Vista has really improved..

I was one of the first people to buy Vista, I got it the day it came out at retail.. I only used it for a week because I was having all sorts of problems, a lot of incompatibility issues and just general instability.

Well I decided to give Vista another try, since its been a year since it was released to retail and I must say I am really impressed with how things have progressed.

Installing Vista on the same computer as last year was really painless and so far I have yet to run into any problems at all, it runs just as fast as XP was, my start up time from when I hit the button until I can actually use the computer is about 30-45 seconds.. last time I had Vista it would take up to 2 minutes.

 

Vista is pretty good. I got it three months ago and it hasn't let me down. BTW, I never really considered going back to XP unless it was really, really, really bad.
It takes sometime for Vista to improve, get all the problems sorted out. XP wasn't exactly perfect from day 1, unlike what many people seem te remember when they talk bad about Vista.

 

Yes Vista has improved alot and is the best OS from MS right now IMO.

Vista FTW. especially if u know how to tweak it

 

Its like a totally different OS since the last time I used it..

Love the sidebar how I can have my stock quotes and everything.. Also I found a neat XM radio thing for the sidebar so I can listen to my XM

I just think a lot of people that hate on Vista are probably like me, they tried it a long time ago and haven't given it a chance since..

I am glad I did though because I love it.

 

Agreed. I've had Vista since October 07 and it's been a dream for me.

Once SP1 is released, surely XP will begin to fade away.

 

I don't run much of the extra stuff except Aero. I like the eyecandy. I liked the theme from XP too. After years and years of boring grey from Windows 95 to 2000 Pro.

Stability is great, very much like XP SP2 and I had litle to no compatibility issues. Those that I had were solved with a simple patch.

 

I still prefer XPP, I guess old habits die hard. When buying my x61s, I insisted it had XPP and actually paid a premium. Won't get back on Vista without sp1 and will probably wait till I I get a new notebook.

 

Thats how I was thinking, after my experience with Vista when it first came out I was going to wait as long as I could but I figured WTH ill give it another try, and I have to say I am impressed.

 

Well, I have a desktop that runs Vista and my XPS M1210 runs XP Pro. My desktop came with Vista and its good. I don't really plan on upgrading my XPS M1210 to Vista. It works fine the way it is. Don't fix it if it ain't broke...

If I buy a new notebook it will have Vista on it and it will be fine.

 

Yeah, it's all right. But my gripe is that it's more locked down. I can't change my Start Button text like I could in XP, and changing things like the amount of space System Restore takes, or connecting to a wireless network have become more of a process.

The Aero theme is definitely better than the XP Luna theme *ugh*.

I actually like the Classic theme, and usually use it. But just recently I started using Aero. It's really pretty sweet.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that you can't set a PNG as Desktop background through the Background panel; you have to do it by right-clicking on the file and setting it as background. That makes me mad.

 

It does use a lot more hard drive space, I have

Vista Ultimate
Mozilla FireFox
Call of Duty 4
uTorrent
Google Talk
And XFire

installed and I am using 40GB on a 74GB raptor.. but my secondary is 500GB so its really no big deal but I cans see it being a problem if you have a smalle drive.

 

I never had any problems really. I have plenty of HDD space so I don't really care. When the time comes I can always tell Windows to clean up. Never really bothered with this with XP too.
I don't use wireless, I still use good old wires. They're faster anyway and more secure.
But all things considered Vista is really shaping up to be a good OS.

 

how can you startup in 30-45 seconds?
what's the specs of your machine?

 

I just wish Vista was as fast/responsive as XP. I don't even really mind the 550mb ram usage @ idle, compared to say 180 for XP. But if MS is really going to justify all that extra resource usage, they should at least make the OS as fast IMO :|

 

For me its just as fast as XP, and I am using around 880MB at idle

Also I am getting pretty much the exact same FPS in Call of Duty 4 as I was in XP.

 

Lucky! I tweaked mine down to 500mb @ idle, but my startup time is 2x as much as my system using XP. I managed to tweak the shut down to be about the same as XP though. In system usage is fairly similar...I just notice a few differences where it chugs compared to XP :\

 

Not sure where these "Vista is as fast as XP" ideas are coming from, because benchmark after benchmark shows that Vista is demonstrably, factually slower than XP, and that fact is exacerbated with the upcoming XP SP3.

Driver issues and application (lack of) compatibility continue to harangue this newst OS albatross from Microsoft, and will continue to do so.

-David

 

Mine does that too (40-60s though). I have the t7300 and a 160GB 7200RPM HD.It's not that hard, but you really have to clean up your computer to do that,though.
There is a stickied topic on this that goes into a lot of detail, but essentially you have to remove alot of the junk that boots with windows and defrag from there. SP1 RC really helped me alot as well. It sped up the boot from the password prompt to usable computer from like 30s to 10s. I didn't mess with disabling any of the services, so I could probably bring that down even more.

 

What major application made in the last few years will not work with Vista?

