Vista Rants

Vista Rants

When you lose evangelists likeChris Pirillofrom the Windows camp, it’s a bad sign: Do I recommend Windows Vista? Not a snowball’s chance in………..I’m waiting on Apple to release Mac OS X Leopard. As far as I’m concerned at this point, Microsoft is taking a huge hit. The future of

There is a parallel situation in the software field. Microsoft now has Windows Vista as their flagship operating system. Vista, however, has landed with a thud. Neither users nor IT staffs like it. Even many of theleading voicesin the “all for MSFT and MSFT for all” crowd are saying that they can no longer deal with Vista’s failings. There is no excitement around Vista. What do you do if you have an ugly daughter that no one wants to marry? Well, you can set prospects

Chris Pirillo

(Kelly O’Hair’s Blog) Amazon’s Dynamo (All Things Distributed) Four Myths Government and Media Use to Scare Us About ‘Dictators’ (AlterNet:) The Code C.R.A.P. Metric Hits the Fan – Introducing the crap4j Plug-in (Artima)Vista Rants(Chris Pirillo) The Bug That Shut Down Computers World-Wide (Worse Than Failure) Programming message services in Java ( Reg Developer) BEA balances VMware with Xen (Reg Developer) Report Says Firm Sought to Cover Up Iraq Shootings

Vista. I go to Microsoft friendly websites like eWeek and PCMag.com and find articles like these: Night of the Living Vista The Vista Irrelevancy Ok, so it’s not just me, a pro-Linux guy who is feeling the pain. Popular blogger and pro-Microsoft fanChris Perillois not a big fan of Vista either. The more I search the more complaining I encounter. I realize that some of this is people’s resistance to change. But I don’t recall an all out revolt like this when XP came out. When XP came out, it was a significant

like photos and I think that after trying my vista pc with its updates built in (it falls over on the same update each time it tries to do it once has re downloaded it/them. so it makes me a little more wary when someone like chris pirillo who has ablogposts on the update for vista – sp1 and what happens when he tried to update. perhaps i should replace the latop with a macbook with parallels or fusion and try it that way?

Quote: >http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/09/28/vista-rants/> > Last night, I tried to install a Beta of SP1 for Vista. To put it mildly, > it didn’t go so well. Coincidentally, two viewers have written in to ask > me how I feel about Vista.

Even some well-known long-time advocates of Windows such as Chris Pirillo have bailed on Vista. Not only has Pirillo reverted to XP on his PC, he’s been toying with Mac OS X for months. Here’s what he had to say on hisWeb sitejust today: Do I recommend Windows Vista? Not a snowball’s chance in………..I’m waiting on Apple to release Mac OS X Leopard. As far as I’m concerned at this point, Microsoft is taking a huge hit. The future of Windows, in my opinion, is

make the move when they’re ready.” Which seems to be corporate-speak for “Just give us a few months to try and fix it.” Technology expert Chris Pirillo writes on his eponymous blog, “Do I recommend Windows Vista?Not a snowball’s chance in …I’m waiting on Apple to release Mac OS X Leopard. As far as I’m concerned at this point, Microsoft is taking a huge hit.” 2:06 PM ET | 10- 1-2007 | permalink | comments (4) | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

And thats my 2 cents 4 this sunny Friday, October 5, 2007. http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog/archive/2007/10/05/imac-ownership-day-0-where-is-my-applications.aspx http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/09/28/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 tendency to doing things just like this; Deliberately going out of their way to find faults and then making loud whining noises about their problems without giving their audience all of the relevant information in context.

As has correctly been pointed out by others here: You installed a Beta service pack, and because something went wrong you then advise people to avoid Vista. I simply cannot believe that you did not understand the risks involved in such an action, which suggests that you have very deliberately gone out of your way to slate Vista, with no apparently good reason to do so.

I often wonder what motivates fanboys to do such things. Is your own personal OS preference really so bad that you need to constantly voice negative opinions about the competition?

I think perhaps these fanboys need to switch off the computers (Whatever OS they happen to run) and spend a little more time in the real world, dealing with real issues and trying to break out of their immature mind set.

I apologise if my comments appear to be rude. Its not intentional, but honestly, what were you thinking when you wrote this puerile article!

As most are pointing out, the software you installed was a beta. Bla bla bla. Shame on you for not expecting a service pack to bring down your machine. As I see it, your real error here was installing a MICROSOFT beta. Witch, as we all know is really an alpha. MS likes to let the general populous do there beta testing for them. Why else would they so desperately need a sp1 for vista so soon after it’s release? After all, what are you going to do… lean Linux?

Most of the comments here tend to be of the ‘Vista is great’ or ‘Vista is rubbish’ variety. I can understand this is going to be the typical user’s point of view: if brand XYZ toaster doesn’t work (well), the user isn’t going to be concerned with the technical questions of why, but just put it in the bin and buy another one.

But I hope some people will be curious enough to read the comments I have on some of the issues as to why Vista is or isn’t great.

First of all, it is necessary to understand that most of what makes up the Vista operating system, from the user’s point of view, is not written by Microsoft at all. Instead there is a multitude of ‘device drivers’ and other components that are written by a dizzying multitude of hardware manufacturers and other third parties. These components all run in ‘kernel mode’, which means that if any one of these components has a fault in it, that fault is capable of crashing the whole system (and is quite likely to do so).

Now, the fact that all these components run in kernel mode was a Microsoft decision, and I believe Microsoft were monumental fools in making that decision in the first place. Nevertheless, when Vista goes belly-up, be aware that it is almost certainly some non-Microsoft piece of software that is the direct culprit. Your experience of Vista will indeed vary depending on your hardware.

Next, a long-standing Microsoft policy that has perhaps come back to haunt them very terribly is to hack their own operating system in order to make it accommodate (popular) application software that behaves wrongly. Microsoft bend over backwards in this respect; they even go so far as to make the OS effectively compensate for what are really bugs in application software.

This is probably madness. It certainly seems like madness to me (a thoroughbred software engineer). Microsoft’s ‘business’ (marketing) department has often been accused of being to blame for imposing this policy against the will of the technical people; I would love to know if this is true or not, I certainly do not know myself.

Nevertheless, given that this policy holds sway, it’s not difficult to see why Microsoft has such difficulty defining and documenting its APIs. Various evidence suggests that the ‘business’ department positively prevents it from happening. They see it as enabling them to control the third parties who publish application software, especially if that software competes with some Microsoft product. It can be assumed that, in many ways, the failings of Vista are designed-in. Microsoft deliberately make it difficult for third parties to interface their software with Vista.

Finally, I recall the days when Microsoft published a magazine in which they demonstated some of their own code. Examination of that code makes it abundantly obvious the jaw-dropping amateurishness of the programmers at Microsoft. I’m quite sure Microsoft is not alone in this respect, and I suppose they may have a few star programmers whose code is superb. But you can be pretty sure that when a leviathan company assigns thousands of amateur programmers to a system software project (that requires a very high level of skill and precision), it’s going to be a small miracle that the result works at all.

The problem with real problem with Vista is that XP with SP2 is a damn brilliant OS, and to compete with it, it has to try and introduce gimmicks such as Aero, AUP etc which will only ever introduce more problems…………..at the end of the day people, it is an OPERATING SYSTEM.

Why change if what you already have is brilliant? It is not something you hang on a wall, or show off to neighbours in a garden, and it is certainly not a fifth appendage substitute….its purpose is to as smoothly as possible operate your hardware and run your software.

XP did this very well….Vista was doomed to never initially behave like this……..add on the fact that for some reason it is an absolute beast of a resource hog in comparison with XP, and you are quiet frankly off your head if you would prefer to have Vista over XP.

All we need now is for MS to release DX10 for XP and goodbye Vista forever hopefully. Ubuntu should aim for nothing more than XP.

PS – Server 2008 is equally as resource hoggy…..WTF have MS done to the most successful combination of OS/Server software out there? :/

I have went from beta to actual release and I would never go back to XP. After using Vista , xp now seems outdated.I for one had many more issues with XP. Vista for me has been excellent. At the begining i was dual booting but realized i was never using XP any longer. I run old hardware(Printers,Scanner,Ext hard drives) and software . Plenty of games. Some I run in compatibility mode …But no issues as of yet.

I’ll be the first one to admit that Microsoft screwed up Vista and screwed it up royally. However, I’ll also have to admit that I have had ZERO problems with Vista which were software related. I defied reason when I UPGRADED my laptop XP Home install to Vista Ultimate. The upgrade was seamless after I downloaded a few new drivers.

I built a new desktop a few months ago (Intel Core 2 Duo Q6600, 2GB GDDR2 800, nVIDIA 8800GTS) and installed Vista Home Premium on it. Again, like before, I have experienced absolutely ZERO problems in terms of reliability, stability, speed, or bugs.

I then proceeded to install Vista on 3 other machines in my house, including a home server and Media Center PC. Again, like the other two, I have been running these flawlessly with zero issues.

Maybe I’ve gotten lucky. Or maybe I just know what I’m doing when it comes to selecting the right hardware. I don’t know.

One thing I’m sure of, however, is that were OS X had the same scale of hardware support that Vista or XP does, it would have exactly the same problems. The issue is NOT with Microsoft’s implementation of the OS in terms of reliability and stability (they did over promise and under-deliver, however). The real issue lies with third-party driver manufactures not getting it right.

This is both a strength and weakness of Windows. It’s also the strength and weakness of OS X. While the operating system may run perfectly stable, I can’t pull out the stock nVIDIA 7xxx graphics card and put in 2×8800GTS cards in SLi configuration, can I? My choices on the hardware side are extremely limited.

And to be honest, until that changes, I will not be moving to OS X. Period. I’m too much of a hardware control freak.

- Adam
http://www.adamreyher.com

Installing BETA windows components on a computer with a full hard drive is a BAD idea.
#1 You should never let your hard drive run out of space, especially if it has you OS installed on it.
#2 You should only install beta software and especially a beta service pack if you know what you’re doing AND it’s not a big deal to you if it causes problems.
You can’t just expect a beta service pack to be perfect. It’s the definition of beta. It means the software has not been fully tested and approved for the masses. You sir are part of the masses. And it’s obvious from the steps you took to try to fix the problem that you don’t know what you’re doing so you shouldn’t be installing it in the first place. But the good thing is that you found a bug in the beta. Installing a service pack with a full hard drive will hose your system. Now you’re going to be a good beta tester and report the bug to Microsoft, right?

Just a few quick pointers:

-there is a shut down option, press start, see the arrow next to the padlock? try pressing that.

-the black screen with the mouse? thats what happens when you have too many startup program. i have it nowadays, be bloody patient! give it a few minutes and itll load up.

-don’t use ctrl+alt+del, use ctrl+shift+esc (task manager people!)

-drivers? what drivers? I haven’t need any so far!

-only problem i’ve had it transferring files! but that was soon gone when I installed the hotpack thing.

[however I do agree with whoever said they scrwed up in Office, man that sucks nowadays, you have to change the filetype for it to work properly in other versions of Office, but the new extension does cut file size down half of what it used to be....]

I was an early adopter with XP and it was a really buggy o/s until SP2 came out & incompatible with older software. Vista is less buggy and less of a problem child but it is newer than XP and currently not as good. What do people expect though? All these anti-Microsoft moaners who run LInux and whine about Macs are welcome to them. It isn’t like Apple aren’t a massive capitalist computer company just like Microsoft!

