I Hate Windows Vista

[rainman]

The topic title says it all. I installed Windows Vista Ultimate onto a 2nd hard drive today and played around with it for several hours. The first few things I noticed is that it's a lot slower in many aspects than Windows XP. I have a custom-built Xeon with 4GB RAM and even on there it's sluggish, so it's not my computer. The interface is also a lot more cluttered than in XP, the constant "are you sure you want to run this program? warnings when I put a CD in the drive are also annoying me to no end. If I put a CD in the drive, surely I want to run the program on it. There may be a way to turn this off, but it's not very obvious and it's not fun either to wait another 10 minutes for the knowledge database to load.

Enough ranting. Has anyone else that installed Vista noticed the same? Personally, I just finished uninstalling it and will be happy to stay on XP for another few years. It seems that Vista is a lot of visual effects, but it's not very effective for a work environment. I mean, who's going to spin their work windows around in 3D?

[wileycoyote]

Enough ranting. Has anyone else that installed Vista noticed the same? Personally, I just finished uninstalling it and will be happy to stay on XP for another few years. It seems that Vista is a lot of visual effects, but it's not very effective for a work environment. I mean, who's going to spin their work windows around in 3D?

Dear Rainman,

I faced great opposition from my kids ,when I decided not to upgrade from XP.

Based on your experience ,I am so pleased that I decided to delay.

Wiley Coyote

[nidge]

Bin windows and go for an apple. It has done for ages what "New" vista can do and it does it all better and faster.

[sjaak327]

Quite the opposite, Vista runs way faster then XP on at least 6 pc's I have it installed on. Even a 4 year old Dell Optiplex is more happy running Vista then XP. Of course the amount of ram inside your system is important.

UAC (user account control) can be switched off, even by using the control panel. Not recommended though, and once you have finished installing all programs, you won't see the prompt that often anymore anyway.

I just have to laugh at the last comment regarding the Apple, Mac OSX isn't bad, but to state that it can do what vista is doing for ages is just plain bullshit.

[Crushdepth]

I like Vista a lot more than XP. I don't agree that the interface is cluttered - I think its a lot better organized and much easier to *look at* all day. However it was a bit annoying for the first couple of weeks while getting used to the new interface.

Definitely consumes a lot more resources than XP, I wouldn't run it on an old computer. It has definitely had a lot more 'quality control' put into it than XP. The UAC thing is much better than getting viruses and trojans every time you stick a cd or thumb drive in.

[rainman]

I've never used Apple/Mac to be honest, but I regularly use Linux (for development) and Windows XP (for my day-to-day work). I might give Vista another try in a few months, but for right now I'm not touching it.

[Wolfie]

Whats the spec of your machine Rainman? I found it was comparible to XP and with my recent upgrade its fast as lightning now - perhaps you have/had a bottle neck somewhere? All-in-all i like vista, and i'm happy to have upgraded

[Insight]

Was fairly impressed with Vista which came installed on a fairly high spec laptop (or so I thought) I picked up recently.

That was until I opened the Task Manager. I'll be needing more memory soon.

[britmaveric]

Vista is great, far prefer it over XP now. It does take time to get used to, but any drastic change is. More Stable and faster I can't really grumble.

[rainman]

Whats the spec of your machine Rainman? I found it was comparible to XP and with my recent upgrade its fast as lightning now - perhaps you have/had a bottle neck somewhere? All-in-all i like vista, and i'm happy to have upgraded

Dual Xeon 2.0, 4GB RAM. It just seemed very sluggish from when I started up Vista. I then installed the graphic card drivers (ATI Radeon) and thought it would go away after but it didn't.

[Gary A]

I'll wait until service pack 2 comes out.

How long did it take MS to get XP working properly?

[cdnvic]

I'll wait until service pack 2 comes out.

How long did it take MS to get XP working properly?

Vista is a whole different animal. It works better out of the box than XP after seven years of use and upgrades. Wait if you want but you're subjecting yourself to an inferior system.

[Guest Reimar]

May the problem is the ATI Card!! First at all you need a card with min. 128 MB memory and second a true Vista compatible Driver!

Check the Performance Rating and you se where some problmes are! Start from there to fix.

One other problem is the "older" XEON CPU which isnt really compatible to Vista!!

