Is Vista any better these days?

[richwenzel]

vista, for me is just a lot more annoying than xp.

i am running vista 64-bit, and i find it a lot less "trusting" than xp...which is good and bad I guess...but it is definitely more annoying...in a way, it feels like a pc at work, you have to permission everything.

at this point, if I were to rethink it, i would go xp over vista, but its not like night and day difference...

i cant think of a single thing that i like about vista over xp...i can think of a few things i like about xp over vista, however.

 

[Gamingphreek]

I recommend Vista to anyone who asks me these days. After Service Pack 1, there is no reason not to run it. I have had, in a year running, 1 crash.

As for the memory, people really don't understand anything at all about it. Vista's takes all the memory you throw at it for caching purposes, when it is needed, it deallocated the memory for use. I have 2x machines in full Aero glass (One for gaming, one HTPC) and I have NEVER had a hiccup - NOT ONCE!

Now if you are a power user, then you should really be using a Linux Distro. I dual boot with Ubuntu and Vista 32bit. There is really no reason not to use Ubuntu - Vista is there for any lingering school apps or web-apps that wont run correctly for a variety of reasons (I just haven't had time to wipe it and install a vmware install).

-Kevin

 

[richwenzel]

there are a lot of things, like many games, that dont run well or without decent amounts of effort in ubuntu.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The main issue with vista is, its BLOODY SLOW. on a mid end computer, its not even worth it. May as well get a 486 with windows 98. On a super high end computer it will run ok, but nothing incredible. On the other hand, my windows 2003 vm on a quad core high end machine is insane fast. Like, I've never seen something this fast. 30 secs to reboot. Open a window or anything, instant. Vista is a little sluggish even on that machine. That's a fresh install. Takes about 2-3 minutes to boot up compared to win2k3 that takes 30 secs.

And vista is very annoying too. I'm sure you can turn all that crap off, but its still annoying. Stuff like the "Are you sure" "are you really really sure?". Everything seems to be hidden or totally moved out of place too.

But regardless I need to learn it, I work at a help desk. It's rare but we sometimes get internet customers that use vista. Worse is it does not even have telnet built in. Try troubleshooting an email server issue without telnet. PITA. (yes I know there's a way to install it, but I'm not going to start installing stuff on customer's machines and most probably don't even have the dvd anyway)

Now it does have some neat administrative features and other cool stuff. But to me it just does not balance out. If ever I upgrade from XP, I'm going Linux, probably Ubuntu. But I'm happy with XP and will probably stay with it for a few years before going to Ubuntu.

 

[A5]

Originally posted by: bullbert

Originally posted by: hans030390
The OP is using it mostly for "school work".

You put "school work" in quotes, not the OP. But the latest definition of "school work" seems to be 3 hours per week of Office/Works, and 40+ hours per week of the-latest-and-greatest-multiplayer-FPS.

Parents spend $1000+ on a laptop, and even more for an external 24" monitor, 5.1 speaker set, external storage, etc for junior, and the parents wonder why junior flunks out of University after one or two semesters, moves back home, and has to restart at Community College. Assuming the University REQUIRES a laptop, parents should have gotten a $300 Hot Deals special, and if the University does not require a PC, junior should be satisfied with a calculator. Of course I am speaking as someone who went the BS (Bachelor of Science) Engineering route, and spent 70++ hours per week in classes, labs, and studying. I would image going the BA (Bachelor of Arts) route affords junior much more leisure time to waste on multiplayer online games.

I'm doing BS EE at a top 10 program, and I've never had more than a consistent 25 hours/week of work. If you did 70 hours a week, you were doing something wrong...

The main issue with vista is, its BLOODY SLOW. on a mid end computer, its not even worth it. May as well get a 486 with windows 98. On a super high end computer it will run ok, but nothing incredible. On the other hand, my windows 2003 vm on a quad core high end machine is insane fast. Like, I've never seen something this fast. 30 secs to reboot. Open a window or anything, instant. Vista is a little sluggish even on that machine. That's a fresh install. Takes about 2-3 minutes to boot up compared to win2k3 that takes 30 secs.

Vista is going to be slow when you first start using it, because it's building up a profile of your typical usage...use it for a couple weeks and your most commonly loaded apps will load like you think they should.

Also, I'm running Vista on a 1.73GHz Pentium M (awesome chip in late 2005, not so much now) with 1.5GB of RAM and it runs fine for Firefox/Openoffice/VirtualBox. If you "need" 3+GB of RAM, try closing some windows every once in awhile

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: A5

Originally posted by: bullbert

Originally posted by: hans030390
The OP is using it mostly for "school work".

