This may be news to Jessica Mintz of the Associated Press, but not every Vista user has been griping. While it's easy to look to Chris Pirillo's 52-minute rant on Vista, people forget that Chris has made his professional career out of griping about Windows. He's been complaining about Vista since the first time I showed it to him in 2004. So going to Chris for an opinion of *any* version of Windows is likely to produce a 52-minute rant on fonts, spacing, pixel alignment, and his feelings on usability. I consider Chris a friend, but the guy's about as nit-picky about UI as they come... I'm actually surprised he hasn't just switched to the Mac yet.
I've been using Windows Vista for just as long as Chris has (if not longer), and while my beta testing problems were well documented, I haven't had too many issues since RTM. I'm running with UAC on, and I don't run into UAC prompts all that often. I've rarely had driver issues (except for the first few weeks when Acer didn't update their US support site), and all three machines in my house are running it. Overall, I love Windows Vista, and I can't stand touching Windows XP. Heck, my mom and kid sister use it every day too, and they've hardly ever called me about tech-support issues.
In fact, my only real beefs with Vista are centered around Media Center. The first is that my CableCARD Digital Cable Tuners encrypt all of my TV shows, regardless of whether or not the "protected" bit is set, so I can't excercise my "fair use" to edit out commercials or stream the TV using WebGuide to my other Vista PCs or my cell phone. Hopefully the next Windows Media Center release will have the "SoftSled" software extender technology they have been talking about for the past couple years. The second is that Microsoft still doesn't have v2 Extenders on the market yet, nor do they have any kind of rebate program.
So, while it may be fun to write a sensationalist article about the "problems" with Vista. It's also great that this article gets Chris some exposure right before Gnomedex. But unless the AP is going to have Zogby do a customer satisfaction survey (or unless they do some, uh, investigative reporting, and get both sides of the story), I think the best way to explain the public's experiences with Vista is "Your Mileage May Vary".
UPDATE: Since someone in my comments asked for them, here are the Reliability Index stats for my Vista machines (as of 14 July 2007):
- Acer Ferrari 5000 x64 (Mine)
- Windows Experience Index: 4.8
- Reliability Index: 4.27
- Notes: This is my main machine, and I push it the hardest. Internet Explorer crashes account for 72% of my failures, and is the single reason my score is so low. I was told a new Flash runtime would fix that, but so far, that's not the case.
- Dell XPS 400 x64 (Mine)
- Windows Experience Index: 4.7
- Reliability Index: 8.17
- Notes: This is my Digital Cable Tuner Media Center. It was running at a 10 for a couple months, but I recently installed the WebGuide 4.1 beta, and it crashed a lot a few days ago, dragging my system down. The WEI would be a 5.2 if the Pentium D processor wasn't dragging it down.
- HP tx1000 x86 (My girlfriend's)
- Windows Experience Index: 2.4
- Reliability Index: 8.35
- Notes: This is a review machine from HP that my girlfriend has been using the last 2 months (which she'll be posting a review on shortly). I hardly ever touch it, so I consider this representative of the real consumer experience. Again, IE7 is the main reason the score is not a 10. And the WEI would be higher, but the graphics card on the tx1000 is not that great.
- Dell Inspiron e1505 x86 (My sister in Denver's)
- Windows Experience Index: 2.0
- Reliability Index: 6.52
- Notes: This machine would have a WEI of 4.7, but the graphics card is the dead weight once again.
- HP Pavillion ze2000 x86 (My sister's boyfriend)
- Windows Experience Index: 2.0
- Reliability Index: 7.93
- Notes: He's had very few problems with this computer.
If I can get the stat's from my mom's and sister's machines, I'll post them too. All in all, I'm very happy with my overall Vista experience, even if IE7 keeps crashing all the time. With IE7pro, it's become far less aggravating than it used to be.