I like Vista

[gunslinger]

The problem with Vista really isn't Vista. It's that people don't understand it, don't like change and drivers.

Nope, the problem with Vista is that it does not work as well as XP. People want a computer that works. Thats one reason Mac sells have increased by over 30% sense Vista came out.

Superfetch makes people think Vista is using gobs of ram when it's really just making use of idle ram. And within a few days to a few weeks superfetch is monitoring your computing habits and speeding up your commonly used apps and games. It's a good thing.

If this were so and Vista was just "holding" the 700 mb or so it needs to run until something else needed it. When I used a program that used lots of RAM Vista would gladly hand over the extra RAM for the program to use. It does not do this. Vista does not get faster with use, in fact the more programs you install on it the slower and more unstable it becomes.

Why Windows 7 will be better is simply because it's using the same driver model as Vista. The same drivers will work and it gives hardware vendors a couple of more years for their drivers to mature.

The only way Windows 7 will be better is if Microsoft starts with a clean slate, takes out all the bloat and useless crap, lowers the install size and RAM use by 50% or more and put more focus on a stable OS instead of trying to put every feature and program on earth inside it.

How about a stripped down, tweaked ,Windows XP pro with aero glass and an install size of maybe 400-500. Now you are talking.

 

[archer75]

Nope, the problem with Vista is that it does not work as well as XP. People want a computer that works..

It works just as well as XP. In some cases better. The issue is really just drivers. With quality drivers it's fast, I would say faster than XP and more stable. Vista itself is fine. It's the drivers that are the problem though they are getting better. When people complain about being slow, crashes or BSOD's the vast majority of the time it's really poor drivers.
Nvidia drivers are still crap but alot of people own Nvidia video cards and motherboards and thus have issues. I don't blame microsoft for this, the blame is clearly Nvidias. They are getting better. I keep an eye on benchmarks regularly and Nvidia's performance of existing cards under Vista improve with each new driver release.
As I stated, ATI cards take no performance hit in Vista over XP. I have tested this on my own system and recent extremetech benchmarks agree.
It's all about drivers.

And yes, XP was indeed the same way at launch. There were quite a few less hardware combinations than to support, much less drivers, but it still had very similar issues. People bitched about it, said they were going back to 98 as it was faster but in time the drivers got better and people came back and now love it.

Macs don't have this same issue as everything is so controlled. But your upgrades are limited as a result.
On the same machine I get better FPS in WoW in Vista than I do in Leopard. And a common complaint in leopard is that it's buggy. That's not me saying that, it's said by mac owners on mac forums. And is evident by apples next OS Snow Leopard. They know Leopard is buggy and not as fast as it could be so they are coming out with what amounts to a maintenance release.
I like Leopard. I use it quite a bit but there are quite a few things that just bug the crap out of me about it, little things that Windows has and does that OSX does not.

If this were so and Vista was just "holding" the 700 mb or so it needs to run until something else needed it. When I used a program that used lots of RAM Vista would gladly hand over the extra RAM for the program to use. It does not do this. Vista does not get faster with use, in fact the more programs you install on it the slower and more unstable it becomes.

Superfetch caching commonly used apps makes for a faster experience. You are confusing system ram with superfetch.

Obviously Vista needs ram to run, beyond that is caching for superfetch. It does indeed get faster over time. I have personally seen it again and again and a great number of people in the community have seen it as well. It does indeed hand over the ram that superfetch is caching too when other apps need ram and that is all that's available.

I have my desktop Vista install loaded with apps so I only have a few GB available. It runs faster a month after a clean install than it did the day I set it up. And still very stable. Never a BSOD. I also run x64 on my desktop which does seem faster than 32bit which I use on my HTPC.
Head on over to hardforum.com and ask the folks there. Superfetch certainly works and Vista does get faster than it is after a clean install.

 

[gunslinger]

Vista absolutely is not faster than XP and I can provide benchmarks to prove it, as can many others. Vista is no where near as stable as XP is, this is a fact. XP has had almost seven years to be patched, and polished. Vista may one day be as stable as XP but as of right now it most certainly is not.

