Thoughts on Vista/What is Your Problem With Vista

[jbonetwo]

its ugly, its slow, it treats its users like they're retards and i've never spent an hour trying to copy a 40mb zip file to a usb flash disk when i was using windows xp! which btw i resolved by renaming it from *.zip to *

 

[tneff]

I recently purchased a new laptop for work, HP 6510b with Vista business on it. At first I thought Vista was a pain, constantly having to give permission to do something. Outside of that, I am starting to like it. Has it's differences from previous versions from Microsoft, but so far I am not unhappy with it. Have not had any issues related to the OS or otherwise, no problems with drivers for equipment as of yet.

 

[kirock]

This is why I won't buy Vista or ever have it on my machine. Just google for Vista DRM and there are dozens of articles bashing DRM and it's bs big business/big brother roots and it's waste/hog of system resources.

article
and here

 

[Atwooooood]

its ugly, its slow, it treats its users like they're retards and i've never spent an hour trying to copy a 40mb zip file to a usb flash disk when i was using windows xp! which btw i resolved by renaming it from *.zip to *

i constantly copy media to my flash drive, and that just drives me crazy.

 

[BloodRaven]

I think its going to be like the XP launch. i thought it was horrible until SP1 came out and it got a little better. my problem is i have 4BG of RAM and the only way i can get my system to read all of it is if i get vista. im going to wait till SP1 comes out though. which will be very soon. in a month or so.

had it for 2 days now, imho it sucks!

i plan on getting vista soon so i'd like to get some reasons why it "sucks" so i can see what to watch out for. thanks for any replies

 

[SNGX1275]

my problem is i have 4BG of RAM and the only way i can get my system to read all of it is if i get vista.

Windows XP 64bit will handle 4GB. Vista 32bit and regular XP must be what you are thinking of. Vista 32bit with the release of SP1 will display 4GB when you have 4 installed, but other than that cosmetic appearance, it handles it the same as pre SP1.

 

[Darth_Terra1]

Currently i have no intention of re-installing Vista, i'll wait and see how SP1 does and then change if it makes a difference, I tried it and like some have said i found it to intrusive and resource hungry, and i hardly noticed any increased improvement running games on Vista than on XP in fact in some cases it was worse even with the latest drivers etc. as i say i'll wait a bit and see how it goes.

 

[Cybersciver]

I'm with you anti-Vista guys. It should've been called Microsoft Victim. Sure, XP wasn't so hot initially, but you'd think (or hope) the lads in Seattle would've learnt from that. Instead they made the klunkiest OS ever. It's too big, doesn't fit together, squabbles with itself. I'm running XP and Vista on same rig and it's just no contest re speed and accessibility. Typical nonsense is being told I didn't have "sufficient administrative rights" to install chipset drivers after a new mbd installation. You'd think it would be easy to conclude that one user on a private network equals full administrative rights. I mean who does have full administrative rights then? Bill Gates? Doh!

 

[Frostmonkey]

I'd have to say I'm still on the fence - and I've been using Vista Ultimate x64 for 3+ months now.

Aesthetically, the stock Aero interface is sleek and very pleasing. However on XP using various UI utilities from 3rd parties I had an equally pleasing UI at substantially lower system resource usage.

As for performance, there is no question that Vista is slower in nearly every game when compared to XP (at least from my personal experience), albeit if it's only a few frames.

To be quite blunt, I had to do a fair share of tweaking to get the performance of Vista to be snappy enough for my tastes, disabling indexing and various other tweaks readily found on the internet.

One thing that I cannot complain too much about is driver support. I have as of yet not had any driver issues with my system - when they're signed. When you don't have a special approved driver Vista refuses to use it, while they may have viewed it as a great security feature for most people - it's frankly a pain in the ***. I can't use my old copy of ZoneAlarm though NOD32 runs great however

However I'm one of those people who always wants to have the new shiny toy. And for those considering upgrading to Vista I offer this viewpoint: Vista is like a perpetual beta of sorts.If you are looking for sheer performance - don't upgrade. If you are not fairly confident in your computer skills - don't upgrade (or at least wait for SP1). For the rest - Vista is a resource hog with a pretty UI, give it time and it may gain a good reputation on par with XP but only time will tell.

