G
Guest
Calling this build an "RC" is overly optimistic.
There are numerous critical functional flaws in the latest build of RC1:
1. Firstly, I cannot follow prescribed trouble reporting procedures because
the trouble reporting tool won't load due to errors.
2. Various MMC snap-ins fail frequently when attempting to load: "MMC has
detected an error in a snap-in and will unload it."
3. Automatic Update errors out with an 8024400A. When help works,
reference to error code 8024400A yields no information except references to
other error codes and (potential) fixes for those.
4. Help is spotty and incomplete.
5. Adding folders for indexing for future searching causes the system to
grind to halt. Indexing claims "Indexing speed is reduced due to user
activity," but I'm not doing a thing. The system is doing something and then
passing blame to me, the user?
6. Various diagnostic and performance tools will occassionally work but
more often than not won't load with an error message.
7. The system asked to be shut down to complete the installation of a "new
device" (a second hard-drive). Responding to the system's request to be
restarted caused it to corrupt some sort of system database which resulted in
the system's inability to boot up in standard mode. I was forced to
reinstall the system.
8. Event viewer recorded the error multiple times: "The Event Logging
service encountered an error while processing an incoming event published
from Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing."
9. Event viewer recorded the error: "The service 'StiSvc' may not have
unregistered for device event notifications before it was stopped." multiple
times.
10. Registered file objects give "file path does not exist" when
double-clicked.
11. Most information links that contact a Web-based resource do not work at
all. Numerous examples of this, particularly in help, but they are common
and spread throughout the O.S.
12. Thumbnails of photos absent from Explorer. At one time they were
there, then they dissappeared never to return.
13. Photo Management software takes an hour to load. Thumbnails are often
missing for photos that are perfectly fine.
14. The Event Viewer contains several errors indicating "Advise Status
Change failed. The system is probably low on resources. Free up resources
and restart the service." With a code 0x80041812.
Then the real fun began. All these errors pale to the litany of critical
and other system errors that occured when I started to attach hard-drives and
use the system seriously. I filled Event Viewer up with little critical
error exes, and error exclamation points. So many errors that to list them
all here would seem pedantic. My normal computing activities were just too
much for poor little ole' Vista. I had services errors complaining about
stopping for no reason, I had diagnostic errors complaining about one thing
or another taking too long, meanwhile all the diagnostics came back clean as
far as hardware was concerned. The issue causing the problem was the O.S.!
The O.S. was so slow, so laden with errors, so unmanagable, and so painful to
interact with that I've uninstalled it completely and am back to XP.
Apart from the plethora of "bugs," there are numerous annoying
characteristics.
1. I am dumb-founded that somebody believes UAC is a functional computer
protection scheme. I don't want to editorialize too much here, but this
scheme is easily one of the most inane concepts I could have imagined. A 3
year old child could design such a methodology. Analogously, UAC is like
having your car automatically throw on the brakes and grind to a dead stop
every time you want to make a lane change just in case you might hit someone.
That's not progress, it's just stupid. In this day and age of 10Gbps WAN
links, remote control cars on Mars, and designer nano-technology, this is the
solution? All the computerized cryptology and security and all the
programming expertise money can buy can't come up with something better than
a box that says "are you really, really, really sure you want that thing you
just clicked on to load?"
I read the testing guides, and the forum posts, and the blogs, and no amount
of condescending dialog about the user "just not getting it" mitagates the
glaringly obvious rediculousness that is UAC. Jim Jones has been
reincarnated and he's serving punch in the Redmond cafeteria.
Computers are tools. When they start causing more work than alleviating it,
they will end up on the trash pile. UAC is a step in that direction.
2. Removing a single file type from indexing (which claims cannot be
disabled) causes all Indexed folders to be reindexed. There are far better
ways to manage this than reindexing all the folders. Reindexing the folders
is the most unintelligent way a program could handle the issue that it begs
the question the of engineering acumen. Were I a beginner programmer I might
do it that way. In the 70s.
3. Windows Explorer was an area that really needed changing in XP. It sure
has been changed, for the worse. Firstly, the built-in search is a mess.
Why can't I do advanced searching any time I'm in Explorer? No, I have to go
to search in the start menu to get any features. And this is because of?
Secondly, there's no abiliity to have a preview pane unless actually in the
photo management software, which is only a surrogate to explorer. Why can't
I have photo management and file management together, cohesively, and add
reasonable search. Is that "too hard to program" or did a committee decide
the feature wasn't needed or the public "just wasn't ready for that kind of
seemless experience." All those graphically intensive 3-d renderings of my
open windows are useless when basic navigating is a chore.
