So we have people reporting great experiences, and people reporting horrible experiences. How can this be? I have a theory, as you might expect. Apologies in advance for length... :8

Vista was "rushed out": which might be a strange thing to say, considering it was expected a year before it arrived. The hardware manufacturers have a lot to do with it, in my opinion. I ran two separate Vista installs, though both are gone, and had drastically different experiences:

- home PC with AMD64, NForce4-based motherboard, GeForce 6600 video. I installed the 64-bit version, not long after Vista was released. As you can imagine, hardware support was a big problem: video OK, but it was months before NVidia released any Vista-specific drivers. I have "only" 2GB in this PC, and I found Vista to be a hog. It spent a lot of time writing to disk (which was a bit old), even after I stopped Indexing services. Since I use that PC to run a few games and as a "backup server" for my laptop, it doesn't need Vista or a 64-bit OS, so I've had XP SP2 back on for 6 months now.

- At work, months after the Vista release, the IT company I worked put out a beta of their internal Vista release, for business laptops. I installed it and had very few problems over the next 6 months before I left the company. Remote access (VPN) worked great, and it actually seemed faster than XP. A very old Window applications had a couple of interface problems, but nothing that stopped work. It was a business laptop, with a slightly old graphics chipset that Intel said they would not release full 3D graphics support for.

In both cases I had the well-documented problems copying large numbers of files in Explorer: I "worked around" the issue, as I tend to do: using a freeware Norton Commander clone. or the command line e.g. XCOPY and ROBOCOPY.

So I don't think it's as simple as "Vista is crap" - it never is. The work my company put in really made a difference, and other PC manufacturers can do the same. What I want to see from Microsoft in particular is testing, testing, and more testing, and a Service Pack that tightens the whole experience considerably.

That's why I say Vista was rushed out, despite being used internally at Microsoft - what they call "eating their own dog food" - it hasn't been enough, in my opinion. On the other hand, our varying experiences illustrate the role that hardware manufacturers have to play, because so much of the Vista experience depends on how well it works with a huge range of hardware.

Gonzo,

I've run DOSbox on XP just to see how it runs. Runs??? Walks would be a better description. I would imagine that the combination of Vista and DOSbox could work as a last resort, but it would be slow on "lesser" hardware.

DOSbox is slow since it does a full emulation of the X86 instruction set as well as DOS. I gather that there is somewhere something to allow running DOS applications on X86 hardware that just intercepts the DOS calls and uses the underlying X86 hardware instead of emulating it.

seacue

I have been running Vista for 3 months now, admittedly on quite a powerful machine (Dell XPS Quad Core).

In the early days I was considering throwing it away and putting XP on the box, 3 months in and having got round the UAC niggle (which is not actually a bad idea if you consider the rationale behind it) I'm quite happy to keep Vista.

There is nothing I have tried to do with it that I have not been able to in terms of software or peripherals although I believe this has not been the universal experience.

Microsoft is the only company I know that spends billions of $ in development to make products that are more obnoxious with each generation.

The reason seems to be that MSFT is playing to the parasites. These mostly are the advertising and marketing schemes that benefit from knowing everything possible about their sales prospect in giant databases.

The customer who pays for software with money and time, just seems to get the ever more finely targeted shaft. A trap thats easy to get in, can't get out.

Well. having read the threads on Vista here I'm not really much wiser! My problem is Mrs B has declared she would like a basic laptop for Xmas. Standalone thing just needing a wifi internet link, Word etc. I cannot find any 'good deals' for XP Pro laptops any more - the cheap ones are all punting 'Vista Premium'. As cheap as £250 for an HP machine. I am looking at a 512mb/80GB wireless machine which will more than do what she needs with XP.

Here's the big problem - No 1 son (ITwhiz:rolleyes:) has threatened 'violence' :) if I get a Vista machine (I use XP Pro). His latest go at 'Dad' is

BOAC,

If you have access to XP installation media (and a license), then you can presumably buy what you want, irrespective of what pre-installed OS there is on it.