 

[Berzer]

I bought a new machine recently with vista home basic x32. i have had non stop issues with the cruddy com surrogate issue as well as a rundll32 error as well. i like that it automatically downloads and finds drivers for things like my printer which i had lost the install disk for. it took forever today for me to be able to access my flash drive and view a video i had stored on it. overall i wish i had kept with xp because vista really just isnt doing anything fancy that i couldn't do myself. all the security settings i had to tweak at first to allow me to do simple things. i don't remember xp being that bad. i don't remember xp being as bad as vista ever, at least not for me. i have noticed it runs smoother than my old comp but thats because i went from a 1.4 ghz celeron to a C2D 2.66 ghz with 2gb ram. i really don't think vista has much to do with the speed of my system aside from just looking pretty. i had an alienware gui installed on my old comp that looked just like vista. and operated the same way. it is frustrating that microsoft puts all this work into something and then makes the people who spend their hard earned money on their product be the testers and find out whats wrong. i can't imagine that microsoft techs never had the com surrogate issue, as i have seen many others have had this same issue. its probably a result of the big wigs not allowing the lower half of their tech hierarchy to put the fixes in place and wanting to finalize it and put it out. i guess they gotta get paid some time right, even if its a little half ***?

 

[flash222]

games

I want to play games, but almost no game is able to run in Vista, waaaa

 

[Frostmonkey]

I want to play games, but almost no game is able to run in Vista, waaaa

What games are you trying to run? All my games run fine.

 

[Berzer]

yeah seriously, if you can't play games then it's either a shortage of ram or your processor speed or video card. most new games are now "made for vista" like gears of war and halo.

 

[Cybersciver]

Vista Games

I want to play games, but almost no game is able to run in Vista, waaaa

I can play games OK in klunky old Vista, they just run slower that's all. In my experience there's about a 10% framerate hit - except for Stalker which seemed to run fine in Vista. If you're running in DX10 mode my advice is don't. The difference between DX10 and DX9c on high quality settings is minimal (checkout screenshots of Crysis and World in Conflict) yet the performance hit is huge (and don't even consider very high settings, with DX10 - tho' I have to admit the eye-candy is impressive).
I played Stalker with an Abit FP-IN9 SLI with two 7900GT's and a Core Duo 6600 running at 3.2GHz. For Crysis and World in Conflict I'd moved on to an Abit IP35 Pro (great board!) with a Core Duo 6750 running at 3.5GHz and a 8800GT. I play these in XP.
Hope it helps.

 

[iraedei]

If you're runnning Vista you should consider 4 gigs of RAM. And don't insult your computer with anything less than PC6400 with a CL 4. Get the PC8500 if you can afford it. Watch for the CL of your RAM ... very important. Also Processor upgrades are pretty cheap.... But you'll want to reinstall your OS after such an upgrade. It's usually best anyways. Personally I'm runnig :

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400 (3.2GHz)
6gigs of PC6400 Kingston RAM with CL 3
VISTAx64

Vista runs great on my computer. The only problems I've had are with my gamer mouse. I'm sure that will be fixed soon though.

 

[kyleb05]

i had 2 gigs and it ran fine i didnt need it but it bumped it up to 3 gigs and it runs super fast its insane lol but normally after a processor upgrade you do not need a OS reinstall but thats my opinion and i work for SUN

but i like vista and i will never go back to server 2003

 

[Tmagic650]

I am running a dual-boot 32-bit XP Pro/Vista Home Premium on my system (see specs) I will be upgrading my CPU from the Intel single Core 2, to a Core 2 Quad this weekend. I will upgrade to 2GB DDR2 Ram, when I upgrade the motherboard. 4 GB is not necessary at this point. Does 32-bit Vista/XP access 4GB properly anyway?

I have partially disabled the UAC (User Account Control). After dealing with it for 2 weeks, I am very glad it has been tamed.

Microsoft says:
"The point of UAC is that it is designed to put control of your computer back into your hands, instead of at the mercy of the programs running on your system. This is also its weakness: UAC is only affective if the user understands what they are responding to. Unfortunately most users will hit "allow" anyway because they want the program to work/install. UAC doesn't really protect a computer from malicious code, it only shifts the decision to the user. The choice of allowing or denying a UAC prompt is only as good as the user's knowledge that is running the computer."

