The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007

Mike Hankey

We have no doubt Vista will come to dominate the PC landscape, if only because it will become increasingly hard to buy a new machine that doesn't have it pre-installed. And that's disappointing in its own right. It disturbs me that whether I like it or not I have a limited time to get used to Vista or face going to another system. Mike

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. "George Carlin"

leckey 0

It wasn't 1 THROUGH 15?

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code frog 0

Seriously? I would have put the iPhone above Vista. At least Vista doesn't force me to use QWEST or Verizon. Then when I found a way to ditch AT&T at least the jerks at Microsoft didn't push an update that trashed my phone. If someone seriously ranked Vista number one then I'm not even going to read the rest of it. It's a total smear and the entire purpose of the review was to put Vista as number one and that's the only reason. Bunch-o-crap! Vista is actually a pretty competent OS compared to previous efforts from Microsoft. Trouble is that it's such a departure from XP that it's taking some getting used to by everyone. Lame! Total Sleeper! This came from The Onion right? :laugh:

Lost User

leckey wrote:

It wasn't 1 THROUGH 15?

It's actually 15 through to 1, but whoever the OP was, decided that he should link to page 5 (the last page) of the article. Go towards the bottom and you will see an arrow you can click to go to page 4, then 3 and so on.

Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004

DaveX86

Windows 7 is due in 2010...I can wait that long :)

Anton Afanasyev

I believe leckey was showing her surprise that Vista didn't claim all 15 spots, and not the way that the article way laid out.

:badger:

Steve Echols

code-frog wrote:

At least Vista doesn't force me to use QWEST or Verizon

Yeah, but at least with the iPhone you have a choice of crappy carriers. With Vista you have NO choice. You will be assimilated.

code-frog wrote:

jerks at Microsoft didn't push an update that trashed my phone

Give it time. I'm sure MS will F up an update and trash something even more important - your PC.

code-frog wrote:

If someone seriously ranked Vista number one then I'm not even going to read the rest of it.

They trash the iPhone and MacOS X, so don't be so hasty, there's something in this article for everyone.

code-frog wrote:

Vista is actually a pretty competent OS compared to previous efforts from Microsoft. Trouble is that it's such a departure from XP that it's taking some getting used to by everyone.

And you think forcing you to use a certain carrier for a phone is bad. I think making me upgrade my PC that runs XP perfectly blows! Especially if I buy a new PC and it performs worse than what I had. Sorry, I just disagree with you on this one.

- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on!

p daddy

Wasn't Vista (or Longhorn) due in 2002? I'm sticking with XP for a while yet.... if Visual Studio ran on Wine I'd be typing this in Ubuntu. You have to take your hat off to Microsoft's approach of "look after developers first" that seemed to be adopted before the launch of VS6. I'm only using Windows because the developer tools are so good - I've moved from building native windows apps to websites so I'm pretty platform agnostic these days.... it's my fear of losing awesome tools and having to learn lots of new technology that is keeping me with MS, not the quality of the operating system! :)

p daddy

code-frog wrote:

If someone seriously ranked Vista number one then I'm not even going to read the rest of it. It's a total smear and the entire purpose of the review was to put Vista as number one and that's the only reason.

I don't think there's conspiracy against Vista - it's just unfortunately not as good as we were expecting. I think even the hard-to-the-core-hardcore MS fans on CP can see that Vista is at least somewhat a dissapointment? Am I on my own on this one?

Pete OHanlon

p daddy wrote:

Wasn't Vista (or Longhorn) due in 2002?

It was, but MS halted development on it while security flaws in XP were addressed. To a large extent, the upgrades to XP in SP2 were down to lessons learned while developing the initial codebase for Vista.

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Mike Hankey

Yeah me too, I am satisfied with XP and hope they continue to support it for many years! Mike

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. "George Carlin"

Hans Dietrich

What disturbs me the most is that Microsoft is on the list 3 times: for Vista, Zune, and Office 2007 - all for things that users just fundamentally don't like. Has Microsoft product management devolved? Does Ozzie have something to do with this? My nightmare is that Windows 7 is going to look like Lotus Notes. :omg:

Best wishes, Hans

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realJSOP

p daddy wrote:

if Visual Studio ran on Wine I'd be typing this in Ubuntu.

+1...

