Hasta la Vista, Part 2
22/11/2007
What do you think of Vista, and should Microsoft abandon it?
Hosting specialist
Neil Barton
Hostway UK
Releasing a major operating system is a tricky process. While the early versions of Windows were so revolutionary that they were almost universally well received, Microsoft seems to have had an uneasy adolescence. Windows Me, Windows 2000 and even the early mobile version, WinCE, received a shower of criticism. Microsoft does seem to have learned from its mistakes, and XP (once SP2 came out) has been generally applauded as a stable, easy-to-use operating system.
It’s easy to understand the problems Microsoft must have faced releasing Vista. With intense competition from Mac OS, and Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, which showcase advanced graphics and other features, Microsoft must have been feeling the pressure. Abandoning an OS, however, would be an even worse mistake than publishing a buggy one, and would draw outrage from all the proud owners of new PCs with Vista bundled.
I do believe that phasing out XP early would have been a big mistake, because it’s still used by a huge number of people. Indeed, many companies will only use the penultimate version of a program or operating system because it tends to be the most stable. Vista is still quite buggy and doesn’t have drivers for all devices yet. Its system requirements are demanding, but it does look and feel great. In six to nine months’ time, once SP1 has come out and people are talking about Vienna, the next version, Vista will probably be regarded as a stable, easy-to-use OS and a worthy successor to XP. It just takes time to iron out all the kinks - and it’s not surprising, given the vast complexity and sheer number of lines of code.
Neil is the director of Hostway UK, which provides hosting services in the UK and abroad
Project manager
Ane-Marie Peter
on-IDLE
Where XP was welcomed and made a huge difference to the ease of daily use, particularly if you were still on Windows 98, Vista is very much a bit of a damp squid. What was being worked on for half a decade is a bit of a mystery. If Microsoft doesn’t work out how to release Windows features faster, the future of the organisation, and not just the OS, looks bleak. Microsoft was already working on a major update to Vista - Fiji - last year, but the intermittent issues and current six versions of Vista make it unclear when the next big release will be.
It’s very likely that Vista is the last “big release” using legacy components and code, particularly in light of continuing security issues and not really integrating better to the web. I’m certainly not going to upgrade on-IDLE’s PC OSes away from XP any time soon. The good things about Vista are definitely the updated GUI, easier networking between computers using peer-to-peer technology, and the drastically improved search. The inclusion of the .NET Framework also makes it much easier to develop new applications than the previous Windows API.
Vista won’t be abandoned as such, but will simply be replaced by newly coded, smaller, sleeker and thought-through features around a stable core that’s easier to replace and upgrade than an entire OS. Future releases/components are certainly going to be interesting, especially in light of the new technical leadership at Microsoft now that Bill Gates if focusing more on his charitable foundation. Then again, I shouldn’t really have an opinion on Vista as I use a Mac!
Ane-Marie Peter is the co-founder of on-IDLE and has a background in business management, communication strategies and technology
Software expert
Ian Moulster
Microsoft
You might think that I’d hate to respond to a question like this. Actually I love it, and here’s why: Windows Vista is a phenomenon. It’s an incredibly powerful, secure and easy to use operating system and most people out there who are using it love it. To give you an idea of the scale of uptake, it’s worth considering that in just the first month of availability, Microsoft sold more than 20 million Windows Vista licences, a figure approaching Apple’s entire installed base. So should Apple abandon their operating system business? I don’t think that’s likely.
So what’s really behind the question? All I know is for a huge, huge number of people across the world, Windows Vista is a very welcome addition to their lives. And to me that’s what actually matters.
Ian Moulster is senior product manager in Microsoft’s Developer & Platform division in the UK
Web designer
Andy Clarke
Stuff and Nonsense Ltd
As a Mac user who only runs Windows applications on Windows XP under Parallels, I have never tried Vista and can think of no reason why I would ever need to. (Now, where did I put that Zune?)
Andy is a member of the Web Standards Project, and is an “Invited Expert” to the W3C’s CSS Working Group
B3ta guy
Rob Manuel
B3ta
I recently visited Joel Veitch of Rathergood fame to work on a pitch for a client. He’d spluffled out 4k for a posh new Vista box, which, quite brilliantly, wouldn’t run Macromedia Flash for longer than three minutes without crashing. We completed our pitch on my Mac laptop that cost about 700 quid and it worked perfectly. Microsoft shouldn’t dump Vista, but it desperately needs to fix it.
Rob is co-founder of B3ta, a website that "celebrates the best stuff on the internet"
Tech journalist
Scott Carney
Vista? I switched to Mac OS more than ten years ago. Who needs Windows, anyway?
Scott is a freelance technology journalist and a damn fine photographer to boot.
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