Why Does Vista Suck?

[Uytuun]

I personally don't have Vista, still using XP, but a friend of mine bought a new laptop and it operates on Vista...I used it once or twice very briefly and hated it because of the lack of control, stupid resource-hogging visual effects and patronising attitude towards to user. And that was only my very superficial first impression...what else sucks? :p

[Erika Redmark]

I think the more salient question is "why does Windows suck?" :p

I personally don't have Windows, but that's the impression I get from school computers and other people's computers I've used very briefly and hated. Everything about the Mac OS's makes more sense to me.

[HackerX]

If enough people say it sucks, without ever actually using it, eventually it's got to suck for real right???

People can't stand change.

IMO, Vista > XP. and I'll stick with it.

[Jakalwarrior]

Mostly its just slower XP, with a new theme pack installed, crap ton of processes... err I mean new features, that the power user or gamer will just disable to "Try" and get some performance back. Whats to love? It does have some new features but I haven't run across any of them that I found useful in the months ive been using it. Usually I just try to figure out how to disable or remove them.
The other dissappointment is DX10 and the fact that you are forced to buy Vista to get it. Not that DX10 is spectacular either. Its supposed to be able to do advanced effects with less performance hit than DX9, but in general its slower, even when forcing DX9 to do those things.
Not to mention games keep hyping "DX10 effects" when they are really just DX9 effects, and the general populace doesnt know better. The geeks who do know and see the false advertising / bullshit get pissed off.



Soft particles, works in DX9. HDR, works in DX9, etc... Crysis is one example of the BS. It is still the best looking game ever, and it looks 99% identical in DX9 or DX10.


Ive been using Vista Ultimate for ~5 months and am a gamer with a DX10 card.

[JILebedev]

Well, you pretty much summed it all up. Windows is generally geared to cozy house wives without any actual knowledge of computers and who'd rather call the geek squad than actually try to fix problems themselves. And don't even get me started on the false advertising of overrated features (transparent windows, yay) Microsoft so often employs.

That said, I use XP myself, though I plan on switching to something more customizable/minimalistic/streamlined in the future.

[Aronnax]

Vista is windows ME part 2. It added a lot of system load and offers very little in terms of upgrades over the previous generation.

Vista wouldn't have gotten such a bad rap if Microsoft hadn't decided to help Intel sell a bunch of old processors by stamping them "vista capable". Thousands of computers were sold to unwitting consumers who opted for Vista only to find out they had to use a minimal version of Vista that ran slow.

[bubbles]

Vista is very bloated and does not offer much more than XP, but it costs more. It is also much slower than XP. With increasing competition that costs less (linux), Windows will need to improve if it wants to justify its price.

[Phrixos]

Windows XP is a very good windows operating system, though like all other operating systems it has its weak points. Overall a good operating system.

Vista uses too much resources for the functionality it provides. Realistically to run Vista Ultimate, you need a "PC" thats hardware is more specific to server builds eg 4 gig of ram should run Vista pretty well, but what home user needs that??

This and the file system structure are two main negative topics of Vista at the moment.

Personally I hate the Vista Security Police, every time you do something administrative it asks you if you were the person who initiated the request....every single time stops the pc and asks you if you did it.

Another personal problem i have is that when trying to play music and videos on vista, the system manages the resources inefficiantly and resulted in clipping in audio and video lag.

I now use ubuntu and I have not had to restart for 7 months. Let alone had any problems whatsoever. The only problems I had was that of making programs i needed work and those problems have fixes.

The current fix for vista is unfortunately a roll back to XP.

[HackerX]

Windows XP is a very good windows operating system, though like all other operating systems it has its weak points. Overall a good operating system.
From a technical point of view, XP is worse than Vista as far as operating systems go.


Vista uses too much resources for the functionality it provides. Realistically to run Vista Ultimate, you need a "PC" thats hardware is more specific to server builds eg 4 gig of ram should run Vista pretty well, but what home user needs that??
So you're telling me that my system is running slow??? I never noticed.... I certainly didn't upgrade anything in the switch from XP to Vista. Guess I should go out and by another 2 gig or Ram... but wait... no 32bit operating system can handle that anyway???


This and the file system structure are two main negative topics of Vista at the moment.
FS is exactly the same as XP?


Personally I hate the Vista Security Police, every time you do something administrative it asks you if you were the person who initiated the request....every single time stops the pc and asks you if you did it.
So turn it off? I login as root in linux to get around the same problem. Most of those prompts are because of poorly written programs. But that's a Vista problem right?


Another personal problem i have is that when trying to play music and videos on vista, the system manages the resources inefficiantly and resulted in clipping in audio and video lag.
On board sound card chip on your motherboard? Where's your proof that vista is doing things inefficiantly? or that it's even vista that's handling it? Video just gets palmed off to a codec, which would be the same as the XP version.


I now use ubuntu and I have not had to restart for 7 months. Let alone had any problems whatsoever. The only problems I had was that of making programs i needed work and those problems have fixes.


You've not had any problems... but you've had problems getting things to work??

[Phrixos]

I conceded that I used the wrong word for File system and was not what i meant.