I have a computer servicing business & process ~300 systems a year for home & business clients. Vista has proved to be as popular as a black widdow in a lucky bag! The most common request we get is “I got this new computer which came with Vista & we hate it. How much is it to remove it & supply XP?” Never once yet have we been asked for Vista & we have never sold a copy yet. Lots of new machines especially Toshiba & Compaq have no drivers available for XP already. I have encountered problems with networking, drivers, freezing, dissapearing programs, printer problems, boot loops, inability to recover/restore properly, inability to transfer data to/from XP, other programs & even though we were told it would be more secure scumware infestations & extortionware infections not detectable or removable by any currently available security software which I am aware of (I have a manual method I have developed over the years & can find most infections given time). This OS is a load of garbage which offers nothing for it’s users other than heartache.

I have not once had a problem with Windows Vista. I had a Dell 1gig ram, 1.5mhz pentium 4 computer upgraded from xp to vista. It was seamless, no problems, Vista YES was slower on the dell, decided to upgrade my computer, buy a whole new computer (which is what microsoft wanted you to do with vista) they know it does not upgrade well, so I bought a new computer which came with Vista Home Premium installed, its a Intel Quad 4 cpu with 4gigs of ram, runs AWESOME. Not one problem, lucked out my scanner, printer, webcam all my old hardware had windows vista updated drivers. I am very happy with Windows Vista.

Scott
http://www.scottsgnome.com

I have Vista. It’s been working pretty well for me, though it is slow compared to XP or Ubuntu (I use XP at work, and Ubuntu on my laptop). Microsoft intentionally made Vista a RAM hog, trying to force everyone to buy a new computer, at least that’s how it appears. And it has backfired incredibly on them.

You installed a Beta release, you had it coming. You have no right to complain, or say XP is better when you install Beta software – it’s installed at your own risk, and when you install critical beta software that drastically alters the operating system, you have to be prepared to lose everything – so make frequent backups.

That is all.

It seems to me that with all of you technically minded people spouting off about ghost and linux and dx10 and so on and so forth that you all have forgotten one important thing.
Thats me and my mother and half a dozen of my friends who have no idea what you are talking about, and yet are still going to be forced somewhere in the future to use Vista or change to a mac and lose all the software we already have.
If you guys(system administrators and whatnot) can’t agree on whether the system is any good spare a thought for us poor “ordinary users who are supposed to navigate this minefield.
The fact is that xp works for me and I dont want to change to Vista but I will be forced to when the support for xp is withdrawn in the future.
Oh and a quick aside to people like Cythrawl, you shouldn’t be allowed out in polite soicety, because you have some idea what you are talking about it doesn’t give you licence to talk to other people as if they are morons. cogent argument and not insults will ensure people actually listen to you, where as abrasive rudeness will get you excactly what you deserve – contempt

Chris, I watched you install that BETA version of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista on your Ustream.tv web site live.

I questioned your actions in live chat about installing beta software on a production Windows Vista computer at that time, yet you ignored my comment in live chat.

You lost credibility, Chris, since beta software was not meant for use on a stable production Windows Vista machine.

Has the Apple corporation poisoned your thinking now?

Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Ive no issues with vista its pre-installed on both my core 2 vaio notebooks and hasnt skipped a beat but as has already been said its an operating system a means to run applications and in that respect it brings nothing that could be considered both new AND useful to the party over what XP already offered.

Vista an OS for those with no real work to do and who really need to get out more..

I bought a machine with Vista, a dual core chip and 1gb of ram – the thing pants even trying to run the OS let alone Photoshop, or any other respectable application that ran just fine under XP – I hated XP but hey it worked! Here I have a brand new machine that crawls along at the speed of a snail with arthritis! I tried a dual boot with both Mandriva Linux and Ubuntu and they… fly! Sadly some of my apps. run only on Windows, and some drivers are not made for Mandriva / Ubuntu etc. (like my TV tuner card) so I have to put cash in Bill’s pocket anyway… As to networking, my stable for years wireless system running on a Linksys router no longer worked, – WEP was unobtainable and WPA crashed – but when I upgraded to a ‘Vista compatible’ unit it came back up – leaving me 79 dollars the poorer – and as I’ve been in IT for 25+ years, and qulaif9ied as a Microsoft Professional and a Cisco routing engineer I hate to think what the average user would do? Vista is a bad smell – let’s hope someone come soon with the computer equivalent of Oust!

I have absolutely no idea what all you people are talking about. In April this year I bought a relatively inexpensive Compaq laptop pre-loaded with Vista Home Premium, I THINK IT IS BRILLIANT, everything works very well, the built in security features gives me a lot of confidence and the step-by-step operating instructions are clear and well thought out.
The updates download automatically without any problems and I have downloaded numerous programmes e.g. open office and Picasa without any trouble.
I think that “the average PC user” like myself just want something that works, whereas the Anoraks want to find problems so they can write about it.

Congratulations retard, you’re a massive fucking idiot.

I have been a longterm windows user from away back on version 3.1 through the many different server softwares to XP on all home and business machines. I needed a new laptop and picked one up with Vista preinstalled, no option for XP when buying, just Vista supported.

It was an absolute nightmare of an OS to use, Vista prevented me from working rather than just letting me get on with things, it took two weeks to figure out how to get rid of all the security features. Security alert, you moved the mouse, security alert you clicked the mouse, it became so frustrating to use that I felt like throwing the laptop against a wall at times. I would scream at the screen, close the lid and walk away for 10 minutes.

Instead, one month old, I threw it on eBay and got rid of it quickly.

So a trip to one of the new Apple stores, ran some image processing tests in comparison to what I could do on the PC with similar specs, and was really happy with the performance, so I left with a MacBook Pro and a new 24″ iMac and I can get through in one day what took 3 or 4 days using Vista, Really!.

OSX just works, the OS doesn’t take over, it is there when I need it, app installations are a breeze in comparison with windows installers. And for those few apps (sorry, programs) that are only for the PeeCee, I have XP running in a Virtual Machine. If and when XP crashes, I can still get on with other work on the same machine while the virual machine with xp reboots in the background.

Got to agree with you Chris, the future for the forseeable future is windows on a Mac when you really need windows. I have started to learn to find apps for the mac and forget about windows at all.

I see developers clambering to port their apps over to OSX, the curtains have finally been drawn on microsoft’s windows.

I tried installing Vista Home Premium on a very powerful Sony Desk top and it took aaaaages- and when it finished I found the interface was just boring, slow and coming back with the old Windows can’t do, won’t do,self destruct in five minutes rubbish !
However I then installed Vista via Parrallel Desktop on a new intel mac book and the loading was much quicker and it work first time and still does but I still think Microsoft have way missed the mark here made more noticeable by being able to switch between “tiger” and “Vista” at a click. Vista looks and responds as though it was from last century ! On this showing stay well clear !

I’ve been a PC user all my life and until recently owned two laptops and a PC. Stuck Vista on a brand new hi spec ‘Vista Ready’ Dell laptop and it crawls along making everything take three times longer than it used to.(Don’t start me on the mess that is the start bar). Any high power demanding software struggles along.

Chatted to a mate who recently converted to MAC, played with his laptop for a few days and bingo, I’ve been won over.

I’ve sold both laptops, and the PC is sitting in the corner sulking waiting to be sold once I have the confidence that the MAC does everything I need, which since the MAC runs Windows as well, is not something I need to worry about!

I now have an IMAC which also has Parallels Desktop (for any version of Windows should you need it – check it out on the web, its an amazing bit of software that allows you to run both OS’s at the same time, no rebooting, you can run any windows application from the MAC!).

Also bought a MacBook for being on the move which I’m very please with.

I hate to say it, but Vista screwed up bit time. Quite why it took five years to produce that mess is beyond me.

Since the Intel chips have been introduced to the MAC’s, they are fast, efficient and really a joy to use. Give it a go.

I would like to point out a very interesting fact. It seems many people are complaining about Vista’s lack of drivers and incompatibility with older XP and WIN 98 programs. It’s interesting that most linux distros haven’t garnered mainstream acceptance for this same fact. Maybe we should all switch to using UBUNTU or PCLinuxOS. The driver support for linux is better for older hardware. You can run older Win 98 and XP software with wine (the linux windows emulator) while still getting the nice desktop graphic effects using BERYL or Compiz fusion. More interestingly, I would like to note that I can run it all with eye candy on a 3 year old laptop with 512 MB RAM. I still wouldn’t give up using XP just because it has a huge software base. However, after installing UBUNTU, I find myself splitting my time between it and XP.

So, you install Beta (which by the way, its very title suggests unstable, unfinished, etc, etc) and you’re surprised that you had problems? And you don’t think that Beta software on an XP might also screw it up beyond belief?
So far, I’ve had no problems with Vista at all. I’d say the biggest problem I had was learning to navigate the Control Panel, since I had 2000 before Vista and the names are slightly different.

All of you “IT professionals” have exceptionally short-term memories. The *exact* same thing was true of XP when it was first released. It took 2-3 years before it settled down and became less of a resource hogging pain.

As for this blog post, the key word here is “beta” – enough said. I’m tired of reading blogs complaining about beta software. If you want stability, wait for a final.

WTF cares that a dumbass Maczealot doesn’t recommend a Microsoft product.

Hey Chris. Its a beta release. Noone said it was going to work. You were supposed to test it (discreetly I imagine) and report back to Microsoft.

Are you on the Leopard seed program? Are you running VMWare Fusion on Leopard? I look forward to you dissing Apple’s pre-release OS version and the shitstorm that hits you from Cupertino when you do; they take their NDAs pretty seriously down there.

As it happens I am running OSX 10.4.10 with Vista in a VMware Fusion VM and Vista is my main “machine”. I pop in and out of Mac but I work in Vista and it rocks. If I were to run the SP1 I would make a copy of my VM and run it on that. Problems? I would delete the new VM and run the old one. No drama.

Why aren’t you working this way already and swelling VMware’s coffers?

I find Vista usable, even if the way it works is a bit of a sea change from everything that preceded it (I got lost in the control panel for a while…). I’ve got a laptop with home premium and a desktop with Ultimate x64.

Both run well and seem to be more reliable than XP ever was. It’s not perfect (because software rarely is), but overall I find that Vista is a step forward from XP, not a step back.

On the resource issue, it’s hardly surprising that it taxes current machines (I seem to vaguely remember gasps about the system requirements of XP) – Vista is going to be with us for at least 5 years so hamstringing it with current systems would be foolish in the extreme for MS. Processing power and hard disk size are advancing at such a rate that Vista will be a drop in the ocean in two years or less.

As for the beta, well…that’s the risk – you know you’re testing software that might have risks attached. It’s a pretty harsh result, but to blast Vista solely on that lacks objectivity.

Just a quick point. When I first installed Vista (ult), I turned off all the Eye-candy, and stopped a number of useless services, etc, to save some memory and speed the machine up (still using an oldish machine with 1GB). After that, the machine ran like a dog, very sluggish. Then, for some reason, (I probably thought, “What the hell…”) I turned all the fancy stuff back on – and now, I am very pleased to say, the machine seems to be zipping along. Don’t quite understand this?

Nick.

erm.. you instaleld BETA
why complain on blogs about things not working wheny ou installed a beta product.

In all honesty, you are just being a baby. Its beta software for god sake. You install it knowing the risks thats why if your not very techie, never go for anything in beta stages that affect your PC.

Vista runs fine for me and I have had no problems at all. I will not install SP1 until its released and counted stable.

You seem to forget how much microsoft has to deal with. It accounts for more than 70% of all computers used world wide meaning it has A LOT to deal with compatibility wise (for hardware and software). A new OS will obviously cause trouble at the start.

