Honest opinions on Vista

I have been having a personal battle trying to decide whether I should get a Mac or a PC as my next computer as you may seen in another thread. Anyway after a bit of playing around with a Mac in my local Apple store and being very impressed I would now like to ask anyone who has Vista what they honestly think of it. It is the only thing that is truly stopping me from getting another PC. Am I worring over nothing? How does it perform and is it a step up from XP or not?

Any advice would be great,
Jason.

Right now I would steer clear of it. I had XP on my 1.8ghz, 1gig ram, Radeon X1600 PC and everything was sweet. Since upgrading to Vista simple things like browsing folders, copying/deleting files etc has become the biggest chore. Sometimes it takes 30 seconds just to open a folder while it indexes it (at least I think that's what it's doing). Sure, I could upgrade the RAM, but I don't see why I should have to that for handling files! The security checks are also a new bane of my life. Being asked for confirmation every time you want to open a damn rar file is not my idea of progress.

I also dislike the attempts to abstract the folder system. It's trying to be like OSX but it's sort of stuck halfway between the old simple, logical system and the mac way of doing things.

And what's with the button that makes all the windows go 3d? It's the most utterly pointless feature imaginable but hey, it looks nice in the screenshots.

In short - I hate it with a passion.

I don't have a problem with it on my laptop, but I would still go with XP for now, 6 months from now it would be Vista.

What are you laptop specs dynaman?

At work we have plenty of Vista problems, drivers not working properly etc. Generally it seems pretty solid though.

I'd wait for a bit until going for vista, like every previous windows operating system, it's only ever any good after the first service pack.

I like Vista. It is arguably prettier than OSX and the look and feel of any operating system that I'm going to spend significant time using is very important to me.

It isn't quite as stable as WinXP or OSX, but it is still reasonably stable.

If you get a new machine it will probably run vista fine. Any new hardware from well-known brand names will run fine.

Asus, Nvidia, Ati, and so forth, no problem. Get expensive and stable memory and components.

The operating system IMHO is nicer to use than mac.

> What are you laptop specs dynaman?

I don't know the exact specs, it is actually my Wife's machine. It is 3 monts old and was a low end machine for $600. The one thing I made sure it had was a gig of ram. I can get the stats tonight if you need them.

I've moved to Vista during the beta period and now all of my machines have Vista Ultimate installed. No way I am going back to XP. Vista is simply more fun.

Barney

I'm just curious why my main pc is slow damn slow. I mean unbarably slow at times. Like I say, it has a gig of ram, decentish gfx card. Hits 3.6 on the perfomance meter thingy (out of 5?) which doesn't sound too bad. Ahh, I dunno.

It's really sexy to look at, runs like a lame dog and explorer is a nightmare to navigate unless you're used to OSX finder. It's a necessary purchase if you want to ensure your software is compatible.

It depends on your hardware. I'm running Vista Home Premium on a E4300 (OC at 2,4GHz), 2 GB RAM and a GeForce 8800GTS and I have to say: I'd never go back to XP again. With Aero and the right hardware Vista feels more responsive. MacOSX is cool as well but you'll have headaches sometimes when your software just runs on Windows (especially games).

So on a new PC Vista should run well or is it still as slow as a lame dog? In other words is it a hardware or software problem?

Jason.

works flawlessly on the lady's 3200 athlon with 1 gig and ati 800XT...

movies playing from dvd while a game is playing all being tabbed between in realtime with no lag.

I'm thinking of doing a neapolitan hard drive here, having Vista Ultimate, XP MCE 2005, and Ubuntu 7.04. Seems like that's the ideal setup here on my Dell Inspiron 6000.

I had to upgrade my desktop computer at home (New video card, more ram), but now it's running Vista Ultimate and I absolutely love it. It's zippy, responsive, easy on the eyes. The Aero interface is beautiful, and I think it has a lot to do with improving the performance of the OS. I think the windows are all handled by the video card now (don't quote me on that).

