Is Maximum PC Right About Vista?

I have an older HP Laptop. I was more or less forced into Vista when my HD crashed and burned.

I didn’t have my legitimate copy of XP on hand (it was in the states), and my local base exchange was out of XP. They had tons of Windows Vista available though - they must have “believed the hype” and purchased only Vista thinking every single GI would want a copy of the latest and greatest.

Anyway, because I needed a legitimate Windows install on the machine, I opted to try out the Vista Home Premium.

I installed it no problems at all. Everything ran great - a little slower than XP, but still, it ran, and the Aero interface worked great on my system too (because I was smart enough to buy a system with a real video card from a real video card manuf., and not one with a integrated one that robs from the system memory).

When SP1 finally came out, that helped a lot.

My system has been much more stable than it ever was under XP (I have had only one BSOD under Vista with a bad app install - I used to get one a week with XP) and even though it is slower, and sometimes takes longer than I like for it too with certain tasks, I’ll take stability over speed any day!

I am a Linux user (Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, etc…). But I am also the PC repair guy, so I have to fix whatever clients throw at me. Of course, it has been XP most of the time, with a bit of Mac, but now lots of Vista… I have to live with it.

-Why don’t I use it ?
-I always build my own desktop PC’s… I won’t spend money for an OS, when I can legally download one for free… And I also support Free Software philosophically, trying to run (most of the time) on Free Software…

I’ve been using Vista for more than a year and a half, and have now permanently dropped my once-necessary “XP partition”. I use Vista exclusively now, having gone through all the pangs, most of which were caused by old and mindless hardware, and especially by drivers and software that refused to get with it (in fact this problem still persists and software engineers simply refuse to update and/or get it right). However, I went shopping extensively online and gradually replaced every piece of hardware that was balking, or had balky drivers, or ran too slow to be of use in Vista. Running with streamlined hardware eliminated most of the problems, but Vista still has some ridiculous glitches of its own that I continue to wait patiently for Microsoft to fix.

In the meantime I can’t go back to XP. Every time I have to help out a friend with computer problems, I come into contact with XP again, and it seems like a cemetery to me, a small one. Static and immoblile it seems, and I would almost call it entombed. All that’s missing is the headstone.

As for the other OS’s, they’re all great in many ways, with drawbacks in other ways. I download them and try them, and maybe one day I’ll latch on to one, but at the moment I’m not much in the mood for experimentation.

With Vista now running at an acceptable speed on my computer, comparable almost to XP, and with its notorious problems either resolved or backed into a not too bothersome corner, I find Vista feels up-to-date, spacious and flexible, and it’s always nice to look at on the screen.

The disastrously restricted “upgrade paths” and the severe limitations on how you can install or reinstall Vista remain a painful issue, just like acute arthritis. There are times, when you are trying to help someone recover from a system crash, that you have to stand on your head, stand the computer on its head, and console and comfort the weeping computer owner, all because Microsoft has closed almost every geeky door that you could once use to get Windows running again and save the hard drive, and save the files, and save the owner’s bacon. This tight, unyielding, and frankly greedy stranglehold on “installation rights” and activation issues almost did actually put me off from using Vista, but I have now worked around most of it. However, if I see that admonition that I can only start the installation from within Windows, when that fact that Windows is NOT ABLE to run is the very reason why I need to start the installation–well I won’t put up with it any more and I will go looking on the Apple website again.

You have some good points Chris , one of my pet hates about Vista is this .. there is NO effective repair/restore option in the product. and I consider that to be the worst thing of all. From my perspective thats like being told I can have a car but no you are not allowed to have wheels. Excuse me ?? what operating system does not provide users with a fault free recovery process. It may be ideal to recommend new installs , but for an awful lot of people that just is not practical or financially viable.You can talk about backup all you like , people just don’t do it and weep when the disk fails to boot. More often than not in XP I could salvage 99% of their build using the repair/restore process. That is missing in Vista and the so called repair option they provide has not worked once for me yet. In Ubuntu its just a plaything for me .. I might use it as a web browser and possible file storage system .. thats about it or I might just install it on older hardware to get more use out a PC without new cost. VISTA requires new cost and lots of it but no tangible benefits really despite the hype. So I am not that surprised VISTA is a dead set failure and really Microsoft has set this up for itself by encouraging people to get used to a certain style and way of computing that was taken for granted. They are learning the hard lesson that once you give somebody something they like its awful hard to take it away if there is nothing significantly better in its place.Vista is slower , clunky , costs more , needs new hardware , new software , no obvious benefits , requires a new learning curve , an interface not too many people like , intrusive prompts , added security that fails the security test so why would anyone be really bothered. When commentators start looking closely at the real world it becomes pretty obvious why Ubuntu does not attract a great deal of angst and why Microsoft does.

Ken

For a normal netizen I would agree with you but, Chris, you are a dispenser of wisdom and knowledge, a geek guru guide. If you are going to deliver epithets of wisdom on operating systems you need to have those systems available to test so that you are delivering proven data and not just repeated hype.
Chris, I have a lot of respect for your knowledge. You have definately established your place in cyberdelia as a respected superGeek. But now it is time to go farther and challenge the StatusQuo. Get a Vista machine and test for yourself. Become known as someone who finds out for himself and releases real data not just what he has heard. You have the ability and the brains. Have you got the guts?
No matter what you choose you’re still one of the best gurus out here so stay cool.

I have a new notebook that had Vista preinstalled. I didn’t get a OS cd with it. What do I do if crashes? Also most of the software I have been running on the Win XP machine won’t work on the Vista. Now its going to cost me more for new software than I paid for the notebook. I would try to dual boot the notebook with XP if I knew how and could get a copy of XP for a resonable price. It all was just not worth the cost and bother.

pophall: Great feedback, however you need to check the author - it’s Matt, not Chris. ;)

Just so we are clear -

Author Avatar
Is Maximum PC Right About Vista?

Thursday, September 11th, 2008
by Matt Hartley

The avatar is generic, it is used for all authors here.

I work as IT support, and a lot of users have problems with Vista. More than 50% have “slow computer issue”. Some other 25% have strange issues associated only with Vista - but not with other MS operating systems, especialy with the self-protection (install some software like Nero or DivX which load some “drivers” and Vista will consider a hardware change and stop to work since means is pirated). Yes, advise user to reinstall everything axcept the software, then do an update from Microsoft, then install your software. Some exception apply: if you do not have internet, you’re out of lack.

Myself, I do not understant why force all users to have Vista, when Windows 2000 and Office 2000 will work better on these new machine, especially when the features you need are the same ones like on DOS and Word 2…

Other aspects? I had a lot of links to strage behavior of Vista (which were so designed!), and one of them is the next one:

- A year ago, Dr. Peter Gutmann, a security researcher at the University of Auckland (NZ), published a fascinating, eminently readable, scholarly paper called “A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection.” Now you can understant a little:  http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pu…)

hi this abdul
i am also using vista for more than one year
when i bought the system 3 years ago i thought of running windows and linux simultaneously but when i first try to install linux in my system it does not fit with my hardware and all its features does not unlock at i had to run my system with xp but i could get required performance that i expect from hardware and at last i install vista .firstly it put great load on system but i could able to unlock all its features one by one and now i am using it with good reliability