If anything, just think of it as a mile stone where you need to throw away your old rubbish and buy new stuff – its a big leap in technology – vista will force everyone to have more ram, bigger harddrives, more powerful CPUs etc.

Grow up and quit the whole “MAC ARE THE BEST” act. If you like mac, go there, dont tell people vista is rubbish just because the beta service pack did you no good. Microsoft is popular for a reason and that reason is because they are the better company – maybe in some cases they do screw up but think about how much they have to deal with.

Thank you and good night.

I had vista on this laptop, and honestly, it was rubbish. There were so many bugs, one after another, until after an update one day, my copy of vista decided to un authenticate itself, and complained it wasn’t genuine. Microsoft has always been a pain in my backside, but this was just the final straw. I wiped it off the laptop and put XP back on. It’s so much more reliable than its successor.
And the microsoft customer service was poor and didn’t help me at all. A complete dissapointment. My regards to IBM though. They were very good at helping me sort it out.
Suffice to say, don’t go vista unless it’s for a very good reason.

Ubuntu just released their new beta, the desktop effects make windows look like trash. Bill Gates has ripped us off too many years with unnecessary high prices. Ubuntu “no matter what”.

Okies… well I think you are being a tad unfair with your comments on this service pack.

It is a beta version…. this means there is a considerable amount of testing and bug fixing prior to it going gold.

Have you filed a bug report with Microsoft on this issue.

I don’t use vista myself I am an Ubuntu guy.. non the less in any OS you run beta software.. expect bugs!

I will keep this brief as it has all been said so many times before, I installed Vista onto a clean D630 Latitude, all going fine until I tried to copy my data back from an external 250GB USB hard disk. Vista reckoned it was going to take 36 hours to copy 2GB of stuff, I thought it was a bug so left it, went away and came back an hour later and it was still copying. Checking the destination folder and it had only moved 500MB of data!!!!!!!

Yes it looks nice but whats the point of that if it doesn’t work? I went straight back to XP and have not had a problem since.

Hello,

Even Dave Mathtews doesn’t use Vista! I am a musician and computer programmer and hate Vista. The support side, I don’t even want to go into! I have to ask support seekers if they are runnign Vista or XP now.

switch ($os)
{
case ‘vista’:
break; break; break; break; break; break; break;
break; break; break; break; break; break; break;

case ‘xp’:
// stable operating system
break;

case ‘apple’:
// Stable, easy to use…
break;

default:
// Assumption linux
//support_getting_better
}

All I can say is Vista is dead.

Dave Matthews

I dont use Windows. ..BUT… I dont think you can bash MS for Vista…. Lets not forget they are trying to produce an OS that satisfies 90% of the worlds computer users… and like the old saying goes… you cant please all of the people all of the time.
I think making an all out switch to Leopard is a very wise Idea.

I’ve switched to Ubuntu and computing is fun again.

XP only gets run in VMware when I need to listen to something DRM.

Okay – I can’t stand Windows (I’ve always been a Mac fan/fanboy) but seriously, you can’t whine about beta software!

Installing a beta copy of Leopard would have given you grief as well.

Plus, if you install Windows on Boot Camp you still have all the same Windows problems, albeit on a prettier looking machine.

The theory that “because it is a brand name, surely means that I should spend my money there” is getting old in the world. I see it everyday: “everyone has Windows, so it must be the best,” “Macs are expensive, therefore they must be worth it,” “I’ve heard of Starbucks, so I’ll have some,” “I see commercials for Walmart – they must have everything and better!”

Think for yourselves, people.

i think vista was designed to give the computing industry a kick up the arse regards to hardware specs

shame the green meanies shrunk the expected large chip sizes that sum of us need n the video cards are only just starting to arrive at budget level 4 directx 10

n the audio interface also needs a new generation of specialist cards

great if it happens

its a great kick up the arse

regards hardware specs

just what us intesive users need

new n bigger chips
faster graphics directx10
better audio interoperatability cards

n a mother board to handle them

so if yer gonna take advantage most people are gonna need a new bare bones system

trouble is the chips have shrunk

theres only2 budget level graphics cards

the audio cards are still hanging on to there expensive way of doing things
its the best if the expected change in hardware happens

You are all idiots. I have been running Vista Ultimate since the day it came out, and since I have a basic understanding of computer software, and maybe a little more than a basic understanding of the code going on behind the scenes, and the only problem’s I’ve had so far is an unrecognized sound card which is about 10 years old.
Don’t get me wrong, I was the first person to trash Vista until I actually used it. Considering everything is either a) plug and play, or b) Unsupported, just get a new computer and stop whining.
If you really like Leopard that much, Go get a mac. I hear they are better for some stuff anyway.
But I’m a gamer through and through, and Vista, sadly, is where I want to be.

“I bought a machine with Vista, a dual core chip and 1gb of ram – the thing pants even trying to run the OS let alone Photoshop…” – Uhm.. Why are you trying to run Photoshop with only 1GB of RAM? Even on XP you need 2GB of RAM for the program to even work on a useable level. Forget dual-core, the powers in the Ram

And Chris, one last thing… Why are you using a Beta version, almost 6 months after the RC’s have been finalized and in user’s hands? Go home, stop writing blogs, and install Win98.

I for one think that vista is way better than xp. I was skeptical at first but after using it for awhile now i havent had any major problems with it and to be honest ive had less problems that i ever did with xp. not to mention the way vista handles multiple thread processing is so much more efficient that the way xp does. I use 64 bit which is even more risque, the 64 bit operating systems are the next generation and we are slowly being phased into it. in the next 10 years you wont be able to use new hardware with a 32 bit o.s. and xp will be completely useless. if youre having issues with vista you might want to look at who built your pos computer in the first place. if you went out and bought a dell or an hp well you get what you deserve. Im all for building your own pc. but not everyone has an iq over 50. oh yea and the rant about the BEAT sp.. its a beta dude what did you expect? you encounter a problem, you as a beta tester are supposed to report it to microsoft so they can work out the issue . what do you think a beta is? its put out there for public testing. or are you one of those people who thinks that betas are just an early release that you can get your hands on before anyone else because you’re just so smart?

Problems so far:
1. Can’t run windows update and Microsoft can’t figure out why.
2. Video games often crash on exit (nvidia drivers most likely) but seem OK during game play. Just annoying.
3. 4GB of Ram on a Core 2- 2.4GHz system and it seems SLOW.
4. Sorry , the more I write about Vista’s problems the madder I get. Going to go smoke and try to relax.

At first I was quite impressed with the way vista looked but having used it for 3 months on my new Dell dual core XPS system I am left a little disappointed. One of the most annoying things I have found was the apparent inability to correctly install the Adobe Flash player. Despite getting confirmation that the player was successfully installed, visiting sites such as CNN video resulted in an error message telling me that I need to install flash as I currently have Flash version 0! After searching the net I eventually found the solution at http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windows.vista.general/browse_thread/thread/b101d7457c8b25fc/9437abee8b553d97?lnk=st&q=%22installing+flash%22+%22windows+vista%22&rnum=1#9437abee8b553d97
Here’s a list of some of the other issues I’ve had: Skipping playback of music in WMP, IE 7 crashing (often), control panel takes 5+ seconds to populate, User access control frustrations (yes I know I can turn it off but what a mess), WMP crashing during DVD playback, over speed of the OS.

[...] my friend Rob Fahrni’s blog he linked to an article by Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame where Chris basically says: Do I recommend Windows Vista? Not a [...]

I’m right there with you Chris. I’ve tried Vista on two separate occasions.

The first (a week long period) I ran it to prove to myself that I didn’t like it. I proved myself correct. I couldn’t stand the UAC always popping up, my laptop battery life was cut in half due to the default Aero Glass interface, and things just didn’t work the same as they did in Windows XP.

The second (a two week period) I ran Vista to prove that it could work in a business environment. I had Vista Enterprise edition, Office 2007 Professional. Again the UAC drove me nuts, even when I set myself as a local administrator. The two straws that broke this camel’s back were I had to install McAfee 8.5 instead of the 7.1 version that I like. Virus Scan Enterprise 7.1 isn’t Vista compatible. The other straw was that Track-It 7 (trouble ticket software) wouldn’t install at all. Other minor things like always having to run my command prompt in admin mode, and running Internet Explorer in admin mode to get ToonTown Online running for my daughter. NONE of Vista’s “security measures” are worth two cents if you have to run apps in admin mode.

Vista SP1 is heavily Beta – you cannot whine and whinge to the public about an UNFINISHED beta-test SP. What you should be doing is noting these issues and reporting back to MS… that is the purpose of Beta-test software… to find and expose flaws before a final is released (the clue is in the title). You also agreed to the agreement presented to you at install-time, I take it?
All this article achieves is to take a pot-shot (unfairly) at MS and Vista – one small example would be the improvements in the Vista TCP/IP stack over that in XP…ipv6 is just one aspect of the imrovemnents. Vista Security, data-protection and service-hardening are also greatly improved over XP
Anyone installing Beta-test software on mission-critical machines has only themselves to blame for any issues which arise.
As for the SP knocking out USB modems – I say “thank heaven for that!”; anyone using a usb modem (and therefore relying on a SOFTWARE firewall and PUBLIC (ie visble) IP ADDRESS) is either clueless or a fool.
As for Vistas only place being inside a VM or Bootcamp – that is just nonsense; you knock Vista, but are so deperate to use it that you would resort to VMWare! Why use it at all? Why not just install a *nix distro and use OpenOffice and the myriad other software available for free?
I smell a Mac fanboy just itching to get out! (-_o)

No problems, here. 5 machines at home: 3 XP Pro desktops (one for each of my kids, one for my wife), 1 Vista Ultimate notebook (mine), 1 Vista Ultimate desktop (ditto).
Zero problems in every machine, but to be honest, I find it really hard to go from Vista to work on an XP machine when I have to (normally to fix some mess my kids did when installing games).
My notebook is a Toshiba U200 with 1 GB RAM and integrated (Intel GMA 950) graphics. For light work only, but runs OK, and with Aero since RC1.
My desktop machine was custom built for Vista with 4 GB of Kington high speed RAM, fast Intel Core Duo, MSI board and 8600 GTS nVidia, etc.
It does everything a Vista machine should, and them some! :-)

Regarding your experience with Vista SP1, I have only 2 things to say:
A) If it is not broken, don’t fix it!
B) A beta, is a beta – and you should have know better!

Well, I’ve been running a Vista Business upgrade installation from a clean XP installation with appropriate hardware (I checked first) and I’ve had absolutely no problems. I think that Vista is great.

I certainly wouldn’t install a Beta Service Pack on anything other than a test PC – and I’ve expect problems or glitches. That’s what Beta versions are for, surely.

Chris, I think that you’ve shot yourself in the foot.

This afternoon i suffered from the same issue “suddenly I’m at a black screen, with nothing other than my mouse cursor on it”. Oddly i haven’t attemted to install BETA SP1. However thier was a fix

All i did to fix this issue was CTRL-ALT-Del open Task Manager and expanded the running processes for All Users. I noted that explorer hadn’t started. So started and hey presto! windows vista was functioning. I would just like to highlight that maybe this isn’t an SP1 issue.