As for Leopard being buggy. Its funny, I hang out in some Mac forums and have yet to hear anyone say they went back to Tiger from Leopard, but I personally know about 30 of my customers that want to go back or have went back to XP from Vista. I can find hundreds more online.

You can dance around the issue of how Vista uses its RAM all you like, the fact is I have seen many Vista machines that are running 3-4 gigs of RAM and are still slow.

Any system running Vista will run XP much faster, and will be more stable and have greater compatibly with almost everything. This is a fact, and anyone who would argue these points is a fool.


Security, I'll give you that one because hackers and crackers have had much longer to work with XP.

Looks, I'll give you that one also, but its nothing that can't be done with third party apps. in XP.

 

[MHCG]

I can't believe someone is actually arguing that Vista is as fast as XP.

 

[gunslinger]

I can't believe someone is actually arguing that Vista is as fast as XP.

It happens. I have actually been kicked off of other forums for not liking Vista. I guess every OS needs its fanboys, but to make such obviously wrong statements is beyond me.

 

[archer75]

Its funny, I hang out in some Mac forums and have yet to hear anyone say they went back to Tiger from Leopard

I never said anything about going back to Tiger. Only that I have read posts by many people saying that Leopard is buggy. I do agree, I come across some bugs daily in Leopard. It's not a big deal really, I still like it.
You can find most of these comments on appleinsider and macrumors in the sections about the announcement of snow leopard.

You can dance around the issue of how Vista uses its RAM all you like, the fact is I have seen many Vista machines that are running 3-4 gigs of RAM and are still slow.

Drivers. It keeps coming back to that. You haven't mentioned the specs on these systems either. However I provide benchmarks below showing what superfetch really does.

It happens. I have actually been kicked off of other forums for not liking Vista. I guess every OS needs its fanboys, but to make such obviously wrong statements is beyond me.

Because there are benchmarks to back it up. And many user accounts. You see what you choose to see. Like I said, with good drivers it is certainly as fast as XP if not faster and is more stable. I'm not saying XP is not stable but on my system Vista x64 does not crash, does not lock up and does not BSOD. I have 3 weeks uptime before a power surge forced a reboot. I have not been able to achieve that on Leopard. But it's not a big deal for me.
I have Vista on 2 machines here and can verify this. I have talked with many others who also agree.
It's all about your drivers and your hardware. Drivers which improve all the time so it would need to be tested with each new release. And with the right setup it is rock solid. I also have yet to run into any compatibility issues. I have a Vista HTPC setup to play every video format under the sun, all from within Media Center.

You have to be able to differentiate between OS issues and driver issues.

I'm not sure how I could be a fanboy when i'm writing this in Leopard. I like Leopard, alot. I spend more time in these days than I do in Vista.

Some people simply hate anything Microsoft just because it's Microsoft and see only what they wish.


Here are just some gaming benchmarks showing Vista vs XP. It edges out XP here by a hair. It's also almost 2 months old so there has been several driver updates since then and I imagine performance now would be even better. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2302500,00.asp

Final Thoughts:
If you were expecting a huge drop in performance as your eyes scanned from the XP to the Vista results, well, surprise! As many a tech analyst predicted, Windows Vista's gaming performance conundrum has largely been solved, and it was mainly due to early graphics drivers.

In fact, I'd been planning to run a few other gaming tests, but the results from these were so uninteresting that further work didn't seem merited. Love it or hate it, Vista is performing far better than it used to.

Game performance, it seems, has been exorcised from your concern when choosing a Microsoft operating system. That leaves a few other factors, of course: stability, responsiveness, eye candy, price, DirectX version, and a few other odds and ends.

It took about a year and a half, but the performance gap between Vista and its forerunner has finally evaporated.



Here's another review. This one is 9.5 months old and obviously drivers have matured since then. And issues were addressed in regards to SLI. In some cases Vista is faster, XP in others but in most they are neck and neck.
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/amd_nvidia_windows_vista_driver_performance_update/

Here's some more from January, Even shows some superfetch benchmarks which you seem to think doesn't work.
http://futuremark.yougamers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=72298

It's interesting to see that Vista's performance seems to have progressed since it was released. The general usage tests are either faster or equal to XP. It should be noted that the program load times may be influenced slightly by the fact that the OSs reside on different drives (Samsung/WD). However, Vista is on the slower drive (the WD), so it only makes the results even more impressive. Talking about the program load times, it's obvious that Vista's SuperFetch feature works wonderfully. Even though I've only launched Photoshop and OpenOffice a few times, Vista has already picked this up and loads them into mem right after boot up. Crysis was almost certainly not cached into RAM during the test, but still loaded faster than in XP.

