Why Does Everyone Hate Vista?

[Agent Smith]

Ok so the deal is this. 99% of instability is caused by bad and faulty hardware such as bad ram..etc. I've also had flaky unstable OSX machines at work. I could easily say its crap and make a blanket statement but I ran a memtest on it and it was bad ram - on two of the 10 dual 2.5Ghz G5's. If I didnt take the time to figure out the issue, then we could have just chalked it up to sh*t computer or crappy OS which was not the case.

Microsoft caters to all kinds of hardware, its up to the vendor, being Apple, Dell, HP, Gateway or even yourself if you're building your own, to decide what hardware is reliable, what hardware has good driver support etc. If you buy crappy hardware with poor support, then you will end up with a crappy experience.

I think that much of the ill will stems from the fact that people should not be forced to buy new equipment just so that they have a printer or scanner that works with their OS. For instance, if your average consumer is upgrading their PC, the new one will probably come with Vista. There's a chance that they are going to experience difficulty when they are setting the thing up when the printer drivers don't allow them to print. People then tend to blame one of two (or both) things: Microsoft (very likely), or the manufacturer of the malfunctioning printer.

 

[Fukui]

I think that much of the ill will stems from the fact that people should not be forced to buy new equipment just so that they have a printer or scanner that works with their OS. For instance, if your average consumer is upgrading their PC, the new one will probably come with Vista.

Well, if MS had waited at least 6 months to let driver manufactures get thier drivers up to speed, and submit bugs against MS's API's, maybe it would have been smoother from the get-go, but I guess it doesn't matter in the long term (monopoly).

 

[contoursvt]

More rambling from me...I have another example.

I drive an american car which the lemonaid guide says is crap. If I had to go by what they said, my car is a bucket of bolts and terribly unreliable but I'm on the original engine, tranny, fuel pump, computer and electronics. I'm at 305,000KM. I change brake pads every 50,000k, discs every 100,000k, struts every 100,000K and clutch replacement was done at 200,000K. I've had my alternator go once and a fuel pump once. Thats about it for unexpected failiures. Sensors, catalytic converters and other stuff are just consumables and to be expected. Anyway considering the mileage, I'd say thats decent.
Now if I didnt care about the car and put no effort or interest in knowing about it, maybe it would have been a bad car but knowing what to expect and doing some researched turned a potentially bad experience into a good one.

I treat computers the same. If there is a problem, then find out the solution instead of harping on the problem. It just takes time. Ages ago and I mean ages. I used dos/win 3.1 and I didnt mind it. I decided to try OS/2 just for fun. It took me months of swearing to learn its ins and outs and what makes it happy and not. I had all kinds of instability issues at first but traced it to a bad driver for one of the components. Swapped that out with a different one and then it was solid. I used it for 2-3 years at least. I could have ditched it but I decided to master it instead

PS I know none of what I've said matters. LOL. Ford vs Chevy, Audi vs BMW, Nikon vs Canon, Atari vs Commodore. List goes on. Some people choose to take a side and hate the other. Others choose to learn both and know the good and bad about both.

Its true but hardware vendors had ages to write their drivers and submit them to MS. Many did not. I mean look how long Vista took before it came out. I dont think we can blame MS for the fact that these vendors are not writing drivers.
My favorite sound card (M-Audio 2496) still has no drivers but thats not MS's fault. M-audio is not doing their end. Its expected that a new OS will have some driver changes. I mean even from 2K to XP which was a smaller jump, there were certain hardware that needed specific XP drivers at the time. It did eventually come out but people were upset then too. I think its the same.

I think that much of the ill will stems from the fact that people should not be forced to buy new equipment just so that they have a printer or scanner that works with their OS. For instance, if your average consumer is upgrading their PC, the new one will probably come with Vista. There's a chance that they are going to experience difficulty when they are setting the thing up when the printer drivers don't allow them to print. People then tend to blame one of two (or both) things: Microsoft (very likely), or the manufacturer of the malfunctioning printer.

 

[Fukui]

Its true but hardware vendors had ages to write their drivers and submit them to MS. Many did not. I mean look how long Vista took before it came out. I dont think we can blame MS for the fact that these vendors are not writing drivers.

