main
Report a problem

After month, no rush to adopt Vista

Daniel Fleshbourne   on 28 December 2006 - 01:35 · 35 comments & 14107 views

Advertisement (Why?)
Windows Vista has been on the market for nearly a month now, but enterprise users and industry experts agree that Microsoft's latest and greatest OS still isn't yet ready to replace XP. The problem is not with the software itself -- by most accounts, Vista is technically solid -- but with myriad peripheral issues that Microsoft must work out to take the pain out of using Vista.

Take patching, for example. On Dec. 12, Microsoft released an Internet Explorer 7 fix that improved the performance of IE's phishing filter. The software had been bogged down by Web sites with a large number of frames, and users had been complaining. Microsoft patched the problem for Windows XP and Server 2003 users, but not for Vista. That update will come after the consumer release of Vista hits the market some time in January, according to a spokeswoman for Microsoft's public relations agency. And although Microsoft is now issuing security patches for Vista, performance-related updates such as the phishing filter are being handled on a case-by-case basis, she said.

Microsoft won't say why it is holding off on some Vista patches even though the product is commercially available for business customers, but Russ Cooper, a senior information security analyst at Cybertrust, has a theory. "I say Microsoft never intended anybody to run Vista prior to January," he said. "What works on Vista, beyond Office 2007?" he asked. "I'm going to Vista ... when my VPN supplier tells me that they have drivers that work, and when my anti-virus vendor tells me that they have non-beta versions that work."

View: The full story
News source: InfoWorld

Post a comment · Send to friend Comments · There are 35 additional comments
#1 fracture_x on 28 Dec 2006 - 01:37
history repeats itself. just like XP started. what else is new?
(1 reply) #2 crimsonhead on 28 Dec 2006 - 01:38
in my mind vista still feels like beta. it feels incomplete.
#2.1 sphbecker on 29 Dec 2006 - 17:25
In some respects that is true. I really don't think MS made Vista available to corp. users early in hopes that it would be rolled out, but so corp. users could start testing. Very few hardware manufactures fully support Vista (ever heard of Dell, they don't yet), so it would be pretty stupid for a company to start pushing Vista prior to Jan 30th.

It is a little silly to say you are going to wait until SP1 or SP2, because the problems with Vista are lack of 3rd party support, MS is not going to make Vista work with your old Win3.1 software with a patch. However, I can fully understand waiting for vendors to add vista support.
#3 amrinders87 on 28 Dec 2006 - 01:40
This is hardly news. It was expected. Its up to the software/drive manufacturers to make compatible software.
(8 replies) #4 drygnfyre on 28 Dec 2006 - 01:47
Of course there is no rush to upgrade to Vista. It hasn't been released to consumers yet.
#4.1 RAID 0 on 28 Dec 2006 - 03:03
Well, not to the "home" user. Really, as someone stated before... "just like XP" I didn't switch to XP till over two years after it was released because I thought 2000 was by FAR better...now.. after 1231432 patches and updates... XP is great. :-)
#4.2 phantom on 28 Dec 2006 - 11:59
Quote - RAID 0 said @ #4.1
Well, not to the "home" user. Really, as someone stated before... "just like XP" I didn't switch to XP till over two years after it was released because I thought 2000 was by FAR better...now.. after 1231432 patches and updates... XP is great. :-)


other than some hardware support, and some os restrictions(quite a few artificial), 2k is far superior.
#4.3 _dandy_ on 28 Dec 2006 - 13:56
Quote - phantom said @ #4.2
Quote - RAID 0 said @ #4.1
Well, not to the "home" user. Really, as someone stated before... "just like XP" I didn't switch to XP till over two years after it was released because I thought 2000 was by FAR better...now.. after 1231432 patches and updates... XP is great. :-)


other than some hardware support, and some os restrictions(quite a few artificial), 2k is far superior.


Can you, uh, substantiate that?
#4.4 lbmouse on 28 Dec 2006 - 14:00
Quote - drygnfyre said @ #1
Of course there is no rush to upgrade to Vista. It hasn't been released to consumers yet.

