Microsoft faces a class action lawsuit over the unfit state of Vista

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The unfit state of Microsoft Vista - as reported by a local Seattle newspaper:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/352993_msftvista28.html?source=mypi

Read the feedback:

“i hate vista so much that i would like to see MS just disappear. it's just a horrendous product!”

“I'm in on this...paid $3,500 for my "Vista ready" Dell laptop, it's black screened of death on my three times since install of Vista Ultimate. Don't have drivers for everything - haven't seen a black screen of death on a Windows computer I've run since Windows 95.

Shameful, and they knew it was screwed up and rolled it out anyway.”

Dozens more comments like these:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/soundoff/comment.asp?articleID=352993

Court documents filed: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/vistaone3046.pdf

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Stephen

Whoever paid $3500 for any laptop is a ****ing idiot. They're going to get laughed out of court too.

Capt'n Midnight

probe wrote: »

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/352993_msftvista28.html?source=mypi

It's not about vista crashing and being incompatible.
It's about the marketing of PC's as vista ready, even though they would only run vista without the bells and whistles

What do you expect from a company who said window 95 would run on 4MB RAM ?

But the suckiest thing about windows, is the money side , marketing and licensing.

One message points to chip maker Intel Corp., a key Microsoft partner, to explain the decision to lower the requirements a piece of hardware needed to qualify for the "Windows Vista Capable" designation.

"In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded," Microsoft executive John Kalkman wrote in the message, referring to a class of Intel graphics technology that doesn't work with Windows Vista's most-advanced graphics technology, known as Aero Glass.

Overheal

That sounds like the american way: we didnt reach our [army] recruitment this quarter so we're going to slash the quota to a mere fraction. *6 months later* we've shattered our quota omg we are teh roxxor!

So this is likely were a lot of the Vista reputation has come from: 'vista capable machines' trying to run vista and getting their asses kicked: it quickly become what vista was known for. By mid 2007 most machines that were hitting the market (save the low budget) were then capable of running Vista properly - Vista Premium/Business/Ultimate.

mukki

Ba$tard$

looks like AMD with linux is the way we should be going

probe

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

It's not about vista crashing and being incompatible.
It's about the marketing of PC's as vista ready, even though they would only run vista without the bells and whistles

“unfit” as in “unfit for the purpose for which it is being sold”, to use the legal jargon.

If you buy a new BMW in the morning and it has a Bosch engine management system with Vista-like software issues that cause the engine to stall every 5 minutes – one could say that both the BMW and the Bosch engine management system are unfit for the purpose.

I have a Dell M90 notebook workstation with 4 GB of RAM and 512 MB of video RAM, dual core processor, bla bla bla. It is labelled “Designed for Windows XP – Windows Vista Capable”. I wouldn’t dream of trying to run Vista on it.

Does anybody have a notebook/laptop computer that runs Vista properly (ie with Aero and other bells and whistles running at an acceptable speed)?

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mick.fr

probe wrote: »

I have a Dell M90 notebook workstation with 4 GB of RAM and 512 MB of video RAM, dual core processor, bla bla bla. It is labelled “Designed for Windows XP – Windows Vista Capable”. I wouldn’t dream of trying to run Vista on it.

Does anybody have a notebook/laptop computer that runs Vista properly (ie with Aero and other bells and whistles running at an acceptable speed)?

.probe

Come on guys of course it runs properly, even with 2GB of RAM.
I have it on 2 laptops and one desktop I certainly do not have any performances issues since it is faster than XP, you simply need more RAM than XP, because many programs are runnning from memory rather than disk.

kaimera

Vista runs perfect on mine which is less spec than your machine. I know quite a few folks with no probs either.

In fact, there's nothing wrong with vista basic. It is vista regardless if it's minus the bells & whistles. I have a friend who goes to the trouble of turning it off for crying otu loud.

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kaimera wrote: »

In fact, there's nothing wrong with vista basic. It is vista regardless if it's minus the bells & whistles. I have a friend who goes to the trouble of turning it off for crying otu loud.

