When Vista was released, and the first reviews started to trickle in, it became apparent that Vista was a massive release – not only in terms of money spent on it by Microsoft and the amount of promotion, but also the operating system itself. It was huge, and it felt as such too. Despite what many have been saying the past year, Vista is, in fact, much more than just XP with a new theme. Basically every framework and feature has been rewritten, lots of new ones have been added, and, according to some, the process of modularisation has started with Vista (and Server 2008). It may come as no surprise that all these changes resulted in a whole boatload of bugs and breakage, which led many people to conclude that Vista was simply not as “done” as it should have been when released. Steve Ballmer confirmed these sentiments in a speech at Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professionals conference in Seattle.Ballmer said in his speech to Microsoft’s MVPs:
Windows Vista: A work in progress. [Laughter, applause.] A very important piece of work, and I think we did a lot of things right, and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from. Certainly, you never want to let five years go between releases. Can we just sort of kiss that stone and move on? Because it turns out many things become problematic when you have those long release cycles. The design point, what you should be targeting. We can’t ever let that happen again. We had some things that we can’t just set the dial back, but I think people wish we could. Vista is bigger than XP. It’s going to stay bigger than XP. We have to make sure it doesn’t get bigger still, and that the performance and that the battery life and that the compatibility, we’re driving on the things that we need to drive hard to improve.
This is quite a frank admission by Microsoft’s CEO, which echoes the sentiments I and others brought forth last year: Vista is big and complex, and Microsoft needs to make sure it doesn’t turn into something even bigger and more complex. However, Ballmer also notes that a lot of big and important steps were taken with Vista, and that the input of the MVPs is valuable in helping Microsoft to continue down this road.
In addition, Ballmer acknowledges that a lot of people are sticking to XP, and that as long as that is the case, Microsoft will remain “sensitive” and will hear what these people have to say. He did not make any promises with regards to extending XP’s life cycle, though. “And I know we’re going to continue to get feedback from people on how long XP should be available. We’ve got some opinions on that, we’ve expressed our views.”
What’s the big deal, he is just saying what we know and wanted to hear…
Well … he said it was big (and it is … on disk the bare Vista OS is ~ three times the size of a full Linux distribution including applications) … but even he apparently doesn’t know what is in it that is taking up all that room … or at least, if he does know, he isn’t telling us.
It is sure hard to figure out what features it actually has that takes up all that size on disk.
Okey, repeat after me
“Vista is not linux, vista is not linux, vista is not linux”.
95% of the computer market are aware of Linux existence, we know it is said to be every users wet dream.
Now I’m not dreaming about it despite knowing of it’s existence… so can we stay on the topic of what Ballmer is talking about instead? Especially as Linux is just like Vista “work in progress”….
Big question is rather, isn’t consumer marketing laws saying something about false marketing?
Vista is more a case of false development then false marketing. Do you think they had a choice? I doubt people would have been more happy to get Vista forced down their throat with their next computer if even Microsoft had been saying what Ballmer did say now.
Rewriting every feature from scrap that you already had means that they either were badly implemented or they were implemented in a way that they couldn’t be integrated with other changes done to Windows.
Either way it has “amateurish” written all over it and it explains the lack of new features in Vista. I think the problem was that Microsofts development model just didn’t work anymore for a project this big.
I don’t want my OS rewritten all 6 Years, i want it upgraded in reasonable time in a reasonable way which means, Vista isn’t for me and i have run out of patience for MS… i expect my Mac to arrive tomorrow, then it is good bye Windows.
I, personally, went Microsilly free in October of 2003 and have never returned.
Yes, I still repair old and ancient XP and newer Vista machines. Debian 4 Linux and OS X 10.5.2 work for me.
Here’s your cookie
Sigh!
Here is what Ballmer apparently did say about Vista:
OK Steve we get it. It is big, and you have to be careful not to make it bigger.
Steve, what you have utterly failed to explain is this … why is it big? It doesn’t (apparently, to the user anyway) actually DO anything much that XP didn’t also do faster at a fraction of the size of Vista.
OK … so can we now focus on that?
