Hapless Vista Turns 6, Shuffles Toward Obscurity

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Messages
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According to most past users, Vista can’t pass into obscurity fast enough to satisfy them. Rivaled only by the monumental flop of its not-ready-for-prime-time cousin, Millennium Edition. Microsoft, along with the majority of its users, have distanced themselves from Vista at warp speed.

Since its 2009 peak, Vista has been shedding share, dropping 5.6 percentage points in 2010, 4.1 points in 2011 and 2.7 points in 2012.
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Glad to hear. My work has me migrating as many Vista systems to 7 as we can right now.
 
proudly Vista free here

still have some XP holding on...lol
 
I got Vista on a Dell Inspiron I won from work and didn't care for it. At the time 2gig of memory was enough, but Vista previous to SP2 was slow and clunky. SP2 helped a lot, but it was too late. Right now I'm on the said laptop with Win8Pro and it runs much faster than Vista. Still, it doesn't hold a candle to WinME, not by a long shot. I would rather move to a mac than deal with a headache like that again.
 
Releasing an OS will a huge amount of problems as Vista did was a mistake. Some drivers and some OS specific. I remember that dragging and dropping files was a slow and painful process. Drivers aren't an excuse either. As big of a company as Microsoft should have taken the time to test as much hardware as they could. That Vista compatible bullshit confused and frustrated a lot of people as well.

Though I see Windows 8 going into a similar direction.
 
I still use Vista and <3 it! In fact, it's probably the OS I'll hang onto while waiting out the Windows 8 thing. I mean, I have Windows 7 at home and work, but I'm lots more comfy with Vista so I have it installed on more stuff.
 
Never really had a problem with Vista64 on my q6600, NV9800GT, 8GB system. It just had a very rough start and the Ads from Apple didn't help either. Coarse Vista32 on my laptop was a mild pain do to it was running 2GB and shared memory with GFX system.

I'm running Win7-64HP on this laptop til I get a new one which would have 8 tho. :(
 
I'm still pretty much using the same system I had when Vista was around and I didn't notice a lot of the complaints people had with the OS (though I did notice a few). Transitioning from Vista to 7 was nearly transparent in terms of performance. The only major differences were the new taskbar and less UAC annoyances. Win8 gives me more or less the same feeling; it feels much like 7 but without the start menu. Some of the stuff I've been used to using were shuffled around a bit, but they're not impossible to find without search. Search just makes it easier.

Of course there are also a few bits of "quality of life" improvements with each new OS generation. I love the native support for ISO mounting and that MSSE is now integrated into the system as "Windows Defender." Overall, I'm not missing the start menu at all, though I kinda miss the weather gadget I had on my desktop.
 
I still have my WinME disc. I never had any problems with it, but people still love to hate it.
 
I think Vista deserves a certain amount of credit for getting everyone "ready" for Windows 7, and to a lesser extent 8. Many of the Vista issues were caused by bad drivers, drivers that had a chance to mature before 7 hit. If 7 hadn't used the exact same drivers as Vista, things would have been a lot more rough.
 
I know there is alot of hate for vista, but I have to say, it is still the best OS for an htpc. Windows 7 and 8 are a bust in that department unless you want to either spend the money and purchase an xbox or convert the video format of every program you record. I have had zero issues with Vista and have no plans on removing it from my htpc. Maybe someday Microsuck with go back to a video format that any pc can play, not just the pc that recorded the show.
 
Vista has been a pretty decent OS since SP2 came out for it. Before that, it was a turd.
 
Generally speaking, Vista was a poor OS. It made me switch to Linux and I haven't looked back at Microsoft since. After reading the article, I got to thinking- how did Microsoft address the poor sales when Vista launched in 2007 (Jan 30th, to be exact).
Here's a commercial for Vista- wow doesn't quite cover it..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOtqg0REUrI
So how were sales projections framed? Here's how...
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240080531/Windows-Vista-sales-outstrip-XP-launch
Yep, you guessed it, Vista is a success! Of course some reports were more objective:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ATeLDM1H4M
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/technology/05microsoft.html?_r=0
So, according to Windows at the time, it was piracy that caused the lackluster launch.
Best buy was optimistic:
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/02/16/best-buy-seeing-picked-up-sales-of-windows-vista/
I like this line, "Once those [XP machines] are sold, then all new PCs (well, generally) will have the Windows Vista operating system pre-loaded -- and then the sales will start marching regardless."
Thus, forcing the consumer into an OS is standard operating procedure for MS...
So what can we take away from all of this?
1) MS will bully its customers into an OS
2) MS WILL lie about sales
3) The truth eventually comes out.
If customers reviews of 8 are any indication, MS will need another 7 to save them. But how many times can MS do this before they lose enough people, like me, who switch to Linux or Mac before the brand fails? Ultimately, there is one clear message, Win9 will be necessary to make MS profitable again. I just wonder if the hardware manufacturers can make it through the Win8 storm.
 
