I hear a lot of people talk about how bad Vista is, and how its gltichy and buggy and programs dont work... But can somebody please go into detail? Ive been using Vista for almost a year and I havent had any problems of the sort. In fact, I prefer it over my xp.

Could it be that those who havent tried it personally, don't like it? They have just heard horror stories? Or is it that somebody had a bad experience and then spreads those stories until it gets to the point where some people think vista doesnt even run properly?

Vista came built on my laptop, then I swapped for a bigger hd and reinstalled with the OS disk provided with the computer. Could it be that all the problems come from people who upgrade from xp to vista? Not just vista in general? And even then, that stuff was probably fixed relitavely quickly.

(On a side note my laptop is a tablet convertable and vista's integrated tablet/touchscreen features are great, apposed to having to get a different version of xp, or Mac's lack of any full sized tablets. [Hello, just make a bigger iPhone])

What are your thought's/experiences? Somebody please enlighten me unto these apparent extremely common glitches I seem to be missing out on.

Of course it could always just be a "beat up the other guy" marketing strategy by Mac...

Discuss.

I think it is a mac strategy with all of these commercials, and most of the public hears "vista sucks" and assumes that it is true. I don't think that there are many that have actually used it. And there might be a few, but they went into it saying "vista sucks , I can't use this thing" and never give it a chance. Maybe it does have something to do with upgrading leading to some problems.

I did a fresh install of vista ultimate on my desktop back in 2006 and i still use it and it has never given me any problems. I am running stardock and aero and it is incredible. As long as you do regular maintenance, you shouldn't have a problem. Now many programs support vista, whereas last year there were some issues. You can always just run an older program and compatibility mode and it usually worked anyways.

Enough of my talking, but bottom line is vista (ultimate at least) is a solid, secure os when compared to some others out there. Sure, the UAC is annoying, but the os is more secure than XP believe it or not. I saw an article where they had hackers trying to get into os's as fast as they can. They had Vista, OS X, and some form of linux. Guess what; they got into the OS X system first.......think about that ppl

It's because people think it's "cool" and "popular" to jump on the we-hate-Microsoft bandwagon. Sure, there are a few bugs and bad experiences but no product's perfect. The irony of it all is is that most people who complain about how terrible Vista, continue to use it at home anyway!

I'll be clear from the start: I'm a Linux user and my experiences of Vista are just in setting up my sister's laptop, showing her how to use it and some very basic usage on it occasionally. I don't use it every day, and haven't had a comprehensive experience of it. This is just first impressions I suppose.



In the times I've used it, I've found it to be considerably slower than a comparable XP system, the UAC is incredibly annoying, and there are a few issues with applications which worked fine in XP that now either have annoying bugs or fail to run completely (or at least did when I tried to set them up. This may have been fixed now).



I think the problem is that people read about all the issues that could occur, and assume they will all happen to them. That is not strictly true, but it is likely that some issues will occur, and I certainly wouldn't be willing to pay £320.08 for an operating system that I highly suspect will not work correctly, 100%. It is that element of risk that scares a lot of people away.



Vista was preinstalled on my sister's laptop and still had issues. I think Microsoft released it way before it was ready, despite the colossal amount of time it took them anyway.



I went in to setting up my sister's laptop with as open a mind as possible, and I still ran into a load of issues and certainly wouldn't have been able to stick with Vista over my Linux install.



And think about the fact that they didn't get into the Linux system at all

Yeah, linux is very interesting... My main problem with it though, is that I couldnt figure out how to work a lot of things. I think I just needed somebody to walk me through it.

As for setting up your sister's laptop, and having things run slower, it could be the hardware. I am somebody who is going to get the best hardware I can, just incase, even if I dont hardly play those hardcore games often or at all even.

But naturally 2 computers with the same exact specs, 1 on xp 1 on vista, the xp will run faster because the OS is less advanced. But I think at a certain point (for ex. dual core 2gig processor in each) they will run at the same speed... And honestly I like the UAC because I know that no intruding program is going to run on my computer unless I click accept.

But I will say that I dont have an open mind to mac at all... Sure its got some cool features, but (from what ive seen, correct me if im wrong) its not very open. For one I love the right click. For two, it seems too simple. I like to be able to edit things and have control over my computer, and from what ive seen mac is pretty straight forward. To me it seems like mac is for little kids or something who just need to use the programs and nothing more.

And as far as flames go, please politely explain how im wrong... Im sure alot of the vista sucks talk is from people who feel the same as I about mac but visa versa.

On a side note, I love my iPhone to death. But if they made an iPhone with windows... Id be all over it like a pack of wolves on a three legged cat.

This post has been edited by chriscannon: May 22 2008, 08:09 PM

There is a large problem with that system however. Many users get accustomed to having to type their password in so often that they just don't think about it. When users stop reading the box, its just like it not being there, but with a lot more annoyance. That instantly removes any extra security that was introduced. Linux has the balance right. I know that when I enter my password, something major will be happening, and I therefore need to think about why I'm being asked.

I think it just has a bad rep from a few people, you know how things work on computers, a few bad experiences and bang, apparently the product is terrible. It is just different peoples opinions, for example someone who is anti-Microsoft would always campaign against Vista, while somebody who uses Windows every day might praise it. It does use more RAM, more disk space and more processing power, but it's common sense that the more features there is, the harder it is going to be to run. Most of the bugs that are in Vista have been ironed out in SP1 anyway, but the bad rep for Vista will always continue, just like some people hate the iPod and others hate the PS3.

You definitely put it right. I know with my vista (which I only use on certain occasions, I have xp, vista, and ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop) it's annoying to run anything I have to install from the internet on there. When I first reinstalled vista on my machine and was setting up my programs everytime I ran something I had to click accept 2-3 times. Once to let it know I know it was downloaded, once for UAC, and then once to let it connect to the internet for an update. It was unbelievably annoying and if I knew I was going to be exclusive to vista I would have turned off UAC. In linux, it's really nice, it only asks once and only on occasions where the action could damage your computer.

As for other issues with vista, I have 4GB (3.5GB since it's 32-bit) of ram with a 128mb nvidia 6800 and 2.5ghz dual core and I can still see a noticeable difference in my games between XP and vista. I'll get a 10-20 frame boost in XP while playing a half life game. And for openGL games such as frets on fire, I had to get a special version of it, the latest version wouldn't even run because the opengl support in vista is almost as good as directx support in linux.

Now, for the average user who checks their mail and chats online, vista may be fine may be even great with UAC to keep them safe, but usually, if a user is going to get a virus it happens from infected attachments or downloads that they aren't paying attention to, so they will get infected no matter how much security there is.