why Vista to XP?

I see quite a few folks going back to XP from Vista. What is the reason for doing so? Maybe you trying to run some older programs that won't run on Vista? It can't be for speed increase I wouldn't think, IMO Vista boots and runs ever bit as fast if not faster than XP ever did.

 

Because many people hate Vista. A good number of them have heard a lot of bad things about it, and no matter what you do or what you show them, Vista will always be terrible compared to XP in their view of the OS world.

Only a very small and specialized grouping of applications only work in XP and not in Vista. Add to that business notebooks that need to be tightly controlled by IT managers who haven't come up with methods of dealing with Vista Enterprise, and you have your legit XP holdovers.

There is also a group that doesn't see any real reason to upgrade, XP handles everything to their liking, I'll call this group legit as well, they aren't being obnoxious.

Then there is the group who runs XP, has never or barely had any contact with Vista, and stokes the forum flames with mindless hearsay. Some of these people may have had personal malfunctions with Vista, which, combined with the generally negative attitude toward Vista, leads them to believe the OS sucks as a whole. The majority just doesn't want to upgrade, so replaces their envy with hatred.

As long as people give it a shot before they bash it, I'm cool.

 

I think alot people are go back xp based on mis infomatioln that they just head bad stuff about from people who problay never even used it or lack system rewquiments to run it right

I mean at work always here people say how bad vista is I always ask did you even try ? They don,nt seem even give it chance


alot of of people be anti microsoft just like bad month it same happend with xp even happen with service packs for sp3

I mean they alot people prefectly happey with vista but tey always be that person out they hate just because

I think hate vista based on not useing it or not even give chance stupid or because some one else opioned

It one thing to hate it based on use it but not to hate just based on other opions winch seem be alot reason peoplle downgrade to xp

 

It depends. If you are running a piece of bargain basement hardware, or hardware that is over 18-24 months old XP may be a better operating system. Some software won't work, but many of the mainstream programs do. Other than that there is always the "I hate MS" crowd, and the "Windows 3.11 is the best OS EVAR!!!1!!!" group, not to mention those Linux hippies (I kid) and these people will never be pleased.

Vista is a decent OS and if you have the hardware to run it, I believe that it is every bit as good an OS as XP.

 

Yes I agree with Storms

 

Hi!
Vista was too slow for my needs! It took at least a minute and 30 seconds to start up, and all apps took a long time to start! Now that I have XP, my laptop starts in about 45 seconds, and it runs very fast!

I also agree with StormEffect and TabbedOut

 

Really? What type of hardware you running?

 

I love when people compare a clean install of xp to vista that came preinstalled with all the normal bloatware.

 

Everyday use, Vista isn't bad, and with capable hardware is decently fast. In my experience it does boot up in nearly identical time to XP, close enough that I don't notice a difference.

Compatibility is the reason I went back. Some of my programs just didn't like Vista - specifically, Civilization III (2001, Firaxis Games), which wouldn't save any games at all and can't be played in one session, and Halo 1 (2003, Microsoft), which had bad graphical artifacts that no other game did and it doesn't have on the same laptop with XP. The last one I found especially bad since it's a decently recent game from Microsoft itself. A couple further programs (such as The Guild) that I don't use nearly as much refused to install, too. There were a couple of other reasons, too, such as Vista messing up my Windows password and not letting me log back in, frequent video driver crashes, and a loud CPU Whine when I had Vista that doesn't occur when I have XP (no reason why that is, but XP not having it is a major plus). So Vista was just a bag of hurt for me, and XP solved all the problems it had. Thus it made no sense whatsoever for me to continue using Vista instead of switching to XP.

Is it any faster? Not that I can tell, but I can't tell it being any slower, either, and my programs work, so I'm happy. And I also get a nice 7 GB free hard drive space boost! Sure, I lose DX10, but my card (8600M GT) isn't powerful enough to make DX10 really worth it, anyways.

edit: Speed comparisons are fresh installs of both, and after having used both for several months (I used Vista for 5 months before tossing it). Bootup time after fresh install + drivers was within 5 seconds between XP and Vista on my Travelstar 7K160.

