Buzz Out Loud Lounge forum: Silent Vista-loving majority?

I haven't had any real problems with Vista but I only use my computer for managing media, email, simple games and the internet. I've used Windows 98 and then went without a computer for a while so I've never used XP. So, with all that said, I actually like Vista. My father, on the other hand who builds PCs, thinks I'm nuts.

I install cable modems for high speed internet on Vista EVERY day. I owned a PC with XP. Because of my experience with Vista I knew I would never own it. I got a Mac...need I say more. The "majority" cannot possible be satisfied because the majority of Vista owners I encounter are not. It didn't take much to convince me.
-Andrew-

I've had ME,XP and now Vista. I love Vista. The only thing I have had trouble with is System Restore and that could just be me not not understanding how to use it. I was spoiled by ME's system restore, for some reason it seemed more logical. But I've been using Vista since it came out and I love it.

That's strange. I received a couple of computers from dell and the only thing that they had preinstalled other than the OS were some Google apps. I thought they had ceased to preinstall crapware.

All I've seen, so far, is "I'm okay with it" or "I've adapted" or "I've learned to live with it". I haven't heard anyone say they LOVE it. I love new technology. I'm not at all resistant to change, if it's exciting and efficient. Vista isn't.

Have installed Vista on a number of my machines. Generally like its features and capabilities. But have reverted these machines back to XP. The unavailability of Vista drivers for my printer (Xerox) made it uneconomic to retain Vista. Microsoft made a mistake it failed to retain (possibly as an option) XP type printer interfaces.

I have owned vista for almost one year. I hate it as much today as i did the day I fired up my computer for the first time. When XP replaced "Windows" 95, it took me almost a full day to fall in love with XP. I am still waiting for the day that happens with Vista. I think MS and Bill really screwed the pooch on this one.

Absolutely, Vista is great, nothing else has been able to drive me to a Mac. I have been in IT consulting for over 20 years all on the PC/Micro platform and I finally recognize the right choice...a Mac. Windows NT was the last REAL OS improvement and everything else has been fluff to sell more licenses. I just wish software vendors had a cross platform upgrade program so I could recoup a little of my software investment!

I've had Vista for over a year now, and like not getting the blue screen of death the most. The local search feature is great. My sound card hangs up once in awhile when Quicken doesn't release it on closing, but I've found a work around by calling it a quad, testing, forcing a relase and then resetting to dual speakers. Combined with high speed DSL, it has been a nice improvement over XP for us.

Nor do I know anyone who is. I find it hard to believe that there is one. No one who is technically savvy can possibly be part of a group that loves Vista, majority or otherwise. It looks really cool though.

I first installed vista not long after it came out, and must admit did find it a bit awckward to say the least, I also found that some drivers did not work, or could not find the upgrades. Since then I have reloaded and given it another try just recently and like everything else, I found that it worked with no problems especialy after the sp1 upgrade. I found that almost everything has been ironed out.So now I have decided to keep it and stick to it. There was only one big problem I found which did annoy me quite a bit was that in the help section if you typed the question in of what you wanted to know it came up with something else and had to spend hours reading through the information before you finally got your answer, but apart that it has quite a few WOW factors about it and now a silent lover of it.

I'm a member of the group that loves Vista. And as you can tell those that are content are much less vocal than the discontent. I actually started running Vista while it was still a beta and was glad to see it happily supported all of my hardware.

I heard reports of problems in the begining, but many of those problems were not from Vista so much as developers not following guidelines that Microsoft had set more than 8 years ago. For example, Microsoft has for years been advising developers to not store files in certain locations and not to save data in certain areas in the registry. They warned that not all users have Administrative access and as such storing in these locations caused problems in the pre-vista world for users that were not using administrative accounts. Once Vista was released the bad practice was more visible because it resulted in the UAC security prompts. (note: applications that sport the "Made for Windows 2000" or "XP" badge follow these guidelines and thus don't cause UAC prompts on Vista.

