Is Vista the worst OS in history?

Anti

LoGiE wrote: »

No chance! Windows ME was filth..... I remember years ago walking onto a site with several Windows ME machines and thinking '**** this is going to be a long day'

Be fair now, windows ME machines are grand....when they arn't powered on or connected to anything more complicated then a toaster

Bob_Harris

Anti wrote: »

The one thing ive noticed about Vista, the people that bitch and complain about it non stop truely are retarded.

No, vista wont run on a p3 with 64mb of ram(you can make it do so though). If you cant work out how to get the best out of vista after over 2 years since launch, maybe its time you step the feck back and get the feck away from your pc. Go buy one of those kids v-tec jobbies and come back in a few years when you finially work out how to program your Vcr.

I could have sworn I posted the below in this thread, or maybe I did in a different thread.

Anyway, I'll say it again.

It's not the end users job to optimize the operating system. As an operating system, it's primary concern is to be a light platform on which higher level applications run and not to be a resource hog.

Regardless of system spec, pre SP1 Vista is sluggish all round. Even the basic task of copying/moving files was horrendously slow.

And no, XP on release was not as bad.

Coupled with user interface and user interaction frustrations, it is simply a poor OS.

And to top it off it did nothing that XP couldn't. In it's attempt to cater for the dumb masses with it's verbose dialogue boxes and configuration options buried beneath layers of pretty fluff, it took a step backwards compared to XP SP2/SP3.

This is why a lot of people hate it, and I honestly couldn't care less if it is finally managed to get a bit stable and you've disabled half of the shite to get it running nicely, it was such a piss poor effort to begin with that I will continue to call it shite for ever and ever.

Anti

I've said this thousands of times now, and so have many others. I've been using Vista since beta, i even got a shot at some even earlier code as i was working for MS at the time (And no im not a MS fanboy) I've never had one problem with the Os that i didn't cause myself, or couldn't fix myself. I've never found it slow, as ive always had the newest of hardware to go along with it. I'd say close to 75% of people that complain about it being dog slow are sitting there using Vista on a pre netburst intel or a older athlon cpu with a tiny amount of ram 5400rpm hdds, system clogged with ****e trial software off some random pc magazine which they buy to "Keep up to date" multiple AV solutions all conflicting with each other (Mcaffe LOOL) the other 25% are just the usual nay-sayers who love to jump on any bandwagon they can find.

Its no skin off my nose if people bitch about it, but atleast have the decency to know your talking about before you put something down, and no, thats not aimed at you Rob..Directly.

No, you shouldn't have to optomize the OS when you get it. But when you get a TV for example, do you leave the standard brightness, contrast and color options the same as they were when they left the factory? You do this because you want the most you can get out of what you bought. Same can be said for your car, do you get remoulds? Do you buy engine oil from lidl/aldi?

Stark

Windows ME without a shadow of a doubt. I didn't think Windows NT 4 was that great either to be honest. Windows 2000 was the first version of Windows that I felt I could rely on.

MacOS 9. Okay, it was quite nice compared to other MacOS versions, but come-on Apple fanboys, it's the year 2000 and your OS still doesn't support pre-emptive multitasking? Windows had it since 1995. Also, 2 mouse buttons are better than 1.

AlmightyCushion

Bob_Harris wrote: »

And to top it off it did nothing that XP couldn't.

Well that's bull. The search bar in the start menu is a great improvement over xp. Once you get used to it, it's hard to go back. Also they completely changed how the graphics drivers were handled. In xp if you're graphics driver crapped out you got a blue screen. In vista, it restarts itself and you go about your business as if nothing happened. Just two of the top of my head that are very beneficial.

Anti

Dont forget built in widgets !! everyone loves widgets !!

AlmightyCushion

Anti wrote: »

Dont forget built in widgets !! everyone loves widgets !!

Aw DUDE! I forgot about those widgets. Look I have a clock here. A whole fúcking clock with hands and everything!!!

