Windows Vista Why Windows Vista failed (or so people say)

Here's the real story..... M-Audio stated on their website that they wouldn't even start development of Vista drivers until after Vista was released, as Microsoft kept changing the specs, and M-Audio had no way of knowing what the final version of Vista would be. So they couldn't develop drivers because of Microsoft.

And yes I did do my research before buying Vista, and knew my M-Audio card wouldn't work from day one, but I thought drivers would be available in a short period of time...as it turned out was about a year long wait. So what do you do in the meantime ??

So now a couple of years later, Vista drivers are available, and do indeed work with the Vista compatibility mode of Windows 7. The compatibility program in Vista did not allow XP compliant drivers to work with Vista. So obviously they improved on the compatibility program in W7, which I am very happy about, as now I'm able to use my M-Audio card with W7.

So now you know why I dumped Vista for XP. For a long time, professional grade sound cards just weren't available for Vista as nobody had Vista compliant drivers, so most pro's I talked with, also went back to XP for music production work. Some of the pro's I talked with, hated Vista for many reasons having to do with audio production work. They got better results using XP. So XP became the norm for audio pro's. I liked Vista, but I didn't like the idea of my hardware not being compatible with it.

Now that my hardware is compatible, everything is hunky dory.
:D
 
Here's the real story..... M-Audio stated on their website that they wouldn't even start development of Vista drivers until after Vista was released, as Microsoft kept changing the specs, and M-Audio had no way of knowing what the final version of Vista would be. So they couldn't develop drivers because of Microsoft.
:D

With all due respect, this is false. All companies, manufacturers, etc were given the final CORE code that makes up Vista many months prior to its official release. Matter of fact, the "core" elements were complete LONG before a public beta was even released to the public. How do i know this, because im with MSDN and have been testing vista from day one.

The truth is, companies like M-Audio didn't want to put resources & money into something that they didn't know how would take off. If this is in question in anyones mind, explain why companies like Kaspersky among so many more had Pre Beta releases of there products ready to go. Not so hard to rationalize is it?. Where as companies like Creative and M-audio sat on there asses to see how things panned out, pissing off everyone who owned one of there products. Problem was and still is, people blame Vista for this, and not the manufacturer. This is the mentality I have been speaking about.

Companies were on the fence, should we or shouldn't we make drivers for a OS that is getting such bad publicity from the folks with mentalities like the quoted subject a few posts up who falls into A) B) C) and D) categories... and at the end of the day blame only Vista for there issues.

Fact is this, ALL companies had final "core" code many many months in advance. THEY chose not to sink money into devleopment until they needed to or got pressure to do so.
 
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That's what M-Audio told their customers. I certainly didn't make that up. If I would have known it was going to take a year for Vista drivers, I wouldn't have bought Vista the first week it was out. It wasn't just M-Audio that was having problems, it was also Hewlett-Packard. My HP Photosmart 7550 printer wouldn't work either.....HP's website had a Vista driver to download, but it didn't work, rendering the printer useless, unless I went back to XP.

Even if M-Audio didn't want to put resources into an unknown product like Vista, can you blame them after the Windows ME experience ??

Another issue I mention was Vista works slower than XP, I have both XP and Vista available to me, but I choose to work with XP as it runs better. I could go back to Vista anytime, but I choose not to, and I'll wait for W7 to come out, before dropping XP as my main OS.

You wanted to know why Vista failed, I told you.
 
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You wanted to know why Vista failed, I told you.

Yes you did.... Yet again, its perception..Who to believe and who to muddle through the BS and see the truth that lies before you. I'm not going to go on and on over this, my facts, my perceptions and the ability to see through the BS is clear. To bad it isn't for others.

With all do respect of course.
 
Also to be fair......I've heard that Vista with Service Pack 1, runs pretty good. So I'm not all anti-Vista as you may think. Now that the driver issues have been settled, it's a different ballgame, but too bad it took so long. Maybe I'll try that after W7 beta expires.

I currently have my main computer programs set up on a drive with XP Service Pack 3, and that works perfectly for me. If I can get that kind of performance with Windows 7, which at this time I think I can, will be switching over to W7 when it comes out.

