Vista Rants

I can’t even begin to tell you the pain I’ve suffered and witnessed at the hands of this monster.
As a sideline, I do IT support for individuals and small businesses by referral only - mostly friends & friends of friends, and all just non-techie ordinary civilians.
A lot of them buy new computers, with Vista installed - and then the pain starts. Vista has completely screwed all these people - they are lost in a sea of can’ts and won’ts and don’t know hows. From the way that Vista Mail (replacing Outlook Express) doesn’t remember & autocomplete more than the last 13 addresses typed into the To box (WHY kill such a useful feature? presumably so people will be encouraged to upgrade to Outlook) to the more serious security and approval features (GOD DAMN THE UIC TO HELL) which confuse users, irritate them, slow down everything and even undo things they’ve carefully spent a long time setting up. Connecting to broadband in the UK is a lottery with Vista - USB modems are uninstalled or buggered completely, and even ETHERNET modems are blocked - setting up fine and then disappearing on restart. And this is just the beginning of a massive list of inconveniences and stupidity. Microsoft deserve to be hit badly for this. Not least because it was so obviously an exercise in forcing people to rebuy both their OS and a new PC to run it - absolutely no need for it to be so demanding of memory and processor, as a sub-OSX OS.
I never realised how much I liked XP until I started using Vista.

I was actually starting to feel pretty good about my Vista laptop, until the other day when I was using a friend’s Celeron laptop running XP. Her computer blazed! I had forgotten how quick and agile XP was compared to Vista.

In short, my fairly powerful laptop is hobbled by Vista. I seriously think it’s collusion between the processor manufacturers and MS. Otherwise, why would anyone upgrade? Me, I just bought this computer and I’m ready for a quad-core just to make the OS run. (I’m running with all the eye candy turned off. My laptop looks like it’s running Win98.)

Another minor irritation is that I have 2 MS Mouse 3000 input devices and both are Vista certified/approved/whatever. About twice a day Vista loses track of my input devices. I have 3 USB ports, so it’s not the port. I have 2 mice, so that’s not it either. I’m big on re-booting to maintain contiguous blocks of free memory but twice a day is a bit too much, particularly since I have 4 GB.

It’s not a bad laptop. It’s a bad OS.

!

Hey Chris, iv been watching all of your Vista Videos over the past year and cant say i am having any the issues u are getting. I installed Vista Ultimate 32 and 64bit about a month ago now on 2 machines, one is 5 years old running an AMD 2600, 1Gb ram and GF 4600TI and the other one is new running a CoreDuo 6600, 4Gb ram and a GF 8800GTS. on both computers everything ran fine right away with out any drive issues.

I also installed SP1 last night and that to installed without any issues and im happy to say there are some speed improvements. It seems you just happen to be unlucky with Vista. Having said that im still sticking to XP64bit for my work machine for its speed, but Vista’s eye candy is very nice.
Iv used XP, Vista, Ubuntu 7.04 and OS X10 and find XP to be the best by far. its the fastest most stable and most compatible with software. But i do see Ubuntu creeping up. I can’t share your same feelings about OS X though, i find it to be sluggish and i hate that fact that i cant spec out what parts i want and cant install any software i want! The only OS i see dominating in the future is Linux.

Leo

Scary, I have been looking at a new desk top to order with Vista Ultimate on it. I have been a diehard PC fan – maybe I ought to be looking at a Mac.

Hi i had win xp sp2, and then i bought vista home premium, my scanner, fax and printer do not work, my ethernet wireless does not work and also i am having problems with my laser printer!
My dilemma is i want to go back to Xp where all these problems never existed, but do i need to purchase an extra copy of win Xp ? As i had a single install license originally, also i am returning win Vista as it has consumed too much of my life for me to deal with, but the 10 day period of returning it no questions, has passed so what do i do?

So.. let me get this straight… you installed a BETA

It’s a beta! If you don’t know what you are doing then stay away. LOL! yes a MAC would probably suit you better - nice and easy.

upgraded to vista from XP nothing but problems mainly with drivers freezing or vista telling me not compatible when they are all vista approved drivers and programs. When i installed it completely erased my old XP setting and files luckily i back up before i upgrade. And my computer is slower than before. so i would not bother with the upgrade until buying a new computer.

