Neowin.net

"It was tricky to install, trickier still to get running"

If memory serves, the installer was almost identical to that of 98. And the CD was bootable unlike some 98 discs so you didn't even need a DOS floppy lying around.

Not another bash fest of windows vista...Give it a break already people, please..It may not work for you for whatever reasons, but it does not make it a bad OS has it works for a good number of people just fine. Windows ME on the other hand, had major issues considering MS only spent 9 months throwing it together.

While I wouldn't compare Vista to ME technically, due to ME being a complete disaster; what was the max uptime on it 5 minutes? I would compare the two in worthiness i.e. If you had 98 what was the point of going to ME? an update WMP and IE which could both be downloaded and installed on 98. So if you have XP what's the use of Vista......... a new WMP and IE, which YEP can both be downloa... ahhhh you know the words. OK so you can get Media Centre as well but if you have XP Pro and need it's features (eg Remote Desktop) you have to shell out for the top of the line product.


I'll stick with XP MCE and see what happens with V7

Even as an Apple devotee, I have to say that we really need to wait at least a year and *then* take a good long look at the numbers. In other articles I've come across, Vista has shown some backbone with respect to solid sales figures.

In fact, I'd say we need to wait even longer and see what the landscape looks like once Leopard has gone head-to-head wth competition.

I may be biased toward Apple, but fair's fair.

the most irritating thing in Vista is the fact that you must get new hardware to get it running.... and Drivers.. a real pain to find a working one. I guess thats what most people irritates about Vista.
UAC u can always turn it off and some other "new features" that you dont like... i dont think Vista = Me II, but MS should really move his ass and pull a SP to fix things....
5 years and they couldnt release a fully working OS... thats annoying!

Why people are complaining about Vista? I have Vista Ultimate x64 and is by far superior in stability, performance and security than XP. I have xp pro and I will never going back to XP. Vista is a pleasure to use it for work and gaming.

Right, MS profits beat expectations due to Vista and Office but its a failure?

Vista is the first Windows home OS that has actually networked painlessly and easily ... most have randomly thrown errors at various points.

Yes ZDnet are a trusted source of intelligent technology reporting. /sarcasm

He just wrote this for page hits from nerds who already agree with him.

Vista works well for me and continues to on anything I install it on; including both my Mac's and my Vaio (which came with it).... that and a bunch of work machines.

I agree with LTD... the only thing that I would add is that we are gonna get Vista rammed down our throat by M$, whether we like it or not. They have too much vested here. I'm waiting for Leopard and am running a MacBook w/ Bootcamp (XP)... so I can wait. I also have Dell w/ XP SP2 and am not running out the door...

LTD didn't actually go the biased-fan way entirely, But sure.

I challenge ZDNet or any other "knowledgeable" company to point me to such critical flaws in Vista as there were on ME. Most, If not ALL, Of the issues I've seen with Vista since the late RCRTM builds are all 3rd party driver issues, Or there lack of.

Technically Win ME was disaster. That said Vista isn't - it quite stable. So you can't compare on technical qualities. That said neither offered anything signifciant other than system restore on me and dx10 on vista.

Also windows me last lasted like 18 months before xp came out. I susspect we will see another os from microsoft late 2008 early 2009.. which should be vista propper.

Oh and making dx10 - vista only, is probably the worst idea microsoft came up with.

Windows Me never gave me problems In fact I thought it was way faster than Windows 98SE.

The author is merely pointing out his experiences with an OS which after almost 7 years in the making hasn't really captured his imagination.

This launch reminds me of the XP launch. Not every piece of hardware worked in XP from 2000, there were still annoyances and bugs, but after some patches and SP1, things were starting to look good.

I feel this is the same way in most respects. I was an early adopter of XP as well as with Vista now - and I can say while things haven't been perfect this is in no way the magnitude of disaster that Windows ME was. Not even close.

The only similarity is that both are Microsoft's "in-between" releases.


---

Ya know I really have to admit that I don't understand what all the fuss is about over Vista.

