Does Windows Vista suck as much as everyone says it does?

[lightningandsnow]

I'm thinking of gettign a laptop, but because of how much everyone complains about how much Vista sucks, I'm thinking of getting a used one with Windows XP on it. I don't think I really want to get a mac, either, but it might be alright...

Any advice?

[trotsky]

1. No.

Vista came out before most computer hardware was ready. That was a dumb move by Microsoft.

But the hardware has caught up. I bought a new computer with Vista on it two months go. Rock-stable, fast (gets faster as you use it), no problems whatsoever. Make sure you get a dual-core processor, at least 2 GB of RAM, and a hard drive that spins at least 7200 RPM. You'll be absolutely fine.

[lightningandsnow]

2. Hmm...

Budget is also an issue... would it cost an insane amount of money to get a computer with those features?

[trotsky]

3. Define insane. ;-)

Kidding, though. I bought mine from the Dell Outlet. Those are refurb/returned machines, fully warrantied, at deep discounts.

Here's the Dell laptop outlet:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/notebooks?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh&dgc=IR&cid=11343&lid=543237

[PeaceNikki]

10. This is my new machine

I got it with XP and have the 22" monitor (still under $500).
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=04&kc=6W300&l=en&oc=brpdsgd&s=bsd&dgc=BF&cid=7421&lid=197378

Excellent deal, IMHO.

On edit... Doh... you said LAPTOP!

[pokerfan]

21. Yep, the biggest problem

were so-called 'Vista-Capable' systems that clearly weren't but sold as such.

[trotsky]

22. Absolutely. And that doesn't even cover...

the bloatware that a lot of manufacturers (I'm looking at you, LENOVO) piled on.

[pokerfan]

23. I hate the bloat

Last time I looked at least Dell would sell you a bloat-free system for an additional $50 (which gives you an idea of how much they are paid to install it in the first place). Don't know if the practice has caught on as it's been a while since I bought a new system.

[trotsky]

24. I should note that the computer I bought

I immediately wiped it and reinstalled with Vista Business. Fed up with the bloatware. Hadn't heard about the bloat-free option, but $50 a pop sounds like they make a pretty decent return on filling up people's computers with junk.

[eppur_se_muova]

37. They charge extra for NOT selling inflicting their software on you?

Isn't that called "extortion" ?

[pokerfan]

38. Not really

The harsh reality is that they are paid (on a per unit basis) to load the crap in the first place which allows them them to sell it for less. I will either piece together my next computer or patronize a vendor who will sell me a bloat-free model.

[Omphaloskepsis]

4. Vista is OK..

It really depends on what you do. If you browse, email, and use Office and iTunes you will be fine.

I'm not a fan of Vista, but it does the basic things OK.

/* I use a Mac, I just have to work with Windows machines all day */

[Tyler Durden]

5. I would say only this:

There is a good reason that MS gives away an XP license with every copy of VISTA, so you can load XP from disk onto your new machine in place of VISTA: MS NEVER gives anything away.

[av8rdave]

6. It's a Microsoft product...need we say anything more?

My next computer will be a MacBook. My daughter has one - it's awesome. Boots up in just a few seconds, programs run without stalling, you really can run more than one application at a time, and none of those $#@! OS error messages. Best of all, none of those automatic "updates" that you don't ask for or approve.

[meegbear]

7. The biggest issue is the UAC ...

thats User Access Control for you non-dweebs (like me).

This is a "security feature" which basically prompts you every time you perform an action, verifying that you want to do it - one of the Mac commercials parodies it with the guy in the sunglasses constantly saying "Allow or deny?"

While it's great if you are on a corporate network, it's bloody annoying as hell at home. You can turn it off though and after that, you're fine. You can click here for the steps to do it (it's easy).

A word of advice - DO NOT GET OFFICE 2007! I don't know they were thinking when they "redesigned" it. Stick with 2003.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

9. Thanks for that link.

I'm going to turn off that UAC on a Vista laptop.

[Coyote_Bandit]

11. You got that right

Vista is ok at best - certainly not as good as XP Pro.

Office 2007 sucks! I've had multiple instances where the damn thing freezes up and then when I restart it won't open its own backup and autosaved files. And the new user command interface is cumbersome. The Corel office suite is much better. And cheaper. Probably my choice from this point forward.

[meegbear]

15. That "ribbon" is the worst ...

what the FUCK were they thinking? I've worked with Windows since 3.1 and I don't care how long it would exist, I would never understand it.

Jeez.

[Fredda Weinberg]

16. I bought a cheap desktop that crawled w/Vista, 'cause I knew that as

soon as I threw XP Pro on it, it would be a awesome home server. Love those extra licenses hanging around ... they're good forever.

[TreasonousBastard]

31. Good choice-- been using WordPerfect for years and...

it does everything I need with no hassle and little buggery.

Still using WP 12, though, and don't know if Corel has managed to screw things up with the new package. One of these days I'll get it and find out.

