In an article entitled, "The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007," PC World in December 2007 awarded Vista the No. 1 slot. "Despite its hefty hardware requirements," said the magazine, Vista is slower than XP." And in January, InfoWorld, a magazine for corporate IT managers, listed Vista as the No. 2 technology flop of all time, behind only computer security.
Dell Corp., one of the largest PC direct sellers, released documents in late February showing that a senior Microsoft executive knew that Vista's drivers for printers, scanners and other hardware were not working properly. The documents were released as part of a class-action lawsuit brought against Microsoft by two consumers, who claim they had purchased computers touted by Microsoft as "Vista Capable" but could not run many of the graphics features in Vista or work with common peripherals.
As a result of the lawsuit, which was granted class-action status by a U.S. District Court on February 22, there surfaced an embarrassing e-mail written by Microsoft board member Jon Shirley, former president and chief operating officer. "I upgraded one of the two machines I use a lot to Vista," Shirley wrote. "The most persistent and so far hardest-to-fix issues are both MSN products, Portfolio in MSN Money and Music (downloads I had bought in the past). There are no drivers yet for my Epson printer (top of the line and in production today, but no driver yet); Epson scanner (older but also top of the line, and they say they do not do a driver for); and a Nikon film scanner that will get a driver one day."
Added Shirley, "I cannot understand with a product this long in creation why there is such a shortage of drivers."
My business partner, Steve Gordonson, who is a systems analyst and programmer, reluctantly bought a new laptop with Vista in August 2007. He regretted it right away. "Even after turning off all Vista's new features, it was buggy, unreliable and slow," he says.
Where does that leave you? Large corporations have not jumped on the Vista bandwagon, and it appears the vast majority of advisors wisely have kept away. Web-based applications are unaffected, but many desktop advisor applications are still not yet programmed to be Vista-capable-even a year after its introduction.
Angie Lyles, the president and CEO of Cornerstone Revolutions, maker of the PowerAdvisor portfolio management software used by about 275 firms, says her company is in the final stages of testing a Vista-compatible version and expects it to be released in April. "It wasn't that programming a Vista-compatible version was insurmountable, but a myriad of glitchy things came up," she says. Lyles says her company has a couple of Vista machines in its sales department, "and they give us nothing but trouble."
Schwab PortfolioCenter, which is a desktop portfolio accounting application used by about 3,300 RIAs, became Vista-compliant in November 2007, says Dan Skiles, VP of technology at Schwab. Skiles says 1,500 firms run this latest version of PortfolioCenter and only 250 of them run Vista on at least one machine in their office. "An important point for advisors to remember is to ensure that their hardware has enough memory to efficiently operate Vista and that all of their software programs are Vista-compatible," says Skiles. "I've heard stories about advisors experiencing issues because of hardware or software compatibility issues."
Greg Friedman, president of CRM Software, which makes Junxure, says his company is now launching a major new release and it will be Vista-compatible. "But we hate Vista." Warren Mackensen, president of ProTracker, a CRM application, says his company's software has been Vista-compatible since "day one."
Money Tree Software, makers of Silver and Total Planning Suite, is also Vista-compatible, according to Mike Vitkauskas, Money Tree's CEO. Linda Strachan, vice president of product marketing at EISI, which makes NaviPlan and Profiles financial planning software, says its desktop software is also Vista-compatible. But EISI estimates that only about 10% or 15% of its users have migrated to Vista. In addition, versions of EISI's planning programs sold to institutions are not Vista-compatible because large enterprises have steered clear of Vista so far.