I've had it since March and as far as I'm concerned, its the absolute BEST OS MS has designed. ME was a total disaster, Vista is not even close. This OS for me is rock solid. It's performans is purely outstanding. I have not had a single problem.

I think the worst thing about Vista is that Microsoft was selling the O/S in the media as the "third coming of Christ" beforehand. With that kind of build-up (plus the 7 year wait), they should have known that the buying public's expectation would be beyond huge.

When I use my business PC running Vista, I cannot escape the feeling that I'm either running a beta O/S or a lackluster XP SP3 wannabe. It's memory optimization is horrible considering the sweet spot for Vista x86 is 3GB. UAC is just plain annoying and MS even admits that it's not really doing much to keep your computer secure. If I had actually paid for Vista (I'm using a freebie from MS), I'd be totally seething right now.

The Vista experience is so lackluster that I can't even bring myself to buy a copy for my gaming PC. Why do I need all the expensive bloat just to play a game? For now, XP suits me just fine. Normally, love to play with the shiny new stuff. Maybe down the line when DX10 finally shows up (Another mistake made by MS in not releasing it from the beginning) there might actually be a game made that's worthy of it. Crysis is pretty but it just screams "tech demo" to me. Meh!

Finally the Home Basic, Ultimate, and x86 SKUs are completely confusing and unnecessary.

I used to believe all this stuff about Vista being a failure, until I took the time to actually look at sales figures. Then you realise it's not, and all this "Vista is making Microsoft lose cause no one likes it" attitude the media keep pushing is simply complete and utter bollocks.

Regardless of whether you agree that Vista is a good product, it's the fastest selling OS in history - so it's clearly not failed and thus shut the **** up.

It's boring and media spin.

I love vista. There are a few things I would tweak, but its one hell of an upgrade over xp. Even the damn time dialog is upgraded.

-d

Windows Vista is a hell of a lot better than any other version of Windows on the consumer line. I love it, right now I'm on my laptop and my battery is barely draining because of the advanced power management settings I can configure.

Vista may have its share of problems, but its hardly something you can compare to ME.

The post title had me rofl.

The main problem with Vista is likely to be people who expect it to run on old hardware. I just got a new laptop that came bundled with Vista. The hardware on the laptop was what I shopped for, everything was by vendors that I know actually provide good support in both Windows and Linux ...read Nvidia and Intel here.

My first move was to put Kubuntu on it. When I saw how buggy Beryl was and that the card reader and bluetooth didn't work, I went back to Vista. On the right hardware Vista is no problems at all. Sure, some programs will not run on it even in compatibility mode, like the software for my Sony Ericsson phone ...something I am not so desperate to have as I'm gonna change phones soon anyway.

I love Windows Vista - I love the stability of it, I could run it for weeks on end without having to restart, unlike XP... But again, it all boils down to driver issue's with me.

Once these driver issue's have been worked out, then I will go back to Vista.

ANY ONE who thinks Vista is anyway related to the Win ME OS is in my opinion retarded!

5 Reasons why Vista is better than ME
1: Win ME was a POS because the OS was a total disaster and it was Microsoft’s fault! Vista has issues with drivers because the vendors haven't made ones that works, it isn't Microsoft’s responsibility to make a driver for every piece of hardware in the market.
2: Win ME failed to install even from a format, I can load vista just fine on a fresh install but I can't dual boot with XP because it’s an issue with my nforce 590i chipset.
3: Vista doesn't crash every 5 min after its installed unless its a driver, win me you could get a fresh install and it would crash when you clicked on solitaire! With my 590i chipset if i use the default driver for my nic that vista has it will crash but if I install the driver set from nvidia works perfectly.
4: Vista has lived up to what it has advertised! I remember when Win ME came out, Microsoft said it was the fastest and most reliable OS in Microsoft’s history, well just let history speak about that.
5: Vista isn't liked mainly because they changed a lot of features such as the control panel personally I don't care for it, but I didn't care for XP's control panel either! Many people don't give Microsoft enough credit that when they change something it is generally a good change, but I have to say I hate how the network sharing center works how it navigates and how you find an ip for a nic, I loved the support and general tabs in XP!

