"I can't believe it's not better!"

Summary: People who are experiencing the reality of Vista 7 tell their stories

THIS is the latest in a long series of posts about the reality behind Vista 7.

The 'Microsoft press' has this interesting new article which is titled "Windows 7: The Gift that Keeps on Rebooting." From the article we happen to learn about the cost of Windows zombies to advertisers -- an issue that Vista 7 will not resolve.

According to an October report by Click Forensics, botnets accounted for 42.6 percent of all "click fraud" in the third-quarter of 2009. That percentage is "significant," according to the company, as it is more than double 2007's rates. And last year, botnets accounted for only 27.5 percent of click fraud instances.

Not only advertisers are at risk due to Windows; Australia's power grid too is said to be at risk. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

A virus outbreak is wreaking havoc with Integral Energy's computer network, forcing it to rebuild all 1000 of its desktop computers before the "particularly sinister" bug spreads to the machines controlling the power grid.

[...]

Integral Energy said the virus was the W32.Virut.CF strain, which computer security company Symantec describes on its website as "a particularly sinister file infector" that spreads quickly and "is proving difficult to remove from infected networks".

These are Windows issues; the power grid must not rely on Windows anymore.

Going back to Vista 7, there are more new issues being found. "I stumbled onto a weird Windows 7 bug," says our reader Ryan, who is a former Microsoft MVP. "Sometimes it boots up and doesn't see my keyboard or mouse; no way to log in; did it on my last system too sometimes; irritating when it decides to do that."

"This is why people should stay away until SP1," I said to Ryan, who replied: "That's always been the party line before. There is already a SP1 branch on "WinMain"; As to when it is released, who knows? Probably a year or so."

“In some ways, it's [Vista 7] worse than Vista.”
 --Ryan, former Microsoft MVPAnother person tells us: "I see a bug in Vista and sometimes (but not as often) in Win 7, where if you SHIFT DEL a file, it does not go away, but stays there until you log off or restart. [...] SHIFT DEL does not bring up the "are you sure" thing. I've tried all sorts of things, but sometimes the file "goes away" but comes back when you F5 it."

"I had a weird Vista filesystem bug once," confesses Ryan. "It deleted the folder but the folder stayed, but if I tried to delete it, it would tell me it didn't exist. You have to go to the command prompt and use dir /x to get the DOS 8.3 name and then use del <8.3 name>."

"In some ways," says Ryan regarding Vista 7, "it's worse than Vista."

Our reader Goblin asks: "did you see the YouTube speed comparisons? (in regards to Vista/7/Ubuntu) Ubuntu booted the fastest, however what was interesting was Vista booted quicker than 7."

Here are two more USENET posts from the past 24 hours:

From: Rex Ballard <rex.ballard@gmail.com>€ € (http://groups.google.com) Date: Thursday 29 Oct 2009 20:56:50 Groups: comp.os.linux.advocacy, comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy

IT seems that a bunch of Vista users are as confused as ever by the whole upgrade process.€ € Yesterday a customer at Office Max was asking if he could upgrade from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Home Premium and still keep the Ultimate features.

I really didn't know the answer, and I told him so, but I suggested that he might want to pay the $200 price for Ultimate because if the installation did not go well, he might end up having to re-image the drive, and that would mean losing those nice features for sure.

I also suggested that he would probably want to shell out an extra $150 to get a USB backup drive to save all his personal files.€ € His big concern was that he had a bunch of software he'd purchased or downloaded and didn't have the registration keys and source media anymore.€ € I suggested that from now on he put every download into a download folder and put every registration key into a file in that directory with a shortcut to the desktop so that he could save the keys when he got them.

Unfortunately, that was closing the door after the horse had left the barn, but he did appreciate the advice.

Has anybody tried their old XP software with Windows 7?€ € How much of it doesn't work anymore.

That may be a bigger determiner of the success of Windows 7 than it's speed or nifty graphics.€ € If users have to trash hundreds of dollars worth of commercial software and up replacements or upgrades because they upgraded to Windows 7, Windows 7 will probably not do very well in light of current economic conditions.

The second one:

From: Justin <justin@nobecauseihatespam.com>€ € (A noiseless patient Spider) Date: Friday 30 Oct 2009 06:33:10 Groups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy, comp.os.linux.advocacy, comp.os.ms-windows.advicacy

People are scrambling for copies of Windows XP Professional 32 and 64€  via eBay. Prices for XP64 were averaging at $100 to $110, now its at $130 to $140. This didn't happen with Vista.

Steve Ballmer was probably right. Vista 7 will not spur sales. It inherits too many problems from Vista, except the tarnished brand name (they insist on calling it "Windows 7", not "Vista 7"). ⬆