I am really not sure how Microsoft is still trying to argue with people, defending that Vista is a very good operating system, and that it is only problem is a bad reputation. They even tried to do a “blind taste test” with Vista, making users experiment it without knowing that it was Vista. Pathetic!
Anyway to confirm the fact that Windows Vista sucks (period!), there is an article on The Register claiming that around one third of all Windows Vista equipped machines have been downgraded to Windows XP (some by the PC manufacturers directly…).
Vista’s death march picked up some pace yesterday, after a metrics researcher revealed that nearly 35 per cent of PCs built to run the Windows operating system have been downgraded to XP.
In a survey of more than 3,000 computers, performance testing software developer Devil Mountain Software estimated that more than one in three new machines had either been downgraded by vendors such as Dell, or by customers once they bought the PC.
One third is a really big number, especially if you consider that downgrading an operating system is not a trivial task, and most users would think twice before going through that.
Windows fans, let’s hope that Windows 7 will hit the target. Or give Ubuntu a try, as I have been recommending for a while.
I use Windows Vista Ultimate on an Acer TravelMate 6291 with 1.5GiB of RAM. It works pretty darn well. I think we give Vista less credit than it deserves, and XP, more.
I agree with Adam—the fact that more people are downgrading to XP doesn’t necessarily mean that Vista sucks. Just because people have been jumping off bridges an awful lot lately doesn’t mean suicide is good, right? I have to say that this is a really narrow-minded post.
Oh, and the “blind taste test” was a smart marketing move, IMO. It just goes to show that when you eliminate all the negative hype surrounding the mere mention of the word “Vista” and use the operating system without prejudice, you’d really learn to appreciate it. (The Mojave Experiment was not without success, mind you.)
I also have Linux Ubuntu 8.04 on my system, and while Linux is lighter, it isn’t exactly more reliable, and I still find myself turning to Windows for my heftier computing. I also have a desktop running XP, and I can say with certainty that Vista beats XP any day. (In my case, at least.)
@Adam, I am not sure if people are switching back merely because they don’t like change. It is not the first time that Microsoft has put a new OS on the market. It did it with Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows XP. But it is the first time we are seeing this downgrade phenomenon at mass scale.
@Dean, the pathetic thing about Microsoft turning to a “blind taste test” is the fact that they themselves end up admitting that their marketing efforts with Vista were terrible. They spent millions of dollars in promoting it, and yet, as you said, people hate it even if the OS itself does not suck that much.
What\’s wrong with Vista? Most people would say its buggy, its slow, its incompatible with my software, etc. But, it is true? Vista isn\’t slow for me, its not buggy (anymore), but I did have an incompatibility issue with my printer.
Vista is underrated. People just talk shit about it without even using it. I agree that Vista won\’t run smoothly on their grandma\’s computer. That means its time to get a new computer or upgrade a few parts.
The Mojave Experiment was a good idea. They proved that people hate Vista and most of them haven\’t even used it. I\’m using Vista and I like it.
Daniel, did you actually use Vista on your own computer for a few days?
…time to get a new computer or upgrade a few parts??
Time for Microsoft to make a new windows OS that is modular based and not preloaded with crap you will never use…this is the key!
All the new games etc can run just fine on your current computer but the companies just make it so that they won’t…just so they sell more hardware…
we have to stop bloatware in its tracks…wake up people!
You shouldn’t have to buy a new computer to run the latest OS…period!
I’m going to guess you need a better machine.
@Daniel – oh. so that’s what you meant by pathetic. The way I read it, it seemed like you said that the Mojave Experiment was a bad idea. Yes, I have to say that Microsoft could have done a better job marketing Vista. Does bad marketing mean a bad product? I don’t think so.
@Jschmuck – lol :-))
Wow, two things about this surprise me:
1) Just about all the comments here are actually defending Vista, that has to be a first!
2) and that you, Daniel, would published such a sensational article.
Check your facts before relying on the Register as a credible news source.
The vast majority of the downgrading has come from enterprises, suggesting a mass downgrade by consumers is frankly almost obsurd. Sure, a lot of people have downgraded (and complained on internet) but nothing even remotely approaching this number.
