One Vote For Vista

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Robert Hankins - 15 May 2008 19:11 GMT

Amidst all of the naysayers and whiners, I cast one vote in favor of VISTA
which is much superior to any prior MS OS in terms of improved graphics and
adaptability to more complex programs.
The main problem with this forum is that too many people have just enough
knowledge to get themselves into a jam and not enough smarts to get out.
Looking backwards at XP will avail you nothing but a stiff neck. Get with
the program !

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IWantXPBack - 15 May 2008 22:02 GMT

So in other words, we should be super jazzed about a new operating system
that works great if you know nothing about computers, or if you are a
computer whiz, but that is a complicated mess if you moderately savvy.

I should point out that the majority of computer users fall into the last
category.

Why wouldn't someone look back at XP? It was a huge improvement over Windows
95. It was easy to customize and did what you expected it to do most of the
time. Why should users not expect the subsequent OS to be better?

I don't run "complex" software. I'm using Visual Studio 2008, Adobe CS3,
Blend (or whatever they've decided to call it) and Office 2007. And the only
benefit I see in Vista is the eye candy. The drawbacks are myriad, and
catalogued in this forum by all the "whiners" who expected something better
from Microsoft.

> Amidst all of the naysayers and whiners, I cast one vote in favor of VISTA
> which is much superior to any prior MS OS in terms of improved graphics and
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> Looking backwards at XP will avail you nothing but a stiff neck. Get with
> the program !

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Gordon - 15 May 2008 22:31 GMT

> The drawbacks are myriad,

Please elaborate? I run Vista Home Premium and Office 2007, and find no
"drawbacks" at all. It performs at least as fast as XP if not faster. I have
NO BSOD's, and no other problems.

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Charlie Tame - 17 May 2008 16:48 GMT

>> The drawbacks are myriad,
>
> Please elaborate? I run Vista Home Premium and Office 2007, and find no
> "drawbacks" at all. It performs at least as fast as XP if not faster. I
> have NO BSOD's, and no other problems.

Possibly the worst aspect is that things in "Familiar" menus were moved
around just for the sake of it. This left many confused and forced a
learning curve that was unnecessary - the items function the same but
are hard to find.

I have installed Vista, XP and Several Linux on the same machines, Vista
is SLOWER on all of them than XP with fresh installs. If you find it
faster then the likely explanation is that you are comparing with an
older install of XP that has a lot of things running. For common tasks,
and this is not easy to compare realistically, the order of speed is
Debian Linux, Ubuntu Linux, XP and Vista. This is not just identical
hardware but THE SAME hardware, about 10 machines.

There has been a speed improvement in Vista, possibly because Graphics
drivers have been improved, however I have nothing here that it actually
beats XP on. This includes one machine from 2000 and the rest < 2 years old.

Things that should have been improved upon were not, Explorer is still
buggy, the Mail client was messed about with and switched around so as
to make it a waste of time even setting up mail, and the search function
was a joke.

File sharing functionality and networking are very hard to get working
reliably, Vista to Vista is okay but mixed with anything else it is less
reliable than W98 was and that was a bit flakey to say the least.

Now, these criticisms are not insurmountable, but I think most were
expecting better from Microsoft than a "Beta" version, which is what the
Released version felt like.

Of course when you are the best act in town people expect more from you
than from others, and new hardware is going to be necessary for the
future, but I think MS went for "Looks" rather than solid functionality
and lost the plot a bit on the way.

I like the Media Center, I find that works well and is reliable, however
my old W3.1 media player played movies, 95 and 98 and 2000 played
movies, XP played movies and Vista plays movies. I can't watch them on
another machine because the networking doesn't work properly, but under
all those systems the damned movie looks and sounds the same. Did I
really need all those versions of Media player to achieve the same
result when networking could have been the focus of attention?

So no Vista is NOT bad, but it is not quite as expected and if anything
it is somewhat less useful than XP.

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propman - 17 May 2008 22:55 GMT

> Possibly the worst aspect is that things in "Familiar" menus were moved
> around just for the sake of it. This left many confused and forced a
> learning curve that was unnecessary - the items function the same but
> are hard to find.

Pretty much the history of each Windows release (my experiences go back
to v3.xx).....nothing new there and with each release there was lots of
bitching about "the learning curve"! <grin>

> Debian Linux, Ubuntu Linux, XP and Vista. This is not just identical
> hardware but THE SAME hardware, about 10 machines.

