I like Vista

I'm sorry, I've let you all down.

I like using Vista.

Watch as this thread fills up with everyone moaning about problems in Vista.

My experience with Vista thus far :

I had to bloody buy my mom's new PC a router because it didn't like the USB connection to a cable modem that worked fine on her previous XP machine.
(that and the whole network config is a total mess in Vista, 50 more clicks than needed)

Otherwise, Vista wasn't as bad as I'd have thought in terms of setting it up, and it boots up fairly quickly once it's actually inside the OS.
(unlike my XP installation which takes 3 minutes afterwards to set everything up)


If I had a preference in OS it'd have to be Leopard though, it's just leaps and bounds better than anything I've used before.
(just a shame I have to use XP for all my games/software still)

*ignores Pure Cane Soda*

WinXP SP2 Pro Forever!

I dont mind it. I really dont think it is that necessary. They did a few things good, but really didnt make it any more inovative than xp, just a little flashier.

I have dabbled with it but havent seen an actual need for it. There were some nice touted features at the various trade shows that were dropped and as a concequence Vista doesn't seem THAT much of an update from XP.

Some things are a bit more responsive than XP, and it runs fast enough but at the end of the day there isn't anything wrong with XP. I have older hardware so can't use DX10. And thus far, games that use DX10 exclusively are non existent, probably because so few people have the hardware to run it, made even worse when you also have to have windows vista.

I will say this much in response to those saying "it's not necessary" and the like (looking at you minty, Evak, and those who will follow this path like a bunch of spoons because they haven't actually used Vista and don't want to look like they hate it): there are a lot of nice, little things that add to the overall improvements that Vista provides. On the surface, not much has changed, whereas a lot of little stuff has changed that makes everything a lot nicer. I suppose this is what XP should have been.

My 4-years-old kid like Windows Vista, too.

My experience with Vista thus far:

The bad:

- Had to disable UAC to make it half-way usable
- network copying & compressed folders slow beyond belief
- Intermittent graphical glitches (every two days or so I have to kill the explorer.exe task because the start button stops working, and the tasks on the taskbar are drawn right on top of it
- 950 MB used just to stare at the desktop, not running anything
- I dispise most of the enhancements such as the "breadcrumbs" in the explorer windows, the removal of the "go up one folder" icon which was very easily spotted and always in the same place under XP
- The integrated search is near unusable if you often search across non-indexed network locations -- especially when entering a new path makes you lose your keywords and vice versa.

The good:

- (3rd party Unixtools for Windows actually *work* reliably under Vista. They worked under Win2000 as well, but were very inconsistent and unstable under XP. (e.g. the same nested command string would fail 9 our of 10 runs under XP, but is rock solid under vista)

That last one is actually a big one in my book, because it does make my life a lot easier... But most of the other changes are a whole lot of Meh in my book.

Is there anyone who can suggest a free 3rd party search utility that looks & feels just like the classic Windows 2000 search? Vista's 'enhancements' in that area really do bug me to no end.

My most annoying Vista 'adventure' was fighting a laptop where Vista disabled the built-in NIC for power savings reasons. Completely dropped out of the device list even. reboots, shutdowns -- whole lot of nothing.

I had to actually go into save mode and back to normal mode before I could see the adapter again, and only then could I tell it never to put it back into power savings mode again.

Yeah, it can be nice to *use* for apps, looks nice, smooth and all, but its crap to *work* with, support, customise and do anything outside the realm of what microsoft deem to be "normal use".

So far the only things i like about it is the 'smoothness' and the chess program. Everything else is terrible. Dont even get me started on the networking issues ive had. :(

Each to their own... Each to their own...

nearly a gig of ram just to show the desktop (and hidden tasks)

well im sticking with xp cos i dont think it would work on this one

ill use vista if and when i get a new pc
everythings onboard and i dont seem to have that much in the way of spare slots it'd be like trying to upgrade a shuttle case with the contents of a crammed full tower

I don't understand the people who are 'sticking with XP' and 'WinXP SP2 Pro Forever!' Vista I'm sure will get stable and supported 100%

My reasons for not going to vista:
1. My computer is a pile of poo.
2. My mixing desk and MIDI interface do not have Vista drivers.
3. MY MIXING DESK AND MIDI INTERFACE DO NOT HAVE VISTA DRIVERS! What's that about.
4. My computer is a pool of stool.
5. I've only recently (6 months ago) upgraded to XP from 2000 because Pinnacle Studio doesn't work on 2000.
6. My computer is a sack of cack.