[continued from above] service pack for Vista and it didn’t go so well and based on that (according to this article) you would not recommend Vista. Wow. I mean… I know you hate Vista but maybe you should put that in the article so first time readers don’t just think you are basing your decision on Beta problems.

I guess I continue to question how so many people are having issues with Vista. So far the only problems that I know of that I may have run into is a lack of compatibility with Watchguards VPN client .. but that software is junk anyway. I use Vista every day all day. I’ve never made the mistake of getting myself tied to some off the wall programs like so many other people which helps me beat compatibility issues.

I cant help but mention the one user you read about in your video… they were upset because a weird fax program that they had been using in Windows ME!!!! wouldn’t work in Vista. Give me a break. Thats not even worth including in a commentary such as your video. My question to you Chris is what hardware are you running (trying to run) Vista on and what are the peripherals that you are having so much trouble with?

Im using Vista Business on a Lenovo Thinkpad z61t (Centrino Duo) built for XP.. “Vista Capable.” I have 1.5gb of ram and an 80 gb HD. I run software from Office to Photoshop to MagicISO to VMware Clients to Alcohol 120%. It took me a couple of weeks to download all the drivers from IBM/Lenovos massively user unfriendly website but after that it was smooth sailing.

*Sigh* VIA LA VISTA!

Didn’t you AGREED to do a BATA!!! test of the install, what were you expecting? Why are you bashing a product you were BATA testing? Did you back up the software that you were BATA testing before you installed the BATA version of the software? The software you are BATA testing was not a finished copy, that’s why you were BATA testing, you are now suppose to respond to MS with your experience so they can fix the bugs.

You do everyone a disservice when you bash a product that you agreed to BATA test.

I have vista home premium running a simple Acer laptop..

on-going issues with freeezing up with no solutions on the MS site fixing the issue. All drivers up to date etc.. no further forward…

Also - nothing showing in event viewer, performance monitor.. so I can’t even begin to tell what is causing the issue let alone fix it…

HP refuse to create Vista drivers for the Photosmart 7350 printer, so my lovely colour printer that worked fine under XP is now useless.
Vista caused my MP3s to skip when played under WMP11 - not a resource problem, apparently a driver conflict with my Soudblaster Extigy soundcard. So I can no longer enjoy music on computer which I could under XP.
I used get a low ping and good refresh rate on games on XP… now I don’t.

Am I glad I switched to XP? Am I hell!

Hmmm sounds like that wasnt too much fun for you! I sympathise. But then again this was beta code you installed so it seems a little harsh to completely write off Vista because the SP1 beta didnt work! I have been using Vista since its RTM release in Nov 06 and have had no problems. I also have a XP partition on the same machine and that has worked fine too with no weird interactions like you describe. I havent touched SP1 for Vista and wont until the final release. Then if it goes horribly wrong the ranting and raving will be wholly justified ;-)

Tim

Installed the Vista SP1 beta and it worked out fine for me, so guess you were unlucky :-) To be fair, if you don’t like unexpected results then you should probably avoid running BETA software. The whole point of the beta process is to resolve issues like yours. You’re looking to Mac to be your saviour, but would you consider running betas of the Mac OS?

Have to agree i’m afraid. Microsoft haven’t brought out a good version of Windows since v3.1 and now they seem to be forcibly directing everyone to install it. Had Vista, looked at Vista, didn’t like Vista.

Problem is for PC users theres no alternative.

So, you’re providing consumer advice along the lines of “avoid Vista”, because of a bad experience with a BETA service pack installation?

Other than this rant, have you provided feedback to Microsoft, such as system specs and software installed? That would be more helpful in the long run - it could be down to a simple software/hardware conflict that could be avoided in the final service pack if you told them about it. Your feedback could save someone else from the same headaches in the future.

System Restore is not really an adequate protective measure prior to installing something as major as a service pack (let alone a beta), but of course you knew that, right? I mean, you’re relying on the OS’ ability to heal itself after you’ve effectively performed open-heart surgery on it - that’s asking a bit much of a beta Service Pack.

It’s fun to rant about these things, but when given the opportunity to make a difference, however small, don’t pass it up. Microsoft software will never improve if everyone on the Service Pack beta programme took the same attitude as yourself.

Hmm - the word “beta” means “if you use this, you could screw your machine up”. I’ve been around enough engineers to know this one. So I’m not surprised that your machine is mashed. It was on the cards the moment you decide to install it.

If your computer and data is important to you, don’t use beta software.

