Review of Windows Vista

[Atomic Wanderer Chicken]

Windows Vista was considered a flop by many. If you had the right hardware that ran Windows Vista, then Windows Vista would run fine. I used Windows Vista for a short period before getting a newer computer. It felt like a prettier and slower Windows XP with many good improvements. The design of the UI was striking and the Aero glass was quite nice (now considered cheesy and dated).

 

The Good

 

Setting up Windows Vista was like setting up any other version of Windows.  I had a fully compatible PC at the time, so I didn't have issues with Vista not fully working. Windows Vista introduced many new features that to today are in Windows 8 even. The windows explorer was overhauled with search integration and many other things.  Windows Vista introduced tab browsing in Internet Explorer which I really loved when it came out and still do.  Windows Media Player received a big facelift but it took time to get used to it.  I never used gadgets on the desktop with Vista but they were a very interesting and cool feature. Some other things that were nice was Windows Live. Windows DVD maker was a plus to have for making DVDs. The coolest part of Vista was the new start menu. The start menu in Windows Vista was more sophisticated with a search built in, the programs scroll up/down and expand rather than cascade outward, and when you hover over the right on my pictures for instance, the icon changes. Windows Vista introduced a lot of the core features that set the foundation for Windows 7 and later Windows 8 which makes Windows Vista an important step in Windows evolution. The security in Windows Vista is better than Windows XP, but the dialog boxes can become irritating.

 

The bad

Driver support in Vista was horrible at times and sometimes did not have drivers at all for some devices.. The requirements for Vista when it was launched were too high for a lot of computers , and many computers couldn't fully run vista as a result. Windows Vista says minimum requirement was 512mb of ram, but in reality Windows Vista needed to have 2GB at least. Windows Vista additionally loved chugging resources. The pricing of Windows Vista was fairly high at the time as well.

 

 

Overall

Windows Vista was a good experience if you had a computer that had 2gbs of ram, a dual core CPU and a compatible graphics card. The UI in Vista was nice with the Aero glass, and the Flip 3D. Windows Vista was unpopular OS and was disliked by many. Windows Vista set the foundation for Windows 7 and 8 and was Vista important OS in moving forward.

 

[Bi4me]

Never experienced any problems with it. Worked fine just like any other OS. I had a mediocre PC back then. Didn't quite understand all the hate towards it

[Brandon H Supervisor]

here's my take on things with vista

 

it wasn't a flop in of itself. the only true problem with it was it's memory management wasn't the best

every other problem with vista was ###### ups from OEMs and hardware companies. OEMs where putting vista on hw that had no right even have vista on them and other hw people such as ati and nvidia were sloppy about their drivers at first

 

besides all that vista was a fine OS especially once SP1 came out

[_-Psycho-_]

I forgot how beautiful Vista was. I wish i could make my Win8.1 look like that easily.

[fusi0n]

Vista was pretty awesome if you had higher end hardware.. OEMs were packaging Vista with slow CPUs and 1GB\even 512MB RAM.. Vista wanted the MEGABYTEZ and if you had them, it treated you well.. It took a while for hardware vendors to get up to speed with drivers.. but, as others said, after SP1 for Vista came out.. It was a pretty solid OS if you had nice hard.. the OS wasn't really optimized or polished like Windows 7.. Glad Microsoft got it right. 

[Dot Matrix]

Did I just time travel to 1985 2007? 

 

I ran Vista on a circa 2004 HP off the shelf tower with a single core Athlon and never had any issues. I know many here will find this hard to believe, but I was considered back then to be a "Vista fanboy", and gave it much praise. It was a breath of fresh air compared to the rotten Windows XP, and never regretted upgrading at all. I ran Vista up until 2011. :yes:

[Growled Member]

I loved Vista myself but a couple of friends had major problems with it. They were driver related. I think that was  lot of the problems with Vista and what gave it it's bad rep.

[Phouchg]

As a sidenote, "vista" actually means chicken, or more precisely, a hen in my native tongue. Imagine the lulz.