You put "school work" in quotes, not the OP. But the latest definition of "school work" seems to be 3 hours per week of Office/Works, and 40+ hours per week of the-latest-and-greatest-multiplayer-FPS.

Parents spend $1000+ on a laptop, and even more for an external 24" monitor, 5.1 speaker set, external storage, etc for junior, and the parents wonder why junior flunks out of University after one or two semesters, moves back home, and has to restart at Community College. Assuming the University REQUIRES a laptop, parents should have gotten a $300 Hot Deals special, and if the University does not require a PC, junior should be satisfied with a calculator. Of course I am speaking as someone who went the BS (Bachelor of Science) Engineering route, and spent 70++ hours per week in classes, labs, and studying. I would image going the BA (Bachelor of Arts) route affords junior much more leisure time to waste on multiplayer online games.

I'm doing BS EE at a top 10 program, and I've never had more than a consistent 25 hours/week of work. If you did 70 hours a week, you were doing something wrong...

The main issue with vista is, its BLOODY SLOW. on a mid end computer, its not even worth it. May as well get a 486 with windows 98. On a super high end computer it will run ok, but nothing incredible. On the other hand, my windows 2003 vm on a quad core high end machine is insane fast. Like, I've never seen something this fast. 30 secs to reboot. Open a window or anything, instant. Vista is a little sluggish even on that machine. That's a fresh install. Takes about 2-3 minutes to boot up compared to win2k3 that takes 30 secs.

Vista is going to be slow when you first start using it, because it's building up a profile of your typical usage...use it for a couple weeks and your most commonly loaded apps will load like you think they should.

Also, I'm running Vista on a 1.73GHz Pentium M (awesome chip in late 2005, not so much now) with 1.5GB of RAM and it runs fine for Firefox/Openoffice/VirtualBox. If you "need" 3+GB of RAM, try closing some windows every once in awhile

I'm running it on a 1.2ghz celeron and 1GB laptop, and I can truthfully barely notice the difference in speed between it and XP for basic stuff like internet, email and office. The only thing noticeably slower is the explorer, but its still far from sluggish. It shouldnt take weeks, just a day or two - the real problem is the way it preloads apps on boot, it gives the impression that something is wrong, that its immediately swapping to disk. Stop constantly rebooting for no reason, and all of the speed problems go away.

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: plastick

guess its a life lesson to not be a stupid ass. Anyway, I know now not to delete the restore partition after I break the computer

Fixed.

If you had simply left that 13gb alone, you wouldn't be in this dilemma.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Vendors do it wrong through they should give a DVD with the image on it. What if the drive fails?

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
Vendors do it wrong through they should give a DVD with the image on it. What if the drive fails?

I completely agree with this. Some vendors still send a restore DVD with each computer they sell. Others will send one on request when ordering a computer direct from them.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: Fallen Kell

Originally posted by: ViRGE
With the specs Amazon lists, I don't see why you'd have a problem. The processor is powerful enough, and 2GB of RAM will do.

2GB isn't really enough for Vista. I have been fooling with that for a while. I have a HTPC which I started out with 2GB and it had issues just opening new programs because it was swapping to the hard drive page file. The minimum I would use with Vista is 3GB. It is pretty sad when you have to use the maximum allowed by the OS (32bit at least) as the minimum needed. My server is running 64bit Vista because the max 32bit allowed wasn't enough to do video editing. I'm now running 8GB and it works like a champ. It just screams through everything I throw at it.

I agree. 3GB is a minimum for Vista for me. Anything less and you start running out of memory really quickly. Just Vista with no programs uses about 1.3GB on my machine. My my main workstation I have 8GB of RAM too. It's nice to have VMware with WinXP running on 2GB of that memory. I've peaked out at around 5GB of RAM used up when I'm doing heavy multitasking.

I'm actually finding scenarios where I would actually like to have more than 4 CPU cores running too now. Now if the SLC solid state Intel drives would go up in capacity and down in price, I could finally remove the final bottleneck of my system.

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: Golgatha

I agree. 3GB is a minimum for Vista for me. Anything less and you start running out of memory really quickly. Just Vista with no programs uses about 1.3GB on my machine. My my main workstation I have 8GB of RAM too. It's nice to have VMware with WinXP running on 2GB of that memory. I've peaked out at around 5GB of RAM used up when I'm doing heavy multitasking.

