
Vista Is Good - breily
http://mattmaroon.com/?p=377
======
axod
You don't win by being "good". You win by being outstanding. MS died and
stopped being relevent to anything much a long while ago.

What features does vista have that XP doesn't that are worthwhile? What is
pushing people to upgrade? Nothing as far as I can see.

Now you can buy PCs without an OS, and some very cool portables like the asus
eeepc using linux, I'd expect MS dominance to take a major bashing over the
next years on PCs. Not to mention the march of Apple.

You can't really start an article with "As Apple fanboyism has spread
throughout the tech publications" and expect to be taken seriously. Especially
when you then churn out obvious Microsoft fanboyism.

I think to be honest the whole point is becoming moot. The operating system is
becoming irrelevent. Everything is moving onto the web (Despite ms trying hard
to stop it by adding bugs and incompatibilites into IE ;) ). Luckily though IE
is nose diving in usage.

Add to that the new motherboards that ship with linux for a fast startup into
a browser, and what is the reason for most people to boot into a full blown
monolithic beast such as vista?

~~~
josefresco
"MS died and stopped being relevent to anything much a long while ago"

Is this 2020? It must be the future because MS has not died and is still very
relevant.

"Now you can buy PCs without an OS,"

How many non geeks do you know that bought one of these? I know 0.

"The operating system is becoming irrelevent"

Again this must be 2020 because the OS is still essential to almost 100% of
computer users.

"IE is nose diving in usage"

Any stats to back up this claim? I'm not seeing it, in fact IE7 usage is now
higher than Firefox on hundreds of my managed websites.

I'm sorry but you live in fantasy tech-geek world where Linux and browser
based operating systems are the norm. Do me favor and do some work for real
"users" and then re-evaluate your opinions about where MS is and is heading.

~~~
eugenejen
For browser statistics <http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>
IE 7 is less than Firefox.

I found last year when I worked an Ajax project that when I replace DOM that
contains images, IE 6/7 will load images twice. While Safari, Firefox and
Opera all just load those images once. So if your managed servers have any
program that replaces DOM on the fly that contains images, IE's usage in
server log will be higher because IE wastes the bandwidth twice.

~~~
alex_c
It's a site with web development tutorials. Of course Firefox has a strong
presence.

Try stats from a less focused source:

<http://www.thecounter.com/stats/>

------
Create
DRM gives power to Microsoft and Big Media.

    
    
        *  They decide which programs you can and can't use on your computer
    
        * They decide which features of your computer or software you can use at any given moment
    
        * They force you to install new programs even when you don't want to (and, of course, pay for the privilege)
    
        * They restrict your access to certain programs and even to your own data files
    
    

Even when you legally buy Vista, you don't own it.

    
    
        *  If your copy of Vista came with the purchase of a new computer, that copy of Vista may only be legally used on that machine, forever.
    
        * If you bought Vista in a retail store and installed it on a machine you already owned, you have to completely delete it on that machine before you can install it on another machine.
    
        * You give Microsoft the right, through programs like Windows Defender, to delete programs from your system that it decides are spyware.
    
        * You consent to being spied upon by Microsoft, through the “Windows Genuine Advantage” system. This system tries to identify instances of copying that Microsoft thinks are illegitimate. Unfortunately, a recent study indicated that this system has already screwed up in over 500,000 cases.
    
    

<http://badvista.fsf.org/>

[http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/microsoft-learn-
from...](http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/microsoft-learn-from-apple-
II.ars/3) [Apple is even worse on DRM etc.]

~~~
andreyf
This comment breaks how the page renders under FF 3rc1...

~~~
xlnt
and in safari

------
olefoo
It's too bad this article is such a troll. I'm sure there are intelligent and
useful things to be said about vista; but this article is not where they can
be found.

Vista strikes me as a reasonably good OS crippled by the need to support the
entire win32 legacy. It's too bad that Microsoft can't take 2000 of their best
programmers and turn them loose on building a new OS that supports .NET and
nothing before; as it might be quite worthwhile.

However; Microsoft the company seems to be slipping into the senility phase,
thinking that their spot at the top of the pile is a god given right and that
they should stay there forever. They seem to have forgotten that it's
capitalism, it's dog eat dog; and it's their turn to be a dog's breakfast.