[sigh…] I really didn’t want to comment in this thread, since doing so means I’ll lose the ability to mod people but I just had to respond to this…
Trust me, we know the difference! My Linux can run circles around Vista on lower end hardware while performing much of the same feats that Vista supposedly requires such a hardware upgrade to be able to do…
Oh and did I mention that my Linux uses less space while providing me with more apps?
So ummm, yeah not a problem on our end…
Wow! Really?? I hadn’t really seen that trend, but that would be so cool…
Umm…dude? You just said… Oh wait I see what you did there. Funny how no one in this article was even talking about Linux, wet dreams or etc until you brought them up… Nice try OP…
Ummm… Linux may indeed be a work in progress but unlike Vista it’s free–both in cost and in freedom.
Vista requires me to spend a minimum of $100 USD for an OEM copy (which may or may not actually be legitimate) and still not have all the ‘wonderful’ features Microsoft advertises Vista as having! No for that I’ve got to spend nearly three hundred dollars as well as having to do a total hardware replacement in order to get the same level performance I have now in either XP or Ubuntu…
As others have asked in this thread, what exactly is Vista actually doing that requires them to use so much resources? It can’t be the basic day to day functioning of the OS, because others have managed to do all that at a fraction of the resources and look better while doing so!
On this at least we agree!
Why isn’t some consumer body (or all of them really) standing up for the people they supposedly represent and demanding an answer to Vista?
Why hasn’t some governing body complained about Microsoft’s blatant and forced paid beta program?
Why has it suddenly become acceptable to make your customers pay for your broken OS with the claim it’s a work in progress?
Inquiring minds would like to know!
–bornagainpenguin
Here’s your cookie too, now run home and eat it.
I must totally agree.
Hey, my dear fellow linuxians – isn’t that Linux is also “work in progress”?
Isn’t true that every PC / Mac / whatever (Amiga PPC? 😉 ) computer user on this planet AT LEAST heard of Linux, and many of them saw / tried it?
Why then 95% of the “computer user population” won’t mind about changing “their” OS to Linux, despite it is free and – according to some – so perfect and flawless?
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that those 95% of “computer users” has better things to do in life, than full time sudy of the man pages?
100% agree; and for the same amount of space Vista uses up, you can have a full blown development installation with all the bells and whistles.
Now, some would claim its due to ‘less drivers’ – I call bull to those; Linux (like MacOS X, Solaris and *BSD’s) include large number of generic drivers which developers build their own drivers on, without need to replicate large sections of code over and over and over again. It seems that in my experience, in the Windows world, a 40mb (or larger) driver download is considered ‘acceptable’.
I think the better question to ask is this; why was it sold as being ‘finished’ when its actually still ‘work in progress’. Are they going to formally announce once they get ‘there’ where ever ‘there’ actually is. Do customers now have to the right to demand copies of Windows XP (and supposedly finished product) until Windows Vista has formally reached its destination?
I’m sorry, but Windows really needs to be addressed from top to bottom; when I see the sort of inconsistencies in the UI Window’s GUI, it reminds me of the types of inconsistencies I used to see in Linux 10 year ago – I really have to ask myself, when are we going to see Microsoft invest some billions into delivering a consistent experience? I also want to know why they (Microsoft) haven’t moved all their operating system components over to the new WinFX/.NET – you would think if that were the future, all the bundled applications with Windows Vista would include all these new API’s – but they don’t.
I’m running Mac OS X 10.5.2 right now, and sure, it has received its amount of flack (Most of it due to lazy third parties not updating their applications and end users running hackware), but at least these issues get addressed – at least we know there is a clear roadmap for the future – at least we actually SEE Apple launch new API’s and USE them themselves in their own products
Edited 2008-04-18 13:26 UTC
I’m surprised that people are just now asking this question; Microsoft has done this with their last few iterations of Windows. It’s as if the customers are being used as beta testers and don’t even know it.
Edited 2008-04-18 15:03 UTC
Of course, which is why I find it funny the number of, at least enterprise customers, who claim that they ‘depend on Microsoft’ when it is THEM who embrace pointless garbage applications like SharePoint that do zilch to improve productivity and only there to further integrate and ingrain Microsoft products into that said work place. The only one who benefits from these garbage applications is Microsoft, the consumer itself receives very little (if any) benefit from it.
