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Windows Vista: Poll: What’s your personal experience with Vista?
- 5/7/08 10:29 PM
Vista is the answer to a quesion...
by rbsjrx - 5/8/08 1:14 AM In reply to: Poll: What’s your personal experience with Vista? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
...that no one other than Microsoft's marketing and sales people were asking.
It's even more bloated than ever and it may or may not run legacy or 3rd party software. Really, what good is it except to line Microsoft's coffers? I use WinXP MCE and it works just dandy for everything I need to do with it (which is a lot - everything from firmware development and electronic design to photo and music editing to creating and editing web pages for my server!) In a couple of more years I'll be retired and using some flavor of Ubuntu Linux. Between now and then, Vista is grief I simply don't need.
I just bought a new computer to replace my primary Linux machine which recently bit the dust. It has essentially identical specs to my primary Windows machine and it's amazing how much more responsive it it is. Yet I know from friends running Vista that it would be marginal with Vista loaded on it.
The bottom line is I have no compelling reason to migrate my Windows machine to Vista, but a lot of strong disincentives to do so.
Slow Slow Sllloooooowwwwow
by rednorsk - 5/8/08 1:20 AM In reply to: Poll: What’s your personal experience with Vista? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Visa came with the laptop I bought about a year ago. The laptop came with 1 GB of RAM, which I knew wouldn't be enough. So I doubled my RAM. Still slow. Unresponsive. It makes Office 2007 work a little faster. But Vista is just s-l-o-w. Don't even think about using the "Sidebar" feature if you want to accomplish anything today. It's not that Vista is awful... it's just in today's world, we are CAPABLE of high speed functioning on ALL our electronic devices... especially our computers. Why would we settle for slow now?
An early Adopter and Happy with Vista
by netbob57 - 5/8/08 1:20 AM In reply to: Poll: What’s your personal experience with Vista? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have been involved with Vista since the early beta trials and while I have run into various issues, at this point in time, my Vista Home Premium notebook at home and my Vista Enterprise notebook at work are rock solid.
My coworkers are mostly running XP still because our IT department will not support Vista. So I see on a daily basis, BSOD's, network ipconfig issues, and just plain crash worthy machines. All running XP. How many of those issues do I have now? Zero. I am a MCSE with a Security cert and never needed any support from our IT staff. All my print drivers work, all my Oracle java programs work and my systems are rarely rebooted. In fact my work machine has BgInfo running on it with a time of last boot which was when Vista SP1 came out. That's it.
The keys to a successful Vista experience I think would be the following:
- 2 gb minimum system ram.
- 1.7 Ghz processor minimum.
- Do not do an upgrade of an existing XP system
- Make sure your apps can work with Vista. I had to upgrade McAfee and my Cisco VPN client to newer releases and I was good.
The main pluses of Vista for me are system stability. Compared to my XP coworkers, I am ahead of the game.
I'm happy with both Vista x86 and Vista x64
by paulo.morgado - 5/8/08 1:21 AM In reply to: Poll: What’s your personal experience with Vista? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
What I'm not so happy with are hardware manufacturers for not providing proper drivers.
A Happy User--After I Cut Out IE7
by steve39 - 5/8/08 1:24 AM In reply to: Poll: What’s your personal experience with Vista? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Vista, without IE7, has been fine, fast and futuristic.
But with IE7 has been prone to crash, dead screens and sloth.
Not only has a switch to Firefox improved my browsing experiences, but has dramatically improved my use of my Dragon Naturally speaking voice dictation system.
Little screens have been telling me for a year something like "Vista will try a solution for your problem." It never did.
One other sign of improved operations. My history log on Diskeeper showed a dramatic decline in fragmentation when I switched to Firefox.
SP1 had no influence on solving the IE7 problem.
Vista is fine for me.
by mjmuk - 5/8/08 1:25 AM In reply to: Poll: What’s your personal experience with Vista? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have a 10 month old Dell Latitude D820 - 2GB RAM, 120GB Disc. Bought with Windows Home, upgraded online to Windows Home Premium with no problems, recently updated with Vista SP1 with no problems. Running every application that was on my old Toshiba with no problem except for my Sony Ericsson phone base, which works fine but shows up in the log files as not compatible.
Compared with XP I like the GUI, I like the speed, yes it does more memory, but what subsequent O/S didn't?
