August 11, 2008 at 9:45 am
I have been using vista for several months now on a new laptop I bought. The performance hasn't been great. file operations take much longer than on older, slower machines I have that run XP. File copies and unzips are the worst. I have also found that most peripherals printer, thumb drive, and external hard drives, work fine. anything I have tried to connect to it ouside those few peripherals do not work (camcoder, video capture card, external USB video capture unit). This has been my biggest frustration, is the lack of support for these devices. I don't want to have to buy a new camcorder to be able to transfer my videos to DVD. That being said, I don't think there is any compelling reason to move to vista other than some of the security improvements.
August 11, 2008 at 10:03 am
Steve Jones - Editor (8/11/2008)
The point of my editorial (not sure about the experiment) isn't the Vista is or isn't good, but that people have those perceptions, not knowing anything. Too many people don't take a look themselves.
Agreed. I had a friend some months back who went on a tirade about how unusable Word 2007 was and how unstable and slow Vista was, this was while she was watching me type up a quick doc in Word 2007 on my Vista laptop.
Turned out when I asked that she had never used either product.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
August 11, 2008 at 2:38 pm
On the subject of marketing and preconceptions, I've actually seen several hundred people do "the Pepsi Challenge", with both cups filled with Coke, and most people had strong preferences for one cup over the other. Less than 10% said something on the order of, "I'm sorry, I can't tell the difference." Over half strongly prefered one over the other, and the rest liked one slightly better than the other, or had other comments based on perceived differences.
In all cases, both cups were filled out of the same can.
This kind of thing is called "pretexting", and it creates prejudices and preconceptions in the human mind. There have been a lot of studies on the subject. Con artists use it all the time. Prosecuting attorneys use it to make the defendant look like he's covering something up. And so on.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
August 11, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Vista is not bad. People has to be used to it to use it. I have used Vista but I am still more comfortable XP. It will take some to time to get used it. I liked Windows Sever 2008 which is also built on Vista technology.
🙂
August 12, 2008 at 7:39 am
My biggest beef with Vista is the demands it places on the hardware. Even very fast hardware runs very slow and when I installed XP Pro the machine smoked! I know the bells and whistles are real sexy but you think Microsoft could tighten up the code a make it faster.
August 12, 2008 at 7:54 am
not to defend Microsoft because I have the same complaints about speed, but they design for future hardware. They always have so that the new OS takes advantages of hardware that is new at it's release. I think they predicted a bit too many advances with Vista.
Copying files, deleting files, etc. are all slow. Popping Firefox, and other tasks are just too slow. I'll have to go to SP1 soon and see if things are fixed, but until I have enough podcasts canned and have time to rebuild if needed, I can't take the chance.
August 12, 2008 at 9:55 am
Then there is the incompatibilities. Seems like there is so much more that won't run under Vista that ran without problems on the previous versions.
August 15, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Adam Angelini (8/11/2008)
... anything I have tried to connect to it ouside those few peripherals do not work (camcoder, video capture card, external USB video capture unit). This has been my biggest frustration, is the lack of support for these devices. I don't want to have to buy a new camcorder to be able to transfer my videos to DVD. That being said, I don't think there is any compelling reason to move to vista other than some of the security improvements.
A lot of peripherals like that won't work because of the increased DRM built in to Vista. Good reason to dual-boot, except that some versions of Vista post-SP1 won't permit dual-booting without going through some contortions.
However, that's hearsay as I don't run Vista. My new Optiplex with 4gig of ram runs XP Pro quite nicely, for my home desktop system I went from an Athlon with XP Pro to a MacBook Pro, occasionally running XP Pro under Parallels when I need SQL Server or Access for whatever. I'm happy, and hopefully at work I might be able to avoid Vista and go on to what comes after, hoping that it's a little more realistic with some actual user testing this time.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
August 15, 2008 at 3:48 pm
mike brockington (8/11/2008)
So, a load of people with low expectations were pleasantly surprised by a canned demonstration (or was it just a video?) from a machine of unknown spec, that had been carefully selected by the vendor...
From what I've read of people who have studied the video further, including psychologists who specialize in developing good testing methodologies, the on-camera users didn't include tasks such as installing software or trying to connect peripherals or legacy hardware.
Limited test, limited results. Cue straw-clutching music! :hehe:
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
August 25, 2008 at 7:19 am
Bottom line - Vista runs at least 40% slower than XP. I've used Vista some, on a new laptop that has great specs - core 2 duo with 2 gb ram, great video card. This thing is a dog! I tried to find all the Vista tweaks to speed it up, but it still was slow. I shouldn't need to drop $5k on hardware to run the new operating system smoothly.
And don't get me started on gaming with Vista - what a joke!!
I'm staying with XP till something better comes along, not just prettier, but better.
August 25, 2008 at 7:51 am
thelabwiz (8/11/2008)
"If I could get drivers for the laptop, I'd go back to XP."I do software development for some niche devices and there are enough glitches with these tools under Vista to make XP a much better develoment platform. That's the reason my new laptop is a Dell. For $99 more than the Vista version, it came with XP Pro loaded plus the Vista Business CD for (possible) future upgrade.
John
Then why not run VirtualPC or some such thing? Between the compatibility mode settings (which IMO work VERY well), setting certain programs to run as Administrator, and VirtualPC, I get more done now, in a cleaner, more secure setting than I did in Vista.
It does depend on which version of Vista you're running. The dev platforms I run all seem to need Business or Ultimate to run without issues, so running them on any Home version would cast a bad light on the product.
There are some things I'm not thrilled with, but all in all, I do like Vista.
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Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part...unless you're my manager...or a director and above...or a really loud-spoken end-user..All right - what was my emergency again?
August 25, 2008 at 7:53 am
I have two work laptops running XP Pro and one laptop personal / work running Windows Vista Ultimate. I don't mind it but it certainly isn't something that I would have paid for to get off of XP. Vista just doesn't offer any compelling reasons for me to upgrade. For others that are more involved in some of the digital photo / recording stuff or gaming maybe it makes sense but I really don't do too much outside of SS work and some other side line business design work.
I like the Mojave advertisements and think that it does help some to overcome a very strong bias against a pretty decent OS. I agree with Steve in that I would have liked to have seen what these people were shown as I wonder if they changed the look and feel of Vista to a more classic presentation. I also wonder who these people were. It definitely seems like it would be hard to be fooled into thinking that Vista was something else unless I had never seen it before. Who knows, maybe it was a requirement to have not seen Vista in order to enter the "study".
David
@SQLTentmaker“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” - Jim Elliot
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