[EphraimShay]

I fail to agree with several of these choices. I have been very satisfied with my Zune, having yet to encounter a problem with it over its year-long life. Declaring it a disappointment based on sales is a good start to a poor argument, especially since the Zune has been around for around a year while the iPod has been on the market for about six times that. Also, the Office 2007 UI is far superior to its predecessor. Using it numerous times daily, I can honestly say I get work done much faster and more efficiently simply because of the "ribbon." But I will have to agree with one statement: I will be waiting as long as possible before I buy either of the new HD formats and waste that much money.

[kirbyj2]

At first I was pleasantly surprised with this article. It seems like it was written by someone with some actual writing ability. It was keeping me interested in continuing the long article. Then, Dan, you went and said "exsqueze me." I almost stopped reading.
Also, not that I think Vista shouldn't be #1, but it was no surprise to see it there. Should have started the article with #1 and went up, the suspense of knowing what crappy thing is better than all other crappy things would have been less crappy.
And before everyone says it, I obviously have no writing ability myself.

[batres]

ubuntu? wrong!

product of the year: autodesk maya 2008 :D

[jdb5134]

man its funny to read this stuff, and its even funnier to see the articles that PCworld keeps coming out with, This list is hilarious. Theres about 4 things that belong here, and the rest: what??

Im pretty much not gonna comment on vista or leopard. Both seem to work well for different people, and both seem like great operating systems. I know I love vista. The writer says it is slower than XP. He is obviously braindead. The only other thing i will say is that im tired of vista being on everyone's top dissapointment list. The whole iphone debacle was hilarious, and apple should be ashamed for its bait and switch tactics. and the zune, though not as good as ipod, is a solid alternative. again, what the hell is this guy talking about?

[haraldfelgner]

I do not subscribe to #9 at all. The Ribbon and SmartArts are a real breakthrough: http://www.felgner.c...lookalike.html.

[TechyGuy]

Here's my #1 dissapointment of 2007: Vista Contimues its exsistence.

[boed]

Agreed - they put down lame horses - it is only humane to let go of Vista - it's time has past (OK - it is an abomination and should never have seen the light of day)

[boed]

"it's not that vista is awful" - OK - let's try other adjectives, metaphors and or hyperboles -
Vista is a train wreck, vista is dreadful, vista is wretched, vista is a complete sweat flop, vista is the more annoying than Clippy, Vista makes me long for Windows ME, Windows is slower than molasses in the winter time, They say that a thousand monkeys could eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare - MS should have paid the big bucks and hired those monkeys - the ones they hired to write Vista were sub par. Vista is so slow; frustrated XP PCs will shoot it in drive by's on the information super highway.
It took Robes Pierre 12 months to commit his atrocities in France- there were 40,000 victims - it took MS five years to create an atrocity this significant - how many millions will suffer? Robespierre's reign of terror ended quickly - how much longer should we endure Ballmer's?
First rule of programming - don't assume end users are running googolplex core processors.
MS needs to fire anyone even remotely associated with Vista - starting with Ballmer for letting Vista go public. Then start again on Windows XP 2009. Don't let any programmers work with any PC faster than a Pentium 4- that way they'll design it to be fast above all other things.

[jdb5134]

hey Boed, why dont you be our guest and go work for microsoft. you obviously think you know more than they do. if people are honestly gonna throw tirades on this thing, do it somewhere else

[sandkicker]

Item 3 - who are the other 3 dozen addresses who use beacon.
So far I have blocked traffic from and to:
facebook
Blockbuster
fandango
Epicurious
Kongregate
Overstock
Travelocity
amazon

I'd like to know the rest so I can block them also....

[boed]

I've developed my share of code and managed developers - it is a simple rule ANYONE who knows about programming knows - test for performance on the average users PC before rolling out a new app. Clearly MS ignored everyone's complaint about slow performance and claimed it was bad drivers, additional software such as antivirus, or end user error. 5 Months later they confirmed the performance issue with Vista.

I may not know enough to write an entire OS - but I certainly know enough not to make such a newbie mistake as giving overpowered PCs to developers and expecting end users to be happy - that is why web developers use limited bandwidth connections to test their web pages on hosts before going live.

Are you saying MS did a good job with Vista and businesses are rolling out? Are you saying that other than end users buying brand new systems it is popular? Anyone who has upgraded to XP from Vista even on the fastest new systems will agree that XP can easily quadruple the speed of their computer.

[esklsnrq8]

Its a shame that the newbee's to computing are able to read such trash until after they have had a chance to make up their own mind.

I am new - 5 yrs- to PC's, internet and all the rest. I cut my teeth on XP and later installed SP2. Against everything I read I bought a Vista ready machine in 11-06. My express install was shipped as promised and went in without a hitch, only minor tweaks and updates required.

I liked it so much that last night I downloaded and installed Vista SP1 RC. All went liquid smooth. I've loved every moment of my Vista Experience.

If business owners or old time users have issues with their outdated software or hardware they should address that and not blame MS for progress.

The thing that becomes quite evident by the intensity of the bashing is it must be fueled by large installments of palm grease. I conclude I must trust my own experience before allowing those "Gurus" to romp willy-nilly thru the corridores of my mind.

