Windows Vista: 5 Broken Promises

I disagree with the last 3, for me they are improved.

Same here....not only that, shutdown is also faster than in XP for me (not including when Windows is configuring updates).

Agree with the others...notably #4, startups are faster and cleaner, and I have less stability issues than with XP. I don't know what 'Font Compositing' is, and I don't have a network, so that doesn't concern me.

Ditto.
And I'm not sure about the networking. It's in part more organized, but some things like the connection status and network connections takes more steps to get to.

Now, this list of promised features, is that picked from when MS was working on Longhorn? Because that project in reality got scrapped.

WinFS anyone? Vector graphics?

The article described it. It's basicly making sure things looks the same across various monitors with different DPI.

Definitely less reboots! I can update my ATI video drivers without a reboot. Could never do that in XP.

Startup/Shutdown is definitely faster.

I agree, I am sad for WinFS still being on the backburner. However Vector Graphics are in Vista, just that no one is developing desktop apps with them that I've seen.

First part of the article says..

"I use it daily, but I also use it with the full knowledge that it's a pre-service pack 1 OS from the boys in Redmond. That necessarily means it will have glitches, bugs, and annoyances. That's a given."

How did we as consumers allow things to get this far? No other product on this planet gets released this way. Well except fruit that hasn't ripened yet.

I just finished working on a Dell Laptop for a friend who purchased the unit for her daughter going to college. It runs Windows Vista Home Premium and supports transparency effects, etc. It runs like a pig, even disabling some of the eye candy features on this unit it doesn't run anywhere near as fast as my ibm stinkpad t43 which is a couple years old already with a processor that isn't nearly as fast and isn't a duo core, has 1/2 as much ram, older/smaller harddrive, etc. etc. You get the idea (or at least I can tell the difference). And it isn't just UAC that gets in the way everytime I try to perform a function, the unit genuinely runs slow and I could bet quite a few dollars that if this same new dell laptop were running windows xp it would be racing with it's current specs.

That's what makes me sad most of all, the performance doesn't match the look. I'm a big fan of the Vista GUI - I love it (just like the frosted flakes commercial... "I eat 'em, I like 'em and I don't care who knows!" - as I sit here typing with my anonymous userid at a computer screen thousands of miles away), it's a huge improvement over what windows xp offered but Vista's performance is very poor on what would be considered decent hardware. I'm almost inclined to believe that whatever hardware specs you think would run Vista capably, you should double just to make sure. That's my biggest disappointment. What good is fast startup & shutdown speeds if the time in between is very slow.

I've removed the crapware that came pre-installed from the factory on this machine which helped a little, I've installed all of the latest/greatest windows updates, removed the pre-installed norton antivirus/security suite and replaced with avg's free offerings which also helped a bit, disk cleanup/defrag (anyone know of a windows registry tuneup tool for vista?) but a few bits here & there are still just a few bits.

I've done what I can for this person's machine, she will be using for it internet access/email/typing up word documents & spreadsheets, playing music cd's & mp3's, watching the occasional dvd, etc. She isn't a gamer so thankfully she won't have to deal with that issue.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? I have machines that run xp & a machine running vista ultimate but still find myself working on my xp machines because I just can't handle having my pc run slower when it can definitely run faster.

Me too. I think they have improved. I must be strange but I like my Vista. We are getting along fine.  

Yes, I disagree with several of the points in the article, Vista has been much more stable for me than XP was and also noticeably quicker at booting. May have to do with the hardware you are running it on but I really like Vista and being able to run 4+ gigs of ram on the 64 bit version amongst a variety of other improvements. The good news is that like all MS releases, it will just improve and I am really liking the new Direct X 10 stuff even though it's few and far between atm.

Personally My biggest complaint, is the fact that I have vista 64 bit and have a harder time finding compatible software for it. Case in point "Icon Packager" and having to wait for Windowblinds 6 to come out of beta so I can use it. But my husband has a vista 32 bit and I am yet to notice any "real" problems that couldn't be figured out just by doing a google search for them. I'm sure there will be improvements, most of us should be used to Microsoft releasing OS's in this manner by now, they have been doing it for long enough that we've all seen it before.

Does anyone notice though that with 512mb to 1gb ram on a winxp machine, that machine will run fast. 1gb ram on a Vista machine hardly makes a dent in performance, to make perform capably it's normal to run a vista machine with 2gb or better. Obviously other factors come into play, SATA drives will run faster than standard IDE drives, and when solid state harddrives become the norm that will play an even larger role in Vista & later os releases.

Take into account these machines are still doing basically the same thing, running office apps, email, internet, a few other applications and depending on the user: games, video & image editing, etc. and they technically aren't doing them any faster than previous generation hardware & software.

It takes alot more muscle just to read email and browse the net on a new machine nowadays.

MS talked about the whole OS GUI being vector when I described the Longhorn project. But that was along time ago.


Yea, 2GB is optimal with Vista as it cache often used files, making it ready to use. So with 2GB you get some pretty smooth performance as Vista keeps things ready for you.


Lots of people say this because of Window's previous versions. But keep in mind that Vista is a Windows versions that's been tested much much better than any previous versions. With the public betas and all, it's much more solid from day 0 than any older release. So I'm not sure if this is still valid anymore.
MS have been going for making Service Packs less important.

i'm planning on getting raxco perfectdisk rx suite eventually, it works with vista
defrags hard drive and cleans out registry

i'm not sure how good it is, but raxco's defrag is pretty good

to answer your question on the registry cleaner...

jlook, I have used Raxco Perfectdisk (I am not affliated with them or anything)for a few years now in their various versions!
I have tried a lot of others but Raxco is fast & effcient, gets the job done!
My Vista Ultimate have had no issues with it.

yeah, the last 3 for me are a lot better than xp. as far as rebooting, the black screen and logo is just as long, but when the screen comes up, the system actually works. not chug along for a few minutes loading all the background stuff looking likes its done but really wasn't, like XP.

and stability, way better than XP on my machine. i can't recall a crash that has ever required a restart, just games to desktop and things like that... stuff that can easily be blamed on 3rd parties.

Not to mention when my Display Drivers failed (only once, ...was a fluke) it didn't Blue Screen my system. Just gave me an system tray balloon and kicked the display drivers back up. Gotta love how they don't touch the kernal now. Stability is 100% better for me

I'd also have to disagree with most that list. Even in the beginning with shaky driver support it was still solid for me. I'd say more stable and sure on it's feet if ever there's a problem; I mean if there is a prob it doesn't just fall over and die. Pickup for Vista support has I think been very quick too. Performance is even better than XP x64
Networking I suppose might depend what you use it for but I found setting up sharing folders and media amongst machines and internet was done in seconds and a few clicks to personalise how I want it.
Shut-down lightning fast and start-up about the same but a have quite a few more startup apps. And I haven't rebooted this thing all week
I found this interesting as well[qoute]"No other product on this planet gets released this way. Well except fruit that hasn't ripened yet."[/quote]
don't get around much I guess, just some pc games for example over the last year or two can show just how horrifying a condition some can be released in

Dunno about elsewhere in the world, but here in Oz I'm constantly seeing Dell, HP, Acer and Compaq ads for Vista machines with only 512mb RAM...of course they're gonna run 'like a pig', even with Home Basic installed.

This seems like almost a side topic, but I'm very pleased with Raxco's PerfectDisk. I tried a number of different defraggers,including the crappy one built into Windows and Diskeeper, and most of them seem to take almost literally days to clean up a relatively-small (160GB) hard drive. I've been using PerfectDisk 7 for a while now, and it will usually complete a full defrag in two or three hours.