stmadeveloper

So my laptop bites the dust and I decide it's time to just get a box since I wasn't roaming around with the laptop anyway. I'm probably going to pick up a macmini with the money I saved buying the box instead of a laptop.

Of course any new PC you get has vista on it - and I was dreading it after reading all the horror stories.

I've done some programming, done some graphics, made a video, browsed, played music, etc.... -- not a single problem.

I turned off the annoying permissions things and that's about it.

Don't get me wrong - I've got my copy of XP and a UBUNTU partition just waiting to be installed if I change my mind - but it's not that bad. Don't notice a speed issue, or anything else to complain about.

Maybe the secret is just enough CPU/memory

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nickycakes

why should you need more cpu/memory for an OS that doesn't provide you with any new functionality?

my new laptop had vista and bluescreened on me twice in the first hour of it being on
never using it again.

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selven

Vista is great for new PCs, problems always occur on old or poor performance computers

LazyHippy

I've stuck with it too. Gonna have to use it sometime, right? Or are all the anti-Vista windows users still using 98SE?

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sampunk

same shit happened to me, took it out right away

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KSRothwell

I'm using my girlfriends brand new laptop running vista, and I hate it! It's a $5000 alienwear gaming rig that crashes every time we try and play anything that isn't DirectX 10 compatible. All the newer games run great, but anything that was made more then a year ago, can't be run without there being huge issues of some kind. I hate Vista.

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HarveyJ

Vista isn't problematic for every day users... In fact, if you don't know much about the back end of your system Vista is perfect for you. I'm not saying you're an idiot or anything, just that Vista is designed for the VAST majority of computer users: Ones that don't actually know how to use a computer.

If you're someone that tinkers around a lot with a computers internals, or does coding, hacking, digital forensic work, BETA testing, or happen to be a serious power gamer, then Vista is a serious pain in the arse.
The biggest problem if you're a serious computer user is the way it sandboxes the entire OS so you can't fuck it up too badly (this is why it's so amazingly resource hungry).
Problem #2 is that to do this, it sucks up 200-300% more resources than a fully functional OS like that should. That you need a 2gb of RAM to run a computer at all is actually pretty stupid if you think about it.
Also, if you run a laptop, it'll chew through the battery. Running all that extra code means more processing, means more electricity used, which means more heat, which requires more cooling, which means more electricity used... It's a downward spiral that leads to poorer performance.
It also has a nasty habit of reporting back to MS what you've been up to, and if you block it at the outgoing firewall level, it throws a hissy fit and refuses to work... I get the feeling this has been implemented and MS are just waiting for the day that it's actually legal to prosecute people using info you've actually stolen from their computers.

There are other problems... MANY other problems...
But most people will never notice them, and they're starting to get into the more technical realm anyway.

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johnmatrix

can you back up ANY of those claims HarveyJ?

Im no novice.. I've used osx, centOS, gentoo, redhat.. all that crap and I absolutely love vista. How exactly is it sucking up resources? dont base it on ram usage because it caches things in the ram so they load faster... it doesnt mean vista is 'hogging' the ram, theres no point leaving ram unused is there?

I ran vista on 1gb ram perfectly, recently upgraded to 2gb and noticed no increase in performance except loading times for games like crysis.

dont like the constant confirmation box popups? DISABLE UAC IN CONTROL PANEL.

Im running winamp, msn, pidgin, opera, firefox, IE, dreamweaver and photoshop and my cpu usage is at a whopping 6%, and vista is using 1.3gb of my 2gb ram as a cache, the remaining 700mb is being used for all those currently running apps. such a resource hog.. not to mention i have an uptime of roughly 6 days and it is still stable as a rock. People love to hate microsoft, thats what it comes down to.

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aim

Vista really isn't horrible. It's like a pretty version of XP. I have it because I upgrade computers about every 6 months and it just comes with the new equipment.

Either way, (and geeks have been saying this for years) the OS is on its way out, that's a fact. So whether you're on Windows/Linux/OS X soon it's not going to matter.

We all live in our Web browsers 90% of the time anyway, so unless I'm coding/designing, I'm in Firefox.

emp

I just dread "upgrading" to Vista.
Why?

- Driver problems
- bloatware
- more driver problems
- DRM
- ...

And all that when I am really, really happy with XP.

::emp::

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xmcp123

I agree. It's actually quite decent. I only had one problem so far with it, and that was actually a result of hard drive failure.
My uptime is now weeks-months, where on XP the system would slow to a crawl after 3-4 days. It has a few annoying traits, but overall, I really like it.

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johnmatrix

Dont know why anybody would have any driver problems except if they're using hardware from the 80's or something. Sure there WERE driver problems when it was released.. i had to wait a couple weeks for proper nvidia drivers, but theres absolutely no troubles now.

