Why people hate Vista
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You rarely hear about a new OS causing people to panic. But IT consultant Scott Pam says that's exactly what his small-business clients are doing when they install Windows Vista on new PCs and run smack into compatibility or usability roadblocks.                                                    Pam's clients are not alone: Since InfoWorld launched its petition drive on Jan. 14 to ask Microsoft to continue selling new XP licenses indefinitely alongside its Vista licenses, more than 75,000 people have signed on. And hundreds of people have commented ? many with ferocious, sometimes unprintable passion. "Right now I have a laptop with crap Vista and I'm going to downgrade to XP because Vista sucks," reads one such comment.Where does all the vitriol come from?[ Get the big picture on  Windows XP's impending demise, from user reactions to licensing implications ? and sign InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition ]IT managers and analysts suggest a range of reasons, some based on irrational fears and others based on rational reactions to disruptive changes.Emotional effects "When we first deployed Vista, people told us it sucks, that it's not as good as XP," recalled Sumeeth Evans, IT director at Collegiate Housing Services, an 80-person college facilities management firm. A month later, he surveyed the staff to see if their views had changed, and they had: "They said it was very good, that they were getting used to it. We asked what was different, and they said they originally didn't like Vista because it was a change. That's human nature."Microsoft's overzealous schedule in replacing XP with Vista has exacerbated resistance to change, said Michael Silver, a research vice president at Gartner. The company had originally planned to discontinue XP sales on Dec. 31, 2007, just 11 months after Vista was made available to consumers and 14 months after it was made available to enterprises. The date for new license sales to end is now June 30.In practice, XP's consumer availability ended for many users even sooner ? just six months after Vista's release ? since storefront retailers  Best Buy and Circuit City and most computer manufacturers' Web sites stopped selling XP-equipped computers in July 2007. Typically, Microsoft has given customers two years to make such a transition, Silver noted.Burton Group executive strategist Ken Anderson suggested that the strong emotional identification with XP represented a fundamental shift in how people, including IT staff, now think of operating systems. They have become a familiar extension of what we do and how we work, thus not something  want to change often. "When technology becomes part of you, you don't want people to mess with it," he said.Anderson likened the reaction to XP's impending demise to what happened in the 1980s when Coca-Cola replaced its classic Coke formula with New Coke, causing massive protests by customers who had no reason to change what they drank. The protests forced the company to bring back what we now call Coke Classic. "XP has come to the point of being Coke Classic," he said, with Vista playing the role of New Coke.The further the better The Englewood (N.J.) Hospital Medical Center switched to Vista shortly after its enterprise release, since it had been in Microsoft's early adopter program. Most users ? mainly nurses and other medical staff ? didn't really notice the upgrade and had few complaints, noted Gary Wilhelm, the business and systems financial manager (a combination of CTO and CFO) at the 2,500-employee facility. That's because they don't really use the OS, but instead work directly in familiar applications that load when they sign in using their ID.Capacitor manufacturer Kemet saw a similar ho-hum reaction from most of its staff, says Jeff Padgett, the global infrastructure manager. And for the same reason: Users have little direct interaction with the OS. But the staff did push back on Office 2007, whose ribbon interface is a departure from the previous versions. They rebelled to the degree that Padgett has delayed Office 2007 deployment and may not install it at all.Back at the Englewood hospital, Wilhelm did hear anti-Vista grumbling from people in the administration department, who work more closely with the OS itself for file management and so on. And at Kemet, another group of hands-on users complained about the switch to Vista, noted Padgett: "The people who suffered the most were engineers and IT people."The phenomenon of hands-on users being the most resistant explains why so many small-business users and consultants have reacted so strongly against Vista, noted Gartner's Silver.Conversely, those enamored of the latest technology tend to be Vista enthusiasts, said David Fritzke, IT director at the YMCA Milwaukee, which has been adding Vista to its workforce as it buys new computers. "Some users bought Vista for home and then wanted it more quickly at work than we had initially planned to deploy it," he said. Fritzke also found that younger users adapted to Vista more easily.In search of ROI Users' personal reactions, positive or negative, ultimately impact the bottom line and help drive the business decision of whether to roll out Vista across an organization.It's all about basic cost-benefit analysis, says Gartner's Silver. In most businesses, Vista offers few compelling advantages for users while introducing challenges. The cost of change is too high for the perceived benefit. For example, users often complain about Vista's constant nagging about possible system threats, about applications that no longer run, or about files that appear to be "lost" because they've been moved to new places by the OS, Silver said."It's really hard to convince someone to go to a product that's not quite as stable or as capable as what they're already using," Silver noted ? and so they get frustrated and angry. While IT managers and analysts appreciate some under-the-hood changes in Vista, these improvements don't have an immediate, obvious benefit for users. "Vista's benefits are not about the users," concurred Collegiate Housing Services' Evans.Upgrades from Microsoft's past have also colored expectations, Silver said. Users tend to remember the straightforward transition from Windows 2000 to XP, even though technically it was a "minor" upgrade, he said. (Silver also noted that until XP Service Pack 2, XP had its own share of compatibility and security flaws that annoyed users, something that most forgot with SP2's release.)And while the path from Windows 95 and 98 to Windows XP was rockier, the benefits were clear enough at each stage for most customers to make the upgrade investment gladly, Silver said.Some users have decided to skip Vista altogether and instead wait for Windows 7, whose release date has been reported as anywhere between 2009 and 2011 "Why shoot yourself in the foot twice? Windows 7 will be out next year; I'll wait till then," said one InfoWorld reader. If Windows 7 arrives sooner rather than later ? or if a miraculous Vista service pack addresses all the major objections in one swoop ? then the uproar over upgrading to Vista will quickly fade into the hazy past of other Windows upgrade snafus.
