Vista.....not so bad?

[SirJ]

Hey everyone,
First, I'd like to apologize because this is probably not in the right place to maintain forum feng shui, but I am really excited and wanted to see what you guys think.

Yesterday, my dad and I built a new computer (replaces our old dell dimension 4550). This is the first computer that we've built and I think I learned a lot from the experience. We put in 8 GB RAM, E8400 processor, Geforce 9500 for our new Samsung 2253 and old Magnavox something (17 inch), ASUS P5E-Q, Saitek backlit keyboard (very cool) and a couple 750GB HDDs. OS is Vista Ultimate 64-bit

Was first wondering what you guys think of it, I realize it's not a beast with quad-core and 3-way SLI but we don't need that for word docs, Photoshop and Reason.

Also, does anyone have anything good to say about Vista? I realize this is a Mac forum but I 1) feel I can learn as much or more about things from looking at the cons and 2) really like the Aero interface (glass windows are really neat). I read somewhere aero is Microsoft's take on Aqua which is an OSX thing, but I've never seen the glass look in OSX.

Any comments or answers would be really appreciated

[SpaceKitty]

I have Vista running on this HP that I am typing on right now. It's very dependable. I don't think I have ever had it crash ever since I got it in July. I haven't rebooted it either in like two months, just sleep.

I think it's allot more stable then XP ever could be. We have it on both of our laptops that are HPs.

[yg17]

No. I've used Vista extensively, and kept my Mac bias out of it as much as possible, and there is nothing good I can say about Vista. The interface has got to be the most user unfriendly, cluttered piece of crap anyone could ever make. Sure, it's pretty, but eye candy only goes so far.

Vista reminds me of Miss South Carolina (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww). Sure, it's pretty, and you wouldn't mind playing with it for a couple hours, but would you really want to be using something so stupid for an extended period?

[SirJ]

Wow those are polar opposite replies.

What about the interface specifically don't you like? I've had it for all of a day so I'll be the first to admit that yes, aesthetics are the main thing I've noticed about it thus far.

[NT1440]

It seems like the people that dont have problems never get them, the people that do have problems get ALOT of them.

I for one, typing this on a vista machine, can bear it knowing that im buying a mac after february.

Its the little things that will bug you the most. For me its the CONSTANT crashing of explorer.

[Dagless]

It's very problematic for me since I run old software. XP manages both old and new without hitch. Vista takes longer than XP to boot, to boot individual apps, to do anything really. But it is a new OS - just one that doesn't have any benefits for me at all.

Especially bad since Vista can't be installed on a Fat32 drive. I know it's old but with full OSX compatibility I swear by it (and Macdrive for the XP side).

[shfreelance]

Call me odd, I kinda miss Windows. Almost like it better, then Mac OS X. But I am going to college next year and need a windows machine. So I will be selling my iMac.

[fireshot91]

Vista takes so much less time to boot on MY computer than XP. Not sure why, it just does. If you start>*right click* Computer> Properties

you can see your Benchmark score for your machine. Mine is 4.8 due to 2GB RAM. Thats the only thing below 5.1.

[SpaceKitty]

Vista takes so much less time to boot on MY computer than XP. Not sure why, it just does. If you start>*right click* Computer> Properties

you can see your Benchmark score for your machine. Mine is 4.8 due to 2GB RAM. Thats the only thing below 5.1.

Mine is 3.4, came with Vista allong with 4GB ram.

[fireshot91]

Whats making it a 3.4?

[SpaceKitty]

Whats making it a 3.4?

Maybe the CPU? It's a Duo Core 1.83GHZ. Vista is 64 bit.

Wait, it gave the graphics card a 3.4 so that's it.

[thejadedmonkey]

I like Vista, but decided against using it as my main OS because fiddling with it is a nightmare! Everything's moved about and so un-intuitive.

Personally, I can not wait for Windows 7.. I built a desktop too, just for when SC2 comes out, and I'll throw Win7 on that asap, as much as I like OS X, it's just not Windows

[toolbox]

Personally, and this is just MY opinion. I refuse to use vista in any environment. Whether that be at home or at work i would rather use windows 95!.

There are just certain things about vista that are so anoying and make doing this twice as long. Having to authenticate everytime you want to move a file or the way it will sit there calculating how many files your copying or deleting. Who really cares about how many files there are. Xp this was done straight away now your sitting there for 5 minutes waiting for it.

