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Vista

I personally am loving Vista.

It seems quicker than XP - but this is probably an illusion caused by my upgrading to a beast of a machine to run it on in the first place!

One of the biggest selling points over XP for me, is the way it deals with errors/crashes/instabilities etc; I have not experienced what I would call a 'crash' with Vista. Under XP, if my graphics card stopped responding, 9.9 times out of 10, it would mean a reboot, and lost data - now, I just get a quick screen flicker followed by a pop-up telling me that my Graphics card 'stopped responding', but is working OK now. Also, when XP came across an error running a program, it was fond of spewing out cryptic technobabble messages like, "Error in catflap 9: sysmemhidoskeycheck 80059435789347" - Vista actually tells me in plain English what the problem is related to, then tries to sort it out by itself, without taxing me too much.

I like this! I bought a computer to do my thinking FOR me, not make ME think harder!
 
SatansMaleVoiceChoir said:
I like this! I bought a computer to do my thinking FOR me, not make ME think harder!
Click to expand...

...but then you installed a Micro$oft OS ?

Hey- fair enough, if it does what you want, great. I think what has underwhelmed many folk is that they were expecting a lot more than Vista seems to offer.

Maybe the problem is less that the OS is no good than that M$ marketing department are too good.
 
I think one of the main problems with Vista is that all the improvements and new features happen in the background and aren't necessarily instantly apparent. Also, MS seem to be promoting it on the strength of its apparent 'shinyness' - ie; Aero - which is more about aesthetics than functionality.

It doesn't appear to be doing anything new, but behind the scenes, it's a whole different kettle of fish. It's the old swan metaphor I think.

It also doesn't help that many of the improvements are things that have been around for a while on Macs, and could really have done with being on XP.

Still loving it though!
 
The Sheep grade "up".

Latest consumer survey report indicates that Vista is selling better than expected http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=8953

I admit I'm a bit surprised, as I have yet to hear a convinving reason for upgrading. It seems we are irresistibly drawn to the new and shiny.

The majority of user in the survey have bought new machines, so it seems many technerds put off purchasing a new pc at Christmas and waited the month for the release of Vista.
Interestingly, of those who upgraded older machines, a surprising number report problems and some have reverted to XP.
 
There's no real reason for upgrading to Vista, unless there's really a new functionality that you absolutely want/need (e.g. disk encryption, DX10) and you don't want to get it from a third party application.

On the other hand, if you are buying a brand new computer (and wants a Windows plateform), there's even less reason to NOT get Vista, as it is superior to XP in many aspects.
 
Well, I have to disagree. The more I use Vista, the more I'm hating it. I really wish I had sought out an older model with XP on it.

Firefox crashes about twice a day. I never had a Firefox crash in XP.
Windows Media Player is apparently not available in Vista. To get Firefox to use WMP you have to manually copy some XP DLL into your program directory.
I have two ISP's both of which provide free virus protection software. Neither package will install on Vista.
At least one game which ran fine on XP will not run on Vista. No surprise really, but Vista offers me no features that I care about more than that game.
It's very slow.
In order to run a program you have to confirm as many as three times, and quite often the program still doesn't run (ref. my anti-virus packages).
Benign start-up programs like Adobe update manager are blocked, and there is apparently no way to unblock them.
The supposed help for all these problems is useless.
I frequently get messages that say "Such and Such a program may not have installed correctly! Would you like to reinstall? When I click on help I get a message that has nothing to do with installation.

I don't recommend it. Period.
 
ChristineR said:
Firefox crashes about twice a day. I never had a Firefox crash in XP.
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I've not had a single Firefox crash in Vista, and I've been running 20 or so extensions for several months. I'd say you've probably got a bad extension installed.

Windows Media Player is apparently not available in Vista. To get Firefox to use WMP you have to manually copy some XP DLL into your program directory.
Click to expand...
This is a pain. I've been solving it with IETab in the meantime.
 
Extensions

Talkback 2.0.0.3
Sends information about program crashes to Mozilla.

That's it.
 
ChristineR said:
Extensions

Talkback 2.0.0.3
Sends information about program crashes to Mozilla.

That's it.
Click to expand...
Hmmm. Well, I guess all I can say is that sucks. :(

My intention was merely to note that the problem you've cited isn't generalizable to the OS as a whole.
 