Vista Basic - Akin to a BMW without a back seat!

It offers no remote access to the office computer systems (RDC). You can't make DVDs. Or HD movies with movie maker. etc etc.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/choose.mspx

There is only one version of Apple Leopard OS (and I'm not an "Apple person"). You get everything in the box with the Apple alternative.

Even if you pay the extra for "Ultimate" as an upgrade, I have read lots of horror stories where systems that came with basic Vista versions won't work with Ultimate.

They can't even get Vista SP1 out.

Vista remains Windows ME v 2.0 in my mind...

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probe

I just came across news that Microsoft is planning to cut the price of Vista. Continuing with the BMW analogy - BMW never has to cut the price of its cars.....

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2008/feb08/02-28BrooksQA.mspx


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PogMoThoin

Do PcWorld actually sell any pc's capable of running Vista? I'm in peoples houses everyday, I'm using their pc's and most are underpowered for Vista, take ages to boot & then the initial virus scan. Most people blame Vista, but its not Vista's fault. It just needs good hardware. I've a quad with 4Gb ram at home & vista flies.

I think its an Irish thing also to buy the absolute cheapest pc that the likes of PcWorld sell, then give out about Vista when it doesn't run very fast. If they'd only researched what they needed exactly they wouldn't have this problem, besides buying what they know is bottom of the pile.

Capt'n Midnight

probe wrote: »

They can't even get Vista SP1 out.

And it was first announced right after XP and they had to drop winfs and other key goodies to get it out the door, five years late...

Are they dropping EU prices or just the US ones ?
At one stage a US customer could buy a copy of Vista and two upgrades for use in the same home for about the same money it cost for vista in the UK.

With the dollar dropping , how much has vista dropped by ??

Still it's more secure than before,
but the when you compare the speed of the interface to the iPhone youhave to wonder what's going on in the background.

Capt'n Midnight

We've been here before

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138349

System requirements for installing Windows 95:
• Personal computer with a 386DX or higher processor (486 recommended)
• 4 megabytes (MB) of memory

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457057.aspx

Windows XP does not require 128 MB of RAM. The operating system can run with 64 MB of RAM. For many workloads that involve Web browsing, e-mail, and other activities, 64 MB of RAM will provide you with a user experience equivalent or superior to that of Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me) running on the same hardware. If you're satisfied with using Windows Me on lower-end computers, you should find Windows XP a satisfactory upgrade

LOL - according to the marketing gimps every version of windows runs just as fast as the previous version on the same hardware

MINIMUM specs - follows Moore's law with a doubling time of 18 Months
Windows 95 - 4MB (1995)
Windows XP - 64MB (2001)
Vista Premium - 1024MB (2007)


Windows Vista Capable and Premium Ready PCs
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/capable.mspx

CptSternn

It never ceases to amaze me the people who get angry at computer innovation. I mean, seriously, if I could pay and upgrade the gas mileage on my car, I'd do so happily.

I mean, cars have gotten the same gas mileage and have had the same top speed for decades - there is no innovation there. Is that what people want from the computer world as well? A stagnant market where nothing changes and everyone lives with 64 megs of RAM on their P2 machine?

The fact I can buy a new system now, or upgrade my current, so that it will allow me to do stuff in half the time that I used to do it in, well, thats a good thing.

The average user can work with a P266/64megs of RAM with no problems. I live in Clare - they gave the 'Information Age' machines away here for under a hundred euro a few years back - and you find them in every home. Everyone here has one. They can use Office2000 on a W95 box and to be honest, they will never have to do any upgrades. They can log on the internet via their 33.6 modem and print files on their dot-matrix printers without issue.

That being said they also won't be able to watch video in HD, compile 3D images in 3DSMax or Lightwave, use GoogleEarth (or other high-end websites), setup their new MP3 player to sync with their PC, convert video from NTSC to PAL or use software like AutoCAD or Adobe Premiere CS3, and of course you can rule out the latest and greatest games. The average user doesn't do anything other than check email and type up the occasional document so this doesn't effect them. Thats why so many of these things are still around here and people still pay to have them serviced (the shops in town fix them - usually at a cost that is more than they are worth - about half of what it would cost to buy a new top-of-the-line Dell).

