Windows Vista: What's With The Negative Dogmata?

Hey! Realistic Guy said almost the same ! I like this guy !

The author said: "I'm a senior technical editor with an engineering degree and more than 20 years of engineering-plus-technology analysis experience, so as I regularly remind you all, I'm naturally going to dodge-and-solve problems (without even realizing I'm doing so at the time, in many cases) that'd bedevil most average folks" So am I, and ? Don't even dare to state bullshits like this. You're not talking to noobs here. Don't be arrogant. And sincerely now I have my doubts about your knowledge. Vista is sloooow, sluggish, has a lot of security issues ( I can hack it in FIVE minutes ). Eats memory. Has a freak overhead. It's interface is extremely annoying. Windows 7 isn't much better. Why the hell the OS needs 256MB of video RAM ? It's an OS for dummies. Also made by dummies.

I have been using Vista ever since March 2007 with a Sony Vaio laptop. When it is running it is OK, but I always have to shut it down because it will randomly stop opening Thunderbird or Firefox. My only solution is a crash and reboot because it will hang when trying to close. This happens either with wireless or direct ethernet. I never have problems like this with XP. As of now, I just live with it and assume that I will have to shut it down two to three times a day.

After using XP and Fedora Linux previously, I purchased Vista Ultimate (64-bit) last year. The biggest issues I cam accross compatibility wise were 64-bit driver issues, rather than Vista compat issues (with the exceptions of some old legacy software and games). However, although the security is annoying, you have to do similar things under Linux when it comes to installing software and system config changes. So this is nothing new, and a natural progression. And to be honest, UAC has saved my butt twice. But, the worse problem for me is the explorer, and that annoying way it wants to display folders (it looks for certain files and makes a decision on how to lay folder out), and without tweaks you cant change it. What would have been great, would be the ability to interchange the desktop (like X-windows). But we are forced to use Aero, which is ok hand has some neat effects, but I dont use them. All in all, although still undecided, it's a technical improvement, which is good enough for me.

Hi g122, I feel your pain. If you want to lose Vista on your XPS 420 I can point you in the right direction. It's not simple (Vista won't let another OS overwrite it), you'll need to load the drivers manually, and the Sideshow display will be reduced to playing Solitaire only, but it's worth doing to get the most out of a fine bit of hardware. I've never looked back.

I have a number of computers circling me including my laptop - a Sony PCG-5E1N brought in from Japan by Dynamism. Came with Vista preinstalled, all drivers, all docs in Kanji. I lived with it for about 18 months, but with each successive update it ran slower. Finally bit the bullet, wiped the drive, and installed xp. Vista is an example of creeping featurism.

Linux is the answer, what is your problem?? A few months back, I purchased a fairly nice HP laptop with Vista installed. Before converting the box to Linux (which made the salesman give me all sorts of warnings about the warranty!), I played with Vista just a little bit. The only positive thing I can say is the Aero Glass feature looked neat. But, the software was slow. It was the biggest memory hog I ever saw. It was unwilling to share much of the hard drive for a dual-boot box. Needless to say, booting into my Linux install disk was the best thing about that whole experience.

Vista has been great for me on all me systems. The only hardware compatibility problems I've had were with a scanner and a TV tuner, both obscure and over 5 years old. Even then, it seemed to be a problem related to 4gb RAM memory mapping or unavailability of x64 drivers than anything else. As for the fellow that complained that it was "deliberately" difficult to remove because you can't just stick in an XP disc and run through an XP setup wizard in Vista... Are you kidding? Have you tried to take WinXP down to Win2k or Win98? You'll end up doing the same thing, booting from CD, or worse DOS boot disk, and installing from there.

Brian, how are those asbestos shorts holding out?

I bought a Dell Inspiron 530 desktop last christmas with Windows Vista Ultimate installed.... I can only say it''s a super OS. I have had no problems other than the lack of a driver formy old scanner. This led to my buying a new all in one printer from Canon (my old scanner was also Canon)which is so much faster as the old machine that I am not sorry I was forced into the change. So happy am I with Vista that I have just ordered a Dell XPS M 1330 laptop with Vista Ultimate pre installed. If you have a PC that meets the hardware requirements of Vista you should not have many problems. Remember the hard time MS got when XP was launched!! It doesent seem to matter what Microsoft releases, it''s always lets rubbish it from the masses.