The driver situation for me has always been good. I've found that companies that made WHQL drivers before vista (Windows Hardware Quality Assurance Labs) were more likely to have Vista drivers available, both for 32-bit and 64-bit.

Lastly there has never been a major OS transition that has been completly smooth. The transition from Windows 3.1 to Windows 9x had it's pain points. The transition from Windows 9x to only NT versions of windows (2000/XP) also had it's share of conflicts. The only difference now in transitioning from XP to Vista is that now people can share their problems on the internet.

I resisted Vista based on everything I'd heard (not only in the "cloud" but from friends who had it), but didn't want to pay the extra freight to get XP on my new laptop in January, so I reluctantly booted up. I have not had any problems, and no programs that balked at it - although the laptop is mostly just a toy, not a serious "business" machine. I *don't* like MS Office 2007 (which was bundled as a 60-day trial) and installed Open Office instead, but otherwise, I'm not having any second thoughts.

But I'm not planning on upgrading my (home) desktop machine. And my company has not shown any signs of planning to upgrade those machines anytime soon.

I've been using Vista on 3 machines (2 Dell and 1 Velocity Micro) for over a year. The experience has been great. Vista has a lot of new features under the hood, which many users won't even realize. I wouldn't say it's a run-out-and-get-it-immediately upgrade to XP, but in the natural course of things when it's time to get your next computer, you should get it with Vista. No question.

Vista Media Center is AMAZING. It is now the centerpiece of my living room.

Oh, and pressing the windows key, typing the first few letters of a program (e.g. "soli") to launch my favorite apps (Solitaire in this case!) is a HUGE timesaver. Tiny little feature, but it changes your life.

Thank you Microsoft. There are actually lots of us out there that don't like to lob insults at you just because you're the biggest player. I like Mac OS too, but Vista hasn't done me wrong.

I'm not all that silent, and indeed I have written to scold the Vista-bashers in these forums several times already,

I think that Vista is a great improvement over XT (and I loved and used XT and all previous Windows releases since it was first released back in the Pleistocene). The difference between this upgrade and XT's upgrade from 98 is that, unlike 98 and previous Windows versions, XT was actually good enough to use.

There is a learning curve, but it is a very shallow one when upgrading from XT. The changes in Vista make it more logical, versatile, and easily navigable, and it makes files much easier to work with, particularly in deeper directory trees.

Of course Vista consumes more of a computer's resources, just as XT consumed more resources than 98, 98 more than 3.x, 3.x more than the primitive 1 and 2, and 1 and 2 more than DOS. As computers become more capable, newer O/Ses take advantage of the additional available resources. This is a simple fact of life.

The biggest problem I have encountered with Vista is that some third-party manufacturers of peripherals and software developers neglected to provide appropriate fixes and Vista-compatible drivers for legacy hardware. But you can't blame Microsoft or Vista for that. Microsoft gave developers a HUGE lead time in advance of Vista's release, the longest I have ever heard of, and it is the manufacturers who are at fault. Indeed, Microsoft included marginally functional drivers in Vista itself for some of these things, like older HP printers. And I blame HP, not Microsoft, for turning my older 6300C scanner into a doorstop (actually it still works fine with an older XT machine in my home office).

I got a new computer, nowhere near top of the line, running Vista back in March, 2007. I'm not a game addict, but I use it every day, all day, very heavily, often multitasking with video and sound editing, compiling, and all sorts of things. I have yet to have my first system crash, ever, and nearly every apparent application crash clears itself after waiting for 30 seconds or so. I have never lost a single byte of data except to the dreaded PEBCAK error. I've never seen anything so utterly stable on a computer running any O/S.

Performance is excellent, but I credit Intel and its spectacular Core 2 Duo processor for that.

But the final proof-o'-the-puddin' is that, when I have to go back to using XT on my other machines, it feels clumsy and clunky just like 98 felt after growing accustomed to XT. And I keep my older machines in tip-top shape.

I think that Vista is an enormous improvement, and I wish that the Vista bashers would stop their whining. Personally I think they're just slow learners and resist the logical changes from their ingrained XT routines.