5 Mistakes Microsoft made with Windows Vista

and some suggested solutions

from WinCustomize Forums

Windows Vista has kind of gotten a bum rap. Some of the rap is deserved -- Microsoft shipped it too early. But for the most part, the rap is carried on by vocal techies who just like to poop on things because they think criticizing things makes them appear more knowledgeable.

Talking to a techie about the quality of mainstream software is a lot like talking to a film school graduate about the quality of mainstream movies. Sure, you might have liked Pirates of the Caribbean but talk to a film snob and it's the 7th sign of the Apocalypse. So how good is Windows Vista? The answer is, pretty good. Far better than Windows XP. But I can think of 5 big mistakes Microsoft made that has taken a window out of its sails.

Let me outline those 5 mistakes Microsoft made with the Windows Vista launch and talk about how Microsoft might be able to keep Windows Vista from being a sequel to Windows ME.

#1 The UAC. The User Account Control in Windows Vista is a feature that appears to have been designed by a marketing committee. Some casual computer user decided that the way to make other casual users think that Windows Vista was "secure" was to have more prompts. A lot more prompts. And so, even a power user (i.e. early adopters) logged on as an administrator is going to find themselves being prompted regularly. They can turn it off but that defeats the entire purpose of having better security.

The result: Power users turn it off and casual users learn to ignore the myriad of repetitive dialogs.

Solution: Have the UAC be a lot smarter. A simple "Always give permission to continue for this action" checkbox at the bottom of the dialog would be nice. It's bad enough that changing the IP address on Vista requires 5 clicks to get to (versus 2 in Windows XP) but it adds a 6th click to get past the UAC.

#2 Windows Vista was shipped before drivers were ready. This, combined with item #1 are probably responsible for the majority of the negative vibe Windows Vista has received.

As a practical matter, the first usable beta of Windows Vista wasn't made available until 4 or so months before Windows Vista shipped (or merely 1 month before "gold". This meant that many drivers, video drivers in particular, weren't ready. But for all those people who have a finicky scanner or Air card or other specialty peripheral had to be guinea pigs.

The result: Early adopters were stung with problematic behavior and a lack of drivers which caused frustration that they shared a lot with others.

Solution: This is mostly dealt with now (as of July 26th for nVidia users for instance). But when one considers how much reputation damage this caused Microsoft should really give more care in the future. Release a stable public beta long enough before going gold so that developers can provide adequate support.

#3 The new Start menu. Love the new Start Search. Kudos. Don't love the Start menu navigation which wants to exist in a fixed window. The example screenshot shows Microsoft's own apps being cut off. For those of us who liked to seriously organize our Start menu items into categories and such, this new start menu option is a huge pain.

Solution: Make the All Programs button behavior an option between the classic expanding menu or the new menu container.

#4 Unbelievably bad desktop performance. Another item that really hurt the initial impression of Windows Vista was how horrible basic desktop operations like copying and zipping were. A user would be copying a handful of files and would get this dialog trying to estimate how long the copy should take. Here's your answer: less than a second! At least, that's what it should have taken. Instead, the estimating time dialog would take a few seconds and then the copy would take a second or two. This sort of thing on routine file copying and moving made Windows Vista feel like a pig.

Solution: Service Pack 1 is supposed to address this sort of thing more thoroughly but the good news is that Microsoft did officially release some patches that improves desktop performance significantly.

#5 Upgrade Pricing is a joke. I wonder what color the sky is on planet Microsoft. Because on planet Microsoft, the Xbox 360 is $350 which not only includes the OS (with Media Center), a 20 Gigabyte Hard drive and other goodies, but at the same time Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade lists for $160. Sure, it's not a truly fair comparison (console makers get a piece of revenue from console games) but the point is still valid. One might get the impression that Microsoft has a monopoly in the PC OS market but does not in the console market.

The big problem is that Microsoft's marketing never made the case for what you are actually getting for that $160. I like Windows Vista. I think it's a big improvement over Windows XP. And when I buy a computer, I am glad Windows Vista comes with it. But upgrading my existing computers? The incredibly stingy "Family Discount" (which has expired) wasn't even close to justifying upgrading machines to Vista.