Well, this is geared towards enterprise users. Many enterprises are either trying to figure out how to upgrade from 98/NT/2K to XP or to another OS platform. Vista hasn't even entered the equation. I know the corp IT guys at my company won't touch Vista with a 10 ft pole until at least SP2.
#4.5 guylaroche on 28 Dec 2006 - 18:01
Quote - lbmouse said @ #4.4
I know the corp IT guys at my company won't touch Vista with a 10 ft pole until at least SP2.
Why?
#4.6 briangw on 28 Dec 2006 - 18:10
Quote - guylaroche said @ #4.5
Quote - lbmouse said @ #4.4
I know the corp IT guys at my company won't touch Vista with a 10 ft pole until at least SP2.
Why?


Because (prob like my company), you want things to be tested and tried to verify compatibility with software/hardware and other things. We never rolled out to XP until 2 years ago, prior to SP2. We were sitting on NT 4 forever. Plus, if you had any downtime, imagine the amount of money and revenue that would be lost trying to recover the OS on multiple machines.

It's generally a corporate practice for most companies, although I cannot speak for EVERYONE!
#4.7 lbmouse on 28 Dec 2006 - 21:23
Quote - briangw said @ #4.6
Because (prob like my company), you want things to be tested and tried to verify compatibility with software/hardware and other things.

Exactly. Plus when you compound these problems times 45,000 employees (just in the Americas), it becomes a logistical nightmare. The IT division wants to make sure that ALL of the bugs are worked out before even thinking of upgrading. I've heard other sore spots from corp which include licensing issues, hardware requirements, and the fact that MS stripped Vista down to a version that is not much more than XP plus (as far as for business users).
#4.8 +Odom on 29 Dec 2006 - 07:37
My company is only upgrading to XP SP2 in a couple of months. We've been testing it's compatibility with in-house software for the past years, almost since XP came out. Vista was never mentioned and probably won't be even considered for the next 2 years minimum.
(5 replies) #5 Foub on 28 Dec 2006 - 01:49
I don't use IE 7. It too much bloatware now. I use Firefox instead. I only use IE 7 to get updates from Microsoft's update site.
#5.1 +Nightwind Hawk on 28 Dec 2006 - 02:09
I must agree that, on many PC's i've used, IE7 is really slow and freezes until the homepage is loaded. (e.g. when the homepage site is down, you can't stop it.. you have to wait for it to time out)
#5.2 +Octol on 28 Dec 2006 - 07:25
Quote - Nightwind Hawk said @ #5.1
IE7 is really slow and freezes until the homepage is loaded. (e.g. when the homepage site is down, you can't stop it.. you have to wait for it to time out)

You might want to stop using a home page that doesn't load properly every time. Try this home page:

about:blank

It loads instantly every time. Then, if you then click on a link to a page that won't load, you can open another window or tab and move on to a page that will load faster and go back to the slow-poke page after it's had time to load.
#5.3 AfroTrance on 28 Dec 2006 - 14:50
Quote - Octol said @ #5.2
You might want to stop using a home page that doesn't load properly every time. Try this home page:

about:blank

It loads instantly every time. Then, if you then click on a link to a page that won't load, you can open another window or tab and move on to a page that will load faster and go back to the slow-poke page after it's had time to load.


In all your glorious wit you missed the point. The issue isn't the slow loading home page. It is IE freezing when it is loading the home page. Any capable browser wouldn't freeze when loading a website.
#5.4 +Octol on 29 Dec 2006 - 02:22
Quote -
In all your glorious wit you missed the point.

Really.

I have seven computers running variously XP SP2, 2003 Standard SP1, 2003 Enterprise SP1, 2003 Enterprise R2 – including one copy on a VMware Server (XP Host), Vista RTM, and Longhorn Server (August CTP). Every one runs IE7 without any significant problems except when there's a connection problem with whomever is serving the web pages.

This is to say that I don't have any problems with about 98+% of the websites that I visit. So excuuuuuuuuuse me if I've erroneously jumped to the conclusion that whatever problems people are experiencing have less to do with the browser they're using than with the web pages they're trying to load.

Last edited by Octol on 29 Dec 2006 - 02:30
#5.5 sphbecker on 29 Dec 2006 - 17:19
Quote -
In all your glorious wit you missed the point. The issue isn't the slow loading home page. It is IE freezing when it is loading the home page. Any capable browser wouldn't freeze when loading a website.


