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

Bought a new low end PC with Vista Home Premium installed, ran windows update and installed SP1. Everything worked great; my wife was able to transition from XP to Vista with absolutely no training. I swapped the Vista machine for the XP machine and she just kept on working. File transfer worked great, no driver problems, the new machine is easily 5 times faster than her old machine. Here is my take on why this worked so easily: By buying a preconfigured machine, the vendor was on the hook to make sure that all the required drivers were in place, the Vista machine has 2Gb of RAM and all my printer and other external devices less than a year old.

Now is Vista that much better than XP? Hard to say, it looks nice, I like the way it organizes photographs, it has been extremely reliable but there is nothing compelling me to upgrade any of my other XP systems. On the other hand, when I buy another preconfigured computer there is no reason to get XP, Vista is OK.

It has definitely improved greatly since its release. I tried, many times, to "downgrade" to XP but could never get it done (At the point of selecting a drive to install XP on it couldn't "see" any drives. Now I am less inclined to begrudge my inability to downgrade and am starting to quite like it. I still get frustrated that I can't get it to open windows in full-screen mode, it keeps defaulting to a smaller size. But that's a minor complaint.

After just building a new blow out gaming machine, I decided to go with Vista. (BTW To a few of you I communicate with, I put up some pics & stats on my site in the photo gallery)
I loved it...until I kept getting "Windows explorer has stopped working"... This caused games to crash and other heavy usage programs....
I was told to try SP1 (which was available for manual download) and WOW!!!
No crashes, no problems now for over a month and a half.

Perhaps it's having build a top of the line PC and having tons of power and memory (4GB), but maybe its also that MS is really getting the bugs out.....

The only thing I don't like is the addition of 5 rows of menus at the top of every folder and no way to remove them (dislike the "search" immensely) It makes open folders too big..... Minor though to say the least, as MS has really done so much right in Vista....

Frankly, all this Vista-bashing is quite annoying. And sadly, I fell for it, at least for a while, when I was about to purchase another system for my office. We already had 4 XP systems, and were quite worried about replacing one of those with Vista... worried about compatibility problems, warned that older printers wouldn't work, made to feel as if none of our software would run. We even ordered an XP system, but it came damaged, ordered another XP, and it came damaged, so decided to bite the bullet and get one with Vista. Well let me tell you, it is great, MUCH MUCH better than XP. No more blue screens of death, Visa had faster boot up and shut down times, so all this nonsense about Vista-bashing is just that... nonsense. It is Microsoft's best operating system so far. Not perfect, but a heluva lot better than XP!

I really do like Vista. I have had less crashes with it than with XP. I have been using it on a new machine for over a year with no major problems. Within the same time spand, I have had to reload/rebuild my husband's XP machine twice. What I dislike about Vista the most is the Adminstrative access query with appears everytime I open an admin enabled program, Also, if I disable this alert, Vista keeps telling me it is not protected. I am the only "user" on this machine and it does not see me as an administrator. I dislike this "shadow" administrator user.

I admit there are benifits to the new Vista OS, but so was the Millenium OS Update. I am enjoying working ( sludgung) my way through the slow compatability issues but overall I am impressed with Vista.
I fine the most of the people I talk with about it are disappointed not beacuse of the OS itself but the lack of hardware.
I certainly hope there will be resolutions to present issues soon, or I will be forced to revert back to XP. I am now on my 10th page of "sorry for the inconviences but a solution is being worked on" error messages. BTW...some fixes are easy yourself....It remindes me of playing Myst games.
I am sure it will prevail sooner or later....it is the wait that is killing it.....

I have to admit, I NOW love Vista. It's smooth. It's stable. It's visually appealing. There aren't that many monthly updates (although I don't mind updates).

I had two major problems when I first went Vista:

1. The UI is so different, I though it was messed up. I had used XP since 2001 and it was just natural. Going back to XP now seems old-fashioned. It reminds me of how XP users think of Win 3.1!!

2. The stupid Nvidia drivers were horrible!!! I got some blue screens, some lock-ups, etc... However, the problems now seem to be worked out with the latest Nvidia drivers. Honestly, I'm now scared of Nvidia products. I will think twice before buying again.

There are some things that need to be changed for Win 7:
1. More componentized. I think Windows server 2008 is the best MS OS. Win 7 needs to look/act more like this.
2. The sidebar needs to feel more like the OS itself, and not a separate app.
3. The UI still needs some tidying up. Some parts feel like the old OSes are still there while there are new Vista elements.

