Anything but Speechless: 100 Things People Are Really Saying About Windows Vista

Hands-on with Vista (or: The "Waaah" starts now)

25. "Vista is slow to start up!"

The Wall Street Journal gets out the stopwatch: "Leopard felt about as fast as Tiger, and it started up much faster than Vista in my tests. I compared a MacBook Pro laptop with Leopard preinstalled to a Sony Vaio laptop with Vista preinstalled. Even though I had cleared out all of the useless trial software Sony had placed on the Vaio, it still started up painfully slowly compared with the Leopard laptop... It took the Vista machine nearly two minutes to perform a cold start and be ready to run, including connecting to my wireless network. The Leopard laptop was up, running and connected to the network in 38 seconds. In a test of restarting the two laptops after they had been running an email program, a Web browser and a word processor, the Sony with Vista took three minutes and 29 seconds, while the Apple running Leopard took one minute and five seconds."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119326655774870521.html

26. "Vista is slow all over!"

Everyone agrees that Vista requires a fast computer with lots of memory to run acceptably – and that's not all that surprising for a new commercial operating system. But the slowness runs deep: a bug in Vista's file operations, such as copying and deleting, make simple actions painfully slow for many users. "...moving and transferring large single files or a large group of files can take as much as three times longer than it did on Windows XP."
http://vista.blorge.com/2007/03/28/vista-file-operations-are-irritatingl...
Even typing can be a chore: "On a brand new £1300 notebook built (one would think) with Vista in mind, the operating system should fly, especially when no applications are running. Not so; it's a complete dog. It's so slow that applications often won't register that I've hit the space bar until I'm halfway through the next word. I'm a fast typer, but not that fast.... After tracking the ever increasing speeds of processors and computers for the past 15 years I'm left somewhat dismayed to see menu bar so sluggish, and finding myself waiting around for the OS to do the most simple of tasks."
http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10006214o-2000331758b,00.htm

27. "Vista's a non-stop parade of problems!"

Like this: "With the 64-bit version of Vista, my monitor resolution was changed nearly every time I restarted the machine. Each and every time, I had to reinstall the manufacturer's drivers to get the best resolution which happens to be 1680 x 1050. But when I shut down and restarted, the screen would generally revert back to a much lower resolution."
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13114/1090/1/3/
The Wall Street Journal had no better luck: "In fact, every piece of software and hardware I tried on two Leopard-equipped Macs -- a loaned laptop from Apple and my own upgraded iMac -- worked fine, exhibiting none of the compatibility problems that continue to plague Vista. My old Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer, for which Vista lacks the proper software, worked instantly in Leopard, even over the network. And, unlike with Vista, it was able to print on both sides of the page."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119326655774870521.html
From USA Today: "...Vista's problems started almost immediately after I upgraded... When I opened a folder that contained both pictures and video files, Windows Explorer crashed... Then I discovered that Vista would not allow Firefox to be my default browser no matter how hard I insisted... I finally fixed this by not only disabling IE through Default Programs, but by delving into Vista's Registry and manually changing some keys... But that was nothing compared to what happened next." (The writer ends with a lament for lost XP, and a wish for an iMac.)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/andrewkantor/2007-03-02-vista-pro...
The BBC: "The Windows "sidebar"... crashes regularly and infuriates me because its "gadgets" can not be customised."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6407419.stm
It's the average user who matters, though. Here's a representative report from one: "I received my first experience with Vista yesterday. Took an hour to get the ethernet working (Public/Private network security issues) and in the end had to shut the modem off and back on so Vista could evidently give it a damn good talking too. In that hour, I had approximately 1 security message every 5 seconds while dealing with the networking center. It crashed on me about 3 times (lockup) and ran like a dog."
http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/08/30/mac-os-x-leopard-vs-microsoft-window... (see comments)

28. "Vista's a downgrade in stability!"

