Windows Vista Pretty Much Sucks

[bgavin]

I spent 4 hours on the Home Basic edition. What a pig. It is incompatible with a wide variety of stuff, plus slow as hell.

AMD 3200/64 processor, Dell E-series box. Not enough memory at 512mb, but still in the black if opening a web browser.

No Outlook Express
Replacement "Windows Mail" will import some OE files, not others.
No NTBackup
Built in Backup/Restore will not read NTBackup BKF files.
Won't install Quicken 2005 Deluxe at all
Will install Quicken 2005 Basic, but you have to click the data file first.
Refuses McAfee Enterprise 8.0i
Installs McAfee Enterprise 8.5i OK
Office Updates not supported. You must opt-in "Window Updater" instead.

And the most irritating thing is, just like the Mac commercial, it asks your permission for EVERY DAMN THING it does. Truly amazing. I equate this piece of shit with New Coke.

I figure when the Mac will run MS Office and Quickbooks Pro, flawlessly, it is gonna beat Windows ass. FTR, I am not a Mac fan (nor disparager).

[Fatal0E]

I am running Vista Premium x64, not to bad. Turned off the User account control that bugs ya all the time. Had no problems with quicken 2005 deluxe. Quickbooks 2000 wont install. Speed seems fine. Running it on 3 computers in my home. Athlon x2 2.5ghz, 2gb ram, 2gb readyboost drive, 250gb sataII hdd 16mb buffer... Athlon x2 2ghz, 2gb ram, 500gb sataII 16mb buffer drive... Core duo laptop 1.86ghz, 32bit vista, 1gb ram, 5400rpm drive. All seem to run fine, but laptop could use 2gb ram.

[Fizzycapola]

It seems not too long ago having a computer with 64-128Mb was considered super powerful able to be used for creating profesional 32bit color 3D movies of Pixar quality.

Now one must have 2GB or more to open their a text document.

Did everybody die and awake in hell. This is a nightmare you must pinch yourself to believe it's real.

[Per Hansson]

1gb is usable, 2gb feels better

The new Windows Update app is a much better idea.
The old with Internet Explorer and ActiveX to install critical security updates to the operating system, the two most insecure things ever developed!!!!

You can turn off UAC, and yea, I also hate Vista

[Fizzycapola]

Why do you use Vista anyway. Is it not just a slower OS, actually programmed to be slow like XP is.

[Per Hansson]

Like all windows NT versions you should wait a service pack or 2 if you really want somewhat decent performance and a chunk of the millions of known bugs removed

Note: Windows 2000 shipped with 50000 known "faults"

[stevo1210]

I bought a Dell Inspiron 6400 earlier this year and it came with the Windows Vista express upgrade program. So a few days ago I decided to pay the $35 for it to be shipped here.

I had always thought Windows Vista was something very new and exciting because of those great ads they have on TV.... now I'm going to have to reconsider that point after hearing about how slow it is and the bugs it contains etc.

My Dell Inspiron 6400 has the following in it.... it was quite expensive when I got it also.... probably because of all the fancy extras I ordered....

* Intel (R) Core Duo T2250 CPU, 1.73GHz, 533MHz FSB, 2MB L2 cache.
* 1GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM (Dual channel 2x 512Mb modules)
* 80GB SATA HDD
* ATi Radeon X1400 256MB Hypermemory.... this is the best part of this laptop, also the point why I ordered it.
* 8X DVD-Writer
* Dell 355 Truemobile Bluetooth module.... I wonder if it is Vista compatible....
*Intel PRO 3945 A/B/G WLAN.

Anyway, will these specifications be able to run Windows Vista Home Premium smoothly?? I currently have Windows XP Media Center Edition and it runs very fast. For my desktops, I am still using Windows XP, but some of my desktops also run Fedora Core 5. Fedora Core is a pretty good OS, very fast on a Pentium III, no such bugs etc. and best of all it is a freeware OS.

Thanks.

[WNG]

I don't see myself porting to Vista in the future. I think MS pretty much painted themselves into a corner in going down the gamentertainment route. Crazy as it may sound, they flipped with Apple's MacOSX for being a mainstream OS. OSX is beginning to be a more robust OS, with hardware capable of running windows XP.