~~~
gills
Some would argue that Microsoft got to the top of the pile due in no small
part to maintaining backward compatibility. By doing so they lower the
barriers to upgrading for most of their users, who don't want to reinvest in
new versions of applications that can't make the jump.

~~~
Hexstream
"Some would argue that Microsoft got to the top of the pile due in no small
part to maintaining backward compatibility."

The most dangerous curses are the transiently useful ones.

------
petercooper
Why do nearly all of this guy's blog posts end up on the front page of HN?
Sure, a couple have been good, but it strikes me as a little "odd" that he
seems to be on here all the time. Group voting, or do random people really dig
opinionated blog posts that much? Honest question.

~~~
axod
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll>

"An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts
controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online
community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention
of baiting other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt
normal on-topic discussion."

I think quite a few of his blog posts fall into this category.

~~~
pchristensen
Controversial: he's just opposing conventional wisdom

Irrelevant or off-topic: Vista and Facebook are very relevant to this
community

Baiting others: maybe he's guilty of this, but I think it's more the jarring
cognitive dissonance of him opposing the accepted wisdom. A minority opinion
isn't necessarily baiting.

Disrupt normal discussion: other people post his stuff.

Let's face it, he writes well, he argues his points well, and he calls out
people he thinks are wrong. pg does the exact same thing, but no one disagrees
with him since we're all in his world here.

Besides, how much of a troll is it to say something is _good_?

~~~
axod
The first line of the article was "As Apple fanboyism has spread throughout
the tech publications".

If that's not baiting I don't know what is. In actual fact a lot of articles
about Apple these days are bashing them. Especially for the Macbook air.

Also, I'm not really sure why Vista is relevent TBH, are people here starting
up a company to write desktop apps for Vista? Do any hackers use Vista?

~~~
jordyhoyt
You say how the article is flamebaiting, yet the last line of your comment was
extremely flammable. To answer your question, if it was honest: I am a hacker
and I use Vista daily. I am sure I'm not alone.

~~~
axod
Sorry if it came across as flammable, it's just not something that you hear
about - startups working on vista. And all the startup photos you see are full
of macs.

------
jws
Too much slack in this article.

 _Which is not to say that Microsoft didn’t make some mistakes in launching
the OS. They clearly made a few. For one, they gave OEMs too much leeway in
deciding what they could or could not slap “Vista Capable” stickers on. And
even though it wasn’t entirely their fault that manufacturers screwed this up,
it reflects badly on Microsoft. It’s just like when a program crashes your PC.
It might not have been Windows’s fault, but you get pissed at it for not
preventing it, because that’s its job._

Microsoft told the OEMs exactly what they could stamp Vista capable. It is
entirely Microsoft's fault.

If a program can crash the OS, it is the OS's fault. (regular user mode
program that is, third party drivers are a different story).

~~~
mattmaroon
Not exactly on the OEMs.I suppose it's impossible to tell who had how much
fault, but there's clearly some blame on both sides:

[http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/02/mi...](http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/02/microsoft_and_o_1.html;jsessionid=PRZRL3XPDRUNYQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN)

As for crashing, depends how you define "fault". If a program causes Windows
to crash, where it wouldn't have without that program, it could be said to be
the program's fault. I tend to agree with you, since the point of Windows is
to be a platform on which programs run, and found myself on that side of the
argument against a number of PalmOS fans not that long ago.

You could easily say either party (or both) were at fault, but Windows will be
the one more damaged by it. Microsoft would tend to agree too, which is why
they spent so much effort making XP resilient to that sort of thing by SP2.

~~~
far33d

      If a program causes Windows to crash, where it wouldn't have without that program, it could be said to be the program's fault.
    

The job of a good operating system is to protect itself and other processes
from themselves and each other. It's only after years of Windows use (or os 9)
that people have grown accustomed to OS crashes caused by rogue processes.

------
randomhack
Well there are more problems than pointed out in the blog. Many of the
"problems" cited are actually just effects of the real problems. Corporates
not upgrading and OEMs offering XP are not causes themselves.

