September 28th, 2007

More facts and less hysteria on Vista, please!

Posted by George Ou @ 2:37 am

Categories: Browsers, Consumer electronics, Desktop, Development, Microsoft, Security, Vista

Tags: Microsoft Windows XP, Driver, Microsoft Windows Vista, Apple Mac OS X, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows Vista SP1, Don Reisinger, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Operating Systems

In the latest round of hysteria to be written about Windows Vista, Don Reisinger regurgitates the usual hysteria about Windows Vista mixed in with a pinch of facts here and there.  Don spouts off the usual nonsense about sales, UAC, and even DRM.  Despite the fact that bashing Vista is quite the popular sport these days, I’m going to see if I can set him straight with an honest and factual assessment of Windows Vista.

Are Vista sales really poor?
Everyone knows that Windows Vista retail box sales are poor, but does that matter when Microsoft relies overwhelmingly on sales to OEM PC makers?  If you focus only on the retail box sales, you’re missing the real picture because Vista has sold more than 60 million licenses and ~78% of those sales are Vista Premium edition.  Don complains about Windows Vista Ultimate edition and I actually agree with him that it’s overpriced and under delivers but Microsoft doesn’t need to “save itself” if Vista Ultimate fails, more like an “oh well”.

Does it matter if a few people revert to XP?
Even if a whopping 20% of computer buyers downgrade and revert to Windows XP for whatever reason, that still leaves 80% who stay with Windows Vista.  That means hardware makers and ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) have to deal with Windows Vista now or later whether they like it or not if they want to stay in business.  The fact that 60 million copies were sold in the first 6 months since launch pretty much confirms Vista will become the dominant OS by default.

How about Vista drivers?
There are no questions about it, a fair number of Vista drivers during the first 2 months stunk badly.  Vista implements a brand new driver model which offers a little more separation between the driver and the kernel so that a bad driver is less likely to crash the entire system.  The price for this is that there is a brand new learning curve and it took a few months for the hardware companies to get it right.  For the most part, everything is working well but there are still some older devices that don’t have drivers and will never get drivers for Windows Vista and much of that is because the hardware vendors want you to buy new hardware.

Is it fair to expect a hardware company to write drivers for a 3+ year old device? Probably not.  Is it fair to expect users to buy new hardware because they can’t get Vista drivers for a one year old device? Definitely no!  Reputable hardware companies that want to keep customer loyalty will go back as far as they can to create drivers for older hardware.  Was it Microsoft’s fault that the drivers didn’t work well at first?  Technically no but that isn’t going to matter to consumers and they’ll take their anger out on Microsoft and the hardware maker.  Fortunately, the driver situation has stabilized but it’s always good to check for drivers before you upgrade a computer to Vista and before you buy a piece of hardware.

How about application compatibility in Windows Vista?
There’s no question about it, applications will break in Vista and it’s probably the #1 reason some people are reverting back to Windows XP.  This is primarily due to the fact that many applications never followed Windows development guidelines set since 2000.  One of the worst offenders is Intuit which refused to properly write QuickBooks right up to the 2006 version.  Intuit never followed Windows development guidelines that have existed since Windows 2000 and XP for Windows logo certification and they - like many other software makers - used Vista as an opportunity to sell a new version of QuickBooks 2007.  If you bought QuickBooks 2006 or earlier, you were out of luck and it wouldn’t run on your new computer and you had to buy QuickBooks 2007.

Microsoft asked developers for 7 years to clean up their act but drew the line in the sand with Windows Vista which comes with UAC (User Access Control) on by default.  That finally forced vendors like Intuit to properly code their application and not violate security best practices.  If UAC does nothing else and even if people turn it off, it has had the desired effect of cleaning up the Windows development community.

Vista and Internet Explorer 7 also breaks a lot of applications in the name of drawing a line in the sand for security.  Microsoft will get criticized for not getting rid of things like Active X but they’ll also get criticized for breaking dangerous coding techniques and the vast majority of Active X controls have been disabled in Windows Vista by default.  There are still plenty of web applications that don’t work inside Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 and vendors like Kodak will try to drag their feet but they will have to deal with it sooner or later unless they want to alienate the 60 million (since summer) and growing Vista user base.  My colleague David Berlind questions why Microsoft needs to break so many legacy applications and the answer is security.  It’s a known fact that until something is hard broken, no one will change anything.  Is this going to be painful?  Certainly.  But it has to be done if we want a more secure computing environment.

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