Vista started life with great anticipation, 5 years worth, LOTS of promotion, and all of the advantages of any new OS that Microsoft delivers. Everybody wants the coolest and the latest, thus Vista received better treatment than it deserved. The Mojave example is simply damage control. Vista with SP1 is a different animal. Moreover, before Vista shipped, you could have gotten the same acceptance by the same people. It’s when Vista hit the business world with the problems it had, that it soured the Vista name. Vista had worn out its welcome by the time SP1 came out.

We are an IT Support organization, and Vista is a cash cow. We watched this unfold in corporate America. This is a cut and paste of the Dell headlines for their business desktops:
“Get Genuine Windows Vista Business Bonus with Windows XP Professional INSTALLED: FREE with Vostro 4-series Desktops and $99 with Vostro 2-series Desktops” It is impossible to make a case for Vista being a success when you have and entire market segment paying a premium to get the 6 1/2 year-old operating system more than 2 years after the release of the new one. It took a lot of pain somewhere to overcome people’s pride to make that happen. We support a smaller percentage of Vista machines than a year ago.

I also disagree with the inference that that people disenchanted with Vista don’t plan to jump ship. They have left in droves for the MAC. MAC likes to take credit for that with their Intel series, but their super salesman’s name is Vista. Why else would someone pay more for an iMac? Look at their meteoric increase in market share.

Release like this happen with any OS. I expect Windows 7 roll out will go much better. It’s also what a lot of corporate America is waiting for who skipped Vista.

More importantly, what you are asking for is another version, one without the ability to play Blu-ray discs, and thus not subject to the licensing requirements that compel something like UAC. (By the way, this is not the party-line, it is a fact. Any computer system whether Windows, Mac, Unix, or other that wants to include the ability to play Blu-ray DVDs must comply with the rules of those who own the various copyrights, trademarks, and patents on Blu-ray. To do otherwise would be the same thing as putting the full text of all the Steven King novels in the My Documents folder without asking or buying the rights. Lawsuit = big penalty. )

Considering there is already Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, and Vista Ultimate that might be pushing it. While I understand that there are those who only need a small set of features to run on a lean system, I just don’t think there is much of a market for Vista Home Basic Non-blu-ray Edition.

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090206/microsoft-changes-windows-7-uac-control/

1)Device support Microsoft is not responsible to make a driver for another companies product or device. And forcing companies to make better drivers is a good thing something they did learn from apple.

2)Vista dose provide better security power management and time saving features that provide great ROI.

3)Vista runs fine on my desktop and it’s not a ultra high end or very tweaked computer

4)Yes it’s nice to have people show you or give you step by step instructions with pictures that are the reason we use train signal……

5)Yes the hardware requirements are high but would you buy the newest far cry or halo or unreal tournament game and not expect to upgrade? At work I had to upgrade an older computer to run the newest QuickBooks.

6)If you had 5 years instead of the normal 3 to upgrade your pc to meet the requirements for something and the prices are the lowest I have ever seen what is the problem?

You are incorrect about being able to force it. The Blu-ray license requires some kind of protection feature like this one. If you want to develop software or hardware capable of playing Blu-ray discs, you have to get a license and a key.

So, Microsoft’s other choice was to make Vista incapable of playing Blu-ray. Can you imagine the complaints about that when users found out that they can only play their old non-state of the art movie DVDs on their laptop?

Want to know what is worse? Something just like this is built into the hardware of new MONITORS too!

http://www.blu-raydisc.info/index.php

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

And Microsoft’s response? Too bad, so sad:

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/01/20/windows-vista-content-protection-twenty-questions-and-answers.aspx

It’s a resource hog for starters. 1 GB memory is the minimum, and that will get you slow performance. The disk space requirements are also large, but if you are going to spend the cash for an OS upgrade then another $50 or $100 for a new disk isn’t that bad. Plus you’ll have a new–and maybe faster–disk.

My real problem, though, is that you have to relearn how to do EVERYTHING. I ended up feeling like one of the users where I work; every time I tried to do anything other than open something on the desktop, I had to search. Remove a program that I don’t need? Previous versions of Windows were all the same from W95: go to Add/Remove programs and there you are. Vista renamed it something else and you had to search for it. What was the point in that? And pretty much EVERYTHING I do, all day long, was the same.

It seems like they believe that you wouldn’t think you were getting your money’s worth if you didn’t have to stumble around trying to do simple, everyday tasks.

All of the systems we’ve bought in the last year have had the downgrade to XP installed. A few users (who were delighted with the performance of their new computer) decided they wanted to try Vista. We did the upgrade and everyone of them had us switch them back; it was too slow and they couldn’t find anything.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that Vista was an incredible OS before Microsoft was forced to separate out all the libraries due to that Anti Trust suit. Not to mention the problems with drivers. Granted, most of the problems were the fault of MS, and believe me when I say, MS has learned a lot from these troubles. Win 7 is a great OS, and I hope that people give it a shot.

Let’s set the way back machine for the days of Windows 3.1. Does anyone remember IBM’s OS/2 “WARP” OS? It was a far faster and more stable operating system them Windows in those days, but it suffered a painful death because it lacked driver support. Does Microsoft really want to repeat the mistakes of the past? Lets hope they learned their lesson and that Windows 7 fixes the mistakes of Vista.

The fact is most people hate change and don’t want to have to learn anything new or different. No one says they have to use Vista but you can’t expect Microsoft to continue to support old software forever. Xp is over 7 years old now and Vista is now over 2 years old so stop complaining and start living in the 21st century.

Windows 7 is even better than Vista, but people who think that it is going to be like Xp are going to be upset because it is based on Vista code so you are going to have to upgrade any software that would not run on Vista so just deal with it people!

The good news is that they seem to finally be taking notes from the successful parts of the various *nix systems, and Apple. Eyecandy is important, but it couldn’t sell Vista. Having things “just work” is more important, and many people want to pick-and-choose functionality.

The new taskbar will be impressive, but more impressive will be a completely reworked UAC system, corrections in usability in the UI (seriously, more than 3 clicks for Wifi?), and more granular control of what your system does and doesn’t have.

I have to agree about the testing scenario though. How does one evaluate the fitness of an OS for everyday use by watching someone else demo it in front of you? The problems with Vista are (or were) show-stopping… and the bulk of them had to do with everyday use, upgrading, ridiculous required hardware specs, etc. None of these would rear their ugly head during a demo to someone who barely knows what they’re looking at.