All good points, however, don’t forget, the SP is a *beta*. It will not go smoothly. If you were part of the Beta process for XP and / or Vista itself, you will know how badly things can go :)

What do you expect if you install Beta software onto your machine… Its in beta for a reason!!

I had such high hopes for Vista too. But instead I now spend most of my time using Fedora or XP.

Haa-haa.
Just forget Microsoft and get something that works…
And costs 100% less…
How about Linux…
:-D

Have you tried removing the display adapter from Device Manager in Safe mode? If you can get into Safe mode, it sounds like the SP installed properly, but your display driver is fubar’d.

Did you file a bug report to the Beta team? You are on the Beta, right?That is the way to get the right people to look at this.

As far as reliability of Vista, I have been running it at home and at work for over a year. The ONLY problems I’ve had at work were display-driver related, which is not Microsoft’s fault. I’ve had zero problems at home.

That’s why it’s labelled as BETA… I hope you’ve submitted a bug about this so Microsoft will be aware about it?

I have a macbook pro, and also a desktop PC which runs Windows Vista, i have found it impossible to mess Vista up yet and its been quicker faster and more reliable than OSX 10.4.10. In fact i hated XP with a passion but find vista works very very well.

I think maybe you are slightly biased as 99% of mac users are, but in reality they are no better. Its all down to the user. trust me, ive got both, i use both for very different tasks.

Clearly you do not understand the meaning of BETA? :P

And SP1 for Vista? Offically its announced but did you get it from Windows? If not then, what can you expect?

p.s this made it to the bbc news websites tech page… and the blog is very unhelpfull as an moan at a unoffical version of a beta!

What do I think about Windows just being used as a virtual machine on a Mac………I’d rather chew broken glass!

I have both Mac and PC, and though years of using both I can say that PC/Windows has far more to offer. I hate the fact that Mac essentially forces you to “join the collective” in a sort of deranged Star Trek way.

You end up just like the Borg!

“There will be no individuality…all Macs are the same”

“You will only do things the way Mac wants you to do them”

Thou shalt not be able to upgrade anything except Mac software and unless we say so”

“Thou shalt not be able to personalise anything as this would result in “personal identity”…Mac will not allow this to happen”

“Mac users shall all be clones and if you can’t afford it then tough”

” Mac shall claim the graphics throne…which we have no right to…and are in fact no better than PC’s of the same spec.

I could go on and on. Unitl Mac allow people to make their own choices about what they want, how they want it, to be able to personalize and to let people BE ABLE TO REPAIR THINGS THEMSELVES….PC’s and windows will always be around and will always be more popular than Macs and OSX.

oh just in case by reading this you think I like Star Trek…well, I can’t stand that either!

Hello

I was more than chuffed to find an article on the bbc’s site regarding your statement.

I got vista on 2 machines the day it came out…it was ok for a start…then you do an update…it gets slower…another…slower….another…painfully slow.
Then i ran up XP quickly for something or other, and thought WOW this is fast. and since then i just boot up Vista every now and then for an update for it.

I am a mac fan and also cant wait for leopard…

My colleague whos been in IT for 30 years is now back on XP also, and for both of us we’re not going back for a long time.

Dan

Vista has compatability issues with prevista software (similar to Win 98 1st edition and XP when they first hit market). The difference between vista and its predecessors was that although XP may have hads its share of compatability issues, it was in all other regards a much improved OS. It was easy to forgive XP of its initial shortcomings because it was like nothing that had ever existed before its introduction into the computing world. Vista, on the other hand, does not compensate for its many miseries with the same consistent delivery of advanced functions. Vista is to XP what ME was to 98. This is an OS that does nothing measurably better than XP, it simply looks better. But what I dislike the most about Vista is the way it excludes me from the defrag process.
Mike

Every single day, I have to power off my vista laptop at least 3 times. Reason? Windows explorer stops working after about 2 hours leaving the computer in some kind of semi freeze (you know when you can access already open windows and can’t open any new ones)

Its a beta for a reason, if you’re not prepared for everything to go wrong don’t install beta versions. Have you ever installed a beta version of any of Apples software? No, because they wouldn’t want bad press like this.

Should i switch from xp to leopard when it relesases

Beta is for IT Professionals to test and debug the software. It is not designed to be used on a work machine that requires stability.

You shouldnt be using it for a start, and your talking about it like its a final product.

