Experienced Vista Users

[Guest Reimar]

I believe you have every right to expect excellent performance from Windows Vista, specifically, I believe all of the following statements should be true:

* On a new PC built with up-to-date hardware, Windows Vista should start up in a minute or less and shut down in 30 seconds or less.

* Video performance and audio playback should be smooth and glitch-free.

* Programs should open quickly and do their work without affecting your ability to perform other tasks.

* File transfer speeds should be limited only by the capabilities of your hardware (disk, controller, and network).

* System crashes should be nonexistent, and application crashes should hang the faulting program only, without affecting other programs.

Now the big question: What are your experiences?

It would be interesting to see the TV user's experiences with all sort of Vista Version. Please post!

Cheers.

[Crushdepth]

Using Vista Ultimate 64 bit SP1 (my PC has 5.2 rating):

* On a new PC built with up-to-date hardware, Windows Vista should start up in a minute or less and shut down in 30 seconds or less.

I haven't timed it but a cold start wouldn't even come close to this. However, a warm start or shut down to/from 'sleep' is quite fast.

* Video performance and audio playback should be smooth and glitch-free.

I haven't really had many problems with sound. Video the only problem I have is trying to play Crysis, apparently half a gig of video card (GeForce 7950) just isn't enough. I don't understand why Crysis is such a pig, its special effects aren't nearly good enough to warrant the hopeless video performance. Anyway, that's crysis not vista I guess.

* Programs should open quickly and do their work without affecting your ability to perform other tasks.

Opening programs (and even windows) on vista is dog slow. That's the most annoying thing about it IMHO.

* File transfer speeds should be limited only by the capabilities of your hardware (disk, controller, and network).

Transferring files used to be pretty slow but I haven't done much since the service pack arrived. One strange thing I've noticed very large differences in speed of copying to different flash cards (much bigger than I see on XP, and much bigger than expect from different 'speed' rated cards). Vista must set a world record for 'most slow unzip of archives'.

* System crashes should be nonexistent, and application crashes should hang the faulting program only, without affecting other programs.

Fairly good in this regard - no blue screens and can usually kill a locked up app. However, the file explorer tends to crash a bit - restarts ok but annoying.

[dave_boo]

Ok, here it is....

I'm running Vista Home Premium on a laptop with the following specs: Core2Duo 5250, 2 GB RAM, and a 8600GT. Not exactly the top of the line, but much more powerful than most out there. Running Hi-Def (1080i) is awfully 'stuttery'. I think that has more to do with the Nvidia driver than anything since it seems that CPU usage is ~50%. If you've read the thread about the UAC, you'll know about the allowed startup programs not starting (that's not a performance issue just an aggravation). Startup time is under a minute, suspend to RAM-my favourite working thing-is under 15 seconds, wake from ram is darn near instaneous, and shutdown is quite a bit less than 30 seconds if I don't have too many programs open when I shutdown (infrequent since the suspend to RAM works so well!).

Program opening is much better since I disabled the Aero interface, sidebar, yaddie-ya-ya. There is an issue for whatever reason of Knights of the Old Republic refusing to work with the Nvidia driver that I have installed, but other Lucas Arts games work just fine with it; go figure.

File transfers are on par with SuSE on the same laptop with a HUGE cavaet; ZIP files. Vista is the slowest I've ever seen on opening them. I'm talking like 5 minutes!!

I've had some Explorer crashes, and while they did wipe out all my open windows, the actual underlying operating system seemed relatively unaffected. But than again, XP exhibits pretty much the same characteristics. A positive is that if something intense crashes, the overall system isn't as affected as much as on XP.

[ThaiAm]

I am running dual core 3.0 with 4 gig of memory and an older Nvidia graphic card. Vista Ultimate with SP1 64bit.

The start up speed is more controlled by what I load and is quite fast without the encumberances I impose. I have had no stoppages except the Beta Version of MSIE 8 does hang up at times. I run it in IE7 emulation mode and that seems to take care of most of the hangs.