This trend is completely consistent with previous Windows releases. A lot of enterprises do downgrade their systems for a number of years following any new OS release.
A lack of confidence? No.
It takes time for large companies to upgrade and change and even longer for the software they use to be upgraded. It can take 2-3 years for large software companies supplying complex applications for businesses to upgrade their applications for the next platform.
Seriously Daniel, do yourself a favour and do a quick Google. Find the tech news articles from 2001 and you’ll find it quite amusing. Some quotes spring to mind:
“XP offers no new essential functionality over previous Windows incarnations”
“retailers have reported no significant boost in sales prompted by the release of Windows XP”
“2 years on and Windows XP adoption in large enterprises is still lagging well behind Windows 98”
Oh… but I agree with the comments about Vista’s marketing. It has been shocking the entire way along.
@Josh, I did mention that part of the downgrades was coming from PC vendors on the article.
Secondly, I really don’t think the amount of bad feedback, negative publicity and downgrades have that we have seen with Windows vista is “consistent with previous Windows releases.”
@thirt33n, I tested it briefly, though I don’t own any Vista copies. I only own one Windows powered PC indeed, and it is running XP.
Daniel, may I know the source from where in you got the information about dell and other vendors recommending XP over Vista?
I have checked a couple vendors (Dell, hp and others) and even now when you purchase a decent good configured machine, the pre-loaded OS is Vista not XP.
While I agree that XP has its own advantages, Vista is still the preferred OS.
The features and the GUI of vista are far better than any OS of today.
@Suresh, that is a quote from the article I am linking to.
I’ve been running Vista Ultimate on a PC ever since the software was released. The PC scores a 5.9 in the test so I have no performance issues.
The reason I decided to change was that so many third party application just didn’t work properbly with Vista (even though they were said to be Vista ready).
All in all I’ve degraded 3 Vista PCs so I’m part of the 1/3 in the statistics. I even recommend everyone that I know not to use Vista and sometimes I’ll even offer to help them do the downgrade.
I’m definitely not upgrading again but I will hopefully change my mind with Windows 7. I do like the Aero design that Vista has so I hope that they will keep it.
Mikael
http://www.antphilosophy.com
From personal experience Vista is still quite buggy and very sluggish. My laptop now runs XP and switched the desktop to Linux Ubuntu (which is great btw).
There are some very annoying aspects of Vista, such as its overeager “are you sure” messages that force users to decide what is safe and what is not (I believe that puts the burden on the wrong party; Microsoft is trying to make PCs safer, but annoying users as a way to get software developers to rework their apps is hardly a customer-friendly security approach). Microsoft is asking people to spend a couple thousand dollars (new equipment, software upgrades, you know, shit like that.) for Vista. That’s a lot to ask of customers when there are few tangible benefits.
Remember how XP was the in-thing when it came out. XP gave you a reason to upgrade from 98, Vista hasn’t done that for me. Yeah eventually I’ll have to buy a Vista preloaded PC…… but for now it’s F*#K VISTA, XP Rocks.
and to ya’ll hard headed biatches, the fact customers are rejecting Vista (downgrading) means it sucks to them. They have no reason to upgrade.
Tom’s Hardware published benchmarks in January 2007 that showed that Windows Vista executed typical applications more slowly than Windows XP with the same hardware configuration. According to CNET, Windows XP Service Pack 3 outshines Windows Vista in performance and in other benchmarking tests.
“Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP’s 35 seconds.”
XP XP XPXPXPXP
XP XP XP XP
WINDOWS XP XPXPXPXP RULES
XP XP XP
XP XP XP
Forget about xp and vista think about Clout.