I'm actually finding scenarios where I would actually like to have more than 4 CPU cores running too now. Now if the SLC solid state Intel drives would go up in capacity and down in price, I could finally remove the final bottleneck of my system.

You are using 64 bit Vista obviously if you have 8 GB of RAM. 64 bit Vista uses more memory than 32 bit by about twice as much, which isn't an issue for someone with 8 GB's of RAM. 32 bit Vista uses anywhere from 450 to 600 MB of RAM (Depending on how you have Vista configured.) until a program needs it and then will relinquish a sizable chunk back to your programs.

In other words you guys are comparing apples and oranges when you give recommended minimums for Vista. I will go one further and say the absolute minimum on 64 bit Vista should be 4 gigs. But on 32 bit, most people will never need more than 2 gigs. Gamers should use 64 bit Vista now days instead of 32 bit, since many newer games are pushing the memory envelope.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Originally posted by: bullbert

Originally posted by: hans030390
The OP is using it mostly for "school work".

You put "school work" in quotes, not the OP. But the latest definition of "school work" seems to be 3 hours per week of Office/Works, and 40+ hours per week of the-latest-and-greatest-multiplayer-FPS.

Parents spend $1000+ on a laptop, and even more for an external 24" monitor, 5.1 speaker set, external storage, etc for junior, and the parents wonder why junior flunks out of University after one or two semesters, moves back home, and has to restart at Community College. Assuming the University REQUIRES a laptop, parents should have gotten a $300 Hot Deals special, and if the University does not require a PC, junior should be satisfied with a calculator. Of course I am speaking as someone who went the BS (Bachelor of Science) Engineering route, and spent 70++ hours per week in classes, labs, and studying. I would image going the BA (Bachelor of Arts) route affords junior much more leisure time to waste on multiplayer online games.

Wow you're a pompous asshole.

 

[nordloewelabs]

Originally posted by: BD2003
Nonsense. Vista works spectacularly on 2gb, and works great on 1gb.

different people have different opinions on which speed is acceptable.... i wouldnt run XP on 1Gb, let alone Vista. i have better stuff to do with my time than watch hourglasses....

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: nordloewelabs

Originally posted by: BD2003
Nonsense. Vista works spectacularly on 2gb, and works great on 1gb.

different people have different opinions on which speed is acceptable.... i wouldnt run XP on 1Gb, let alone Vista. i have better stuff to do with my time than watch hourglasses....

Of course it depends on your workload, but the difference in performance between XP and Vista is barely noticeable when neither system is choked for ram. The shell (explorer, etc) is slightly less snappy in Vista, and I think thats where the perception of slowness comes from, but actual applications run just as fast.

 

[Juddog]

I'm running Vista 64 w/ SP1, Wolfdale with 4 GB of RAM with dual 512 MB 8800 GT's. The one thing I really like about it is that when XP would bomb out under certain circumstances, Vista rarely crashes under the same circumstance.

Don't get me wrong, I've had to reboot a few times, but it's much more rare when one application will bomb out your system enough that you'd have to reboot. In fact I haven't had a full system crash in at least 6 months. Service Pack 1 made a big difference IMHO. I would personally recommend using a program like nLite and rolling in the service packs, latest drivers and patches, and rebuilding Vista using that. You will get a nice clean install that is stable, just make sure you research all of the 64 bit drivers from the get go and it will make a lot bigger difference.

 

[blackangst1]

Originally posted by: richwenzel
vista, for me is just a lot more annoying than xp.

i am running vista 64-bit, and i find it a lot less "trusting" than xp...which is good and bad I guess...but it is definitely more annoying...in a way, it feels like a pc at work, you have to permission everything.

at this point, if I were to rethink it, i would go xp over vista, but its not like night and day difference...

i cant think of a single thing that i like about vista over xp...i can think of a few things i like about xp over vista, however.

The UAC thing giving permissions...you DO realize it learns your responses right?...after about 1 month I rarely get a prompt...

The things that make Vista FAR superior over XP are things you cant see...superfetch and the kernel for example. You realize naked Vista with NO security and UAC is the ONLY setup that wont allow registry and system changes...right? XP is so hackable by kiddie scripts its not even funny. "OH IVE NEVER BEEN INFECTED!" you say...how do you know for sure? Do you have a script you run to show EVERY system or registry change and do you look through and understand it daily? No you dont. You think modern trojans alert you when they install? lol you could be infected and never know.

