Why Does Everyone Hate Vista?

[Cloudane]

I have Vista on my PC (which admittedly spends most of its time switched off now that I have an iMac) and don't really see what the fuss is about either. Works just fine for me.

A lot of it just seems to be word of mouth, for some reason it's just acquired a negative reputation and it's stuck like mud. The number of times I've heard people say "I heard Vista sucks, maybe I should find a machine with XP" and then they've gone around saying "Vista sucks". How do you know if you've never used it! Because Joe down the road said it was bad... because he heard it was bad from his greengrocer... and he heard it was bad from his mother in law... and she heard it was bad from her dentist... etc.

The main complaints people seem to have with it after actually *using* it are:

a) UAC, aka "Cancel or Allow", generally where the person knows what they're doing and feel patronised and pestered. 'scuse me, but if you truly know what you're doing then you should know how to turn it off, at least when you're not surfing pr0n

b) Incompatibility. Yeah, this happens with new versions, most developers are not interested in even starting work towards making their apps/devices compatible with the latest Windows version until it's actually released to the public. This means that for the first 6-12 months, you'd better check the compatibility lists before upgrading. This is nothing new (have people forgotten the XP release already? The jump from DOS to NT was an absolute nightmare for the first year or so especially if you were into gaming)

It'll work out ok in the end just like XP did, I mean anyone who adopts early and expects everything to work properly is a sucker. Any Apple enthusiast should know that only too well First batches of new Mac releases? Leopard?

 

[DakotaGuy]

I have Vista on my laptop and I like it. The only thing that I really hate about it is the slow boot-time. It has to start all kinds of things to get going, but once it is running it is a good stable OS.

 

[gkarris]

I think it's the versions.

My friend's got an Acer laptop with Home Premium and has to constantly reload it.

At work, I tried it on of these crap dHell laptops and Business Edition seems to run okay on it.

Maybe it's all the different versions acting differently and you have to actually invest in Business or Ultimate to get an actual working copy.

As far as an OS, it's okay - just the next version of Windows.

 

[WillMak]

Vista's answer to expose, Flip3D, looks cool but is so stupid. I use expose so I can see al my windows at once and quickly select! Flip3d means looking at one window at a time and having to flip through all them to find the one you want! so slow and inefficient!

 

[jaw04005]

My grandparents just purchased a new Vista machine.I spent an entire afternoon setting everything up for them, downloading the 90+ Windows Update patches they needed, setting their security settings and installing their software. I left around 6 p.m with everything up and running. At 8 p.m., they called me and asked if I could put the "old Windows" on this new machine.

I told them to give it a week, and if they didn't get use to it—we would return it for one with XP. They gave it five days and it was sitting in a box for me to return when I got to their house the next weekend.

I called Dell, explained the situation, and they took it back without any fuss. The lady told me this was a "common complaint." They shipped out the same unit with XP pre-installed within 2 days of receiving the unit.

Other examples

• My mother has Vista and Office 2007 on her Toshiba notebook—she despises both and constantly complains about "not being able to find stuff."

• My friend who is the director of technology at a local school district said he has told his superintendent that he has no intention of rolling it out across the district ever. (They skipped Windows ME and went directly from 98 to XP.)

• I gave my brother a free copy of Vista from my college to use with his Mac (Boot Camp) . He gave it back and spent $200 on an OEM copy of XP Pro.

• My cousin purchased a new Dell notebook in January that came with a Vista coupon. I asked her if she claimed her free copy, she said she didn't want it.


There is something about Vista that "regular" people don't like. I personally think it's an improvement. Now, this is just my personal experience with people I know. Channeling Windows Enthusiast Paul Thurrott—I'm sure, statistically, most people are fine with Vista.

 

[Cloudane]

There is something about Vista that "regular" people don't like. I personally think it's an improvement.

My mother has Vista and Office 2007 on her Toshiba notebook—she despises both and constantly complains about "not being able to find stuff."

Yeah, I forgot about that one, but most "regular" computer users absolutely despise change, especially if it seems gratuitious (cf. leopard dock), and even more so if they can't find things as a result. Vista is very different, but at the core it's still the same, and I think people pick up on that.

Most people I know would have their old versions of software prised out of their cold, dead hands if necessary. Mate of mine would still be using Windows 98 if the changes in modern PCs hadn't prevented it working.

I have to admit, I'm not keen on Office 2007. The UI has been obfuscated just for the sake of being different, and it took me half an hour to find the database window in Access. Not to mention the number of times I've closed the entire database when all I wanted to do was close the print preview of a report.

 

[DieIRL]

Why I prefer XP to Vista has nothing to do with mac.

