Pixeleo

A few reasons why I'll never use Windows Vista again...

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A few reasons why I'll never use Windows Vista again...

from JoeUser Forums

You heard and read the tales of many bloggers and daily life PC users of how they anxiously waited for Windows Vista's much awaited public release, and how it broke their heart to know that it isn't quite much of a... well...operating system.

And almost daily, many organizations hoping to direct the use of computing in the hopes of expanding their business, purchase Windows Vista and give it a test drive, which is almost always a test crash.

 

Why? Why is all this happening? Wasn't Vista supposed to be Microsoft's biggest success? And though I won't provoke arguments by saying that people should downgrade to XP, I'll say that most of the software present in Vista isn't as useful to us now than the software present in XP was useful to us then. I'll give some examples: Windows XP, when it was first released, shows the amount of progress Microsoft had made since Windows 2000 and Me. It boasted many new security features, a brand new GUI, and was the perfect OS for homes, industries, and laptop users alike.

 

And Microsoft was kind enough to keep their users happy with the latest security updates and newest versions of Windows software at their Windows Update site. And then last year, Microsoft released Windows Vista, which it promised would include all the features needed to make your computer do everything. That's not an official claim, but the amount of hard work and bloatware they put into Vista seems equal, so they were surely planning to make the OS a revolution in personal computing, right?

 

And speaking of bloatware, Vista is full of it. I won't anger those fans of Vista by saying that Vista should be replaced and a more updated version of XP should be released with all the good stuff of Vista in it, but let's face it, it's the right choice, isn't it? Windows Vista was never received with as much as enthusiasm as Microsoft was hoping for. The OS was found to be slow, memory consuming, and laptop batteries reported exhausting usage when one ran even the Basic version of Vista and the laptop had all the system requirements checked. So, now we come to versions. Believe me, I sat up all might reading reviews about Vista where I read the whole list of Vista versions several times, but there are so many that I can't remember them now. Hopefully, I'll just suffice by taking you through them one at a time. First there's the Home Premium. I've read its features and let me tell you this, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON IT....HOME PREMIUM IS NOT WORTH IT! Then there's the Business versions, two of them I guess. They pack a whole lot more than the Home one, some more bloatware and combine together to form a good OS for those multinational biggies that can afford to use it on their PCs.

And finally, we come to the Windows Vista Ultimate one. No, I'm not listing more criticisms. Instead, I'll tell you my own personal experience in handling Vista. Till date I've bought Vista Ultimate twice. Both times, it installed perfectly well. Both times, it booted fine. Both times, the screen resolution never went higher than 640x480. Both times, I switched back to XP.

 

The main reason why I don't want to work with Vista again is the lack of compatibility with many graphic drivers.  Other reasons:

  • User Account Control [UAC] - Microsoft stated that they built UAC for a specific purpose, to annoy you.
  • Packed with less needed features- Vista relies more on eye candy than functionality. Though you can get a lot of things done with it, you can do the same [or more] with XP too.
  • Microsoft's failure to realize that the classic Windows Explorer interface is losing popularity. Let's just hope Windows 7 doesn't have that ruddy taskbar.
  • Bloatware, bloatware, bloatware- 1 GB programs with 1% usability.

 

I'd add some links for those who aren't convinced.

 Xp versus Vista at Tom's Hardware - Essential, you should check this one out.

Vista vs XP at InfoWorld - Haven't read much of this one but it has major sections of reviews, like usability, compatibility, etc.

Roundup: I'm not anti Vista. I love its new GUI as much as the next person. It also has Windows Defender, which is a great tool. The only problem is, its not worth it. Let's just wait and see whether Windows 7 makes up for what Vista messed up.

 

-Pixeleo

209,626 views 48 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
MS Vista is " OK " ...

I just purchased a new laptop and it's running fine. I'm still
running 3 WinXP and a Gentoo system on my little home network.
Right now I'm in the process of adding HP WHS to my small net.

In my opinion MS Vista is designed for new hardware and you
should never select the min. for hardware specs.
Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
my little Old

AMD Athlon(tm) XP 3200+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.2GHz

1.g ram( I would not try any less then that tho)

GeForce 7600 GS

run it pretty good

but I mainly run XP

Nasty

WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #28 from JoeUser Forums Top
wow! another vista-bashing thread by someone whose machine can't run it! 512 megs of ram, huh? vista needs 2 gig just to be happy.


Actually, while I intend to upgrade as soon as I have the extra cash, I have suffered no performance problems on 1GB. And this is Vista Ultimate.

Of course, I've tweaked it for performance, but they're tweaks anyone can google if they have any level of tech skills whatsoever.

My specs: AMD 3500+ dual core proc, 1GB DDR2 RAM, 2-SATA 160GB hard drives, onboard video.