I knew Vista was bad news from the start - partly from a technical side and partly from the "ram it down your throat marketing" side. First thing - they price and ship the consumer machines with Vista Home Premium (AKA crippleware) but, hey, for more money we''ll let you upgrade to the version of Vista that works! Sort of. Why do I call it crippleware? Where to start... The first thing I hit was the "Send LM & NTLM responses" intentional registry botch that made it difficult or impossible to network the VistaHomePremium (VHP) machines to a network running older versions of windows. It took me DAYS of wasted time until I was able to find the hack to fix that problem. Not only did MSFT decide to change that setting, they removed that path in the control panel to change it back! Of course, if you pay for premium, that part of the control panel structure is given back to you. Then there''s the "backup" that doesn''t allow you to backup your entire system - unless you upgrade. Then there''s the "bad user - no system disk!" marketing mentality. On HP''s there is a restore partition, but even on dual disk machines, the partition resides on the boot drive. If that stops spinning, you are DOA. But that''s HP! What about, oh, Sony? Not only is there no OS install/restore DVD, there is no recovery partition either. Sony and MSFT went even further and, at least on the laptop I tried this on, the BIOS seems to have been hacked to prevent the installation of anything other than Vista. Also, all of the config screens were removed, other than boot-order. Think about it. Imagine that you are Joe Consumer who has just bought a new machine because either Windows or Norton has dragged your old hardware into the gutter. Your new one has VHP installed. If the system becomes corrupted, auto-update has trashed their config, or the disk starts getting flaky, then they are completely screwed. VHP has made it HARDER for people to make backups of their entire system when they should be making it effortless. Then there is the memory use. I found it interesting that VHP actually used more memory idling than Ultimate. HUH? More? 800M vs 450M! Another nudge towards upgrading. And of course, don''t even try to run an OS install disk from within Vista. I swear, if MSFT could get away with it, they''d force the PC manufacturers to change their BIOS so that if a user tried to install another OS, it would execute an HCF (Halt and Catch Fire). Vista is Microsoft''s latest step towards having the user RENT their OS. They see places like Cadence and other high end SW companies doing it and they just can help but salivate. No, you can''t have a copy of the OS you just bought. No, you can''t protect yourself from it crashing and taking everything with it... Unless you buy this upgrade that we have designed to cut out the retailers and OEM''s. Even then, if you can''t boot, you had better have backed-up recently because your options are often limited to "Format and reinstall". Most of my customers are on XP and have avoided Vista. With these carved-out BIOS''s showing up and most of the non-business machines being shipped with Vista, I am starting to tell a lot of non-power users to just get a Mac. There''s an initial learning curve, but they would have some of that with Vista as well. In the end, their machines will be a LOT less buggy and I won''t have to keep making excuses for Vista Home Premium turning their machines into bricks.

Microsoft choose to mess up the Vista by integrating things thinking that ''''simple'''' integration will do good for them - without even going to the fundamentals and looking at the architectural limitations. Vista is a mega patchwork to patchwork of things. It is just a bloatware that is not fit to lead the computing industry. They will be wiped clean in long run when either Mac OS X or Linux take over them. Even now they do not have any idea of setting standards - just wait for Apple to release new stuff and simply copy it - and release ahead of Apple and claim that it is theirs. Microsoft itself is a nasty bug to the industry and community - biggest rip of all times. It is a torn fabric. People who try to patch it up is simply wasting their time and they have a false hope.

I've built a PC with an Intel Q6600 quad core, 4gb ram, Nvidia 9600 GT video card and Vista Home Premium. I'm fairly happy with it. I haven't had any problems with hardware compatibilities and only 1 software problem. My biggest joy has been finding how quickly it boots and resumes from sleep mode. My XP machines took far too long to boot and never entered/exited sleep mode with any reliability at all.

I purchased a new pc early this year and it came with Vista home preinstalled. I soon began to wonder what all the Vista bashing was all about. I installed many applications and hardware devices without a hitch. There were a couple of applications which didn't function smoothly until I discovered the software compatibility wizard. Wow, that even allowed a program that I could never get XP to cooperate with to run perfectly in Vista. My Vista experience has been great.

Dear aka, have you tried running the software on Vista in XP- (or prior O/S generation-) compatibility mode? That seems to have solved lots of folks' problems with, for example, Office 2000 (see comments at miniburb.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/outlook-2000-on-windows-vista)

Vista runs much slower even on a machine with nbetter processing power. The boot up time takes 3 to 4 time longer on my new machin than it does for XP on the old. The other issues (in addirtion to 3rrd party driver support) is the incompatibility with other MS products, notably office 2003. Everytime I started ourlook I would have to manually enter the pwd b/c it would not remember it (even after install of SP1). I did stick w/ Vista but as other users have commented I don't see a significant improvement.

You might want to think about us folks that run alot of Rockwell Automation Software in the automation world. It will not work period! And everyone is discontinuing XP, what are we going to do?

