Having recently bought a docking station for my notebook, I thought that I would have it easier interfacing with Vista. Now the booting process takes forever due to all the USB devices I have hooked up to my notebook.
My Vista experience has been good so far, but that might also be from the hundreds of megabytes in updates that I have downloaded. Now with SP1 out, another round of updates has started, with almost 200 megabytes in updates, from the notebook manufacturer, having been done on top of the SP1 installation, which include video, network, sound and other types of drivers.
Closing the Door to Microsoft Vista – Business Week
General Motors GM may take a detour around Vista, the latest computer operating system from Microsoft MSFT. The automaker has encountered so many speed bumps getting Vista to work on its machines that it may just wait for the next version of Windows, due in 2010 or 2011. “Were considering bypassing Vista and going straight to Windows 7,” says GMs Chief Systems & Technology Officer Fred Killeen.
Alaska Airlines (ALK) is among companies that see diminishing value in running the latest Microsoft desktop technology when so many applications are available via a Web browser. “There’s no business value in us continuing to chase that upgrade cycle,” says Senior Vice-President and CIO Bob Reeder. So as PCs need replacement, the airline buys Vista-equipped machines for its roughly 2,000 office workers from Dell (DELL), then exercises its right to downgrade the machines to XP. About 8,000 PCs used mostly by gate agents and airport crews run a variety of older Windows versions. Reeder says the company plans to skip Vista.
As a side note, yesterday I slipstreamed SP3 into a Windows XP installation CD. The last time I performed the slipstreaming operation, with a Celeron 366 PC, the process took forever. With my notebook (2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo), burning the new CD took longer than slipstreaming SP3 into the XP core files.
Ok, time for all the Vistards here to chime in and tell us how great the program is and how you never had any problems.
#1,
I’m not going to say that Vista is the greatest thing ever but I don’t think it deserves all the bad press it’s getting. The only issue I had with my wife’s laptop (I use Linux) was that there were no drivers for our HP PhotoSmart 1100 printer. I ended up using a driver for a different model and works fine. Even that issue isn’t Vista’s fault. HP has decided that it’s not going to write Vista drivers for anything over three years old. Maybe they don’t expect their products to last that long. Anyway, just because some people haven’t had problems with Vista and want to be as vocal as those who have doesn’t make them fan boys or “Vistards”.
I am tired of bashing Vista. I am going to ignore it instead.
SP1 made my copy of Vista a little faster, but more unstable. Programs lock up more frequently and I have to reboot more often.
Windows ME kept getting better with every update. I wish this was true of Vista.
I’m torn. What kind of example is GM for us to follow???? Its made nothing but bad strategic decisions for 40 years, so when it skips Vista, is that just another fuck up, or is it that even a retard like GM can smell it from 100 yards???
Now==again==other than some games specifically engineered to lock out XP–what can I do with Vista that I can’t in XP?
Are we really supposed to upgrade our OS in order to lose functionality and infect our machines with a drm virus?
Seriously==I haven’t gotten a virus in years with my XP protection in place. Why upgrade?
“i’ve never had a problem using email and surfing the web under vista, so i can’t see why general motors and alaska airlines should be so worried”
#6 – Wow Andy! You can surf the web and do e-mail with Vista? Man, I’m sold…
Based on Andy’s recommendation I’m running out now to buy me a copy of Vista.
I did the Vista SP1 this weekend and lost the CD/DVD drive. I ended up having to call support. They suggested that I restore it back to before SP1. “How?”, I asked, “When the optical drive is no longer seen?”.
I ended up having to perform a registry hack, which then magically allowed Vista to see the optical drive. I can’t believe how dumb Vista is.
Vista: lipstick on a pig.
# 1 Hates Vista Whiners
Hey Pedro!
Again the problem with Vista is that people are using crappy hardware or their opinions of themselves far exceeds their actually abilities. The hardware you buy speaks volumes about your knowledge of computers. It doesn’t have to be expensive either.
I now have 8 machines running Vista 64 Ultimate. Not one of them has a problem. The reason? I don’t have crappy hardware. I am not trying to install it on an E-Machine or some 10 year old Pentium II with 256 MB of RAM or some POS laptop that I was fooled into buying by a slick sales ad.
Does all my software work? Yes! Some better than it did on XP in regards to the fact that it has more memory. Granted this is only with the 64 bit version of Vista. All of Adobe products with 4 GB access are faster than with 2 GB access under XP. Do I have have crashes? Not yet! Have any individual packages stopped working at any time? Sure Some. They did that in XP too. I don’t blame the OS for that. I will say that certain problems I had under XP with certain packages do not occur with Vista. I chalk that up to the driver changes. Despite the fact that it is a benefit it is also not an OS issue.
I wonder how many of the complainers actually bought the software instead of getting it off bit torrent. Maybe the hack they are using is the reason it doesn’t work right.
See #11 – I rest my case. Yes, J you are correct – Vista needs a larger trash can.
