Microsoft: The Vista Bullying Stops Here

I'd say its about time that Microsoft done something:

By Rick Whiting, Kevin McLaughlin, ChannelWeb
1:17 PM EDT Tue. Jul. 08, 2008

Windows Vista has been dragged through the mud by the bullies with which it competes, but those bullies are about to get hit with some long overdue retaliation.

That's the message from Brad Brooks, Corporate Vice President of Windows Consumer Products, who in a Tuesday keynote speech at Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)'s Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston attempted to swat away the negative mojo around the OS that has built up since its launch.

"There are a lot of myths around Windows Vista. We know the story is very different than what our competitors would like us to think," Brooks told the audience.

In a clear dig at Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) and it's 'I'm a PC, I'm a Mac' advertisements, Brooks suggested that Microsoft is preparing to retaliate against "noisy competitors" with a major new multi-million dollar advertising campaign, something that many channel partners have been hoping the software giant would do for months.

"You thought the sleeping giant was still sleeping. We've woken up and it's time to take this message forward. This is the true story of Vista," Brooks said.

Security is one of the areas in which Vista simply hasn't received its due, Brooks said.


Read the full article here - Microsoft: The Vista Bullying Stops Here - IT Channel - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness.

 

[TheShadow]

Thanks Joel,
I got the link from the email notice of your post.
I'm aware of that site and have used it often, in the past.

That guy was AWOL for a long time and I was sure glad to see him back on-line.

I've used many of his tweaks and scripts to enhance XP.

Vista is still a resource hog, including disk space.
I've found ways to make it run more efficiently, but I've not done a lot with the HD bloat.....yet!

thanks again

The Shadow

 

[morts]

vista was a dreeam come true, if you have the double the specs needed though, but with its (many) faults it sure beats Linux and OSX, in the end im sure we will all see linux burn and crash and im sure OSX will end up with herpes begging for crack whilst vista will soar.

 

[Chappy]

Hi Shadow

OS's are going to continue to grow in size, mainly because people continually want their new computer to be able to do everything out of the box. As more toys become available, MS has to code in more functionality, while keeping 90% of the old functionality still. Plus the driver list that MS has to integrate will continue to grow exponentially, and of course there's the old security bits that have to be upgraded...etc, etc. I'm completely Not surprised at the size of the OS today, and with storage as cheap as it is for mega-large drives, I don't really see it as a problem. I used to keep XP Pro on a 20G partition and that was plenty, but I have Vista on a 150G one now.
OS's will not shrink any day soon, or any decade soon, it's just far too complex now and the lines of code needed for something this diverse and complex has to grow exponentially as well. Billions, not Millions anymore.

Anyway, as a system builder you probably know that the Services is a terrible place to go looking to save space or resources. We heavily tested the many XP services tweak suggestions found on the WWW and found the Max savings was less than 40G of RAM, and the issues that can arise later from some of these are certainly not worth the headaches. Most users completeley forgot they tweaked their services when they came to our sites complaining that This and That aren't working anymore....
Then after a week of t-shooting it's found that some silly little service was disabled and once turned on most of those problems went away. But of course many times the user also just got frustrated and reinstalled...hmmm.

I advise people that the only services that should be turned from Auto to Manual are things like TabletPC if not used, Parental Controls if you're a Bachelor, and basic things like that, of which there are about 5 or so...not a real savings anywhere there I think.
With RAM and magnetic disk storage as low in price as they are, it's best to leave the services area alone for the most part, and simply upgrade the resources to match the needs of the system, not the other way around.

 

[TheShadow]

Thank you Chappy for the lesson, but ya gotta realize, I'm "OLD SCHOOL" and I don't like things running in my 'background' that I don't need.

Vista reminds me of the guy who drives around in his pickup truck with about a half ton of junk in the back, all the time. Just saying there's plenty of room in the bed of that pickup for all his junk plus a lot more does nothing about the loss of performance and of course the gas that's needed to move that junk and the wear and tear on the brakes every time he has to stop.

DOS was great, because it ran NOTHING you didn't want running. Then came windows which liked to run things hidden in the background. That really tick'd me off! Ever since Windows 95, I've been tweaking, tuning and trimming to achieve the highest possible performance and I've become pretty darn'd good at it.

