Vista - Early Vista Status

The beta was nearly useless to me for evaluation as there were no available
drivers for my peripherals. Magazine and web reviewers were lying or
hallucinating about Vista unless they had custom drivers supplied to them by
Microsoft, which is cheating but a typical business practice.
As with the Vista beta all (without exception) program installations take
longer than with XP and not infrequently hang before completion. This is on
a very high end computer.
The brand new Roxio 9 already has a glitch with a driver that they say does
not affect the program but is annoying every time Vista boots. They blame it
on, surprise, an errant Microsoft update to Vista.
Drivers from Xrite and Adaptec simply will not install or work at all. None
of these companies have clear plans to fix the Vista problems. Roxio says to
uninstall the Vista upgrade: does that make any sense?
While these three examples might be the fault of those companies the fact
that three independent vendors cannot write Vista compatible drivers doesn't
say too much for Microsoft programming or marketing.
Most annoying of all is that it takes on average 3 mouse clicks, because of
pointless reconfirmation dialog boxes, to do simple things like create new
directories or move files. This is idiotic.
The wow factor in Vista is not a positive attribute, despite Microsoft TV
ads. Its more like, "WOW! This really is worse than anything Microsoft has
ever published." Worse even than Bob.
I am a big Microsoft fan. I even liked ME.
But bad is bad and Vista has little good going for it, except that Microsoft
will eventually drop XP support and force everyone to use it.
In fact, it is really shocking just how unpolished Vista is, after all the
years of development, and how little support there is from non-Microsoft
vendors. I think the programmers who forgot to convert feet to meters in
that ill-fated Mars probe must be doing Microsoft quality control and
usability testing.

"nsag" <fac@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4DC4F59F-7F01-41FB-94E7-98FCE0B0C1DF@microsoft.com...
> The beta was nearly useless to me for evaluation as there were no
> available drivers for my peripherals. Magazine and web reviewers were
> lying or hallucinating about Vista unless they had custom drivers supplied
> to them by Microsoft, which is cheating but a typical business practice.
> As with the Vista beta all (without exception) program installations take
> longer than with XP and not infrequently hang before completion. This is
> on a very high end computer.
> The brand new Roxio 9 already has a glitch with a driver that they say
> does not affect the program but is annoying every time Vista boots. They
> blame it on, surprise, an errant Microsoft update to Vista.
> Drivers from Xrite and Adaptec simply will not install or work at all.
> None of these companies have clear plans to fix the Vista problems. Roxio
> says to uninstall the Vista upgrade: does that make any sense?
> While these three examples might be the fault of those companies the fact
> that three independent vendors cannot write Vista compatible drivers
> doesn't say too much for Microsoft programming or marketing.
> Most annoying of all is that it takes on average 3 mouse clicks, because
> of pointless reconfirmation dialog boxes, to do simple things like create
> new directories or move files. This is idiotic.
> The wow factor in Vista is not a positive attribute, despite Microsoft TV
> ads. Its more like, "WOW! This really is worse than anything Microsoft has
> ever published." Worse even than Bob.
> I am a big Microsoft fan. I even liked ME.
> But bad is bad and Vista has little good going for it, except that
> Microsoft will eventually drop XP support and force everyone to use it.
> In fact, it is really shocking just how unpolished Vista is, after all the
> years of development, and how little support there is from non-Microsoft
> vendors. I think the programmers who forgot to convert feet to meters in
> that ill-fated Mars probe must be doing Microsoft quality control and
> usability testing.
The long and sordid story of Adaptec/Roxio (Adaptec spun off Roxio back in
the early days of Windows 2000) inability to make its products work properly
in various versions of Windows is legendary. The consistent theme throughout
the saga is Adaptec/Roxio blaming Microsoft, then (eventually) fixing their
lousy product(s). Meanwhile, many users of Adaptec/Roxio products suffered
from unexplained failures, wasted optical media, lost data and system
crashes.
I'm sure a trawl through Google groups would enlighten you. You can put up
with the Adaptec/Roxio inadequacies and fabrications, or you can do what I
did years ago, switch to alternative software from makers who design and
implement their software properly.
I'm having no problems with Nero in Vista, for example.

"nsag" <fac@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4DC4F59F-7F01-41FB-94E7-98FCE0B0C1DF@microsoft.com...
> The beta was nearly useless to me for evaluation as there were no
> available drivers for my peripherals. Magazine and web reviewers were
> lying or hallucinating about Vista unless they had custom drivers supplied
> to them by Microsoft, which is cheating but a typical business practice.
> As with the Vista beta all (without exception) program installations take
> longer than with XP and not infrequently hang before completion. This is
> on a very high end computer.
> The brand new Roxio 9 already has a glitch with a driver that they say
> does not affect the program but is annoying every time Vista boots. They
> blame it on, surprise, an errant Microsoft update to Vista.
> Drivers from Xrite and Adaptec simply will not install or work at all.
> None of these companies have clear plans to fix the Vista problems. Roxio
> says to uninstall the Vista upgrade: does that make any sense?
> While these three examples might be the fault of those companies the fact
> that three independent vendors cannot write Vista compatible drivers
> doesn't say too much for Microsoft programming or marketing.
> Most annoying of all is that it takes on average 3 mouse clicks, because
> of pointless reconfirmation dialog boxes, to do simple things like create
> new directories or move files. This is idiotic.
> The wow factor in Vista is not a positive attribute, despite Microsoft TV
> ads. Its more like, "WOW! This really is worse than anything Microsoft has
> ever published." Worse even than Bob.
> I am a big Microsoft fan. I even liked ME.
> But bad is bad and Vista has little good going for it, except that
> Microsoft will eventually drop XP support and force everyone to use it.
> In fact, it is really shocking just how unpolished Vista is, after all the
> years of development, and how little support there is from non-Microsoft
> vendors. I think the programmers who forgot to convert feet to meters in
> that ill-fated Mars probe must be doing Microsoft quality control and
> usability testing.

The long and sordid story of Adaptec/Roxio (Adaptec spun off Roxio back in
the early days of Windows 2000) inability to make its products work properly
in various versions of Windows is legendary. The consistent theme throughout
the saga is Adaptec/Roxio blaming Microsoft, then (eventually) fixing their
lousy product(s). Meanwhile, many users of Adaptec/Roxio products suffered
from unexplained failures, wasted optical media, lost data and system
crashes.
I'm sure a trawl through Google groups would enlighten you. You can put up
with the Adaptec/Roxio inadequacies and fabrications, or you can do what I
did years ago, switch to alternative software from makers who design and
implement their software properly.
I'm having no problems with Nero in Vista, for example.