-j9t

Well,
Its really swish, completely original, state of the art, 100% secure, reliable and eveything runs on it with no random errors ever, it will even run on a P3. Its lightning fast with a minimal hard-disk and memory usage. It is so configurable with its open software base you can practically build your own operating system!

OH! LOL! sorry, i thought you were asking for a Dis-honest opinion.

Honest opinion: get a mac or if you are not scared of re-educating yourself, linux (at least that way you still have a pc and dual boot for b3d or when u need to play a game that wont run on lx).

I have to use Vista at work and have pretty powerful PC to push it... performance is enough fast, but compatibility with other apps and hw is lousy. Had to give up my ACDSee8 because it wouldn't run, my HP scanner refused to work flat out, XSI5.11 (and even 6) had problems especially with aeroglass (drivers... I know), and I absolutely HATE the bloody file exploder which shows every gooddamn directory differently - can someone tell me how I can force it to show "list& details" ONLY in EVERY directory???

So... don't like it that much, but yu can live with it I guess.

I've got Vista x64 running on my current computer. Had to turn off UAC though.

CoderLaureate wrote:


You're not the boss of me.

@Mustang: Explorer > Tools > Folder Options > View Tab

Select 'Apply to Folders' to apply the current view to all folders of that type.

BUT, you have to do this for -every- folder template... Documents, Music, Pictures etc. You can select the folder templates by right clicking the folder, select Properties, then Customize.

I like Vista. UAC lasted about 30 minutes before being disabled and lots of other little annoyances, but overall it makes XP seem antiquated. You definately need good hardware though, 3.6 is a low performance score siread (it's not out of 5).

I don't have Vista yet, but everyone I know is rushing out and buying super expensive new laptops at the moment - while they can still get them with XP. The only person I know who does have Vista (allegedly by accident) curses loudly at it at least once a day - while the rest of us point and laugh.

Hmmmm, what do I think about Vista? Well I'd say it's like that bit on Saw 2 with the injection needle pit, except intermittently through the day.

I'm growing to like Vista. Fair enough, I've turned off some services to make it run like I want it to (superfetch, readyboost, a few others I can't recall right now) but it's a damn fine OS.

I don't bother with all the graphical niceties (no aero for me) because let's face it, it's an OS, not a damn art show. If I want to look at cool stuff, I'll download a decent desktop background. Window resize gadgets should be functional, not pretty.

Finding good, compatible anti-virus and firewall software is a bit of a challenge. Hell, we went through the same story when XP hit shelves, so I'm hardly going to complain too much just yet. If it's the same situation in 6 months, then I'll be annoyed. A new version of F-Secure was given to my by their tech-support guys. Seems to be working fine, for now.

If I was buying a new PC and had the option of Vista Home Premium or XP Pro, I would go for XP Pro. I know it's stable and I know it's well supported. If it was a gaming rig with 2G of RAM, I would go for Vista (though probably Ultimate, rather than Home Premium). DX10 support is a selling point.

In conclusion, I wouldn't recommend an upgrade (from XP) unless you need or particularly desire some of the Vista specific features (of which there are scant few). If you are still stuck with Win98, you likely will need hardware upgrades before you consider Vista. If you can pick up Vista for cheap, go for it. It's at least as stable as XP, slightly better usability, slightly worse compatability (so I'm told, I haven't hit any problems yet), slightly more RAM consumption (2G is cheap).

Actually the perfomance score ranges from 1.0 to 5.9.
Mine is 3.7, mainly let down by the Athlon64 3400 (1.81ghz).

Edit: I think I just found the answer to my woes...
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=251

Turn of the Windows Search service. Would seem that it has issues with very large Outlook 2007 mailboxes. Fingers crossed, everything seems a lot slicker now. :D

I like vista, but don't see the point in it just yet. 3dsmax has DX10 support and thats about it. I'm waiting for next year. If you buy a new PC and already have XP I'd get Vista for later and install my old XP on my new system for the time being. Only because IEM vistas are a lot cheaper than retail.

Vista is slower than XP and has lots of compatibility problems. Many applications won't run on Vista and there still is a serious lack of hardware drivers, especially for hardware that older than two or three years - which includes lots of printers that are still in use, for example.

