Was Windows Vista THAT bad?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,076 words · ~10 min read
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Few things strike fear, or perhaps loathing, into the hearts of PC enthusiasts more than
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the words Windows Vista.
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That operating system's notoriety as a buggy, slow, bloated mess reaches far and wide, even
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to the land of the Apple faithful Vista was aboard.
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Its successor, Windows 7, adored.
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But was Vista's heart truly evil, or simply misunderstood?
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Pushed out into a world that wasn't ready, one can say.
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It is a terrible tale, but perhaps its telling may reveal new secrets.
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So I was reading a post written by Glassbomb on our forum, and it inspired a fairly lively
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debate in our weekly writers' meeting.
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Was Windows Vista really that bad?
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You ask a dozen people, you'll get a dozen different answers.
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The one thing we all agreed on, though, was that to answer the question fairly, we would
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have to get our hands on an ISO and actually install it on a system.
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And we chose the 145.
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Usesonerongo is a $450 gaming PC, that Riley and I put together.
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Mostly because it's from 2007.
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The year that Windows Vista launched.
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And, how is it?
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Well, surprisingly, it works pretty well.
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There's some GPV mobilised programming, but it tasks for jail i assume.
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The fixing process is not as high end.
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The software doesn't work that well either.
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Both systems are a sticky bit.
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exactly like Windows 7.
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So how is it different then from Windows 7?
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And what's so bad about it?
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Well, the answer requires some history.
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Development of Windows Longhorn,
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actually named after the Longhorn Saloon and Grill
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in Whistler, BC, represent,
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began in 2001, the year that Windows XP was launched.
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Longhorn was supposed to launch in 2003,
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but a number of issues during development
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left Microsoft conflicted
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about which features to include
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in the new operating system
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and which ones to add to Windows XP and Windows Server.
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Things got so complicated that in 2004,
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development was effectively reset
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as team leaders changed
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and much of the code was scrapped and repurposed.
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This was also when Longhorn's product name
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was finalized to Vista
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with a tagline of clear, confident, and connected,
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none of which had described Vista's development so far.
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Perhaps they were trying to ask the universe
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to throw them a freaking bone.
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There's actually a lot more I could say
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about the development, but frankly,
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we could make a whole video about that.
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So let's just leave it at the launch was delayed
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a few more times, bones were not thrown.
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And then finally, on January 30th, 2007,
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Vista made its public debut.
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And that's really when the excrement
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hit the air circulation unit, so to speak.
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You see, Vista had a ton of new tricks up its sleeve,
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including the graphics intensive arrow UI
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with translucency effects
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and elements of the Windows backend
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that had been completely redone.
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So the hardware requirements were higher
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than probably anyone expected,
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which meant that at launch,
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Vista was slower than its predecessor on equivalent hardware.
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So users accused Microsoft of packing the OS full of bloat
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as part of a conspiracy to force them
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to upgrade their computers.
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Not that that would necessarily lead
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to a better experience anyway.
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Making its own foot more full of bullet holes than necessary,
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Microsoft allowed many prebuilt PCs, brand new ones mind you,
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to be sold with Vista capable branding
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on the front that they created.
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But these PCs only met the requirements
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for Vista Home Basic, the second of these six different
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and very confusing editions
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of this software that existed.
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And because of this particular misstep,
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Microsoft actually got served a class action lawsuit
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for misleading marketing.
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On top of everything so far,
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many component and peripheral vendors
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didn't release updated drivers for Vista
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for their older, or in some cases,
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even their existing products.
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So many users having experienced
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the relatively seamless migrations
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between various versions of Windows 9X
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or 2000 to XP, where drivers could in many cases
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be used interchangeably were outraged
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when particularly their wireless cards
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and printers just didn't work anymore.
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As for the hardware components that did work,
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well, because the drivers were so fundamentally different
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from the XP versions requiring extensive rewrites
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in many cases, even key system components
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from reputable vendors like graphics cards from NVIDIA
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were prone to causing whole system crashes.
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Even when it was running normally,
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Vista managed to generate user ire too.
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While the new user account control feature,
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which prompted users for permissions to run programs
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and change settings was a great step forward
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for system security, it appeared far too often
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and took control of the entire Windows interface
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until it could be dismissed.
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Annoying and confusing regular end users
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who just wanted the annoying pop-ups to stop,
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they could get their work done.
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And this is only a fraction of the complaints.
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It truly was a horrible launch.
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And you could argue that it directly resulted
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in Apple increasing their OS 10 market share
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thanks to their wildly successful Mac versus PC commercials.