Anti

**** the fecking bed, and call me daisy ! Ive got one that monitors how much usage this bloatware OS is using !

asdasd

OS X 10.0

asdasd

No, you shouldn't have to optomize the OS when you get it. But when you get a TV for example, do you leave the standard brightness, contrast and color options the same as they were when they left the factory? You do this because you want the most you can get out of what you bought. Same can be said for your car, do you get remoulds? Do you buy engine oil from lidl/aldi?

People dont have to rebuild their car to get it to work correctly. Or turn off most of the settings. Not the same.

Anti

Its a simple analagy, i never said it was very accurate

Shane Slv

I really dont think vista is as bad as people are making out. Ok when it first came out their was a few compatibility issues but most of them have been sorted by now. It brought widgets, better security, payrental controls, Aero, ability to search programs, and countless other stuff most people don't even know about. Where vista had problems was performance, I see computers with vista installed for sale with 1gb ram and a AMD sempron processor. Their isent a snowballs chance in hell these computers are going to preform at a satisfactory level for people. And these are the people who are complaining. Also some IT people are saying that vista was a pig to work on. A It guy once told me that he has to quote at least double the time to do any work on vista. As an example a client required some software to be installed. To install the software on Vista took 4 hours. To take Vista off and install XP Professional and the software only 2 hours. I think that was vistas biggest downfall, it took ages do most things. I get really enoyed being asked 3 times "Are you sure you want to continue" only to find that i down have the right to do it, i mean come on i payed for this computer i am the administrator and you wont let me edit a file. Other then that vista was a improvment over xp and if windows 7 can iron out some of vistas problems that i really think that microsoft are on to a winner !!

(BTW just ordered windows 7 ! cant wait ! !)

partyatmygaff

Shane Slv wrote: »

. I get really enoyed being asked 3 times "Are you sure you want to continue" only to find that i down have the right to do it, i mean come on i payed for this computer i am the administrator and you wont let me edit a file. Other then that vista was a improvment over xp and if windows 7 can iron out some of vistas problems that i really think that microsoft are on to a winner !!

(BTW just ordered windows 7 ! cant wait ! !)

Lol, I doubt the OS knows whether the owner of the computer is the one attempting to make changes or if its a trojan. I cannot believe how many times I've heard people get annoyed about it, they obviously do not understand how viruses etc work.

Besides that I've had Vista since it was known as Longhorn and I've loved it since, XP seems so archaic now, that search bar in vista is so much easier to use, the taskbar is much easier on the eyes, search is miles faster, Widgets are all too useful.

That said I am running a modern computer with a DX 10 Graphics card and 3GB of ram and have since day 1 (Albeit without a DX10 gfx card)

Those that complain are either people who are trying to run vista on an ancient dell dimension etc with a "Top of the line Pentium 4 2.4GHZ" and 256MB ram crippled with 5400rpm hdds and integrated graphics of an age where integrated graphics could hardly handle 2D desktop displays let alone 3D games. And the likes of McAfee and Norton and the idiots who think its safer to have 5 anti virus programs running.

Stupidity of the highest order tbh.


I have never had a single problem with a vista, everything has been smooth and I find it much faster than XP (3 extra FPS in games don't lie).

I'm upgrading to Windows 7 sometime before the end of the year.


Windows ME was the biggest load of crap in all of MS' history. The OS I used as a child.... Thankfully it helped me learn how to fix nearly every single computer problem due to its security bugs and crashes and BSODs which plagued the screen about once every 10 minutes.

AlmightyCushion

partyatmygaff wrote: »

that search bar in vista is so much easier to use

While the search bar is awesome I'm finding my dependance on it a bit annoying since getting my new keyboard. I'm still not used to typing on this key board yet so I sometimes hit the wrong key or two keys at once. Of course I only notice this after I've hit the enter key so end up searching for "comtrol" instead of going in to the control panel.

Overheal

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Well that's bull. The search bar in the start menu is a great improvement over xp. Once you get used to it, it's hard to go back. Also they completely changed how the graphics drivers were handled. In xp if you're graphics driver crapped out you got a blue screen. In vista, it restarts itself and you go about your business as if nothing happened. Just two of the top of my head that are very beneficial.