I vomit every time I hear someone say “vista just suffered from a bad reputation.” 5 laptops were bought in my family during the Vista era, each one of them with Vista and a little Vista sticker on the hand rest. Each one of these laptops ran painfully slow. Start up time ranged from 1 minute to 10. Click on firefox and wait a minute or more for it to open. Okay, so if you have a supercomputer or spend time tweaking the heck out of it it will move at an acceptable rate – but when you PAY for an operating system it should work out of the box. Everyone would just use Linux if they wanted to spend several days of their life getting it to work right. All those laptops my family bought are running other operating systems now – Windows 7, XP, Ubuntu 9.10 and Linux Mint 8 – and they’re all great, snappy computers now. Funny thing is, Ubuntu (and Mint) worked on these computers without any extra tweaking. There may be operating systems out there that were worse than Vista, but they were not forced onto consumers the way Vista was. Vista was forced on us, we had to pay a high price for it, and it required more work than Linux if you actually wanted it to work. That’s why Vista was the worst operating system ever.
Its October 09 2010 and as I can see, Microsoft still has alot of work to do on its operating systems, by that, I mean Windows Vista and Windows 7. Yes its is true that Windows 7 will give you a better performance over windows vista, but according to SOME of my customers it is still not enough for them to warrant that it is WORTH using over Windows XP. For example, last 8 months, I went to one of my computer repair customers house, he said that its been twice the times that he had to send his dell computer for warranty repairs because the computer started running sluggish. At first, it was running Windows Vista, then it was upgraded to Windows 7, and at first, after the upgrade it initially started performing better, but then, GRADUALLY as the weeks passed by, it started running as painfully slow as it was doing under Vista, Windows 7’s performance did not had any difference over that of Vista, so my customer asked me if I can help him downgrade to XP since he owned a COA for 1 unused XP CD he has laying around his house, it was SP1, but I helped it slip stream SP3, along with some nLite tweeking to remove some “extra fat” off the XP installation files, well things that he never uses and that about no body needs, and I also used nLite to slip stream the SATA drivers to the XP installation files for text mode since it was necessary for XP to initially recognize the SATA hard drive, then I proceeded to format and install XP. After the installation was done and I installed all the other programs he needs like OpenOffice word processor, Avast Antivirus, SoftPerfect personal firewall, HostsMan Malicious websites rogueware, etc blockers, Firefox web browser (Also I made sure to delete the shortcut for Internet Explorer as no one needs that insecure crap of IE), and other freewares, he was very surprised on how fast the computer ran, I mean, XP literally FLIES on his computer.
Since that operation was performed over 8 months ago, I called back my customer to ask him how the XP installation is performing now, 8 months later, and he says that his computer is as fast as I left it, thanks to that, he recommends me alot of customers and I Have made lots of money on computer repairs with a great positive recomendation, and all what I had to do in his case was help him ditch Win7 and install XP (legally).
Well, that’s for now, I hope that my experiences with these customers that I have from time to time helps people here wake up their minds, specially if their computer is under performing, now you know what you can do. And yes, some times it could be an issue with the hard drive, such as impending failure of the hard drive can cause the computer to run slow, viruses, etc, but in the cases that I have analyzed it was not ANY physical imminent failures for ANY hardware components.
Another suggestions that I can say to you is that if you are having performance issues in your Windows Vista or Win7 machines, you can enter the MSCONFIG and disable as many components there that you do not need, you can start by clicking on the diagnostic mode — load basic drivers only, and see if it gets faster, if is does, then you can start enabling one by one starting from the most critical component until you see your computer running with acceptable functionalities, such as audio working, video drivers working, wifi worning, DHCP working, LAN working, your antivirus and firewall set to start up, after that, you do not need to enable any thing else, restart your computer, if it runs faster at the finished point, then you have done it, if now, it is still runs slowly, then consider downgrading to XP, or get Ubuntu linux. Ubuntu linux has the greatest hardware support right off the box, thats why I recommend the Ubuntu distribution. If you LIKE the way Windows 7 looks, then you can download a nice neet distribution called Zorin OS, (google it), it is based on Ubuntu 10.10, and has the looks changer built in, it allows you to change the THEME of Ubuntu to either XP, Windows 7, or Macintosh X, at least people wont have an excuse not to use linux if their only excuse if that they dont understand it, with familiar graphical user interface, now they can understand it perfectly well, (now let just hope that what ever printer you have is not one of those printers with no linux drivers, and with that, stay away from Lexmark printers, they dont support Linux, always research on google if such hardware and model numbers work for Ubuntu before purchasing ANY hardware meant for your Linux box.)