Vista. Not so good?


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Ive been using Vista for a long while now. And here are my opinions.

After seeing a TV show tonight about Vista, I realised that allot of people are being fooled by novelty.

Take for example the much acclaimed Flip3D. After the first few times you are impressed it soon wears off. Tick in that box. Same goes for the “we have seen it all before” GUI. And the sidebar? Give me a break. A flawed idea poorly executed and only added to bridge the gap between MS and Apple. Or the fact Vista needed it to make itself look modern and up to date. “Ooh a sidebar! Wow look at all the things I can put on it!” Yea, give it a week and you will be removing it, especially when it adds 10/20 seconds to your boot time.

What’s next? The new start menu search feature? Useful, granted but again it does not impress me what so ever.

How about the new GUI? One of the problems with it is it’s a victim of its own success. To a degree. So many people wanted to see it before Vista was even at RC stage, and as a result loads of GUIS for Windowblinds or for the patched XP theme, popped up. Soon we all had used this GUI. Granted, not to the detail that Vista uses, but still. Seen it all before. There are now new ways to do things we all knew how to do. Networking panel has been revamped, same with almost every dialog. But still, something doesn’t give you the “wow” factor Microsoft claims you will get. Most of the fading dialog boxes have a slight touch of lag. And things really get worse when you get the UAC box dimming the screen. It almost fades with a stagger. (Although this might be an ATI driver issue).

What about the new security features? Nice. Always nice to have allot more security. But the UAC does divide the Vista community. Some wouldn’t run Vista without it. Others shut it down the moment they install. To be honest, unless you’re a moron you won’t be infected with a Trojan, spyware, virus you name it. UAC will protect those people, but with XP hailed as a very insecure OS (at least at first), we all had to adapt. With safer browsing methods mixed with common sense, it was becoming more and more difficult to **** up XP.

I remember in the days of Norton AV, I used to get a virus on a weekly basis. Spyware was rife. But with basic computer knowledge and using my brain I avoided such things. Firewalls and decent antivirus software helps, but it’s the user in the end who will decide the computers fate. As a result I think UAC is a tad over the top and at the very least, be allowed to be shut off easily. Rather than fiddling with the command prompt.

I wanted Microsoft to make an OS for BOTH the first time user and experienced user. Vista tries to bridge the gap but like most MS products it does cuddle up to the first time user a little too much.

Backwards compatibility. Well even MS wouldn’t be stupid enough to release a new OS that wouldn’t work with much from the previous OS (yet). Most programmes do run fine, and the ongoing driver issues are very, very slowly being patched. So no problems there. But one thing I did stumble across which perhaps is the most annoying and serious thing about Vista, is its inability to shut down rouge/unresponsive programmes.

Here’s a true example I experienced the other day. I was downloaded movie trailers (.wmv), two of them. I played the first with no problems. The next one crashed WMP. In XP it was a simple case of clicking the X until I got the end task option. Or if pushed, bring up the task manager and close it that way.

No such luck with Vista. When WMP crashed, no amount of clicking would bring up the “The programme isn’t responding” box with the option to close it. I tried bring up the taskbar (for quickness I just right click on the taskbar and launch it that way), that failed. Nothing happened. CTRL ALT DEL. Surely that would do something? **** all. And it’s not the first time, and it’s not just on this install and it’s not just this computer. It’s rare, granted. But when it does happen only a hard reset will fix it. Sorry? But this is a brand new OS. I’m not saying crashes are a thing of the past, but it’s a ****ing video. Nothing too taxing. I always think; if XP can do it, why cant Vista?

What Vista cures from XP it seems to create more problems which XP itself didn’t seem to have. Shutdown times are insanely slow. Up to 30+ seconds to reset/shut down, the PC. And that’s on a fresh clean install. Ok allot of people will run to aid of MS, (Brandon, I await your usual unbiased input...) about the fact “there is allot of changes under the hood”. That’s not good enough anymore. Maybe 5 years ago, but not now. I don’t want to pay hundreds for an OS for which the only reason I’m buying it is because I’ve been told it’s got allot under the hood. Will I need all that under the hood? Is it worth the price tag? Does that “under the hood power” stop my apps from crashing and speed up shutdown time? You get the idea.

