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[+Warwagon MVC]

Picture the scene. A small country pub in Canterbury, a warm, autumn evening, surrounded by friends drinking and smoking in the beer garden; relaxing after a difficult, hard day at work. The birds are singing, the breeze is light and feathering our very souls. This is heaven.

And then the nerds arrived and I was already preparing my 8 feet of rope and looking out for a ceiling fixture. Within minutes, they?d taken no regard to the peace and quiet, solidarity and gentle nirvana we had around us; they?d started to talk about Vista as if it was serial sex-offender, part-time puppy and kitten contract killer, who deals crystal meth to teenagers.

I thought I?d kick off another testing conundrum, in previous search engine style. With these different tests, I want to show you that Vista really isn?t that bad after all. Sure, some won?t ever be satisfied, some will bitch and moan and claim Linux, UNIX, Mac or even OS/2 to be the best operating system in the world?(bless). To the lot of you, don?t bother. It?s not important. The point I want to make is that after years of criticism, Vista is pretty good.

Consideration 1 - Security

Microsoft products are ?renown for having security issues?. There are many parts to this:

* Worlds most used operating systems: more chance of an attack as a result. Bigger user base, bigger target audience.

* Easy to plug-into: the Windows operating system is really easy to develop for, thus making malware easy to work.

Not only that, many don?t use anti-viruses which ultimately causes problems. Then again, you?ll always get the porn addicted idiot who installs every plugin they see. I used two computers, my desktop with Vista SP1 and my laptop with XP SP3 for 24 hours, switching between them every 30 minutes or so. Browsing, email sending/receiving, downloading, researching; the results of malware detected I find quite interesting.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/igeneration/?p=378

The part where he browses around the net with Xp3, and he got 35 things of malware..... is this guy an idiot?

[ViperAFK]

lol I love vista but yeah...

I used xp for years with no real time a/v and never got malware. and that was pre sp3.

[tsupersonic]

Yet another blog about vista... :yawn:

[NEVER85]

lol I love vista but yeah...

I used xp for years with no real time a/v and never got malware. and that was pre sp3.

Well it was pre-SP2 when XP was an abortion of an OS. :p

[Xerxes]

Of cause Vista isn't that bad, I think it's great and been using it for sometime now :) but it's a lost cause, the anti-Vista people can't accept Vista has come a long way since the early days and are always looking for faults to shoot it down again. Anyone who supports Vista is labeled a mindless Vista fanboy/girl and any attempts to defend Vista against the mindless bashing is met with more bashing :/. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if even a small group of these people started bashing Win7 when it releases just because it was built up from Vista.

Another thing that annoys me is these people moan about how MS isn't giving people choice in what OS they want on their new PC, yet some of these people are IT Professionals and claiming they will only sell/recommend XP because they hate Vista...so who's is the one not giving people choice really?

Vista is not without it's faults, but if you believe anything these people are telling you, it would be an unstable mess that either breaks your software/hardware or outright doesn't support them (and while yes there are still quite alot of issues with older hardware, the modern stuff works great) and slows your PC down..which clearly isn't the case.

I understand and respect there are people out there who genuinely dislike Vista for genuine reasons and that is understandable, Vista can't please every person out there. However, there are still quite a few people who hate Vista for such stupid reasons, like Vista uses all my memory! Vista Sucks! or Vista doesn't support my printer from 1990, Vista sucks! etc

Ok that is my rant, I feel better now :laugh: take with a grain of salt.

[Skulltrail-old]

And I thought this was important... :(

[Raa]

No, Vista's not THAT bad. True. I'll agree, there I said it.

BUT

It's not that GREAT either, IMO. I do use it, but I have a preference for XP. Don't start trolling/flaming either, just stating my opinion!

[Garry]

Quotes like this one annoy me:

When people say ?Vista?s crap, it crashed twice last night? or something similar, I can almost guarantee it?s not a problem with the operating system; rather likely a problem with the hardware interaction.

It doesn't matter whether the underlying cause of a problem is the OS, drivers or hardware. If Vista crashes and WindowsXP doesn't it's a headache for the end user - 99% of whom don't know how to resolve the issue. In a business environment such as the one I work in, it also takes time (and therefore money) to diagnose and resolve those issues.

[Doli]

I think most of the blame should be on PC companies who were pushing Vista with desktop/laptop configurations that were ok for XP but very low for Vista and on top of that they added crappy pre-installed jumk.

[+Warwagon MVC]

I think most of the blame should be on PC companies who were pushing Vista with desktop/laptop configurations that were ok for XP but very low for Vista and on top of that they added crappy pre-installed jumk.