 

I have been using Vista 64-bit for like two weeks now, on my new 1737. and I love it.

we are a week away from 2009 its time people use a 64-bit OS

Besides XP 32-bit can use more than 3gigs of RAM and 4GB came with my laptop.

Core 2 Duo's just run better with 64-bit software period. Imagine haveing a V8 Mustang but only getting the performance of a 4 cylinider.

I wish everything was 64-bit.

Even Games that are coded for 64-bit run better, sadly most games are still 32-bit.

 

People just like to use old software I guess. It kind of irks me to see brand new hardware used with old software. Vista is fine. Do a clean install and you are good to go.

 

I really don't mind either! I have Vista on my 1530, and XP on my Mini 9.

Both work well for me. I can't say which one I like better.

I don't think I would want Vista on my Mini 9 though...


Cin

 

I have definitely tried both, in 32-bit and 64-bit. Besides all the bloatwares talk, I know what process is what and can say that a clean install with Windows XP has fewer processes running out of the box. However, I like both operating systems. I'm a performance kind of guy and Windows XP just seems alot more "cleaner" and "simple" than Windows Vista. Windows Vista is just too graphical for my taste. One big reason why I switched to Windows XP is that it fixed my sound stutter issue.

 

As a 'Linux hippie" I like Vista a lot more than XP - I didn't rush out and convert as soon as it was released though and I read the many 'opinions' out there on the internets about how bad and sluggish it was with mild bemusement...

Then I bought a laptop last year with it on (Home Premium), and well, I left it there - I run Linux in a virtual machine now when I want to have a play with that!
I even installed Vista HP on my EeePC 1000H and preferred it over the base XP install - and guess what? I personally found it just as fast to both boot and run as the XP install, complete with Aero - there are screenies of the Vista scores on my Flickr page (link below)...

Its not hard to learn Vista and learn a few very quick and simple tweaks (how many people actually leave their XP install alone after all?!! ) and it will boot up very very fast, shutdown equally quick and run and do everything that their old XP system did in the same time frame...

Then again there were people still using Windows 98 long after XP came out who swore blind that 98 was a far superior system and they would never change...lol

 

I was amongst the first to use Vista. I am a part of their beta testing community and I've received Longhorn Alpha, Beta then Vista Beta, Vista Ultimate final full legit.

Part 1

As soon as I got it, I said, I will try it. I installed it on my Prescott. Installation was a synch. Nothing easier. I installed it, set it up, and loved the interface. It is true I did not find anything but hey, it was fancy. This was long before Sp1. Wanted to Install my normal suites I use.

1. Installed Creative Audigy Platinum. The card had nothing. Just a driver, a reduced MediaSource GO bar and Creative Media Source. No Mixer, EAX, THX, etc.
2. Installed HP All in One. It would scan but not fax. When I managed to make it Fax it stopped scanning.
3. I spent a week trying to make my Audigy work...I gave up. Tried modded drivers from everywhere on the net. Tried the drivers from the guy who got threatened by Creative for offering more options than Creative.
4. BSOD with my Print Server.
5. It kept dropping out of my network.

Rolled back to XP. Filled in the report and sent it to Microsoft. They said, SP1 will fix many of those things. Sp1 Beta came out but I did not try it.

Part 2:

Sp1 came out. Slashed my XP PRO Sp2 and put Vista Ultimate +Sp1. I had the same . I had before without SP1. It was obvious...Vista was way, way, unchiseled for my daily needs.


Back to XP.

Part 3

1. Bought Asus U6Sg. It came with Vista Business 32. I said, hey, its been almost a year...lets try it. Left Vista, got used to it...until :

Part 4:

Tried XP on my laptop. All the fancy Asus crap was gone. I said, I can live with this. XP was snappy, went faster than Vista. I hit a few snags with it tho...after 700 MB RAM usage it died. Memory management was rubbish compared to Vista. The gains in the lower levels were lost in the upper levels of memory usage. Oh, and my HDD was lagging badly. 30 seconds reponse time before anything opened.