Thats true, but its hard to write drivers (or any software for that matter) when the core os is changing up until the last second, as it did with Vista. Even now, in Leopard, its damn hard to make use of anything without running into bugs that stop one's work in its tracks so to speak... even though its been 6 months, there may be changes in SP1 that they need, and would break a lot of things...

 

[A Pittarelli]

because its slow, expensive, and crappy

 

[NiteWaves77]

Based upon your replies to some very complete answers to your question, is seems to me you are less interested in getting an answer and more-so looking to start a flamewar. To paraphrase TMBG, you want a shoehorn with teeth, because you know there's no such thing.

Run Vista and find the answers for yourself, if you so choose. What have you got to lose but $299 and a few hours of your life?

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...

 

[contoursvt]

Can even snag Vista home premium OEM from tigerdirect (I think they will sell it without hardware purchase) for $120 or so

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2864281&CatId=306

 

[aLoC]

It is extremely non-intuitive. OS X is more intuitive to an XP user than Vista.

They should scrap Vista and gradually release updates to XP using pieces of Vista technology.

 

[SEGStriker]

contoursvt, you are the very first and devoted Microsoft fen I have ever seen

Have you read what I wrote before - just 1 page backward? Vista is DAMN slow. It is slower on dual core CPU than Windows 95 on 386 or 486 CPU!
I am Microsoft certified system administrator, I have great experience with Windows - starting with Windows 2.0. In this time I had my first experience with Mac - System 5. And long before - with 8 bit Apple's. Now I work with various Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac OS servers and computers. So, from my everyday work and my personal tests I can say - Vista is the worst Windows I have ever seen! If you have XP and you decide to install Vista on the same computer - it will become like old castrated horse. Slow and reactless, not useful for everyday work. I already wrote some info about huge difference of FPS's in games and graphics tests.
Finally, I don't see anything revolutionary in Vista. It is not the promised revolution OS, it is just another crappy Windows, only slightly reorganized. The GUI is looking different and most useful menus and items are on different places, just to make user's life more difficult than ever.

 

[contoursvt]

I've got my MCSE so what does that have to do with anything. We're not talking certifications, we're talking Vista and as far as performance goes, I've benchmarked application performance, application startup times, windows startup times and I can tell you that its very close to XP. The whole win95 on a 386 is meaningless.

Now maybe you're using vista on some boxes that have < 1GB RAM in which case, yes it will be slower but at 2GB+ there is not much performance difference. RAM and HD cost nothing these days.

I'll post the benchmarks showing system startup times and performance numbers tonight. You can show then that you're quite wrong as far as speed goes

contoursvt, you are the very first and devoted Microsoft fen I have ever seen

Have you read what I wrote before - just 1 page backward? Vista is DAMN slow. It is slower on dual core CPU than Windows 95 on 386 or 486 CPU!
I am Microsoft certified system administrator, I have great experience with Windows - starting with Windows 2.0. In this time I had my first experience with Mac - System 5. And long before - with 8 bit Apple's. Now I work with various Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac OS servers and computers. So, from my everyday work and my personal tests I can say - Vista is the worst Windows I have ever seen! If you have XP and you decide to install Vista on the same computer - it will become like old castrated horse. Slow and reactless, not useful for everyday work. I already wrote some info about huge difference of FPS's in games and graphics tests.
Finally, I don't see anything revolutionary in Vista. It is not the promised revolution OS, it is just another crappy Windows, only slightly reorganized. The GUI is looking different and most useful menus and items are on different places, just to make user's life more difficult than ever.

 

[XheartcoreboyX]

....wow uve been using macs for 16days and youve already got that opinion!!! NICE

trust me,i always hated windows...and thought like everyone around uses windows because its just common...i always wanted a mac,especially when vista realesed and i saw their ''ugly crime''..vista is 100% a rip off mac os...my sisster have a new vista computer and i put it right next to my mac..its has LOTS of stuff in common..but the big difference is that windows os STILL freezes like crazy..just like my earlier xp laptop..now everyone around is jealous of this powerful OS builtin this beautiful silver body XD

 

[SEGStriker]

I've got my MCSE so what does that have to do with anything. We're not talking certifications, we're talking Vista and as far as performance goes, I've benchmarked application performance, application startup times, windows startup times and I can tell you that its very close to XP. The whole win95 on a 386 is meaningless.

