Vista Sucks

I have been using Vista for three weeks now. While it is a stable operating system, it is not an improvement over XP at all. It uses too much memory, twice as much a XP uses. It is incompatible with many softwares (I am forced to buy new version of the same softwares because the current ones don't work in Vista.) It has a security procedure that's annoying and counter-productive. Every time you install something, there is a list of questions you have to go through before you can install it. You can't modify your softwares the way you used to be able to do in XP any more.

But all these annoying and some times crippling inconveniences pale in comparison to the way Vista was forced down our throat. When I was shopping for my laptop three weeks ago, I couldn't find any retailer or even direct vendor that offered XP. The only choice was Vista. It was as if the entire industry was in on this huge effort to rip off consumers. It makes sense for them to do so because everybody makes money. Microsoft makes money selling a new operating system. Hardware vendors makes money selling more ram and computers with Vista in them. Software companies make money selling Vista-compatible products.

What's worst though is how content the public has been. Instead of being furious, most people seem happy with this atrocious piece of software while spending more money on ram and new softwares to run it.

 

I agree with this, to a point. Vista does have SOME advantages.

Whilst this may be annoying, it is to be expected from a Windows revision. Software devs will need time to ensure their products run smoothly on the new system.

Actually, I find this system VERY productive, even if it is annoying. UAC will hopefully mean less time I have to spend fixing up peoples computers when they get filled with crapware.

Program "mod-ability" depends entirely on the program in question.

This is my biggest beef with the product as well. Give me choice. Or give me a refund.

Such is the nature of the IT-industry beast. The good thing is though, is that there are now viable alternatives to Windows. So you don't have to use it. My choice of OS doesn't require 2GB of ram to run smoothly.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and frustrations.

 

Install XP then. But then you'd probably complain about that also.

 

You can turn off the security so that it works just like or atleast very similar to XP SP2. I found that most software does work after downloading a patch or something of the sort. Virus scanner and utilities dont work anymore since they are made for XP.

Vista premium OEM doesnt cost more then XP home so MS isnt really making any extra money.

More ram and so on is always nice to have and a new system now that runs vista perfectly doesnt cost more then the an XP system a year ago. For most people it will not be worth upgradeing their computers to run Vista. Either get a new computer or stick with what you have.

But I think once a driver support gets better and the mass of new software works under Vista things should be nice.

 

WackyT,

I have XP on another laptop, but not on CD. To install XP, I would have to buy it. I try to spend as little money on Microcrap as possible. But I shouldn't have to install XP. No one should. A new operating system is supposed to be better and more efficient than the one it is replacing.

 

I'll agree with you (tho I wouldn't have stated it quite so forcefully as the title of your post suggests) for the reasons you mention ..... not better than the OS it replaces, resource PIG, program incompatabilites, etc. Vista is not ready for prime time - yet. I'm sure that SP1 will address a lot of the concerns we have identified.

The thing that really frosts me is that I couldn't buy a system with XP on it. I'm a consultant and I live and die on the support I give my clients. I should have seen this coming a while back, but I thought I'd have more time to transition over. <sigh>

 

SP1 really won't fix those issues.

Vista simply needs a powerful machine.

But it multitasks better than Xp.

To me, this is a sign of it being made with the future in mind.

May be best if people did wait for SP1 for Vista. Then pcs will be faster and people will be able to see Vista can multitask better.

As of now, it's not ready. Except for people with good pcs.

Specs should be changed to about...

I dunno...
2 gigs ram
7600 gt
athlon 3200+

AT LEAST.

 

But when we get the faster PCs, the next version of Windows will be out.

 

Dont worry. You will have no problem buying XP in a business setting for a while longer. I know companies that are still running Win 2000 and are buying new computers for it everyday. If you want to buy a Laptop with XP just call one of the bigger laptop manufactuers/resellers or whatever and ask them. They will send you one. It is just in the consumer section where XP has been phased out.

 

I've seen this misstatement too many times. Vista doesn't "use too much memory". If anything, it uses memory more efficiently than any other OS.

Although I'm not a heavy Vista user, I don't find my Vista system any slower than XP. I don't really understand why there are so many complains about Vista, except for the price Microsoft wants for it. Currently, I see no compelling reason to use Vista because the new features it provides don't really justify the price.

If you're a safe computer user, you can disable UAC and life should be back to normal. I have always seen UAC as an equivalent to Linux's file system protection where you'd need to be root to perform certain changes to the system and that's always a good thing because XP was so vunerable.

 

Perhaps if we all reverted to manual typewriters, paper resources, and board games, we would all be happy because we wouldn't have to cope with change.

 

I completely understand. Why don't people complain about Mac and Linux operating systems? They get major revisions too. Mac's, especially, are worse than Windows in terms of backwards compatibility, yet no one seems to care, but every step Microsoft takes seems to offend someone. We can't please everyone.

 

An professional examination of Vista
It seems that linux may be the only os that matters....

 

Vista offers better stability, and once software applications are patched, it will be the same as XP.Remember that whenever a new Windows OS comes out, no one can gurantee that all the software works with it. One to two years down the road, most, if not all will work.

Retailers still do offer XP as an alternative choice to Vista, but you'll need to make some queries. Alternatively you can walk into a shop or to ebay and purchase XP.