My customers enjoy a system that's immediately responsive when they click on something without having to sit and WAIT for the CPU having to find time for them among all the other things it's doing. The highest priority of any system should be the user. For any PC to ignore the user while it performs some (needless) background service, is INSANE. The guy/gal that pays the electric bill should always get the highest priority. (Sorry, now I'm ranting)

When I finally decided to do something about Vista's background 'Services', I consulted "Mr Black Viper". I actually "Disabled" very few services, but I put a 'bunch' of them into Manual mode. I checked every item to make sure no other program depended on it to be running all the time. My final total for general purpose use was 22 and for myself (only) it was 24.

You mentioned that today's computers have lots of ram and huge hard drives. True, most of the time, except for a few PC makers that still like to skimp on the ram.
But those services are not actually run by the HD and ram,,,,,,they're run by the one CPU in the PC. It must constantly service all those running "Services" besides the programs that you have open. Like a juggler, it has to keep all those balls flying or it will crash.

It's not just me, because many web sites, run by credible persons, deal with removing the unneeded load off of the CPU to increase overall system performance.

With all due respect for the nay-sayers and their right to their opinions, I'll probably keep doing what I do because I've seen it increase system performance markedly.
My own Vista PC was taking 126 sec's to boot up....then I ran my little batch file to shut down services and the boot time immediately dropped to 52 sec's.
My customized boot up includes my own VICleanup program and a script to froce a new Restore Point.
I also have some registry tweaks that help system performance. Most are carry-overs from XP.

I service hundreds of home computer users and I can't even remember the last time a customer called complaining of BSOD's or Freezes or crashes. I must be doing something right.

Again thank you for your response, but if you'd like to continue a "personal" conversation, lets take it OFF of the forum.

Just to touch on that large HD you mentioned, all too many folks are loading those HD's with every picture they ever took, every email they ever received, and the list of "Junk" just goes on and on.

Then that huge HD crashes,,, and they are on a forum someplace crying for help to recover their stuff. I see it every day, in the 16 or so forums that I work. In most cases there is NO recovery when a HD squalls, balls and smokes.

For that very reason, I keep NO valuable data on my HD. If I want to keep it and need it, it's on a CD or DVD. With lots of drive maintenance, I am still able to back up my C: drive to a 6 or 8 gig flash drive, using Ghost 2003 with HIGH Compression.

I provide every one of my customers with a weekly HD maintenance procedure and encourage them to use it Weekly......not weakly!D

OK, got a service call.....
Catch y'all later,
The Shadow

 

[echrada]

Shadow, you will appreciate where I come from when I say that my first computer was an Osborne 1, portable, I've been hooked since.

And the changes since then has been phenomenal and I cannot wait to see what is next. No Windows - ah bring on the future.

 

[TheShadow]

Theoretically, I'm retired, but I still run service calls to my old customers and pick up a new one every now and again.....like today!
Can you believe someone building a PC to run XP-Pro and only putting in 256m of ram? That's what I call criminal behavior!!!!

Well, that's one of the two PC's I brought home today. I'm adding another 256m for that (new) customer. That PC certainly runs better with 512m than it did with just 256m, and she's been running it that way for over five years.

The second PC is a Compaq Laptop, running Vista. I'm also improving it greatly!!!

Any way, I remember the Osborne, the Adam, the Pet, the ITT (?) and of course the Commodore 64.
In fact my first computer was a C-64 with tape drive.
I quickly got me a floppy disk drive so I could load a program in less than six minutes.
I didn't like the screen colors though and the slow loading so I and a programmer friend of mine re-wrote the OS (Kernal ROM) to improve performance and make a brighter screen. It worked great and I sold copied of my custom ROM nation wide.
I also developed a "Quiet Stop" for the 1541 disk drive so it would run quietly and never go out of alignment. Gads!,,, I made a fortune, re-aligning those floppy drives.

Anyway, I've got to git back to the shop.....two computers I picked up today await my full attention.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
The Shadow

 

[Epicurus]

Most of the persons who hate Vista is beacause they still use old hardware/software....

Theres no way i would go back to XP now, Vista works like a charm with a up to date PC.


So for the haters, welcome to 2008... its time for a change.

 

[Everlong]

The times I've been around the PC World near me and seen the PC's that only just scrape the bare minimum to run Vista obviously isn't going to run Vista well, which are usually the people I find moaning about it running like crap.