Yoshiyuki Blade said:
I'm still pretty much using the same system I had when Vista was around and I didn't notice a lot of the complaints people had with the OS (though I did notice a few). Transitioning from Vista to 7 was nearly transparent in terms of performance. The only major differences were the new taskbar and less UAC annoyances. Win8 gives me more or less the same feeling; it feels much like 7 but without the start menu. Some of the stuff I've been used to using were shuffled around a bit, but they're not impossible to find without search. Search just makes it easier.

Of course there are also a few bits of "quality of life" improvements with each new OS generation. I love the native support for ISO mounting and that MSSE is now integrated into the system as "Windows Defender." Overall, I'm not missing the start menu at all, though I kinda miss the weather gadget I had on my desktop.
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Vista bombed on me initially--but it wasn't technically Vista's fault. A problem with an NVIDIA driver (surprise!) caused my SLI/4GB RAM system to be unusable unless 2GB was pulled (memory map issue between dual 512MB video cards and 4096MB of RAM).

After that, Vista wasn't bad, because I was running appropriate hardware (Opteron 170 @ 2.6GHz). Hardly a speed demon by today's standards, but much, much faster than the "base" recommendations from Microsoft!

Part of the problem with Vista was that people hated change (UAC) and that Microsoft vastly undersold what hardware was "required" to run Vista well. Sure it would run on 512MB RAM and 800MHz of CPU--barely...

Microsoft essentially said "Here's a ten stall horse trailer--this compact SUV can tow it!" That's less a reflection on Vista than it is on how it was marketed.

I'd take Vista over 8--I see the new UI as that un-beneficial. Vista's much more similar to 7 (which I have been running since beta leaks).
 
aquabusa said:
Thus, forcing the consumer into an OS is standard operating procedure for MS...
So what can we take away from all of this?
1) MS will bully its customers into an OS
2) MS WILL lie about sales
3) The truth eventually comes out.
If customers reviews of 8 are any indication, MS will need another 7 to save them. But how many times can MS do this before they lose enough people, like me, who switch to Linux or Mac before the brand fails? Ultimately, there is one clear message, Win9 will be necessary to make MS profitable again. I just wonder if the hardware manufacturers can make it through the Win8 storm.
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Yeah they're bullies. Apple lets me buy a new Mac with any version of OS X I like. And Oracle lets me buy boxes with 20 year old copies of their OS. Oh wait, they don't.

FYI, after roughly 2 years, XP had 20% of the market, almost identical to Vista's peak. The reason XP was so dominant, is because they went 6 years without a new OS.

Bottom line is MS still owns more than 90% of the computer OS market. There's nobody else that's even challenging them. Most IT people do not like Apple. They think they're overpriced and not friendly to enterprise users. Most home users aren't willing to pay the premium for a Mac.

Linux is irrelevant to the desktop space. It's been the next big thing for 16 years. It's a great server OS, just like Unix.

Unless we all give up our PCs and use tablets and phones to do everything, Windows is da man. I like my phone and tablet, but I'm not going to sit at home or work and do everything on it...they're just too inefficient.

XP had bugs when it came out, and most game oriented sites told people to avoid the OS until sometime after SP1, because 9x was faster. People really have incredibly short memories. The same doom and gloom stories are trotted out with every windows release. Unless MS puts 6 or more years between releases, there will never be another version of windows that dominates like XP did. The only question is what percentage of the desktop/laptop space is Windows and that's still
 
MajorDomo said:
According to most past users, Vista can’t pass into obscurity fast enough to satisfy them. Rivaled only by the monumental flop of its not-ready-for-prime-time cousin, Millennium Edition. Microsoft, along with the majority of its users, have distanced themselves from Vista at warp speed.
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Don't forget the other horribly designed cousin, Windows 8. As January sales numbers roll in the Windows 8 sales trajectory has fallen even further behind the Vista trajectory.

As of right now, Windows 8 has completely redefined Market Flop for Microsoft.
 
7 is basically the fixed up Vista.
At this point with 7 (and 8), outside of cost, there is little reason to stick with Vista and not upgrade.
 
Saist said:
Don't forget the other horribly designed cousin, Windows 8. As January sales numbers roll in the Windows 8 sales trajectory has fallen even further behind the Vista trajectory.

