9 thoughts on “The Vaio Returneth”

  1. This series should be required reading for all executives at OEM’s involved with selling Vista equipped PC’s. Sony should be embarrassed by this, how many customer paid this kind of money for this poor an experience?
    Good work Ed, but it didn’t need to have come to this. How much of the Vista FUD was caused by this sort of experience. My own experience with Vista started on a home built desktop, all the drivers that came with Vista worked fine. I guess I was lucky, later on in the year I bought a Dell from their outlet store without any trialware at all, that I recall. I’ve been delighted with both and frankly never understood all the complaints hurled at Vista.

  2. Ed:

    This video demonstrates your talent nicely, but Vista is still a dog. As Jeremy says, you – Ed Bott – cannot personally reinstall and configure everyone’s machines.

    The general consumer and business markets have formed a negative opinion about Vista based upon user experiences, like Jeremy’s original one, that all your efforts will not change.

    I agree Vista can work fine, as it does a very nice job on my MacBook Pro, but it has few features that are compellingly better than XP’s. The numerous changes to the Vista UI from XP, that are change-for-change sake, are off-putting to the new Vista user. These experiences of “where did Microsoft move that” further cement the bad PR that Vista suffers.

    Ed it may be time for you to focus on something else and let this dog go.

  4. Ed:
    I wasn’t giving career advice, only suggesting that “spitting in to the wind” about Vista was not the best use of your varied talents.

  5. Richard, I like Vista. A lot. I am more productive using it than I have been on any computing platform in my professional life. That’s just a fact. I enjoy using it, and I enjoy working with it, especially with digital media.

    I recommend Vista all the time and almost without exception the people I recommend it for like it too. I don’t see it as a lost cause but rather as a superb platform that had some serious stumbles when it launched. I am impressed with its progress to date and excited about its potential.

    I get lots of mail from people who start with some variant of “I must be the only person who actually likes Vista…” and I am happy to tell them they have lots of company.

    I certainly don’t think I’m “spitting into the wind,” although it’s easy to feel that way in the face of the small but loud “Vista sucks” movement. And I am well aware that people like you have had bad experiences with Vista and decided you want no part of it. I am not the least bit interested in changing your mind or denying that your experience is valid, but it also doesn’t change the positive changes I see in this product.

    Every version of Windows I’ve ever worked with has had flaws of one sort or another. That’s been true for as long as I’ve been working with it. So when Microsoft did a major reworking of large components of Vista, I assumed there would be problems, and I assumed those problems would be solved over time. That’s exactly what I see happening now, which makes me hopeful rather than depressed.

  6. Do you think the issues affecting Vista are worse than the operating systems preceding it? Certainly conventional wisdom seems to think so. I remember ME, 98 1st edition and pre-SP2 XP to name a few.
    Or is this a phenomenon of the new bloggesphere?
    I think it’s human nature for people who like something seldom make a fuss over it. However when you have a bad experience with something, you tend to make more noise. I believe most Vista users enjoy it, and are oblivious to the controversy.

  7. @Ed
    You assume too much. Both my main machine and my laptop run Vista. I have been using Vista on a daily basis for well over a year. I did a Vista install for a client two days ago. I have and intend to recommend Vista where it makes sense. I am a Microsoft Partner and sell lots of MS OSes. But I am OS agnostic. I recommend what I think is best suited to my clients’ needs and capabilities.

    Unlike you, I recognize that the public perception on Vista is mature and negative. This may change but it will probably take three more years. With Windows 7 coming in 2010 Vista probably does not have the time to turn the public perception around. Hence my advice – let it go.

  8. “Let it go”?

    I like it and recommend it for most people. There are tens of millions of Vista users out there. I can provide useful how-to information for them and also spank OEMs that deliver crappy installations. I think that’s much-needed work.

    I also disagree with your original opinion that Vista “it has few features that are compellingly better than XP’s” and that it has “numerous changes to the Vista UI from XP, that are change-for-change sake…” That to me is one of Microsoft’s biggest challenges, and as an independent Windows expert one of mine as well, to help people discover what’s right under their noses.

    I appreciate your input, and will try to take it into account as I move forward.

  9. Let’s agree to disagree on…

    that Vista “… has few features that are compellingly better than XP’s” .

    You are the Windows expert. I am on the front lines every day in front of lots of real and varied users. I have been working and playing with computers since 1972. I believe your experience starts somewhat later. Our experiences are different so are our perceptions.

    Pax vobiscum.

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