Vista Slowing Down Broadband Users Worldwide

Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system is slowing things down for many high-speed Internet users worldwide.

Installation disks needed to configure user's PCs often are incompatible with the new operating system, a fact many users don't know when they upgrade their computers. Vista was released Jan. 30, and any computer bought after that point has Vista preinstalled, and millions of users chose to upgrade.

Many broadband companies are telling users it may be months before an upgraded disk will be available.
Rob Evans of the United Kingdom was told by Virgin Media that his connection was not supported on his brand-new PC. When he called for support, he said he was told that nothing could be done.
A spokesman for Virgin Media said Evans is now able to use his connection and the problem is limited to the disks alone, rather than the connection itself.

The spokesman said part of the problem is that the company's staff is not fully trained on Vista because the product is so big and it takes a while to test all the company's services.

A spokesman for a different broadband company said they also had issues with the operating system. He said many conflicts came because Vista was not fully compatible with Norton's security suite of software, although he said he thinks these issues have been solved.

Editor of Think Broadband Andrew Ferguson said the problems are to be expected. He said he thinks that since Vista changes the way many things are done in Vista, it will take a while for problems to be fixed and staffs to get up to speed.

Problems with broadband connection are just one of a spectrum of problems that have affected users upgrading Vista's early users. Symantec, a security software maker, published a series of reports Feb. 28 giving Vista's security functions a mixed review.

The report found Vista was still vulnerable to malware attacks that plagued Windows XP and said that the operating system cannot be considered a security solution by itself.

However, the company did praise Microsoft for reducing the number of coding errors in the software, which create coding errors a hacker is capable of exploiting.

Users have also had problems validating the software. Microsoft requires each copy of Vista to be individually validated to prevent software piracy. The error arises when users install certain types of software on their machine, which may erroneously cause Vista to shift into a reduced-functionality mode until Vista is reinstalled or the software is taken off the system.

Sources
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6407925.stm
http://www.itworldcanada.com/a/News/4d96c7d6-221c-41a3-af5e-b545972928ab.html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=220