But due to your assuming nature ie:

Vista uses too much resources for the functionality it provides. Realistically to run Vista Ultimate, you need a "PC" thats hardware is more specific to server builds eg 4 gig of ram should run Vista pretty well, but what home user needs that??

So you're telling me that my system is running slow??? I never noticed.... I certainly didn't upgrade anything in the switch from XP to Vista. Guess I should go out and by another 2 gig or Ram... but wait... no 32bit operating system can handle that anyway???

It is not worth discussing an issue with someone who interprets a general statement as a specific and personal one.

Learn to converse via citation rather than assumption. I would have been happy to cite everything I wrote and withdraw anything I could not. But immediately you start acting like it's a contest.

Enjoy your computer buddy.

[HackerX]

Start citing. If you're going to make a bunch of personal claims, you're going to get a response with a bunch of personal claims.

[Phrixos]

64-bit Editions of Windows Vista (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

The 64-bit editions of Windows Vista—available for all editions of Windows Vista except Starter—deliver premier performance, reliability, and security, providing you access to the next generation of PC innovations.


By the way i meant the way Vista Indexes on the FS. And its search function.


Originally Posted by Phrixos View Post
Windows XP is a very good windows operating system, though like all other operating systems it has its weak points. Overall a good operating system.

From a technical point of view, XP is worse than Vista as far as operating systems go.

As far as that point goes, I don't really think that warrants your response. Since all I said was XP is a very good windows operating system and did not mention vista.

Personally I hate the Vista Security Police, every time you do something administrative it asks you if you were the person who initiated the request....every single time stops the pc and asks you if you did it.

So turn it off? I login as root in linux to get around the same problem. Most of those prompts are because of poorly written programs. But that's a Vista problem right?

As far as this goes, Vista security police ask you for not just what Linux would ask you to be SU for, it prompts you at every conceivable security issue. Turn it off, would have, if I wasn't unimpressed to the point that I wanted it gone.
I mentioned this because it is on topic and an issue I have with vista, we are not discussing how to fix them, just what issues people have with it.


As for the audio comment. Video and Audio runs perfectly with the same hardware setup using ubuntu. I find that to be acceptable, and now that it works... no more need be said.

And the comment on me not having any problems on ubuntu, I admit that sentence was constructed poorly. The point should be as clear as day though. The only issues I have come across in ubuntu are things like, getting windows programs to work under wine, and compatibility workarounds. No resource hogging, no audio clipping.

[HackerX]

64-bit Editions of Windows Vista (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)


Eh? What's this got to do with anything? Yeah, there's a 64 bit version, like any 64 bit operation system, it takes a bit more power to run compared to any 32 bit version.



By the way i meant the way Vista Indexes on the FS. And its search function.


Hmmm, most systems do some form of FS indexing these days. Quick search tells me that people are complaining about it. Never noticed that, but I do notice how it works when I use the search.



As far as that point goes, I don't really think that warrants your response. Since all I said was XP is a very good windows operating system and did not mention vista.


This is a thread bitching about Vista, your comment is automatically going to be assumed to be a comparision with Vista, otherwise it should be in a seperate thread about how good XP is.

As for my point, The changes/rewrite to the Vista kernel was a "good thing".

Here's a nice overview without going into the really technical stuff
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To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Read the bit about prefetch and half the reason people complain that vista is a resource hog. There are varieties of prefetch for linux now too... "When linux does it, it's OMG that's amazing, works so well. When Windows does it. OMG Vista is a resource hog".

If you had mentioned that the prefetch doesn't work so well for systems < 1gig, I'd have understood.


As far as this goes, Vista security police ask you for not just what Linux would ask you to be SU for, it prompts you at every conceivable security issue. Turn it off, would have, if I wasn't unimpressed to the point that I wanted it gone.
I mentioned this because it is on topic and an issue I have with vista, we are not discussing how to fix them, just what issues people have with it.


For anything setup/config that is included with Vista, the prompts seemed no worse than what I've experienced in Linux. Sure there are a bunch of programs (non Vista) that were crap in this regard. Part of the reason changes were made to the kernel as mentioned previously was that these programs were doing bad things, and running with far to many privileges. People bitched, "I can't believe Vista has all these warning messages when this other program from this other company does something, omg wtf Vista is crap"


As for the audio comment. Video and Audio runs perfectly with the same hardware setup using ubuntu. I find that to be acceptable, and now that it works... no more need be said.


And I'm telling you that Vista itself doesn't handle these. The only problem Vista has in this regard at the moment is that there is no direct hardware access to sound (DirectSound from DirectX) like XP (& DX) had. Lots of game companies are bitching about this.


And the comment on me not having any problems on ubuntu, I admit that sentence was constructed poorly. The point should be as clear as day though. The only issues I have come across in ubuntu are things like, getting windows programs to work under wine, and compatibility workarounds. No resource hogging, no audio clipping.

As a power user of linux, I'm used to seeing all the unpolished programs, crash repeatedly, not work as they should. There was a version of Amarok released that was notorious for it.

All operating systems have there problems... but experience as shown me that the grass isn't always greener on the other side, it's just a different shade.

[capricornintj]

I used it once or twice very briefly and hated it because of the lack of control, stupid resource-hogging visual effects and patronising attitude towards to user.