What a load of tosh.Vista a far better than XP. Been running ultimate from day 1, the only problems I had were graphic drivers for SLI (now available). With some programs not working in vista it was easy enough to source similar ones which run on Vista. The only conclusion I can come to is the people who get problems with Vista do not know what thier pc/laptops are capable off. Besides how is it the fault of Microsoft if software vendors had no software ready for vista. Anyone remember when XP came out, same issues as now for some people

Dear pals,
why are you spending time for something worthless. Vista is a crippled OS. Try Linux instead! You’ll get excellent applications with this reliable, virus-free OS. It’s at least twice faster, less system-resource consuming, with such a flexibility, MS just can dream about. Incredible visual desktop effects…
This is an opinion of a former Windows user. I quitted using it 1.5 years. No regrets, no turning back. Only the games and the addiction is keeping MS alive. But in fact, Vista and Linux are like a civil airplane and an F-18. Try it, its FREE!!! Don’t be a slave, take the right pill. Wake up Duracell! Mandriva is waiting for you.

You’re all quite mad.

Why did you think Windows would have it right in the first release? They never have before.

I would never ever install a new windows version until SP2. Even then, I’ll wait until all you geeky maniacs start to feel comfortable with it before I install it. I’ve worked in software development for years (games), every piece of software is released when the developer STILL has an enormous list of issues. It takes years to eradicate all the issues and of course they are prioritised. Just when most things work… a new one is released.

I like my XP… it works great, with very few hitches… but it’s been 6 years getting here… and I’m not about to give it up for a cutesy onscreen clock!

Isn’t a computer there to help you get something done… to achieve something in some way; work, play? Why would you move to VISTA for the sake of it when XP already does everything you need it to? For superficial gimmicks… or because you’re a geek that likes a challenge and secretly enjoys the pain?

I to have had constant problems with Vista
I bought the OEM 64bit edition and…ugh
I’ve tried it about 4 times in total, since buying it, but still ended up going back to XP
Most issues revolved around drivers and random reboots when playing games and the like
Performance was also a problem, I have 2gb of ram yet it was SO slow, even without the glass aero interface running.

Hi, I have recently purchased a new laptop with windows vista, I only have windows vista basic on my machine at the moment (didn’t see the point in any of the other versions), and my lapotp is a dell inspiron 1501 with a dual core AMD chip, 1.5gb RAM and fairly decent vista scores. Vista for me seems to be fine, and I only use my laptop for light gaming and internet based applications, sure it works fine… most of the time. Every week or so my machine just randomly gets to the BSOD (blue screen of death), it could be when i’m surfing the net, when the machine is idle, or in the middle of a game of command and conquer, I have a memory dump (I have enabled full dumps), and when I boot back up vista tells me that there has been a hardware error, it gives me an error report consisting of some meaningless numbers which I have googled (other people are having the same problem), and come up with nothing. My first reaction was that I had got a faulty laptop so I whipped out the dell diagnostic CD and ran a full check and came up with nothing. Everything was completely fine, my first port of call would have been the RAM, as it could easily cause a problem like this is faulty, but it was fine! I am not impressed.
I installed Vista onto my old laptop also, and as this was a lower spec it worked fine on XP but was suddenly so sluggish on Vista. Sure I like the new ways to navigate the system and search my files, but all of these things could be added to XP with different 3rd party tools. I could also go on a rant about having to cash out on new periphreals due to vista not supporting them, but I see that has been done enough. Before I go also, my hardware is 64bit capable, but very little new software (yes even now) is compatible with the 64 bit versions of vista, so I’ve had to compromise my own system performance by going for 32bit!

I’m sure Vista will eventually shake out fine but I wouldn’t want to be an early adopter ~ especially as I use my pc for a home business too. To slate a beta upgrade is pretty niave ~ problems ARE expected otherwise it would be on full release.

I’m happy with XP. It rarely (ever?) falls over, has the compatibility mode and is pretty quick. The only other OS I’d consider is Linux. Macs don’t interest me ~ I don’t want to get locked into ‘Apple world’, however slick it looks :)

Hay,

Try and get Visual Studio 2005 to work on vista! good luck! even with the SP1 for Visual Studio no go! However Netbeans works nicely!

If you turn off Aero it speeds things up a little!

Is this the end for Windows? I think it’s starting to look that way, with Linux on the rise big time and OSX, if vista hangs around as long as XP it’s doomed!

“But Vista Looks Nice!” do I care? bring back the terminal any day!

Well I’ve installed Vista on an upto date machine seperate from my main machine and in short ‘ what a joke!’ non of my perherials work ( e.g. printers and scanners) , you’d think after FIVE years of reinventing MS’s version of the wheel they could have at least bothered to see that abroad range of equipment drivers stood a half chance of working, rather than just assume people would dump there kit when migrating from XP, and what do we learn now from the brains up at Redmond?, there on the way to the first vista service pack! ..hmm!, well maybe a complete code rewrite might be a good place to start with proper equipment support backed with some chance of dependable user reliablity would do for me!, still as far as I’m concerned vista is very shortly to become history on a pc very near me!, so service pack or not, I won’t give a damn what they do with it!, I now just can’t be doing with this bodged shambles of an effort anywhere near any of my machines, XP will do me for sometime to come, simply because it works dispite its own collection of little quirks!, but at least with XP I don’t have to spend hours p*ssing around coaching it like some petutlant pet!, so as for vista thanks but no thanks Microsoft , you’ve screwed my confidence in your products big time!

I don’t know how other computers handles things, but Lenovo IBM has been issuing large updates on a regular (weekly?) basis. After my initial install of Vista it was immediately necessary to download a huge file from Lenovo IBM just to get started, drivers to operate such things as the proprietary volume buttons and trackpad nipple etc, and much more too I would guess. It was no simple matter, and required quite a deep understanding of computer operating systems, which I could only just handle. And it took a very long time just to download, not to mention install.

I have been required to download loads more ever since. Recently one file even kept being downloaded but failing to install. Not a good sign.

Today, a whole new update, and this time a whole new wireless access driver, Lenovo IBM’s own, which appears to have taken control from Windows wireless access. This is fine by me as I have been having issues with connecting to hotspots round town, not to mention to my home router, and I welcome anything which might actually work smoothly. As a bonus, the file which kept being downloaded and failing to install has now gone. Obviously a glitch on their part, as I have done nothing different.

However, here we the crux of the matter I feel. The problem with Windows is that there are in effect at least two OS’s trying to control the computer. Windows and Lenovo IBM. This leads to issues, not to mention difficulties for the user. I wonder if the technicians at Lenovo are on the phone to Windows all week, discussing power sharing deals. This is all before we have actually installed all the other necessary software like Photoshop, of course.

When I once installed OSX Tiger on an old Mac, the whole procedure happened in one smooth and quick operation. With Macs both the hardware and the software is built by one company. The advantage of this is that OS installation and updates are centrally controlled. By Apple itself. All the software needed to operate all the hardware is designed and installed Apple alone. No other separate third party downloads are required, and there are no conflicts about which driver to use to control even such basic tasks as wireless access.

By contrast I now have two drivers battling it out as to who is master. Windows or Lenovo IBM.

Who will win? Which should I choose? How do they each work? How much time will I need to familiarise myself? And when I come to buying a new laptop, will I have to learn a whole new set of drivers, say from Sony or Acer etc? Yes, is the answer.

Meanwhile, Mac installs just one purpose-built set of drivers etc, which will already be familiar to all Mac users, even when buying a brand a new Mac model.

I’ve been using Vista since February, quite simply it is awesome, I have never used any OS so good including unix and linux, and office 2007 beats all my dreams put together. You guys that cannot get along with it and don’t like it – I cannot understand, Windows XP is jurassic park in comparison. I LOVE IT. it is different accept that and use its power, do not fight it.

Looking forward to the October release of Leopard. :)

My story: got a supposedly vista ready computer around thanksgiving with a free upgrade to vista when it came out, installed vista, and my computer slows to a crawl, taking 20 minutes to boot up, what a waste of time! not to mention the 5 hours it took to install vista itself, after a few weeks I’m sick of it, so I remember I read a little about Ubuntu, one of the best products of 2007. I go and read more about it and find out its a linux distribution, I tried it then tried Kubuntu, one of its sister projects and I loved it. I say the future is Linux, yes thats right Linux, its already obvious that it sure isn’t windows, and Macs are way over priced, but linux is free, and it works much better, not saying that the future is this or next year, but linux is spreading

Yeah, there are plenty of problems with Vista but I see it with a future because at its core Vista is considerably more stable than XP. I’ve been running it since rtm and don’t believe I’ve had a single crash or bsod except when messing with one of ATI’s half-baked driver releases. I can’t say that for my machines at work running XP. I’ve had some problems with programs and that crummy Wise uninstall that never seems to work but if (if ever) all the manufacturers and developers can get there stuff working I think we could have a sweet operating system here. Windows 7 will probably be out by then so we’ll need it!

Well my experience of Vista has been 90% good which is better than my experience of XP was for years until SP2 (I largely stuck with W2k till then)

The issues I *had* have been almost entirely resolved and they were mostly driver based.

NVidia and Creative should both be shot for the ridiculous/pathetic/useless way they went about updating drivers for the products. It is not as if Vista was sprung on them yet my X-Fi didn’t have any kind of working driver (beyond stereo!) for about 4 months which is crazy. NVidia weren’t much better.

Beyond that, the only *major* problem I’ve had with Vista has been the infamous slow network copy. I’d be trying to copy files from my NAS onto my PC and it was going to take days, so instead I’d get TS into an XP box on the network and use that to push files from the NAS to my PC taking longer than it should but still significantly faster than Vista trying to copy across.

That however appears to be largely solved with the “performance update” of last month or so.

I don’t get spurious crashes anymore, I don’t get the “device driver stopped responding” error (which gracefully just let the driver restart and did not blowup the system, good work over XP) which was an driver NVidia issue anyway.

The GUI has some excellent additions. Sure XP is more lightweight in the GUI front sure, but it’s also less useful and as long as your desktop is responsive, who cares if you can get it “shades of grey” more responsive GUI in a more limited OS?

Going back to XP at work bites now; an environment where the integrated search would be hugely beneficial only has the truly lame 3rd party alternatives or the paralytic XP built in search.

On the positives, the Problem Reports and Solutions centre is excellent. Seeing issues dealt with (including in 3rd party apps) is fantastic, seeing solutions appear is great!

Hell I have an ancient Intel webcam that when I first plugged it into Vista, it said, “sorry this is too old bro, buy a new one.” Disappointing but fair enough since it’s about 7 years old. Then just for the hell of it plugged it in again last weekend and ta-da, driver found and it worked.

So, my experience with Vista has been – after a shaky driver start – excellent.

Honestly, installing a beta service pack and it breaking your system leading you to dump the entire product is ridiculous imo. Beta isn’t short hand for “better”.

Chris.. You are the geek’s geek. We all respect and admire you. But this time – what you have done – is almost incomprehensible. You went and installed beta software.. without a back-up.. other than system resore.
A smart individul like yourself – one who should know better – should have a full back-up… as in a mirror image of that hard drive… and not depend on system resore. So.. if I’m correct… on this… you never back up your data? Taken to the next level… if your HD crashed… then what? Would you blame the manufacuer of the hd for releasing junk? Or wish you would have made a full back up. I don’t understand why someoe who is supposed to know better – would not have done this without a way to recover. And then report: DON”T INSTALL VISTA SP1 BETA!! It might not work for you!! But instead.. you chose to leave yourself open to questioning if you have lost a few cards in the deck… or should buy a srewdriver.

Linux !!! Has all the eye candy and is FAST!. Installs have come a long way in the last year. Use Ubuntu !! , Permissions are like MS products and installs especially if on broadband. I install ubuntu on PC’s that are to small for vista and people didnt think their PC could be that fast. all the app’s are FREE and compatible w/ MS also !!

Microsoft launched a an ill prepared product eight months ago, and for all its superficial beauty Vista has little substance. Were it not for DirectX 10 I would not have bothered and now it appears that even this aspect may be deeply flawed.