A common comparison with XP, from the BBC: "I've had two Vista crashes so far - not a blue but a black screen - and that really shouldn't happen. I can't even remember my last XP crash."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6407419.stm
"Still with us: program crashes, followed by the machine's refusal to shut down until you lean on the power button awhile. Thereafter you may be subjected to ugly white-on-black text from CHKDSK, a DOS-era program that issues baffling new reports like "44 reparse records processed.""
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0226/050.html
"Stability-wise, Vista is much worse than XP with all its bandages. Security fixes continue to be applied to Vista - I had a total of 15 applied during my brief period of usage - but the stability leaves much to be desired. Each and every time a security fix was applied, I had to reboot the machine... There are times when the whole system seems to seize up for no apparent reason; at others, it seems to take forever for a simple function to be performed... I asked [my son] to try and crash the system. He was able to achieve it in about seven minutes. His description: "...was browing, pressed 'show desktop', waited, pressed again... waited... hit ctrl, alt, delete, task manager showed up, hit cancel and the whole thing stuffed up." He had a couple of choice things to say as well but after two months of life with a MacBook what he said wouldn't stand scrutiny in parliament."
http://www.iTWire.com/content/view/13114/1090/1/3/

29. "Vista breaks my applications!"

One of the biggest Vista problems. The warning came before the launch: "Microsoft really doesn't want you to know this, but many of your existing applications won't work with Vista. In fact, some brand new products won't work with Vista."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2062318,00.asp
Then came the pain: application compatibility has been perhaps the largest cause of outcry over Vista, and is seen as significantly hampering uptake of the OS. Says Information Week: "Industry surveys and anecdotal evidence have shown that many businesses have shied away from Vista due to concerns about application compatibility and resource requirements."
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204801084
"I find it particularly telling that Microsoft's general manager for Windows client product management, Brad Goldberg, told Microsoft blogger Mary Jo Foley that Microsoft would not publish, as it had for XP, a list of applications that don't work with Vista. "We have no plan for publishing a (Vista compatibility) list," said Goldberg. The reason for this is probably that this would be an embarrassingly long list. I've also found many mainstream applications that will either not run at all or not run well with Vista."
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0%2C1895%2C2072976%2C00.asp
How about games? "Alex St. John, chief executive of game publisher WildTangent... claims that at least nine out of ten games do not work with Vista."
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/30824/98/
"...the choosy gaming crowd is one niche group that seems to prefer XP. One reason... is the lack of games that take advantage of Vista's DirectX 10. Also, the normal performance and compatibility issues encountered with a new OS might merely annoy an everyday user, but to gamers looking for top speed, they're a killer."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,137635-page,3-c,vistalonghorn/article....
Don't put too much hope in SP 1 to fix the issues. "Microsoft is warning customers that the soon-to-be released service pack for its Windows Vista operating system won't fix the application capability issues that have plagued the software since its release in January."
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=204801084

Vista and me (or: Trust busting)

30. "Vista is frustrating!"

Blank screens, driver errors, a disappearing wireless card, system restore, manual info re-entry, corrupted data... That's just one blogger's tale of woe.
http://vista.blorge.com/2007/10/01/windows-vista-is-already-past-its-exp...
Want a more mainstream voice? Says the departing head of PC Mag: "I've been a big proponent of the new OS over the past few months, even going so far as loading it onto most of my computers and spending hours tweaking and optimizing it. So why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn't work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2171472,00.asp

31. "Vista spies on me!"

And does so with a passion. Prepare to be scared: "Are you using Windows Vista? Then you might as well know that the licensed operating system installed on your machine is harvesting a healthy volume of information for Microsoft... In fact, in excess of 20 Windows Vista features and services are hard at work collecting and transmitting your personal data to the Redmond company." http://news.softpedia.com/news/Forget-about-the-WGA-20-Windows-Vista-Fea...
Another report: "I ran a packet sniffer for about two hours, leaving the PC idle. I was left wondering why packets need to be sent to wwwbaytest2.microsoft.com and data.tvdownload.microsoft.com. Can someone from Microsoft give me an answer?"
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13114/1090/1/3/
Another take: "...Vista came along and I loathed it so much, so immediately and - importantly - lastingly, primarily because it is crippleware that constantly spies, asks for confirmation, and comes across almost like an insecure bully..."
http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/08/30/mac-os-x-leopard-vs-microsoft-window... (see comments)

32. "Vista's Software Protection Platform? Yechh!"