Maybe there is $160 in value buried in Windows Vista Home Premium but Microsoft's marketing didn't make the case. And I can't find it -- especially when you combine it with the above issues. This wasn't a problem with Windows XP. Windows XP was blatantly better than Windows ME/98 and it was noticeably better than Windows 2000 (which only had a tiny share of the market compared to 98/ME). As a result, 7 months later, Windows Vista has less than 10% of the market. By contrast, I remember watching Windows XP's launch and the migration to Windows XP was pretty swift.

Solution: No solution. They aren't likely to lower pricing any time soon. Once Service Pack 1 has been integrated into the OEM versions (the ones that ship with new PCs) you'll see nearly everyone opting for Windows Vista on a new machine while older machines continue with Windows XP.

Conclusions:
I could go on with numerous other items like the terrible icon handling, the fact that development tools weren't ready for prime time, that Microsoft's marketing efforts were seemingly handled by non-technical people (I mean, really, Flip3D is actually one of the first things mentioned on the Windows Vista home page -- how deep are you digging to find compelling features when a fairly useless task switcher is your money shot?), all have contributed to the negative buzz around Windows Vista.

Which is a shame because Windows Vista is really very good. On a scale from 1 to 10, if Windows 98 was a 4, Windows ME a 3, Windows 2000 a 6 and Windows XP a 7 then Windows Vista is easily an 8. It's a worthy and significant upgrade. It deserves a good reputation. Hopefully, Microsoft can get Service Pack 1 out sooner rather than later and address as best they can the issues that many people have brought up.

Original posted on Neowin.net
 

23,615 views 23 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top

Excellent points all around.

Like you said, Vista is good.  Perhaps not $160 worth of good, but good.  That's the biggest complaint I have with it myself.  I just don't see it being worth paying much for as an upgrade over a system that works and performs adequately.

On the UAC issue, having a 'remember this action' selection should be a good idea, but at the same time it really does defeat the purpose of the UAC.  Any time you offer some sort of by-pass to the security prompting some rogue program will take advantage of that by-pass and attack your system.  That was why UAC was created and why it really is a total pain in the rump.  I'd love it to be smarter, and hate that it is so annoying, but at the same time it is there because there are just far too many idiots that never pay attention to what they are running on their system and then later can't figure out how some nasty virus or spy-ware got installed on it.  99.9% of the time that spy-ware or virus is there because that person is a complete idiot and they infected themselves by opening a message saying 'Congratulations - You just won $1million' or something stupid like that.  At least with UAC there the individual gets a final chance to confirm what an idiot they really are.

Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Not really what I would have expected from the Man in Charge. I appreciate the very honest appraisal.   
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Thanks Brad,
After using Vista Business for a few months now on my new laptop I wholeheartedly agree with your concensus!

Funnily enough, I agree with Citizen terpfan1980, as well as a whole bunch of others I've run across while searching for answers about the UAC and other niggly bits. I think I've come up with a somewhat plausible solution for the whole UAC issue:
1. Depending on the version of Vista that you're running, which by default denotes the usage of the machine (usually ) ON TOP of the status of the Account Type (ie Admin, Power User, User, idiot) could control the amounts of UAC alerts and their re-occurance ratio?

Just a thought, not like good ole' Bill would listen to lowley lil' me...

R
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
You make some really great points here, and I can't agree enough with #5. I have said for a long time that Microsoft should have a "family" pack of licenses for a reasonable price.
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top

I disagree on two points.  

1.  I think UAC is GREAT.  I'm a super power-user and I don't mind it at all.   I *did* mind it when I first started using Vista,  however I have discovered that after your system is running for a month or so, most of the configurations that trigger UAC are done with.  The only major mistake in my opinion, is triggering UAC when moving/deleting items on the "all users" start menu.    That is obnoxious!   The only other thing I dont like about it is that a couple companies cant figure out how to configure their applications to avoid triggering UAC *cough* SD Central *cough*.    