I have been running Vista Business for over a year now on my desktop computer. Granted, I don't use it that much, but when I do, I find it "not that bad". Its had its problems, like explorer crashing, the ever annoying "windows neeeds your permission to continue", and the fact that the only way to make it quick involved overclocking the Pentium 4 Cedar Mill to 4.5 GHz, bumping up to 2 GB RAM (DDR2 800), dropping in a GeForce 7600 GT KO, and then getting a Perpendicular Recording hard drive, but otherwise, its got a bunch of nifty features that even Ubuntu Linux only recently added. Sure, it takes time to get used to the new environment, but once you do, you might look back at XP and wonder why you ever put up with its cartoony look and Wizard Wizardry. Just remember... 2 GB OF RAM AT MINIMUM!! If you bought an el cheapo desktop or laptop, chances are it came with 1 GB of RAM, the minimum hardware requirements for Vista. Most likely it uses onboard graphics, which "borrows" system memory to do video. This means your actual memory at 1 GB is between 896 MB and 768 MB to run the Vista desktop. That's not enough. 2 GB will give you improved performance, and maxing it out, 4 GB, will allow Vista to take 0advantage of superfetching, which preloads all the most frequently used files in RAM, allowing programs to start up much faster than before. For some people, who play games like Battlefield 2, which is infamous for extremely long loading times, have had entire maps load in fractions of the normal load time (a matter of seconds versus a matter of minutes!) and without even touching the hard drive!

The potential is there in Vista, it's now up to Microsoft to finish debugging and get us fully operational by Service Pack 2!

- How much money have you spent on:
- anti-virus software?
* None, I use Avast! Home Edition (its a Home computer. Shutup.)
- anti-spyware software?
* None, I use Spybot Search and Destroy and Lavasoft Ad-Aware
- anti-adware software?
* see above
- firewalls?
* Never needed one
- PC cleanups at Best Buy / Futureshop?
* None, I clean up my own hardware with CCleaner, Disk Defrag, a stack of DVD-Rs, and a air spraying can. I also use air filters and seal up my cases so the only holes are filtered intakes and exhaust ports with a fan on them. I don't need to waste money at BB so they can uninstal a bunch of crap and leave me with a working system that is missing a certain driver I need for some hardware that the newbie behind the counter didn't think I needed.
- upgrading hardware because of inefficient programming by Microsoft.
* I upgraded hardware because my last motherboard couldn't take the heat of running a Prescott core P4 (it runs HOT!!) at 3.5 GHz.
How much time have you spent:
- without your computer while it's getting reformatted at Best Buy / Futureshop?
* None, I actually just plugged in my drive when I rebuilt it and after ten minutes of Vista getting angry for changing hardware it let me use it again.
- scanning for viruses?
* TBH I haven't run a virus scan since I installed Vista. I should do that.
- scanning for adware?
* Have only scanned once or twice. Spybot's immunizer and my good browsing habits keep my system surprisingly malware free
- scanning for spyware?
* See above.
- registering for shareware / freeware / trialware crap to try to clean up Windows?
* CCleaner. Freeware. End of story.
- wishing your Windows PC performed like the first time it ever started up?
* My 4.5 GHz Cedar Mill is performing quite well, thank you. It can keep up with a AMD Athlon64 4200+! And I have a dual core 4200+ to compare it with! I changed to a Pentium E (Core2Duo with 1MB cache) 2.0 recently though. Haven't OC'ed, but it was $70 cheap and it's fast too!
- trying to clean the Windows registry?
* CCleaner. Takes a minute or two.
- trying to figure out why you are paying Microsoft hundreds of dollars and still suffering with Windows problems every week, month, year?
* I got mine from school because Microsoft gives (but you pay shipping) college kids Genuine Windows disks in the mail! :P

Install Ubuntu and all of these problems are gone.
* I have it installed in older computers I have lying around. It works very well, but the ga- er, programs I have on my Vista box don't do Linux. I do like to use Ubuntu on systems that have no valid XP or Vista key.

After destroying 2 machine by installing Vista, I downgraded back to reliable XP SP3. I just received the upgrade to Vista 64 SP1, I will be installing this on separate drive and see if my software still works?....I waiting to here about sucess stories of users after installing Vista 64

I've been on computers for at least 35 years and have used all of Microsoft OS. I've had Vista for a month and am loving it. No problems at all. I needed to update one driver for a printer and just went out to the vender site and downloaded it no problem.
I'm a believer now!

why would anybody take these out?? The first time I saw the windows in Vista I was lost, but luckily I found an option for it. And I thought disk defragmenter wasn't working when the analyzer and all the colorful bars didn't show up.

Hi --

I recently bought a new laptop (Thinkpad T61p) with Vista Ultimate. I am still running Windows XP on my desktop (a relatively high powered Dell). Since I get all my E-mail on my laptop and do much of my work on my desktop I switch between them frequently. The more I use the GUI in Vista, the more I like it over the GUI in Windows XP. For example, creating new folders in the correct location is simply a right click in Vista but a menu dialog in Windows XP. I find that many of the features I need are more readily available in Vista (and this is not even considering the changes to the Office 2007 interface). I would change over my desktop if I didn't need XP for some older applications.

