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Fixing Windows Vista, one machine at a time

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If the "Vista sucks" movement has a public face, it's the Sony Vaio. No one knows that better than my new friend Jeremy Toeman. In May 2007, this 15-year Windows veteran replaced his old, beloved, XP-powered Vaio with a newer Vaio that came with Windows Vista Business installed. Practically overnight, he told me, his experience went from "awesome" to "awful." The experience was so terrible, in fact, that after several months of struggling he finally surrendered, putting his $2500 Windows notebook in storage and replacing it with a MacBook last summer. At first glance, Jeremy's machine is Exhibit A in the case against Windows Vista. As Jeremy documented in a series of posts, this gorgeous machine was ugly in action: slow to start, sluggish when performing everyday tasks, crash-prone, and overloaded with annoying and unwanted software. But is it really a hopeless case, or was this system done in by the rush to market and a sloppy OEM integration? My instinct and experience says that even under these extreme circumstances, Windows Vista can be fixed. That's why, for the past two months, Jeremy and I have been collaborating on an experiment. After he sent me his Vaio in early March, I blew away all traces of the old installation and set up a pristine copy of Windows Vista Business, with up-to-date drivers and zero crapware. (This screen shot, from the accompanying image gallery, shows the blizzard of dialog boxes and icons that are part of the original, unpleasant experience.) The initial results were eye-opening and impressive. After my makeover, this machine was every bit as fast as its specs said it should have been. Out-of-box experience with a Sony Vaio and Windows Vista Around the same time, Sony sent me a brand-new SZ770N Vaio, also with Windows Vista Business installed. The new model is in the same series as Jeremy's machine, and physically nearly identical. Not surprisingly, the CPU and graphics processor in the newer unit were both significantly faster than last year's model. Over the next two weeks, I played with both machines, switching between the original factory images and my own clean installs to see where the differences lay. In this post and its accompanying image gallery, I'll give you a close-up look at what I had to do to turn Sony's messy, half-baked Windows installation into one that was worthy of their excellent hardware and that took full advantage of the new features in Vista. At the end of this post I'll share some of the lessons I learned about how Sony and its rivals can win their customers back. Meanwhile, both units have left my office - one returned to Sony, the other sent back to Jeremy in the Bay Area. So you don't have to trust my observations about the differences in performance and overall experience. Over at his LIVEDigitally blog, Jeremy just posted his impressions (short version: " At long last, after 11 months, Ed Bott has turned my $2500 Vaio laptop into a usable computer"), along with an accompanying video that is truly must-see TV. His advice to "the PC manufacturers who are failing to deliver consumer-ready products" is spot on. Page 2: Getting through a clean install Page 3: Is the cleanup alternative worth it? Page 4: The device driver snipe hunt Page 5: Lessons learned

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posted by Ed Bott
April 21, 2008 @ 8:03 pm

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