Out of the box, it does not like connecting to SMB shares, as in samba based servers. You have to hack the registry in order to get this to work. Now the average user mum or dad would not have a clue how to do this.

There are so many stupid wizards that need to be run to set up wireless connections and stuff like that which you can do with a few clicks in xp.

[GSMiller]

I don't care for Vista because the only time I ever have to use it is when I'm trying to fix a problem one of my friends is having out of it. People always bash OS X for being a "walled garden" but at least it lets me do my work without baby sitting me and holding my hand through the entire process.

[NT1440]

yea Microsoft tried to make it more user friendly by making automated processes do almost everything, but in reality they just muddled everything up and shuffled everything around. Pissing off anyone who actually knows how to use a computer.

[toolbox]

Vista is windows ME all over again!

[Melrose]

<You Are Now Pointing Out Windows' Flaws: Cancel or Allow?>

Is Vista anything at all like XP? Then I won't be using it anytime soon. I switched from XP one year ago - after going through hell in several iterations of Windows (with the same problems and system errors nipping at my rear end on all of them). The experience of several generations of Windows use has me soured enough to prevent me from installing Vista on my Macintosh (Boot Camp). Therefore it will be several years at least before I even consider using a new Windows version. The Windows taste has got to wash out of my mouth a bit...

I know several people personally who have used Vista and detest it - with similar problems cited by all. I don't know any one person personally who thinks it's any good. In contrast, I have not had one single glitch on my Mac - realistically I know they're not perfect and I am strangely expectant of a problem at some point (not due to any error on my current machine) but at that point its dependability will have very much eclipsed anything M$ has to offer.

I have to deal with XP once in a while and that's bad enough. Every time I use it I am reminded why I detest it as much as I do.

[dotdotdot]

I think that Vista is a fantastic operating system, works flawlessly for me, and I honestly trust it more than OS X.

I got to use Windows 7 the other day however, and it completely puts Vista to shame. It makes Vista seem like a bloated, slow OS with a bad user interface, and using their new taskbar that resembles the OS X dock (but is actually incredibly different - at first I thought it was poorly designed because I'm used to the OS X dock but once I realized how it works I find it intuitive and perhaps superior) makes the current Vista taskbar look ancient.

Basically, I think Vista is great, and 7 will be incredible.

[No1451]

I've used it since RC 2, and I really don't have anything to say on the negative side. My machine boots quickly(under 1 min to get to a usable desktop), and its stable as can be.

Honestly though, a lot of issues that will crop up stem from usage patterns. If you keep your machine clean(don't install 10 new programs a day) and maintain it(AV scans, nothing fancy) it should run fine. Also keeping your drivers up to date helps a lot for stability(unless its already stable, don't mess with what isn't broken).

To the poster who said they don't wanna see the calculating stuff, well, I'm not sure what you expect. If they didn't let the user know that the computer was doing SOMETHING you get the people who start trying to cancel or kill it, assuming that its just frozen up. The deleting one is because the machine needs to check if there is actually room in the Recycling Bin.

@OP: Biggest bit of advice, read reviews of your hardware, make sure it jives well with Vista, I made sure to, and my machine hasn't experienced a system crash in several weeks(in fact the last one was actually caused by software going crazy on me).

[richard.mac]

Call me odd, I kinda miss Windows. Almost like it better, then Mac OS X. But I am going to college next year and need a windows machine. So I will be selling my iMac.

you realise that you cant install Windows on your Mac either natively or virtually. you are saying you need Windows for college but a Mac is actually a Windows machine aswell.

[NT1440]

you realise that you cant install Windows on your Mac either natively or virtually. you are saying you need Windows for college but a Mac is actually a Windows machine aswell.

You get the beeeeeeeeest of both worlds, la la la dee dee de de da doooooo.

[Melrose]

my machine hasn't experienced a system crash in several weeks(in fact the last one was actually caused by software going crazy on me).

I'm not picking on you, so heads up no offense. I just find it amusing you have to put a time line on system crashes... The World of Windows. :D

[gmecca2]

After converting to a mac 4 years ago I will never go back unless Mac becomes unreliable as WIndows is.

The whole operating system will work for the first 6 months then become garbage from my experience.

