What has Vista done for you?

[Final8y]

They are my 2 biggest hates of the new OS. I never had any issue with the speed or responsiveness of XP launching applications...so why introduce Superfetch??

HD life must significantly reduce because of this? Superfetch ITSELF make my system slow now. Having to wait until its finished caching stuff before my OS feels useable.

And UAC...JESUS CHRIST!!!!!! The most ridiculous feature ever to be installed. 'You are attemtping to launch an APP'...'Are you sure?'...'Have you thought it through?'...'Positive?'

Any power users nightmare

Maybe its your hardware that is the bottleneck like slow harddrives or so you would not notice.
But some people run raid & the speed is very noticeable.
My self could see a huge difference from a fresh install of XP & how quickly its responsiveness slowed down with just a few apps installed.
There has been no slowdown of vista at all from the fresh install.

 

[1337z0r]

Maybe its your hardware that is the bottleneck like slow harddrives or so you would not notice.
But some people run raid & the speed is very noticeable.
My self could see a huge difference from a fresh install of XP & how quickly its responsiveness slowed down with just a few apps installed.
There has been no slowdown of vista at all from the fresh install.

This is true about XP slowing down after a bit of use, but all it takes is CCleaner and a decent defrag program like O&O Defrag and it's running tiptop.

I found vista to be annoying at time's. Setting it up right is the key, disable UAC and a few other things and it is pretty good. It uses a lot more ram, file transfers a noticeably slower and CPU usage can peak when doing more than 3 simple tasks at one time.

Vista has done nothing for me really, I prefer XP hands down for stability. I like to say vista is a "noobie" OS. But I guess it's pretty good if you have a laptop as some of the features can come in handy when using it outside the house ect.

 

[Final8y]

This is true about XP slowing down after a bit of use, but all it takes is CCleaner and a decent defrag program like O&O Defrag and it's running tiptop.

I found vista to be annoying at time's. Setting it up right is the key, disable UAC and a few other things and it is pretty good. It uses a lot more ram, file transfers a noticeably slower and CPU usage can peak when doing more than 3 simple tasks at one time.

Vista has done nothing for me really, I prefer XP hands down for stability. I like to say vista is a "noobie" OS. But I guess it's pretty good if you have a laptop as some of the features can come in handy when using it outside the house ect.

I can see the slowdown with in 3 days of use & its not the fragmentation or the registry.
UAC is a matter of opinion. It is a huge first barrier to viruses & the makers will be relying on the fact that allot of people have turned it off giving the virus administrator rights with out a question.
Yes it uses more ram so do new gfx cards & games compared to five years ago.

 

[EvilFranky]

Sorry but, if you download suspect software and don't run a good antivirus program then you derserve your PC to be infected.

UAC makes no difference to wether you get infected or not, its an end user decision. Your the one making the choice not UAC.

So its no different to launching something in XP other than you get more boxes asking if you want to. Total gimmick!

 

[TheVoice]

It'd make more sense if UAC was more customisable i.e. you could set different levels of 'aggressiveness', so you only get confirmation requests when trying to do certain things. Instead though, it can become annoying for power uses etc so it just gets turned off.

 

[Final8y]

Sorry but, if you download suspect software and don't run a good antivirus program then you derserve your PC to be infected.

UAC makes no difference to wether you get infected or not, its an end user decision. Your the one making the choice not UAC.

So its no different to launching something in XP other than you get more boxes asking if you want to. Total gimmick!

Yes a user decides to get infected.
Never could a virus be gotten from an innocent looking file or program or email from a friend.
And with your argument that its the users decision there is no need for antivirus program ether

Antivirus programs makes no difference to whether you get infected or not, its an end user decision. Your the one making the choice not the Antivirus programs .

 

[Final8y]

It'd make more sense if UAC was more customisable i.e. you could set different levels of 'aggressiveness', so you only get confirmation requests when trying to do certain things. Instead though, it can become annoying for power uses etc so it just gets turned off.

I agree you should be able to set trusted programs...ect..

 

[Burnsy2023]

HD life must significantly reduce because of this?

Nope, recent research has concluded that continuous use does not affect the life of the drive.

Burnsy

 

[EvilFranky]

Yes a user decides to get infected.
Never could a virus be gotten from an innocent looking file or program or email from a friend.
And with your argument that its the users decision there is no need for antivirus program ether

Antivirus programs makes no difference to whether you get infected or not, its an end user decision. Your the one making the choice not the Antivirus programs .