I am not sure that Microsoft have a clue where this is going. Did they make a big mistake in lying down with the media giants to give DRM the muscle needed to stop people “cheating”? Or have they fallen into the trap of believing their own hype once too often? One thing is sure, if SP1 does not sort out the bugs it is going nowhere fast.

I was put off Vista after my brother and a couple of friends all had major problems with it (rebooting, going nightmarishly slow, incompatibility issues) – in fact one couple returned their laptop and insisted on having XP instead.

So when I needed a new laptop, I decided firmly against Vista – trouble is you try buying a brand new laptop in the UK which doesn’t have Vista! After a week of looking to no avail, I made a bit of a rash decision to plump for a MacBook instead …

Being a lifetime PC user I was slightly worried about my transition to a mac – however, I was able to install all my hardware on the mac with no problems (digital camera, mouse, tablet, external drive, printer etc) and it really is a joy to use. Imagine, I switch it on and it is all up and running in under half a minute!!! With my previous XP PC I always went to make a coffee while I waited for it to boot it was so slow.

I have been using a Mac for a month now and I would never go back to a PC – the simple fact is that a Mac just works – and also very well. I have not had to reboot once – not had any of this freesing up nonsence that our windows PCs have always had.

Anyone having problems with Vista – I recommend you at least go and try a Mac – life is for living at the end of the day!

Chris.
You are not alone in this disgusting mess they call an operating system. To Vista’s credit, like you have said before, there are many good points to Vista but they don’t outweigh the numerous problems with Vista.

I like to be an early adapter, I had Windows XP within a week of it coming out and I had Vista the day it came out. First off my experience with XP off the bat was wonderful. I had very few issues especially since I had previously been using Windows 2000 SP3? SP4? I forget the latest at that time.

I own a copy of the “Ultimate” version of Windows Vista and … well I have tried it on three! machines, all of them now happily run Windows XP. Before I go into detail let me just say that after I gave up on Vista on my personal machines I thought it would be a better OS for mom and dad who only use the machine for online banking through a simple dial up connection… It took a week before Windows just plain and simply refused to start… It really makes me question the OS because.. they use to use Windows ME for this SAME EXACT PURPOSE and never ran into problems, not even a virus. …but yet Vista just randomly stopped…..

The laptop I currently am on right now and use for School purposes is the longest I ever had Vista on a machine for, which was about three months. The machine came preloaded with Vista Home Premium from Gateway. It has a AMD Turion 64 x2 with 2gb RAM and a cheaper ATI Xpress 1250 IGP. I completely deleted Home Premium and loaded Ultimate and was happy to see that it was pretty snappy for having such a dog of an OS on it, even with the Aero effects on and a lower-end video card all was good. Lets start a list of problems I ran into shall we?

1.) Gaming!!! At first I didn’t think this was a vista problem but rather a cheap graphics chipset, it is a ‘college’ laptop after all I guess I can live without games. Vista I got horrible frame rates in almost any game I tried, if the game would even run. Age of Empires II (simple game, no real graphics, I wanted something on the machine to kill time) REFUSED TO RUN PERIOD. To Vista’s credit, it does work now. Halo 1 for Windows installed fine, ran but had very random frame rates. Usually I got about 15 which still is not playable but it would also dip down to 3-5 fps for no real reason, this usually lasted upwards of 3-5 minutes before it would snap back to 15 for another 20. I played that long simply for testing there was hardly any game play value with such lag. Fable installed correctly but refused to start up either spitting me an error message or the occasional BSOD. (To Vista’s credit again this game does now work correctly but is also to slow to play on my graphics card) I could go on forever with a list of games that DID NOT work at the time of release. The one game that worked was Unreal Tournament 2004 which actually played at full speed under 1024×768. This made me question hey this integrated graphics card can do something why are the other games so horrible on it?? Sure enough.. Under tried and trusted Windows XP I installed the same games and all of them, even Halo at 800×600, run at full speed. Now my graphics card isn’t for gaming heavily at all! but at least under Windows XP I can play games such as Halo, World of Warcraft, Fable, at low resolution and detail levels and the game will be extremely playable. Windows XP 1 / Windows Vista 0

2.) Hardware!, Hardware!, Hardware!. Ok So maybe I mean peripherals but.. for one, my ‘Windows Vista Ready’ HP All in one printer/scanner/fax combo …doesn’t work reliably. Does it work? Yes… when I am not staring at the wonderful BSOD… When I bought this 120 dollar printer didn’t it say Windows Vista Compatible right on the box!? oh yes… yes it did… it just lied to me! The printer works wonderfully under Windows XP and I couldn’t be happier with it. Second.. I’m a college student, I give power point presentations to aid my Speechs… I have a ATI Remote Wonder which.. installs correctly under Vista.. .Vista even finds me a updated driver specifically designed for vista… Boy was I embarrassed when I hit the button on my remote and display the entire class a BSOD on a huge projection screen, I restarted… thought it was a fluke… but no… it did the same thing when running Office 2003 under vista. I later updated to Office 2007 and it would go a slide or two before I got the BSOD… Wait.. why is this happening! Vista told me it found a new compatible driver for this remote!!! This remote works under Windows XP with no problems…. grr. The final and last straw in this area were my flash drives!!! YES FLASH DRIVES THAT WOULD NOT WORK IN VISTA! Out of all my USB devices I figured those would work no problem at all… well a few of them did… I have lots of flash drives, they are wonderful devices, especially the ones with U3 on it which I find very useful sometimes. Well the U3 ones don’t work under Vista.. actually ONE of the five did not sure why but that one must be special. The other four fail to even show up as drives… this is about where I started banging my head against a wall why does this have to be so difficult!?

3.) The final straws… I love the way Vista works at its core… Readyboost works great if you have a Vista compatible High Speed Flash Drive, Superfetch sounds.., good I never used Vista enough to truly know if that technology helps me but it sounds good in writing… Uhh DirectX 10 is something I question.. One what good does it do me at this point and Two WHY THE HELL CAN IT NOT WORK WITH WINDOWS XP?! This is just an effort by Microsoft to kind of force us into Vista eventually.. the less they make work with XP the more people who will use Vista.. actually it will probably make them switch to OS X at this point… Sure we would upgrade if Vista worked… i mean it even looks a lot better then XP.. but unfortunately it doesn’t work.. it wants to.. but it doesn’t. The final final straw was due to a loss of data… in the last few years I had tested dozens of Longhorn/Vista builds, downloaded tons of different ISO’s a lot of linux flavors and beta/alpha Windows versions. Not because I wanted to distribute them, but learn from them, I am after all going into Computers. Well.. I have a 500gb External HD… annnnd I lost… all of the data on it… including all my ISO’s some of which I may never find or recover again… I was copying just a handful of files, EXTREMELY SLOWLY, off of the HD when Vista BSOD on me… I rebooted and hoped nothing bad had happened… but it did… My nearly 200 gb of DATA was now lost on a drive that Windows showed me as Capacity 0bytes Filesystem: RAW… i was in shock.. I plugged the HD into a Windows XP machine and XP reported the same thing… I even sent my HD in to see if they could recover the data but the data on it had all become corrupted somehow… the drive did successfully reformat and since using only XP I have never had a problem… but I refuse to let someone use it if their machine has Vista… What did Vista do to my HD when it BSOD? It is unexplainable I unplugged the HD right when it blue screened (which was caused by my MICROSOFT wireless mouse driver I later discovered) and yet… all my data had been corrupted.. even when I tried to get it professionally recovered it had just been that destroyed… what happened!? WHAT DID YOU DO VISTA?!

My laptop currently runs Windows XP Professional SP2.. my $400 dollar copy of Vista Ultimate still lives…, inside a virtual machine. The only reason I have it even in a virtual machine is to test it… to its credit again… with every patch I notice things work just a little bit better or a new app that will work with it…. maybe.. just maybe by SP1 it will be what Microsoft promised almost six years ago… Zone Alarm, my preferred Firewall and Antivirus suite, now works under Windows Vista.. it didn’t when I left it. My U3 flash drives now all work… my printer still doesn’t work reliably and my ATI Remote Wonder II Pro which I used for power point still does not work, in fact there was another driver update released but now instead of Blue Screening it just plainly and simply does nothing… Shows up in the Device Manager but doesn’t do anything… better then the BSOD I suppose. Its inside a VirtualBox VM which doesn’t support DirectX but according to some of the recent updates definitions game performance has increased… I will not be installing vista to test gaming performance… Office 2007 under Windows Vista still says Word has crashed when you close it for no obvious reason.. it doesn’t do this under Windows XP however. Mozilla works under Vista better then it did back in May. It really does appear that there is an honest effort going into making it better.. but its still just not ready… it really disappoints me to know that I paid a very large sum of money for a BETA, yes i’ll say it, BETA operating system. This is not entirely Microsoft’s fault because all of us as consumers did demand this from Microsoft.. with every delay MS lost some popularity.. but… maybe they should have ignored us? Microsoft, at this point, would have been better off ignoring the complaints about Vista taking forever to be released and actually finished the product. Looking at Vista.. IF it worked… as good as the 2000 to XP worked… people would love it. IF everything worked.. the only difference people would notice would be the, i’ll say it, MUCH IMPROVED GUI. When people see vista they might say wow that is cool or its ‘pretty’ all while being professional. Unfortunately when you use it.. you find out that all the ‘pretty’ is good for is showing off those impressive looking error boxes.

Microsoft releasing a Service Pack so soon after the launch of Vista basically confirms that they gave us, the public, a beta version of Vista. My only concern now is… they are now rushing a service pack.. wasn’t Vista rushed which created the problems? Now those problems… are causing Microsoft to feel rushed yet again in releasing a service pack so people will be happy and use their new operating system. I just have one thing to say..

“Microsoft! PLEASE take your time with this Service Pack I want to use Windows Vista I really do. You’re making it hard for me though by rushing your projects, if you continue on this path you will be in trouble… If this means you push back the SP another 2-4 months do it. We want a update to vista that makes vista work, not just another thing to be fixed.”

With that Chris… I’m going to end this extremely long comment. Like you, I want to love Vista. I will eventually have to work with it daily as a Computer Support Specialist and I want to love it and be able to say “Hey It’s Windows Vista piece of cake” Even though I love new technology and running the latest and greatest Microsoft’s blunder has kept me from using Windows Vista. I am running Windows XP which does everything I need it to do fast and reliably while my expensive copy of Vista Ultimate does me no good.. even on my laptop.. which was SPECIFICALLY designed to run Vista at Premium or Ultimate edition levels… Microsoft really disappointed me with Windows Vista.. I loved XP from day one but Vista has been a nightmare. I can only hope that Microsoft fixes what ’should’ have been a great product.

You are not alone in being angry with Windows Vista.. but stick it out a little longer, give Microsoft a chance to release Service Pack 1 before switching to Mac. I know some have installed the Beta SP1 and say it has shown a lot of improvement over Vista SP0 even though its only beta. If SP1 drops the ball… well… I like you will start looking at Windows alternatives.. Windows XP will only be supported for so long.

Take Care!
-TheDub

I have read the comments about VISTA. I am not surprised by the poor results. As a designer of non-computer electronic circuits, ( mostly hardware) I have always been amazed at the lure that new software such as VISTA has had on the world. But, when I read about how the computer oriented, are foolish enough to use a Vista BETA software design, I can only shake my head.

I am interested in operating external electronics from my Windows XP.
I have found that there is NO way to do so, without purchasing a very a specific software application + a hardware card to eliminate computer interfacing problems. It appears that the Series COM Ports , the
Parallel Ports, are unbelievably complicated to use, and with many restrictions, such as speed and signal complexity.