That said, some people here at work have vista generally problem free, but we are really only running Vis Studio and not a lot else. So nothing outside of normal use really. And the Vista machines have a very good spec.

http://badvista.fsf.org/

I don't see a problem with XP, so no need to upgrade yet :o) Vista is like sprouts. You eat enough and you'll like 'em eventually.

I don't think my computer would be up to the task of vista and i think it's fairly ok.

I whold never recomend anyone to upgrade to vista.
there is just to many companys who devlopes drivers that aint vista compatible,

At first i tryed vista. it turned out that vista dint support my gfx card and the soundcard. and to less ram. my 4 years old pc finaly catch by time. Ubundu likes i thoe :D

Instead Buy a Brand new computer that is designed for vista. You get support and can demad device drivers for your computer too.

Sounds like you just answered yourself there Rob :)

It will get there, it will just take years, mabe SP2 or 3 before its good enough. No one wants to upgrade until said upgrade is no longer a downgrade.

I have not had a problem with it. Then again I wouldn't go out and buy it, it just came with the new PC.

So far all of my old software works correctly and I have not had any major problems (the security quirks took some getting used to, but the same thing happened with XP)

That said, I'm hoping Linux gets a more friendly distro in the future, MS needs some competition to keep prices down - and to get the requirements to run the OS within reason...

Vista home basic with UAC disabled seems to work quite well. I've been using XP SP2, Vista Home Basic and Vista home Premium, and the last one was less performat than XP SP2, or Vista Home Basic in my computer.

xp sp3 out soon early benchmarks have said that with sp3 installed xp is upto twice the speed of vista in some applications even with vista sp1 installed.

I think vista will be more short lived than everyone thinks, as soon as people are happy with vista they will release a new os thats more like what the "long horn" project was ment to be, not just some flashy looking resourse hog.

Im begining not to care anyway, as my next upgrade will be a Mac book pro in about 6 months time.

Well, as it happens, "it's not necessary". XP does everything very well indeed for me at the moment. There is absolutely NO reason for me to shell out for Vista. I dont need it. It offers nothing significant. Simple as that.

If you went out and bought Vista then why? What killer feature did you pay £££££/$$$$$ for?

Please provide a list of 'to die for' features in Vista apart from the uninstall option(!)

Right now I would be more interested in ReactOS - A free open-source implementation of XP

I would immediately upgrade to Vista if the sum of all benefits minus the sum of all disadvantages would be bigger than in XP. Currently I'm having hard times to find even 1 thing which would be better in Vista. Maybe DirectX10 would be the only thing which comes to my mind, but as I make games only for OpenGL (I don't want unnecessary development work since OpenGL runs on all platforms, including XBOX360 an PS3), it doesn't really make a big difference to me.

Xbox360 is not OpenGL IIRC.

I've got Kubuntu, XP and Vista x64 on my laptop.

XP was getting used a lot until it started to crash intermittently. I switched to Vista and it's crashed twice. I'm beginning to think I've got a RAM fault or the latest beta nvidia drivers are really unstable. Except, graphics drivers are supposed to run in usermode under Vista, so they shouldn't blue-screen.

Well, it seems not to be DirectX either. I think it doesn't matter what graphics API the game uses, as long it can be compiled under XNA/.NET, at least that's how I understood it. And even XNA is not necessarily needed if you include your own OS on the game CD, like the Ubuntu CD for PC. I read that someone is already developing a Linux for XBOX360, since currently it's quite difficult to install Linux: you need old firmware and boot it via the King Kong game :)

Shame you have to pay for Vista. I get stuff like this for free (legally).

Actually i have used it. I have my computer, that has xp, and then my family computer, which runs vista. And once again, ill have to say, it is not necessary.

I quite like Vista and have been one of the few supporters the past year. I have tried it but it doesn't offer much worth paying for at this point.

I just want my primary apps to run as fast as possible with as little resources being waster in the background. My primary use for an OS is to run applications, the two I use most being 3ds Max, Photoshop, Bmax, Ogre3D and flow.

My system is pretty old, CPU about 4 years old Athlon64 3000+ 754 with a recent upgrade to 2gb of PC3200 ram. Thanks to my AGP 7600GS vista's UI is snappier than XP, but that doesn't make it better when my main concern is my weak CPU and high RAM requirements to run Vista. Especially if you play games and it's your only OS.