Hey Andy — windows 95 can also surf the web and do e-mail.
p.s. GM builds cars just like windows 3.1
#11–J==perfect, you should know. What advantage does Vista give us over XP?==Not in default settings out of the box, but “real world?” I haven’t gotten a virus in 3-4 years, very stable, runs all my programs, fast.
Give us all as many specifics as you have as to why we should spend money to upgrade to Vista. In advance, thanks.
Two copies of Vista here – pre-installed. I rather like it (I had the opportunity to play with it on another machine a while back).
I also have one of those “Ready For Vista”-stickered machines that won’t run it….
I would hesitate to upgrade to it, and wouldn’t recommend that to anybody.
XP-ME, mostly….
I like the “Aero” interface thing where letting the mouse hover over a start bar item shows a little picture of whatever’s behind the button, but otherwise there’s nothing there. (A really wide monitor makes the “sidebar” very useful, but that could have been implemented in XP, if it wasn’t.)
If I’d bought this as an upgrade, I’d have returned it by now – stability ain’t great. I’ve been using Windows since 3.0, and got a little spoiled because XP was so stable v.s. prior versions. It’s like home now [grin]….
I put XP on a machine my daughter uses while she was out of town, way back when. When she got home, about a month passed, and I had to upgrade something or other, requiring a re-boot. She asked “what the heck is that?”…. That’s when I realized that she’d been using it for a month without a re-boot. Compared to once or more a day….
Vista, for me, at least, is rather better than Win98SE, but not as good as XP was, nor is it the improvement that XP was (even though XP is a bit of a resource pig).
That is a problem of it’s own…. I’m sitting here typing this on a machine that’s kinda middle-of-the-road for XP, but would have made the average serious gamer drool with delight five years ago. I’ve used Vista on a much smaller machine, and while that one’s “big” enough to make the gamers of, say, ten years ago, salivate, it’s a pig….
The average user is doing some kind of “Office” – a Word Processor, spreadsheet, AOL or IE, and a few games. Other than corporate-specific software, and some video capabilities, they just don’t need the horsepower. But the OS wants it just to run at all…. I’ve got 3GB of RAM on this thing, and at any given time, half of it is “in use”, even when nothing is running in the foreground at all. I don’t mind some of that, but some of it is kinda silly. For example, AOL, which I use a couple times a week, has “helper” apps running all the time, and if you kill them, it won’t work…. Sheesh….
Dont’t tell me to switch to Linux. My clients won’t….
Regards,
Stu.
I was recently forced into building a machine at work with Vista. Vista has one core feature I need that XP does not: it can have multiple websites running simultaneously. Justifying Vista to a business is a bit harder. I know there are some additional security features in Vista that corporations might like and the firewall is substantially better than XP. Yet, for all the shininess of Vista, it is mostly the same as XP except that the drivers that are available are buggier. From a business perspective, I see the biggest issue being that the more experienced the user, the harder that Vista is to use since they moved and renamed everything.
Vista is an abortion. After the reviews started coming out, does anyone seriously think that M$FT would have sold a single copy, other than the ones they rammed down hapless users’ throat as a preinstalled mandate?
Wtf does it do (other than run like molasses, and require continual 8-minute re-boots) that XP didn’t do as well or better.
#16–Thomas==what do you mean? I use XP Pro SP2 and constantly have 3-4-5 websites open across my triple monitors. Just to check, I have all three running video’s from different websites.
So, what do you mean?
A bloke down the pub told me about his sister’s boyfriend’s mum’s ex husband who left his wife for someone who last week bought Windows Vista and three days later, got killed.
This is proof that Vista is bad for you and you shouldn’t use it.
#11, “J”
Again the problem with Vista is that people are using crappy hardware or their opinions of themselves far exceeds their actually abilities. The hardware you buy speaks volumes about your knowledge of computers. It doesn’t have to be expensive either.
I couldn’t disagree with you more. The OS should work with the hardware, period. Especially when it already is advertised as working with that OS.
A few weeks ago I changed a CD-ROM from my computer for a DVD burner. That was when I realized that that sucker came out of a 1998 eMachine. It worked just great under XP and would be still there if I didn’t want to be burn DVDs a little faster than my other one allows.
I, and many others don’t need or buy cutting edge equipment. We don’t need it. I buy what I need. I’ve been using MS since DOS 5.0. My XP has crashed twice since SP2, both times using ROXIO video editing.
#18
I mean hosting (for development), as opposed to browsing, multiple simultaneous websites.
22, nice one
I was a Vista basher as recent as 2 months ago so I have a perspective. I always though M$ was too big for their britches and didn’t want to make them more rich by upgrading to their latest and greatest. I think their business practices are anti-competitive, blahblahblah… the same reasons most Linux users bash M$.
I use a Mac and I think OSX is really good. I found Vista to be very unwieldy on some old laptops that my wife’s friends business bought (I put together their network for them) and hated using Vista since then and vowed never to upgrade.
And so I did 🙂 …
I recently installed the Home Premium Upgrade version of Vista on my home machine on top of my XP Home system because I got a really good deal on it from my student discount. I would have preferred Ultimate but it wasn’t available for discount and there was no way I would spend even $100 dollars for a Windows OS and/or do a fresh install.
