows them free access to your entire hard drive - sure, I don't have anything to hide in a legal sense, except that which by their own damn DRM laws belongs to me!!!).

[Sekani]

On 2008-02-19 10:35, Reynard wrote:
I can speak first-hand the headaches of Vista. I work a Tech Support job at the company I'm at and let me put it this way...most calls I get take 15-20 minutes, 30 minutes tops. If it involves Vista? An hour. Almost always, because of all the stupid "security" settings and what not that Microsoft has set. I feel bad for anyone who works for Microsoft Tech Support to be honest...

Regardless, use XP. For the love of god people, USE XP.


Funny thing is, from my own experiences Vista is actually great for normal usage for most people. It's just a LOT harder to fix Vista when it's broken, thanks in no small part to all those security settings Microsoft added to try and idiot-proof their OS.

And then there's the usual none-of-my-programs-or-peripherals-work issue.

[Kumlekar]

On 2008-02-19 10:46, rogue_robot wrote:
I have XP, and will continue to use it until my entire system dies. After that, I'll probably go completely over to Linux, using whatever Windows is available then strictly for gaming, as that's all it would be good for (with that new little part of MS's EULA, starting with Vista, that, from what I understand, allows them free access to your entire hard drive - sure, I don't have anything to hide in a legal sense, except that which by their own damn DRM laws belongs to me!!!).



This would be genius, except for one tihing... Most games don't work on vista. Over half of the games I own do not work on vista, and I have never had the back compatiability mode work.

[rogue_robot]

Compatability mode works if you know what you're doing. I've been able to get several games, new and old, to run on my brother's Vista machine with almost no effort (and his specs can only barely run Vista as is). Have you downloaded the DirectX 9 compatibility patch for DirectX 10? It's non-standard, and required to play almost any game not designed for Vista specifically (including PSU).

Keep in mind I was saying when I need to replace my current (XP) system. As I try to stay legal in my actions, even in cyberspace, there's no way, not even from MS themselves, I'm gonna be able to get another copy of XP (they've already discontinued sales of the XP O/S).

That - and even fewer games run on non-Windows systems. There, you're left to the mercy of the quality of Windows emulation/compatibility available. For example - PSU is rated poorly for Linux/Mac/Sun WINE compatibility (likely because of GameGuard).

[Firocket1690]

Didn't we have this kinda rant some five, six years back? When Windows 2000 was the best 'usable' OS around. Then everyone was ranting about how XP ate unecessary ram, it does everything for you, its too focused on graphics, unstable, (Not Responding) blablabla?

Then they released service packs. currently on 3 or 4, methinks. and now XP is the good one, and people bitch about vista.

I think the problem is demanding software/OS, and middle tier/mediocre hardware in most cases.

...coming from someone running windows xp, core.

[Sord]

On 2008-02-25 14:46, Firocket1690 wrote:
Then they released service packs. currently on 3 or 4, methinks.

they are working on 3. it was supposed to be out this Febuary, but MS meeting deadlines? Like hell. It was pushed to March last I heard, which probably means a release in May or later. And yeah, you are right about the 2000:XP = XP:Vista thing. As soon as MS finally fixes the majority of the bugs in something, they just move on to making yet another buggy peice of shite software to fix up over time. IF Vista is ever actually fixed, by that time I am positive another shitty OS will be released.

[Sekani]

On 2008-02-25 14:46, Firocket1690 wrote:
Didn't we have this kinda rant some five, six years back? When Windows 2000 was the best 'usable' OS around. Then everyone was ranting about how XP ate unecessary ram, it does everything for you, its too focused on graphics, unstable, (Not Responding) blablabla?

Then they released service packs. currently on 3 or 4, methinks. and now XP is the good one, and people bitch about vista.

I think the problem is demanding software/OS, and middle tier/mediocre hardware in most cases.

...coming from someone running windows xp, core.


I don't believe 2000 was marketed for home use, but right out of the gate I thought XP while not perfect was a significant improvement over 98 and ME.

The problem with Vista is that at the moment it's not as much of an improvement over its predecessor.

[Kent]

It seems like I'm really the only one who isn't having these reported hellish issues with Vista. For everything I've tried, basically everything I have works just fine with Vista, and most of the time, even better than it did on XP.

