Discover the best of the web!
Learn more about Digg by taking the tour.
Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate
Readers have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.Microsoft Predicted to Back Away from Vista
gigaom.com — "When it comes to technology debacles, every major company has a few (remember the Newton?), but right now one of the top spots has to go to Windows Vista, Microsoft ’s clunky operating system that has IT shops and consumers desperately clutching at XP for as long as they can."
dimmerswitch- 857 diggs
- digg it
- Happy_Phantom, on 04/22/2008, -67/+144It's not clunky. It runs nicely on my Dell Inspiron 1420. I like it a lot better than I ever did XP.
I suppose if I was confronted with a Vista upgrade or compatibility problem, I'd be annoyed. But it is far from being "Windows ME 2.0." It has proven very stable on my system and I do enjoy the eye candy and new Mac-like explorer functionality.- simplistics06, on 04/22/2008, -47/+52Is that you Bill Gates?
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -28/+22He's not the only one, jackass, I am running Vista too and it's actually pretty good. Your stupid smear campaigns clearly aren't working.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRm4hk5uRo0- Wartyboskfapped, on 04/22/2008, -13/+13smear campaign? On a website that buys ads from Microsoft?
If there's a popular swing against Vista & its being expressed here, the bastion of MS fanboys, then you have to accept that it is legitimate. That MS itself is trying to sweeten the Vista medicine with price cuts and (quiet) patch roll backs to XP for some clients, then you have to see it for real.- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -10/+16The fact that a lot of people hate Vista doesn't mean that there's a legitimate reason for it, people by nature always pass along what they hear and if they say it enough times it becomes accepted as the truth. I may have exaggerated a bit when I said "smear campaign", I don't think the people who hate Vista have some kind of hidden agenda against Microsoft, but I don't think everybody who hates Vista has a legitimate reason for saying they do either.
- simplistics06, on 04/22/2008, -12/+4I bought a HP computer at futureshop with vista preloaded on it. Like none of my programs I used to use worked on it, I couldn't play older games like battlefield 1942, it always kept asking me if I wanted to run programs which is supposed to make it more secure? My computer got raped by a virus anyway, so I went to the option to return it to factory shipped settings but it didn't work I still had the virus. So I got my xp cd out to upgrade but it wouldn't let me upgrade, so I wiped the hard drive and tried to install xp again which didn't work. So I had a computer with no operating system and was like ***** it and bought a new computer WITH XP. Oh yea and vista hogs a lot of recourses and stuff for no reason, hows that for a legitimate reason?
- djgreedo, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1Are you seriously suggesting that Digg is full of MS fanboys? Digg is clearly very strongly biased towards Mac and Linux users. All positive news about Microsoft goes all but ignored, while any mundane news about Linux or Apple is treated like the most important technology event in history.
Vista is a great operating system. You'll find (if you have the intelligence to do a little research) that most people saying negative things about Vista have either never actually used it or have had hardware issues mostly caused by hardware manufacturers not providing solid drivers.
- mikelieman, on 04/22/2008, -16/+7It sure ain't the HUGE IMPROVEMENT the marketing people told you it would be, is it? And it *sure* ain't worth the 100 bucks you shelled out for it! Vista adds NOTHING to the bottom line, unless you're Microsoft.
That's why the shareholders are worried... They saw this *exact same* act back with Win95 -> ME -> 98, and realize that Microsoft ain't got *any* game.- MacParrot, on 04/22/2008, -1/+17"Win95 -> ME -> 98"
????? Didn't ME come out after Win98? - Giga, on 04/22/2008, -0/+4Windows ME came after 2000, not before 98.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -3/+13Actually, Vista is exactly what I thought it would be, I don't buy into hype and I knew Microsoft was re-orienting their internal strategy for development by focusing more on security than anything else. Vista is a great product, it has great features and I find using my computer with it more enjoyable than XP, and I have enough experience under my belt to be able to say that with certain confidence.
- mikelieman, on 04/22/2008, -2/+1What features?
Oh, and you're right... 98 -> ME-> XP... Sorry...
( Same problem though.. .)
- MacParrot, on 04/22/2008, -1/+17"Win95 -> ME -> 98"
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -5/+16Are you ***** kidding me? Digg the bastion of MS fanboys? Do you realize how many stories make the frontpage about the stupid Iphone?
- Tenoq, on 04/22/2008, -3/+4There's far more MS supporters, it's just the iPhone/Apple supporters are more.... fanatical.
- mikelieman, on 04/22/2008, -3/+1That's because Apple makes GOOD products and Microsoft makes ***** products.
- Laughsatyou, on 04/22/2008, -1/+3 apple repackages ***** that already exists, and idiots like you shell out the bux for it.
- mikelieman, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1Actually, I roll with a Sansa E-270 running rockbox. It was like a hundred bucks -- But I hear that Rockbox firmware works *just fine* on most iPods, too. I've used a linux-only desktop since 2001 running on cheap, commodity hardware. Of course, I can recognize good engineering. Apple has it. Microsoft don't.
- TheReport, on 04/22/2008, -9/+5Looks like ballmer comes here too
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -2/+10Don't you have a new turtle neck to buy?
- Wartyboskfapped, on 04/22/2008, -13/+13smear campaign? On a website that buys ads from Microsoft?
- HigherLogic, on 04/22/2008, -18/+5Is that you, Steve/Linus?
- abhiroop, on 04/22/2008, -20/+9I still don't see how a bunch of programmers/engineers could come up with something like Vista. Just a simply example. Was using Vista on a friends laptop. Suddenly everything hangs. I'm like *****, cos his work is open. I can't click on anything. So I do the the Ctrl+Alt+Del, and poof everything works again. I mean is that a security feature? to freeze the computer???!!
- Giga, on 04/22/2008, -5/+5The fact that Ctrl+Alt+Del actually worked is the new feature.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -4/+13I don't even know what to tell you, because there's about 20 different things wrong with your comment anyway.
- abhiroop, on 04/22/2008, -6/+220? Really? I gave ONE example and ONE opinion.
- 11oops, on 04/22/2008, -1/+4simply example, Was, friends, cos, the the, ? to, ???!!, fragments x 7
- flameboy, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3Your problem could have been anything ranging from 3rd party drivers to hardware issues. You are simply a feeble minded noob who wants to jump on the MS-hating bandwagon and blame Vista.
- cotaskmemalloc, on 04/22/2008, -5/+14No, he is just another happy Vista user - like myself and a ***** others. Is that you, Richard Stallman?
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1The campaign of FUD against Vista is just ridiculous. Between the badvista website, and the horrible PC vs. Mac ads (the last three have been so over-the-top that I'm confident that a apple-backlash has to be on the way) - but its failing. Enough "normal" people are starting to use it / experience it that the the Apple/GNU/FSF FUD has lost its effectiveness.
Once you use it, you know you've been lied to.
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1The campaign of FUD against Vista is just ridiculous. Between the badvista website, and the horrible PC vs. Mac ads (the last three have been so over-the-top that I'm confident that a apple-backlash has to be on the way) - but its failing. Enough "normal" people are starting to use it / experience it that the the Apple/GNU/FSF FUD has lost its effectiveness.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -28/+22He's not the only one, jackass, I am running Vista too and it's actually pretty good. Your stupid smear campaigns clearly aren't working.
- zerocool1990, on 04/22/2008, -10/+40Yes i agree too. I never saw what the fuss is all about and I've been using vista for a year.
- S1ngular1ty1, on 04/22/2008, -11/+32Same here. My machine with Vista 32 Ultimate runs fine. In fact I'd say more stable than XP. I regularly play games on it.
- dorkino, on 04/22/2008, -6/+6How do you get more stable than XP?
- Tenoq, on 04/22/2008, -3/+3Oh trust me, that can be done. But TBH, I crash Vista far more often than XP - and I work predominantly with XP boxes. I'm sure Vista is GREAT on the perfect system... but even laptops with it pre-installed seemed to crash for me quite readily. And don't get my started on how messed up it is on our A64 test box.
- Laughsatyou, on 04/22/2008, -2/+1I have had nothing but problems with my 64 bit vista, even with the ram patches and SP1 vista BSoDs with 4 gb of ram. luckily i dual booted xp and vista. xp works great, and if there is a game i need DX10 to play ill switch back to vista and hope they have fixed the ram problems.
- DarkShroud, on 04/23/2008, -1/+2"even with the ram patches"
Vista 64bit doesn't require a patch to read more than 4gigs of total memory. You fal.
- Tenoq, on 04/22/2008, -3/+3Oh trust me, that can be done. But TBH, I crash Vista far more often than XP - and I work predominantly with XP boxes. I'm sure Vista is GREAT on the perfect system... but even laptops with it pre-installed seemed to crash for me quite readily. And don't get my started on how messed up it is on our A64 test box.
- dorkino, on 04/22/2008, -6/+6How do you get more stable than XP?
- Mysk, on 04/22/2008, -18/+9I see where you're coming from, and if Vista would just ***** work rather than screwing up in some major way on a regular basis then I'd really like it. That's not the case though. Not at all. From being forced to re-activate due to a driver change to being forced to use recovery points or even format the hdd to get the system working again, it's been a total nightmare. You folks are some of the lucky few.
- S1ngular1ty1, on 04/22/2008, -5/+17Maybe you just don't know what you are doing?
- dianebl, on 04/22/2008, -3/+9The whole POINT of windows is that you don't have to know what you're doing. As long as you aren't one of those people who goes deleting system files "to clean up the hard drive", the average user shouldn't have any issues during normal use.
- FKnight, on 04/22/2008, -4/+5That's the funny part. I never hear any non-computer-geek average home user complain about Vista. Nearly every person I know who uses Vista regularly and has no problem with it are not computer geeks. The only people I hear from who are complaining about "stability problems", "constant crashes", "viruses", and "programs not running" are people who are supposed to allegedly be "computer savvy" and "know more than all of the brainwashed Vista users who wouldn't use Windows if they knew what else was out there." Hilarious.
Apparently, most of the people complaining about the "problems" with Vista probably couldn't even use a Speak-n-Spell without breaking it.- Tenoq, on 04/22/2008, -3/+4Dude - work in a computer shop for ONE DAY and listen to the complaints about Vista. I'm *really* starting to get tired of it, TBH. But then people don't want to fork out for an XP license and my labour to fix the ***** thing.
- jakem1, on 04/22/2008, -0/+3@Tenoq: But what sort of complaints are they? The sort of person who needs to take their computer into a shop for help are just as likely to complain about simple changes to familiar things like the Start menu which they'd just appreciate once they get over the fact that it's different..
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+2The half-wit failures that work in PC clone shops are the usual cabal of comic-book-guys (from simpsons). A bastion of opinionated know-nothings.
- S1ngular1ty1, on 04/22/2008, -5/+17Maybe you just don't know what you are doing?
- Zoltair, on 04/22/2008, -7/+23Vista runs fine for me, been using it for almost a year, never had a BSOD yet that was so frequent on XP, and even my wife find it far easier to use and configure for her liking.
The author doesn't have much a clue, needs a better crystal ball.- diggduggjoe, on 04/22/2008, -2/+5My XPs never had frequent BSODs, All problems related to drivers. Once, you have stable drivers they run for months non-stop.