Vista: Oh hey. Didnt want to stir you Mr. Overheal, but that black flicker you just noticed? Yeah, the Graphics Driver had a total conniption. But we went ahead and zero'd it out and rebooted it for you, so you can go back to working. Have a nice day now.

You know I take for granted that little balloon telling me I've had a driver crash now.

***

XP: PACK YOUR ****! PACK YOUR SH!T! WE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE! YOUR DRIVER JUST CRASHED> DO YOU F*CKING UNDERSTAND ME YOU DUMB F*CK? YOUR DRIIIVERRR JUST. CRASHED. THERES NO TURNING BACK. YOU DONT HAVE TIME TO SAVE THOSE DOCUMENT CHANGES. HURRY AND HIT THE POWER BUTTON BEFORE YOU WASTE MORE TIME READING THIS SCREEN

For that same reason I find myself tipping my hat to IE for the first time in a long time. Now that each Tab/window is its own process, you never have to worry about one bad tab tearing down your entire browsing session, which for me regularly involves anywhere from 4 to 12 tabs.

asdasd

Why tell people at all, just get on with it. There was a glitch, and user doesnt need to know.

asdasd

Anyway, I think this has become a bit MS bashing, and I am not a fan od MS. ( Although I like XP as a functional, stable, but fairly primitive OS. )

As a Mac Fan Boi I bought OS X 10.0 and, well, it sucked. 10.3 was the first non Beta version of OS X.


We can say that now.

mikkael

Um, NT4 anyone?

jahalpin

I used Vista from it's launch until I upgraded to Windows 7 a few weeks ago and never had a problem with it.

As other posters have said, the reason that it was so unpopular was that a lot of people tried to use it on cheap, underpowered PC's which were never really designed to run a modern OS. Another problem with these PC's was that they used older hardware which the manufacturers no longer supported and therefore did not write new drivers for.

Another problem was that some people were trying to use poorly coded programs which were incompatable with Vista due to system security issues.

If I was to nominate a truly terrible OS, Mac OS X - Snow Leopard would have to be it. It is very slow and has a number of very serious bugs. Unfortunaetly for Apple, it can't blame drivers as the Mac is a closed system and they therefore have almost absolute control over the hardware (exc. Mac Pro, as you can change the graphics card etc)

Backward compatability is also very weak on OS X, as programs designed for 10.0 upto 10.5 may not run on 10.6. This seems to crop up with every .x release

A lot of people also complain about UAC in Vista, however, if you want to install a program that modifies the system in OS X, yoou are prompted for a password each time, which is even more annoying

5uspect

jahalpin wrote: »

A lot of people also complain about UAC in Vista, however, if you want to install a program that modifies the system in OS X, yoou are prompted for a password each time, which is even more annoying

As in Linux. UAC is annoying as hell when you come from XP. But it is secure. Unfortunately MS decided to make a big song and dance about it and your average punter failed to see the point.

devnull

I had Vista since launch too and never had an issue on a laptop or a desktop, infact whilst I do like some of Windows 7, I don't see it of anywhere near as much as an upgrade than XP -> Vista was for me.

ME was by far the worst though, the random blue screens were always entertaining no matter what hardware you used

jasonbourme.cs

Jonathan wrote: »

Windows ME

+1 !!!

hated that OS most unstable piece of crap ever :mad:

Menengroth™

its not too bad tbh, once you've plenty of RAM that is, runs perfectly on my laptop, yet like a bag of ****e on my sister's.

that said, i'm still moving to windows 7.

steps_3314

Its a piece of **** and thats putting it mildly.

Useless piece o crap that has given me nothing but headaches.

I fix alot of laptops that have it and each time the owner asks me, no pleads with me for Xp.

An example of its uselessness is when you try to open a folder containing files like photos or whatever and a stupid green bar has to go across the top of the screen before you can see your files and this could take 2-3 minutes.