I disabled the Aero features (who really needs flying windows?) and found Vista to be reasonably stable (for a Microsoft product).

[Muse]

The government hasn't made the switch from XP to Vista yet for their office PCs; that might say something.

[HackerX]

The government hasn't made the switch from XP to Vista yet for their office PCs; that might say something.

Ha, ever worked in a large company? Mine made the switch from 2000 to XP at new years this year. That's the IT department...

All it says is the cost of changing those many computers and supporting something different is too large to deal with at the moment. It's a little different to upgrading your home computer...

[Tenacious B]

The government hasn't made the switch from XP to Vista yet for their office PCs; that might say something.
That could say a lot of things. Price, time/effort to switch, and teaching users to use it are all reasons not to change, as is being lazy. I think training all the government workers would probably be the hardest task.

But like the government, I'm waiting for Microsoft to get a service pack or two out before I switch. My university sells Vista Ultimate upgrade to students for $20, so I got it and will wait to install at some point later (64bit AMD).

I had XP home edition when it was fairly new, and it sucked severely. I'm now with Pro with all the updates and service packs and it has been quite good.

[PRBori]

Lack of support for drivers not to mention an annoying interface and the amount of CPU power and memory need it make it a bad choice.

I worked for various gov companies and I wouldn't recommend it at all for it has too many issues.... and migrating to such will required migration of most of the equipment for there is not many drivers to support older equipment.

That said as someone that make recommendations, I personally would not recommend upgrading to VISTA anytime soon. More options and drivers and more powerful PCs are need it and that means replacing almost everything in a company. Not feasible for many who who have a tie IT budget and more important items to deal with. Besides Windows XP works just fine. All PCs coming with VISTA are downgraded to XP Pro or a purchase is made directly from the company with such option.

[HackerX]

That could say a lot of things. Price, time/effort to switch, and teaching users to use it are all reasons not to change, as is being lazy. I think training all the government workers would probably be the hardest task.

But like the government, I'm waiting for Microsoft to get a service pack or two out before I switch. My university sells Vista Ultimate upgrade to students for $20, so I got it and will wait to install at some point later (64bit AMD).

I had XP home edition when it was fairly new, and it sucked severely. I'm now with Pro with all the updates and service packs and it has been quite good.

Ahhh you have to pay $20 for it? That sucks. My uni gives out copies of Vista Business for free to all the IT students. (XP pro was previously offered as well). It's pretty common for uni's to be partnered with microsoft to allow this.

[Vortex]

I personally don't have Vista, still using XP, but a friend of mine bought a new laptop and it operates on Vista...I used it once or twice very briefly and hated it because of the lack of control, stupid resource-hogging visual effects and patronising attitude towards to user. And that was only my very superficial first impression...what else sucks? :p

/delurk

Vista is a superior OS in terms of technical execution. It fixes a lot of the wrong backend problems that XP has.

However, for practical use, its slower at all levels, has DRM shenanigans at times, requires UAC to be disabled to keep sanity (years of work rendered useless by its zealotry), aero is slow for what it does. The problem with Vista is that for most users, its XP, but shiny. For power users (esp. power gamers) that loss of performance is a deal breaker. DX10 is a joke (don't even mention 10.1), they changed the way sound is executed (and broke $200 audio cards in the process) and the DRM shenanigans are as lame as ever.

So while Vista isn't bad, there isn't any really great reason to run out and switch. Vista 64 is actually the most compelling argument for vista, as it has much better driver support than XP 64. Overall, theres a reason to run either, so long as you chose the right argument for it.


-------


Well, you pretty much summed it all up. Windows is generally geared to cozy house wives without any actual knowledge of computers and who'd rather call the geek squad than actually try to fix problems themselves. And don't even get me started on the false advertising of overrated features (transparent windows, yay) Microsoft so often employs.


Show me some false advertising of Aero please. Then show me how 3d desktop + transparency is bad. This alone saves you the 2d/3d context switch when alt-tabbing out of games, and looks a hell of a lot nicer than XP base (even w/o aero, vista is much more shiny). It doesn't really compare to Beryl, but then, nothing else does either.

As for your comments regarding House wives.... right. Theres no counter-argument as this is an ad hominem attack (housewives) and appeal to authority (the mac cult) than anything else. If anything, the OSX is the OS that is built for those who can't do anything on it. It works out of the box, is pretty, requires little user intervention and It hides everything it can from the user (just changing basic settings is a PITA).

Also - Geek Squad. Really? Your referencing that? Can we let cliche's die and ignore the stupid Best Buy support system please? Or are you going to tell me geeks drive around in new bugs now too and look like starving programmers (apparently we have nothing better to do than fix "house wives" windows problems :thinking:)?


/relurk

[ShaiGar]

Because it isn't Linux

[Jakalwarrior]

I dont know about you guys but I still havent managed to get vista under 40 active processes and still have it functioning / safe (firewall + antivirus).
I had a vista theme pack installed on XP before I switched (even has transparency) so about the only thing I noticed while switching was reduced FPS in my favorite games (especially witcher), the annoying security features I had to disable, the massive number of processes I spent hours trimming to no avail, the difficulty of setting up simple file sharing, and the superfetch that was stressing my HD and Ram so I can load Opera in .5 seconds instead of 1 second. I havent really found a use for the 3d desktop thing yet either.

