Jim, I remember quite well that we had more issues when Windows 2000 came out. Most of the problems were solved only with Windows XP. Vista was a poor release only with regard to compatibility. But as I already outlined in the article, this was unavoidable. I agree that Microsoft had no other choice after all these security problems with XP. Thus they did a great job with Vista because they must have known in advance that there would be a lot of bashing.

As to my naive view. I think you misunderstood this point. Of course, I didn’t claim that Microsoft needed only two years to develop Windows 7. Every Windows version is based on its predecessors. My point was just that they had considerably more time for Windows Vista.

I also disagree with your last point. Windows XP also only was a optimized Windows 2000 and there also was Windows 2000 bashing. It was just not as bad as with Vista because the server version had some important new features. I think the media hype can only be explained by the fact that most journalists only have limited technical knowledge. So they tend to parrot what others have been writing. This way they are always on the safe side. This is also the reason why there often is no controversial discussion about a new Microsoft desktop OS. It is either a total failure or a great success. The main point of my article is that both claims are very unlikely from a technical point of view.

I agree with the hype. It’s really misplaced but it’s all relative to the times. Vista was a poor release and really should have had the SP1 fixes in place before release. There is too much evidence to argue against it. The file copy problems were indeed bad. Maybe not widespread as impressed on the reader but anytime you’re dealing with data transfer and integrity and a certain threshold experiences it, it’s bad and a good warning to others. Yes, we had to deal with it.

As for adoption of Vista in business do not discount those who adopted it and later regretted it. The dept I support is one such entity. It’s been a disaster but as patches come out things have been improving.

To say that the developers only had 2 years to work on Windows 7 seems rather naive. Development doesn’t work like that on these OS’s. Much of it is an evolution and lets not forget that the final release of Vista is not what originally Vista was going to be and that the story is that a few years into it and they wiped it and then started over with the Server 2003 code. I got this firsthand from someone who works at MS…I assume he knows what he’s talking about. The Vista we know evolved from Server 2003 and then had the next few years to become Vista. Windows 7 is an evolution of that.

As for the comment that had Vista had relaxed security it would have been a marketing success…there’s no guarantee of this. OSX was already gaining mindshare before Vista due to the security issues in XP and previous Windows OS’s. MS had identified that and were very embarrassed over Slammer and other worms(according to MS employees) thus the reason for Vista’s security. Relaxed security could have been a bigger disaster for MS.

Don’t get me wrong though as a basher. Vista has been torture but I look at it as a necessary step MS had to make. They simply screwed up long ago in how they treated or rather mistreated security. In some people’s eyes certain things have to get worse before they get better and Vista was an example of that. I think they weathered it pretty well.

BTW, for what it’s worth if it’s true that Windows 7 has a smaller footprint and more optimized than Vista, it will be the first time in the history of Windows OS’s for that to happen. To me that is saying something. WinXP certainly wasn’t over Win2k and Win98 wasn’t over Win95. This kind of excitement explains some of the media hype as it’s not been seen before from MS.

My comment about Linux was based on the hype that the Linux community built itself. Even as recently as a week ago you could find blogs on linuxtoday and tuxmachines carrying on about how Linux marketshare had risen thanks in part to Vista.

On the flipside my reference to recent comments being made that Vista is more secure than Linux based os’es is as equally stupid but enough said as there are literally hundreds on blogs covering this.

Summary point there are extreme points of view in both directions driven by emotion and misinformation that affects perception of the implementor and prospective users. In my environment I would don’t think I can argue a case for Vista simply because of these perceptions by key stakeholders.

If Windows 7 is Vista made right and people believe that perception and statement then good luck to Microsoft because it helps them.

Lukas, you just replied to Adam what I would have written. However, I have to agree with Adam, that Microsoft made critical missteps. If they didn’t strip off some of the planned gimmick features in Vista and released a less secure and therefore more compatible OS, then Vista would have been a marketing success.

moiecoute, I somehow doubt Vista’s release has anything to do with the failure of Linux to dominate the desktop market. The only OS that gained advantage of the Vista bashing campaign was OS X. Linux wouldn’t dominate the desktop market even if Windows didn’t exist.

1) Vista suffered from its system requirements and never shook that.
2) It suffered from many users getting used to UAC for the first time.
3) Early compatibility with drivers etc.

It is obvious to state that IT managers are also users and there own experience affect the workplace.

p.s Linux did not kill or become a dominant os thanks to Vista.
p.p.s. Vista is not more secure than Linux distros.

I disagree. If Windows 7 was released as a successor to Windows XP at the time Windows Vista was released, we’d have had the same problems we did at Vista release.

Namely:

* High hardware requirements (e.G. netbooks now ship with 1GB of ram, while in 2006, 512MB was still consideres “normal” in an office pc)
* Unprepared application and hardware vendors

These were the biggest issues – Microsoft has made some blunders, like the file copy issue, but which wasn’t as bad as the media put it.

You wrote exactly what i think.