Vista Is Good

by breily • 18 years ago

38 99 18 years ago

brianlash2• 18 years ago

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?

mattmaroon12• 18 years ago

Thanks.

jcromartie2• 18 years ago

> 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.

brianlash2• 18 years ago

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

randomhack• 18 years ago

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.

mattmaroon12• 18 years ago

"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• 18 years ago

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.

jws• 18 years ago

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).

mattmaroon12• 18 years ago

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...

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• 18 years ago

  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.

axod10• 18 years ago

No usermode program should cause windows to crash.

This is such an irritating point of view. In a previous job we had a boss like this, who said our code must have bugs in it because the JVM was crashing with a segfault.

wumi• 18 years ago

"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.

LPTS2• 18 years ago

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

mattmaroon12• 18 years ago

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.

LPTS2• 18 years ago

You can make it do that. You can have different search domains for different shortcuts. With how I customized it, I hit apple+space to do normal stuff, option apple space to use it to access tho menu bar commands, etc. You could set one shortcut to do normal stuff and another to customize.

Compare Vista plus any app you want with it. If search is your priority, quicksilver is better. I don't have a horse in this OS race (but I think Apple is generally brilliant and Microsoft lacks vision). Plus, it's free.

bouncingsoul2• 18 years ago

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

alex_c3• 18 years ago

Vista DOESN'T search inside files, or if it does, it does so very very badly. I spent half an hour trying to do a very simple search for one keyword in a folder with php files, and trying various tricks from the net when it became obvious I can't do it on my own, with no luck.

That was probably the first major flaw in Vista I've run into.

tokipin• 18 years ago

Google Desktop is great. dunno how it compares to Vista's built-in search

axod10• 18 years ago

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?

Create2• 18 years ago

like the asus eeepc using linux, I'd expect MS dominance to take a major bashing over the next years on PCs

false about Xandros. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_and_free_softw...

josefresco• 18 years ago

"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• 18 years ago

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.

axod10• 18 years ago

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

My point, as has been made in the past, is that MS has not innovated for a good many years. No one is scared by MS any more. No one cares what they do. They aren't leading anything. They are simply trying to eke out their monopoly for all its worth.

No startup thinks "Oh no what if ms are developing a similar thing", because we all know they aren't.

I expect they could still turn it around, but they'd have to actually make things people want which isn't what they are used to. They are used to a monopoly.

hsmyers• 18 years ago

"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• 18 years ago

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.

chaostheory2• 18 years ago

"only W2K is stable"

yeah, that's my fav windows version too. It was the only time Windows was stable for me, where lockups and blue screens were relatively rare compared to XP... switched to osx before vista came

tx3• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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.

tx3• 18 years ago

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.

bouncingsoul2• 18 years ago

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.

initself• 18 years ago

Vista is not good.

albertcardona• 18 years ago

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.]

snorkel• 18 years ago

2 + 2 = 4

Hexstream6• 18 years ago

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?

Create2• 18 years ago

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... [Apple is even worse on DRM etc.]

gaius2• 18 years ago

The thing is, if (and it's a big if) Trusted Computing meant an end to virii etc, it would be worth it for many people. But as you say, it's a bit of a one-way street.

andreyf2• 18 years ago

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

xlnt• 18 years ago

and in safari

marcus• 18 years ago

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

rw• 18 years ago

Fail.

globalrev• 18 years ago

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?

petercooper2• 18 years ago

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.

axod10• 18 years ago

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.

mynameishere4• 18 years ago

I think that it is impossible for someone to troll his own blog.

I think that is is especially impossible to be a "troll" when someone else is posting entries from your own blog to a social news service. No, I don't think that qualifies.

pchristensen3• 18 years ago

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?

mattmaroon12• 18 years ago

Yes, it is me who is trolling by posting my opinions to my blog. It's not you, who out of kneejerk reflex caused by your sensitivity about being an Apple fanboy (a label you applied to yourself, then took offense to) leaves 10 negative comments every time someone posts me here.

Anything on my blog is, by definition, neither irrelevant nor off-topic, since the theme is "things that are interesting to me".

alex_c3• 18 years ago

Matt Maroon: I disagree with the rest of the world, and here's why.

andreyf2• 18 years ago

I'd rather read an opinion which disagrees with the rest of the world than agrees with it, if only for the sake of novelty.

tx3• 18 years ago

SV != "rest of the world". Maroon seems to be more more in touch with outside-of-sv-reality on most issues. And majority of readers here aren't in Bay Area.

mhartl2• 18 years ago

Evidently many people (including me) enjoy reading Matt's contrarian views. He's also the founder of a YC-funded company, and many of us here at HN know him personally; that's probably also a factor.

petercooper2• 18 years ago

Oh okay, I didn't know that. I don't mind, I was just curious, thanks for the answer :)

jpeterson2• 18 years ago

The other thing that strikes me as odd is that, while his original article has enough points to stick to the front page, all of his comments here in defense of the article's points have been downvoted into oblivion.

Hexstream6• 18 years ago

It's not odd at all, it's because of the dichotomy of being able to downvote comments but not stories. So a story that 20 people love and 30 people hate gets 20 points while a comment with the same demographics gets -10.

This system encourages stories that generate strong emotions even if disapproval is strong.

jcromartie2• 18 years ago

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.

gaius2• 18 years ago

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!".

mattmaroon12• 18 years ago

I used Google Desktop Search on XP. It was nice, but not as nice as having good search built into the OS.

I largely agree that Vista isn't that compelling of an upgrade. I just don't think it's the disaster its often made out to be.

olefoo• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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.

Hexstream6• 18 years ago

"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.

jobeirne• 18 years ago

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.

ssharp• 18 years ago

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.

chaostheory2• 18 years ago

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

pchristensen3• 18 years ago

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.

mattmaroon12• 18 years ago

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

GHFigs• 18 years ago

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".

noelchurchill• 18 years ago

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

jdvolz• 18 years ago

@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.

Xlp-Thlplylp• 18 years ago

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...

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.

Vista Is Good

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