Anyway. This has been covered ad nauseum. The problem with people moving to Vista is they want it to be familiar to them (read: XP). Its a new OS. Gotta relearn. Vista IS superior in almost every way to XP it is just different. It would be like moving to Mac OS or Linus and expecting it to work like...XP.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

It shouldn't be a relearn though. I think Microsoft finally understood that.

 

[Scotteq]

Regarding Vista memory usage - Reading this thread, I have to come to the conclusion that people are confused/uninformed about how Superfetch works. Hence confusion regarding cached data as actual 'usage' because their XP/*UX box didn't do that at all.

Also - Vista 64 does NOT use twice the ram as it's 32 bit relative. I used Vista 32 on exactly the SAME computer before making the switch to 64. The difference is *maybe* a few hundred MB.

A decent blog which covers many of the questions brought up in this thread: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=511



Regarding the "Different" aspect of switching from XP to Vista, there's not much anyone can do about that. Clearly, if someone doesn't want to make the effort to learn, then that's on that individual rather than the fault of the OS or it's creator(s). Though by way of a little help/guidance: Just type the name of the thing in the search box in the startup menu rather than trying to navigate there. Results will pop up as fast as you can type, so IMHO you may be very pleasantly surprised when you discover you're suddenly saved the effort of navigating there.

I do note that a few individuals have claimed the different feel alone is enough to drive the jump from XP to one of the Linux distros... If that's how you really feel, that's fine. And if the XP/*UX tools you already know/use are working for you, then that's perfectly well and good. But it's hard to not be amused at individuals who refuse to learn a new MSFT OS run off in a huff to *UX, and have... to.... learn... a... new OS!?!?!?

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: Scotteq




Regarding the "Different" aspect of switching from XP to Vista, there's not much anyone can do about that. Clearly, if someone doesn't want to make the effort to learn, then that's on that individual rather than the fault of the OS or it's creator(s).

The thing is, is it isn't that different. Anybody with an IQ slightly below average or higher should be able to just go with it. They moved some things around, and changed some phrasing, but it's not that different from XP. I was fully up to speed in less than a week, and I'm not any kind of IT guru. People complain because they like to hear themselves make noise. If nothing changed we'd still be using Win3.1 as our gui interface :^/

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

Just download your drivers from HP.

Drivers

 

[bsobel]

The UAC thing giving permissions...you DO realize it learns your responses right?...after about 1 month I rarely get a prompt...

Im sorry but this is simply not true, UAC does not learn over time (we do have a tool at Norton Labs for that). Your most likely getting prompted less since your no longer making machine wide changes.

 

[blackangst1]

Originally posted by: bsobel

The UAC thing giving permissions...you DO realize it learns your responses right?...after about 1 month I rarely get a prompt...

Im sorry but this is simply not true, UAC does not learn over time (we do have a tool at Norton Labs for that). Your most likely getting prompted less since your no longer making machine wide changes.

Then why am I not getting UAC alerts for things I used to?

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: blackangst1

Originally posted by: bsobel

The UAC thing giving permissions...you DO realize it learns your responses right?...after about 1 month I rarely get a prompt...

Im sorry but this is simply not true, UAC does not learn over time (we do have a tool at Norton Labs for that). Your most likely getting prompted less since your no longer making machine wide changes.

Then why am I not getting UAC alerts for things I used to?

I think SP1 reduced the number of UAC prompts.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: lxskllr

Originally posted by: blackangst1

Originally posted by: bsobel

The UAC thing giving permissions...you DO realize it learns your responses right?...after about 1 month I rarely get a prompt...

Im sorry but this is simply not true, UAC does not learn over time (we do have a tool at Norton Labs for that). Your most likely getting prompted less since your no longer making machine wide changes.

Then why am I not getting UAC alerts for things I used to?

I think SP1 reduced the number of UAC prompts.

Correct.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: blackangst1

Originally posted by: bsobel

The UAC thing giving permissions...you DO realize it learns your responses right?...after about 1 month I rarely get a prompt...

Im sorry but this is simply not true, UAC does not learn over time (we do have a tool at Norton Labs for that). Your most likely getting prompted less since your no longer making machine wide changes.

Then why am I not getting UAC alerts for things I used to?

As noted, SP1 reduced the places where UAC would prompt. Youve gotten app updates which play nicer with UAC, or you are not accessing parts of the app which require UAC to continue.