[moo9]

The topic title says it all. I installed Windows Vista Ultimate onto a 2nd hard drive today and played around with it for several hours. The first few things I noticed is that it's a lot slower in many aspects than Windows XP. I have a custom-built Xeon with 4GB RAM and even on there it's sluggish, so it's not my computer. The interface is also a lot more cluttered than in XP, the constant "are you sure you want to run this program? warnings when I put a CD in the drive are also annoying me to no end. If I put a CD in the drive, surely I want to run the program on it. There may be a way to turn this off, but it's not very obvious and it's not fun either to wait another 10 minutes for the knowledge database to load.

Enough ranting. Has anyone else that installed Vista noticed the same? Personally, I just finished uninstalling it and will be happy to stay on XP for another few years. It seems that Vista is a lot of visual effects, but it's not very effective for a work environment. I mean, who's going to spin their work windows around in 3D?

It sucks, I installed it on my 1.6 GHz Pentium Mobile 1GB Ram...it sucks, it is slow....

I am happy to be back on XP!

[eek]

If you use ram heavy programmes, esp if running at the same time, then (depending on how much ram you have) it will probably lag the system if using vista. Same goes if anyone you know plays online games.

With XP i can run photoshop and Maya/or zbrush simultaneously on my Vaio with fairly unnoticable delay but totally impossible with vista.

Vista was pretty I have to say, and I think its fine if you run reg programmes.

[Rice_King]

Been dual booting XP Pro and Vista Ultimate on an HP laptop for two months now. Laptop is a Intel Centrino dual core, 1.66 Ghz, with 1 GB RAM. (3.1 on the Windows Experience Index). Middle of the road. Not a "barn burner" but not a slug either.

Vista actually loads and is up and running faster than the XP Pro on the same machine. I have not benchmarked either OS yet, but once fully loaded, Vista seems to run nearly, if not just as fast as XP. It is just too close to call without an actual benchmark.

I installed Windows Vista Ultimate onto a 2nd hard drive today and played around with it for several hours.

A couple hours Rainman? Just enough time to really check it out and to give it such a "glowing" review? You are joking us, right?

Edited July 4, 2007 by Rice_King

[Firefoxx]

After a couple weeks of using Vista on and off on some VERY high spec machines (2GB ram, great graphics), I've gotta say I don't like it.

The sleep function is really messed up. This has happened on two different machines.

The program compatibility is bad, bad, bad. Basic programs just won't function. BIG no-no.

Yep, the constant UAC nagging gets on your nerves, especially when it pops up 10 times during a program install.

Granted, it looks nice. It boots fairly fast (but any system boots fast when it's new). It's got a lot of nice features, like gadgets (which turn out to be BUGGY). But these things aren't enough to persuade me to accept the downfalls. XP still works well, and without all the annoyances, so I see no compelling reason to switch.

I'll do like when XP came out and wait for a service pack to clean out the MAJOR annoyances, then reconsider using it. By that time program compatibility will not be as big a problem. It's inevitable that there will be a switch, but I don't have to switch when it's still not mature enough.

Edited July 4, 2007 by Firefoxx

[rainman]

I did actually test it for about 5 hours and just decided it isn't ready yet. It's probably fine for users who just load it pretty out of the box and occasionally surf some websites and write a few emails, but to work on it day and night its useless in its current state. I don't need an operating system to hog most of my RAM and load applications slowly. During the time I tested it, it took Vista about 4 minutes to go from clicking the power button to the interface being available. And that's without any programs installed.

Windows XP is not perfect, but before installing Vista on the 2nd drive, it was running for 35+ days without a restart and I use heavy applications on it almost every day.

The program compatibility is bad, bad, bad. Basic programs just won't function. BIG no-no.

I agree, that's the most annoying part of it. Even about 70% of the driver installation programs crashed or had to be started several times to load properly. Most drivers I had to install manually.

[BambinA]

No idea about Vista

But MS office 2007 makes me nut

[sjaak327]

I did actually test it for about 5 hours and just decided it isn't ready yet. It's probably fine for users who just load it pretty out of the box and occasionally surf some websites and write a few emails, but to work on it day and night its useless in its current state. I don't need an operating system to hog most of my RAM and load applications slowly. During the time I tested it, it took Vista about 4 minutes to go from clicking the power button to the interface being available. And that's without any programs installed.