I have used IE7 on a number of computers and my home page (by policy) is set to the companies internal site; meaning that when I am off the network work the site is always down yet I have never had to wait for it to timeout.
(1 reply) #6 Skyfrog on 28 Dec 2006 - 04:04
I was excited about XP though, but after using Vista RC1 I have absolutely no interest in it at all anymore. I don't think I would use it if they made it freeware.
#6.1 dhitb on 29 Dec 2006 - 01:24
Same here, I liked playing around with the RC's of XP and bought XP for two machines (third still running 2k) because of it. Vista had/has potential but no way am I laying down the cash for it. Not until some killer DX10 app requires it (won't be Crysis as it'll play on DX9, Alan Wake will play on the 360 probably better than my dual core will).
#7 Draje on 28 Dec 2006 - 04:26
I tried it and I find the interface to be too dumb for me. So many words to do so many tasks, very annoying. Also very bloated IMO.
#8 Pegus on 28 Dec 2006 - 04:28
I replaced XP with Vista on my home server, and it's working like a charm. Much better than XP ever did, in terms of networking and stability. Granted I can't play D3D or OGL games properly yet, but who cares, I got better things to do! All my AV, burning, multimedia, internet software works fine too.
#9 hardgiant on 28 Dec 2006 - 04:49
Vista will be great in 24 months from now when SP2 comes out, that is when Windows XP began to really shine. Also all the drivers will finally be solid and software glitches will be worked out.
#10 GEIST on 28 Dec 2006 - 05:18
I can just roll my eyes on all these twisted stupid Vista news and reports lately.
#11 +Odom on 28 Dec 2006 - 06:09
Haven't they ever heard of a testing period? They can hardly expect to release a new OS and have companies jumping to upgrade their networks. Some take years to finalise testing and make sure that everything runs fine on the new OS. Or were they only intending Vista to be for SMB?
(1 reply) #12 bathisland on 28 Dec 2006 - 06:18
Somehow I just cannot get excited about Vista like the way I was with XP. The interest is just not there.

XP is fine for now and I know Vista is not the ulitmate answer to XP. So why replace XP then
#12.1 AfroTrance on 28 Dec 2006 - 14:52
Quote - bathisland said @ #12
Somehow I just cannot get excited about Vista like the way I was with XP. The interest is just not there.


Why were you excited about XP? (Unless you went from 9x to XP...)
#13 obsolete_power on 28 Dec 2006 - 08:15
Well this isn't a surprise considering that Vista hasn't been released yet passed VLK. This is the reason that people are reluctant to buy it. Lack of driver support!
(1 reply) #14 cork1958 on 28 Dec 2006 - 09:29
Vista is just another money sucking step in Microsofts rise to power. I have NO interest in it at all. Even a pirated version (which I do already have) does not interset me. In fact, Winblows does not even interest me anymore. Switched to Linux over a year ago.
#14.1 billyea on 28 Dec 2006 - 16:40
Winblows , must've took an hour to create eh?
#15 RedHook on 28 Dec 2006 - 17:25
I am waiting for my company to get their copy through MSDN.....
#16 devHead on 28 Dec 2006 - 20:55
I had Vista on my computer for a few weeks, but I have recently gone back to Windows XP. I just found that too many programs don't work correctly, for example, Quicktime. Even the most recent update causes errors. Plus, I can't run my HP software for my printer/scanner in Vista. I got the COM surrogate errors since I have Nero 7 installed. I can't use Process Explorer for my task manager (although I will admit that Vista has excellent monitoring tools...finally!

I had to run Visual Studio and SQL server management studio as Administrator, and even then I have to supply the password each time. The Adobe updater constantly was having issues, and after a while, UAC got really annoying. Beta drivers for my sound card, Microsoft Mouse and Wireless keyboard, as well as a lot of other little things made me move back to XP for the time being. Once some of these glitches get worked out (I'm not saying they are all the fault of Vista) I will likely install Vista again.

Office 2007 is another story. I really like it.
#17 Aero Ultimate on 28 Dec 2006 - 21:48
Well, what did they expect?
Many programs still have compatibility issues, among them essentials like a decent firewall or antivirus.
For a good amount of hardware, the are no or only beta drivers out. Some older hardware won't run under Vista at all, as support for it was discontinued by the manufacturer.
#18 Yuxi on 01 Jan 2007 - 02:40
I'm not surprised...

Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!

Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.

Advertisement (Why?)