There are a lot of features that people don't like because they are new and if the community makes a big enough stink they will make significant changes to the OS to accommodate what we want from vista just like they did with Win 98se. If you have a problem with it let’s make our voices heard about what we don't like about it and petition for change, bashing an OS will bring about change but not as quickly as it could be if you were being productive about it.

Look I am not a Microsoft fan boy I run Linux on my multimedia pc and I use a pc and macs at work. I just think Vista will be the best OC Microsoft has made ever when the driver, codec and in general support moves to it. Win XP has been around almost 6 years and people don't like change and that’s a fact, but XP took almost 6-8months for good drivers after its release and vista has only been out 3 so for the moment guys stfu and don't blame Microsoft vista's short comings it isn’t entirely their fault, granted they rushed it out and should have gotten the support first but do you run a international / multibillion dollar company and make decisions that will affect the world? I think not, I think Microsoft did fall on their sword in that respect and should have gotten Vista to them earlier to develop for but whats done is done and now it's a waiting game for them to develop drivers. The only reason why Win XP had no driver support right away was because of Win ME and how badly it flopped!

Last edited by Kayden on 27 Apr 2007 - 14:06

This seems like a really silly comparison in my eyes. I was dumb enough to buy ME when it came out and after realizing how terrible it was I went back to Windows 98. When XP came out I went ahead and downloaded because I refused to buy it since I felt like MS owed me for the ME mistake. Since then I've learned to love XP and Vista isn't far behind. And to those of you who have problems running it on certain hardware, I would really like to see your specs. I have an Ahtlon XP 2800+, 1 gig of ram and a Radeon 9600 and I'm having no problems. The only thing I blame MS for is making XP their greatest OS to date and making it nearly impossible for Vista to improve upon that.

This dude is pathetic and to prove my point.... he has a story about Apple having a fantastic quarter but no story about an even fantastier MS quarter meaning? he's an Apple fanboy otherwise he'd mention the huge quarter MS had with vista and office launches (which equals to a year of apple... hehe)

This is some damn bull**** spread by the Inquier. Get it thru your ****ing heads

Vista is better than all the OSs that have been released by MS and way better that OSX. Linux is too customizable to say that its better; Linux can and cannot be better.

STOP ****ING CALLING IT WINDOWS ME 2 (sorry for the caps but had to get this point across to some morons)

I said this was going to happen from day 1 when I booted up my Vista Ultimate box.

First thing that came to mind was windows Me sadly.

Vista just feels like it something that "could've been" more. In other words it's not finish.

You'd have to know next to nothing about computers to start talking about Vista as if it were "Me". I hope the people who are calling it "Me 2" relaize how immature and foolish they sound but at least its giving us a good laugh.

And let's clear up one more misconception: there was nothing wrong with Me. It was faster and had more features than 98. But I guess when you can't figure out how to work a computer you blame Microsoft. No one will take responsibility for themselves anymore. Just look at the guy who's trying to sue nVidia because he couldn't figure out how to get his video card working.

take a look at the polls at zdnet.

and I think it would be more the IT people who can say whether vista reminds them of me not a fanboy.

Months ago i said that Windows Vista will follow the step of windows-me.

I'm not saying that windows vista = windows-me it's plain stupid to say it, but in marketing, business, entry and such.

Almost all users stayed with windows98 (mainly windows98se) over the windows-me, even when windows-me was more modern (?) secure (?) and with more multimedia features (?).

Also windows98/se had back-support with old drivers, windows-me starting breaking this support giving nothing but troubles for the windows-me users. What's the with the new paradigm of drivers?. nothing, the common users gain nothing, the manufactured gain nothing, oem gain nothing.

Also windows-me eat almost the double of the resources that windows98.

Change windows98 to windows xp, and windows me to windows vista and we will see the same pattern.

The only difference is that also windows-me had a "nice feature", where big files suddenly (randomly?) dissapear, also random crash and many "surprises".

With all this fuss... bottom line, I am going to wait for Vista SP1 before I make the move. I made that assertion a very long time ago. I think that it's a wise decision... no need to rush (at least for me).