Now maybe you're using vista on some boxes that have < 1GB RAM in which case, yes it will be slower but at 2GB+ there is not much performance difference. RAM and HD cost nothing these days.

I'll post the benchmarks showing system startup times and performance numbers tonight. You can show then that you're quite wrong as far as speed goes

No, you really haven't read my before posts - I tried Vista on many computers, including mine - 4 GB RAM, dual core CPU. I don't have any computer with <1 GB RAM, including at my work. It is 2007, not 2001
I already wrote about this, anyway, for example - my personal tests:

Configuration:

AMD x2 3800+, 4 GB RAM, Geforce 7900, 320 + 500 GB HDD SATA-2

F.E.A.R. (1024x768) - this is well known game, with benchmark module from guru3d.com

Win XP - 176 FPS
Win XP 64 bit - 192 FPS
Vista - 62 FPS


I have my personal tests in other games, some test programs - like 3D Mark.
Results are almost the same. But, more important is that the GUI is not very suitable for most people, including me - it takes longer to do some job, then in XP. And everything is much slower in Vista, sometimes it just freeze for some sec/min, like my first experiment in Vista - right click on some empty directory to see it's properties - this took about 2 min. and 30-40 sec. on Vista. Sometimes this works fine like in XP, sometimes - CPU goes to 95-100%, everything freezes... And this is not only one computer issue - at my work I have about 30 developers with Vista installed on their machines. It is a hell to support them...

 

[contoursvt]

Those numbers are not representative of Vista. They may be your numbers but but please dont make them everyone's numbers. I've done testing and they are in line with the tests done from extremetech.com. Most games are within 5-10% and best case scenario its even. DX10 games of course are not supported in XP so they cant be compared.

Anyway starting with F.E.A.R which is the numbers you posted, here you go. XP vs Vista http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2096947,00.asp

And from the conclusion in the article

"...It's not unreasonable to expect graphics drivers to get to a point where the worst-case scenario is a performance loss between 5% and 10%, with the vast majority of games running no more than 5% slower and a few even running just as fast or faster. What we have witnessed here gives us great hope for that scenario, as we already see some games running just a touch faster in Vista in the right circumstances. "

No, you really haven't read my before posts - I tried Vista on many computers, including mine - 4 GB RAM, dual core CPU. I don't have any computer with <1 GB RAM, including at my work. It is 2007, not 2001
I already wrote about this, anyway, for example - my personal tests:

Configuration:

AMD x2 3800+, 4 GB RAM, Geforce 7900, 320 + 500 GB HDD SATA-2

F.E.A.R. (1024x768) - this is well known game, with benchmark module from guru3d.com

Win XP - 176 FPS
Win XP 64 bit - 192 FPS
Vista - 62 FPS


I have my personal tests in other games, some test programs - like 3D Mark.
Results are almost the same. But, more important is that the GUI is not very suitable for most people, including me - it takes longer to do some job, then in XP. And everything is much slower in Vista, sometimes it just freeze for some sec/min, like my first experiment in Vista - right click on some empty directory to see it's properties - this took about 2 min. and 30-40 sec. on Vista. Sometimes this works fine like in XP, sometimes - CPU goes to 95-100%, everything freezes... And this is not only one computer issue - at my work I have about 30 developers with Vista installed on their machines. It is a hell to support them...

 

[KingofAwesome]

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.

Well, you can approach the internet as if it is a place where you can ask a question and expect a slew of useful, precise and thorough answers from a generous selection of experts, but you're going to be disappointed. Just as you are free to ask, anyone else is free to answer. I'd suggest you accept this rather than complain about it. Demanding a debate that goes along your narrow guidelines is not going to work well, as you've seen.

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.

It's a problem because it assumes that home users have the time or interest in learning a lot about computers. You already know all about it, and many others here do as well, so it can seem like a reasonable prerequisite if you forget that the vast majority of the market does not have that knowledge.

