Windows Vista - Your experience and opinion?

By Ian W
in Microsoft (Windows)

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Grand Master

Ian W

Posted
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Apologies for the topic, but it was an area of interest for me. There weren't many Vista topics, so...

After using Vista on a newer machine, I didn't know what all the flak was about. The only issue I had was a missing driver after installation (of RTM), which is understandable since the computer was manufactured in late 2008.

Vista introduced so many nice features. In fact, Windows Vista is the only operating system to have six articles on the English version of Wikipedia dedicated to the new features it introduced!

What was your experience (assuming you had one) with the operating system? What was your initial impression after the first log in? What made you go "Wow!"?

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deleted_acc

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i only had a few driver issues back in '06 and '07 (terratec and hp) but otherwise i loved Vista... basically it was the pinnacle of skeuporph designed OS, back in the day it was just beautiful, especially after XP which was a kids' playroom made out of plastic

aero glass had some grace and elegance, some of that gone with Win7 (which was a great system and looked good but for me Vista was more appealing)

i never had speed issues with it (granted, IE7 wasn't the best browser but after updating to IE8 that concern was gone too)

all in all, i liked Vista very much and found it quick, comfortable and a real eyecamdy :)

Veteran

Brian Veteran

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  • Veteran
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i only had a few driver issues back in '06 and '07 (terratec and hp) but otherwise i loved Vista... basically it was the pinnacle of skeuporph designed OS, back in the day it was just beautiful, especially after XP which was a kids' playroom made out of plastic

aero glass had some grace and elegance, some of that gone with Win7 (which was a great system and looked good but for me Vista was more appealing)

i never had speed issues with it (granted, IE7 wasn't the best browser but after updating to IE8 that concern was gone too)

all in all, i liked Vista very much and found it quick, comfortable and a real eyecamdy :)

I don't think you know what skeuomorph means.

Mentor

Mr. Dee

Posted
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i only had a few driver issues back in '06 and '07 (terratec and hp) but otherwise i loved Vista... basically it was the pinnacle of skeuporph designed OS, back in the day it was just beautiful, especially after XP which was a kids' playroom made out of plastic aero glass had some grace and elegance, some of that gone with Win7 (which was a great system and looked good but for me Vista was more appealing) i never had speed issues with it (granted, IE7 wasn't the best browser but after updating to IE8 that concern was gone too) all in all, i liked Vista very much and found it quick, comfortable and a real eyecamdy :)

What are you talking about? Windows 7 and Vista share the same Glass theme. The only difference I would say is Windows 7 dropped the shaded Taskbar. Also, the Glass theme in Windows 7 is more refined, compare the Start menu pane in Vista vs 7. Windows 7 Start menu has a certain glass and shine to it.

Personally, I don't have a problem with Windows Vista, still have it installed on a HP workstation where I keep my iTunes Library.

I ran it on my laptop and other desktops until Windows 7 beta came along. I will admit, even on a Core 2 Quad, 2 GBs of ECC RAM and 512 MB Quadro FX video card (state of the art for late 2008), Vista boots slow on it, takes long to compose the desktop. It just was not optimized. If Vista had the optimizations of Windows 7, it would not have the backlash it got.

A lot of the compatibility issues Vista initially experienced were resolved within the first two months of general availability.

I had installed it on the workstation beside me at work a few months ago since the machine has upgrade rights to Vista Business, as slow as it is, its still nice to use in some areas. To be honest though, I use Windows 8 everyday, today I had to back it up because the machines are being refreshed next week. So I was left to use Vista and I have to say, it felt weird. I work a lot with WordPad, the minute I opened it I felt weird, lack of Ribbon and just the garrish 90's feel of it.

I think if Microsoft had also updated some of the built in apps at the time too, it wouldn't be so bad. Overall, I readjusted and used as normal. I plan to keep Vista on the workstation I have at home until the machine dies. I don't really need to have Windows 7 or 8 on it since its doing what it needs to do. The eventual successor though is a iMac or MacBook Pro I will be purchasing later this year.

Grand Master

PNWDweller

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Sadly, my first impressions of Vista were not favorable to say the least. I had gotten it as a freebie from Microsoft's small business promotion which gave away 30k copies (remember that Neowin?) I also had gotten a free copy for my laptop which came with it as an upgrade. I installed that copy first which was Home Premium and it ran slower than reasonable for me. I tried business and it was still slow so I just stored them away and went back to XP at the time.

