Is Vista really THAT bad?

Smiley012

Hello everyone,

I was wondering if people wouldn't mind posting up their opinions/experiences with Vista, I recently sold my laptop, and am looking to purchase a new one for completing my thesis next year.

I mainly need it for internet, word processing, some web design stuff and a few games, like second life, world of warcraft.

So I was looking at this laptop::
http://www.laptopsdirect.ie/Fujitsu_Siemens_ESPRIMO_Mobile_V5545_VFY:EM7BV5545BJ6GB/version.asp

And it looks pretty cool, has all of what I went, with a good enough graphics card, so I rang them and they said it would cost 140 sterling to get XP put on it instead of Vista.

I have heard many bad things about Vista, can anyone tell me, is it really that bad? And why is it so bad?

Thanks,
S

Spear

I've been using it for the last year, and I've had no issues, no drivers missing, no stability problems. Once the UAC is turned off there's not much to differentiate it from XP.

kmick

Dell will put XP on most of their laptops apart from the VOSTRO I think. I have been using Vista for about 6 months and echo the thoughts above. Turn off UAC and its very like XP. Try the dell outlet for pretty good deals
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/inspn?c=ie&l=en&s=dfh
Thats where I got mine and its been trouble free.

Heres a good example
http://outlet.dell.com/Emea_Dfo/EuDispatcher?target=SpecPage&serviceTag=EPAZJRWW&sessionID=LR7TrvBn!203392821!-552092762!1209121619973

rrpc

Just one note of warning.

I have a Vostro in my possession at the moment. Was using it the other morning, shut it down and put it in its case. Went out to a job and turned it on and lo and behold, bad sector on the hard disk.

Luckily I had a Windows disk with me, so I was able to run recovery console and fix the MBR, but the damn thing's only a couple of weeks old and been turned on about ten times.

Smiley012

Thanks for the replies guys, but what is the UAC?

I think I'll go for it then, the laptop is a good deal, and since I don't need to do anything major with it, it'll probably be fine!

rrpc

Smiley012 wrote: »

Thanks for the replies guys, but what is the UAC?

User Access Control I think it's called. Basically an annoying pop up that asks you do you really want to run the program you just clicked on.

In fact it pops up for anything, dialog boxes or new dialog boxes.

Very annoying.

Spear

rrpc wrote: »

Very annoying.

But it can be disabled.

copeyhagen

i bought 2 of them laptops before xmas, just without the gfx card and with a 160gb hadd from laptopsdirect. didnt need the gfx card, ones for djing on ones for general use.

left vista on the general use one, thing crashed nearly every day at one stage or another. i had already installed xp on the djing one as vista is too heavy on the resources.

havent had a single crash on the xp machine, and gave the general use one with vista to my folks when they moved back to spain. tbh they havent had any issues with the laptop since afaik.

my sister had a dell with vista, thing was constantly crashing, so i put xp on it for them, havent had a problem since.

then my brother lives up north, bought a new mesh desktop bout 4 months ago with vista, hasnt had any problems.

so it seems it could go either way.

but i have heard a lot of people say its fairly ****e

Saruman

Look, vista is exactly the same as 2000, xp and every other OS that has ever come out. When it comes out first, it seems buggy software/drivers have not had time to settle down.. plus there are bugs in the initial release.

Vista needs time to settle down. Its a grand os as long as you have the specs to use it etc.

My Dell vostro has never had a problem with it, and it has vista business on it. Likewise i have used other vista machines that have been horrible to use. Usually because they only have 512mb of ram.

Windows XP was the same, people hated it when it first came out and now people can not stand the thought of moving away from XP to Vista.

Mena

Been running it for ages. Love it, no hassles.

Edit: I do prefer OS X though :P

Smiley012

thanks for the replies guys, i figured it was a case of bugs and nothing out of the norm.

i'm looking for something with a decent graphics card around the 600 range, don't wanna go above 700 as thats all i have left on credit card! lol.

so sweet example Kmick, but a bit pricey for me!

everyone recommend dell over laptopsdirect?

irlrobins

Off to Windows forum with you...

TerrorFirmer

I had Vista for a few months on my laptop, and I'm a heavy user. Not a whole lot different to XP once you turn off some of the crap, though still, I just hated it. Installed XP Pro instead....

Sherifu

Smiley012 wrote: »

I have heard many bad things about Vista, can anyone tell me, is it really that bad? And why is it so bad?

No it's not imo.

If you search the forum you'll find a few threads about this. Mostly positive experiences with Vista as time passes it gets better.

Mac daddy

Vista is so good it made me switch over to fedora core 8 on all of my systems after the whole incident with Vista's SP1.
It's a buggy pile of crap you would be better of using XP if you have to.

kaimera

Mac daddy wrote: »

Vista is so good it made me switch over to fedora core 8 on all of my systems after the whole incident with Vista's SP1.
It's a buggy pile of crap you would be better of using XP if you have to.

Just you then it appears.

No probs with Vista. Running it on a dell vostro.

Wee bit of advice, dont turn off UAC but get TweakUAC instead and set it to Silent Mode. Keeps the security features without the annoying pop.ups

jor el

I dumped Vista off my laptop after a month. The UAC is one of the worst things in it, but as mentioned, it can be disabled. The fact that MS moved everything around (documents and settings) really annoyed me. The new explorer is the worst thing about it though. What was wrong with the old one? Also, there's no option to make it work like XP. everything changed, and not in a good way, for me anyway.

Also, while your considering Vista or XP, reconsider using laptops direct too. I've never heard a single good thing about them. I'd recommend you have a look around at other sources before buying anything. Hell, even have a look in PC World!

Tinytony

I must say I was very anti-vista at the start and found the UAC very irritating but once i got rid of that and after a few weeks of heavy use of vista I quite happy with.

Gadgetman496

Whatever you decide to buy make sure you leave yourself with at least the option to revert to XP.

Not all new Laptops can be converted to XP due to the fact that some of the newer hardware has never had XP drivers written for it in the first place.

You did mention that the one you were looking at could be bought with XP so therefore the drivers for that particular machine must be available.

Read this article:
http://www.thorschrock.com/2007/04/03/think-again-if-you-plan-to-remove-vista-and-install-xp-on-a-laptop/

The jury is still out as far as I'm concerned with regard to Vista.

I'm dual booting XP Pro & Vista Ultimate for some time now & I will admit that I warming a little to Vista (But only a little) there's still a hell of a lot I don't like about it.

By the time we're all finished bitc*en about it, the replacement (Code Named [URL="[URL=http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=32095]Vienna[/URL]"][/url]Vienna ) will be out ;-)

When will we get the next Windows?

Well, they say it could be as soon as 2010 & even though Microsoft are notorious for missing deadlines I have a sneaky suspicion that they can't wait to get Vista behind them. I only hope they don't pull a double whammy & release more crap for the sake of it. (The old saying still holds true, "Two wrongs don't make a right").

Will Vista still a baby at one year old,
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3724671

No 'brain drain,' but analysts connect Vista problems with Microsoft departures.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9077980&intsrc=news_ts_head

Here's one US stores take on Vista:




It's all a matter of opinion I guess.....

-

dulpit

Ok so i do software development in college, i'm in 4th year so i'm always on my computer. In college we have XP machines, my laptop is vista. I will only use XP if i really have to, Vista is far superior if you ask me. Sure things are in different places, but that's change for ya (why bother with a new OS if everything has to remain the same?)

I only know 1 person with Vista who's had a problem, he got 2 blue screens of death in 1 day, he updated all drivers on his laptop and nothing since. TBH the only people i've seen complaining about Vista are the type of people who come onto forums like these and call Microsoft "micro$oft" and generally try to be cool and not use these products. It's a great OS, sure it might have been buggy at the start (isn't everything?) but at this stage it's perfect. In the ~8 months i've been using it my laptop has crashed ZERO times. In the same time i know i've had 1 or 2 problems with our home PC (running XP).

Vista >> XP. Nuff said.

Cantab.

jor el wrote: »

I dumped Vista off my laptop after a month. The UAC is one of the worst things in it, but as mentioned, it can be disabled. The fact that MS moved everything around (documents and settings) really annoyed me. The new explorer is the worst thing about it though. What was wrong with the old one?

Yep, for me they were two major gripes...

I managed to disable UAC. I'm also now using the wonderful 'FreeCommander' as a replacement for Windows Explorer. I don't think I'll ever be able to understand Microsoft's directory structure conventions. I mean "Program Files", "Users", "Documents and Settings", "My Documents", etc. -- it's nigh impossible to understand what directory your file was stashed away in.

I (reluctantly) have Vista on my laptop. It's a toy and incapable of doing any serious work. I do all my presentations in latex/.pdf and wouldn't touch a word processor/spreadsheet with a barge pole.

Simple programming and simple interfaces are the way forward. Think of apple design, Python programming and open standards.

Visual Studio gets worse and worse -- it's a frankenstein of a beast. What takes a whole page of c#, I can do in 2 lines of Perl/Python. What uses 500kb of memory and 100ms of CPU time on an ISS server, takes 1 kb and 1 ms on a Unix server. Even the large financial houses here in the UK are beginning to dump MS like the plague.

Lazarus2.0

I do a fair amount of troubleshooting (for want of a better word!) machines for friends and family etc - strictly an amateur tech though

I find with Vista that it's invariably lack of RAM is the issue (Vista systems being sold with less than 2Gb is shameful - customers are paying big bucks for the OS and manufacturers are shafting them by banging in 512Mb RAM sometimes (I've seen this on around half the Vista machines I've worked on) to save themselves a measly few quid . Sharp practise imo .
The other issue I often come across is pron lol . Or the lack of - usually there's a host of trojans and viri instead of Debbie Does ... you get the gist .

Back on topic - I dont like Vista . It isnt capable of doing anything you cant do with XP and even with UAC disabled it's known to be buggy and temperamental on some machines while fine on others . It's more likely to be okay than not , in truth , providing hardware requirements are met but personally I'm steering clear of it .

I'm an old dog but I do enjoy learning new tricks -Vista just doesnt seem to have any !

tman

Cantab. wrote: »

I do all my presentations in latex

:eek:

I've had absolutely no issues with Vista so far, have been running it since launch without any complaints. x64's driver support issues are a thing of the past, and combined with SP1 it's an absolutely rock solid OS.

On other people's pcs, the only problems I've experienced have generally been user related issues (spyware bloated and the pc had always been put in standby instead of shutdown...) or performance issues related to lack of memory.

Saruman

nessyguin wrote: »

Back on topic - I dont like Vista . It isnt capable of doing anything you cant do with XP

Would DX10 not be something important? I know there are people hacking it to make it work on XP, but as of yet i do not believe you can simply download DX10 for XP and play, and even if you did i think XP is missing a lot of driver API's so can not make the most out of DX10. I could be wrong.

DX10 is still a vista exclusive so by the time more games are designed for it, Vista will have settled down and we will all be thinking back to XP and how early 21st century it was

Lazarus2.0

Saruman wrote: »

Would DX10 not be something important? I know there are people hacking it to make it work on XP, but as of yet i do not believe you can simply download DX10 for XP and play, and even if you did i think XP is missing a lot of driver API's so can not make the most out of DX10. I could be wrong.

DX10 is still a vista exclusive so by the time more games are designed for it, Vista will have settled down and we will all be thinking back to XP and how early 21st century it was

Vista gamers take note - you'll have a state of the art machine within the year ....

Not getting into a hacking debate but XP is DX10 capable .

Why on earth would you pay an extortionate price for an OS that is so widely reported as being buggy ? Would you pay full whack for a car that may be roadworthy even though you're aware a problem might develop once you get behind the wheel ?

Its not really buggy anymore, I run Vista business and I was pleasantly suprised! I thought it was going to be a head wrecker going on all I heard! I got it free for a limited time.
I actually dont want to go back to XP after!!

Crashes dont happen anymore. Once you have updated drivers your ok.
Its up to companies to update drivers and make them compatible with Vista
its not microsofts fault if they dont , I`ll give you a good example:
I used to have win 98 with an Agfa snapscan scanner
best scanner i ever had to this day! My epson 3 in 1 just doesnt give as good quality scans!

When Xp came out Agfa wouldnt write drivers. I had and many others (this is all over the internet some people turned completely off AGFA because of this) had to dump our scanners and buy new ones.

Most of the top 10 benchmarked pcs on 3dmark are running Vista
http://www.futuremark.com/
contrary to people who said vista was hard on gaming machines. I think its a matter of bad drivers. My pc definitely loads vista faster than Xp.

Here are some tweaks for speeding up vista:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

I bought a CD burner with nero and nero wont work on vista. They wont patch it. Instead they want you to buy a new version. Well I can tell you there are plenty of free cd burning software alternatives out there.

Hobbes

I've only just started using Vista and TBH it is driving me fricken insane for the last couple of days. Network would stop working and vista reporting the router is the issue.

After some messing around it connected. Then didn't connect anymore a few hours later. Seems to think my router is two seperate boxes. Shows up twice. After rummaging past the MS-fanbois comments of it being my routers fault (on other forums). Turns out its a known issue.

So if you have WPA-TKIP then your going to a good chance of serious issues. Best thread I found on it, but I am not convinced it is solved.

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=481371&SiteID=17

Has also blue screened a couple of times. this is on a brand new TP (X61). The solver program suggested naff solutions that either couldn't be installed or didn't have an answer.

v.annoying.

lodgepole

nessyguin wrote: »

Why on earth would you pay an extortionate price for an OS that is so widely reported as being buggy ?

Because it isn't actually buggy. Eighteen months in and i've never had an issue with Vista, not one. I hate going back to XP and 2000 when i'm in work. It's a wonderful OS.

toiletduck

Had it nearly a year and no complaints.

god's toy

I don't know, maybe Ive been lucky so far. Ran the Vista beta, ran the full OS when it came out and now running Vista 64 (SP1) and Ive not really had many issues in all that time. For me it's been a joy to use and I'm looking forward to testing Windows 7. Think the beta/full OS of XP was a nightmare compared to Vista

BostonB

nessyguin wrote: »

....
Back on topic - I dont like Vista . It isnt capable of doing anything you cant do with XP ...



I'm an old dog but I do enjoy learning new tricks -Vista just doesnt seem to have any !

I agree with that. I ran Vista 32 for about 9 months and am now on 64. I have Vista on a few other machines. But really even after you turn off everything its still slower than XP. Other than the eye candy its not giving me anything I couldn't do in XP, and faster in XP. I've had a lot of issue with Vista, mainly with copying, merging files. Most of which seem to me file permission issues. Its better since SP1 but it still leaves behind empty folders at random. My current bugbear is folder locations and folder types. Where it redirects files to the folders it thinks they should be not the ones you tell it to copy them too. Crud like that. I'm seeing any difference in stability between versions either. I never really has a problem with XP not really having nay either with Vista. 64 seems to be able to cancel a process more reliably I think. I should really move back to XP, but I know I'll end up fixing Vista machines soon enough and I want to have some experience of it before I do.