Summary: Vista 7 disappoints some more people ahead of its release

A PERSON of some importance, Jim Louderback, has just justified the name "Vista 7", which concisely describes the problem with Windows 7. Some Windows enthusiasts tend to agree.

Windows 7, as Louderback puts it, is "Vista all over again." That's his headline. He explains why.

“There you go again”. The Gipper said it in 1982, and I’m saying it today – but about Windows 7, not Jimmy Carter.

Because the more I play with Windows 7, the more I see the Vista debacle unfolding all over again. The commonly accepted wisdom is that Windows 7 is oh-so-much-better than Vista. Well, based on my own extensive testing, it’s not. Not at all.

First a bit of history. Back in 2006 I was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine. Vista was coming out and we were pretty darn laudatory. Microsoft provided us with new hardware, we tested beta versions of Vista, and we loved it. Shortly after it shipped, alas, the Wow was less Now than Ow. Vista sucked upon release to the world for a wide range of reasons – not least because the networking and audio driver models were completely rebuilt in the six months prior to release. That led to driver problems, along with general instability. When I left PC Magazine in 2007, my parting column was a bit of an apology – we’d been too easy on what turned out to be one of Microsoft’s more uneven efforts.

It’s easy to get snowed. Microsoft provides its favored reviewers a steady stream of highlights, new versions, and new features – along with brand new hardware to run the new builds upon. A team of technical marketers inside the borg stand at the ready – helping the anointed work through, and around, any problems that develop during testing.

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We’ve seen this story before. Vista was overhyped when it came out by everyone from PC Magazine to the Wall Street Journal. And now Windows 7 is getting the same treatment.

As we have shown before, Microsoft bribes/incentivises to generate positive Vista 7 reviews [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

Louderback is not the first person to compare Windows 7 to Vista. To give just a handful of older examples, consider:

• Overheard: Windows 7 is just Vista with new shade of lipstick



• Is Windows 7 Just a Vista Service Pack?



• Is Windows 7 just Vista in disguise?



• Ballmer: Windows 7 is Vista, just 'a lot better'

When the hype is over (probably weeks or months after release) people will see for themselves whether Vista 7 outperforms Vista. ⬆

"[W]e're not going to have products that are much more successful than Vista has been."

--Steve Ballmer