Fed up with Vista

[gunslinger]

Enough is enough, I had to reinstall again last week. I lost some music and data but not a lot because I back up to an external drive weekly. since early February when I built my new desktop system and installed Vista ultimate I have reinstalled maybe 20 times. Why? because almost every program I run kills vista. I thought that it was because I was running the 64 bit version so I switched to 32 bit. It was a little more stable but not by much. Last week it crashed on me again. Feb up, I installed XP Pro. I will not go back to vista until I here some feed back on SP1 later this year. Maybe not even then.
My case is not unique, in fact these days a large part of my business is people wanting me to remove Vista and install xp on their new systems.
I'm getting a laptop in January and have been doing some shopping around and a Macbook running OS X is looking realy good these days. With the specs I wanted in a laptop It was looking like Dell, but after a quick call I found out they did not provide xp drivers for the model I wanted. The specs were 2 ghz core 2 , 2 gigs of RAM and a 120 gig hard drive. price? about $1,400. A quick look at apples site and I found a Macbook with a 2.2 ghz core 2 , and a 120 gig hard drive. Here is where it gets intresting. I can order the mac with 1 gig of RAM with my student discount for $1,199 then go to newegg and get 4 gigs of mac RAM for $179. With the dell I would be stuck with vista unless I run xp in a virtual machine. With the Macbook I can use bootcamp to run OS X , vista or xp. Yup, I may be turnning into a fanboy soon. I have never owned a Mac but pretty much anything beats Vista at this point.

 

[JohnR]

I've found that Vista is not well-liked at all, no. I've taken to recommending that anyone looking at Vista spend the extra cash to get Business or Ultimate so they'll have downgrade rights to XP Pro if they decide they don't like it after the first few months.

On the laptop side: I'm not a big fan of Dell's machines. Their support is second-to-none in terms of availability, and their next-day onsite tech support is good, while the warranty lasts. Their website is great for finding drivers and machine specs, and the internals and cases are really easy to open and work with, even the laptops.

Those are the upsides, and they're pretty nice upsides. The downsides: They, like Macs, are very overpriced as you approach the higher-end models. When (not if) the hardware fails, you've either got the onsite warranty (good) or you're looking at weeks to get a part shipped, and it's about 50% of the time the wrong part, in my experience.

For cheaper laptops, Acer and Asus make good machines, that are just as reliable as the Apples and Dells I've worked with. For truly reliable machines, Lenovo and Fujitsu are unbeatable. I personally swear by Fujistu's Lifebook series - I use a s7110 for my own work. They're about as expensive as the IBM machines, and still cheaper than Dells and Macs.

Macs? They work just fine, for what they are. I don't recommend them for office use due to then endless small compatibility problems, but for personal use or in the hands of people who like working with BSD to work around issues, they're acceptable.

 

[greggh]

Acer is definitely making some great laptops. I've sold on average about 4 a month and everyone has liked them so far.

 

[gunslinger]

I'm not an Acer fan at all, their quality has come up some but its still not up to some of the other names.I ordered a replacement drive for a customers laptop from them, price was $230, thats a outrage for a two year old system. As far as the price of the Mac, Its about the same as the Dell with the same specs,and i'm not going to be stuck with Vista. My only real problem with Dell is that they outsource tech support. Not a fan of taking jobs away from my country.

 

[JohnR]

As a citizen of the country to whom they outsource most of their North American second-level and hardware support, I don't actually have much of a problem with that, but I understand your hesitance.

 

[Rabid_frog]

I've even heard vista being called "windows ME/2007". I cant stand it either, downgraded within a week from first using it.

 

[dipper]

I'm not an Acer fan at all, their quality has come up some but its still not up to some of the other names.

If you think Acer's quality is not up to scratch check out:
http://www.crn.com/hardware/202401938

Simply put CRN put notebooks through a "Toughest Notebook Challenege". Only 4 manufacturers were willing to provides laptops to test - Panasonic, Dell, Toshiba and Acer.

Only 2 laptops survived being knocked off a table, poured soda on, dropped on the floor and dropped down the stairs - Panasonic and Acer!

Considering the Panasonic was a Toughbook (ie specifically designed to withstand this type of treatment) the Acer did a hell of a good job to survive the tests.

 

[thecoldone06]

I'm not sure about the home tech support but as far as business Dell tech support they are all in Texas. Anytime I've had to call for a workstation or server, they have always been in Austin. It's nice being able to understand the person on the other end.

 

[greggh]

Dipper: I read that too. Like I said above, I have been really happy with them. One of our techs is delivering another one today. The only problem with the Acer laptops right now is that they all come with Vista. We make sure to get the OS upgrade so we can then use the XP rights and install XP. You have to check out the model you are looking at on Acers website first though, make sure drivers for that model exist for XP on their download site. Some models dont have XP drivers. The 5570 has XP drivers, the 5570Z does not.

 

[dipper]

You have to check out the model you are looking at on Acers website first though, make sure drivers for that model exist for XP on their download site. Some models dont have XP drivers. The 5570 has XP drivers, the 5570Z does not.

Here in Australia you can still get Acer's with XP.

FYI A client once purchased a HP laptop elsewhere and then wanted in to run POS software. The POS software would only run on XP. HP had no XP drivers and stated it would not run on XP.

With help from http://www.driveragent.com and a bit of playing around we had XP Pro all running apart from the sound card. Since the client was a business they didn';t want sound anyway!

So depending upon the laptop and with a bit of stuffing around it is possible.

 

[greggh]

Dipper, very true. Sometimes the manufacture (like broadcom or realtek) have made reference drivers available too. I have noticed with acer though that it is tough to find xp drivers for some of their vista only laptops.