[NT1440]

After converting to a mac 4 years ago I will never go back unless Mac becomes unreliable as WIndows is.

The whole operating system will work for the first 6 months then become garbage from my experience.
Yea part of windows biggest problem is that it just gets clunkier and clunkier as it goes. Funny enough theres an amazing amount of people out there with the mindset that its normal to have to restore a computer every certain amount of time, like its a tune up or something.

Thats what happens with such a huge marketshare tho.

[gilkisson]

No. I've used Vista extensively, and kept my Mac bias out of it as much as possible, and there is nothing good I can say about Vista. The interface has got to be the most user unfriendly, cluttered piece of crap anyone could ever make. Sure, it's pretty, but eye candy only goes so far.

Vista reminds me of Miss South Carolina (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww). Sure, it's pretty, and you wouldn't mind playing with it for a couple hours, but would you really want to be using something so stupid for an extended period?

Ouch. I say again, ouch. On behalf of my state, ouch.

However, I agree about Vista. There is no use for it, no point it in, no purpose for it, other than income for MS. Useless as lips on a woodpecker or teats on a boar hog. :p

[Cassie]

Yea part of windows biggest problem is that it just gets clunkier and clunkier as it goes. Funny enough theres an amazing amount of people out there with the mindset that its normal to have to restore a computer every certain amount of time, like its a tune up or something.

Thats what happens with such a huge marketshare tho.

Although it's actually a good idea to reinstall OS X once a year or so, it's not perfect either. :)

From my experience, Vista is just a slower, flashier and more confusing version of XP. Give me XP over Vista anyday. (However, give me 98 SE over both of them. :D)

[Winni]

I found 32-Bit Vista quite disappointing and slow, only with Service Pack 1 it became usable.

I never saw a 64-Bit version of Vista "in the wild" until last week; I finally obtained a 64-Bit installation DVD with a slipstreamed SP1 from Microsoft and installed it on my Quad Core Mac Pro (Early 2007) with 8 GB RAM and an nVidia 8800 GT.

It was a royal pain in the neck to install Vista 64 SP1 on the Mac, mostly because Apple is not very supportive to that version of Windows, but it can be done even without Boot Camp and without support from Apple.

Once Vista was installed, I was very positively surprised how great it runs and how fast the 64-Bit version is - not only compared to 32-Bit Vista, but also compared to XP -AND- OS X Leopard. Vist 64 beats the crap out of its siblings and it also runs a good deal faster than Leopard. "Snappy" is the word marketing people like to use for this experience.

Sure, the user interface could be improved in many aspects. I don't really like the new Windows Explorer and the new Start Menu. But, truth be told, there's also a lot of space for improvements in OS X as well - especially the Dock needs a complete re-design.

I cannot say that I really have a huge preference for the one or the other system. It always takes me a few minutes to adjust to each system, but then it doesn't really matter anymore which I'm using. The applications and other tools are more important than the underlying operating system.

For me, OS X has two killer applications: Aperture (which I like -MUCH- better than Lightroom) and Scrivener.

However, and this is -my- opinion based upon -my- preferences, background and experience, I find OS X is the crappiest platform for software development that I've ever seen. From where I stand, Objective-C is not a programming language, it's an ugly abomination. And Xcode and Interface Builder are clumsy last millennium tools compared to Visual Studio. It's amazing that Mac developers get anything done at all with those pieces of crap. It also still perplexes me that everybody seems to believe that Cocoa is the greatest and most beautiful invention since sliced bread served by Olympian Goddesses. But the worst thing is: There are not even any real alternatives available that truly support the platform. (Yes, I know Realbasic, and no, it doesn't cut it.) If you want to create truly native apps for the Mac, you -have- to go back to the 1980s and put up with Objective-C and Xcode. Good old UCSD Pascal was more fun to use - and a more beautiful programming language, too.

Another killer argument for Windows is the abundance of freeware tools. On the Mac, I mostly use registered Shareware where on Windows I get similar programs and tools as Freeware. Filzip vs StuffIt, just to give one example.

And then, of course, there are games. Windows has them. OS X forces you to purchase an Xbox 360 /and or a PS3.

However, OS X does not show you those annoying bubble boxes all the time, which is a huge plus. On the downside, it annoys you with its rotating beach ball instead.

Ultimately, both systems only cook with water.