Had one case last week with a newly built machine. Tried to install Epsom printer software and it took 45 minutes.

Lets hope 7 is better.

Overheal

steps_3314 wrote: »

Its a piece of **** and thats putting it mildly.

Useless piece o crap that has given me nothing but headaches.

I fix alot of laptops that have it and each time the owner asks me, no pleads with me for Xp.

An example of its uselessness is when you try to open a folder containing files like photos or whatever and a stupid green bar has to go across the top of the screen before you can see your files and this could take 2-3 minutes.

Had one case last week with a newly built machine. Tried to install Epsom printer software and it took 45 minutes.

Lets hope 7 is better.

As a highly trained laptop technician, you might have noticed the STOP button on said files and folders to halt thumbnail loading.

steps_3314

Overheal wrote: »

As a highly trained laptop technician, you might have noticed the STOP button on said files and folders to halt thumbnail loading.

good point and i love the sarcasm.
but in all honestly its a poor Os

Cuddlesworth

steps_3314 wrote: »

Its a piece of **** and thats putting it mildly.

Useless piece o crap that has given me nothing but headaches.

I have quite a few headaches with vista. And with nearly 2,300 machines running it and a huge amount of custom apps I would guess my problems are on a different scale to yours. But I still like it. Can't wait for the red tape to clear for Win7 here.

steps_3314 wrote: »

I fix alot of laptops that have it and each time the owner asks me, no pleads with me for Xp.

Cheap low spec normal irish sold laptops are not cut out for Vista. So no real surprise there. Doesn't mean its bad, means the company that spec'd and sold it is.

steps_3314 wrote: »

An example of its uselessness is when you try to open a folder containing files like photos or whatever and a stupid green bar has to go across the top of the screen before you can see your files and this could take 2-3 minutes.

Thats the hard-drive not vista. Once again poverty spec machine.

steps_3314 wrote: »

Had one case last week with a newly built machine. Tried to install Epsom printer software and it took 45 minutes.

Lets hope 7 is better.

This wouldn't be the Epson printer drivers fault would it?

Anti

Steps, no offence but i think your in the completely wong line of work if you are blaming a operating system on faults which it has not a thing to do with.

90% of Vista's problem is Pebcak ! And there are some fine examples of it i this thread.

Bob_Harris

Anti wrote: »

I'd say close to 75% of people that complain about it being dog slow are sitting there using Vista on a pre netburst intel or a older athlon cpu with a tiny amount of ram 5400rpm hdds, system clogged with ****e trial software off some random pc magazine which they buy to "Keep up to date" multiple AV solutions all conflicting with each other (Mcaffe LOOL) the other 25% are just the usual nay-sayers who love to jump on any bandwagon they can find.

In fairness the vast majority of people using Vista had it come pre-installed on a store bought PC. PC's which are well capable of running Vista only after it's been tweaked.

Anti wrote:

Its no skin off my nose if people bitch about it, but atleast have the decency to know your talking about before you put something down, and no, thats not aimed at you Rob..Directly.

Who's Rob?

Anti wrote:

No, you shouldn't have to optomize the OS when you get it. But when you get a TV for example, do you leave the standard brightness, contrast and color options the same as they were when they left the factory?

That's akin to changing a theme on Vista. Now if you were to disable the fancy themes, well that's akin to disabling colour on your TV. :pac:

Anti wrote:

Do you buy engine oil from lidl/aldi?

Yes.

PogMoThoin

Bob_Harris wrote: »

In fairness the vast majority of people using Vista had it come pre-installed on a store bought PC. PC's which are well capable of running Vista only after it's been tweaked.

Yes, remove the manufacturer added bloatware and MacHogAV program and its well fit for Vista, but people blame Vista. But the truth of the matter is that people always buy the budget pc.

Overheal

Bob_Harris wrote: »

In fairness the vast majority of people using Vista had it come pre-installed on a store bought PC. PC's which are well capable of running Vista only after it's been tweaked.

Yeah, if you google the Vista Capable Scandal, youll be rewarded with a good read.