I am able to run any and all programs alone or in bunches at will with no visible degradation of any of them. I was originally very unimpressed with VISTA but after the many updates it seems to have settled down to work as good as XP. It is now my operating system of choice but the early frustrations of programs not being set up to work with VISTA and drivers that were not available etc. All seem to be resolved but did cause extra expense for upgrades of some software.

[Wolfie]

I went with Vista from a few days after its release, managed to download a crack that worked well for just over a year...

My first few months, it was terrible, very little driver support, all kinds of crashes - had a real bad time of it. Once the hardware vendors began releasing drivers and M$ started releasing fixes things settled down. I began to enjoy the OS a lot more. After just over 12 months M$ picked up my crack and de-activated my version of Vista giving me 30 days to enter a valid key. I decided at that point i would go back to XP as i couldn't really see any benefit to Vista over XP.

Recently i discovered that XP wont support 4gb of ram, only supports 3gb. I always wondered why it wasn't showing my full 4gb hehe. After some research i found that Vista 64bit will support 4gb of ram, and with SP1 is very stable and very quick. So i thought i'd give it a try... i was unable to find a legal copy of Vista64 in Pantip so i had no choice but to get a hooky copy, i figured i could always buy a license off M$ online and it wouldn't make much difference

Now its showing the full 4gb (after SP1 was installed) - so far i find the system very responsive, quick to load up/shut down, programs open and close immediately, i've only had this operating system on for 1 week and it was a fresh clean install, so i expect a virgin/vanilla Windows install to run well at first. Also with the newer games coming out being optimized for DX10 it was only a matter of time until serious gamers have to make the move, i'm pleased i have now, driver support for hardware is excellent now, everything seems to be running well... it *feels* faster than XP did, but i dont actually have any proof/evidence/benchmarks to say this is true or not.

I'll come back to this thread in a month or so and give you an update, when i have been running windows vista 64bit for a bit longer.

Also, its fair to say that with a 800mb memory footprint, vista needs more ram, so if your running on anything less than 2gb, your gunna need to upgrade. My system is 2.4 core2 duo cpu, 9800gx2 1gb gfx card, 4gb of ram, 2.5tb of HDD. My system comes out at 5.2 in the windows experience rating thingie, let down only by my CPU. If i take the CPU out of the equation i'm 5.8/5.9 on the index - plan to upgrade the cpu soon anyway

[Thanh-BKK]

Hi

I used Vista Ultimate 32bitoin an AMD Sempron 2800+ with 2 GB RAM and an ATI x300 128 MB graphics card.

Vista generally booted to desktop in under a minute but, mostly delayed by the AntiVirus (Avast!) and other self-starters, the time from power on to usability was more like 3 minutes.

Most programs indeed opened very fast, Firefox 2.0 being the fastest - it was open almost the instant i clicked it's icon. The slowest to appear was "Super", a video converter - took like 30 seconds.

Same experience here with the lack of drivers, codecs etc during the first few months (i got mine shortly after release in Thailand), at first it was HORRIBLE to work with, or even watch, downloaded video in most formats. Opening folders that contained videos would instantly crash explorer (or at least the "com surrogate"), this was caused by the system trying to generate a preview thumbnail and for lack of proper codec, failed in doing so. Specially files encoded in divx were the culprit, the same happened under XP a lot, too, and there it ALWAYS took down the explorer while under vista it was mostly the com surrogate, less often the explorer itself (which would then restart automatically - nice touch!)

No problems whatsoever with audio, and if video could be played at all, it ALWAYS played smooth, no stuttering, regardless what format or what player used. Later when compatible codecs became available, it played everything i threw at it.

I agree on the "opening zip files", this took AGES. Try opening a zip file of 300 MB that contains a couple of thousand images. We are talking 45 minutes here, easy. Not the opening as such, but the "extracting" of the images.

Files transfers are reasonably fast but APPEAR slow because it sits there "calculating time remaining" with the progress bar not moving - until it suddenly shoots from 0 to 100 and is done. Very fast transfers to a Kingston 8GB thumb drive.