Return of the king...I mean Vista:

I am using Vista Business x64 SP2 and it works fine. Minimum Asus drivers and software. I still have some of the probs I mentioned in the thread but it seems there aren't any solutions. I gave up trying to fix it.

 

Yup same for me as well. I actually like the more simplistic look of XP over Vista. Processes weren't a problem for me wrt Vista as I can usually get them down to around 37 with Vista. I'm currently running 22 with XP Home along with all my AV and Spyware filters.

I also like the layout of XP better than that of Vista. There are some things that Vista does better than XP but I can find some things XP does better than Vista. I do find XP has a snappier feel throughout the OS even with SP3 installed.

It really boils down to preference rather than saying one OS is terrible. It really is all about what works for you and not trying to convince someone else to agree with how you see things.

So to those that prefer Vista I say, great and to those who prefer XP I say good for you. I sense a group hug here.

 

the only xp i have anymore is the asus eee, and my work pc. aside that, i only have vista and i love it. it's much more stable and snappy (with and without ssd).

i used and loved xp for all the tweaking and stuff. i love vista now for not needing it anymore. it's a bit like switching to apple for me. since i have vista, i had no use to fiddle around with it at all. it just works and works great.

memory management is much better, the user interface is much better, hw support is great.

but there are a lot of hurdles that can get in the way if you switch to vista. the switch to an ordinay user instead of admin can hurt here and there. but then again, i just dropped old applications in favour of new (often, free) ones to fix compatibility issues.

btw, the game issue mentoyed before could be solved simply by adjusting the rights on one folder.

but the default rights change where issues. i never say it wasn't. it was easy for me, but very hard for some others.

"everytime i plug in my external harddrive and want to copy something onto it, that ****ing UAC pops up and i have to click 3, 4, 5 times to copy a simple file!!!". this can be solved with one little change. but people have to know, they need help to do that.

so, in the end. vista is great. switching to vista may not be great and involve work. work is something people hate. => they hate vista

 

I'm a new Vista user so let me relate my experiences.

I've been hearing bad stuff about Vista, but I just ignored it. I figured Vista was the best and latest, and was now "fixed". I currently have an XP workstation at work, an XP desktop computer at home and an XP laptop at home. I was ready to switch to Vista so I bought my wife a new Toshiba laptop with Vista Home Ultimate, and I got a new Dell work laptop with Vista Business.

I took the Toshiba out of the box at work, pulled the network cable out of my workstation and plugged it into the Toshiba and got on the internet to download a few things such as Firefox. We have a darned fast network connection at work but the machine insisted on downloading pretty slow. At home it connected to my wireless but was still slow to download. My wife wanted to get her email on the machine so we configured winmail to her account settings. It has yet to download all of her mail. It downloads one message, then times out before it can download the next message. I've researched this on the internet and found lots of messages dealing with slow winmail, none of the workarounds apply to us. No real solution has been offered. One person said they had to install XP on their laptop just so they could get their email.

I unboxed my Dell at home and connected to my wireless. It was working fine, didn't seem very fast though. The next day I cranked it up again and it wouldn't connect. I tried multiple times, finally got it to connect and started downloading some things I had emailed to myself. The fastest I was about to get downloading was about 9kb. I downloaded the same file on my desktop and got 110kb. I start downloading acrobat reader to install it. It took a LONG time to download 33Mb, the fastest it could get was 40kb. I do some more research on networking on this forum and find that everybody seems to have problems getting Vista to connect to wifi.

I travel with my old Dell and connect to Wifi just about everywhere. This is essential to my business. I bought the 2 new laptops to travel with, but if I can't rely on them to connect to wifi anywhere and everywhere then they are near worthless to me. My XP laptop is old and not 100% reliable at connecting to wifi at just any hotel, I was hoping that a brand new Vista laptop would have improved software and would be more reliable. Now I'm finding that this is completely backwards.