(I know, I know...yes, I AM saving up for a new video card!)
Reply #29 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Actually, while I intend to upgrade as soon as I have the extra cash, I have suffered no performance problems on 1GB. And this is Vista Ultimate.


Same here, I've got a testing pc with Ultimate at my home with 1gb of valueram that is untweaked and it runs perfectly fine. Saying you need 4gb minimum is either an utter lie or you are just extremely nitpicky.
Reply #30 from Stardock Forums Top

So it's actually my RAM that's at fault right. And Gideon, I read the minimum specs for Vista Ultimate at Microsoft's website, and it says that for the other versions of Vista you should have at least 512 MB while you need 1 gig in the least for Ultimate. So I guess I should try the Home Premium or Business one, and I've made up my mind on upgrading my RAM too. :d 

Reply #31 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Honestly ram is so cheap these days you might as well upgrade to 1gb. I've bought 4gb for under $120 for my gaming PC and its really good memory, overclocks like a champ too. I'm willing to bet 1gb is fairly cheap, and its unlikely to solve anything switching to Home Premium or Business.

The whole 512mb minimum is BS anyways, XP had a minimum of 128mb? Yeah like anyone wants to run XP with 128mb of memory! Just because its stated to require that much doesn't mean you really want to run at the minimum requirement. ;)
Reply #32 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Let me be honest with you: The amount of memory you have is going to be one of the largest factors affecting how your OS performs, no matter that the OS. The biggest killer of performance is whenever the OS has to swap an application between the memory and the hard drive.

Not only will this depend on the OS a bit, it also depends on what type of applications you use, how they are designed, and how you use them.

There has been a trend towards caching (pre-loading) more stuff in memory these days, with the idea being that if it's in memory, there's no need to go out to the hard drive or the network to get stuff. Problem is, many programs are making them a bit more dynamic, so they change in size. This results in what appears to be memory "leaks" in software when it's just the cache making itself larger to hold more stuff.

This is why Firefox 2 takes up so much memory sometimes: It has large caches that grow in a pretty uncontrolled manner. And with the Internet being an endless source of data, that's not really a great idea.

Unfortunately, caches are very unfriendly to other software: Any place in memory that is used by a cache can't be used by another piece of software. In addition, if the OS decides to page pieces of the application's cache, it can result in the software actually running more slowly, since it's now on the slowest part of the computer: The hard drive.

Now layer on top of that Vista's SuperFetch, which is its own caching mechanism that pre-loads software it thinks the user might run in the near future. In fact, the biggest reason Vista wants so much memory is because it's pre-loading software it thinks you'll use in the near future.

So the million dollar question is: How much caching should an application use? How much stuff should be stored in a cache? How should it determine the size of the cache? How should it handle low memory conditions? What happens when several applications want to create their own caches? Does the user have the memory for all of those caches?

Caching is something that seems to be a huge experiment that's going on right now, and it's eating up memory on a lot of computers. Even though it's very well intentioned, it may be hurting performance more than helping it in many cases.
Reply #33 from WinCustomize Forums Top

yes, you can run vista on 1 gig of ram but it's much happier with at least 2. and no, you do not need 4 gigs to run vista. i'm not extremely picky but i do enjoy having 8 gigs in my rig. when it comes down to it, the more ram you have, the better off you are when using a 64 bit os. i have 4 gig in my 32-bit laptop and it seems prefectly content :)

Reply #34 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Pixeleo, you didn't do your homework again. ;) You left out Vista Home Basic,pre-installed on my Compaq.It came with 512mb ram,but I added a 1gb stick when I got it home.With a 17"crt@1024x768,I run a DX theme,WB's,RC,IP,SP,CFX,and most DeskScapes combined with what I'm working on at less than 30-40%,tops.Do you have a usb drive? Try setting it up with at least 1gb of readyboost,it's far cheaper and easier than adding a stick of ram.Give it a another shot.Ram is your biggest bottleneck.Fix that and I think you'll be surprised.Peace. :D
Reply #36 from Stardock Forums Top

Actually I was planning to write on Home Basic, but I left it out purposely because there wasn't much to write about it. Also, I read that article about ReadyBoost, and I think I'll have to choose between buying RAM and a flash drive. I think I'll buy a 2 gig drive for Vista and some RAM too. 

Thanks guys, you've been really helpful. :CONGRAT: 

Reply #37 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Memory use is to 40-50%(typo)Note: That's well over the 512mb it shipped with!I should add,Vista comes with a buttload of running processes.I started with 73-78 with 78 services running at IdleI'm down to 61 now.You'll need to manage these for best results,no matter how much ram you have.I used AdvancedWindowsCareWWW Linkto sort through them all, it does a good job explaining them and optimizing the memory even raised my graphics score.TweakVista may also do this, probably better,although I haven't installed it yet. It's worth checking out. I believe you can disable UAC with it easily. Happy shopping!
Reply #39 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I believe you can disable UAC with it easily


you can do this thru user accounts

Nasty

Reply #40 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I hope all you people using more that 4GB of RAM are running the 64bit version. But, what runs on the 64bit version?
Reply #41 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm starting to kinda warm to some of the aspects of Vista and some aspects will always be utter crap.

