I purchased a copy of Vista 64 about four months ago. I paid a chunk for it - too. Now it sits in the drawer from the first day I put it on and then took it straight off again. It is unuseable; with constant error messages that don’t really exist. It operated so slowly on the computer - and so badly - that I had to put XP 64 right back on I’ve been building computers for a few years now, and must say that I am personally dissappointed with Vista. If Microsoft doesn’t entirely overhaul Vista in a timely fashion; I can see a VERY large class-action suit imminently. All those laptops and desktops made by Dell and other large manufactures are constantly crashing - forcing them to put XP back on these machines to satisfy their customers - this will force Microsoft to solve these problems NOW rather than LATER. It is time for Microsoft to come up with the goods NOW- or face a class-action lawsuit for which I will want a piece of flesh as well. Get with it Microsoft; you had to do the same thing with XP years ago - and now XP is still the best OS out there for the common Joe. The time for this overhaul is NOW………

Maybe for resellers Vista has been problematic because the general public have little understanding of operating systems, and how their computer actually works. Personally I’ve been on Vista Ultimate 64bit for about 5 months now and have found it to be just as good as XP in many respects, and better than XP in some respects. Yes it has steep hardware requirements but if you have a high end machine Vista really starts to shine.

I have Vista Business edition on a high end laptop and its working great. My initial idea was to rip it off and install XP when I got the laptop. But so far, I’m happy with the Business edition of Vista.

[...] I do, at least on my desktop. Just read this article a few minutes ago about Vista sales moving backwards. I’ve been putting much thought into purchasing a mac. Multimedia-wise, I think I could benefit. [...]

Robert, I think many will be moving to Macs or Linux because of Vista. Thanks for the comment.

Nathan and Tom, thanks for the comments. I am sure there are those who do understand computers, and how they work, yet move away from Vista. The ability to write drivers for the operating system would be needed to make Vista work for many. Since MS has proven they can’t do it very well, what chance do most of us have?

I am a computer consultant here in Tucson,AZ and have been in business since 1988. I have always built machines for my clients and been pretty solidly in the MS camp vs. Mac and Linux.

So far, NO clients that have had me build them a machine have asked for Vista. They have all requested XP. All but one client who purchased a pre-built computer elsewhere have had me wipe Vista and install XP.

I installed Vista Ultimate on my Shuttle XPC with an AMD64X2 6000+ / 2GB RAM, nVidia 512MB video card and nVidia Dual-TV card and ran it for about 2 weeks and took it off and reinstalled XP MCE. My Visioneer Strobe Pro wouldn’t work with Vista, my printer wouldn’t work properly with Vista, my Bluetooth adapter wouldn’t work, etc. There was no way I was going to spend another $1000 upgrading all my hardware and software that wouldn’t work with Vista. So… back to XP it was.

Also, Steve B. telling us to recommend an All Microsoft solution to clients including using MS One Care and Defender - give me a break! My clients just look at me and laugh if I mention MS security products and they pretty much ask me why they should trust the same company that built the OS and software with all the security holes in them in the first place with their security. And, why should they have to pay the company that created the problem for a solution to protect them from the same problems? I don’t even bother mentioning it any more!!!

I have to say, as someone who has used Macs since they were called Apples, this is a new low for M$FT. Their own users (and the retailers!!?!) refuse to use it…damn. Just…wow.

TucsonMatt, I agree that it is bad form when no one likes the product, those that matter anyway. This brings up a new point…if MS is so good at coding, why don’t they whip out some new drivers for EVERY piece of hardware that XP supports. New things that XP does not support can be handled by those companies hoping to sell their hardware, but if XP supports it Vista should. No excuses.

Thanks for the comment.

Ricky, I’m sure Mr Jobs is sitting quietly smiling somewhere.

Thanks for the comment.

I recently bit the bullet and purchased a 15″ MacBook Pro and before that I used an old iBook [G3], despite having a very capable–at least technically–HP laptop and desktop, which both run XP Pro. While initially pricey, the MacBook Pro [running OSX 10.4.10] is vastly superior, both in terms of hardware and software, in every regard. (One kernel panic/crash in 4 months is simply unheard of for XP, where it’s almost a daily situation.) It will even run Windows without too much trouble, thanks to BootCamp. (Alas there are some programs that must be run on a Windows system and it makes interfacing with other computers/networks a little easier.) For this dual partition I decided to use XP Pro and, indeed, the thought of running Vista–from my admittedly limited expose to it–terrifies me. Vista struck me as a retread of XP to look and feel more like OSX. And this is the opinion of someone who has used–and loved–MS products since Windows 3.1. I’m certainly not trying to be Mac-chic.