When will computers become capable of such control ?

m.shen

thank god so many people feel the same as me.
i bought a new vista loaded PC specifically for the new generation of games (supreme commander, crysis etc) from mesh. That was back in may 2007. I spent 3 months attempting to get ANY of my xp games (you name it…) to work for more than an hour without my friend BSD popping his mother****ng head around the corner. 2 IT hardware and a software specialist from MESH came over and all informed me in no uncertain terms “vista doesn’t do games”.
so i’m back to XP sp2 and loving destroying robots to the max.

Oh, forgot to mention – i know its not vista related but about a month ago my xbox360 died (3 rings) – thanks for the memories microsoft – its been swell.

What an interesting set of posts! I must say that many of the people posting seem to have had extraordinary issues with Vista. I wonder if this is because more issues arise with upgrades to existing s/w & h/w than with Vista bought on a new machine?

I bought a Dell Latitude D820 (2.16Ghz, 2GB RAM, 80GB, NVIDIA Quadro NVS120M, Vista Home) of an eBay shop three months ago. Worked first time out of the box and connected via wireless to my home/office network (WinXP Pro x2) via a Netgear834G. Upgraded on line to Home Premium (did not need top end versions for my use).

Installed drivers for my existing HP LaserJet 6L and HP DeskJet, installed Office 2003, installed various other applications, (PaintShopPro X, EditPadPro, NamoWebEditor, CoffeCup Web Editor, Jaws PDF driver, BBC Alerts etc. all of which worked first time albeit some with newer versions for Vista – but wasn’t that the same when ‘we’ moved to XP! Installed other specialist XML editorial/CMS applications – the reason for a new laptop which replaced an ageing WinXP Toshiba and finally it backs up over the network to the WinXP box as well as syncing various folders for consistency of files.

Three months later, I’m happy with the new laptop, it does what I want, I have not experienced the level of issues that many here seem to have had, yes there are some issues, but what hardware/software doesn’t. Yes it does have different approaches to some things, UAC and no Fax function to name two, but again between major upgrades (Win 3.0/WinME/WinXP) there are/will always be differences and feature changes(mostly forward).

Finally with regards to Beta software, having worked in IT for many years on a number of different platforms, I’ve learnt to be very wary of update patches and beta software, at the end of the day beta software is exactly what it says it is, testing software! Don’t load it anywhere near you normal systems.

Hope my input contributes to the overall discussion.

Mike

Windows Vista sucks, and I think XP was better. But when windows xp came out, I thought XP sucked and 2000 was better. So does this mean we’re getting worse and worse products from Microsoft and everybody still uses them? I won’t switch to OS X because why move from one monopoly to another? Nothing would have been achieved. Linux is definitely the way forward but it should be taken out of the hands of the NERDS and handled by a team who have same ideology as the Mozilla team and make something as appealing as Firefox so that the masses can use it. Wireless support is number one reason for laptop users not using Linux.

Hi all

I notice alot of people saying that Vista offers them nothing extra over XP. I cant really believe those statements. Here is a list of the plus points for me over XP.

Vista though needs a good spec to run to it’s full potential. At least Core Duo, 4GB ram(3.2 roughly usable), huge graphics card and preferably a raid setup of some sort. The only problems I have had is with Dream Scape, the desktop video system, which is still buggy, otherwise it’s rock solid. The best points for me are :

1. The desktop search, indexer service. This is a godsend. Being able to find any one of my thousands of files or emails within seconds is fantastic. I know google and others have provided this but to have it so closley integrated into the file system is superb.

2. The new start menu. No longer have to trawl through start menu items looking for a program. Just type it ’s name and it’s there. Type it ’s name and enter and it’s launched. A great time saver. It will even launch a typed website name once it is in your favourites. For instance type `bbc news’ in the start menu and press enter and it opens your default browser and goes to the BBC news website designated in your favourites list.

3. The integrated file viewer within the file system. This is another great plus point. I can now browse pdf’s, docs, Videos, photos and other file extensions within the file system. Even multiple page pdfs can be browsed without having to open a seperate window. The desktop search system also allows this browsing and also allows searched emails to be browsed within the search window without needing to open seperate windows. This integration has finally persuaded me to go to a semi paperless office. I scan all non legally required docs in and then shred the original.

4. Faster lauching of programs. No hanging about anymore. With prefetch, Vista loads commonly used programs into memory so they are there waiting for you. Quickbooks, which takes an age to open on XP opens within a couple of secs on Vista. Outlook, even with a large email database opens instantly. Word opens so fast if you blink you would miss it. So much better experience.

5. Side bar. Although seen as a memory hog by some, it’s no problem if you start with loads of memory in the first place. There are many useful apps for it. I like Magic Folders which keeps my desktop clean. Just drag a file to it and it puts it into the correct folder depending on it’s extension. Others such as language converters, system info apps and news video feeds add to the experience.

6. Under the hood apps. There’s a great selection of tools in Vista for viewing system info etc, much more than in XP.

7. Network tools. Many more options for network control and media sharing including networked drives etc.

8. Inbuilt support of mobile phones. Didnt have to install any software from my phones vendor. Just plugged it in and it worked straight off and synched immediatley and has been rock solid ever since.. Think I downloaded just one update for this to enable some more up to date functions.

9. Vista starts up quickly and shuts down even quicker.

10 Stability. Vista is rock solid. Only dreamscape gives it problems and as thats a fairly new add on its to be expected and obviously is optional to run. Games run fine and have less stability problems.

Some of the inbuilt Vista stuff I dont use such as the photo gallery (Picasa is much better), Windows Mail (Outlook for me) but I do use the Movie Maker which isnt bad for basic video editing and adding titles and effects etc.(usually to my sons YouTube vidoes).

The only hardware that I have not been able to run properly is a webcam. For some reason the inbuilt sound of webcams will not work with MSN messenger. An external microphone is needed to enable this.

Overall, Vista is hugely better than XP, but you also need a hugely better PC to run it on.

And lastly dont install beta software on production machines!

Regards
Danep
Quad Core, 4GB, 640MB 8800GTS, Raid5 1TB.

My strategy was to buy a new PC with Windows Vista Ultimate pre-installed. That way someone else had done all of the hard work of getting everything to work properly. When SP1 is released I’ll wait a few days before installing it especially after having read this. That way if there are any issues I’ll know about them. I use Norton Ghost to backup my PC and it saved me once on Vista. I managed to do a full recover to a point in time a few hours earlier before I had installed some software. I’d recommend you use a separate machine if possible to test your “upgrades” or even a virtual machine and definately do a backup first.

Get a Mac, you never have to go through this service pack and hardware/software conflict.

I switched over full time 18 months ago after XP was becoming to demanding on updates and driver conflicts and taking 3 minutes to boot up.

Compared with my iMac and MacBook which take 11 seconds to boot up, and I have no need for cache clearing, defrag, spyware and virus checks.

Anything I bung in the USB or FireWire port is immediately detected and up and running, no drivers to install.

Microsoft have F***** up with Vista

I’ve not moved to Vista because of the compatibility issues with most of my hardware and software, so am in no way a fan or supporter of Microsoft’s latest OS, but I’m wondering something about this person’s problems.

Are any of the “Vista problems” actually caused by maintaining a fully operational version of XP at the same time? If Microsoft can’t get one OS to not be flaky, how can they ever be expected to work in a dual boot situation?

I am a it manager for a small company. I installed Vista on all our companies computers (both upgrades and full installs) with no major problems. these were all old XP machines (not dual core, 512 / 1024mb ram). The only bother I had was with bluetooth drivers. All other drivers just needed a quick sniff for on the net.
Don’t just think i am a needles early adopter either, I was still running 3.11 in 1998 and didn’t upgrade to 98 till 2000.
One thing I have fond is that for users the transition from XP to Vista is less painful than changing from 98 to xp or from 3.11 to 95. (i didn’t use 95 at all. What a bodge job it was. and Millennium……..)
Server 2003 support for vista was a bit patchy at first but is improving with updates. It probably will never be perfect as MS want us to buy server 2008.

I tried Vista Beta and RC1 64bit versions. I have also tried multiple Linux 64 bit versions. They all fail in one aspect or another with drivers. Most computer users have a varying combination sound, video, TV, printer, modem, tablet, camera, etc. requirement. The only operating system that worked 100% is XP.

While it isn’t MicroSoft’s ‘fault’ to supply drivers for everything, I for one will not switch under the present ad-hoc method of doing business from a system known to work to anyone of the others that fails miserably to supply even the basic requirements demanded by the KNOWN OLD
EQUIPMENT.

All we are doing by buying these new operating systems is increasing the mountain of old equipment and quite frankly buying equipment that doesn’t work properly!

Stick to XP, or Win 98 is my advice – they work.

Well ok vista? ive installed it onto my pc (ultimate ed. u know- the one with all the extra fancy bits, i just cant find them yet) on a second partitian (first containing XP pro) ok and to date (a week or so) i have had no problems with it, all devices installed ok and its running as good as xp, really it is – one major difference is my graphics card doesn’t support aero so what am i looking at? well vista without aero feels sort of like a XP service pack 3, if sp3 existed..trouble is its not the giant leap that was windows 98 to XP…so even though it runs good, looks pretty, i’m left with the thought a bit of…and now what….its XP with a bit of bling..nice, but a tad expensive.

Finally…whats with the boot screen..its black..empty..did they forget something here? i want to see something there..its wrong! oh it gets me everytime i boot my machine.

[...] Chris Pirillo relates his boondoggle experience with Vista SP1 beta and it reinforces and validates all of the reasons I decided not to be on the bleeding edge with this OS any longer. The post is well worth reading to get the gist of Chris’ experience and the video provides the full story. What Chris says in summary pretty much confirms my attitude about Vista at this point: Do I recommend Windows Vista? Not a snowball’s chance in… I’m waiting on Apple to release Mac OS X Leopard. As far as I’m concerned at this point, Microsoft is taking a huge hit. The future of Windows, in my opinion, is inside a Virtual Machine or BootCamp on a Mac. [...]

Thats what u get for trying to install a BETA. Wait until the full release is finished! Ive had no problems whatsoever with Vista, and i prefer it to XP.

I have been a windows support engineer for over 14 years (even before Lockergnome was popular!) and am now a mac user at home.

Luckily I am now supporting Server 2000 and cringe when my firends ask me to pop over to sort out their Vista woes.

Long live apple! But thanks, Bill! You gave me – and keep me in a day job!

hey Chris
I have to disagree with your comments (in reverse)!
Vista RTM for me basically did what you described…
im finding that the SP1 Beta resolves all those problems and for me is where Vista should have been at RTM.
My only minor problem is a recurring IIS Worker Process failure alert box popping up every half dozen hours or so (even though IIS is still running fine).
For me if this is the quality of the beta now then rtm of the beta will resolve all the problems allbeit a year too late!
ps…i should mention that all my previous problems were whilst running as a multi-boot machine with XP/Server 2003. The beta is running stand alone so why dont you give the beta another try on a dedicated machine.
ciao
Andy.

I’ve noticed a common theme here over the years and seems to get bigger and bolder with each new version of Windows. The last successful Windows “upgrade” I’ve ever had is with Millenium which by the way is still my favorite version of windows although I’m so used to XP now that it doesn’t really make a difference. I also got that upgrade directly from Microsoft at one of their trade shows from back in the day. I still have a Dell that came with Millenium with an XP upgrade release. The machine was allegedly designed for XP. To this day I’ve never had a successful upgrade on that machine. I have tried to load the XP upgrade they sent me a dozen times. Everytime I have to revert back to the orginal Millenium to get the machine to work and it works great.