I have a lot of money tied up in music production and sound sample programs on my computer, so it's important to me that they work without problems.
 
You can expect anything you want out of microsoft or any other company and their software or hardware. I can certainly understand the frustrations people went thru with Vista.

In my opinion here is the lesson.. Don't buy some new software/hardware the first week it comes out, heck I wouldn't buy it the first month. But I think there are two different issues that happened to Vista. A switch between XP and Vista and a switch from 32bit to 64bit. Put them both together making a jump between 32bit XP to 64bit Vista and boom I would imagine those are the people who had the worst problems.

Heck I am having problems on some forums using the 64bit version of IE8 in Windows 7 while the 32bit version in Windows 7 works fine on the exact same webpage. I suspect things will improve in the next 3 years as we transition to 64bit and then one day when everything is 64bit we will come full circle and people will love that generation of OS.
 
Well somebody has to test the waters....I thought Vista drivers for my sound card would only take a couple of weeks, maybe month or two, I never imagined a year long wait.
A professional quality sound card is link between a musician, and a recording program. It has to be of good quality, onboard soundcards don't work for pro recording as they are noisy, and that noise is unacceptable. So in order for me to be able to use my sound card, I had no choice but to go back to XP.
 
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As I read through all of this, I kept thinking 'wow, when I beta tested Vista I thought it was great'. Heck I still think Vista is great.

Everyone of my customers who has problems with Vista, well, there is no easy way to say someone should never even own a computer.

Anyway, I did note that the debate over Microsoft not having there system ready for vendors popped its head up, and actually, right now, there are a load of vendors who are sitting back waiting to see what happens with 7.

I beta test for about a half dozen companies, and all of them are really clear with their statements of 'NOT' using the software we are testing at present with Windows 7.

They do not want to know if or how it works, primarily a big gloat av company, whose product I would never own and is usually the first software I remove from client's computers when they bring them in because they run like crap.

As long as I can keep fragging in my fps games, keep bringing on the OS that will fully maximize my system.
 
Its not Vistas fault...

its the engineers and sales departments of Microsoft. First of all, I'm in agreement that Vista ran like s*** on low to mid-grade PCs. Tons of unnecessary processes killed the PCs productivity levels. Companies from near and far could care less about Aero, thats a luxery for the home users. Any skilled manager or employer would stress production, not aesthetics from a machine. Really, what employee needs Aero?
As far as the home user, Vista isnt that bad, however Microsoft needed to inform the uninformed about optimal "Vista experience" hardware requirements far better than they did. 7 should be a good OS for MS, they'll finally get the XP holdouts to upgrade.
 
That would mean me too!! well they already got me to upgrade!! eejejeje All i can say is this from personal experiences. I have had 2 laptops in the last year. one was a dell wich had a 2ghz dual core and 2gb ram with Vista ultimate, and the other had 2gb ram with a 1.6 dualcore also with Vista ultimate! And both ran like crap, super slow, took fore ever to boot, no to mention it took ages to install and remove programs. Right now i own a Acer one netbook, wich only has 1gb ram, and a 1.6ghz Intel Atom processor with 120gb hd. It came with xp installed, and out of the box it ran twice as fast as my other two laptops. I recently went ahead and installed Windows 7 beta build 7000, and WOW! i am really impresed!! This windows blows both Vista and Xp out of the water!! My net book is even faster now, and i havent had any problems so far, everything is running great!! I,ve installed Firefox, flash, java, quicktime, realplayer, Live messenger, avast anti virus, Cooliris extension for firefox etc, etc. And Windows 7 is super fast compared to Vista!! I mean if i installed Vista Ultimate on my netbook, it'll probably blowup during bootup, or at least bring it to a halt!! Remember this is a Atom 1.6ghz and only 1gb ram! Vista is just too sluggish of an OS, and windows 7 in my opinion has remarkably totally surpassed Vista in every way imaginable, and it is only in beta!!!
 
Ok Folks -- lets step back 18 months or so.