- gamelord12, on 04/22/2008, -5/+1Yeah, tell that to my family's main computer. They're so sick of XP not working for them right now. They wake up every few days to a BSOD, new USB devices are no longer accepted due to corruption from viruses (while under protection of SpySweeper and AVG), and Explorer decides to screw with them every few hours or so by shutting down completely or just locking up for a few minutes. Yeah...XP is stable. This computer is less than 2 years old too. When they get Vista, not only do I expect their problems to go away, but Windows Meeting Place will allow me to easily give them tech support from school if they still need it.
- foooey, on 04/22/2008, -1/+6oh, so they're retarded enough to get constant virii, but it's all xp's fault of course?
- radish, on 04/22/2008, -1/+4They had a virus, didn't rebuild the system, have corrupted drivers, and you want to blame the OS? Sheesh.
- 11oops, on 04/22/2008, -0/+1According to every Mac and Linux fanboy, yes.
- gamelord12, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1I'm willing to bet that even my family couldn't get viruses on Vista/OS-X/Ubuntu. The only one they'll try is Vista though, due to the fact that they're not about to buy a whole new computer (and waste money on over-priced hardware) or go to a new OS where their old games and tax software won't work.
- gamelord12, on 04/22/2008, -5/+1Yeah, tell that to my family's main computer. They're so sick of XP not working for them right now. They wake up every few days to a BSOD, new USB devices are no longer accepted due to corruption from viruses (while under protection of SpySweeper and AVG), and Explorer decides to screw with them every few hours or so by shutting down completely or just locking up for a few minutes. Yeah...XP is stable. This computer is less than 2 years old too. When they get Vista, not only do I expect their problems to go away, but Windows Meeting Place will allow me to easily give them tech support from school if they still need it.
- diggduggjoe, on 04/22/2008, -2/+5My XPs never had frequent BSODs, All problems related to drivers. Once, you have stable drivers they run for months non-stop.
- daza, on 04/22/2008, -9/+42I run Vista on 4 PCs at home, (2 desktops, 1 notebook and the HTPC) and it is a massive improvement over Windows XP in many aspects; ease of use, stability and security being my top 3.
There is one problem with it though. The uneducated masses who bash Vista because it is the cool thing to do. Those who bash it have clearly never used it on a computer less than 2 years old, otherwise they would realise it is fantastic. Either that or they are running it on their $400 notebook with 512mb of RAM wondering why it's so sluggish (try using XP plus the manufacturers bloatware w/ 512MB of RAM and see how that goes).
Driver support is phenomenal. I've used 3 different printers with it and thank God I have not had to reach for the manufacturers bloatware CD. I can print or scan out of the box. If the drivers aren't there, Vista accesses the driver database for me and gets them.
So really, it's just the haters who are hyping up how bad it is with a malformed opinion. People who know the more technical ins and outs of Vista know it is a massive improvement over XP.
These trashy websites continue to attack Vista because it is what the majority of people want to read. Too many people want to see a company fail for no good reason. This is not Windows ME again. This is Microsoft's best operating system to date (each to their own, of course).- Suricou, on 04/22/2008, -18/+7So, because you have a very powerful PC, you believe that those without cycles to waste should not complain? Vista's resource usage is not a problem to those who can afford to upgrade, but to the rest of us it is obvious waste.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -4/+8No, if I didn't have a powerful enough computer to run it, I wouldn't. Vista makes use of technology that isn't available on older machines, such as proper 3D cards or chipsets which were a rarity on OEM machines unless you specifically ordered a gaming rig; also, newer mainboard chipsets have I/O optimizations made with Vista in mind. I have a high-end desktop that I run Vista on, and when I installed XP on it I actually felt I went a step backwards because it was quick in some regards (such as boot time) but when it came down to it, starting/closing and switching between programs was quicker for me on Vista. My laptop, however, is a simple machine and I choose to run XP on that and that's perfectly fine too.
- jakem1, on 04/22/2008, -1/+4If your computer's not powerful enough for Vista then you have two choices: either stick with XP or turn of some of the new services. You wouldn't try to run XP on a computer built for 98 so why try and run Vista on an old machine that doesn't meet the required specs?
- djgreedo, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1Of course you shouldn't complain. Vista is designed for recent computers. If your current PC runs fine with its current OS then why would you want to change it? With computers, both hardware and software evolve hand in hand and you should only run software appropriate to your hardware.
- cotaskmemalloc, on 04/22/2008, -7/+13Exactly. I am exceedingly happy with Vista - I left XP for (first) Linux (which I finally came to the conclusion was utterly useless for what I wanted to do) and then a Mac - I never thought I was going to go back. Vista changed that for me, now I'm happy to be running it with Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro. It actually restored my faith in Windows. It really is Microsoft's best OS to date.
- MWeather, on 04/22/2008, -3/+3What did you need to do that Linux was useless for but a Mac was useful for? The only things I can think of are professional photo and video editing. Are you in publishing/multimedia?
- cotaskmemalloc, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1No, I'm a software engineer. Linux's small market share on the desktop doesn't exactly translate into a good user base, hence it being useless.
- MWeather, on 04/22/2008, -3/+3What did you need to do that Linux was useless for but a Mac was useful for? The only things I can think of are professional photo and video editing. Are you in publishing/multimedia?
- JoeVet, on 04/22/2008, -6/+8Why should I upgrade my computer simply to run a newer OS. If there was other software that needed the newer CPU then that would be an argument to upgrade but not to run another OS. That's like saying I need a new car because a new set of tires is available. The old car works just fine with the old tires and there is no obvious advantages to the new tires except better looks.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -5/+13Comparing an OS to a set of tires is a terrible analogy, first of all, and second of all, nobody said you had to upgrade to run a newer OS. Nobody said you even need to run the newer OS. All I am saying is that just because a new operating system doesn't run fast on an older computer doesn't mean the OS is fundamentally ***** up. And I'm sure a lot of other people who are also running Vista like me and are perfectly happy with it, scratching their heads and shrugging at all the negativity about it, are saying the same thing.
- FKnight, on 04/22/2008, -3/+5Yeah, I'm not getting the whole "why should I upgrade my OS?" .... no one's telling you to. I swear to God, these people actually believe that Steve Ballmer is holding a chair over their head threatening them unless they upgrade to Vista.
- WaruiKoohii, on 04/22/2008, -0/+1In all fairness, a better analogy would be saying the OS is like the engine and drive train, and you should upgrade the tires to better get the power to the ground.
- peaceninja, on 04/22/2008, -6/+4my friend did an upgrade from windows xp to vista (as opposed to doing a harddrive wipe and installing vista from scratch) and she had so many driver problems, and vista's support were constantly stonewalling her and they eventually told her that she'll need to wait for vista sp1, and this was after two or three months getting the runaround. she would have had to wait another few months for sp1 to come out so she decided to just 'upgrade' back to xp so that her printer and scanner would work again. sure there are a few good things with vista but its nowhere near being simple for the layman.
- gn0stik, on 04/22/2008, -0/+9didn't check the hcl before upgrading eh? didn't run the upgrade advisor? meh, look, if your friend wants a box of heterogeneous hardware designed to work with a specific OS, in a guaranteed stable way, she can switch. If she wants a flexible platform made to run with the latest third party hardware in a stable manner, buy vista. There was plenty of forewarning of compatibility issues with older hardware, and software, and there were even no brainer tools that pointed out configuration, software and hardware setups that were known problems for upgraders. If she didn't run these tools, or ignored their advice, then her story is a little less than laugably moot here.
Ignorance is not an excuse for these types of problems.- peaceninja, on 04/22/2008, -3/+1upgrading to vista is definitely for people who know what they are doing (i wasn't part of my friend's upgrade process, i doubt she would even know to look for HCL documentation or an upgrade advisor let alone be articulate enough to ask about this from vista support which is clear to me this information wasn't volunteered to her). im sure you realize not everyone is technologically competent, but i still see evidence that vista was rushed to market under competitor pressures and while I am rooting for microsoft overall as a company, it makes me apt to tell the 'technologically challenged' to not be early adopters of any OS's that microsoft releases.
- gn0stik, on 04/22/2008, -0/+4When you put the cd in the drive "Run upgrade advisor" is the very first item in the list of possible things to do, if I remember correctly. You have to willfully ignore all the warnings if you do NOT run it, in fact, because you see, it leaves a footprint which the install later checks. If it doesn't exist, the install bugs you to quit and go run it.
Sorry. You have to really not be paying attention in order to miss that one.
I agree, they did rush to market. And I am by no means a fan of the windows dev group (check my comments), but vista is fine for the average use, on average (recent) hardware.
We have to separate real issues from user created ones, otherwise we believe that there are base problems with the OS that do not exist.
This is one of them. Stupid people are why tech people have jobs. It's becoming so easy now, that people blessed with a reasonable amount of sensibility, and patience, can install windows.
Far moreso, than on XP. Upgrades have never been for the technical novice. But this version is better than ANY previous.
- gn0stik, on 04/22/2008, -0/+9didn't check the hcl before upgrading eh? didn't run the upgrade advisor? meh, look, if your friend wants a box of heterogeneous hardware designed to work with a specific OS, in a guaranteed stable way, she can switch. If she wants a flexible platform made to run with the latest third party hardware in a stable manner, buy vista. There was plenty of forewarning of compatibility issues with older hardware, and software, and there were even no brainer tools that pointed out configuration, software and hardware setups that were known problems for upgraders. If she didn't run these tools, or ignored their advice, then her story is a little less than laugably moot here.
- specialK16, on 04/22/2008, -5/+2Im running on a P4 with 2GBs RAM and it is not bad at all....
BUT, I'm having two ENORMOUS issues.first, WMP uses around 50%+ while playing music, I mean even iTunes works better on my computer! WTF is that... someone must have that problem. The other thing is the indexer. If I disable it, whenever I type something in the Start Menu it will crawl up each one of my hard drives and ***** performance badly in the butt. If I enable it, it seems to index only drive C, and whenever I type something it will also crawl on every disk....
Other than that, it's fantastic.- 11oops, on 04/22/2008, -0/+2Indexing: http://www.vista4beginners.com/Improve-Instant-Sea ...
- jakem1, on 04/22/2008, -1/+1You can get indexing to index additional drives/folders. Just type "Indexing Options" into your Start menu and you can add as many locations as you like.
If WMP is using too many resources you may need to download updated drivers. For example, older audio drivers can cause problems with the DRM components in WMP.
- secleinteer, on 04/22/2008, -3/+1My new HP Pavilion laptop that I got in January came with Vista - after putting up with that crap for about a week, I changed the Windows OS to XP. I think it all depends on the person - some people can put up with Vista's *****, while others can't. I mainly use Ubuntu, and it may be that because of it, my ***** tolerance level is lower than the average Windows user's, so I wasn't able to put up with Vista like they can. After all, you have to learn to put up with a lot of ***** if you use (any version of) Windows on a regular basis.
- djgreedo, on 04/23/2008, -0/+1Well, perhaps you should have given Vista more than a week. They've changed around a lot of things, and it took me several weeks to get used to the new OS. But now I could never go back to XP. In fact, I was still noticing little improvements up to a year after starting to use Vista. There are so many tiny improvements that together make using the computer so much easier and more intuitive. Add to that the fact that when I do have to use XP or 2000 at work and they crash, and I suddenly remember what a crashing OS is...because with my home PCs running Vista they pretty much never crash.
- Suricou, on 04/22/2008, -18/+7So, because you have a very powerful PC, you believe that those without cycles to waste should not complain? Vista's resource usage is not a problem to those who can afford to upgrade, but to the rest of us it is obvious waste.
- sqwirl, on 04/22/2008, -8/+11I've been using Vista for about a year and I also think it's just fine, and is miles ahead of XP.
