[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
It’s not that Vista is outright horrendous. It IS that it does nothing, nada, zilch that anybody cares about any better than previous versions of Windows, but also is an unnecessary pain in the ass in the process.
In other words after spending money on a new machine people get less performance and additional hassle for no benefit whatsoever. I’m in the process of making a cottage industry out of helping folks avoid Vista.
Folks who buy new computers, especially laptops, and wind up on my phone begging me to “just get this thing so I can use it like before”.
Folks with very little money and very old machines that I throw some memory in and load up with XP or even 2000 still giving them in many cases better performance than a brand new shiny one and costing them 100 bucks and some change.
The people who buy new machines with Vista and have me downgrade them to XP very often also give me their old ones which I reload and then resell to jubilant customers who also now have a perfectly good and cheap computer that does everything they need.
I just got a call from a girl yesterday who bought one of my blue light Windows 2000 specials a while back asking if I had another one for her sister. Goes online, gets email, runs Office XP, does her taxes, plays her music and she can view her pictures. All 95% of the average bonehead users in the world do with a computer.
As far as security goes. This is something that just hasn’t been grasped by the Microsofts of the world. For someone who knows what they’re doing security isn’t a problem and never has been. For someone who doesn’t no amount of security short of unplugging the machine will ultimately keep them safe. It may prolong the inevitable for a while, but they WILL end up finding a way to require another reload which is actually great for me because that’s how I make my living.
4est is right about things like VPN and networking in general too. Vista can throw some bizzare and inexplicable curveballs your way for no apparent reason whatsoever.
Shares that will not map in either direction or sometimes one direction, but not the other. They’ll map to every other machine in my network except the one Vista box I have. The Vista share will map to some machines, but not others. Mappings will drop out of the blue, but only if they touch that Vista machine and then won’t remap if I put a gun to their head. Slow dragging file transfer rates, but not all the time.
I have 4 network printers and every one except the 4M Plus will map, but I can ping it and Vista has native drivers for it. It works fine on all of my other machines including the 4 Linux boxes.
The performance thing may be the worst though. Telling people well, of course it runs like shit you didn’t do the all the horsepower upgrades Microsoft recommended is like putting 5000 pounds of lead in their trunk and then chastising them for not buying an industrial vehicle. They don’t want to haul 5000 pounds of lead around. They just want to get to and from work like they always did and are wondering why they should buy a new vehicle so they can do it with 5000 pounds of useless lead in their trunk.
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I agree that for the average non-technical person that Vista is a hell of a learning curve. For computer enthusiasts though, like me, it’s much more interesting to use than XP. This exact same argument came out back when XP arrived on the scene and everyone was like- but it doesn’t do anything that W98 w/OSR2 doesn’t do (I won’t mention ME, since everyone compares that to Vista). But once you use it for a while it’s hard to go back.