I wanted to move to Vista, I wanted to learn it and like it, but now I'm wondering if that was a mistake. The machine I bought for my wife was not available with XP, but my Dell business class machine WAS, and maybe I should have gotten it that way.

 

I had Vista Home Premium SP1 (32bit) pre-installed.
It was ok ... but ultimately I replaced it with XP PRO SP3 for compatibility with older software and am about to dual-boot into Vista 64bit (at least until Windows 7 64bit comes out) so I can utilize the full power of 3dsMax as it was intended (and of course later on I will increase the RAM in my laptop to 8GB which will REALLY give it a boost as far as 64bit OS is concerned and 3dsMAx when working with large resolution textures).

For 32bit and older software support, there's really no reason going to Vista in my opinion as gains are small.
But if you will be using 64bit programs, then it would be prudent to upgrade to Vista 64bit (or wait for Win 7) as it's better supported compared to XP 64bit.

XP is still going strong in this day and age given it's support for new technologies which is why a lot of people continue to use it (especially in Office based tasks) and get the same job done as Vista (32bit) would with far less system requirements.
My XP SP3 was slightly modified so it looks like Vista in terms of icons and some interface layout in general (minus the Aero), plus I didn't have any discernible issues with the OS hanging when more and more memory is used (and I have been using it sometimes in parallel with 3dsMax).
There's no doubt that memory management is better in Vista, but the compatibility is of large importance here as well, and such older software doesn't need large amount of ram to begin with.

 

bjcadstuff:

I know you may be thinking that every single Vista machine ever made has unnaturally slow wireless, but I assure you that's not the case. I use Vista wirelessly at work without any complaints at all.

You may want to see what kind of wireless devices the laptops have. They may use the same thing. You may want to see if there are updated drivers available.

Also, preloaded systems typically run poorly. If you have any installation discs with your laptops (Dell is generally good with this) you should re-format the hard drive and reinstall Vista and all the latest drivers from scratch.

 

Are you able to say the specific software?

I only ask because I've tinkered with stuff up to 10 years old without any problems. If you're going back so far that you're in DOS territory, you should have known from the start that a 64-bit Windows OS wasn't going to do it for you.

 

For what it's worth, I think that many of the complaints about Vista are really stemming from the terrible Vista installations that come on many PC's and notebooks. I do tech support on the side for a real estate company with about 50 agents, all with their own laptops (which i support with regards to their business apps). I'll say that most of the new HP and Toshiba notebooks that I deal with are pigs, and it's not Vista itself but all of the garbage installed by the manufacturers. Those sprawling "Security Suites" are the worst. It's no wonder these people think that Vista sucks.

But of course it's not Vista that sucks. I run 64-bit on my notebook and main desktop. It's by far the most stable OS I've ever run, and I'm old enough to pre-date Windows 3.x by a number of years. I can't stand looking at XP.

That said, I ust ordered a new PC for one of the company employees and I ordered it with XP rather than Vista. Nothing to do with any incompatibilities, but rather it's that the user is completely non-technical and gets confused if you simply move an icon around on the desktop. No way I want to have to school her on Vista.

 

What does one have to do for a pic like yours in the sig?

 

Yes I am going into DOS territory and XP SP3 (32bit) has better support for that compared to Vista SP1 32 bit.

Also, I am fully aware that DOS based programs won't work in 64bit OS (which is why I stated I would primarily be using 64bit for Max and other demanding applications that can take advantage of my hardware the most in 64bit).

 

how about using a vm or virtualbox instead to run dos apps in there?

and yes, we've done that at work to solve our problem of switching to xp. we've moved our dos-app to a vmware and run it from there.

xp is not great in dos support. better than vista, but not great. it wasn't able to run our apps at least.


for old stuff: get fixed environments for them (vmware, virtualbox).

for buggy stuff: FIX IT. if your wlan network is slow, call dell, get other drivers, fix it. that's not vistas fault.