- ATLien74, on 04/22/2008, -7/+8There is NOTHING Mac-like about Windows!!
- Assezdefromage, on 04/22/2008, -0/+7They both have some common features now. That's not saying that they are identical. Just similar in certain aspects.
- dfeifer, on 04/22/2008, -3/+7I have also been using vista since beta, and I LOVE it. I am using vista ultimate x64, and this is actually the first Microsoft OS I have bought since windows ME. Linux the rest of the time for me. The only errors I have ever received were due to bad drivers from Creative [What else is new] and ATI.
- n4tune8, on 04/22/2008, -2/+1I agree with you except for the Explorer interface. Just can't get used to it.
- dukeochutney, on 04/22/2008, -5/+4the plain fact of the matter is vista will never have mass usage in the business world like XP does.so while it isnt that bad its also not feasible except for home usage.
- 11oops, on 04/22/2008, -1/+4I recall that same thing being said about XP following its release during the era of W2k dominance.
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1My fortune 5 firm pulled the vista deployment ahead by 6 months after the beta went so well. We're fighting with local IT preventing them from running skunk-work Windows 2008 servers.
I'm sorry, you're flat wrong.
- boot20, on 04/22/2008, -2/+4I love how the comments are always "I love Vista" and "Vista is SOOO much better than XP," but nobody ever give any real reason why this is so. So convince me, why should I switch to Vista?
- ShorD143, on 04/22/2008, -3/+3don't. you probably won't need to for another few years anyways. i'd say wait until it becomes more streamlined. if you really cared to switch you would have probably done so already
- DarkShroud, on 04/23/2008, -1/+2The over all system performance is better than XP. The security is miles ahead of XP. And then there is the eye candy (Aero & glass) that runs off your video cards processor & memory so it doesn't hurt the system performance.
- djgreedo, on 04/23/2008, -1/+1Security is better.
Vista for me has been far more stable than XP ever was.
The UI has dozens of little improvements, such as editing MP3 tags from within explorer (works really well), different folder options depending on what folder you have open (e.g. recycle bin empty button), more intuitive ways to customise the files and folders on your computer, media center is much improved, Vista looks better than XP, performance is slightly better, etc.
There are plenty of reasons to upgrade, but it really comes down to your personal needs and preferences. If your computer is older than Vista (1.5 years), then I wouldn't recommend it as XP performs better on older hardware, and you may find that your hardware is not officially supported by the manufacturer under Vista. I'd recommend buying a PC with Vista preinstalled when you're ready to buy a new PC. - wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ...
- Kamujin, on 04/22/2008, -2/+3I use Ubuntu as my daily driver, but I really do like Vista better then XP and OS X also.
I am not going to state my reasons because you don't want to be convinced. If you wanted to be convinced, you'd try it and make up your own mind.
- simplistics06, on 04/22/2008, -47/+52Is that you Bill Gates?
- krystalo, on 04/22/2008, -54/+139Buried as inaccurate. What a load of crap. Of course it will probably make Digg's frontpage, considering how many Microsoft bashing articles do.
- fauxdeluxe, on 04/22/2008, -18/+14Agreed.
It's from the same line of dull performance-based issues that sprouted when people tried to migrate their ***** 486s to run XP. I've seen plenty of PCs that are sold with Vista preloaded and run a-okay.
It has happened before, and it will happen again, and again and...- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -5/+14Vista has lots of new I/O technologies that allow newer hardware to scale higher, performance wise, versus XP. Here's a wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_tec ...
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -5/+14Vista has lots of new I/O technologies that allow newer hardware to scale higher, performance wise, versus XP. Here's a wiki:
- Sushubh, on 04/22/2008, -4/+5om malik... what do you expect from him!
- armo, on 04/22/2008, -3/+17What? Inaccurate? A blog citing a blog must be true.
- burnerz, on 04/22/2008, -0/+4It's because digg is full of apple and linux fanboys. Digg me down all you want, it is the truth.
- fauxdeluxe, on 04/22/2008, -18/+14Agreed.
- schizogony, on 04/22/2008, -29/+75Yay, another fanboy baiting article written to do nothing other than stir up controversy.
- Theli, on 04/22/2008, -5/+2And the fanboys took the bait. I just hope all the Vista users remember this the next time they want to accuse Linux users of being fanatics.
- jabberwolf, on 04/22/2008, -0/+2took the bait? The bait is *****! And sorry we do use linux and Vista, but we dont cry a ***** river and make ***** up.
- e2superman, on 04/22/2008, -38/+66My copy of Vista runs just fine on my computer. I have had it over a year with zero crashes, zero driver problems, and once I tweaked some setting for UAC (it can be annoying by default) the OS is a gem.
- zerocool1990, on 04/22/2008, -10/+24Why the hell are you burying him ? Because he thinks vista is good ?
Well I've been using vista for a year too and i love it. - FKnight, on 04/22/2008, -6/+5Oh didn't you know? No one on Earth runs Vista without a problem. Anyone claiming to absolutely must be a hired shill for Microsoft.
- maximus98, on 04/22/2008, -8/+1When Vista was released, I got a version to test on my travel laptop. The machine barely met the minimum hardware specs. It took at least 5 mins to boot, and maybe another 3 mins before becoming responsive after logging in, on a brand new fresh install. OK, I didn't expect too much running some aged hardware. I gave it a month to let the performance optimize, but it didn't help. Later in the year I bought my girlfriend a brand spanking new laptop for Christmas; dual core processor, 2GB RAM, etc. OK, it still ran like molasses. Still had to wait at least 3 mins for a boot, and another minute after logging in before it became responsive and I could start some applications. Then, 30secs to start apps, it takes 2 or 3 seconds before what I'm typing shows up on the screen, every once in a while, switching between apps takes 30 seconds. Screw that, I can't get work done. I wiped that brand new computer clean and installed XP. Boots in less than a minute, I can start apps as soon as I log in, I can run 10 apps at a time and switch between them instantly, typing shows up on the screen immediately. SO, Vista is a bloated hog. Got it? Good, I thought so. So I got to upgrade to a quad core with 4GB ram to get the same responsiveness that I get from XP? Get real. That f**king sucks.
Vista was nice, I liked the UI improvements and features, but I can't use it if I can't get work done. If you think Vista is great, good, but how does it perform compared to XP on your same hardware? I wouldn't doubt it sucks compared to Vista. Back up your data and switch back for a week. You'll see what your missing.- radish, on 04/22/2008, -0/+1You won't care, but...
I saw poor performance like you describe on a machine using the built-in graphics (running with out Aero). I added a $40 graphics card, and the machine runs quite well (with or without Aero). With Vista, the graphics subsystem seems to make the biggest difference in performance. - modix, on 04/22/2008, -0/+2You probably had something very wrong with your system. I have Vista Ultimate running on an older Athlon 64 and it's snappy and responsive. When people say "newer computers", they're just meaning something somewhat modern with at least 1-2gB of RAM. Your computer should never have ran that slow unless you had a major driver issue or something.
- radish, on 04/22/2008, -0/+1You won't care, but...
- zerocool1990, on 04/22/2008, -10/+24Why the hell are you burying him ? Because he thinks vista is good ?
- ipewpewtoo, on 04/22/2008, -30/+20I LOVE MY VISTA COMP!!!
- simplistics06, on 04/22/2008, -15/+10*barfs*
- slave1, on 04/22/2008, -10/+11you've been skipping your medications again, haven't you?
- zerocool1990, on 04/22/2008, -9/+13Why the hell is everybody saying he loves vista is being burried ? ***** YOU MACBOYS
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -0/+6There are XP fanboys, too.
- fakeollie, on 04/22/2008, -4/+2YOUR ECOSYSTEM ROCKS!!!
- badwithcomputer, on 04/22/2008, -48/+33vista is like the genital herpes of os: even when you think you totally got rid of it, some nasty warts show up on your penis and you need to get some more cream from rite aid before you date tomorrow night at 7:30
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -14/+22What a stupid analogy, if you don't want Vista just use XP, nobody is forcing you to upgrade. I guess everything is acceptable as long as you bash Vista.
- FatShady, on 04/22/2008, -8/+19Spoken just like someone who's online moniker is "badwithcomputer".
Well done.
- e2superman, on 04/22/2008, -25/+40I have had Vista over a year without a single crash or driver problem. IMO it runs better than XP. UAC can be annoying sometimes but you can tweak that setting in the control panel if you desire. I downloaded a beta driver for nvidia once and it did not work right (why they call it beta) and instead of taking vista down it simply restarted the driver (screen flashes) and then all is good. In XP my whole computer would have BSOD'd.
- MacSuxWindozSux, on 04/22/2008, -2/+7That's exactly true. XP doesn't have the ability to recover the video driver on the fly.
- MacSuxWindozSux, on 04/22/2008, -0/+5What I said was factual in every way. The truth must hurt.
- MacSuxWindozSux, on 04/22/2008, -2/+7That's exactly true. XP doesn't have the ability to recover the video driver on the fly.
- aliguana, on 04/22/2008, -19/+77no, people are "clutching to XP" because a) their machines need upgrading to run Vista properly b) Vista is too expensive. Stores are unhappy because they can't just bundle Vista on any old crappola machine like they can with XP, so of course they're clutching to XP for as long as they can. The majority of people will buy a new machine with Vista installed and be very happy with it, thank you very much.
No-one says "Leopard is a clunky OS", because people aren't trying to run it on outdated hardware. A 2008 OS generally needs 2008 hardware, sorry to say. (Says he who is running Vista perfectly fine on a 2001 Pentium)- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -27/+29Core2Quad, 4GB RAM, and Vista is still a pig.
- schoate09, on 04/22/2008, -17/+9You must have installed something wrong.
- willywong, on 04/22/2008, -15/+26Yes, he installed Vista.
- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -5/+9Haha,
- gameforge, on 04/22/2008, -1/+4I have a Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz w/ 2GB of RAM, and I'll admit it does not run like a pig, after months of "scarcely documented" tuning. But it requires a ridiculous amount of RAM for what it offers over XP.
I use it strictly for games, so I've stripped literally every bell and whistle it has... Win95 GUI, no wallpaper, no desktop icons, three tray icons, no superfetch (no it doesn't help anything at all when all you do is run high performance software), no defender or firewall, no UAC, no autodefrag, etc.
I do have driver issues with an eVGA GeForce 8600GTS. That's a perfectly Vista-compliant card, and the problems (texture flickering, always in the same places in various games) have persisted over multiple drivers. It goes away if I turn off DX10 functionality, and never happens in XP. It also doesn't like "eccentric" swapfile configurations... while that's not exactly a major complaint, it's also inexplicable...
Other than that it does exactly what Win95 did for me - launches my games.
I have a bit of Windows-only software that by no means requires that I use Vista (or even Windows at all in some cases); and the amount of RAM (read: Application RAM listed in the performance monitor, not buffered/etc. RAM) is just stupid. They have obviously bloated up the Windows API from anything but an ideal standpoint.
There are political reasons not to use Vista; it incorporates DRM, and while they are free to adhere to whichever industry standards they wish in order to support various formats, it means to non-supporting customers that they must be cautious about which forms of media they invest in, and this was through no choice of their own - MS imposed that on them by including these technologies by default with the OS. They were not the first of course, with respect to operating systems; that would be Apple.