It seems that this thread is all about Mac OS vs. Windows in the discussion of why everyone hates Vista. I hate Vista, but not because I'm a dedicated mac user. So I see myself as neutral in the mac vs windows fight

I dislike Vista because it is made for noobs. It has too many security alerts that makes everything just that little bit more time consuming. Of course it's made to improve security, but when you are an experienced windows user already it is just annoying.

Especially the User Account Control feature makes using Vista annoying. Hey... I'm a grown up big boy logged on with an administrator account. I don't need big brother Windows to interrupt me every time I run an .exe file. And I'm an experienced web surfer so I just don't get my self in to situations where Windows needs to safe my ass from evil programs that want to run them selves. On XP I don't even have an anti virus program, I just don't need it...

Bottom line:
I prefer XP to Vista because XP treats me as a grown up, and Vista assumes every one are noobs.

 

[DieIRL]

XP treats me as a grown up, where Vista treats everyone as noobs.

It seems that this thread is all about Mac OS vs. Windows in the discussion of why everyone hates Vista. I hate Vista, but not because I'm a dedicated mac user. So I see myself as neutral in the mac vs windows fight

I dislike Vista because it is made for noobs. It has too many security alerts that makes everything just that little bit more time consuming. Of course it's made to improve security, but when you are an experienced windows user already it is just annoying.

Especially the User Account Control feature makes using Vista annoying. Hey... I'm a grown up big boy logged on with an administrator account. I don't need big brother Windows to interrupt me every time I run an .exe file. And I'm an an experienced web surfer so I just don't get my self in to situations where Windows needs to safe my ass from evil programs that want to run them selves. On XP I don't even have an anti virus program, I just don't need it...

Bottom line:
I prefer XP to Vista because XP treats me as a grown up, and Vista assumes every one are noobs.

 

[Cloudane]

Especially the User Account Control feature makes using Vista annoying. Hey... I'm a grown up big boy logged on with an administrator account.

So you should know how to disable it! It's not that difficult

 

[yeroen]

Microsoft's Suicide Note

Vista is marketed to content producers, not consumers
- Oliver Day, Analysis of Microsoft's Suicide Note, Part 1

Essentially, the entire OS is shot-through with costly, resource-hungry, and outright aggressive content-protection mechanisms.

A good place to start is here:
http://badvista.fsf.org/what-s-wrong-with-microsoft-windows-vista

Then:
http://badvista.fsf.org/blog/analysis-of-microsofts-suicide-note-part-1
http://badvista.fsf.org/blog/analysis-of-microsoft-s-suicide-note-part-2/

And of course the definitive analysis:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

 

[jaw04005]

So you should know how to disable it! It's not that difficult

Then you get the annoying prompts that your Windows is not "secure" and you should enable UAC.

 

[fearful]

Bottom line:
I prefer XP to Vista because XP treats me as a grown up, and Vista assumes every one are noobs.

Microsoft cannot do anything right can they? They're critised for having a unsecure OS, so they release a secure one. The problem here is that Windows has such a huge install base that it has to do things which pro might find annoying because most people aren't that IT savvy.

Is XP "treating you like a grown-up" or is it just not doing anything to protect you? You might know what you're doing but most people don't. I deal with them every day, there's the people that respond to spam, fall for phishing scams and open email attachments. If the OS doesn't do anything to stop them what do you have? Windows XP pre SP2.

BTW: UAC annoyed the hell out of me at first (I even turned it off) but I forced myself to give it chance. Now I don't even notice it, I see the sheild on a button or icon before I click and I know it's going to prompt me. As software has become more Vista aware I see it less and less.

Essentially, the entire OS is shot-through with costly, resource-hungry, and outright aggressive content-protection mechanisms.

My god! Then is mustn't work at all! How on earth can anyone possible get anything done on it?

The content protection in Vista is a requirement of the *media* which it is able to play, if Apple released something capable of playing BluRay, for example, theyed have to do the same. This protection must exist on any platform cabable of playing High Def (protected) content. Which includes consumer grade players that live, typically, under a TV. If you play such media on a Vista Machine (and it is protected) then the DRM kicks in. This is because the *media* that being played requires an encrypted path from media to screen. If you play anything else, the DRM doesn't run.

And of course the definitive analysis:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

To say that article is suspect would be a kindness:

See here for a rebuttal:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=299

And here:
http://www.twit.tv/ww39

I know, I'll stick my fingers in my ears and and go "nah nah nah nah" if someone dares to mention that Vista is OK.

 

[Cloudane]

Then you get the annoying prompts that your Windows is not "secure" and you should enable UAC.