I’m not saying Vista is a poor OS. But it’s not an amazing one, by far. In a few months Vista will get the driver and app support it needs to survive and hopefully the above mentioned problems will be ironed out. But as of right now, I wouldn’t recommend this over XP to anyone.

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too be honest i fell asleep by 4th paragraph, but what i did read reflects my thoughts of when i used vista RC1 havn't got final yet but all very very good points

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Vista has various improvements that make it different from xp. More secure ect.., but you are right Vista is mainly a combination of third party aplications for xp all rolled into one with a different badge on it.

Still I don't regret getting it. After all it was just released. Give it a year and it may grow on you. This is the longest I've kept the default theme enabled. Most of the time I revert to classic.

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Vista has various improvements that make it different from xp. More secure ect.., but you are right Vista is mainly a combination of third party aplications for xp all rolled into one with a different badge on it.

Still I don't regret getting it. After all it was just released. Give it a year and it may grow on you. This is the longest I've kept the default theme enabled. Most of the time I revert to classic.

Oh come on, don't be silly. You know Vista had a lot of code re-written under the bonnet.

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neoflux, we all know it was rewritten, but its the same speed as XP & 5 times larger (thats hard drive space and resources {RAM etc})

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Oh come on, don't be silly. You know Vista had a lot of code re-written under the bonnet.

Thats my point. Its not good enough. I dont want just under the hood tweaks, which so far arent really doing that much. To use an analogy, its like buying an identical car, but told its got a different engine. Stills struggles to get from 0 to 60 and still has virtually the same interior.

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Take for example the much acclaimed Flip3D. After the first few times you are impressed it soon wears off. Tick in that box. Same goes for the ?we have seen it all before? GUI. And the sidebar? Give me a break. A flawed idea poorly executed and only added to bridge the gap between MS and Apple. Or the fact Vista needed it to make itself look modern and up to date. ?Ooh a sidebar! Wow look at all the things I can put on it!? Yea, give it a week and you will be removing it, especially when it adds 10/20 seconds to your boot time.

I disagree, I am liking Vista and once I got used to features I hate using someones PC with XP.

Flip 3d is my main choice for tabbing between apps or getting to the desktop. Very handy.

Sidebar is great for me, I have my home pictures on slideshow, and I am always running into a pic I forgot about. When computer seems to be hanging, I can look at the meters and see in my processor is 100% or not. Weather with no ads/spyware. I love the sidebar.

Oh and the search function is simply awesome, no more Start run, browse, etc... I type the first few letters of what I am looking for and there it is.

Vista has been great for me.

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Let me put it this way, it ****es me off when I see Windows XP!!! Doesn't that tell you anything??? Why must you feel like complaining about it. It is a matter of opinion and you have stated yours, leave it at that because quite honestly very few people share the same opinion as you can see.

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yeah.... I didnt want vista and i knew XP was becoming obsolete (plus it wasnt all that stable for me..) so i switched over to, as some people here would say, the "dark side". I mean, I knew Vista wasnt going to be hardware compatible and I wanted the most recent OS so i got linux (and surprisingly, all my hardware worked out of the box. more than some people can say :D ) It seems maybe one day in the future, as you said, Vista may become worth it but as of now, I'm content where i am :)

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I stopped at the first paragraph. You're just ranting.

especially when it adds 10/20 seconds to your boot time
- the sidebar does not even add 5 seconds to the booting of Vista and I have 1GB of RAM. There are computers at freaking best buy with 2GB. Vista is meant to last a few years, it is not meant to run amazingly well with today's computers. Can't accept that? Stick with XP. When you get a new computer, you'll end up choosing Vista.
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I stopped at the first paragraph. You're just ranting. - the sidebar does not even add 5 seconds to the booting of Vista and I have 1GB of RAM. There are computers at freaking best buy with 2GB. Vista is meant to last a few years, it is not meant to run amazingly well with today's computers. Can't accept that? Stick with XP. When you get a new computer, you'll end up choosing Vista.