The same people who go on about how the above (Windows Vista is work in progress) are the same idiots who deploy exchange servers when there are literally HUNDREDS of replacements, they go on about needing Outlook but never actually quantifiably justify the costs when it boils down to the alternatives and what they can provide.
I mean, sure, the consumer doesn’t have much choice (due to the diversity of what they expect out of their computer) but when it comes to the enterprise, it is well served by non-Microsoft operating systems and Office suite. It is the establishment and the establishments vested interest in the status quo which keeps Microsoft ingrained, nothing with a so-called superior solution (as some Microsoft fan boys will make out).
PS. Sorry I turned this into a giant rant (and off-topic in the process
)
Edited 2008-04-18 16:56 UTC
Well, that is a good question. Originally, more of the apps did use.NET, but then they had to back away from them. I remember reading about writing Windows shell extensions and there were Microsoft published articles about the right way to do it in .NET. Later on, they recanted and said not to write shell extensions in .NET–because of .NET’s own version of “DLL Hell” that could be called “Runtime Hell”. Only one version of the .NET runtime can be loaded into a process space and if you have different requirements of what is the required runtime is–well, let’s just say that bad things happen. That’s why they had to back away from writing shell extensions in .NET.
I’m not surprised; but then again, I personally think that .NET is a framework which solved one problem and created a new one. That is what I love about Cocoa; Objective-C 2.0 now has garbage collection – without needing to create a whole new language, and a whole new framework – its based of an existing, mature framework which forms the foundation for the future of Mac OS X development. People know if they develop for Cocoa, they develop for the future.
In the case of Windows, what do they do? if they go for win32, they have uncertain future, and within win32 which widget toolkit do they use? its one big ugly giant piece of spaghetti. Then what about .NET? well, there is winforms, but you’re SOOL (Shit out of luck) because winforms 1.0 is incompatible with winforms 2.0 because they (Microsoft) didn’t pull together their brain cells and properly design the damn thing from day one. Then there is the runtime conflicts, as you said – two, three, four – how many ‘run times’ must be installed to get compatibility? doesn’t this sound like a redo of DLL hell all over again?
Want to know the *really* scary part, Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar organisation, and yet, when you look at the types of thins being created by Troll Tech, Apple, Sun Microsystems, I ask myself, “what the hell is Microsoft doing with their resources?”
Wasting them and pocketing the extra cash. It seems quite obvious to me.
They probably spend more money on things to keep their monopoly from slipping and trying to hinder their competition (ie. economic and anti-competitive things, legal and illegal, you name it) than they do on truly advancing their OS technologies in general. Well, unless you consider the whole DRM thing… seems they really focused a lot of time, effort and money on pleasing Hollywood and the RIAA with Vista (yay!).
Something I have found about mac devs is that you guys seem to live in a bubble. GC is NOT new, and really should have been there years ago. Whenever I have done anything for OSX it is like stepping in a timewarp and coding like its 1969. Obj-C is cool in its own way, but it is like smalltalk, an interesting idea from way back that the industry ignored and moved in another direction. And whats the deal with NS*? That is like the programmer equivalent of caveman paintings on the walls.
Not only that, but developing for apple is WAY harder then anything else, for the sole reason that if you aren’t paying attention, a new release will come out that your app won’t work on anymore.
I’m sorry, .net has been out for over a DECADE now. Win32 was alot more then that. Sure, Winforms 1.1 is not compatible with 2.0, but 2.0 is compatible with everything up to 3.5, and 2.0 was released 6 years ago. How many Jaguar apps run on Leopard?
As for the runtimes, it is as if apple gave its developers the ability to target a specific version of its APIs, and promised that version would always be available, even in new os upgrades. How would that be a bad thing? DLL hell came from a lack of both versioning and the ability to target a specific version of a DLL. This is actually the exact opposite of that.
Ok, to take off my .net zealot hat for just a second, TrollTech puts everyone else to shame in this. They do not have anywhere near as complete an API, but they also have nowhere near the resources as the others you mentioned. Apple puts everyone else to shame with the functionality they expose in their API. WebKit (imo) is hands down the best html engine out there, Core* all allow you to put out really professional apps without having to become a domain expert.