Hardware issues aside, when you have it running properly on fair ware, its a fine OS.

AlmightyCushion

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Cheap low spec normal irish sold laptops are not cut out for Vista. So no real surprise there. Doesn't mean its bad, means the company that spec'd and sold it is.

Not always why people want rid of vista. I've had a lot of people who asked can they have xp put on their machine. These were decent machines (2Ghz dual core, 3GBs etc.). When I enquire as to why they want xp on it (they may just be running slow because they're riddled with viruses and need a clean up) the answers vary. a lot say that it's shíte because they're friend who knows a lot about computers said it was. A lot say because it's very slow and they heard xp was faster, after discussing it further it usually turns out that downloads and loading web pages are where it's actually slow and they're surprised at how fast it is when I connect it to our network. Others hate UAC popping up all the time. A few have really expensive software that doesn't run on xp and don't fancy spending thousands again on a newer version of the software. So it's not just crappy computers to blame. Mis-information is a big one with a dislike of certain features and software/hardware incompatibilities playing a small role as well.

asdasd

Thats the hard-drive not vista. Once again poverty spec machine.

Thats the logic of blaming a game which cant run properly on the graphic card rather than the games developer. These were new machines, there is no way that showing a progress bar is acceptable when opening a folder. If Vista was before its time that feature should have been disabled, or enabled only for speced machines.

Overheal

asdasd wrote: »

Thats the logic of blaming a game which cant run properly on the graphic card rather than the games developer. These were new machines, there is no way that showing a progress bar is acceptable when opening a folder. If Vista was before its time that feature should have been disabled, or enabled only for speced machines.

The alternative is to have Vista create a One-Time cache for all thumbnails in all folders. Your cache file though would be quite sizable. And thats an understatement. Not to mention the amount of disk time used up during the initial run. Vista already does enough of that during the first few days while its running the initial indexing service. Which is fine by me: That indexing service runs the best ****ing start bar in creation.

That said it does store those thumbnails for a good length of time, until you go do something like run a disk cleanup. Meaning frequently accessed folders (eg. Movie collections) dont load every single time.

The feature can also be disabled altogether. Google it.

BostonB

On the same hardware XP and Windows 7 are much faster than Vista. I've had no problems with XP over the years, or Windows 7. But Vista, was one niggle after another.

Windows ME for the worst OS ever.

devnull

No, on decent hardware Vista is much faster than XP, for instance my home built E6550 with gigabyte motherboard, samsung hard drives and 4GB RAM always ran Vista much better than it ran XP, but then again maybe thats because I avoided cheap and nasty parts?

BostonB

Visata was much slower than XP especially in things like file copying. Its only caught up now after 2 service packs. Its still slow in some tasks. Thats to ignore all the "minor" issues with the OS.

The excuse of needing better hardware is blown out of the water when Windows 7 does all the same stuff and doesn't need the same hardware as Vista, and is as quick as XP for most things. XP still being quicker in some things.

Even with the service packs, people are still having issues with Vista, regardless of hardware. Windows 7 has far less issues.

cpu-dude

Windows are still remarkably going by their up-down / good-bad / right-wrong routine

95
98
2K
ME
XP
Vista
7

Windows 8? Who knows... :cool:

mickoneill30

cpu-dude wrote: »

Windows are still remarkably going by their up-down / good-bad / right-wrong routine

95
98
2K
ME
XP
Vista
7

Windows 8? Who knows... :cool:

You're missing NT4 there . After 95. Before 98. Was a pretty good business OS.

cpu-dude

mickoneill30 wrote: »

You're missing NT4 there . After 95. Before 98. Was a pretty good business OS.