As far as OS's, I'm sticking with win2k/winXP. I've finally stripped XP sp2 down to the point where I can live with it... lean, fast and reliable. But it's still porkier than win2k.

Migrating to Linux, not Vista... and may have to adopt a MacOS (wow, did I state that?).

I'd love to see a GoogleOS that will topple Microsoft once and for all.

[starfury1]

I just read in a mag that home basic is XP in drag....

Me...* I think unless you are going for the higher range versions....its just more blotware...
like how to take you nice fast X2 chip and make you want to go and buy a Quad chip....
* But no expert on OS's

Ok yeah all a bit tongue in cheek

No plans unless I get a much faster box and that isn't going to happen any time soon

So I can live without it......dont need its run home to billyware either its a pain enough with XP when it gets screwed or you change too many things..well it thinks you have and it decides it wants to be reactivated.

be nice if you could get OSX for white goods type boxes though
I dont mind OSX

cheers....

[willawake]

how is vista without all the fancy gui? there must be way to speed it up also by removing services that are not needed.

Fatal0E already explained how to avoid the constant nagging.

here is something if people are considering whether to get DSP version or not.

On the question of replacing components, our licensing terms do allow for replacing or changing components. Windows Vista allows you to change up to 5 non-peripheral components, after which the PC is deemed to be "new". In other words you can upgrade your MB, Processor, RAM, Hard Drive and Graphics Card, without needing a license purchase. Every hardware change will necessitate a reactivation, however.

Once you have replaced more than 5 non-peripheral components, you will need to purchase a new DSP license / pack.

[gdement]

Every new windows version has been slower than the last. I remember back in the 90's Microsoft used to advertise the latest versions as "faster", even though they really meant "you need a faster computer".

I'm always on the trailing edge because old stuff works and the constant upgrade mentality just annoys me. I've tried WinXP and didn't like it as much as Win2k, so that's what I still use. But now Microsoft won't even share their hotfix for our daylight savings time issue. That spells out our bad standing with Microsoft pretty clearly.

Does retail Vista come with downgrade rights? If so, how are you supposed to go about getting an XP installer?

[MD Willington]

Originally Posted by bgavin

I spent 4 hours on the Home Basic edition. What a pig. It is incompatible with a wide variety of stuff, plus slow as hell.

AMD 3200/64 processor, Dell E-series box. Not enough memory at 512mb, but still in the black if opening a web browser.

Nvidia chipset, Nvidia drivers aparently suck for Vista... and your board is sharing the 512 meg o ram with the onboard video?

I figure when the Mac will run MS Office and Quickbooks Pro, flawlessly, it is gonna beat Windows ass. FTR, I am not a Mac fan (nor disparager).

I've seen where people have almost the same intel chipset hardware in a PC where they could run X86 OS-X...

Apple has a leg up here since they use a finite set of hardware, whereas Microsoft has to cope with an infinite set of hardware...

[tazwegion]

The only reason I upgraded from 98SE was because you just couldn't get all the drivers you needed & MS stopped any further support, 2K & XPpro variants are nice enough... but there's times I miss the almost simplistic 98SE

BTW the MS slogon "the WoW starts NOW..." relates more to your wallet's reaction to the new OS than you're OS experience LMAO

[willawake]

i certainly dont miss 98/ME. what a load of crap. It would develop wierd problems which would take hours of troubleshooting and in the end could only be solved with a reinstall. it was like a house of cards, mess around with stuff and vape the whole os.

2000/XP meant i no longer do much support, just dealing with failed hdds, spyware, lost menu bars etc.

[Per Hansson]

2:nd that^^

I switched to 2000 December '99...

And let me check now, what am I still running? Ahh, Windows 2000

Oh, I have also learnt my install key by memory; literally, I usually go and hum it at work to just annoy people...

And the few times I've had people by when installing my Win2K, let's just say they have dropped their jaws to the floor

[tazwegion]

Originally Posted by willawake

i certainly dont miss 98/ME. what a load of crap. It would develop wierd problems which would take hours of troubleshooting and in the end could only be solved with a reinstall. it was like a house of cards, mess around with stuff and vape the whole os.