[No1451]

I'm not picking on you, so heads up no offense. I just find it amusing you have to put a time line on system crashes... The World of Windows. :D

heh, none taken. Before I got my machine in gear I was sitting at a few crashes a week, luckily thats stopped mostly now. Only reason I remember the crash was cause it was the day a big school assignment was due and I celebrated my completion of it by playing some game, then, poof, Fallout 3 killed my system:(.

[shfreelance]

you realise that you cant install Windows on your Mac either natively or virtually. you are saying you need Windows for college but a Mac is actually a Windows machine aswell.

Well also need a laptop... So the iMac is got to go. I plain to major in Computer Engineering Technology (Networking). Should be a worthy degree, I hope...

[toolbox]

Although it's actually a good idea to reinstall OS X once a year or so, it's not perfect either. :)

From my experience, Vista is just a slower, flashier and more confusing version of XP. Give me XP over Vista anyday. (However, give me 98 SE over both of them. :D)

Yeah i reinstall my macs every 6 months that way there always running like rockets. You a proud Win 98 user? I was with win 95 for years until xp came out. I never bothered with 98, ME, NT or even 2000

[Stridder44]

Vista is windows ME all over again!


Spoken like someone who has never used Vista.



Although it's actually a good idea to reinstall OS X once a year or so, it's not perfect either. :)

From my experience, Vista is just a slower, flashier and more confusing version of XP. Give me XP over Vista anyday. (However, give me 98 SE over both of them. :D)


Yeah seriously dude, XP is so bloated and slow. Microsoft really screwed themselves over on that one. Windows 98 is pretty bad too. That's why I run Windows 95. It takes up way less space and resources. :rolleyes:

Amazing how people so quickly forget XP got the same crap as Vista is getting when it was still in its early days (pre-SP2).

[Melrose]

Amazing how people so quickly forget XP got the same crap as Vista is getting when it was still in its early days (pre-SP2).

The only difference here is that the OP asked if Vista was '...not so bad.' - There was no qualification that we had to wait for Vista SP2 before making a comparison...

I have no doubt Vista will (gag) improve with age as M$ releases patches and fixes and Service Packs for it. Which begs the comparison to OS X again since Apple makes sure they have a stable product before it's brought to market.

[No1451]

Yeah but I hardly think anything pre-SP2 really has any bearing in this discussion as SP2 is available as we speak, and a great deal of the issues have been resolved.

And please, don't compare it to OS X, that isn't what he asked for, he asked for a discussion on whether or not its going to be ok for me. Which didn't require a thread, just 2-3 days of using it in trial mode:).

[toolbox]

Spoken like someone who has never used Vista.

.

Trust me i have used it! I work in the pc industry fixing them. Vista is just a pain to deal with.

[ravenvii]

The only difference here is that the OP asked if Vista was '...not so bad.' - There was no qualification that we had to wait for Vista SP2 before making a comparison...

I have no doubt Vista will (gag) improve with age as M$ releases patches and fixes and Service Packs for it. Which begs the comparison to OS X again since Apple makes sure they have a stable product before it's brought to market.

Really? How people forget so easily.

I remember all the problems with 10.5 and 10.4 when it first came out. Those problems, of course, went away with subsequent updates.

[SpaceKitty]

Vista is just a pain to deal with.

And as already pointed out, OS X is not perfect either. I can't tell you how many times I've had Safari and Firefox crash. Itunes as well. There have been times when my whole Mac Pro just froze up and I had to hold the power button to get it to turn off.

Since July when I got a HP laptop with Vista, none of this has happened at all. IE hasn't crashed once yet with XP I was lucky if I could go a day without it encountering a serious problem and needing to close.

[Edmonal]

I've used Vista on an Acer laptop, a Dell and a Lenova PC, 32 and 64 bit. I detest it. As an end user it's annoying and not very intuitive, but they had to make it different from XP, I mean just because that's what people are used to using. As someone who has to work with Vista in an Enterprise environment I can't even begin to tell you how much I loathe it. It's Vista that made me look into going Mac. As far as I was concerned Microsoft is not interested in the end user experience, and still cling to very amateurish practices when it comes to the kernel and api.

I do have higher hopes for Windows 7, but to be honest I'm sticking with Macs for at least the next 3 years.