In my case there really isn't any reason to have both, when I get a new PC that has modern components (newer than 2-4 years old) I'll probably try Vista again.

Ah people whine about Vista now but they will look kindly on it when Microsoft bring out the next incarnation of Windows.

i like my cat

funny how it used to come on a few floppies ;)

What do you think the X in Xbox stands for? I remember reading that the original used a modified version around the time of its release and I'd expect the 360 is much the same. What sort of message would it send if Microsoft's own games machine didn't base its graphics API on DirectX?!

I'm not sure if people are just misconfiguring their systems or just exaggerating when they make claims like "950 GB to stare at the desktop" (I've seen others saying you need more than a Gig. For me Vista boots and runs just fine using around 600Mb of memory (with some used as disk cache). Here's my Vista using quite a lot of applications and only chewing up 832Mb.

Pic 1

Pic 2

Like all Microsoft OS's there is resistance to start with but in two years time you know you will have upgraded like you did last time and the time before that. My strategy is simply to embrace the technology as early as possible that way I'm comfortable in it and finding out the best ways to use and optimise it before most people have started adoption. Although this is a steeper learning curve it usually pays off.

Darkheart

well if you have a shader 2 card its most likely no problem.
but if you don't have a vertex shader capable card it is actually an issue and vista will die down. as they removed luna and only offer win2k ugly style beside aero, you sadly are out of luck then.

and no, that aren't stone age systems, they even get vista capable. -> GMA 900 for example which only has pixel shader but no vertex shader

True Darkheart True

They had to drag me kicking and screaming from Windows 2K to XP, But with Vista I took to it like a duck to water.

The flesh is weak, and I thought you were strong.
8)

Same.

Dreamora, they didn't remove Luna, it just got a name change. I have a GeForce 3 and Luna/Windows Themes/what is now called 'Windows Vista Basic' works just fine. It's more or less exactly the same as XP's Luna in every way...

I bought a new HP HDX9130 laptop with Vista Home Premium installed.
Its a fairly powerful laptop with a great gfxcard and 2GB RAM.

In the beginning it went fine.. everything worked as it should (not 3D Studio Max, due to problems with the 3D desktop)

Not a month later it was running really slow, like XP does after a years usage (installs, uninstalls, 10gb Windows folder and so forth)
Just normal operations in the windows explorer would take ages and network access suddenly was painfully slow - not to mention file access time went up all the time.

I reinstalled Vista, it was fast again. A month later, same problem.

Now I have XP Pro SP2 installed, and its much faster and more responsive than it ever was with Vista.

I admit I was biased against Vista from the start, but this experience made me tell all my friends to stay away from it with personal knowledge that its a bad purchase.

As an end note - I am the kind of guy that enjoys tweaking and cleaning my system every day to get maximum responsiveness and speed out of my systems, but no matter what I did, Vista just died on me.

Ash,
There must be stuff you are installing into the enviroment causing the slow down I have Vista builds with over a year on the clock and no problems at all.

Darkheart

Hate it.
And I have it on my second computer.
Theres just too many boxes popping up and telling me Im doing somthing wrong.

@darkheart,

I had a similar problem after about 3-4 months but then it seemed to get a bit better. Its still way slower than when i first installed it (and its only got about a hundred apps installed) hardly any 'services' except the essentials. It also takes a looong time to boot up and shut down (about the same as "established install" XP times)

Big bloats on the windows folder here too. (10GB+) not sure how big barebone vista is supposed to be so mabe this is normal.

The windows folder should be roughly 10gb from the start. Perhaps a little under.

I agree with darkheart, I have now been running my Vista machine since roughly April 07 with no slowdowns (still runs quicker than the fresh XP SP2 install on another partition that I barely use except for oldskool gaming)... wouldn't know what is causing it though. Only thing I can think of is that in my experience uninstalling certain antivirus apps can make a hell of a difference... I'm talking some of the most popular free ones... if you uninstall yours and notice a large speed up on start up and especially on shut down then maybe consider a different one. Only thing I can suggest...

@Darkheart - Adobe Creative Suite 3, 3D Studio Max 9, Visual Studio 2008, MS Office 2007 and Firefox.
Those are the programs I've installed.