 

I think my 1 week old fresh new 1737 running Vista 64-bit runs amazingly fast with about 56 process running sure that more than the 30 I could trim XP Pro down to. But why change?

If everything is working blazzingly fast in Vista 64-bit why downgrade to XP Pro? which is only 32-bit.

Sure it would probably be a bit faster but. I would lose 1GB of my DDR2 800mhz RAM because XP Pro is 32-bit and a 32-bit OS can only use upto 3gigs of RAM.


Thankfully I never used Vista when it shipped but
Vista SP1 runs fine.

And if you ask pros or read around forums Microsoft's team on Vista 64-bit is the #1 AAA team they get things right, on the 64-bit version. Things either work perfectly or Vista won't let you install it.

I over speced my Machine for more than what I needed because I was planning for Windows 7 which is running Vista's Kernel

Windows 7 will be still Vista but with more refinements, and Touchscreen uses.


I went for the T9400 with 6MB cache 1066mhz FSB Montevinia. For a few reasons mainly due to performance.

P models using 25watts TDP, even though they are the same GHZ fall behind in benchmarks, Which is why Apple doesn't use them. In their Macbook pros with 1066mhz FSB Montevinia

 

Agreed! Very well said.

 

I am using Vista 64-bit very happily with zero problems.

But I have yet to see 1 single reason just 1, to tell me why I NEED Vista over XP.

 

because it works better with your hw? because it's more stable? because its more secure? because it (would be) the better os in a company environment, espencially when paired with win2008 environment?

or just because aero is much cooler than the xp gui and removes the gui burden from the cpu?

no clue what reason you have. but those are my main ones.


edit: and while you can still argue you won't need it; then this is a good thing. vista is just better in a lot of things, but happily, since years, we have working pc systems and os' that do what we want. you may use a mac, you may use win98, you may use linux. they all work. the question is, does it work well? and vista works better than xp if you get over some issues that you may encounter when ever you switch to something new.

 

or just because aero is much cooler than the xp gui and removes the gui burden from the cpu


This give me reason to switch to XP. Since XP puts the GUI burden on the CPU I would get better better life.


Since my CPU is 45nm and uses 35watts, vs Vista using my GPU which is 55nm and uses more than 35watts.

 

Ice Cold you don't know what you're talking about and it's evident...

just a few misconceptions:
64-bit software is not inherently better than 32-bit software. SOME 32bit OSes can't address 4gb, but application wise it is not relevant to performance unless said program requires more than 2gb for itself and memory is a bottleneck. The main advantage is that 64-bit can address more than 3gb, but there are some exceptions for 32-bit. windows server 2003 32-bit CAN address greater than 3gb of memory, and so can a modified 32-bit linux kernel.

the cpu/gpu burden is mostly irrelevant. As long as they don't clock up during regular use it does not use more power or expel excess heat. the biggest factors in power/heat in laptops are voltage and clock speed and if those are throttled then it's fine.

there are legit reasons for sticking with XP like OP posted, but it makes me cringe when people post misinformation

 

I don't play games and mostly use the pc for web browsing and office applications, some videos and audios. I'm not sure if Vista will make my life better. One of the reasons I heard people like Vista for is that it gives pretty looks. Who cares Security? As far as I know I haven't suffered any consequence of bad security since using Windows 95. The old softwares I have are enough for me (so far--I admit); I'm not sure if they are Vista compatible or not, so I hesitate to switch to Vista to add unnecessary inconvenience--if I switch to Vista, and in case the softwares are incompatible, then I'll have to buy a whole bunch of new softwares, spending the money that I wouldn't have to spend if I stay with XP. "If it ain't broken, don't fix it."

I would be interested if some people can make a convincing argument for my case one way or another--either that Vista is better than XP, or the other way around.

