I sent this off to Microsoft today, and just thought I'd share it here.
In August 2007 I purchased an Aspire 9410-4541 Laptop from Futureshop. On
Nov 29 I installed XP Pro, and I have been very happy with the laptop since
that date (3 months with Vista, 1.5 Months with XP). The 9410-4541 was not
offered with XP and this is my primary complaint. I decided to try Vista
because I knew Microsoft had spent longer than usual testing it, and I
thought that with 15 years of OS transition experience Microsoft should be
able to bring this OS to market with minimal user impact.
I was mistaken. The transition to Vista has been my worst OS transition
to date, and this is the first time in my life that I have switched to an
older OS. Vista is clearly the least stable and least usable OS to date,
and
it reflects very poorly on the reputation of Microsoft that you;
a) Offered an OS that was clearly not adequately tested.
b) Offered an OS with very poor backwards compatibility.
c) Arbitrarily removed common features from the OS
d) Arbitrarily changed functionality in ways that make the OS less
functional, and less ergonomic.
e) Arbitrarily moved and re-named features. This does not in any way
enhance the user experience.
I tend to acquire a new machine every 18 to 24 months. If Vista becomes
the only choice then I will be forced to move to a competing architecture.
I
like the Microsoft OS because it has the widest range of available
applications, but if the application base needs to be re-written to run
under
the current OS then there is no reason to stick with Microsoft. The only
applications that will be re-written to fix Vista are the applications that
are currently being marketed/developed; these make up a tiny minority of the
available applications.
My Vista experience has cost me at least 40 hours plus an XP license,
these are costs I can not bill through to my customers. I have included a
list of issues I encountered with Vista. Many of these issues are
intentional design issues that will not be fixed with any number of service
packs.
I do hope you can provide me with a usable OS the next time around.
Lorne Kelly
PS On a positive note, my Vista experience has encouraged me to move my
gaming activities back to consoles (Wii). This has turned out to be very
well for me.
-Issues encountered before I started listing dates.
Deleted Internet Explorer etc from desktop, but they still appear in file
manager. I find it hard to work with all this clutter on the desktop.
Text file on desktop will not delete, found an unlocker but it did not work
with vista. Took two hours to get the file off the desktop.
Adobe required me to shutdown explorer from the task manager just to install
Audio mixer no longer allows recording source selection. Vista requires
many clicks to change from line in to mike in.
"go online to find a solution to this problem" software is very inconsistent
- usually just disappears without finishing.
Selected "run" for a download, came back later and the download was gone -
restarted download and nothing was cached. This is reproducible.
If you set two "open with" options for a file, vista creates its own names
for each, and they can't be edited.
The start menu no longer supports drag and drop.
Every file move in the start menu requires a security check.
Start menu is not as ergonomic as the old one. Trying to navigate more than
one level is tricky.
If you select the old start menu the search box disappears.
Sept 18
Pinning a shortcut to the start menu is inconsistent. I've pinned a network
folder before (it's still there), but now vista wont let me.
Explorer crashed again today
FILE MANAGER NO LONGER HAS AN UP BUTTON
Sept 19
Plugged in mouse - no response - requested re-boot and waited at least 5
minuets for vista to shut down. Not even a wait symbol for the first 40
seconds (aprox).
After reboot mouse works, but hard drive is on solid and system is sluggish
Clicked an item from the start menu search and got two launches
Sept 22
Tried to install Dune 2000, installer just disappears with no error. Tried
compatibility modes for win98, win 2000, win 95 etc. Tried run as admin
etc.
no good
Spent over an hour trying to get Oni to install - no luck - tried
compatibility modes, administrator, and fresh DX9 install.
THE SEARCH RETURNS INCORRECT RESULTS Running a search for the executable
incorrectly returns c:\Program files\Oni.exe (should be c:\Program
Files\Oni\oni.exe)
Sept 23
In 'my computer', 'Folder options' is shown in the 'Organize' and 'tools'
menu?