So then you disable those too (point 12). There's absolutely no reason for a tech savvy person to complain about any of the "nags" in Windows (XP or Vista) IMO It's not that much of an effort to turn them off, and indeed that's the first thing I do upon installation. Sure they're a little hidden, that's a good thing as it stops newbs turning them off (some people DO need protecting from themselves), but any pro user should be able to either work it out or know how to use Google.

I'm not blindly defending Vista (like we often do with Apples hehe) but the reasons most people give for disliking it are rubbish reasons where they should know better

BTW, disabling UAC also stops things being thrown into the sandbox versions of Program Files etc, which can otherwise be VERY confusing and messy even for a savvy user, and is also the cause of a good number of the incompatibility issues.

 

[LeviG]

Having just upgraded one of my pc's to vista 64 bit most of the issues with vista are down to companies not supplying updates to their hardware/software. I've got a scanner which doesn't work, a couple of programs that won't even install (solidworks) and few programs that don't function completely (not all down to the programmers). Got over the install issue by using a virtual machine, not ideal but saves rebooting.

Games performance is worse as due to a combination of additional bloat in vista and lack of decent drivers from nvidia/ati games run on average about 10% slower than in xp, might improve over time but we'll see.

For general day to day office apps, photoshop etc it seems fine, no slower than xp 32bit, I'd say the 64bit upgrade is making the performance about even in day to day use.

For my 3D work, 3ds max performs about a third faster and has access to ALL of my 4GB of ram, this alone makes it a worthwhile upgrade.

However my second rig is going to be upgraded to vista 64 in a few months but its also going to have a dual boot set up with xp to give me the option of full xp performance where needed.

 

[SEGStriker]

LeviG, try /PAE option in your boot.ini, you will have access to all of your 4 GB RAM in XP (and even more if you have Windows 2003 Enterprise, Windows 2000 Advanced Server with more than 4 GB of memory).

 

[LeviG]

I've been using /PAE and /3GB for ages, first PAE is not needed to be added as its usually there after install and second PAE will not allow me access all of 4GB of memory, some of the memory is held back due to the pci bus etc, at most I get is 3.5GB, 3 of that is addressable by programs that can use it. Its the same with vista 32 bit too.

 

[SEGStriker]

Well, you are right, but only for some machines - sometimes /PAE is absolutely needed (when using AMD CPU), sometimes it is applied by default. Also, some motherboards allows using of all 4 GB of memory, some doesn't, and in some cases you have to turn off shadow memory, to turn on 4 GB option or other settings in CMOS - depending of your motherboard model. Finally - on some systems you will see 4 GB RAM, on some you will not.
Anyway, /PAE switch is dangerous - the memory model is different, some applications don't work at all, overal performance of your system is lower with 5-15%, so /PAE may be avoided unless absolutely needed. /3GB have another purpose: take a look at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791558.aspx
On one of my personal systems - Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro SLI (NForce 4) I have 4x1 GB DDR modules, with /PAE I see 4 GB in Windows XP, without it I see 3.65 GB.
With Vista instead of /PAE you have to use the PAE element with the BCDEdit /set command:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791485.aspx

 

[heatmiser]

I've tried Vista on multiple machines, and I always kept going back to XP. Before I gave away my Windows laptop this past week, I'd been running XP on it without problems (except for a lack of ethernet) despite the fact that the computer came with Vista. Basically, I saw no reason to run Vista when I could already do everything I needed on XP, for less memory and processing power. It's the same reason why I wouldn't upgrade to Leopard over Tiger. XP was faster, cleaner, and overall, just stayed out of my way.

 

[JFreak]

Interesting question, theoretically.

Somehow the first thing came to my mind was the Bible, which says that we shouldn't be interested in what Satan has to offer or what ways does Satan operate. No, we should only be interested in good things.

And I realised that I'm not even remotely interested in the Windows world, whether people actually enjoy it or not. Why should I care? I use Mac OSX and I know how it works. Everything I want to do with computer I can do within OSX and that's all I need to know. And I love how it works, not only because I've been using OSX extensively for the past 5 years but also because I used to use Windows before that. One could say I've been saved!

Now back to the topic (why people hate Vista).

It bugs me that I have never met anyone who was insanely in love with Windows. Never ever, even though I've seen Windows and Windows users since version 1.0, not one person has loved the system. For most computer literate MS systems have been "workable" but never great. But I know a whole lot people who love OSX, Linux or some extra rare *NIX variant. Of all the people I know who are passionate about computers, nobody loves Windows but everyone loves UNIX (this assumes OSX is also considered UNIX which it rightfully is).

So the big question is: what makes MS systems so "evil" people mostly feel bad about it?

 

[netdog]

SJ put it very well.

"Microsoft has no taste, and I mean that in a big way."

