Microsoft Admits What Went Wrong with Vista, and How They Fixed It

Maximum PC sat down with Microsoft to hear the company's side of the Vista story. What lessons have been learned following the worst Windows launch in the company's history? Is Microsoft doing enough to regain PC users' faith?

[Harry190]

with Vista. Well, it can be a bit slow at times, but it's not a major worry.

Disclaimer: I have never used any OS before or since then, so I am not really qualified to provide an experienced analysis. Just saying that I have no real problem for my everyday use.

[HighDefinition]

It`s take ALOT for a BIG company to admit they were wrong.

Learn from your mistakes MS. (360 and Vista)

[PikkonX]

I've used Vista since its first beta releases and I have never had any issues with it. I think one thing that turns many users away from the OS is that their first experience with it is on one of these new laptops that come loaded with bloatware. Companies like Dell just add so many unimportant programs that run at start up and eat the rest of the ram that Vista isn't using. On a clean install, Vista is really not much different from XP, experience-wise.

[sack_boi]

I have a PC with 4gb ram, Q6600... and Vista Ultimate SP1; it's the best OS I've ever used ( I started with Win95 10yrs ago) and Linux is too complicated for me.

[ThanatosDMC]

You need a 1gb of ram minimum to keep vista by itself running without too much hiccups.

1.2gb with bloatware.

2gb and above if you want games, image/video editing, etc.

Vista just made us upgrade our computers unnecessarily since XP could use more of the ram with other things. I recently bought a tx2500 from HP and too many background programs are running. I'm not sure if i should close any... which sucks!

[nieto]

not only ram ThanatosDMC, Vista needs quite a lot more processing power than Xp so a 2.2Ghz Dual core, 2GB ram and a 8600GT for aero are necessary to run it properly. but when you have a comp with those specs or higher then Vista runs faster and it is more stable than Xp or any other OS. besides those specs are pretty cheap now... if you built one yourself it should be less than $700.

[DavidMacDougall]

They where to busy spying on another pc company and walked into a wall and the outcome was vista

[chaosatom]

MUCH better than Vista.

[militant07]

sounds good microsoft learned 2 thing,vista, and red ring of death.
i hope they fix both of it on next project.

[Freezingduck]

Your hope is futile

[rebirthofcaos]

yea rgiht¿¿¿ they fix it, then why still people thinks that vista is crap?

[trancefreak]

the only gripe i had with vista was the nvidia g80 and the display driver crash in the beginning. Since then ive had no real issues with vista.
Personally vista has been running strong for me without hicups

[dro]

im sorry ms but my pc is still slow and crashes so much thanks to vista!!!! i think this is the worst software ms has made to date, i prefer windows xp.

[Liquid_Ocelot]

mm hmm, bubbles

[HyperBear]

their first step was admitting that Vista was not the greatest thing ever, and it's probably too late to fix anything on it now. What they should now focus on is making their next OS, Windows 7, an even better improvement for technology, less hassel and buges to fix, and make it simple to use, along with having great gaming capabilites, Direct X 11.

[athlon770]

but I would hope that Microsoft will give some kind of "trade-up" program for those of us that bought into or were forced into Vista through a new PC purchase allowing for a reduced price on W7.

[Fishy Fingers]

Vista is alright, it's demands are rather high but I think they tend to be inline with the progression of PC hardware, RAM for example is so cheap now if you upgraded your OS to Vista and you saw a noticeable slow-down, chuck in an extra few qiq of RAM.

My only real gripe would be gaming performance. Vista was touted to improve gaming performance, to usher in the new era of Dx10. When in reality, Dx10 has yet to be fully utilized, and the games that do take advantage of it show a minimal improvement over Dx9 but at a huge performance cost. I run a dual-boot of XP and Vista and when running games in Dx9 on both OSs certain games see a 30% increase in XP.

To the average Windows user (e-mail, internet, Word, Excel) on a new or average PC (not 4 years old) Vista shouldn't pose many problems. It's familiar yet exciting in it's appearance. Compatibility was also largely blown out of proportion, again with standard apps or drivers there isn't much trouble to be had.