Bad vista! Bad! Vista, sit!
Lie down, Vista! Have a chewie ($1k)
Stay, Vista Stay! Another chewie $1k
No! no Vista! No! Bad Vista!
Vista, come ($1k)
....
....
...
..
.
 
Tief said:
I tried XP home edition on one of my computers - it was slower to boot than Win2kPro. And it crashed more, a lot more. I took it off and re-installed Win2k.

One of the things I don't like about XP is that I have to select for all file types every time I do a file search, if I want to include hidden files. With Win2k, I set it once and it automatically does this every time I search. This is the kind of thing I call 'bloat' that MS would call a 'feature'.
Click to expand...
This is precisely the kind of comment I alluded to earlier. You installed XP Home once, on a single machine. Perhaps when it was first released?

I have hundreds of installs of XP to compare with your single install and can overwhelmingly state that XP boots up and shuts down faster than Win2k. I've done rebuilds on many network PC's switching from Win2k to XP and the bootup process is certainly faster all things being equal.

Can XP get bogged down over time so this faster shutdown / bootup is now much slower? Certainly. But that doesn't change the overall fact Win2k takes longer to load the gui and the security and user profiles, than XP does.

So you've taken a single experience with XP, and simply used it to bolster you're preconceived opinion of Microsoft OS "bloat".

Again, I would apply the same comment to ChristineR's experience. I've also ran several testbed installs of Vista RC2 and the full release and can report back very good results with no crashing or large application issues. Certainly I have experienced some.

Again, this is not to deny that ChristineR has obviously had a poor experience with Vista, and that it is in fact running very poorly. But how much of that can be laid directly at Vista's feet?

A PC is made up of many things, OS, hardware, drivers, 3rd party drivers and components and add-ins. All can have unpredictable results in how well an OS may run. Or how any particular app on an OS will run.

And how does it explain that there are lots of examples of it running fine for other people?

To have a single bad experience with an OS, on a single machine, and right it off as crap, without knowing the extent of what might actually be causing each individual issue, is a little illogical.
 
voidx said:
This is precisely the kind of comment I alluded to earlier. You installed XP Home once, on a single machine. Perhaps when it was first released?

I have hundreds of installs of XP to compare with your single install and can overwhelmingly state that XP boots up and shuts down faster than Win2k. I've done rebuilds on many network PC's switching from Win2k to XP and the bootup process is certainly faster all things being equal.

Can XP get bogged down over time so this faster shutdown / bootup is now much slower? Certainly. But that doesn't change the overall fact Win2k takes longer to load the gui and the security and user profiles, than XP does.

So you've taken a single experience with XP, and simply used it to bolster you're preconceived opinion of Microsoft OS "bloat".

Again, I would apply the same comment to ChristineR's experience. I've also ran several testbed installs of Vista RC2 and the full release and can report back very good results with no crashing or large application issues. Certainly I have experienced some.

Again, this is not to deny that ChristineR has obviously had a poor experience with Vista, and that it is in fact running very poorly. But how much of that can be laid directly at Vista's feet?

A PC is made up of many things, OS, hardware, drivers, 3rd party drivers and components and add-ins. All can have unpredictable results in how well an OS may run. Or how any particular app on an OS will run.

And how does it explain that there are lots of examples of it running fine for other people?

To have a single bad experience with an OS, on a single machine, and right it off as crap, without knowing the extent of what might actually be causing each individual issue, is a little illogical.
Click to expand...


Though you seem to be a little peeved at me in your response, I must say I have to agree with you. My 'sample size' is not significant, or scientific. And, I don't know whether or not something went wrong during the install.

I'll take your word for it that boot-up and shut-down is faster in XP than Win2k. However, I do say that unless you actually did timed studies during your comparisons, your info isn't scientific either, and may also be biased.

:)
 
Does anyone know if Vista is more stable when running multiple tasks (programs) than XP? I only have a problem occasionally when I am running WoW and AVG virus scan at the same time - heh probably something I shouldn't do.

My guess is that it is more stable, and this is one of those things 'under the hood' that someone might not notice in everyday use.
 
ChristineR said:
Well, I have to disagree. The more I use Vista, the more I'm hating it. I really wish I had sought out an older model with XP on it.

