Your View on Vista

[Roffo]

Hello all. After countless battles with I vs. vista, I have been inspired to see what your views on Vista are. At the moment I am trying to get Vista to work, and apparently my computer doesn't recognize a system restore date, so now I am stuck reloading Vista into my drive. Its a very sad time indeed for me  Other then that, what do you think of vista?

[Orcus]

totally useless out side a basic home PC where the user just needs to look up recipes and check email.

[Kesarra]

Vanilla is terrible. SP1 still needs a great deal of work.

[Benjamin]

I use it a bit at work. I can't say that I'm a big fan of it. Seems a lot of people can't stand it, anyways. It's very resource intensive for not a whole lot of gain in usefulness, it seems.
 
Benjamin

[Brasou]

I have been using it for over a year now I think(sp1, but before sp1 I have never had any problems either) Honestly, I don't think it is worth the upgrade from xp, but for a new computer you should definitely get vista. Alot of people say its slower, and it is. But have you looked at the price of computer components lately? 2gb of ram can easily run vista, and that costs Maybe 100$ if its good high quality ram. Same with cpus. Most new laptops can run vista fine as far as performance goes.

As for all the "crashing" and bugs, I have yet to have one problem. Well thats not true, Crossfire used to get worse performance with vista but that was fixed with sp1.
It has a ton of small features that really take your computer to the next level, The search indexing built in is killer(Lots of 3rd party solutions for xp that do the same). Windows defender is great.

And as for people complaining that vista asks you to confirm everything, and tells you what you should do....Guess what? YOU CAN TURN THAT OFF! OMG    I don't think vista should have been a whole new OS, But rather another service pack for XP.

And one more thing! as for alot of the bugs and crashes people complain about they don't seem to understand, Programs made for XP aren't expected to run perfectly on vista! Try running a windows 98 or ME program on XP and you would get the same amount of bugs. Can't expect outdated software to run on a new OS

[Kesarra]

2000 and XP have almost no issues between them. NT-wise, the two are very close to each other, so there's few compatibility problems in the registry and codecs. It's 98 and back where issues arise. I've seen problems with current gen software having issues with tech that's a year or two old, like Vista and 3 core AMD processors. Lots of games put folders in strange places on Vista. That's a pain in the a$$ when we're talking about mod and save folders being hidden in the dumbest and most convoluted places down the folder tree.

Now that I think about it, I've heard about the system restore problem with Vista. It seems to pop up on random support forums at least once a week.

[Kesarra]

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gah. wrong button
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[Brasou]

2000 and XP have almost no issues between them. NT-wise, the two are very close to each other, so there's few compatibility problems in the registry and codecs. It's 98 and back where issues arise. I've seen problems with current gen software having issues with tech that's a year or two old, like Vista and 3 core AMD processors. Lots of games put folders in strange places on Vista. That's a pain in the a$$ when we're talking about mod and save folders being hidden in the dumbest and most convoluted places down the folder tree.

Now that I think about it, I've heard about the system restore problem with Vista. It seems to pop up on random support forums at least once a week.

I have never had to system restore, so that I can't really comment on. But as far as the way vista seems to save everything as far as file settings and such that I do hate. There are tons of random folders all over the place it seems with vista, Also I noticed that some games no longer create folders in my startmenu

[Tamaska]

I would prefer to revert to windows 98 but I seem to have lost my boot disk so I'm stuck on vista... it DOES have some cool little things but mostly it likes to kill my processing power I cant stand having 40% of my computer used by graphical details I dont even like

[Seamus]

I haven't had a single problem with it.  It's quick and efficient for me, I run a lot of adobe CS3 programs and they all run great while i'm doing the web and listening to music.  I think a lot of people have problems with it because they get it pre loaded with an unbeleivable amount of garbage programs on it.  as well as anti-virus security suites, on top of that they try and test the limits of the OS when their computer isn't even capable of handling it.  People trying to run vista ultimate on the compaq they bought at best buy with 512 ram and a 1.8ghz single core processor.  If you can't tell by now I know a lot of relatives and friends who aren't very computer savvy who have decided that Microsoft no longer can produce a good product because they're too dim to do their homework.

Perfect instance here to explain why I think vista gets such a bad rap.

My friend just got a new laptop for his graduation.  He gets Vista Home Premium, and these are the specs of his laptop:

1.8ghz intel core 2 duo
512gb RAM
80g Hard Drive
Internal Graphics

It came loaded with CA Security Suite, a purchased copy, where all of the filters and functions were set to the max and turned on.  He tells me after a month of having it that Vista sucks big time, and he's probably going to sell that laptop and buy a mac.  I come over saying maybe there's something I can do to help him with his speed problem/security pop ups, it being his first laptop and for the most part first computer he's had to himself.  He doesn't know a great deal about them but he isn't stupid   I load it up, and totally get rid of CA Security suite, as it was giving him a pop up every time he clicked on something saying that it was "Secure", or that it "Required additional scanning" which caused the computer to freeze for a few minutes while it decided that Firefox wasn't a virus.  I ditched all the spyware that was preloaded on his machine, as well as all the trial programs/games that were constantly trying to connect to wireless.  So he basically got a clean slate with the laptop (as he asked) and it still ran fairly slow.  I found out about his ram situation and told him to just get more ram and he'd be fine.  Being the friend that I am I even went on newegg and showed him which one it was and when it came in the mail I installed 2 x 1gig sticks of memory into his laptop.  It flew.  He was so happy and absolutely shocked at how efficient and quick it was running now.  Office 2007 even loaded instantaneously for him (after loading it for the first 20 seconds at start up though), and it totally changed his mind about it.

