Vista's been out for a while, and it's catching flak. People all over the place are singing the praises of XP over Vista, and saying Microsoft has stumbled like never before.
This is interesting to hear, certainly. I've always been comfortable and empowered in the Windows/Microsoft world, and my forays into OSX and Linux have been nice, but in the end all they've done is remind me how much I prefer Windows. So naturally, hearing all these complaints about Vista is alarming: has Microsoft lost their touch? Did they bungle this one up completely?
For your reading pleasure, I present two articles. Given the things you hear about Vista, they should be very familiar in terms of content and language. I'll present the reasons I post these articles in a moment.
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ARTICLE 1:
| Dennis Faas wrote: |
I've been diddling around with Windows Vista now and again on my system. My first take on Windows Vista was "wow, this looks really different", but then quickly realized that different is not necessarily good. All the die-hard Windows users will find that they will spend much of their first hours of using Windows Vista in order to re-orient themselves with the new interface. But fear not, Windows Vista can be configured to look like its predecessors if you're resistant to Microsoft's monopolizing change. The biggest issue I have with any new Microsoft Operating System (OS) -- specifically Windows Vista -- is its incompatibility with existing hardware and software. The most popular complaint from many of my colleagues is that their CD Burners won't work with Vista. Even my favorite text editor wasn't compatible with Windows Vista. ... |
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ARTICLE 2:
| Infoworld wrote: |
HOPELESS OPTIMISM must be a fundamental part of human nature, because we want to believe that new operating systems truly represent an improvement on their predecessors. It's easy to point to certain features in a new OS as examples of progress, but end-users often find that a new OS performs like molasses compared to the version they were using. As a result, CTOs wanting to capitalize on the benefits of a new OS may find that new hardware investments are necessary -- and expensive -- requirements. Unfortunately, Microsoft's Windows Vista appears to be maintaining that tradition, as indicated by results of independent testing performed by CSA Research and confirmed by our work in the InfoWorld Test Center. Our tests of the multitasking capabilities of Windows Vista and Windows XP demonstrated that under the same heavy load on identical hardware, Windows XP significantly outperformed Windows Vista. In the most extreme scenario, our Windows Vista system took nearly twice as long to complete a workload as did the Windows XP client. Our testing also suggests that companies determined to deploy Windows Vista should consider ordering desktop systems with dual CPUs to get the most out of the new OS. ... In every test we performed on systems with a single CPU, OfficeBench ran in less time under Windows XP than under Windows Vista. The differences ranged from slight to dramatic, depending on the hardware configuration, but Vista was always slower. For example, our initial baselining using Office 2007 and an optimized UI on the Core 2 Duo system indicated a lag of a modest 11 percent, but things went downhill from there. The baseline reading for the Pentium 4 system showed that under Windows Vista and Office 2007, OfficeBench took 27 percent more time to execute than under Windows XP and Office 2007. Generally, Windows Vista proved increasingly slower than Windows XP as load increased, with a few rare exceptions. For example, in the first multitasking scenario, using light database, messaging, and multimedia workloads, we got mixed results using Office 2007 on our Core 2 Duo client. Under the default UI, Windows Vista with Office 2007 narrowed the performance gap to 24 percent, compared to a gap of 35 percent in the baseline scenario. Except for a few instances, Windows Vista increasingly ate the dust of Windows XP as load ramped up, regardless of machine specs or Office version. When the Core 2 Duo client with Office 2007 was tested, script execution generally took between a quarter and a third longer with Windows Vista as with Windows XP, and as much as half again as long with the heaviest load and a stock UI. The Pentium 4 client fared even worse. Running Windows Vista with our heaviest workload and the default UI raised script execution time to more than twice that of Windows XP. Optimizing the UI helped Windows Vista to narrow that gap, taking 1.6 times as long as Windows XP to process the workload. ... Overall we are quite disappointed with Windows Vista's ability to pull serious weight when compared to Windows XP. We are not certain where the problem lies. Our follow-up testing indicates that the additional database and multimedia workloads are breaking the proverbial camel's back. Microsoft claims it's been unable to duplicate our results, but hasn't supplied us with a better explanation or identified a major flaw in our testing. Whatever the cause, until the problem behind Windows Vista's performance is resolved, we can't recommend Windows Vista as a client for serious database crunching. In fact, until fast Dual-core desktop PCs become commonplace, we have a hard time recommending widespread adoption of Windows Vista at all. Granted, it appears that for light-duty service on the newest hardware, Windows Vista with Office 2007 is an acceptable choice -- if an 11 percent performance hit, or 53 minutes added to an 8-hour day, is acceptable. But beware of this combination in more demanding environments, whether the workload is greater or the equipment is older. Barring the need for Windows Vista-specific features, IT departments should take advantage of license downgrade provisions and continue to press forward with Windows XP deployments until the installed hardware base catches up with Vista. Shops lured by Vista features should weigh their options carefully. In many cases, these features may not be compelling enough to justify saddling your end-users with a slower OS. Although differences between Windows Vista and Windows XP can be measured in seconds, what business can afford to put a 20 percent or greater bite on worker productivity? |
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The thorough researcher or the technically well-read most likely knows exactly what I just did, but if you do not yet understand the significance of those two articles, follow their sources and examine the original articles carefully.
I think it sheds a lot of light on the whole "everyone bash Vista!" bandwagon. It's merely an example of history repeating itself. Vista is powerful, new, in a high position, and therefore the popular thing to attack.