Vista !*?@@!*

[Peter.N.]

Today I did the best thing ever since I bought my latest computer - I installed XP! Vista has been behaving more and more bizzarly, every time I get an update it runs slower performs less functions and the latest thing is hiding files, yesterday it packed up altogether, connected to the net but wouldn't talk to it.

Today my son installed XP, its brilliant, everything works about 10 times as fast, all my hardware now works and the writing is big enough for me to be able to read.

What a rubbish systen Vista is.

Peter.N.

[demag]

Well done Peter, Vista is cr*p! Its over rated and over bloated!

You've done the right thing with XP. We have Dell computers at work pre-installed with Vista and they are stupid slow. I reckon Win98 was better.

[Ciaran]

Totally agree Peter.

Like for like, Vista runs slower than XP on the same hardware, and that's just for starters. Many simple concepts from XP have been 'improved' to the point where simple operations now take twice as long and are more labour intensive. Good example is accessing the properties of a network connection - took two clicks in XP, takes nine in Vista.
Then we have the fact that the interfaces have been rearranged, moved, and displayed in a 6ft high Fisher Price font for no conceivable reason whatsoever. Its 'change for the sake of change' of the highest order.
Don't even get me started on the hopelessly crippled filesystem. Take the most simple of operations, copying a file to your USB memory stick. In XP, plug the stick in, a few seconds later its detected and available; copy your file, job done.
The same thing in Vista... well. Plug memory stick in....wait. Eggtimer. Wait some more. Eventually after about 20 seconds it realises a device is plugged in, and starts to do its preview scan. Frantically you try to cancel it, but to no avail. By the time this merry little jig finally stops, usually well over a minute has passed. Ok you think, go into 'Computer' and double-click on the USB device. The folder opens quickly enough, great. But then it sits, and sits, and sits. Then it displays a blank folder, then it sits some more, then it starts animating that ridiculous green status bar at the top of the window, which of course rockets up, until it hits about 98%, whereupon it promptly stalls completely, sitting there with an eggtimer and hanging the entire explorer interface until such times as its decided it can continue (upto two or three minutes in some cases). At this point (if you're lucky it won't have forgotten the USB device is connected, crashed explorer, and dumped you back to the desktop), you can finally copy your files onto the device. Like its friend the status bar, the file copy progress also rockets up until almost complete, then sits at the last 2% for an age, for no discernable reason whatsoever. This entire process often takes five minutes or more, something which in XP took mere seconds.
It is this aspect of Vista which really, really causes me to lose the plot with it. Much laughter echoes round the office at work when I get some Vista machine in and am attempting to copy files to it. Its an ongoing joke in our organisation, people give that knowing ‘Oh he’s got a Vista machine again’ look, and smirk at my frustrated outburst of 'Damn it... just copy the f***ing file.... its just one simple file, how complicated do you need to make it.... JUST COPY IT...jesus christ!!!' etc. I just don't understand how they can take the most simplistic of tasks that you can actually perform with a computer, and turn it into such a song and dance, I really fail to comprehend it.

Put simply, it was a marketing release because they were under pressure to release something, anything, so it was rushed out the door.

Looking at it from a business point of view at work, it gives no tangible benefits over XP whatsoever, in fact it actually creates additional problems and overheads with no corresponding advantages. I laugh out loud in meetings when someone moots the possibility of us upgrading hundreds of machines to Vista. We will be skipping over it entirely. XP still does everything we need and more, there's no reason whatsoever to change it.

In my own business, I've lost count of how many people scrambled to upgrade to Vista 'just because', and later came back wailing for XP.
It really is Windows Me all over again.

The good thing is, mentally and strategically, Microsoft have moved well on past Vista at this point. Windows 7, dare I say it, is a massive improvement. They've fixed a lot of issues, and it has the feeling of a proper OS, what Vista should have been when it was released.

So there is light at the end of the tunnel, but a problem you may encounter in the meantime, is getting XP drivers for a lot of 'Made for Vista' computers. In many cases, hardware support for XP simply doesn't exist, because the devices were manufactured when Vista was the mainstream OS. MS putting pressure on OEMs and cutting off the supply of XP licences didn't help either, though they have been forced to do u-turns on that in a few notable cases.

Of course there are cases where people buy new PCs with Vista, it works fine, and they report no problems, which is great. But for the most part, particularly in situations where an upgrade or migration from XP is being performed, its just a complete and utter disaster from start to finish.

Sorry, rant over.
Annnnnnnnnnd......breathe

Ciarán

This post has been edited by Ciaran on February 18, 2009 01:40 am

[Peter.N.]

I'm glad I',m not the only one then Mine has been playing practical jokes on me , especially in the last couple of months. Half my photo's dissapeared and I had to instigate a search to find them. I then found it had apparantly duplicated most of them and distributed them all over the entire system, I tried sending them all to 'my documents' but they never arrived. if I try and put a short cut on the desktop, it appears but wont open. My scanner now works, first timesince I had this computer!

Peter.

[steelcityuk]

The place I work for has around 3500 PCs and we don't have one on the network that runs Vista. Basically we provide our supplier with an XP image that they install onto the PCs before they deliver them. Standard image with all the necessary features enabled/disabled to allow itself to download and install the needed updates automatically from our servers.

As for Vista, I tried it for 5 minutes on a kneetop a friend had brought in for me to look at, I just switched it back to Windows classic display so that I could use the dam thing without jumping through hoops. He much preferred it too.

I doubt we'll ever implement Vista.

Steve.

[rowanmoor]

Part of the problem is the stupid minimum hardware requirement that Vista has. Don't believe for a minute the official min requirement either. XP will run happily on virtually any PC that is likely to still be in use - even with low specs such as 250Mb memory.

Vista is supposed to require 512Meg of memory, but in reality consider 1Gig to be an absolute minimum and expect that to be slow. Graphics card, CPU and everything else will need to be good spec (much higher than the min requirements) for it to run well.

Hardware saying Vista ready or Vista compatible or being shipped with Vista does not mean it is capable of running it. If the hardware was made before Vista came out then it is probably not up to the job unless upgraded since. If it was made after Vista came out then it still may not be up to it.

That is before you get to any bugs or annoyances with what has changed.

Whilst Windows 7 seems much better from what I have seen, it looks like it will still have the same hardware requirements (though run better/faster on them). But by the time it comes out the required hardware will be a machine that is a year or two old rather than vista requiring absolute top spec machines at the time it comes out.

[DerekW]

I'm glad I'm old fashioned. Two home assembled desktops and a Dell notebook on XP and another desktop with a Cyrix 200Mb chip and Win98, I can't remember what graphic card I put in it. but It's the only one that will run DukeNukem DC and I hate throwing anything away. Nothing less than four years old.

Derek

[demag]

Ah I have an old Cyrix chip somewhere Derek. Not sure if its a 220?

[Ciaran]

I have an old Cyrix Pr166 on a keyring, best place for it.

My own home desktop is about 7/8 years old, built it in 2001 or '02 I think. Course its been upgraded a few times and has 2Gb of RAM and 2 CPUs (old P3 1Ghzs), and believe it or not runs Vista fine... not that I kept it on there very long...

Still runs XP lightening quick.

Ciarán