Windows Vista. Best ever or flash in the pan?

I have fiddled with Windows Vista every now and then. Especially when repairing some of the newest computers.

More or less, there are some things that Windows Xp can do which Windows Vista cannot. Many games do not work with Vista. And I have noticed that the bulk of Windows Vista sales here in Australia are OEM preloads on new machines. And the majority of people buying such new computers are wiping the hard drives and installing Windows Xp. Particularly Windows Xp Professional.

I have also noticed that nearly all the reviewers in the computer magazines have been slating Windows Vista as the biggest fizzler since Windows Me. Nevertheless, I have heard a bit of noise regarding Vista's first service pack. Maybe the service pack will trim away the loose ends on Vista and then it will take off as mainstream.

Personally speaking, I think Windows Vista is a flash in the pan. And Windows Xp with Service Pack 2 doesn't fail me. I would like to see how Xp Service pack 3 pans out when it's released.

Now, are there any Vista users out there who have any opinions? Let's see what they think of Vista compared to Xp.

I delayed as long as I could the move from Win2k to XP. It was after XP service pack 2. Once I was forced to put it on my desktop at work, and my new laptop was shipped with XP, I've gotten used to it and tweaked it the way I prefer.
I also run Linux (Red Hat / Fedora, Knoppix and Cent OS).
I have looked for a reason to try Vista but so far have not found one. Everyone I know in IT that has tried it does not care for it. Most go back to XP.
So, count me as one who will avoid Vista for the time being, maybe forever. I had not considered it as bad as ME, but you do have a point there.

I just bought a new HP computer for one of my retail stores, its going to be a back office system. It came with Vista installed. My computer guy was setting it up and could not get Vista to play nice with the firewalls and VPN. He is stripping VISTA and installing one of the XP versions.

I've not used the computer yet, but he was less than impressed.

I can honestly say I have never seen a Vista system in person. Screenshots on the web and commercials, but that's it. My laptop at home is on Linux (Ubuntu 7.10), and my development PC at work is XP. Our production systems at work are not certified for VIsta, and probably never will be. Hell, we just made the switch from Win2K to XP in August of this year.

Works great for me. It's different. Some people handle change better than others.

I'm running Vista on my laptop (guess only computer I have right now) and I like it. It has a lot of neat features with it. I was able to get it set up to work on the house network before the fire, I've used it in hotels via wi-fi, and I've used it on the network at work. All have worked fine. I've only had one issue and that was copying a bunch of data from the Vista laptop to the XP desktop and it the Vista machine would push it too fast and overwhelm the XP machine. Not sure how it could do that via a wi-fi connection but it did. Ended up having to buy a portable drive and copy the data that way.

At work I'm still using XP on my development machines (Visual Studio 6 (Visual Basic), Studio 2003 (VB & a little C#), & Studio 2005 (C#)) and all is working fine. I know some of our consultants are now coming in with Vista on their laptop and the Studio 2005 stuff works fine including a lot of the Open Source Tools we are using. I haven't upgraded yet because our VB6 application is our main application (claims handling) and it is very picky with lots of 3rd party controls that I had trouble getting to run under XP so as a developer we probably won't go to Vista. I have tried running it on Vista and it did run OK.

Of course, I ran ME for a lot of years with no problems. I think Vista will take off, but it will take time - just like it took XP quite a long time before it took off really fast. OEM is always first.

"In the Microsoft world, never buy version 1.0 of anything". I'm surprised nobody has quoted this.

I bought a really cheap laptop at Fry's, their house brand, $259 on closeout. It has Vista and minimum ram, I think 512k. It's fine as the second laptop out at the ranch. I got it so my wife can read her news while I'm online or editing photos on the other laptop (XP). Hers is light use, just Mozilla.

This Vista laptop found the wireless lan easily and works as well as the XP laptop which is a $600 HP. Actually they are near twins. No problems here.

I don't see any advantage to Vista, from this user's perspective it just looks different with no apparent advantage.


Yesterday back at home I added a mb of ram to the home XP desktop, and that seems to have refreshed it to serve another couple of years before it's outdated.


Yesterday I also set up an old retired laptop to give to Older Daughter, who has to work from home while her office moves next week. That's a 600mhz HP, 160mb ram, Win98. I had forgotten how crummy Win98 runs when it doesn't have enough ram. It took forever to clean it out, update Mozilla and AVG (antivirus), defrag it, and configure a new usb wireless adapter. Everything works, it's just that modern versions of software expect more ram so it's paging continually.

I liked 98B back in that era. I'm even happier with XP now. I don't see a reason (beyond marketing) for Vista.

The OS is just there to host the applications. What are the claimed features in Vista that would attract someone to upgrade?

I talked to our IT guy at work and he has Vista on almost all of his equipment at home with no problems. We use XP Pro exclusively for everything at work. Here at home I have an XP Home machine upstairs for when my Mother-in-Law visited. But now that she lives in town, it doesn't get much use at all, if any. I also have an XP Home laptop that gets used a lot via Wi-Fi. I hooked up a new Dell with Vista for the M-I-L when she moved here and what little time I spent on it was okay. She's reported no problems yet. I'm using an older WinMe machine, about 6 years old. The IT guy told me "Just wait, you'll dump WinMe soon. It will become unstable and lock up or shut down." I bought it at CompUsa auctions as a refurb unit so it didn't come with the original OS CDs. I've taken it back in time with restore a few times and it helps, but I think he was right, I need to upgrade. There's a lot on the net nowadays that just don't work well with Me.
I just picked up a handheld Internet Tablet by Nokia that runs on a scaled down version of Linux. I haven't used it very much at all. When I do have time to sit down a play with it more I'll try to post a review of it. The GPS add-on I bought works superb though