Learn to deal with beta problems or dont use it. Simple.

By reading ur blog, it seems you just generaly have an issue with MS.

Sp1 is still in beta. So not everyone will get perfect results. Risk of using a beta.

Microsoft just dont learn. First off the one that drives me crazy is when Bill gates, told the world how original Vista was.
How the search is new and amazing, how the side bar is intuitive and new technology. Errrrr wrong, I havent used Mac but even i know Mac had that stuff since Mac was Mac, compare the 2 and in style and the way it works everything Vista has was stolen from Macs 5 years, or more, old. The biggest difference is Mac is stable Vista…is as stable as a dried up crack fiend.
Bill Gates is suppose to be a bright man so why hasnt he realised whats hes doing, quiet obviously be hasnt got the damn point.
Vista is sinking, an its sinking fast.

Reasons why:

1. Despite Vista being a NEW OS why does it not support half of the world hardware. When XP was released it had Compatibility mod, great all the old games and stuff would work again.
But in Vista. a friend of mine bought a new PC with it and low an behold, a printer less than a year old, wouldnt work even on generic drivers. Microsoft need to wake up a realise they have just blown a big hole in their ship

2. The index that rates your system, apprently dosent even recognise new hardware, such as new grade graphics cards so the highest score you can get i think is something like 6.9 (Or 5.9 i cant remember). Come on update this

3. One of the best one to date, as always MS use the tiring and sad old “This new version of windows will be the most reliable to date, the most stable, and most user friendly” Yup heard this before.
How about every, single, time a new version arrives. And as always, its worth than the last one, when XP arrived it had more holes than the moon.
Vista is slow because MS cram too much into a NEW OS so you need a super computer just to run Vista, before you even want to run a game or graphics software. 3dFlip…oooo pretty…but slows your system down just to show off. Sidebar, Original? As i said before There has been Macs, Yahoo Widget engine, and Stardock. “Hello Microsoft, welcome to the future….5 years behind anyone else”

4. Unfortunatly, i will be going for Vista when i build my new PC next year, mainly coz i will have a super PC at the highest spec possible, even waiting for the more than likely AMD Phenom and Quad-Fire.
But also because as we all know, Some games now will only work on Vista such as Halo 2, and of course in the future new software will also stop working on vista such as 3DsMax 9. That and i dont wannt pay the money for XP (Overpriced) then a year later give MS aniother lump of cash to buy Vista (Funny the word over priced seems to be used a lot to discribe Microsoft Products (Office, Vista, XP an anything else they make)

Verdict: Now I’ve had my little rant an rave (Which was fun) All in all….Id say MS are sunk, new FREE versions of Office floating around, OpenOffice/IBM/Google.
Windows Vista being a bad little child in the playground.
Microsoft getting fined all that money by the EU (For pretty much bullying, which they still seem to be doing in Vista).

This is me, saying “Where in the world…is Bill Gates mind”

I lost a complete thesis paper due to Vista. Installing one of their updates actually manages to delete everything I had worked on in 24 hours, including the files stored externally… Imagine that! I agree 10,000,000%, Microsoft belongs solely on a Virtual Machine, or on Bootcamp when you feeling like Gaming on your Mac!

I am sorry for your disaster, no really I am!

I decided not to move to a Vista upgrade after remembering the problems when XP came out. From memory it was after SP2, before XP was really stable, and MS do have a very poor record for handling releases.

The biggest issues for me are that;

a) I have a lot of third party software that does the trick in XP but which apparently doesn’t work in Vista (nor never will!).
b) Vista apparently adds very little extra functionality.
c) In about 5 yrs time Vista may be gone, because there are rumours of a completely new OS system being developed and
d) Let’s be honest, boy hackers are going to aim at Vista, not XP which is now old hat. However it is very stable.

You might be interested in the news that Microsoft are prolonging the life of XP (by popular demand), as did Dell. The BBC web site has a story on this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7017624.stm, and I and a few like minded friends, have a quite laugh at the problems Vista can visit on the unwary or unlucky.

No doubt I will be stuck with Vista sometime, but not for at least the next 5 yrs, as I bought an XP Pro Laptop in the sales just before Vista came out.

Headline - beta software breaks machine!

Is this surprising?

I don’t know if beta testing involves any NDA for shouting in public about the problems, like it does for Apple. I’m all for Leopard, but re’ Windows, grumble about the quality shipping software, but not pre-release stuff.

