August 5th, 2007
Vista IE7 issue remains unsolved for many users
When I read stuff like this, it confirms my belief that there’s something very broken in the world of Vista. Here’s a very knowledgeable user and talented developer who’s confounded and befuddled by a well-documented and still unaddressed issue affecting Vista users running Internet Explorer 7. The problem manifests itself as an annoying and increasingly frequent hang or time-out during which the PC is essentially rendered useless. This is not a productivity enhancing experience folks. This is a huge time sink. The emphasis below is mine.
I updated some of the drivers on the Toshiba the other day so maybe that’s what’s going on. I know there’s a specific order these drivers need to be installed in or else “things can go wrong.” What those things are I don’t know. Maybe that’s the problem I’m running into. The only cure I understand is to do a clean install and there’s no way I’m going to set aside a dozen hours to reinstall everything and get this machine back in order. I’d rather limp along until I find another Tablet PC. Right now I have my eye on a Lenovo with dual digitizers and the forthcoming Dell Tablet PC.
Sorry in advance if this doesn’t align with your experience and you’re a huge fan of Vista for whom everything is working just fine. IMO, this is yet another indication of how far Microsoft has to go to get Vista to a position of equivalent performance and stability to what we’ve come to expect to from XP SP2. Again, this is not an isolated incident or a case of PEBKAC*. Problems like this are all too common and are being widely reported and discussed in the tubes. Do a search and you’ll see what I mean. It’s increasingly evident that Vista is not a ready-for-prime-time operating system yet.
* A lovely acronym favored by tech support people which stands for Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.
Update: my buddy Ed Bott takes me to task for using weak evidence and he’s right that a lot of hits on a search engine from a query like the one I suggest is hardly conclusive. And, as I commented on his post, there are really two issues here. One is an IE7 problem that further investigation reveals is affecting users of XP and Vista. The other is the larger issue of whether Vista is ready to be a shipping product for the millions of people who were led to believe that their late-model PC was Vista-compatible or Vista-ready and have since discovered that this is not the case. If, as Ed argues in his post, the best scenario is Vista installed on a new PC at the factory and upgrades even on Vista-compatible or Vista-ready machines are a problem waiting to happen, then Microsoft needs to come clean and say so.
Marc Orchant has been building, testing, and sometimes breaking hardware and software for 25 years. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
| 08/08/07