Yeah I left it out because it was just a workstation / server version really. Plus... it didn't fit in my little table

Stark

Windows 2000 was a workstation/server version too, even though the inclusion of up to date DirectX and the like made it suitable for home use. Windows XP was slated when it was first released as well, it wasn't until the first service pack that people started liking it (or getting used to it). I don't see what was wrong with 98 compared to 95. When I worked in support, I used always be getting callouts from people having reliability issues with NT 4. Far more so than for Windows 95/98. Rarely had issues with Windows 2000, that was a dream

CamperMan

defo... Vista is feckin rubbish... after all these years, Microsoft should have got it right.. if apple can do it with the mac.. why can't Microsft.. no excuse for turning this crap out..:mad:

Vista = slow, popup windows, updates, crashes, hanging :mad:
mac = it just does everything so well

cpu-dude

Stark wrote: »

Windows 2000 was a workstation/server version too, even though the inclusion of up to date DirectX and the like made it suitable for home use... Rarely had issues with Windows 2000, that was a dream

Yeah it's the reason I left it in, I used it for a good while before actually changing to XP - great OS, very stable and did what it was intended to do.

mickoneill30

CamperMan wrote: »

Vista = slow, popup windows, updates, crashes, hanging :mad:
mac = it just does everything so well

Ah keep the thread about Vista Vs other Windows OSes. Mac Vs Windows could fill another thread.

mickoneill30

cpu-dude wrote: »

Yeah it's the reason I left it in, I used it for a good while before actually changing to XP - great OS, very stable and did what it was intended to do.

Same for NT4. I was supporting that till 2003 on 2000 PCs. I think that for a lot of Windows OSes you get guys supporting it that think that if they can use Windows at home then they know enough to support it in work. I'm kind of fed up listening to people complain about how Windows (whatever) is unreliable because they don't really have a clue what they're doing.
It's not that complicated but you'll get guys complaining about the constant BSODs or crashing and hanging and ranting about how Mac or Linux is better. If you're getting frequent BSODs you've either got faulty hardware or you're doing something wrong. End of story.

On topic though Vista isn't the worse OS in history. The marketing was the worst in history. You can Google to see what MS did wrong. Vista should never have been allowed to be sold with many specs. I bought a cheapy laptop a few months ago and it ran like a dog. Wipe and put on XP and it's fine. Put Vista on a proper spec machine and it's fine too. With that said though Windows 7 is much better, but that's really only Vista 2

asdasd

Ah keep the thread about Vista Vs other Windows OSes. Mac Vs Windows could fill another thread.

Well then the thread title needs to change. I agree that this could become a Mac vs Window thing, but as a Mac fan I wrote that I thought OS X 10.0 was atrocious. ( But I knew that before I got it, it really was for early adopters as only 500K people ever used it before 10.1 came along and which was a lot better). Now OS X releases get to millions. Nowhere near as many as MS, but lots.

10.6 has some bugs. I dont think it was slower than 10.5, but neither was it remarkably faster. I think that Apple is really concentrating on the iPhone.

kaimera

CamperMan wrote: »

defo... Vista is feckin rubbish... after all these years, Microsoft should have got it right.. if apple can do it with the mac.. why can't Microsft.. no excuse for turning this crap out..:mad:

Vista = slow, popup windows, updates, crashes, hanging :mad:
mac = it just does everything so well

cos apple completely re-wrote their OS.

MS have to deal with so much legacy apps that they can't just re-write the windows code.

least that was my understanding - been a while since I read summet similar.

back on topic: I vista. Nee a problem I didn't cause myself that I couldn't fix.

haven't tried win7, any of the betas or final releases and I'm not even sure if I'l bother with it and just do a fresh vista x64 install.

+1 for ME as worst ever. *shudder*

mickoneill30

asdasd wrote: »

Well then the thread title needs to change.

Good point. I was wrong to post that then.
The OP is looking for worse OSes though. The other guy saying Mac is great is not really answering the OP.

asdasd

The OP is looking for worse OSes though. The other guy saying Mac is great is not really answering the OP.

True, Mac fans should pick the worst Mac Os. System 6? Does anyone remember? :-)

Cuddlesworth

asdasd wrote: »

True, Mac fans should pick the worst Mac Os. System 6? Does anyone remember? :-)

Nope, I enjoy partaking of a right click.