Few things strike fear, or perhaps loathing, into the hearts of PC enthusiasts more than
the words Windows Vista.
That operating system's notoriety as a buggy, slow, bloated mess reaches far and wide, even
to the land of the Apple faithful Vista was aboard.
Its successor, Windows 7, adored.
But was Vista's heart truly evil, or simply misunderstood?
Pushed out into a world that wasn't ready, one can say.
It is a terrible tale, but perhaps its telling may reveal new secrets.
After this word from our sponsor.
Memory Express is the go-to place for your electronic needs and services in Canada, and
they're opening a new store in Victoria, Canada.
And they're opening a new store in Victoria, Canada.
They're hiring for all positions, so check them out at the link in the video description.
So I was reading a post written by Glassbomb on our forum, and it inspired a fairly lively
debate in our weekly writers' meeting.
Was Windows Vista really that bad?
You ask a dozen people, you'll get a dozen different answers.
The one thing we all agreed on, though, was that to answer the question fairly, we would
have to get our hands on an ISO and actually install it on a system.
And we chose the 145.
Usesonerongo is a $450 gaming PC, that Riley and I put together.
Mostly because it's from 2007.
The year that Windows Vista launched.
And, how is it?
Well, surprisingly, it works pretty well.
There's some GPV mobilised programming, but it tasks for jail i assume.
The fixing process is not as high end.
The software doesn't work that well either.
Both systems are a sticky bit.
exactly like Windows 7.
So how is it different then from Windows 7?
And what's so bad about it?
Well, the answer requires some history.
Development of Windows Longhorn,
actually named after the Longhorn Saloon and Grill
in Whistler, BC, represent,
began in 2001, the year that Windows XP was launched.
Longhorn was supposed to launch in 2003,
but a number of issues during development
left Microsoft conflicted
about which features to include
in the new operating system
and which ones to add to Windows XP and Windows Server.
Things got so complicated that in 2004,
development was effectively reset
as team leaders changed
and much of the code was scrapped and repurposed.
This was also when Longhorn's product name
was finalized to Vista
with a tagline of clear, confident, and connected,
none of which had described Vista's development so far.
Perhaps they were trying to ask the universe
to throw them a freaking bone.
There's actually a lot more I could say
about the development, but frankly,
we could make a whole video about that.
So let's just leave it at the launch was delayed
a few more times, bones were not thrown.
And then finally, on January 30th, 2007,
Vista made its public debut.
And that's really when the excrement
hit the air circulation unit, so to speak.
You see, Vista had a ton of new tricks up its sleeve,
including the graphics intensive arrow UI
with translucency effects
and elements of the Windows backend
that had been completely redone.
So the hardware requirements were higher
than probably anyone expected,
which meant that at launch,
Vista was slower than its predecessor on equivalent hardware.
So users accused Microsoft of packing the OS full of bloat
as part of a conspiracy to force them
to upgrade their computers.
Not that that would necessarily lead
to a better experience anyway.
Making its own foot more full of bullet holes than necessary,
Microsoft allowed many prebuilt PCs, brand new ones mind you,
to be sold with Vista capable branding
on the front that they created.
But these PCs only met the requirements
for Vista Home Basic, the second of these six different
and very confusing editions
of this software that existed.
And because of this particular misstep,
Microsoft actually got served a class action lawsuit
for misleading marketing.
On top of everything so far,
many component and peripheral vendors
didn't release updated drivers for Vista
for their older, or in some cases,
even their existing products.
So many users having experienced
the relatively seamless migrations
between various versions of Windows 9X
or 2000 to XP, where drivers could in many cases
be used interchangeably were outraged
when particularly their wireless cards
and printers just didn't work anymore.
As for the hardware components that did work,
well, because the drivers were so fundamentally different
from the XP versions requiring extensive rewrites
in many cases, even key system components
from reputable vendors like graphics cards from NVIDIA
were prone to causing whole system crashes.
Even when it was running normally,
Vista managed to generate user ire too.
While the new user account control feature,
which prompted users for permissions to run programs
and change settings was a great step forward
for system security, it appeared far too often
and took control of the entire Windows interface
until it could be dismissed.
Annoying and confusing regular end users
who just wanted the annoying pop-ups to stop,
they could get their work done.
And this is only a fraction of the complaints.
It truly was a horrible launch.
And you could argue that it directly resulted
in Apple increasing their OS 10 market share
thanks to their wildly successful Mac versus PC commercials.
Now, some of the issues were addressed
in Service Pack 1 for Vista,
which launched a year later in 2008.
But you know what else launched in 2008?
Service Pack 3 for Windows XP,
which understandably left users confused
about whether they should upgrade or just stick with XP.
April 2009 then saw the release of Service Pack 2 for Vista,
which addressed even more issues.
But by then, we were five months away
from everyone's favorite OS, Windows 7,
which whether you want to admit it or not,
is very similar to Windows Vista.