And how does UAC help the situation? If you get a mail that you believe is from a trusted source and it has a program attached, that you have been told is harmless...what protection does UAC provide? None that i am aware.

You would still run it as YOU believe it to be fine. UAC can't detect that its anything sinister...thats where antivirus comes in, to help protect.

 

[Energize]

Never could a virus be gotten from an innocent looking file or program or email from a friend.

Thats pretty much correct. How many friends send an email with a random zip or exe attachment?

 

[markyb]

"What has Vista done for me?"

I installed it on my rig a month ago and kept it for a week. I found myself turning off most of vista's features, Such as Windows Search, Windows Defender and Indexing. Noise is quite a big thing for me and for Vista to be indexing my hard drives all the time was anoying. I've never searched for anything.

I lasted a week and now have gone back to dual booting. I still use XP 95% of the time. Forgot the last time I used Vista.

I say to all my customers, if they have been using XP and have a lot of software or games then stick to XP. If they are starting out with a PC or not used one for a while or little demands on the PC then Vista is the choice.

I can see in a year or so it will become much better but I personally dont like it.

Its the first Microsoft OS which has made me seriously consider using Ubuntu Linux full time.

 

[Final8y]

And how does UAC help the situation? If you get a mail that you believe is from a trusted source and it has a program attached, that you have been told is harmless...what protection does UAC provide? None that i am aware.

You would still run it as YOU believe it to be fine. UAC can't detect that its anything sinister...thats where antivirus comes in, to help protect.

If i have been told its harmless by a friend then he would have checked it already even if it had not if i got a UAC popup i would not run it until i really knew what its purpose was.
i am talking about the random stuff that gets sent through email.
Or even a virus sent its self through email from a friend who has not been careful or gamedemos & 3rd party apps.
Aslo as you said your not aware of what UAC can really do.
Some program should not need addim rights for what they do so if i click on an mpg/game.demo/file/jpg .exe & i get the UAC pop my alarm bells would start ring but with it off you would be none the wiser you would not know that a app had even gotten such a level until the crap hit the fan i don't want the virus infected file to run & then get picked up by a scanner because they are not 100% secure.
UAC will also stop some system files being altered even if you gave the go ahead to UAC to let the virus program run when it tried to change system files you would get another permissions popup more alarm bells ...that game demo is not ment to do that.

 

[Final8y]

Thats pretty much correct. How many friends send an email with a random zip or exe attachment?

I get sent loads of stuff all the time.
Most of it funny but none have triggered a UAC popup yet.

 

[Baz]

You could do that on XP, just hold shift and right click then select Run As.

Not in pratice, you couldn't alter networking tasks, and half the time when you tried to install a program that way, it didn't work.

Plus Vista's remote assistance is way better

 

[HangTime]

Maybe its your hardware that is the bottleneck like slow harddrives or so you would not notice.
But some people run raid & the speed is very noticeable.

Vista is a mainstream OS - there are gonna be plenty of people running it on slow drives (maybe 5400rpm with small cache). And I doubt many of those sub £500 PCs on the high street come with a RAID array.

I think it is too easy to point the finger at people's computers and say they aren't up to the task. Heck, if anything the people with uber-fast setups like RAID0 Raptors should have the least to gain from superfetch since loading files off Disk should be relatively smooth in any event.

The 'inverted caching' done by superfetch seems sound in theory, however my main gripe with it is the lack of (obvious) customisability. It ends up doing completely unnecessary work like caching files I am never/rarely going to use again. Example: Extract a large archive. Once it has finished, the hd starts going mental as it gets copied into RAM. As soon as I delete the file, the caching stops. It would have been nice to have been able to prevent that in the first place.

 

[Final8y]

Vista is a mainstream OS - there are gonna be plenty of people running it on slow drives (maybe 5400rpm with small cache). And I doubt many of those sub £500 PCs on the high street come with a RAID array.

I think it is too easy to point the finger at people's computers and say they aren't up to the task. Heck, if anything the people with uber-fast setups like RAID0 Raptors should have the least to gain from superfetch since loading files off Disk should be relatively smooth in any event.