Ubuntu (Hardy v8.04) seems a bit faster than Vista here on my Acer
Apsire 7720 laptop....just out of curiosity, what kind of speed
difference between Debian and Ubuntu are we talking about here? Gut
reaction is not to big as Ubuntu is a Debian spin-off but am open to
correction on this topic.

> There has been a speed improvement in Vista, possibly because Graphics
> drivers have been improved, however I have nothing here that it actually
> beats XP on. This includes one machine from 2000 and the rest < 2 years
> old.

I would have to say that Vista on the laptop here is just as fast or
faster than my XP desktop.....but in this rascal I have 3 Gig ram; twice
as much as the XP box.

> Things that should have been improved upon were not, Explorer is still
> buggy, the Mail client was messed about with and switched around so as
> to make it a waste of time even setting up mail, and the search function
> was a joke.

Is anyone besides absolute newbies still using them rascals??!! <grin>

> Now, these criticisms are not insurmountable, but I think most were
> expecting better from Microsoft than a "Beta" version, which is what the
> Released version felt like.

Compare to some of the previous Windows release versions, Vista has been
a walk in the park for me.....then again, I ain't doing anything real
serious with my boxes these days.

Just ma 2 cents worth..... :-)

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N Brown - 18 May 2008 20:16 GMT

While I do think Vista needs too much to do what it does
on my machine the video and audio are definitely superior.

I use SB X-FI Elite Pro to Behringer Mixer to Crown XTI 2000 AM
(800 WattsX2@4 ohms)which runs to a pair JBL JRX125 speakers
With a JBL SPII 120 400 Watt Studio Sub running from Room
Control Outs on the Behringer.

Video is DVI out to 22" Westinghouse LCD (second out for Videos,
Visualzations
and Karaoke.) On a Geforce 8600GT 512 MB

Winamp to play audio/video for separate windows mainly but as I discovered
WMP11
doesn't sync to refresh rate on either analogue or dvi out for me so videos
tear.

I do hate some quirks on explorer.
When you select a file now you get that damn long rectangle box stealing
open screen space!!!

Focus Stealing all over the place LOL!!!! And I'm not blaming MS for all of
it
Nvidia control panel is most annoying. I reported to Nvidia through that
vista bug report page since that seems to be the only way to contact them
anymore.

Aero is a joke since it doesn't work if anything else uses directx ROFLOL!!!

>>> The drawbacks are myriad,
>>
[quoted text clipped - 48 lines]
> So no Vista is NOT bad, but it is not quite as expected and if anything it
> is somewhat less useful than XP.

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Charlie Tame - 18 May 2008 21:07 GMT

Have has XP on the same hardware though? With the advent of better TVs
and Sounds systems the hardware manufacturer's have probably improved
their cards .

> While I do think Vista needs too much to do what it does
> on my machine the video and audio are definitely superior.
[quoted text clipped - 78 lines]
>> So no Vista is NOT bad, but it is not quite as expected and if
>> anything it is somewhat less useful than XP.

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N Brown - 19 May 2008 03:07 GMT

I'm Dual booting XP and Vista until tomorrow.
Have a new HDD coming and will just use Vista starting tomorrow :-)

> Have has XP on the same hardware though? With the advent of better TVs and
> Sounds systems the hardware manufacturer's have probably improved their
[quoted text clipped - 82 lines]
>>> So no Vista is NOT bad, but it is not quite as expected and if anything
>>> it is somewhat less useful than XP.

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Nonny - 20 May 2008 20:29 GMT

>I'm Dual booting XP and Vista until tomorrow.
>Have a new HDD coming and will just use Vista starting tomorrow :-)

I did that, but without having to setup a dual-boot. I had XP on a
seperate drive and used my BIOS as the controller for which OS I
wanted to use.

XP is now on an external drive in an image "just in case" and the
drive it was formerly on now holds 60 gigs of Old Time Radio files.

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rach - 23 May 2008 21:21 GMT

> Please elaborate? I run Vista Home Premium and Office 2007, and find no
> "drawbacks" at all. It performs at least as fast as XP if not faster. I
> have NO BSOD's, and no other problems.

I can't say it's perfect, but I CAn say I like it. i find most of the
problems are the result of my learning curve than errors in the system.
And I want to take this opportunity to extend a word of praise to Vista. I
LOVE the metadata bar at the bottom of the file window! As a writer, this
information has made my life much easier. I can sort my work by a "myriad"
of characteristics easily, not to mention having access to such things as
Status and title by merely highlighting the filename. I wish there was a way
to get my XP machine to do the same thing, via an add on or something.

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