I think that the very reason this is being brought up, with the repeated development cycles of Vista, the long time it was under development, the multi-billion spent and huge numbers of devs and entire rewrite ... but some people complain its slow, buggy (granted its a 1.0) shows something is at least wrong with Vista. If not in speed but in development, management from MS.

I honestly believe this is a case of a lot of people talking about things that they haven't dealt with personally, and just don't know wtf they are talking about.

Also, it's like anything negative. Take the war for example. People are going to talk about the bad stuff a thousand times more than the positive stuff that is going on.

I made the jump to vista last week after reading hundreds of posts like this. And yeah, there are still a few things to smooth out, but it's a very young OS. People need to stop expecting instant gratification.

This 'MEII' thing is really starting to get to me. It's obnoxious.

The trolls up there a ways seem to be right in saying that all this was started by the Inquirer.

I'll say what I said before to a friend: Vista is a let down? Sure. Not the Longhorn we were expecting? Absolutely.

A failure? Heck no. It's a more modern system than XP to be sure. There are certainly flaws; there is no way I could disagree with that. There are flaws. But every OS seems to have that problem.

Vista is not a bad system. There may be some similarities between its launch and the ME debacle, but some of us online are taking that way too far. If nothing else, Vista brings a sweet new interface, unlike ME, which looked almost just like every other Windows release since '95. Not precisely, but you get the point.

There are new features under the hood. Networking has changed severely (although not consistently for the better.) The new Start menu is, I suppose, a 'you love it or you hate it' sort of arrangement. I, for one, really like it.

I can tell you that Windows Vista is doing at least something right for sure. I uninstalled RC1 from my brother's machine and replaced it with Windows XP (with all the necessary modifications) and he really missed Vista. I'm not sure why he feels that way, exactly, but I know that he really likes Vista. Even coping with the fact that his laptop scroll function doesn't work properly. Ignoring the fact that almost every time his laptop sleeps, RC1 locks up and doesn't bring back video. It is still a good operating system. And this is RC1, remember, so at least some of these problems may not be relevant anymore.

Of course there are things wrong with it. Honestly, I was a nay-sayer for a long time. Actually, I still am; I could produce a laundry list of Vista flaws. They are certainly there.

But come on, people. MEII? No way. Look at this system. It's nowhere near that bad.

I guess those persons who actually bought vista now feel a sense of desperation to justify the unnecessary expenditure. Truth be told, if you had XP pro runningly smoothly, you would have to be severely mentally challenged to ditch that for a totally non-essential , problematic and expensive vista.

This whole topic is an easy way for websites to get traffic. Shame on Neowin for reporting it on the front page. It's sensationalist nonsense at its best.

I've got Windows Vista, I love it. Stop dissing it please.

LOL @ this article.

First of all, ZDNet hasn't bee a reliable source since about 1999.

Second, all you have to do is put Windows Me and Windows Vista side by side and if you can still tell me they are both one in the same, you're ****ing blind and/or stupid. Windows Me was one last cheap attempt to get money out of the 9x line before they destroyed it for good. It had people on the team that were out to get Microsoft and knew their jobs were on the line - proven fact. That resulted in horrible coding and feature-less designs that made Windows Me the worst OS ever developed - not to mention it's short developmental timeframe.

As for Vista, which was in production even before Windows XP was finished, had the proper people and tools in place as well as the proper developmental stages and direction. It has several new features and technologies that not only makes it stand out from Windows Me, but Windows XP as well. We're not just talking visual styles, which we had to expect was going to show up in Windows eventaully to compete with OSX and to appeal to the 21st century consumer market, we're talking a ton more. First of all, off the product line, it's a fairly inexpensive purchase. Second, it's feature-rich and that's important to get your bang for the buck. User Account Control (can be annoying but it shows how important security is), Kernel Patch Protection (only people bitching are a/v developers), DX10 (which will show up a lot more in the future in games), NX security, redone audio stack, IPv6, steath modding, thread pools (most of you have no idea wtf this even is), redone memory management, WDDM, SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, ReadyBoot (if you have more than 700 MB of RAM, it will optimize the boot process by caching), prioritized I/O system, delayed service starts.