[ZiggyPastorius]

Although it's actually a good idea to reinstall OS X once a year or so, it's not perfect either. :)

From my experience, Vista is just a slower, flashier and more confusing version of XP. Give me XP over Vista anyday. (However, give me 98 SE over both of them. :D)

I'm not being facetious, but I'm genuinely curious why you think it's a good idea. I don't know much about stuff, technically, but I've heard the main reason Windows slows down over time is because of the registry, which OS X doesn't have. As an end-user, I have not noticed any difference at all in the performance of my Macbook, ever, in the year+ I've had it, without any reinstallations. The most I've done with it is clean out apps I wasn't using, and not because it was slowing down, but because I didn't need them anymore. So, does anybody have a reason why I would reinstall (on any OS) if the machine isn't slowing down at all, and why OS X in particular would be susceptible to this slow-down over time? (From what I've heard from the majority, it isn't).

[Melrose]

Really? How people forget so easily.

I remember all the problems with 10.5 and 10.4 when it first came out. Those problems, of course, went away with subsequent updates.

Well - I'm biased then. I've only had a Mac since 11/07. All I've ever experienced is pure bliss. :D

And yes, I agree OS X is not perfect, but imo it's ten times better than--- well, that's outside the scope of the OP's request.

[sikkinixx]

I run 64 bit Vista on my gaming PC and plain old 32 bit Vista on my netbook. Never had any troubles. In fact, Vista runs better than XP on my netbook as I get about 25 minutes MORE battery life. It's a teeny choppy if I'm trying to open big pdf's with chrome,office, itunes running but nothing unexceptable.

On my gaming PC, I get more fps than I did in XP and it looks better to boot. It's really hard going back to OS X now when I use it. I had completely switched away from Windows for about two years but now I'm almost completely away from OS X and rarely find myself missing it. I don't do anything hardcore, just everyday use plus gaming and after I got over the learning curve of "where did they move this?" (which I had with OS X when I first switched over) I have zero troubles with it.

[jaydub]

I run Vista 64 on my Mac Pro with no problems at all. I can't complain about it, it has been sufficiently stable and I haven't had any driver issues.

[uiop.]

Hmf. I use Vista Ultimate daily for hours on end as it is on my Dell desktop and it has been getting the job done. Since getting Vista back in January 2007 (?) when it was released, I haven't had a single blue screen of death. Which I think is quite an accomplishment since I've had two kernel panics in OS X since July 08. I really think Vista's reliability has a lot to do with the machine its on and the devices on the machine, with that being said, Vista is still much slower than XP was. The overall UI is very sloppy and confused, too. At the end of the day, OS X will be my preferred operating system.

[iObama]

You get the beeeeeeeeest of both worlds, la la la dee dee de de da doooooo.

baaahahahahahahahaha!!!:D

[iObama]

I like Vista.

Let's face it people: Windows is still the shiznit for networking. Macs are a royal pain in the you-know-what when it comes to dual-platform networking.

[QueenZ]

Sorry but i won't be able to tell you almost anything good about Vista.. After all, Vista is the reason i'm on mac now :)

OK, so what i don't like about Vista..
1/10 of my programs are working
No DOS support
eats up all my RAM (even if you have 8GB, it will eat half of it) :D
Very buggy.. crashing all the time..
easy to get tons of virus.. no antivirus will help ya..
....

What i like is the new Windows Explorer, it's pretty easy to navigate. But PathFinder is even better :D

[Dagless]

I like Vista.

Let's face it people: Windows is still the shiznit for networking. Macs are a royal pain in the you-know-what when it comes to dual-platform networking.

Really? :eek:
XP was easy-ish to set up, but ruddy nora when we got more than 1 Mac in our network they could see each other and all that from the get-go, and all the "shared folders" on Windows machines popped up on the Mac too. Even when just trying to connect to the network OSX does it all from the go, XP needs a little configuring to get an internet connection over the network.

Now I didn't like Tiger with networking and how it would stumble if it lost a connection rendering Finder useless for a few minutes. But Leopard has been a major improvement.

[nplima]

Hi,

I'm one of those 5 people in the world who is actually happy with Vista :D

I use Home Premium edition on a desktop PC, and my gf has Home Basic on a low end Dell laptop.
Since I am used to Windows for many years, this transition to Vista was mostly painless. I'm used to some quirkiness and essentially I'm used to waiting a few months until the irritating bits are ironed out, until there are some 3rd party add-ons that allow you to customize your OS and I don't mind reading instructions.