DRM is bullshit, it wont affect you. you can do exactly the same stuff you do on XP.

Dont know what you define as bloatware.. but it doesnt feel very bloated to me. You cant blame the OS for being large, it has to support millions if not billions of hardware combinations. OSX only has to support their own limited amount of hardware, and linux.. well it doesnt support hardware very well at all (ati drivers anyone?)

vista is not just a pretty version of xp.. most of the components have been redesigned from the ground up. I wish people would read about the changes that have been made before claiming its nothing but xp with eye candy.

Technical features new to Windows Vista - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Security and safety features new to Windows Vista - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Windows Vista networking technologies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Windows Vista I/O technologies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Management features new to Windows Vista - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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-Matt-

I never had problems with Win XP, and still use it on one of my computers. Other than that I stick with Linux and Mac.

emp

And the one thing they did NOT do, that they WANT to do for 20 years now, the ONE thing that would have made me preach to strangers on the street about Vista...

they didn't.

Database based file system.

::emp::

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emp

I see your vista technical links and raise you some vista bad stuff:

Testing Shows XP Still Outperforms Vista - Software - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness
Yahoo! Personal Finance
Vista fiasco continues with retreat to XP | Storage Bits | ZDNet.com

::emp::

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-Matt-

And there's this again:
YouTube - Vista install in 2 minutes

joshmv

Switched to macs a couple years ago and I honestly think it has been one of the best decisions I've ever made.

I won't go into all of the reasons why since that could take hours, and I'm sure some people here will disagree, but in my eyes they are better without question.

LazyHippy

Argh! Let's not get into the old PC v Mac debate again!

While I'm generally happy with Vista, that's because I've got an ok spec PC. I personally wouldn't bother on a P4 or less, but on my core2duo (low one - 2x 1.8Ghz) with 3Gb ram (dirt cheap) and a couple of 256Mb gfx cards it runs fine. The only problems I have is a memory leak from some firefox add-on that I can't be bothered to try and identify.

I probably wouldn't use it on a laptop either if battery life was important, but I was with the anti-xp crowd back in the day and stuck with 98 for ages. It's kinda nice to get to grips with what will be (like it or not) the de facto standard OS for likely most of the next decade early on.

Yeah, it does hold your hand way too much and is overly-protective of stuff, but it's not hard to change permissions etc really. The stuff about it reporting your ever move to M$ is kinda worrying, but if they really want this info for evil purposes they'll find a way to get it from XP too.

I'm not exactly M$'s biggest fan just too fuckin Lazy to switch to Linux, although I prob will when I get another laptop. I don't doubt my PC would be faster with XP too, but I don't need it to be any faster so why take a step back? As for Macs....

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Lucidity

Vista has run rock solid from day 1 and is as responsive as XP ever was for me. I mostly play games and do web dev stuffs and I've never run out of resources in any situation. Well, okay...there was this one time I was being indecisive and had 20 porn videos open at once...that slowed things down a bit.

To anyone who's going to be installing Vista or getting a new Vista machine soon: use Vlite. I shaved almost 2 gigs off the Vista install DVD with this.

tweak50

I am a web developer and a pretty serious programmer. I have to say that I have had zero problems with vista.

I have vista running on a 3 year old desktop with 1gig of ram and on a 1 month old laptop with 3 gigs of ram and it runs about the same. Really the only difference I notice is start up times are a little quicker on the laptop.

I have no actual proof to back this, but I think the extra battery consumption is minimal compared to XP. If I get time I will partition an xp install and test this for sure because this interests me.

Yeah that is shady.

Now I'm not saying that Vista is perfect, or that everyone will like it. But it is not nearly as bad as the media has made it out to be, once the fad of bashing Vista goes away people will realize the value of it.

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HarveyJ

I was going to post the links that emp did, ah well...

I had a few other articles from gamer sites, but I can't be arsed finding them
again. I'll admit, the problems I have with Vista are entirely anecdotal. It could have been the setup I'm running and that it does work peachy keen for most people. I've just heard too many horror stories to believe that personally though.

My battery life claim is based off running it on the Dell Inspiron 1525 my mother has. It was sitting on the charger, fully charged. I took it out, the battery was down to 14% after leaving Spiderman 3 on in the garage to "keep me company" as I was cleaning things out for her. The week, after installing XP on it, I plonked a cousin in front of it, Spiderman 3 again. Battery life at 33% after the movie. Not very efficient test, but it's a pretty big difference...

The resource hogging issue is based entirely around the way that the OS sandboxes itself. That should be a no brainer. Instead of making an OS that sandboxes, just make an OS that isn't so easily exploitable that sandboxing becomes a "logical" solution...
I mean, the fact that there's a feature to let "friends" remotely login to fix problems for you? Insanity!