Microsoft really couldn't do too much more with XP and definitely wanted to move forward to a 64 Bit OS. I think Gamers also wanted faster and faster hardware -- and if you are going to use Video cards with a HUGE amount of memory in them you are going to have less RAM over for the OS. Dual Core 64 bit processors were coming out so Microsoft wanted (bad mistake IMO) to get VISTA out ASAP.

This resulted in most new computers people were buying at that time to be shipped with VISTA already installed -- no choice -- you got VISTA that was it - and even more of an irritant you rarely got a proper install Disk but just an OEM Image usually installed on a Hidden Paritition. The recovery software often didn't work -- and if I had trouble with this (and I've used computers for quite a long time) I can just imagine the horrors of a relatively inexperienced user trying to recover a "Broken OS" with no proper install Disk.

Even on this board (and I've had problems with this as well ) a load of users report problems in getting XP computers to share files with VISTA / W7. This in a lot of of cases is by no means trivial problem to solve --especially for inexperienced users who often had zero experience of Networking,

The initial implementation of Vista also wasn't very well optimized and on typical hardware available at that time DID RUN LIKE A DOG. Most home users don't have the time or inclination to tinker around improving VISTA - and by all accounts it could have been optimized but requires some expertise way beyond a typical users skill set to do - especially if you break something and there's no decent way to re-install the OS.

SP1 on modern hardware is a different animal - better but still not as good in my (and loads of other people's) experience as W7. At the very least VISTA should have been released as the SP1 version even if it meant a 6 month delay.

So not unnaturally Vista got a bad reputation to start with -- introduced too early for the average level of user competance, and once a product / brand gets a bad name / image then it's almost impossible to redeem it.

Microsoft would as far as VISTA is concerned done better to have introduced it the other way around - Corporates first and then Home Users. A lot of people would have got used to it in the workplace so would then have been able to handle it on their own computers.

What we've got now is a VERY VERY poor take up of VISTA by corporates -- at least "for the masses" even though some I.T support staff might have a VISTA computer or two around . Shell where I have often done some Free lance work for is still using a huge number of computers running believe it or not Windows 2000. They will go straight to W7 and they are not the only large corporation running Windows 2000.

So one might question whether Vista deserves its bad reputation from a purely technical point -- however BAD MARKETING, TOO RAPID INTRODUCTION, AND NOT ENOUGH USER EDUCATION hobbled the project from the start.

Anyway the end outcome is fine --we've got Windows 7 which seems to address most of the negative issues users reported on with VISTA and looks like it WILL be a winner all the way.

Cheers
jimbo
 
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Well my laptop has a 1.73 Ghz processor, but I think 2 GB should now be the recommend amount of RAM for Vista.

But you can optimize Vista's performance without modifying your hardware. You can gain some performance by disabling Aero, for example.

We know that.

But it doesn't take a lot of impact.
 
We know that.

But it doesn't take a lot of impact.


That,s exactly my point! im runing W7 right now with full aero, 3d the works on my measly Acerone netbook no problems or glitches at all, and i didnt even have to tinker with it a bit, didnt disable anything to make it work like it should, it just runs great period! Vista on the other hand is a total mess1 thanks god that MS has gotten it right so far with W7, and i bet that when W7 comes out more people are gonna jump to W7 than the amount that jumped from xp to Vista! But it still depends on wether MS stays on the right track, or decides to mess it all up! My money is on staying on the right track!
 
Ya right....I had the "opportunity" to wait a year for Vista compatible drivers for my sound card.

I also had the "opportunity" to spend a couple of days messing with printer drivers that were supposedly Vista compatible, that wouldn't work for anything.

It was amazing that as soon as I went back to XP, all my stuff worked !!

Windows XP, An OS that's uhm, 7 years old, Vista, An Os that's about 2 ... Hmmmm which do YOU think is more mature?

I'm not making excuses for the lack of driver support for VISTA but. Since WHEN is it the responsibility of the OS Manufacturer to produce drivers for the many millions of hardware devices out there? MS does a fantastic job of providing the basic drivers for MOST hardware but asking them to make optimized drivers for all the different hardware devices that are out there is being a little unrealistic.

If the hardware manufacturers want to SELL their hardware, they'd better provide DECENT drivers for the operating systems their audience is using.

