Windows Vista forum: Poll: Whats your personal experience with Vista?

My shiny new PC running Vista reboots more times in a week than my clunky 6-year-old dying PC running XP did in a year. 'Nuff said.

Vista has difficulties killing "Not Responding" processes. The only option is to reboot. Sometimes, it even fails to shutdown with the "Not Responding" processes; I have to resort to hard reboot using the power button.

If Microsoft hadn't announced their plan to desupport XP soon (though I doubt they can pull it off in the near future), I would never have chosen Vista over XP. I'm beginning to regret my decision though.

I didn't move to Vista until it had been out about a year since I went to XP right when it first came out it drove me crazy just like the problem XP it's pretty much the same as what Vista is going through now...growing pains. I'm running CrossfireX and able to use just about every piece of software I had on my XP computers with Vista. Sure I had to find the new drivers for a printer and scanner but those were both three and four years old respectively. With SP1 out for Vista moving files between computers has been noticeably faster and of great use. I've only encountered one blue screen of death but it wasn't Vista's fault it was my motherboard going bad on me. There were a few issues with the Radeon video drivers but ever since I installed the new Catalyst drivers (Version 8.4) all those problems have gone away. When I was duel booting XP and Vista I found I had more trouble with XP and Crossfire but now that I'm using only Vista the problem has vanished.

Sure word has it that MS is pushing to get Windows 7 out sometime in 2009 instead of 2010 and even with that I'd guess there will be problems with it as well. Add to that Microsoft bringing in someone who had worked for Adobe (his name slips my mind right now) to spearhead it's development all this tells me they are trying to make their products better. We just get comfortable with a product like Windows 98 or Windows XP it's tougher to move onward with something new.

I have two PCs about a year old and both have had significant software problems with Vista. Specifics - PC#1 - HP Pavilion dv9500 Laptop - Intel Core 2 Duo CPU 2.2 Ghz - 2038 MB - PC#2 - Samsung Mobile Q1 Ultra
1) Bought Norton's 360 to get their newest and greatest - after weeks of work with tech support finally had to totally remove Norton. Thanks to CNET advice moved to Zone Alarm - do manual updates and scans.
2) Inconsistent operation with Targus USB to Serial and USB port replicator. Often Serial printer needs to be deleted and re-added.
3) Roadrunner dial backup would not work with Vista so had to buy Verizon High Speed Cellular USB modem for backup when cable fails and for travel.
4)Spy-Sweeper can't stay on with Zone Alarm so only use for periodic deep inspections.
5) Office 2007 fine - but only work with 97-2003 documents since no-one has 2007.
6) To keep speed up - clean each evening with Window Washer - great program
7) Clean registry with PC Tune-up
8) Once in a while use CCleaner
9) Windows Dick Cleaner and Defrag every couple of weeks
10) HP Health Check in HP Advisor NEVER has worked - won't scan
11) Zone Alarm Forcefield had to be stopped and prevented from starting
12) New Windows mail - OK but no bcc ability

Don't recall this extent of difficulty with XP - gave a son an older HP XP laptop for use instead of buying new with Vista
I do like the Windows Sidebar so you can see real time CPU and memory use
Keep Smiling, Bdarrah

Have we all forgotten what an Operating System is for?

Why do I need 2 G of RAM (which I've found is the minimum for a snappy response) just to launch a program!

Why do we have programs integrated into the operating system? (Internet Explorer) If it was separated, as it originally was, we would never have had the huge security holes we currently endure.

Personally, I would have preferred if Vista dropped backward compatiblity for stable and secure (like Vista 64 bit). 5 years and all we got was an interface that _claimed_ to be backward compatible, contained a lot of bloat with features that most people don't need or want.

All in all, I like Vista and find that it works just as good and often better than XP for me.

Came with new laptop last November. Runs fine, fast, and glitch-free. Runs my old HP printer (parallel port through adapter no less) and several older XP programs that the original software vendor says may not run/they won't support. XP is/was fine (still use it on an older laptop and at work. As to slowing down, I agree with other comments that Vista as an operating system seems to behave long term like any other Windows version: load enough programs and don't attend to temp file deletion, etc., and your system will slow.

There seem to be THREE main computer camps nowadays: XP, Vista, and Mac. The pro-XP folks are beginning to sound like Mac users who think that their OS is so much better than Windows and won't listen or accept anything other viewpoint. I get tired of reading Mac user diatribes. I looked at moving to a Mac several times, but when I followed Mac user forums, I saw that there were just as many problems for them whenever Apple upgraded the OS as when Windows changed. AND with Mac you're stuck buying your machine from ONE manufacturer who calls the shots on prices. At least with Windows, including VISTA, I was able to shop around for a good deal on a good laptop from several reputable companies.