The horrendous file copy performance has been fixed. Performance is definitely higher than in XP. Also gone are the sometimes irritatingly long file deletion times. File deletion seems instantaneous now, just like it's always been in XP.

This is a very old article and performance has changed a great deal since then, but this page on superfetch is a good read:
http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=4

And here is a new link on hardforum to what other users are saying:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1322225




I believe you said XP is 20-40% faster? Maybe you've decided that Microsoft is evil and therefore you can only believe bad things about all that they do? I don't know when you've last tested it, I don't know what patches it had or what the hardware specs were or what driver versions you've used. If you are just setting it up for someone and leaving you wouldn't see that in time superfetch does make it faster as seen by the benchmarks above.
I think it's clear in benchmarks that it all depends on your hardware and drivers. Some show Vista slower, some show it faster. How can the same OS give different results? Again, drivers. One person benchmarks it with poor drivers and you get bad results. You benchmark it with better supported hardware and good drivers and you get better results.
Sure the home user isn't going to care about drivers, they just want it to work. And any problems as a result of drivers is seen by them to be an OS issue.
Luckily Windows 7 uses the same driver model and hardware vendors would have had more than enough time to get it together.

Now i'll tell you what my problem is with Vista. All the different versions of it is just plain stupid. And it's organization is a clusterfuck. I feel like I have to look all over the place for a setting that should all be contained a streamlined in a single location. By comparison Leopard is highly organized and very clean. Does not feel cluttered like Vista at all.

Despite whether or not we like or hate Microsoft, Apple or Linux it's important to stay up to date with the latest info and not to let any personal bias we feel get in the way of that. Of course finding the time to sort through vast amounts of info isn't always so easy.

 

[Wheelie]

... It took about a year and a half, but the performance gap between Vista and its forerunner has finally evaporated ...

Who cares? During that whole 18 months things sucked for most of my customers that got duped into Vista. Your whole story of driver this and driver that just makes me dizzy. My customers have no clue about that stuff and would not know how to get the right drivers if their life depended on it.

Forget all your performance tests and proof. I have been exposed to enough Vista machines and XP machines to know for myself - pound for pound - XP is noticeably faster than Vista. Maybe Vista's finally making a comeback? Who cares. The bitterness and pain my customers had to endure for the past 18 months sucked and is enough to forgo being nice to it now. Microsoft beta-tested Vista on the masses and now people are ******. Hast-La-Vista

 

[Wheelie]

Furthermore, Vista is NOT a value-added upgrade anyway. There is nothing in Vista that warrants migration from XP over to Vista. When we went from Win98 WinME to XP there were significant advantages and it was truly a "value-added" upgrade. The same cannot be said for Vista IMHO.

Microsoft just moved everything around and changed the names of half the stuff to make you "think" that there's some value to it. One poster said he likes Vista because: "I like shiny things, so the flashy pages won me over" so there ya go! Vista has value for someone!

 

[Wheelie]

And to add to that (I'm on a roll now) many of my customers were frustrated and upset because they had to relearn how to use a "damn computer" again because of Vista. This ****** them off. They could care less about snazzy new features and shiny things. Most of my customers are trying to run businesses or households and simply need their machines to work. The last thing they want is to have to spend another $400 for the newest version of QuickBooks, or to spend time with a 6 month learning curve just so they can connect to their old printer, burn a CD, send an e-mail or connect to the net.

Vista was a "perceived" upgrade not a true "Value-added" upgrade (IMHO).

 

[archer75]

Forget all your performance tests and proof.

Now that's just funny. Might as well just say, "we don't deal in facts here!"

Your whole story of driver this and driver that just makes me dizzy.

It shouldn't. If you are in the business of repairing computers you should have a full grasp of the subject, even if your clients do not.