I think I was more disappointed with the removal of items from it that were promised which were indeed eye-candy such as transparent folders by default, animations when switching through them etc.. I think it was PDC 2003 or somwhere around that time. Not only that though, was also the delayed release. Remember when it was promised but never came but for a few more years later? I think that threw a lot of people off of it.

When I look back at the eye-candy things and all the goodies that come with it, I tend to agree that anymore while it is quite amazing and fun to look at for the first few times, after that - it is quite old and you want to do anything to disable it. :) I experience the same thing on my Android anymore, it is all "OOOH!!! Eye-Candy!!!" then after about a day or two of looking at it, I switch the program's animations off. (Launchers mostly).

  • Nathaniel Smith_329019
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Grand Master

NEVER85

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I didn't really have any issues with Vista, even from day 1. Vista Ultimate Extras was a big flop, but I mainly used Home Premium anyway. The bulk of Vista's "issues" weren't even the fault of the OS itself, it was from hardware developers (most notably nVidia) not releasing proper drivers in time for Vista's launch, and Microsoft's mis-marketing of it. "Vista Capable" should never have existed. The only computers that should've been marketed as being able to run Vista were the ones that were marketed as "Vista Premium", with over a GB of RAM and a decent processor from the time. If nVidia had released Vista drivers on time and Microsoft never used "Vista Capable" as a marketing ploy, Vista would likely be remembered a lot more fondly by the masses.

Grand Master

simonlang

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i had no problem at all. worked on a dell inspiron 9400 and also on my acerferrari 5000. not a big microsoft fan but it was their only OS i bought online. i liked vista aero glass effects and besides that it was as good or bad as xp was.

still convinced most people were just fine with the OS but because it got such a bad press now everyone thinks it was bad.

Mentor

beanboy89

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/me hops into time machine and goes back to 2006.

On my Athlon 64 X2 system that I just built, Vista x64 actually has support for all of my devices out of the box. With XP x64, I had to mindlessly search for drivers (like video and networking) which I could never find. I really like the Aero Glass UI. It's a fresh change from XP's Luna interface.

/me travels back to present day.

I never had any problems with Vista. I used it from November 2006 until January 2010. It was a great OS for day-to-day use. I never had any outstanding problems with it. In fact, I wouldn't have any problems with still using it today, but I've grown to love Windows 7 and now 8.

Grand Master

spaceelf

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Vista pre SP1 had issues. Which is to say, Vista before it'd been out about nine months had issues (SP1 actually came later, but included all those patches anyway.)

SP1 was still a bit glitchy but very stable and usable. SP2 cleared up most of the glitchiness.

I was seriously irritated with XP by the time Vista came out.

Some laptop makers (hint - Acer) also loved putting their builds in Power Saver mode which performed like *********.

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Grand Master

+virtorio MVC

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  • MVC
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Vista had some genuine issues when it came out, probably the biggest issue for me was how slow it was to copy files, but there were other issues as well. I brought it on release day and, along with the slow file copying, experienced frequent Explorer crashes and blue screens.

Lousy drivers from hardware vendors (on release, and for a while afterward), a ton of software that was not designed to run under a non-admin account (that people blamed Microsoft for, not the actual developers of the software), the negative response people had to DX10 (exclusive to Vista, but with hardly any advantages), the joke that was Ultimate Extras, and the fact it had only a portion of the "cool stuff" Microsoft had been showing off for years with Longhorn, it gained a bad reputation that it never could get rid of (even after a myriad of patches fixed many of the bugs and performance problems).

Grand Master

MtnDewCodeRedFreak

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Had Vista since Beta 2 in July 2006 - 2 months after its release of Beta 2 in May. Late, I know, but hey late is better than never lol.

Ran Vista from Beta 2 all the way to Vista SP2 before Windows 7 (well actually I had Win 7 since Beta in Jan 2009 tho)

I haven't had any problems with Vista and it only got better with Win 7. Love the Aero Glass theme - was disappointed to see the transparency gone in Win 8.

Grand Master

Nick H. Supervisor

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  • Supervisor
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My experience with it is...low. My opinion of it is even lower. However, I should probably point out that I have a similar opinion of Window 7 at the moment. It's not that the OS is flawed, it's that they've made some silly decisions regarding user interaction, and I'm finding that it takes me twice as long to perform a simple task that I would have no problem with in XP.

Grand Master

Japlabot

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At the time I tried it (pre SP2), explorer would constantly hang and crash for no reason. Graphics drivers kept crashing even years after release of Vista. Compatibility with so many apps was broken even with UAC disabled and compatibility mode.