Firefox crashes about twice a day. I never had a Firefox crash in XP.
Windows Media Player is apparently not available in Vista. To get Firefox to use WMP you have to manually copy some XP DLL into your program directory.
I have two ISP's both of which provide free virus protection software. Neither package will install on Vista.
At least one game which ran fine on XP will not run on Vista. No surprise really, but Vista offers me no features that I care about more than that game.
It's very slow.
In order to run a program you have to confirm as many as three times, and quite often the program still doesn't run (ref. my anti-virus packages).
Benign start-up programs like Adobe update manager are blocked, and there is apparently no way to unblock them.
The supposed help for all these problems is useless.
I frequently get messages that say "Such and Such a program may not have installed correctly! Would you like to reinstall? When I click on help I get a message that has nothing to do with installation.

I don't recommend it. Period.
Click to expand...
My experience has been just the opposite. I installed Vista a while ago, and I'm liking it more and more as I become more familiar with it. I've had no unexpected crashes since installing, in fact it seemed to stabilize some games I couldn't get to run in XP, such as Dark Messiah (still runs like crap going down to 30 fps on my 8800 GTX, but it at least runs without crashing now which is better than on XP). My fps seem a bit lower overall on Vista compared to the same game (expect Dark Messiah) while on XP, but I can't really notice the change. Not much of a difference between 140 fps in WoW and 115 to 125, and the slower frame rate is more than made up for in my opinion by the faster load times I seem to have. I have noticed some small glitches, but I was aware of them since the driver notes for my vid card documented them as still needing work. Such as my monitor not being initiated again after Vista goes into sleep mode, and I suspected this will be fixed within the next few driver releases.

As for foxfire, I'm on it right now typing (still don't like IE :) ), and I haven't seen it crash once for me yet. Windows media player works just fine for me, in fact it has features I didn't get in XP. My media player in XP wouldn't do 5.1 surround for me when watching DVDs, I had to use NVDVD instead. In Vista the 5.1 works just fine without me having to change anything in the program, just pick 5.1 from the DVD's audio menu if it isn't the default.

For your problem with startup programs being blocked, you have to open the control panel from the start up menu. I normally change it to classic view over on the left here, then you head down to Windows Defender. Hit the tools button up on top then open software explorer. There is a drop down menu towards the center of the screen, it should default to startup programs, but you can choose to look at running program or services as well. On the bottom left it lists all the programs that are set to start on startup, I normally right click there and group by startup type. This tells you where they're located to start up, either registry entries or in startup folders, etc. It also lists the categories here, such as permitted, not yet classified, or disabled. Permitted and disabled are pretty self explanatory, and not yet classified means that windows defender isn't sure about the program but it is still permitted. At least, that seems to be the way mine is set up, programs like my nvidia control panel, and steam are listed as "not yet classified" but they start up when I boot the computer. If adobe isn't starting for you, check to make sure it isn't disabled here, or it might not be compatible with Vista and unable to start. I have adobe reader 8 and it seems to work fine. Hopefully this will help.

I sure feel like I'm in the minority sometimes, being a person that had a smooth transition over to Vista. There are a few things that get annoying, like many programs for configuring your computer pop up windows asking if you want to proceed... a lot. Also, learning an almost completely new layout for windows took some getting used to. Many of the ways of configuring window components seemed to have changed quite a bit, but for the most part, I'd have to say my experience with Vista has been positive.

ETA - Learned something new... again. Seems that windows defender is put towards the top of your all programs menu in the start menu. Just noticed this, I had been going the long way. :D
 
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Soapy Sam said:
I admit I'm a bit surprised, as I have yet to hear a convinving reason for upgrading. It seems we are irresistibly drawn to the new and shiny.
Click to expand...
Well, that and DirectX 10 only being available on Vista. Games like Crysis, the Halo 2 PC port, Shadowrun, and other DX10 games are about to be released starting this summer. Microsoft is basically forcing gamers to buy the new OS if they want to keep up with current graphics.
 
i recently bought a new laptop running vista. the first laptop i bought came with vista basic. this laptop barely could run vista. i returned that laptop for something with more power, so that i could get a *real* version of vista. the difference was drastic.

thus far, i think vista is quite slick. it comes with a lot of neat eye candy, and a lot of useful eye candy.

the best thing, however, is that vista seems much more secure. unrecognized .exe's require user validation to execute. many basic system operations also require user validation to execute. while this may be annoying, it removes any threat of crazy cross zone scripting exploits that used to ravage non patched XPs, and still plague earlier systems.
 
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