BTW, I disable file indexing in both XP and Vista. The faster file searching really isn't worth it to me.

[Lout]

My main issue with Vista (which I got with my laptop) is that all the programs I liked and used in XP were immediately rendered useless. Also, I'm simplistic by nature, so the Aero theme -- touted as one of the best reasons to go Vista -- didn't make much of a difference.

Granted, none of this was solved by moving to Linux but it certainly gave me a good excuse.

Oh, and it used to crash at the most inopportune moments.

[Phrixos]

HackerX,

You say all operating systems have problems, so, my question is why would you pay for an OS that obviously has faults when you can attain one to suit specific needs for free.

Vista does suck, it obviously works well for you. I happen to work at an ISP, and i do deal with support.

Vista problems dominate the support queue.

This is not due to the fact that people hear about problems and take on board the "vista sucks attitude", its because they are experiencing problems with vista. I've been here 10 months and I'm yet to hear about a unix machine breaking down that is less than 5 years old.

[integratedvelocity]

Vista + Securom= very bad
Vista + attempted Ubuntu installation = reinstall Vista and still have no Ubuntu

However, since the reinstallation, I have barely had any trouble at all. Partly because I chose exactly what I wanted to install and didn't have all the bloatware. I wouldn't know about the required hardware, since I bought a laptop that exceeds Vista recommendations

[Vortex]

Vista problems dominate the support queue.

This is not due to the fact that people hear about problems and take on board the "vista sucks attitude", its because they are experiencing problems with vista. I've been here 10 months and I'm yet to hear about a unix machine breaking down that is less than 5 years old.

Oh, this is rich. People who don't know how to work their computers call the support line, but a rare and arcane OS used only by technicians don't call. NO REALLY? Those that work in tech support know how stupid the average user is. The average user buys MS products. Clearly, its all Microsoft's fault. Personal responsibility is, after all, a dead concept.

Also, before the "OSX = Unix" argument - its based on unix, its not unix. Apple has their own numbers.

[HackerX]

I honestly couldn't have said it better myself.... wow. You honestly think that because you don't get calls about unix on your little ISP support line, that's a reasonable conclusion that there's no problems. Read your ISP's service contracts. ALL of them state that they'll only support Windows... and on the rare instance they'll do Mac's.

Ever seen a linux support forum? The problems are much the same across the board, no matter what OS is involved. Linux users tend to be people who:
a) Want to fix it themselves or
b) Know that some wannabe tech support on the other end of a phone line won't be able to help them anyway.

integratedvelocity - ya, bloatware that comes with laptops (or just off the shelf pc's) suck. Sometimes you have to question whether they actually test what they're putting on before they ship some of that software out.

[Coraline]

Most people who use a computer want it to behave like their car does - it gets them from A to B with average care and anything extra the mechanic deals with. Yes, they can be stupid - I've worked in Tech Support. But your car doesn't decide half way through a jounrey that it is going to disable the brakes, or disengage the steering wheeel, or take you in theopposite direction to where you wanted to go, unless it has a serious fault. This, metaphorically, is the problem with Vista. It does things you don't expect, and you don't know why or how to stop it doing it again. It thinks it knows better than you do what you want.
I no longer use Vista; I now use Debian.

[Vortex]

Most people who use a computer want it to behave like their car does - it gets them from A to B with average care and anything extra the mechanic deals with. Yes, they can be stupid - I've worked in Tech Support. But your car doesn't decide half way through a jounrey that it is going to disable the brakes, or disengage the steering wheeel, or take you in theopposite direction to where you wanted to go, unless it has a serious fault. This, metaphorically, is the problem with Vista. It does things you don't expect, and you don't know why or how to stop it doing it again. It thinks it knows better than you do what you want.
I no longer use Vista; I now use Debian.

Uh... What? A computer won't do any of those things unless theres something wrong with it. Your analogy is a wash argument. This will hold true of all OSs, as they are all living proof of absolute digital consequentialism. What you see is what you get - nothing more and nothing less. To blame the failings of the public on computers is a logical failure worthy of the press.

[elfece]

Uh... What? A computer won't do any of those things unless theres something wrong with it. Your analogy is a wash argument. This will hold true of all OSs, as they are all living proof of absolute digital consequentialism. What you see is what you get - nothing more and nothing less. To blame the failings of the public on computers is a logical failure worthy of the press.

Vortex, you're right saying that any OS is a living proof of absolute digital consequentialism, but that's FROM A HARDWARE POINT OF VIEW. I mean, if my RAM or my CPU or my GPU start misprocessing bits then it's expected the whole OS to hang intermediately, but what we're talking about is a software abstraction layer over that flawless-but-not-too-complex hardware.

If the computer does what it does, sure it has a good reason to do it, otherwise it would probably BSODed instantly, but the user, who resides at the top of that abstraction layer, doesn't focus on "decoding Matrix", but expects everything to work as he/she would like at his/her level of "reality". Average users doesn't care wether the hardware and software works in a strictly deterministic way or there's an army of little magical gnomes inside the CPU doing the hard work, they just want their will to become facts: That's what users expect to work under consequential laws, and that's what Vista fails to offer.