Chris, I’m right with ya pal. Vista was enough to make me switch over to a MacBook. More explicitly, the utterly terrible Sony Vaio SZ-VGN460N (now christened the VGN470N) did it. I really can’t believe Microsoft let this whole chain of events happen! It was a “kinda understandable” mistake when Windows ME came out, but to do it twice? Amazing.

I was an early Vista adopter because I’m a desktop admin, and I know its not going to go away… So I figured I should learn it early.

I’ve had no problems with it… none. I almost had a problem, but I fixed it.

I do understand how people can complain its slower or that it takes more system resources, but if you have a bleeding edge system (Core2Duo, 3+gig ram, 8800GTX, etc) the additional resources are nothing. And, I can understand if a system a few years old is having problems with the system demand from Vista, but honestly, it shouldn’t have had Vista loaded in the first place. Its always smarter to load the OS that the hardware was designed for. You don’t load Win 2K on a Pentium1 w/ 32mb of ram, you don’t load XP on a Pentium2 w/64mb of ram. Why do people expect Vista to run well on a Pentium3 or 4 with 512mb of ram? I would never in my life recomend tha someone upgrade from XP to Vista… But I would also never recomend that anyone get XP on thier brand new system.

99% of all the problems I’ve heard about from other users I know (not counting blogs such as this) were of the line “I hate it because xxxx driver isn’t supported”. But I have to ask, should we hate MS or Vista because a 3rd party vendor didn’t write a driver for it? Its certainly not MS’s fault that Brother failed to make Vista print drivers, and its not MS’s fault the first round of NVidia Vista drivers were flakey. Instead we should look to that manufacturere and ask them why THEY released bad drivers, or none at all. Or, as in 80% of the 99% of complaints… there IS a Vista driver out there, just the user is to lazy or to ignorant to go get it!

The closest thing I’ve had to a problem is compatability issues due to the lack of VB6 Runtimes, and Proprietary installer’s that use the non-MS way of checking OS compatability. But in both cases there are fixes if you are savy. VB6 runtimes can be loaded, and MSI files can be edited. Every tool and game I used under XP is Vista compatable… Thats alot more than I can say about the DOS–>Win98–>Win2k–>XP transitions.

As for problems with the SP1 beta… I’m not overly suprised there were problems, I’m not a fan of Beta patches/drivers. Sometimes they can be a life saver, such as Beta Nvidia drivers to improve DX10 support, but usualy I’m quite content to sit and wait for the final release.

Mac or Linux OS’s… they’re great if you’re not interested in gaming. If you view your PC as the hub of intertainment in your home, and PC games are a big part of that entertainment, there simply arn’t any non-MS options out there.

are you suggesting that beta software was unstable, and shouldn’t be used on production systems?

Say it isn’t so!

I am running vista ultimate. The only problem I have so far is that it’s slower now than when I was running XP, also my graphics play holy hell with me whenever it chooses. Like my desktop goes all haywire and the taskbar climbs on top of the screen. When this happens I have to log out by using ctrl+alt+delete, and login again to clear it. I thought it was a spyware or virus infection initially but after scanning my system clean I am now sure it’s a bug or something with the graphics adapter. I even had to upgrade my vga drivers, still the same problem. Apart from this no problem at all, and I like the way vista looks and works; better than XP if you ask me.

Interesting.

My partner recently purchased a new laptop loaded with Vista - and XP went on within 3 weeks. Hardware problems, software problems, it’s slow compared to XP, the fancy graphics were rough and sluggish.

Getting Vista fully removed and XP installed was a nightmare, and with the particular laptop and version of Vista concerned, we eventually had to remove the hard drive and insert it into my Macbook in order to write over the disc, before putting the drive back and successfully installing XP.

I did suggest to her in the first place she should go for a Mac and run XP on it but……

I may just enjoy punishment but I’ve actually installed Vista twice on my machine. I also dual boot xp which frankly is almost a necessity. Apart from the initial annoyance of UAC and various driver problems (bye bye webcam, usb headset, digital camera) I actually got on quite well with Vista and had a lot less problems than a lot of people reported.

My first major problem was the ATI drivers released specifically for Vista. Installed them, rebooted and hello black screen, hello Vista start up sounds and then nothing. By random mouse movements/keypresses I could tell Vista was alive under its nice new sleek black/invisible theme but it took a trip to safe mode and some driver bodging before it got back to normal.