Software Protection Platform gets no love. "A major component of this is a new reduced functionality mode, which Vista enters when it detects that the user has "failed product activation or of that copy being identified as counterfeit or non-genuine", which is described in a Microsoft white paper as follows: "The default Web browser will be started and the user will be presented with an option to purchase a new product key. There is no start menu, no desktop icons, and the desktop background is changed to black. After one hour, the system will log the user out without warning". This has been criticised for being overly draconian, especially given reports of "false positives" by SPP's predecessor, and at least one temporary validation server outage."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...
In less tempered words: "Microsoft doesn't really care that some percentage of the people whose Windows installations SPP convicts of being pirated or tampered with might be false positives. Those people have absolutely no recourse but to call Microsoft's WPA support number, and they might not get a sympathetic ear. We all know software is imperfect. Yet Microsoft's policy does not allow for handling that imperfection."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...

33. "Vista calls me a criminal!"

Here's how users view Vista DRM: "It doesn't matter if you legitimately purchased your DVD or CD, it doesn't matter if you wish to format shift this product you own to another device you own, and doesn't matter that you routinely go out and buy more music and movies to enjoy -- you're a criminal, deal with it."
http://apcmag.com/5348/vista_defective_by_design
If pirated material does slip into your hands, you're the one who pays. "You've purchased Vista in good faith -- and Microsoft is going after you, not the person who did the pirating."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...
This cartoon says it best: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20070901&mode=classic

34. "Get out of my face, Vista!"

"Like a screaming, petulant child, a UAC security pop-up demands attention, and users must respond to get around it. The security notice seizes control of the computer, the screen goes gray translucent and a pop-up box asks the end user's permission to do something. The end user can regain control by responding to one of two options: "continue" or "cancel.""
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/vista/vista_security_a_petulant_c...
Business Week chimes in: "The security program in Microsoft's new version of Windows is so annoying you're likely to turn it off. And that's risky."
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2007/tc20070315_101834...
Vista's nag-based security has been the butt of many jokes, something not missed by the competition: http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_4...

35. "Vista's UAC is awful!"

"UAC [User Access Control] is not smart in any way. It doesn't try to discern something that might actually be a threat. It just throws up a prompt about something that might conceivably be exploited. It also doesn't ever relax. You could click the System Control Panel (also called Advanced System Settings in some areas of Vista) 75 times in a row, and it would prompt you with the statement "Windows needs your permission to continue" every time. So basically, it adds an extra click to the process of accessing this tool... As a Johnny-come-relatively-lately to the security bandwagon, Microsoft has embraced security principles fervently. What that means is that, if there's even a small chance that opening a settings dialog box, starting up an applet, or running an installation program could present even a slight security risk, Windows Vista is going to prompt you with some sort of UAC dialog box asking for permission to proceed."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...
Another reaction: "I feel more secure — and more irritated."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289431,00.html
A comment spurred by UAC: "But the emergence of Vista has sparked something new inside me, a serious need to explore my alternatives."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...
A 2008 update: MS acknowledges that UAC is supposed to drive you crazy. "Microsoft's David Cross came out and said so: "The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I'm serious," said Cross."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080411-vistas-uac-security-prompt...

36. "I can't trust Windows Update!"

Microsoft has long suffered from lack of user trust, and Vista is burning what little is left.
"Something seems to have gone horribly wrong in an untold number of IT departments on Wednesday after Microsoft installed a resource-hogging search application on machines company-wide, even though administrators had configured systems not to use the program."
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/10/25.10.shtml
"Over the months vigilant Windows users have caught Microsoft betraying user trust on several separate occasions and this behavior is eroding customer confidence in the entire update mechanism."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=855
"For the second time in a month, Microsoft Corp. has had to defend Windows Update against charges that it upgraded machines without users' permission."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,138495-pg,1/article.html
"We're looking for a more holistic view of what WU [Windows Update] does. And Microsoft hasn't given it to us."
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/137208/microsoft_downplays...
"Microsoft has apparently decided... that it doesn't need permission to patch Windows Updates files, even if you've set your preferences to require it... To make matters even stranger, a search on Microsoft's Web site reveals no information at all on the stealth updates... [W]riting files to a user's PC without notice (when auto-updating has been turned off) is behavior that's usually associated with hacker Web sites. The question being raised in discussion forums is, "Why is Microsoft operating in this way?""
http://www.windowssecrets.com/2007/09/13/01-Microsoft-updates-Windows-wi...

37. "Vista security is still second-class!"