Also I have not had 1 driver issue, I was able right on the lexmark web site to find drivers for my pretty old printer.

I did no benchmarks but I can tell you without a doubt that my computer starts up faster then it did with XP installed..

 

Well my raptor is 10,000 RPM so I am sure that helps a lot.

 

I did look at that thread and tweak my system before,
now, my laptop takes 60 seconds to startup, from I press the button to desktop.
and I'm pretty satisfy with this.
Just wondering how can he do that in 30-45s

hah, you guys have 7200RPM and 10,000 RPM, mine's is 5400RPM
that's why.

 

I just restarted 3 times, fastest was 40 slowest was 52, so I was off a bit, weird how there would be such a range but like you said even 60 is fine.

 

I've used vista for 4 months, I didn't get lots of compatibility problems,
my machine runs smooth.

I think the problem is that people don't have the most updated softwares,
they install old softwares on vista, fail to run that, and they blame on vista.

 

Good to know another happy guy with Vista

 

I don't have any problems with vista but my startup is about 2mins.

 

My vista startup is about 1 minute. I reinstalled because I was trying to install XP, which didn't work and I've found I like it.

 

My vista boots in about 45-60 seconds too. Shuts down in less than 20 seconds too.

Few of my friends are encouraging I go back to XP...

I'm sort of contemplating it. Truth be told I'm not sure. It'd be an experiment thats for sure.

 

My Vista startup time is around 40-50 seconds. After using Vista for several months and figuring out how to use it, I've come to like it more than XP.

 

The problem is sometimes the newer version of the old software is not as good, or doesn't exist. And the "old" software is not always that old - quite often it's still 21st-century software.

My bootup time from a fresh install with Vista was 37 seconds, 7200 RPM HDD. XP seemed faster after I first installed it, but I didn't time it, and now I've got quite a few startup items (antivirus, etc.) so it's not as fast as possible at startup anymore - though still pretty fast.

I've been encouraging my friends to switch to/keep XP. Haven't gotten anyone else to abandon Vista yet (admittedly their problems haven't been as large as mine) but I've got a few considering it.

 

21st century doesn't necessarily mean new.

 

Not a single app here at work doesn't work with Vista.
(and we have some doozies)
Some DO take some twiddling to get it to play nice however.

XP is about 5-10% faster than Vista as it stands now with everything tweaked on both sides of the fence. Most applications are pretty much even with only things like games that require every last processor cycle showing any real performance lost.

SP1 is a big help for Vista users... most of the really big annoying things are gone. one thing that isn't... the stupid sound driver issue...

XP is truly better for older hardware... if you have an old dog of a computer, leave it with XP period.

For newer hardware, I won't order anything but Vista for myself.

There are quite a few "that's very nice" moments... one of them being when every last Vista machine we had in the building completely ignored the virus rampaging through every XP machine in the building. Basically the only XP machines that were not affected were those who didn't connect to the network that day.
100% of the Vista machines and especially those that were very much in harm's way and that both connected and worked all day had a ZERO % infection rate.

I was very impressed with my Vista that day.

Vista is far from perfect, but it is also far from an "albatross".

 

Benchmarks show that the Dx9.0 emulation of DX10 is not as good as native DX9. Nothing more.

When we says "as fast", it means that it works as fast, not that it gives you the exact same FPS in games...

BTW: Don't tweak the memory down, the memory is optimised so the system gets faster with time. The extra memory (thus the 400MB you tweaked down) is freed when you need it.

 

I really don't understand why people try to quite benchmarks for everyday use. XP might be faster in games, but what counts is things like how long does it take your browser to open. For me, Vista is much faster than XP was. I like Vista, and can't wait for the official SP1 launch.

 

i was a day one vista user too... i actually neer had any problems in it, i just was like, every one says it has problems, it sucks, and tried to downgrade to xp (my lappy came withj vista) and couldnt find sound drivers, but iv never had a REAL problem with vista

 

I haven't had any compatibility issues with Vista, but it sure does feel slower than XP IMO.

As an aside, I've had TERRIBLE problems with burning DVDs under Vista vs. XP.

When I was on XP I'd literally start up Nero (the old Nero mind you [which incidentally doesn't work on my Vista install], and not that bloated POS they have now), pick CD/DVD type, burn, whatever. Done.

Now, whenever I burn something with a 3rd party program (like InfraRecorder) Vista might recognize the disk occasionally, but 99% of the time it just says LOL DISK IS EMPTY SHOULD I FORMAT IT FOR VISTA BURNING ??? I've tried burning data disks, music, ISO...all give same results.

Of course, when I use the built-in Vista burning app, NOOO problem Vista sees everything great. But I hate the built in one, and it doesn't burn ISOs either :|

 

Use Nero 7 or 8, they are free version too.... For isos I use deamon tool or Alchohol. According to what you say, it's the 3rd party that doesn't see the disk, not vista....