Also, why didn't Microsoft add something that tells you the size of folders?
There are a dozen free applications that fill this gap for XP. There's even
a nice plug-in "Folder Size" that adds that function to Explorer you can get
for free. Why is such a glaring gap still there?
Etc.
The number of usability issues in Explorer is far greater than my patience
with enumerating them.
4. One thing I'd really hoped was the O.S. would be much more configurable
than XP. I'm a heavy user. Some would argue a power user. I prefer the
keyboard to the mouse because its faster. I know the keyboard shortcuts
(thank you IBM ergonomics team!) and use them. Because I'm such a heavy user
it would be fair to say perhaps I like things setup a little bit differently
than many. In fact, the default settings in XP are just about the opposite
from how I set them, whether its explorer or the task bar or whatever. I was
hoping I'd be able to configure the crud out of Vista. Tune it up just the
way I like it. Can I? No.
Regarding the "low resource" error and my machine's capability of handling
the tasks asked of it:
I don't know the scale for the Computer Performance score. clicking the
link to get more information takes you to the regular Microsoft home page,
with no specific Performance Score information. The score I got is 4.5,
which was the lowest score, the score of my graphics adapter. I realize it
isn't the best, just a 256MB SLI ATI X700, but that adapter is several
generations ahead of what the public is using. I discarded adapters several
generations back that most I know haven't gotten to yet. Other than the
graphics adapter, my machine is essentially one generation back from the
current hottest consumer-grade hardware you can buy: AMD Dual Core x64 4400+,
2GB of fast matched Corsair XMS memory, SATA 2 hard-drives (not running as
RAID as they were with XP PRO X64 because the drivers don't work), nVidia
nForce 4 chipset, Sound Blaster Audigy-2 ZS. It isn't the hottest hardware,
but it isn't far behind, and if this machine is inadequate to run Vista, then
Microsoft is in for more bad press than their P.R. firm will be able to
handle.
This software is an embarassment. When you consider that the programming
task it represents is only an evolutionary step for Windows, not a
revolutionary one (basically a prettier interface, some more diagnostic
tools, and most inane attempt at protecting the system by having the user
click on things twice via UAC) combined with the long amount time developing
it, then Microsoft is truly in a grave situation. I'm particularly concerned
because I am the one this software was developed for. I'm a Microsoft
shareholder. This is partially my company, and I am very dissappointed with
this as our next O.S. If I can't get behind it, and I have a vested
interested, how can the public? Yes, Vista is pretty. VERY pretty. But no
prettier than the graphics on the G4 Mac running OS-X sitting here next to
me, and it's years old. Microsoft had such an opportunity to fix the myriad
of user interface issues that make working with XP just not what it ought to
be, and that has been squandered. I'm voting against the current management
team at the next shareholder meeting and then selling my stock.
Remember the change from Windows 2.0 to Windows 3.0? Earth shaking. 3.0
was graphical, versus 2.0 DOS-shell. Then 3.0 to 3.1? More features,
better, faster. 3.11 from 3.1? Networking! (Cruddy 16-bit thunking
networking, but networking nevertheless) 3.11 to 95, then 98? Paradigm
shifting. Remember NT 3.0, then 3.4 then 3.5 then 4.0 then 2000? All
incrementally better. Quicker, more features, more stable, everything
better. Then the mother of all upgrades, XP. That was truly an upgrade. In
every case we're presented with a better O.S. More secure, more stable, more
features, better. This is the first time that you could argue the upgrade
isn't better, or more secure, or faster. Every prior upgrade of Windows
offered a user interface that was more intuitive than the last, except for
this one. This time the user interface is so clunky, so difficult to
navigate (compared to XP) that the O.S. is nearly unusable. Oh, sure, there
are some new features, but not so many as to make someone want to change from
XP to this. Every additional photo feature, like adjusting photos or
cropping them I can accomplish with free software in XP, and much more
quickly. The indexing and search capabilities are abysmal. Slow,
inaccurate, and painful to navigate. The ONLY compelling feature this O.S.
offers is its built-in diagnostic system. This was sorely absent from XP.
That one feature may be enough for many to upgrade, but then I have to ask
what have the programmers in Redmond been doing all this time? The O.S. is
just hooking into monitoring functions that have been there since 2000 and
adding a little logic to them. It took all this time just to do that?
Where's all the killer security they've been sweating over? A dialog box
popping up that says "are you really really sure you want to run that?"
Pathetic.
