Microsoft explains a misunderstood Vista

Windows Vista just isn't as bad as widespread reports would have you believe. Granted, it might have been better, and users may have expected more, but, it's as stable and secure as most Windows operating systems.

Having been released over a year ago, Windows Vista has matured and the initial widespread driver incompatibilities are now a much rarer occurrence. Throw Vista Service Pack 1 into the mix and you've got an operating system that most system builders should be considering.

Still, the trouble for Microsoft is Windows Vista's perception. How do you make users who don't believe in your software, believe? Well, the Microsoft solution comes in the form of a nine-page document titled "Five Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista".

So, what are Vista's five most commonly misunderstood features? According to Microsoft's research, gathered from IT professionals, they are:

User Account Control
Image Management
Display Driver Model
Windows Search
64 bit architecture

Microsoft claims that these five items "often cause confusion and slow Windows Vista adoption for many folks". It hopes its article will help "provide their background and rationale, and present the straight scoop on how to deal with them."

The article, part of Microsoft's Springboard Series on TechNet , is geared toward IT professionals and is available to download from the Microsoft download centre.

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Microsoft have now officially lost it.
They have some barmy bloke in charge of something way out of control.

There is nothing mis-understood about UAC.
If there is a fly buzzing around your head and flying into your face do you:

A) Kill it
OR
B) Write a 9 page document convincing others that it isnt annoying.

Either of these 2 could be Ballmer —> :angst:

I really like Vista, moreso since SP1.

First thing I do on a clean install is disable UAC as that can be a bit of a pain, then it is removing things like the sidebar on the desktop and other things that run on the system tray. After that once the drivers are installed it works great for me with my setup.

We can't just keep holding back with XP, hardware moves forward and so does software. Since the release of SP1 a lot more people should consider it. I now prefer it over XP and when I do a new build for my wife she has stated that she wants Vista on her new machine as she like things like the sidebar and feels comfortable using it.

Much of what that document says is probably true, and there undoubtedly are structural benefits to Vista, and some of them evidently do cause some issues with backwards compatibility, and that obviously does cause some issues in moving forward. Legacy hardware and apps always have caused that problem, and probably always will.

But none of that changes my assessment - the benefits to be gained from Vista do not, for me, justify either the cost (of Vista) or the changes required or hassle involved in bringing systems up to date.

It's this simple. I use, currently, about nine PCs at home. They all have legit OSs installed. To bring them up to Vista requirements will cost me a lot of money in licence fees, and I can't see ANY of the improvements in Vista that justify that expense. Then there's the hardware - a good proportion of it is getting on. Hell, some of those machines are Pentiums, some are Athlon XPs and a couple are 486's. And they're doing the job I require of them. They're stable, they're long written down and they just carry on working. So to upgrade, not only would I have to spend a lot of money on Vista licences (unless, of course, MS would suggest I use pirate software? No, thought not) but I'd have to spend a bucket-load more on upgrading PC hardware.

Then there's the question of legacy hardware and software. I regard both as tools for a job. If they're doing the job, why replace them? For instance, I still have some old tape streamers, several old SCSI-based scanners (including two film scanners and an A3 flatbed), dye-sub printers, A2 inkjets, and a host of other items. To upgrade to Vista either implies replacing those, or an extensive investigation to determine if drivers are available for them. And for gear that's 10 years old or more?

It comes down to this. Does Vista offer me anything I want, or need, badly enough to be prepared to spend either the time or money involved in upgrading? Right now, no, it doesn't.

And nor do I or other users at home want to spend the time learning how to do things in Vista that we already know how to do on the existing machines.

There's a time-honoured adage. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And Microsoft, as far as I'm concerned, my IT infrastructure ain't broke.

If you want to convince me to spend the time, money and effort required to upgrade, you're going to have to come up with a FAR better product than Vista. Sure, it's better than XP in many regards (at a price, in time and money terms), but not by anything remotely resembling enough to win the pro v. con argument with me.

As teachers are fond of putting on school reports ….. must try harder in future.

Vista x64 is just great ;)

Give it plenty of memory and a powerful cpu, turn off any extraneous features and watch it fly :)

However UAC is so annoying it is the very first thing that everybody disables, everybody I know anyway.

Edit: Trying to run Vista on lesser hardware is like wading through treacle though, so I can understand why a lot of people don't like it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Vista+old PC=NO
Vista+PC with 2GB RAM minimum and bits released after Vista was officially released=yes if you got it with the PC.

Why are people bothering trying to shoehorn Vista on to the computer equivalent of an old banger?
If you had a rusty old Austin Maestro, would you give it a full leather retrim?

Microsoft explains a misunderstood Vista

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