Some files, specially (again!) video files, take a long time to DELETE. Specially any .avi files, up to several minutes for a 700 MB file. This has recently gotten somewhat better, i think one of Microsoft's updates fixed something.

I NEVER experienced a OS crash or BSOD in the time i used it - close to 14 months, and i did some weird sh!t on it. A few app crashes tough, none with data loss.

One VERY BAD point: I found it, since last December, increasingly impossible to download mail from Hotmail accounts to the computer. Out of the box, Vista's "Windows Mail" application does not support Hotmail, and the old Office version that i have (Office XP) contains Outlook, which does support it but i had to restart it like 4-5 times before it would finally get the mail. Microsoft's new application "Windows Live Mail Desktop", designed for that exact purpose, worked fine initially but as of last December simply stopped working on all three of my accounts, and i tested it on various computers, different Windows versions, different WLMD versions and even different ISP's. Microsoft's comment? "We apologise for the inconvenience. We know there is a problem but we can't provide a time table as to when it will be fixed. Thank you for using our service".

I didn't bother with the service pack because, since last Sunday, i have fully switched to Linux. Not because Vista is bad, i loved it - but because i want to learn Linux, that's all. Oh, and under Linux, using T-Bird, i GET my Hotmail - no problems at all

Best regards......

Thanh

Edited May 9, 2008 by Thanh-BKK

[justwilliam]

Vista Home Premium on an HP Pavilion laptop, AMD dual-core 1.6ghz, 2mb, purchased one year ago in the US with Vista installed. No gaming, no weird programs except my Thai dictionary. Replaced a Dell Inspiron running XP SP2 that had served me flawlessly for close to 4 years, except for 2 hard drive crashes.

Start-up is OK, I'd guess about a minute except for finding my wireless network, which about half the time takes an extra minute easily, and about 10% of the time it can't find my network at all, and I have to restart (which always works). Also, about 10% of the time it starts with my volume control set to 100%, instead of the 55% I otherwise keep it at.

Shut down is fast and fine, unless I have more than one user logged on, in which case it occasionally won't shut down at all, and I have to use the power switch..

All my programs run well, including audio and video, except I had to uninstall the HP Quickplay video program that was pre-installed, because it would sometimes start of its own accord and take over my screen completely. I didn't like that program anyway.

Copying and file transfers seem fine to me.

For the first 6-8 months I was seeing the BSOD at least every 2 weeks, for a variety of reasons. But I held my breath and the system always restarted without any further problems. I haven't seen the BSOD for a while now, so I am guessing that one of the Windows updates fixed that problem, whatever it was.

The built-in webcam is temperamental, sometimes indicating no connection, but again, always works on restart. It seems this is a known problem, with HP and Microsoft pointing fingers at each other.

Overall I find the whole setup to be rather fragile, and am constantly on the verge of switching over to XP.

[nikster]

Guys - thanks for the updates, and keep them coming! I find this thread very informative. Its a great overview of where Vista's at today.

I tried Vista when it was released to the general public, I had a legit Ultimate via MSDN. It was horri-lific. My laptop only had 2GB RAM so I didn't see benefits over XP. Nicer graphics and sound were appreciated, but there were way too many downsides to make that worth-while. I had UAC messages every 5 minutes, so I turned it off. Everything worked as to drivers - but everything seemed to kinda-sorta work instead of just plain work. Numerous mysterious problems every day were the norm. I tried to enjoy this for a week, then decided I needed to get some work done instead and went back to XP, soon to be replaced by OS X and a MacBook Pro. OS X delivered where Vista had failed. For example, it has 4GB and no problems, with 32 bit programs and 64 bit programs running, kinda like it should be. It even runs old PPC-architecture programs, and windows in a nice little virtual box.

I did not see any BSOD during my Vista time but there was just too much wrong and/or annoying. It's good to see that things are improving. MS seems to stick to their own reputation - come version 3 (=Vista SP2), it will actually be good

[Wolfie]

I think its fair to say that the Vista we have today, with Service Pack 1, is a significant improvement on the Vista we had at release... as the old saying goes... "Dont trust anything Microsoft until the first Service Pack is released!"