One problem is that the UI changed quite a bit from XP but without any added
value. Why rename My Documents to Documents? Just for the heck of it? Why
change the network connections dialog? For the first time in my life, I had to
spend more time setting up a wireless connection in windows than Linux. Change
in UI can be good but only if the changed UI offers something new. Just
renaming things or moving options around without any reason is plainly
annoying.

Second problem is bloat. Why is the OS eating up so much RAM. Isnt the OS
meant to run applications on top? Or is the OS just meant to run(or in this
case limp) itself somehow. Again I dont see what Vista is doing with all that
RAM. Is it doing something useful which XP didnt do? Then go ahead and use the
RAM. But if it isnt, then why is it eating RAM?

I havent faced much problem with hardware incompatibility thankfully and as
pointed out thats an issue with any OS upgrade. UAC is annoying but can be
useful.

edit : I feel the blog only raised strawmen and then beat them up but did not
tackle with the real issues.

~~~
mattmaroon
"Corporates not upgrading and OEMs offering XP are not causes themselves."

Agreed, which is why I explained why they exist. I just take issue with the
tech industry assuming that the cause of them is Vista sucking, when in fact
if Vista were a good operating system, those issues would still exist.

~~~
shiranaihito
Why are some people downmodding Matt's comments for no apparent reason?

Form your own opinion on whether Matt is trolling in some way or not, but even
if you decide "yes", don't take it out on his innocent comments.

~~~
mattmaroon
Ha, yeah. I don't mind. Until PG lets me convert my karma to real bucks, it's
OK by me.

------
tx
A lot of Vista bashing is coming form ex-Windows programmers being dog-tired
of coding for this platform, which hasn't been an enjoyable experience lately.
Problem is that it's virtually impossible to code relatively complex software
for Windows that can be installed on a typical "Windows box". There is no such
thing anymore: Windows machines are like jungles populated by all kinds of
trojans, software firewalls (often several of them), anti-popup programs,
anti-spyware programs, anti-anti spyware, and so on... Computers are being
sold new in a barely usable shape (pre-damaged by sacks of crapware), can you
imagine what do they turn into after 2 years in average Joe's hands? Letting
your code run down there without a programmer's supervision is like picking up
a Burmese prostitute without a condom: can be done, but it's a tough exercise.

My friend got a Dell laptop and it's touchpad (made by Logitech) greets him
every morning with a pop-up. WTF?

~~~
ComputerGuru
You're partially right. I'm a Windows programmer, and that's probably why I
switched to Linux with the Vista release. I still program for Windows, but
from the safety and comfort of a virtual machine. What you say about spyware
and trojans and viruses simply isn't true - it's really easy to keep a Windows
machine clean: NOD32 + Windows Defender is more than enough. However, the
reason for "which hasn't been an enjoyable experience" can be found in the
lack of stability and performance that we're seeing on the Windows platform. A
decade's worth of Win32 gunk has caught up with Vista, and it's made coding
Windows applications a serious PITA. It seems that somewhere between Windows
XP and Windows Vista the proverbial "last straw" was added, and it's made
coding for Windows Vista such a dreadful nightmare. It's not fun; & more to
the point, it's exasperating.

Using a framework like .NET helps like crazy (.NET:Beautiful::Win32:Ugly) but
the performance and reliability issues still persist no matter what you build
your applications on.

Take for instance my current Vista install. Out of the blue it won't resolve
DNS addresses - for no reason. Basically, the mess of code that is the TCP/IP
stack - just like the other stacks in need of a from-scratch implementation on
Windows - has gotten corrupted somewhere along the way to the point that
reinstalling networking drivers, clearing ARP routes, etc. just won't fix.

