Review of Windows Vista

[ryokurin]

Driver support ultimately was what killed it. I remember the fall of 2006, pretty much everyone thought that since they were missing Christmas they would wait until the spring or summer to release it, so almost no one put resources into drivers.   The other finishing blow were the memory usage and file transfer speed issues.  Sure pretty much all of that was resolved by SP1 and the various compatibility packs but by then it's rep had been set.

[Ci7]

I had it from beta 1 on a quad core CPU with 4GB RAM. The x64 edition ofc. Only thing that felt slow was file transfers and it was a genuine issue with the OS.

 

what CPU was that?

 

Intel Q6600 ?

[tsupersonic]

Never had problems with Vista back during my college days. I had to revert back to XP, because my laptop didn't handle it all that well. 

[TAZMINATOR]

I didn't have any problems with Vista on my laptop since I got it from the day 1.

 

It has been upgraded to Windows 7.

[Arachno 1D]

Look forward to my upcoming review of MS-DOS 6.02.

Upgrade to 6.22 it supports more commands :D

[f0rk_b0mb]

Upgrade to 6.22 it supports more commands :D

 

I never understood you command line people. Windows 3.11 for Workgroups provides much easier networking and rock solid stability than anything on the market today. :p

[Arachno 1D]

I remember accidentally installing win 3.11 for workgroups without installing Dos 6.xx first I had just formatted and sys`d the drive from bootable floppy

[riahc3]

Hello,

On topic, the review is kind of weak. Looks more like a opinion article.

[adrynalyne]

Windows Vista is sooo worst, because of hardware problem!

 

 

LOLWUT

[Active.]

I know many here will find this hard to believe, but I was considered back then to be a "Vista fanboy", and gave it much praise.  

You don't say.  :laugh:

[LaP]

every other problem with vista was **** ups from OEMs and hardware companies.

 

Going by this definition nothing is a flop then. It's always OEM and third party fault.

 

IMO it's MS responsability to be sure its OS is supported by big manufacturers before launch as much as it's let's take for example Nintendo responsability to get 3rd party support for its console.

 

We are not talking about drivers problem for some obscure and unknown companies here. I had brand new Creative and nVidia cards and both of them were not working properly. My Creative card actually never worked. I even removed it from the computer. I heard Creative released proper drivers later but i did not bother i still use today this card as a papereweight (X-Fi Platinum with snap, crackle and pop problem under vista). I think it took many weeks for nVidia to release proper drivers not BSoDing.

 

Also on a side note MS never really supported vista gadgets seriously. This part of Vista was definately a big flop and a big disappointment. I did not have the ultimate version but from what i heard it was not good either.

 

I did blame Creative and nVidia for this. But i did blame rightfully Microsoft for it too.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

Going by this definition nothing is a flop then. It's always OEM and third party fault.

 

IMO it's MS responsability to be sure its OS is supported by big manufacturers before launch as much as it's let's take for example Nintendo responsability to get 3rd party support for its console.

 

We are not talking about drivers problem for some obscure and unknown companies here. I had brand new Creative and nVidia cards and both of them were not working properly. My Creative card actually never worked. I even removed it from the computer. I heard Creative released proper drivers later but i did not bother i still use today this card as a papereweight (X-Fi Platinum with snap, crackle and pop problem under vista). I think it took many weeks for nVidia to release proper drivers not BSoDing.

 

Also on a side note MS never really supported vista gadgets seriously. This part of Vista was definately a big flop and a big disappointment. I did not have the ultimate version but from what i heard it was not good either.

 

I did blame Creative and nVidia for this. But i did blame rightfully Microsoft for it too.

the hardware companies where given plenty of time to prepare drivers. they were sloppy that's not MS fault

 

besides a few issues which did indeed get fixed with SP1 all the blame actually does go to the hardware manufacturers

[gameboy1977]

LOLWUT

yesterday, I played everquest 2 on windows vista, but it keep crashing at 9 times per one day. *grab a lightsaber and cut the windows vista off the laptop,and install Windows 7 or 8.1 with forces*

[adrynalyne]

Kinda doubt that was the fault of the OS.

[JustGeorge]

Did I just time travel to 1985 2007? 

