Why Does Everyone Hate Vista?

[in-ten-city]

For the most part, the only reason you received hostile responses is that you snapped back at anyone who honestly answered your intial question (Why Does Everyone Hate Vista?) You asked for their opinion, they gave it, and you said their opinion was worthless. Hardly fair.

My two cents: I dislike Vista. Not for any technical reasons, but for the fact that it just feels clunkier and more obtuse then XP. For me personally, that's important in an OS.

What it boils down to is this choice: do you want a brand new OS that still has a few kinks to work out (like any new OS, especially a Windows one), or do you want a battle-hardened os that has been out for 5 years?

Or, perhaps more importantly, you have a Mac. Why do you need Windows? If its for a particular piece of software, check whether it was built for XP or Vista, and you've solved your problem.

I didn't call anyones opinion worthless. I simply responded to certain people telling them that their answer was not what I was looking for - for the respective reason given in each circumstance. Many people were answering a question that I was not asking, and I felt that I had to clarify what I was asking if people were giving answers to a question I didn't ask.

I need windows because I want to run a number of programs, some of which only run on windows (winamp, smartphone sync software etc), others which run on mac, however I already purchased the windows version and they are very expensive programs and purchasing windows/(+parallels) to run them would be a more affordable option. I've checked into it and there is no "mac only" solution.

 

[decksnap]

Winamp?

 

[in-ten-city]

Winamp?

whats wrong with winamp? imo its the best media player out there, there are thousands of plugins, skins, and visualizations available. Is there anything in the mac world that is comprable? please dont say itunes...i understand why some people like it, but its functionality is really lacking in comparison to winamp and it looks like a spreadsheet.

 

[Black Belt]

I don't hate Vista, but i dislike it:

Ridiculous silly effects get in the way of productivity.

Oh this is rich coming from a Mac User.

 

[gnasher729]

I have noticed a lot of hatred towards the new vista OS, I was curious why vista is so much worse than XP and why when I install windows on my mac I should go with XP SP2 and not Vista...

There is a minority of people who buy Apple computers for the hardware, remove MacOS X and install another OS, like Linux or Windows. They should install whatever they prefer. There are other people who install Windows on a Mac in addition to MacOS X, either using Bootcamp or Parallels.

Now why do they do that? In order to run some Windows software that is not available on the Mac. That software will run fine under Windows XP. There is a chance that it won't run on Vista because of some compatibility problem. So if you need to install some Windows version for some Windows only software, XP is the better choice.

Now Vista has huge amounts of eye candy, much more than XP. Is that any use to you? No. It doesn't make your life easier in any way, it just its CPU and GPU power. While MacOS X manages to use eyecandy to make things look nicer, or make them easier to use, Vista doesn't. It is just wasted. And you don't need Vista graphics to show off, because you have MacOS X which does it much better.

Summary: Vista has little benefit compared to XP on a PC, and no benefit at all as a second OS on a Mac.

 

[Black Belt]

I'm not sure what hardware you guys have tried vista on to say its slow but I find it pretty much as responsive as XP. I use Vista Business 32bit at work on a Core2 Duo E6300 system with 2gig ram and at home I run Vista Ultimate 64bit on a Core2 Duo E6600 with 4gig ram.

I've also installed Vista business from our MSDN version on a P3 800Mhz with 768mb ram, 40gig HD and a Radeon 8500. Was very usable to be honest.

Also I have encountered only two devices so far I was unable to get working. One was my old (and I mean old) Audiophile 2496 sound card which I dont even use anymore and a Logitech webcam. Also these problems were on the 64bit version. The webcam does work in the 32bit version.

As for it being resource intensive - it really isnt. If you have the ram, it will take all of it using its superfetch service which preloads some items instead of leaving the ram unused. This speeds of launching of commonly used apps. If you dont want this feature, it can be turned off via services. It uses much more disk space than XP - about 12gig on a clean install but its because it installed all options on the HD. There is no more add/remove windows components. There is only turning on/off now. This is not an issue anymore as the smallest HD you can possibly buy is 74gig these days unless you go out of the way to get a smaller one.

The security nagging thing is just a way for everyone to bit*h. You can disable it with like 2 clicks and the computer will be have like XP. I'd leave it enabled if I gave a computer to my mother.... lets put it that way.