For my cleaning routine I use CClean and Diskeeper.

Since we're all computer professionals here, we know by a glance that these products should not cause slowdowns in the whole OS like Im experiencing, but still it is.
I've got the same programs installed on my new XP installation, and so far no problems.

I've got one of those machines where you can pull out the harddrive, so using XP or Vista on the same machine is easy.

Vista is worse in every possible way except for looking a bit nicer, even with all the pointless effects turned off it is slow. And the constant churning of the harddrive, whether it's on the desktop doing nothing or even on the log in screen, just frustrates me.
Noone yet has managed to explain to me why Vista needs about 9GB more than XP, to do exactly the same things as XP (but slower) must be a hidden DVD ending sequence.

Common sense should tell everyone that XP is vastly superior. Sure your 'NEW' pc may work ok, but try sticking XP on it and see the difference. Infact the evidence that XP is superior is so overwhelming that it's not even worth discussing, saying Vista is faster than XP is as ludicrous as saying the world was created in 6000 days.

Yep, a typical Microsoft product. Same old shite but with more value added bloat, as ever to force you buy it all again for about the 4th time in a decade.



'You need permission to spin your mouse wheel'

Confirm?

i agree with enay. theres only one question you need to ask and thats:

what does vista do that xp can't ?

i own both and i cant think of anything that matters

I can.
A friend of mine phoned me up 4 or 5 times a month to see to his Windows XP machine ( every time I was busy with my own machines). Then came along Vista now he only calls me once every 3 months :-)

More then 4GB mem. May completely not be a point of gamers or even die-hard programmers.. it *is* however a point for me, being a composer who loads snippets of samples into memory to cover up for HD seek/access time. It's mere tens of kilobytes per sample, however, it's tenthousands of samples, and I could simply add more if I'd have the memory for it. Why? Just imagine that 1 trumpet ensemble collection of samples uses 100MB memory. Now imagine I'll drop the ensemble samples and use 4 solo trumpets on 4 channels so I'd have some individual control over them. *bling* +400MB. Now imagine this for all the instruments I could use, in years to come, such instruments will only get bigger, have more variations and more details.

Another purpose is aerospace engineering, just heard these details from a friend who works in that stuff. To simiulate certain physical effects they're calculating with colossal masses of data. Having more than 4GB memory is something they'd surely like!

Word has it that Vista has a little problem with memory management when certain applications are running.

The "more than 4 gig mem" is NOT a vista feature, it's a 64-bit OS feature. You can use >4GB just fine under Windows XP 64 bit. (And get the same limited driver availability that Vista gets to deal with to boot)

Could be that XP64 has this feature. But can all Vista software run on XP64? I can imagine that new relevant software may simply demand Vista..

I haven't seen much Vista "Only" software as of yet. I would guess it would come to how many companies are using Vista.

I read somewhere that in the UK that Schools and the NHS wont be going Vista for sometime because of the expense.

I am hearing so much stuff about Vista but I am considering buying it soon to run on my iMac. Mac is my platform of choice for development and using applications etc so I'm not likely to spend a lot of time as a `user` of Vista, but I do mainly want it as a compilation platform for BlitzMax software. Coming from this vantage point I figure you really have to go with the most recent Windows so that you can make sure your programs work with it. At the moment it might be more of a question of `it likely works with XP but does it work with Vista?` - but in future it's going to be `it works with Vista but does it work with XP?`.

Whether we like it or not Microsoft has all the strings pulled to make sure that everyone eventually upgrades or their o/s becomes obsolete. It's quite a clever trick to first of all tell you that you really need something, get you to buy it, then basically take it back by making it obsolete so that you have to buy something else. It drives you crazy but that's what they call `progress`.

XP looks like it will do ok for a few years since it's a `fairly` comfortable o/s, but I doubt Microsoft is going to bring out another significant new o/s in that timeframe. From a developers vantage point I need to know that I'm supporting current technology as best as possible and then trying to support legacy systems as a second priority.

Leopard on the Mac already has some backwards compatibility issues where BlitzMax stuff may not even run on Tiger anymore, or pre-Tiger. What can you do? You can't really have seven different versions of an o/s on-hand to make versions specific to them, at least not within my budget. It's not much of a choice - between an increasigly obsolete o/s or a new rough-around-the-edges o/s.

