Fed up with Vista

[gunslinger]

Thanks for stepping in Bryce. My only points were: that vista is not a stable OS for the masses yet. No one in their right mind would argue that it is. Two: In my own personal experience Vista indeed sucks, although I have never said this to a customer. I do try to stir people away from it. Thanks also JohnR you are 100% right: "There are no situations in which Vista is a superior choice to XP" period end of story.

 

[gunslinger]

I have to disagree with one thing you said Bryce: " On a modern machine (im talking this years hardware) Vista is excellent." Mine was almost the best money could buy in February this year Vista score of 5.3, and I have had nothing but issues with it till last week when I reinstalled XP Pro. I have not had one glitch sense the reinstall.

 

[JohnR]

On a modern machine (im talking this years hardware) Vista is excellent.

I have to disagree. On portable machines ranging from $1000 HP laptops to $3500 IBM Tablets and MacBook Pros, and desktops from $800 Dells up to a $2000 massively overspecced "gaming PC", I've found Vista to be nothing but trouble, to have produced no satisfied users, and to produce greatly inferior results in terms of performance and usability versus XP, Ubuntu 6.06, 7.04, and 7.10 (once configured, which is NOT a casual task for an average user), and OSX 10.4.

I've heard of happy Vista users. I've never met one. The most enthused I've heard have said "it doesn't cause me many problems, and it's not much slower than XP" - which is not exactly a ringing endorsement.

 

[dipper]

dipper and gunslinger, play nice.
Vista in itself is a pretty good OS (shock horror!). Hear me out though, most of Vistas issues including the ones here arent really Vistas fault.

Precisely, this is what I've been trying to say all along but as soon as I mention that Vista is good for certain users I get howled down - how dare I say anything good about Vista.

 

[dipper]

I've heard of happy Vista users. I've never met one. The most enthused I've heard have said "it doesn't cause me many problems, and it's not much slower than XP" - which is not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Haven't you heard what I have been saying? - I'm a happy Vista user!

By the looks of things Bryce is too.

Is it only us Australians who like it?

 

[Bryce W]

To be honest, I dont really see any performance difference speed wise between XP and Vista on my own machine with the exception of copying files and network as I mentioned earlier.

The system I was using it on is a Quadcore Q6600, 2gig ram, 640mb 8800GTS video card. Vista was definitely better at handling program crashes and hangs than XP. Although Vista may cause more crashes due to dodgy software/drivers, it definitely handled them better.

On the above system, I really really liked Vista, but had to revert due to lack of drivers for my devices. However, my media PC which is running Vista crashes frequently but I havent gotten around to determining whether thats a Vista or hardware issue. One of my close friends who is an ex computer technician also runs Vista and loves it.

I guess it plays nice on certain hardware and is a total bitch on other hardware. Once again I think this is still a crappy driver issue caused by the hardware vendors.

Like most of you.. I wouldnt recommend Vista to my clients.. not yet anyway.

 

[gunslinger]

Good to see you are not recommending Vista at this point Bryce.

 

[gunslinger]

Did you not read what Bryce said, he's not even using Vista due to printer driver issues. He is not a " happy vista user ". If it works for you , great , but understand both you and Bryce are in the minority when it comes to problems with Vista. I had some driver issues as well but quickly fixed those. What about the random freezing, BSOD, slow data transfer, random shortcut deleting, " vista certified " apps working sometimes and not others, and massive memory use, that the rest of us many tens of thousands of people have experienced? Do you just disregard that? Are we all too stupid to get Vista to work right? There are still no situations in which Vista is a superior choice to XP....none. Anything Vista can do XP can do and be much more stable while doing it. So until the bugs are worked out of Vista why not stick with a known good thing in XP? This has been my point all along.

 

[JohnR]

Haven't you heard what I have been saying? - I'm a happy Vista user!

And I've never met you.

 

[dipper]

Did you not read what Bryce said, he's not even using Vista due to printer driver issues. He is not a " happy vista user ".

Bryce wrote "I really really liked Vista" and "Vista in itself is a pretty good OS", it looks like you are the one who didn't read what Bryce wrote!

If it works for you , great , but understand both you and Bryce are in the minority when it comes to problems with Vista. I had some driver issues as well but quickly fixed those. What about the random freezing, BSOD, slow data transfer, random shortcut deleting, " vista certified " apps working sometimes and not others, and massive memory use, that the rest of us many tens of thousands of people have experienced?