Game performance is slower as drivers are not as mature. Its a huge problem. I benchmark 171 FPS in Doom3 instead of 190 FPS. I dont even know how I can live with this performance hit.

Too many versions? Hows that a problem. Just frigging pick one. I mean how the hell can you shop at a grocery store with SOOOOO many things on the shelf if you cant decide on a version of Vista. Decide what you cannot live without and pick the right version that will fit the bill.

Vista has been as rock solid as XP for me on both systems so I'm unaware of the instability problems. Also my GF is not calling me all the time with help with vista on her notebook so obviously she's doing fine too. Incidentally she purchased the cheapes POS Toshiba she could get which has 512mb RAM, shared memory and Vista Basic. Oh and a Celeron CPU too. Vista is still not horribly bad on there. Yes its slow but much better than I would have imagined it to be.

Anyway thats all. People whined the same when XP first came out too so......

True.

Vista is great, I use it everyday and going back to XP is painful. People who claim it is no more useful than XP obviously have never used it.

 

[savar]

I have noticed a lot of hatred towards the new vista OS, I was curious why vista is so much worse than XP and why when I install windows on my mac I should go with XP SP2 and not Vista...

Does Vista work in bootcamp? If it does I would definitely like to check it out.

None of my company laptops are being upgraded in the near future (surprise).

 

[Nightkrawler]

just press and hold the windowskey + e for 5 seconds in vista

 

[gnasher729]

No. I asked because I expected logical answers that actually answered the question, and I refuted whenever the answer didnt answer the question itself or simply wasnt true.

What do you actually want? Do you want an argument? Then go somewhere else. Do you want advice? You got plenty here. Accept it, or don't accept it at your own risk.

 

[in-ten-city]

What do you actually want? Do you want an argument? Then go somewhere else. Do you want advice? You got plenty here. Accept it, or don't accept it at your own risk.

Geez, this is exactly the kinda negativity im talking about... As I said: I want advice, but not advice on a topic or aspect I did not ask about. I have gotten lots of good advice from many of the members here, but from others nothing but unconnected diatribe.

 

[yetanotherdave]

1) compatibility, a) with software. Old software has terrible problems on vista. I've heard a lot of complaints about stuff just not working.
b) with hardware. Older hardware isn't supported, and this IS an issue, as it's PC hardware, for a PC, it SHOULD work, and it IS microsofts problem because the reason so much old hardware isn't supported is the driver signing process, which is complicated, lenghy and expensive to get microsoft approval for the drivers.
2) UAC. What a joke. Non admin accounts don't have enough privs, admin accounts get constant pop ups.
3) Over zealous DRM. Drivers can be revoked my MS at any time. If a video card is hacked somewhere to copy restricted content, MS pulls the driver. This means when you try and watch something, your computer checks the signature of the driver and if it's been revoked, it gets basically disabled, until the manufacturer releass an updated driver to fix the "problem"
4) hardware requirements. enough said I think.
5) 6(?) different versions (not counting 32 v 64 bit versions and server) If you install home basic, you actually install the ultimate edition, but only the basic features are unlocked. Why are you being made to install features you can't use?
6) the fact that virtually all user considerations were thrown out in favour of the movie studios requests.

etc

 

[DoFoT9]

because its ****!! thts why!!!

 

[contoursvt]

because its ****!! thts why!!!

Can you please expand on that with actual thoughts and experiences you've had using it?

 

[contoursvt]

So "All user consideration is thrown out (#6)" meaning you're basing everything regarding end user consideration based on the ability to watch pirated content?

regarding old hardware... there are plenty of old hardware that are supported. I had it installed on a Compaq P3 800Mhz box with all its hardware detected without me installing anything. Most older mainstream driver will work. Think of how many pieces of hardare did not have XP drivers when XP first came out btw....Sure many 2k drivers worked but not all.

Old software - I installed and used Office97, Corel office 2000, Nero 6.3, Photoshop 5.5, Illustrator 8, Coreldraw 8 (yes its horrible but I had some old files I needed to convert). If by old you mean windows 3.1 programs then yes there will be tons of those that will not work. You make it sound like old software will not work. It will and yes there might be issues with some but many will run just fine - that includes old games too. I'm sure there will be many ancient apps that will not run on Leopard when it comes out too so why not just burn that for the same reason.