Having not owned Windows before, ever, I don't have the issue of it having to be better than XP, so long as it is not `too much worse`. I'm sure after a service pack or two things will iron out. And you don't need a lot of drivers for older software if you're not planning to use the o/s as your primary environment.

I read somewhere that schools and government depts were seriously considering dropping MS proprietry software all together.

Keep in mind that you'll need the Vista Business or higher release if you intend to run it through parallels -- Microsoft has a nifty little 'no virtualization' clause in the cheaper editions.

..well..for professional aplications such those simulations just pointed, why use Vista to 'gain' 4Gb mem? Use G5 quad core whats around already about 1 and half-2 years,and yes..you can install without fuss or problems at all 16gb mem...works just fine...die Vista die ..

Do we really need to have the "I hate Vista" mob sticking their oar in five times a week?

If you like Vista then use it. If you don't, then go play with Linux but for Christ's sake stop whinging about it!

@Gfk - Agree to a point, but there's such a thing as personal experience and the expression of said experience, in hopes to deter others from suffering the same fate as yourself.

In a kind of "learn from my mistakes" type of advice, many people get quite vocal to punch through Microsofts hype/PR with real concerns regarding the most popular OS platform in the world.

If you dont like vista threads dont read 'em :)

Tbh, I reckon I have a right to whinge about it, as I have purchased it, its a dissapointment and worse - HAVE to use it for making B3D apps that will actually work in 3 years.
(i dont have to like it though, for everything else i will play with my "other box" and be happier).

Anyway, I wouldnt have called my posts *that* whinging. I did say it looks pretty, has a good chess program and is bound to get "better" after a few Service Packs.

People have compared Vista with ME, but I would compare it with 95 instead.

95 introduced a complex UI, networking, decent method of implementing (and managing) device drivers and multitasking.

Vista introduced a complex UI based on a completely new way of rendering an interface, a new network stack (with proper IPv6 and wireless-that-isn't-a-kludge), device drivers moved mostly to usermode (with small kernel element) and some excellent improvements to multitasking and memory allocation. Plus a completely new sound architecture.

It's not perfect, but it's a good beginning. Windows 7 will be better. I would imagine Windows 7 will be as Windows 98SE is to Windows 95.

**EDIT**

I wouldn't be sorry to see Windows 7 dropping forms of backwards compatability in order to be more secure and responsive. I would also not be sorry to see Windows 7 being available only for x64.

Ah Windows 95 possibly the best thing since Sliced bread :-)

Supposedly the next windows version will be strictly 64 bit.

I'm not even paying attention to this thread. It's absolutely hilarious to watch people see a person who's happy with Vista and try to crush that though. You folks really hate seeing someone be content, don't you?

Let's try another one: MacOS is a terrible operating system.

*gets out the popcorn*


This is going to be good, I can tell.

it is a terrible OS
I HATE MACS
lets see what happens now

I'll probably get it when I upgrade my system since vista ultimate OEM costs under $190 here now.

How right you are, PCS. Ka-BLAM!!! ^_^

Seriously, techies & programmers are (usually) fairly mature & intelligent people, but put 'em in a classic debate like Mac vs. Windows, and you'll get something like this EVERY TIME:

"Mac!"
"Windows!"
"Mac!"
"Windows!"
"MAC!"
"WINDOWS!"
"Linux?"
"SHUT UP!!!"

T_T

I find it interesting that many threads usually end up with some people yelling "SHUT UP!!!" when THEY are done with the topic, instead of just leaving the thread.
People like discussing things, and they will be done when they are done, why is this so hard to understand?

Personally I'm really tired of the Xbox 360 & PS3 fight, but I just don't read threads about it anymore - lower blood pressure for me while they can discuss the stuff they want.

That would be true if this thread had been started with the intent to discuss highs and lows of Vista. It wasn't, it was for me to tell you that I like Vista. Which I do. Everyone else saw this as an opening for them to voice their grievances, which is confusing considering at no point did I ask you to whine about Vista.

I understand that you had a statement that you wished to share, but doing it in a community forum like this is inviting discussion.
If you just want to state your opinion I would suggest starting a blog and don't have a field for comments.
I didn't whine about Vista, I stated my personal experience and what I had said to my friends about it. When you tell me that my opinion is whining to you, that means that you have no respect for my opinion or me as a fellow blitz community member.

EDIT: Maybe we'll have to start threads with disclaimers and EULA's soon.. "You may only read my statement and not post in this thread, thank you."