I'm not even going to continue listing the enhancements/features/changes/upgrades. Although I am waiting for SP1 before I upgrade, if you still think Vista is like Windows Me, then you should really get away from the IT industry completely.

I'll say it again, vista is on a btter track at fixing its bugs and driver issues then xp ever did when it was released. It took xp a year to fix these issues, and look, its only been 4 months since vista was officially released, so give it a f***ing break here, vista is NOT ME2, and is NOT a failure. Jesus, all you kiddies that grew up only knowing XP get off microsofts ass over this. Like alot of people above all this vista bashing is simply to get hits to a website/blog and cause controversy, nothing solid and based in fact. So again, STFU with all this vista bashing, vsta=ME2 crap...PLEASE!!!!!

XP works well
Vista doesnt

why use it?

with Me we at least had the chance to get windows 2000 and experience something worthy
and vista is not that bad

WinMe is as to WinVista only in as much as Vista doesn't presently present a compelling reason to upgrade for most people.

DX 10? Great, but since there's no DX 10-only games yet, that's out.
UAC? No thanks, I'd rather drill a hole in my head with a rusty screwdriver.
Bitlocker & TPM? Sorry, not paranoid enough to need that. And if I did, I'd use something that doesn't have a backdoor.
Aero Glass? I don't need a stupid 3D desktop feature using up system resources, thank you very much.
Flip 3D? I can find my files just fine the old (XP) way.
Ultimate Extras? Not worth it.

Here's the problem: And it's a big one.

A LARGE part of the tech community hedged a bet that vista was at very leasty going to be a marginal failure. That this would be a giant blow to Microsoft, that it'd leave an opening for both Linux Desktop and Mac varaities to finally take a foothold without having to fight for every inch.

(NOTE: I Want Ubuntu to succeeded. I'm not a Windows Fan boy.)

And despite the fact that there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case, on a technical, financial, public perception, or economical level, the tech community is still hedging on that bet.

As for Dell shipping XP again, it has nothing to do with the ACTUAL public wanting vista, but them caving to the Linux Fan boys on Idea storm so desperate (By the way, asking Idea Storm for ideas on business smart decisions is like asking a hippie commune about business models if you ask me.) for Vista to fail, they voted for XP over it.

The Tech media is playing to their audience, and their own stereo types, and blatantly ignoring the facts. It's dishonest and mean spirted, and going to end up causing a lot of hurt bottom lines in the end...and as I've canceled my subscription to PC World and Wired over their inability to, ya know, actually print the truth and not their fantasy world lies of "MICROSOFT BOB RIDES AGAIN!" I have a sinking feeling it's not going to be Microsoft that ends up losing this.

Me always worked just great for me

Glassed Silver:mac

just FYI. microsoft's stock boosted 4% b/c vista and office sales were good.

Last edited by leo221 on 27 Apr 2007 - 18:12

This writer is an idiot.

LOL at the writer vista its the best os yet YES for me even bette than xp it runs better

So far vista has worked for me, I used the beta and it worked nice, Specially for developing in visual Studio (for some reason NOW it gives a Warning before it didn't)

I wonder how are going to corporate this things. Oh And one new nice feature: IIS7.0

People on here keep making statements that the new driver models in Vista don't benefit anyone, and it's just a move to add more DRM. These people are WRONG. Take the new video driver model. First of all, there were many changes that were necessary to accomodate DX10, plus they've added the ability for applications to better share the GPU (ever try running multiple 3D apps at once in XP?), and they moved the majority of the driver out of kernel mode to increase stability (even with nVidia's buggy release drivers that crashed every 15 minutes, I never once had them take down the whole OS).

These things DO benefit the users, and even though they add alot more work for the hardware vendors right now, in the end it will benefit them as well.

Is Vista another ME? Not at all. It's main issue right now is driver support. Why do you think you see such varying posts from people, some with no issues at all, others saying it crashes all the time, runs slow, and nothing works? Is it because Vista randomly selects which users it's going to work for, and which it's not? No, it's different people have different hardware, which means different drivers. Once this is worked out everyone will see that Vista is a success in many regards (though by no means perfect).