Anyway, it is starting to grow on me. I don’t have a top-of-the-line desktop. I built what I have about 4 years ago, so I had to tweak it to get rid of all the unnecessary eye candy (Aero) and it runs just about as well as my version of XP did.
It seems to run fairly well although quite a few of my old apps (nothing important) no longer worked and I just removed them. Apparently there is no support for my GigE network interface but it appears to work OK so far.
I like the improved task manager and performance manager. If you are a CS major (like me) or work in sw dev you will appreciate the page fault stats, stat logging, etc.
I still hate the blanking/fading of the screen when the system asks you to confirm an activity only ‘root’ should be able to do. That is just silly.
To conclude this long and winded post: Vista isn’t so bad after all… as long as you are not paying full price for it. It still has a long way to go in some areas (drivers). It may never get there before M$ moves to a new OS entirely (Windows 7). I am not bashing it anymore at least.
# 14 bobbo
“What advantage does Vista give us over XP?”
64 bit memory addressing. Do you need anything more than that? For a lot of professionals that is the ball game. Again, I don’t even know why MS even released a 32 bit version. That seems pointless.
Oh super fetch is rather nice too.
# 17 Mister Mustard
“Wtf does it do (other than run like molasses, and require continual 8-minute re-boots)”
That’s funny my system boots in under 22 seconds and reboots in under 40 seconds. It comes from knowing how to set up a computer properly. My XP machines also boot in under 30.
# 19 Mr. Gawd Almighty
“I couldn’t disagree with you more. ”
You could disagree but you would be wrong. Crappy hardware usually has crappy drivers. Most of the problems people are having are because of drivers and piss poor application software architecture. NOT an OS issues.
The reason Apple does so well in the OS department is not because they have the best OS it is because they tightly control the hardware that they allow it to run on.
“The OS should work with the hardware, period. ”
OK. Install XP on your 386 and let me know how that works out.
# 21 pedro
“Other people’s experiences do matter ”
Of course they do. I know tons of people running Vista with no problems. I also know people who complain about it but they are installing it on machines that it wasn’t designed to run on.
“I think you’re the one who thinks way too much of yourself.”
No you you got that reversed. I’m not the one who says it doesn’t work based on my experience. That would all of you folks. “If I can’t make it work it must be broke” That is your mantra.
“The myriad of bad code issues that has come out of Redmond lately is nothing but shameless and only goes to add at their shadyness about control of they software.”
Won’t argue there.
” still find amusing that, if you go to any computer store anywhere in Canada and the US, the only software guarded by lock and key behind bars is MS soft.”
Not true at all. Once again you make broad and inaccurate statements.
“That speaks volumes of how affraid, paranoid and how much disdain MS has against its customers.”
No pedro it is to prevent theft moron!!
“Keep being happy and labeling your luck as knowledge.”
Luck would be one or two. I have 8. I know of another studio that has over 30. Not one problem that I am aware of. That comes from knowledge.
#24 – Is an 11 on the Vistard Meter
“Won’t argue there.”
” still find amusing that, if you go to any computer store anywhere in Canada and the US, the only software guarded by lock and key behind bars is MS soft.”
All the local stores in my area (Best Buy, CC, etc) have their copies sitting on shelves in the open just like every other piece of software.
Even if Vista never crashes and works with all software and peripherals — can somebody please explain to me why anybody would want to “upgrade” to an OS that uses far more system resources than XP (and thus necessarily makes your system slower) and doesn’t offer anything, beyond XP, that I actually need? This really isn’t a rhetorical question; I would love to hear a compelling answer.
The Vista bashing is completely out of hand. What were you expecting from a new OS? The second coming of Christ?
I build and repair computers for a living, and I’ve been installing Vista on almost all new machines for the past 8 months. I’ve only had a handful of issues, mostly relating to driver issues with old printers/scanners. When Vista works it works well. It’s a stable and secure OS and the 64-bit variant is the first really good 64-bit OS for the general public.
XP maintenance is a nightmare. People are constantly bringing in malware infested machines, and XP just seems to naturally bog down after about 12 months of use.
I don’t recommend people upgrade their XP laptops or older desktops, but there’s no reason not to get Vista with a new machine.
there’s no reason to upgrade. you get less performance for the same hardware, and there are no must-have features. file-copy was actually SLOWER than xp before an update patch. how do you f*ck that up? so the enterprise is supposed to wait on a patch for usable file i/o? now i’m seeing one of the new features of windows7 is an ftp hotlist built into explorer. whoopdi-freaking-doo!
#30 — I appreciate your attempt to answer my question; but the question remains unanswered. My XP runs better than ever on my 16-month-old laptop: fast as lightning and never crashes. So your point about XP deteriorating doesn’t apply to me, at least.
But Vista is fine, you say, so anybody getting a new machine should have it. But the question remains: why? I could just install my perfectly functional and consistently virus-free XP on the new machine, and it will run *faster* than with Vista. I still haven’t heard of any benefit that Vista offers that outweighs the benefit I get by not installing it.