A computer doesn't need to have something really really really going wrong to act unpredictably on that level. What I understand from the analogy said before, is that Vista acts as if the user were stupid, and usually that leads it to act in an even more stupid way. And that's a faulty design of the OS. Nothing less, nothing more. (Specially taking in consideration that the main reason because Microsoft is one of the biggest companies in the world is because they knew how to apply the KISS philosophy onto their overall-crappy products).

In the name of user-friendliness, Microsoft sacrificed any bit of intuitiveness that their OSs could have when it comes to knowing what happens in the background. Microsoft is now really selling their products as if they were "magical-gnomes-powered"...

When somethings starts getting more and more complex and at the same time you expect it to be easy and transparent for the average-user, it is natural to end up at a point where WYSIWYG, but what you get doesn't says anything about the process that allowed you to get what you're seeing. As I see it, it is an inherent flaw of trying to keep easy an overly complex system, but Vista fault is that as a whole it is not well designed. OSX could be the opposite example, it may hide any dirty problem to the user, conveying a "fresh and clean" sensation, but at least when you tell it "take me to point B", it does, so the user doesn't feel abandoned before some "supernatural" error (yeah, sure it has a PERFECT causal chain that leads to its existence, but the user will never be able to know it) so often.

[Vortex]

Show me proof that Vista does weird, supernatural things that an average user cannot understand. The only really new thing it has in the frontend for a user to deal with is UAC. Operationally, its nearly exactly the same as XP. Back up all these unfounded assertions about how nobody knows what Vista is doing, or this vague and undefined "you tell it to go to A, but you go to B instead!!!".

[Jakalwarrior]

Ive had no problems with Vista using it over the past few months. I have it trimmed down and there have been no apparitions haunting it ;) . Once it is good and trimmed down it is indistinguishable from XP with a Vista Theme pack other than some stuff being renamed and or moved.

I still feel like ive "upgraded" from firefox to AOL as a browser or something though. Does the same stuff, just with more crap in your face and a bit slower.

[zhangxy]

Vista is the second worst operating system. The first is ME.

However, people did start out hating XP in the beginning. But Vista is a year old now and it still has a crapload of bugs even with SP1. I bet Windows 7 will be everything Vista failed at.

[Antares]

I honestly haven't used enough Vista to comment, but I have to say the interface is the only thing I'd switch for (which isn't much. I have a lot of nifty programs I want to keep using and if Vista makes that impossible, then it's not worth it). The next best thing is VTP; gives you nearly the identical interface but runs on XP.

[Coraline]

Show me proof that Vista does weird, supernatural things that an average user cannot understand. The only really new thing it has in the frontend for a user to deal with is UAC. Operationally, its nearly exactly the same as XP. Back up all these unfounded assertions about how nobody knows what Vista is doing, or this vague and undefined "you tell it to go to A, but you go to B instead!!!".

I'm not sure what you mean by an average user, but I mean someone who wants to store their music, surf the net, write a few documents and emails.
An example of the kind of "supernatural" things that Vista does is:
it renamed my 3000-odd music files which I had named the way I wanted them (under XP) because there was a setting turned on to automatically update album information from the Internet. It also rearranged them into random playlists (ands screwed up my existing playlists spectacularly) because the default setting on Media Player was to create random playlists. Not helpful when many of my files were tracks from complete operas which I wanted in the order they came in on the album. Before anyone jumps in and says "Well, that's what you get for using Media Player," which is true, the average user who has just bought a new PC/notebook and spent the afternoon carefully tranferring their files from their old PC, or who has had a new upgrade inflicted on them at work, does not expect to have to dive into settings (many people have no idea where to start) to put things back the way they want them. I at least knew what to do about it. Vista's transparency and usability is perhaps okay if you have never used a computer before, but the average user (as defined above) who is familiar with an older operating system will have problems with it.

[Szarra]

So while Vista isn't bad, there isn't any really great reason to run out and switch.
Unless you want to play the latest games. ;) I don't have Vista yet. Though I'll get it when it comes time to get a new system. (Silly new games are always requiring faster specs than I have!)

My Mom has Vista and, once we turned off the UAC, she loves it. Her one complaint is not being able to play one of her versions of Mahjong (they don't provide upgrades/support for it anymore).

My question would be: Why get Vista Ultimate? Wouldn't that simply have more "bells and whistles" taking up processing space?

[knock7]

Each OS has its place.

XP - You can't argue that it is the best PC OS for gaming and it makes sense for businesses, because you don't have to train people.

Vista - commercial failure, I don't know much about it.

BeOS - This was the best OS ever built. You could run fifty videos simultaneously and they all ran well. The system was amazing, but it died.

Solaris - sucks as a desktop, decent server.

Mac OS X - beautiful OS, well thought out, unix and good interface. There is a premium attached to Apple products, but I think its well worth it. I am hoping to buy an Imac at the end of the year.

Linux - This is good for appliances, embedded systems, servers and hobbyists. Several years ago, I got turned off by how difficult the kernel recompile and all the software packages that get installed by default and then I found OpenBSD.