Windows XP is not perfect, but before installing Vista on the 2nd drive, it was running for 35+ days without a restart and I use heavy applications on it almost every day.

The program compatibility is bad, bad, bad. Basic programs just won't function. BIG no-no.

I agree, that's the most annoying part of it. Even about 70% of the driver installation programs crashed or had to be started several times to load properly. Most drivers I had to install manually.

You are joking, you tested it for 5 hours ! I wonder how many programs you installed during that time, to come to the conclusion that program compatibilty is bad, I guess once you were finished with installing all those manual drivers, you decided to delete if from your hard drive alltogether

I'm sorry to hear that on your pc Vista is useless, but it most certainly is due to crappy drivers or a pc that just doesn't cut it. I mean I'm not your average user who loads it out of the box and do basic stuff on it. I have installed Vista (without hardware changes) on a 2 year old pc. With 2GB of ram, and it runs like a dream, heavy apps like CS3 Photoshop are running smoothly and there is a definite speed increase compared to XP on the same box. Furthermore I run loads of applications, and apart from a few exceptions where I had to resort to admin mode or compatiblity mode, all apps are running correctly on Vista. No real driver issues either. Of course this is the Vista 32, I did have some driver issues on Vista 64, but they were pretty much the same as under XP 64.

Incidentally, it took me about three to four evenings to just load most of the software on my current Vista, just because I run a variety of applications that take up almost 200 GB disk space alltogether (including several Virtual machines, which all run great as well under VMWARE 6). Bottom line is that in my experience, on several different pc's Vista runs smooth and is fully usable. Like I stated before, it even runs great on a Dell optiplex GX240 which is more then 4 years old, the only hardware change needed was upgrading the ram to be 1,5 GB and adding a very moderate Geforce 5200 for Aero. (any higher video card would require a new power supply) I'm using it as a media centre and it really runs like a dream.

Of course on some pc's Vista doesn't run smoothly, on my Dell Lattitude 840 with 512mb ram, it wasn't usable, and I decided to not upgrade the memory on that machine, just reinstalled XP on it.

Bottom line IMHO is that Vista is a great OS (the best Microsoft has ever released), yes it demands more of the hardware, no question about it, but if you have a fast computer with enough ram, it will beat XP in terms of speed. Added bonus is not only the eye candy (Aero) but more importantly the added security features. I have been running Vista for a very long time now (since Beta 2) and indeed some builds were downright buggy, but since RC1 it has been stable and fully usable as main OS. To my surprise even games run great on Vista. I also hope that Vista will be a signal to application developers to create apps that don't rely on administrator acces to the system, making it more secure. Same goes for drivers, in a way it's a shame that vista 32 still allows unsigned drivers.

I'm not a Microsoft fan, (I guess some people would get that impression), but Vista indeed is a good product. As a system admin, I just have to make MS a compliment regarding their deployment options for Windows Vista. WDS (windows deployment services) is a vast improvement over RIS and makes an unattended and highly customisable installation of Vista a matter of three keystrokes and about 20 minutes.

[nikster]

Quite the opposite, Vista runs way faster then XP on at least 6 pc's I have it installed on. Even a 4 year old Dell Optiplex is more happy running Vista then XP. Of course the amount of ram inside your system is important.

UAC (user account control) can be switched off, even by using the control panel. Not recommended though, and once you have finished installing all programs, you won't see the prompt that often anymore anyway.

I just have to laugh at the last comment regarding the Apple, Mac OSX isn't bad, but to state that it can do what vista is doing for ages is just plain bullshit.

Huh? OS X is besides the point - the question is what Vista can do that Windows XP can't. And there, I have yet to see anything that's compelling. Smoother graphics. The shiny. That's about it.

My main gripe with Vista is that it's not just slower on the hardware I run it on, it's also way, and I mean WAY, WAY slower, cumbersome if you will - to use.

First you have to turn off UAC. Why? I don't know - it's a feature so obviously broken that no-one in their right mind would let it pass QA let alone the biggest software company in the world.

But UAC sets a tone that's followed throughout the entire Vista experience - pop up dialogs, annoy and ask the user everywhere and for anything. It violates everything a OS should do which can be summarized by: Stay out of my way and let me do my work. Vista fails miserably in this most important aspect of what a OS should do. XP is far ahead in this regard, it basically mostly just works - as it should. And it manages to do so without popping up dialogs left and right.