"Windows users... end up not just buying Vista, the most expensive operating system to date, but also buying security software to compensate [for] Vista security weakness."
http://vista.blorge.com/2007/04/30/windows-vista-poor-security-means-bus...
In surveys, businesses see security worries as a reason to avoid Vista: "... only 28% agreed that Vista is more secure than XP. Meanwhile, the no votes increased to 24% and the unsure climbed to 49%."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...
PC World delivers a too-familiar report: "...this latest flaw (now fixed) is a major black eye for Microsoft; along with two other critical security patches issued for Vista in its first three months on shelves, the problem has tarnished Vista's security sheen."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,131167-page,1/article.html
ZD Net weights in: "Windows Defender for Vista has failed miserably when it comes to protecting users of Microsoft's latest operating system from a very basic attack."
http://www.zdnet.com.au/blogs/securifythis/soa/Microsoft-can-t-defend-Wi...
CRN Test Center tested Vista and found it wanting: "One of Microsoft's big promises with Vista was a more secure operating system. But when stripped to the bare bones and thrown into the wild, wild Web, Vista's security failed to impress Test Center engineers... Vista remains riddled with holes, despite its multilayer security architecture and embedded security tools. Besides providing no improvement in virus protection vs. XP, Vista brings little or no security gains over its predecessor against such threats as RDS exploits, script exploits, image exploits, VML exploits, malformed Web pages and known malicious URLs..."
http://www.crn.com/software/199701019
(Note: For a list of Vista vulnerabilities, see http://www.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?c=12&op=display_list&vend... )

38. "Microsoft's security reports can't be trusted!"

"So it’s one thing to publish a misleading report comparing the security of Internet Explorer and Firefox (ignoring days of risk, time to patch and automated updates), and it’s another thing to paint said report by a Microsoft employee as an unbiased third party study by not disclosing who authored it... I’d like to encourage our friends at Microsoft to practice responsible disclosure when they issue propagandist literature and portray it as the god’s honest truth. Guys: you are giving marketing a bad name, and you’re misleading your readers."
http://www.numenity.org/blog/2007/11/30/lies-damned-lies-and-microsoft-s...

Fractured infrastructure (or: More on design)

39. "Vista's driver support is horrible!"

This complaint is one of the contenders for top Vista problem; you'll find more slams online than you can possibly read. Here's one representative story:
"Vista would not recognise the printer even though the manufacturer has supplied drivers specifically for the O-S; it is a unique printer in that it comes with drivers for Windows, Linux and the Mac! But Vista doesn't want to have anything to do with it... A similar thing happened with an .avi file; Media Player indicated that the proper codec had been downloaded but once again there was only sound, no vision. Once that file was on my Debian box it played without any problem."
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13114/1090/1/2/

40. "Vista's networking is unreliable!"

Again, PC Magazine speaks for countless frustrated users: "Networking, too, gives me huge headaches. In XP, a simple right click on the system tray icon put me one click away from IP settings and connections status. Now that same icon brings up a menu of options that ultimately lead to the Network and Sharing center—sharing in the Sirius Cybernetics, "Share and Enjoy" obfuscation mode, not any sort of network sharing I'm familiar with. I've configured every PC on my home network to share drives and printers, yet... there's no guarantee that any of them will be visible at any given time... my media center PC... simply drops off the network for absolutely no reason... With XP, wireless network connectivity out of sleep mode was virtually instantaneous. Now it can take up to 30 seconds to reconnect, even when my systems do wake up. That's in a trusted network, a trusted zone, and a trusted system. And why does it take so long for the dialog box to pop up after I right-click on the network tray icon? Vista has replaced XP's quick reaction time with molasses. I'm always wondering if something's wrong."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2170276,00.asp

41. "Vista still has the Registry?"

The essential Windows Achilles' Heel... is still with us. "One of the bog-down points for performance is the Windows System Registry, which among other things, is edited by every application you install, making it susceptible to bloat and corruption"
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...
That means Vista users can continue looking forward to Registry repair jobs: "After four different attempts to solve the problem with my keyboard's Intellitype software, a Microsoft engineer sorted the issue by crawling for 75 minutes through my Registry Editor."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6407419.stm

42. "Vista is power-hungry!"

No, not just hungry for control, but for electricity. Vista's DRM is at fault: "The burden that the content-protection overhead places on resources is even more severe for portable, battery-powered devices."
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

43. "Vista's Sleep mode is lousy!"