My only problem with the burning isthat it always burn a 2-3x while my burner is a 8x, DVDs are 16x and I specify "max" as the speed.

 

Oops, I should have clarified. Third party burning programs work great, everything runs fine, and when the disk is freshly burned Vista normally recognizes the contents. But when I try to re-insert the disk at a later time, Vista thinks the disk is empty and tries to format it.

 

I thought SP1 was released on the 4th. Wasn't it?

 

February 4th was RTM(release to manufacturer)
MS will offer updates to current users in March

 

I have been running Vista since June 2007. Keeping it current, too. Doubt I'll install SP1 right away, though. I'm not prepared to re-do all my customizations at this time.

 

My startup time is about 30 - 50 seconds. I have been running Vista since March 2007 and have no issues an problems. All the compilants about the CPU usage is because Vista manages memory in a more efficient way.

 

My desktops starts up in about 25 seconds. Then I see the login screen. After logging in it takes a couple of seconds and all my apps are loaded. I have 2 raptors in RAID stripe mode. Thats a 20,000 rpm HDD for my system. . Really worth it in terms of speed.

I never bothered comparing my XP and Vista systems. My Vista PC is newer and has better specs then all my other systems, so its no use. But I don't mind anyhow. I don't have any issues with new or older games. People make a huge deal about losing a couple of FPs. But does it matter when you already have like 100 FPS or more? Some benchmarks take top knotch PC's and try them with Vista and XP and then report that XP gets a little more FPS, but does that really matter if you can get some insane level of FPS anyway?

 

I mirror your thoughts. I think that if people give Vista more of a chance, especially with all the patches now out, they will like it.

I also had the same experiennce with the sidebar. I've been looking around for good gadgets and I've found a bunch that make life *way* better. One is the XM Online Gadget - it is the perfect way to listen to music. I wasn't even going to keep my XM Online subscription until i discovered it, but now I couldn't live without it.

 

although Vista has improved a lot but its Far Far from XP SP2.
The reason is the complexity of the built.
The new gen features which use GPU. The utilisation of Multi-core.

Etc etc.

 

Vista has a long way to go, but I'd say it's definitely on the right track.
And with it becoming the mainstream OS now, Microsoft will have to continue to improve it.

 

yap...vista is great. Although it gets bigger. No problem...
It's an advantage.

Most people don't know:

1. Because of Vista, RAM prices (price/size) goes down...
2. Because of Vista Soon Video Cards and Hardisk prices will goes down also
3. Because of Vista > IE 7, FireFox will do Better...
4. Because of Vista, Windows Becomes more secure
5. Because of Vista I HAVE NO ANTI-VIRUS installed. That's true...
I'm experimenting on this...why? secret
6. and many many more...

 

I'm with the people who say that Vista's ok but still needs work. Case in point- My computer downloaded 5 Windows Updates yesterday, ironically I later found out that one (I already installed manually the previous two reliability updates) "improved the reliability and performance" of Vista on portable computers, anyway I followed the standard procedure of shutting down to install the updates and after installing the last update it hung on the "shutting down" part for 20 min. before I decided to just push the power button. I know I should never do that, but I figured that, at this rate it would never turn off.

When I rebooted, it went to the welcome screen-"Configuring Updates part 1 of 3"-fast forward 20 min. later it was still on part 1, then it rebooted itself and continued to step 2! At this point I decided to let it churn while I slept, and this morning it was fine.

But it's not just this which actually has happened twice, it's little things when I'm actually using Vista that irk me- apps suddenly not responding-(9 times for Firefox, 3 for FeedDemon and PowerPoint 07, etc.) the Guest account not returning to the Welcome screen when it is logged off, issues waking from sleep, these are all little things that come together to make Vista feel half baked.

Clean installs haven't helped, and after yesterday, I'm torn between cutting my losses and putting XP Pro on the thing, or sticking it out until SP1. (I had installed the beta, but haven't again since I had to do a clean install to remove the Linux partition I messed up.

I really want to see Vista succeed, really I do-the interface is amazingly classy, the sidebar gadgets really come in handy, and the additional programs and features (Windows Calendar, Photo Gallery, Mobility Center, Start Search, etc.) are very well done. I really hope it comes together at SP1!

 

Vista has given me some updates that caused BSODs.

 

Really happy with Vista. When it was first released I was sceptical, and stuck with XP. Since I have taken the plunge with the new Dell laptop and Vista Premium, and since the recent updates, Vista has sped up, been more reliable, and generally worked very well.

I am not au fait particulary with computers anymore, but I am totally happy with Vista as an OS. I can run games at high res, my Adobe apps without glitch (99% anyway), surf the web fast using IE and play dvds and media files as my 'media centre'. Vista is excellent for all these and is 100% what I need at the moment, and I can only see a bright future for it as an OS. XP isn't pretty anymore, and we want PRETTY!

 

Well, there's a lot of themes and good stuff for XP, so you can make it pretty.....