With many of the improvements in performance
and driver compatibility coming about
simply because hardware in 2009 was better,
and the software was better.
And driver developers had gained a lot of experience
working with Windows Vista.
And 7, which were far more similar under the hood
than XP and Vista were.
Because like it or not, in some cases,
Vista wasn't bad as much as it was misunderstood,
and maybe a little ahead of its time.
It was the beginning of a lot of really good stuff
that we take for granted today.
For example, its all new memory management model
used free RAM to load frequently used programs and files,
and it was the beginning of a lot of really good stuff
and files in the background to smooth out operation.
Users didn't understand this.
They just thought that Windows was hogging up
all of their RAM for no apparent reason.
And arguably, Microsoft could have done a better job
of representing this.
As for Windows Aero with its cool translucency effects,
well, it ran on the system's GPU.
So if you had a discrete graphics card,
and you weren't experiencing crashes,
which not everyone did, by the way, I didn't,
it ran very smoothly and looked so good.
That going back to the old way with Windows XP
felt like caveman stuff.
Fun fact, today, elements of Aero's translucent effects
can be seen in all sorts of other UIs
from Windows 10 to macOS to iOS.
And as for the sidebar with its gadgets,
well, that looks pretty laughable
with our modern design sensibilities,
but it was pretty trendy at the time.
Apple's OS 10 Tiger also had widget mini apps,
although they were kept on the dashboard, not the desktop,
and live updating UI elements are now ubiquitous
in modern OSs, including the live tiles
in the Windows start menu.
So those were kind of cool,
until a critical vulnerability was discovered
that could leave your PC open to hackers, oops.
And guess what else Vista added?
Instant search from the taskbar,
built-in Windows Defender, built-in Windows Update,
user-friendly data backup, BitLocker drive encryption,
user account control, which in its modern,
more refined form, is an essential part of Windows 10.
It also added Windows security,
and what's funny is that OS 10 these days,
or macOS, excuse me, has something pretty similar.
It also added DirectX 10 and games for Windows Live,
which for all its faults, was one of the first ways
to enable gameplay between a console and a PC.
Not to mention the completely redesigned print, display,
peer-to-peer networking, and audio subsystems
that laid the foundation for Windows 7 and its successors.
Though I do have some issues
with the changes they made to audio
that effectively killed hardware-accelerated sound.
That's kind of a separate note, though.
So, was Vista that bad?
Yes, and also no, which together makes yo,
because yo, man, for real.
For all its faults, and there were many,
Windows Vista was a huge, if wobbly step,
in the right direction.
And once it had settled in and received proper support,
users seemed to appreciate it.
In fact, in 2008, a few months
after releasing Vista Service Pack 1,
Microsoft ran an ad campaign called the Mojave Experiment,
in which they invited users to vent
about how much they hated Vista,
and then try out Windows Mojave,
the next version of Windows.
And surprise, surprise, people actually loved it.
And then cue the reveal, Mojave isn't Mojave, it's Vista.
Really?
Are you serious?
This is Windows Vista.
Now, were people's reactions cherry-picked,
to only include the good ones?
Duh, of course.
But based on my experience running Vista from day one,
on what was at the time a high-end system,
I don't find it hard to believe at all
that some people genuinely liked it,
or even really liked it.
Its main issue, I think, is that by the time
it had really gotten to the point where it was usable,
Windows 7 was right around the corner,
and Vista's reputation had been irreparably damaged.
So despite the tech and feature advancements,
Vista will, and should,
continue to go down in history
as the worst Windows launch ever,
other than Windows ME.
Just get colder in here.
By the way, guys, just in case this story has convinced you
to try to install Vista and use it,
perhaps out of pity, please don't.
Microsoft's support for the OS ended last year,
and while we were using it,
like pretty much everything was covered in these like,
scary, gigantic, end of support messages.
So it's not a secure thing to do.
If you're a small business owner or a freelancer,
FreshBooks is the accounting solution for you.
It's a simple way to be more productive,
more organized, and to get paid faster.
So you're spending less of your time fussing over
your expenses and your accounts receivable,
and more time actually doing your work.
You can create and send professional looking invoices
in less than 30 seconds.
You can set up online payments in just a couple of clicks
to get paid up to four days,
faster.
You can see when your client has seen your invoice
to put an end to the guessing games,
and you can take the whole experience with you on the go
with their fully featured iOS and Android apps.
For an unrestricted 30-day free trial,
go to www.freshbooks.com forward slash tech tips.
We're gonna have that linked below,
and enter Linus Tech Tips
in the how did you hear about us section.
So thanks for watching, guys.
If you disliked this video, you can hit that button.
But if you liked it because you love Windows Vista,
hit the like button, get subscribed,
or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff
we featured at the link in the video description.
Also down there is our merch store,
which has cool shirts like this one,
and our community forum, which you should totally join.
Maybe it was a little bit of fondness.