It also fails to address many other long-term Windows problems. It still phones home and requires "activation", and MS had initially planned to disallow hardware upgrades (they nixed this due to outcry). It still has problematic driver support - I find it predictable that MS users bash free OS users because they must plan their computer around their OS, and yet similar users find this an acceptable drawback of Windows.
And the usual... scheduled tasks and services I didn't schedule and don't want, having a horrible desktop-refresh which slows the whole computer down (no seriously - if you have a lot of icons on your desktop, get rid of them... your computer will run much better), an "interesting" WiFi implementation (make no mistake, it works fine if you have drivers, it's just strange and unintuitive), a crappy insecure filesystem that allows "hiding" of data from the user as well as regular maintenance, and the cancerous growth we call the "Windows registry".
For what the whole mess cost ($400 for Retail Ultimate?!) it just sucks. I bought Home Premium/32-bit at an Office Depot going-out-of-business sale for $65, and after tuning it just right, it seems to load DirectX 10 drivers well. That's the best I can say for it - it's a bloated-up Win2k which considers me a thief until I prove otherwise.
I'd never have paid more than I did for it; it was marked down from $150 at the time... for a stupid 32-bit-only home-edition upgrade. That's sad.- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -0/+3Congratulations, your "tuning" crippled Vista.
"Win95 GUI, no wallpaper, no desktop icons, three tray icons"
Nice. Glad to see you're willing to torture yourself for like 200 MB of RAM or so.
"no superfetch (no it doesn't help anything at all when all you do is run high performance software)"
I'm sorry to say but superfetch is one of the single most important features of Vista, because it allows you to switch between applications much faster. If you turn off superfetch your computer and your entire desktop experience will slow to a crawl, because everything and anything you do will have to be read from the hard drive to memory and then dumped again when you close it. And all for what? So you can enjoy keeping your RAM free? Pretty stupid.
Here's a video where I play Call of Duty 4 maxed out without any frame loss on a 1920 x 1200 screen, while keeping Photoshop and Reason 4 in the background, Reason 4 loaded with a 500 MB track and playing, all while I'm encoding Batman Begins from HD quality to iPhone quality off of my server in the kitchen. I actually recorded this with a Creative webcam, so it was doing additional WMV encoding overhead. Skip towards the end some.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRm4hk5uRo0
I suggest you try two things:
First of all, reinstall Vista to fix all the ***** you broke.Then, install SP1. Install only the best drivers for your hardware and your favorite games, no tuneup utilities or any ***** apps. Leave everything else including Defender/Autodefrag/etc enabled. When you're loving how great it runs after you do that, come back and tell us about it.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -0/+3Congratulations, your "tuning" crippled Vista.
- blankhorizons, on 04/22/2008, -0/+5I stopped reading after you said your gaming rig has an 8600GTS and you use it for "high performance software". Why have a quad and such a mediocre video card? You would have been way way better off with a cheaper dual core and a better card.
- willywong, on 04/22/2008, -15/+26Yes, he installed Vista.
- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -9/+9Heh, installed something wrong huh, not that many ways to install Vista, besides, came pre-loaded from HP.
- Giga, on 04/22/2008, -4/+5There you go. Preloaded is usually bogged down by bloatware applications that OEMs tend to throw at it.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -2/+2I would also be willing to bet that SP1 didn't come with his machine. Even now, OEMs still aren't installing it yet I believe.
- jakem1, on 04/22/2008, -1/+2Yeah, we just got a few Vista PCs from Dell at work the other day (Core2Quad, 3Gb of RAM, etc.) and the default installation of Vista Business is pretty poor. As GliTCH82 mentioned I was surprised that they didn't come with SP1 and there's an awful amount of crapware installed (it took 10 minutes just for Google Desktop to load - why the ***** do I need that on a business PC). As soon as I get a chance I'll have to do a clean install on each of them. Thanks for nothing Dell.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -0/+1It's like they get the engineers to install Windows, then hand it over to a marketing team that installs everything else you don't need on it. Meanwhile, some executives are laughing their asses off, counting their fat wads of ad revenue cash as the marketing guys shut the laptop down one last time before shipping it out to you. Except, they really only had to do that once and then deploy it 5,000 machines at a time.
- Lyanto, on 04/22/2008, -2/+6"came pre-loaded from HP"
HP used to (and might still) be even worse than Dell when it came to pre-installed crapware. Try a fresh install with SP1, run it a day or two for SuperFetch to build its caches, and it'll run pretty close to XP. If Vista were nearly as bad as people made it out to be, I'd have taken it off my laptop ages ago. Here I am a year later, still running it.
- Giga, on 04/22/2008, -4/+5There you go. Preloaded is usually bogged down by bloatware applications that OEMs tend to throw at it.
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -17/+16You are lying, I have a Core2Duo at 2.3Ghz and 2GB of RAM and Vista runs faster than XP.
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -8/+12Notice that I'm being buried for stating a fact. Enjoy living in denial : )
- KaiUno, on 04/22/2008, -4/+6.... on your previous machine. Which probably was a bit light on the specs for XP.
I've got a Q6600 with 4GB and I don't find Vista performing any less than XP in the OS department. Once I start a game though, XP is about 10% faster to run that. Especially when it's a DX10 game. Those tend to slow down a lot. (And that's running them with 2 8800GT's in SLI.) The only game (so far) that seems to run a bit faster on Vista is the Age of Conan beta. For some reason, as the DX10 client hasn't been released yet. - PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -2/+7I'm obviously talking about the same machine. I tried two different computers, a Core2Duo and an Athlon64 3500+ with 2GB of RAM each. Both ran faster on Vista than on XP, that's because of the fact that Vista actually takes advantage of the RAM.
- zerocool1990, on 04/22/2008, -2/+7I have Core2Due at 2.0 Ghz and 1GB of RAM and it's running great, really.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -4/+15You mean like this Core 2 Quad with 4GB of RAM?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRm4hk5uRo0
Right, so here's a perfectly working Core 2 Quad (mine) and yet you say yours runs slow. Hmmm.... - HigherLogic, on 04/22/2008, -5/+5I'm calling ***** too, Vista's running faster on my Core2Duo 1.8Ghz with 2GB RAM than it did on my old POS with 999Mhz and 256MB RAM running XP.
// The point is, XP ran fine with the outdated hardware above, but it certainly wouldn't run Vista (yes, I tried). XP can run on a machine 5 years old, Vista, simply will not.- KaiUno, on 04/22/2008, -0/+4That's not really ***** then, is it. That machine was underspecced for XP. We all know XP likes a bit of ram, 512mb was the minimum to have it run smoothly, 1GB was preferred if you were going to do anything with it at all.
- CarnivalOfDust, on 04/22/2008, -1/+0I used to have 128 when I first got my XP PC. I tried to play Max Payne and the load time between levels was about 5 mins, or 10 if I'd been playing for an hour or so. I occasionally went out to my local shop for snacks while it loaded...
- KaiUno, on 04/22/2008, -0/+4That's not really ***** then, is it. That machine was underspecced for XP. We all know XP likes a bit of ram, 512mb was the minimum to have it run smoothly, 1GB was preferred if you were going to do anything with it at all.
- S1ngular1ty1, on 04/22/2008, -2/+3Probably user error.
- foooey, on 04/22/2008, -3/+3Same for me, quad core extreme, 4 gig ddr3, GeForce 8800 GTX, and Vista 64 ran like utter crap for me for gaming compared to xp64
- schoate09, on 04/22/2008, -17/+9You must have installed something wrong.
- CarnivalOfDust, on 04/22/2008, -5/+5My comp runs alright at the moment on XP (only got about 630MB of RAM - photoshop gives me page file warnings and all), but I quite frankly can't be bothered to upgrade. I don't think that the difference is worth it - it is just a little ridiculous how much RAM Vista needs just to sit there and do nothing. Obviously this comes from someone with a ~5yr old machine, but I have a mate with Home Basic (so no Aero or anything) and the memory usage seems to always be really high.
I'd be totally happy with Vista, but it just seems like XP+ to me - I might have totally missed something!- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -1/+6The extra RAM Vista uses makes the system faster by caching stuff, you're apps load faster, the system response is faster, etc. In my experience it makes a huge difference, compare a PC with 2GB of RAM with XP and one with Vista, the Vista one will be faster.
If you have a 5yr old PC and you use Photoshop you should seriously upgrade, even if you decide to use XP. Hardware nowadays is dirt cheap.- CarnivalOfDust, on 04/22/2008, -0/+0Fair enough, never tried, so not really my place to judge. And funny you should mention upgrading - think my HD is dying as of a few days ago... Time to jump ship - hey, I might even try Vista, we'll see :)
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1If your PC meets the recommended specs (run the update advisor) you should get Vista;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ...
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1If your PC meets the recommended specs (run the update advisor) you should get Vista;
- CarnivalOfDust, on 04/22/2008, -0/+0Fair enough, never tried, so not really my place to judge. And funny you should mention upgrading - think my HD is dying as of a few days ago... Time to jump ship - hey, I might even try Vista, we'll see :)
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -1/+6The extra RAM Vista uses makes the system faster by caching stuff, you're apps load faster, the system response is faster, etc. In my experience it makes a huge difference, compare a PC with 2GB of RAM with XP and one with Vista, the Vista one will be faster.
- MacParrot, on 04/22/2008, -6/+9"No-one says "Leopard is a clunky OS", because people aren't trying to run it on outdated hardware"
I wish you hadn't brought up OS X but since you did...
10.5 runs perfectly fine on two out of three non-Intel machines I put it on. The two 933MHz G4s (one 2002 QuickSilver Tower with 768MB of RAM and one 2003 iBook with 1.25GB of RAM. ) ran very well (the tower especially with it's dedicated, but old 64MB graphics card) with no hardware related issues (beyond the typical Leopard hiccups that are well documented). A 1.8GHz G5 iMac however ran it OK, but the WiFi dropped to complete crap, forcing me to re-install 10.4 so my kids could get back online. The two Intel machines (2.16GHz iMac and 2.33GHz MBP) I installed it on were significantly faster.
BOT: Even as a Mac user, I have to say the amount of Vista bashing has reached epic proportions here on Digg. If you don't use it or haven't tried it again since many updates for it have come out, give it another try. You may be pleasantly surprised. Just make sure your hardware is up to speed and that you meet or exceed the minimal requirements (exceeding it is always better).
Oh I forgot, here on Digg if you personally don't use something then it must be crap.- aliguana, on 04/22/2008, -1/+2yeah ok, Leo may work ok on old hardware, but Mac users generally don't use old hardware (think 1st gen iMacs from 2000), so the amount of positive/negative stories in that regard is practically zero. I'm glad OSX works on old Macs though... I'm not a lover or a hater, just a user
- MacParrot, on 04/22/2008, -2/+2That's a good point except 2000 era iMacs won't even install 10.5 (without third-party assistance) as they are G3s. I wouldn't install 10.5 on a machine like that just as Windows users shouldn't try installing Vista (or XP even) on a machine of that era. If you want to run a new OS, you most likely shouldn't go back much farther than 3 years or so.
Not being a Windows user at home (My XP box here at work is locked down to the point of ridiculousness) I'm not the best judge to say what computer is probably best for Vista, but I wouldn't go more than a year or two back.
I guess it really depends on what you use your computer for. If your apps need some of the underlying features of Vista (DX10 for example), then upgrade your hardware to match. If everything is running fine under XP, then why screw with it and wait to see what MS comes out with next.