In reponse to your above points:
- randon freezing - never experienced this.
- BSOD - again I've had none.
- randon shortcut deleting - first I've heard of this.
- slow data transfer. I've experienced this but found it not to be a major hassle.
- vista certified apps not working. All the apps I use (certified and not certified) work.
- massive memory use. This is the same for all new O/S!

Do you just disregard that? Are we all too stupid to get Vista to work right?

Am I too stupid as I have Vista working great?

There are still no situations in which Vista is a superior choice to XP....none. Anything Vista can do XP can do and be much more stable while doing it. So until the bugs are worked out of Vista why not stick with a known good thing in XP? This has been my point all along.

You can live in the past and totally ignore Vista while myself and many others laugh at you as we are all running Vista fine.

Yes some of my clients use XP and I still sell XP boxes. I take each situation on a case by case basis and recommend what is best for the client. This is my point.


BTW I'm still waiting to hear how Vista caused you to lose 6G of data????

 

[gunslinger]

I would think you would need to actually be running Vista to be a " happy Vista user ".
Just because you have never experienced any of these things you seem to totally disregard the fact that most people have.

"You can live in the past and totally ignore Vista while myself and many others laugh at you as we are all running Vista fine."

Ah, I get it now. you like Vista because its all new and shiny. Last time I checked XP was still supported, and I see no reason to switch until they drop support or Vista becomes stable, not just for you and a handful of others but for most users.

You still have not told me why you would recommend Vista over XP ( a good reason, not just because someone asks for it)and what Vista can do that XP cannot.

 

[gunslinger]

When Microsoft does drop support for XP, if Vista is still not stable I'll just go to OS X.

 

[dipper]

I would think you would need to actually be running Vista to be a " happy Vista user ".

You don't need to own or drive a Porsche, Ferarri etc to know they are good and that you would be a happy Porsche or Ferarri driver!

He has used Vista and told us his comments - you ignore them just like you are ignoring all the other happy Vista users.

Just because you have never experienced any of these things you seem to totally disregard the fact that most people have.

I have repeatedly said Vista is not perfect and not suitable for everyone. Do you not read what I have said or do you just try to put your own interpretation on everything?

"You can live in the past and totally ignore Vista while myself and many others laugh at you as we are all running Vista fine."

Ah, I get it now. you like Vista because its all new and shiny. Last time I checked XP was still supported, and I see no reason to switch until they drop support or Vista becomes stable, not just for you and a handful of others but for most users.

Thats fine for you but your sort of attitude is no good for any of your clients when you totally ignore an operating system which may be suitable for them.

You still have not told me why you would recommend Vista over XP ( a good reason, not just because someone asks for it)and what Vista can do that XP
cannot.

As I have repeatedly mentioned, I take each client on a case by case basis (tell me what is wrong with that?). If all they do is surf the Internet, run MS Office applications and use applications that either they or myself know will run fine in Vista why sell them an old product? You explain to the client the pros and cons of both XP and Vista and then if both products suit their needs let them make the choice. This is what I take my job to be and not simply ignore the fact that there are people out their that like Vista and is suitable for the wants and needs.

You repeatedly say you havn't met a happy Vista user but then ignore people on this group who say they like it (and it is not just me!). It's no wonder you haven't met a happy Vista user as you seem to be blind to other peoples opinions especially when they disagree with you.

BTW I am STILL waiting to hear how 6G of data loss was caused by Vista.

 

[thecoldone06]

BTW I am STILL waiting to hear how 6G of data loss was caused by Vista.

I've been using Vista at work for a while now. Every month I have to burn CD's for three of our clients, basically a bunch of PDF's put onto CD. Easy enough right? When I copied the files from my AS/400 (through windows explorer) and put them on CD, it didn't put them on the CD but deleted them from my AS/400. I then spent 4 hours trying to get those reports back and needless to say used XP to burn the files once I did get them back. I'm not commenting on anything else about Vista but that could've been one reason for the data loss.

 

[JohnR]

You don't need to own or drive a Porsche, Ferarri etc to know they are good and that you would be a happy Porsche or Ferarri driver!

Uh, once again you've used a car metaphor, and demonstrated EXACTLY *our* point, not yours.

