WITH THE NEW VERSION OF WINDOWS FINALLY OUT, EARLY USERS SAY THEY’RE BEDEVILED BY
HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE PROBLEMS- BUT SOME LOVE THE OS ANYWAY.
last February, bryce Parkhurst brought home a
new Toshiba Satellite notebook with Windows Vista
Home Basic in stalled. The 33-year-old Eas ton,
Pennsylvania, circuit designer bought the PC to
enjoy music, but it soon hit sour notes. Everything
seemed to run a little slower under the new operating system.
His Alesis Photon X25 MIDI controller no longer worked.
His favorite DJ software didn’t function properly either;
when he tried to quit the program, Vista rebooted into
SafeMode. Any system change in - stigated a seemingly
endless series of “Accept or Cancel” messages from
Vista’s User Account Control feature.
After five days Parkhurst had had enough.
He removed Vista and in stalled Windows XP.
Since then, his new notebook has been trouble-free.
In contrast, Bernard Mongeon is quite pleased with Vista
Ultimate, despite problems getting it to work with the
scanner and security software on his three-year-old desktop.
The 54-year-old weather forecaster in Kingston, Nova Scotia,
accepts such glitches as a normal part of moving to a new
operating system. Mandar Jadhav, an 18 year-old Rutgers
University student, is in be tween.
He loves the slick 3D look of Vista Premium, but is
pained by the software and hardware incompatibilities
he encountered when he upgraded his nearly new Dell laptop.
These three users em - body the disparate views of Vista during
its first 30 days in the field. In PC World’ s on line survey of
nearly 1000 early Vista adopters, slightly more than a third
said they were very satisfied with the new OS.
Another third reported being satisfi ed overall, but not
exactly wowed; almost one in four were unimpressed.
And regardless of their overall verdict, a majority some
61 percent—reported at least one hiccup in getting
Vista to work with their existing hardware or software.
.................................................. .................
APPEARANCE COUNTS
the one thing just about
everyone agrees on: Vista
looks great. More than 80 percent
of survey respondents
said the new interface is an
improvement. The translucent
Aero environment available
in the Premium and Ultimate
versions may be one of
the few features that live up to
Microsoft’s “The ‘Wow’ starts
now” marketing campaign.
But not everyone has been
able to en joy Vista’s beauty.
One out of seven Vista users
in our survey had trouble ob -
taining video drivers capable
of handling Aero and DirectX
10, which allows for faster,
more realistic gaming. (At
press time, no DX10-capable
games had been announced.)
Sergio Yanez, a 33-year-old
banker in Jersey City, New
Jersey, complains, “My nVidia
GeForce 8800GTX [video
card] dropped the Aero interface
constantly when using
the [beta] drivers.” He says
this behavior usually showed
up when he was using a DivX
conversion program.
In fact, graphics card problems
topped the list of hardware
issues with Vista, followed
by sound card troubles
and Webcam glitches.
nVidia issued certifi ed Vista
drivers for boards based on
its GeForce 6– and 7–series
chips on January 30, but it did
not distribute fi nal drivers for
its high-end GeForce 8800
until about three weeks later.
The driver de lays and glitches
even prompted disgruntled
nVidia fans to set up a protest
Web site. (Rival ATI, though,
also needed an extra three
weeks to provide drivers for
several of its Radeon cards.)
security measures also
make it harder for some
legitimate programs—
particularly security software—
to work correctly.
Half of the survey respondents
had trouble getting
applications to work with
Vista; virus scanners, fi rewalls,
and media players
had the most diffi culty.
For example, after he
up graded to Vista, John
Ohannessian, a 59-yearold
computer consultant
in Louisville, Colorado,
couldn’t reinstall Zone-
Alarm Security Suite because
it wasn’t compatible with the
new OS. He blames software
firms for not having products
ready when Vista shipped.
ZoneAlarm plans to release
a Vista-friendly version of its
suite in the spring, says Laura
Yecies, general manager of
the company’s consumer and
small-business division. Users
who buy ZoneAlarm for XP
today will receive free up -
grades when the Vista version
is available, the fi rm says.
Yecies says late changes to
key APIs (protocols that apps
use to talk to the OS), the need
to integrate with Windows
Security Center, and the complexity
of security software all
contributed to delays.
Other security software vendors,
such as McAfee and Sy -
mantec, also failed to make
Microsoft’s Vista-certified
software list, re leased in February.
Representatives for both
fi rms say that their software is
compatible with the 32-bit version
of Vista, and that 64-bit
security software will be available
later this year. In contrast,
security vendor Trend
Micro issued a Vista-certifi ed
suite by the launch date.
At press time, more than
30 days after Vista shipped,
Apple had released a free up -
grade to iTunes that should
work with most 32-bit editions
of the OS, but the company
warns that some users
could still encounter problems
with data corruption.
Other users may have to pay
for the privilege of running
their favorite apps. For example,
QuickBooks 2006 and
earlier versions won’t work
because of changes in the way
Vista handles administrative
rights. Intuit spokesperson
Rachel Euretig says it isn’t
practical to update older products
because of the big changes
Microsoft has introduced.
QuickBooks users with Vista
PCs must upgrade to Quick-
Books 2007, which is fully
compatible with the new OS.
Ed Bott, author of Windows
Vista Inside Out (Microsoft
Press, 2007), says vendors
who didn’t always follow the
rules in programming for XP
are paying the price with
Vista—and so are their
consumers, who must
now upgrade even if they
don’t need or want the
new product version.
HOLD OFF?
o f t e n , where users
end up with Vista depends
on where they started.
Respondents who bought
new systems with Vista
were less likely to report
problems than those who
upgraded older PCs. Obscure
or less popular peripherals
and apps, says Bott,
also tend to have more trouble
than mainstream ones.
Even people who say they
like Vista don’t necessarily
recommend you rush out to
buy it. Most advise waiting for
more drivers and the fi rst service
pack to arrive before considering
an upgrade, or waiting
until you need a new PC.
Vendors say Vista’s real benefi
ts will start to appear after
the familiar, awkward transition
period is over (say, about
the time SP1 comes out).
“In a few months’ time, all
of this will be a distant memory,
and users will enjoy exciting
games and features in
Vista that redefi ne computing
and entertainment on the
PC,” says nVidia’s Diercks.
Users, however, aren’t that
impressed. “I consider Vista
an evolution of Windows,”
says Jim Middleton, a 55-yearold
IT analyst in Halifax, Nova
Scotia, who’s “somewhat satisfi
ed” with Vista. “It takes advantage
of modern hardware,
supports new standards, etc.
But there is nothing ‘must
have’ in the OS. Given Microsoft
had fi ve years to work on
this thing, I think they could
have done a much better job.
The reason? Building Vista
drivers is more complex than
for XP, requiring a new model,
says Dwight Diercks, nVidia’s
vice president of software
engineering. “It changes how
basic display is handled, and
it re moves older driver portions
of the code that have
been there since NT 4.0 days.”
PAINED ACCESS
one almost universally
reviled Vista feature is its
User Account Controls. In
XP, installing software and
making other system changes
was much easier for users;
under Vista’s default settings,
you must verify every system
change—a procedure that
helps prevent rogue software
from installing itself but puts
a burden on users. Many, like
Eirik Lundmark, have simp -
ly turned off UAC (the only
thing you can do, as it’s not a
confi gurable option) and are
taking their chances.
“I’m an experienced user,
but UAC wouldn’t allow me
to create a new folder in Program
Files,” says Lundmark,
a 22-year-old student in Norway.
So he fi nally shut it off .
Ironically, Vista’s added.
By: John Goldman August 2006