Dear Useless innovation, Toshiba should be vigorously spanked for short-changing customers by only shipping the system with 1 GByte of RAM. Any short-term profit boost that resulted from their cost-cutting move was probably more than counterbalanced by subsequent customer support and product return costs.

My son purchased a new Toshiba Satellite A205 that came installed with Vista Home Premium edition on a 32 bit processor with 1GB RAM. That PC was essentially unusable, considering the desire to get work done in a timely and uninterrupted manner. Same problems as reported before for using older SW (sorry, no desire to pay for newer and more bloated products). Took me some time, but I was able to install Windows XP SP3 over the image, even though Toshiba does not seem to be providing or advertising XP drivers for their new laptops. Ended up getting the drivers from the manufacturers websites, and is now usable. I do not understand why there are not throngs people marching over to Redmond with pitchforks and torches? No one could wish to have this ineffective product foisted on themselves, by a convicted monopolist nonetheless. And I am sure Toshiba had no say in what Windows OS they could offer their customers. Seems that innovation leads to fewer choices.

Quick story why I don't like Vista: Bought a new Dell laptop for my wife (can't remember which one - but it has 2GB RAM and average - for 2008 - everything else), and it came with Vista. I thought it was fine and so did my wife. Then, while playing around with the laptop, I change a performance setting to be more "green": choosing "Longer Battery Life" setting rather than the "highest possible performance" setting. I didn't really test it much and went on a business trip. About a week later my wife was complaining non-stop about how slow the computer was, and so I started to putz with it. I honestly thought something had to be broken - it was horribly slow. I've used laptops for years and none were has "powerful" as this one, but none were near as slow in just doing normal tasks - and I always set for the max battery life. (But they were all WinXP or older.) Then, I finally remembered that I changed the performance setting to "highest performance" and the OK performance was back (along with short battery life). So, my conclusion: Vista is a dog if it requires that much power.

Here's why my first experience with Vista was bad: www.mdronline.com/mpr_public/editorials/edit22_30.html

I think that in general people don''t want to change. The windows UI had been virtually identical from Windows 3.x through XP. Vista is a different UI with a different user experience. Vista is actually more efficient to use imho, but only if you take advantage of it.

As a new Vista user, I really don't see what it really did for me. The user interface is "different", but not in a better way that improves my productivity. The UAC pop ups are REALLY annoying, and having to switch into the administrator account to do some installs is also very annoying (could be my inexperience w/ Vista admin work). Maybe most of the changes are visible to MSFT/IT folks?

We've got both in our house. An annoyance is Vista's incompatibility with existing software including some online games. Some providers don't plan an update any time soon. Vista's user interface requires you to remember a whole different setup (yeah, it's all there but finding it...). Plus, the home market is such a large segment these days, that MS should have included better features.

I am a power user and to a degree a road warrior. I like security if it doesnt stand in the way on communication capability. Even with a high end system, Vista had difficulties since it seem geared to regular users. Difficulty in connections in hotels or mobile sites. VPN connections were sometimes probamatic. FTP was interesting. Support capability was insufficent to need and repeat connection when you were at same site but need different port connectivity meant some heavy lifting. Cannt afford the new learning with out preceived benefit on a time value analysis

The negativity is that Vista breaks so many things. That''s why our IT folks are sticking with XP until all the applications and peripheral drivers have caught up.

A small concession: I will say this for Vista - somehow on my new PC it automatically configured my modem and ISP settings so I could connect to the internet without having to install anything. That was unexpected and impressive both. It hasn't bought Vista a stay of execution though, and I'm still determined it must die.

I agree with you can't see why there is so much negativity about Vista, reminds me of the 2000 to XP days, exactly the same excuses and negativity being offered. I have been using Vista since pre-release on Dell 520 + £30 ATI card and fast and responsive enough for me as an electronics design engineer. I have also deployed 16 Vista PC's on mainstream Dell hardware (supplied with Vista Business installed) in our company and not had any major issues. Used the settings and transfer wizard to transfer the users settings from their old XP machines to new one no problems. Get most support issues in our company with XP, only had one Vista issue and that was when a SATA cable fell off, hardly Vista's problem.

I took delivery of a Dell XPS 420 last week, and I was hating Vista within half an hour. It's incompatible with a lot of the old software I want to run, and is deliberately designed to be difficult to uninstall. It's going to take me at least a day out of my life to downgrade to XP, but it will be worth it as this particular machine running on XP is incredibly fast. I can't just insert an XP install disk though, as Vista rejects it; I'll have to work from a boot floppy, install all the hardware drivers manually, and totally wipe the C: drive before I can even start. I'll also lose the use of the 19-in-1 card reader, as only Vista drivers are available for this. Small price to pay, I think.