- MacParrot, on 04/22/2008, -2/+2That's a good point except 2000 era iMacs won't even install 10.5 (without third-party assistance) as they are G3s. I wouldn't install 10.5 on a machine like that just as Windows users shouldn't try installing Vista (or XP even) on a machine of that era. If you want to run a new OS, you most likely shouldn't go back much farther than 3 years or so.
- MacSuxWindozSux, on 04/22/2008, -1/+1"It runs on old hardware" isn't the same as "I use it every day on old hardware that works well".
- modix, on 04/22/2008, -0/+0I've used Leopard on an older iMac, probably with somewhat similar specs. It was ugly, with the kernel panicking every 5 minutes or so. The programs regularly crashed and it took forever to load anything.
Perhaps if you had an older high end Mac, it will run, however, if you take a 3-4 year old iMac (which is about as close to some of the crappy old computers people are trying to update for Vista) it will run like crap.
Many of the computers people are bitching about Vista not running on were crappy even when they were sold. Expecting them to run a new OS 3 years later seems a bit unreasonable. Especially when they pitch a fit about buying more RAM, never noticing you can pick up 2gb for $50 or less. - wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1Let me explain it to you;
OS9 is to OSX as XP is to Vista.
10.5 is to OSX as SP1 is to Vista.
Oh, and didnt the 10.5 update fail to support some 5 or 6 year old machines?
- aliguana, on 04/22/2008, -1/+2yeah ok, Leo may work ok on old hardware, but Mac users generally don't use old hardware (think 1st gen iMacs from 2000), so the amount of positive/negative stories in that regard is practically zero. I'm glad OSX works on old Macs though... I'm not a lover or a hater, just a user
- MateyO, on 04/22/2008, -2/+9Not true, 10.4 and 10.5 work acceptably well on older machines. My -personal- problem with Vista is: I paid a lot of money for new hardware that I want available for _my_ use, not as Microsoft wants to use it.
It doesn't matter at this point if Vista's great or not, public opinion thinks it's *****. Microsoft may have fixed all the problems of the OS, but if my office has to weigh replacing 1200 machines _plus_ the 1/3 mil a year for the Enterprise Agreement, you can bet we'd be reluctant to move, especially if the bulk of those machines are doing a perfectly adequate job of what they need to do today.
Vista's costs are exactly what needed to happen for us to evaluate Linux and Mac/OSX in the workplace.- KamikazeeDriver, on 04/22/2008, -0/+3That's the best point made. Sometimes, upgrades aren't necessary. If it isn't broke, don't fix it. My father owns and operates an accounting firm. Of all the computers systems in the office, he still has one that runs Windows 95 to use a DOS program on. It works perfectly. The calculator calculates without a bunch of fancy eye candy..
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -1/+1" doesn't matter at this point if Vista's great or not, public opinion thinks it's *****."
Sorry, you're dead wrong.
- beachtrader, on 04/22/2008, -1/+3But the real question is what real benefits do you get with Vista which require this 2008 hardware? Besides "looking nice" what over riding features do you get which are so better than XP that you must have several GB of RAM to run the OS efficiently?
The problem is that there aren't any major features, there are some minor ones, that Vista does better than XP. Most consumers use a computer for web and email and some document processing. Why should they now require to purchase and have 4 GB of RAM to check email when it simply is not necessary with the other OS now?- Theli, on 04/22/2008, -0/+2I'm wondering about that myself. A lot of the new features added to Vista has also been added to Ubuntu and yet the system requirements of Ubuntu hasn't changed and it still fits on a CD. I'm sure there's a reason for this, but I just don't understand what.
- ATLien74, on 04/22/2008, -2/+4Nobody's saying that because Leopard is the ***** and Vista sucks ass! Vista wants to be Leopard, hell, Windows has always wanted to be Mac/OS...but it most certainly is NOT! You'd be much better off installing Ubuntu or some other flavor of Linux than sticking with Bill and Co.
- jlnr, on 04/22/2008, -1/+0As others have said, Leopard's running just great on a ~2003 iMac G4. Some things actually even feel faster than on Tiger (launching applications via Spotlight, something I do a lot). And that's *without* disabling anything, except the menu bar transparency which can't even be turned on.
That said, I guess Leopard still has higher hardware requirements than XP, esp. regarding RAM. - thedragon4453, on 04/22/2008, -2/+1I think there are basically 3 problems with vista and why it gets all the negative attention:
1. It has some high hardware requirements. Its been pretty much acknowledged that you should be running a core 2 with at least 2 gig of ram if you want it to run smoothly.
2. It breaks backwards compatibility with some apps/hardware.
3. It provides little functionality that XP doesn't.
I don't think that 1 is really the problem. Its not been too different with any other version of Windows. Newer software means higher sys reqs. 2 can be a huge problem, particularly in the corporate sector. Some companies rely on older or in house software. 3 is where the real problem is. Why upgrade to vista since you arent going to get much out of it? Particularly if it means that you will probably be buying a new computer to run it on, and potential repurchasing or recoding software or hardware?
Maybe I'm missing something, but unless you are a die hard gamer that has to have the latest rig, Vista doesn't seem to provide much that isn't already available for XP. DX 10 is one of the few things that Vista has (arguably) going for it.
Now, as I buy a new computer, I don't have any plans to wipe Vista and install XP, because there is some improvement, but I won't be buying an upgrade for computers I already have. I think its silly to say that Vista is a complete flop, but Vista is a bad idea from MS's standpoint. They did a few things that MS shouldn't ever be thinking of doing. Breaking backwards compatibility, making it difficult to put on a lot of machines, and having very little "must have" features. If you are breaking backwards compatibility it gives customers a choice in which OS to break compatibility with. And if other OS's are offering more, and you are losing some compatibility anyway, why not do it with a better OS?
- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -27/+29Core2Quad, 4GB RAM, and Vista is still a pig.
- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -59/+61Vista *IS* a clunky pig of an OS. I just replaced my copy with good ol' XP :)
- schoate09, on 04/22/2008, -19/+12Have fun wtih 2001's operating system.
- Hangly, on 04/22/2008, -7/+13I'm running Linux now. A 1993 operating system based on an OS from 1964.
Newer isn't always better.- synyster, on 04/22/2008, -4/+2true as long as it does the job for you and you happy with it, linux FTW
- Hangly, on 04/22/2008, -3/+2It does the job for me and I'm happy with it.
- senatorpjt, on 04/22/2008, -1/+6If that's the case, then Vista is really a 1985 operating system. (Windows 1.0)
- synyster, on 04/22/2008, -4/+2true as long as it does the job for you and you happy with it, linux FTW
- Hangly, on 04/22/2008, -7/+13I'm running Linux now. A 1993 operating system based on an OS from 1964.
- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -20/+26Haha, I'd much rather 2001's OS then a bloated beast like Vista.
- simplistics06, on 04/22/2008, -8/+14agreed
- HigherLogic, on 04/22/2008, -7/+6XP had a lot of extra crap that nobody needed compared to Windows 98. I suppose you would rather go back to that then, eh?
- Hangly, on 04/22/2008, -3/+5Extra crap like an integrated registry, real 32-bit support (finally!) plus NT-levels of stability and a decent filesystem?
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -0/+3No, but you could be running Windows 2000 which is XP minus all the skinning (and without some performance optimizations that made XP faster, same with Vista).
- HigherLogic, on 04/22/2008, -7/+6XP had a lot of extra crap that nobody needed compared to Windows 98. I suppose you would rather go back to that then, eh?
- senatorpjt, on 04/22/2008, -1/+4HAL 9000? At least Vista never tried to kill me.
- Hangly, on 04/22/2008, -1/+1Just wait.
- simplistics06, on 04/22/2008, -8/+14agreed
- splash, on 04/22/2008, -8/+7I went from Vista to XP as well a week ago. The thing I miss most is the inbuilt CPU Usage limiter and preloaded drivers on Vista. I forgot I had to go and download drivers for almost everything on my laptop.
- elvenseven, on 04/22/2008, -5/+2SP3
- Kazbaeden, on 04/22/2008, -2/+5Just because you capitalize it and put stars around it doesn't automatically make your argument true. Do you have any reasons other than "because I said so?"
- 4ndr3wk, on 04/22/2008, -4/+2[vista haters go here]
- MacSuxWindozSux, on 04/22/2008, -1/+8I downgraded my Windows computer from Vista (which I bought and opted in for MS to mail me the 64bit version free) to XP.
I immediately missed a lot of the features, noticed how old XP looked, and how much smarter Vista performed.
You can even see that programs interfere with each other a lot more in XP, when using resources like CPU or hard drive access.
I was developing DirectX software and one of the libraries that I was using was causing the nVidia driver that I installed to crash every 30 seconds.
This would have been a blue screen in XP, but Vista just restarts the driver and popups a message.
In XP my DirectX performance was double that of Vista, with the exact same code.
The problem is nVidia making ***** drivers. 1/3 of all Vista problems are nVidia drivers. - Amiga500, on 04/26/2008, -1/+1Life in the Ghetto is rough on you, eh?
- schoate09, on 04/22/2008, -19/+12Have fun wtih 2001's operating system.
- poidh, on 04/22/2008, -32/+65I prefer my Vista to XP. I've had absolutely no trouble at all with it. But then again, I live in the real world so I would never jump on the bandwagon and bash Vista just because I was an inadquate nerd who wanted to fit in.
To be honest, I feel embarrassed for the Vista-bashers. What a shallow and uninteresting life they must lead: "I want to fit in. I want to be liked. I know, I'll bash Vista. Then I'll kiss Apple's ass. Then I'll propagate the latest internet meme, hee hee lol. Then I'll post in a Kevin Rose thread, speaking to him as if he is my friend. I just want to be liked."- e2superman, on 04/22/2008, -10/+17You rule. LMAO
- simplistics06, on 04/22/2008, -19/+13I believe Vista sucks in the real world as well :/
- Jenadae, on 04/22/2008, -13/+6I dont think you have vista. Enjoy you AIDS.
- thailand1972, on 04/22/2008, -5/+6The truth is often spoken in jest. And you jest well.
- MateyO, on 04/22/2008, -10/+6ooooor, some of us really have evaluated all the available OSs and decided that Vista runs a distant third place. But, you know, we're not ALLOWED to have an opinion that differs from yours.
- poonaka, on 04/22/2008, -4/+4He speaks the truth!
- JoeVet, on 04/22/2008, -5/+7I feel embarrassed for the Vista-apologists. What a shallow and uninteresting life they must lead: "I want to fit in. I want to be liked. I know, I'll upgrade to Vista. Then I'll bash Apple's ass. Then I'll propagate the latest internet meme, hee hee lol. Then I'll post in a Kevin Rose thread, speaking to him as if he is my friend. I just want to be liked."
Its sad that you don't realize that vista is just an OS. Like any OS it is designed to run programs. It does not run these programs better than XP or Apple's OS. For those of us who already own XP, there is no rational reason to upgrade our computers just to run another OS. There are no new programs that need this OS and its $500 price tag.- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -3/+8You have that backwards, it really seems as though the Vista bashers are the ones trying to be macho. We're just saying, hey, there's nothing wrong with this guys, it works great, but apparently a lot of people just don't want to believe it for one reason or another.
But, by the way, nobody's trying to get the XP users to upgrade. At all. I'm just answering back at all the people that are telling me I must be an idiot because Vista runs like *****, when clearly my experience (and a lot of other people's) would indicate otherwise.- poidh, on 04/22/2008, -2/+2Your reply meant that I didn't have to spend my time replying (to JoeVet). Thanks.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -3/+8You have that backwards, it really seems as though the Vista bashers are the ones trying to be macho. We're just saying, hey, there's nothing wrong with this guys, it works great, but apparently a lot of people just don't want to believe it for one reason or another.