[TOSgamer]

After spending 3 months using Vista the things I've noticed are that XP is faster even when you have pretty good hardware. My 3 year old printer only works half the time (I have to restart Vista a lot to get it to work) and will not give me a status report and Vista randomly hangs for 5 to 10 secs once in a while.

[jerethdagryphon]

im a pc technician

and we have problems with vista the machines its shipped on at release were subbpar

many folk asked us to downgrade /upgrade depending on your point of view
to xp

it was slow unstable and a memory hog not too mention unfriendly to use

[dro]

i guess u can answer y my pc sometimes just shows a blue screen randomly and the mouse sometimes freezes the internet dose not connect sometimes when it says connection available.i never had those problems before until vista came out, it happens so many times....im so pissed of about it, if i had money im just gonna switch to mac.

[SaiyanFury]

Better to find a copy of XP and just install that. That would solve your problems.

[zonetrooper5]

Dro, tell me your PC specs, have you updated the drivers for your hardware?

Most of the time Blue screen is down to either crappy drivers like the Nvidia drivers for my PC which is annoying or crappy hardware.

[beoulve]

like WinME, I see vista as intermediate, not worthwhile to upgrade.
However the next one will be the bomb with major upgrade just like Windows XP. Same Cycle happen.

It's coming soon, I will buy the ultimate on the next version then. Save the money on Vista, XP still works fine.

[DevastationEve]

I will agree that Vista was probably a little too much for the average person's PC. But I think a greater portion of people's problem with Vista lies in the fact that Microsoft has to provide a lot of support for many different hardware configurations.

Vista was released on a DVD just so that they could load as many drivers as possible for the different hardware parts out there. And they still didn't hit the target all that well, as people had issues trying to get their PCs to work with Vista, when migrating over from xp.

Macintosh has had it easy, since the only people that can sell you an Apple are Apple authorized dealers. They control the entire process, and Apple even has the edge in that they build the entire PC. They handle all specs, so Macs are uniform. You buy a particular model, you get the same performance across all SKUs.

[DevastationEve]

I've used Ubuntu (8.04 "hardy heron") Solaris 10, and all sorts of alternatives. Only Microsoft and Apple have been truly on the nail with their progression. Linux may be open source and I truly support the free and open source software initiative, I still see Windows and Mac as the two driving forces of the computer world. It all really comes down to standards.

There are certain evolutions that have come to pass because of something that either company pushed to become standard (64bit PCI, Fire wire, DirectX, OpenGL). Linux will always be fighting to support these standards, while still being an entity of their own. Because of this, mainstream software developers will look at these systems as added platforms that they need to devote resources to develop for.

[Droid]

-
-
I have no idea what they are talking about. I'm still using the very first base version with NO UPDATES and haven't had ONE freeze or anything less of a stellar experience.

poor n00bs.

[Rock Bottom]

When did that happen?

[GameDev]

if they made vista better than leopard at this point, the damage is already done.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS are not everything in the technology industry,IT IS THE ONLY THING.

Let me give you an example, I had the top Plasma engineer for Panasonic in my office today to discuss the technology vs LCD displays. What I learned is astonishing. PLASMA is hundreds of times better than LCD will ever be. Why does it sell so poorly?? The first generation plasmas were complete crap. The top of the line units they have now leave LCD's in the dust broken and bloody. They have a LONG road to go make plasma popular again. THATS THE POWER OF FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

[karlostomy]

But also on when the shoe is on the other foot!

I have use Macs some time ago.
My first impressions were:
1. Overpriced
2. Underpowered
3. Low compatibility
4. Woeful graphics cards
5. Lack of compatibility with the open PC architecture

So, consequently, I stay away from macs. Just can't be bothered.
My PC does everything I need and then buckets more!

THATS THE POWER OF FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

[adorie]

I hope so.

[Mutley416]

It seems MS just missed the boat...This is what they do...Make OS`s... I like xp, ANd could`nt believe when I went to get a copy of Vista @ launch that It would`nt support my printer...lol- I was like umm Never mind...I guess I`ll just stick with XP...