Frankly, I wouldn't bother backing up Vista before trashing it and installing either XP or Ubuntu.

Anything for familial harmony!

Oh yes - if you have got an XP installation CD, make SEVERAL backup copies!! :ouch: I have 2 backup copies of mine, just in case.

SD

ps - I think that your son and I would get along very well! What an excellent summary of Vista.

2 back-ups - good advice I fancy! The only reason for backing up a Vista installation would be to keep the licence for when...............

I'm sure the answer is here somewhere, but is reloading XP on a Vista laptop just a case of reformat and install, or are there traps lurking for the unwary?

Yes

No

SD

XP on laptops preinstalled with Vista......
 

It may not be as easy to install XP on a laptop supplied with Vista as you think - at work we had some Sony Vaio laptops delivered with Vista preinstalled. We were going to wipe them to install XP but couldn't as XP wouldn't detect the hard disk in them!

Searched on Vaio link but Sony don't supply XP drivers for laptops preinstalled with Vista so couldn'y even get XP installed let alone the extra drivers!

Other manufacturers may supply drivers but its something to watch out for so be careful and make sure you have install/repair disks (with Sony Vaio's and some other brands you have to make your own) before you try to install XP.

As for my opinions of Vista - well I hated it at first but am slowly starting to get used to it. Have no desire to move off XP till I'm forced to though.

Switching off UAC definetly helps but it still has some annoying traits - copying a shortcut to the All Users desktop becomes a struggle (after you find where the all users folder is hidden if you try to copy a shortcut straight from a network drive it will fail but will work if you copy to your desktop first then from there to all users desktop).

Also it seems like Microsoft have tried too hard to make it different from XP (moving things about / changing standard pratices etc) in order to try and convince people to upgrade. As an example in XP, NT, 2000 etc you can log in to a network PC without using the mouse (Alt-U then type username, Alt-P then type password, press enter). On Vista this is a struggle as there are no keyboard shortcuts for this.

I'm just glad the powers that be at my work decided not to roll out Vista this year - wish me luck next summer!

Jay

:mad: Back on the origial question:
I run Vista Ultimate on a desktop and on a laptop. In both cases I find it a fascist piece of sh1t.

If you can use Linux, do so. If you can't, go to XP SP2 until further gatesware drags you, kicking and screaming, to Vista.

RMV

"....should I hunt around for an XP machine?"

Get a good preinstalled Linux certified laptop.

http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html

It'll do all she needs to do and more.

Mac

Alternatively, buy her a MacBook

:ok:

Apparently Vista is still under construction :eek:

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir...mmed-attacking

and

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/04/vista_piracy/

comments make interesting reading

I think I'll have to refrain from commenting on Vista any further: it's six months since I removed it from my systems and went back to XP. The only way I'll get it again is if it comes as standard on a laptop, and even that's unlikely. Until then, I'm talking through my ... ear ... when it comes to the current state of Vista. :hmm:

I think it has potential, on future hardware, but I'm basing that on my XP experience - I had very few problems, mostly hardware-related, and none since SP2 came out. My hardware is old and "settled" now, with solid XP driver support. But I could be wrong about that - e.g. this.

I've spent so much time with UNIX systems now that I think that's the way to go. Linux for me, but I can see how Mac OS X makes sense as a "friendly UNIX". I don't think they should be taking credit for the security benefits they gained by choosing a UNIX architecture, but I expect nothing less from Apple these days. :rolleyes:

Did you know they put this in it?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7126902.stm

It would not surprise me if MS attempt to use XP SP3 to "cripple" XP to make it as slow as Vista. In an attempt to "persuade" people to upgrade. Of course it would be dressed up as "Security".

And then force SP3 by making MS Updates (and even apps) only available for SP3...

I'm not saying that they will, just that it wouldn't surprise me at all.

SD

Ignore my post 44 above, I was suffering from a momentary delusion, my other thread on this forum will explain.

