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.
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Vista.....not so bad?
- Thread starter SirJ
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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.
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.
)
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.
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.
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.
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
.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...
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
.
Trust me i have used it! I work in the pc industry fixing them. Vista is just a pain to deal with.
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.
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.
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.
I do have higher hopes for Windows 7, but to be honest I'm sticking with Macs for at least the next 3 years.
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.
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).
Well - I'm biased then. I've only had a Mac since 11/07. All I've ever experienced is pure bliss.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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
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)
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
Really?
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.
Hi,
I'm one of those 5 people in the world who is actually happy with Vista
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?"
... 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.
I'm one of those 5 people in the world who is actually happy with Vista
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?"
... 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.
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.
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.