What has Vista done for you?

I think it has more to do with compatibility and performance. Currently driver support, although better than ever, is still not giving same performance as XP. My older system was about 10-25% quicker in XP over Vista, playing games, using the same hardware. This was also the case when moving from 98 to XP. There is much more going on behind the scenes with Vista, so its natural it will be a little slower in some aspects.

Also lots of scare stories about it looking at private data, DRM and incompatibilities. I do know several people who have had problems with Vista and gone back to XP, this I put down to a lack of patients and ability and in some cases, caused by hardware. When I first upgraded to XP, I had to replace my modem, scanner(didnt bother, never use the thing) and printer as these were not compatible and never would be with XP.

I would say if you are going to use Vista, be prepared for a little bit of incompatibility and some trouble shooting, try to be calm and ask here on the forums for help if your stuck.

Aero is a bit of a gimmick, 3d flip is completely useless, but I like the glass and the way windows open and close. Superfetch is great, apps loads 10x quicker than on my old win 2000 work PC and many times quicker than my XP machine. It helps to have loads of Ram with Vista.

JMHO
 
At work it has saved me a load of time, as I don't have to log people off of the computer to troubleshoot things, as I can just enter my credentials to open stuff in admin mode. It is bulletproof, and the users really like it.

It is way better than XP on so many levels, incredibly stable, looks great and some good functionality.
 
Baz said:
At work it has saved me a load of time, as I don't have to log people off of the computer to troubleshoot things, as I can just enter my credentials to open stuff in admin mode. It is bulletproof, and the users really like it.

It is way better than XP on so many levels, incredibly stable, looks great and some good functionality.
Click to expand...

You could do that on XP, just hold shift and right click then select Run As.
 
burnsy2023 said:
Indeed, I think the GUI was just to show the public that something was different. You can do loads of stuff under the bonnet but most people aren't bothered and then complain that nothings changed.

Burnsy
Click to expand...

And similarly, the people saying 'Vista is just XP with a new theme' would still be complaining if everything was completely different.

Personally I think they made a pretty good balance of similarity to XP, whilst being different enough to actually feel...different.
 
Lankio said:
You could do that on XP, just hold shift and right click then select Run As.
Click to expand...

Wasn't the same though, as permissions were not cascaded if the program needed to access certain things that didn't seem to be 'core' to that program.

Vista is much better in that regard.
 
vista made me aware of the fairly uncommon problem with 7900gt's casuing corruption only in vista, which meant i'm sending it off for a free upgrade :)
 
Caged said:
Surely that's the point though? If the end result is that using the OS isn't much different to XP, then why should anyone care that there's changes that they just can't see? I'm going to reserve judgement on Vista until I've used it for a while (I switched to Macs over a year ago) but nobody I know has upgraded to it yet, and these are the same people who ran XP from the week it was released. The whole buzz (or lack of) surrounding Vista seems very underwhelming to say the least.
Click to expand...

It's the little things taht make a difference, especially when they're exploited by third party developers.

Things like MMCSS and I/O priorities will really help stop HD videos stuttering if your pc is indexing or doing other background tasks. People won't notice the absence of a stutter and they will take it for granted.

There are plenty of other examples, the general public won't notice the change although it is there preventing them getting stressed.

Burnsy
 
Dolph said:
Wasn't the same though, as permissions were not cascaded if the program needed to access certain things that didn't seem to be 'core' to that program.

Vista is much better in that regard.
Click to expand...

Ah didn't realise that.
 
Some good comments here guys, im in agreement that a lot has been changed under the hood and that the last 6 years of development hast simply been a marketing exercise for Microsoft.

Namely improvement in the area's of usability, security and interoperability between platforms plus some future proofing on the network side for support of IPv6.

Perhaps i will eventually move over but like Windows XP the service packs have just started too appear for Vista give it another 6 months and it should be a reliable platform with full support across the board for both software and hardware vendors.
 
I've been running Vista for 2 months now and to be frank, now I've adjusted a few settings I can't really tell much of a difference between it and XP.

Explorer is... different, I like the way the address bar works but it is really annoying the way it keeps setting folders to use strange views if they have any audio files etc in them.

To be fair though I have all the fancy stuff turned off using classic theme, so it looks almost exactly like Windows 2000. Might mess about with this aero thing one day if I can figure out how to turn it back on.

Gaming wise I haven't noticed much difference from XP, except that I haven't been able to get Motorhead working at all.

In terms of what it has 'done for me' - nothing really. Aside from explorer being marginally better there isn't really anything I would miss in XP which I use at work. I like to move with the times in terms of Windows though and have upgraded to every version from 3.1 onwards with the exception of NT and Server OS.

I think it's a pretty glowing reference for XP that it had a lifespan of over 5 years without being replaced, and even then a lot of people still prefer it.
 
Last edited:
Didnt like Vista at first, but love it now. With the newer drivers, sound is perfect, can hear 7.1 nicely in Winamp, 5.1 works for 5.1 movies and games...such a robust OS!
 
HangTime said:
Explorer is... different, I like the way the address bar works but it is really annoying the way it keeps setting folders to use strange views if they have any audio files etc in them.
Click to expand...

That was my main problem with Vista, was so annoying I went back to XP.

I like to set all my folders up the same:
Details view; with Name | Size | Type | Date Modified.

then Tools -> Folder Options -> File -> Apply to All Folders. All folders the same from now on (in XP at least).

With Vista, you have the most useless column ever called "Rating". I was able to customize to the above columns and save it. But it doesn't stick with these columns... after a while random folders go back to the useless Thumbnails view, or that stupid Rating column is back.


I plan on putting Vista back on soon so I can play some dx10 games, hopefully there's a way to set up Explorer properly without it changing depending on what filetypes are in the folder.
 
Vista has made me appreciate Windows xp, and has shown me how much money and time can be wasted making an os which offers nothing new.
 
Energize said:
Vista has made me appreciate Windows xp, and has shown me how much money and time can be wasted making an os which offers nothing new.
Click to expand...

Becuase you dont like it, it must be a load of carp. :p
 
Last edited:
IMO vista is terrible, the core is a step forward from XP but the rest is annoying:

Aero seems to be done for the sake of it to show off that they can do compositing, this results in massive window borders to show transparent stuff through.
Same with Flip 3D, I cannot see a single practical use.
Same with taskbar picture preview.
Sidebar seems a gimmik, it's too small to be useful and is just distracting.
File exporer is totally annoying, it's really hard to see where you are in the file system.
UAC is a pain in the ass.
System settings do not take advanced users into account, messages are too simplified to understand what they truly mean.

I am not a fanboy but Vista has been great for Apple, I am glad I switched just before vista came out to a much better OS, a few of my friends have also switched, mainly after Vista messed up their system and they saw OS X on my computer.
 
stickroad said:
Becuase you dont like it, it must be a load of carp? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

No I just said it offers nothing new, not to me anyway xp is the same with a different interface. Anything that may have happened "under the hood" hasn't expressed itself to me yet. Other than that annoying uac, and vistas insistence of caching loads of stuff into ram which leaves me waiting for it to start up while the hdd is thrashing.
 
Last edited:
Energize said:
Other than that annoying uac, and vistas insistence of caching loads of stuff into ram which leaves me waiting for it to start up while the hdd is thrashing.
Click to expand...

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 :mad:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom