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Vista in "less good product" shocker
In a remarkable and some might say all-too-fleeting display of honesty, a senior Microsoft executive has branded Vista a "less good product".
According to reports, the shocking revelation was made by Charles Songhurst, Microsoft's general manager of corporate strategy, at an investor's conference.
"What people underestimate is the importance of good or bad products," he is reported by those who could be bothered to sit through the entire thing, as saying.
"And sometimes your products are good, sometimes the products are bad. And I think Vista was a less good product for Microsoft."
Less good? Presumably Songhurst was hinting at what analysts, investors, and more importantly, users, have known for quite some time - that Vista is a bloaty, slow, underwhelming operating system which has failed to supplant XP in most organisations.
Although Microsoft has acknowledged in the past that mistakes have been made with the OS, it has never been so outspoken in its criticism of the software.
However, before anyone believes this remark represents the turning over of a gloriously candid new leaf, think again. Songhurst went on to sing the praises of Redmond's next attempt, the "extremely good" and "brilliantly developed" Windows 7.
"Bloaty" is the apt word to describe Vista
Posted by Sarada | September 22, 2009 4:24 PM
what happened to greener computing if you need a big cpu to see fancy lauch pad that windows vista for other programs a cording to most game spec you need double for vista why! over xp
under powered computer that run fine on xp
Posted by nick | September 21, 2009 10:41 PM
Windows Vista was not actually bad. On most dual or quad core systems, it would run laps around XP for simple tasks. As Iama'il put it, the sidebar was not designed well and any system with it disabled got an almost instant speed boost. The biggest problem with Vista, was not the Microsoft version, but the OEMs versions. Each OEM modified the install image with their Help and Support, bloated trial software, and dozens of hardware that has a software part that is not needed, like wireless network software when Windows has included a fairly easy to use built in one since XP. Some OEM builds should not have even been considered Vista, as other Microsoft software, like the newest Windows Live Messenger, would come back with an error stating that it was not a valid operating system. If I were to buy a computer from HP, Dell, Lenova, who-ever, I select the cheapest operating system since they will not send me the system without one and I would buy a retail or Microsoft OEM version of Vista off the internet from someplace like Newegg.com and install it before I even use the system. So I wish people would get smart about their rants on Microsoft software and realize that it isn't Microsoft. If Dell started doing Linux on all their systems, you can guarantee that it will start coming with all the Dell software on it and Linux will be bashed about being bloated and slow and horrible just like Vista is being bashed now.
Posted by Grant | September 20, 2009 7:25 PM
What a strange way to promote the new OS.
Posted by Carl | September 19, 2009 9:54 PM
Vista. Some love it like it is mana from heaven. But for most of us, it sucks with various amounts of vacuum.
If I was to buy it for my laptop, I too would have serious driver issues, but my XP disk had everything I needed (helps to use the disk that came with the computer, even this non-sysadmin can figure that out).
We downgraded to it on the US Gov side (M$ owns the US Gov apparently), and at least half of our programs stopped working. We either have to buy new versions (several M$ programs too, surprise...) or find something else since some vendors looked at Vista and said, "No way we are supporting that".
From a MCCR/IT/Support/sysadmin stand point, Vista is great. We are now away from the concept of a PC and people empowerment and back to the days of the mainframe where every computing action had/has to be approved by the faceless 'Computer people'. Heck, I can not delete icons off my desktop or change desktop font size, have to call the help-desk. Talk about crippling for an engineer who depends on the ability to do things with a computer. I can easily do email and office and luckily I can still use Open-Office, the word processor that does what you tell it and not what it wants.
Oh well, Government workers are not suppose to do real work, just do check marks and be there. That is why we hire contractors, they do not have to follow our illustrious leaders' (congress, senate, and/or obama's people) rules and can get real work done.
Posted by RayW | September 19, 2009 6:31 PM
The'll be saying the same for windows 7, from what i can see its still vista. good luck with that.
Posted by just some dude | September 19, 2009 5:13 PM
I get so sick of people hating on Vista let's face it XP is finished. We rolled out Vista to 3500 corporate users and did not have one problem. I much prefer Vista over XP and with that I love Windows 7 even more. I always ran the 64 bit versions of the OS. So I never got all the Vista hate IMO Vista hate is founded from ignorance kind of like my brother does not like broccoli so I dislike it also.
Posted by Mike Brown | September 19, 2009 3:14 PM
Well at least they admitted it. It would be awesome if Microshaft said "And sometimes your products are good, sometimes the products are bad. And I think Vista was a bad product for Microsoft."
Forget that policitical correctness BS. Sometimes the truth hurts. And say its bad like "my bad."
Also if you slim / hack / 64 bit Ultimate vista on that wolf CPU core duo 2's with 4+ gigs ram it can run good.
But with Windows 7 right here, Vista is ME'd and Betamaxed.
Posted by hiro | September 19, 2009 8:40 AM
Yes there are some good things about vista. But, overall, its horrid OS. Reguardless of have a newer or older system, 32 or 64 bit, in the majority of systems the newer computers acutally run slower than the old systems. Then there are the published work arounds that are "supposed" to get compatible applications that are ment to work with vista that dont, working. And your lucky if the workaround works for you about 3 in 100. Reguardless of turning off the majority of the pretty enhancments and freeing up resourses, vista makes me miss windows '95 (/shivers)
Posted by David | September 19, 2009 8:25 AM
Used them all way up from DOS. XP was bad w/ USB til the SP versions.
3 of those, yuck.
Vista got better with SP fixes.
Run it lean as review mentions and even 32 bit is stable. Quad gets multi-tasking on a roll.
Could be case of s/w ahead of h/w.
Win 7 is even better. Fast install, faster boot. Most h/w works right out or w/ Vista drivers. For sure 7 has got it.
Posted by Frank | September 19, 2009 3:05 AM
With all the vitriol regarding Vista, I feel that I have to throw my 2 cents in. Vista actually works better on my Core2Duo-based notebook than XP did. First off, you have to get the 64-bit version--the 32-bit version has too many limitations for my taste. Secondly, Vista didn't need me to go round up drivers for my notebook, everything I needed installed off the Vista cd--XP required me to chase after the drivers. Third, I got rid of the stinkin' Vista sidebar--it's a memory and resource hog and isn't particularly useful. Fourth, I disabled the useless hard drive indexing service because all that hard drive spinning majorly; I don't have to have my computer constantly knowing where every file in my computer is. Some people don't like the UAC prompts, but as a sysadmin, I like that it's there. It's amazing how many users just download and install garbage applications because they THINK they need them, and that extends to their home machine. Having UAC at least gives them some idea that they should think twice about installing things and not act on impulse or just because some pop up on a web page says they need it.
Posted by Isma'il | September 18, 2009 3:43 AM
Am I strange? - I much prefer Vista to XP, and can't understand all the bad press about Vista, except that it is slow on underpowered machines.
Posted by James Wheeldon | September 18, 2009 12:07 AM
I thought I was the only one thinking about this? Vista down, XP up! Don't give it another name, just call it Microsoft Windows XPi, same windows anyway!
Posted by Paul | September 17, 2009 8:09 PM
Bravo!!! Finally a big company admit that they delivered something that didn't live up to what was stated that it would. Granted he didn't say it was a big steaming pile of crap, but this is as close that we can reasonably expect to ever see publicly stated. You won't ever see this come from any Apple employee.
Posted by William Hinshaw | September 17, 2009 7:42 PM
Use Linux !!!
Posted by Lakshmipathi.G | September 17, 2009 1:32 PM