While I'm on it, the state of driver development out there today is just beyond pathetic.

HP Drivers take 15-20 minutes to load and quit eating 90+% of the CPU after a cold boot on my wife's Dual CPU 2.4 GHz 2GB RAM Windows XP SP3 PC. Is that REALLY Microsoft's fault? Not a chance people. that's HP's fault. And, why are the Drivers for her MFC Printer 238 MB :confused:

Why are Logitech MOUSE drivers (SETPOINT 4.7) 60 Megs :confused: That's INSANE!!

AMD buys out ATI and suddenly ATI's drivers just SUCK. CCC throws 15+ exceptions / second on that SAME PC. I've gone back to 6.9 catalyst drivers that actually perform MUCH better than ay of the driver releases since for her 9800 Pro.

These are but 3 examples. I have thousands more at client sites all over the Denver Metro Area and the Colorado Front Range. And I do have to say that IF all those drivers worked without issue, I'd probably be out work. BUT, be that as it may I find it UNACCEPTABLE that everyone blames Microsoft for these CRAPPY drivers. Microsoft has released a VERY nice Driver Development Kit (compare that to writing drivers in Leopard or Linux!!) with VERY well laid out RULES ABOUT what is and is NOT accetable in driver development under their operating systems. And, all these hardware manufacturers do as LITTLE as possible to get their hardware to "WORK" under whatever operating system they're targeting and nearly everyone on the planet blames Microsoft for the problems and issues that arise from purely LAZY Manufacturers and Driver Authors.

Bottom line though is that of ALL the operating systems I've used over my nearly 40 years in the computer industry, Microsoft provides the MOST drivers for the MOST number of harware products out there. AND, you get those OUT OF THE BOX not having to hunt some source code line down only to have to COMPILE it then figure out where to install it THEN to find that you have the Rev 2 product not the Rev 1! and it just won't work :mad:

AND - is it Microsoft's fault that my PC under Windows XP SP3 will REBOOT when I fire up VPC 2007 SP1? The stack trace (obtained via WinDBG) CLEARLY shows it was VIA's fault with their HD Audio driver trying to call IRQ 0 with NULLS!!
I think not!
 
Nice rant, but the fact remains my soundcard and printer would not work with Vista. I had no choice but to revert back to XP, as I had to have my soundcard for music production. The question was asked "why did Vista fail ??," well that is the reason it failed for me. I bought Vista when it first came out, and I liked Vista, it's a great looking program , and I really wanted it to work, but after several months of not having my hardware, I had to go back to XP. The compatibility program in Vista did NOT work with my soundcard and printer drivers. Now fast forward two years later, and drivers are available, so that issue is a mute point.

With Microsoft changing the OS requirements for driver manufacturers every couple of years, this makes keeping up with Microsoft a difficult thing.
 
XP failed too

I remember having an XP Pro student copy and trying to run it on 256Mb of RAM.. what a joke! Of course back then that
was a socket A m/board and under 1G CPU. Now I have a much better PC and have 2G of RAM.So my point is XP was a dog back then too. I can`t comment on Vista because I haven`t used it yet.:D

Agreed ME was a complete disaster that no cover story, blanket, service pack could repair. People that think Windows XP is the greatest OS have to look back to when it was first released. There were serious problems with the OS that people did not like. In the case of XP though the software engineers from various companies actually FOLLOWED the directions set forth by Microsoft. Oh and with VISTA most companies did not and still have not followed the complete guidelines set forth by them. So literally VISTA and XP are merely the same disaster the only difference is in the fact that in XP other people helped by following the rules while in VISTA they didnt
 
I love how people love to say that Vista flopped, even though it broke XP's sale speed record.

That's because it flopped after I bought it and discovered my hardware wouldn't work with it. I was all gung ho for Vista before that.

Now that drivers have been developed for it, it's still going to flop as I'm going to switch to Windows 7 as soon as it comes out. I doubt there will be a lot of loyal Vista users hanging on for years like there was and still is with XP. But then again, if Microsoft gets crazy with the price of W7, maybe Vista will be a viable alternative.

:)
 
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