I've used Vista for around 10 months or so now, the first PC I had was an Athlon x2 3000, dual 7600GS and 2GB 533 RAM and it ran fine. Ran more so better than what XP ran, and definatley wouldn't go back to XP now.

And like others have said, XP was a lot worse at than what Vista was at released and in the first year or so.

 

[johngalt]

I tested Vista on a P4 2.0 GHz Machine in a Tyan S2266 Trinity 510 mobo, with 1 GB RAM, with a VisionTek MX 440 (yes, back then VisionTek made nVidia cards - imagine my surprise when I asked for tech support 2 years later and found nothing but ATI cards)....and a 120 GB 7200 rpm IDE drive and CD burner. It was slow - but not as slow as XP on a Pentium200 MHz machine with 96 MB RAM and all 5400 rpm IDE drives and built in video.

I have an average machine for today's specs and Vista screams. Yes XP would scream faster - but it sure didn't scream on P4 2.4 GHz machine that were the rage 1.5 years after XP was released.

 

[maryNSC]

LOLOLOL Thank U.. Me and vista have have been getting along pretty good here lately ..:O)
I went through this with Win 3.1- Win 95-- Win 98- XP..
So I was prepared..:O)
I might still go BUY me that easy Button from Staples tho..I know I know it dont work here ..

 

[Methos_42]

The absurdity of most consumers not LISTENING to Microsoft when they told everyone the requirements for running Vista is quite funny to me really. What? Did you really think you where going to have a screaming machine just because you got a different OS. Its the same in the car world, you see these people reprograming their ecus thinking they are going to get all this performance bump, and then call the progam crap because their kia does not perform like a corvette. Put the same program on a corvette and now watch it scream. With a few tweaks, my Vista has been performing great, I like it better for day to day tasks, i find it easier to use, now that i have gotten used to it. Like Most i hated it out of the box, but that was more b/c i listened more to the HYPE regarding Vista than my own opinions.

 

[Joan Archer]

Sounds a bit like my daughter, she was using my old WinME machine occasionally using my XP one but not very often. Christmas her fiancé bought her a laptop with Vista and she loves it and so do I. I bought myself a new desktop with Vista Home Premium about a month ago and am very pleased with it.
I will say one thing about my purchase even though it's OEM it didn't come bundled with crap it just had the OS and a trial version of Live One Care.

 

[[Carl]]

If I'd been using XP, I would have reinstalled loads of times by now, Vista rattles along fine.

 

[Axon]

My brother doesn't want to get Vista because he's pleased with XP. That is OK by me, but he also said it's because it slows everything down, which in my opinion is not true at all, 64-bit OS on 64-bit programs (Minefield) really go FASTER. And 32-bit programs don't go slower either.

 

[Adamd]

Well my bro and friend are big in the Mac computers and they like to say how much crap Vista is and well I find it kind of funny, because I know for a fact that my computer running vista is a hell of a lot faster than their under powered laptop that they over paid for.

I just like that you don't get all the crap like spyware and virus etc that you got in Xp and that is one of the main reasons why I like it so much. Also it runs everything fast and I have had no problems!

Vista rocks and IMO I have to agree that OSX is not even close. I used both and I always find myself lost and confused in OSX no matter how often I use it...

 

[dmex]

Vista rocks and IMO I have to agree that OSX is not even close. I used both and I always find myself lost and confused in OSX no matter how often I use it...

Adamd,

I have had the exact same experiences with OSX, I have found Vista can do everything OSX and Linux does better either using builtin tools or 3rd party software.

I have also found XP to run slower on my hardware (specs below) than Vista does...I take one feature like Areo and Dreamscene, checkout this thread for just a few things its capable of doing http://www.vistax64.com/chillout-room/177445-windows-aero-thread.html

I think Apple users just hate Vista because it can look like OSX and do better than OSX

Steven

 

[Titancom]

Hehe i remember when Windows 3.11 was FTW in all seriousness i have had a lot of MS OS's and have to say once past tedious driver issues and get Vista 64 bit stable it craps on XP, now that i have had a good taste of it i wouldn't go backwards to XP ever again if i can help it.

By far it is quicker pretty much in every aspec of opening and closing screens, boot up and shut downs lol what can i say i think its great and runs everything i use with out any real issues 5 star from me.

I say pffft to the wingers who dont know what there really missing here