[ariesram74]

Vista Home Premium came preinstalled on my HP Pavillion 2000 laptop - Core2 Duo 1.66GHz, 2GB RAM, nVidia Geforce GO 7200. I added the extra gig of RAM because because 1GB was not enough.

In the beginning, I had a problem - BSOD - when installing modem drivers, then realized my my driver was not compatible with Vista. Luckily I had my old laptop running XP so I could get on the net and find the driver on my ISP's website.

Aside from the the initial problem with the modem driver, Vista runs OK and I have had no real issues except for a Firewire recording interface with a Vista driver that will not install (sometimes I think of going Mac because of driver B.S.)

I am planning on getting a new computer in the next few months and am not convinced Vista is all that great though it looks alot better than XP. DirectX 10 is a plus.

I think its fair to say that the Vista we have today, with Service Pack 1, is a significant improvement on the Vista we had at release... as the old saying goes... "Dont trust anything Microsoft until the first Service Pack is released!"

[beammeup]

I'm using vista home premium on a new high end machine. I've had a few BSOD's but the biggest problem I have is trying to view files on burned DVD's it takes like 20 minuted to open sometimes, very frusterating.

[crockett]

Vista Home Premium 32 bit, Intel Core Duo 3.0 GHz, 3 GB Ram, Nvidia 8600 GT 256 MB.

OS startup is about 1 minute even with Aero and Sidebar enabled, it takes approx. 2 minutes

until the machine is ready to go with Antivirus, etc.... loaded. Shutdown is lightning fast,

well below 30 seconds.

No problems with video or audio but I miss a few freeware programs I used to convert

videos and audio under XP. They are not developed any longer, thus there is no Vista compatible

version ( the only reason why I currently run Vista in dualboot configuration with XP Pro.

Opening programs, aside from the additional UAC click, is reasonably fast. File transfer seems

a lot slower than in XP, especially when transfering from a USB flash drive. No BSOD so far,

overall I am very happy with Vista, just need to find some suitable apps for video and audio

conversion/editing to eliminate the need for dualboot.

[cali]

Shutdown is lightning fast, well below 30 seconds.

I recall when PC's had a switch that physically shut off power like a light. THAT was fast.

[crockett]

Shutdown is lightning fast, well below 30 seconds.

I recall when PC's had a switch that physically shut off power like a light. THAT was fast.

Good one... but seriously it takes between 20 and 25 seconds to complete shutdown.

[Guest Reimar]

I'm using vista home premium on a new high end machine. I've had a few BSOD's but the biggest problem I have is trying to view files on burned DVD's it takes like 20 minuted to open sometimes, very frusterating.

That could be the Firmware of the DVD Drive. Try to find, download and install the latest Firmware for the drive.

Hope that Help.

Cheers.

[Crushdepth]

ohmy.gif I recall when PC's had a switch that physically shut off power like a light. THAT was fast.

I used to live with a friend that still had a Windows '98 box. I remember being kind of shocked at how quickly it turned off :-)

[nikster]

Shutdown is lightning fast, well below 30 seconds.

I recall when PC's had a switch that physically shut off power like a light. THAT was fast.

You can still do that, still works. On laptops just keep pushing the power button for 3 seconds.

[Guest Reimar]

Shutdown is lightning fast, well below 30 seconds.

I recall when PC's had a switch that physically shut off power like a light. THAT was fast.

You can still do that, still works. On laptops just keep pushing the power button for 3 seconds.

But that is an "unsafe" shut down! Just hit the power button onec and the system will "safe" shut down but still need maby 20-30 sec's!

Cheers.

[dingdongrb]

Vista SUCKS!!!! I am definitely switching to XP once I find a bootleg copy...

[Guest Reimar]

Vista SUCKS!!!! I am definitely switching to XP once I find a bootleg copy...

It may sucks for YOU but not for ME! And I use both of them!

But I'm a Pro and know how to handle it!

Cheers.

[b19bry]

Vista SUCKS!!!! I am definitely switching to XP once I find a bootleg copy...

It may sucks for YOU but not for ME! And I use both of them!

But I'm a Pro and know how to handle it!

Cheers.

I'm running Vista that came with a HP Compaq 6510b Dual Core 1.8GHz with 1GB RAM laptop and for ME VISTA also SUCKS.

I have disabled most of the nice Graphic features that come by default including gadgets but performance is at best mediocre. Applications constantly come up as 'not responding' before they eventually crawl into life, and startups and shutdowns take minutes to complete.

My Windows Experience Index base score (under Performance Information and Tools) is 2.7 and I have read you need a score of at least 3.0 to run Vista satisfactorily, but as Vista came with this laptop one would assume it should run ok ?

As far as I'm concerned Vista falls far short of it's promise and I can't wait to ditch it and get a proper laptop (i.e. a Mac)

I was also a previously a Computer Programmmer and would consider any operating system that requires daily updates to maintain it's performance and integrity as fundamentally flawed .

[Crushdepth]

Add a gig of RAM, will help improve the situation. Vista eats about 700MB standing still.

[b19bry]

Yes, if I guess adding extra RAM will improve matters, but that's not the point, the system was bought new (& sold by HP) as a Vista laptop which it's clearly not capable of running at an adequate level of performance even with all the nice graphical features not being loaded.

Running XP or Linux on the hardware would also be an alternative to a more usable system, but this means you're either throwing hardware or software at at the system to solve a problem created by a rubbish o/s.

The OP was asking for experiences running with Vista and I was giving mine that, along with many others I know, and that have had the painful experience of it, VISTA SUCKS !!

[Farma]

I have to agree Vista sucks. I’ve been reasonably satisfied with Windows 95 through to XP.

I also run HP pavilion dv6735ee dual core 2.0 GHz notebook with 2348MB DDR2 SDRAM with pre installed Vista home premium.

Vista takes forever to load and shut down and as far as I’m concerned slows the machine down. At the first opportunity I’ll be loading XP over it. Vista is a waste of money.

And Reimar, if Vista is sold for home use why should it need a Pro to know how to handle it?

Edited June 7, 2008 by Farma

[Jumbo chilli]

I'm no computer geek so I can't give any of my experience related to techie.

I'm currently using acer laptop equipped with "core 2 duo 1.66gh" 4G(upgraded from 1G) of ddr2 ram and it takes approx. 65-80 seconds to load(including getting wifi ready).

When shut down, 15-20 seconds!

I'm happy with VISTA.

JC

Edited June 7, 2008 by Jumbo chilli

[Guest Reimar]

I have to agree Vista sucks. I’ve been reasonably satisfied with Windows 95 through to XP.

I also run HP pavilion dv6735ee dual core 2.0 GHz notebook with 2348MB DDR2 SDRAM with pre installed Vista home premium.

Vista takes forever to load and shut down and as far as I’m concerned slows the machine down. At the first opportunity I’ll be loading XP over it. Vista is a waste of money.

And Reimar, if Vista is sold for home use why should it need a Pro to know how to handle it?

Before the Acer 5593 I have now I had an Compaq Presario 2500 (2598AT) with 2 GB memory, running XP Pro. After tweaking the shortest time for to load XP was above 2 minutes. After I uninstalled some of the HP/Compaq s*it which was coming with that machine, I was getting a loading time just below 2 min for XP Pro.

At the time I was changing the Laptop, I tested some HP Pavillion with preinstalled Vista Home Premium and the loading time was above 3 min with 1 GB memory. Added for testing 1 more GB and the loading time was still above 2 minutes.

Than finally I bougth the Acer 5593 with 2 GB and installed Vista Ultimate and had direct just 1,40 - 1,50 min loading. Later tweaked the system and it runs now fast, with Core 2 Duo 1.66 GHz and 2 GB 667 and the loading time is 1 min. If I use hibernating the loading time is 35 seconds!

Very clear and again: for ME Vista didn't SUCKS and is way more secure than any XP!

Cheers.