High-end sports cards are notoriously unreliable, because they're so expensive and made in such few numbers that they simply haven't made enough of them to find and fix the less-obvious manufacturing defects.

When they work, they're very pretty and handle well and are very impressive. Then they break, suddenly and without warning.

Like Vista.

You repeatedly say you havn't met a happy Vista user but then ignore people on this group who say they like it

Actually, *I* said I'd never met a happy Vista user, just the once, and I then said I haven't met you, or Bryce.

Because I haven't. I've never met you. I've never seen your setup. I don't know, for sure, that you've even ever installed Vista. I have no reason to believe you're lying, but I *also* can't call you a data point in favour of "people I have seen be happy with Vista systems that I have seen", because you aren't.

 

[Bryce W]

Did you not read what Bryce said, he's not even using Vista due to printer driver issues. He is not a " happy vista user ".

Actually, it wasnt a driver issue.. it was just a lack of a driver for Vista. The printer is very old but I still run it because its fast, reliable and dirt cheap to use.

To the anti-Vista people in this thread.. what sort of problems are you seeing besides the slow copying/networking issues? If its a BSOD, do you remember what it was?

 

[gunslinger]

Random freezing, BSOD, slow data transfer, random shortcut deleting, " vista certified " apps working sometimes and not others, and massive memory use just to name a few, it also seems that everytime I would uninstall a large program or game it would crash the system, that by the way is how I lost my 6 gigs of data. I removed the call of duty demo, the system froze, I rebooted and got BSOD. After a few tries I got it to boot up and everything in My Documents folder was gone, plus my virtual machine. Used two different apps trying to get the data back. One refused to work at all with Vista and the other told me the data was corrupt. I'm not really anti Vista, If Microsoft puts out a service pack for it and makes as stable as XP I'll be the first guy to recommend it.

 

[gunslinger]

Thanks thecoldone06, nice to see I'm not alone in my data loss. JohnR , its the same here,I have never met a happy Vista user either. Thats because they are about a rare as 4 oz. jars of pickled chicken lips.

 

[focuz]

holly crap, I don't visit the forums for a few days and an all out vista vs xp squabble started.

I along with most techs I know are drawn in the middle of the debate. For end users that just want to surf the net and don't have money to upgrade in a few years I recommend Vista. I have gone back and asked them if they where satisfied and for the majority none of them had issues. I have seen Vista run with frequent freezes only due to bad drivers and have seen very little vista os related crash issues.

For any type of tech savy client that is going to have alot of older hardware they need compatible or want the stability or business client I strongly urge them to stay with XP. The only reason for this is that the OS is to young and needs to mature more. I do this with every OS though. When XP first came out I told everyone the same, just to wait a year or two until the first patch was released.

This is always the part about being a tech that sucks you get forced into using buggy software and OS as soon as it releases so that you know the issues your clients will be faced with.

 

[JohnR]

what sort of problems are you seeing besides the slow copying/networking issues?

Slow performance, in general - not just networking, but also desktop performance, memory and CPU usage, program loading, etc.

As well, annoyances in the interfaces - it took me *7* confirmation windows to copy a program to desktop, run it, and delete it, above what XP asked.

As well, annoyances in the interfaces - not only is very little in the same place, but very little is even in the same menu. While I understand putting Device Manager under the Control Panel - it always SHOULD have been there - renaming Add/Remove Programs was just a pain in the ass, and the Control Panel loads so slowly that it's a serious problem to find the right panel to get programs added or removed.

And then there's stability issues.

On three genuine "vista-compatible" Dell Dimension E521s, two of them shipped from Dell with Vista installed, Vista Business crapped out roughly once a working day and froze, hard, requiring a reboot. Since installing XP Pro, not one crash. On two stupidly expensive Lenovo X61 "vista-only" tablets, Vista freezes for 20 seconds at a time, regularly, and locks up hard requiring a hard reboot roughly once every two business days. On a pair of el cheapo HP laptops purchased last month, running Vista Home Premium and Office 2007 Standard, the machines crash every 3-4 hours of use. The same happens with the same machines and Office 2003 Professional, and OpenOffice 2.3. The problem is clearly Vista.

I have not ever found a stable Vista hardware configuration. The hardware guys I buy from haven't found one, in laptop or desktop configuration. *DELL* hasn't managed to create a stable setup, yet.

I believe you when you say you've found one. I, simply, haven't seen it.