Headlines - Microsoft publishes results of secret Vista popularity experiment

[HEXUS]

Codenamed ?Mojave?, Microsoft?s experiment exposed Vista haters to a ?mystery? OS to see what they thought.

Read more.

[Biscuit]

Well i knew this was the case all along... people saying 'Vista is sh*t' when they have had no experience using it and or being influenced by their friends opinions

[Kotoa]

Well i knew this was the case all along... people saying 'Vista is sh*t' when they have had no experience using it and or being influenced by their friends opinions

I don't think it's sh*t, it just isn't everyone's cup of tea. I've been building PC's for friends and family, a couple asked for vista, and after a few months they asked me to downgrade it to xp. For people who aren't too good with computers, having to re-learn a few things when upgrading to vista is harder than it sounds.

As for me, I'm sticking with xp, because it works, it's fast, and I see no reason to spend a ridiculous amount of money for a few extra (and sometimes annoying like UAC (which I know you can turn it off, but you're still paying for it)) features.

[p4ul]

I did see for myself before bashing vista, and thats why i hate it so much!

[this_is_gav]

And none of this has got anything to do with the news item, which is discussing perceived opinions rather than those who actually know something.

Most of Hexus will know Vista's fine, but isn't worth the buying unless you need a new license or have some specific needs that Vista can provide. This also applies in reverse. Saying "well I know it's crap because I've used it" or "I've got it and it's fine" is something we read every single day and frankly adds nothing to this particular discussion.

The fact remains that word of mouth will put more off of something when in all likelihood, it would have been perfectly fine. The ever-increasing popularity of the internet, and the negativity which dominates it only serves to amplify such situations.

[jimbouk]

Interesting idea, but shame it was done by M$ and on I assume a very high spec machine. Would have been more interesting if it was done on a medium spec laptop so it wasn't so fast, or installed on the people's machines and see what doesn't work and how slow it runs.

I'm sure a perfectly configured linux system on a very high spec machine could get an equally positive response after careful editing...

[menthel]

Interesting idea, but shame it was done by M$ and on I assume a very high spec machine. Would have been more interesting if it was done on a medium spec laptop so it wasn't so fast, or installed on the people's machines and see what doesn't work and how slow it runs.

I'm sure a perfectly configured linux system on a very high spec machine could get an equally positive response after careful editing...

'We did not use some geeked out or custom built PC. We used an HP Pavilion DV2500. It had 2GB of RAM and was running an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz. The OS was a 32 bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate'

From the windows vista team blog. Not old but certainly not cutting edge.

[this_is_gav]

Well it's the previous generation (generation is perhaps too strong a word) of laptop CPU, so still quite a distance off even an equivalent desktop CPU.

[uKvinny]

iv tried vista many times and for all of them its been a nightmare. complex computing tasks such as playing a game while playing music AT THE SAME TIME would couse my system to crash. i tried several players, they all do the same. this was probably the most annoying bug iv had but there have been several and lot of the little vista quirks which are just frustrating.

i did have a vista install which didnt couse me any major problems and many of the bugs iv had have been fixed. however, im still not going to use it. I just dislike the entire the entire system. its not just the bugs that annoy me, its the overall system. everything is so overglossed and in your face, UAC is an abomonation, aero makes the "vista exspirience" less streamlined if you ask me. MS spent so much time on making thier apps look nice however any app that hasnt been coded for vista looks awful (firefox anyone?). I have had a really hard time finding a reason to use it. the only things i have found are small little useful features although there are improvements they arnt enough to justify moving from XP. other than DX10 prehaps, which i would like to point out has no valid reason why it cant be implemented on XP.MS gave a valid reason why DX10 wouldnt be on XP however game devs refused to code DX10 games on vista so they had to implement it or at least parts of it. to the exstend where is now no valid reason it cant be implemented.

i have to confess i have upgraded.from XP to ubuntu. i now game on my PS3 and wii and its once again a painless and fun exspierance and spywhere is a thing of the past. i find that after you have it set up, i find most of my tasks can be completed both quicker and more easily.

personlly i think as soon as apple get thier act together and improve security and bring macs to corporate. when linuxes apps improve and it becomes more stremlined MS will have some huge problems. vista really pissed off lot of people, MS will have a hard time to convince people otherwise. soo.. what is thier first step in doing so? bringing an intuitive touch screen interface to the masses, i seem to remember another company doing something similer... oh yeah.. apple. come on MS vista was slated for ripping off osx, so now your ripping off thier other products?

[this_is_gav]

What? MS have had a touchscreen product out for years now, and shock, horror, it's incorporated into Vista too... :\

[BrianS]

iv tried vista many times and for all of them its been a nightmare. complex computing tasks such as playing a game while playing music AT THE SAME TIME would couse my system to crash. i tried several players, they all do the same. this was probably the most annoying bug iv had but there have been several and lot of the little vista quirks which are just frustrating.

I've done this all the time even since the early Betas of Vista, perhaps you had a faulty driver or hardware?

DX10 prehaps, which i would like to point out has no valid reason why it cant be implemented on XP.MS gave a valid reason why DX10 wouldnt be on XP however game devs refused to code DX10 games on vista so they had to implement it or at least parts of it. to the exstend where is now no valid reason it cant be implemented.

I'm sorry... but you're talking about things you clearly don't understand.

-----

Anyway, while I believe most of the Vista bashing comes from Apple Fanboys (not regular users, just the loud-mouth fanatics which unfortunately seem to be the majority these days) and people who haven't even used Vista (for example, my brother, who I know for a fact has never used Vista "hates" it) the video "interviews" on that site look very scripted.

[Andaho]

I dis-like Vista simply for one good reason:

It seems like it was designed to be heavy on the system, designed to make us all have to spend loads of money to upgrade hardware that still did everything we needed at a fast speed on XP.

But in saying that, I use Vista on my PC and very happy with it, but only because it's powerful enough to handle it - for friends and family that are on a budget (and to be honest, who isn't these days), I still highly recommend a lower spec PC with XP.

---- EDIT adding extra comments ----

I think vista ticks many of the same boxes of Windows ME. The main tick box being no new file system when a new file system is planned for the next version of windows.