Really, the only thing that doesn't work on Vista that I have... Is Tribes: Vengeance - but that's not exactly a loss.

And to be honest, I'd be hard-pressed to find a reason to even think about going back to XP. As far as I've found, most of the issues surrounding Vista have been ironed out... That, or I'm just lucky/not doing things I shouldn't be. The interface is cleaner, runs plenty fast, has all sorts of nifty sidebar support, loads up quickly, has an actual working Sleep/Hibernate function, has all sorts of little things added in that make it much more streamlined than its predecessors, and works with just about everything I can throw at it.

Though it certainly does suck when an OS doesn't work with things (there's a reason I use Windows), I can see why people would be hesitant to adopt Vista, when all they hear are horror stories about how things don't work with it.

[rogue_robot]

Yeah, Vista will get better in the future, just like XP, 2000, and every other Windows O/S before it. Currently, however, it's a bear rudely awakened dead in the middle of hibernation.

The problem isn't so much Vista - it's MS. Their idea of Quality Assurance is, well, nonexistent. Rather than ensure that the O/S works correctly on a wide variety of hardware configurations of varying computing capacity, MS runs it on a few "ideal" machines and just throws it out on the market, pulls their functional stuff so everyone has no choice but to buy the half-tested item, and tells everyone "oops, our bad, we'll patch that soon" with numerous critical issues (and I mean on the level of getting BSoD just for opening an MS-made app, or even certain portions of the O/S itself, which was a problem back in the first few months after Vista's release) that should have been caught in the QA phase.

[Kent]

Perchance, might you be a conspiracy theorist? I can't really speak for many other people, but myself and a few others have been using Vista since its release day, and have yet to experience any of those issues... On a range of things, from several-year-old laptops, to downtrodden desktop computers, to brand-spanking-new systems. :/

[icewyrm]

On 2008-02-26 11:48, rogue_robot wrote:
The problem isn't so much Vista - it's MS. Their idea of Quality Assurance is, well, nonexistent. Rather than ensure that the O/S works correctly on a wide variety of hardware configurations of varying computing capacity, MS runs it on a few "ideal" machines and just throws it out on the market


MS does plenty of testing - but there are so many different hardware and software combinations currently in use today that testing them all is literally impossible. They test for as long as they can afford to (I'm sure they have a fairly substantial budget, but they have a shitload of software to test, and lot's of different teams working on different components).

Eventually they have to release, no matter what bugs they do or don't know about, usually due to various financial/market factors more than anything else.

Windows 2000 professional was the last major OS to bring substantial changes to the windows workstation/client sector IMO - NT workstation was still pretty unfriendly really. XP offered little in addition except a few extra tweaks and features, and Vista is the same, with a little more focus on security (due to the increasing security threat online) and aesthetics (mainly because everyone else was doing it.)

At their core, they are all windows NT with more stuff thrown in and better hardware support. Most issues that come up with Vista relate to all the new services enabled by default (including UAC etc), not counting driver issues which are prevalent every time substantial changes are made to the windows driver/plug-and-play/signing model.

Frankly, this post was from more of a business point of view - the average user probably won't bother optimizing their operating system, and I'll be the first to admit that vista is quite bloated with all the default services enabled.

But if you switch off everything except the necessities, it becomes just another vanilla general-purpose OS with a few new features, which is the way I expect most businesses will configure their workstations for years to come - every organization tends to customize their OS deployment to suit themselves, then roll out a standardized build, regardless of the MS default configuration.

For anyone who has tried windows vista but found it too weighed down with all the new bits and pieces, http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/Archive/servicecfg.htm is a great place to start, FWIW.

[Sekani]

rogue_robot is exaggerating a bit. As I said earlier though, Vista has two major issues. One, it's not that much of a functional improvement over Windows XP. Two, the extra security features make it difficult to fix problems that arise. The second part is what drives me insane, since I do computer repair housecalls on my job. Problems that would take a few minutes to fix on XP can literally take hours on Vista because I have to spend so much time dealing with file and directory permissions in order to do a damned thing. There's also the issue with drivers, but that only seems to be a problem for the few people who upgrade to Vista (as I did) instead of starting off with it.