Avoid Vista like the plague.......

Avoid Vista like the plague.......

Avoid Vista like the plague.......

Avoid Vista like the plague.......

Avoid Vista like the plague.......

Avoid Vista like the plague.......

"It would not surprise me if MS attempt to use XP SP3 to "cripple" XP......."

I predicted this some time ago and it would be well in line with MS's approach. But whether they would dare to I'm not so sure, for

a) There are so many eyes on MS that it would be rapidly detected and publicised (not that MS care but the DOJ might).

b) It would accelerate the flight to other increasingly popular non-MS OSes such as Linux, OpenSolaris, BSD and Mac. Better that the punters should use XP rather than that.

c) Early tests of SP3 beta releases show a speed increase of 5-7% over SP2.

:ok:

Having used Vista for about six months now, on a far superior machine than my old XP dinosaur, I have come to the conclusion that it is f:mad:ing slow. Just asking it to switch on seems to send it in to convulsions. Going to buy a Mac and burn this S:mad:t thing I have. On a side note, Samsung laptops are quite robust. Mine has flown across the room several times now...:*

Hambleite
 

I have just given up on Vista for reasons similar to yours, very slow on a fairly hi spec machine plus various driver and software issues.

I've now set up dual booting with XP on one drive and Vista on another. I'm keeping Vista to see how any 'improvements' may work out in practice.


Regards
Exeng

It's probably fair to say that Vista wins the Turkey of the year award for 2007, narrowly beating the Western Digital NAS box that won't store any kind of media lest it be pirated:p

However, my Vista machine is superior to my XP boxes in every way & I'm delighted (so far) with it. It's homebuilt though & I made it with Vista in mind - E440 dual core, 2 gigs ddr2 & nearly 850 gigs hdd on an Asus P5L-VM mobo & it flies along, absolutely no problems at all, except for sleep. There's a known issue where just about any background process will wake it up, so you can't put it into sleep mode, fix due SP1 apparently.

It seems to me from this thread that Vista is just fine, provided it's on the right machine, yet my guess is MS have cajoled, coerced & enticed the volume suppliers into shoe horning it into new boxes irrespective of the suitability of the system.

Gents

A quick question to you Vista users if I may?

I'm looking to buy a Sony Vaio which is only supplied with Vista - never used it and am quite happy with XP.

The ability of running Vista and XP side-by-side on the same machine (avoiding uninstalling Vista) - if you boot the machine up using XP - will it perform completely as if Vista wasn't on the computer, or is the system still slowed down by Vistas presence? (excluding the extra HD space an extra OS would use).

Duffer question I know, but I'm easily confused.

having more data on a hard drive generally slows down any PC. However, if you dual boot XP and Vista it shouldn't make a difference to the speed of XP.


And to do with the earlier posts.. I got rid of my vista home premium after about a month, it was just wasting my laptops battery and idled still using half a gig of RAM.
such crap for a bit of eye candy

Ah now be fair, there's lots of new features besides the Aero interface that are slowing it down and rendering it user unfriendly. ;)

SD

I have no problem with it... Performs nice for me, looks good and does everything I need.

mmm... i liked the Windows Calendar! that was useful.

In which case it will probably be removed by SP1.

probably. :)

apparently file transfers are a crapload faster in SP1, i wonder where M$ went wrong?

One can turn off all sorts of unnecessary services in Vista to speed it up exponentialy, such as the pointless never ending indexing search thingy, however, one agrees that obe shouldn't have to do so - it should chug along out of the box - and it doesn't. It's a tweakers delight instead.:rolleyes:

Vista did in fact win the equivalent of the 'Turkey of the Year Award' in PC World's end of year horrors list.

Quelle surprise!

Beware Sony/vista
 

Tradewind. Just a precautionary word regarding Vaio's and Vista. I put vista on my sony t1xp which was supplied by sony with xp as an os. Immediately I had problems ranging from wireless utility, bluetooth, hotkeys non functioning and more. Sony refused to assist so I took a look at the club viao forum and discovered that my plight was nothing compared to many others who were supplied units with vista pre-installed. They had similar problems and sony have washed their hands of them stating that it was microsofts problem....... Despite having a liking for all things sony this has made me very wary of them.