PC Magazine reports: "Vista promised a new low-power sleep mode that would save energy yet enable nearly instantaneous resume. Poppycock. The brand-new dual-core system I built a few months ago totters off to sleep but never returns. I have to cold-start it to bring it back. This after replacing virtually every driver inside... But it's not just the long sleep. My home notebook acts as if it comes from Starbucks rather than HP. It used to snooze—but now, after a recent Vista update, it never goes to sleep at all. Its new nickname: Compuccino."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2171472,00.asp

44. "I can't use virtualization on Vista?"

Virtualization is a feature all the IT pros are talking about – and they're angry about the arbitrary restriction of virtualization to only the two most expensive Vista versions. The outcry prompted Microsoft to reconsider – but it then "flip-flopped" and kept the restrictions.
http://www.news.com/Microsoft-flip-flops-on-Vista-virtualization/2100-10...
Those who grudgingly pony up the cash for virtualization-enabled versions don't end up happy either. "...tasks take over three times as long to complete under virtualized Vista as they do under virtualized XP... Vista is significantly slower under virtualization than it should be, and I'll be damned if I know why."
http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisedesktop/archives/2007/06/vista_vir...
It's easy to see Microsoft's reluctance, though, as virtualization is a technology that assists the switch to competing operating systems – something that Vista has led IT professionals to desperately want.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/111607-vista-worries.html

45. "Vista has too much disk activity!"

"Apparently, lots of people have trouble with Vista doing something with their hard drive all the time."
http://blog.stuffedguys.com/2007/03/11/vista-disk-activity-again/
"There is constant disk activity and it would appear that this is happening for the purpose of indexing in order to make desktop search faster; at the rate the disk is written to, I would suspect that its lifetime will be seriously reduced."
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/13114/1090/1/2/

46. "Vista's backup is lousy!"

"Remember the old backup program in XP? It was universally reviled, for good reason. You couldn't do something as simple as backing up to a network folder or a CD drive... Well, the backup program built into Windows Vista will make you nostalgic for XP-based backup. If you want to back up data in Windows Vista, you'll be looking for a third-party program."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...
Comparisons with Mac OS X's Time Machine software are harsh: "[Time Machine] is a completely different system from Vista's "Previous Versions" which are saved (by default) on the same disk with the current version of a file, and can't be rescued if your disk goes south—and Vista's "Previous Versions" can't do anything for you if you need to restore your entire system... [Vista's] System Restore lets you roll back the operating system to a previous state—if you're lucky, because it often doesn't work as promised—but doesn't restore your documents to an earlier state."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2207556,00.asp?sr=hotnews

47. "A: drive? C: drive?"

It may be 2008, but Vista still sticks users with DOS-style lettered drive names like "c:", whose expected (and wished-for) demise was cancelled when Microsoft jettisoned a planned virtual file system.
What remains leads to arcane fun like this: "...I shrank the partition and created a 2nd partition. On this partition I installed XP, but like the article states XP's install sees vista and labels that drive c:. So XP is now installed on d:... Is there any way to change it so xp sees xp's drive as c: and vista sees vista's drive as c: ?"
http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=725

48. "Vista's Search is poor!"

Forbes searches and doesn't like what it finds: "The new desktop search features are a mess, thanks in part to inscrutable indexing defaults and options. A "quick search" panel at the bottom of the Start menu lets you find results whether in a file's name or its contents. But on one machine--oddly, the fastest I tested--it was far, far slower than using Start's regular search option. Though that option finds folders like Accessories, quick search doesn't always. And if you click away to do something else while you wait for answers, Vista abandons the "quick search" and makes you start over."
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2007/0226/050.html
A pithier report: "Windows Desktop Search, last I tried, makes local searching (alone) a pain in the ass."
http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/08/30/mac-os-x-leopard-vs-microsoft-window...

49. "Vista won't let me change root certificates!"

Getting technical here, but: users who want to mark certain root certificates as untrusted will find that Vista no longer allows this. "If you are in an organization that needs to delete a root, it is very serious... it certainly affects government (agencies with strict crytography rules). It also has a serious effect on corporations that are worried about their competitors who happen to be Microsoft-blessed certificate authorities."
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/17703