Vista launched OpenOffice any time I press W today - reboot fixed problem.
Sept 24
The trash no longer has a 'date deleted'? What if I want to restore the
last three items deleted?
When following a network link, I now have to click the link and then click
'folder target'.
File manager wastes a lot of space in the address bar
File manager obscures the true path when connecting via network.
RECYCLE BIN NO LONGER HAS A 'Sort by date deleted' OPTION! I use this all
the time!
Sept 26
Network discovery and file sharing turned itself off today.
Vista sometimes claims it can't find files that it has already launched
Screen resolution suddenly changed to 1024x768 (no gaming recently - this
started happening
regularly after this)
Sept 28
Vista went to sleep while playing Flightsim 2002, had to restart Flightsim
Oct 3
Windows media player locked up while watching SNL, Vista then lost Internet
connectivity (other PCs on the network were ok), had to reboot.
Oct 16
Found out "help" for VB5 is not supported - why would you remove support for
help? Who doesn't still have some VB code around?
CTRL-TAB kept switching applications had to re-boot
Oct 17
Would not delete a folder - locked - no programs were running
Hard drive on solid & applications opening slowly
Oct 19
Went back to the WinHelp32 issue, took 20min of reading MS webpages, jumping
through "genuine windows" hoops, and downloading poorly documented installs
to get it working.
When you try to drag a file into the empty space in a folder, it highlights
the whole row, and launches whatever it thinks you dragged the file onto.
THIS ONE IS VERY FRUSTRATING.
Oct 20
Dragged a folder to a networked drive and the folder moved rather than
copied there. This arbitrary change in behavior is repeatable, and on
another date I LOST DATA because of it.
Oct 22
Printer icon shows 1 document pending, but nothing in printer queue
Oct 27
Saved lk.doc to desktop, it is not visible on the desktop, but I can open it
from Word's file-recent
Right clicked on desktop to create a folder, and waited a full minute for
the popup before giving up.
Oct 29
Accidentally clicked "Restore all" button in recycle bin (It's more
prominent in Vista). Dozens of files restored to directories with no
confirmation, no undo, and no way to know which files went where.
Oct 30
Save to desktop failure as on Oct 27
In hindsight this was probably just another case of explorer crashing.
Oct 31
Ran updates - now Joost no longer operates
Realized it's been 4 days since I mailed Microsoft, no response from them.
Nov 16
Installed SQL server, install requested THREE patches to run with Vista!
Only one of the three patches worked, the other two failed with an error.
Nov 18
Tried to download nodata.bak from yahoo mail, file was corrupted, had the
file skyped to me, transfer showed success, but file mysteriously
disappeared
from desktop. Ran a search, when I clicked on the results found by the
search, Vista gave a "file does not exist" error message. Successfully
downloaded nodata.bak on a win2k machine and transfered it over the network.
Nov 19
Tried to install Visual Studio, IIS was installed, tested, and running on
the OS, but studio can't see it. Looked on the web and found other users
with this problem in Vista, but no solutions.
Multiple patches required for studio on Vista.
Tried to uninstall and re-install SQL server. Reinstall listed 'failed to
install' for more than half of the components.
Nov 20
Tried to uninstall SQL server, got an error message and SQL server
disappeared from add/remove programs list. SQL Server is still taking up
6.5Gigs in program files, but Vista wont let me delete it.
Spent too much time finding the required dos commands to delete system
files.
(takeown /F dirname /R) and
(del dirname /F /S /Q)
Nov 29
It ends now. XP Pro installed and working wonderfully.
With the older OS I installed VS, SQL server, AJAX, and AJAX Controls,
imported and populated the database, cubed it, created the application model
database, and wrote a software ADOMD connection in about 2 hours. In Vista
I
spent at least two full days trying to get everything working, and it never
did.
Jan 11
No issues to date, everything working well, no stability issues, no quirky
behavior, and all installed apps worked as expected.
------------------------------------------------------------
Have a nice day.
jim
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