I’m keeping our organization at XP until forced to upgrade. Looks like some users are pissed off enough to go for a class action.  In the mean time, via Instapundit, Apple couldn’t ask for better free marketing.
12 thoughts on “Vista Class Action”
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I’m seriously thinking about going over to apple the next time I buy a computer.
That, or Linux. Anything but Microsoft.
i wrote the Vista training manual for one of the biggest cable internet providers in the US… i personally was upgrading my machines at home to vista long before it came out at retail…
what i cannot understand is that over a 2 year period, Microsoft had it set up so that ANY engineers from ANY company could come to their offices and work with Microsoft on developing drivers… Dell had several full time people there, as did HP, Sony etc… but all of these other vendors chose not to…
the purposely chose to not develop drivers for their own products that would make them compatible with Vista… Microsoft was under no obligation to develop software to ensure compatibility of hardware that they didn’t make… and even if they tried, they would probably be accused of violating copyrights…
this is akin to ford releasing a new car and a bunch of tire manufactures complaining because ford didn’t build an adapter that would let their existing tires work on the new product…
Well, I’ve heard a good few reasons, some better than others, Chris.
The most basic is that, outside of a few shops like nVidia, there’s not much effort going to a unified driver architecture. Making Vista-compatible drivers for every printer a company like Lexmark spat out was neither inexpensive nor something simple from a time-viewpoint. The changes aren’t huge from one device to the next, but they aren’t trivial. There has, after most major driver system changes, been a pretty hefty resistance toward revamping old drivers for new operating systems.
This wasn’t helped by the folk sure that Vista was going to have some changes made at basic levels reallllllll soon after the first release candidate came out, then after the second… Even big-name folk like Cisco and HP made that mistake.
That’s not particularly new. Going from DOS to Windows 3.x/9x required a similar change, as devices no longer had direct access to hardware and had to deal with VxD. It was rather ugly, and there’s a lot of stuff from before 3.x was really available that never got real safe driver support. The Windows 9x to NT/2000/XP change looked better, but that’s only because home and small office users, and even a good portion of businesses, never saw the NT driver model and only joined the dark side of WDM a while after it came out.
Try out a Ubuntu, SUSE, or other liveCD, first. Linux is powerful, but it’s only for certain types of users. It’s rare to run a server without it unless you need Exchange… yet even with software like AbiWord and OpenOffice, a lot of folk I’ve tried to migrate to it just can’t get used to the differences.
Mac has the same issue, although to a lesser extent thanks to Microsoft’s Office for Mac.
I can’t say much about the chances of that class action being successful — Microsoft’s the sort of business that could get jurors to agree that calling the sky blue is negligently misleading on the tune of a hundred million bucks — but I think this particular one would be rather poor precedent to have as a case.
It seems rather improper to charge Microsoft for HP or Cisco’s failings, or for endorsing machines that do work, but don’t have everything included.
I read that Windows XP Service Pack 3 will make XP run faster than Vista. XP Professional is by far the best version of Windows I have ever used. Vista is crap, in my opinion. Why mess with a good thing? If XP works great, keep up the support for it. Why must we constantly keep upgrading to crap operating systems every 3 years or so?? I’m tired of all this constant upgrading. Ugh!
I’ve converted two lappies and a desktop to Ubuntu. The first one was a BEAR! But the others were easy. They share my little wireless router seamlessly with their Win 2K brethren. For browsing, email and basic wordprocessing Ubuntu is fine. In fact it’s better than fine, ’cause nobody writes viruses for it, so you don’t need Norton AV or ZoneAlarm; everytime my Win2K computer starts up, there is a struggle between Windows, Norton, ZoneAlarm, HP and Adobe: they all want to check for updates FIRST! The only reason I have a Win box now is Adobe; there are just (sorry!) no Ubuntu substitutes for Photoshop and Premiere.
Wai
No, it’ll make XP SP3 run faster than XP SP2 (in most applications), and the change is rather hardware dependent. It’s still not, in my experience, as good at dealing with multicore systems as Vista SP1 is.
Which one’s faster? Depends on what you’re looking for. Vista gets mildly higher values for CPU and memory access, and will seem faster to average users on systems with more than a gigabyte of RAM by preloading relevant software when the system expects you to use it and space is available. On the other hand, it’s going to take up a larger hard drive and memory footprint, it gets slower drive access rates, and significantly slower network file transfer times.