You did whine. Whether you like it or not, you came into a thread about liking Vista to moan about how much you dislike it, and that is called whining.

Also, I don't have any respect for you. You haven't exactly earned it by doing anything worthy of respect.

I see.. I'll refrain from commenting anywhere near you from now on as I see that only feeds the troll.

EDIT: I see you've edited your post. I know you don't have respect for me, thats why I told you so. To say that someone is whining is to say that they are 'complaining in a feeble way', and I have done nothing of the sort. I have tried to present my posts in a clear manner to get my opinion across, and am happy to discuss with my fellow blitz community, even if I'm proven wrong and my opinions pulled apart.
What I don't like is personal attacks or trolling, and thats why I'm gonna do myself a favor and leave it be for now.

Next!

Oh get over it.

and similar comments - Vista uses some kind of memory caching - it loads parts of the programs it thinks you are going to want to run into the memory, so when you do load them they load faster. If there becomes less ram available, it will unload from this cache to make room. Whether or not caching is a good idea isn't my point - it's just that's the reason Vista appears to use more memory.

It's called Super Fetch http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/superfetch.mspx

@dawlane
Sounds like a good feature that. Wierd it appears to not be working on mine (-although mabe i turned it off wading through all the newly-jargonised settings. I mean wtf cant they just call it "Prioritised disk caching" or something logical?
"Super fetch" doesnt mean anything, sounds like a dog returning a 300 kilo stick :/

I am tempted to re-install everything and start again because ive obviously broken it somehow as its really sluggy compared to XP. Problem is its a case of frustration VS cannot-be-bothered bacause win + apps + updates + special settings takes so LONG to restore as every item has to be babysitted in. Plus im worried about what it will do to my grub & other (linux+xp) partitions if i reinstall now. Ive not tried installing vista after installing others but i have heared horror stories.. anyone advise on this?

One thing that fools a lot of people is that Vista starts off slow when you first install it because it has to build all the indexes and does a lot of self-optimisation after installation. This does mean that many user's first experience will be marred by a lot of disk thrashing and seeing some of their CPU and Memory being taken up with these tasks.

However once you have got over this stage Vista run pretty smoothly. My only real gripe is over the ridiculously long time it takes to perform file operations e.g. file copying and saving. Otherwise Vista is quite solid.

Darkheart

Right click your desktop, then click properties. I remember this being instant on Windows 98 :(

Ashmantle, that guy is Noel Cower, he gets banned from this forum frequently for trying to make arguments.

> Vista uses some kind of memory caching
> - it loads parts of the programs it thinks
> you are going to want to run into the memory,

Vista churns the harddrive like a hamster in a wheel when just sitting on the log in screen, and it will do that pretty much all day. So what's it caching there?

> so when you do load them they load faster.

Shame though with all this extra memory caching that it actually loads things slightly slower. I guess when system ram gets to about 16GB then Vista will be 'efficient'

> My only real gripe is over the ridiculously
> long time it takes to perform file operations
> e.g. file copying and saving

Do you really not find that disturbing that a simple process like copying a file could so much slower? For me it takes 1-2 seconds to calculate the time needed to copy files instead of just getting on with it and doing the copy.

...and im not even going to chip in about doing anything with zip files and files on a network..... Oops.

> Vista churns the harddrive like a hamster in a wheel when just sitting on the log in screen

Mine has not done that.

> Do you really not find that disturbing that a simple process like copying a file could so much slower

I have not noticed being slower for that, but some putting in some CD's is a chore

With networking, it seems to work fine once you disable the search ahead and find all computers before giving you access service.

(don't know the proper name for it)

Also not having a network printer as your primary printer stops your computer searching for a printer before opening a word doc or whatever.

First time I tried Office 07 with Vista it took 40 seconds to load a 2kb word document, till I disabled a couple of things and started picking the network printer before printing instead of having a default.

once I got it setup ie turned off all the functions/extras then it worked fine. I actually prefer it to xp now

Congratulations Ruz, you've just made PC User history!

FORUM EULA DISCLAIMER: THE PRECEDING STATEMENT WAS NOT MEANT AS ANY WHINE, GRIPE, INSULT, FINGER-POINT OR OTHER DEROGATORY OR ANTI MICROSOFT REMARK AGAINST VISTA, MICROSOFT, WINDOWS, OR ANY USERS, FANS, OR AFFILIATED COMPANIES. SO THERE. :P

I like vista too, its just companies need to get vista-oriented software.