OpenBSD - A good appliance, embedded system, server or hobbyist machine. BSD and this OS in particular don't get the credit they deserve. The guys who created OpenBSD are unabashed assholes. OpenBSD stresses security and simplicity. The install takes about ten minutes and it comes with only very essential software. BSD recompiling the kernel is very easy. I have built several servers that solved real business problems by installing OpenBSD and throwing on some packages. This OS is definitely worth a weekend to play with. It also looks like pf is significantly cleaner that ipchains. I run this on spare PCs sitting around my house.

BSDi - It was like OpenBSD with real commercial support. It is sadly gone.

FreeBSD - I like OpenBSD better.

[leprecon]

I have always been primarily a windows user. At one point in time i played with linux but it just seems so boring, dont get me wrong the idea behind it is awesome of setting up every little detail just the way you want it but if thats what you want to do just go buy legos or something. first and formost it has to work and though i have had some minor problems with vista i prefer it over xp simply because it just looks really cooler. (yeah i know how much of a simplton i sound like, but the paint sells the house not the structural stability) the other thing is the search engine has proven invaluable to me being that i try to organize my files but it ends up being like the rest of my life--a work in progress.
i also like the side bar with the analog clock and the notepad.
but the biggest thing that sold me on vista is that when i first got it and started using it i got on the inet and then when i was done did my routine of checking for and disposing of all of the "wonderful" spyware and i couldnt find any for several months atleast there was no spyware. maybe i'm just unique but i havent had even half of the problems with crashing and stuff that i have heard about in various places.

one thing i will say though is that ther speech engine (so called) doesnt work at all. after about 2 1/2 hrs of dealing with it i had to shut it off to preserve my laptop from physical damage (via me chucking it at the wall) but i prefer typing any way.

from my experience the biggest thing it needs is ram
512 is horrible
1024 is pretty good but sometime gets to be to much of a wait
2 G this should be the bare minimal sent with any computer it works great
and thats with a Celeron M 1.6 GHz with 1M of cache

oh by the way i'm not a big fan of video games so that may have something to do wiht it.
i did have some usb jumpdrive compatiblilty issues but once i upgraded to ultimate it worked perfectly but i think that that is just my laptop its an acer.
but all of that is just my opinion

[azelismia]

I worked at microsoft for six months and ran vista in that time. I didn't have a problem with it. a lot of the showy features you just want to disable, but once that is done it's a solid system. It is more stable than xp. I still run xp at home though because of the software problem someone else mentioned.

[Vortex]

I have always been primarily a windows user. At one point in time i played with linux but it just seems so boring, dont get me wrong the idea behind it is awesome of setting up every little detail just the way you want it but if thats what you want to do just go buy legos or something. first and formost it has to work and though i have had some minor problems with vista i prefer it over xp simply because it just looks really cooler. (yeah i know how much of a simplton i sound like, but the paint sells the house not the structural stability) the other thing is the search engine has proven invaluable to me being that i try to organize my files but it ends up being like the rest of my life--a work in progress.
i also like the side bar with the analog clock and the notepad.
but the biggest thing that sold me on vista is that when i first got it and started using it i got on the inet and then when i was done did my routine of checking for and disposing of all of the "wonderful" spyware and i couldnt find any for several months atleast there was no spyware. maybe i'm just unique but i havent had even half of the problems with crashing and stuff that i have heard about in various places.

one thing i will say though is that ther speech engine (so called) doesnt work at all. after about 2 1/2 hrs of dealing with it i had to shut it off to preserve my laptop from physical damage (via me chucking it at the wall) but i prefer typing any way.

from my experience the biggest thing it needs is ram
512 is horrible
1024 is pretty good but sometime gets to be to much of a wait
2 G this should be the bare minimal sent with any computer it works great
and thats with a Celeron M 1.6 GHz with 1M of cache

oh by the way i'm not a big fan of video games so that may have something to do wiht it.
i did have some usb jumpdrive compatiblilty issues but once i upgraded to ultimate it worked perfectly but i think that that is just my laptop its an acer.
but all of that is just my opinion

Pentium M Celerons have *zero* multitasking ability. Like, below none none. An OS like Vista should never be put on one. Vista, even base install, can't physically eat 1GB of main system ram (unless your doing something weird o.o). 1GB of ram is the "mininum" because you need RAM past the OS's primary needs for your applications. XP eats ~256mb (512MB recommended). Vista eats ~512mb, so 1GB becomes recommended.



Mac OS X - beautiful OS, well thought out, unix and good interface. There is a premium attached to Apple products, but I think its well worth it. I am hoping to buy an Imac at the end of the year.


Er... no. But I wont derail this thread further. LOL @ Imacs though.



it renamed my 3000-odd music files which I had named the way I wanted them (under XP) because there was a setting turned on to automatically update album information from the Internet. It also rearranged them into random playlists (ands screwed up my existing playlists spectacularly) because the default setting on Media Player was to create random playlists. Not helpful when many of my files were tracks from complete operas which I wanted in the order they came in on the album. Before anyone jumps in and says "Well, that's what you get for using Media Player," which is true, the average user who has just bought a new PC/notebook and spent the afternoon carefully tranferring their files from their old PC, or who has had a new upgrade inflicted on them at work, does not expect to have to dive into settings (many people have no idea where to start) to put things back the way they want them. I at least knew what to do about it. Vista's transparency and usability is perhaps okay if you have never used a computer before, but the average user (as defined above) who is familiar with an older operating system will have problems with it.