UAC can be disabled. God how hard is that. XP doesnt even have that so pretend vista doesnt either. Sheesh. If you dont like it then turn it off. I have it turned on because most of the popups were during the initial setup and rarely do i do something that gets me any alerts on a day to day basis.

Hardware - Anything 1Ghz and up with 1Gig RAM will run quite well. A P4 3Ghz box with 1Gig ram and a 60gig drive is more than vista capable in terms of power. How old is that like 4 years already? So you're saying that Vista is crap because machines older than 4-5 years (maybe even 6) may be a little slower? Wonder how a 4-5 year old 1Ghz quicksilver will run leopard with 1gig ram. Please these excuses regarding hardware are pretty senseless. Hardware is like 10 cents these days.

As for all the different versions. You can buy the cheapest version and then later decide if you feel like, to pay more (not the full amount of ultimate) and go to the highest version without reinstalling everything. Its pretty much a product key change and it will unlock the other features.

1) compatibility, a) with software. Old software has terrible problems on vista. I've heard a lot of complaints about stuff just not working.
b) with hardware. Older hardware isn't supported, and this IS an issue, as it's PC hardware, for a PC, it SHOULD work, and it IS microsofts problem because the reason so much old hardware isn't supported is the driver signing process, which is complicated, lenghy and expensive to get microsoft approval for the drivers.
2) UAC. What a joke. Non admin accounts don't have enough privs, admin accounts get constant pop ups.
3) Over zealous DRM. Drivers can be revoked my MS at any time. If a video card is hacked somewhere to copy restricted content, MS pulls the driver. This means when you try and watch something, your computer checks the signature of the driver and if it's been revoked, it gets basically disabled, until the manufacturer releass an updated driver to fix the "problem"
4) hardware requirements. enough said I think.
5) 6(?) different versions (not counting 32 v 64 bit versions and server) If you install home basic, you actually install the ultimate edition, but only the basic features are unlocked. Why are you being made to install features you can't use?
6) the fact that virtually all user considerations were thrown out in favour of the movie studios requests.

etc

 

[yetanotherdave]

No, I said, if anyone anywhrere in the world cracks my graphics card, MS will cripple it, regarless of whether or not I'm doing anything illegal, until the crack is patched.
I think this guy says it all better than I can
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

Yes, some old hardware will work, but I've heard countless complaints about a lot of hardware not working.

And yes some software will work, but again, I've heard countless complaines about a lot not working.

After all the features were stripped from vista, security was pretty much the only one left. If you turn that off, what's the point?

hardware, some computers bought last year, cannot run anything but the home basic version, yet were labelled vista ready. From what I've seen, home basic is not worth having.

So "All user consideration is thrown out (#6)" meaning you're basing everything regarding end user consideration based on the ability to watch pirated content?

regarding old hardware... there are plenty of old hardware that are supported. I had it installed on a Compaq P3 800Mhz box with all its hardware detected without me installing anything. Most older mainstream driver will work. Think of how many pieces of hardare did not have XP drivers when XP first came out btw....Sure many 2k drivers worked but not all.

Old software - I installed and used Office97, Corel office 2000, Nero 6.3, Photoshop 5.5, Illustrator 8, Coreldraw 8 (yes its horrible but I had some old files I needed to convert). If by old you mean windows 3.1 programs then yes there will be tons of those that will not work. You make it sound like old software will not work. It will and yes there might be issues with some but many will run just fine - that includes old games too. I'm sure there will be many ancient apps that will not run on Leopard when it comes out too so why not just burn that for the same reason.

UAC can be disabled. God how hard is that. XP doesnt even have that so pretend vista doesnt either. Sheesh. If you dont like it then turn it off. I have it turned on because most of the popups were during the initial setup and rarely do i do something that gets me any alerts on a day to day basis.

Hardware - Anything 1Ghz and up with 1Gig RAM will run quite well. A P4 3Ghz box with 1Gig ram and a 60gig drive is more than vista capable in terms of power. How old is that like 4 years already? So you're saying that Vista is crap because machines older than 4-5 years (maybe even 6) may be a little slower? Wonder how a 4-5 year old 1Ghz quicksilver will run leopard with 1gig ram. Please these excuses regarding hardware are pretty senseless. Hardware is like 10 cents these days.