Andy, thanks for the comment. As someone who uses XP Pro on several machines, I don’t think MS is incapable of making Vista work, but they are greedy, and release things in beta form as finished products. I use a machine that stays up for days at a time, and I haven’t seen a BSOD since I replaced memory 6 months ago. Yet, I know that others don’t have my experience with XP. Still I know Vista will be ok one day, but truthfully, it will probably be just about the time MS is about to foist another unfinished OS upon the public. I would say XP became GOLD about the time of SP2, and that was almost 3 years after its initial release. On that same timetable, Vista should be ready in about 2010.

I had another thought after I answered Andy’s comment. I wonder how many problems with Vista are due to the ‘uncorrectable errors’ reported inherent to the Intel Core 2 Duo procs? It would be interesting to see the breakdown of Vista users along the lines of processor usage. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see that the AMD users are much happier with Vista, and objectively have fewer difficulties with the OS itself, apart from driver problems.

This is a quite a laugh for me. Financially I haven’t had any interest in moving to any other OS (except Linux) or computers (aka. broke!). Although Apple is sounding more appealing everyday.

I was wondering if those with Vista preloaded in machines are having less trouble than those who upgraded? When I installed XP (as to buying a computer with it pre-installed) I seem to remember more quirks and squabbles occuring.

To me Vista seems to lean a little more toward eye-candy and DRM than the much promised benefit to consumers/users.

Vista still in beta?!! It’s terrible to think that the largest software company on earth, given the better part of decade with re-work delay on top of re-work delay, cannot produce a better product. Out of control greed is one thing (I expect it … this is Microsoft after all) but incompetence is another. Perhaps MS is functionally incapable of doing any better. Could it be that we are seeing the first cracks in the Microsoft monolith? With OSX, Ubuntu, Red Hat and other GUI/OS, the competition (and critically the public’s willingness to give these systems a try) is certainly growing for Mr. Gates and his dark-side cohorts.

Andy, it is amazing when you consider how many men and how many years. But, since Vista is so modular, or at least that’s what we’ve been told, it should be simple enough to debug the separate parts before putting it all together.

Perhaps there has been too much resting on the laurels.

Thanks for the comment.

I-user, I never had any trouble with XP on any machine that was done as a clean install. Vista is giving people fits on a clean install.

Staying with XP is probably the hot ticket for at least another year, maybe more.

Thanks for dropping by.

I upgraded to Vista about a month after it was released to the general public, as I knew the software security company I work for would have to support it eventually and I wanted to get familiar with it. I dual booted with XP Pro for awhile, but have recently deleted XP Pro as I have all of my applications working fine in Vista now.

None the less, there isn’t a compelling reason to upgrade. The OS is not more stable or secure than XP from what I have seen. I would say that moving from XP to Vista is kind of like moving from Win98 to WinME. Lots of fluff, but not much to recommend it.

swayne, nice to hear your upgrade was so uneventful. Thanks for the words, we know everyone is not having a disaster, but for most it isn’t bliss.

Of the many persons I know who have purchased a PC with Vista all but one ended up removing it and installing XP. Some of these people are experts and just didn’t want a slow bulky OS. Others were people who just wanted to use a computer but didn’t have a great amount of computer knowledge and all the problems interfered. The answer to them was simple go back to XP because they didn’t have problem until the were using the new version of Windows. (don’t have to be a computer expert to figure that out)

The one person I know who has not switched his machine to XP has not had his machine long. I would not be surprise if he eventually switches after having to deal with the Vista for a while.

Vista has not completely been a flop. I have been an IT consultant since 2003, and working with semiconductor industry since 1999, so I can provide a more technical point-of-view.
Just give it time, service pack 1 will be released, and then 2.
I believe after sp2 we’ll start to be happier customers again.
And all the silly remarks of Mac vs. Microsoft… one question… why?
I have built thousands of workstations using windows xp and the amount of these workstations that crash every day = zero.
for the most part xp is a fairly stable platform, it’s the app’ providers that are creating alot of headaches for IT.

I’ve been using MS products since I started using computers; starting with DOS. I have several computers running XP, Pro, Home, and Media Edition. I recently bought a new portable with Vista pre installed; in some ways I like it, in most ways I don’t. The first thing was my partner going out right away and paying several hundred dollars for a new printer that was supposed to be Vista ready; it wasn’t, it required several driver and program updates and still won’t work every time via my network. The printer is on the most part the a replica of the one replaced. It does print sometimes and other times it doesn’t, that makes it even more difficult to find the problem. I know my way around pretty well all PC Operating Systems from DOS, NT, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, Me and XP. Vista is a pretty strange animal as far as I am concerned; I should have put it on my main desktop as a second OS to start, that would have given me a chance to learn it and its problems. What will I do? I’m not sure as of yet but I am considering replacing Vista with XP Pro. Microsoft needs to take a second look at this problem. As for high sales, yes there is no doubt they have high sales but most likely because almost all computers bought new now have Vista on them. When I bought the new portable I could change almost anything on it; the Vista operating system was mandatory.

