I don’t know, I think that Vista’s not that bad. I admit is probably worse than XP but I kinda like it. Call me a graphic freak or something but I kinda like the graphics and animations of the Vista OS. They may slow the system down, but I’m not in a hurry! Sounds stupid, but that’s how I feel!

I Think Windows Vista Isn’t So Bad, I Have Had Vista For Over A Year Now And Its Had No Probs, Except It Had A BSOD Once! I Mean, Everything Breaks Down Once Or A While. Its A Very Good Operating System!

I am not computer savvy as I have mentioned before. But, I know that Windows Vista is a disappointment. You can’t do this, you can’t do that. Like was said in the post, you don’t even know a dialog box opened because it is behind everything. I give up on alot of things because I don’t know much so instead trying to get out a bunch of books or search the internet for help. I just move on. I was looking into working online and all of them said you can’t have Vista on your computer to work with them. Hmmm. Friends have said once they put the Vista on, this or that program started acting funny.

once again, good day and i need the computer,
Jahada

The thing that bugs me is that MS has made this a worse OS for *me* so that they can be in a better marketing position with media providers.
We’ve got end-to-end internal video encryption, and video card “tilt bits” (plus a need to support them in the drivers).
MS has got the same thing in the works for audio (read some of their device driver developer stuff).
So, this (eventually) puts MS in the position where they can say to music/movie providers “Hey! DRMed stuff on our boxes is secure internally - users have no access - no analog hole! Sell your media through us - not Apple.”.
Great for them, I guess - but it means I get a slower, more fragile (google for “tilt bits”) system, so it sucks for me. Given the market clout MS has, they can force device manufacturers to put those tilt bits into everything they build, so it sucks for me even if I jump to Linux - but it sucks *less*.

Oh - and yes there are *plenty* of ways MS could have plugged the analog hole for their media PCs without impacting all of us. For instance, a blueray player with builtin processor and hdmi out. Control the player through a new API over, say, an internal USB.
Of course, that player would work with Linux or Mac, so maybe that’s why we all get stuck.

Anyway, other than being slower than it has to be (see above) and more fragile than it has to be (also see above), it’s got good and bad, but nothing earth shattering. It *still* has the tooltip bug (tooltips on the taskbar get hidden if you right-click anything on the bar or in the start menu). It has the same capability to run apps at lower user privs as XP (think of it as “runas guest”, but they *still* haven’t done anything useful with it. Wouldn’t it be nice to have your apps that are in close contact with the outside world be incapable of writing to places like program files and systen32? Sigh…

Vista is a real pain for more than just the location of option choices. In designing VISTA Microsoft took away the good things about XP and gave us a turtle like replacement. It’s soooooooo SLOW ! Its User Access function is a total pain in the butt. Security is an issue but not at the expense of speed. You need a $500 graphics card to get a benchmark score of 2.9 WHY ?

But my biggest objection to VISTA is this - there is NO REPAIR/RESTORE OPTION and that is crucial to anyone who has ever turned a PC on to find it will not boot. I cannot see why when I first insert a CD , after power on I cannot get choices like-

1. New Install 2. Upgrade 3. Repair/Restore 4. Compare System Files from DVD against your hard drive 5. Clone Drive to another drive 6. Network Troubleshooter etc so that end users can do 99% of fixing XP
Boot problems without having to reformat and rebuild from scratch.

Microsoft thinks its OK to just wipe a disk and start again. Thats OK in a test environment but not if you have 2 years of data stored and have no clue exactly where it stored. Vista does not come from a decent records management design background and so fails to force users to save into the My Documents folder , which would be a better idea than aero glass (what a joke that is) if they want to be authoritarian. Treating us all as pirates is a pain. I intensely dislike the fact that if my motherboard dies I have to rebuild the OS. Under Win98 I could just drop in the old drive and 98 would load. OK I might have to install new drivers but at least it would start and I could get going again quickly. This is the area where Microsoft O/S costs us all massive dollars in time and effort and I am sure they know and in not responding to this show how little they care about us the consumers telling them what we want versus them being the IT Monolith telling us what they want to deliver and want us to pay for. The whole emphasis of development has to shift away from what techo types say they want as a play toy to what the user market says it wants and is willing to actually pay for. An O/S costing more than $199 just encourages piracy. More than one version of the same product creates confusion. Just sell one O/S with everything enabled at a flat price , streamlines a whole lot of process , simplifies training , reduces overheads but of course loses revenue - not what Microsoft want . So its a good guess that Windows 7 now being redesigned by an Adobe Graphics Programmer will look more like Office 2007 than earlier versions of Windows and I won’t be buying that if it is. Effectively I want Microsoft to continue offering me the closest looking product to XP , without the added load of aero glass (a wank) , I don’t wants gadgets , widgets or other crud on my desktop. I want speed , speeed , speed , ease of use , ease of familiarity , the lowest possible learning and training curve and the lowest dollar cost. It would be nice if the internet speeds could be a whole lot faster as well.

I will wake up next century (maybe - I am old already) and my guess is nothing much will have changed.

Ken McAvoy
Director
Melbourne Based IT Consulting Company

Everyones opions are different some say that it is a total copy of mac os x tiger…it may be true but who knows.! windows vista is a great operating system with very attractive eye candy and will get the job done with a few clicks that is if you have the right system specs like a good ghraphics card lets suppose from a good brand nvidia and a good processor like a quad processor or proberly a amd….its varies. Some people say that vista sucks i get the so called BSOD..yes it may be true but then again what if you have been fiddleing around with your computer .. I do not use vista but i can install vista but due to my bad hardware i cant use it and the booting time and some compatabillity issues.. xp too is a great rememberable OS i mean it also gets the job done and is designed for performance…but look back remember when windows xp was launched and people had Pentium 2’s and started complaining how xp sucks but now look at them they are on xp because they have moved on so someday you better move on too coz u wodnt like to sit in the past would like in the 1970’s with the black and white tv instead you would pefer a 70 inch lcd tv hd something like that so we have to move on!

