Vista isn’t the worst OS Microsoft produced nor is it the best
By Jonathan Schlaffer
Windows Vista is reviled by many of being a “bad” product because of its poor compatibility when it was first released and inability to function with old programs and hardware even now, someone, somewhere is having a problem with Vista. Well, this was partially by design but some things are problems that Microsoft needs to address in the future.
It’s never a good idea to “upgrade” a computer to a new Microsoft operating system, that’s just not something good to do. If you want to install a new version of Windows by the full version and do a clean install but make absolutely certain that every single peripheral you have has drivers for the new OS or else you are in for a world of hurt. This is what happened with Vista. In some cases it’s possible to cajole XP drivers into working but in most cases the installation will fail or the utilities necessary for managing the device or driver functionality won’t work which is just as bad as not having the drivers at all.
Some hardware devices still do not have proper Vista drivers, like the Creative Audigy 4 cards and never will but that’s not on Microsoft, that’s on Creative. But, Microsoft isn’t known for having great relationships with device vendors either. Device vendors and Microsoft are both to blame for some of these instances.
Vista has updates that “fix” some issues but create new ones, there are articles on articles on articles about that. This has to stop. At least when Apple releases an update, it will fix a problem but if it breaks your computer, it really breaks your computer so there’s no second guessing as to what happened. Both companies have problems, Apple has fewer of them but when they happen there, it’s usually more serious.
That being said, Vista isn’t the worst operating system by Microsoft to ever hit the market. No, that honor falls to Windows ME though Vista comes in second place.
Windows ME was a botched operating system that tried to add features to Windows 98, tried to pretend it was some horrible conglomeration of features that were Windows 2000 and what would eventually be XP, all rolled into one impossible and almost totally useless operating system.
It was unstable, it crashed, some programs refused to install or quit and task manager would occasionally refuse to function correctly, it would refuse to shut down properly or restart but it worked great the first time it booted but only the first time. System restore in it was a joke and a clean install could not be performed from the disc (unless the hard drive was formatted from another computer first).
Vista doesn’t crash, well, not as much as ME did and when it does it usually comes down to a bad driver (like with all versions of Windows), other than that the only other complaint I have is that installing updates can be problematic and it’s overall response is slower than XP running on the same hardware (which is a modern gaming system).
Vista is bad but it’s not that bad but saying a Microsoft operating system isn’t “that bad” is like saying having a root canal without anesthesia isn’t “that bad.”
XP is the best operating system Microsoft had produced to date, just like Mac OSX is the best operating system Apple has produced to date. Both have been updated several times since their initial introduction and both are going strong almost seven years in, let’s keep it that way. XP should stay and I’m sure Mac OSX will be with us for quite a while.
Vista, well, if Windows 7 is the savior that Microsoft says it is, will have Vista collecting dust and rotting like XP did to Windows ME.
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April 20th, 2008
Haven’t used Windows for workgroups, or 3.11 eh? MSDOS 2.11 sucked as well. And there was MS BOB.
It kind of hard to compare an OS that runs on a closed hardware platform to all the permutations that Windows has to work with.
Just getting it to work with the staggering number of other Microsoft products is gigantic . And many of these folks have service contracts with MS.
Microsoft couldn’t care less about the home users. They could give the software to home users with barely a blip in financials. The largest revenue stream by far is businesses.
Microsoft wants companies to see Vista and Server 2008 as a package deal and a bridge to 64 bit computing.
It’s times like this when you have to wonder if the Justice Department had split the company, with the OS it’s own company, what would have happened.
April 20th, 2008
The only good thing about Windows ME , is that MSFT admitted a mistake and buried it instead of making excuses for keeping it in the marketplace and forcing on a unwilling public (like Vista).
April 20th, 2008
Vista isn’t a bad OS… we all know that Vista is built to be more stable and secure than XP. Vista is still in its early stages and unlike MAC OS X windows usually have struggle with lot more compatibility issues with more vendors and etc,. Vista itself is stable enough… but the problems appear when dealing with 3rd party driver and incompatible software.
So, for Vista to get there it will take time… No one seems to remember the days when we all blamed XP. Early days of XP people hated it because of compatibility issues… but by the time SP2 was released XP was loved by many. I’m sure Vista will be better… but it needs more time…
April 20th, 2008
Ja, WfWG bit, and Bob was far worse than Me. I dunno though, Windows 2.03 (came bundled with gen 1 MS Mouse) WAS pretty aweful.
My company wouldn’t let us upgrade to XP from 2k until SP2, and still won’t let us use Vista. I suspect they may never, but MS is putting businesses over a barrel by dropping XP sales as it goes officially “end of ordering life”.
April 21st, 2008
If you measure Vista by dollars spent on it’s development and the cost to consumers to upgrade to it then I’d suggest it probably is the worst OS Microsoft have ever produced.
It cost me around $300 CDN to upgrade my development machine to Ultimate last year. I did a clean install and at the beginning I was reasonably happy. Now I have a Vista machine that refuses to install SP1 and the backup system is completely broken.
For me I’ll be switching to Ubuntu 8.04 at the end of the week and running XP and Vista in VirtualBox when I need Windows applications.
April 22nd, 2008
What about Windows version 1, or version 2? How many people here have used or even seen those 2 different versions of Windows? I’m pretty sure that I read that MS-DOS was more popular in those days than Windows, untill version 3 came along. That’s how bad Windows 1 and 2 were, they were GUI OS’es, and they weren’t even doing as good as the text-based OS (DOS) made by the same company. That says allot.
April 22nd, 2008
Do people realize the REAL reason why there basically aren’t any driver problems (which are the worst problems associated with Vista) with Macs? It’s because Apple is the only company that sells Macs. You can buy a Mac computer only from Apple. So, they’re the ones in controll, they don’t have to worry about endless possibilities with there users hardware set-ups, they know what they sold them. The difference is that Windows can be bought from many vendors. Also it can be found widely on custom made computers. With amount of hardware companies, and the amount of possibilities posed by the mixture of all this makes supporting all these different hardware possibilities very hard, it’s deffinately not at all just Microsofts fault.
April 23rd, 2008
Small point of correction necessary here - Windows versions 1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.11 were NOT operating systems in their own right. They were GUI overlays that ran on top of MS-DOS. DOS had to boot first, and many of us retained the choice of staying in DOS, and only going to Windows when we needed to.
Many of limitations, faults and foibles in those early Windows were actually a result of the way DOS was structured. Think of it as like putting a Ferrari body and paint job on a Volkswagen Beetle chassis - it may look very sexy, but underneath it’s still a VW.