Microsoft just moved everything around and changed the names of half the stuff to make you "think" that there's some value to it. One poster said he likes Vista because: "I like shiny things, so the flashy pages won me over" so there ya go! Vista has value for someone!

Vista is not a major upgrade. Windows 7 is supposed to be. Vista just layed the groundwork. 98 was not considered a huge upgrade over 95, though XP was. Because Vista took so long people were just expecting more, and they had every right to. Microsoft just marketed it as something more than it was intended to be.
There were quite a bit architectural changes that needed to happen. Driver models changed which needed to happen.
Yes, you are correct in that some stuff has been changed simply for the sake of change. But there is alot more going on under the hood of Vista than you realize.

Here is a good read on those changes:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/pretty-vista.ars
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/vista-under-the-hood.ars

There has been some changes as a result of SP1 such as UAC pop ups but it's still a good read nonetheless.

And to add to that (I'm on a roll now) many of my customers were frustrated and upset because they had to relearn how to use a "damn computer" again because of Vista. This ****** them off. They could care less about snazzy new features and shiny things. Most of my customers are trying to run businesses or households and simply need their machines to work. The last thing they want is to have to spend another $400 for the newest version of QuickBooks, or to spend time with a 6 month learning curve just so they can connect to their old printer, burn a CD, send an e-mail or connect to the net.

Vista was a "perceived" upgrade not a true "Value-added" upgrade (IMHO).

People don't like change. These people would use XP till the day they died. It's been around so long that most people started using computers with it. I certainly would'nt put Vista on my Grandparents computer. Getting them going on XP was bad enough.

Yes, some printers no longer work with Vista and it has nothing to do with Microsoft. Rather those hardware vendors saw no benefit in creating drivers for old printers when they could get you to buy a new one. HP seems to be the biggest offender here. It's a lousy thing to do but that's the way it is.
Personally I would love to see Microsoft dump legacy support. Part of Windows bloat is trying to support too much. Dump 32bit support too. Apple has no problem dumping support and getting you to move on. Just look at the transition from OS9 to OSX, PowerPC to Intel. Even apples own software dumps support for older versions of OSX.

If people feel they have to relearn things and don't carry about snazzy new features than there is no reason for them to upgrade. If they have the hardware they want, the features they want, why upgrade?

You right in that customers don't care why it works, how it works or even who's responsible for what(hardware vendors, Microsoft). They just want it to work. But the more we learn, the more we leave any sort of bias behind the better we can help and educate people.

 

[Wheelie]

Ok. You're right.

 

[Wheelie]

Big corporations weigh in ...

"... Intel joins the ranks of a large number of corporations that have shunned migration to Microsoft's latest version of Windows, slowing adoption of the operating system in both the SMB market and the enterprise. Many companies perceive Vista as slow, buggy and a resource hog. Lack of support from software developers and for third party device drivers are also considered factors against adoption ..."

... and is the reaction of many of my customers.

Some people upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. Some people use them as toys or hobbys - something to play around with - testing its speed, looking for tiny improvements in performance with new drivers, and tweaking the flashy new interfaces.

But some people use their computers as a tool. They have a job to do. Work to be done. Down time has a direct impact on their bottom line. This is why so many in the world are so reluctant to move to Vista.

 

[14049752]

Why are you guys going back and forth on this? Really, what's the point?

Love Vista? Awesome, you still have to support XP machines for a long while. Hate Vista? Awesome, you still have to support Vista Machines.

The way I see it is: We're techs, we should be running vista and XP both. Get intimate with Vista, figure out how to make it run better, find out the problems first hand. It's not going anywhere for a while, so get used to seeing it more often. Unfortunately replacing an OS that you consider "junk" isn't as easy as replacing something like an antivirus you consider "junk"...most customers aren't going to go for paying for XP and would be ****** if you put a free alternative on their machine.

 

[gunslinger]

To start with after having looked at your “proof” I have to say I’m not impressed. I know numbers can be twisted into pretty much anything , but an improvement in 3ds max of %300 and in photoshop of %150 is bull. Its as simple as that. You have to really watch where numbers like that come from. Most likely the same people that proclaim Norton to be the be all end all of antivirus software year after year.

I agree %100 with Wheelie on this one. Microsoft beta tested Vista on the public and now for the people that got burned so badly by it and went back to XP there is no looking back. Is Vista better with SP1, yes. Is it anywhere close to as fast or as stable as XP , no. There are thousands that will agree with me. Provide all the stats you like and it wont matter one bit if the end user sees his control panel take 15-30 seconds to load or it takes 5 mins to open a small zip file.

You said that I did not mention the specs of the Vista machines that I have had trouble with. Ok, here is a rundown, they ranged from a quad core 3.0 ghz system on the high end to a AMD 4200+ with one gig of RAM on the low end . About 70 systems in between these two. The problems ranged from start up and shutdown times in the 10-15 min range to 10mb zip files taking 5-17 mins to open, BSOD, random deleting of data and even whole programs. Non booting systems, very slow opening of programs , if they ever loaded at all. General slowness and instability. Programs not being compatible even though the worked on other Vista systems in the same room. These are just a few of the problems I have personally been through with Vista.

Vista is expensive slow clunky buggy and unstable. You only have to compare it side by side to a good XP machine to see it. Vista has no useful features that I have found over XP. Also as has been stated the bright boys at MS moved things around that had been unchanged for over 10 years. All for what? DX 10 and glass?

Now as for OSX. Is it perfect? No. But its the closest thing I have found to perfect. I have had no hang-ups, no errors and no program incompatibility issues with OSX at all. My start up time is 25 seconds from a cold boot and shutdown time of 6 seconds. Also Apple added over 300 new and useful features to the OS. Know where these new features came from? They asked the people what they wanted in an OS. Microsoft refuses to do this and the few times they have they did not listen.

This coming from a long time Windows guy. Microsoft really dropped the ball with Vista. The only people that can’t see this are the gamers and the people who are impressed with “shiny things”

You are right about one thing, " You see what you choose to see" very true.

 

[Wheelie]

Why are you guys going back and forth on this? Really, what's the point?

For one ... it's fun. And for two: it's our life.

We are being paid to assist our customers with their computers and software. And that means we must have a good working knowledge of the market.

My best advice for my customers has been to stay away from Vista. I ask them questions like:
* Do you really want to re-learn how to use a computer?
* Do you really want to spend a significant amount of time researching and looking around for and installing new drivers for all your old hardware (remember it was months or even a year before many manufacturers even had drivers for some products!)
* Do you really want to be a Beta Tester for Microsoft?

I suspect that the gamers and tinkerers love Vista (archer75?) because of the opportunities to continue their hobby in new ways. It's just good clean fun. But end users (not of that mindset) that have a daily mission could care less about Aero, User Account Control, BitLocker, IPv6. Their PC is simply a tool and when that tool ain't working they are not happy. And when my customers are not happy - I'm not happy.

For me and most of my customers it's that simple.

 

[kaspiahn]

Vista Certification

My employer is going to send me to a MCITP bootcamp for Vista (Global Knowledge in Irving, TX. I hope to learn more about Vista and maybe to appreciate the OS. So far I've used it on my new Dell XPS laptop, and I've tolerated it up to now. However, I haven't installed many apps yet.
My wife has it on her laptop and loves Vista. She just surfs the net and emails. I suspect if I really want to use my laptop for gaming I may lose that tolerance. My first action is to add more RAM. Then we'll see.

 

[just_a_nobody]

Also Apple added over 300 new and useful features to the OS. Know where these new features came from? They asked the people what they wanted in an OS. Microsoft refuses to do this and the few times they have they did not listen.

Bingo!! That's M$ biggest problem. They don't listen to their customers, nor do they care what their customers think. M$ seems to have no idea of what the vast majority of their customers use their computers for, as evident with VISTA. To M$, the idea of a coffee table PC is the future of computing....lol. Now who the heck wants to be bent over a coffee table for hours at a time? "Mom, the coffee table crashed again, and my back hurts!!"

Instead of trying to bring down the cost of computers, M$ seems hell bent on increasing the costs.

 

[archer75]

To start with after having looked at your “proof” I have to say I’m not impressed. I know numbers can be twisted into pretty much anything , but an improvement in 3ds max of %300 and in photoshop of %150 is bull. Its as simple as that. You have to really watch where numbers like that come from. Most likely the same people that proclaim Norton to be the be all end all of antivirus software year after year.