Vista comes preloaded on a TON of machines, People want to buy the cheapest computer and they want it to do everything for them.  It's when it DOESN'T do everything for them, or it requires them to take time to set it up properly, that they write it off as Vista's fault.  The OS itself is not perfect, but it's far from the image a lot of people tend to be giving it at this point.

I recommend it to anyone and everyone who can take the time to set it up right.  for those who can't, i don't recommend you get a computer at all

[Brasou]

Wow that laptop is pretty low compared to the average mid-range laptop out today! haha

I just got mine,

2.4Ghz Amd Puma 2 core processor
4GB Ram
Radeon 3200 HD

The base model is about 1000$ Cnd, But I got the better cpu(A whole 0.4 Ghz for like 200$ lol) and bigger hard drive.

With firefox open, msn, NORTON(need to remove that soon resource hog!) and a bunch of other programs the cpus idle at about 20% with all the vista features on full boar ( and battery mode push's it to about 30%)

[Seamus]

yeah, was an entry level from HP I think, only cost like $400 or $450.  RAM was only $50 so he actually got a hell of a deal for just using it at school and stuff.  External HD of course

[Wyrd-Hotd]

I have had Vista for over a year now, and all the problems people have..well i dont even know, all of my problems have been my fault! DONT INSTALL Alchohol 120% vista does NOT like it one bit! i got the blue screen of death 12 sec after every restart, had to go to a restore point, but really...no hassle and i think it looks better then XP, but...thats just me!

[Brasou]

I have had Vista for over a year now, and all the problems people have..well i dont even know, all of my problems have been my fault! DONT INSTALL Alchohol 120% vista does NOT like it one bit! i got the blue screen of death 12 sec after every restart, had to go to a restore point, but really...no hassle and i think it looks better then XP, but...thats just me!

That right there is the main problem with vista, Not everyone switched over...so not all programs have been properly converted to vista compatibility still, but they expect them to run fine.

Same thing(Sorta...) with macs, they are great machines but alot of people hate on them because they can't run windows programs, so they blame it on the mac rather then the people who are to lazy to convert there software to mac format.

[Kesarra]

Same thing(Sorta...) with macs, they are great machines but alot of people hate on them because they can't run windows programs, so they blame it on the mac rather then the people who are to lazy to convert there software to mac format.

I find more hybrid installs that cover Windows/Mac/Linux coming from small and/or obscure companies than the large corporate entities.

[Lady Serpent]

We got my brother a new computer with Vista installed.. I find it's way too 'shiny', so many little memory-using functions that don't need to be there.

Plus, the fact that it wants to confirm EVERY action you take.  "Are you SURE you meant to click that button?  Really, really sure?"

There's probably a way to turn that off.  I havn't been home long enough to fix it; more like set-up-and-run back to Kamloops.

[Kesarra]

We got my brother a new computer with Vista installed.. I find it's way too 'shiny', so many little memory-using functions that don't need to be there.

Plus, the fact that it wants to confirm EVERY action you take.  "Are you SURE you meant to click that button?  Really, really sure?"

There's probably a way to turn that off.  I havn't been home long enough to fix it; more like set-up-and-run back to Kamloops.

There is a way and it's up to you to do it. I think this is it:

1. Press on the Start button at the bottom

2. Scroll to the Control Panel button and click it

3. Click User Accounts and Family Safety

4. Click User Accounts

5. Then Turn User Account Control On or Off

6. Uncheck the checkbox

7. Click OK

[Lady Serpent]

Thanks.  Yea, I'll try and get over there to do it while I'm home for the school break.

[Wyrd-Hotd]

I honestly dont mind the "are you really really sure?" it just does not effect me, as for memory usage GET RID OF THE SIDE BAR! : )

[Zephyron]

I think Vista's an okay OS, transitioning between Linpus Lite, Ubuntu, XP, Mac OSX and Vista is painless for me considering I can use all of them for different occasions =3

I did de-activate the UAC (annoying) and Side Bar (unecessary clutter) for Vista after a fresh re-install though.

Vista does require more RAM than the other OSes and Linux distroes, and that's due to a lot of things actually running in the background (a lot of which we won't need anyways), but as long as my Photoshop boots up in 3-4 seconds, me-sa ish a happy pup =3