Anyone Else With Windows Vista?
 

A few months ago my computer died off, thus giving me the great excuse to buy a new one. But nowadays any new computer you buy has vista on it.

Now for the most part, vista isn't real bad. It keeps things pretty orderly.

The real killer of this false 'messiah' OS is how damn slow it is. Even with the hefty new hardware I have this thing is usually slower than XP.


Does anyone else have this? If so I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

I actually think it is very fast, but considering I have 2GB of RAM I'm probably not the best person to ask about it. As for the interface, it isn't as bad as people tell me all the time. I rather like it, though it took me a while to get used to the changes from XP.

My aunt has it and it runs like a glacier.
Then again she has it on some entry level notebook that undoubtedly has some kind of crappy intergrated video card sharing memory with 512 MB of RAM.
The interface looks great though from what I have seen of it, it's pretty what with all the transparency stuff.
And I love the bubbles screen saver.

I have 3 gigs of RAM on my Vista machine, so I'm also not the best for comparison, but otherwise I have found no fault in the system. 'Coarse I don't know how a mac or a linux system run, though.

2 gigs here, though I used to have a 1 gb. Even then it was still faster then my family's XP. It's usually perfectly fine, but starts to get choppy after about 6 programs. Still, I've not had a virus yet. Oh happy days! The real problem I have with Vista is this office bullshit. Basically, if you plan on getting a new pc with microsoft office, add about 150 to the price of the computer.

That's why I remained faithful to Microsoft Office 2000 even when I had XP. I just don't like the way it has gone after all these "upgrades", Word in particular.


I also love the implementation of tabs in Internet Explorer (finally!). I've just never been really attracted to Firefox. I know I should use it, but every time I click on it I feel like I'm neglecting a girl that's been with me all of my life. Then I smack my head for being so idiotic and start using Firefox, though the spellchecker is atrocious.

I find the British English dictionary to be much better. And if FF isn't to your taste, there's always Opera.

RR, it was the same way with XP, and 2000, and ME, and 98; that's why I stick with OO.org.

I would upgrade to Vista, as I have the muscle to run it fully. The issue? I don't have any reason to upgrade. If DX10 becomes a necessary component, then I may consider it, but I'm more likely to go to the OS after Vista, simply because by the time I need to upgrade it will already be out :p

I am a little surprised - I agree with ya that Vista is something that needs a hefty build, it's been one of the things levelled against it that you needed some serious hardware upgrades to run it but the fact that you have a new one, which should've been specced for Vista that runs it slow is just odd. I'd go back to the store and ask them what they're playing at.

I have Vista as well. One gig of ram and an integrated 256 video card, and it runs very well. Of course I have been pulling for an additional gig of ram and a decent video card, as I can then run Vista fully. Right now, I have about half the crap I don't need off. My dad cannot seem to comprehend that. But of course, he is runnung on a 512 video card and 1 gig of ram on his nice end laptop. Yet the cpu that everyone else uses is at best average. Bah!

If she wants to speed it up without having to deal with an upgrade, tell her to use a flash drive of at least 1GB and use ReadyBoost with it in the PC and it'll act like an extra 256MB of RAM.

However, I have Vista on both my PC and my laptop, and I believe it runs nicest with 2GB. 1GB isn't bad, but 2GB makes it flawless, and there's no benefit beyond that unless you have Vista 64-bit. The video card doesn't need to be particularly uber. I've only got an integrated 6150 Go on my laptop, and most things still run pretty smoothly. I can play Unreal Tournament 2004 on 1024x768 on high settings with smooth gameplay.

For the most part, once you turn off UAC and turn off notifications from Windows Defender, Vista is actually quite a pleasant experience.

UAC? Elaborate, as I'm stupid right now.

The thing about Vista is it's like the iPhone, don't get the first or second gen. The longer they have to find all the obvious flaws in it, the more likely they are to have them fixed in later versions.

But it's still a great OS. And for all its bugs and flaws, it's introduced a lot of good ideas, like much of office. It's actually a lot better once you get used to it.

User Account Control. Its the feature built in that makes you confirm everything before it'll actually do it. You can turn it off from the User Account settings in the control panel.

I advise everyone to do so. It saves many headaches.

That's kinda what I have against me. My computer - although new grrr... - has a limited capacity for RAM. It can only accept a maximum level of 1GB, and I only have 512.

Since I bought it as such a low cost - $250 - I probably shouldn't complain too much.....