As of right now, Windows 8 has completely redefined Market Flop for Microsoft.
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It's way to soon to tell anything. But does it really matter if MS maintains 92-93% of the computer market? The only reason I'm upgrading is because it was ridiculously cheap. The only reason i changed from Vista to 7 was because I had technet so I had no reason not to. I like 7 better than vista, but the performance change at RTM wasn't huge.
 
My personal experience of Vista was pretty positive. Always worked just fine for me. I only just stopped using it on one of my machines recently. I have no niggles.

I get a lot of laptops in with their original 2007 install of Vista on them and they are awful, just thrashing the disk all the while. But once wiped and a clean service packed and tweaked install of Vista put back on, they work pretty smoothly. Hard to tell from Windows 7.

As others mentioned it needed a couple more months of fine tuning and the likes of Nvidia etc. needed to get their act together sooner.

Oh and all the manufacturers slapping tons of bloatware on that was designed for Windows XP.

I still feel the best version of Vista was Home Basic.
 
I think in 5 or 6 years we'll be talking this way about Windows 8 and saying "remember that horrible 'Metro UI' they tried to shove on everyone?"
 
Super-D said:
I think in 5 or 6 years we'll be talking this way about Windows 8 and saying "remember that horrible 'Metro UI' they tried to shove on everyone?"
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I don't see the Modern UI going away, they might add a toggle switch in Windows 9 but that's about it.
 
03grandam said:
I don't see the Modern UI going away, they might add a toggle switch in Windows 9 but that's about it.
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That's all I ask but I bet MS will be to dam pig headed to do that...they certainly can shoot themselves in the foot every now and then.
 
With Vista everything changed in Microsoft's OSes, most importantly device-driver models. Most hardware OEMs were very late to the changing-the-drivers party, and so Vista got a bad rep, especially in the laptop department. Microsoft had been releasing driver code and specs, along with early versions of Vista itself, to those same OEMs for about a year before Vista shipped. Classic chicken-egg problem. Hardware OEMs didn't want to invest in Vista drivers until Vista had achieved a decent market penetration, but without good hardware drivers there's no way Vista would ever do that...;) I had little to no trouble at all with Vista on my desktop, though. It supported my DX9 gpu and all of my DX9 and earlier games without difficulty (also contrary to badly misinformed rumor at the time.)

What still makes me laugh today is the fact that many of the same people who went bonkers in love with Windows 7 were the same ones who despised Vista--yet the fact is that Win7 is nothing except Vista 2.0. Win7 has far more in common with Vista than it does with WinXP. Indeed, hardware drivers released today often say "Vista-Win7-Win8" because they simply won't run on XP or earlier. By the time Win7 shipped, hardware OEMs had gotten their acts together and the public had become accustomed to the UI and code changes inside Vista--the result being that Windows 7 became Microsoft's most popular OS to date. Had Windows 7 shipped at the same time as Vista and in place of Vista it would have been received no better for the same reasons.

Thinking further back for more laughs--it seems like yesterday when I was reading articles written by major computer-magazine pundits lamenting the passing of Win3.1 and predicting that Windows 95 would be an unmitigated disaster for Microsoft...;) Win95 was actually the first OS from Microsoft that I liked--I didn't much care for DOS and earlier Windows versions because alternatives at the time (prior to 1995) like AmigaOS were far better.

I've been using Win8 Pro x64 for several weeks now and I'm still not sure what to think about it--except that if a customer primarily uses a desktop and has Win7 then Win8 is worth no more than its introductory $39.99 sale price. I think that Microsoft really goofed by mandating the start screen instead making it optional--I mean, it seems irrational that Microsoft would have made the desktop UI in Win8 optional (you can choose between traditional desktop UI and Metro) but at the same time is forcing customers to use the Metro start screen instead of providing an optional start menu for its Win8 customers who prefer the desktop UI over the Metro UI. There are some things about Win8 that I like (like you can mount and run any .iso file without having to use a third party program, for instance), but if you have Win7 already there's no way that Win8 is worth $199.
 
This discussion is pretty much moot. About 95% of the population don't even know forums like this exist; they're busy playing farmville, angry birds or bejewelled. They use whatever os is on the computer they buy, and they buy one every few years because the os slowly either fills up the computer with garbage files, they get a virus/trojan/worm that slows the computer, or the ram requirements of even current applications go beyond what once worked (firefox and chrome use up tremendous amounts of ram in comparison to earlier versions, especially once any popular plug ins are added). There is no killer ap that linux has to make the move interesting for anyone, indeed, most people are locked into windows because all of the aps they have are windows specific, and they wouldn't know how to install a new os anyway.
M$ has the world by the balls. Even other countries use it, albeit pirated versions. And M$ allows it, to get their footprint there too (just as they did for windows across the USA back in the nineties; most people paid for it, so it wasn't a problem to allow the few to steal it, knowing those who know how to pirate the os would also influence other buyers into using it!).
 