 

I have both installed on my laptop setup as dual boot, so I have the best of both worlds. The main reason I still cling on to XP is it runs some games much better than Vista does. A recent example is the new GTA IV. In Vista it was pretty much unplayable on my laptop, granted my laptop isnt the latest and greatest but still no slouch either. Under XP I can get fairly good FPS and the game is more than playable, I'd even go as far as to say its enjoyable. I cant say that for Vista. For my everyday use I almost always use Vista, but for games XP does a better job with my older hardware.

Anyway that's my 2 cents.

Cheers,

/Reby

 

As of now, if you already have XP, and cannot get _Vista as a pre-installed option on a new system, then there's really no very good reason to pay for a _Vista license in order to switch your XP machine over to _Vista (not to mention that if it's old enough that it came with XP pre-installed, unless it was a "_Vista-ready" system, it probably won't be able to run _Vista properly in any event).

Conversely, if you got _Vista preinstalled on your system (I know you didn't, but others reading this might have), then there is no good reason to throw away a perfectly good _Vista license that you paid good money for just to go back to XP. Right now, both OSes are more or less on par, and so the only real determining factor is pricing - don't pay more money than you have to to get a decent OS. Both XP and _Vista are decent OSes, so there's no real point in spending additional money to go from one to the other.

 

i'm using vista as a vmware image at work and... am not really impressed. that's why i decided to get xp again with my new laptop (vista downgrade... so that i can install vista whenever i decide to).

i take an OS simply as an environment which should not need much attention, and should work. and in case of any troubles, i spend much less time with xp as 1) i know much more about it and 2) in case that i don't know, someone around will. mentioning this, pre-SP1 vista was quite buggy and even now, most admins simply still don't like it and rather wait for another service pack.

i guess that i'll stay with win xp for the time being... and when buing next laptop (not within next 3-4 years i hope), windows 7 should be a good and a time-proved OS.

 

I love XP more than Vista . There I said it! But!! I admit when the latter is better. For example, many people here have minimum, low medium specs, and they migrate to XP and see a huge improvement. Obviously this will happen because one OS was finished in 2001 with a different system in mind and another way, way later.

You guys can do the same test I did. Stitch a panorama in Photoshop, Shrink a DVD,run a background AV scan, batch convert NEF to JPEG.

1. On XPx86 it started fast and the more RAM it took...the slower the laptop became.
2. On XpX64, performance was better but I hit the same snag. The upper range is not used properly in XP .
3. I put back Vista x64 and did the same. Everything was flying. I could see how Vista was toying with the RAM and pagefile.

Nobody loves here XP more than I do...but performance wise Vista is better. Lets not do unfair comparisons. Minimum Vista specs will always yield better XP performance.

I had 700 MB RAM at start-up on XP with all my Asus apps, etc. I have 1.1 GB on Vista with the same number.
Vista flies even at 3.5GB RAM used. XP at 3.5GB used does not know what to do with it. By the time it figures out you lose time and performance.
My laptop performs better on Vista 64 than on XPx86 and XP64.

If you want to unleash Vista you need 4 GB of Ram and a 64 bit OS. Since I upgraded to 64 and changed my RAMs this is a new laptop!

 

well, but as the gpu is made for drawing, it does consume in the end much less power to do the same job the cpu would have to do else. it is faster in drawing => handles the job in less time => burns less power.

and a gpu is MUCH faster in drawing your ui.

 

That's pretty much it. And the second sentence is really what the OP was questioning...why people would go back to XP from Vista.

Of course, not only does this thread resemble the other 100 XP vs Vista threads that preceded it, but it also resembles every discussion about every OS upgrade since the beginning of OS upgrades. Most notably it resembles the 98 to XP conversation, with legions of gamers refusing to let go of Windows 98 because it "ran their games better." And so it goes.

If one has a recent system that ships with Vista, there really isn't a quantifiable technical reason to downgrade to XP. Vista does not suck. It is not buggy. It runs games just fine. On proper hardware with proper resources it's very fast. It's compatible with nearly every modern commercial application. It is, for all practical purposes, darn solid.