I agree with Steven Parker (AKA Neobond) past and present articles on Windows Vista... To be honest with the ever increasing vulnerability being reported to Microsoft on a daily basis, I'm just thankful my version of Vista was a complimentary copy from MS and I didn't have to put a penny out.

My advice at the moment is wait until SP1 comes out. Let them fix all the problems at the moment and then reinstall it again once all the vulnerabilities have been resolved. Windows Vista Better than a Mac, Yep, I would tend to agree, although 10.3 is a bit buggy but still a great OS. RESPECT the MAC. You throw just about anything at a Mac OS and it will not break unless you accidentally drop your hard drive into the recycle bin and then empty it. Then you are slightly buggered. Just a little.

Vista = Me.... I don't think so because Me was just an utter abortion, an OS built around Win98 Kernell is a bad idea to start with. Win98 Winsock was a total joke.

Vista is not bad, I agree it has it's problems but what the heck did you expect, Microsoft telling you everything is fine.

Comparing Windows Vista to ME isn't fair in my opinion. Windows XP has about the same number of problems prior to SP1 being released than Vista if memory serves me correctly.

I have vista buisness on one computer and XP mce on another.
I will soon upgrade the mce when i get a printer dirver for vista premium.
other than that, i think vista is ready, even before SP1. i got the readyboost to work and am impressed with it.
Vista is the most stable OS than any OS i have ever been on.(count out Ubuntu. I haven't installed or used Ubuntu yet.)
i recomend it to all my clients with a disclaimer to make sure printers,faxes and other periphiels have a driver for vista.

I find the Concorde with asserted how much from Zdnet. I have used for some time windows seen Home Premium (32 bit) on a Athlon 64 bitVenice 3,2 GHZ, 1 GB of ram DDR and a card Seen Radeon video x550. decidedly turns worse in every operation respect to XP, not counting that also R-retired it occupies is the processore that the ram!! I do not see the true motivations in order to pass R-a.vista, considenrando that here in ITALY, coast TANTISSIMO

Bullocks.It's all bullocks.

I do think Vista is a Windows ME, its got a new GUI and sorta has the Apple look, as an OS, i think its no better than XP.

The next Winodws will be what they wanted in this one....

if you are using old HW just stick to xp , like me .. vista its not worthy for old systems .. and i dont think vista its ME II, actually its a little step for big improvement for the future of the MS Os's.

I sorta agree. I don't really like Vista and Microsoft's "either you adopt Vista or you're not with us" attitude really bugs me. I think Vista is bloated. However, my feeling is that Vista won't be a complete and utter flop like ME was (although I liked ME; it worked well for me, it just wasn't adopted publicly), but it won't be the best selling OS, either. I think many people will choose to stick with XP instead, and Microsoft will eventually back off with its' Vista grip and realize that Vista isn't as "WOW" as they claim it to be. But, Vista will be updated a lot, and by the time Windows Seven rolls around, Vista will still have issues, but it will be better than when it was gold.

My gut feeling that Microsoft will do a GREAT job with Windows Seven and really make it to be a wonderful OS, like XP was, and people will just forget about Vista.

My two cents.

Windows Vista is horrible bloatware, no doubt it will have compatibility issues,
just as XP has when connecting to a Windows 2000 Domain. Comparison to
Windows ME - 98 (in it's day) is reasonably legitimate IMO. Obviously things
have moved on though. Windows 2000 is still Microsoft's best O/S in terms
of simplicity and usability.

Who needs a massively powerful wind tunnel just to run a web browser,
office application, storage and DVD player. Maybe some dedicated gamers
"need" powerful PC's, but most people would be happy with one of the
excellent games consoles.

The future of hardware is surely low energy, lean embedded OS with
storage. The days of mainstream PC's (in their current guise) are
reaching an end (along with current Windows desktop bloatware), anyone
can see that. The computer market will fragment into a myriad of
"convergent PDA type devices". Real, mobile, "Person Computing"