I disagree with the SUN statement though. The java COMMUNITY is very mature, and most of the really advanced thinking in line of business software development comes out of that space, but when it comes to the platform itself, all I see is how it is falling more and more behind .net as the years go by. Every release we get more whiz-bang features then they do, and ours are done right. For example, generics. In the old days, we had ArrayList which was a collection of objects with a whole bunch of sugar on top. However, you lose the benefits of strong typing (compile time error catching) and you add substancial overhead for boxing/unboxing the objects when you add or remove them from the list. Generics let us do List<T>, which means that List doesn’t care what type of objects it is accepting, but that type is going to be defined once, and once it is, it will be strongly typed. So I can do List<string> list = new List<string>();, and that will give me a strongly typed list of strings. In the .net world, that goes all the way down to the IL (the semi-compiled code). In the java world, the compiler will generate the bytecode that does the boxing/unboxing for you. So while foreach(string s in list) gives you a performance boost in .net, it is the same thing as using the arraylist and casting the item in java.
All that being said, Microsoft is my favorite development platform hands down. Everything from the tools, to the language (C# is how I think in code), to the elegance of the API, to the awesomeness of the CLR. While the competition may have an edge in a specific API or aspect of their platform, I find that .net wins in a more general sense. There are specific areas, like WCF services are way better then any services platform I have ever seen, and WPF is hands down the coolest, most flexible UI framework I have ever worked with. But there are also more general areas, like how a ASP guy can bang out a windows app, or a mobile app very easily, since so many of the ideas and practices are directly transferable. Or how when the community asks for something, we actually get it (as opposed to java JSR which moves about at the speed of one feature per decade).
Anyways, forgive me for ranting, I don’t think there is any subject I enjoy talking about more then this one. And don’t get me wrong, I love apple products in a deep and profound way (the machine in my avatar gave me to this day the best user experience I have ever had with an OS). Another thing to keep in mind is that MS is a big place, and I’m only talking about once specific part of it. I’m not even saying that the Apple development platform sucks, I have friends who use it professionally and love it just as much as you seem to. All I am saying is that as someone who has been around the block and who tries to keep tabs on what is going on in the programming world as a whole, Apple has many, many areas where they are behind the times.
Are you sure about that? 3.0 and 3.5 use the 2.0 engine (they are just library upgrades, not vm upgrades), and I know they can both load 2.0 dlls. there is a difference between 1.1 and 2.0+, but honestly, noone is writing in 1.1 anymore.
The only issue I have ever run into is that 32-bit pre compiled binaries can’t exist in a 64-bit process. This is an issue if you have to do interop with anything JET, since MS has made the decision they are not going to give us 64-bit JET. The only real option is to P\Invoke the native code, which is messy and not performant, or set your assembly configuration to only target 32-bit, which means anyone running the app on a 64-bit machine takes a performance hit for no good reason.
With regards to shell extensions and .net “runtime hell”:
I don’t know the details, but a search on the web brought the following page up, maybe you find it interesting:
“Don’t do Shell Extension Handlers in .NET”
http://blogs.msdn.com/junfeng/archive/2005/11/18/494572.aspx
What baffles me is that, now that Vista is more or less all over the place and you have to look for some business machines to find XP preinstalled, and given the fact that lots of people complain about Vista, XP suddenly got an aura of something desirable; the first thing to try to smash on a machine that runs Vista.
Something that people even come together for, create websites like “Save XP dot com” for.. it’s amazing.
I have no judgement on Vista, I’ve hardly ever used it. But I thought there was quite some complaining about XP too. (?)
In short, it might be one of the most brilliant marketing campaigns ever in history: somewhere in autumn, Microsoft will announce that Vista will be EOL’ed and XP will come back as a preferred OEM option; Bill and Steve will be hailed as the Messiah and his lackey by a cheering, happy crowd…
Edited 2008-04-18 12:21 UTC
Rumour has it that MS is negotiating for use of the trademark “New Coke”. 😉
… why not just have one version of Windows, that has everything in it, for one price?
Ars talk about how modularising Windows would let home users cherry pick their functionality, ditto business customers, but why not just have it all available anyway for one price, then let the OEM/user/sys admin decide what gets layered into the build/windows install.