[Bluestar]

44. Hi--have you loaded the Service Pak for Office 2007 off of

the MS website? I was having the same problems, but the SP fixed them all.

[Coyote_Bandit]

46. Ummmm

I think so. I know I loaded some updates that didn't fix the problem. Probably a good idea for me to double check that I havre all the latest ones though. Thanks for the reminder.

[supernova]

12. That UAC has confused the hell out of my SiL

I've been at her place twice in the last week and 1/2 to undo things she did because she is a user/administrator.

:argh:

She has to share the PC with her high school aged youngest son and she can't stand that screen that makes you choose which user desktop you want.


All she wants to do is use Media player to play CDs, surf the net, read her Gmail, and play games. I'm astounded that she signed on to Second Life, but there you go. :crazy:

She downloads things all the time, esp email attachments that go to the desktop (because she doesn't understand the concept of a directory tree. Then she gets confused about which icon is the install program and which is the actual program. And why are they different things?!?

I swear this woman should not touch a PC. It's crazy making trying to help her.

Both of my nephews have gotten fed up with helping her and I partly don't blame them. :crazy:

And Vista makes the whole situation, with all its setting and choices, that much crazier.

:argh:

[petronius]

29. Yeah, I am really not liking office 2007

It seems like so many things I do (simple things, like customizing a chart in Excel) take twice as many steps in the new version. My biggest peeve about MS Office has always been the assumption that all users are businesses that want to have standard memo, letter, spreadsheet formats, etc - it's a huge pain to turn off all that 'helpful' autoformatting every time I get a new version of the program. In Office 2007, it's harder than ever to do anything that MS doesn't think I should want to do...

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

36. I actually love Office 2007.

It does take some getting used to, but overall I find it to be very useful.

[Bluestar]

43. Office 2007--I just installed it and you're right, it was a nightmare

but I fixed it by installing the Service Pak for Office 2007 on the MS website. Now it works like a dream--takes a little getting used to of where they moved basic functions, however.

[grace0418]

8. At my craft night the other night, all but two of the women were complaining up and

down about how much Vista sucked. The other two (me and one other woman) looked at each other and said "I love my Mac!" :)

Sorry, if you need a PC for what you do, I have no advice. If you don't need a PC, I can tell you that I truly do love my Macbook Pro.

[supernova]

14. Me too!

Much less headaches all the way around.

[DS1]

13. No

Just turn off that UAC crap.

[BarenakedLady]

17. No

I have it on my laptop. It's just different.

[DarkTirade]

18. It has its ups and downs.

Personally, I think they just released it before they were ready.

Other than that, it is a bit of a system hog, but newer systems can handle it. It's not for me anytime soon, but when I get a new computer, if most of the bugs are ironed out, I'll probably go with Vista. Or I may do dual-boot XP and Vista.

[MediaBabe]

19. I bought a new laptop last August

It came with Vista and I have not had any problem with it at all. I thought about a Mac (for about two minutes) but didn't like the 50% larger price tag. I'd not even think of getting a used one. Why buy trouble if you can afford new?

I don't know why everyone complains so much, I'm thinking they just don't like change and it's a sport to whine about Microsoft.

[Boojatta]

20. Obviously everyone who says anything negative about Vista

is a paid operative working for one of Microsoft's competitors...

just as everyone who says anything negative about Senator Clinton is a paid operative and everyone who says anything negative about Senator Obama is a paid operative.
:sarcasm:

[Yavin4]

25. My General Rule With M$ Operating Releases

Is to wait a year or two. They always seem to have a major fix within a year or so of a new release.

Anyone remember Windows ME?

[LSK]

26. Yes, stick with XP

There are NO BENEFITS to going to VISTA.

[musette_sf]

27. Agreed

and agreed.

by someone who just bought a big bad new HP box and downgraded (some would say, upgraded) to XP Pro.

[Pacifist Patriot]

28. The only problem I am having is compatibility with FrontPage 2003.

If someone would be so kind as to tell me how I can get the damned derived files to create and publish automatically so I don't get a bunch of broken graphics in the theme whenever I create a new page. That would be great! Previously written stuff is fine, it just does it when I create a new page or try to change the name of an old page. Bugger!

[China_cat]

30. Even worse.

[qb]

32. Yes. I would try to get XP.

I'm still the phone support representative when my ex-wife is trying to figure out where she saved her latest Word document. I don't know what the hell to tell her now that she has Vista - they changed everything in the user interface. It also took a couple of tries to find a compatible memory stick and wireless mouse.

[Orsino]

33. Nothing can possibly suck that much.

It's working fine for me, too.

[SKKY]

34. Vista doesn't suck. It Suckity suck sucks....

...I use Linux. Vista is an absolute resource hog.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

35. Not even close. (nt)

[laconicsax]

39. I've been running Vista for over a year now.

After turning off the stupid UAC feature within the first hour, I've had only a handful of problems, almost all of which having to do with really old software (Windows 95/98 old, and they didn't always work too well on XP). I only one OS specific problem. Every other time I'd open the control panel, it would hang up and give me a 'not responding' error. It stopped doing that a while ago.