Anyway, the 3 days I had it on my machine (again, pirated copy, maybe that the reason it fucked up?) was beyond frustrating.
Driver issues with my Wacom tablet and ActiveSync for my phone, and it refused to believe my monitor had a refresh rate of 70Hz, so occasionally I'd get that really annoying flicker.
Constant rejection of software I was attempting to install because it wasn't "Verified", as I hadn't bothered to turn my modem on (you know, sometimes, and call me crazy here, I don't want my computer connected to the net... It's like leaving the phone off the hook)
It did network like a breeze though...

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emp

Thing that pisses me off mostly is that 2nd link I posted, basically stating that Windows Vista will be replaced in a year. Making this the Windows ME of today.

::emp::

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tweak50

I we still have a couple of years left of Vista. If anything we'll see an early beta this year. I really don't think we'll see a major overhaul in Windows until they get the balls to dump all of the legacy code and start from the ground up.

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Rage9

Fuck vista, never liked it. If I did buy a computer with it on it, you can bet I'll just install XP.

Windows 7 in 2009? Be careful what you wish for
Windows 7: The Anti-Vista? | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com
Windows 7 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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HarveyJ

I loved that whole period on 2000-2001... THREE whole operating systems released in 19 months! Yeah, great for consumer confidence that is...

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Ted

I've had lots of problems with vista though most of them are sorted out after my 8 hour battle to install SP1.
The issues I still have are the slowness of unzipping files and moving files, the unzipping is fixed by winrar but still havent worked out how to make file transfers faster.

I'm in the middle of putting together my first linux box and if all goes well, once I'm as proficient with it as I am with windows, I don't see myself using microsoft products again.......

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BillyHayes

What a spectacular setup and install you have going there then..thats quite an accomplishment.

Try buy some quality stuff or do a proper OS install before complaining about Vista...

BillyHayes

Depends on the hardware you have, and if proper XP drivers are available.

Easy way after digging tru the manufacture drivers homepage is to identify the components name (with a software like Everest for example) and look for the drivers directly

AdExhibitJason

I dont mind vista to much just so much garbage around it.

JoeHa

i would put vista and mac ox on the same level.. But never beating xp.

WebRef.eu

My Toshiba Satellite Pro Vista laptop blue screened after doing it's first ever Windows update.

The computer takes ages to boot up which is frustrating.

Generally the software seems to take longer to do things, so it feels like a step back.

Rgds

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AdHustler

i have vista on an HP laptop i recently bought. I was a little afraid that it came stock with VISTA but honestly its been fine.

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smoosh

Frankly, I've had nothing but problems since i bought a new laptop that came with Vista. My old desktop is stable as hell and seems to work much faster with most software, that baby is running an XP Pro. I also experienced quite a few bugs with running Vista, the most frustrating of which is the security popup - the problem would only occur when the comp's been running for a while and would result with me being unable to change security settings even though i am logged in as admin. I would have to reboot the machine and then change the settings. System stability and speed is also a major issue - i disabled that stupid dynamic windows file that allowed me to preview the actual window once i roll over it in the task bar. Still, that thing is slow as hell!
i iz not a happy chap.

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I got a new toshiba laptop and so far so good. I only had one blue screen, but I suspect it had something to do with having too many programs on/never turning off or restarting my computer.

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spock49

I upgraded to Vista 64 bit because I wanted to take advantage of 4GB of memory.

For those using Adobe CS3 products (photoshop, fireworks, illustrator), be aware that having aero turned on will negatively impact certain functions like vector path tool, etc (at lease for me, they ran very slow with my ATI x1600 vid card)

I ended up turning off all eye candy stuff and everything seems to work much faster. I didn't want XP 64-bit because of lack of drivers (worse than Vista 64-bit).

cabron

I just hate the fact that it uses 1 GB of ram on idle. I switched back to a tuned xp with the same looks and uses 250 MB. Also game compatibility is an issue with vista.

backdraft

Vista made me remember how much i loved Windows XP.


Besides all the more ram etc that it uses as I have 4GB of that anyways......its just nauseating hehe

FSHD$$$

I'm due for a new machine and because of what I've read about Vista I'm buying a iMac and I'm going to use Safari. I have the only Windows machine in this office and I'll keep my old PC if for no other reason but so that I can see what my work looks like on a PC but I'll be a Mac girl very soon, thanks to Microsoft.

ArtDeco

"Vista is great for new PCs, problems always occur on old or poor performance computers"
Err wrong. I have a brand new Dell with 4 gig of RAM and Vista preinstalled. It ran so poorly that I partitioned the 500 gig drive and installed Linux. Rarely even boot Windows anymore.

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