Too much gunk === impossibly difficult to keep stable/reliable for any period
of time.

~~~
tx
Guru, keeping Windows machine clean is trivial, I more than agree with you (in
fact I've never used an anti-virus or a software firewall in my life, and
_never_ had any security issues). The issue isn't technical, it's a strange
fusion of "software culture" that surrounds Windows: a combination of how
software is written and how it gets consumed. Things that Windows programmers
can get away with are not tolerated among OSX/Linux users, and the way typical
Windows users do things is just... crazy. But I do believe that it was
Microsoft themselves who seeded and cultivated those expectations.

And .NET is really just a layer on top of Win32, it was an MFC replacement,
not Win32 replacement (which is what "new windows" really needs). Just getting
rid of registry (along with stinky AutoRun section where every piece of shit
software adds itself) and making system32 read-only-for-all would solve most
problems.

But personally I don't care anymore.

------
hsmyers
"Works for me" does not represent any useful information.Frankly I listen to
the people it doesn't work for--- and they are legion. Since I develop for
Windows (but open source for any) I have a machine that runs Vista, just like
I have a machine that runs XP and another that runs W2K. Any thing else and I
won't work for the client unless he gives me a machine to test with. From my
experience (not lack of sample size, common to the blogger...) of the three
only W2K is stable. Not to mention smaller, faster, simpler and a host of
other superlatives. I intend sometime later tonight to OK VistaSP1 and I am
prepared for the possible crash--- I believe myself to be safe since such
problems were tied to AMD chips and not INTEL. By the way 'wumi' is a CPU one
of those single points of failure you claim are all of the problem? And as for
the new version of search in Vista; does any one know a working method to
revert it back to at least XP if not W2k. There are many worthwhile 12 step
programs in the world, windows search isn't one of them.

\--hsm

~~~
trevelyan
I bought a new Fujitsu laptop that came preloaded with Vista. Technically the
machine is no slouch.

Right-clicking on the network button to open a network connection reults in a
grey box loading and hanging on the page for 10 seconds or so before it
disappears. At that point you _can_ click on the exact same icon and have a
list of options, one of which is "Open Network Connection". Clicking on that
results in another 10 second wait, after which a list of possible networks to
connects to opens up.

Either one of those waits would be permissable if Windows really needed to
check if the network existed (doesn't take that long under Ubuntu though....).
But both? And for the system to show nothing but plain grey boxes?

Frankly, I don't find the OS particularly usable for anything except
Photoshop. And I'll be getting around to installing Wine soon.

------
bouncingsoul
You've conflated two separate issues (Vista the OS and Vista's launch) so it's
hard to argue accurately about this. I think you're using a too-broad
definition of _launch_ if you can offer _improved search_ as evidence of a
successful one.

I would agree that Vista is an upgrade in the same way XP was: moderate
improvements with new UI things to learn. And I think you're very right to
refer back to XP's launch and how the same complaining was made then.

But I don't see who you can call Vista's launch a success. This would probably
be better debated with empirical data about sales and time on the market and
stuff, but just the general vibe about Vista is so horribly negative in ways I
don't remember XP's ever being.

You say this is because more people are making their negative reactions known
this time around, and we should ignore them because people like to bitch. But
I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that their reactions would be negative
-- they could've reacted positively.

I doubt Microsoft is proud of Vista's launch.

------
GHFigs
He can't even get out of the first clause before trotting out the "Apple
fanboyism" scapegoat. It's the tech industry equivalent of crying "liberal
bias".

------
marcus
I agree Vista is good -> for my bottom line, I charged a ton of money from
companies to make their software UAC compliant.

------
wumi
"For one, they gave OEMs too much leeway in deciding what they could or could
not slap “Vista Capable” stickers on. And even though it wasn’t entirely their
fault that manufacturers screwed this up, it reflects badly on Microsoft."

That, in and of itself, seems to be almost the single point of failure on
Vista. OEMs selling Vista Capable computers that don't have nearly enough
memory to run Vista DOES reflect very poorly on Microsoft, and its something,
that although may remedy itself as processing power improves and becomes
cheaper, may not be erased from a lot of people's mind for a while.

As a longtime Windows user (and Apple Fanboy opponent), I certainly am almost
ready to make the jump.

------
jcromartie
Matt sounds like he has never encountered usable desktop search before. Has he
really not been exposed to Google Desktop Search or seen Mac OS X since around
2005?