As for all the different versions. You can buy the cheapest version and then later decide if you feel like, to pay more (not the full amount of ultimate) and go to the highest version without reinstalling everything. Its pretty much a product key change and it will unlock the other features.

 

[contoursvt]

DrAtheist, just because Aero is not enabled on older or lesser hardware does not mean someone cannot run Vista Ultimate. Media center, bitlocker, Disk Image backups/restores and all other functions of Vista ultimate will run just fine. Its only Aero. Heck there are some that dont even like aero and just turn it off. Doesnt mean its now converted to Vista basic.

Also there is more under the skin of Vista in changes than just Aero and UAC (when compared to XP). Its very easy to say that 10.5 will be just like 10.4 when you disable something so whats the point in having it.

...I dont know. I guess we do not see eye to eye on this. I have lots of hardware running with Vista and it runs fine. Nothing gets on my nerves with Vista either. I like it so I recommend it to anyone with 1gig of ram or more - if they are looking to get a new OS. If someone already has XP and dont need the functionality of Vista, then thats fine. Heck I had a B&W G3 running 10.2 until a few months ago. It did fine. Just because I didnt upgrade to 10.4 doesnt mean it sucked, just meant 10.2 did everything I needed on that computer. Same thing with Vista.

So basically, if someone is buying a new machine, I recommend Vista unless they have some very specific application they cannot do without that doesnt run on vista yet.

Now I will go hug my vista64 box

 

[ghall]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's because it sucks. Don't take my opinion to seriously though, it's not like I ever tried it out or anything.

 

[DoFoT9]

Can you please expand on that with actual thoughts and experiences you've had using it?

lol i knew this would grab someones attention.
i was just being one of those little immature kiddies, it annoys the hell out of me when people do that.

i have had many-an experience with vista.

so much so that i wont be using it, even virtually.
xp imo is much better in terms of useability.

sure vista has all of the new improvements and whatnot, i have yet to see them in action!!! they are worthless to me. a new skin isnt going to cut it, and i know i know, its not just a skin that they threw on it. im not an idiot.

i hate the fact that they STILL have backwards compaitibility to everything.

when billy made xp he should have stopped compatibility from the previous OS's and started again, completely rewriting it, he didnt do this though.
still has the same old file management
same old crappy REGISTRY!!!

aero looks like crap to me, it just doesnt do it. vista looks like a tryhard UI.
im not sure who took the idea of widgets/gadgets first, but vista doesnt do it for me.

OTOH, im looking foreward to longhorn tho, that should be good.

 

[contoursvt]

See but here is the problem. You're upset that there IS backward compatability, and there are others on this site saying that it isnt backward compatible enough. MS is making a product which is not catering to a fixed hardware like apple, but to a very broad range so they have to go down the middle.

As a Vista user, I have found the security to be better and UAC actually did save my hide once. I was surfing for some freeware and even though I know better, I decided to go to this site with a weird domain name (something that just looked scary). As soon as I hit that page, UAC poped up and said there is a script trying to launch an executable from my machine. I did not allow it. I believe UAC does serve a purpose. Might seem annoying but I dont mind it.

In terms of performance, I find Vista to be very responsive and fairly close to XP even with all the eye candy, but my hardware is pretty decent and I'm running the 64 bit version so maybe that somehow makes a difference.

Also, I personally think the registry is a good thing. Its like having a huge preference file so I fail to see how its different from apps having their own preference files. If anything, at least windows keeps a backup of this large preference file. So many times I know my friends who are using OSX going and dumping their pref files becuase something is not working. I have not once needed to go to the registry and 'dump' a setting regarding an application because it was corrupted....

PS. I dont like gadgets and widgets and stuff either. First thing I did was disable them Maybe if there was one useful for me but I'm old school.. I dnt need no stinking gadgets.

lol i knew this would grab someones attention.
i was just being one of those little immature kiddies, it annoys the hell out of me when people do that.

i have had many-an experience with vista.

so much so that i wont be using it, even virtually.
xp imo is much better in terms of useability.

sure vista has all of the new improvements and whatnot, i have yet to see them in action!!! they are worthless to me. a new skin isnt going to cut it, and i know i know, its not just a skin that they threw on it. im not an idiot.

i hate the fact that they STILL have backwards compaitibility to everything.

when billy made xp he should have stopped compatibility from the previous OS's and started again, completely rewriting it, he didnt do this though.
still has the same old file management
same old crappy REGISTRY!!!

aero looks like crap to me, it just doesnt do it. vista looks like a tryhard UI.
im not sure who took the idea of widgets/gadgets first, but vista doesnt do it for me.