2000/XP meant i no longer do much support, just dealing with failed hdds, spyware, lost menu bars etc.

I never liked win-ME but 98SE-lite worked just fine, I don't recall ever experiencing many issues in all my applications, though disappearing icons in the taskbar is nothing new as it still happens to me using XPpro SP2... a hard reboot fixes all that

I guess I'm fond of 98SE-lite because my older hardware supports it so well, PII era CPU's can and do struggle with 2K/XP releases I suppose a stripped down version of XP would be somewhat easier eh?

AFAIK it was regular win98 that had the bulk of the issues, hence the release of the Second Edition variant

[japlytic]

Upgrading to Windows 95 in its time was moderately steep (system requirements - I ran 95B on an old 386 in 1997 which did work), and XP was quite steep (compatibility - I held off until 2004, when I got my new computer at this time). I think Vista is a bit too steep for me.
Not to mention some devices not being able to work with Vista (which means some of them being thrown out because they would not work with Vista!)
I guess the manufacturers want to make money selling new devices and not supporting older ones ...

[Fizzycapola]

Originally Posted by willawake

i certainly dont miss 98/ME. what a load of crap. It would develop wierd problems which would take hours of troubleshooting and in the end could only be solved with a reinstall.

Out the box this was very true, most of the blue screen errors seemed to be RAM allocation related, it was almost as though the errors were intended to encourage you to buy their new OS. I think many people bought XP for this reason. Although I found simply changing a few lines of text in system files I found made the OS almost rock solid unless I started messing around with new applications/drivers etc. That and a full reinstalltion to perfect tweaked state with all apps working via key reg file backups backed up and reinstallable any time in under 60 seconds made me very very happy with it.

Here is are my custom settings from my archive:
[boot.description]
system.drv=Standard PC
mouse.drv=Microsoft Mouse
keyboard.typ=Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
aspect=100,96,96
display.drv=FIRE GL X1

[386Enh]
ebios=*ebios
woafont=app850.fon
mouse=*vmouse, msmouse.vxd
device=*dynapage
device=*vcd
device=*vpd
device=*int13
keyboard=*vkd
display=*vdd,*vflatd
PagingDrive=D:
MinPagingFileSize=1382400
MaxPagingFileSize=1382400
IRQ3=4096
IRQ5=4096
IRQ10=4096
IRQ11=4096
IRQ14=4096
PageBuffers=32
VGAMonoText=OFF
DMABufferSize=64
HardDiskDMABuffer=64
32BitDiskAccess=on
ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
MinTimeSlice=80

[vcache]
minfilecache=65536
maxfilecache=65536
ChunkSize=4096
NameCache=4096
DirectoryCache=128

Back then a 65MB cache you could run Office 2005, Graphics Apps, Read Acrobat documents whilst playing modern games, listening to music and browsing the net and it would all run from RAM at 60 nano seconds. To do the same today only *nearly* as fast requires 4GB+ of DDR2 800Mhz-1066Mhz RAM and 6Ghz of processing power and maybe even a RAM hard drive array.

Sometimes I wish Bill Gates would say the reason to buy Vista is to slow you down because you're walking/talking too fast, maybe if everybody still used old apps with modern power they could do a years work in a split second, give MS money and give hardware industry money. Not transparent lies. I think their slogan should be "hey you give us your money, don't ask what it's for".

[Per Hansson]

ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1

This one I remember, it lets Win98 address memory above 128mb

It simply can't otherwise, I mean, wtf 128mb ram was not _that_ much in '98....

[gdement]

I never liked Win98, but it certainly has a lot of fans for whatever reason. It's just as unstable as all the DOS descendant versions, and the IE integration makes it slower than 95 or NT4. As much as I used it for a few years, I don't think I'll ever install it again.
If a computer can't use Win2k, then for most purposes NT4 is a much better choice than 98. NT4 is very stable and it also runs faster than 98 on old systems. I used it on a P133 laptop and it felt like a new computer. The problems with NT4 are it doesn't support USB and it doesn't work with modern versions of DirectX, so you can't play many games on it. That isn't a big deal on most old machines.