Aside from needing to move back to XP for some arcane legacy application, the only legitimate reason to move back is simple personal preference. Some people just like what they know, and don't feel the need to undertake change for what they feel is no real benefit. And that's OK. People should run what they want. That's the beauty of not being a brainwashed Apple zombie.

I imagine that Windows 7 will be more of a unifying OS. By then most will be tired of looking at XP (though it's hard to imagine that people aren't already sick of it now) and no one is likely to have become emotionally attached to Vista, as seems to have happened with XP. The abnormally long development cycle between XP and Vista resulted in a huge number of users who know XP and nothing else. Perhaps getting back to the normal 3 year OS cycle will make it easier for people to move on.

 

The one thing I don't like about Vista on my dv6500t is slow moving file transfers over my wifi network from my xp desktop. I have all the lastest patches and drivers and its still too slow. My 2000 toshiba satellite running me does better with communicating with my xp desktop. Also, when I transfer large multi gig files from within my vista laptop using powerdesk manager it will hang. Sometimes it will freeze when I access my shared folders after sending something from the xp box to the vista laptop (and that is using windows explorer and with vista sp1 update!). I'm thinking the problem could be my very old smc wifi access point. But the real issue to point out is that XP was the last OS MS put out without all the built in DRM that none of us have any control over. Yes SP1 did help in my file/copy transfers speed from within Vista but still did not help me with my network speeds (still can't transfer large files with powerdesk). I've been running vista now for 1.5 years and there are times that I consider rolling back to XP. I just wish the networking would run smoother and that my new updated powerdesk that is stated to work with vista.. would work as well as it does on my XP box. I am convinced that much of the woes people have with transfer speeds is related to the DRM in vista. In fact I am convinced that it is no matter what anybody says. And being the DRM is coded from MS and is proprietary and most definitely secret, its hard to prove how it effects performance. But I personally know many people who say they will stay with XP and eventually move to other non XP solutions because of MS's move to put DRM on all their OS's.

 

When I had my first notebook, Toshiba satellite(or smth) a210 I migrated from Vista to XP becouse Vista was too slow on that mashine, toshiba had only 1 gb of ram, and shared video memory, so left only 700~ mb of ram, that coused a realllyyyyyyy bad experience with Vista

But know i see no problem when I bought new notebook with 4gb ram and dedicated video card.

 

More like MS shot themselves early on when they changed the min requirements for crap machines to accept vista with the 915 chipset and letting OEM's install 1 gig or less on vista "capable" machines. Also, the slow file and poor networking issues were huge at launch time and had no place in a final release. In fact, I believe vista still lacks in the networking department and is probably related to the built in DRM and will effect some configurations. Probably why the majority of businesses are still excercising those XP downgrade rights.

 

That didn't help, for sure. But the push for that really came from Intel, which didn't want to orphan an entire class of motherboards. As the ensuing lawsuit revealed, there was a strong opposition to this from inside Microsoft. Obviously though the opposition was ineffective and Intel was able to get that class of machine branded as "Vista Capable."

Not that the source of the blame matters to consumers of course. But for purposes of discussion it's useful to mention that it wasn't really Microsoft that pushed such labeling.

 

True, but MS definitely had the final say on that and controlled the outcome. It does not matter, I believe MS did not disclose properly what vista capable meant. As far as I know the lawsuit is on going and MS will probably burn on this one.. IMO that is. Like you say, the strong opposition from within MS itself from all those emails that were made public. MS is doing a good job in delaying the lawsuit but I think they will most likely lose this time. Personally I think they should settle out of court. This could be a real PR nightmare. But anyway, sorry to get off topic. But all that is worth mentioning since it does relate to vista's negative perception.

 

I agree with the clean install. Preinstalled OS's run terrible but when you put it on your self it runs smooth.