The next thing you notice once the newness wears off is how incredibly slow Vista really is. I don’t have a monster of a machine anymore but I did have 1GB RAM which is rediculously listed as the “recommended” amount. I would never even try to work with Vista with less than 2GB as a minimum spec. So I figured I’d bump up the amount of RAM I had to 3GB by adding 2×1GB sticks. Powered on the machine and hello nice informative blue screen errors. Booted to XP which had no problems, so reinstalled Vista.

All was fine as far as Vista goes… for a while. Randomly when I booted up, blue screen again (maybe once every week or two). Randomly also a black screen (although far less common). Around about this time I got myself a TV card and started using media center which I must admit is quite impressive. That was until I started getting guide errors. Then recording stopped working. It would record a show, then once it was meant to stop, crash. I get the media center error pop up telling me to restart the machine (which didn’t help).

Oddly about 3 weeks later it fixed itself. Not long after this automatic updates started causing problems. The updates would download, start installing and then blue screen. I didn’t manage to successfully shut down my PC for about 10 days as these updates kept bluescreening. Then about 3 days ago the updates started going through as normal.

Which leaves me where I am today. I occasionally still get random boot up blue screens, I sometimes get messages saying Windows has failed to connect to the event notifier service which seems to have no consequence but at least things seem to be relatively stable.

On the plus side driver support has improved, I can now use almost all of my defunct hardware. The only real reason I still use Vista regularly is I don’t have the media center version of XP so my tv card is quite a frustrating experience on there due to the bundled software.

Ummm… its a BETA of Serive Pack 1…. Beta being its not finished… WHY would you want to put a Beta, Time locked Service pack on your main PC in the FIRST place… God what a totally stupid and pointless article..
You are bitching about the fact that you installed BETA software on a rig that was working in the first place then you proceed to bitch about it how its broken and how never in a snowballs chance will you reccomend anyone installing Vista…

The same crap could happen if you installed a Beta of any other OS.. The key word is B-E-T-A… Idiot…

Just to sum up… if you were any kind of Computer professional, you would try the Beta software in a test enviroment, be it a test computer or a Virtual PC… You had it coming to you.. Go whine elsewhere..

Hello

I installed Vista Home Premium on a HP DV8025EA laptop with Turion 64, 1MB RAM and ATI Radeon Express 128MB graphics. It runs hopelessly slow so very soon now I will upgrade it back to XP where it ran smooth as velvet. I am glad I took a Ghost image so I have that to go back to.

That is shameful, I realise it’s a beta, but honestly the Vista experience is starting to really look like a monumental flop, almost as bad as Windows ME.

I personally believe Microsoft is going to need to do some serious rethinking about they code an OS. There are too many licensing issues, too many bugs, too many annoyances, and to top it off, their 7yr old system (XP) works better and faster, and is more reliable.

I posted a comment earlier, but no idea where it went. I’ll repeat it lol.

I lost a whole thesis paper when doing one of Vista’s updates a little while back. It even managed to delete the file on the external back-up drives, imagine that! I agree 10,000,000% that Microsoft belongs solely on a Virtual Machine or Bootcamped for when you want to play PC games on your Mac.

~Vaughn

Uh.

Make sure the releases you’re using are stable, maybe?

Hmm, I don’t think you could PAY me to go back to XP after having used Vista for a month. For me Vista works a treat, the only issue I’ve had with it being a problem running Homeworld 2 due to Securom stuff, but even that was solved.

Maybe I’ll try the SP1 beta myself.

Here’s the tip of the iceberg. It only gets worse from here. I refer you to my submission, under the title of “I would like to register a Complaint”. My problems are relatively small, but the horror stories will ramp up from there, I’m sure.

In the morning, in the evening, ain’t we got fun! ;D

i am having no problems, but it is slower then xp. Things stop responding more too, and explorer EXPLORER stops responding alot…

No problems as I am using Mac OSX Tiger - switched 5 years ago and have not looked back!

Totally agree! I had pretty much the same experience. The few Vista machines we have were this week rolled back to XP - and there they will stay. We are gradually moving the entire company to Mac OS X in any case.

I keep hearing this stuff but never seem to meet anyone in person with these problems. All three of my personal installs went well. I hunted around for a NVIDIA notebook driver at one point, but that’s it. And I have some pretty exotic hardware.

