First-Time Vista User: Doesn't Seem So Bad To Me

[kurt454]

ketchup79 is right about Vista though. I encountered low-end laptops with 512MB RAM running Vista. Such computers basically shouldn't have been sold with that configuration.

No doubt. My first laptop was a Gateway with 512mb ram and Vista. I promptly located drivers for XP and proceeded to "downgrade." I eventually bought 2 gigs of ram and put Vista back on.

 

[mikeymikec]

So you're saying they haven't learned a thing? Sheesh, manufacturer's should be required to hand these things off to a non-development person to try out for a night before they give it a green light.

I honestly don't know what Toshiba was thinking with this particular laptop; an AMD E-1800 APU but also having 6GB RAM? Take the extra 2GB and give a processor that is at least 200MHz faster! (By this laptop's standards 600MHz more, maybe, you know what I mean)

I wonder whether big-name OEMs buy a job lot of processors in one go, that if they want x number of half-decent processors that they'll get a better offer if they also get a load of craptacular ones as well. Then they have to do something with the craptacular ones to make the investment work as well as possible.

Perhaps in the days of Vista similar things occurred with RAM?

 

[JAG87]

It amazing that people still haven't learned how Microsoft works.

If a new operating system is a radical departure from the previous one, such as XP was to 98, or Vista was to XP, you don't touch it until SP2 is out.

Win 7, 8 and the upcoming 10 are just evolutions of Vista, which was the true massive overhaul. It would be appalling if Microsoft messed them up.

 

[mikeymikec]

I doubt there will ever be another "SP2", so I'm not sure where that leaves your logic JAG87.

NT4 had 6 service packs, Win2k had 4, XP had 3, Vista had 2, 7 had 1, 8 kind of had one.

 

[Danrr]

Thank SP1 and SP2.

I tried Vista since launch, in my opinion, it was the worst since ME.

 

[Mem]

Thank SP1 and SP2.

I tried Vista since launch, in my opinion, it was the worst since ME.

I disagree,I installed Vista on first day of release and I was in good shape because it was a clean install and it had all my drivers and I had no real issues even in gaming,infact did a lot of beta games testing on Vista for quite a few companies back then,also having 4GB of ram and dual core CPU back then really helped out,SP1 and SP2 made it better,it was far from a WinME OS which IMHO Microsoft will have a very hard time making any new OS anywhere near ME disaster level.


There was a lot of FUD on Vista over the net,amazing how many jumped on that without a real clue or even using it properly for a decent time,also OEM companies have a lot to blame for ie shipping OEM PCs below Vista's recommended minimum specs,throw in lazy companies taking ages to release Vista drivers and that did a lot of damage as well.

At least we can really thank Vista for starting 64 bit OS bandwagon which on WinXP 64 never really took off.


Moot point really regardless of how good Vista or even Win7 are, since both are very old operating systems now,Win10 is not far away .

 

[tcsenter]

Vista was actually fine as of SP1. Most actual MS issues had been fixed and improved drivers were available within three or four months of Vista's public release. That left underpowered computers that were significantly below Vista's "Premium" requirements, which was a lot of systems both newly shipping and predating Vista, that could not be "solved" with software.

 

[lamedude]

You were ok if you stayed away from Nvidia.

 

[lxskllr]

I had virtually zero crashes with Vista, My experience was almost flawless. I did get some driver resets(Nvidia), but it was done so gracefully, it's hard to complain. I don't think I got a single bluescreen that wasn't caused by faulty hardware

 

[sweenish]

Vista was fine for me. Athlon T-bird with 1 GB of RAM. Sound was all screwed up, but even then I knew it was the OEM's fault for not releasing proper drivers.

Service packs made it better to be sure. But I had no complaints with Vista itself.

The Suse Linux I was dual-booting at the time, though. I completely borked that install so many times. At least I could get sound from Vista, the issue was simply that it wasn't surround like I had. It was a nightmare trying to get that distro to recognize anything on my system. Linux has come a long way. My virtual LXLE was flawless out of the box.

 

[mrjminer]

I used Vista 64-bit when it came out until a few months after 7 came out. Never had any problems. UAC wasn't annoying, it operated about the same as in 7. Public outrage was unwarranted. People just wanted to use 10 year old hardware with 64-bit and were too stupid to understand that it's not just something that magically becomes possible.

 

[Zodiark1593]

I purchased a second-hand Dell Optiplex 380 for $55 on eBay, and it came with Windows Vista Home Basic SP2.

I had always heard that Vista was the worst version of Windows (well maybe Millenium Edition was worse), but so far in using it, I don't see what the issue is. It actually seems a lot like Windows 7, at least in its appearance and how you get things done with it. In fact, one thing I like better about it--the quick-launch toolbar icons can be very small, much like on XP. (What's with this trend of LARGE icons and listings, I like them small for screen real estate purposes.)

