Bad Windows

Have you ever wondered what are the reasons behind Windows Vista crashes? I’m sure you did! Now the folks from Ars Tehnica revealed that in the 158 page pack of emails that was released as part of the Vista Capable lawsuit, there is information indicating that sometime in 2007, 30% of Vista crashes happened due to Nvidia drivers. More specifically, Nvidia caused 479,000 crashes out of a total of 1,663,748 logged by Microsoft last year on an unspecified period of time.

The second spot went to Microsoft drivers that were respnsible for  17.9% of crushes, while ATI is third with 9.3%. Intel takes fourth place with 8.8%.

Read more at eFluxMedia 

It seems that Microsoft is already giving up on Vista and is setting up business users to switch from XP to Windows 7.

Technically, Vista is pure misery. It eats system resources like an elephant does peanuts, Windows applications break and its so-called improved security is a joke. I know it. You know it. Even Microsoft's most devoted yes-men know it–although they won't admit it–and perhaps Microsoft knows it as well.

What else can explain why Microsoft is now leaking news about Windows 7, the next version of Windows? Oh, officially Vista SP 1 is still the big upcoming news, although I think most businesses are actually more interested in XP SP 3. The simple truth is that no matter how Microsoft and its partners like CDW spin it, Vista is not being picked up by corporate users. Even Bill Gates' vaunted 100 million Vista users number should be taken with a large—very large—grain of salt.

Read more at eWeek 

Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is shipping and what we know so far is that it is incapable of running on many types of machines. In fact, Microsoft is being sued for putting stickers all over machines claiming that Vista could run on them, when in fact, it cannot. We recommend correcting this problem by covering up such stickers with a "GNU/Linux Inside!" sticker—if you make a purchase at our store or become an associate member we will send you some of these stickers.

If you were able to run Vista, you would find that it takes your general-purpose computer and makes it incapable of doing a lot of things you might want to do. In particular, it does not allow you control over your multimedia; it is incapable of allowing you to access your hardware, such as certain types of video cards, without restriction; and it is incapable of allowing you to control the third-party applications, data, and other files you download onto your machine.

Read more at BadVista 

Microsoft admitted on a technical blog on March 10 that Windows Home Server can corrupt data when used with a wide variety of common applications. According to the blog posting, Microsoft has been aware of the "data corruption issue" since "late December 2007."

Specifically, Microsoft states in its KnowledgeBase listing that on servers with more than one hard drive running Windows Home Server users can experience data corruption with Windows Vista Photo Gallery; Windows Live Photo Gallery; Microsoft Office OneNote 2007; Microsoft Office OneNote 2003; Microsoft Office Outlook 2007; Microsoft Money 2007; SyncToy 2.0 Beta; Intuit QuickBooks; and uTorrent, the popular BitTorrent client.

Read more at LinuxWatch 

I blogged a while back on how a Vista upgrade effectively rendered my old desktop machine useless for business purposes (see Retiring Leonardo from last year). I got a lot of feedback at that time as many people out there were obviously trying to get a handle on the viability of upgrading older kit.

While this debate continues, the related question has now arisen of whether even some PCs pre-installed with Vista are capable of running it adequately. Based on my own experience, this is a very pertinent question to ask if you are considering buying anything with less than a 1.8 Ghz Core2 Duo processor with 2Gb of memory – the current minimum spec I work on for serious business use. Yet there are lots of Vista machines out there on the market that are significantly less powerful than this.

Read more at Channel Register 

It's no big secret that Microsoft Vista hasn't been the most well-received operating system release. I knew it was bad from several friends I have who weren't quick to embrace it. Then Microsoft offered the extension to manufacturers to keep using Windows XP – a sure sign that Vista was in jeopardy. Most recently Microsoft even had to release some previously secured internal e-mails of a somewhat embarrassing nature thanks to a class action lawsuit.

Read more at Blend Technology 

Vista Capable became a phrase in flux with the release of Microsoft’s new operating system last year. Lack of drivers, graphics issues, things that didn’t work, and all sorts of headaches were cropping up daily. I criticized Asus and Microsoft for sticking a Vista Capable sticker on the Asus R2H at the time.

Read more … 

Last December, Microsoft's Windows Internet Explorer group announced that Internet Explorer 8, the next iteration of its Web browser, would be standards compliant, interoperable and backward compatible when it's released in the second half of 2008. The group announced that IE8 has rendered correctly in Acid2, a complex Web page design. That the browser passed the test wasn't big news. That Microsoft was embracing the standards compliant and interoperability features marked a concession by the company that proprietary development of one of its key products may be nearing an end.

Read more at Linux Insider 

Open Source Initiative (OSI) board member Raj Mathur claims to have a copy of the Microsoft letter to NGOs. "Microsoft has 'persuaded' several non-profit organizations," Mathur writes, "to bombard the Indian IT Secretary and the Additional Director General of the Bureau of Indian Standards with letters supporting its OOXML proposal."

Read more at Linux.com 

I knew it. Vista simply wasn’t ready for prime time. Some internal documents that emerged from a class-action lawsuit over Vista Capable illustrated that hardware vendor, Dell, pushed back on Microsoft to fix issues with Vista before launching. Microsoft knew fully well of Dell’s feedback as early as Aug 2005.

Read more …