People like myself though, notice these things and look forward to advancements in technology.

I' m quite happy upgrading every couple of years - because with the apps I use, I can ALWAYS use more RAM and speed.

Also, it's funny to see so many people complaining about upgrading on a technology forum. I mean, are we all on dial-up posting to a BBS? No. Why? Technology upgrades.

It's ironic to see so many people taking advantage of technology and using that advantage to complain about the technology they have upgraded to - seeings how if those advancements didn't happen there wouldn't be a site here to complain on.

Of course it's also quite ironic that the same people complaining about upgrading their systems now were the same people complaining last time they rolled out a new OS (XP). These people of course aren't using Windows 3.1 either.

But hey - some people are happy with using 1980's technology. I just have to laugh a little knowing my mobile phone can do more than my neighbors PC.

Saruman

vista runs fine on the Dell vostro 1000 we got last year. Its running business so has aero etc running fine.

However, i did a network install yesterday and the guy bought 3 compaq home PC's with Vista basic from PC world... and get this... 512mb of ram!
I swear the speed was like working on a 10 year old PC trying to run windows XP.
Vista is a complete mess of an OS right now unless you only get it on a new PC, have no old hardware, no old software and only use brand new stuff designed for vista... you will have a terrible headache if you have anything pre vista at all.

ntlbell

mick.fr wrote: »

Come on guys of course it runs properly, even with 2GB of RAM.
I have it on 2 laptops and one desktop I certainly do not have any performances issues since it is faster than XP, you simply need more RAM than XP, because many programs are runnning from memory rather than disk.

That's one of the most retarded statements I've read on boards and with the caliber of morons on boards that's a tough feat.

Mick why do you allow MS to fill your head with nonsense and come out with this stupidity?

I can't work it out

Do you be trolling?
or are you really this much of an idiot
or is it your just French.

jahalpin

I have Vista on my Dell P4 630 with 3GB Ram and an X1600 graphics card and I haven't had any problems with it at all.

I find it very stable and the best version of Windows yet. A lot of the problems that are experiencing are due to to the low amount of RAM installed and the other programs running in the background eg. anti-virus. Anyone who tries to use a program with the minimum hardware requirements should expect very low performance. The more power you throw at anything, the better it will work, for example, a BMW could probably be powered by a 1.2 litre engine, however a 2.0+ litre engine will give much better performance


Why don't these people take a class action suit against Symantec, who produce Norton the mosr resource hungry amti-virus program ever. Norton usually reduces most computers to crawling speed.

As for comparing Max OSX and Vista, this isn't a fair comparison. For a start Apple have complete control over both the hardware and the software, most of the problems with Windows are due to the huge range of hardware avaliable, which Microsoft has little or no control over.

Mac OSX has some serious problems such as,
-Severe compaability problems between version ie programs will work on OSX 10.4 Tiger but not on 10.5 Leopard. A lot of basic things such as keyboards will only really work on Leopard (they will work on Tiger but only on versions higher than 10.4.9

-Safari browser: This is very unstable and doesn't wotrk properly with some major websites such as imdb.com

-Price: Most Macs are far more expensive than an eqivalent spec Windows PC

mick.fr

ntlbell wrote: »

That's one of the most retarded statements I've read on boards and with the caliber of morons on boards that's a tough feat.

Mick why do you allow MS to fill your head with nonsense and come out with this stupidity?

I can't work it out

Do you be trolling?
or are you really this much of an idiot
or is it your just French.

The poor NTBELL is back.
Get a life man, I already told you if you can't stop yourself from insulting me just let's meet up in Dublin and I will explain you in your face.

Sparky

Vista business runs perfect on my dell xps 1210

2gb ram
intel centrino duo 2ghz

I wanted to see how good it was so the laptop has been constantly on and stable for 31 days now

AARRRGH

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I've a quad with 4Gb ram at home & vista flies.

