Angry Vista Users Vent Over SP1 Driver Issues

I don't know when I will upgrade to Vista, but it will be a long time. However, XP was such a dramatic improvement over 98 (in my experience) that I jumped at the chance. For one thing, XP didn't (and still doesn't) blue-screen 3-4 times a week.

Ah, yes, the fabled Blue Screen of Death...

so vista is more like Windows ME? What a waste that was!

Well I should say that New Machines with Vista are far far better then upgrades, but of course with upgrades, there are still going to be driver issues.

Comparing ME and Vista ? Not that many people bought ME, but at least ME shared all of Windows 98 and most of NT's drivers. My guess in looking back, Vista has caused more headaches, but its hard to tell as ME had such a short life and so many people ended up with pre-released versions and those were horrible The final release was pretty solid.

Windows 7 will be out around 2008,

So, since it is scheduled for 2008, we can expect it to actually be released about 2013? :)

Well that might be more realistic.....

That is exactly what I had, all three, but finally gave up on Vista as it was just too painfully slow for me and really added nothing for me. So my older Laptop is XP sp3 and Desktop is the Imac 24 with Leopard and that makes a good working combo.

Actually 3 years before Microsoft came out with Excel for the Mac in 1985, it came out with Multiplan for CP-M as that is what I ran on my Apple II and RadioShack II

He's one of the biggest @!$%#s you'll ever meet.

Give me the "@!$%#s" who delivers a stable and more usable product EVERY DAY and twice on easter Sunday.

But I guess the TRS-80, shout-out and engineering types are gluttons for punishment.

Is the notion of a dominatrix degrading you because your punch cards are not ordered exciting? Go get Vista and keep calling Steve Jobs an "@!$%#s." WHO CARES IF HE IS AN "@!$%#s."

hater ...

But did you have a TRS-80?

Of course I had the Trash 80 and a TRS 100 (the 4 line 8 80 character portable) The TRS-80 was one of my first real PC's, that and my Apple II.

I did the same in 1975, Fortran on a IBM 360 and a huge box of punch cards. And if the computer centers Air Conditioning was not working well (I was at School in Tampa, FL) it would not read my cards because of the humidity....I was lucky, I was in engineering so I never had to take Cobol, next one was SPSS.

Hah....I have tried to delete any and all memory of SAS. I dreaded trying to figure out all about variance's and Bayesian analysis and all the strange world of SAS....I only had that for 2 quarters. Never did anything with Minitab.

My first view of a VAX was around 1979 and my into to Unix on the VAX-11/780 and figuring out VAX/VMS. Man that was the supercomputer of the future ! :-)

I learned on a Control Data (IBM clone), my first "computer" was an AIM single board computer (bare motherboard with a 6502 processor, 256 bytes of memory and a calculator 10 key pad to program) llater an Apple ][ (not even a Plus). I have run IBM system 3's. 34, 36, 370; Dec PDP 11's, Vax 11, Wang, and on and on; Commodore PET, VIC, 64's, TRS 80 model 1, 3; PC and clones from 1981 and on including Xerox, Eagle, NEC, etc; Northstar and other S-100 based, Atari, and on and on

I think it's fascinating all of us old computer fogey's - those who remember OS's before Win XP - somehow showed up here in this thread.

Oh. And as far as I know Microsoft's first product was Applesoft basic 1979 - on cassette TAPE

I wonder what it says that the most active discussion on an article about Vista centres around 25 year old computing memories...

Perhaps a good way to release some of the frustrations of dealing with Vista ?

It's also a really interesting read. I came into computing slightly later - anyone else cut their teeth on a ZX Spectrum?

I used the ZX Spectrum 128 a little, but those were hard to find in the states as they were more of a UK thing and Commodore was more the thing here. But a friend brought one back from London. Good old Sinclair Basic I think.

The Spectrum I had was a 64K, but in size it put modern laptops to shame. Except for the TV and tape player to save onto audio tapes (that was a master-stroke, they were cheap and easy to get). The BASIC on it was great, each line of code started with a keyword, like PRINT or LET, and each of those was bound to a letter, so you'd get them with one press on the keyboard. Simple, but cool :)

Leander - No. MS Dos was actually purchased from a small company Seattle computer products, I think; It was most likely in Assembler and was originally written for 8088 boards in S-100 bus computers when Microsoft found it and bought it to become MS Dos / PC Dos

#6.27

I took a class in basic many years ago. By the end of the second week I was more or less teaching it. The class was very modern, a whole room full of Apple II's. I remember being amazed by the IIe when it came out. :)

Of course that was before Apple became all closed architecture.