I don't like the new Windows Explorer and I also think that the UI design shows a serious lack of taste of the designers in Redmond, but that falls under individual preferences. Even with all the new effects turned on, I'm still waiting for that "WOW" they have been advertising. Maybe I've been using OS X too long already.

Other than that, working with Vista feels OK once you have disabled the annoying User Account Control (which disables a lot of the new security features). It's still Windows, with all its advantages and shortcomings.

If you're into playing games, XP will do you a much better service at the moment. If you're into .NET programming, you should go for Vista. If you want to play with the system software, use Linux. If you want a system that "just works" and boosts your productivity, go for OS X.

And here is the good news: On Apple hardware, you can legally use them all -- at the same time --.

More like two steps up, 6 steps sideways and five steps back. :-?

advantages: It's 'pretty' (arguably), it's more secure (but very in-your-face while doing things), and above all it's very different.
On machines with identical hardware, XP will blow it out of the water speed-wise.

Certain trivial things take absolute *insane* amounts of times. Copying files over a network or expanding a large zip file can take ~50 times as long under vista than they did under XP - a quick google search will show you tons of rants from people about those issues. (I had a 500MB zip file myself that took 2 minutes to unzip under XP, and well over an hour on vista -- absolutely ridiculous!)

Bottom line: personally, the only reason I'd even remotely consider Vista would be for compatibility testing of any software I might create, but the way things look right now I fully anticipate using XP until it's end-of-life in 2014... Barring any major changes in Vista, of course.
for normal day-to-day use there is surprisingly little incentive to use Vista, and many reasons not to.

I guess 5 billion dollar of development money doesn't buy what it used to. :-?

Yep. I agree it's absolutely ridiculous and it's a sign that something is obviously very wrong with your Vista installation. I've been using large (gigabytes) files and they unrar or unzip in just about same time on XP or Vista. Oh, yes. The longest I had to wait was about 6 minutes and that was a 3.6 GB RAR file. I'd check my Vista installation if I were you.

Barney

Jim Allchin said,

"LH is a pig and I don't see any solution to this problem."

my vote goes for mac...keep in mind that also allyour 16-bit aplications from previous macs work just fine on new systems, whats not case with windows..and yes,as what Winni said..Vista, XP and OSX all running just fine on my MacBook Pro..

My experience with Vista32 : If your PC has multiple CPUs (or cores), go for it. Otherwise, you'll need more RAM. If you're upgrading from XP, don't.


The core OS is more stable than XP. The rest is up to your drivers.


No, it doesn't. I am not using Glass and the OS in general is still more responsive and faster to boot than XP.


Rubbish. On any system with multiple CPUs (or cores), or OVER 1gig of RAM, Vista blows XP out of the water. Except for file manipulation, which I still think is broken. Never used XP or Vista to extract from ZIPs, because it sucked in XP to begin with.

Now here's the thing I've been wondering, has anyone here got a Vista fully loaded with a crapload of crap installed/laying around?

I always found XP boots fast as hell within the first month of installation, but after awhile it just keeps bogging down over time, Vista got a routine built-in to keep things running smoothly in that area or something?

I'v been running Vista on one of my Bitch machines for a while now, its fairly well bloated out and its used for testing bad code and security issues.

I have to say that as long as its patched, the system is stable with my hardware, and secure, which is annoying for me.

I would always pick a PC over a Mac no matter what software your planning to run, its always going to be better in the long run, with more software on offer more options in terms of hardware and a lot more choice and bang for your buck, the PC kicks the Mac's ass.

I got a Vista "upgrade" for my laptop (Athlon X2, 1GB ram) from HP, along with a DVD of drivers. They called it an upgrade but it was actually a fresh installation, which was nice. Anyway installed it, installed the HP drivers (that HP sent me) and it lasted 4 days before I put XP back on it. As well as the slow file copying (and remember this was a fresh install with manufacturer supplied drivers and very little other software installed yet) it just kept hanging doing simple things like copying or renaming files. Well, when I say hanging, the lovely file copying animations were still running and the mouse was still moving but that was it. As I say, before I even got all my software back on it I'd got sick of the constant reboots and went back to XP.