[wxpwzrd]

Sadly, many of the people that say "Vista sucks" will only say it in a general sweeping context and will not (or cannot) provide specifics that support their generalization. They also fail to realize that this sweeping generalization occured with XP, 2000, etc. Even many of the legitimate issues they have with Vista happened with XP and 2000.

I have been a legitimate user of Vista since the Microsoft betas. Vista is not everything Microsoft promised but it is certainly not what the bashers sweepingly claim. And many of the legitimate problems can be attributed to the hardware and software vendors rather than Microsoft.

[libya 115]

I am so angry with VISTA that my blood pressure increases just thinking about it:

1. It takes about 3 minutes to open and although I have tried to stop start microsoft messenger it still opens it on start up.

2. Annoying pop ups like 'some start up programs are turned off' or ' virus protection not up to date' or ' new update for nokia' etc etc.

3. Crashes VERY regularly on internet explorer, at least twice a session. (Have to turn off PC).

4. Updates, always show fault after download.

5. So slow to open even a word document.

6. I just cannot control it. Everything I do, suddenly I get a circular whirly thing like an egg timer thing that suggests it is busy.

7. When I get a crash Control Alt Delete does not work.

I might take an axe to it one day, I am not joking. Now I am calm on an XP desktop......................

[b19bry]

Sadly, many of the people that say "Vista sucks" will only say it in a general sweeping context and will not (or cannot) provide specifics that support their generalization. They also fail to realize that this sweeping generalization occured with XP, 2000, etc. Even many of the legitimate issues they have with Vista happened with XP and 2000.

I have been a legitimate user of Vista since the Microsoft betas. Vista is not everything Microsoft promised but it is certainly not what the bashers sweepingly claim. And many of the legitimate problems can be attributed to the hardware and software vendors rather than Microsoft.

Wxpwrzrd, I gave my opinion that 'VISTA SUCKS' but also indicated the "specific" spec of my laptop, and also "specifically" indicated :

1. It takes me minutes to boot and shutdown

2. Vista constantly shows me applications as 'not responding', which then pause for minutes before they 'crawl into life'.

3. I also expressed my concern that I have to load o/s patches almost daily to maintain the system.

I'd also add

4. Networking in Vista is very much more diffiicult and cumbersome to setup than in previous Windows iterations

5. There are many annoying Vista generated popups when you try to install even the most basic additions to the o/s.

These problems are most certainly NOT hardware or software (other than the basic o/s).

These are not generalisations, they are real experiences from a (regrettable) Vista user who happens to know many other Vista users with similar sentiments.

[b19bry]

I have to agree Vista sucks. I’ve been reasonably satisfied with Windows 95 through to XP.

I also run HP pavilion dv6735ee dual core 2.0 GHz notebook with 2348MB DDR2 SDRAM with pre installed Vista home premium.

Vista takes forever to load and shut down and as far as I’m concerned slows the machine down. At the first opportunity I’ll be loading XP over it. Vista is a waste of money.

And Reimar, if Vista is sold for home use why should it need a Pro to know how to handle it?

Before the Acer 5593 I have now I had an Compaq Presario 2500 (2598AT) with 2 GB memory, running XP Pro. After tweaking the shortest time for to load XP was above 2 minutes. After I uninstalled some of the HP/Compaq s*it which was coming with that machine, I was getting a loading time just below 2 min for XP Pro.

At the time I was changing the Laptop, I tested some HP Pavillion with preinstalled Vista Home Premium and the loading time was above 3 min with 1 GB memory. Added for testing 1 more GB and the loading time was still above 2 minutes.

Than finally I bougth the Acer 5593 with 2 GB and installed Vista Ultimate and had direct just 1,40 - 1,50 min loading. Later tweaked the system and it runs now fast, with Core 2 Duo 1.66 GHz and 2 GB 667 and the loading time is 1 min. If I use hibernating the loading time is 35 seconds!

Very clear and again: for ME Vista didn't SUCKS and is way more secure than any XP!

Cheers.

"Vista didn't SUCKS and is way more secure than any XP!"

As if that was a recommendation and you're a "Pro" !! You're kidding me aren't you ?