paul thurott rips vista a new one...

http://winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308_05.asp

he gives it 5 stars... but rips it to shreds

i agree with his UI points - especially horizontal navigation influx everywhere and highlighted windows being to similar...

jamie wrote:

highlighted windows being to similar...

I do agree with that, although to be fair his example with the two windows wasn't terribly difficult. The right window has a coloured close button and a larger shadow, so that is the active one. Subtle, yes, even too subtle, but not impossible.

jonne wrote:

Are even the thumbnail pictures that show document contents gone? And what about the document stacking feature?

They're still there.

Take a look at these beautiful Longhorn screenshots from PDC 2003 I found at Paul's site, the look just fabulous: clean, fresh & clear, the opposite to the overdesigned shell in the current Vista build:
PDC 2003 Longhorn Aero

I guess these were just mockups?  [C][C]
Are even the thumbnail pictures that show document contents gone? And what about the document stacking feature? [C]

What the heck crawled up Paul's butt when he wrote that?

You know, it's kinda scary how much stuff Paul gets wrong in his little rant. Not blatant falsehoods so much as inaccuracies and attempts to tie things together that don't relate.

I don't know if I have the energy to detail them.

PS: FWIW I think he's got some valid points in there. But too much of it is assuming his personal preferences are widely held IMHO, or that the public gives a flying fig newton what MS promised 3 years ago.

DCMonkey wrote:

You know, it's kinda scary how much stuff Paul gets wrong in his little rant. Not blatant falsehoods so much as inaccuracies and attempts to tie things together that don't relate.

I don't know if I have the energy to detail them.

I don't agree with Thurott a lot but he is right on numerous points.

Personally, I think Vista is very good because I am primarily concerned with how it will fit in at work and it looks like it has a number of features that are very good in that area.  However, in terms of a consumer OS, it is far from ready - his complaints about the over-zealous nature of UAP are spot on, for instance.

My biggest concern is there seems to be a lack of concern about the quality of Vista.  In fact, everything I've read suggests the Windows team RTMs Vista, has a massive party (which, frankly, they don't deserve), has a couple weeks holiday, moves onto Longhorn server for 18 months, then works on a service pack for Vista for the following 18 months, and then we'll start to hear about the next round of improvements in Windows in 2009 with a shipping date of Vienna client at the end of 2010 at the latest.

If that's the reality, then something drastic needs to happen to break them out of that stupid malaise.  I only hope that Fiji is a reality and Microsoft somehow manages to pull a bells-and-whistles version of Windows out of the fire in the year following the release of Vista.

Remember, Paul is the one who said:

"Vista is a train wreck"

and a month later:

"Vista is a guaranteed home run! I love it!"

Who knows what he's going to write next week....

Well I think I can explain the high rating and the lowly review.

I'll just give an example.  I love my Creative Zen Vision (the bigger one).  If I were to rate it from 1 to 10 than I'd give it a 9.5, because it can do so much.  I love the screen size, the HD size, it's compatibility with WMP10, and a myriad of small things.  But wouldn't you know it, I can just make a looooong list of things that I don't like about it. Like it doesn't index pictures and videos, it has some problems with video conversion (although it does support windows media, divX and Xvid), it freezes every once in a while, you can't customize the background picture like you can with the Zen Vision:M, the screen has a funky viewing angle, etc., etc., etc.  Nevertheless, I love it. Does that make sense?

I think him pointing out all the shortcomings and triumphs make his reviews much more reliable than "OH!!! I love vista! It just works! Perfect!"

 

 

alwaysmc2 wrote:

Well I think I can explain the high rating and the lowly review.

I'll just give an example.  I love my Creative Zen Vision (the bigger one).  If I were to rate it from 1 to 10 than I'd give it a 9.5, because it can do so much.  I love the screen size, the HD size, it's compatibility with WMP10, and a myriad of small things.  But wouldn't you know it, I can just make a looooong list of things that I don't like about it. Like it doesn't index pictures and videos, it has some problems with video conversion (although it does support windows media, divX and Xvid), it freezes every once in a while, you can't customize the background picture like you can with the Zen Vision:M, the screen has a funky viewing angle, etc., etc., etc.  Nevertheless, I love it. Does that make sense?

I think him pointing out all the shortcomings and triumphs make his reviews much more reliable than "OH!!! I love vista! It just works! Perfect!"

 

That's actually why I don't assign "rating" numbers to anything I review.

The whole point of Vista is to be a Karmic experience. No longer bound by structured  methodology, each user experiences it in thier own unique way.


(sorry Charles!)

Who cares. I'll just get Windows Server 2007 via my MSDN anyway and strip everything out of it until it's on par to 2003 with user land crap. I mostly just care about the new kernel.

Charles wrote:

As Paul Feyerabend would say:

This is just a puff of hot air...

C

Nice to know that Microsoft are listening and taking that criticism right on board.

If this was a Linux zealot or Mac fanboy writing, then sure, you'd be taking this all with a pinch of salt - but this is Paul Thurott, a guy many see as a Windows fanboy, and who some even acuse of being on the Microsoft payroll!

That he has written an article making such scathing criticisms of the weak parts of Vista, should have the alarm bells ringing - it certainly makes me (as a Windows user, and supporter), a little worried about my next OS upgrade.

Is this it?  Is that the best reply you can come up with, that it's a puff of hot air?  How about some answers, how about telling us if you're working on it.  How about telling us that the problems he highlights will be fixed when the product is finally shipped?

Or, are we going to have to live with these problems until SP1, which will ship by, ooh, 2008?

Badgerguy wrote:

That he has written an article making such scathing criticisms of the weak parts of Vista, should have the alarm bells ringing - it certainly makes me (as a Windows user, and supporter), a little worried about my next OS upgrade.

Why? He does it all the time.

Basically he writes an article that states "Microsoft X will be a complete disaster" and gets lots of attention because, "PT is a Microsoft shill and even he is slating X"

Then he writes a "X is the bestest thing in the whole world ever" and gets lots of attention from people saying "Wasn't X going to be a complete disaster last week???"

Two stories from nothing. Basic tabloid journalism.

Paul Thurrot is just trying to generate copy, fair-play to the guy because this is what keeps him in business.

The trick with Paul is to work out the signal from the noise and it is hard because he is random and has been known to flip-flop.

Personally I've felt for a long time that articles like this never help Paul's credibility level.

The part that scares me the most is the amounts of blatant lies in the article. "There's no sidebar" for example, I have it running here and unless MS does a complete 180 it'll be there at RTM. Same thing with a lot of the features from Longhorn, take WinFS for example. Pretty much everything except network integration was integrated into the base of Vista and from a user perspective little has changed from PDC '03. But hey, writing stuff like: "Vista is on track and feature-complete, all is well in the world." doesn't generate the same buzz so I can see why he's going for it.