Did I just read that right? Vista flies on your PC which has 4 processors and 4 gigs of RAM?

LOL I would hope so...

Cabaal

ntlbell wrote: »

That's one of the most retarded statements I've read on boards and with the caliber of morons on boards that's a tough feat.

Mick why do you allow MS to fill your head with nonsense and come out with this stupidity?

I can't work it out

Do you be trolling?
or are you really this much of an idiot
or is it your just French.

ntlbell, any more personal insults and your getting a ban, this is your only warning

Cabaal,

sobriquet

I was chatting to a guy a month or so ago who runs a business selling hardware and support to small non-technical businesses. He said almost every Vista Business edition (whichever one has the XP downgrade in it) machine they send out gets requested to be downgraded.

Whether it's that Vista isn't as capable, unfamiliarity, or perception that it's bad that has people dissatisfied, that's a very bad trend for Microsoft if it's not curiously isolated to his customers.

CptSternn wrote: »

It never ceases to amaze me the people who get angry at computer innovation. [...] Is that what people want from the computer world as well? A stagnant market where nothing changes and everyone lives with 64 megs of RAM on their P2 machine?

I think that's a very dismissive attitude. It's not at all wrong for customers to demand value from businesses, and in the case of Vista (whether it's reality of just perception) the value proposition just isn't there. Pretty much everything you described (HD video, AutoCAD, 3DS, Google Earth and so on) can be done with XP (or 2k for that matter) - why then would people want to upgrade a platform that might demand a hardware upgrade? It makes no sense unless you're a neophile that loves technology for its' own sake.

Upgrading from one technology that meets ones needs to another that has no substantial gains but demands a hardware upgrade is nothing at all like, say, the move from text-mode to pixel graphics, or from BBSs to the web.

You many find that attitude surprising, but I find the idea that the upgrade treadmill is worthwhile for its' own sake (that innovation somehow demands it) just as surprising.

PogMoThoin

dublindude wrote: »

Did I just read that right? Vista flies on your PC which has 4 processors and 4 gigs of RAM?

LOL I would hope so...

Yes but some people are under the impression that Vista runs slow no matter what hardware its run on, and blame vista. I'm saying it can & does run fast if you got good hardware, not the Celeron & 512MB ram i see PcWorld selling.

AlmightyCushion

My mum and my sister both have vista on their laptop. 2GHz turion x2, 2GBs ram, some crappy ati graphics and it runs fine on their laptops. I haven't gotten any complaints from them. As said above it's when you put vista on a computer with a celeron processor and 512MB ram that it suffers. Computers that crap shouldn't be sold with vista it's as simple as that.

mukki

I have a vista media center, it has a 2.8 gig p4 1gig ram, and a fx5200, and its reacts to the remote much faster then xp mce did

CptSternn

sobriquet wrote: »

I think that's a very dismissive attitude. It's not at all wrong for customers to demand value from businesses, and in the case of Vista (whether it's reality of just perception) the value proposition just isn't there. Pretty much everything you described (HD video, AutoCAD, 3DS, Google Earth and so on) can be done with XP (or 2k for that matter) - why then would people want to upgrade a platform that might demand a hardware upgrade? It makes no sense unless you're a neophile that loves technology for its' own sake.

Your arguing XP vs. Vista here. Your ignoring the fact that people fought tooth and nail against Windows95, 98, etc. and all the predecessors to Vista as well. My point is if the first batch of people who fought to keep 3.11 instead of upgrading to 95, then you wouldn't have any of those aforementioned applications to run. You can't just argue XP/Vista because I made this very same argument a few years ago when the same people were arguing that W2K was all they needed and XP was just for neophiles. Every time industry upgrades the 'standard' OS used by PC manufactures, you have a group who fears change and fights it for whatever reason.

The reality is unless everyone upgrades their hardware on a regular basis, then technology becomes stagnant. If everyone listened to the lads who were fighting to keep from upgrading to Windows 95, where would we be today?

sobriquet wrote: »

Upgrading from one technology that meets ones needs to another that has no substantial gains but demands a hardware upgrade is nothing at all like, say, the move from text-mode to pixel graphics, or from BBSs to the web.