Microsoft first days were started after buying out a small company called Seattle Computer Products (SCP) run by Rob Brock and had mainly local High School Students putting PC 8086 boards together. The had a DOS OS called QDOS. The also sold a package bundled together with a 8088 CPU and that whole thing was called "Seattle DOS". Microsoft never marketed any of the bundled packages. Then the name went to 86-DOS, PC-DOS (IBM) and finally MS-DOS. Those were the days when Microsoft was scattered around in a couple rented office spaced in Bellevue, WA. Long before the invasion of Redmond.

#6.30 No, It was not written in BASIC, it was native Intel 8080/8086 code.
The Lawsuit was between Seattle Computer Products and Microsoft as Microsoft never told SCP that they already had a customer (IBM) althou under the Marketing agreement, Microsoft did not need to tell them from what I understood. It was finally settled about 8 years later for $1 Million.

I get the impression that MS has run a bit downhill since Bill Gates stepped away from the everyday mgmt. Just my opinion.

Oh, and Leander, you should probably avoid making any historical statements without running it by Tedd first. It seems he always has the final word on so many things.

MinnieApolis
Thanks for the comment..I have been around a couple years lets say and it kinda helps just a little that 27 of those years was in Redmond, 1/2 mile away from Microsoft..

Good old Ray, "Mr. VisiCalc" (and Notes of course) that guy has one amazing background. Neat person also.

Ray is doing alot with the Windows Live stuff that is so popular right now and giving alot of presentations on that and is very open on answering questions and walking around and mixing with people. I played a little with Improv, but whoa..that was a long time ago.

New Mexico in the haaaaauuuuus!

No I'm not actually missing the point. Yes it is true that under a Vista install without SP1 installed it is capable. However now with SP1 out. The companys have to adjust THEIR drivers to account for this. Microsoft are in no way to blame for companies not being able to write drivers to work with the OS.

I see both of your points, but I do wonder whether it's reasonable that the OS had to change so much that drivers no longer work. It's not like it's a new OS after all, it's a service pack.

It is not, I REPEAT IT IS NOT, Microsoft's responsibility to ensure that every single driver is "signed" by the vendor.

I agree with this, Leander, but I don't agree that MS is completely off the hook. They keep moving the goal posts for the driver vendors. Both are to blame, but I really think MS seems to be making it extra hard for them.

Every vendor is different on how they work with Microsoft also. Some of them take a stand off approach and wait for the new update to get sent to them and then they test it in their environment which I have seen with some of the big name audio card people and others will either have a full time person of group at Microsoft and test it right there while the SP is going thru the Alpha/Beta/RC/RTM and then final release version. The later group, very rarely has a driver issue. Costs a little more money up front, but in the long run, saves alot of pricey service calls and customer support.

HP & Canon are good examples of two vendors that you never see on the "broken SP update list"
A little homework ahead of time goes a long way.

Both are very true and correct statements Tedd and Leander.

If you think about what makes a business successful. You don't find business that have bad partnership programs and bad products succeeding. Microsoft are producing a product for millions. So of course there are going to be problems.

When you look at the people that are bad mouthing Microsoft and their product they are people that claim they "Hate Microsoft" when they're sitting there running on Windows. Its these kind of people that clog the Internet with garbage because they don't bother checking for an updated version of their driver or bother looking on Microsoft's update site for a patch that will fix it for them...

Cheers Figuresofstick

Thanks figureofstick, I could not even put a number on how many people I have bailed out of computer problems that were screaming about "crappy Microsoft software" and when I looked at their PC, I would ask why they had the Auto-Updates turned off and No Updates ever done (Even SP1 in many cases on Windows XP !) and the common answer would be "I heard that was Microsoft Spyware, I don't want them checking on what I am doing". Almost every case, a fresh download of updates and drivers fixed whatever was wrong.

Amazing the amount of incorrect and false info there is that is floating around out there...

Very true point gecko. There is no denying when you get a product that is addressing such a large scale customer base such as Microsoft Windows. You are going to get products that don't work correctly or even break in an update. Remember Microsoft can't do everything for the Windows user and/or device vendor. in many cases Microsoft have to get to a point where they have a majority of things working which will allow them to release the product. Then once its released they can get real world feedback to fix whatever is wrong.

