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Buzz Out Loud Lounge: Silent Vista-loving majority?
Working Fine For Me
by tedkennedy - 5/8/08 6:28 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarOverall I really like Vista. The best thing is the higher level of security, but of course for the average user this is a pain. It's like learning to wear a seatbelt - at first it's a pain, but then later you realize how dumb it is not to have one.
It takes more horsepower, but that is true for all software. So I throw an extra $100 of memory and things are fine.
I don't experience a huge improvement over XP. To me, it's about the same, but more secure. The visual effects are nice, but don't make that much difference to me.
The Mac OS might be better, but to get a more expensive laptop, with no docking station, which runs fewer applications and has a brain-dead mouse -- I mean how dumb do people want to be?
Our CEO has a Mac, but our tech support department spends about ten times the amount of time supporting him than it spends on anyone else. (If he weren't the CEO, it wouldn't happen.)
If you want to just get on with life and be productive in a more secure environment, Vista works very, very well.
What Was the Point?
by richardbacker - 5/8/08 6:29 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarI bought a new desktop in the early Vista days when I could've saved a few dollars buying the same hardware with XP. I opted for the new OS on the grounds of keeping my machine relavent longer...which is why I went for the core duo processor and the 2 gigs of RAM. Nothing monster, but enough muscle to keep me happy for a few years. I didn't count on Vista's hunger for resources. The new machine seemed just as pokey as the Pentium 4/XP box I left behind. The interface is prettier, but not much more helpful than XP. The security is better but more annoying. I spent some extra money and sweated the drivers situation (and replaced a printer) to do Vista, but I don't feel I moved forward. I still have the same computing experience I had 6 years ago.
Almost a Vista-lover
by tedjoy44 - 5/8/08 6:31 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarI’m pretty much of a middling user of things computer, a journalist/writer who needs them for writing, research, correspondence and keeping track of bills and such. Except for Minesweeper, I don’t play games on my machine and seldom watch movies or play CDs, though I’m almost always listening to one or another internet radio station. Anyway, I’m not a techie but I’ve had a computer for 15 years or so and have been forced to learn more about the damned things than I’ve ever wanted to. Add to that the fact that I’m downright stingy and, as a result, have become a user and ardent lover of freeware and open source apps.
Last summer, I got a new laptop for my daughter with Vista already installed and it was okay, just okay. I mean, it looked pretty and all that but it seemed clunky and prone to crash and reluctant to run stuff. Then a month or so ago my beloved main computer (XP Pro/SP2) had a disastrous crash and to get it up and running again it was easier to use Vista/SP1 than not. The differences between the two versions of the Vista OS were major. The latest one feels much more elegant and runs everything easily and well and a few things -- Word 2007 comes immediately to mind – work even better than on XP. The only problem I have – and it doesn’t quite count as major – is that a handful of my favorite old programs don’t work with it so I’ve had to spend an afternoon tracking down replacements. C’est la vie.
Silent and Loving It!
by rational.mystic - 5/8/08 6:31 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarI have used Vista since RC1 and have found it to be every bit the worthy successor to XP. Compatablity issues have been few and far between for me and usually fixable with a little bit of know how and the wonderous Google.
I personally just switched to running only Ubuntu on my own laptop (I like the customization offered by Linux), but I got my wife running vista almost a year ago. She is no where near technology literate and she loves it!
Love that user friendly stuff
by Blue-J - 5/8/08 6:32 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarI love Vista, if for no other reason than the OS-wide speech recognition.
"Open..." and it opens. Speak an email, and it types. Open Word, start speaking and in 10 minutes I miles ahead of where I can type.
Yes, I love it.
by SCD - 5/8/08 6:34 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarIt works with an old HP computer, all the flash disks and the only problem is that the firewall turns itself off when the computer is off. Bummer! Global Finance's Kate
Vista
by Copythat - 5/8/08 6:35 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarHave used Vista since Beta 2, both 32 and 64bit versions
Just reinstalled my Vista 64 bit desktop OS for the first time since RTM (usually do that periodically) and it's back to Super snappy.
With XP I usually had to reinstall every 6-8 months to get that "new" feeling back, Vista made it almost 18 months. WIN!
Yeah, it's okay.
by wronbaker - 5/8/08 6:35 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarI've been using it for a couple of months now and it's fine. I've got a new, powerful computer so all the graphics (eye candy) run and look fine. It still isn't as nifty as the Mac's graphic user interface (GUI), but it's a lot sexier than XP. I've had no trouble getting all my peripherals to work because Vista has been out long enough for almost all the manufacturers to come out with updated driver software. Be that as it may, I still run XP on my old laptop and, for the moment at least, I have no intention of converting it to Vista.
I love Vista and I'm keeping it for myself. . . .for now.
by Codemonkee - 5/8/08 6:35 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarI have been The resident IT geek for a department at a major University for the past 8 years now and was here for the great XP migration, which was nothing short of a nightmare for many of my cohorts. Now that Vista is here we are seeing some of the same growing pains - and a few new ones.
Personally I am running two dual boots of Vista and XP (one here and one at home) and for the most part I really have no complaints with the operating system itself. At my office it does everything I ask it to and hasn't missed a beat. The problems we are having here have to do with our GPO structure, with which Vista has a hard time dealing with. As long as I keep them separate from my other GPO groupings, they work great.
The few users I do have that are using it have had almost No complaints about it, either. Security wise it is way ahead of where XP was at this stage of the game and from a IT point of view the new automatic updates work great and really don't rely on the user at all to sit through an install, or delay it, which on my XP systems is most often what happens.