The only issue I've had--and I'm not sure it has anything to do with it being Vista--is that I couldn't get Acronis System Image Home 2010 to work properly on it for making a system image backup. I ended up using "Drive Snapshot" (for the first time) for doing that.

Otherwise, other than that Vista will soon be rather old, I don't see what's so horrible about it, frankly. I had considered upgrading the PC to Windows 7, but now I'm not seeing where I'd really need to, frankly, except maybe in a year or two for the same reason I've stopped using XP in most places--the lack of security updates and the like.

Thoughts?

A good portion of the reason Vista wasn't received very well was due to the low spec machines not having caught up to Vista's requirements. Hell, the crap igps in most expensive buisness laptops couldn't run Aero at the time.

Also, I've had ME on my first PC. Vista doesn't even compare to ME for the dubious reward of Microsoft's worst OS. Vista had issues at launch due to bugs, and the hardware, but ME in comparison is virtually broken, no matter what it ran on. It was uncommon to go through a couple hours of surfing without some sort of crash.

 

[oynaz]

I disagree,I installed Vista on first day of release and I was in good shape because it was a clean install and it had all my drivers and I had no real issues even in gaming,.

Are you sure there was nothing to annoy you? Yes/No
Are you really sure? Yes/No
Are you really, really sure? Yes/No
No, I mean it, are you REALLY REALLY sure? Yes/No

 

[mrjminer]

Are you sure there was nothing to annoy you? Yes/No
Are you really sure? Yes/No
Are you really, really sure? Yes/No
No, I mean it, are you REALLY REALLY sure? Yes/No

Yes once, the rest of your questions are fiction I presume you have tossed in based on not actually using it yourself. People who complained were reviewers who know nothing and have no business reviewing a product, or consumers who knew nothing and based their opinions on reviewers who also knew nothing. Nobody I know that actually used Vista, even at release, had any problems with it. Normal people were glad that it actually stopped them from letting things like "Antivirus XP 2010" or whatever run.

 

[Ketchup]

A good portion of the reason Vista wasn't received very well was due to the low spec machines not having caught up to Vista's requirements. Hell, the crap igps in most expensive buisness laptops couldn't run Aero at the time...

I am going to have to take issue with this one. This was all on Microsoft. Yes, manufacturers could have tested things better, but I was selling desktops off the shelves at launch day, and they were all within Microsoft spec. The problem was that Microsoft was saying all one needed to run Vista was 800 Mhz and 512 MB of memory. In reality, they should have made the recommended spec the minimum spec, and the recommend spec should have been closer to 2 Ghz and 2 GB of RAM.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919183

 

[mrjminer]

I am going to have to take issue with this one. This was all on Microsoft. Yes, manufacturers could have tested things better, but I was selling desktops off the shelves at launch day, and they were all within Microsoft spec. The problem was that Microsoft was saying all one needed to run Vista was 800 Mhz and 512 MB of memory. In reality, they should have made the recommended spec the minimum spec, and the recommend spec should have been closer to 2 Ghz and 2 GB of RAM.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919183

That is a legitimate gripe, but every company does (or did) this. Minimum becomes "it will run." Recommended becomes "it will run a little better." In the past few years, I've noticed a lot of software have started giving more realistic "recommended" settings, but the minimums are usually still laughable

The minimum for 7 is like a 1ghz processor and 1gb RAM, IIRC. Don't think I've ever seen someone even attempting 7 on a 1ghz single core since by its release everyone had duals or better.

 

[chin311]

Ah yeah, I come across Vista machines a lot in the field. Most run fine like you say as long as they are updated at least to SP2 and updated properly. The RAM is the biggest chokehold, some with 1GB run horrible as you would imagine, 2GB is bare minimum in my eyes. Even still these days it can be a struggle.

I don't get why M$ won't update Internet Explorer past v.9 in Vista though, since it's still under support....not that I endorse the use of IE but lots of people use it and I try my darndest to get them off of it lol old habits die hard.

 

[Mem]

Are you sure there was nothing to annoy you? Yes/No
Are you really sure? Yes/No
Are you really, really sure? Yes/No
No, I mean it, are you REALLY REALLY sure? Yes/No

UAC did not really bother me in Vista,Win7 they improved UAC nag,long file transfers were probably the worst thing on Vista but back then I never really did a lot of that.

So yes Vista was ok as far as a Windows OS goes,remember I use Linux as well so pretty flexible with operating systems.

End of the day does it really matter since we have Win10 around the corner,XP,Vista even Win7 are all nostalgia to me .