I think that my basic criticism of Vista is that it's just not worth it. It
adds too much to read (I really need to do a formal study of this), too many
choices to make, too many new UI paradigms (on top of the XP/2000/98/3.1
pieces still kicking around), too many things to authorize, too high hardware
requirements, etc. ...

And what benefit comes from taking on all of these burdens? Nothing that I
have seen yet that wasn't already implemented and more refined in other
operating systems years ago.

~~~
gaius
It's weird that MS are blundering so badly with Vista. Server 2008 is shaping
up to be a solid (if rather late) product. There's even a command-line only
version (Server Core Edition).

The question MS are struggling with is "what does this do that that didn't",
something Apple have been quite good at, e.g. '10.5 has Time Machine!".

------
ssharp
It will be interesting to see what happens the next time Apple needs to
drastically overhaul their language and how gracefully it gets handled. I
think they did a decent job in handling "classic" applications.

Why can't Microsoft do the same thing? Abstract out support for old versions
and build something concrete that can be expanded. OSX has been around since
2001 with steady improvements with each upgraded version. A lot has changed on
the outside as well as under the hood but the same core architecture is still
in place. Why? Because it works very well, is modular, and can be improved
without a massive overhaul.

~~~
chaostheory
Windows 7 is rumored to be going on this path (emulation of old windows,
modular, ...)

but honestly I wonder how many of these new promises will come about. I still
remember the old promises about Longhorn aka Vista. Their new filesys (i think
winfs) is no where to be found, and their cool looking command line is just
starting to show up on server 2008... M$ has a bad history with promises and
reality

------
initself
Vista is not good.

~~~
albertcardona
Unlike Matt's, your opinion statement lacks a basis.

[Disclaimer: I'm a linux user, former mac classic/10.2.8 user, former windows
3.11/95/98/XP user.]

~~~
Hexstream
So a conclusion that's been arrived to empirically by a major portion of
consumers and professionals alike is not a basis for that opinion statement?

------
Xlp-Thlplylp
No word about Vista's DRM and the difficulty this is causing many multimedia
content providers and others. Economist David K. Levine called Vista "one of
the colossal business blunders of all time" in the following article in the
Against Monopoly blog:

[http://againstmonopoly.org/index.php?limit=10&chunk=0...](http://againstmonopoly.org/index.php?limit=10&chunk=0&searchstr=14+billion&topic=DRM)

Here's an excerpt: "the demand for degraded computers that can play "premium
content" is limited. People just don't buy computers to play movies on them.
Michele and I previously dug out some numbers on the size of the "premium
content" industry versus the IT industry. According to the RIAA, the value of
all CD's, live presentations, music videos, dvds in 1998 was 13.72 billion
US$. According to the SOI, in 1998 the business receipts of the computer and
electronic product manufacturing including both hardware and software was
560.27 billion US$. I looked up at the census 1997 revenue in the
telecommunications industry: 260.50 billion US$. So: are people going to give
up their general purpose computers they spend $560 billion on to access less
than $14 billion in content?"

From an economist's perspective, a $13.8 billion industry is negligible
compared with a $560 billion industry.

------
brianlash
A lot of good points here. I think his best comes from the notion that
business customers' slowness to upgrade "...was the case last time. The reason
is that enterprise customers don’t upgrade much."

So true.

Apple's taken the tact in their "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" adverts that Vista's a
failure for it's lack of penetration among enterprise users. Nice work, Matt,
for pointing to the fact that while little penetration may be true, it may be
irrelevant.

Edit: What was worth downmodding here?

~~~
jcromartie
> Edit: What was worth downmodding here?

I don't think many people believe that "business customers' slowness to
upgrade" is the cause, and Vista's poor reputation is the effect. Most people
believe it to be the other way around.

~~~
brianlash
Fair, but that kind of disagreement is what the "Reply" button's for.

------
noelchurchill
Vista is good in the same way that a $4 gallon of gas is good: it gets people
to consider alternatives.

------
pchristensen
Hi, I'm Matt Maroon's agent. Please direct all irrational, accusatory non-
productive trolling downmods at me. As of right now, 23 people have voted for
my client's article, indicating that it many people think my client is in fact
_not_ a troll. If you disagree, please leave a civil comment. If you disagree
with my client's responses, add another civil response of your own.
Disagreement isn't cause for downmodding.

~~~
mattmaroon
Lol. You're much better than the last agent I worked with.

------
rw
Fail.

------
LPTS
The feature that Matt says he likes (searching, eg poker) is much better
implemented with Quicksilver on Mac OS X.