So far I would say that my feelings towards Vista are somewhat mixed. I am a long time XP user and use my PC for both work and play. I'm going to start with the latter:

When it comes to gaming, Vista so far has been a blast. DirectX10 has some very pretty effects and for the most part gaming has been very enjoyable.

When it comes to creating music, however, my experience with vista has been very annoying. My PC came with an SB X-Fi Xtreme Gamer, which like most of Creative's hardware, has the ability to record off of the computers Mixer. In addition, I have all the fun toys for soundfonts and 3D Midi. I have been a fan of composing music in MIDI and mixing it in with live instruments and vocals utilizing my PC as a mixer. Bill Gates, in his infinite wisdom, decided that Vista will no longer support mixer recording. You know those options you get when you right click the sound icon on the lower right of the screen for recording options? Well those were replaced and most of them were disabled. Yes, I've done that whole "click the white space and enable disabled devices fix" to no avail. It seems that Microsoft thinks that by disabling mixer recording they can somehow be the heros in the epic struggle between the recording industry and music pirates.

What kinda morons does Microsoft take us for? Do they even realize a SIMPLE Y CONNECTOR AND A SET OF HEADPHONES completely makes this "anti piracy feature" obsolete? I find this increadibly insulting!! If someone wants to pirate music off the internet they can completely bypass software recording, I promise you. Limiting everyone to only using Microphone or Digital-In recording options is rediculous. Not only that, but not everyone is out to STEAL music. Some of us like to use a PC for musical CREATIVITY. My old XP rig is still great for composing music in MIDI, soundfonting it up, and mixing it with live vocals and guitar.

When it comes to work, Vista was a pain to set up, but great once I got the ball rolling. I am a real estate appraiser and utilize WinTOTAL by A La Mode. There were some compatability and font display issues at first, but once I resolved those with A La Mode's tech support, everything ran like a champ. The overall work experience was more than satisfactory and I had few issues.

Another comment I'd like to add: The security features seemed to be much better on Vista than on XP. The fact that every time a program needs to be run the PC asks me before it gets executed is a GREAT idea. Some people may find that annoying, but I like the idea of being in control of what gets executed on my PC.

Overall I'd say that I'm more displeased with vista than not; however, to be fair, I am a new user. These may be some hicups in the beginning of Vista use that, once I get more into Vista, may be completely resolved. Overall I'd rate Vista something like this:

Setup 2/10
Security 9/10
Compatabality 5/10
Visual Appeal 9/10
Gaming 10/10
Productivity 9/10
Musical Productivity 0/10

Overall : 7.5 / 10 (Positive)

I just wanted to point out some things that we (aka Windows users) may forget about when jumping into a new OS:
1. Vista (with default settings) is a resource hog. That's been an issue with Windows OSes since '95 was rolled out, but now it's worse. The main reason many don't pay it much attention is that often we get it on a new, faster PC - you know - the type with more (and faster) memory, faster bus speeds, faster I/O controllers, faster hard drives, faster optical drives, faster video cards, etc. This notable hardware performance increase offsets much of the additional burden Vista places on a PC.
2. Even "stripped" down, Vista is still significantly slower than XP when installed on equal hardware platforms. Feel free to check any of the web-searchable lab tests.
3. I've poked around Vista (Home Premium) for about 2 months now, and I've found a couple bugs that I haven't seen published yet. If I - a single, casual user - have found a couple myself (and still haven't reported them) how many others out there are not reporting theirs?
4. Aside from a slightly different way of accessing some of the various features, I haven't seen anything that Vista does that XP doesn't do - as good or better!
5. It seems that most of the changes in the registry are directly related to the way MS has (needlessly) reoriented primarily the user profile-related folder structure. Instead of keeping everything for a single profile under an easily-defined and locatable folder, they have strewn it about in various areas - making administration and troubleshooting significantly more difficult and time-intensive. This - I believe - may be a simple explanation of the primary reason why the vast - er, I mean VAST - majority of the business community has refused to adopt Vista.
6. XP has been the most robust, flexible, supportable, stable, ... Windows OS that MS has put out. Why upset the proverbial apple cart? Sure, every once in a while there needs to be a core change to an OS to keep up with the times, but it seems that so far (for the most part, anyway) there ain't nuthin' Vista does that XP can't do...
7. Last point - regarding the performance hit for the "Vista experience", have you tried turning off your Aero interface??? It's like ... well "try it, you'll like it".

So far my overall assessment is that even though I'm able to work around most of the Vista issues, and while Vista will inevitably be a viable platform sometime in the future, it is not yet ready to replace XP in function, stability, compatibility, and performance. Some say that XP had its moments in its post-release months, but I was there too and in my experience XP had a much better start than Vista.