The fact is Vista is new & there clearly is issues with compatibility with hardware
& drivers[it may work but not as well as it should] with most hardware people are using even now was made with XP in mind with the exception of the latest gfx cards.
Even the install times are varying largely from setup to set no matter the cost of the setup. some stuff just works better with vista than others.
I have been extremely lucky that i have not had the problems that i see day to day with vista on these forums.
I also don't expect vista to run as well as XP on low end hardware, somewhere along the line more resources will always be need.

 

[sWiZzLe]

Plus Vista's remote assistance is way better

If you have the time to get it to work and patience to use it as its is sooooooooooooooooooooo slow!

Just installed TeamViewer and it is unbelievably fast compared to it!


What has Vista done for me? Well its added at least 4 inches to my man meat

Vista 32 & 64 on my laptop, both are very stable but i only use 64 as it is a LOT faster. The only problem ive had with it was last week when i resized some partitions and i couldnt boot - ran chkdsk, fixed all kinds of stuff - within in hour i was back in to Vista and it was as sable as ever

Recently installed Vista 64 on my Shuttle replacing XP 64 which had become very unstable and kept locking up. Have had one bsod while installing updates, one week later no problems.

When i first tried Vista it was 32bit Basic, which is an utterly pointless version of the os, so i quickly went back to XP.
But now i have the Ultimate & Business versions i think, for me....Vista's here to stay

 

[Curiosityx]

Vista may well be here to stay but a lot of people are treating it as a fad, something new to play with.

When XP was released the uptake and satisfaction was far superior too that of the Vista launch, this forum alone is testament to the fact of how troublesome the migration is.

I dont disagree with moving technology forward i too see myself of a innovator when it comes to specification new solutions for businesses and thinking of alternatives to the norm but i haven't and wont be advising my customers to consider a move for along time to come and dont get me started on Office 2007 compatibility problems in networked environments.

If you look into the grand scheme of things consider that a business as substantial as RBS/Natwest has only just completed a move from NT Server and Desktop too Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP Destop.

 

[cavemanoc]

Vista may well be here to stay but a lot of people are treating it as a fad, something new to play with.

When XP was released the uptake and satisfaction was far superior too that of the Vista launch, this forum alone is testament to the fact of how troublesome the migration is.

Yep. I remember my upgrade from 98 to XP and the pure joy that followed - smoother installs, better stability, HUGELY improved networking. That was a pleasant experience - and never once was I heard shouting "Where the **** have they hidden that now?" - which I have to say I do a lot of with Vista. Yes I suffer badly from Resistance to Change, but I really do think they have moved some stuff for the sake of it - took me 30 minutes to find my network ip in Vista 1st time I looked for it

I have to say that I do appreciate all the improvements under the hood - they're great - I just don't know that the justify all the niggles - especially now that many of Vista's improvements are filtering backwards into XP.

I run XP on my home machines - WHS on the server - and Vista on my XPS laptop. I have found myself marvelling in the new shiny features on Vista, only to switch them off one by one as the novelty wears off and I realise that they're hitting performance. I didn't need to index my drives on XP - I still don't search for much - I know where I left stuff, and thankfully Vista doesn't move it around... much! The sidebar is cool - but it caused a slowdown in Stalker. Aero is shiny, but that task viewer thingy... I still just [ALT] Tab.

And my all time worst gripe - petty, but really grinds my gears - why oh why did they mess with ctrl-alt-del? Why did it need to change? WHY?!?!?! I know there is a new shortcut to get the old screen, but I can't remember what it was - so I get annoyed.

That's the bottom line for me. I know the underlying architecture is better and more robust. But I wish they hadn't changed things for the sake of it. I really can see myself sticking with XP pro until 2010 when the replacement arrives.

(And why do we need 25+ different version of the bloody thing?)

 

[Burnsy2023]

Yep. I remember my upgrade from 98 to XP and the pure joy that followed - smoother installs, better stability, HUGELY improved networking. That was a pleasant experience - and never once was I heard shouting "Where the **** have they hidden that now?" - which I have to say I do a lot of with Vista. Yes I suffer badly from Resistance to Change, but I really do think they have moved some stuff for the sake of it - took me 30 minutes to find my network ip in Vista 1st time I looked for it

That's vastly different to how I remember the XP launch. Whilst all of your points to XP's advantage are true, a lot of people didn't accept that when their old hardware couldn't get drivers and they had compatibility problems left right and centre.

I accept that Vista has been a slightly more tenuous upgrade then XP, but
take off those rose colour glasses and remember the huge discontent people had when XP was new and put it in perspective.

Burnsy