I have vista on my acer one netbook with 1.5gb of ram it runs pretty decent

 

I don't disagree at all. It was (is) Microsoft's product and they're the ones who will suffer the legal effects, as well as the verdict in the court of public opinion. They caved to pressure from a business partner (thus demonstrating I guess that they're not really as all-powerful as we sometimes imagine) rather than do what they obviously knew was right. And they'll pay the price for that.

I guess I mentioned it because Microsoft generally takes hits right and left for being some sort of evil empire, and I don't think that's accurate. I think they wanted to do right here. However, that they failed to do so falls directly on them.

 

hey folks i just wanna say i hate vista
y?
-i have a brand new laptop n u can say it is a top model but still takes some time in noobie applications and long startup time
-ah also i just wanna say that vista never crashes (But keeps getting worse)
explorer some times restarts on its own
-options in xp were removed or became in harder place and replaced with options u don't need and don't know how to stop them unless u search a while on the internet
-F***n UAC this noooooooooooooob application what is the security if it keeps asking me every thing and some times while i am installing a program i find the laptop stops for a while and then oooooh UAC
-networking in vista with an xp computer is a little hard my laptop alot of times can't access computers in the network
- ONE final thing when i installed XP my laptop worked as a bullet after i searched for the drivers everywhere on the internet and some drivers like the remote i can't use
can some1 tell me y should i go back to vista if some 1 can

 

The reasons I ditched Vista for XP:

1] It was HUGE. Jeez, it took 20 GB. On a 160 (no, it's 149, no wait it's about 130 if you counted the recovery and mediawhatnot partitions) it's quite a chunk of disk space. For features I had to switch off or didn't care about.
(I was able to shrink it to some 10 GB but IMBO it's still too much for a friggin' OS)

2] Was messing around with the disk too much and I either had to disable the 'resource expensive' features off for all partitition and/or all folders (shadow copies works for the whole disk, indexing works for the whole partition IIRC)

3] Other features were either ALL or NOTHING. I really hate that.

4] Many features I did not want or cared could not be uninstalled.

5] Many features I would have cared (like speech recognition and synthesis in language different from English were not - and still are not AFAIK - there).

6] It was not customizable out of the box.
Holy Sh*t, do I really need to buy a fuc**ng program to change the icons associated with a filetype??? Same for changing windows style and colors? In 2007??? What is this? A bad joke?

7] Oh, at the time the file system's performances on my system were laughable. It took forever to move files to and from the usb pen. Even after updating all the updatable. Moving files between partitions of the only disk was noticeably slower than doing the same on a 2002 Pentium4. (this could have been solved with SP1, I guess - at least my niece's laptop is not suffering from this problem)

8] Key programs, like the C/C++ compiler didn't work as they should. On XP they worked fine. Might not be Microsoft faults, but that's a reason good enough to switch OS, at this point.

9] Let's finish here, but the icing on the cake was the difficulty in shrinking its partition when I partitioned the disk. Friggin' MTF files. I hate it when the OS is so intrusive. It has been a pleasure to wipe it out.

Oh, yes, lately before erasing it, the internet connection would come and go with no apparent reason. It connected only in 'local' and not in 'internet'.
Some days it worked, some other it didn't.
Linux surfed all right.

It has been a REAL pleasure to format the darn partition.

 

+1 for vista x64 ultimate, much better experience then xp for me.

 

Apropos of this topic - anyone know if a version of Win7 can run on so-called "Vista Capable" systems that weren't? I ask because it strikes me that if a version of Win7 can run on those systems that turned out to be in-capable, the solution to the suit may simply involve offering every aggrieved owner a free copy of whatever version of Win7 runs on those systems (I speculate on this because, from what I've read so far, Win7 is a lot lighter on resource usage than _Vista is/was). An offer such as that may simply moot the entire suit.

 

I'll probably run better on a system with less memory but the 3d aero will not work on seven if you have a crap chip set like the 915. So to answer you question.. no. I'll still only be able to run the most basic version of seven for the same reason that those vista capable systems.