Overall I don't think that I have had any greater problems with Vista than I have with XP on my two desktops.
I guess we'll hear just as much clamour when the next O/S comes out to replace Vista/XP - Foghorn/Pink/Dearth/Hope/7 whatever it's called.
Don't upgrade to vista
by Ishigamma - 5/8/08 1:30 AM In reply to: Poll: What’s your personal experience with Vista? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have vista home premium and I really don't like it. On the other partition of my hard drive i have also xp os. I don't like the way vista boot and the way it runs on my machine. I'm using Pentium E2160 @ 1.8. Ghz, 1GB RAM @ 667, 512MB Nvidia 7300 128 DDR2, and hard drive of 200GB samsung sata 7200RPM. I used performance test to test performance of my computer running on vista os and it gave an unacceptable overall result which is 401.51 unlike in my os xp which gave me 541.68. I really tuned and tweak the settings of vista to its maximum performance instead of having a great visual style but still I'm having a snail pet in my house. There's no great compelling reason why we need to upgrade to vista os. I'm much so sure that most of the software companies are having issues in regards to the high requirement of vista to graphics, memory and even cpu.
Vista usability is a SHOWSTOPPER..!!
by chappejw - 5/8/08 1:34 AM In reply to: Poll: What’s your personal experience with Vista? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
When comparing Vista with other operating sytems, it is just too slow, too cumbersome, and forces you to go carpal tunnel with endless popups. Unless you are the kind of person who would buy the first car on the first lot if you went out to look for a new vehicle then shop around. When comparing Vista to other operating systems, and in 2008 you can certainly find many other operating systems to use, you will find that Vista is sometimes incompatible with programs that would run on XP or on Wine under Linux, or you have to spend $50 a pop to get programs that come for free in other operating systems. If you test drove another operating system for 2 weeks, and went back to Vista you would see what I'm talking about. It's virtually unusable in comparison. If you are curious about the state of operating system advancements these days, take a good look at Ubuntu, it's razor sharp, lightning fast, and a joy to use. Users will find the desktop very intuitive, and extremely easy to use. Check it out...
www.ubuntu.com
If you would still like to keep Windows, the Ubuntu installer also allows you to resize your hard drive partition, so you can have a Windows/Ubuntu dual boot system. You could also install Ubuntu and then install Vista as a virtual machine using vmware or Xen which also works rather well.
My experience with Vista is that the sooner you switch to Mac or Linux, the sooner your pain will end. It's not that you are not good with computers for all these years, it's that Windows has not been good with you.
Why Vista?
by rbsjrx - 5/8/08 1:48 AM In reply to: Poll: What’s your personal experience with Vista? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Vista's now been out about a year. The email I received from Cnet about this forum referred to the "silent Vista-loving majority". Excuse me?!? Is anyone home at Cnet? As much as Cnet shills for Microsoft, this is really a bit much. After a year and a service pack, the word on Vista is now finally only about 50% negative, where it used to be much more so.
But forget the bad experiences for a second. Forget the bloat and greater (i.e. more expensive) minimum hardware requirements. Forget the incompatible applications and drivers. The question is what will Vista do significantly better than WinXP? Sure, it's flashier, but it's also less stable, and less usable because of how much it bogs down the machine. Are there any killer Vista apps or other compelling reasons to migrate to Vista? If there are, they're very well hidden after a year in the market.
But that wasn't the question.
by MarkFlax - 5/8/08 1:53 AM
In reply to: Why Vista? by rbsjrx
The question was, "What is your personal experience with Vista?"
What's yours?
Mark
I'm fortunate
by rbsjrx - 5/8/08 1:59 AM In reply to: But that wasn't the question. by MarkFlax
My personal experience with Vista has been limited to using it on machines of friends and clients. Out of the box I find it slow, gaudy, and annoying. Stripped down to overcome its performance penalty and to lose its tyro orientation, it appears to be a slower, less compatible version of WinXP with a gluttonous appetite for machine resources.
And that's when it runs at all... I have several friends and clients who were never able to use it because of compatibility issues (both hardware and software).
Color me massively underwhelmed!