Generally speaking, both Vista SP1 and Vista release are going to be slower in a resource-limited system than either XP SP3 or SP2. In higher powered systems, especially going to 64-bit set-ups, you’ll find that the performance loss is well-worth the better memory management, multicore and multi-thread control, and usability features… if we’re ignoring the several other reasons to avoid or switch.
It’s been six and a half years since XP was released.
XP’s also got some significant issues. Some of them are simply the results of other technology coming around : multicore systems really weren’t a big concern in 2001 outside of big servers, and aren’t really something you can easily dump in place. A lot of parts of XP, such as the idiotic tendency to run in a superuser (‘administrator’) mode constantly and allow programs to assume superuser status, really needed to change to get on the level of Linux and BSD… but again couldn’t be done easily within the existing system, if at all.
Hardware changes, and not just a little. Making an OS that’d remain optimized for every hardware possibility to come out in the next three years is nearly impossible.
Turk Turon
No, they do write them., and it’s becoming increasingly common. Most of the ones focused on taking out server functionality aren’t going to take on a normal well-built desktop distro, but there are numbers of virii designed purely to go after normal user stations, and that number is only increasing with the observed higher penetration of Linux in the home or small office.
Get a virus scanner, no matter what your operating system. There are free, nearly invisible ones out there, and your data really is worth the short set-up time.
GIMP and GIMPshop (Linux and Windows XP/Vista installers available) easily replace Photoshop and are more powerful under many circumstances, although both are a bitch and a half to learn. Inkscape is a good vector art focused one. Depending on how many or how powerful the features you use in Premiere, Cinellera, Kino, and LiVES may be worthwhile options.
Foxit is a good substitute for Adobe, but I don’t know if it’ll work on Ubuntu.
If I look around, I am reasonably sure I can find this series of arguments (less the class-action) for Win2K vs Vista (or similar issues with other old vs new products). I have a scanner on my desk that I was told point-blank by the manufacturer that no XP driver would be coming out for. I was pissed because I had bought the thing only a couple months before at a computer show. I can use the basic features because there is a basic driver bundled with WinXP, but it caps at 600 dpi (scanner is 1200) and I lost the use of the front panel quick buttons for one-touch copy / email / etc. This was not MS’ fault…
I have been using Vista since RC1 at work, and I really want a copy for home use, primarily for the reasons people don’t like it (UAC & Aero). But I don’t quite have the hardware for it, and haven’t decided on an upgrade strategy yet (the mobo is a few years old and has AGP, not PCI-Express, so I am concerned about sinking money into compatible parts).
On the other hand, Vista does require a certain level of power in the system, and if MS caved to the Vendors about Vista-ready as the lawsuit alleges, that was not a good choice. Is it actionable? I’m not sure. The machines in question I would consider marginal for a primary xp box but acceptable for a limited-duty portable. Bargain-seekers got burned. MS should have stood for the higher requirements, but IMHO the laptop vendors should shoulder the blame. And all of MS customers will pay the judgment…
I’ll probably give Windows a fifth chance one of these days. I might build a computer with quad-cores and water-cooling one of these days…
I’d load Cygwin and all those goodies on it to still provide a Unix-like experience.
Heh, the very first DOS PC I used has a set of unix-like utilities on it; I knew obscure switches for ls long before I knew them for dir.
(it was an 8086 as well, for more oddness.)
wanna know just how worried the major companies were worried about testing?
when the cable company i worked for (cant mention the name, but its one of the top 3) was testing USB driver compatibility for vista, they tested both 32 and 64 bit versions… as they should have… they also tested XP 64bit, something they hadn’t done… so 5 years after XP comes out, they finally decide to test the damn thing…
worst part was, if i hadn’t done the leg work and brought it to the attention of the upper corporate structure, they wouldn’t have even started their testing when they did, which was 3 months after the vista release…
and here i was making $13 a hour telling entire rooms full of 6 figure income people how to do their damn job…
IMO, vista is one of the best, most stable OS’s that MS has released… but you have to have hardware that can support it… going with a bargain computer doesn’t cut it… a 3 year old machine doesn’t cut it… these are the same kinds of people that buy a SAIGIA and expect to be a sniper… they buy a kel-tec and expect to run IDPA matches with it… they buy a walmart special HDTV for $600 and expect it to look as good as the ones in the special room at circuit city…
oh and i liked Vista so much in my testing of it that i actually bought a retail copy… first MS product i have EVER paid for…