 

[gunslinger]

What its comming down to is that everyone is going to be forced into running Vista at some point. There will always be a few holdouts like us computer tech folks who see just how bad Vista is, but even we can only hold out so long. Thats my main reason for going over to the Mac for a laptop. Do I think Mac hardware is better? No. Do I buy into the hype? No. Do I think OS X is better than Vista? You bet your ass it is. No comparison. A computer is only as good as the OS thats run on it and this time microsoft really dropped the ball.

 

[JohnR]

What its comming down to is that everyone is going to be forced into running Vista at some point.​

Really?

How many Windows ME users do *you* know?

Just like ME, Vista will be replaced by a non-crappy OS before businesses migrate, and, if we're lucky, this new OS will be called Vista Service Pack 2 and, unlike ME, all the people scammed into buying Vista won't have to pay for a working OS.

 

[greggh]

JohnR is definately right. ME was a joke, I would go as far as to say a travesty. It was disgusting. But it didnt last long, 2000 was out pretty quick and a lot of people moved to that.

I have been testing every beta of sp1 for vista and so far it is going ok. It is still vista and most of my main gripes are still there, BUT most of the bugs that cause crashes and whatnot that really piss me off are fixed. Hopefully by SP2 it will actually be a usable system. XP was decent pre-sp1, but it wasnt a great/stable OS until SP2. Some people will argue that point, but pre-sp2 it had more problems than any other windows OS before it. Sort of like Vista is having now.

I still only use windows for work at this point. Linux has and will be my main server and desktop operating system.

 

[focuz]

I agree, XP really sucked until service pack 2 came out. Not as bad as Vista but it was definitely up there. Alright have to ask how many of you have seen the new Mac commercial showing the look alike bill gates telling everyone "Its not what Vista can do for you, its what you can buy for Vista"

and their next-day onsite tech support is good, while the warranty lasts.

Thank you, Thank you, I know I'm awesome. HEHE I work for banctec which is one of the contractors that do dell and lexmark repairs with a few others on the list. And sir off the record I would never buy a dell. I bought a toshiba about 5 years ago and when I called tech support even when the warranty was up I got an American and its made in Japan. (I spilled tea on the keyboard and needed the part, it was the only problem I had with it) When you buy a dell however which is an American product you speak with India unless you spend the ridiculously priced gold warranty then you Texas. No disrespect to Indian citizens.

 

[gunslinger]

What its comming down to is that everyone is going to be forced into running Vista at some point.​

Just like ME, Vista will be replaced by a non-crappy OS before businesses migrate, and, if we're lucky, this new OS will be called Vista Service Pack 2 and, unlike ME, all the people scammed into buying Vista won't have to pay for a working OS.

Agreed, but how long will this take? service pack one is not yet out. Are we looking at maybe a year or two before we have service pack 2 and a stable windows os? I'm just not willing to suffer that long. How much data must I lose? How many times must I reinstall? I work on lots of systems, and have friends that work on many more and I have not heard one customer say that they like vista, not one. The two features they did like are the aero glass and spotlight oh i mean the " new search ". Thats not enough to make up for an unstable OS. I may give vista another shot after a few service packs and a lot of positive feed back. But right now I'll stick XP and soon to be OS X.

 

[JohnR]

Are we looking at maybe a year or two before we have service pack 2 and a stable windows os?

Uh, no. You're looking at a year, maybe two, before VISTA is a stable and usable OS.

XP, however, is the same XP it always was. And it's still the best user-level desktop OS out there.

 

[dipper]

Enough is enough, I had to reinstall again last week. I lost some music and data.

What happened to make you lose data?

because almost every program I run kills vista.

What programs are they and do the manufacturers say they are Vista compatible? Are all your drivers Vista compatible?

I've been running Vista Ultimate on the laptop I'm using now since the 2nd beta and apart from when I upgraded it to the release version have never reformatted. It has also never fozen, lost data etc.

There's things about Vista I'm not fond of and admitedly the laptop isn't my main machine (its all my wife uses though) so it is not pushed to the limits but I can honestly say there has been no major issues with it.

 

[gunslinger]

In response to what programs killed vista: two games that I tried to install, nero (two different versions) even though it said vista compatible all over the box, about 6 different reg cleaners,VMware workstation ect. too many to name here. most of these said "vista compatible". I think your vista experience is very unique. You would be hard pressed to find just a few people that have never had problems with vista. I have friends that work at staples office supply. One of them told me that about 70-80% of the "vista compatible" software they sale does not actually work with vista and the customers try to return it.
In response to what data I lost: about 6 gigs of software, music, and photos. I back my data up to a slave drive on the weekends and the crash happened on a Thursday. My Acronis backup was also nuked ( second time thats happened with vista ).

 

[dipper]

In response to what programs killed vista: two games that I tried to install, nero (two different versions) even though it said vista compatible all over the box, about 6 different reg cleaners,VMware workstation ect.).

My wife installed Nero last week and so far no problems. I use the reg cleaner ccleaner and again no problems.

Other programs in use are MS Office 2007, MYOB, Corel Paint Shop Pro XI, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks, TrendMicro AV, WinRAR, Spyware Terminator.

most of these said "vista compatible".

Yews but are they the latest versions with all patches applied?

I think your vista experience is very unique. You would be hard pressed to find just a few people that have never had problems with vista. I have friends that work at staples office supply. One of them told me that about 70-80% of the "vista compatible" software they sale does not actually work with vista and the customers try to return it.

But you cannot hold Vista or Microsoft responsible for third party applications that claim to work.

In response to what data I lost: about 6 gigs of software, music, and photos. I back my data up to a slave drive on the weekends and the crash happened on a Thursday. My Acronis backup was also nuked ( second time thats happened with vista ).

But what caused the crash and how could a crash cause 6 Gigs of data to be lost?

If Vista was solely responsible for data loss it would be worldwide news.