Comments on: Big Update for Vista Leaves Little Changed for Mainstream Users

By: Microsoft Isn’t Giving Up on Vista… yet | Greg Loesch (compulsiveguile) - Blog

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:53:24 +0000

[...] Reason 1: Vista was apparently released with relatively low standards for proper performance. Recent news is revealing several disagreements among Microsoft’s head officials as to the set “standard” that makes a computer “Vista compatible/friendly.” I have my doubts that a Service Pack update would make up for power/hardware insufficiencies. Walt Mossberg covers some other reasons here. [...]

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:27:55 +0000

I find this particularly misleading “under-the-hood fixes that are hard to discern.”

Let’s assume for a moment someone didn’t keep pace with the hotfixes over the course of the year — or hasn’t tried Vista because they were (rightfully) frustrated with the state of the OS. Put those fixes together, and you sure as heck are going to discern something.

To stretch your car metaphor a little bit, you don’t notice things under the hood unless they’re broken.

I test a LOT of hardware as a musician — more than the typical tech journalist — and found all kinds of gear refused to install even with functioning Vista drivers available. That situation has changed. So has graphics performance, overall stability, and many other details. Some of these details are available in hotfixe, others are not. But generally I think it’s the journalist’s job to “discern” what’s going on even if an individual mainstream user can’t — because many *other* mainstream users are going to be painfully aware of whether or not things work.

Beyond that, the only criticisms here I can find seem to be boot/reboot time — which is significantly faster on every machine I’ve tested than XP.

Nagging security — I agree with you there. It’s absolutely apalling that UAC is as painful as it is.

But “mainstream” or not, users need some level of detail about what will impact them, not just generalizations. (Steps? Bigger steps? Bigger steps in Leopard’s point release, a totally different OS? I’m lost.)

By: Kevin Weilbacher

Kevin Weilbacher — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:19:56 +0000

Walt, to summarize — large files copied in half the time as before, and waking from hibernation was up to 10 seconds faster, but no visible speed improvement from a cold start. So the only real complaint in your article is that your HP printer still doesn’t work – which is an HP issue, not Microsoft’s, for not providing proper printer drivers. So what’s your beef?

As an aside, I would suggest providing people to a link to read what Vista SP1 does and does not include. Perhaps a link like this one from the Microsoft Vista Team Blog:
http://windowsvistablog.com/bl.....a-sp1.aspx

By: Ibrahim Jadoon

Ibrahim Jadoon — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 04:00:22 +0000

Hello, Walt!

Would you mind sharing the steps Microsoft shared with you on how to speed up the boot times after certain cached data has been erased?

Thank you!

~Ibrahim~

By: Richard Mitnick

Richard Mitnick — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:22:20 +0000

Regarding Vista SP1, there is a necesary prior update KB937287 which is giving many people fits.

There is a valid work around at
http://forums.microsoft.com/Te.....;SiteID=17

By: Richard Mitnick

Richard Mitnick — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:58:19 +0000

I think I lot of this time stuff with Vista is just so much ca-ca.

In the real world, people don’t go out and buy a new Vista machine and a new XP machine, really the same machine, all at the same time.

I replaced my Dell Inspiron 8000 with a XPS M1710. So I went from a PIII 1 gig approx CPU, a 133 FSB and 512 megs of DRAM, to a Core 2 Duo 2.0 gig CPU, a 633 FSB, and 2 gigs of DDR2 (I think) DRAM.

I did the same sort of thing replacing a Dell Dimension 4100 with a Dell XPS 410, a little faster CPU on the 410 than the M1710.

Are you going to tell me that I did not get a huge gain?

This is much more the reality in personal computing and also in at least small and medium size businesses.

Wit zero complaints about older periferals no being up to snuff
with all of their bells and whistles, I just do not get all of the griping.

By: Emre Aydinceren

Emre Aydinceren — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:20:13 +0000

Slow file copy, endless “calculating time to copy” window have been my problem before I downgraded back to XP. Did SP1 fixed this issue?

By: Andres Reitze

Andres Reitze — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:11:07 +0000

Hi Walt, this is my first time posting here, but have been a long time reader (loved your interview to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates last year by the way).
I have vista home basic, it came with my dell. My computer runs great, really stable, everything works, but that was only afer i installed the RC1 of SP1 I belive it was in Dec 07. Should I have to do something with this RC1 or will MS update mechanisim take care of it for me and just install what ever is new?

By: Samantha West

Samantha West — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:37:56 +0000

So, no Vista for me for years to come. I’m still running 2000. I don’t like the idea of being forced to have anti-virus software, even though I run Comodo.

I know one of these days I’ll be forced to upgrade to XP…

By: Owen Cutajar

Owen Cutajar — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:35:51 +0000

@Dave: Your comment might be relevant if the post was written in Italian. You might notice it’s written in English, where the plural of scenario is scenarios (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scenario)

@Walt: Great post! Have you noticed any problems that would prevent you from recommending installing SP1 at this stage?