And then you have the issue of Vista never, ever, ever not accessing the
hard-drives. That hard-drive light stays lit solid the entire time the O.S.
is operating. Oh, sure, its probably indexing something, after all, you
can't turn indexing off. Or control it reasonably. Or maybe the drive is
running because I have a virus (not). Or maybe somethings broken and its
running a chkdsk to fix it (not). Or maybe its just big brother spying on
me. One of the questions on the Vista "is this ready for release" survey was
"Do you feel more secure with Vista than XP." No way. No. Not even close.
I feel far less secure. I don't know what that operating system is doing
behind my back but its doing something. Just look at that hard-drive light.
At this rate I'll suffer drive failure in half the time it normally takes,
and that's not counting the system overhead all that indexing is consuming,
making me wait and slowing down my productivity.
And that's what its all about, isn't it. PRODUCTIVITY. Computers are tools.
Tools designed to do data processing and to entertain us. Vista didn't make
me more productive, nor more entertained. "But this is only RC1/2." you
argue. "Release Candidate" means that this software is a candidate for
RELEASE. Release to the public as a finished application. You couldn't
release this thing. This software is closer to Alpha than Beta, and calling
it RC is euphamistic at best. A funny joke to be played on the testers.
This software is a year and half from being RC.
And I'm no Microsoft basher. I like Microsoft. I'm a shareholder and have
been using Microsoft O.S. since the Dos 1.0 days and using/programming
computers in general since the IBM 360 days. I'm not the most technical guy
around, plenty posting here are far more technical than I, and I'm not good
enough at programming to program good PC security, but apparently neither is
Microsoft.
The obvious issue, the rhinocerous in the bathtub, is Apple. Why Microsoft
is so wary I'll never know given Apple's market share, but they are. This
new interface is a direct result of the Aqua interface in OS-X. So given
that this is meant to compete directly with Apple, how is it Apple seems to
manage security without UAC just fine? How is it Apple seems to offer a
reasonably intuitive interface (except where's the darn right mouse button!),
while still being secure, offering enough power to those that want it, but
not those that don't. Don't get me wrong. I am no Macintosh fan. I don't
like Apple. I never have. I own one for testing and so I'm familiar enough
with it to trouble shoot it, but that's it. The real winners with Vista will
be Apple. Every time I use Vista, my Mac starts looking a little better.
I'm disgusted with myself, but that's the truth.
----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/co...f4c&dg=microsoft.public.windows.vista.general
There are numerous critical functional flaws in the latest build of RC1:
1. Firstly, I cannot follow prescribed trouble reporting procedures because
the trouble reporting tool won't load due to errors.
2. Various MMC snap-ins fail frequently when attempting to load: "MMC has
detected an error in a snap-in and will unload it."
3. Automatic Update errors out with an 8024400A. When help works,
reference to error code 8024400A yields no information except references to
other error codes and (potential) fixes for those.
4. Help is spotty and incomplete.
5. Adding folders for indexing for future searching causes the system to
grind to halt. Indexing claims "Indexing speed is reduced due to user
activity," but I'm not doing a thing. The system is doing something and then
passing blame to me, the user?
6. Various diagnostic and performance tools will occassionally work but
more often than not won't load with an error message.
7. The system asked to be shut down to complete the installation of a "new
device" (a second hard-drive). Responding to the system's request to be
restarted caused it to corrupt some sort of system database which resulted in
the system's inability to boot up in standard mode. I was forced to
reinstall the system.
8. Event viewer recorded the error multiple times: "The Event Logging
service encountered an error while processing an incoming event published
from Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing."
9. Event viewer recorded the error: "The service 'StiSvc' may not have
unregistered for device event notifications before it was stopped." multiple
times.
10. Registered file objects give "file path does not exist" when
double-clicked.
11. Most information links that contact a Web-based resource do not work at
all. Numerous examples of this, particularly in help, but they are common
and spread throughout the O.S.
12. Thumbnails of photos absent from Explorer. At one time they were
there, then they dissappeared never to return.
13. Photo Management software takes an hour to load. Thumbnails are often
missing for photos that are perfectly fine.
14. The Event Viewer contains several errors indicating "Advise Status
Change failed. The system is probably low on resources. Free up resources
and restart the service." With a code 0x80041812.
Then the real fun began. All these errors pale to the litany of critical
and other system errors that occured when I started to attach hard-drives and
use the system seriously. I filled Event Viewer up with little critical
error exes, and error exclamation points. So many errors that to list them
all here would seem pedantic. My normal computing activities were just too
much for poor little ole' Vista. I had services errors complaining about
stopping for no reason, I had diagnostic errors complaining about one thing
or another taking too long, meanwhile all the diagnostics came back clean as
far as hardware was concerned. The issue causing the problem was the O.S.!
