“Vista sux” is too sweeping a generalization. I did have many problems early on with crashing and BSOD (traced back in most cases to nVidia drivers). Since I updated to SP1 and newer video drivers, it’s been far more stable. I reboot rarely; its power saving modes work just fine.

I prefer its media center mode to XP-MCE2005′s, and it handles HDTV and HD-DVD (came with the system, not my preference) quite nicely.

I still despise its painfully slow file copy speeds and frequent failures while copying over the network. If I need to do any copying I share the folders and use the XP machine to do the heavy lifting.

I echo the sentiment above – use virtual machines. VMWare is a beautiful thing.

(I recall in ’99 desperately trying for a couple of minutes to find where they effing put Windows Explorer while trying to help the CEO on his brand new XP machine; of course, I’d never seen XP before …feeling like a no-nothing idiot …gad, I was pissed at Microsoft for effing years about that.)

With Vista, it’s worse than just moving crap around: in their infinite wisdom, they diabolically decided to rename crap (like Add-Remove Programs: now WTF point was that?) AND move stuff around.

Biggest pet peeve: they’ve totally screwed with the folder structure. It took me hours to find crap (and weeks to become usefully “familiar” with locations …I’m still clicking on those useless file/folder “markers” that they put in, which I can only guess is so that XP compatibility doesn’t totally break on every 3rd party application in the world …which, from the sound of it, happens too often regardless). I can only guess they did this to make it more Registry similar (I haven’t run a comparison to test that theory yet though).

But as far as that goes, it’s more stable than XP (yes, you heard that right). It has a MUCH better event logging (almost too much better: inasmuch as it’s so feature rich I’m still working my way through it).

You can pretty easily turn the eye-candy off (and it needs to be: Aero’s a performance killer), and drop the GUI back to more like the Windows 2000 one (actually, it’s almost exactly like W2K). And just do turn off the UAC (it’s only there to cover MS’s a$$ in the event of another class action lawsuit) …and immediately: too, too annoying.

But I don’t think it “sux” per se. All-in-all, I like using it on the 3 machines that I have it on.

But as a sys admin, I’ve pretty much banned it on the small-business networks (generally 5-25 users or so) I provide contract-support though …because of the user training, and the lack of legacy support (machines & especially 3rd party apps). Machines are relatively low-cost: people aren’t …and I don’t think the genius-boyz at Microsoft quite understand how expensive re-training is.

That said: my real beef with Microsoft is the purely idiotic changes in the ribbon bars for Microsoft Office that someone already mentioned. THAT is a fricking nightmare. (Both for user support, and re-training.) My end-users (and hey, those are MY *real* clients) hate it; and I ain’t fond of it either.

I’ve actually started recycling old Office licenses (back to Office 2000 …Exchange includes Outlook 2003 per user licenses thank gawd, so that hasn’t been a problem) to new machines (unlike XP, Dell doesn’t sell Office 2K3 as an option anymore …too bad, they’d lock up sales with that, too).

My other “solution” has been to install Open Office on several machines (users had no problems with that).

Sheesh. Would it have been so fricking hard to have included a one-button “classic theme” for the fracking thing? (And yes, I know there’s after-market “solutions” that provide this …rather *makes* the point though, don’t you think.) No, I don’t mind saying Office 2007 sucks at all.

If I hear one more computer-illiterate person who’s never used Vista and knows nothing about it say “Vista sux” I’m just might vomit.

Vista sucks. Let the vomitus begin.

Bloatware+Shameless MAC Theft x $150 to $300 = VISTA

-CompTIA A+
-Forensic Computer Examiner

Mac is good.

Two reasons why :

First, I’ve NEVER had to read any documentation. EVER.

Second, it’s stable.

PC? Uh… nothankyew. Oh, I’ve touched them from time to time over the years. It’s an unsettling, icky experience. It’s sort of like the 400 pound, 5 foot tall transvestite in Iowa who asks his hair stylist to make him look just like Cher.

If I hear one more computer-illiterate person who’s never used Vista and knows nothing about it say “Vista sux” I’m just might vomit.

DaveS on September 6, 2008 at 6:13 PM

Vista sux.

And now, after paying Seinfeld, they have considerably less money.

“The only problem with Microsoft is they have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way; I mean it in a big way.”

If I hear one more computer-illiterate person who’s never used Vista and knows nothing about it say “Vista sux” I’m just might vomit.

VISTA IZ TEH SUX-DIDDILY-UX-UX-UX!!1!one!!

Gave it a shot. Wouldn’t run MasterCAM, wouldn’t run AutoCAD ’05, constantly “detected” my usb printer and decided to install a new printer driver for it every time I booted (lexmark1, lexmark2, lexmark3, etc.), declared my flash drives and dvd burner off limits (admin level access not good enuf, but of course I could access them all in safe mode… some security protocol) took eternity to boot, and shared sensitive info with the Playstation3 of all things. Junk, junk, junk. Downgraded to XP, and when I bought my new laptop, didn’t even hesitate to downgrade it too.

Sorry to all you Microsoft otaku, but VISTA = FAIL.

But the Spanish-speaking family was hilarious?

Conquistador?

If I hear one more computer-illiterate person who’s never used Vista and knows nothing about it say “Vista sux” I’m just might vomit.

In any case, I thought the ad was funny… it’s the first of a long campaign, so we’ll see what happens. I’m sure it will morph into a campaign about “something” over time.

DaveS on September 6, 2008 at 6:13 PM

How about if a computer literate person says, “Vista sucks”?
I know there are some things that are somewhat improved in areas users don’t see. However, aside from the eye-candy, the rest of the changes are just change for change sake. The worst part though is the Msoft bending over and grabbing ankles for the RIAA and MPAA. The adoption of all of the digital restrictions in the software that prevent people from fair use rights to that which they have purchased was the final straw and set me to upgrade to Linux. A good overview of the Digital Restrictions Management can be found in http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

The hit to productivity with the vastly changed user ribbon interface in the Office suite is a real killer to those who are looking to adopt it in a business environment. The only advantage of learning the new interface is getting back to the point of being as efficient as before the new interface change — i.e., it’s different, not better.

At first he tried to install XP on it, but tracked down all the XP drivers first, and found out there were no XP drivers for a lot of the hardware.

Why is he happy with it now? Because he downloaded Virtual PC, and was able to run the software he needed in a virtual machine using Windows XP.

Moral of the story: Windows Vista is ok, as long as you’re not stuck with it.

This ad is clearly an attempt to play off of Apple’s very successful “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” series of commercials. Apple has made a laughing stock of Microsoft over the last few years, and Microsoft has been in purely reactive mode for quite a while. Jobs has been playing Gates like a fiddle, and Gate and company (especially monkeyboy-Ballmer) have absolutely no clue how to respond.

The point is–Microsoft is running an ad campaign against yesterday’s Apple ads. Apple’s already moving on. It’ll be interesting to see how this evolves. If Apple continues to be inside Microsoft’s OODA Loop, then we should see something quite remarkable coming from them soon. (there is an Apple event on Tuesday, but I’m not making any predictions about it)