Contrary to the many versions of Vista, there are two versions of Mac OS X - regular and server. You won't generally find the server version on any store shelf, so there's basically one version to choose from, and it will work well out of the box with all the peripherals you used on your old OS (assuming you aren't upgrading from OS 9 or earlier). And it will run faster.

Microsoft has established some ideas about what should happen when you upgrade an OS - namely, your devices won't work right away, control panel items have moved around (or in XP's case, overhauled and accompanied by an animated dog), performance will be slower, and you'll have to learn how to use your computer again. Apple has put a lot of work into stopping or minimizing all of the above, and this is inherently present in our critiques of Vista. That's what you get when you read about Windows in a Mac forum.

 

[SEGStriker]

Those numbers are not representative of Vista. They may be your numbers but but please dont make them everyone's numbers. I've done testing and they are in line with the tests done from extremetech.com. Most games are within 5-10% and best case scenario its even. DX10 games of course are not supported in XP so they cant be compared.

Anyway starting with F.E.A.R which is the numbers you posted, here you go. XP vs Vista http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2096947,00.asp

And from the conclusion in the article

"...It's not unreasonable to expect graphics drivers to get to a point where the worst-case scenario is a performance loss between 5% and 10%, with the vast majority of games running no more than 5% slower and a few even running just as fast or faster. What we have witnessed here gives us great hope for that scenario, as we already see some games running just a touch faster in Vista in the right circumstances. "

Fine, I know about the driver issues, especially in Vista. But what you can tell me about my other examples - like seeing the properties of an empty directory? It is very good evidence for huge problems with Vista.
Also, I did dozen of other tests - memory, HDD performance, etc. XP beat Vista everywhere, and this is not only from my computer - I tested personally about 7-8 computers and some my coleagues tested more. Then we compared our results - the situation was the same everywhere. For me it is clear - Vista is very big, very slow and full with problems. But this is the situation on the market - instead of making faster, simpler and smaller OS's, developers are creating huge, useless (most users will not use more than 10% of all options), heavy and slow products, and this is true for every software, including games.

 

[Rower_CPU]

It's not just "inexperienced" Mac users who dislike Vista - PC Mag Editor: Vista just ain't cutting it

 

[phillipjfry]

this isn't an inherent problem with the operating system - this is a problem with the devices and their respective manufacturers that their devices weren't made to be compatible with this os... but the next gen devices will...
would you say that a CD player is lacking because it cant play an audio cassette or 8track tape? i think not...

I would say that a cd player is lacking because it says it can play cassette and 8track only to buy said cd player and put in a cassette and have the player tell me it doesn't recognize the track. Windows vista utility that tells consumers (especially me) that their hardware is compatible with Vista lies. I only found this out after I got a copy of Vista, installed it on my computer and found out that neither vista nor my motherboard's manufacturer has drivers that get ethernet/sound to work. Nvidia's drivers do not allow certain functions in the Vista drivers but allow them in the XP drivers (say, resizing the desktop on a 26'' lcd display so that you can actually see the start button and top of a maximized window). Microsoft's utility did not say that there would be an issue. Actually the only issue that it had was that my optical drive did not write dvd's and it recommended I got a drive that did. Computer isn't much use to me anyways if I can't get on the internet or even get output from the speakers. Beyond the lack of support for hardware (or even having generic drivers for basic motherboard functionality), I couldn't tell you much that is wrong with vista since I didn't bother using it long enough to find out.

P.S. One more example, cancel or allow?

 

[sine-nomine]

I haven't used Vista enough to know much, but when I was at CompUSA looking for a new laptop, I was disappointed to see that dragging windows around was laggy and kept "stuttering." Overall, it felt kind of sluggish. It wasn't unusable or anything, don't get me wrong, it was just kind of annoying. I noticed that right clicking to bring up a menu also had random lag.

I remember how great it felt to go from a 450MHz Compaq with 98 to a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 with 2000 - the speed boost was just amazing. The Vista laptops I looked at didn't give me that feeling. I was left thinking, hmm, I may as keep what I've got. It didn't impress, you know? It's a subjective thing, but I've always enjoyed that whole new computer feel - doing stuff and really noticing that, wow, this is faster.