Look at any large company. I'm going to use Blizzard here as a good example. And their game World of Warcraft.

They release a patch for the game. It isn't going to be perfect there are going to be bugs in it. Some people are going to experience a downfall in their games performance. Whilst some will experience improved game performance. This is when Blizzard will go back look at the patch and use the feedback of the people using the game to provide an update to that patch which will fix the majority of the problems. the cycle repeats.

This goes for any company really. Now what Microsoft have done is put a page with products that have "broken" drivers at the time of Vista SP1 being released. However this might not effect everyone. Some people with the product might not have the problem whilst others will. Microsoft need to get the product out there in the best condition they can to get the feed back from real world users not just Microsoft Tech-Net subscribers.

The original plan for Vista was a really nice product, but it got scaled back so much and pushed thru to market and I have to agree, I have tried to use it, but its pretty sad.

Vista had two main proposed improvements over other (MS) OS's: security and a much better, db-based file system. The file system got shelved since they could not get it right, and they also said it would be included with the first SP. If you think the actual SP is bad, imagine if it also tried to rewrite your file system! We all know the joy of the security improvements: Do you really want to delete this shortcut?Are you really, really sure?Are you really, really, really sure?Actually, you look like an idiot so you can't.

?Actually, you look like an idiot so you can't.

Its too bad they did not slip that into the code, I hate answering that stupid question 5 times in a row, I just want to say "do it now" and not get asked over and over again if I am sure.

That's true, those questions can really annoy you after the 5,000th time. There should be some box to click "Do not ask me again" RE a specific type of edit or operation.

I have sent many a comment to Microsoft to have a "expert mode" that you could not go thru all those questions. Might be ok for someone that is just starting out in computers, but if its something you have done 100's of times, you don't need to keep say Yes, Yes, Yes.....

Are you opening it with "Run as Administrator"?

I have a program I installed and it is installed correctly, but I cannot actually RUN IT unless I click 'Run as Administrator' when I open it.
I have a game or too also that I have trouble deleting from programs -- I finally just went to where it is listed on the programs list and deleted from there, rather than thru 'install/uninstall'. I know it is not kosher, really. But I did not know what else to do with it.

Actually a group of us is doing that at the moment in a article that one of these days will be ready as there is alot of history between people on the vine.

I was really sad when I heard the news about Joseph Weizenbaum, he was such a neat guy and what a brain ! He would always make time for students questions on any subject, no matter what it was. I had great fun playing with ELIZA that was his baby.

I only played with it, but no formal course, I never got the hang of that one either, it was just too confusing for me. Did you grow up around Boston ? That would be handy to be close to MIT, interesting place.

MIT is where I knew Joseph Weizenbaum from, no not everyone is a geek, there were a couple people that worked in admin that were not.....

"Hey look I'm got those clowns over at Lincoln Lab's breathing down my back to finish up, just need an extra hour"

Another one that always works with security if they happen to stumble around....

Did you happen to be in Boston on 9/11/2006 ? That was a awesome day for the famous MIT prank's. the College of Engineering students got together and got a full sized Fire Truck on top of the Great Dome !

For some odd reason the MIT Fire Department was not too happy about the joke...

Like entering "10 feet in smoots" into Google and learning that 10 feet equals 1.79104478 smoots ?
Or how the Mass Ave bridge gets a fresh paint job thanks to Oliver Smoot ?

You are no MIT engineering student if you don't have those detail ingrained in the brain !

Boston is a great town, lots of interesting stuff. I never have gotten a chance to do much serious exploring of it other the the MIT campus which I know very well and Woods Hole. However my daughter is going to Med School at Boston Univ. and hope to get out to see her soon so I am sure she will be a good tour guide.

I'm obliged to put in a plug for the Milwaukee tie-in for any mention of Houdini, R.I.P.
He listed humble Appleton, WI as his birthplace and hometown, then his rabbi father was fired by the Appleton temple and the family moved to Milwaukee in 1882 (where the young H saw his first magic show), and eventually to NYC. Milwaukee is the scene of the annual Halloween seance to try to contact Houdini's restless spirit. Houdini Days and the Houdini Museum are in Appleton.

Hah...good one !

Hey it was just a somewhat "different" learning experience :-)

haha so "different" is what they call it now? Not "extra-curricular activities"? or "extended learning program" :-)

"enhanced extra credit learning experience"

haha that works as well