My computer security knowledge is good I like Vista. Vista doesn't like my old Linksys NIC. My on-board NIC was destroyed by a city power failure last November. I have a new Rosewill Vista certified PCI NIC coming from Newegg Monday

 

[Kaleid]

If you're runnning Vista you should consider 4 gigs of RAM. And don't insult your computer with anything less than PC6400 with a CL 4. Get the PC8500 if you can afford it. Watch for the CL of your RAM ... very important.

Yeah, I would recommend 4GB of RAM for Vista, but CL4 is not that important. I think there's more performance to gain by having a modern fast harddrive

 

[Cybersciver]

Does 32-bit Vista/XP access 4GB properly anyway? (Tmagic650)

Depends. Microsoft says 32bit Windows can handle up to 4GB memory but can access only 3.2GB. Also, it maps memory of onboard devices like graphics cards to RAM. Also it automatically sets aside 250MB for miscellaneous devices. So a GTX will knock out 768MB of RAM. Add the misc devices allowance and you've lost 1gig. So if you start with 4gigs you're left with 3, all of which will be accessable.

 

[bleuken]

my problem with Vista is I can't run my old programs from my XP computer like PowerDVD (i need to disable hardware acceleration on the option before I can run it properly) and my only game I like TextTwist it doesn't run

 

[Cybersciver]

Microsoft says:
"The point of UAC is that it is designed to put control of your computer back into your hands, instead of at the mercy of the programs running on your system. This is also its weakness: UAC is only affective if the user understands what they are responding to. Unfortunately most users will hit "allow" anyway because they want the program to work/install. UAC doesn't really protect a computer from malicious code, it only shifts the decision to the user. The choice of allowing or denying a UAC prompt is only as good as the user's knowledge that is running the computer." (Tmagic650)

How is the user supposed to decide? There must be millions of programs that haven't been submitted to Microsoft for approval. Seems to be a complete waste of time.
I wonder what protection checking-out downloads with antivirus/spyware programs gives (before installation I mean). I do this and it only takes a few seconds, but is it reliable (or am I kidding myself!)

 

[Cybersciver]

my problem with Vista is I can't run my old programs from my XP computer like PowerDVD (i need to disable hardware acceleration on the option before I can run it properly) and my only game I like TextTwist it doesn't run

Have you tried running them in XP mode?

 

[Tmagic650]

Microsoft says:
"The point of UAC is that it is designed to put control of your computer back into your hands, instead of at the mercy of the programs running on your system. This is also its weakness: UAC is only affective if the user understands what they are responding to. Unfortunately most users will hit "allow" anyway because they want the program to work/install. UAC doesn't really protect a computer from malicious code, it only shifts the decision to the user. The choice of allowing or denying a UAC prompt is only as good as the user's knowledge that is running the computer." (Tmagic650)

How is the user supposed to decide? There must be millions of programs that haven't been submitted to Microsoft for approval. Seems to be a complete waste of time.
I wonder what protection checking-out downloads with antivirus/spyware programs gives (before installation I mean). I do this and it only takes a few seconds, but is it reliable (or am I kidding myself!)

That's my point. How does one decide what to allow? After "playing" with Vista for 2 weeks, I decided to look into disabling UAC. UAC is actually a group of programs. You can't or you shouldn't disable all of them. You can switch off the UAC prompt, that annoying "Windows needs your permission to continue" pop-up by editing 2 areas of the Registry

 

[captaincranky]

Decisions, Decisions....or Hacking Your Way back to XP......

I see "Micro-scourge" has dropped it's.......Vista......Wow!, ad campaign.

I always though it should have been........Vista...WTF.....?

So, after you edit the registry and run most of your old programs in compatibility mode for XP, well, you figure it out.

 

[hynesy]

I find it funny how people think they have to hate Microsoft and Windows to be hip, its almost like a fashion in the tech world. I don't understand why people hate the operating system that the majority of the people, who ***** about windows, actually use. They won't admit it but its the best operating system for the majority of the computer populace. Another thing, people hate Windows and Microsoft, but they love the xbox360, and hate the PS3, its like people have to hate the things that work the best and love the things that don't quite work. The bottom line is, people hate anything that is successful, and why? Because they are jealous, its human nature...for the most part anyway.
Thats my 2 cents.