I have avoided Vista so far because of all I heard about it. However a friend of mine bought a new laptop with Vista on it. She is not all that tech savy but she is ok. So she needed some help. I traveled the hour and a half to her house to check it out. Vista seems to work fine. My biggest complaint was with the CA Anti-everything software that came on the computer as well. I did experience some slow action but at this point I tend to blame CA and not Vista. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with the computer. I just got her going which meant mostly writing rules for CA.

As a side experience I also have a Toshiba laptop that came with XP and I never had a problem with it and never upgraded to SP2 until about a year ago. The computer has been slow ever since. Now the computer is old. Maybe it’s wearing down but it was fine before the upgrade which I resisted for a long time for reasons which will now be my point.

My point is that it seems to me the only time you have trouble with Windows is when you do an upgrade and as Windows has aged this has become worse with each new generation……..even if the machine was designed for the particular version. However any machine that I bought with the latest and greatest already on it…………no problems…….ever.

Is this just a coincidence or have I noticed something that no one else seems to have noticed for some reason. This seems especially true considering upgrading didn’t seem to be a problem with 95 and 98. Millenium upgrades seemed to start this all rolling although I had a great experience with a Millenium upgrade and upgraded several machines.

I never used 2000 although Microsoft gave me an upgrade that I still have somewhere. However I have also known friends that had trouble with 2000 when they upgraded.

I think Upgrading is the actual problem. Whether it’s Microsofts fault or the machines fault is still up for debate. I usually blame the machine however. I’m not good enough at this to explain why I think the machine is the problem but that’s what I have come to blame over the last few years.

Zach quote, supporting PC running Vista:

‘It took me a couple of weeks to download all the drivers from IBM/Lenovos massively user unfriendly website……’

Isn’t that the kind of PC-user comment of denial that drives people to buy a Mac which allows you to do things, instead of spending your whole life playing PC Dungeons and Dragons trying to fix bad stuff?

How I love so-called ‘journalists’ spouting off how bad Vista is!
If you know anything about the configuration or the way that PC’s work, you would have no problems with running Vista at all. Ultimate Edition runs perfectly fine on my Core Duo 1.86Ghz notebook with 1GB of RAM (even with Photoshop CS3 and Premiere Pro usage). No slower nor faster than XP SP2 ever did. No problems with drivers or anything as such, but then again, I MADE sure that the hardware I was running was fully compaible with Vista before installing it. The people who have problems 99.99999% of the time have incompatible hardware then blame MS for their lack of being able to check manufacturers sites out for non-beta drivers for Vista. As a systems integrator myself, I have persuaded numerous clients to try Vista on new builds, and not one person has been unhappy with it. Then again I make sure that full testing is carried out before any of the machines are offered with hardware to ensure that Vista works perfectly fine with no glitches. If the hardware does not perform as I would want it to, then it doesn’t get used. My clients would rather lose a few FPS in their games and have a 100% stable system than to gain a few FPS and have to endure crashes due to buggy drivers.
I use Vista personally and if it was not reliable or worked as I would expect an operating system to do so, I would not use it for all my personal and business usage. I have no problems with slow network transfers as some people claim they have from the start, but that could be down to the way I have my networks configured and that everything has been tested thoroughly before being implemented or rolled out into a working environment.
I haven’t had any problems either with ANY software installation or operation using 32bit Vista’s. The problems with the software generally lie under 64bit versions, but if the software itself is not 64bit, then you would expect it to have some issues running in emulation.

In the long term, people blaming MS for their peripheral items not working or lack of drivers, is not MS’s fault, but the hardware manufacturers. People seem to forget the same problem was apparent when XP was launched with driver support being very flaky and very few drivers being available for many months into the life of XP.

I ran Vista business out at work. Works flawlessly! Run Vista Ultimate at home on my Media Centre TV. Dual DVB-T card and DVB-S Card. PC stays on 24/7 works flawlessly. My 4 and 6 yr old kids use the remote on it to watch TV they have recorded, No problems. With respect to the whingers here, I come across you guys all the time a quite frankly you don’t have a clue and maybe you should go back to dos 6.22 with some text editor or better still use a type writer.

A BETA is a product know to have problems that is released by companies for feedback.

You need to take a step back check your hardware for compatibilty BEFORE installing the software. Make sure the manufacturer of the hardware you wish to use has VISTA drivers.

Update the PC’s Bios or at least check for an update.

You have to do this stuff with some thought.

Don’t take this the wrong way but some of you need to leave this stuff to the pros.

thanks

I tried installing Vista as a dual boot with XP. It was a nightmare – nothing worked. No network card, so no way to improve or receive new drivers, no sound card – it was almost comical how little worked.

As far as the UI goes, it seems like Microsoft have moved everything they possibly could, simply for the sake of making the UI look different from its predecessors. The result is an unnecessarily awkward and unintuitive mess that has to be learned practically from scratch.

The fact that it conflicts badly with XP when dual booted (recovery points, etc) seems almost calculated to hobble any attempt to use the older system in conjunction with it. What a mess.

What are all the complaints about? Vista is new. Everyone knew MS had probs with the release of XP and that took several years to settle down. Why are people so keen on jumping to Vista before it’s had time to settle? I was running XP on an old AMD processor, and it worked fine, but it had it’s limitations. So now I’m using XP 64-bit on a PC with 4 Gb of RAM. And guess what? No probs. Does everything I want, very quickly. And I’m only missing software for my mobile phone (Come the revolution, Sony Ericsson will be first against the wall!!!). As far as I can see (and I may be technologically short-sighted) Vista is a marketing exercise that hasn’t quite worked. But did it really promise a technological leap forward from what was already available? I have yet to be convinced. That said, when it’s working, it might be better. To the complainers: less haste (to jump onto technological bandwagons) and more speed (courtesy of XP 64-bit, a dual core processor and as much RAM as your motherboard can handle). TO MS: if you were a car company, you’d be bust!

BETA versions gives no guaranties for a smooth running system after install..
One should always run BETA’s in a test environment..

I ran VISTA in BETA before the final official VISTA was on the market – and I have had the official VISTA – Ultimate and Business versions – on many computers since they were released.

No problems whatsoever..!
Smooth and nice – every day..!
Also within a network based on SMALL BUSINESS SERVER 2003 R2..!
A very dependable OS indeed..!

Krgds
Henri

[...] Ive put it as a link too (in links) Chris Pirillo [...]

Iinstalled Vista Business on 2 machines here. Both of them very fast, 4 Gb memory, top of the range video cards. Had no driver problems. Very soon we got fed up with the constant “are you sure?” screens, so used secpol.msc to switch them off with some success.

The thing that caused us to wipe Vista and return to XP and Win2K was that so many programs we used previously wouldn’t run properly on Vista, even using compatibility modes (running as Adminstrator and/or emulating any of XP/2000/ME/95/98 etc).

Also, we rely on various tasks running automtically in our absence. They worked with no problems (albeit with some changes each time) on Windows 3.1, WFWG, 95, NT4, 98, ME, 2000 and XP. Can’t get them to run in Vista no matter what we do. Even some simple Perl programs which have run perfectly well as scheduled tasks for many years just would not perform all of their tasks any more, no matter what we did. (even re-wrote the programs specifically for Vista)

The Vista kernel is simply incapable or else positively prevents the actions we require, so there is no point in having an OS that works against us. Windows is either an advantage to our business or it is irrelevant. Vista is irrelevant. Not worth the money.

So, Vista is now wiped, CDs in the dustbin. May switch to Linux when support or XP stops.

Wrong product, Micrsoft! Wrong business model, Microsoft! Wrong, wrong, wrong.

You installed a Beta. Wait until the actual release before you give up as this is a Beta. Got that? A BETA.

Buy an iMac… no such problems… ever

I have a Laptop, I built it personally to dual boot XP pro and Vista.

It works perfectly.

End of story.

Why do you think MS have not only extended XP support for 6 months, and additionally provided a downgrade for Vista to XP? :)

Personally, my next computer will be a Mac, then I’ll reformat my old PC and test out ubuntu.

[...] He says: Microsoft is taking a huge hit. The future of Windows, in my opinion, is inside a Virtual Machine or BootCamp on a Mac. [...]

Vista might be ready/stable/drm free some day and fully compatible with old software. Some old programs are not actively maintained anymore and will never be updated.

If vista will be ready before ms cease support for xp, it’s all good. If not I am slowly preparing my switch to linux with xp in a virtual machine.

I don’t want to buy an OS that does not meets my needs nor use an unprotected/unpatched OS for internet stuff.

I want vista to be ready, I am just not that much optimistic about it.

When will people realise that it’s down to the hardware vendors to develop decent drivers and NOT the OS vendor?

Also UAC is A GOOD THING. People need to change their “always running as an admin” mindset, this has been acknowledged for a while now (ask any linux user about SU, this is just another way of doing it.). Yes, it’s frustrating at times but only because we’re used to not having to think about this kind of thing when installing an app. I love the inherited security token model.

People bashed Microsoft over XP when it was launched (Oh yes, I was around then as well…) for very similar reasons, now XP has had nearly 6 years to mature it’s in the state that Windows 2000 was at XP launch. Vista (for me) has enough benefits to outweigh the downsides (yes, it’s more resource hungry but then so was XP compared to 2k, 2k compared to 98, 98 compared to 95 etc etc etc).

Now is the time for Apple to commercialise on the failure of Vista. Now, more than ever, the market is dissatisfied and unhappy with what Microsoft offer.

Yet Apple sticks to their high-priced, give nothing away strategy. I can see they want to maintain quality control over their products, but Apple can simply no longer justify entering the market in a much more aggressive fashion if they ever hope of grabbing more market share.

Yes, VISTA, not just the SP1, is BETA…
But while in every other business environment a “test product” is a freebie, Microsoft have seen fit not only to SELL this abomination but to force it wholesale upon the new PC market.
The phrase, “NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE” springs to mind. I’ll wait for SP4 before even considering Vista, or Vienna.

When the motherboard on my 5 year old desktop went phut recently, I looked long and hard whether or not to buy a Vista based machine. After discovering that my HP scanner wasn’t supported (great PR, HP!), my expensive Office XP might not function properly, my expensive PhotoShop 7 might not work, plus all the other reports of Vista anguish, guess what I did?

Chose XP of course!

At least I have the measure of the beast, my existing hardware and software runs correctly without needing updated drivers, and with a new Core 2 Duo processor and 2Gb memory it zips along.

I’ll not be moving to Vista for the foreseeable future.

Geoff

Hi Chris,
Sorry to hear about your frustrations with Vista SRP1 beta. I finally installed Vista 32 and 64 bit on two machines as I was getting support calls and frankly hadn’t even looked at it. Hard to help out when you don’t know the OS. Turned off the eye candy, set the power options to best performance and despite having fast machines with 2 and 4 Gb of RAM still think they are a bit slow. One is a Q6600 Intel machine that I dual boot with Ubuntu. Ubuntu is better on that machine. No real problems but mostly I use OpenSUSE 10.2 which has had a few problems for me too. I tend to use linux now as there are no virus issues, it runs faster and it is way more stable. And it offers all the choices in the world. Took me 20 minutes to figure out how to change the workgroup in Vista but that is just new OS blues. I’m just glad we have so many different options: XP, Vista, Mac and Linux in all its various flavors. Isn’t it great?