WaltC said:
Thinking further back for more laughs--it seems like yesterday when I was reading articles written by major computer-magazine pundits lamenting the passing of Win3.1 and predicting that Windows 95 would be an unmitigated disaster for Microsoft...;) Win95 was actually the first OS from Microsoft that I liked--I didn't much care for DOS and earlier Windows versions because alternatives at the time (prior to 1995) like AmigaOS were far better.

I've been using Win8 Pro x64 for several weeks now and I'm still not sure what to think about it--except that if a customer primarily uses a desktop and has Win7 then Win8 is worth no more than its introductory $39.99 sale price. I think that Microsoft really goofed by mandating the start screen instead making it optional--I mean, it seems irrational that Microsoft would have made the desktop UI in Win8 optional (you can choose between traditional desktop UI and Metro) but at the same time is forcing customers to use the Metro start screen instead of providing an optional start menu for its Win8 customers who prefer the desktop UI over the Metro UI. There are some things about Win8 that I like (like you can mount and run any .iso file without having to use a third party program, for instance), but if you have Win7 already there's no way that Win8 is worth $199.
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The thing is is that Microsoft is not getting better at making an Operating System (their attempts at it). It is the same stuff but then with integrated cd/dvd burning program. More and bigger workspace needed instead of lean and faster with less programs.

The people at Microsoft couldn't make an Operating System if their life depended on it

The best example is how they promote their webbrowser, it doesn't matter how broken it is it is still their pet project.

If you look at the resources the company has and the best they can do is called Vista or it's red headed steph sister Windows 8 you know it isn't going anywhere in the next decade (like the last one).
 
If you want an OS that will do the job for 90% of folks out there then use ChromeOS.

I find it interesting that if ChromeOS really takes off then it could well be the time that linux hits the computing (laptop/desktop) mainstream). However, the funny bit is that its the exact opposite of how the linux fans would want it to happen. Linux without all the crap/distro and desktop choice confusion and CLI.
 
daglesj said:
If you want an OS that will do the job for 90% of folks out there then use ChromeOS.

I find it interesting that if ChromeOS really takes off then it could well be the time that linux hits the computing (laptop/desktop) mainstream). However, the funny bit is that its the exact opposite of how the linux fans would want it to happen. Linux without all the crap/distro and desktop choice confusion and CLI.
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The problem with ChromeOS is that it's only a 90% OS in a world that has 100% OSes.
 
Vista was only bad for the first year because the drivers were so much crap.. i do not blame microsoft for that. Companies like nvidia and amd dragged their heals on the new model implementation..and then were ultra slow to fix the night mare. Otherwise yah.. 7 is not so much different than vista. the hardware caught up as did the drivers.
 
RedStarSQD said:
Vista was only bad for the first year because the drivers were so much crap.. i do not blame microsoft for that. Companies like nvidia and amd dragged their heals on the new model implementation..and then were ultra slow to fix the night mare. Otherwise yah.. 7 is not so much different than vista. the hardware caught up as did the drivers.
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No, it had a terribly optimized kernel, the GUI used far more resources just to run basic 2D programs than it should have, and systems tended to be far underpowered to run it properly at it's release in 2007, something Microsoft should have expected and optimized just as they did with XP, upping the system requirements per service pack.
Oh, and Vista was garbage in an enterprise environment.

Everywhere I've worked or have seen, Vista was completely skipped, even after loads of testing and user input, and to this day XP is being phased out in favor of 7.
 
I still have my vista partition on my htpc, still never saw the problems it had. I will probably keep this one around as it is very stable and I'll use it as a back up for when win 8 fails me.
 
^ You never saw any of the problems Vista had because all you did on it was stream movies and videos, woopdeedoo.
Get beyond the GUI, and you'll see what a nightmare that OS was; it totally needs to die.

I would rather see XP stick around for another decade that see Vista stay another year.
 
Nathan_P said:
Someone should tell that to the company I work at, they rolled out vista enterprise for every PC in the company, spread over 500 sites:eek::mad:
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omg... I'm so sorry you have to deal with that.
That's like, purgatory in the world of IT. :(
 
lol you sure you guys work in IT?.. vista was much easier deployed than XP :) anyways, of course people are gonna pick 7 over its beta these days. So while the hate on vista is overdone it is a moot point. hehe
 
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