Mossberg on Windows 7: It's all good | The Coffeehouse

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

Yeah, ATI is on that chart in my link too...over 9% of Vista crashes.

Still makes you wonder why. Was Microsoft not giving vendors enough info? Was Microsoft changing things so often in Vistas architecture that vendors couldn't keep up?

LeoDavidson

In reply to Harlequin

#Oct 9th @ 8:45 AM

What caused the graphics drivers to be so unstable? Were the hardware companies just not on the ball or were they struggling to keep up with a moving target, or to implement some of the things Vista required? (DWM, DX10... Maybe secure video path, or was that in XP as well?)

I heard one opinion (I forget who/where now; sorry if it was someone here) that Microsoft threw the graphics vendors a swerveball by changing a lot in Vista very late in the game. Don't know how true that is, though.

The other thing I had problems with for weeks after RTM was network drivers. I don't know what changed in Vista's network stuff but several cards/chipsets either didn't have drivers at all or had ridiculously unreliable drivers. That was less of a big deal, though, since it's cheap and easy to find a vendor with working drivers and buy one of their cards. Not so much with graphics cards.

Whoever is to blame, I think the lesson is that if the OS changes so much at the driver level, it simply shouldn't be released until the major manufacturers have stable drivers, and getting those drivers working on a stable platform should happen sooner rather than later. Sod the release date; it's better to ship the OS late and good than ship it on-time and broken. As Vista showed, it's hard to recover from a bad first impression.

kettch

In reply to Harlequin

#Oct 9th @ 9:09 AM

There's a certain point when, if a vendor is producing bad drivers, Microsoft needs to take some sort of action. Pull their WHQL certification. Use Windows Update to put in a shim that will warn anybody installing bad drivers that they are known to cause instability.

If the vendors don't get their hand slapped, they aren't going to change their development process. Maybe they would have more time to work on driver stability if they weren't so concerned about building Crappy Custom Control panels and whatever else they cram into 120 MB downloads.

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

In reply to kettch

#Oct 9th @ 9:28 AM

We need another series beside the "But Why?" one called "WTFBBQ!!!!111!!!"...so we can get these kinds of things answered Smiley

wkempf

In reply to Harlequin

#Oct 9th @ 9:09 AM

When stable (even if still poor) drivers didn't come out for a couple of years after realease, I don't think you can blame Microsoft in any way here.

I said at the time, and I maintain it now, this is the exact same thing we saw with XP. It was universally criticized when it was released. It wasn't until two service packs later that it suddenly became the darling no one could do without. The only difference this time around is that instead of two service packs we got another OS. The things Vista was criticized for are largely no different in the new OS that everyone loves. Maybe, this time, it's some of the UI changes that have people convinced, though I doubt it. Maybe it's some of the cool new features like VHD support and XP Mode, but I doubt that as well. It's just fickle human nature, IMHO.

intelman

In reply to Harlequin

#Oct 9th @ 9:09 AM

My hypothesis is that Vista's new driver model exposed more errors in hardware. Before one would get blue screen or some other random error. I have seen a few cases where my friends would RMA their video cards and such errors went away (in the early pre SP1 Vista days).

daSmirnov

Windows 7 is good. But let's be honest, its got issues I didn't come across in Windows Vista - so much so I almost went back to Windows Vista on my Tablet.

1) The Common Feed list doesn't seem to always want to update after waking up in the mornings, and you have to tell it update. Pretty annoying bug when I've been checking my feeds in IE all day without noticing they've haven't updated since yesterday.

2) Pen flicks are broken in IE8 when using the new renderer /facepalm. No doubt this breaks it for people using touch input, as well as a digitiser on a Tablet. Not being able to scroll is a kind of major issue, especially as its going to get worse as more websites start rendering in IE8 mode not IE7.

Both issues were reported in the beta and both are still present. In comparison Windows Vista didn't have any issues that forced me to change my day to day behavior when using it.

As for subjective stuff, sure Windows 7 is faster, not on any of my machines which are all 2GB+ but yeah I guess its faster I can't really tell the difference but meh I'm sure someone can on their 1GB system. And still after 10 months I'm struggling to get used to the new Taskbar, I have to to show icons for a few days, then when I've got half a dozen explorer windows open I realise how much quicker it is when the icons have labels and aren't being combined (I do have the screen space down there - the system might as well use it).

LeoDavidson

In reply to wkempf

#Oct 9th @ 10:17 AM

When stable (even if still poor) drivers didn't come out for a couple of years after realease, I don't think you can blame Microsoft in any way here.

It was more like 2 months than 2 years, though.

exoteric
I : Next<I>

In reply to brichpmr

#Oct 8th @ 4:53 PM

No no no, you misread, I create a contrast to make a point (and not just about Windows vs OSX). The point is still valid, because OSX has a far lower marketshare than Windows. And security based on lack of popularity really is a house of cards. Other than that I have no oppinions on OSX as I'm not using it.

brichpmr

In reply to exoteric

#Oct 9th @ 11:07 AM

Fair enough.....Apple has benefited from relatively low marketshare in terms of being targeted, and I've enjoyed using Win 7 RC previously; however, I doubt that a credible argument can be made that Apple's level of security is a house of cards, where it could be argued that at least prior to XP SP3, Windows was both popular and insecure....thus my swiss cheese comment before.

wkempf

In reply to LeoDavidson

#Oct 9th @ 10:52 AM

Two months? Not even close. Sorry, the NVidia drivers were buggy as hell for a long time after Vista shipped.

LeoDavidson

In reply to wkempf

#Oct 9th @ 11:33 AM

Maybe it varied by hardware. I had a lot of crashes and DWM resets (and the desktop turning into weird triangles once or twice) in the first couple of months but after that things were quite stable, as far as I can remember. It certainly didn't take two years.

Unless you mean buggy in certain games, which is another kettle of fish and an issue that affects all versions of Windows. Smiley