Where as I would agree that upgrading just for upgradings sake offers no substantial gains or benefits is frivolous, you have to take into account that new technology is based on new hardware. You have to take into account the state of applications like GoogleEarth, which require a 3D graphics card, now standard but just a few years ago this was considered a luxury.

Same goes for many other aspects which are being overlooked. It's great to live in a place like Sweden or Germany that has gigabit connections, however, if your not running a top-of-the-line PC you can't take advantage of this as slower PC's will become a bottleneck. These things right now be luxuries that might not encourage people to upgrade right away, but they will become commonplace and unless people upgrade, they will be held back from these sorts of things and others.

sobriquet

I am arguing XP vs Vista, and 2k vs XP, and NT vs 2k, because it's a valid argument. The move from the 9x series kernels to the NTOS kernels and their associated userland code was a leap, and for that I can accept an OS upgrade. For all the rest of them, the idea that you must upgrade the OS for any reason other than forced obsolescence is a fiction[0]. With Vista we're at the point where the upgrade (of things that could be integrated into the existing systems) is coupled with, for most people it appears, a hardware upgrade. You don't think that people are justified in regarding it as pointless?

Where would we be if we stuck with Win95? I dunno, it didn't happen and it wouldn't have. People resisted because there was no particular reason to other than to stay on the upgrade treadmill. When the reasons are there, they do so: 32 and 64 bit hardware, multiple cores, graphics cards etc. All that exists now and is supported by Windows XP; are there any technologies on the horizon that demand an OS upgrade or support that couldn't be integrated into XP? I very much doubt it.

That's what I mean when I say that Vista looks to me and apparently most customers like a pointless upgrade. There are reasons other than some nebulous 'fear' that people resist OS upgrades. This is entirely unrelated to any technological luddism (is that a word? Ludditism? Anyway). When people see a compelling innovation they'll go for it, like your graphics card. The idea that this should also naturally entail an OS upgrade is a brilliant bit of marketing but certainly not inherently necessary from either a technical or innovation standpoint.

[0]: I don't follow Windows development very much any more, so it's to the best of my knowledge that I say there's no technical reason to do it. I'd be very surprised if there were.

astrofool

From a technical standpoint, XP (and 2000) is a house of cards, where changing code often lead to the system failing, requiring many more hours of testing and development to ship small changes. With Vista they changed this (was the main reason behind the delay, as the XP codebase become too unstable), they went back to the beginning, starting with the win2k3 sp1 code, and made the system as modular as possible. This allows, for example, WinFS to be retro fitted if they wanted to, or an upgrade to the network stack to be done seperately. It's why dx10 wasn't just ported to XP (and then used as marketing to force gamers to Vista), and it's why XP has a large amount of patches, and has had lots of patches to fix patches

From another point of view, MS could have sat on XP as a cash cow and just done support, and been happy for another 10 years, far cheaper then to develop a new OS, however, given the rate of technology change, the risk is that MS would have nothing to do in 10 years once someone else starting getting a foothold, due to supporting the new technologies coming through.

In the next few years we'll have 8GB RAM as the standard, with 1GB Graphics cards, 8 to 16 core machines for desktop users, eSata, Wireless USB, Torrenza, Quickpath, working bluetooth, WiMax, Wireless-N, SSD, tri/quad channel ram, we'll also see websites using new tech such as silverlight, and the next version of flash, which will put much larger strains on current desktop hardware.

All this requires development to be done to the OS to support it, and the question is whether it's worth modifying XP to do all this, or start with a new OS and build from there (and again in a few years time).

You have to remember that neither XP or Vista are by no means perfect at what they do, meaning they can have improved UI, improved RAM management, improved security and so on and have numerous bugs, which will need to be fixed.

Then you have the enabling platforms, by shipping with .net in box, allowing companies to develop more cheaply and reach a wider audience.

Or you could think of Vista, as XP with all these changes made