Reader Feedback Friday: Vista

Anyway, regarding our post about XP hanging on a little longer, we actually got a little Vista love in return...sort of. Diane says:

"With minimal experience, I love Vista, but the market isn't ready for a system that only works with all the bells and whistles on the latest hardware. We do love nurturing every last bit of performance from our dinosaurs. And it's not that the public or corporatations are not willing to adopt it -- they just don't have enough time or incentive to upgrade all the hardware or be 'bothered.'

"Am I bothered? Only one of my five PCs meets the standards for running Vista Ultimate, and frankly I see no reason to upgrade them at this time. As for Office 2007, until somebody actually knows how to design a SharePoint Server, the big plus of Groove will become just as muddied. A few years ago, I used SharePoint very effectively as an application information repository. Since then, I have not seen or heard of an implementation that was time-saving rather than another quagmire of useless searches.

"As for IE7, well, most of us are afraid -- very afraid! How many e-mails from major companies have you had telling you their site would not work with IE7? Beyond that, the interface is relatively unfamiliar. I do like it, but still find it frustrating and don't understand all of the new 'features.' And I am supposed to convince people of its technical benefits?"

Diane, we're with you on IE7. Well, actually, we're not -- we use Firefox at home and IE6 at work. But we hear you.

For his part, Alistair, who writes from the U.K., joins the chorus of folks saying that Vista's struggles have been more about third parties than about the operating system itself.

"We've been running Vista in the IT deptartment from December '06, and it has been fine after some initial tweaks (mainly badly written drivers). We're running all our legacy apps on it, and it has been way more stable than XP Pro. Uptime was 60 days with no problems -- updates forced reboots.

"I can't help feeling that one whole lot of the issue is caused by manufacturers shipping shoddy drivers and IT not taking the time to really get to know the OS. It is actually good -- it just needs a bit more work than XP.

"Incidentally, I also think that a lot of the supposed shortfalls that are getting whinged [that's "whined" here in the States -- LP] about by business are the result of security measures that the industry has been asking Microsoft to address for years."

Very possibly true, Alistair, especially the bit about shoddy drivers. It's amazing that this still seems to be a problem with Vista going on being a year old.

Have any more thoughts about Vista? Send them my way at [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on October 05, 2007