OTOH, im looking foreward to longhorn tho, that should be good.

 

[Sauron's Master]

Troll - One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument.

Courtesy of urbandictionary.com

 

[Eric5h5]

Oh this is rich coming from a Mac User.

Aside from the ripple effect, I can't think of any "ridiculous silly effects" in OS X. Almost everything else is there to give feedback. Even the ripple effect doesn't really get in the way of productivity, unless you constantly add and remove widgets, I guess.

Anyway, this is a silly topic. If one asks a question and one doesn't want to accept the answers given unless they happen to match one's already made-up mind, then one probably shouldn't have asked the question in the first place. Unless, of course, one is something that starts with "t" and ends with "l"....

--Eric

 

[contoursvt]

Winamp?

Winamp is fantastic. Light, small and does the job

 

[darkcurse]

Fine, I'll post something with a bit more "words" In my experience, Vista is ok. I mean, I kind of like the user interface. Seriously, when you get to use it; its not so bad once you get used to it. Its like the window fade-ins are quite tastefully done, the glass effect is not as distracting as I initially thought it would be. Praise ends there though. The new control panel is screwed up and so cluttered. It takes ages to "fully" startup and is quite sluggish. Mind you I'm on a Core2Duo laptop with 2gigs of RAM so its pretty powerful. My machine constantly locks up for a moment while doing the most simple of multitasking (Maybe 1 or 2 active apps). And if you've seen the video I posted, UAC is just too annoying. I understand what they're trying to do but currently it pops up too often. I like OSX's way of handling things like this. I only see it when installing programs that might mess with system stuff.

 

[Freyqq]

vista is fine..it is more stable than xp

it's just glitchy in a lot of ways

service pack 1 will likely fix this though

it is also far worse for games that are dx9

also..the popups for launching programs vista doesn't like is really stupid. It should only ask the first time.

 

[DoFoT9]

See but here is the problem. You're upset that there IS backward compatability, and there are others on this site saying that it isnt backward compatible enough. MS is making a product which is not catering to a fixed hardware like apple, but to a very broad range so they have to go down the middle.

As a Vista user, I have found the security to be better and UAC actually did save my hide once. I was surfing for some freeware and even though I know better, I decided to go to this site with a weird domain name (something that just looked scary). As soon as I hit that page, UAC poped up and said there is a script trying to launch an executable from my machine. I did not allow it. I believe UAC does serve a purpose. Might seem annoying but I dont mind it.

In terms of performance, I find Vista to be very responsive and fairly close to XP even with all the eye candy, but my hardware is pretty decent and I'm running the 64 bit version so maybe that somehow makes a difference.

Also, I personally think the registry is a good thing. Its like having a huge preference file so I fail to see how its different from apps having their own preference files. If anything, at least windows keeps a backup of this large preference file. So many times I know my friends who are using OSX going and dumping their pref files becuase something is not working. I have not once needed to go to the registry and 'dump' a setting regarding an application because it was corrupted....

PS. I dont like gadgets and widgets and stuff either. First thing I did was disable them Maybe if there was one useful for me but I'm old school.. I dnt need no stinking gadgets.

are we talking backwards compatibility in terms of software or hardware here?? im confused. im talking software wise.

UAC (user access control???? im not sure on wat it is) to me is extremely annoying. i do not need all of these warnings comming up all of the time. OSX also has these warnings, i get them all the time, that is only because i donot allow myself to be administrator of my computer, if i was an administrator the 'UAC' would hardly be present at all.

as soon as i got my vista copy, i stopped those annoying UAC warnings, turned off defender (to an extent) and put the old xp theme on (not the blue one, the gray one). vista's appearance just doesnt do it for me.

as for the registry. the registry is so much more than a large preference folder, it has the ability to change hardware configurations aswell... hell,if i had a dialup modem i could overclock it using the registry. to me having all that power in one location (the registry) means that people can have direct access to change pretty much everything without even having to try.

P.S. no one is safe!!!!
P.S.S. i love my widgets

also..the popups for launching programs vista doesn't like is really stupid. It should only ask the first time.

agreed