- KamikazeeDriver, on 04/22/2008, -2/+2Until I have to run Vista, I won't.
- zplus, on 04/22/2008, -35/+17Macs are worthless.
- MacParrot, on 04/22/2008, -7/+6You know completely off topic comments just make you look like an idiot...unless that was the look you were going for
- zongamin, on 04/22/2008, -5/+6Strange - my 2 1/2 year old imac could be sold for over £500 - show me a similar aged pc that has anywhere near that value. *****.
- S1ngular1ty1, on 04/22/2008, -3/+7Macs aren't worthless. They just aren't as useful as PCs. Get your facts straight.
- PrismoFillusion, on 04/22/2008, -17/+34Alright, I decided to finally stop lurking and sign up for an account just to say the following:
I had ME and it was AWFUL. It basically made my family computer half-useless until we were finally able to upgrade to XP eventually.
I just got a laptop with Vista a couple of weeks ago, and I haven't had one problem with the OS.
It's not a big step up from XP (if one at all at this point), but in terms of "does it work?" the answer is "yes!"- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -6/+8Heh, well hopefully it works! But, what I don't understand is what anyone would want an "upgrade" that has slightly more features then the previous version that costs all that extra processing power. Personally, I found it less reliable then XP, more crashes, more apps hanging too, so, yeah, pretty much big thumbs down from me. :)
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -3/+8Slightly more features? A completely new network stack, a new security model (even if you hate UAC you have to admit that not running as an admin by default is a step in the right direction), a way better Explorer, Prefetch that actually works, GPU accelerated GUI, a new audio stack, a new driver model, etc etc.
Vista has never crashed on my PC in comparison XP sometimes freezes when using the file explorer.- Giga, on 04/22/2008, -2/+1To be fair, things like new network stacks and driver models don't immediately come across as beneficial features. The new driver model causes older drivers to be incompatible rendering older hardware useless unless new drivers are written. The new networking stack is, well, transparent. If I wasn't told it had changed, I wouldn't have noticed anything. Actually, I was told, and I still haven't noticed anything. Most of Vista's big improvements are in the background that people mostly don't notice. Good in the long run, but hard for marketing to sell.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -1/+3New drivers are available for almost all popular hardware, and not only for 32-bit Vista but also 64-bit which is something that isn't possible with XP given XP-64's low popularity.
Logitech keyboards and mice have 64 bit drivers. Nvidia and ATI have 64 bit drivers. My Canon MP850 printer has a 64-bit Vista driver. Chipsets, game controllers, sound cards, you name it... I'm running Vista 64-bit with a ***** of hardware and a ***** of software, and I think the only thing I couldn't get to work was my Fujitsu ScanSnap which has a 32-bit driver with the 64-bit still in development.
I even went on a trip down memory lane and installed Myst. That game from 1994. That runs, too.
The new network stack is noticeable when you're mobile, and for example, want to have your firewall on when you're away but off when you're at home. Even using Wi-Fi. The audio stack is great because each application has a separate volume control in the mixer now. - wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1" things like new network stacks and driver models don't immediately come across as beneficial features"
Which is why people who dont know what the fcuk they are talking about are most likely to spread FUD about Vista. See how it works?
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -1/+3New drivers are available for almost all popular hardware, and not only for 32-bit Vista but also 64-bit which is something that isn't possible with XP given XP-64's low popularity.
- Giga, on 04/22/2008, -2/+1To be fair, things like new network stacks and driver models don't immediately come across as beneficial features. The new driver model causes older drivers to be incompatible rendering older hardware useless unless new drivers are written. The new networking stack is, well, transparent. If I wasn't told it had changed, I wouldn't have noticed anything. Actually, I was told, and I still haven't noticed anything. Most of Vista's big improvements are in the background that people mostly don't notice. Good in the long run, but hard for marketing to sell.
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -3/+8Slightly more features? A completely new network stack, a new security model (even if you hate UAC you have to admit that not running as an admin by default is a step in the right direction), a way better Explorer, Prefetch that actually works, GPU accelerated GUI, a new audio stack, a new driver model, etc etc.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -2/+1Did your laptop come with Vista SP1?
- Wartyboskfapped, on 04/22/2008, -6/+5"It's not a big step up from XP"
EXACTLY. It is, at best, a GUI upgrade patch, and a vastly overpriced one. Why do we all need to use an OS that is 'not a big step up from XP' after all the hype and massively extended development time that we get with Vista? There is no compelling argument to use it, security issues notwithstanding (arguing that Vista is more secure than MS' own previous OS is not a good way to go, seeing as it tacitly confirms flaws in MS' designs).- flameboy, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2People who:
a. have done no research about vista
b. had no experience with vista
c. think they know what they are talking about
d. want to fit in and look cool
will say ignorant/annoying things such as:
1. vista is just a "GUI upgrade patch"
2. "there is no compelling argument" to use vista
3. All microsoft software is flawed by design
- flameboy, on 04/23/2008, -0/+2People who:
- arjie, on 04/22/2008, -2/+2I got Vista with my laptop, and it works fine. It's not quite as user-friendly to me as Ubuntu (maybe just a lack of experience on my part, I can't even find where to adjust the animation speeds and settings for Aero, and it doesn't seem to have zoom).
It also seems to be slightly slower (Not too sure on this because Vista's effects are sometimes not smooth even though I have a GeForce 8400M GS whereas Compiz worked just fine on the Intel GMA950 IGP I had). But for all that, it's actually quite reasonable, and the only things I've had crash on me since the 18th (which is when I got it) are the Fingerprint Reader Server, and some miscellaneous Dell program which I have since disabled. - Suricou, on 04/22/2008, -2/+3The argument is not that Vista is as bad as ME, more a comparison - Vista is to XP and ME was to 98. An upgrade which increased resource demands, provided additional eye-candy, but really provided nothing extra that could justify the upgrade and compatability issues.
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1People who:
a. have done no research about vista
b. had no experience with vista
c. think they know what they are talking about
d. want to fit in and look cool
will say ignorant/annoying things such as:
1. vista is to XP as ME was to 98
2. "provided nothing extra"
(thx flameboy)
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1People who:
- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -6/+8Heh, well hopefully it works! But, what I don't understand is what anyone would want an "upgrade" that has slightly more features then the previous version that costs all that extra processing power. Personally, I found it less reliable then XP, more crashes, more apps hanging too, so, yeah, pretty much big thumbs down from me. :)
- icsbase, on 04/22/2008, -11/+23Microsoft will admit that Vista was a flop compared to what it might have been for further development - but only after next Windows version is released. They _need_ Vista to gather more money right now so they say it's currently the best option out there for operation system.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -5/+3You _need_ to gather more information because your knowledge on the subject is, quite frankly, lacking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRm4hk5uRo0
- cotaskmemalloc, on 04/22/2008, -2/+2You're an idiot.
- eightfivezero, on 04/22/2008, -16/+11I also don't understand where all the Vista hate comes from. I can't remember it crashing ever.
- bitsmartuk, on 04/22/2008, -3/+11If "not crashing" is the only thing you look for in an operating system then yeah, I guess it's pretty good. By most other metrics however...
- senatorpjt, on 04/22/2008, -1/+2If that's the metric, they should have stopped making new operating systems after VMS came out. (Sometimes I wish they did)
- Wartyboskfapped, on 04/22/2008, -2/+12It's not about crashing or failures per se, it is about the massively overhyped expectations and claims for Vista from Microsoft, the extended development time & delays, vs cost & the operating system's sluggishness at release, lack of features and general superfluous nature. It is not what it is supposed to be, and you really might as well not install it cos you aint missing anything.
- eightfivezero, on 04/22/2008, -1/+2Digging you up because I didn't think about it that way yet. Thanks for the insight!
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1The hate comes from organized campaigns from both FSF and Apple, and the irrational fanboys who'll say anything if they think it helps them in their fantasy war against MS.
- bitsmartuk, on 04/22/2008, -3/+11If "not crashing" is the only thing you look for in an operating system then yeah, I guess it's pretty good. By most other metrics however...
- flangepiece, on 04/22/2008, -6/+15Only reason I've got Vista on my machine is I thought I'd be an early adopter for once in my life, so I shelled out on the OEM copy of Ultimate 64. What can I say, it works okay-ish, barring the occasional update which just won't install no matter what I do, the fact I had to unlock it a couple of times when I upgraded my PC just a little too much (because moving from IDE to SATA is utterly unheard of right?), Superfetch dying all the time, and other random process error messages which don't actually seem to effect the running of the PC. But it's getting a heck of a lot less airtime on my PC than a certain other OS which is becoming increasingly popular. I'll give Windows 7 a go if I get a FREE upgrade from Microsoft, but the chances of that are slim to non-existent.
- injury, on 04/22/2008, -5/+4well um ya that upgrade is unheard of in that what were you doing running windows vista 64 bit on the old hardware in the first place.
Let's play a little detective work based on what we see in your post. Not normally an early adopter, was installed on an IDE harddrive, and surprised you had to reactivate upon swapping harddrives. I'm guessing you didn't want to shell out money for the hardware to run Vista much less know of a good reason why you'd need to run Vista 64. You bought an oem version (which means you got a new hdd, mobo, ram right...because you're legal right) but that new drive you got for it was IDE.
So you either cheaped out on the hardware and had issues (suprise surprise no NT based Windows OS runs well on crap hardware), you actually installed it on some old junk you had lying around and was somehow disappointed that an OS that was advertised by Microsoft to be more hardware dependent didn't run as expected...M$ should charge you double for a win7 upgrade- flangepiece, on 04/22/2008, -2/+22Gb RAM, Athlon X2 4200, 512Mb x1950 (admitedly AGP, not PCI-E). Something nearing a terabyte of storage. So, not top of the range, admitedly, but hardly crappy. I get something like 5 for my vista experience. 5 of what, I'm not sure. Yawns per hour, perhaps.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Vista hater, but if ambivalence is all that my money buys me these days, then I don't think Microsoft are doing their job right.- daza, on 04/22/2008, -1/+2Honest question but do you think you really needed to spend money for Vista Ultimate or would you maybe have been better buying the much cheaper Vista Home Premium? You're not using a notebook so clearly a lot of the security features that come with Vista Business/Ultimate you won't use. Here, in Australia, OEM copies were going for $139 for Vista Home Premium when it launched and they have since fallen to $99 or so. Ultimate is still quite a lot more though..
- flangepiece, on 04/22/2008, -1/+1When I bought it there was only about £40 difference in Home and Ultimate - but I guess that's about $700 in your crazy Aussie dollars though eh? *just kidding*...Anyway, I'm into my gaming and I'd read that it was the better-suited platform; I originally liked the sound of the 'Extras' (still waiting for any worthwhile ones to arrive); I occasionally need to connect my machine to an Active Directory network, and I suppose I like to think of myself as a 'power user' so I just couldn't bring myself to buy anything labeled 'Home'. In retrospect perhaps I should have stuck with WinXP but I wanted to go 64bit to make the most of my CPU - and the lack of driver support on XP64 was one of the things that made me leap (one thing which has been surprisingly decent in Vista).