This is about maximising profits. Each audience has a price point where it is just so willing to depart from their cash – finding these points is what economics students go to school for.
There is not much difference between a BMW 520 and an M5 either – bigger engine, some goodies, but all in all, it does not make it 4x more expensive to produce. Have you ever wondered why they don’t build M5s only, selling them to us at a reasonable 25.000 USD ? Because there are people who can and will afford 150.000 USD, that’s why. And that is why we have 9 flavours of Vista, too.
I hear you. But it’s still sad to think that people with such resources would squander them on such useless trifles. Think of the good that $150,000 might do spent in some other way. This world needs a few miracles, not more ego gratification.
Edited 2008-04-18 15:31 UTC
The real problem is more with windows 7 than with Vista… Without Windows 7 being announced in 2009 (or 2010?), it would be ok. But soon, when XP won’t be available, you will have the only option to buy a “work in progress” if you want to stick with a Microsoft OS, and this “draft” will be replaced in maybe 2 years? I don’t really think it’s acceptable. If you want to release a work in progress, no problem with that, it’s important to launch new technologies. But then keep the stable OS on sales too and don’t announce another version so quickly. It just put Vista in a dead end…
Edited 2008-04-18 12:42 UTC
Oddly enough, I run Debian (GNU / Linux) unstable, and that’s perpetually a work in progress… However, Debian unstable happens to be fast, generally stable compared to other (even Linux) OSes, free as in speech, and free as in beer. I’d feel rather ticked if I payed for closed betaware that happened to be mislabelled. To each their own, but as far as PR goes, this and the short Vista lifecycle is making it seem like a real ‘must skip’ pile of ‘technology’. IMHO, MS is in real trouble if they screw up the next Windows this bad…
Edited 2008-04-18 13:03 UTC
is an example of human regress. Tell me something I don’t know.
Vista is shite, and will never be accepted.
…just said that Steve Ballmer is an @$$hole? I mean we laugh about his monkey boy antics, his cluelessness, and his overly greedy ways…but has anyone ever in the press said that he is just an @$$hole?
We always quantify and qualify what he says and why he says it, for fear of being called vague or being accused of being too vague…but,really, the dead horse has been beaten, the info is out there to be found…let’s jsut say it…he is an @$$hole…
No, want to know why? It is bad journalism to declare someone an asshole because you disagree with him, even if it was an obvious case.
People don’t call that monkey an asshole because they disagree with his views. They call him an asshole because he’s a loud, corny, obnoxious jerkoff.
He is not an a$$hole because we disagree with him, he is an a$$hole because he lies in your face without moving an eybrow. Talk about king without clothes…
OK, one realizes that he’s saying, and in the context of that particular conference. Even so, it’s an unfortunate choice of phrase in a wider context. Would Microsoft accept, say, five bucks now for Vista and a bit more later, because managing to pay the sticker price is a bit of a “work in progress” for me? I don’t think so. It’s hard to think of any other consumer item for which folks are asked to pay the full price upfront even though the item is a “work in progress” and by definition unfinished. A TV with no screen, perhaps, a bike with no wheels, a steak with all the meat removed? The sooner some consumer legislation overrides EULAs and enforces some minimum standards for pay-for software, the better.
Vista on my desktop cames pre-installed. In Spanish language, even wanted to be English. After no chance to change the language, I face various problems. I’ve installed Ubuntu beta, all works.
What is the thing I wanted to point:
I’ve got two betas: one for free, one for money and enforced. May I get money back from an OEM system? Probably not. So, for my sake, I will always point that Windows is ugly, as much as did not give to me any reasoning to live with it. I write that lines from Linux and Firefox 3 (still beta), but I get better than any extra-options, like Vista and crappy IE.
If you purchased in Europe there is actually a pretty good chance for you to get a refund for Vista if it came Bundled with your PC, at least if you got it from a big retailer. I have heard of plenty of people getting refunds for Vista at Dell for example.
I got Vista with new laptop. It’s not completely bad… but there was some terrible choice made which to this day I still don’t get. And unfortunately those plus the new bugs (eg. copying file bug) tarnish the whole OS.
