Windows Vista: Choosing the right one for you

I just hate vista's bloated theme...takes up too many resources... shut it off on all of mine... put my old custom XP theme back on.

Vista doesnt do it for me. Slow as sh1t, takes up to 1 - 1,5 GB after start-up .... and kills my laptop and instance

ThaMaestro,
it would be nice if you people that dis Vista would bother to do a little research before you try to go to Vista. I realize that some laptop manufacturers jumped to putting Vista on their laptops without making sure the hardware was good enough to run Vista, and this is not your fault. Vista SP1 has been released. Vista hardware drivers are much better now. Take a look at my specs. Vista runs very fast and stable on my system. The multitasking is great! Game playing is wonderful!

Tmagic640 those specs are they for your laptop running Vista on? Vista SP1 doesn't require a lot of systems resources well depends on what you choose though?

You're right, i guess, but one might assume that when you buy a new laptop (or pc), which has an OS pre-installed by one of the biggest companies in the world, things should work proper. Ofcourse we all kow MS, and thus know that this isnt the case with (most of) their products. So yes, a little bit research in advance might be good. Then again, it took my 3 weeks to find out which laptop i could/wanted to buy for my budget. As a student, you cant take more time then that to sort out things. You need to make decisions, and you cant find out everything in advance; some things need to be experienced (which however, in this case, isnt the best thing for me).
Because, what if i were to scream n shout on this forum that Vista isnt any good (based on what ive read), while i didnt even used it in reality?

I see your point of view, and agree to it on some way. But you must understand that for me, its quite a big bug that my Laptop (which has quite good specs, for a cheap 700 euro's, which is very cheap here) doesnt work stable and proper/fast. All that, while I only used it for 2 or 3 months (AND, in the meanwhile, already needed to re-install my complete laptop, i.e. format C:\ and re-install everyting new again, simply because IE7 was having very strange errors ...).
For example, when i bought my laptop, booted it for the first ime, it used, after it was completely booted, more then 1 GB RAM. That's freaking awfully much. Ofcourse, there are some builtin programmes, which can be removed from the startup procedure ... but still, its too much!

I really like to know which programmes i can turn off, if I put my laptop back to factory defaults (which i will probably do, since the problem im having now really troubles me (see my post in the Security and the Web subforum)

Oh you have 2GB of RAM and it's using 1.5GB.. Something wrong their with memory management. Or an applications is leaking memory. I can run it with 1GB and have 500MB free. So if I had 2GB I should have 1.5GB free at startup..

No, my laptop (HP Compaq 6820s (vendorcode GR713EA#ABH) standard has 2 GB RAM; i upgraded it to 3 GB RAM when i bought the laptop.

And yes, the very first time I booted the laptop, it used ~1 GB RAM. Of course, as i said in my previous post, there are some programmes running which arent windows built-in; some HP programmes etc.... But still, those progs together will never manage to be more than 500 MB i think.

I don't really know what you are asking here. I don't have a laptop, at least one that I own. If you look at my specs, it is a desktop. I have seen laptops with a core 2 dual intel or a AMD 2 Turion and just 1GB of RAM run Vista well

Oh then your desktop is running Vista well.. I thought you were saying your laptop, but you don't own one. Vista will have a short life in service by 2010. For now it's the only one that loads everything I have on my HP laptop plus it looks nice on Ultra Bright screens. XP huge jump over 2000 as NT, 98, 95, 3.1 DOS/EGA/CGA was..

Still some users have problems with Vista...

In China,these vista copy cheaper than other countries.

I think dual booting is the way to go right now.

Very good post,

I would suggest windows vista home premium 64-bit for home users.

Vista

i think bussines is the best

I'm getting ready to build my new system tonight and have been going back and forth about whether to stick with XP or go to Vista. I assume most of Vista's driver issues would have been corrected by now (I'm not running anything unusual anyway), and my new hardware is more than capable of handling it.

The thing is, I already have a copy of XP and don't feel like I'm missing anything with it. I prefer a lean software environment and would rather not have all the 3D bells and whistles. I'm going to do a dual-boot with Ubuntu and hope to have it become my primary OS, so I don't see a reason to give more money to MS when XP works fine and will, last I read, be supported until 2014. By then, hopefully Ubuntu or another Linux distro will be my only OS.

I'm not happy about Vista's EULA tying each copy to a specific motherboard. I understand they're not currently enforcing it, but the potential exists. Yet another reason to make XP my last MS OS.

Often wonder just what exactly
Genuine Windows Vista® Ultimate
not in dark orange of course! means...in ads for new pcs? Does it mean a full installation disc is supplied or that the operating system is genuinely MS's stuff? Who would have thought otherwise?

I don't like the way vista organizes files. Its to complicated and it makes it hard to see what programs you have installed and access them (there may be a way to change this but i dont own a pc with vista so i haven't tried)

Also vista is good up until the point when you have a problem with it eg. you have a spyware problem or you stupidly cog it up with rubbish.

Then it becomes a nightmare

Actually, I'll argue that VERY old point. I had a horrid virus/spyware problem at my grandmas on her Acer, running Vista Home Premium. It wouldn't even boot without going into safe mode.

I thought I was screwed when it kept stopping scans a quarter of the way through, and even BSOD'ing sometimes, but alas, I couldn't believe what saved me. I was looking for another installed AS, and found "Windows Defender", and decided why not, might as well give it a try. I had used it before, and it missed 3 or 4 things that SAS found, but this time, it came through. It got one of the infected files off and allowed my computer to boot normally again. From there, I installed my good anti-spyware programs (Malwarebytes, etc.) and ran them in safe mode, then downloaded AVAST! and ran a boot time scan, and then proceeded with all other measures to ensure I was clean.

All in all, having Windows Defender built in can save your *** if something similar happened.

PS, this happened while I was changing Anti-Viruses from AVG to AVAST!... so I was unprotected.

I've been running Vista Home Premium (SP1) 32-bit now for about 6 months. I ditched my Creative XFi gamer PCI sound card for the use of my Abit IP35P Realtek HD on-board sound. The Creative card caused Alien-like sounds from other programs and software notifications. The Realtek HD sound is perfect. My XFX Vista video drivers were swapped for Nvidia Vista drivers recently, so other than these small things, I'm very happy with Vista... I use Avast Home free antivirus, CCleaner and Glary Utilities

Don't bother getting Vista since around 2009 Microsoft will be releasing Windows 7. It will have more compatibility than Vista ever will and improvements on New Technology like those touch screen computers HP has. Windows Vista will just end up being like Windows ME. Its almost the same scenario.