paul thurott rips vista a new one... | The Coffeehouse

jamie

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...

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

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.

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

jonne wrote:

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

They're still there.

jonne

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]

Jason Cox
Longtime C9 Lurker

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

Charles
Welcome Change

As Paul Feyerabend would say:

This is just a puff of hot air...

C

DCMonkey
Monkey see, monkey do, monkey will destroy you!

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.

Cider
Daze-d & Confused

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.

PaoloM
Hypermediocrity

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.... Expressionless

alwaysmc2
It's not stupid; It's advanced!

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!"

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

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.

manickernel
anticipate consequences..

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.
Big Smile

(sorry Charles!)

LarryOsterman

Charles wrote:
As Paul Feyerabend would say:

This is just a puff of hot air...

C

To be honest, some of his points are valid (the which window has the focus one, for example). I strongly disagree with others he makes, however.

Tom Servo
W-hat?

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.

Badgerguy
Badgerguy

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?

AndyC

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.

Sabot
My name is Dave Oliver. I'm a Technical Architect.

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.

ddewbofh
And so the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

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.

Badgerguy
Badgerguy

AndyC wrote:

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.

That would be the easy way of dismissing it if it weren't for the number of good points he makes in the article. Some of it may be pure opinion yes - but the problems with the interface and UAP (for example) ARE good points worth investigating - it's a little dissapointing if that sort of thing is dismissed as 'a puff of hot air'.

eddwo
Wheres my head at?

I do agree with him that the UAP feature is far too sensitive.
I've been running my work machine with a user account for about a year without too much difficulty.

I keep keyboard hotkey to a MakeMeAdmin'ed console window for when I want to run an installer, or reregister an ActiveX dll I'm writing in VB6. but I only need to use it a few times a day.

On Vista I seem to get prompted every couple of minutes for one reason or another, and I find I very rapidly become desensitised to the dialog and just keep bashing the Allow button without even reading the prompt.

Vista is still not at a level where I feel comfortable running it for more than a half an hour at a time. It feels sluggish and drives the processor fan on my machine to max speed far too easily. The machine is a P4 1.5, 768mb from 2001.

Badgerguy
Badgerguy

ddewbofh wrote:
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.

Quite a lot has changed since PDC '03 - many features have either been dropped, watered down, or will ship later as an 'add-on'. WinFS is one of those features.

Paul makes the point that Vista is not feature complete, and lists several features that are missing completely - is that all made up too?

Maybe it's valid to say some of it is sensationalist - but there are still good points made by Paul - so to dismiss ALL of it, would be just stupid.

cyberneticloop

Perhaps I'm overly cynical, but I've seen this pattern from Thurrott too many times to dismiss it.

He hypes product X. He then denegrates product X while praising the competition, product Y. Product X emerges. It beats expectations! How could it not after deflating it so much? Product Y emerges. It disappoints. How could it not after inflating it so much? Product X beats product Y on expectations even though product Y is better.

This is an old rhetorical trick. It was used prominently in the last US presidential debates. The Bush camp portrayed Kerry before the debates as the virtual reincarnation of Socrates, leader of debate club at Yale, yada, yada. The Kerry camp portrayed Bush as a indominable debater, one who had never been beaten in a major political debate.

Somehow the human brain interprets the relative good of not sucking as much as predicted as being an objective good.

littleguru
<3 Seattle

Why does Vista get five "Pauls" with such a review... I can't follow him.

cyberneticloop

littleguru wrote:
Why does Vista get five "Pauls" with such a review... I can't follow him.

Five Pauls are worse than one Paul?

littleguru
<3 Seattle

After reading the article I was feeling like being in the C9 Coffeehouse. It seems as if he was reading some threads here and used them as base of his article.... or is he simply feeling like we do for months now...