Community poll forum: Will you be installing Windows Vista?

I have heard of Vista but all that I hear tells me it's not a good option at present. I'm using WinXP at work and trying Mint Linux as an alternative to Windows.

Richard. Consultancy Director

No way, till the standard installed memory of a PC is 4 or more GB, and transfer speed of data from the OS drive is at least 5 times that of a SATA II hard disk, and the OS drive has 64 or more of Cache
Dr. K. A. Rasheed

When I recently purchased a new computer it came equipped with Vista. After struggling for two weeks without success to try and use all of the other equipment I used with my computer I returned the new one and went back to the old one. If I kept the Vista I would have had to purchase a new printer, a new digital still camera, a new video camera, several new software programs, junk several of my favorite games etcetera, etcetera.

Mt recommendation is either never use Vista or be prepared to spend a fortune on all of the peripherals and applications software you have built up over the years.

If/when Microsoft withdraws support for 85 I will bite that bullet and either go to Linux or purchase an Apple and all of the associated peripherals for them. I have had it with Microsoft.

I have a VISTA READY HP NOTEBOOK, I have the Vita CD, but have not installed it. I have read too many reviews where Vista degrades the performance of notebooks computers, but works fine on desktops. I don't want any degradation of performance and will not use Vista until I am 100% sure it will not slow my computer down.

My E-Machine crashed 2 weeks ago so I had to buy a new computer. I didn't think I had the choice of not getting Vista, so I have it. I was upset at first because of all the negative things I've heard, but so far it hasn't been a problem. Of course I'm not a "big time" user. I just surf the net, answer and send email and occasionally hook up to a remote computer for some paper work. My advise is to not be afraid, go for it! There are lots of people out there to help you through the rough patches, when you get to them. But, maybe I'm naive.

I'll wait for SP2, if you please. That's what I did with XP while it required sorting out. Recently bought 4 new machines, Partitioned the hard drives and loaded XP Pro on all of then and have isolated Vista so it's only accessable to the administrator. Our one previous attempt with Vista was an education within itself. We're in business to create things not play with OS's. There is always a learning curve with a new OS but there's no reason to attempt it until the product is sorted out and stabilized. I figure that won't be happening until SP2.
Dawg

I have the vista basic home edition on one system. It is no better than Windows xp or 2000. In some respects it is worse because I confuse the three. Generally I prefer xp (Which I have on my other home systems), or nt which I use at work. These run smoothly and most of the bugs have been worked out of them. There is no valuable difference betwixt vista home basic and home premium. A trial run of vista at our workplace was a definite no go. I have worked with the earliest dos and apple systems right on up to this new and so called better system. Heck I worked with the first trash 80's and atari systems and the commodore vic 20's. I know cobol, fortran and basic basic. Believe me: dont trade your xp for vista until they work out the bugs or you actually use it a while and acclimate. Make sure you like it before you buy it. If not, stick with xp.

It came pre-loaded on an HP Pavilion dv9000 I bought for the wifey. It takes a little training period (different from XP, permissions aka "mother may I do so and so?", ad blocking, different areas to find same info from XP, etc.). Overall, very stable product, very user friendly after the short XP -> Vista learning curve. Great support from HP and Microsoft for both the hardware and the applications. Only had to upgrade Diskeeper and one other package (can't recall name right now). Everything else I already owned worked. Nuked the Norton, Office 2007, and one other trial (60 day) packages. Replaced with Kaspersky, Office 2003 and whatever the other package was. No hangs, problems, or crashes so far.

Windows Vista has to many problems with it. It is like Windows 98 before they corrected it with Windows 98 Second Edition. I am now using Windows XP Pro-Edition and I like it very much

We decided to upgrade the family computers (4) with new DELL desktops and Vista was included. Never again will make that mistake. I can not detect any advantage and we lost the use of many peripheral hdwe. items because of lack of drivers (like my 2-yr. old 4-in-1 DELL office machine). NOTE: the DELL 4-in-1 never has worked as well as the previous H.P.s, but now it is REALLY useless.

One system continues to lock and crash (my Mom's) and can not find the source.

I am impressed - NEGATIVELY! I wanted to revert to XP but they said it would be another $300.

I hate VISTA and I would not do DELL again because of their bad advice.

~ jrmercer

Sorry TechieAJ -
The 'everyone is doing it' is also DELL's excuse and I now consider their advice incomplete and untrustworthy. If they had told me my 2 year old DELL office machine would be virtually useless for lack of software, I would definitely have said "Call me when you are ready."

My daughter is going VISTA because her entire system will be new (so it should work ok) but isn't VISTA a power-hungry OS? I think the faster machine would still do better on XP and I must question the real advantage of VISTA.

Nope. I lost the faith. I don't trust DELL's advice a$ it i$ all about the $ale. In reading the many replies to this question, there are apparently a good number of intelligent opinions that are deaf to the feel-good, 'everyone's doing it' rationalizing, but I do understand the techies' pro vote. That's 'progress'. (???)

Thanks ~ JR

pamwpamw How true I have been having instability issues with my HP LapTop since I bought it 1 year old now and for the last year all I get from "noservice" is to reformat as"there testing" says system and drives are fine this is after paying extended warrenty(HP)for 3 years and upgrading to Vista and for some strange? reason chkdsc when you try to run it self canceles EVERY time makes you wonder so what did I do simple scraped Vista and back to XP PRO, replaced the hard drive with Western Digital and guess what no more problems to date!!!However I have paid with my tech fees(as this was the only way to get it running again) and new drive the price of a new machine never again extremly disapointed!Unfortunatly I am lead to believe that 40%+ LapTops/NoteBooks come from the same factory probably you know were!

From the little I know Dell has been caught like lots of us!I believe there relationship is some what soured with MS as it has cost them a bundle to fix problems like yours a friend of mine persisted with Dell customer service after some time he now has XP PRO dont give up just be persistant it is amazing what they can do if you call often enough!I had Vista Business loaded and had nothing but trouble on my HP now back to XP Pro and no problems.Good Luck!

Already using it...

But it is on a dual boot system with XP MCE and the vast majority of my time is spent in XP.

Machine has raid 5 and extended Vista use seems to slowly destory the raid drive environmnet. Have to boot back to XP and fix with chkdsk!

Both PartitionMagic and Acronis report partition/drive errors.

Vista says the machine is a 5.4. And I though that was a good thing.

Waiting on Vista SP1 and hoping it gets better.

They need to fix 3D sound and SLI. I do have it on one laptop Its ok, has lots of features, but not particularly stable.