~~~
mattmaroon
Does it search inside of files? I did like Quicksilver a lot. But it isn't
fair to compare an OS against an OS and a third party program.

~~~
bouncingsoul
OS X has Spotlight, which searches inside files. It's probably comparable to
Vista's search.

~~~
mattrepl
Since it was released before MS' offering, Spotlight was probably
inspirational to Vista's search.

~~~
jimbokun
Which is an important point.

Steve Jobs was able to make it very clear that the most notable features of
Vista were in OS X first. I was at the WWDC where Tiger was introduced and the
posters said things like "Redmond, start your photocopiers", and "Introducing
Longhorn" (Vista's previous code name).

The brilliance of the Mac vs. PC adds is that it has been pounded into the
subconscious of the consuming public that innovation happens on the Mac first
and is eventually picked up by Windows sometime in the future. This means that
the PR burden has now shifted to Microsoft to demonstrate that they actually
can offer functionality that's not already available on a Mac.

Which is not to say that PR can exist in a vacuum. If Apple didn't have some
legitimate claim to being ahead of Microsoft in technology, the ads mocking PC
would not be effective.

(ps The long version of PC's country western song is brilliant. I especially
like how they were able to work a rhyme of "Control-Alt-Delete" into the
lyrics.)

~~~
raganwald
"the PR burden has now shifted to Microsoft to demonstrate that they actually
can offer functionality that's not already available on a Mac."

This doesn't seem compelling. What is wrong with MSFT simply copying Apple
while maintaining compatibility and familiarity for its users?

Consider American retreads of Britcoms (a longstanding tradition, I recall
watching "Three's Company" religiously). The value proposition is simple: All
the laughs of "Robin's Nest," with an accent you can understand.

So why must MSFT "innovate"? What is wrong with going to their user base and
saying "All the nice features of OS X, with backwards compatibility and
rewritten to be familiar to you"?

This may not be sexy to me personally, but it seems like a legitimate business
strategy and like something many Windows owners would want.

~~~
jimbokun
"What is wrong with MSFT simply copying Apple while maintaining compatibility
and familiarity for its users?"

I didn't say MSFT is doing something immoral by copying Apple. My point is
that Apple has shifted perception such that MSFT, and specifically Vista, is
now the butt of a joke. They have had external help, for sure, but Apple's
relentless advertising campaign has certainly also contributed to making it
so.

So my argument is that, empirically, in the minds of many consumers the burden
has shifted to Microsoft to prove they do not deserve ridicule. Whether or not
that is "fair" is a separate matter.

------
globalrev
funny how i never cared about the OS. i program and for personal use the OS
really is whatever in my opinion.

for porfessional use maybe windows has issues but really what is wrong with
vista or earlier windows for the average computeruser?

------
jobeirne
Vista's failure is most evident once you've used Ubuntu, which contains
wheelbarrows full of innovation not incorporated into MS's effort, which is
ironic because that's the software you're actually paying for.

------
jdvolz
@backward compatibility

This doesn't really matter anymore because you can just make a VM with the OS
you need and install your program there. There are both free and open source
virtualization programs.

@Vista

The UAC is annoying for programmers; that's the real problem with it. I've
even had trouble doing reasonable actions in the designated folders (make a
new directory, for example). Yes, it is annoying for customers too, but that
it annoys programmers is an unforgivable sin.

Having just interviewed with a couple of people from Microsoft, it's clear
that they are working on interesting problems and that they aren't dumb.
Individual Microsoft engineers seem to be just as dedicated and smart as the
rest of us. Some of these decisions must come out of committees with values
different from the individual engineers.

Their major concern was security, which they've frankly fixed in XP at this
point. I haven't had virus software on my XP machine for 18 months and I
haven't had a problem. So, the major feature of Vista (more security) was
filtered back into XP, thus there is no drive to change to Vista.