I still dont understand what is running that requires a minimum of 1 gig to run smoothly. Why is it so memory intensive o_O

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Microsoft assumed user pattern of using computer. It looks like a lot of things are preload into memory which is just wrong. Windows Index Search is the most demanding feature btw.

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The biggest issue I have is I am running Vista Ultimate x64 with 4gb of ram. I was using x86 but could not use all my ram. Superfetch which I like to call the ram eater takes all but 5mb of my ram and caches it. Superfetch is then supposed to release it to apps when needed but in my case it doesn't. When I try to render a 5 Min video clips the system starts saying you are running low on ram, close some apps. Blah, so superfetch needs some improvement. I disabled that service and now have 2.3gb of free ram and everything works normally. Check your task manager and tell me how much free ram you have. I had the same issue with Vista Ultimate x86 as well.

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Have to agree with the original poster, I too am thoroughly unimpressed with Vista. But I'm also sure that come SP1 Vista will have significant peformance improvements.

So till SP1 appears, I'm remaining loyal to good old x64 XP :)

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I stopped at the first paragraph. You're just ranting. - the sidebar does not even add 5 seconds to the booting of Vista and I have 1GB of RAM. There are computers at freaking best buy with 2GB. Vista is meant to last a few years, it is not meant to run amazingly well with today's computers. Can't accept that? Stick with XP. When you get a new computer, you'll end up choosing Vista.

Couldn't of said it better, just wait until you're running next years hardware. At that time, running XP on your PC woukd be like running windows 98 on your current hardware. Pretty nasty.

Not to mention, it's going to open many new software posibilities. Apps that are nice to use. I'm hoping for more user friendly well designed apps, akin to those we see in os x.

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I have been using Vista for a week now and I love it so much so that I cant stand being on XP. Its time for a change. Some of you may find vista only a beefed up XP but I NEED it for its ReadyBoost, Easy scrolling Flip 3-D, its Live Preview in explorer so I can see what is sais in the document without opening it up, oh and DirectX. Also for me, Vista was ready out of the box... I didnt have to download any additional drivers, mine Vista JUST WORKS (Mac add :p)

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Let me put it this way, it ****es me off when I see Windows XP!!! Doesn't that tell you anything??? Why must you feel like complaining about it. It is a matter of opinion and you have stated yours, leave it at that because quite honestly very few people share the same opinion as you can see.

Actually some do. Besides, since when do I need people to agree with me to make my opinions heard?

I stopped at the first paragraph. You're just ranting. - the sidebar does not even add 5 seconds to the booting of Vista and I have 1GB of RAM. There are computers at freaking best buy with 2GB. Vista is meant to last a few years, it is not meant to run amazingly well with today's computers. Can't accept that? Stick with XP. When you get a new computer, you'll end up choosing Vista.

Sorry, but thats bollocks. Imagine that as an advertising hook. Buy vista! Doesnt work with todays computers but buy it anyway and give it a few years.

Too many people on Neowin write up their personal opinions as if they were giving an objective review of something.

Anything Vista related in that sour comment? Thought not

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Vista is good in my opinion yes the eye candy is abit to much and microsoft have marketed the thing around eye candy and security but o well now even though XP still has life Vista isnt an upgrade id recommend to anyone unless they was buying a new PC.

Im a big XP fan but im abit fond of vista in compatibility ways thats all. But all the systems i build/upgrade for people will and shall run XP until i feel statisfied or if they request it.

Yes the Sidebar gets boring, i have it disabled now and again (Full screen app's) and the flip 3D i have used that 2x i just use the alt + tab again.

If vista was more low end PC friendly id have got vista more quickly but since its a hardware hog head its not 1 id say is good.

I do wonder if microsoft will make a Fundamentals of Vista, i highly doubt it but o well XP fundamentals is good :)

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