[jdb5134]

well Boed, i would have to say that as a former XP user, i would 100 percent not agree with you, so if i were you i wouldnt make statements like that. my vista machine outperforms what xp did on the same machine. Removed by Moderator







Edited by MPHEnterprises

Okay, let's not let this get out of hand. Please refrain from personal attacks, whether directly or indirectly, against another member.

[boed]

Actually I support several thousand PCs and a few hundred servers so I did actually do the tests personally. I actually work directly with several MVPs for MS who also have confirmed my findings and admit they don't use Vista on their home PCs as it slows them down. I compared network copies up and down from Windows 2003 x64 and 32 servers, I compared file copies between hard drives on the same machines - I did all the tests with P4 HT and Core 2 PCs identical equipment all updated to the latest drivers - with AV turned off and all machines had 2 gigs of RAM and no other processes turned on.

We don't roll out anything without testing it. I can also point to many well respected journals and magazines with essentially identical findings - Vista on ANY hardware runs slower in file copy performance, than XP on the same equipment. In addition, most machines run apps faster and certainly run games faster on XP than Vista.

Why would you make such foolish statements when there is no supporting information for your claims?

As for complaining to MS - I did during the beta testing of Vista - they thought it was a firewall or AV issue - when I confirmed I had also tested with those turned off they thought it was a driver issue - I couldn't argue with that since I didn't write the drivers. However 5 months later MS did admit Vista is indeed slower. Most educated experts believe there are several reasons why Vista is so slow -

1. DRM - file copies running XP within Vista signficantly outperforms file copies with Vista not using XP in a virtual session on the same machine.

2. Poor network layer access TOE and other features not implemented correctly.

3. Inneficient access to certain hardware layers in the graphical environment.

4. Speghetti code in the indexing features of Vista cause drain on hard drive access as well as memory and processor utilization.



While Vista may be OK for people in their own little world who don't need to copy large files, groups of files or do anything but browse the web, people in networked environments, those working with large files such as multimedia files will find Vista is a significant step backwards for them in performance. And educated users buying state of the art home equipment wouldn't want to slow down that cutting edge technology with a performance killer like Vista. Mind you I support Vista, Windows XP, 2000, 98, Novell and various forms of Linux in addtion to OSX. There are many advantages to Windows, Linux and OSX however Vista presents no real advantages to most users other than a "pretty" interface. For anyone serious about computing performance far outweighs the advantages of a "pretty" interface. Vista is no more secure than XP is. I don't think OSX or Linux is really more secure but there are more known hacks for XP only because it is the most popular - you don't see taggers putting their graffiti on the darkest interior part of a bridge - they want it to be seen - just like hackers so they spend more time going after the most visible platform.

[THEPecosBill]

Hellooooooooooooooooo? Is anyone at PCWorld awake? Apple announced that the iPhone will have a full SDK spec announced in Feb. Don't bet that anyone can use it though. Apple is dead set against letting Joe Schmo write swiss cheese code that let's evil hackers hose up users' phones.
Leopard's only disappointment was the lack of a surprise feature that Job's hinted at.
Dead on with Vista

[Car54]

Sorry I haven't really read any of the previous comments in this thread, but I got to this point in the article, where Dan Tynan made me laugh with his Vonage "disappointment": (yes we can laugh at some of these disappointments, unless in this case, you had the misfortune of being a SunRocket customer)


h2. #7. Cannot be Completed as Dialed: Voice Over IP

Here's
a recipe for disaster: Have the market leader in your industry sued by
three of the biggest telecom companies on the planet. Have second-tier
players go belly up overnight, leaving thousands of business customers
without any phone service. Add in a healthy dose of security
vulnerabilities, and bake at 450 degrees until crispy. :^0

[KidWorf]

Well, I guess PC World has become the Fox news network of the Computer world.....it gives false information, makes up things as it goes along, and provides spin to those things that do not work (Vista, Zune, etc.), and gives negative spin to those things that DO work (Apple's iPhoto, OS X, anything from Apple, etc.) I guess that the writer has gotten his 4 gold coins from gates, or at least his M$ handelers, as Vista is one of the crappiest OS's that has ever come out, Zune is a joke, and most of the products from M$ are top-heavy and require much more than they need to operate. But, never mind that. And, never mind facts. The only thing that matters to this writer, and to this magazine is that anything but M$ products are given a bad review, even if facts state differently. Of course, the lemmings will follow ANYTHING the see in print..........

[kfjfeijfe]

The hilarious part of this is while the new version of Microsoft Windows is being dumped Linux is being offered for the first time by all of the major computer manufacturers. I suspect the third world will still outpace Linux desktop adoption given projects like one laptop per child. Maybe http://zonbu.com will be successful.

[mjd420nova]

I think the failure of the industry to decide on an accepted format for HDDVD will continue to drag down further development of equipment and thereby a reduction in consumer prices. It does appear that Sony has once again repeated their Betamax mistake and choosen an incompatible format and left it up to the consumer to decide the standard for acceptance. An overpriced format regardless of its capabilities will always be left by the wayside when allowing the consumer to decide. Choice is nice by compatability must be the first consideration.

[Dewcrav3r]

Hello, it's time to dump Microsoft and go Open-Source with Linux. Every Vista article from PCW blasts Vista, and rightly so. Now go read Ubuntu Linux reviews. 94 on the PCW chart and nothing bad to say about it. We trust PCW and buy the top-rated products on the other charts, why not trust them on the Operating System chart and use Linux?