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Windows Vista - Still Fresh After 19 Months?
MyStuff writes "ZDNet blog Hardware 2.0 looks at the effect of having used Windows Vista for over 18 months. It Windows Vista the indispensable upgrade that Microsoft wants you to think it is? Writer Kingsley-Hughes says 'Having been using Vista for over 18 months I believe that it's a huge improvement over XP and even though I still use XP I find that I miss many of the features that Vista offers.' Just the same, he goes on, 'I wouldn't call any of the changes earth-shattering. When I'm using XP systems I miss some of the features but not so much that they push me to upgrade any faster.' He then goes on to give a feature-by-feature breakdown of all of the improvements Vista has over XP, and what long-term use of these features can net." A possibly useful guide for gamers or administrators thinking about upgrading sometime soon.
So, has he actually been able to run Windows for 19 months without reinstalling? That's amazing!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Not counting the "beta" versions given to special corporations and colleges, I don't think its fair to judge Vista just yet. Asking if Windows Vista is still "fresh" after 19 months is like asking if the PS3 is still "fresh" after 12 months.
This from a professional reviewer after 19 months on the job:
"Is Vista more stable that XP? Hard to tell as I don't have a lot of problems with XP but I do feel that Vista is on the whole more robust."
On the whole, ZDNET adheres presents a robust standard of informative journalism. But there are exceptions.
From the article:
Maybe it's just me, but I hardly use the Start Menu. I assign keyboard shortcuts to all my commonly used applications. I might go digging around in the Start Menu a couple times a week, but's hardly a reason to change operating systems.
Is that really a huge efficiency boost? I use Windows Search even less than I use the Start Menu. It's very rare that I don't know where to find something on my own machine. Does anyone else use the Search function that often? For what are you typically searching?
Yikes! Large icons are the first thing I usually turn off. What a waste of screen space. Once again, is this really a huge efficiency boost?
So in conclusion, "beats XP hands down" translates to two features I'd never use, and larger icons that I'll want to turn off. Think I'll wait a bit...
I read that article and no where in it did I see any evidence of what is so earth shattering about it. He did mention stability but only a gut feel that even that may be better than xp.
So what was MS working on all those years?
Got Code?
"even though I still use XP I find that I miss many of the features that Vista offers."
I find this comment quite bizaare. After using Vista for nearly 2 months, my experience is exactly the opposite. I find Vista frustrating because many features from XP have been removed or changed in ways that make them less useful. There are no major problems with Vista, but dozens of minor annoyances. Each one by itself is no big deal, but together they add up to a major step backward.
I don't get it.
Between work and home I have two Win2000 boxes and two XP boxes (and a Redhat as well). I remember still running NT when XP was introduced.
Unless you have an application that can't be run on an older system, and by then you usually need a newer computer anyway, is upgrading really worth the hassle? A workstation for me becomes like an old pet. You're used to it. You know how what its quirks are.
Personally, I've never felt a compelling reason to upgrade. I like shiny toys as well as the next person, but I have never upgraded a Windows OS in my life.
Best Windows Freeware
Looks like I'll stick it out with Win2k, nothing interesting here =)
Reboots: I reboot my 2k media PC once a month maybe
GUI: I still can't find a person that can point out why XP was so much better than 2000. If you can convince me, please do. There just aren't any productivity advances that I can see. The article author pointed out the vast productivity benefits from the start menu, but honestly, if you're spending more than 1% of your time in the start menu you're not being productive period.
I think everyone who upgrades and claims it substantially better are under self-hypnosis. The 'beautiful graphics' are deluding you into believing the OS is so much better. If Microsoft had updated their driver compatibility layer like they did in XP, I don't think there'd be a single justification to ever buy XP. But like I said, I dare the community to say differently. Give me a reason to enter graphics country!
Price: How much for media center edition? Ouch.
Bye!
The problem with the new mac ads is it doesn't show the OS, the system or anything useful. Even worse most of what they say is blantantly false. Yeah a Windows machine is a full work system and has no entertainment value, that's why 90 percent of computer games are still available on the PC. When mom and pa see the commercial and see "mac is fun, PC is work" they think about their system and realize it's not that much work. Adopting a mac would be more expensive to them, be more work and they don't want to spend 1000-2000 for a mid level system.
...." Stop. Realize that people don't use dos based systems any more because they don't want to do that, running 1-2 programs just to get a third working isn't cool, and won't work for most people unless Microsoft disappears, and from the look of it Microsoft is going to be here to stay.
You can lie your ass off to a consumer but the minute they realize what you said isn't the whole truth you're screwed. What Mac has said in their last round of commercials has hurt it because people started smelling the BS, and because people looked into it and see the problems.
Hell their switch ads tried to bandwagon people on with famous faces. However looking back at them I can tell you. I only knew one or two of them. Bandwagoning commercials slowly faded away in the 90s. There's a reason for that, it stopped working so well... except in politics of course, when you're forced to choose if you're going to vote.
As for Linux the steady trickle I've seen going to Linux won't matter, it's still too small, and I still see people returning to windows, most people will continue to use XP. I'm all for using Linux as a back bone to coporate systems, but it's still not good enough to be a platform for business/work, nor one for productivity. People still don't want to do everything by hand, they want the comfort of Windows, and XP has given them a perfect surrounding. The minute you can't run program X from linux, it fails in people's minds. You can start by saying "well you can just run it under
What can I say? They learned from the best - Microsoft.
Complaints:
For some reason they fucked up the defragmenter and now it's just a big "defrag my hard drive now!" button with no progress indicator or something to show how fragmented your disk is (this *really* pisses me off). Startup/shutdown time is better, but hibernate/sleep is a problem - when I come out of them it doesn't remember I have a second monitor, and I have to reboot to get it back. Thus, they're mostly pointless.
Surprisingly it runs a little faster on my notebook than XP did, I assume because of the caching (2GB RAM) and Aero offloading stuff to the GPU.
All in all, I wouldn't want to go back, but I don't know it's worth the hassle of upgrading for everyone. Especially since not all software works quite right yet. YMMV.
The more I read about Vista the happier I am with Win 2000. It has a handful of features that were somewhat improved but at a cost of it being slower than XP and a security system that depends on you manually authorizing things that you shouldn't have to. I have a couple of PCs and one Mac and the only time the mac bugs me is when I'm installing something or doing a monthly update. Try rebooting a windows machine and you are prompted to update something every time. Yes a lot of things can be turned off if you go digging but with my XP machine when I turned off some of the annoying stuff I got even more prompts. The biggest hesitation I have with Vista is the Microsoft fanatics aren't finding a lot of good to say about it. Leopard got a lot of flack from the PC community but personally I can't wait. I'll give it a month to make sure the upgrades are going smoothly but I can't wait to upgrade. That's a massive difference between the two systems. Most people in the PC community look at upgrading to Vista like they were looking at a snake and they aren't sure if it's poisonous or not. The Mac community can't wait for Leopard. Like I say the best sales promotion Mac Leopard has ever gotten was Vista. The difference between the two is fighting with the OS in Vista and not noticing the OS in Leopard. I use computers for the software not to get my rocks off configuring OSs. The more Microsoft "fixes" Windows the more interested in Mac I get. Funny how Mac is never trying to fix their security. I leave a Mac logged onto the net for days or weeks at a time without one problem. No need for firewalls and antivirus software. Macs aren't completely virus free but they tend to be more like urban legends. I've heard of them but I've never seen one.
One often over looked "benefit" of Vista is that it's Control Panel is completely redesigned and made much more confusing. So confusing in fact that my mother (after having upgraded and I don't know why) is unable to break her PC anymore by messing with the Control Panel. Under XP she knew where things were and would adjust them. Now she can't find anything, so I get fewer calls.
On the flip side of the coin, the poor guys in my IT department are also lost as to where the hell the controls they need have gone in the new Control Panel.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
You left out nicer fonts!
But almost everything he said could have as easily been done in XP- better fonts, faster startup, improved search... all this could have just as easily been in SP2, or at least SP3, if MS hadn't been expending all that money and energy on Vista.
Here's my favorite quote: ``Some programs still have problems with Vista but the blame for this really falls on the vendor and not Microsoft.''
I wonder how he arrives at that? If the program already existed, and Vista didn't, and MS wrote Vista with backward compatibility in mind (did they?) it's hardly the app vendor's fault. But even if MS didn't care about backward compatibility, that's not the app vendor's fault. They can't write programs to an OS that hasn't been written! So this was just a goofy statement.
On the flip side, an employee here just bought a laptop with Vista on it. Another admin has spent at least a day working on the stupid thing over the past week or so, just trying to get it to work properly on a network that has been supporting several versions of Windows as well as OSX, Linux and Solaris for years. Granted, he hasn't used Vista before, but he knows Microsoft OSes prior to Vista just fine. (One of the things that pisses me off about MS is that with every release you have to learn where things are all over again.)
And there is NO excuse for scrolling something like a start menu using standard sized fonts. None. Ever. Morons.
Will somebody please tell Microsoft to STOP WASTING MY F****** SCREEN SPACE!!!!!! I want smaller icons... MUCH smaller, not bigger ones.
First thing I did in XP is convert everything to windows classic mode due to slightly smaller icons on screen, start menus & control panel, same with fonts. On a side rant, I am also not impressed at all with LCD screens that run at very lame fixed resolutions.
Due to all of this, I had to recently spend $1,000 on a Samsung 24" LCD screen that would run 1920x1200 just so I could recover some of the screen space I used to have back in Windows 95 running on a 19" CRT at 1600x1200. My CRT finally died after 7 long years and no computer store was selling 21" CRTs anymore *cry*
My recent forced upgrade at work from Outlook 2001 to 2003 also kind of ticked me off as Microsoft loves to waste my screen space and make just about every row FATTER than ever before.
The control panel in windows XP even in classic mode is a complete waste of screen space. Also run the Services icon and you can see what I am talking about.
Yo Microsoft, make your graphic shit smaller, not bigger. Or fine make it bigger, but also give us 20/20 vision people the option to use smaller icons, fonts etc - MUCH smaller.
Thanks, and asta-la-vista.
Adeptus
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
NFS Client.
New TCP/IP stack that won't overrun or lock up for interminable periods anymore.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
In Vista:
If you Pull up the Start Menu, All Programs, right click on Computer, Select Properties, Then Advanced Features, then Performance, Selecting Optimize for Best Performance, and Hit Apply:
All the 'Vista' stuff gets turned off,
You get normal square windows aka - Windows 3.1 type windows.
All Vista & Windows XP eye candy is turned off.
So, You too, in order to get maximum performance,
can buy a new Windows Vista computer,
and optimize it for a personal Windows 3.1 experience!
This Baffles Retail Store PC people,
they think you reinstalled a different Windows.
Most of us like change.
... and an iPhone(tm) to go with it.
... however you spell it ... minutes after it hits the mirrors.
The MacOS X types will be lined up around the block and across the street to buy Leopard
The Linux people will install their version of Umbu... um
Unfortunately, the Microsoft people have learned from bitter experience that a Microsoft upgrade means misery. And most Microsoft people are pragmatic; they use it for their job, and know upgrades will interfere with things while they get up to speed.
So Microsoft people don't act like computer enthusiasts, because they are not enthusiasts and think the WOW! will turn into WAHHH! faster than you can count.
D
, I'll eat my own pussy.
Hirez pix pls!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.