– One is the file manager. This is your main interface to your files and they removed all functionality out of it !!! This one is truly beyond me. No more menu bar, no icons (copy, paste, delete.. all gone) and new address bar/navigation scheme which still puzzled me after months.
– Other is the control panel which gains gazillions new icons but they managed to removed the one I used the most (Network Connections). The new Show Connections and Devices does NOT show you your devices.
Vista its a BIG (waist of code) pice of code that do same thinks XP do but with more resources and more slow. And consider you stupid because buy it and must say more that one what want to execute…
A work in progress? came on that’s a bad work and they are fixing a BIG mistake on a HUGE PRODUCT that do not offer a real value compared with Windows XP
45segundos.com
Is this the same Microsoft that last year stated that Vista was done and that users shouldn’t even wait for SP1 to upgrade?
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Says-Don-039-t-Wait-for-Vi…
If they are selling a “work in progress”, shouldn’t they be getting a “payment in progress”?
I mean like “pay the price when we actually deliver the goods”, not in a “pay the price now, we will ask for more when we release more stuff” way.
Of WOW it should have been Vista WIP(work in progress) editions. Vista Ultimate dont count because it’s not even a WIP, since the proper promised features are RIP.
Alright, so what? What OS is not a work in progress? Apple releases updates every few months, as does the various flavors of Linux.
Operating systems, and most all computer programs, are organic in the sense that they are being improved on and changed constantly.
Everything in life is a work in progress…
I don’t so much mind large installations if there is a reason for it and it is spaced used efficently. How big are the icons in Vista? 256×256 192dpi or some crazy size. And how are they stored? Why, .ICO of course. Why not switch over to .SVG? Or heck, even just one single PNG instead of one for every view?
I found some files to compare, one online and the rest on my computer:
Vista Icon Example
http://www.visualpharm.com/office_space.html monitor.ico (290.1 kb)
KDE PNG Example
~\nuoveXT-kde-1.6\128×128\devices\system.png (10.2 kb)
GNOME SVG Example
~\eXperience\small\filesystems\gnome-fs-client.svg (20.7 kb)
I chose those icons because the are the most similar in apprearance. I know what you are thinking, big deal. 290 kb is nothing nowadays and the KDE icon only goes up to 128. Fine, multiply that time 10 for however many size you need and it is still smaller than the Windows ICO. Those six ICO files are larger than the entire GNOME icon theme archive. How many icons are in Vista now? How many of you GNOME and/or KDE users out there have more than 10 icon themes for each DE? I know I do. That space adds up.
I was big into modifying my UI when I was using Windows. There was hacking involved just to get the icons to work with my Litestep shell and if I wanted to theme the rest of the UI I had to hack a system file or buy Windowblinds. Some of those themes get to be pretty big. When I first started downloading GNOME icon themes and window decorations, I thought I had corrupt files or partial downloads because they were so tiny. Now Window applications are skinned too. Office 2K7 (omg what garbage) has a skinned UI that doesn’t even match the rest of the UI unless you have Aero on. Jeesh, Vista with Aero on running Office 2K7. There is a waste of memory.
Sorry, started rambling. Anyways, I think that alot of the disk space is for frivolous things like the icons. I have had Vista for about 2 months and all I can find that it has that I want in KDE is the media folder presentation. I like how the album covers show on the folders. That’s it.
… and a much smaller one, try this neat little OS – MonaOS –
http://www.monaos.org/
MIT-license, apparently “not based on any other OS” (although the icons look Haiku-ish. That’s MIT-licensed too so some code might come from there.)
The zipped iso is only 2.39 Mb, and it has a great GUI – very nice…
It’s already at around mid-beta, I’d say. An occasional bug, but already very good.
someday microsoft is going to fire the incompetent coders who muck up windows… where are all those people going to go?
Edited 2008-04-19 01:09 UTC
… like the pc home movie from the get-a-mac ad?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNnX6XRQBec
In my country (Brazil) Dell doesn’t sell notebooks with linux and therefore I just didn’t accept the Vista EULA and gave back to them the Vista DVD and the COA label to receive the windows refund. I received US$ 75 for Vista Home basic.
Just say no to pay for a alpha-state OS like Vista !
My Dell notebook is happy and much faster and useful running Mandriva 2008.1 x86_64 now.