Recently I read on Arstechnica about the Ultimate Vista Tweaker
http://www.winvistaclub.com/Ultimate_Windows_Tweaker.html

and I think it's essential, even more than TweakUI was in its day.

I used it to:
- disable windows search indexing - I prefer Google desktop search
- disable the intelligent caching of applications - I prefer to have enough RAM
- disable the UAC screen when I am running as Admin. I have a normal user for day to day activities and only log in as Admin when I need to change something important, that's why I disabled the additional "are you sure you want to do what you said you want to do?" :p

... and there's more. now if you look at all the criticism about Vista a you might find out that these are exactly the complaints people have, so now it's time to fix them instead of whining.

[angelneo]

Amazing how people so quickly forget XP got the same crap as Vista is getting when it was still in its early days (pre-SP2).
When XP first came out, the green/blue interface just scream, fisher-price toy. I insist on using Windows 2k for a long long time.

I use Vista Ultimate edition at work and I'm pretty ok with it. Personally, I'm just annoyed that for the same functionality in windows, the minimal specs of hardware just keep going higher, and the OS keeps going slower. In the meantime, OSX just keep going faster.

[nplima]

Amazing how people so quickly forget XP got the same crap as Vista is getting when it was still in its early days (pre-SP2).

I think you are the one who forgot how it was.
When it first went on sale XP was bloated, nobody knew exactly why it was so much bigger if it wasn't doing anything new... after a while, it became "good enough" for most people, ie: all retailers got rid of Win 98 and sold XP only.

As more and more people got broadband internet and started to get their PCs Pwnd, that's when XP stopped being good enough and turned into a crap product. Now Vista is ending that stage where people aren't sure what's so good about it to justify the upgrade and XP is now elegant and lightweight.

[pilotError]

I recently built a new machine for one of the Simulators I use. Similar setup, Asus p5q deluxe, q9550, gtx 260, 4GB ram...

I installed Vista 64 and it has been OK. Just OK. It works, it has crashed on me on a handful of occassions. It tends to annoy the crap out of you unless you start turning off all sorts of options mentioned above.

My issues are mainly around trying to find things. It seems they tried to make it simple, but in the process, dumbed it down and made things harder to find. When I say find things, I mean like trying to map a network drive, or attaching to my NAS.

They did some things different, hid the menus so that you have to press ALT for them to appear. I wish they would do away with the 400 tool bars and keep the menus around. As polished as the UI is in Vista, I'm not sure the useability factor is there.

I haven't had the compatibility issues with software that others have had. It's been fairly reliable in that instance.

In the end, it really has reaffirmed my decision to go to OS X. I'm a little sorry I didn't just buy a 24" iMac and dual boot it, but then again, this thing runs blu-ray without issue. Something we are all still waiting for.

[Stridder44]

I think you are the one who forgot how it was.
When it first went on sale XP was bloated, nobody knew exactly why it was so much bigger if it wasn't doing anything new... after a while, it became "good enough" for most people, ie: all retailers got rid of Win 98 and sold XP only.

As more and more people got broadband internet and started to get their PCs Pwnd, that's when XP stopped being good enough and turned into a crap product. Now Vista is ending that stage where people aren't sure what's so good about it to justify the upgrade and XP is now elegant and lightweight.


Did you even read what I wrote? XP is "lightweight" because it's 8 years old and made for computes built back in 2001. XP wasn't accepted up until SP2 was released for it, then it became good and acceptable. Vista is actually gaining acceptance more quickly that XP was. And elegant? If XP is elegant then Steve Jobs is a body builder.

[Melrose]

I like Vista.

Let's face it people: Windows is still the shiznit for networking. Macs are a royal pain in the you-know-what when it comes to dual-platform networking.

Weird. I had a network set up back when my parents had a PC, and my Macintosh hooked up and handled the network fine. It was Windows that I had so much trouble with.. In the end it never worked right; we just got used to not having the nice network features on the PC.

[Cromulent]

Vista x64 is pretty good if you ask me. Fast, stable and easy to use.

Turn Aero off as soon as you get it though and use the Windows 2000 theme (best Windows UI Microsoft ever came up with) and it will be fine.