I might try again after SP1 - maybe the stability and drivers will have improved by then.

Yavin, how can a machine that runs OS X plus Windows plus anything else have less software offerings than a machine that runs Windows and everything else EXCEPT for Mac OS X?

And how and where can you find a PC that performs faster than a Mac Pro for less money? Dell Xeon workstations are not only uglier and loader than a Mac Pro, they also consume more kilowatts per hour and cost more. But the worst part is, they run SLOW compared to a Mac Pro. The Dell Xeon that we have at work is the most unimpressive workstation that I've ever seen. The only thing that is not disappointing about it is its 30" display. ;-)

Maybe you have more hardware choices for the PC, but you know what? It just doesn't matter. For the first time, more notebooks than desktop machines have been sold this year. And I think we can all agree that once you have bought a notebook system, the machine is basically frozen in its state. And nobody cares about it anymore -- the systems have more than enough computing and graphics power these days for what people usually do with them and they also come with all the required interfaces and networking options. Nobody needs the additional hardware choices anymore. That was important in the 90s, when even normal people still upgraded their machines. Nowadys, people buy a new computer after a couple of years and that's it. And they want compact machines that they can use in the living room or take with them. The old school argument about expandibility just doesn't count anymore.

But the real truth behind everything is that computers in general just suck, no matter what hardware or software you use. But when you use a Mac for a while, you will discover that Macs suck less than the rest. They run all the software you would want to run on a PC, they have an optimal bang for the buck rate AND they look pretty in your living room. Just ask your girl friends and wives what machine they would buy. ;-)

Oh, "one more thing": The discussion is about as old as the computer market, and there never has been a "right" answer for everybody. Once the decision's been made, later changes come expensive. Just like in a marriage. Only that a computer will accept a second or third partner in your life. :)

But honestly. When you have a business plan, your business requirements will dictate the choice of the system. If you don't have a strict plan and strict requirements, you can buy whatever feels best for you. Personally, I never felt comfortable in the mainstream or where everybody else went. I prefer quality and beautiful design and I am willing to pay for it. For some reason, I don't find either in the PC world. And, PLEASE, don't tell me that Vista is "beautiful" or "looks good". From an overall perspective, it does not. It looks like a tuned VW parked next to a Porsche.

Enough of it now. About time to have a late breakfast. ;-)

Humor me. Take a huge zip file, and rather than extracting everything, try to copy/paste just a single large folder out of it into a normal explorer window.

(Note: Make sure you can spare some time first)

Well, I only use Vista for doing games or for software development. For other purposes, you'll find me using Kubuntu Feisty Fawn most of the time... I even do some game design in there with BlitzMax and such.

Here's one BIG problem with the mac pro. It comes with budget/middle of the road video cards



Thats a huge negative when you want to buy a premium price desktop computer.

I'd much rather build my own and pick that parts that I want in my system than being told what I can have too.

7300GT 256mb $65

Vista = pain in the arse for game developers...

I think it's like when someone who uses profanity is perceived as having a lower vocabulary, than someone who chooses not to, despite the obvious logical flaw that the person using profanity has more words at his or her disposal.

It's a religion - don't try to understand it.

> despite the obvious logical flaw that the person using profanity has more words at his or her disposal.

It usually has something to do with them using the same profane word over and over again, rather then using language more appropriate to each situation, but I digress.

I would go for an intel mac with osx and then make it a dual boot system with some flavor of windows.

I have an intel mac and will have it triple-booting for osx, linux and windows (probably vista home premium).

Hah, THIS would be some joke report, but if it really IS true, then why should we be respecting Microsoft after this?

http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/22/report-vista-more-secure-than-os-x-and-linux/

> then why should we be respecting Microsoft after this?

Because everyone else does the same thing? (spinning data that is)

Love the picture of JJ superimposed on the background though.

