MICHAEL said:
* Charlie Tame:
Mike and I have had some lovely conversations in this group. ;-)
He doesn't come around too often, but when he does, he quickly
establishes his propensity at being a jerk and his skill at shilling for
Microsoft. Mike used to work for Microsoft. Perhaps, he believes
they may take him back if he is sycophantic enough.
-Michael
Employing sycophants is usually a bad idea, in general they are simply
waiting to knife you in the back
Seriously though "Most" ordinary users were expecting certain things
that Microsoft have led the market in making "Standards", even if these
sometimes go outside of recognized industry standards.
--
Plug and Play was unbeatable by any other OS. Almost everything would
work with it after a mouse click or two.
Blame who you like but this is not the case with Vista, even with
equipment touted as "Vista Ready". Whether this is Microsoft's fault or
not it will be judged to be their fault by many.
--
New OS reasonably old hardware. I have installed XP on machines that
originally came with W95. It works, maybe slow but really not much
slower than 95, that's simply the hardware. It will even install on
machines that a GUI Linux won't look at. This is extreme but a machine
say 2 years old should be viable for OS Upgrade.
This is not viable with Vista in many cases since it's cheaper to buy a
pre installed machine than to locate and buy new hardware for the
present one. Again, you can blame hardware makers if you wish but the
customer is more likely to blame Vista, because they had expectations
from the experience with XP. The advertising contained no warning about
this. Drug companies put in a disclaimer that XXX may not be suitable
for everyone.
Remember MS were selling an OS, not a complete package with hardware, so
it's a bit late when someone has bought it to have them find out they
now need a new PC of the same price in hardware.
--
Better security.
Is it? It nags a bit, but it's still possible for something to ask for
install and for that to be approved with a mouse click, yet to manually
install something you want installed you have to submit to being nagged
just as badly. However try installing something that "Microsoft" don't
approve of in their 64 bit versions and the machine gets shut down and
the user told "You can buy another copy of Vista". Yes there is a way to
get out of this but it is deliberately obscure.
--
Better Performance
Is it? Hmm, games most definitely run slower, networking is slower, okay
the graphics are good on the desktop but that makes no difference at all
to business functionality. The "Extras" consist of a desktop animation
(A screensaver you can have all the time?) but using it carries a not
inconsiderable performance hit. A Poker game? I can't play poker, but if
could is it really any added value?
I keep hearing about better memory management but hey, software that ran
without visible problems in 512 K now runs with no visible problems in 2
GB.
Copying large numbers of files, they must have improved the random
spurious errors now...
Nope, still there and in my case at least worse.
--
Well at least it will be a familiar system with minimal learning involved.
Nope, most things rearranged for no apparent reason, not even cosmetic,
and no obvious way to switch to a more "Classic" view to get used to it.
--
It is not sufficient to keep saying "This always happens with a new OS",
it doesn't have to, maybe it always happens with a new Microsoft OS but
it doesn't have to. There were better ways to release this, better ways
to organize versions and hell, even throwing in a free XP emulator might
have helped some folks.
--
Sure this is just my view, but nobody can call that "Wrong" and in these
groups the contempt shown by some toward users who are after all
customers is of itself an obligation to respond.
Whilst problems that are encountered may not be directly the fault of
Vista "The software" they are, for that individual, a result of "Using
the software". A concept that is totally lost on the sycophant.
