Rant: Microsoft Windows Out of Box Experience Sucks
OK, rant mode on. This morning I spent over three hours running Windows Update on the cool Viliv S5 UMPC I am evaluating. Yes, I realize it runs the older Windows XP operating system, but even so Microsoft must make the out of box experience (OOBE) better than this. I have recently experienced this process with Vista too, and it’s no better than XP. It’s time that Microsoft fix this absolutely unbearable process.
The entire Windows Update process resulted in 5 reboots and took almost 3.5 hours. That is ridiculous in and of itself, but watching it closely (something you have to do as it requires user input at inopportune moments) really got me steamed, as I realized that Microsoft could easily fix this stupid process.
How can Microsoft make this more bearable for the end-user? Simple. Watching the update process made it clear that Microsoft supplied the OEM with Windows XP SP1. A large part of the update process was downloading and installing SP2, which has been out for years. The next pass of Windows Update then downloaded and installed SP3, which has also been out forever. Why the hell is Microsoft not supplying OEMs with the latest SP slipstreamed in the build image?
My fury didn’t end there, no siree. The update process also duly downloaded and installed .NET Framework 1.0. Then 1.1. Then 1.5. That is absolutely stupid on any level. Then came the core Microsoft applications that had to be “updated.” You may not believe it, but the update process had to download and install Internet Explorer 7, yes, that’s right 7, which is not even the current version available. Windows XP is still shipping with IE6 in the OEM image. Incredible.
That’s still not all. The update process had to download and install Windows Media Player 11 because the build image only contained WM9. Yes, version 9 even though WM11 has been out for a very long time.
Of course, once all of these “updates” were duly installed, then all of the security updates for each of them had to go through the same loop. I found myself getting more and more ticked off as this inane process dragged on.
I know that I’m going to start hearing that this isn’t even the latest version of Windows, like that’s a good excuse for Microsoft. Give me a break, Microsoft is still happy to sell XP to OEMs (and thus the consumer), so that’s no excuse for lousy support. All Microsoft has to do to end this stupid situation is to roll any update or upgrade that is distributed via Windows Update that is over six months old into the image provided to OEMs. That’s all it would take to end this goofy situation, and there will never be an excuse to not do this that I will accept. Take responsibility for your product, Microsoft.
I’m sure I’ll also hear that a lot of these updates are security related in nature and thus not Microsoft’s fault. I understand that, but I don’t care. As a consumer, I just want my stuff to work as easily out of the box as possible. As far as I’m concerned Microsoft could easily go a long way toward providing that experience if they would just do it.
OK, rant mode off, at least for now.
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Although I agree the update process could be better, this is not ms fault. We regularly receive dell pcs with so and they already have sp3
those are known as service packs in windows speak, but yes, one can wonder…
I agree with Tom – is it Microsoft’s fault or the OEM? Seems to me if they want to provide a quality customer experience, they could easily install a patched OS.
James;
If a vendor can add all sorts of crapware to their build why can’t they add the latest updates and patches. It isn’t rocket science to slipstream service packs into a previous verions of XP in order to create an up to date build. If Microsoft is going to all the effort of trying to make updates available to end users I can’t see them preventing an OEM from providing the SPs in the build on these systems. It sounds more like laziness on the part of the OEM to me.
Maybe its time Microsoft took a page from Apple’s book and went into the hardware business and stopped selling their OS to OEMs. Then they could tightly control the customer experience by only making a very minimal set of systems available to users.
why dont you manually D/L SP 2/3 ONCE from MS & use them on all your XP PC’s?
its not the install process that takes so long, its D/L process.
So, Viliv did a crappy job of producing their OS image and this is somehow Microsoft’s fault?
I’m pretty sure this is the OEMs fault. All other systems I’ve received with XP recently had SP3, and none of the updates afterward required a reboot.
Microsoft has never been good at updating their products. Rather than fix the thousands of legacy bugs they want you to just buy the latest OS instead. Microsoft philosophy goes something like this: Release shiny new software and throw in over the wall. Immediately begin work on next shiny new release. Fix only the most annoying bugs in latest release (if we must) and throw it over the wall for the masses to enjoy. Repeat process for next shiny new release. They almost never ever fix the older bugs. Just look how long it took them to fix a bug in Windows 2.x calc program that still ships with all windows versions.
MS could also do what Apple does and provide a large Combo Updater with Windows Update. Then it won’t matter what OEMs are using, you just download all the latest core system files in one large update, apply, and restart once. Easy peasy.
…. or ubuntu, kubuntu … 9.04 or so.
A few things about .Net.
1; There is no 1.5 version. There is a v3.5, which is what I think you misrecalled as v1.5.
2; .Net frameworks 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 are not compatible with each other in the same way you have to install Visual Basic runtimes for version 3, 4, 5, and 6 in order to run a program that was compiled with each respective version of VB. Merely having VB6 runtimes will not allow you to run a program compiled in VB5, and in the same way, having .Net 2.0 installed will not allow you to run .Net 1.1 or 1.0 programs. Like VB runtimes, .Net runtimes can be installed side-by-side to allow programs of any version to run on that machine though. So the 1.0, 1.1, and 3.5 frameworks are installed on your machine to allow for the most compatibility and capability in running programs that were written for any version of the .Net platform.
There is an obvious inconsistency in why 3.5 was installed instead of 3.0 and 2.0 as well though. I won’t get into it here, but the 3.0 version of .Net IS capable of running 2.0 programs, and the 3.5 is capable of running both 3.0 and 2.0 programs. So the necessary .Net frameworks on any machine today to have the most compatibility are 1.0, 1.1, and 3.5.