As for the UAC annoyance simply shut it off. You know what programs you will be running.

 

I often ask myself that question too.

But that defies the purpose of having it there in the first place. It's one of the few good features Vista has.

 

i personally do not think that it defies the bla bla bla, but more of a way to tell m$ that it is another poor implementation of a so.called good feature if it turns user away from using it - hopefully that they will come up with some better way with implementing it during next updates

one suggestion to them (i did send them this during my beta testing phase with them): ask for confirmation, but for goodness sake, give the users the ability to chose "do this from now on for this app", and not keep nagging over and over again

cheers ...

 

Which doesn't excuse anything. If an upgrade causes problems, that is a reason not to upgrade. "It is to be expected" doesn't invalidate the problems it causes...

Is there? Name one. (Let us for a moment assume that I'd like the software I own and use to still work. That means, among other things, quite a few games. What alternative do I have if I don't want to use Windows?

Yes, there are other OS'es, but if they don't help me do what I want to do, how can they be "alternatives"

Does it? Better than stable? If XP doesn't crash, how can Vista be "more stable"?

Once *all* software applications have been patched. Which hasn't happened yet, and won't happen for quite a few more years.

So then it doesn't matter that for one to two years, it will not work?

 

Those who complain about Vista's memory consumption are arriving to their conclusions too quickly. Vista has started copying other OSs in many respects, but in particular, it uses RAM with the Linux (or Unix) doctrine in mind: "free RAM is wasted RAM"

In other words, whenever there is free RAM, Vista will try to use it as cache memory for loading/executing applications faster. Whenever higher priority tasks come up asking for memory, Vista will dump that cache in order to makeroom for the newcomer.

When running Kubuntu Linux (w Beryl) for example, the system starts at about 350MB of RAM consumption. As time goes on, and I start and exit various applications, memory consumption steadily climbs to the point where I have only 35MB of RAM left; nevertheless programs start quickly and I experience no problems. High memory consumption and efficiency are two attributes that can go hand-in-hand, you know.

 

I think a lot of people are stuck on the task manager/performance tab and obsessing over what the figure for memory is, rather than how performance actually is in reality.

 

Did anyone actually read the link I posted?

How can anyone defend vista?

 

Win OS has been doing this since 95. Windows automaticaly consumes all unclaimed memory upon boot.

What you see in "task manager" is simply what windows has allocated to a program.

 

The things in the article doesn't bother me since I don't (and won't) use Vista. I use Linux. I'm just pointing out that Vista is not necessarily the inefficient resource hog that people complain about. Digital rights is another story.

"Windows automaticaly consumes all unclaimed memory upon boot."
In that case you would see something like this in the Task Manager:
512000kb memory available
0kb left over

From a cold boot Windows addresses all "unclaimed" memory and allocates memory addresses to the tasks it is running. In this way tasks do not use any more memory than allowed by the kernel. Additional programs (besides the those essential processes like svhost.exe) behave in much the same way.

Unix and its derivatives follow the "free RAM is wasted RAM" mindset of resource management, an idea that has finally been adopted my MS in their new OS, Vista.

 

What happens to linux when chip vendors are forbidden by vista to give out specs for chips, as is currently the case?

The number that windows reports as "free" is free for windows programs to use. The physical memory has already been claimed by windows. been that way since '98.

http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t80670.html

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html

the above links do some explaining about how windows 98-XP "lies" about it's memory usage, but you need to read the feedback comments in the threads...

 

They try and reverse engineer the Windows drivers.

 

Yes, Vista does suck!

 

And when the drivers are obfuscated, or AES128 encrypted?

According to Vista specs, vendors are to prevent anyone from developing an understanding of how their products work, so they cannot be hacked.

This is a radical and fundamental change from the traditional open and free world of personal computing.

I strongly encourage everyone to take an hour and carefully read the document I linked. If it is too dry and technical take it in chunks. I feel this is a very BIG deal, and no one is paying attention to it.

 

I've read through it before, as have a few other members here. Some of us are aware of how bad this problem has become.

Unfortunately, we can whinge all we like, but once the closed hardware hits the shelves, all we can hope for is reverse engineering.

Though, smart buyers will buy open hardware. Security by obscurity doesn't work.

 

I've been using Vista since Beta 2 and now I have Vista Ultimate. I love Vista and i'm so used to UAC I don't even think about it. It's there to protect us. Vista has been Beta tested by more users than any other OS Microsoft has released. Vista is way better at doing driver updates from third party vendors such as than XP.

 

The UAC has been implemented well IMO. At least it doesn't attempt to ask you to enter your password each time it wants to execute that program. If you run Linux, you'll know that you need root access to perform certain tasks and programs which make changes to the underlying OS. This is the best practice until we find more secure mechanisms of locking down our PC.
Disabling the UAC is equivalent to chmod'ing all your directories 777 in Linux, which is an ultimate disaster.

 

"The number that windows reports as "free" is free for windows programs to use. The physical memory has already been claimed by windows. been that way since '98."

The memory is not yet allocated, therefore it is still free. It is simply reserved by the OS for any processes it may execute. Like I said, when a process asks the kernel for memory, the kernel assigns the process a memory address and the process allocates itself memory after requesting it from the kernel.

Although the memory is claimed and under the control of Windows, it is not allocated until a new application asks for some of that memory.