..both from a skinning perspective and recent advancements of WB\SKS6 have a lot to do with it.

Bravo Neil.
Reply #42 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Bravo Neil.


Ditto on that. Unless you've seen it,you have no idea just how fugly Vista Home Basic without WindowBlinds is. X-( No way could I go back to that. ;)
Reply #43 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
But, what runs on the 64bit version?


Quite a lot, actually. The backwards compatibility for Vista64 is pretty good. And a requirement for getting WHQL certification for Vista drivers is that they must provide a 64-bit version of said drivers.
Reply #44 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I hope all you people using more that 4GB of RAM are running the 64bit version.


Yup, I'm running 64 bit.

But, what runs on the 64bit version?


The better question is what can't run on the 64 bit version. Other than a couple of drivers that weren't WHQL (and all of those have since been fixed and certified), I've yet to see software that won't run on 64 bit Vista. I've thrown pretty much every game and program I've got at it, and it handles all of them very well.
Reply #45 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree, and i know how you feel! Both times i've tried Vista it has failed misserebly. The first time it was The Ultimate 64bit version. It was a given that this one was going to fail. But since it utilize my 64bit it worked quite fluently exept the 1,5gb memory drain :(. And practicly no programs worked with the 64 bits. But 64b has not been devolped enough to be of any use. Atleast not for gaming purposes.

The second time was just a couple of days ago! I tried the Ultimate version again but without the 64b, i went with the "basic" 32b. Anyway, i installed... the first two tries it failed! The third time it worked and i needed to download the drives from internet since the disc i had was not compatible... I've also picked up a few tricks and turned off most of the programs vista used... It still registered over 700 mb memory... Anyway! After all my hard work i restarted and started to clean up my drives, moving things where i wanted them only to have Vista freeze on me everytime it moved a file larger than 300mb... Not thats sick... Vista is all cosmetics and it doesnt use any new features really exept UCA (witch is meant to me annoying) and the indexing thingie). Thats the only two things you notice is new.

I formatted again and installed XP and EVERYTHING works fine. No problems, no crashes, no freezes! No nothings! :P

My word of advice: If you have a good version of XP stick with it! Wait for Windows 7 (That will be released 2009 or so has microsoft claimed).
Reply #46 from JoeUser Forums Top

2010 actually.

I'll stick with XP, but I'm already ready to upgrade my PC, and the real case is that before Windows 7 does come out, I want to experience Vista. I've just complained about UAC and the resolution,, but I find it quite fast. I've still got the Ultimate CD, so I'll give it a try after the upgrade... :d 

Reply #47 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
After all my hard work i restarted and started to clean up my drives, moving things where i wanted them only to have Vista freeze on me everytime it moved a file larger than 300mb...


That has been fixed in SP1.

ista is all cosmetics and it doesnt use any new features really exept UCA (witch is meant to me annoying) and the indexing thingie). Thats the only two things you notice is new.


There's also new troubleshooting tools, Flip 3D, DirectX 10, protected mode for IE8, SuperFetch and ReadyBoost, improved backup tools including disk images, a new sidebar, and a few other things. In addition, a lot of existing stuff has been completely rewritten, which won't be obvious to the user but will be very obvious to the developer. It's a lot of small improvements instead of a few large ones.

I *do* recommend getting Vista with a new computer instead of trying to put it on an old computer. It works best on new machines.
Reply #48 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Well while you are crying over the bad OS Vista is ... The rest of us are busy as ever fixing and designing the next Windows. The which I'm sure you will not like either. Actually that is to bad. For a lot of people enjoy the progress made with Vista and look forward to the final 32bit version of windows.
I would suggest you look a lot harder at all the facts. A lot of what is wrong with your system is mainly just poor quality hardware. With any new hi-performance OS system you will need better equipment. A simple answer for a sad problem. Too many people want to upgrade; but do not want to upgrade their hardware. You give Vista what it needs and it works just as good as any other OS. Actually better and much faster than any XP system.
Truth is you need to just go buy a good computer with Vista and use it for what is designed to do. That is if you want to use Vista.
Then when you get done with that. You can buy another new OS system here in 2011 for what it is worth to you. It will be much better than Vista on the business side of the system. The new design is aimed at security for business's again. Plus the use of web-2. [the new IPv-6 systems]
Plus all the new stuff for mobile systems. Ah just go buy a new blackberry with everything on it and see what you get. Be sure it is with windows mobile 6.1 too! You will enjoy that much better than you think.
If you wake up and smell the coffee you might just figure out what is truly going on in this world of technology.

SGT :HOT: