Opinions on Vista?

tdc

Whats the story with Windows Vista? I've heard nothing but bad things about it and how it is harder to use than XP.

Im in the market to for a laptop just for general home use, nothing special but Ive found that the majority of them come with Vista. Im not too techy and Im currently using Windows XP on a 4-5 year old laptop - if I get a laptop with Vista will it be difficult or annoying?

Ive just heard pretty bad things, a couple of people I know have gotten new laptops and the first thing they did was remove Vista and install XP.

What are the pros/cons of Vista?

tech

you can still get some Laptop that have Vista Business installed and are licensed for XP PRO also and come with the restore DVD to do this

check out DABS.ie

VISTA SUCKS

Fabio

I run Vista and I think it's great to be honest, a lot more useable than XP as regards clicking on things (folder navigation) and searching.

Fair enough I've disabled the Windows Aero feature on Vista which adds transparent windows and nice looking things like that but I find my laptop is slightly faster without that stuff.

A lot of the hassle with Vista at the beginning was because it was rushed to the market and was not made compatible with a lot of other software and hardware like printers. A lot of that has been fixed now though so it's fine in my book.

Other on here may say different but to be honest if you're looking for something simple and won't be too nit-picky, it'll do you fine.

Guy:Incognito

I really like Vista. Been using it sice early on and have had no issue.

leninbenjamin

tdc wrote: »

What are the pros/cons of Vista?

this can only really be answered if we know the specs of the machine you're looking at getting, as the pros and cons really depends on the hardware you have. but...

i much prefer Vista to XP.

first; it is not harder to use Vista. it's just different, and does take a bit of time getting used to, primarily because the users data is orgranised differently. and you might be well banging your head for a bit because the option your looking for isn't on the UI your using... until after a couple of weeks you realise it's right there in front of you, just called something different.

on performance, if you've got the machine to run it you wont notice a huge amount of difference. a core 2 duo minimum and 2GB of RAM (personally i'd get at least 3 if it's in your budget). if you want to get the full benefit of the Aero stuff then a decent graphics card is a must as well, at least 256MB of dedicated graphics memory imo (you'll get by with 128, but you'll notice it struggle in places).

both me and my father have similarly speced machines, he runs XP business and i run Vista. there really isn't too much of a difference in performance. I did take the time to disable some of the unnecessary features like the tablet support etc, but it's worth it and now that i've done that you'd hardly notice a difference (even though i still run the Aero stuff).

overall though Vista is nothing to fear anymore. it is not the unfinished OS that my drivers kept crashing with in the early days, SP1 really has fixed most of the outstanding issues. take the time to get to know it (google things like how to speed up Vista etc.) and tailor it to your needs and it flies, but just keep in mind i wouldn't run it in a machine that has less than the specs i outlined above.

sukikettle

VISTA SUCKS

tech

here here!

Overheal

For laptops, Vista is actually easier to use than XP - the wireless networking and power management is a bit more accessible. Just make sure you have at least 2gb of ram and a 2ghz dual core processor and you will have nothing to worry about. Once your past vista's very gradual learning curve you wont want to go back to XP.

GigaByte

I stuck with Vista for a year, then I bite the bullet and re-installed Windows XP. I just had to many problems with it.

I'm thinking of installing Windows 7 just to see the difference. :pac:

listermint

Ive had it near 2 years on my laptop. It works fine, some driver issues with some problems but for general home use you cant really find issue.

samhail

i think its one of those things that you simply get used to.

Shane O' Malley

For new laptops, Vista is much better than XP.

Problems are when you use old hardware, or old software (Especially in a business environment)

I have it as my main desktop and have a laptop running it. And security is much much better than XP.

Would never recommend upgrading an XP system to Vista, but with a new build it is the way to go.

watty

New laptops I've upgraded to XP from Vista ran nearly 2x better than Vista.

Vista adds nothing whatsoever of value. Windows 7 is just a bug fixed polished version. What do you get if you polish the brown things in the field and pick the bugs out (the flies)?


I've used NT (Vista is NT 6.0 and Windows 7 appears to be NT 6.2) since 1994 NT3.5x and Windows since 1991.

However don't attempt to install ANY OS (Linux, XP, Win2K Server, Vista etc) without ensuring you have or can get all the drivers needed.

Security is NO better at all than XP, that's a myth. Security is mostly user education. I've removed Trojans and viruses from more machines WITH up to date AV sw than not.

My own laptop has never had XP re-installed, nor ever had a virus or any Malware, purchased in April 2002. 35 to 40 seconds to Desktop.

An external firewall or turning off server services and MS Client/Sharing on any network connection direct to Internet is more security than XP or Vista can provide.

An old 1.8MHz P4 with 512M RAM with XP (NT5.1) can out perform most new Vista systems with 2G of RAM given same Graphics card.

NT4.0 of course only needs 200MHz and 32M RAM

Morlar

Vista sucks donkey balls compared to xp pro in my opinion. Flashy gimmicky nonsense and obnoxious security settings. 1 or 2 minor improvements but not even close to being worth the ridiculous cost of it.

Voodu Child

No problems here with Vista. Its a good OS.

An OS isn't an application, the point of it is to get you into applications and then get out of your way. So for the average (non-techy) home user, Vista is a much better OS than XP. Its more stable, more secure and more user friendly.

You can yakk all you want about how many versions of Windows you're an expert in, or how your Win2000 machine runs 10x faster, but its 100% off-topic, because the OP (and most consumers) are non-techy users, just want a machine to browse the internet and organize photo's etc.

mick.fr

Well myself I have been using it since the last 2 years and I have no problem with it, it is faster than XP, given the fact you give it enough RAM, although the explorer view is annoying me, I am still not used to this dynamically moving window when trying to browse for my files. Also the indexing engine seems to be weak and slow, the 2 factors that are annoying me really.

tdc

Well I'm not too techy, I only really use the computer for Internet, iTunes, Video, Pics and Movies, just basic stuff

Would I be better off with Vista?

Overheal

Yes.

You can do all sorts of mad things in the photo gallery like stitch together panoramic shots. For browsing the web its more secure considering Microsoft is trying desperately to drop their support for XP like a bad rash. Your computer will keep more up to date in the long run, and more secure in the long run. As for movies, Home Premium retains some of XP Media Center's better qualities.

Ginger

I like Vista.. and I am coming from a developer point of view there were a few hurdles that were overcome with just some simple education such as knowing to run in Administrator mode during dev.

Like Watty I have used everything from 3.5 up. I suppose I could go back to no USB devices and the grey toolbar yadda yadda but I upgraded from XP to Vista to support Azure and Live Mesh tools.

I find Vista faster than XP on my machine (AthlonX2 4400,4GB RAM and this machine is nearly 4 years old at this stage). Stability wise no major hitches.. drivers all good...

Boot speed is about 10 to 15 seconds once past POST and about 5 seconds or less from login to desktop.

So I am happy.. people complained bitterly about XP as compared to 98 (yes I am skipping Millenium) and Windows 2000. Same story different OS. People dont like change