OOZ, other than cash in the pocket for MS, how has it been a success? I’ve been a consultant in some form or another since 1989, and believe me it is not always the best product that wins. If that were so, we’d all be using some form of OS/2. Vista has been a flop on so many levels, not the least of which is that, despite all its highly touted security features, it was tested [CRN Magazine, 5/07] as being only SLIGHTLY more secure than XP. It doesn’t have anything revolutionary, not really evolutionary, either. The WOW starts when you say, ‘I paid how much for all this disappointment?’

If you look at my comment above to Andy, you’ll see we agree, that after about 3 years, and Service Pack 2, it should be fine. Two reasons why are 1] MS and their bloated code always runs better on machines that are 2 years faster than what was available at the time the product was released and 2] in the 3 years of hearing what garbage they foist on the public, they usually come around and fix things.

But why should we have to suffer with what is essentially a beta for 3 years while they fix what should have been fixed before it was released? You can say all code has bugs, and I’ll agree, but when you see the patches coming out for XP and Vista, and the patches are repairing the same problem…I know I say that MS has learned nothing in 6 years of XP fixes, and that they were too stupid to work with known good code and improve it.

Remember, Bill Gates is a marketing genius, not a computer genius. Ballmer is nothing more than a blowhard, and any talent they have is only there for the money, so that when they become sufficiently rich through stock purchases, they leave. This is why they are now crying for people. They tend to burn out good programmers. If the company had its sights on the right thing, Vista would be something they were still working on, with sincere apologies to the customer, and the Service Pack 3 long overdue, would have been released.

Thanks for the comment.

Jim, MS has always had high sales because of the marketing of Mr Gates, which clearly was genius. There is no doubt about his sales prowess. His thoughts on how software should work, the projects he has untdertaken, and the way his company has treated certain people are all suspect.

As I was telling OOZ, if life was fair, and the best product always won out, we would all be using some form of OS/2, because IBM knows a lot more about bulletproof code than MS, and, of course, we would have used Sony Beta VCRs instead of anyone’s VHS offering. Also Lotus 1-2-3 would still be the spreadsheet everyone wanted, and it would do all that Excel does, with half the hard drive space, and Wordstar would be the word processor of choice.

Thanks for the comment, good luck with your laptop.

Wow, hasn’t this page just turned into a Vista lovefest!

The almost unanimous annoyance, if not hatred, leveled at Vista and MS is somewhat surprising to me though. I would have thought that MS could have at least made Vista superior to XP. And if these are the comments of the technically savvy, how must the ’silent majority’ of Vista users be suffering? The very same silent majority that has made MS the de facto standard in personal computing. Apparently, suffering enough to spend extra to have Vista “downgraded” to XP on their new systems.

I would have to concur with THE ORACLE’s comments, it seems that marketing considerations have dominated MS’s decision to unveil Vista at this time. MS’s crass attempt to stay relevant in the face growing competition at the expense of its customers. The real question is whether and for how long those very same customers will tolerate such abuse.

OOZ seems to be the lone dissenter in this regard and this fact alone makes his opinion suspect to me. But with all the respect that is OOZ’s due, he must be living in a strange parallel universe where 1000s of XP workstations run every day without a single crash. [Delusional or just heavily invested in MS stock?] Even his best advice regarding Vista [as was the public's experience with XP] is to give MS three years or so and by then they will have worked out the bugs–no doubt just in time to sell you the next “quantum leap” in Windows software. Now who is being silly? Didn’t MS learn anything from their experience with XP?

From the posts here, another problem with comparing XP to Vista in this way is that XP was worth the wait, enduring the bugs, and the multitude of security holes. It indeed was a quantum leap over its predecessor. The hype was real for once. I certainly recall being impressed after upgrading to XP from 98SE. It wasn’t a difference in degree but in kind.

Andy, thanks for stopping by.

i have been asked to remove vista from every laptop and desk top i have sold in the last three weeks! Just this week a new customer with a brand new laptop has hired me to take vista off. She purchased the machine via her brother (2,000 miles away ) and he is forwarding a new XP pro to her. these customers claim to be informed so are not following my opinion. I have tried vista beta on my 2year old Ga-7n400 pro - Athlon, ddr dual ram system which flies under xp, and there is not one Vista driver available for any of the devices except the drives! N DVBtv, no sound, no internet poor graphics ( FX 5200) I will stick with xp and this hardware thanks MS