I'm sure there are others who are delighted with sony but for the money I would have expected a little better service.

I've had an Acer Aspire 5610Z for around 6 months now. Dual core (T2060), with 2Gb DDR RAM. Works fine except for when it decides to lock up, which is on a daily basis. Anyone found a fix for this?

Not as bad as people say.
 

Started with Vista on a new Laptop. Took a bit of working through the cr@p I don't need and turning it all off but so far it looks like HP did a good job on the packaged OS build and I think that this is the reason why I had a good experience. Most of the bloatware was from M$, HP only included a couple of programs in the build.

Only real issue I have is that Outlook 2003 on Vista cannot connect to a Microsoft Exchange Server as it did when running on Win2k - so after having migrated all my office settings (worked fine) I have to sort out that issue, there are still a few possible solutions so although annoying it is not a show stopper.

Cleaning up in general took a bit of effort (don't want M$ applications in my face at the top of the list of the Start Menu and Side Bar junk or UAC) but to be honest getting the OS to look like I wanted it (and configure the services I wanted or did not want) took no longer than resetting the application configurations to my norms after I had installed all my apps and tools I use. I know Mac does this config migration for you automatically when you install on a new machine and connect your old one but I have a wide range of apps and with that choice and diversity comes the effort of setting all the preferred options, there is no free lunch in this world. For some apps I just copied config files over.

I'm now on a machine that is now tidier and more refined than XP (that I use on another machine) or Win2K and doing what I did before. Having said that, I would eat my dog before I performed an OS upgrade to Vista, I think it's a fresh install type of change that is the right time to choose to leave XP (such as I did when a change of hardware occurred). I'd love to see this happen on Windows as smoothly as a Mac "can" do it (if all goes well) but as I have stated elsewhere the relatively poor range choice of Mac software makes the effort I just described above wothwhile, for the moment, in order to preserve my massive range of application choice. Anyway, I've got VMWare Workstation installed.

Hardware I used was an HP dv9670ed: 4Gb RAM (Vista only uses 3.1 of this) and 2GHz Dual Core Intel Processor.

My summary, "Acceptable, M$ could do better".

Needed a laptop and I was going to buy one without an OS and install XP on it. However, came across an HP one in the sales at a very reasonable price, the only probelm being it was loaded with Vista premium.
Decided to buy it and I have to say that so far, and much to my surprise, I am getting on very well with it. A few things to turn off etc as previously mentioned but at the moment I like it :8
Regards
SHL

"Vista's first year leaves little to celebrate"
 

My favourite line in the "Vista's first year leaves little to celebrate" article:

:D :)

SD

Vista Service Pack 1
 

Does anyone have any idea when the Service Pack 1 for Vista may become available as I understand it includes a lot of fixes for many of the bugs etc ?

If you are considering abandoning Microsoft due to Vista issues and buying a Mac. DONT!!!

Long term Mac users will tell you that excessive sales of Macs will encourage virus and spyware writers to focus their attention on our beloved machines and sooner or later one of them may succeed in writing something nasty.

Please stick to your highly advanced machines based on NT technology. Whatever the flaws, you have stuck with them so far. Don't abandon Microsoft!

I thank you.

It's already available as a "release candidate" download from microsoft, but reading the report on it in this months PC Pro it doesn't appear to do a lot.
Their tests showed very little improvement after the installation of SP1.


"It improves the file copying speed significantly, it now shuts down 7 secs faster than before and it took 35mins to install the service pack as opposed to
10mins for SP3 for XP. XP with SP3 installed it still faster than Vista"

No 1 Son tells me that his work "Let's try Vista for a laugh" machine warned him that a particular file copy would take "122 days".

I'll let you know in May how it went.