I do hear (in person) allot of weird stuff, like VISTA kills my wireless network, VISTA crashed my HD, and VISTA makes its rain; but I never seem to be affected or present when it happens.

BTW: I have no doubt that you had problems with the SP Beta, it is a beta. I’m sure it’s full of peril.

However, I just don’t see myself buying a Mac. I’ve checked out a Mac with pretty much every release. It seems to suffer from all the same types of irritations that any other OS does with a sometimes cleaner look and I’d still need Windows to run my apps in any case. It’s also more $$ for less attractive hardware and less choice, though the casual user probably doesn’t care as much as I do.

Good luck!

I’m running Vista on a new Alienware desktop and it’s sweet - works perfectly. I can’t believe that you didn’t back up using an image (e.g. Ghost etc) before loading a beta update. Still, live and learn I guess - invest in Ghost or another imaging system, they work extremely well. Just like Vista, eh? ;-)

The EXTREME lack of x64 driver support for a multitude of things. For example, I have a Belkin N1 wireless desktop card (F5D8001 v1.0). They (Belkin) tout their products as ‘vista compatible’ yet this is misleading because there are NO Vista 64-bit drivers for ANY of their products. Although I’m only concerned about the one I have. There are two things that really bother me about this.

1) Vista was supposed to include so many drivers (native support) for a great many things but this apparently doesn’t include Vista x64. and
2)not only is it misleading for a company like Belkin to say they’re ‘vista compatible’ when that’s not completely true (false advertising anyone?) but for MS to allow companies to say that when it’s not entirely true is just as bad.

Businesses and companies all over the world have known for a while that Vista was coming. To not have at least one version of finalized drivers (in this case 64 bit) by now is crazy. I attribute some of this to the lack of communication between MS and companies like Belkin.

Then there are the little things in Vista that really bug me. By themselves they’re not that bad, but added up together it’s quite annoying. One example of this is the ‘menu bar’ in IE7. By default it’s not turned on, and once you turn it on, you can’t drag it to where normally goes or anywhere you like. You have to go into the registry to put it in it’s traditional spot. That’s just one thing that bothers me. That and I have a large dislike for the UAC.

My PC was built with the intention of running the ‘latest and greatest’ of OS’s. So far the former part of that statement is true, it is the latest. But the latter part of that statement is well… nowhere near to the truth.

i upgraded to vista from xp on my new compaq presario laptop…the sheer joy of a 5 hour installation left me lost for words.booted up nicely only to crash after 5 minutes every tiwas 3 months agme i started ie7, that wonderful shiny updated web browser. opening documents was a breeze…for about 3 minutes, when good old vista decided it had had enough and shut down. after a lot of exasperation and research i decided to try a live cd of ubuntu linux. imagine my surprise when everything just worked as it was meant to. i decided to go all the way with it and installed ubuntu and removed vista. that was 3 months ago and i haven’t looked back since. if microsoft focused more on reliability, they would still have a loyal customer instead of one who will never return.

I couldn’t resist upgrading to Vista, and boy do I regret it. Yes it looks good (although alongside OS X or Ubuntu w. Beryl its very ordinary), but simple file operations are still a nightmare, though slightly improved of late. Internet Explorer crashes are frequent, restoring from sleep state usually causes an IE7 restart….I could go on.
This is on a dual core intel with 2gig of RAM, which should fly.
In my experience it’s a dog of an OS. XP had at least gotten reliable, and if I could have Dreamweaver and Fireworks native under Ubuntu then I’d leave Vista behind forever.
My advice is steer well clear for the time being.

Vista may be bad at times (although it seems to be OK if you run it on a system which was specifically designed for it). My gripe is with Office 2007. Have you tried to find all the things which were so obvious in all the other versions? This is where Microsoft have really shot themselves in the foot. My company is due to upgrade to 2007 this winter. I’m praying for a project overrun…

Of course, being an expert you did have a complete useable and tested backup taken before you intalled the beta SP1 didn’t you? If you didn’t then I for one have precious little sympathy for you.

My vista is fine, both on my PC and my laptop. But then I don’t go near beta software - it rarely offers any great benefits and often gives a lot of trouble. Microsoft should pay people to run beta software - after all you’re doing their quality testing for them free of charge!!

I think for some reason that everyone upgrading from XP (or linux, but why would you?) to Vista has had problems, while most people buying new Vista systems have been trouble free.