The O.S. was so slow, so laden with errors, so unmanagable, and so painful to
interact with that I've uninstalled it completely and am back to XP.
Apart from the plethora of "bugs," there are numerous annoying
characteristics.
1. I am dumb-founded that somebody believes UAC is a functional computer
protection scheme. I don't want to editorialize too much here, but this
scheme is easily one of the most inane concepts I could have imagined. A 3
year old child could design such a methodology. Analogously, UAC is like
having your car automatically throw on the brakes and grind to a dead stop
every time you want to make a lane change just in case you might hit someone.
That's not progress, it's just stupid. In this day and age of 10Gbps WAN
links, remote control cars on Mars, and designer nano-technology, this is the
solution? All the computerized cryptology and security and all the
programming expertise money can buy can't come up with something better than
a box that says "are you really, really, really sure you want that thing you
just clicked on to load?"
I read the testing guides, and the forum posts, and the blogs, and no amount
of condescending dialog about the user "just not getting it" mitagates the
glaringly obvious rediculousness that is UAC. Jim Jones has been
reincarnated and he's serving punch in the Redmond cafeteria.
Computers are tools. When they start causing more work than alleviating it,
they will end up on the trash pile. UAC is a step in that direction.
2. Removing a single file type from indexing (which claims cannot be
disabled) causes all Indexed folders to be reindexed. There are far better
ways to manage this than reindexing all the folders. Reindexing the folders
is the most unintelligent way a program could handle the issue that it begs
the question the of engineering acumen. Were I a beginner programmer I might
do it that way. In the 70s.
3. Windows Explorer was an area that really needed changing in XP. It sure
has been changed, for the worse. Firstly, the built-in search is a mess.
Why can't I do advanced searching any time I'm in Explorer? No, I have to go
to search in the start menu to get any features. And this is because of?
Secondly, there's no abiliity to have a preview pane unless actually in the
photo management software, which is only a surrogate to explorer. Why can't
I have photo management and file management together, cohesively, and add
reasonable search. Is that "too hard to program" or did a committee decide
the feature wasn't needed or the public "just wasn't ready for that kind of
seemless experience." All those graphically intensive 3-d renderings of my
open windows are useless when basic navigating is a chore.
Also, why didn't Microsoft add something that tells you the size of folders?
There are a dozen free applications that fill this gap for XP. There's even
a nice plug-in "Folder Size" that adds that function to Explorer you can get
for free. Why is such a glaring gap still there?
Etc.
The number of usability issues in Explorer is far greater than my patience
with enumerating them.
4. One thing I'd really hoped was the O.S. would be much more configurable
than XP. I'm a heavy user. Some would argue a power user. I prefer the
keyboard to the mouse because its faster. I know the keyboard shortcuts
(thank you IBM ergonomics team!) and use them. Because I'm such a heavy user
it would be fair to say perhaps I like things setup a little bit differently
than many. In fact, the default settings in XP are just about the opposite
from how I set them, whether its explorer or the task bar or whatever. I was
hoping I'd be able to configure the crud out of Vista. Tune it up just the
way I like it. Can I? No.
Regarding the "low resource" error and my machine's capability of handling
the tasks asked of it:
I don't know the scale for the Computer Performance score. clicking the
link to get more information takes you to the regular Microsoft home page,
with no specific Performance Score information. The score I got is 4.5,
which was the lowest score, the score of my graphics adapter. I realize it
isn't the best, just a 256MB SLI ATI X700, but that adapter is several
generations ahead of what the public is using. I discarded adapters several
generations back that most I know haven't gotten to yet. Other than the
graphics adapter, my machine is essentially one generation back from the
current hottest consumer-grade hardware you can buy: AMD Dual Core x64 4400+,
2GB of fast matched Corsair XMS memory, SATA 2 hard-drives (not running as
RAID as they were with XP PRO X64 because the drivers don't work), nVidia
nForce 4 chipset, Sound Blaster Audigy-2 ZS. It isn't the hottest hardware,
but it isn't far behind, and if this machine is inadequate to run Vista, then
Microsoft is in for more bad press than their P.R. firm will be able to
handle.