I'd amend that statement; I'd advise everyone who knows what they're doing to disable it. It's a quite useful safety feature for the technologically illiterate.

Annoying for me, though.

Yeah, that could be dangerous advice if someone isn't careful...

It's probably still a useless feature for the technologically illiterate, since they'll either be too terrified to do anything or they'll get so used to clicking through it that they'll click through whatever malicious or undesireable changes the system is asking them to authorize.

UAC is what keeps those of us "in the know" from doing something we "should know not to do." Disabling it just makes your system as vulnerable as XP.

As for performance, I tend to sit on older games (BF1942) and for those Vista is just not worthwhile. If you are sticking to newer games, then it should be fine, just make sure you have 2GB+ in RAM before even trying.

In a lot of ways this is like the migration from 98/2000 to XP. Don't have 512MB? Tough titties...

I have Vista; pretty fond of it, all together. I hated XP with a passion, so being able to get Vista for my own personal laptop was a relief. I've had it for about a year and use the computer everyday, and much to my surprise -- it hasn't CRASHED! I'm so happy.

I did have to play around with it to get around some of the annoyances (thank you tweakvista.com and how-to-geek.com). I even still have User Account Control on, and it's not annoying, yay!

My biggest complaint is that Vista Home Premium has some really STUPID things disabled. There's stuff I want to do and change, but apparently I need Ultimate to do this and that. Like, most importantly, the Local Policies and Security Options MMC, which allows you to change User Account Control settings. Vista Home Premium doesn't HAVE it (secpol.mmc), which is ridiculous. However, the stupidest part of all is that SOME (but not all) of the things that you supposedly can't do with Home Premium but can with Ultimate do ARE possible if you edit the registry. ARGH. It's horrible enough that they want us to pay more money for semi-necessary features, but it's somehow WORSE when those features are so... lazily disabled! :P

Erm.

But I like User Account Control. Correct me if I'm horribly wrong (which I definitely could be), but I though UAC was less about stopping clueless people from doing stupid things and more about stopping malware and yadda from changing stuff without you knowing it. I don't know how successful it is, but it does make me feel better. :D

Also, Vista is pretty. :P

So, in summary: like Vista. Don't like strange Microsoft business practices. Apparently.

I'll shut up now. *blinks*

Vista's pretty eats my RAM. Also, I'm working out-of-the-box fresh on the version. That first update? DISABLES YOUR ABILITY TO TURN OFF THE ACCURSED TAP-TO-CLICK! If there were any feature that deserves to be treated to perpetual Hell-fire, it is the one that opens fifty-some-odd windows in the process of me trying to get to any given folder on my desktop.


Plus, as I have mentioned, it doesn't seem to want to boot XP Home from my external, at least without considerable knowledge and effort.

Now that I have my new fancy-pants Christmas present computer running, I am also a Vista user.

I haven't had any real problems yet. Just gimme a few days, and I'm sure I'll fuck something up =P .

You might have a point. Much as I like me my Spider Solitaire, I'm sure I never needed a version that looked so shiny and full of special sound effects for every damn thing. As it is, one of the first things I did was go back to the Windows Standard look for my desktop. It's less sparkly-shiny and I just like it better. (But does it matter in terms of eating up RAM? I'm genuinely curious.)

Yeah, Vista's a RAM eater, but you can disable some pretties if it's a problem. I actually haven't noticed anything, but heh, I do have 2 gigs. *pets*

What kind of laptop (brand, model) do you have, bluestarultor?

Yeah I have 2.5 gigs and it runs rather sweetly, I just have to do a little more maintenance on my computer.

I just got a Dell Inspirion to replace my eMachines.

It's actually not a bad buy at ~$450US, but 1GB RAM just doesn't last with Vista. Plus, it uses friggin' BD-RAM, so I can't even use my 1GB strip of SD that I just upgraded the eMachines with. :gonk:

Ouch! That sucks. Makes me glad I got my 2 GBs straight out; I've never tried Vista on anything less.

But anyway, I read somewhere (never tried it myself) that if you uninstall the drivers that come with Synaptics and replace it with the drivers that came through the laptop manufacturer (in your case, you'd want to download the Dell Inspiron model # whatever Synaptic driver), and then you are able to disable the touch-to-click thing again. I haven't tried it myself yet though since I haven't updated my Vista (sucky internet connection, yo). If you google it, you should be able to find more info.