- daza, on 04/22/2008, -1/+2Honest question but do you think you really needed to spend money for Vista Ultimate or would you maybe have been better buying the much cheaper Vista Home Premium? You're not using a notebook so clearly a lot of the security features that come with Vista Business/Ultimate you won't use. Here, in Australia, OEM copies were going for $139 for Vista Home Premium when it launched and they have since fallen to $99 or so. Ultimate is still quite a lot more though..
- flangepiece, on 04/22/2008, -2/+22Gb RAM, Athlon X2 4200, 512Mb x1950 (admitedly AGP, not PCI-E). Something nearing a terabyte of storage. So, not top of the range, admitedly, but hardly crappy. I get something like 5 for my vista experience. 5 of what, I'm not sure. Yawns per hour, perhaps.
- senatorpjt, on 04/22/2008, -1/+4Wow, you picked the wrong time to be an early adopter. last time I did it was blu-ray, i got lucky. Still, you should know better than to upgrade any microsoft OS until at least the first service pack.
- injury, on 04/22/2008, -5/+4well um ya that upgrade is unheard of in that what were you doing running windows vista 64 bit on the old hardware in the first place.
- nickcozy, on 04/22/2008, -10/+4Yeah windows 7 will be awesome,good times ahead people.
- aliguana, on 04/22/2008, -3/+8Windows 7 will be Vista Extreme : you think people are complaining NOW lol. I doubt very much W7 will be a lightweight Linux-esque rewrite of Windows, more likely it will be Vista SP3 with all the things that were promises in Longhorn thrown in too. Regardless, people will complain about W7 until W7 Sp2 anyhow, they just like complaining.
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1What? Youre delusional if you believe a word of that -- and how does that get to +5?
"linux-esque rewrite of Windows" - what the fcuk do you think you're talking about?
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1What? Youre delusional if you believe a word of that -- and how does that get to +5?
- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -2/+8Anyhow, that the next Windows is coming out in .. a year? Is a pretty good indicator of Vista's success level.
- nickcozy, on 04/22/2008, -5/+6emaila i see linux versions coming out every day shows how *****/insecure it is,even apple releases osx each year ,even they suck.Windows is much better,oh and i don't like cheap products like linux cheap is not good.
- junaru, on 04/22/2008, -3/+4Oh how i would like to flame you about "linux versions coming out every day", pointing that you're probably talking about distributions, and not the kernel versions and their snapshots, than laughing for comparing release times of a proprietary product with a open source one and totally not understanding of how the development of later works. But meh, maybe keeping you of linux is the best for all of us.
- nickcozy, on 04/22/2008, -2/+2Sorry junaru i will accept linux if you convince me ,but you sucked.
- senatorpjt, on 04/22/2008, -0/+2Maybe he tried linux a few years ago. It has stabilized now afaik, but the early 2.x versions (when they were split by odd number development/even number stable branches) were constantly breaking interfaces. ("making stuff not work" for you Windows folk)
- luchid, on 04/22/2008, -0/+1"emaila i see linux versions coming out every day shows how *****/insecure it is,even apple releases osx each year ,even they suck.Windows is much better,oh and i don't like cheap products like linux cheap is not good."
Your lack of punctuation, capitalization and proper grammar show a really bad education. Your non-existent point, the completely baseless statement and your ass backwards logic further sustain that idea.
- junaru, on 04/22/2008, -3/+4Oh how i would like to flame you about "linux versions coming out every day", pointing that you're probably talking about distributions, and not the kernel versions and their snapshots, than laughing for comparing release times of a proprietary product with a open source one and totally not understanding of how the development of later works. But meh, maybe keeping you of linux is the best for all of us.
- jakem1, on 04/22/2008, -0/+1If the next version of Windows does come out next year (it's more likely to be 2010) then that will mean nothing more than that Microsoft have returned to their old three year schedule.
Vista RTM came out in November 2006 so a late 2009 release date would not be that strange. Remember that XP is the odd one lasting 5 years without a successor. Also, XP came out in 2001 whereas 2000 came out in 1999 but I don't remember anyone claiming that that made 2000 a piece of crap.
Your argument makes no sense.
- nickcozy, on 04/22/2008, -5/+6emaila i see linux versions coming out every day shows how *****/insecure it is,even apple releases osx each year ,even they suck.Windows is much better,oh and i don't like cheap products like linux cheap is not good.
- aliguana, on 04/22/2008, -3/+8Windows 7 will be Vista Extreme : you think people are complaining NOW lol. I doubt very much W7 will be a lightweight Linux-esque rewrite of Windows, more likely it will be Vista SP3 with all the things that were promises in Longhorn thrown in too. Regardless, people will complain about W7 until W7 Sp2 anyhow, they just like complaining.
- itsthemechanic, on 04/22/2008, -18/+45Vista: 20% less FPS, hogging more memory, weird sound problems in games.
XP SP2: faster, stable, and with some msstyle changes, just as pretty.
It's not bashing, I tried both. Although, if you just surf the web and do basic stuff Vista might work fine for you, and look pretty to boot.. but if you do balls-to-the-wall stuff with your computer, you will discover the myriad of ways in which it blows.
And fwiw, my machine does NOT need upgrading to run Vista: 2GB RAM, Dual Core T7700 2.4 Ghz, Geforce 8800M GTX.- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -8/+8Yeah, one thing I do notice about XP having used Vista for awhile, XP sure was/is stable. Vista honestly reminds me a little bit of ME in that respect.
- jakem1, on 04/22/2008, -0/+2No it doesn't. You're just saying that because you think it's cool.
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -3/+4You forgot to add that some games on XP use way more RAM than on Vista, also some games run faster in Vista than on XP (Assasin's Creed if i recall correctly)
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ ...- JoeVet, on 04/22/2008, -2/+2More ram is way cheaper than upgrading your working XP to Vista.
- cotaskmemalloc, on 04/22/2008, -4/+4OH NO 20% LESS FPS, I WISH I COULD GET MORE FPS ON MY GAMES!!1
Nevermind the fact that most benchmarks (at least that I've seen) show Vista at right around the performance of XP, sometimes a bit slower, but not 20%, and certainly not all the ***** time - but it's cool to make blanket statements about Vista these days, so I hope you feel good about yourself. Ever think that it might not be Microsoft's fault, but the blame might be better placed on the companies who make the drivers? But again, it's just cool to blame everything on Microsoft.
Hogging more memory - did anyone do a tiny bit of research into how Vista manages memory? It's not hogging it - it's simply wiring it for faster access, you dumb *****.
And maybe you do have weird sound problems in games, and maybe that one is Vistas fault, but I don't ***** care because you're an *****. Also, it's probably the sound drivers, so again, most likely not MS's fault. - stonklit, on 04/22/2008, -4/+5People will claim the RAM is due to "app caching" or whatever the ***** it's doing, but I don't buy that.
And you can try this out yourself - get a new machine, SAME HARDWARE on both, install fresh Vista, fresh XP.
Latest drivers. Everything.
Go ahead and run some resource intensive games. You WILL see that Vista has worse performance. That 20% drop in FPS is spot on.
I happened to try both Doom 3 and WoW.
*waits for someone to claim my hardware is "too old"*- jakem1, on 04/22/2008, -1/+3So despite all the evidence to the contrary, you think that Microsoft is lying and Vista doesn't pre-cache applications. That's all the proof I need then and I'm now a firm believer in everything that stonklit says.
- GliTCH82, on 04/22/2008, -2/+5Actually, it depends on your hardware. XP runs slower than Vista on my machine. And I'm definitely a hardcore user. I think your machine would run Vista great, too, I just wish I knew what you might have missed when you set it up.
- smoger, on 04/22/2008, -0/+4every game i play on my Vista PC(close to the specs of itsthemechanic's) gets 70-100 fps.(oblivion,bioshock,etc etc) always maxed out at 1680x1050 (WHILE running a second monitor for desktop apps). i have no reason to hold onto XP whatsoever. hell i can even watch TV on slingbox on one monitor while I play COD4 on my main one, and the machine doesnt break a sweat.
- reddog093, on 04/22/2008, -3/+1I bought a Tablet PC with Vista about a month ago. Last week I successfully downgraded it to Windows XP with a software theme that makes it look exactly like Vista (i choose not to run the sidebar). Now it runs even faster AND I have access to all of my older software/games.
I admit that Vista is not as bad as the stereotypes say it is. It does run well and the OS mainly just needs to mature a bit. The reason I chose to go to XP is because I already have a boatload of software that I can load up on an XP machine.
The reason I don't use Vista? - It does not have anything I need. Switching from Windows 98 - 2000 - XP brought extraordinary changes along with them (Win 2k Pro is still my favorite Windows). Until DX10 becomes more mature and is integrated into more games, I have absoutely no reason to switch any of my computers to a newer OS (Plus my Gaming computer is still using a 7900GTX - Great gaming card but no DX10 anyway.
It's not that Vista is bad..It's just that Vista doesn't have much to offer at the moment.- jakem1, on 04/22/2008, -1/+2So you paid extra to get a tablet and then replaced the one thing that gets the most out of the tablet features??? Vista beats XP Tablet hands down - there's just no comparison. If you wanted a gaming laptop why buy a tablet? I just can't understand how the slight benefit you might get in your gaming is worth losing all the tablet improvements in Vista.
- reddog093, on 04/22/2008, -1/+1You're putting words in my mouth. I didn't want a gaming laptop. (I have a gaming desktop that I built in June of 06 that can still hold its ground. Pentium D 940 oc'd, 7900GTX, 3Gigs 667, 1TB hard drive storage, LG Blue-Ray drive, Hauppauge TV Tuner). But that doesn't mean my laptop can't play older games. (Age of Empires, Sim City, Civilization, Rome Total War, Warhammer, etc) I also have a boatload of software, from Partition Magic to Adobe Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Macromedia suite, and a version of MS Office that I've already paid for on XP.
Most of the software that came packaged with Vista tablet edition has been replaced. The touch screen still works great. I still have a screen rotator and onscreen keyboard. I still have my fingerprint software and the verisoft security The only thing I do lose is the mobile settings software that came with Vista (although I have alternative XP power management software).
So yes. I paid extra for a tablet and I'm happy to have my tablet running more efficiently than before. So, like I said before. I haven't lost much that hasn't been replaced and I consider it worth it to be able to have access to a wealth of software that I've accumulated in the past.
- reddog093, on 04/22/2008, -1/+1You're putting words in my mouth. I didn't want a gaming laptop. (I have a gaming desktop that I built in June of 06 that can still hold its ground. Pentium D 940 oc'd, 7900GTX, 3Gigs 667, 1TB hard drive storage, LG Blue-Ray drive, Hauppauge TV Tuner). But that doesn't mean my laptop can't play older games. (Age of Empires, Sim City, Civilization, Rome Total War, Warhammer, etc) I also have a boatload of software, from Partition Magic to Adobe Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Macromedia suite, and a version of MS Office that I've already paid for on XP.
- reddog093, on 04/22/2008, -0/+1http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/showpost.php?p=869 ...
Almost everything in Vista is replaceable. And I still have Vista on the system restore partition for when the OS does become more mature. It's not like it's gone forever. I do intend on switching to Vista when the time is right.
- jakem1, on 04/22/2008, -1/+2So you paid extra to get a tablet and then replaced the one thing that gets the most out of the tablet features??? Vista beats XP Tablet hands down - there's just no comparison. If you wanted a gaming laptop why buy a tablet? I just can't understand how the slight benefit you might get in your gaming is worth losing all the tablet improvements in Vista.
- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -8/+8Yeah, one thing I do notice about XP having used Vista for awhile, XP sure was/is stable. Vista honestly reminds me a little bit of ME in that respect.