 

I ran Vista on a circa 2004 HP off the shelf tower with a single core Athlon and never had any issues. I know many here will find this hard to believe, but I was considered back then to be a "Vista fanboy", and gave it much praise. It was a breath of fresh air compared to the rotten Windows XP, and never regretted upgrading at all. I ran Vista up until 2011. :yes:

 

LOL, Microsoft could ship you a new PC with a fresh turd in the DVD drive and you'd find a way to spin it and preach its superiority to the great unwashed. No offense, but seriously....You probably have a Windows Whaling wall in your house.

 

Vista was fine with 4GB of RAM and up :)

[Atomic Wanderer Chicken]

I blame Microsoft for making Windows Vista's requirements considerably higher than xp. I also blame the device manufacturers for being lazy and not releasing drivers for vista.  There were a lot of graphics card back then that didn't have drivers for vista, and was huge headache. I had a lot pcs I'm my house that could technically run vista, but the graphics cards in my pcs did not have vista drivers available. If Microsoft made Vista have lower requirements and didn't make vista such a research hog, then it could have been more successful. My now gone desktop emachines t3256 ran windows xp like butter. When installed vista, the computer was so slow and becoming frozen at times, even though it had a 1gb of ram, a vista supported graphics card and a Athlon xp processor. Later on I test drove Windows 7 on the emachines t3256 and the computer liked it much better and windows 7 ran like night and day compared to vista. Microsoft woefully understated Vista's requirements, vista really needed a dual core processor  and 2gbs of ram as minimum.

[Lord Method Man]

You think driver support for Vista was bad? Shouldve tried running XP x64 Edition back before Vista was released.

[+Warwagon MVC]

I remember back in the Vista days our local phone company was giving away free Dell computers with Vista as part of some promotion. I think they were a slow CPU (Can't remember which) with 512 megs of ram running Vista Basic. The term "Ran like ass", doesn't even come close to describe the performance of those machines. Once I put 2GB of ram in those machines they ran MUCH better.

 

I think Vista basic was the death of vista.

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

Like the review, my feeling is once SP1 came out and Hardware manufacturers had about a year to write drivers, most of the issues went away.

 

I think a big issue with Vista, was mix of Microsoft's & Intel's fault. During on an unrelated lawsuits, some of the e-mails from the windows developers not wanting to certify Intel G45? (forget exact model) graphics because it wasn't powerful enough and Microsoft caved in and certified the hardware, and since it was the cheapest graphics chipset intel offered, a lot of manufacturers did the bare minimum hardware with these graphics, causing Vista a lot of computers to be underpowered / underperforming.

[Andre S. Veteran]

I know it was much hated, but the changes Vista brought were much needed. Microsoft was smart to ditch the XP codebase. 

You seem to have strange notions of software development. Most of the code in Windows Vista was inherited from Windows XP, starting with the NT kernel.

[+Heartripper Subscriber¹]

I ran vista on a Pentium 4, 1.5 Gb of RAM and an Ati 9600 AGP card and it was buttery smooth. I remember how much i was stunned the first time i saw vista's UI.

[Arachno 1D]

Vista might have been around the same time MS starting charging hardware manufacturers for the "Certified by Microsoft drivers".lots of hardware became obsolete overnight and not because it wasn't working but just because manufacturers would not make drivers for older hardware.To them it was wasted money supporting and paying MS to certify the drivers for old hardware they no longer had in the sales stream.

Until recently I had a perfectly working laser printer that only ran on XP drivers as I used it infrequently I just used to dual boot or use VMware for printing the odd page.I now have a brand spanking new Dell 3330DN laser printer on which I traded in the old one for and thanks to a Dell rebate and trade in scheme it didnt cost me a bean HUKD

[JustGeorge]

I remember back in the Vista days our local phone company was giving away free Dell computers with Vista as part of some promotion. I think they were a slow CPU (Can't remember which) with 512 megs of ram running Vista Basic. The term "Ran like ass", doesn't even come close to describe the performance of those machines. Once I put 2GB of ram in those machines they ran MUCH better.

 

I think Vista basic was the death of vista.

It didn't help and was a prime example of greed.

[Dot Matrix]

You seem to have strange notions of software development. Most of the code in Windows Vista was inherited from Windows XP, starting with the NT kernel.

Vista was developed from Server 2003 codebase. Not XP's. Microsoft abandoned XP's codebase with the cancellation of Longhorn. 

[Order_66]

Vista was definitely a flop but it's nowhere near the flop that windows 8 is, not even close.

Vista did get better after 2 service packs but it still has it's issues, especially with memory management.

The UI in vista was IMO the best of all Microsoft operating systems.