I’m running Vista now, it’s great on my new Toshiba laptop with only 1GB of RAM… only problem is games don’t run that well, but it’s a laptop with Intel graphics so I don’t expect much…

@Colcam :: Thats utter FUD and BullDUNG… You could have just popped the XP CD in and repartitoned the drive and formatted it with XP… You didnt even have to take the Hard drive out of the notebook. Its obvious you dont know what you are doing and are just spreading more FUD about Vista, because you couldnt be arsed to even learn how it works..

I have been running Vista X64 since release. I had a few minor issues with drivers in the first month. But right now, it runs just as fast as my XP system ever did and is nicer to look at to boot. I run all my games, apps (some dating back to 2000) and I have had not one IOTA of trouble… So onward with your FUD Crusade with the rest of you.. I for one am glad you are not using Vista.

I posted a comment earlier - is this free speech or is this blog just completely biased? Anyway like I said before it’s a Beta! you fool! so don’t complain. There are plenty of warnings about the fact it’s a Beta for testing! If you don’t know what you are doing step away. Go and get a MAC if you want your hand held.

“Explorer crashes are frequent, restoring from sleep state usually causes an IE7 restart….I could go on.”

All driver and/or third party hack related.. you need to check your drivers.. I havent had IE crash unless Im running some third party addons like IE7Pro..

“This is on a dual core intel with 2gig of RAM, which should fly.”

Yes it should but obviously you have some underlying issues which is preventing it and you really need to find out what they are… did you do an upgrade by any chance? if so then you need shooting with a large salmon..

No version of windows EVER upgraded correctly.. Fresh format and fresh install every time… thats where 99% of “Vista Upgrade issues” come from. People upgrading over the top of thier old OS..

“In my experience it’s a dog of an OS. XP had at least gotten reliable, and if I could have Dreamweaver and Fireworks native under Ubuntu then I’d leave Vista behind forever.
My advice is steer well clear for the time being.”

And XP was the same way for the first 12 months.. all the naysayers staying away until minor driver issues were sorted out for the minority.

I am a network administrator and provide tech support for a company of about 100 PC users. My new work laptop came with Vista. I ran it 2 weeks before moving to Linux.

One of the better features of Vista, is when you try to connect to a network share that you know is out there like \\SERVER3\COMMON and it is not connecting. You can second guess yourself and think, OK, maybe I typed it in wrong, lets go browse the network. So you close out the window where you had tried to connect to the share but nothing was happening.

Now, no internet. Some icons when you click on them don’t respond. When you click on the start menu so you can reboot the computer or log off. Well, the shutdown menu is now missing.

No problem, lets do what we would do in Windows XP, press CTRL-ALT-DELETE and do a shutdown from the task mananger…except the Vista task manager does not show any shutdown, logout, reboot options.

So there I am, after trying to browse a network share in vista, with no internet, most applications won’t run, can’t get a command prompt, and cant log out or reboot. ALL FOR ATTEMPTING TO BROWE A NETWORK SHARE.

I actually quite liked Vista for the few months I had it. While I was at uni it was very stable, never had any spyware or viruses, rarely crashed, and looked great! However, at the start of the summer holidays I had more spare time and decided to install some games on it. Turns out although my graphics card (GeForce 6600) ran vista, had vista drivers, and was vista compatible, my specific version of the graphics card (by MSI) was not supported, and games ran at a snails pace. So, the other day I reinstalled XP on my second hard drive. For some reason, even though Vista is still installed on C:\, I don’t get the choice what to boot into, it just goes right into XP. I was hoping to dual-boot, with games in XP and general computing in the much nicer Vista. Also, within 20 minutes on XP I already had a virus! Virtuamundo or something like that. I’ve spent the last 48 hours trying to remove it and finally managed. I’ve also been to deviantArt and now my XP looks exactly like Vista and runs faster in games, which is a consolation I suppose :)

I saw a link to this article on the BBC website and came along expecting to find some definitive information, but instead I find a Linux/Mac fanboy telling the general public to avoid Vista because he was brainless enough to install a beta service pack without (apparently) understanding what that meant.

Or ARE you brainless? Maybe not. Maybe you’re just another MS hater who deliberately went out of his way to use a beta service pack in the hope that something would go wrong and give you something to whine about.

Iv little time for fanboys because they have a tend