[sangosimo]

vista 64bit. My rig is smokin fast and cost less than a macbook.

[gilkisson]

Vista x64 is pretty good if you ask me. Fast, stable and easy to use.

Turn Aero off as soon as you get it though and use the Windows 2000 theme (best Windows UI Microsoft ever came up with) and it will be fine.

What's left? If turn off the vista-ness, what does it have left to recommend it? Why bother to pay Bill? I mean, what's the point?

[chewietobbacca]

What's left? If turn off the vista-ness, what does it have left to recommend it? Why bother to pay Bill? I mean, what's the point?

Stability and speed? 64-bit is damn good too

Granted, I have a top of the line PC with vista ultimate x64 (and a Raptor X to boot), but the thing runs smooth as silk and never crashes (okay, so when it does its usually due to drivers from the video card, which accounts for the highest chunk of crashes)

Yes, you do have to disable things like UAC if you don't want to be annoyed, but if you understand anything about computers (and don't go clicking random links), you won't need it anyways

[Stridder44]

What's left? If turn off the vista-ness, what does it have left to recommend it? Why bother to pay Bill? I mean, what's the point?


Yeah, there's no other changes in Vista at all. :rolleyes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Windows_Vista

Check out that bar on the right that lists all the different sections, as the link I posted only covers one section of changes.

[gilkisson]

Yeah, there's no other changes in Vista at all. :rolleyes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Windows_Vista

Check out that bar on the right that lists all the different sections, as the link I posted only covers one section of changes.

Oh, I admit and agree there are indeed changes in Vista, versus XP, versus Vista SP1.. Let me clear up where I'm coming from. I'm looking at 300+ PCs to upgrade at several properties. I see no driving need to shell out the money, go thru the pain/suffering/downtime. It will not benefit the business, nor will it allow me to save money elsewhere. For example, I'd still need my corporate antivirus, right? Of course.

There is nothing that sells me on the "upgrade".

[gilkisson]

Yeah, there's no other changes in Vista at all. :rolleyes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_features_new_to_Windows_Vista

Check out that bar on the right that lists all the different sections, as the link I posted only covers one section of changes.

Oh, and the link you included?

[Cromulent]

Oh, I admit and agree there are indeed changes in Vista, versus XP, versus Vista SP1.. Let me clear up where I'm coming from. I'm looking at 300+ PCs to upgrade at several properties. I see no driving need to shell out the money, go thru the pain/suffering/downtime. It will not benefit the business, nor will it allow me to save money elsewhere. For example, I'd still need my corporate antivirus, right? Of course.

There is nothing that sells me on the "upgrade".

Fine. Don't upgrade then. Seems like you have made your own mind up.

Personally I find Vista much, much more stable than XP ever was for me. If I were in charge of a business stability would be pretty high up on my list of priorities.

But hey that's just me.

[gilkisson]

Fine. Don't upgrade then. Seems like you have made your own mind up.

Personally I find Vista much, much more stable than XP ever was for me. If I were in charge of a business stability would be pretty high up on my list of priorities.

But hey that's just me.

Yep. I have made up my mind. Had to. Sorry, that seems to be upsetting to you for some reason...

What do you mean when you say "more stable"? Going x number of days between reboots or BSODs? I have my users shutdown at night, or whenever the PC will be inactive for more than two hours. Saves electricity, and as a security measure. Therefore, they reboot almost daily anyways, making that a moot point.

And I've yet to see any studies that show me a dollar amount in productivity savings that justifies the expense of Vista. Managing a network means more than just installing the latest "cool" things, it also means staying within budget and looking after the bottom line.

[northy124]

Congrats on installing 64bit Vista you made the right choice as it actually works, I'm seriously considering going back to Windows as this OS is seriously doing my head in:mad::mad::mad: (Lost 11GB of space (Items disappeared so I can't delete) that I need so I can partition).

[Cromulent]

Yep. I have made up my mind. Had to. Sorry, that seems to be upsetting to you for some reason...

Not at all. As I said that's just me. Hell, you could go back to running DOS if you really wanted too.

[FX120]

Oh, I admit and agree there are indeed changes in Vista, versus XP, versus Vista SP1.. Let me clear up where I'm coming from. I'm looking at 300+ PCs to upgrade at several properties. I see no driving need to shell out the money, go thru the pain/suffering/downtime. It will not benefit the business, nor will it allow me to save money elsewhere. For example, I'd still need my corporate antivirus, right? Of course.