I’m getting really sick of the continual vista bashing. You get exactly the same reaction whenever any piece of new software is released to a user base. There was precisely the same reaction and problems with XP, the only difference there was that the previous OSs were so hopeless (anyone remember Windows ME?)
I’ve now had vista running fine on a celeron 1.7, and amd xp 3200+ and my dual core laptop. These machines are used for gaming, mediacenter, software development, CAD and much more – they get the full workout. No problems on any of these, including drivers (even got a driver for my hauppage tv card) or performance. It runs far fast than xp on the same machine. I kept a dual boot available until all the software I use caught up, but I haven’t used that for more the 4 months now. Any software that hasn’t caught up (or won’t eg VB6 etc) runs fine in the compatiblity modes.
My sole annoyance with Vista is the UAC prompt, and there are plenty of policy options to mitigate that.

All the comments here are fully believed in by me because I have experienced most of them, and more besides. I run Vista and XP in a dual boot, and it certainly is a pain to have to do this, but I find I can’t go back to running XP exclusively. Vista is slow, balky, obtuse, riddled with errors and sometimes infuriating (I’m talking rage), but XP is like a dead-end street to me and seems kind of dumb compared to the potentials that are in Vista. I think a lot of the negative opinion developing around Vista is due to the deafening SILENCE from Microsoft. Sometimes I think even a little of their bland corporate-speak would be welcome, if it would just provide some clue to when and how improvements and fixes might be on the way. But there is nothing — no help, no encouragement, not even an apology — the company seems not to exist any more so silent is it, while the large group of billionaire executives count their cash again after selling the new Vista as a functional OS, which it is not. In fact it is just what you say, Chris, a beta release being tested under live conditions. Anyway, I continue to act as a beta tester, having paid 160 dollars for the privilege under Microsoft’s UNBENDABLE pricing rules (ah, I remember the days when the government used to act against price fixing). Vista is broken again on my computer and behaving badly, but I can’t bear to install it again because Microsoft won’t let me do a clean install on a formatted hard drive with my poor little budget Home Premium upgrade version, and so I have to stand on my head for two days, dodging around the restrictions and trying to remember how to walk the deliberately hidden path to a clean installation, fixing the Master Boot Record errors and getting Vista to cooperate with XP on the same hard drive, and then, God help me, reloading all my programs and drivers, and re-establishing all my settings and preferences, and then restoring all my data from backups. Holy crap, and then what? It doesn’t work right! While many others are turning to Apple and OS X, I might just go off computers altogether.

Well it’s been 2 weeks now on my new Toshiba A215-S4757 machine. The love affair is over! The Black screen of Death (Hmmm a BSOD is still a BSOD! HA) No matter what I’m running. say FF with 5 tabs doing a term paper, or teaching my wife how to use e-mail. Now she thinks she’s breaking the new laptop!….. I looked at the memory modules. Not a familiar name but hey are Korean made. So I went to Newegg and bought 2 sticks of 2 gig ram of Patriot. I figure 4 gigs I know it will only see 3 and some change but I want to eliminate the cheap(?) OEM memory and use quality sticks.

Now, I’m looking at Freespire (Ubuntu kernal?) live cd to learn and get acclimated. I have this brand new OEM Vista Premium install and it breaks every frigging day! arghhhh….

My gosh I’ve long resigned to the fact that I am only interested in using a computer and not having to tinker under the hood. I’ve even given up on overclocking, just have too many other interest. So this Vista ordeal is getting to be too much. I need a stable machine NOW not in 2008. Toshiba doesn’t not have XP drivers so I can clean the slate and load XP argh…and who says they don’t believe in conspiracies!..lol…

M$ gets it alrighty….just don’t care….all the way to the bank…Haaaaa…in our face and we keep on hoping for the new stable, secure release……well…at least I’m glad I grew out of believing in the easter bunny….lol……

Vista Ultimate works great for me on my laptop, media center and my workstation. Frequently loaded programs load much much faster now too. Sorry to see you are having so many problems. Make sure you do a fresh install of Vista with the latest BIOS and device drivers.

I have to point this out… love it or hate it, Vista is the fastes selling OS in history. You can hate it all you like, its not going away. I recomend less bitching and more learning.

You might even find out that some of your problems started between the keyboard and the chair.

I normally build my own PC’s & I have a reasonablly fast AMD beastie on a good ASUS M/B, 2 GB ram oodles of HD space, Linksys Wireless, Broadband etc. Running quite happily on XP thank you very much. Having read a lot on the failings of Vista I have no of intention of upgrading this system yet, even if it is compatible…

BUT I had to by a Laptop recently for some school work & I bought a nice Fujitsu Lifebook, with you guessed it, Vista Home Premium. Apparenlty its not easy to get them with XP now. So with some trepidation I took it home & started playing with it, first thing I did was get it hooked up with my Wi-Fi, no problem! Second thing I did was get shot of the free(?) Norton anti-virus & install the COX suite which comes free with my broadband, again no problem.

On my network I have an HP 8250 Photo Printer hooked through a D-Link Print Spooler, this will upset Vista I thought, but no, all I had to do was put in the IP address of the D-Link, find the right HP drivers (in Vista) & once again works fine & I can print with no problems.

I also installed Photoshop Elements 5.0, no issues yet. So I guess Time will tell, but so far so good..

PS In my work life I have tested plenty of Beta Software, always on systems that we caould easily revert back, so I will never install a Beta release from Microsoft on a system I need to use!!

TTFN

I built a machine ment for vista. Dual core, 2GB of Ram that matches the motherboards QVL, a small video card in the nVidia 6200 series and I don’t have these issues with Vista that everyone else is complaining about. It’s all hardware related folks. While XP may be faster, I averaged a crash a day with XP. With Vista I’ve managed to go 28 days and it probably would have been longer if the stupid Updates didn’t reboot my computer automatically on me.
I’ve had my Vista Preimum since the first week it’s been out and all the complaining everyone else is doing isn’t making my machine run any less stable and grand then it has been. My advice to the big dudes that like to build systems and think they are so intelligent.

Don’t install with another OS. Install Vista on a machine that was ment to run it. Make sure your RAM is QVL with your MB. Vista dosen’t like cheap memory that doesn’t run properly with the motherboard. In fact let’s make it easy.

Get a 600 Watt Power Supply or larger. Get an Asus P5N32-E SLI, and a Seagate 500GB SATA 3.0 Hard Drive. I have 2 of them and a 320 but they are all SATA 3.0 and not in any raid configuration. nVidia video card, and I’m using a 3.2G Dual Core with VT Technology. I forget the exact Pentium D number it is. 940 I think? You put that together, and put in Vista Preimum and see if you can complain.

[...] was gonna try and describe it, but, you just gotta read it! You go [...]

I’ve been in the PC support business for the last 20 years so it didn’t bother me to install Vista on my new Core2Duo PC I built. Although I wouldn’t recommend it for new users unless they bought a new PC/printer, etc.
I haven’t had any problems with it – it runs lightning fast but a lot of that is the new hardware. No blue or black screens yet. Very happy with it. I still have my old XP but it runs like a dog now especially compared to the Vista.

I spent about a week trying to connect a co-worker’s new Vista laptop to the hotel WiFi. WinXP worked fine, as did Linux, but WinVista continued to have problems the whole four months we were there.

Likewise, he bought a mouse, certified to work with Vista, but the _built_into_Windows_ driver for it did not pass security, so it refused to install. He bought a Microsoft mouse, certified to work with Vista. Same thing happened with its CD-installed driver, although there was a working driver available at Microsoft’s site. We could use either mouse with WinXP no problem.

If Microsoft itself cannot make working drivers for Vista, how can someone expect other companies to do so?

[...] Monday, 2007-October-01 Via James Robertson: Microsoft is extending the sales period for Windows XP because so many people are unhappy with Windows Vista. [...]

I’ve had problems with Vista x64 from day one. From drivers to slow copying and moving operations, DRM bullshit which Ed Bott denies, and on and on. Microsoft really failed with Vista for three main reasons: (1) it takes a LOT of hardware to run it, but Microsoft doesn’t disclose that fact; (2) the EULA is just draconian (much like Apple’s iPhone mess), and (3) Vista should have been a 64-bit OS only. That would have forced everyone who wanted it to go out and buy a big new machine on which to run it.

For the past year I’ve installed and tested almost every GNU/Linux distro I thought I’d like and it turns out there are several very, very good ones. The great advantage to GNU/Linux is that you can find a specific distro that’s tailored to your needs and hardware. Hell, it makes an old machine new again. And the new ClearLooks UI is elegant. Although I run a downgraded XP machine for background tasks, I can’t see myself going back to Windows for my primary computing tasks throughout the day.

DISCLOSURE: Until 18 months ago, I was perhaps one of Microsoft’s biggest fans. So I don’t blame myself for Vista’s failure.

I have Vista 32 and 64 on two separate notebooks. Compaq runs Vista 64
Vista 32 about 70% of programs used with XP run “OK” but slower. In some cases cannot get to help files.
Vista 64 works with

Vista: First there were hardware issues … ATI X850 and X700 AGP video driver crashes/restarts. No support for ATI TV Wonder Pro cards and delayed support for USR 5699 Winmodems … 2 GB of memory is nolonger ample just sufficient … the 3.2 GHZ Pentium 4 Northwood CPU lacks sufficient processing power … no
Then the software issues … the whole ITUNES/IPOD driver issue and general sluggishness … VMware 5.x series nolonger works … etc
Then replacing the old components with Core 2 Duo E6600 and Gigabyte 965P-DS3 Motherboard to support CPU and 4GB of DDR2-800 memory only to find miserable performance of products such as VMware 6.0 and Folding@Home on Vista as compared to XP Home not to mention poor driver support of ATI X1300 card and poor tuning of Hauppauge PVR-150 card on Vista as compared to XP.
So … I too am back on XP to my chagrin … as Chris points out “… a year after Vista’s release …” to get the performance back for VMware and Folding@Home among other apps (I fault Microsoft for the performance hit) … not to mention for general program compatibility (not so much a induced Microsoft problem)

I have Windows Vista 64 bit installed, running XP in a Virtual PC which lets me run multiple instances of Visual Studio, with no issues… I do all sorts of things… and I do not install bloatware, so I have had no issues. I built this computer… Quad Core 6600 processor, EVGA mother board (SLI) and EVGA 8800 GTS 320MB graphics card…. I love Vista 64 bit, and if I want USB support for virtual machine I just need to get VMWARE, which I do not need yet… VISTA 64 ROCKS! XP is a toy I run within VISTA.

I’m reading these posts and your problems with windows and can’t help myself stop laughing and sympathising. I erased windows off all my computers 4 years ago and I’ve been running Suse Linux since then. I NEVER had any problems worse than windows’ with previous versions of Suse. And with new releases there’s less and less problems, with 10.2 I had literally zero, everything worked out of the box, all hardware supported, all drivers available – piece of cake. Laptop, desktop, servers, printers, cameras, modems, wireless you name it, everything just works.

Listen, you people, switch to Linux, dump that windows cr*pware and have no worries in the world. Instead have total freedom, power, security, tens of thousands free programs and much more. Linux rocks!

“Abandon the notion that UI doesn’t matter.”

Are you kidding? UI is about the only thing that Microsoft is any good at (for mediocre values of “good”). Microsoft is all about putting lipstick on the pig.

Yes, lets all move to Linux.

I’m getting rid of my 335 Cabriolet and buying a Citroen 2CV.

It’ll be so straighforward!

Completely primitive and sh*& but SOOOOO STRAIGHTFORWARD.

Most of the commenters on this post seem to have the reading comprehension of a blueberry.

two words linux/ubuntu