Vista is great or it sucks?

I know there is a lot of discussion out there about Vista.  I've been running Vista since November 2006 on my personal laptop and have my own list of +/- with it, but before I give my own thoughts I'm curious to hear your true, unbiased opinions about it from each of you out there.

What do you like or dislike about Vista?

Are we allowed to comment on the Apple adverts?

I too have been running Vista since the early days (Beta 1, 2 and finally RTM) and couldn’t be happier! Sadly, however, my sentiments aren’t echoed by others in some cases. I’ve spoken to individuals both in the IT industry and out and received what can only be categorized as a mixed bag of reactions. Some, like me, love Vista and make every effort to evangelize the product, but others seem to avoid the product (and sometimes the very subject) like the Plague. Over the course of my push to gather feedback (actionable or otherwise) I’ve gathered that some pain points certainly exist for the IT Professional and the average user alike. Some of these include:

1.       Increased hardware requirements-Many times I’ll ask someone whether they’ve made the jump to Vista and I’m greeted with the response of “Well, I’d love to deploy Vista, but I just don’t have the hardware to run it.” This is especially true for IT Pros who would like to deploy Vista in a managed environment, but are deploying to older machines that may not be quite “up to snuff”.  I’m hopeful, however, that this will soon change as most times an IT shop will deploy a new OS in concert with a hardware refresh cycle (at least that’s how I do it). Now for the average user who is a COMPLETELY different story. Most times an average user with hardware that can’t handle Vista aren’t well versed in the process of building a PC and are therefore stuck with their current machine unless they’d like to purchase a new machine. Thankfully, we will soon begin to see a change in this as most end users will at some time purchase a new PC with Vista pre-installed.

2.       Hardware incompatibilities-Another pain point I hear often is the fact that some older (or even new hardware in some cases) like scanners, printers, etc won’t work with Vista due to driver incompatibilities. At this point I try to educate the user and let them know that it’s not the fault of Microsoft that their particular hardware won’t function. Rather, it’s the fault of the device manufacturer as they have yet to implement a Vista compatible driver. Microsoft, unlike Apple, doesn’t manufacture the hardware on which Windows is installed and therefore cannot possibly prepare for every possible device that comes to market.

3.       Miscellaneous performance issues/bugs-This is the final major pain point I’ve come across and it’s a pretty large one at that. Many times end users will make it quite apparent that Vista has bugs and performs badly in their view. I make every effort to assure the user that Vista, as with any OS, will have bugs that will be fixed over time with Windows update as will the larger performance issues. Vista SP1 has already proven my point to some degree.

Even with all the negatives I’ve seen when it comes to Vista, I’ve also encountered a good number of positive reactions. Most are reactions to Kernel Protection, Aero, DX10, and other miscellaneous improvements. In summary, the biggest Pain Point I’ve seen has to be Application Compatibility with LoB (Line of Business) Applications.

Just my thoughts….

+Josh

Overall, the product is poor and doesn't provide enough value to justify the cost.   Main problems I see...

Driver support on desktops for me has been so-so, but driver support on my Dell laptop is terrible.  Dell doesn't support vista on it period depite it meeting the requirements just fine.  So I haven't been able to get an Nvidia video driver without going out and downloading a hacked version.  Above, someone commented that this isn't Microsoft's fault.  I totally disagree.  It is absolutely MS's fault as they didn't get out and force vendors to support their products with drivers early enough.  The fact that they dropped OpenGL support and NVidia and ATI didn't have drivers for months after GA release?  It was pathetic.  On my third vista machine which is a desktop, it crashes each time I use the DVD burner because of a RAID driver and I don't use the RAID features.  Worked fine in XP. 

The UAC was/is a complete joke.  Asking the user to validate that you want the computer to do something every 30 seconds?  Someone had to question that in the design phase.  Whoever overruled that guy should be fired. 

Performance is substandard, even with great hardware.  System pauses are common.  Game performance is lacking. 

Lots of misc. services added to startup that you don't need. 

Boot time is much longer. 

On the positive side, I got much improved search.  Beyond that I can't think of anything else I value.

Vista Ultimate only makes me feel worse.  For the extra money, I received bitlocker, texas holdem, and language packs. 

I would have switched back to XP, but I'm just too lazy to do it on three machines. 

Microsoft has had two major screw ups in the last couple years.  First was product management of Vista.  Second was betting so much on DRM.

I have no idea what's goin on.

This is in reply to mjulson's post. I field alot of these questions every week and I do understand the frustration it can bring. Technology should work better than this. But it's also important to give credit where credit is due.

Drivers will always be an issue as people don't want to release/support drivers for older hardware. They really don't get the ROI on it than say a new piece of hardware. What I am going to do though is turn the blame not to MS, but give that credit to the 3rd party ISVs. Why should MS be responsible for other ISV's software? Yes, they need to make an enjoyable experience for the Windows platform. But at the same time, the ISV's aren't doing enough to help facilitate this push, as they are also uniquely connected to this paradigm.

A perfect example is Nvidia. Why don't their drivers work? Sure, they have become much better but for the first 6 months...wow. I would completely understand the level of frustration I was seeing...because I was feeling it as well! But when a driver crashes, the general conclusion is that MS is at fault. I don't see it that way. When Nvidia has access to code and documentation to create a driver for what...1.5/2 years before the product is released, and they release a semi-stable one 4-6 months after it's released to customers that is wrong.

That is wrong in so many ways.

As for UAC, frankly I don't see it that often and I'm in IT. It helps with security, provides a safer environment, and will also improve user satisfaction in the long run as it helps with malware not messing up your PC. We're talking about the greater good, and that was an excellent design decision. I wish it wouldn't need to be there, but really the blame needs to be put on the ISV's who design their software to need admin privs. A good example of someone not following through with this is Intuit with QuickBooks. People, this rule has been in place for years...not something new.

The performance is an issue and you're right about this. I think it will improve as there is more optimization and better hardware, but I wish it would hurry. The boot time is pretty bad...what happened to the x second boot up???

Ultimate really isn't worth the money. MS marketing made a bad move there. What happened to the Extra's?

Again, credit where credit is due. I could vent some more...but I'll give it a rest.