How did I know you'd say that. In true fanboy fashion you discount all facts. At least I have provided facts. I have even provided links to the new features in Vista. Benchmarks from different dates, from different sources.
You have not provided anything. Just step back and listen to yourself. Wouldn't you say you sound at least alittle bit fanboyish?

I don't doubt that you've had some bad experiences. Like I said, it takes time for drivers to mature. 10-15 minutes for startup/shutdown is not the norm. My install takes seconds. Though on my system OSX is indeed a wee bit faster. A 10mb zip file taking more than a second to open is also not the norm. I can extract 4gb+ in well under a minute. Same speed as OSX on my machine. Your experiences certainly aren't normal. But they are just that, YOUR experiences. Don't assume because you have had some bad experiences that everyone else has. Many people do not have issues at all, most not as extreme as you say by any means.

Just today in Leopard I have had lock ups and errors. And i've only used it for an hour today. Todays errors were unusual though, certainly not the norm.
300+ new features sure, apple made every effort to document every little thing too. Quite a bit of fluff there, but ok. I still like Leopard. But it did introduce a host of bugs. I can provide links for this as well if you wish, though i'm sure you will call it more lies.

I would provide more benchmarks, from different dates and sources, and more user experiences, but it seems you would perceive as lies.
I can even run benchmarks on my system and provide screenshots if you like.

To M$, the idea of a coffee table PC is the future of computing....lol. Now who the heck wants to be bent over a coffee table for hours at a time? "Mom, the coffee table crashed again, and my back hurts!!"

The focus of Surface is for retail. Not the home user.

 

[gunslinger]

If I'm a fanboy, what am I a fanboy of? I have been working with Windows/Microsoft OS sense the days of the 386 and have been working on computers sense Windows 95. I'm a true Windows guy. I have only been using a Mac for about 3-4 months. In that time I have not had a single problem. In that same time I had already had to reinstall Vista 3 times and had too many issues to count.

You say you have benchmarks to back up what you are saying and I believe you. But, I have also seen many benchmarks that say the exact opposite of what yours say. Including an entire article in pc mag I think it was about how much faster xp was with sp3 than vista with sp1. Thats why I said that all the stats and numbers can be made to look like whatever you like, but user interaction and experience don’t lie.

All you have to do is look at the link at the start of all this to see just how many people dislike Vista, and the reasons why. Again take in mind thats just one small forum with a small sample of people. Look on youtube and you will find thousands that feel the same as me about Vista. Even on this forum I'd say about 60-70% of the people I have talked with dislike Vista for one reason or another. The only people I have seen that have no issues with Vista are the true die hard gamers that would give an arm and a leg for DX10 or older people that use their computer for email and web only.

You can talk about how much better Vista is than XP in theory, and you may be right, in theory it should be better. But in the real world its just not, its that simple.

I'm not a fanboy for anything, I just like my tools to work. For me and my thousands like me XP and OSX just work, while Vista does not. You can not ignore the end user in all this.

 

[archer75]

If I'm a fanboy, what am I a fanboy of? I have been working with Windows/Microsoft OS sense the days of the 386 and have been working on computers sense Windows 95. I'm a true Windows guy. I have only been using a Mac for about 3-4 months. In that time I have not had a single problem. In that same time I had already had to reinstall Vista 3 times and had too many issues to count.

You say you have benchmarks to back up what you are saying and I believe you. But, I have also seen many benchmarks that say the exact opposite of what yours say. Including an entire article in pc mag I think it was about how much faster xp was with sp3 than vista with sp1. Thats why I said that all the stats and numbers can be made to look like whatever you like, but user interaction and experience don’t lie.

All you have to do is look at the link at the start of all this to see just how many people dislike Vista, and the reasons why. Again take in mind thats just one small forum with a small sample of people. Look on youtube and you will find thousands that feel the same as me about Vista. Even on this forum I'd say about 60-70% of the people I have talked with dislike Vista for one reason or another. The only people I have seen that have no issues with Vista are the true die hard gamers that would give an arm and a leg for DX10 or older people that use their computer for email and web only.