3.  I think the new start menu is great, *because* I seriously organize my start menu into categories.  With the old start menu, i could categorize to my heart's content, and I would still have to do a LOT of mouse movement to get to where I needed (keyboard navigation was totally inefficient).    The new "contained" startmenu is a dream come true.  My category folders take up about 3/4th of the window space, and I hardly move my mouse at all to get to the apps I need...I can even do it with my keyboard!   In fact I rarely need to "navigate" the start menu at all....because all I need to do isL

  1. Press Windows Key
  2. Type the first few letters of the app I need
  3. Hit enter (or use arrows to differenciate between mutliple matches, then hit enter)
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top

#3 The new Start menu

Thankfully you can use RightClick to have the familiar fly-out Start Menu programs list. Vista is almost tollerable thanks to that.

Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
Thankfully you can use RightClick to have the familiar fly-out Start Menu programs list. Vista is almost tollerable thanks to that.


First thing I did when I started working on it!
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I think the major mistake would be the "Ultimate Extra"! Where are they now? Even the windows ultimate website is like a ghost town that all the people working on the supposedly "Extras" were suppose to get are all probably gone! Right now the Dreamscene feature is still in freaking preview version. I'm tired of MS not delivering to its promises. I'm switching to mac. We should have a maccustomize version I think   
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
#3 The new Start menu. Love the new Start Search. Kudos. Don't love the Start menu navigation which wants to exist in a fixed window. The example screenshot shows Microsoft's own apps being cut off. For those of us who liked to seriously organize our Start menu items into categories and such, this new start menu option is a huge pain.


I used to organize the old start menu. But that was because it was so hard to find the program you where looking for if you didn't. It is harder to organize the Vista start menu, but I don't feel the need any more. I've gotten so used to just typing a couple of letters and have the application available. Mind you, I also use ObjectDock+ and keep an dock at the top of the screen which is just as quick as all I need is slam the cursor at the top of the screen. Maybe one extra click if I need to switch tab. At least the start menu in Vista automaticly sorts it's order.
I actually get frustrated now when I'm forced to use an XP machine and navigate the old start menu.
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It’s the price that's the killer, its way too expensive and delivers too little extra to even closely justify it. Considering the market share MS should really be offering it far cheaper to the home user.

I need to upgrade my "Office" and that will have to be the priority because it delivers things I need - even so its too expensive as well. Everyone I know says these are their reasons.
  
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It’s the price that's the killer, its way too expensive and delivers too little extra to even closely justify it. Considering the market share MS should really be offering it far cheaper to the home user.

I can only second that. I would like to upgrade my XP home license since I would like to be uptodate. But it would cost € 200 for me. That's far too much. I could get the system builder version without the 2 support calls for € 100. But I think that's still too much money for upgrading just for fun, since my XP is really stable by now.
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I think the UAC "problems" were overhyped because most people forgot that once you have set up your PC, the UAC dialogs will not reappear unless something unusual is happening. If you are the type that builds a system and makes an image of it for backup, you only have to put up with UAC dialogs for a few days or so.

However, I think Vista has triggered a rash of bad interface design, all of which looks superficially slick, but is inherently disorganized and confusing.

For example, new "Vista-style" applications are appearing where items that used to be "simple to spot" and "click at a glance" now require reading entire paragraphs of text (rather than simple labels) and commonly used controls are often scrolled off the screen by default when the application is opened.

There is an unhealthy trend away from multitasking to screen wastage and maximizing one application at a time on the screen, which is impossible to work with for power users who read from multiple windows at once and cut and paste between applications.

There also seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding how to use the new control styles (unmarked hyperlink text being perhaps the worst example), but even taking as an example Skin Studio 6.0, which many of us on this forum have had experience with (for the sake of an example), the left menu sometimes loads a sub pane and sometimes opens a dialog (as with other controls, there is no predictability as to what will happen).

Several applications are also following Vista's poor example of 'open another dialog' then 'open yet another dialog on top of the dialog' until the whole screen is full of dialogs with no apparent relationship to one another and the user, no matter how experienced, struggles to maintain some sense of flow. The most idiotic examples are 'open another version of the same dialog' instead of 'make current dialog read-write mode (if opened read-only to begin with)'. I am not sure how people who cannot cope with the concept of multiple instances are expected to handle this, nor why it has gone from an known example of undisputed bad interface design to being "the latest thing". When the application is something you want to be able to go through all tasks systematically, it is hopeless.

Add to that that sheer waste of resources putting up extra dialogs at once (memory and handles for layers of controls that are not usable in context). Sure, we have powerful machines now, but that power is eaten up quickly enough by legitimate usage, such as multimedia tools, 3D graphics applications and virtual machines. There is still no room for wasteful programming any more than there was in the past.