That's not to say that we haven't had our share of problems - at home my 9 year old scanner refuses to work and of course no driver is available - but I saw that coming 3 years ago when they decided not to support XP64-bit. I was ready to pony up and buy a new all-in-one, and should I really expect a 9 year old scanner that I paid $60 for to work with the next 3 OS releases. No. And should I really expect the sound card I paid $26 bucks for 5 years ago to work? No. The new machine I built runs both the 32bit and the 64 bit versions beautifully, and it's nice to see a Motherboard manufacturer (XFX - very nicely done!) really take the time to provide complete driver sets for ALL possible OS, both the 32 and 64 bit.
Funny story - the $5000 scanner we bought 4 months ago works great with XP, Win 2003 and Mac OSX 10.4, but not Leopard - and this is a network scanner too. MS is not the only OS with growing pains. . .
Vista is better than XP
by shhoward - 5/8/08 6:39 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarI have a Toshiba S2 laptop (circa 2005) and a Dell Dimension 8100 desktop (circa 2000), neither of which are officially on the Vista compatibility list from either vendor. Regardless, I waited until SP1 was released and then installed it on both systems. Vista is smoother, faster and much more responsive than XP ever was. I can only imagine how great it would be on a new system.
We always repeat this hate-then-love cycle with any new operating system release. History always repeats, in this sense. People love to complain and vent while the positive experiences often go unspoken.
I hate Vista with a passion
by gospel - 5/8/08 6:41 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarBut I can't downgrade to xp becausr I have Home edition, I don't think it is right for microsoft to dictate to those who buy computers to have to use vista instead of xp, and they want allow you to revert to xp, is there anyway to get xp pro back?
Yes, And everyone loves to hate on me for it.
by pichu_1988 - 5/8/08 6:44 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarI have been using Windows Vista for the past year and a half and I have not yet had any problems with the operating system that I would've deemed a deal breaker for me. So far, I haven't had a blue screen in YEARS and that's a really nice change of pace. I haven't had the MONDO driver problems that the community has shouted out on, and all those various problems everyone's been screaming about. File copying's SLOW, but its not like it can't copy the darn thing and SP1's fixed that... Sorta. And yes games are slower on Vista than on XP, but honestly I don't feel it so much at all.
To talk about this Vista, in the community I find is a bit like talking about some taboo. It automatically gets slammed, even if a person hasn't used it, or even tried it. Vista is not ALL that bad y'know. REALLY, and hating on it just because its the cool thing to do, or just because its too easy to bring the hate to microsoft is just lazy in my opinion. The strange thing is, when one complains EVERYONE hears it, but no one ever effuses about how normal something actually is. Vista does exactly what an operating system should do for me, work normally and not throw too many curveballs for me to intercept, and that really is all I need.
I like it.
by carmaiden - 5/8/08 6:48 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarI bought a HP laptop around 2 months before Vista came out. It was supposed to be "Vista capable". Nevertheless when I upgraded many things did not work as expected (and still some are not working). Subsequently, I bought one desktop and one laptop already with Vista. I have not had any problems with Vista in those PCs. I love my desktop it has a Blueray/HD-DVD/DVD drive and a cablecard TV turner that allow me to watch premium channels. Everything works really nice in the Vista environment. Maybe old PCs were not prepared to work with the sophisticated Vista and that was the origin of the multiple complaints when the OS came out.
Changed the furnature around
by markgrime - 5/8/08 6:50 AM In reply to: Silent Vista-loving majority? by chustarI have had Vista as a beta tester from the Longhorn days and while I like a great deal of the new features, the ball got dropped on several important issues and others were handed off to the wrong sources. I'm a PC tech by profession and found from my customers that Vista could have been far more acceptable if a few items were handled in a better fashion. The biggest reason Vista got bad ratings is MS basically did the equivalent of changing the furniture and cabinets around in a blind person's house. They put things in different places and changed the names of known items. This made it difficult for those who weren't tech intensive that had spent a lot of time developing their workflow over the years. The look and feel didn't change as drastically during previous transitions between 95, 98, 2000, XP, etc. the workflow was still very similar with those transitions. While Vista is easier for someone that never used a computer before, it is hardest on people that have used windows in the past that are afraid to explore the new playground. MS did the same thing with Office 2007. The other big thing that gave Vista a bad rap was the lack of drivers for older equipment. MS did much better in the past at supporting older peripherals but the majority of customer complaints I got were that they couldn’t use the existing printer/multifunction devices. MS didn’t update most of the device drivers to work with Vista as they had done in the past like from 98 to XP. They left that duty to peripheral manufacturers who would rather force as many people to buy a new one as possible and had no desire to create a driver for an old product. The problem MS has is that it is Vista who took all the heat for that one. I like the way Vista has consistently healed itself when you would otherwise end up with a blue screen of death from a driver or software conflict. Having used Macs also, Vista has come closer to the look and feel of OS 10.x. Vista is now a new visual experience but it has a pretty high price in overhead. If you install Vista and XP on identical hardware, the XP runs substantially faster even with most of Vista’s visuals turned off. I hope MS will learn from this, but somehow they claim they are listening to you but they haven’t ever heard a word I’ve said. I suggested back in 98 that text in error message dialog boxes should be selectable so you don’t have to type the whole message when searching for a solution, but it has never been implemented and I’m sure I’m not the only one to mention it.
Amen to the gripe about non-selectable error message text
by macmcf - 5/8/08 8:24 AM In reply to: Changed the furnature around by markgrimeThe inability to select text in error messages in all of Microsoft's OSs and most of their applications is a real pain.
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