Vista: I was wrong

Post Reply New Topic

A friend helped me clean up Vista some (the people who installed it for me enabled some random services that hogged a lot of memory and didn't do much else) and now it runs great. With as much RAM as I have installed, there's really no noticeable difference in performance between it and my other OS's (except Mac OS X boots fastest) so no worries there. I've found that Aero grows on you, and I really like it now. It has loads of great eye candy by default, in Ubuntu it is possible to get the same stuff (or even better in some cases) but you have to put more work into it. While I appreciate eye candy in my OS, is not something I'm likely to invest a lot of effort into. I would rather have it enabled by default and disable it if I didn't want to than jump through all sorts of flaming hoops to be able to make my windows close like paper airplanes. The integrated search function is pretty neat. Securing it isn't too hard- not as much of a hassle as getting wifi drivers in Ubuntu used to be, at least. I never have to wonder "is this application compatible with my OS" because with Vista the answer is yes. It runs all the same stuff I use in Mac and Linux, plus a couple extras. It's generally stable (I haven't had any issues since disabling some of the extra services). Overall, it's not a bad OS. Very cleanly made, very user-friendly, and the only limitation I will ever have in dealing with it is that Apple cheapskates you on the graphics unless you pay through the nose for a Macbook Pro. I've got integrated graphics, and not the best either. Still good enough to handle Aero, though. Just no hard-core gaming, which I don't have in Linux or Mac anyways. I get a better office suite in Windows, I don't have to worry about compatibility because that OS dominates the market and so it doesn't have to play nice with anyone else. My only gripe is that I still can't find a proper driver for my touchpad- I have to click with the actual button rather than tapping on the touchpad, which, because of certain hardware decisions by Apple, makes right-clicks highly awkward (hold two fingers on the touchpad and then click the mouse button). I might just get a USB mouse so I don't have to worry about that.

There gamefreak, see? I'm not just a Linux fanboy. When I see a good product, I'll admit it's good. I'm finding myself preferring Vista over OSX at least, even though OS X is admittedly less work (no defragging or spybot scanning). Right now it's probably about level with Ubuntu, though I still have yet to tap the full potential of either system.

Driver incompatibility is THE issue with Vista. All the rest (like the enabled-by-default IE-rendered desktop clock that eats up CPU cycles like candy) is just an annoyance.

That said I haven't actually tried it yet.

At least I disclaim what I say.

And I play video games enough to know that if I want to continue to play video games with as little hassle as possible, I should stay away from Vista. XP isn't perfect but it is familiar and does what I need it to.

Vista is not familiar and has consistently been in the tech news for having problems doing what I need it to. (amongst other things)

So why even try it?

XP is a nice OS as well, and from what I've seen there's not a whole ton of added functionality in Vista over XP. A cooler interface, yeah, but that's not always the biggest thing. From everything I've read, XP users are safe sticking with XP until Windows 7 comes around.

I personally like Vista. Then again, Windows is what I'm accustomed to. I have Ubuntu on the computer in my room, but that's connected by wireless internet, which Ubuntu doesn't seem to read for some reason...

As you know I recently switched from mac to windows and I find vista a lot more user friendly than osx. I'm not a techie, so it (vista)does a lot of problem solving for you, it seems to identify problems and then throws up a window for you to choose what you want to do about it. that's way more than os does. it suits my level of skills. things like uninstalling stuff you don't use any more are a breeze - on a mac i'd have to do a search and then dump each component individually into the trash. i've only been using vista for a few months and it just suits me a lot better with my lack of techie skills.

Orwell ! !! !

I think you must be ill. I suggest you have a rest in a dark room for a while
I'm sure you will get over it. Maybe you caught a virus from Vista? Maybe it has corrupted your firmware?

I guess I'm a power user with computers and for me Vista is a pain in the ****. Everything takes longer to do (more mouse clicks) than it did in XP and it is so damn intrusive. Sorry guys. I use it every day (no choice) and I hate it.

I loath that dumbed down little search box that you have to type everything into. As a software developer I'm in and out of the registry all day long and what used to be a single click in XP is now a chore: Type Regedit into the search box then I get the Vista warning and have to click continue.

I also hate the way Vista changes the way it shows files in its abortion of Windows Explorer. I am sick of telling it to view files in a certain way. So for example I tell Vista that a folder is to show file details (date mod, size, file attributes etc) a week later it suddenly decides to show the folder as photos with date taken and star ratings alongside - for DATA FILES! Vista loses the plot very easily. It is like it is trying to second guess everything - and gets it wrong - badly.

Vista is a daily wrestling match.

A nice little example about the new crappy search box on Vista:

A few weeks ago I needed to know what files had been modified during the last hour. The file names and types could have been anything and the drive / folder anywhere.

On XP I would have gone straight into advanced search options. No problem. But with Vista you can't go directly to advanced search options you just have this dumbed down search box. Since the files I'm looking for could have any name or extension I'm forced to put in *.* however, this doesn't trigger a search. Instead Vista just runs whatever program happens to be right at the top of the recent program list!! !! !! !!

So, to do the search you have to type some searchable crap into the search box. Any crap; just to trigger a search so that you can then get at the advanced search options. Then you can actually specify what you are really searching for. What long winded way of working!

TallyMan - my uncle uses vista the same way you do(going into the registry etc.) and he didnt like it at first due to it what-he-called "time-wasting", but aparently its very customizable. a lot more customizable that previous versions of windows.

A lot of the issues with Vista were fixed with SP1. I hated it before, too. Had major problems with it and my nVidia card. Ran games slow as s**t. Works great now, though.