I fully agree with you.
by thefirstM - 5/8/08 2:16 AM In reply to: Why Vista? by rbsjrxI fully agree with you and I believe that this title was made with very little actual data. To me, it is nearly insulting. ALL of the latest operating system usage share lists show Windows XP being in the 70% range of usage share. Mathematically, this leaves no room for a "Vista majority." XP still has an overwhelming majority among computer users and most likely will for a long time.
Silent majority
by mtylerjr - 5/8/08 4:44 AM In reply to: I fully agree with you. by thefirstMTheFirstM said:
"I fully agree with you and I believe that this title was made with very little actual data. To me, it is nearly insulting. ALL of the latest operating system usage share lists show Windows XP being in the 70% range of usage share. Mathematically, this leaves no room for a "Vista majority." XP still has an overwhelming majority among computer users and most likely will for a long time."
Your comments indicate that you misunderstood the author.
Clearly the author meant "silent vista-loving majority" in the sense that the majority of vista-users love it, but are silent.
(Not meaning, as you interpreted it, that the majority of all OS users use vista and also love it.)
I tend to agree with the author. Those that love it are usually silent - there are those that just react so negatively to praise of anything MS, that it is often better to just not set those people off.
I'm not anti-Microsoft, per se
by rbsjrx - 5/8/08 10:01 AM In reply to: Silent majority by mtylerjrI bought my first Microsoft products back in the late 70's to run on a CP/M machine. The Wintel monopoly always disturbed me a bit, but I migrated to PCs in the 80's along with the rest of the world. Although I was a satisfied MS-DOS (and OS/2) user, I moved to Windows when 3.1 came out (I ran 3.11 on top of OS/2). I've been through every generation of Windows, both good (e.g. Win98, Win2k, WinXP SP1+) and bad (e.g. Win95, WinME, WinXP non-SP). I've been through just as many generations of Windows software, both from Microsoft (e.g. Office) and otherwise (e.g. Acrobat). I live in Windows as a business necessity, and WinXP MCE meets those needs as well as my personal use very well.
But like any OS, it has flaws. The biggest thing I have against Microsoft is its rapaciousness and anti-competitive business practices. By contrast, Apple is a little less rapacious but even more anti-competitive. That keeps Apple's prices up which is one reason the last Apple I bought (and still have) was an Apple II.
In the course of my business and personal life, I regularly use both Windows (XP MCE SP2) and Linux (Ubuntu on my desktop and Debian on my server). Linux has proven more efficient and much more reliable, but I still spend most of my time in WinXP. I actually like working in Windows. What I don't like is the cost of Windows, exacerbated by Microsoft's frequent trips to milk its cash cows anew. On each of these trips Microsoft introduces new incompatibilities to try to force its customers to buy its latest(!) and greatest(?). When I retire in a couple of years, I will happily migrate to almost totally Linux.
So, you see, my scorn for Microsoft is honest and based on Microsoft's own business practices. Unlike some here, I'm not blindly devoted to any particular OS. Software is a tool. All tools have advantages and disadvantages and OSs are no different. I will readily admit my agreement with Windows' most vocal critics. But I also agree with a lot of the criticisms leveled against Mac and Linux by Windows partisans.
At the end of the day, the only relevant issue is what allows me to reliably do what I need and want to do at the most reasonable total cost of ownership. WinXP scores points on usability, but loses points on cost and reliability. Vista loses points to WinXP on usability (based on compatibility on the myriad obscure applications I use) and cost (much more expensive hardware required without any advanages to justify the expense). Once I've retired, cost will take on new importance so Windows will be out in favor of Linux. No emotional investment, only cost/benefit analysis.
Microsoft is no longer a technology Company
by Albertv - 5/8/08 10:27 AM In reply to: I'm not anti-Microsoft, per se by rbsjrxMicrosoft is no longer a technology Company but rather has turned into a dairy business, milking the consumer. Some would be happy to switch places with the cow. I am not one of them.
I love hardware. Bought my self a new laptop with the latest Chipsets and nVidia graphics. I loaded the new Ubuntu 8.04 OS and I was bolled over that it correctly identified every piece of hardware in the unit. It is an HP product. What I like about Linux is that the drivers reside in the Kernel of the OS. Gone are the days of the Microsoft way where we spend hours looking for drivers. Loading the latest Linux on this 10 month old Laptop was a 20 minute affair, rather than hours for Windows.
Truth be know Microsoft better make the up and coming Windows 7 compatible and reasonably priced for they will loose their market.
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