[webwired]

I was just wondering if anyone else has noticed how desperate Microsoft appears to have become in order to sell Vista? I don't about you guys, but I had Vista on one Machine and after the initial first few months, I saw the dreaded blue screen more than the desktop... I tried and tried to give it a chance by continually getting the patches and fixes, but to no avail... Finally ditched it and went back to good ole XP...

I was just on Dell's site the other day, building my dream laptop and noticed that they are still selling XP downgrades with nearly all of their models... Then I keep seeing all these Mojave Experiment commercials trying to get people to give Vista a chance, makes me laugh...

I think they need to trash Vista and work on adding some of those really cool add-ons to XP and then sell it as something else if they need to...

[1lacca]

I don't see any BSOD on my Vista, but I don't do much on it either.

[Amadeus]

webwired, on 1 Oct, 2008 - 10:10 AM, said:

I think they need to trash Vista and work on adding some of those really cool add-ons to XP and then sell it as something else if they need to...

Although Microsoft will not trash Vista, the company has publicly acknowledged on several occasions that the adoption rate has never come close to desired projections, and that there have been many cases of downgrades to XP. They will continue to patch it and keep it in circulation, but their main mitigating action is that the have accelerated the release program for the next windows OS by a full year.

Like any large company, this is a setback they will adapt to. From my own personal vista experience (please keep in mind I don't use it as a main OS, so my own views come from somewhat limited usage) - I have 2 machines running Vista: One laptop and one desktop (wife's machine). The laptop has experienced a few driver problems (mostly with graphics), and a couple of sporadic BSODs over 8 months. The desktop has never experienced a problem with Vista (to date)...running it for a couple of years (including beta time).

[1lacca]

Yup, I was talking about a desktop as well. So far I've found only one thing in it that I like very much, it is power management (naturally, I am not talking about the way it is burning watts because of it's fancy visualizations).

Otherwise it reminds me of ME, it is a broken OS

[Locke]

1lacca, on 1 Oct, 2008 - 07:25 AM, said:

I don't see any BSOD on my Vista, but I don't do much on it either.

Same...except I do everything on it.

[KYA]

Those commercials annoy me when I am watching stuff on Hulu

[Locke]

I don't watch commercials, unless I'm not at home, and don't have my DVR...

[PsychoCoder]

Personally, Vista has never crashed on me a single time, no BSOD, nothing. It's a resource hog (that Ill admit) but I, nor my wife, has had a single problem with Vista

[Locke]

PsychoCoder, on 1 Oct, 2008 - 08:25 AM, said:

Personally, Vista has never crashed on me a single time, no BSOD, nothing. It's a resource hog (that Ill admit) but I, nor my wife, has had a single problem with Vista

Same, but no wife ...I don't know why some people's Vista crash all the time, and others don't at all.

And what do you have to worry about with resources?! Don't you have a 4 core processor, and like 4 GB RAM? Or is that like...your work computer?

[webwired]

I have to say, I'm jealous of all of you that haven't had any BSOD... I rather liked alot of the capabilities of Vista... In fact when I got my new machine, I thought it was the coolest OS yet, wasn't until after installing a few programs/games and then uninstalling them that it became irreversably corrupted... Then it acted like I used a bad registry fix program on it...

[baavgai]

Yep, desperation. And still disconnection. There's a sense that Microsoft feels it's lost touch with it's users and is trying to reconnect. The horrid Jerry things say as much. However, the subtext is that while most the technical community has panned the OS, Joe user is still none the wiser.

So the commercials don't really talk about anything of substance but rather try to convince the uninformed that they have somehow been misinformed. ( Curiously, this is similar to what those high fructose corn syrup commercials are attempting to do, though they're a little slicker about it. )

The problem is that their demographic is not as uninformed as they'd like. Most people who don't know anything about computers go out of their way to find someone who does. I've had people I barely know find me through a friend of friend, because of things they've "heard", and they have lots of questions.

My honest advice is usually, if it comes with the box, see what you think. Often the next question is, "but will my favorite program, that you've never heard of before, that's kind of old, run on it?" To which the answer is, best case, maybe.

[Amadeus]

PsychoCoder, on 1 Oct, 2008 - 11:25 AM, said:

Personally, Vista has never crashed on me a single time, no BSOD, nothing. It's a resource hog (that Ill admit) but I, nor my wife, has had a single problem with Vista

Same with the desktop I referenced...never one BSOD (or even crash) the whole time, and that includes running the Vista beta trials.

[akozlik]

I haven't had any problems with Vista on my laptop, and haven't seen a BSOD. However, I was trying to get Picasa set up on my parents' computer, and every time it scanned the hard drive it would go blue. They can't use Picasa now because of the issue.

I wonder if maybe it has to do with the type of hardware installed?

[no2pencil]

I would have to say that the desperation of Vista can be seen by the amount of cheap ($500 or lower) laptops whom firmware can only accept Vista drivers. It's monopoly style practices to attempt to keep the customer from installing another OS on the hardware (to bump or drive the number of Vista users) but it's a sign of desperation when you don't even allow your own older OS to be installed.

[KYA]

This is the part where we bludgeon the corporation for doing corporately things in corporate buildings.