You really need an absolute minimum of 1GB RAM. I bought my laptop with 512 MB, which was a real boneheaded thing to do. I bought an extra 1GB and things ran pretty smoothly with occasional sluggishness when dealing with resource-intensive software. The ReadyBoost feature is really great for this too. Sometime in July, I bought a 4 GB flash drive, allowing me to essentially add about 3.5 GB ram just by plugging the drive into a USB port.

[Deja Q]

50. Agreed. My laptop,

Gateway MX8739, running Vista Ultimate (32-bit), had 1GB as default. Vista accorded itself 670MB on regular basis. Word processing, chess/solitaire/poker playing (built-in apps), and web browsing were tolerable, but that ate up the rest.

If anything more than what I just said is what people do on their PC, double it to 2GB.

When I used vista32, I bought 4GB. 32-bit restrictions in play, my PC only used 3.2GB of that. And I often max'ed the system with Photoshop and a handful of 8x11", 300dpi photos. (XP gave me a tad more RAM to work with, about 350MB, but I could overload it too. :D )

I've yet to test Photoshop in Vista64, and I know it will have the 4GB limitation too, but all of the RAM will work with photoshop - no OS or other apps will be using the allotment and plenty of RAM will remain.

Microsoft has GOT to convince more developers to go 64-bit... it's win-win all around.

[TrogL]

40. No, it's worse

[Bluestar]

41. I just got a new laptop with Vista pre-loaded

It took me a few days to get used to it, but I haven't had any big problems. I did some research before I bought, because I had heard horror stories and XP was so good I didn't want to give it up.

They have moved things on the screen for no good reason, but once you find what you're looking for, it's no big deal. I also loaded the new Office 2007 at the same time. I had a lot of problems with that until I downloaded the Service Pak for Office at microsoft.com. Now it works like a breeze.

I think you will have to have Vista eventually, as Microsoft will stop supporting it, trying to move everyone to Vista. In fact, they just cut prices on Vista (today) some 20-30% to stimulate sales. There is a Service Pak for Vista coming out in March that should fix most of the complaints.

[Deja Q]

45. I'm hoping they start pushing Vista64.

Some companies have been more proactive on supporting those brave enough to go Win64... others need to catch up. Kudos to Epson, Olympus, and to an extent Canon...

Vista64 is rather faster and more flexible for apps, but there are a couple minor annoyances. Mostly in that an 11 year old piece of software will not work. (Vista Ultimate, 32-bit, was very accomodating for app compatibility - Windows Compatibility Mode addressed any problems I had, but even then I had 11 year old software working without needingt to use WCM!)

From what I've been reading, Vista SP1 will fix most of the problems...

An early adopter of Office 2007, I had no install or usage problems. Though for Access, there were a couple of usability functions they could have improved on, what having created the Ribbon interface and all...

[LeftyMom]

42. New ones that have the capability to run it are fine.

Most of the problems seem to come from computers that really don't have the horsepower to run it. I wound up with a new laptop with vista after my old one fell apart on me, and while I don't think it's any real step up from Vista, I also don't think it's a conspiracy from the gates of hell to drive sane men mad and Apple share prices into the upper atmosphere.

The new version of Office, otoh, sucks. I use OpenOffice instead, and it works just fine.

[GOPisEvil]

47. You know, I have a new-ish desktop with Vista and I have had zero problems.

I did have to download a couple of new drivers for older peripherals, but those were readily available. I didn't even have any trouble getting the computer to play nice with my home wireless network (simple though it is). I will eventually upgrage the amount of RAM, but in reality, the machine works pretty well as is.

[Deja Q]

48. oops, hit the post button 2x...

[Deja Q]

49. It doesn't suck as much as claimed.

It's got quirks and problems, but so do Windows XP, 2000 Pro, NT 4, Me, 98, 95, 3.1...

So do OS/2, Linux, OS X, BeOS, DOS, TOS, Workbench...


It's really about the apps.

And in Vista, most software app compatibility issues can be resolved by using the Compatibility Mode options in the app's icon properties...

Most benchmarking sites do see Vista response times beind marginally slower... depends on the app and the hardware, but it's nothing to lose sleep over.

The improved UI makes up for the "fischer price" interface XP is known for -- and 3rd party add-ons not only made XP as bloaty as Vista, it made XP far less stable. (Vista, in its favor, is stable.)

Worse, I prefer Vista 64-bit - far better utilization of hardware, is faster (Windows index for my hard drive went from 5.3 to 5.8 and feels like it too), and allows far more RAM to be used; something 3d animators, photoshop users, et al, would appreciate.

[Giant Robot]

51. I don't think so

It's not perfect but it doesn't suck either.

I don't know what your computing needs are, but ours are pretty basic, and it does what we need just fine. It is obviously more than we need and a resource hog, but thats an issue that we can cope with.

[DainBramaged]

52. Well, no

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=7523073&mesg_id=7523073

I just bought a new notebook. Me likey.