Couple of major things to keep in mind when it comes to those kind of comparisons:

1) 'Redhat' and its ilk also include bugs/patches for the application suites that accompany it, in addition to the core OS itself, unlike Microsoft does
2) Microsoft has fully admitted in the past that many of their hotfixes patch multiple vulnerabilities without fully disclosing this. Looks great in the graphs, 'only' one patch even though it really consists out of multiple seperate ones. this artificially lowers microsoft's patch count, something that the open source OSes can't/won't get away with.

And one more thing: if you look at the graph, you'll find that although Vista has a lower admitted vulnerability count, it has a significantly larger number of *unpatched* vulnerabilities than the supposedly inferior XP does.

Hmm, well, that's Redhat, how about other hot distros like Ubuntu or SuSE vs. Vista? Now, you have to remember that Ubuntu is probably about as easy as Linux can get, yet still remains one of the more secure distros to date. Wonder how Microsoft would be able to counter that claim.

@Winni : The OP asked for opinions on Vista, not a MacVsWindows war.


Well, it's been my main OS since March or so and that's my favourite way of keeping my OSs organised =]


Since running various Vista betas and doing several entire wipes of my main OS harddrive (including tri-booting with Linux/Mac), I've often had to reinstall my XP partition as well. This wasn't the case so much for XPSP1, but as of XPSP2 a clean install is definately less responsive/more laggy than a clean install of Vista. In fact snappiness was the reason I reinstalled XP; but I was sorely disappointed when I noticed just how bad it was (particularly at boot up) and ended up using Vista fulltime.

Since then I've installed a fair bunch of stuff on both machines (used XP as main OS until Vista retail box was shipped to me, between Xmas to March) and the balance still hangs in Vistas favour.


Why? Because it takes a step in the direction MS announced they wanted coders to start going 7 years after said announcement? ;]

@dynaman
No you didn't. Flamey did ;]

jason, ive just had to buy a new comp with vista

and it aint good, ive just spent hours trying to get the email to remember passwords, which i have now found it doesnt work and is a known problem, finaly googled and found thunderbird for email stuff, also lightwave updates dont seem to work from 8.2 to 8.5

its seems very slow on simple tasks like opening folders
...right now a mac sounds good

scribbla: There are services within Vista that supposedly learn your (disk) usage patterns and pre-load things when you need them. It takes some time to learn, and slows operations down until that point (I think, there's a fair amount of conjecture here!).

I've turned off some services and I now have a sufficiently XP-like experience.

hope so, i miss XP

Different people appear to be getting different results on things like that. For instance, I use Windows Mail and have never had a problem with passwords (whereas I did constantly using Outlook).

First time I've heard about what vinylpusher mentioned, but I do know there's a search/metadata databasing service that is supposed to run while Idle, though people have noticed large speed increases turning those sorts of services off. Again, I've never had a problem. Guess I've had a sort of good run with Vista (except for my gfx card cacking up).

if you doubting wich platform to take regarding use of specific OS, then go for intel based MAC man..you can run on it everything, and its simply working..

I turned the services back on yesterday and all seems to be well. Even Nero works now (it didn't a couple of days ago).

I think Vista is still 6 months away from being a 'comfortable' OS. XP has been comfortable to use for a long while. It works, it's fast, 99% of people have more than enough RAM to keep it from paging itself to death and everyone knows someone who can fix any type of problem they may encounter whilst using it, games work on and are designed for it, it supports all needed technologies (firewire, usb2, removable storage, RAID) and it can be reasonably secured with inexpensive or free software.

Vista offers no real advantage in the realm of support for new technology (iSCSI, seriously?), much fewer than 99% of people have enough RAM to prevent games and large apps from paging to disk and if problems are encountered it means a fair amount of Googling. Generally though, it does work and it is fast (for a given configuration). The level of trust ascribed to it 'just working' seems to be low, which is an oobstacle overcome only by the passage of time.

So, I give it 6 more months before we're all happy (or at least ambivalent) to switch from XP.

Yeah the UAC stuff is a pain as it means everyone has to recode their storage functions. Also there's the whole "BMax Sound Drivers have major problems with Vista" issue.

BRL should have just used OpenAL from the start I say.