As someone who has been servicing PC’s for 32 years now, I have two big beefs with Vista……
1) Why did everything have to be re-arranged? I can help people with 95, 98, ME, 2K, 2003, or XP while driving down the road because the bulk of the paths to various functions are similar; but, in Vista, somebody had to build a better mouse trap (I Guess). And as for “easier to use”, NOT.
2) Leaving out the option to “Always Trust This Program” in the UAC was just plain dumb. I have already encountered big box store’s service departments disabling UAC, altogether, and, from what I understand, the result is a weaker security model than XP. Add the fact that most of the “incompatible” software works fine if you “Run As Administrator” and the lack of one, simple checkbox, could well be the reason for Vista’s lack of acceptance.

At the risk of beating a bass drum with a dead horse — the main objection to VISTA is DRM — which turns *your* computer into *Microsoft’s* computer. For the short term, I will stick with XP, and over the longer term, will move to virtualized 64-bit Linux with emulation for those “must-have” WINDOWS programs like OneNote and games.

Vista’s been fine by me, and I haven’t experienced any of the problems mentioned. I recommend it to others and they have all liked the OS, with no significant issues.

I have to admit that there is so much Vista bashing going on (and it seems so spiteful), that it seems much more about hating Microsoft than it is about their products. (And no, I don’t work for them, never have, and I don’t own their stock.)

Really, if you hate them that much, just use Linux and Open Office and quit the whining.

I agree with all of the points you mention except regarding dialog boxes. I actually count that as a real plus over the old system. I can see your point, and its true that you can miss them, but I’m quite a fast typer and if I switch to something else and am firing off a quick email or something while waiting for a dialog box, if it pops up on top I often hit the ‘y’, ‘n’, or ‘c’ keys without realizing the box is there yet (which closes the box before I can see what it is.

Minor point, but I think it speaks to a larger issue that many of the issues you point out are personal preferences rather than outright flaws. Problems with drivers and stability early on were a huge concern, but now that those seem to be fading away (QUICK - KNOCK ON WOOD!!!) I’m actually getting more happy with Vista than I thought I’d be.

Instead of Vista I’m using trial version of Windows Server 2008 (http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/). I’m impressed with stability (not a single crash in the 30 days online), the only crashes were “badly” written programs. That didn’t have any impact on system. I found Windows Server 2008 much more friendly than Vista. I must agree, the settings are somehow difficult (especially Network settings).

I have to say, everyone does have a different experience with computers but I seriously doubt we’re all using these machines in the same ways.

I’ll give you a lovely example of why I think Vista is the biggest POS ever made.

Since day 1, I have had nothing but issues with Vista on this laptop. I’ve had random Blue Screens when using other input devices like gaming mice and gamepads. I’ve been unable to reload my original Vista disc on this machine because it hangs on installation. I’ve had issues with the machine booting up. It never ever boots up on the first try. It always freezes before the windows logo. I end up having to reboot and THEN it works. I’ve had random lock ups happen.

I can’t stand Vista. It’s just not good from where I stand. I don’t need all this extra garbage in an OS. For those of you spouting off saying “run this OS or run that OS instead” I’ve got news for you, the main reason some of us can’t is because most of the stuff we do on PCs can’t be run on other OS’s or run very well.

And before we get all bash happy on the fact that it’s my fault and it’s user error, ID10T error, or Pebcak error, I’ve been working with computers for over 10 years now. I’ve repaired them on every OS since 95 and worked with Macs and Linux systems as well. I know what I”m doing and haven’t had this many problems in my 10+ year history of working on PCs.

Vista definitely sucks!

I suggest you folks play around with your machines a bit more and maybe you’ll start seeing a bit more of the issues the rest of the world is seeing.

Hi:
Kent K. stated “most of the stuff we do on PCs can’t be run on other OS’s or run very well”. I’ve been experimenting with Linux over the past year even though I use Windows for Work and home.

Linux has equivalent functionality for almost anything one can do in Windows. Since Linux functions on one program one thing done well paradigm it will often take more than one program to match a Windows equivalent. For example, Open Office Writer plus Scribus plus Lyx beats the pants off Microsoft Word. Second, if you include some Unix non-free software you might need to buy and recompile there is little one can’t do even with specialist packages. Third , in answer to Kent K. , Wine or Crossover office can run many Windows programs (i.e. Office, Adobe, etc) pretty well. Ditto with Crossover Games or Cedega for games. So one can still compare head to head Windows vs Linux and/or UNIX on your machine and see what works for you. For non-technical users that may be a bit much, but for people writing for this board it seems a realistic alternative.

I plan to pass up Vista because it is much harder to maintain for an individual. It is more a corporate system OS. With XP plus a couple of utilities I can keep the cache and registry clean, fight malware and stay defragmented and have everything roll along. For me the tipping point will be with Windows 7. If the next OS isn’t more user friendly and controllable by an individual then I could well bite the bullet and go to Linux. Windows has an inherent advantage of convenience: The OS and apps all come in bundled packages and you don’t need to think about mixing and matching. Yet what price convenience. We shall see.

Here is where it stems from. People who are ok with vista are people who have never used other operating systems. this is because what was a one click solution to find what you needed, now requires 5 or 6 clicks on links to unknown locations. things like control panel with all your options in one place are now segmented into 15 different locations. the reason people are upset isn’t that they hate microsoft. those people already dont use xp. the problem is that they wanted a good opperating system and vista failed them. they had high hopes for it and wanted to see just what it could do. only to find that its the worst thing sence ME edition.