Memo to new Vista users

[jdhurst]

People are looking for Vista support here, while Vista is still so new, there are (from a large point of view) not that many persons yet actually running Vista in a production environment.

Here are several quotes from Information Week Friday July 20,2007
* Vendors are continuing to sell and support Windows XP, as some users struggle with Vista incompatibilities with existing software and hardware.
* One industry analyst said it short-circuited key software programs he counts on: Quicken for balancing his checkbook, Lotus Notes e-mail and a networking program that connects his home to the office. His Sony camcorder also doesn't communicate with the PC properly.
* Hewlett-Packard(HP) Co. and Dell Inc.(Dell) recently started selling XP machines on their Web sites. Lenovo Group Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. also offer similarly equipped machines.
* Some companies have been slow to respond to Microsoft's call for upgrades. Consumers have taken note.
* The owner of the Computer Cafe, an independent computer store in Arlington, Massachusetts, says he received so many complaints about Vista after it was launched in February that he stopped selling machines loaded with the software. "People came back and said, 'Please, will you take this off and replace it with XP," he said.
* The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is advising incoming freshmen to buy PCs loaded with Windows XP.

None of this is to say the Vista won't eventually survive. It will. Many of us will move to it soon (2008, likely).

In the meantime, please do not be impatient if your Vista questions in here are not answered quickly. ... JDH

[Kyocera]

Good post sir

[ryengineer]

I just saw this thought it could fit into this topic, however if you believe this is hi-jacking then please gladly move it to another place.

Acer: PC Industry 'Disappointed' with Vista
Acer president Gianfranco Lanci today became the first major PC manufacturer to openly attack Microsoft over the Windows Vista operating system.
Matthew Broersma, Techworld
Monday, July 23, 2007 2:00 PM PDT

Acer president Gianfranco Lanci today became the first major PC manufacturer to openly attack Microsoft over the Windows Vista operating system. He was quoted in the Financial Times Deutschland .

Lanci said the operating system was riddled with problems and gave users and businesses no reason to buy a new PC, according to the report. Taiwan-based Acer is the world's fourth-largest PC manufacturer, after HP, Dell and Lenovo.

"The whole industry is disappointed with Windows Vista," Lanci said.

Despite the long wait between Windows XP and Vista, the latest operating system still lacks maturity, he said. "Stability is certainly a problem," he said.

Users are voting with their feet, Lanci said, so that the Vista launch has had the smallest impact on PC sales of any version of Windows in the history of PC manufacturing. He added the situation didn't look likely to change in the next six months.

Many business customers have specifically asked for Windows XP to be installed on their new machines, Lanci noted.

While industry pundits have detailed user problems with Vista over the past few months, including sluggishness, the expense of acquiring hardware powerful enough to run the OS and lack of support for many critical applications, PC makers have so far looked on the brighter side.

HP, Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba have continued offering XP-equipped machines, but these are generally aimed at consumers or small businesses, not large corporate clients.

Microsoft itself says Vista has been a smashing successs, saying it had already sold 20 million Vista licences by March.

Last week the company said its quarterly income was up 13 percent from the same quarter last year, growth it said was partly due to strong Vista sales.

The company has said most Vista users are satisfied and that nearly all software and hardware is compatible.

On the other hand, the company recently told analysts it expects Windows XP to make up a significantly larger part of sales than it had previously expected, at Vista's expense.

Chief financial officer Chris Liddell has told analysts that he expects XP to make up 22 percent of sales in Microsoft's new fiscal year, up from the previous estimate of 15 percent. Vista would make up the remaining 78 percent of Windows sales. Windows XP sales will, in other words, be nearly 50 percent higher in the next 12 months than Microsoft had estimated earlier.

Michael Cherry, analyst with Directions at Microsoft, said part of the problem is that users prefer lower-cost machines that might not work well with Vista.

"Most of the machines I see pitched in catalogs are in the $700 range, certainly under $1,000," said Cherry. "Computers with that amount of hardware are a better fit for XP. With Vista's requirements, people may be thinking about sticking with XP, and putting less money into the hardware."

It's possible, Cherry added, that Microsoft might find itself forced to recognise more reality in the future. "At some point, they might have to consider limiting the availability of XP," to push people to Vista.

The software developer has made at least one move in that direction already. In mid-April, it announced it would terminate sales of Windows XP to resellers and retail after January 2008. User reactions were almost unanimously negative.

Gregg Keizer of Computerworld contributed to this report.

[arni]

+1 for sticky!

Very good post that actually reflects the status quo with vista.

[Kyocera]

Good article rye, could this be what they call "Karma".

Users are voting with their feet, Lanci said, so that the Vista launch has had the smallest impact on PC sales of any version of Windows in the history of PC manufacturing. He added the situation didn't look likely to change in the next six months.

[tomh009]

Acer: PC Industry 'Disappointed' with Vista
Acer president Gianfranco Lanci today became the first major PC manufacturer to openly attack Microsoft over the Windows Vista operating system. (...)
Users are voting with their feet, Lanci said, so that the Vista launch has had the smallest impact on PC sales of any version of Windows in the history of PC manufacturing.

The cynic in me wonders whether Lanci's vitriole might have been triggered by Acer's drop back to the #4 spot in sales? Lenovo took the #3 spot back from Acer, and shipped 600K more units than Acer during last quarter.