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Forget about finding the next Microsoft. You'll do better by looking at what others don't want.
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David Daoud ran into trouble when he  started using Vista, the new version of Windows that Microsoft  Corp. and PC makers have spent millions of dollars advertising  since it came out six months ago.
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For a lot of users, the cost of upgrading to Windows Vista could be the first of many outlays needed to bring their system up to date. You've also got to update all those programs -- and a lot of vendors may not offer free compatibility updates.
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I can't urge you strongly enough to read the article entitled How Vista Lets Microsoft Lock Users In. It details how Microsoft has built into Vista the "trusted computing" ability to lock down Office files via DRM such that no unauthorized document reader will be able to decrypt and read them. This is perhaps one of the biggest hidden weapons Microsoft has in its arsenal that could sabotage Linux and OpenOffice.org if Microsoft succeeds in its attempt to plug SUSE and all Novell's "interoperability" bonuses.   Think of this, if you will, as the Tivoization of Office files, only with malicious intent.  Microsoft could, indeed, open up the document format completely and swear before God that it will never sue anyone for patent infringement.  However, this does not prevent Microsoft from locking Office files in such a way that only Vista users can read them.  No one else will be able to do so without the proper authorization, thus rendering the open format and Microsoft compatibility entirely meaningless.
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For nearly a year, television and Internet audiences have been seeing a familiar string of ads from Apple attacking rival Windows-based computers. With this week's release of Windows Vista, the newest jabs aren't any friendlier.
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Some users of the new operating system are having a tough time connecting to the virtual world.
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Microsoft Corp's Windows Vista operating system has only been available for a day but it has already made the company some new enemies, with the UK's Green Party and Computer Aid International lining up to voice their environmental concerns about the new operating system.
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While Microsoft trumpeted Vista worldwide on Tuesday, the Internet abounded with postings from people unimpressed or downright disappointed with the new operating system.
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The clock is ticking for Windows XP, the tried-and-true Microsoft operating system that millions of businesses and individuals depend on. Soon, the only Windows option will be Vista, an operating system that businesses as well as individuals have disliked and often avoided. The lackluster changes to Vista, coupled with the high costs of switching tens of millions of computers to it, have convinced InfoWorld that XP should not be retired as planned on June 30.                                                      "Over the past year, CIOs and CTOs have consistently told me they see no significant benefits to Vista, and really don't want to spend the time and money to update all their computers, retrain their users, and deal with application incompatibilities for a cosmetic upgrade," said Galen Gruman, executive editor at InfoWorld.Already, due to customer resistance to Vista, Microsoft has granted XP a stay of execution, delaying its scheduled demise from December 31, 2007, to June 30, 2008. But that's not enough. InfoWorld's editors believe Microsoft should make XP available indefinitely. Therefore, InfoWorld has launched a petition drive aimed at convincing Microsoft to not only stay XP's execution but to take it off Death Row."We encourage IT and business staff alike to sign the petition today and to ask their friends and colleagues to do the same," said Eric Knorr, editor in chief at InfoWorld. "In the past, Microsoft has responded to customer dissatisfaction and changed its plans, so there's reason to believe it will listen today if the message is loud enough," he added.Under Microsoft's current plans, June 30 is the last day that Microsoft will have XP available for sale as shrink-wrapped software, as well as available from computer makers as an installation option on new computers. Makers of white-box computers can sell XP until December 31.Related Links InfoWorld's Save XP petition form Analysis: Why XP should be saved Flash countdown clock till XP's demise (to use this clock on your own Web site, please e-mail Gruman for the code snippet) Submit your "Save XP" video
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Strip, shutdown, repeat Microsoft has published an article on speeding up Vista, aimed at general users.â¦
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A massively multiplayer beta test Review The most prominent feature of Windows Vista is its cost. So, before we get into the nuts and bolts of how it behaves, let's talk about value for money. Because at these prices, it had better be good.â¦
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The new waiting game Comment Vista is a step forward in security, but many businesses will be stuck with Windows XP for years to come, due to the cost of upgrading, the value of existing assets, and compatibility issues that trump security features.â¦
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Microsoft is, for once, trying to play nicely.  This is why it's failing.
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Talk about unfair competition Comment It looks like you can start thanking Google for making Microsoft's Vista operating system even worse.â¦
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If you still don't see a need to upgrade, you're not alone--many people are opting for XP even on new PCs. We'll show you how the Vista transition will become smoother.
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Nine months since its release, lots of hardware and software products still don't work with Microsoft's operating system, including some that are certified as Vista compatible.