PS: No memory errors and worked perfectly with XP.

Vista was necessary to iron out the bugs for SP1/Windows 7. If Vista didn't happen, Windows 7 would have faced the same issues. They needed to get it out there to make software developers realise that this change is real and can't sit on their ass hoping that compatibility issues with resolve themselves in time for the next release, software developers will have to fix it themselves.

Grand Master

+InsaneNutter MVC

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  • MVC
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Personally i loved Vista, it was a massive upgrade from Windows XP.

Yes it broke a lot of stuff in regards to drivers, however it was a needed change and it forced manufacturers to start pushing 64bit drivers too. I personally loved Windows Media Center, as i was a big fan of MCE 2005 in XP and it was a great upgrade in Vista. I loved the modern theme, widgets and improved start menu too. Everything appeared to get a fresh coat.

I think my only complaint is like Intrinsica mentioned it takes twice as many clicks to perform simple tasks compared to Windows XP. Sadly this trend has continued, especially in Windows 8 to the point where its just one big mess now going through system and user settings.

Grand Master

cork1958

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Could only tolerate that TOTAL POS OS just long enough to wipe it out and install good ol' XP!!

I bet since it was released, I've down graded AT LEAST 250 computers to XP or have upgraded them to Windows 7 now. The very vast majority of those poeple have asked me what MS did to actually make such a crappy OS!

I would've rather used Windows 95, 98 or even Me, over that crap a** OS! :x

Grand Master

Arceles

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I used vista with my former laptop, with only 1 gb of ram and even so... it ran smooth as silk (provided I installed all my programs and removed any kind of autostarting feature on them) SP1 made it faster... and continue to use it even after win 7 came out because of a weird BIOS problem that I only discovered months later (had to downgrade to the very frirst bios revision of my laptop to correct it) To be honest, I really have a lot of fond memories of it, this was because most of the people was so stuck in winxp because apparently it didn't ran fast enough on their computer, but for me it was great, win7 was just an speed performance of it.... I consider it even more "revolutionary" than windows 8.

Grand Master

theyarecomingforyou

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Personally I liked Vista. It certainly wasn't perfect but the visual theme was a significant improvement from XP, gaming was great (performance was largely similar but it included DX10), driver handling was much improved (thanks to the online check) and stability and security were both improved also (people forget how insecure and unstable XP was). I was glad to upgrade to Windows 7 upon release but to me it was simply Vista 2.0 - I never understood how people could hate Vista but love Win7.

Contextually I think Vista was better than Windows 8, though Windows 8 is still the superior operating system.

PS - It should be noted that my systems tend to be at the top-end of the performance spectrum, so I didn't encounter the significant performance issues that affected people with lower spec machines.

Grand Master

+Frank B. Subscriber²

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I was beta-testing Vista. Even got a complimentary Vista Ultimate key for that. Yet I went back to XP not even six months after installing Vista RTM. Why? Main reason: my PC at the time was a lowly AMD Sempron 3000+ with 1 GB of RAM and a Geforce 6200. Suffice to say performance wasn't exactly stellar. Upgrading my hardware was not an option at the time, hence the downgrade.

Two months after downgrading to XP I bought an iMac only to see the first Windows 7 beta a year later and go 'damn, why did you switch to OS X again?' But I digress.

In terms of reliability I didn't have a lot of issues with Vista.

Grand Master

Detection

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The only issue I had was a missing driver after installation (of RTM), which is understandable since the computer was manufactured in late 2008.

That was perfectly the time that there should have been drivers for it, Vista was released in 2007, Win 7 was released in 2009

2008 was Vistas limelight year

Grand Master

Jose_49

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I can say that I really hated Vista. Because everyone hated it, I hated it too.

I had it on the laptop I'm writing... This was 4 years ago (September 30, 2008). Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.4 GHz, Nvidia Geforce 8600m GT.

I had problems with DEP (Data Execution Prevention). I had to create exclusions with several programs.

Everything else worked good. Booting time (cold) was like 30 secs, with everything disabled (Startup, except the essentials).Most of the programs ran OK.

I can say that every problem I had with Vista could be atoned to the bad press (Mostly mentally).

I, as of today have a different stand. I believe Windows Vista is the most revolutionary OS ever created by Microsoft. From incredible UI improvements and simplicity, to modifying internals.

Hell, I can bet my butt that if it wasn't for Vista, we wouldn't have the monster PCs we had today. Vista forced Hardware vendors to create much powerful GPU, RAM, CPU.

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