There is nothing that sells me on the "upgrade".

The biggest thing for me as a (albeit smaller) network administrator is that Vista is inherrently more secure than XP.

The improved group policy controls were much welcomed too. And taking device drivers out of kernel space improving stability and the systems ability to recover from crash without shutting down the entire machine.

Sure there are some bling factors included in Vista, but under the skin the core OS is really worlds ahead of XP in pretty much every way.

[Stridder44]

Oh, and the link you included?

Now you're just being ignorant. Check it out for yourself on a Vista machine, or a simple Google search will tell you that it's all true anyway.

[SactoGuy18]

I have Windows Vista Home Premium (SP1) running on my HP Pavilion a6400f and I've never had any serious problems with my PC. :) I like it over Windows XP because in Vista if you have a program crash you can recover much more gracefully than in Windows XP.

[gilkisson]

Not at all. As I said that's just me. Hell, you could go back to running DOS if you really wanted too.

Heh. And I would, too. Actually, Win2K desktops attaching to Netware servers... ah, those were the days.

[gilkisson]

Now you're just being ignorant. Check it out for yourself on a Vista machine, or a simple Google search will tell you that it's all true anyway.

Jeez, dude, lighten up. I assure you, I've done the due diligence I felt was needed. I admit, this was when Vista was new and fresh, before the service pack that made it (reportedly) tolerable. And yes, XP was once in that same condition.

But we are where we are. When Windows 7 comes out, I will look at it as well. From what I have read, 7 is to Windows 2000 as Vista is to ME.

Upgrading to Vista now is, in my opinion, the very epitome of ignorance. If you are happy paying for your OS twice, well, enjoy it.

[me_94501]

Also, does anyone have anything good to say about Vista? I realize this is a Mac forum but I 1) feel I can learn as much or more about things from looking at the cons and 2) really like the Aero interface (glass windows are really neat). I read somewhere aero is Microsoft's take on Aqua which is an OSX thing, but I've never seen the glass look in OSX.

Any comments or answers would be really appreciated

I use Vista at work; aside from lack of polish endemic to Windows (e.g. I can't move a file if it's open--frustrating as all-get-out), I can't say it's all that bad.

[twoodcc]

well, i had to use windows last semester for school, and i decided to try vista (since i got it free from school). i put it on all my macs, and i must say that i like it. granted, i still use leopard as my main OS, but it has tempted me to maybe go back to windows.

i mean, i have 3 macs, and for me to really give Vista a real go, i'd have to run it on all my machines at once to give it my full attention. in my experience, leopard and vista don't mix all that well.

[sangosimo]

why can't cut and paste in finder and why doesn't osx mimic alt tab.

[angelneo]

Fine. Don't upgrade then. Seems like you have made your own mind up.

Personally I find Vista much, much more stable than XP ever was for me. If I were in charge of a business stability would be pretty high up on my list of priorities.

But hey that's just me.
Stability is not a singular equation in businesses, you need to take into account your hardware/software setup and compatibility for each station, you need to consider whether the users are trained, sufficient procedures to maintain the stability etc. It's not a simple answer of "Oh, this OS is stable so we should upgrade".

[yojitani]

I haven't used Vista extensively. The university here recently made all their windows machines Vista so I've had a chance to use it a bit and I've seen friends' computers with it on. Here's what I see:

- Organization is a problem. I was used to XP and had a hard time finding things on Vista. I'm not sure if this is a problem or not. It's more likely to do with me not taking time with the computer.

- It only works well on recent hardware. They have it running on pentium D machines and it is slow as molasses. When I use it on a C2D machine and it is smooth.

- It looks nice overall, but I think apple has better attention to aesthetic detail.

- I like the Windows spaces equivalent. In fact, it looks to be better. I haven't used this feature myself, but I've seen it in action on my friend's computer and it seems to be much easier to navigate.

- My dad, who doesn't fully understand the different OS concept but utilizes more computer power than most users for imaging software, refuses to use Vista. He had it on a Dell machine and had more problems with it than with XP (to which he was an early user).

Overall, I don't think I'd mind having a modern machine with Vista on it to tinker around with, but it's not something I'd want to rely on.