Or the ones that sell a vista machine with 512 megs of ram onboard video AND Mcaffee Antivirus.

[Skulltrail-old]

UGH. IE8-b2 Created duplicate posts again... crappy MSFT...

[Skulltrail-old]

Or the ones that sell a vista machine with 512 megs of ram onboard video AND Mcaffee Antivirus.

Those are marketing ideas. They act as an advertisement for customers to purchase more RAM, specifically from them, and extra software to "speed up" their computers when they could just restore it. However, restoring isn't really an option with new users as they miss out on the "useful" pre-installed OEM software.

HP does that a lot, and since I know so much about computers, especially Vista now, I just restored and installed only the essentials. My desktop's performance is far better than with the OEM crap they pre-install.

[bluewind.]

It's fine. It runs fast. It looks good. It runs even faster after a week or so. It has some nice features. I dual boot, but I end up using XP 90% of the time.

[bigmehdi]

Even if Vista is fine, some people bash it just to slow down it's adoption. Being forced to buy new hardware just to support latest OS is not exactly what everyone is looking for. Also the license of Vista looks more restricted than XP.

And finally, staying with XP seems still fine.

Even without updates, with my firewall, antivirus, system remain relatively secure.

And at worst, I can restore a backup with acronis, if system is infected.

[anonymous_user]

Stop already with these articles. Just use whatever OS you like and shut up.

[Kronir]

Vista isn't that bad; I liked it. But, XP still worked better day-to-day (on a brand new fairly high-end rig). I still use XP the most; mainly because even on my hardware, it was slower than XP and had a few minor annoyances I never could quite get used to.

I'm really waiting for Windows 7, though, and plan to migrate to it full-time when it comes out and use XP only for legacy apps & games (this was my initial plan for Vista, but it ended up not coming to pass... ^_^).

[wellofsouls]

Of course Vista is not that bad, and UAC is not that bad either. It's just that WinXP still does all the work good enough.

[Kronir]

Of course Vista is not that bad, and UAC is not that bad either. It's just that WinXP still does all the work good enough.

True, UAC generally isn't that bad...its just annoying. Also, if you're a gamer who uses mods, its a very good idea to not install games into the default Programs folder, otherwise UAC will drive you insane. I personally always use C:\Games (in both XP and Vista); less UAC prompts in Vista and is more organized in both XP/Vista.

Still, I'm really looking forward to easier (and greater) control over UAC in Windows 7. :D

[+Warwagon MVC]

The best thing about a new vista article is to watch the amount of people that get ****ed about the article.

[Quillz]

Vista works fine, and I see no reason (referring only to myself here) to use XP anymore. I see XP -> Vista being like Win95 -> Win98. The latter is clearly a better and more mature product, though it is not a huge revolution, the way 3.1 -> 95 was.

[Sam Symons Veteran]

True, UAC generally isn't that bad...its just annoying. Also, if you're a gamer who uses mods, its a very good idea to not install games into the default Programs folder, otherwise UAC will drive you insane. I personally always use C:\Games (in both XP and Vista); less UAC prompts in Vista and is more organized in both XP/Vista.

Still, I'm really looking forward to easier (and greater) control over UAC in Windows 7. :D

I turned it off the day I got my Vista laptop. I like Vista, though. More than XP, too.

[afuchi]

My laptop is more quicker with Vista than it was with XP.

[Linkinfamous]

True, UAC generally isn't that bad...its just annoying. Also, if you're a gamer who uses mods, its a very good idea to not install games into the default Programs folder, otherwise UAC will drive you insane. I personally always use C:\Games (in both XP and Vista); less UAC prompts in Vista and is more organized in both XP/Vista.

Still, I'm really looking forward to easier (and greater) control over UAC in Windows 7. :D

Er. You can very easily set the ACLs on any folder inside Program Files so that you can edit it.

Also, a lot of newer games are moving 'mod' stuff over to user folders, fortunately.

[Quillz]

I turned it off the day I got my Vista laptop. I like Vista, though. More than XP, too.

Why did you turn off UAC? It's annoying at first, but as you use your system more and more, UAC prompts appear less and less, especially as you begin to take ownership of various folders and files. I think UAC is probably the best feature in Vista, and is something that most users will need.

[se7en.hu]

Im a Mac user switched in 04. Initially I ran Vista with 1gb RAM on my toshiba laptop, it ran like ass. I found 1gb I had spare and upgraded it to 2gb total. it runs perfectly, things load intstantly, its responsive, stable, seems to work good from the little that I use it. Definately an upgrade over XP.