1) MP 11 isn't vista. Its completley, 100% independent. Everything you just described is a MP 11 issue, not a Vista issue.
2) MP 11 (and 10) can update MD3 metatag data for you. This does *not* change the base filename or path as stored on the harddrive.
3) Itunes actually does what you describe, except it tries to copy everything into its own special directory and transcode the data into AAC.
4) Playlists are a per-program application. MP11 can't mess with any other programs playslists.


My challenge to demonstrate Vista doing arcane, weird things still stands.

[Coraline]

1) MP 11 isn't vista. Its completley, 100% independent. Everything you just described is a MP 11 issue, not a Vista issue.
2) MP 11 (and 10) can update MD3 metatag data for you. This does *not* change the base filename or path as stored on the harddrive.
3) Itunes actually does what you describe, except it tries to copy everything into its own special directory and transcode the data into AAC.
4) Playlists are a per-program application. MP11 can't mess with any other programs playslists.


y challenge to demonstrate Vista doing arcane, weird things still stands.

My point, which you completely seem to miss, is that the average user - not one who can tell the difference between MP 11 (which ships with Vista - it is not downoaded/installed separately by the user - and therefore to the average user is indistinguishable from Vista) and the operating system itself - cannot cope with these sorts of issues. They don't want to. They want their OS to run in the background and not disrupt what they are trying to do on their computers.
As far as the average user is concerned, Vista does do weird, arcane things. The user shouldn't have to spend hours delving around trying to find the things s/he needs to turn to get the thing to behave the way they want to, nor should they have to find a tame geek.
This is why Vista sucks.

No, I probably haven't answered your challenge.

[knock7]

Er... no. But I wont derail this thread further. LOL @ Imacs though.

If its worth making a snide comment, it is worth explaining.

[Vortex]

If its worth making a snide comment, it is worth explaining.

Its not snide. Its the truth. iMacs are nothing more than a motherboard shoved into a monitor's housing. Even for macs they are unusually hard to upgrade, have poor stats, and extremely poor price/performance ratios. They are status symbols of macdom, not a useful computing device.

[leprecon]

Pentium M Celerons have *zero* multitasking ability. Like, below none none. An OS like Vista should never be put on one. Vista, even base install, can't physically eat 1GB of main system ram (unless your doing something weird o.o). 1GB of ram is the "mininum" because you need RAM past the OS's primary needs for your applications. XP eats ~256mb (512MB recommended). Vista eats ~512mb, so 1GB becomes recommended.

ok...
number one i wish you would tell me where i can get a "Pentium M Cerleron" because i have never even heard of one, let alone owned one. what i said was a CELERON M processor and you must have never had one because they are actually good processors. However; if you still disagree then i would not mind you buying a laptop that fit your specification and sending it to me as an act of charity. ;)

number two as far as the ram thing of course a base install of vista isnt going to use 1GB of ram but it also has shared video of 256Mb and when you install the acer software (not all of it just what is actually useful) it uses a little more and then when on top of that you install something like an antivirus and an anti spyware and then also MS office it does tend to require a little more. I know it may seem wierd to some to actually use a computer instead of just looking up part specs and os specs but its just one of my hobbies go figure.

also xp's original "required" rating for ram was actually 64MB then they moved it up to 128MB so the "required"rating is 128 and the "recommended" is 256. microsoft doesnt care if it runs as fast as you want it to only if it runs as fast as they think it needs too.

yes vista's required rating is 512MB and the recommended is 1GB but it still runs kind of slow because as you might agree the celeron isnt the most efficient at referencing the other memory on your page file but when you add that extra gig you will find out that as you use different programs-especially more then one or two(yes my celeron can run more then one program at a time)that the ram usage will actually go up to between .99GB and 1.17GB(thats what i have had mine up to).

by the way if you havent used a product (celeron) and you dont know what your talking about "Pentium M Celeron" then maybe you should just keep you misfounded opinions to yourself...

"sorry but i dont like people dissing me or my intellect, you can disagree or just not believe if that is what you choose but i do know a thing or two about computers"

by the way Vortex what grand computer are you running? (just out of curiosity)

[realkodiac]

I would say Vista doesn't suck. If the majority of software out there, and games, were written for Vista 64-bit I would be running it right now. Simply because the max supported amount of ram goes up quite a bit. Sure I would "need" 8GB of ram, but wouldn't you like to be able to have a game, IE, and all of the office apps running at the same time? or is that just my male-geekiness showing through?

[sonofone]

I don't think vista sucks. It isn't amazing but I've found it to be an ok OS. I think people are intimidated by computers, so when a lot of changes are made to the OS they get all upset. Give it time... I think when touchscreen computing really takes off, people will appreciate Vista more than Mac OS.

[HackerX]

ok...
number one i wish you would tell me where i can get a "Pentium M Cerleron" because i have never even heard of one, let alone owned one. what i said was a CELERON M processor and you must have never had one because they are actually good processors.