Sounds like some people have a lot of slowdown and disk access while others don't. Maybe not enough ram and it's resorting to virtual memory?

If you have 2GB or more in Vista your fine for memory with Vista for most common usage and 2GB of memory is very cheap ATM.

Enay, Vista runs a continuous defrag in the background while on the login screen. This is to avoid having to spend huge amounts of time defragging ever larger disks and to offset the performance drop off from not defragging. This may explain your disk activity.

The only real retrograde step with Vista is that they decided to make the user much more aware of the OS which I think is a bad thing. IMHO an OS should just run in the background and provide the resources I need to the applications. Once configured I don't want to have to do ANYTHING to the OS really. However this is a design decision not a technical fault and I'm not the one with over a billion dollars in my back pocket.

Vista (like all OS's) has things I like about it and things I don't like about it, Microsoft are in this for the long haul, it will get better over time.

Darkheart

Slow file operations are more than likley caused by "File indexing" and a feature known as "Transaction" (I may be called somthing else now). Basically it's a file roll-back feature, so when you start to copy/move files and then decide to cancel half way through, Vista will return the files moved back to there original location.

In a beta version of Vista you could turn this feature on and off from the command line, but for some reason Microsoft removed the command from the release version. As far as I know you can only you the "play" with this feature now is through the registery.

@D4NM4N
If you used a OEM/Retail disk to install Vista you don't have to worry, your partitions are safe. You can re-install Vista on the Vista partition and use a linux live CD to rebuild grub (as long as you know what partition grub was on) as always back up any data before messing with any thing.

If the Vista is pre-installed by the manufature of the PC then you have problems.

@To every one
Microsoft (as well as Apple) should for the price paid for there products include a proper manual that fully explains it's features and settings. But as always if I need infomation on these products, I will have to do 2 things..

1 Buy the books.
2 Search The Net (Microsofts Knowlage Base,any fourm, etc) with isn't very good if your having problems connecting to the Net.

@-=Darkheart=-
I think people should be more aware of every thing, especially security features. The UAC is there just in case something tries to again unauthorized access to critical areas without you knowing (It wont stop you from installing such things). Once you have learned how to work with the UAC it's not much of a problem (but it can be a bit annoying at times) and I think that the Local Security Policy manager should have be in all versions of Vista (not just the Buisness and Ultmate editions)

By the way freeworldonline works good in vista. (it suprice me it even run. )

only smal glitches over the text of NPC.

yes freeworldonline is avaiable for download. and sometimes its even online.

thoe devlopment has stoped.... :(

Vista on the cheap ..

http://www.crystalxp.net/bricopack/en.htm

Download the BrickoPack - Vista Inspirat 2 to give your XP setup a 'vista' face lift.

A MUCH cheaper Vista experience

Nice one Jim, but you're forgetting one thing. For that true Vista feel you will also need something like this. A setting of 50% should be about right.

http://www.cpukiller.com/

I tried the brikopack, in the end I went back to the Zune theme.



Slightly Vistaish but with all the usualy XP icons and such.

I think one of the things I dislike most about vista is the glare I get and the fact that I find it harder to read with all the funny icons, folder icons in particular.

I like the aero theme in general, but I really wish they had an option for dark text on a light taskbar... The white-on-black is much harder on the eyes.

I switched Aero off because whilst it looks very nice, it detracts from the user experience because things closing a window now takes time because of the little animation it does.

I know the animation is very rapid, but the overall experience is that of sluggishness because of these little details. Pile slow file operations on top and you get complaints by the bucketload ;)

I'm now almost completely assimilated into the Vista collective. Hopefully XP SP3 can drag me back to reality!

You can disable the animation, and keep the transparancies.

Yes, but... well... meh.

There's also a big difference in RAM usage between the two options.

I'm not against having an attractive UI, but the fact that it's not very configurable and adds nothing to the usability of Windows yet detracts by way of using lots more RAM just rubs my hacker fur the wrong way entirely.

I am going to push myself very hard to use Linux when Ubuntu ships a distro with KDE4 as standard. It's a pretty UI, using less RAM than it's non-pretty predecessor.

Either that or I'll just use Ubuntu plus the compiz thing. I've got that installed on my desktop and it's good. It actually aids usability.