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Mike Hankey

Or have they come to the point where they can pretty much shove anything out the door they want. Whata ya gonna do? Where are ya gonna go? We've become so dependent on them that when they put out a new product we adapt and learn to live with it! For years Microsoft had the crappiest debuggers and a company came along and actually put out some good stuff, easy to use and YES user friendly. There name was Borland, what happened? Mike

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. "George Carlin"

code frog 0

I don't think Vista is a disappointment. If you had your expectations so high for such a huge departure of current methods in Microsoft then that's your issue. Vista was hugely refreshing because it shows me the Microsoft is finally hearing us and trying to make things better. Calling Vista a disappointment is just hopping on the bandwagon of Vista bashing. I will never think otherwise. It was the easiest, least controversial choice for number one simply because Vista-bashing is so popular. That is the only reason it was picked because everyone picks on Microsoft and so it was the "safe" choice. Stupid. The reviewer should have had the balls to carefully look through all the technology. There were *much* bigger disappointments this year than Vista and I personally think I'm right on with the IPhone. It's just another portably connected device. It doesn't revolutionize the way we think about mobile phones the way Jobs hyped it to. It's just another player in a field of strong talent. Anyway, I got a bunch pansie-votes from people who cannot think for themselves too bad.

code frog 0

I seriously believe that there were bigger flops in 2007 than Vista and the reason Vista was picked is because it was the "easy" and "low risk" choice. Everybody would cheer to see Vista not even thinking whether or not it deserved to be there. It's bashing Microsoft therefore it must be right. I guarantee that's why they did it because they knew they'd have a royal fight if they picked on any other product. Vista was the easy and safe choice. I think that's totally lame. To be perfectly honest a list like this having 15 items is lame. They need to expand it to 100 items as contributed by the readers and then a panel of known activists in industry need to pick the order based upon their real hands-on experiences. A list like this should be taken very seriously and 100's of hours should have been put in to compiling it so that it's a meaningful and accurate reference for it's readers. You and I both know this list is simply a political statement so that the author gets points with the "who's who" in the community. That's why I disagree with the whole thing. Vista might be number 1 but I guarantee it's not for the reasons the author(s) used. If I was going to rank Vista as number 1 I couldn't do it at all without saying, "Vista is ranked number one in 2007 but we are not stupid enough to not realize that 2008 could be the year that Vista fixes some things and explodes onto the scene as a great desktop once Microsoft puts a lot of the stuff back in that they cut. Vista has huge potential and we (the reviewers) recognize that. Now does my denial of the review make more sense? Or do I need to find a chocolate donut and some sympathy from a cream puff until I feel better? :-D

code frog 0

Steve Echols wrote:

I think making me upgrade my PC that runs XP perfectly blows!

Hold on there. Every time that happens it's job security for *all* of us. It brings much needed money into every sector of our industry as it validates the break through's we are making in Video Cards, Sound, memory and processors speeds. If Vista didn't move to embrace these things there's no monetary gain for those breaking their backs to make things bigger, better and faster. Every time I have to upgrade memory, video or processor I smile because I know that I just helped an American keep their job. You have to take this view instead of the one you have. I lost my job for this very reason and because of that I'm always willing to buy new hardware and I believe my contribution is to do that every 2.5 years. I have a responsibility to put money I have made from this industry back into this industry to help it grow.

senylity

Pete O'Hanlon wrote:

It was, but MS halted development on it while security flaws in XP were addressed. To a large extent, the upgrades to XP in SP2 were down to lessons learned while developing the initial codebase for Vista.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I read somewhere that they were working on that new filesystem and had to jettison that, then they had to reset their codebase to Server 2003. I'll see if I can find that blog post that describes why it took 5 years to get Vista out the door.

Success is the happy feeling you get between the time you do something and the time you tell a woman what you did. --Dibert My left name is Tremendous Savings, Ms. America – Señor Cardgage

Steve Echols

I see your point about re-investing in the industry, however, wouldn't you be more willing to invest your hard earned money into something that will give you a greater return? I'd rather spend my money on making MY apps run better, not the OS. Sometimes it seems like we're on a horizontal line when it comes to performance vs. the OS. The better your PC, the more ram and cpu the OS takes. That's not progress to me. How do I benefit from Vista?

- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on!

UncaDanno

M$ hired Borland's chief architect away from them.