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Now, some of the issues were addressed
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in Service Pack 1 for Vista,
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which launched a year later in 2008.
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But you know what else launched in 2008?
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Service Pack 3 for Windows XP,
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which understandably left users confused
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about whether they should upgrade or just stick with XP.
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April 2009 then saw the release of Service Pack 2 for Vista,
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which addressed even more issues.
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But by then, we were five months away
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from everyone's favorite OS, Windows 7,
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which whether you want to admit it or not,
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is very similar to Windows Vista.
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With many of the improvements in performance
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and driver compatibility coming about
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simply because hardware in 2009 was better,
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and the software was better.
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And driver developers had gained a lot of experience
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working with Windows Vista.
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And 7, which were far more similar under the hood
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than XP and Vista were.
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Because like it or not, in some cases,
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Vista wasn't bad as much as it was misunderstood,
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and maybe a little ahead of its time.
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It was the beginning of a lot of really good stuff
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that we take for granted today.
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For example, its all new memory management model
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used free RAM to load frequently used programs and files,
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and it was the beginning of a lot of really good stuff
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and files in the background to smooth out operation.
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Users didn't understand this.
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They just thought that Windows was hogging up
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all of their RAM for no apparent reason.
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And arguably, Microsoft could have done a better job
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of representing this.
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As for Windows Aero with its cool translucency effects,
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well, it ran on the system's GPU.
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So if you had a discrete graphics card,
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and you weren't experiencing crashes,
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which not everyone did, by the way, I didn't,
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it ran very smoothly and looked so good.
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That going back to the old way with Windows XP
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felt like caveman stuff.
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Fun fact, today, elements of Aero's translucent effects
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can be seen in all sorts of other UIs
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from Windows 10 to macOS to iOS.
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And as for the sidebar with its gadgets,
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well, that looks pretty laughable
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with our modern design sensibilities,
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but it was pretty trendy at the time.
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Apple's OS 10 Tiger also had widget mini apps,
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although they were kept on the dashboard, not the desktop,
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and live updating UI elements are now ubiquitous
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in modern OSs, including the live tiles
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in the Windows start menu.
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So those were kind of cool,
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until a critical vulnerability was discovered
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that could leave your PC open to hackers, oops.
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And guess what else Vista added?
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Instant search from the taskbar,
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built-in Windows Defender, built-in Windows Update,
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user-friendly data backup, BitLocker drive encryption,
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user account control, which in its modern,
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more refined form, is an essential part of Windows 10.
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It also added Windows security,
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and what's funny is that OS 10 these days,
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or macOS, excuse me, has something pretty similar.
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It also added DirectX 10 and games for Windows Live,
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which for all its faults, was one of the first ways
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to enable gameplay between a console and a PC.
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Not to mention the completely redesigned print, display,
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peer-to-peer networking, and audio subsystems
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that laid the foundation for Windows 7 and its successors.
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Though I do have some issues
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with the changes they made to audio
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that effectively killed hardware-accelerated sound.
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That's kind of a separate note, though.
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So, was Vista that bad?
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Yes, and also no, which together makes yo,
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because yo, man, for real.
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For all its faults, and there were many,
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Windows Vista was a huge, if wobbly step,
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in the right direction.
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And once it had settled in and received proper support,
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users seemed to appreciate it.
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In fact, in 2008, a few months
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after releasing Vista Service Pack 1,
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Microsoft ran an ad campaign called the Mojave Experiment,
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in which they invited users to vent
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about how much they hated Vista,
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and then try out Windows Mojave,
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the next version of Windows.
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And surprise, surprise, people actually loved it.
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And then cue the reveal, Mojave isn't Mojave, it's Vista.
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Really?
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Are you serious?
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This is Windows Vista.
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Now, were people's reactions cherry-picked,
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to only include the good ones?
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Duh, of course.
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But based on my experience running Vista from day one,
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on what was at the time a high-end system,
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I don't find it hard to believe at all
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that some people genuinely liked it,
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or even really liked it.
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Its main issue, I think, is that by the time
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it had really gotten to the point where it was usable,
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Windows 7 was right around the corner,
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and Vista's reputation had been irreparably damaged.
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So despite the tech and feature advancements,
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Vista will, and should,
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continue to go down in history
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as the worst Windows launch ever,
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other than Windows ME.
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Just get colder in here.
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By the way, guys, just in case this story has convinced you
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to try to install Vista and use it,
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perhaps out of pity, please don't.
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Microsoft's support for the OS ended last year,
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and while we were using it,
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like pretty much everything was covered in these like,
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scary, gigantic, end of support messages.
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