OS X, in this regard, also does the right thing - it mostly stays in the background where it belongs.

Vista is crap. It will probably be OK by SP2.

Edited July 4, 2007 by nikster

[nikster]

Added bonus is not only the eye candy (Aero) but more importantly the added security features.

Would you care to elaborate? I am all for security features. However, a cursory check of the latest exploits for Internet Explorer shows that all of them - all the ones I checked - work on both Windows XP and Windows Vista. So I am wondering how Vista is supposed to me more secure when I can just load up a website with some exploits and it works just fine on Vista...

Maybe I am missing something there...?!

PS: You can see the affected platforms for IE security fixes Microsoft brings out on Microsoft's own web page - each fix has a web page with an explanation of what was fixed and what platforms were affected.

I was excited to see that Vista takes the very sensible approach of sandboxing IE - it's the only security strategy that can work in the long run. Trouble is, it doesn't seem to work at all. I am unimpressed.

[Mid]

I was excited to see that Vista takes the very sensible approach of sandboxing IE

IE7 can be sand-boxed with xp .

[Wolfie]

After a couple weeks of using Vista on and off on some VERY high spec machines (2GB ram, great graphics), I've gotta say I don't like it.

The sleep function is really messed up. This has happened on two different machines.

The program compatibility is bad, bad, bad. Basic programs just won't function. BIG no-no.

Yep, the constant UAC nagging gets on your nerves, especially when it pops up 10 times during a program install.

Granted, it looks nice. It boots fairly fast (but any system boots fast when it's new). It's got a lot of nice features, like gadgets (which turn out to be BUGGY). But these things aren't enough to persuade me to accept the downfalls. XP still works well, and without all the annoyances, so I see no compelling reason to switch.

I'll do like when XP came out and wait for a service pack to clean out the MAJOR annoyances, then reconsider using it. By that time program compatibility will not be as big a problem. It's inevitable that there will be a switch, but I don't have to switch when it's still not mature enough.

To be honest, the UAC stuff has never really annoyed me. I'm not sure what programs you installed, but i've only ever had the UAC ask me once per install, right at the beginning of an install. I've never had it ask me multiple times during a single install.

As for program compatibility, i've not noticed any real issues there, but then again i dont really use this machine for the serious stuff. I guess there will be some compatibility issues for a little while as all the various vendors get themselves upto speed on vista, the only main issue i had was with some hardware (webcam didnt work) but thats a driver issue and i will wait for the updated drivers as I dont use it that much anyway

I turned off the sidebar on vista, i didnt like it or want it, i prefer a fairly clean desktop. I imagine the Aero graphics stuff is going to use up a bit of memory/processing power, so for an added speed increase i guess you could turn it off, i havent looked at how but i imagine its possible

I will agree with your point about 'compelling reason to switch' - i dont see any real reasons why someone has to switch (and this is coming from someone who likes vista) If you need your machine for serious stuff then i guess its better to stay on XP for the time being.

With the Windows experience index on my previous machine (3.6) i didn't notice any speed increase over XP, some functions were marginally quicker, others marginally slower... but it felt similar in speed. On my new machine i have a windows experience index of 5.0, and Vista runs quick as lightning (I imagine XP would also) - its the cpu letting me down with all other components indexed at 5.5 or 5.9. when/if i overclock the cpu that should pump it up. (The highest Windows experience index i've heard of is 6.x)

[Rice_King]

Vista is crap. It will probably be OK by SP2.

Background: I had to install Vista on my laptop for work.

I played with Vista over the weekend to figure out whether I should just drop XP and use Vista full time. Conclusion: No. I will wait for Vista SP2 and by that time hopefully have my Santa Rosa MacBook with leopard.

I admit I am somewhat of an Apple fanboy.

Another "unBIASED" Vista review from a self-professed Apple "Fan Boy." Well, at least Nikster DID gave Vista a weekend's worth of testing. (A whole weekend!)

[cdnvic]

It sucks, I installed it on my 1.6 GHz Pentium Mobile 1GB Ram...it sucks, it is slow....

I am happy to be back on XP!

You have a weak machine, what do you expect?