This software is an embarassment. When you consider that the programming
task it represents is only an evolutionary step for Windows, not a
revolutionary one (basically a prettier interface, some more diagnostic
tools, and most inane attempt at protecting the system by having the user
click on things twice via UAC) combined with the long amount time developing
it, then Microsoft is truly in a grave situation. I'm particularly concerned
because I am the one this software was developed for. I'm a Microsoft
shareholder. This is partially my company, and I am very dissappointed with
this as our next O.S. If I can't get behind it, and I have a vested
interested, how can the public? Yes, Vista is pretty. VERY pretty. But no
prettier than the graphics on the G4 Mac running OS-X sitting here next to
me, and it's years old. Microsoft had such an opportunity to fix the myriad
of user interface issues that make working with XP just not what it ought to
be, and that has been squandered. I'm voting against the current management
team at the next shareholder meeting and then selling my stock.
Remember the change from Windows 2.0 to Windows 3.0? Earth shaking. 3.0
was graphical, versus 2.0 DOS-shell. Then 3.0 to 3.1? More features,
better, faster. 3.11 from 3.1? Networking! (Cruddy 16-bit thunking
networking, but networking nevertheless) 3.11 to 95, then 98? Paradigm
shifting. Remember NT 3.0, then 3.4 then 3.5 then 4.0 then 2000? All
incrementally better. Quicker, more features, more stable, everything
better. Then the mother of all upgrades, XP. That was truly an upgrade. In
every case we're presented with a better O.S. More secure, more stable, more
features, better. This is the first time that you could argue the upgrade
isn't better, or more secure, or faster. Every prior upgrade of Windows
offered a user interface that was more intuitive than the last, except for
this one. This time the user interface is so clunky, so difficult to
navigate (compared to XP) that the O.S. is nearly unusable. Oh, sure, there
are some new features, but not so many as to make someone want to change from
XP to this. Every additional photo feature, like adjusting photos or
cropping them I can accomplish with free software in XP, and much more
quickly. The indexing and search capabilities are abysmal. Slow,
inaccurate, and painful to navigate. The ONLY compelling feature this O.S.
offers is its built-in diagnostic system. This was sorely absent from XP.
That one feature may be enough for many to upgrade, but then I have to ask
what have the programmers in Redmond been doing all this time? The O.S. is
just hooking into monitoring functions that have been there since 2000 and
adding a little logic to them. It took all this time just to do that?
Where's all the killer security they've been sweating over? A dialog box
popping up that says "are you really really sure you want to run that?"
Pathetic.
And then you have the issue of Vista never, ever, ever not accessing the
hard-drives. That hard-drive light stays lit solid the entire time the O.S.
is operating. Oh, sure, its probably indexing something, after all, you
can't turn indexing off. Or control it reasonably. Or maybe the drive is
running because I have a virus (not). Or maybe somethings broken and its
running a chkdsk to fix it (not). Or maybe its just big brother spying on
me. One of the questions on the Vista "is this ready for release" survey was
"Do you feel more secure with Vista than XP." No way. No. Not even close.
I feel far less secure. I don't know what that operating system is doing
behind my back but its doing something. Just look at that hard-drive light.
At this rate I'll suffer drive failure in half the time it normally takes,
and that's not counting the system overhead all that indexing is consuming,
making me wait and slowing down my productivity.
And that's what its all about, isn't it. PRODUCTIVITY. Computers are tools.
Tools designed to do data processing and to entertain us. Vista didn't make
me more productive, nor more entertained. "But this is only RC1/2." you
argue. "Release Candidate" means that this software is a candidate for
RELEASE. Release to the public as a finished application. You couldn't
release this thing. This software is closer to Alpha than Beta, and calling
it RC is euphamistic at best. A funny joke to be played on the testers.
This software is a year and half from being RC.
And I'm no Microsoft basher. I like Microsoft. I'm a shareholder and have
been using Microsoft O.S. since the Dos 1.0 days and using/programming
computers in general since the IBM 360 days. I'm not the most technical guy
around, plenty posting here are far more technical than I, and I'm not good
enough at programming to program good PC security, but apparently neither is
Microsoft.
The obvious issue, the rhinocerous in the bathtub, is Apple. Why Microsoft
is so wary I'll never know given Apple's market share, but they are. This
new interface is a direct result of the Aqua interface in OS-X. So given
that this is meant to compete directly with Apple, how is it Apple seems to
manage security without UAC just fine? How is it Apple seems to offer a
reasonably intuitive interface (except where's the darn right mouse button!),
while still being secure, offering enough power to those that want it, but
not those that don't. Don't get me wrong. I am no Macintosh fan. I don't
like Apple. I never have. I own one for testing and so I'm familiar enough
with it to trouble shoot it, but that's it. The real winners with Vista will
be Apple. Every time I use Vista, my Mac starts looking a little better.
I'm disgusted with myself, but that's the truth.
----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/co...f4c&dg=microsoft.public.windows.vista.general