I got Vista as part of a new pc system that I got March 2007. I went from Millenium to Vista so I don't have any idea of how XP works.

To me, the bottom line is this, as long as it works, who gives a flying flip. I could careless about the OS. I just want it to work. It could be Curious George's OS, as long as it works and does what I want it to do when I click, I'm happy.

I dumped Winhell for the wonderful world of Macs 2 years ago! Never looked back, never regretted. Never been bothered by a virus, blue screen of death or all the other nitnoids I had to put up with. My MacPro has been running for 24/7 for more than 2 years and I've never had to reboot because of an OS glitch! Upgrades are a snap. And I added 3 more 750 GB hard drives one evening and from shutdown to restart was less than 15 minutes with fully formatted drives!!!

Bottom line, I don't do Windows any more and couldn't be happier.

Vista assumes you don't know what to do with your files or defrag or that when you start/install/etc a program or an action you have to keep telling it what to do. I use XP on my desktop and previous laptops. I now own an IBM Y510 laptop with Vista. After organizing my documents on drive D: the way I like them, Vista is performing quite well. I miss the Undo, Delete option in XP windows explore but both are available by right clicking. Just means 2 clicks instead of one. Its coming so might as well get used to it.

Actually I have my desktop PC running XP and my Inspiron Notebook running VISTA. I DON'T HAVE ANY PROBLEM USING BOTH OS. Of course, I would like to use my FAX in my VISTA Home, I would like to manage my disk whenever I want. I found some software no compatible BUT we can't blame Microsoft, anyway, is not a big deal for me.

I don't understand why some people try to look "smarter" than the others just for blame vista and using linux.

Bought two HP laptops with Vista pre-installed at Christmas, one for me & one for my wife. And I support two additional HP laptops with Vista for our church. All are Vista Home Premium. We have both wired and wireless networks at home & at church. Also a Sharp projector at church. We use them for email, web browsing, audio/photo/video editing and production, burnng CDs and DVDs, website maintenance and development, documents and spreadsheets and slideshows, oh my. No shirt, no shoes, no problems.

I am staying with XP Pro. I found it strange, when MS was "crowing" about the new file system and improved searching capabilities of the soon to be released Vista and just before release dropped the feature, leaving DirectX 10 and enhanced graphics, as major selling points. You see the DRM use, media control, in Vista, and add the release of the Zune media player with WiFi, and it seems this OS was compensation to the copyright media content owners, Hollywood Studios and record labels, so they wouldn't throw (legal) fits over the Zune player and ruin Microsoft's entry into the iPod market. MS needed to market the Zune and had to release,(as promised?), the DRM Vista incomplete for the copyright media owners.

I have had many friends asking me to help them revert to XP after they and myself trying to resolve the various Vista issues. The biggest one being the Outlook 2000 issues that occur when trying to install Office 2000 on Vista. Absolutely unbelievable that MicroSoft does not fix these!
Many of the cheaper LapTops coming with Vista today does not even have drivers available for XP! A good example is GQ (Great Quality) NX-L515 from Fry's. By backtracking the various chip manufacturs drivers you will be able to build a fully working XP platform, but it takes some researh to pull this off. So check if an XP environment is available before you buy a Vista pre-loaded machine.
I think XP will be the last OS I use from MicroSoft. When the system is bogged down simply by a fancy user interface I have had it!
KW

I bought Vista Ultimate thinking it would be the ultimate. Nope. XP was better. It was slow, crashed, refused to run software it said it would. I have since updated to SP1, and switched from Microsoft's Windows Protection to AVG. AVG is light-years better than Microsoft's malware protection, and helped. It seems that SP1 is much more solid, but feeling burned by Microsoft once again, I promise to report again later if Vista works half as well on this intel Duo extreme as their DOS did on my 8086 in 1982.

See prior. Worked all day on Vista Ultimate. Better, but not what I would have hoped at this late date and the money I've spent on MS R&D.

Regarding Apple's iMac and OS 10.5 Leopard. This seemed important to me today as I tried without success (again and again), to talk to MS tech support (an oxymoron) Apple has wonderful tech support. They actually answer the telephone! And, must I remind myself of this, NOT in India. 10 minutes to my Mac fix by phone. Ten weeks Vista not fixed, nor even answered by MS (tech support?)

I'm a really sad, inveterate MS OS and software user.

Philip Shelton
Santa Barbara

on my laptop which came with Vista Home Premium installed.

My $35 Vista Home Premium with SP1 is OK on one of two HDDs in my desktop but I still use XP SP3 on the other HDD all of the time.

I just don't see the point in using Vista on my desktop computer.