Nah, they're a pile of crap. Better than the AMD equivalent these days (what isn't?)... but still nothing on a real Pentium in technical terms or outright power. I understand where Vortex is coming from... from a multi core/multi thread point of view, but it's a technical discussion that I couldn't be stuffed going into. Google it. The important thing here though is that it works for you, so I don't see why it needs to be taken further than that.

As far as memory usage... have a read of a link I've posted earlier in this thread about the way vista handles memory different from it's predecessors.

And just to add, I hold Vortex's sentiments about Mac's. Back when they held the middle to high end pro graphics market segment I appreciated them for what they were, but current trends are a far cry from that. There's nothing inherently wrong with them technically. They hold some really bad sentiments about UI guidelines, while having some pretty good changes in that area too (UI being something I'm intimately interested in). But they are market hype priced and frankly don't live up to it.

[Navitron]

There is something definitely wrong with vista. The switch from 2000 -> XP was never this frustrating. Also another problem might be that software and driver coders expected vista to be a lot similar to XP, they didn't expect such a big change in architecture.

I believe that Microsoft should come out with upgrades to there OS in small incremental upgrades ones like Mac OS's and the Linux kernels do. Huge changes all at once the industry will not like and can't adapt fast enough.

The other dissappointment is DX10 and the fact that you are forced to buy Vista to get it. Not that DX10 is spectacular either. Its supposed to be able to do advanced effects with less performance hit than DX9, but in general its slower, even when forcing DX9 to do those things.
Not to mention games keep hyping "DX10 effects" when they are really just DX9 effects, and the general populace doesnt know better. The geeks who do know and see the false advertising / bullshit get pissed off.



Soft particles, works in DX9. HDR, works in DX9, etc... Crysis is one example of the BS. It is still the best looking game ever, and it looks 99% identical in DX9 or DX10.


Ive been using Vista Ultimate for ~5 months and am a gamer with a DX10 card.
Oh god I know this pisses me off also. There was a video showing off DX9 vs DX10 Crysis awhile back. All they did was lower the settings from Very High to High for the DX9 test and move the camera around faster in the DX10 Tests. With the XP Custom High Quality config files It looks almost the same as DX10.

Oh yeah I found the videos theres probably higher quality ones then the youtube's.
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[Vortex]

Terrible misinformation

Yea, thing is, there *are* Pentium M Celerons (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

To Quote:

"Introduced in April 1998,[2] the first Celeron branded CPU was based on the Pentium II branded core. Subsequent Celeron branded CPUs were based on the Pentium III, Pentium 4, Pentium M, and Core 2 Duo branded processors."


I won't bother with the technical details (they're very complicated if you don't understand the principles of processor design) but Pentium M's were designed for one thing: Efficiency. Task them with any form of multitasking, and they die. A great mobile processor for their time, but that is one thing they could not do. The M architecture would later get evolved into the Core architecture after Intel finally gave up on Netburst.




by the way if you havent used a product (celeron) and you dont know what your talking about "Pentium M Celeron" then maybe you should just keep you misfounded opinions to yourself...

"sorry but i dont like people dissing me or my intellect, you can disagree or just not believe if that is what you choose but i do know a thing or two about computers"

by the way Vortex what grand computer are you running? (just out of curiosity)


Yea, I have had personal experience with them. My best friend actually had a prototype engineering Pentium M sample from a while back. Thing overclocked like a bat out of hell. HOWEVER, it could not, in any way, shape, or form multitask. The core is not built for it. Even if I had no firsthand experience, you can go look at its specs, learn a thing about how it works, and realize it was never designed to operate simultaneous execution threads in any quick manner.

Wtf is with this fail quote btw? I would never say something so stupid. Or is that you self-monologuing?

Finally, I run an Athlon X2 4200+, 3GB DDR2 667, Nvidia Geforce 7600GT, MSI K8N Premium MOBO.

[leprecon]

oky doky
Yea, thing is, there *are* Pentium M Celerons

To Quote:

"Introduced in April 1998,[2] the first Celeron branded CPU was based on the Pentium II branded core. Subsequent Celeron branded CPUs were based on the Pentium III, Pentium 4, Pentium M, and Core 2 Duo branded processors."


of course they cloned the celeron off of the pentium (with some modifications) it would be stupid(of intel) to waist valueable research money to make a cheaper processor. that is granted...

the fact is though even on that page that you got off of wikipedia there is no "Pentium M Celeron there are pentium I II III 4 & M and even D's, there is also Celeron, Celeron M's and even Celeron D's but there was never a processor that intel made that was called "Pentium M Celeron". they do not exist.

yes i went to the page (very interesting information) however, if you will do a search of the page there is not mentioned anywhere in there a "Pentium M Celeron".

just search the page.

by the way celerons can multitask, just because something is not as good as the best doesnt mean it sucks (i am typing this in IE with media player running and also avg is scanning) and it is a celeron ;) and its using 1.15GB at the moment. Also i never said that celerons were the "greatest processor in the world" just that they are good at running a computer (good: can run it with out making you wait for the processor to catch up, and i dont have to)

[cRyPT]

Vista is to Xp what OS X 10.0 was to OS 9. Only Windows is 7 years off the mark.