Perhaps this is a teething problem, and eventually developers will understand how to make good Vista-style interfaces one day - in the same way that some had to learn that buttons, check boxes and option groups are not freely interchangeable concepts in the past. In the meantime, this 'let's imitate the look without understanding why and how it should work' is painful.

Reply #13 from JoeUser Forums Top
My major complaint with Vista has been the driver issues. We still get support e-mails and posts on the forums almost every week from people who have NVidia cards and we have to tell them to go to NVidia's website and get the latest drivers. But the poor laptop users STILL don't have the 158.24 drivers, so the only way they can get the updated drivers is to go to a third party site like laptopvideo2go that modifies the drivers from the NVidia site.
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
All of the above is true mister Frogboy(I'm a techie;you're gonna find out anyway,after your read this)and all you other users.But that didn't bother me at all.It just that vista is just not for the majority of people.At least,not yet.I have a rather old PC : AthlonXP 2500+,Radeon X1550 AGP,512MB RAM,.And I run Server 2k3 on it and it runs everything better than my neighbor who has (can't really remember) : Intel on LGA (I hate those codes!) running at 2.4GHz (or somewhere around that) 1GB RAM,Radeon X800XT running on vista.Everything runs faster on my PC,except for the games (the X800XT is faster than my CPU,I think ).
The bottom line is,that with vista,if you want to upgrade your OS,you need somewhere around 500-1000$ to make it run good.New CPU (at least).Also,getting a new CPU,today,also means getting a new motherboard.A new motherboard,which again,today,means selling your old RAM,'cause new motherboards come with DDR2.After you've got that cleared,put a piece of cloth on your old video card and go buy one that is PCIe compliant.While you're at it,might as well change the HDD with a SATA.Might save you a couple of bucks in the future,if you didn't already go bankrupt(can't really see a future for ATA).
All of the above are great and make your PC run faster and smoother.
But why am I being forced to upgrade my hardware for software?!
Sure,I could always disable Aero and make vista look like Windows98 (or does it revert to the XP look? lol)...But why did I bother upgrading,if,at least,the GUI isn't different?Screw all the other stuff like the fact that it's a new OS and runs faster and smarter and etc... On a system like mine? No way! And about 70% of world PC users have either my hardware configuration or somewhere around it.
The thing is,I'm sticking to Server 2k3.Give it any system with at least 256MB of DDR RAM and it will fill your heart with joy! (might switch to Longhorn in the future...who knows...)
Love&Peace!
Reply #15 from JoeUser Forums Top
Ohh, I've been using Vista for so long now, we deployed it on some of our computers in my college's computer lab(where I work) when it was in beta(we like to be ahead of everyone else with all the new stuff)... we were some of the first to deploy it like that in a lab enviroment with people coming and going and spent a lot of time on the phone with microsoft, especialy with the roaming profiles. I'm losing this weekend trying to get permissions fixed, again, on all of our accounts' profiles because someone had the great idea of resetting them all for the next semester.

Other than the dislike I have of it just because I had to learn far more than I ever wanted to dealing with profiles, I've mostly liked it. I've had isses where explorer just stops working and has to restart, but once I got more ram in my system its been fine. I just got to check out a laptop with our new vista image on it and it's been working great! Ohh, except I've gotten huge performance losses in my openGL applications And also java/IE 7 has been causing huge problems for faculty, we have to make them remote desktop into another computer to be able to use our school's database program.
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The only real problem I have is when I put a CD/DVD into the drive it wants to format it. If I don't it will not open it. If I do I lose everything on it. That is my biggest issue. Unless it is a CD/DVD that is by a company (ie. Stardock, Pennical....) I can't figure out a way around it.

That is a big issue.

Jentara
Reply #18 from JoeUser Forums Top
For a short time Linux actually had better driver support than Vista. I couldn't use my printer for a while due to that problem.

My brother still can't use due to 64 bit vista.

I agree that it's improving. In least it will only get better from really bad beginning. I'm glad it's not Win Me 2. Win me flopped and never recovered from its bad start.
Reply #19 from JoeUser Forums Top

My desktop hard drive crashed, so I bought a new Toshiba notebook.  I have vista home premium.

It took me three days to find how to turn off my system with the new windows menu.  I looked and looked and couldn't find it.  And the search feature didn't help me at all.

Then I accidentally deleted my recycle basket (not Vistas fault) but I never did that on xp.

I think its harder to find things now and not just because its new.  But I am only a step above computer retarded, so there ya go.

 

Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well...I hate to admit it, but I have been a computer programmer/user for 32 years now. I'd say I am a power user. My advice? Windows Vista is the best thing for Apple. I'm buying a Mac. Not a single one of my customers has gone to Vista, for good reason. Their benchmarks between XP & Vista show a 80-90% reduction in software performance. I think Microsoft will eventually fix the problems, but now's a good excuse to break out of the monopoly. You can run Windows software on the Mac. Oh, and Apple Office costs a whopping $40 - with MS Office compatibility.
Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Vista I Love it, Hate it
Love the way it looks
Hate the way it was laid out.
MS got use all jumping through hoops to get to some thing that was easy with XP
Example;
you can't right click the desk top to get the properties that has all the stuff in it
like Themes, Desktop, Screen Saver, Appearance, Suites and settings

Now it is all scattered all over. WHY?

and dreamscene and/or dreamscape don't like to run right I can't turn off or re-start with an animated wall up. If I leave it running and turn on or re-start my PC it (animated Wall) comes up for about 2 to 5 seconds then goes to a solid Blue wallPaper and then I play hell trying to get Dream S/S to even run or to even get one to load.. BUT if i go back to a WallPaper and turn off or Re-Start all is good then I can load Dream S/S.

oh and MS's Vista Compatibility for going from XP to Vista SUCKS it told me that my PC can handle Vista Ultimate then Why dose Dream S/S freeze up..

my system: HP (Hewlett Packer) <--- worst then an E-Machine
Windows XP Pro ................ came/Home with NO Installation Disk
Pentium 4 CPU 1600MHz
1.59GHz
1.GB Ram ..................... came/128MB
ATI Radeon 9550/X1050 256MB .. came/motherboard 64MB ?
C:(Master) 160GB ............. came/40GB or was it 80GB hhmmmm
D:(Save) 80BG ................ came/NOT

So as you can see My PC does not really works good with Vista Ultimate
So Why would MS tell me my PC is Vista Ultimate compatible..
Because if they told me the truth that I need to upgrade my:

Pentium 4 CPU 1600MHz
Ram
Graphics Card
Probably even the Motherboard
and really should go to a 500GB Hard Drive (this one is just me)

they would lose money because they Know most people would not go through all that

I think this is unethical

but i do like Vista to a Point but the way it is laid out is more for an Expert
and Not the Majority of Computer users...

Reply #22 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well, i guess we'll see with the Sp1.

..I recall having an RC2 vista ultimate candidate and it was b**chin! but i had a laptop-( HP DV8210us
nice laptop by the way WWW Link) and once again it was a driver support issue. The sound card was the problem!
I wouldn't have been so mad if the friggin' laptop didn't have a windows vista ready sticker on it!!! if it just had a "designed for windows XP" sticker, it wouldn't have been a big surprise that the computer didn't have driver support for the newly installed vista OS RC2 candidate!

I think what happened here is they put the "vista ready" sticker on things assuming that when windows vista would be released, it would have all its seams and pleats ironed out, but i think it was a factor of Microsoft not communicating with its hardware distributors about the driver readiness for Vista-Ready Products before the release of RC1, RC2 And the First actual full version of vista,, therefor the "Vista Ready "stickered statement on The laptop that I owned was in fact an assumption based on the dv8210us performance...

thats why i think this applies to most, if not all of the computers that had a go in the beta- testers and early vista world!

as far as vista goes in gen. ,,,,, its a great idea, except for its lackluster in price and "WOW" features! I mean, my windows XP computer is prettymuch identical to vista! THANK YOU STARDOCK! I even have some better window effects than what windows vista has, thanks to compiz fusion!
Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I meant to say windowFX ......I have comp fusion on my brain! heres a link
WWW Link i will be porting this software to windows XP and as soon as i do i will compile an .EXE And post exactly how i did it on my currently in the works website for you all to see