Working As Intended

I have been reading these artiles or statements about Vista for moinths and find that that has not been my experience. I run Vista with all the “eye candy” and many programs running in the background. For me, it has been significantly faster than XP on the same machine with the same ram, etc. I am very, very happy with Vista and have been since I bought it when it was released. One printer I had since Window 3.1 would not work (no drivers), but the company who manufactured it has not maded printers for the last six years. All the rest of my hardware works great, some even better than under XP. I still have XP on two other machines and will be switching over to Vista soon.

It’s a tantalizing and seductive thing, Windows Vista, and it leaves you out of love forever with Windows XP, while at the same time treating you roughly and disrespectfully and not caring about you at all. Once again I had to reinstall Windows, because the Vista Service Pack 1beta pretty well wrecked me and forced me to reinstall, and this time I was determined to just go back to XP. But then, realizing that it was impossibly hard to migrate all my settings, documents and tweaks from Vista back to XP, I gave up and reinstalled Vista. On balance, I found I was happier with this decision. HOWEVER! it was back to the same old problems — drivers that are supposed to work in Vista but DON’T, program “updates” that collide with Vista in an all-devastating crash, third-party Vista utilities that are useless, futile and inutile, online forum discussions that make me even dumber than I was, Microsoft Knowledge Base articles that are written for Martians, not earthlings, and worst of all, the realization that after a year of fooling with Vista, nobody has a clue yet how to make it work. I have a mental pictures of the software programmers wringing their hands pitifully and occasionally weeping as they try to wade through the totally opaque and heartlessly cruel formality of Microsoft Vista programming documentation. As for the speed issues, getting a dual processor helped a little but not much, and Vista continues to horse-whip my hard drive into a frenzy that never, never stops. What is it doing? Does it do this to Bill Gates, and does he cuss at it and scream, “Why are you doing that? Shut up! Shut up!” Well it’s indexing of course, but what else? Is it still running debugging code surreptitiously? Is it counteracting terrorism? Is it communicating with aliens? I am ready to accept any conspiracy theory now.

Jerry, I loved your ending on your comment. That was a good laugh, I needed it.

This is particularly well written, Chris - even by your standards. You’ve matched clarity,accuracy and tone to present a fair picture.
I manage 50 workstations and 16 servers. Two of our staff wanted Vista - one a software support person, the other a developer - on their brand new laptops..
The developer will be giving me his computer for downgrading in the next couple of weeks. Vista repeatedly corrupted SQL files, periodically hid a directory (verified by MS Support as a bug), showed network connectivity stability issues, etc.
The support person has reported continuing laptop narcolepsy, despite special help from Dell’s Vista Team and all of our best efforts. Achieving stable connections to either wireless and wired networks can never be taken for granted. I am waiting to hear from her when she wants to downgrade her laptop.
I know of no sales rep who is pushing Vista for their business customers.
In fact, there is a growing consensus that the majority of people who are happy with Vista are home users, while the business world finds it to be a raft of trouble.
I suppose the saddest comment I’ve seen was from someone who called Vista the “new Windows ME.”
Ouch!

Vista kinda reminds me of the toy prize that comes in a box of Cracker Jack,

“During the Depression, the company that made Cracker Jack introduced many new products, although most of them enjoyed only a short period of popularity. New treats included Cracker Jack Cocoanut Corn Brittle and chocolate-covered Cracker Jack.”

Vista…. chocolate-covered XP!

I notice here that you state that “speed up” utilities seldom work, yet, you recomend tha kind of app 2 sections below.
Hmmmm.

I have no major beef about vista for general usage it does what it is supposed to do - with all the candy as long as it does not get stressed.

The major problem as a sailor is that most of the current software for navigation, tactics, communications etc does not work on Vista and the suppliers seem to have no intention of creating a vista compatible software. If XP does disappear in 12 months or so what then?
The odd programme that does “work” supplies some very odd results and collapses very quickly - is that a Vista problem?
All we need is a reliable system as a first
Some strength to keep the major cpu usage functionig and software creators that have a bit more faith than “We currently have no established dates for upgrading to vista”