Let`s luanch a OS that does less but uses more hardware...Not what got you there Bill-

[flappo]

'some time ago'

now macs are just as powerful as equivalent pc's , they share similar mobos and the same cpu's

plus the mac pro has a good sample of high end cards available

and imacs and macbook pros , macbooks are massively successful , apple now have 12% of the us notebook market and are 4th overall , not bad for a niche player !

for first impressions , don't judge a book by it's cover

[karlostomy]

Dude, apple is NOT a 'niche player'

They are a heavyweight with 4% of world market share.

That sounds funny and impressive all at once! oh the irony... :)

[flappo]

i used vista on two notebooks , an hp and a toshiba

it was pretty lame , in fact it was painful to use

then i went back to my macs and leopard

basically , vista is a very obvious and very poor rip off of leopard / tiger

[juanvan]

Vista is Crap - The system requirements are out of this world, the user friendliness is missing - My Documents = Documents.. When you show someone how to do something, then change it just for a release its a re-re move..

I still can't share files to my friends vista machine even though I know how to implement active directory over a network and It looks like Mac OS..

Also The price is Way off the mark, for the avg buyer..

This all sounds like a ME revisited 8 yrs later

[clrlite]

"but when you have a comp with those specs or higher then Vista runs faster and it is more stable than Xp or any other OS" <---No

[DevastationEve]

Well, I see a lot of people DO have a problem with Vista. I've been on it since RC-1, and even though it had its problems I never cursed it so much that I ended up wanting to go back to xp. The way I had it setup was to dual boot anyway, so getting back into xp was no problem.

Sure, it's a really demanding OS. But how could you expect it NOT to be? You have all this new hardware out there and people say "My GeForce could render the entire GUI!! Why don't they make an OS that actually does that?" Also, memory and hard drive prices are pretty reasonable (understatement).

And putting another OS in place of Vista STILL won't solve the problem. You'd need to upgrade your PC. Mac OS won't run any better than Vista if it was on the same PC. What Apple DOES do is offer complete uniform experience across all Mac models. But that's to be expected, as Apple handles the complete system building process.

There's really no reason for the average PC to not get at least a 3.0 in Vista's WEI scoring. And that's considereing that hard disk and memory should be in the 3.5 to 5.0 range anyway (my old hard drive sill scored a 5.2). The only areas that most people won't score too high in are Processor and Gaming Graphics. If you complain that a 3.0 WEI PC isn't getting you High Def and whatnot, be realistic - that's just not to be expected out of old hardware.

If you're coming over from xp and have a system with Vista's minimum specs, you should be able to run Home Basic. Now, the problem is people want MORE out of Vista than Basic so they look to skip it and try out Premium. Which nets them an unsatisfactory experience since the PC's hardware isn't up to the task. So they feel that xp is somehow better. It's a great OS but it's not better, it's just the negative experience you get with the hardware you have makes you feel that way.

Any PC built in the last 2 years, with a price tag as low as even $500 should still be Premium Ready (albiet usually with much lower graphics capabilities). I can understand how WEI and the Vista Capable/Premium Ready logos may lead to confusion, but all you have to is look at the sub scores. They give you a good idea (based on a metric system) of what your hardware you will net you WITH VISTA.

People are often making the mistake (and this is where I guess it's MS's own fault) of using the WEI score/Vista Capable/Premium Ready logos to judge the overall capabilities of the system WITH OTHER SOFTWARE. The only thing you should be getting from those things is how VISTA will perform on your PC, as well as certain software that are WEI aware. But not ALL software, and not all hardware for that matter.

And if you're a logical and competent system builder, you won't even NEED the score to figure out where there is a deficiency. You could eyeball the motherboard and see, for instance, empty memory slots. Or an aging power supply. Or a poor/under performing thermal solution. Or you could see an LG775 socket, but there's an entry level Celeron in it. Bam! There's your room for improvement. To put it best, the score is just a way of making the process convenient (ie not having to open up the system and take a look under the hood).