You can talk about how much better Vista is than XP in theory, and you may be right, in theory it should be better. But in the real world its just not, its that simple.

I'm not a fanboy for anything, I just like my tools to work. For me and my thousands like me XP and OSX just work, while Vista does not. You can not ignore the end user in all this.

I am certainly no die hard gamer. My kids take up most of my time. I don't even own a DX10 card. Though I do game alittle but there are other projects I work on.

In the real world Vista is indeed better. And the benchmarks show it. This is not all cases. As I have also said drivers are mostly to blame(the end user doesn't care what's to blame, but we should) and depending on your computer you may have bad experiences. Maybe a better statement would be "Vista is faster and more stable than XP with quality drivers." This at least benchmarks do prove.

Oh I don't ignore the end user. In fact I have stated that all they care about is that it works, not why it doesn't. I'm not arguing that at all. We must provide the user what works best for them.

But as techs we can't be affected by bias towards one company or products. It can negatively affect troubleshooting. We MUST deal in facts.
It's easy to say Vista sucks and Microsoft is horrible. But the fact of the matter is the vast majority of crashes have nothing to do with Vista itself. Rather they are 3rd party drivers. We must differentiate the two so as to better fix the problem at hand. Leave emotion out of it.

Macs should be more stable. They have less hardware to support and apple provides those drivers. That's one of the trade offs of going to a very controlled system like that. Vendors spent so much time with XP that their drivers should be quality. The computer industry has changed so much since the launch of XP that most people grew up on it. With Vista they had to learn a new one of doing things. It's a transition period. I don't know how this could have been made easier, they certainly had enough time to get it done and Microsoft did work with hardware vendors to make the transition easier. Perhaps they could have done more? I don't know.

Look I understand that you've had bad experiences. I know others have as well. I have posted my complaints on Vista here too, there are certainly some valid ones too. But don't assume everyone has that problem. Or even most. As time has gone on reviews have become more positive. The complaints are fewer and the positive responses are greater. Drivers have improved. Changing the driver models was bound to create these sorts of issues. We had to expect that, though we also hoped that hardware vendors would have worked harder on those drivers.
Most people who post about things online do so only when there's problems. They post to get help. When things are fine you generally don't here from them. And right now is fun to get on the Vista bashing bandwagon. This isn't just Vista related but also pertains to games. Just because it seems like everyone is complaining doesn't mean everyone is complaining.

I know what article you are talking about in regards to how XP SP3 was supposed to be so much faster than Vista SP1. After reading that I really couldn't understand how when the bulk of SP3 was a colllection of all the updates since SP2. There wasen't a whole lot in it that was new. And now that SP3 is out the benchmarks show that performance for XP is mostly unchanged. In some cases it's slower in others it's faster.
That's why we need to look at benchmarks and reviews from different sources, such as I have provided. Yes, some sites are indeed biased one way or the other so we need a large sampling.

If a person hates microsoft at least do so for the right reasons. Most of the people complaining here and elsewhere are complaining about issues that have nothing to do with Microsoft. We should be complaining to Nvidia about their drivers or HP for not supporting hardware in Vista that isn't that old. Even software developers see this as an opportunity to force people to buy a new version to work with Vista when they could(in some cases) patch their existing software to work.

I'm a computer guy. Not a windows guy, not a linux guy, not a mac guy. A computer guy.
I started on computers before there was windows. My first was a 286 Tandy and the OS, if that's what it could be called, was called deskmate, it ran off of a floppy. I spent a lot of time in Dos and later moved on to Windows 3.11 for workgroups.
I love computers and to tinker(thought kids and budget don't allow for much of this anymore), I don't care what the OS is, I don't get caught up the politics of it all, the companies, the emotions, I leave all that behind and focus on the problem at hand. I search for facts only. It makes us better able to help people.

On a side note, don't you think that automator is the most underrated feature of OSX? It is absolutely amazing yet it's talked about so little. I had to convert some audiobook MP3's over to .m4b. There are apps that will do this for you but I wanted to do it with automator. Got them converted to .m4a with itunes and then the file extensions changed to .m4b and then added to the audiobooks section of itunes. All with one workflow. I have some more projects in mind for it, should be fun.