Installing a gig of RAM too difficult?

Let's face it, the biggest news about Vista is the lack of news. It wasn't the catastrophy all the chicken littles thought it would be. Had to add RAM? You poor thing. Did you forget upgrading from 98 to XP and having to add RAM? 3.11 to 95 and adding RAM?

When XP launched and immediately fell victim to numerous security breeches people were justified in reverting until SP2. In comparison the petty whinges about minor things in Vista is just so paltry it's amusing to anyone with a clue.

New operating systems require more muscle. That goes for Windows, Macs, Unix, and everything else. Moaning about it is just silly.

Edited July 5, 2007 by cdnvic

[solo siam]

I think it can just about all be summed up by my experience recently with a newish HP machine I bought, spent 10 hours and considerable time with the tech support trying to find drivers etc... for XP. Get them all on it and for some reason it decides to crash, every time, even in safe mode.

Next day bought vista, installed it in an hour and every single driver it found itself, perfect install. Its been running for 3 weeks as a meda centre server and hasn't crashed once (I don't turn it off).

There are some great features in vista, the error reporting is first class as is the performance monitoring. The features people seem to be complaining about can simply be turned off and are despite what some think, there for a good reason.

[rainman]

You are joking, you tested it for 5 hours ! I wonder how many programs you installed during that time, to come to the conclusion that program compatibilty is bad, I guess once you were finished with installing all those manual drivers, you decided to delete if from your hard drive alltogether

Sorry to tell you but I'm not joking. I did install a lot of programs actually. The biggest disappointment was probably the continuous blue-screen's I got after installing the driver for my SoundBlaster which is so-called "Vista Ready". Both the latest drivers from the developers' website and and Windows Update got me a bluescreen. And I can't remember having a blue-screen on my last at least 3 years on XP. Photoshop installed fine, but it was a lot more sluggish than on XP. For most programs, I had to start the installer 2 or 3 times in order to even get it running or stop it from crashing. Program compatibility, as others have mentioned, is just terrible. Another thing that bugged me is the "over-done" interface. What was wrong with keeping it fast and easy like it was with XP? We don't need a pretty interface if it takes 5x as much memory as the previous one.

If Vista works for you, then good for you. It just didn't work for me.

Edited July 5, 2007 by rainman

[monty]

One thing I don't understand is how to easily see how many bytes (or packets) have been received and transmitted, or take a quick look what IP address you have.

Under XP you just doubleclick on the small network icon in your taskbar and you see what you need!

Under Vista you always have to go to the network and sharing screen first

[Firefoxx]

Ben, a lot of new computers don't have XP driver support, period. Be it the infinite wisdom of the hardware manufacturers or the marketing clout of MS, it's just the way things happen when MS releases a new OS, the driver support of the old OS gets sidetracked. If you buy a new notebook today, chances are the drivers will be Vista-only. That's what happened for me for the notebooks that I've bought in the past month, zero XP drivers. I could have done a exhaustive search for alternatives, but it was easier to just bite the bullet and use Vista (the notebooks weren't intended for me anyways). It doesn't mean that Vista has better drivers, it just means that Vista *has* drivers, period.

One program that I remember calling up UAC constantly was iTunes. I kept clicking and clicking. Not only that, the UAC window came up in the background, which made it even more annoying.

I think that there will be those that like it and those that don't. We just put different priorities on different things, which is normal. These things just make different impressions, it's not that anyone is wrong or lying or trying to trash it or being just clueless or being an XP fanboy or WHATEVER (let's keep the name calling to a minimum, folks), it's just that it doesn't work for that person, so let's not take it the wrong way. Same thing happened when XP came out, some loved it, some like it, but by the time SP2 came out nearly everyone had it installed. It was inevitable, for better or for worse.

Although Vista may work well for some, it doesn't work well enough for me, and the things that don't work ARE NOT TRIVIAL to *me*. It doesn't really matter how gee whiz whang bang it is for someone else, if it doesn't work for me, it doesn't work for me. I'm guessing that by SP1 these things will be fixed, but until then it's not in a usable state, and XP does everything I need it to do correctly with no hassles RIGHT NOW. Same goes for OSX. Oh, it might be a superior technological marvel to end all OS's, but if I can't work properly on it, then it's a totally useless piece of junk.

Get me?