[Wftl-lug] Vista

[Christian Einfeldt]

On 3/4/07, Michael Willems <Michael.Willems at digitalview.com> wrote:
>
> Pointing out the cost would help (Vista is buggy, expensive, etc)
>

If I were someone who is employed to keep Windows running, I would want the
CEO to understand that there are extra costs associated with Windows being
buggy, because I would not want the CEO to think that I did not know how to
do my job.  See, the problem with Windows is that when it fails, who are
they going to blame?  Microsoft?  No.  IMHO, the era of "no one ever got
fired for recommending Microsoft" is coming to a close.  I don't mean to be
an alarmist and say one's job is imperiled for suggesting Microsoft.  But I
am saying that Vista will entail a whole raft of technical issues that the
CEO should know about.  Here is one tech's perspective.  Please note that he
is a Windows user, and recommends staying with Windows 2000!  This is NOT a
rabid Stallmanite:

At the moment, I am struggling with the migration from a relative's
malfunctioning XP Pro to Vista Home Premium on a new Medion system, which
has a dual Pentium D 2.8ghz processor.  Medion is the Aldi grocery store
brand; I know, I know--I don't pick 'em, I just service them.  At least it
has an Intel motherboard and processor.  Unfortunately, although it has the
possibility of an 800mhz FSB, it has only 1gb of 400mhz RAM.  All I can say
is that with Vista, that hard drive is chugging ALL the time.

 After about 6 hours, I guess I have to say that Vista sucks.  Too many
people have been away from Windows 2000 for too long.  My list of programs
is over in the General Forum, and I attempted to install just a few on the
Vista machine, and they are failing installation from the main Administrator
account.  These include D4 time synchronization, which fails with a message
that the native Windows time synchronization cannot be shut off--even though
I turned it off manually before installing D4.  D4 claims it attempted to
shut it off, but said I was not installing from an account with enough
Administrator privileges.  Um, either you are an Administrator or you
aren't.  Vista even identifies the account as the Administrator for the
computer at log-on.

 And--of all programs,--the latest IrfanView fails, too.  After the initial
installation choices, I cannot get past the next step to file installation.
 There is no explanation whatever; just a failure announcement.

 It does not help that I am dealing with a German language
Vistainstallation, nor is it helpful that
Vista has once again needlessly rearranged options and menu
choices--including combining some and breaking other groupings apart.  Just
try finding "Display" options in Vista.  That little dialog box with 5 or 6
convenient tabs, has now broken those tabs into several different locations.
 Wonderful.  Moreover, the new effect of making EVERY SINGLE window and
dialog box zoom on and off makes using a computer more dizzying than a trip
through the Matterhorn in the dark at Disneyland.  I had no problems
installing any of my favorites in XP; all completed and are working.  But I
cannot even get through just a reduced portion of that installation list on
Vista.

 This experience has also soured me further on XP.  Here is a typical
problem with XP.  I needed to transfer all the user files from the
malfunctioning XP computer.  I'll just create a shared folder on my new XP
laptop and transfer them there, me thought, since I do not have enough
facilities to get both the new and old desktop computers on the local
network at the same time.  My laptop, Bianca, let me create a folder, but
would not let me share it outside of herself.  Unlike W2k, which has an
"Everyone" permission setting, incredibly, XP does not!  Supposedly, I can
poll all the network machines and choose from them to authorize one for
sharing, but it would not poll the network, and the box where the remote
computer choices appear is greyed out, so I cannot type in anything
manually, either.

 Now, maybe I could spend an hour or so researching how to solve this, but I
do not have that kind of time.  In fact, I really do not have time to do
this job at all, but it would not work to refuse family in this case.  So, I
returned to the trusty W2k installation on my wife's laptop, Eros; created a
folder, gave it "Everyone" privileges, and shared it--that took all of about
20 seconds.  Gotta love that W2k.  Transfer of the 2gb of files over the
wireless network was finished in 2:30 hours.

 In the next step, the Medion Vista would not let Eros in, so instead of
pushing files from Eros, I had to pull the files from Eros using Medion.  I
could have babysat Eros, but Medion is in another part of the house, so I
had to make several trips over about 4 hours, only to find transfer problems
with several files, which--of course--stopped the transfer until somebody
said "skip".  Who knows why there would be any problems transferring files
(error dialog in German, again) to a clean hard drive, but screw it--3 file
failures out of 2gb is not bad.  I blame Vista for the failures--I have
never had a file transfer failure on the W2k machines.

 This experience has just about clinched my complete disinterest in both XP
and Vista.  I am seriously thinking about backgrading Bianca from XP to W2k,
even though I now have several weeks invested in getting her to the current
state with XP.

 I know that if fulltime IT folks have these problems, they get paid to
research and solve them, but I do not.  W2k works; XP and Vista are riddled
with troubles....Life is not long enough for me to spend days of it
researching and solving dozens of problems with more waiting in the wings.
 The networking access problems are particularly egregious.  I am really
shocked that the only way around them is to run a computer wide open with no
account protection--just adding user accounts and passwords to an XP
computer makes the task well nigh a Mt. Everest trip.
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