- PrismoFillusion, on 04/22/2008, -8/+5I got Vista on my new laptop just a couple of weeks ago, and haven't had a problem yet.
I don't know too much about computers, but I think one of the keys to making sure that the OS doesn't slow down your system too much is to get enough RAM. I got 3GB and my laptop runs faster than my 4+ year old XP desktop.- aliguana, on 04/22/2008, -4/+3I've got 1 gig of Ram, and Vista runs as fast as XP. I don't see the problems people are having. One thing I do though, is defrag that sucker once a week - Vista IS a pig on HD grinding, thats for sure.
- injury, on 04/22/2008, -1/+2Your harddrive grinding is due to having a low amount of RAM (your's is using the swap file alot). Honeslty I don't even sell an XP machine with less than 2GB anymore.
SP1's improvemenrt in HDD performance as it relates to moves and such may give you some benefit as well.
- injury, on 04/22/2008, -1/+2Your harddrive grinding is due to having a low amount of RAM (your's is using the swap file alot). Honeslty I don't even sell an XP machine with less than 2GB anymore.
- aliguana, on 04/22/2008, -4/+3I've got 1 gig of Ram, and Vista runs as fast as XP. I don't see the problems people are having. One thing I do though, is defrag that sucker once a week - Vista IS a pig on HD grinding, thats for sure.
- cyberghost232, on 04/22/2008, -7/+16They should take whats good in vista and release an SP pack of those for XP
- aliguana, on 04/22/2008, -4/+12they did, it's called Vista. lol. seriously, if you took all the "Vista" bits out of Vista and put them into XP, it would be.. Vista. Because all Vista is just a skin for XP, with a new graphics system imo.
- senatorpjt, on 04/22/2008, -1/+7No, if they took what's good in Vista and put it into XP, it would be XP.
- aliguana, on 04/22/2008, -2/+1lol!
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1"Because all Vista is just a skin for XP, with a new graphics system imo."
Is this where the idiots hang out? Here we have *another* wholly uninformed Vista-hater. Try doing some research before you make an asshat of yourself on the internet.
Here, I'll help you out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ...
- senatorpjt, on 04/22/2008, -1/+7No, if they took what's good in Vista and put it into XP, it would be XP.
- aliguana, on 04/22/2008, -4/+12they did, it's called Vista. lol. seriously, if you took all the "Vista" bits out of Vista and put them into XP, it would be.. Vista. Because all Vista is just a skin for XP, with a new graphics system imo.
- B3000, on 04/22/2008, -18/+8Seriously? Why do people keep writing this *****? Vista is so much better then XP was when XP first came out. Maybe some of you kids were too young to remember but XP was a ***** nightmare for a while. Vista's security is soooo much better and - although it doesn't really add much functionality - the interface is certainly pretty. It might be a bit of a bear when upgrading from XP but I bought my laptop with Vista pre-installed and I have been more than happy with it. I have not had a single compatibility issue, or any other complaint. And I was able to let my Norton account expire because I hadn't picked up by any viruses, trojans, or spyware since I got the thing. ***** the haters. Vista might not be a quantum leap forward but it is a step in the right direction.
- senatorpjt, on 04/22/2008, -3/+3Yeah, but XP didn't just come out. If you're selling an upgrade, you need to be upgrading what people have now, not what they had seven years ago.
- JoeVet, on 04/22/2008, -1/+1"although it doesn't really add much functionality - the interface is certainly pretty." Somehow a pretty UI is not worth the $300 asking price to me.
- TheZorch, on 04/22/2008, -19/+28#1 Problem of Windows Vista: It requires consumers to upgrade to the latest and greatest computer hardware turning a $200+ upgrade into a $3,000 upgrade. Vista Home Premium has only the most basic of features, and if you are missing a feature you need to upgrade again to the Ultimate version which is around $400. Not everyone is able or willing to upgrade to a machine powerful enough to handle Vista. There is a Windows Experience rating system in the OS. If your rating is 3.0 you are on the lower tier of the OS being usable for something other than email. For the millions of use who are gamers we need a machine that has a score of 5.0 and that takes lots and lot of $$$ that the majority of us just don't have. Vista is too expensive, both in price and in system resources, this is why its a debacle. The Compiz Fusion desktop on Linux is 3D accelerated on video cards that can handle GLX. This usually includes most ATI and Nvidia cards, and they don't have to be the latest and greatest cards either. This 3D desktop runs smoothly on hardware from the heyday of the Windows XP Era. So, why is it Windows Vista's 3D accelerated desktop requires so much more in system resources? A 3D accelerated desktop could have easily been made that runs on P4 and Athlon XP CPUs with older ATI and Nvidia hardware yet still support the higher end stuff which enthusiast gamers with big budgets could buy. This is why there is a big problem with Vista.
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -7/+16You are full of *****, a $3000 upgrade? Really? I recently build a new computer for about $700 and i can run CoD4, Bioshock, TF2, F.E.A.R, you name it, all at max settings.
My previous computer an which had an Athlon64 3500+ ran Vista just fine with 2GB of RAM, on XP the RAM was being wasted just sitting there idle.
Back in the day people had 128MB of RAM and XP ran like *****. - HigherLogic, on 04/22/2008, -6/+11***** *****. I paid $400 for a new Dell that came bundled with Vista (and Home Edition to boot). Has not once crashed on me either. FUD, just like this article.
- Labourer, on 04/22/2008, -6/+10you are talking garbage. I paid £9.00 on ebay for a pentium 2 with 128mb of ram and vista runs swimmingly.
- flameboy, on 04/23/2008, -0/+3rofl
- daza, on 04/22/2008, -3/+7$3,000 upgrade? My brother is using an AMD x2 3800+ with 1GB of DDR1 RAM and an 8600GT and it runs Vista perfectly fine. It's clearly no high end system, but it runs Vista flawlessly. He won't even dream about going back to XP now. Runs CoD4, Bioshock, STALKER, F.E.A.R., NFS: ProStreet, you name it, absolutely fine.
What's high end about that system? Would you even pay $200 bucks for it? You wouldn't, but that $200 runs Vista flawlessly. - smoger, on 04/22/2008, -0/+3i have vista ultimate and i dont recall paying anywhere near $400 for it. im not saying i pirated... i absolutely bought a legit copy.. but i think it was more in the range of $200.(and that was a year ago). btw the system i installed it on was built a year ago for 900 bucks and it runs everything and anything i throw at it. a slightly better system today would cost about 600-700
- kineticarl, on 04/22/2008, -0/+2I built a machine for $600 that scores 5.7, held back only by the hard drive. Even before I installed an 8800gs, the eye candy was perfectly smooth with the integrated graphics.
- brianara3, on 04/22/2008, -0/+1I hardly think it is going to cost $3000 for an upgrade.... I just built a new system (read, all new parts) for about $1000 and it scores a 5.7 on the exp. rating.
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -7/+16You are full of *****, a $3000 upgrade? Really? I recently build a new computer for about $700 and i can run CoD4, Bioshock, TF2, F.E.A.R, you name it, all at max settings.
- simplistics06, on 04/22/2008, -18/+8Vista is like the mac for windows except a 100 times worse.
- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -5/+4Man, I wish Linux was better at running games.. & well, a few more Windows apps, Dreamweaver for Linux and i'd be done & finished with Windows period.
- Hangly, on 04/22/2008, -1/+4Dreamweaver 8 runs perfectly under Wine with no tweaking. Dreamweaver CS3... not so much.
- cotaskmemalloc, on 04/22/2008, -0/+2This comment is, by far, the dumbest thing I've ever read.
- emailarron, on 04/22/2008, -5/+4Man, I wish Linux was better at running games.. & well, a few more Windows apps, Dreamweaver for Linux and i'd be done & finished with Windows period.
- schoate09, on 04/22/2008, -7/+9I run 32 bit Vista on my Core 2 Duo (64 bit proved incompatible with some devices, and since I only run 2 gigs of ram with 256MB Graphics card, I really didn't see the benefit in any of the apps I run (just more RAM usage)). The machine feels more responseive due to the interface of Vista, although sometimes it used to feel clunky, but I got around that after a little use. I would NEVER want Xp back, it feels so rough and outdated. All of my apps/devices run, and it performs the same as when I went to far as to instal Xp on here (and whipe it). I've had no major problems, even the old AIM 5.9 client (the best, er only good IM app I ever used) runs.
That said, I do wish they'd support Xp longer. I have a Pentium III 700/850Mhz 256 Mb laptop. I ran Vista on it for the hell of it, and it worked. It proved to be too slow, and the 10 GB HDD wasn't large enough for Home Basic + apps. However, I do want to keep using this laptop up to date, and I'm not a big fan of the "linux" route, especially since I could never get a distro to work on the thing. I don't use laptops as main PCs, I only use them for mobile covenience (such as when watching TV), all I do is type up the occassional letter, do the email, IM, and browse the web (including video). This machine does that well, to toss it because the OS gets dropped would be hideous. - smacksaw, on 04/22/2008, -13/+14This is customer abuse. If you bought Vista, this Windows 7 should be free. It should fix Vista. Instead people are paying for a service pack.
Before Microsoft used it's customers as beta-testers, selling problematic software that needed constant updates to keep rolling fixes going. Now it's using us as funding for developing service packs that should correct the problems with the OS that I bought.- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -6/+7I think you are confused, the ones that charge for Service Packs are not Microsoft : )
HINT: Appl....- MacParrot, on 04/22/2008, -2/+310.4.1 to 10.4.11 all free. 10.5.1, 10.5.2 and I imaging that 10.5.3 will be free too.
Or are you one of those people that insist that absolutely nothing new has been released in OS X since 10.1 came out.- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1Mac OS9 is to OSX as XP is to Vista.
10.1->5 are to OSX as SP# is to Vista (or XP).
- wageslaven, on 04/24/2008, -0/+1Mac OS9 is to OSX as XP is to Vista.
- smacksaw, on 04/22/2008, -1/+3I thought about that, except that Apple actually releases a stable product so I left it out. Stability is not a feature, and I'd say there's a huge gap between Apple's problems and MS'
- smoger, on 04/22/2008, -0/+2you'd be surpised. i manage about 50 macs and i can list a myriad of flaws that seem downright silly for the OS to have after so many revisions. like just today i got an error stating that the alias for a samba share on the network could no longer be found(AFTER i attempted to login to it). tried again, and got right in: i used the wrong password at first and OSX returned an entirely incorrect error message. WHY?
and to insinuate that XP and Vista are not stable is insanity. i get kernel panics on these macs waaaaay more than i've seen any windows machine bluescreen in the past 6 years or so.
//this comment was typed on a macbook.
- smoger, on 04/22/2008, -0/+2you'd be surpised. i manage about 50 macs and i can list a myriad of flaws that seem downright silly for the OS to have after so many revisions. like just today i got an error stating that the alias for a samba share on the network could no longer be found(AFTER i attempted to login to it). tried again, and got right in: i used the wrong password at first and OSX returned an entirely incorrect error message. WHY?
- MacParrot, on 04/22/2008, -2/+310.4.1 to 10.4.11 all free. 10.5.1, 10.5.2 and I imaging that 10.5.3 will be free too.
- FatShady, on 04/22/2008, -7/+5Hi.
On behalf of everyone who read your comment: Sh
- PueSi, on 04/22/2008, -6/+7I think you are confused, the ones that charge for Service Packs are not Microsoft : )