 

[LeviG]

Well, you are right, but only for some machines - sometimes /PAE is absolutely needed (when using AMD CPU), sometimes it is applied by default. Also, some motherboards allows using of all 4 GB of memory, some doesn't, and in some cases you have to turn off shadow memory, to turn on 4 GB option or other settings in CMOS - depending of your motherboard model. Finally - on some systems you will see 4 GB RAM, on some you will not.
Anyway, /PAE switch is dangerous - the memory model is different, some applications don't work at all, overal performance of your system is lower with 5-15%, so /PAE may be avoided unless absolutely needed. /3GB have another purpose: take a look at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791558.aspx
On one of my personal systems - Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro SLI (NForce 4) I have 4x1 GB DDR modules, with /PAE I see 4 GB in Windows XP, without it I see 3.65 GB.
With Vista instead of /PAE you have to use the PAE element with the BCDEdit /set command:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms791485.aspx

Look I'm using an amd opteron 175 and an x2 4200+ with 4gb of ram and have been using them for several years, I know how to tweak them to get the best out of them. I have never had to add /PAE but I do install straight from an xp pro sp2 disk so that might be some of the reason.
As this has no bearing on vista performance etc it doesn't need to be carried on.
And besides with vista 64 I don't need to do anything and it gives a nice performance boost to my 64bit programs

 

[SEGStriker]

Fine, I am not questioning your experience.
I just tried to explain how and when you will have access to 4 GB or more in Windows XP or Vista (and in all Windows NT based OS). If you haven't tried to manually add /PAE, then you will haven't tested the differences with and without it.
And believe me, there is notable performance loss when used this option for every 32 bit Windows, including Windows Vista Ultimate which supports 128 GB of memory.
About 64 bit Vista (and XP) - I am sure for most people is better not to upgrade to any 64 bit OS. All 64 bit OSs lacks some important 64 bit drivers, 3rd party plugins (most notable - flash player), 64 bit versions of some most used applications - Skype... There is a way to use them, but this is not easy for typical users, especially for 64 bit Unix/Linux.
Of course, 64 bit OSs are very suitable for servers, also in near future most developers will switch to 64 bit applications, and finally - 64 bit optimized software is usually faster on AMD CPUs (this is not absolutely true for Intel CPUs - sometimes they operate slower in Intel 64 /EMT64/ mode). This is true for both Windows 64 bit versions and Linux/Unix (*BSD, Solaris). I have tested many OSs, this is my job and I can say that 64 bit world is not yet ready for most users.

 

[contoursvt]

People never feel special belonging to a majority, but when they belong to a minority, then they become passionate and vocal. Thats all. Really has nothing to do with product quality or being evil or anything.

Interesting question, theoretically.

Somehow the first thing came to my mind was the Bible, which says that we shouldn't be interested in what Satan has to offer or what ways does Satan operate. No, we should only be interested in good things.

And I realised that I'm not even remotely interested in the Windows world, whether people actually enjoy it or not. Why should I care? I use Mac OSX and I know how it works. Everything I want to do with computer I can do within OSX and that's all I need to know. And I love how it works, not only because I've been using OSX extensively for the past 5 years but also because I used to use Windows before that. One could say I've been saved!

Now back to the topic (why people hate Vista).

It bugs me that I have never met anyone who was insanely in love with Windows. Never ever, even though I've seen Windows and Windows users since version 1.0, not one person has loved the system. For most computer literate MS systems have been "workable" but never great. But I know a whole lot people who love OSX, Linux or some extra rare *NIX variant. Of all the people I know who are passionate about computers, nobody loves Windows but everyone loves UNIX (this assumes OSX is also considered UNIX which it rightfully is).

So the big question is: what makes MS systems so "evil" people mostly feel bad about it?

 

[zakee00]

The biggest part I don't get is how oblivious Microsoft is. I don't mean to sound like an Apple fanboy, but jesus...anyone who's used OS:X and Vista for more than 10 minutes can see how much more intuitive OS:X is. It's like Apple has common sense and Microsoft...doesn't.

How, after 5 years, can they release a product that is still in it's infancy (a nice way of putting "a piece of ****")? They didn't even get to put WinFS (is that the new filesystem? i forget) into Vista! Apple has been releasing quite substantial OS updates on an almost yearly basis. I want to see what the Microsoft development center is like, rofl.

 

[Cloudane]

Might be what people are used to. OS X is hardly intuitive when it comes to installing apps for example. Anyone used to double-clicking setup.exe tends to struggle when they come to the Mac, especially since Finder is a bit retarded... it opens .dmg's in a plain window and then you're supposed to drag it to Applications but as there's no sidebar in a dmg window the only way is to open another window through the menu system or CMD-N. Bit clunky.