At first I liked the UI, but after an hour or playing around I didn't like it as much. Something feels off about the scale - it felt crowded even on a 17" screen - and overall it doesn't feel polished somehow. As ugly as the battleship gray of 2000 is, it did sort of represent the pinnacle of the Win 95 look. The changes were minor, but they were welcome. Vista's look doesn't really seem to offer those nice little improvements over XP such as those between Win 98 and 2000, or even between Jaguar and Tiger. If Microsoft stays with the glass look in the same way they stuck with the gray of yesteryear, future Windows will probably feel more refined and polished.

I know the OP was going for harder arguments, but for me the intangibles are just as important. My initial impressions playing with Vista weren't profoundly negative, but they were enough to make me put off buying a new computer for a while. At least until I can try Leopard and see what improvements any Vista updates will make.

 

[gertruded]

We just pulled Vista from our PC laptop and installed XP. We also dual loaded Linux which we use for everything but necessary Windows programs.

Our new Desktop machines are Macs. We expect to be entirely Mac and Linux within the next year.

We voted with our actions. Maybe the next Windows version will not have all the DRM crap and pasted on security that slows down the PC's. We might return to Windows then.

Gertrude

 

[DoFoT9]

trust me,i always hated windows...and thought like everyone around uses windows because its just common...i always wanted a mac,especially when vista realesed and i saw their ''ugly crime''..vista is 100% a rip off mac os...my sisster have a new vista computer and i put it right next to my mac..its has LOTS of stuff in common..but the big difference is that windows os STILL freezes like crazy..just like my earlier xp laptop..now everyone around is jealous of this powerful OS builtin this beautiful silver body XD

lol thts a great attitude in this market stealing off each other i natural. every1 does it so mayaswell do it back

 

[in-ten-city]

will this thread ever die?

 

[l'homme]

Vista is about 15-20% slower than XP, btw has a nicer GUI but definitely slower than XP... try Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora Core, open source is the "now"

 

[contoursvt]

While its true that developers are making things bigger which take more resources, but storage space goes up and processing power goes up too, quite often more than to compensate for the extra bloat. I mean OSX is bigger than OS9 and current linux is way larger than my old copy of slackware... but the software and OS can do more than it used to. True that 90% of people wont use the power, but the 10% that do will be happy the power is there

Fine, I know about the driver issues, especially in Vista. But what you can tell me about my other examples - like seeing the properties of an empty directory? It is very good evidence for huge problems with Vista.
Also, I did dozen of other tests - memory, HDD performance, etc. XP beat Vista everywhere, and this is not only from my computer - I tested personally about 7-8 computers and some my coleagues tested more. Then we compared our results - the situation was the same everywhere. For me it is clear - Vista is very big, very slow and full with problems. But this is the situation on the market - instead of making faster, simpler and smaller OS's, developers are creating huge, useless (most users will not use more than 10% of all options), heavy and slow products, and this is true for every software, including games.

 

[DoFoT9]

Vista is about 15-20% slower than XP, btw has a nicer GUI but definitely slower than XP... try Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora Core, open source is the "now"

in terms of GUI maybe...

in terms of "games running slower" that isnt quite true. it isnt M$'s fault that companies make ****** drivers, its the company that makes the drivers.

it is, however, M$'s fault that they didnt give developers enuf time to actually make good drivers

 

[fearful]

it is, however, M$'s fault that they didnt give developers enuf time to actually make good drivers

Developers have had pleanty of time to fix their drivers. I've used Vista as my primary OS since RTM (over a year now) and I don't have problem with it to be honest.

Dell D830 Laptop - 3 years old, runs as fast as it did XP
Althon 64 3000+ Desktop - 2 years old, runs as fast as it did XP
Dell Optiplex 740 - Running Vista 64Bit, very "peppy"
Dell GX270 - Running Vista Media Centre (Ultimate), 5 year old machine, on 24/7 - never failed once.
Dell Precision Workstation - Got it last week, Quad-Core, 4Gb RAM, Vista Business 64 bit - Screaming Fast.

I really don't see how I could have such a completely different experience to most of the commentors here? What's going on?