It seems like users are voting with their feet indeed, but those feet are leading not away from Vista, but away from Acer ...

[jdhurst]

I have stickied this (for a while).

My point was to ask users for patience in solving Vista problems (there has been some impatience in here).

On the other hand, all posts are welcome. I do not want an OS war - I am looking forward to a Vista machine as soon as everything works. But the posts in here so far indicate that XP continues to have legs while Microsoft and the software vendors work out the bugs. ... JDH

[ryengineer]

The cynic in me wonders whether Lanci's vitriole might have been triggered by Acer's drop back to the #4 spot in sales? Lenovo took the #3 spot back from Acer, and shipped 600K more units than Acer during last quarter.....snip

Statistically speaking, Acer is still doing good but lenovo should never had fallen in the first place if it hadn't affected from a factor like Chinise new year. At this moment lenovo cannot deal with other factors that affects it's sales like low-cost notebooks starting as low as $500 from Acer, retail marketing i.e. more in-store availability etc. But lenovo has better image among customers due to IBM background and small backing which they're striving hard to maintain.

Regardless of above, Acer should be more than happy with Q1 sales at #3 spot and would've known better about lenovo's strike back.

Going back to the main topic, I cannot speak for other manufacturers but at lenovo customers have more demand for XP than Vista and reading from user experiences here, even those who opt for Vista, switch back to XP afterwards.

I don't have anything against Vista, to be honest I am using Vista, Matt (lenovo blogs) is using Vista, even many more people at lenovo are using Vista, why? because they're obliged to stay with latest trends.

[tomh009]

Going back to the main topic, I cannot speak for other manufacturers but at lenovo customers have more demand for XP than Vista and reading from user experiences here, even those who opt for Vista, switch back to XP afterwards.

Actually my anecdotal observations would suggest that over the past month or so more and more of the forum participants are going to Vista (even 64-bit!), compared to the strong resistance 3-4 months ago. Between 64-bit support, better tablet functionality and turbo memory, many people seem to be finding sufficient value in running Vista.

[Magic Wonder425]

Even though Vista was cheaper for me to purchase as my OS, I felt more comfortable going with XP Pro. I've heard a lot of complaints, but some people have said it's usable. To be on the safe side though, I stayed with something I'd be better off with.

[PanEuropean]

I moved over to Vista on my T42p about 3 months ago. I don't have any complaints about it - it has been stable, and I have had very few application problems - but I honestly don't think that Vista offers any great advantage over a carefully installed XP system. In other words, if I had to buy a new computer and it came with Vista, fine, I would take it, but if I had any other computers that were running XP SP 2, I would not bother to upgrade them.

I have found that I could resolve all of the small number of application problems I encountered by going to the Properties box of old applications (e.g. Quicken 2002) and checking the "Run in XP Service Pack 2 mode" box.

Michael

[Steerpike]

I was so scared of Vista, based on numerous stories, and resisted using it myself. We then bought a couple of low-end laptops for some on-call users, and I decided to take the plunge and go with Vista.

Initial results were very bad; the machines were very slow. However, I did not have the time to research and experiment, I just received the machines, went through the initial setup, added our limited number of extra programs, configured the machines as I would an XP machine (to the extent possible/logical), and shipped out.

Now, 6 months later, I decided I would do a clean install of Vista on my T60. This has forced me to explore the OS first-hand, and deal with a variety of issues.

Bottom line is, I'm loving my Vista install! I have about 40 programs that I had installed on my XP box, and I've re-installed every one of them on the Vista box without issue, except Scansoft Paperport (which is ALWAYS an issue on new OS's!).

I followed various threads about turning off indexing, tablet services, etc, and I can't say my machine is any slower than it was under XP. I run full 'Aero' with transparency, even though my 'index' is only about 3.5 on graphics. I also run as a non-admin, using elevated credentials when needed (corporate policy).

I'm now desparately trying to get those two 'on-call' laptops back from the field, so I can apply my new found knowledge to them!

Some of the powerful features in Vista that I'm very keen on are: the new advanced firewall, with separate profiles for domain, public, private; the new group policy objects for firewall administration, power savngs, etc; the whole concept of 'elevated credentials' - given that, as a company, we have to run with no local admin rights, XP was always a bit clunky in terms of dealing with the concept of 'run as...'; and my latest discovery - 'offline folders'. They've really re-vamped and improved offline folders in Vista, to the point where it looks usable.

Anyway, I'm a convert!

Note - in this 'Clean Install' of Vista, I did not install any of the 'bloatware' from ThinkVantage/IBM/Lenovo. I've discussed this elsewhere, and I know there are those who think it makes life harder not to do so, but I found it very easy to simply grab about 10 key drivers from the lenovo site (chipset driver, etc) and leave it at that.

[Crunch]

I have a dual-boot system (XP SP2 and Vista Ultimate (x86)), and in the early days, I also kept switching back and forth, but as of 6 months ago now, XP is only there as a backup OS with no apps installed. As soon as my T7600 chip arrives, I'll turn it into a triple-boot system. XP SP2 (for emergency back-up only), Vista Ultimate x86 (main OS), and Vista Ultimate x64 (64-bit exploration )