Noble birds, but the OS itself was so damn hated for the reasons which are all too clear now. Perhaps if hens had a proper lawyer, they'd sue for libel :laugh:

[Dot Matrix]

I know it was much hated, but the changes Vista brought were much needed. Microsoft was smart to ditch the XP codebase. 

[Athernar]

Vista was a victim of it's development cycle, the large accumulation of changes requiring reworks or entire rewrites of drivers/software, which were then unoptimised and buggy - and caused it to be hated.

 

Look at 7, more or less the exact same OS underneath with some added UI gloss and yet it is/was much loved.

[Corvid19]

I remember "wowing" XP users with the amazing win+tab effect which still works in 7. Does it still exist in 8?

[Growled Member]

Vista was a victim of it's development cycle, the large accumulation of changes requiring reworks or entire rewrites of drivers/software, which were then unoptimised and buggy - and caused it to be hated.

 

Look at 7, more or less the exact same OS underneath with some added UI gloss and yet it is/was much loved.

 

A lot of the problem was companies just sit on their butts and didn't update their programs or their drivers until after Vista was released and after public outcry they all blamed Vista. 

[Atomic Wanderer Chicken]

[PeRTeX]

Windows Vista can only be installed on computers that have 2nd generation Intel processors [sandy Bridge] but not on newer generations. Intel does not have drivers for Windows Vista to work with Intel HD Graphics 4000 and newer. Not sure with desktops since it may have a graphics card of a different brand. Even with a laptop that has NVIDIA 600M series graphics card, and the latest NVIDIA driver, if the default graphics card is Intel HD 4000 and newer, you will not be able to make it the default one. Changing default graphics card is only available on Windows 7 and newer versions. If only the features of Windows Vista were still available with Windows 7 [Windows DVD Maker, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Mail, classic start menu, classic themes that were the same with Windows XP, etc.] then for sure more and more people will stick with it same with how people remained using Windows XP.

 

Even with a long development period, Windows 7 is still way better than Windows Vista. And yes, Windows Vista paved the way for all the features that we are using until now.

 

When Windows 7 arrived, Windows Vista felt like a half-baked Windows XP/Windows 7 mixture with majority of Windows XP still intact like calculator, paint and wordpad.

[Circaflex]

I never had any problems with vista, same with many friends of mine. The root of the problem was subpar hardware, ancient machines that just couldn't handle it.

I also never had driver problems, I think its unfair that we bash vista about driver support, when that is up to OEMS and Third Parties, yet Windows XP was tons and tons worse in the driver department around launch and after launch compared to Vista.

[PeRTeX]

I think even running Windows Vista using classic theme is still not as good as Windows XP on Luna theme on the same hardware.

[Lord Method Man]

Switched to Vista when it came out and never looked back.

[Praetor]

i still have a Windows Vista Ultimate box that i've got from Microsoft TechDays, used for some good time until i upgraded to 7. The biggest issue with Vista was:

- lack of drivers, support from OEMs and somewhat the ones that existed were half baked, not always optimized.

- it need more hardware than OEMs admitted to; i've saw whole laptops that barely runned Vista and had a Certified "Vista Ready" tag, when it shouldn't be running Vista at all! Cheapness doesn't help them image and hurts sales, but what do i know? :rolleyes:

- Most of the people that had XP instead of upgrading the hardware for using a newer OS, just installed anyway in the same old hardware; it didn't work well but guess what? Blame the OS! :rofl:

 

 

 

PS: l33t POST!!!!1!one

[Shiranui]

Look forward to my upcoming review of MS-DOS 6.02.

[Atomic Wanderer Chicken]

Look forward to my upcoming review of MS-DOS 6.02.

I never used MS-DOS but I definitely used Windows 95, so that might be the next review :rofl:

[link6155]

Without Vista, Windows 7/8 wouldn't have Aero implemented.

 

Also, I really find it stupid when people think that windows Longhorn was cancelled for Windows Vista. Longhorn was the codename of vista. Even though the early builds look very very different, it's really the same thing underneath. Besides, I really hated that marble giant back and favorite button :P

[Dot Matrix]

Without Vista, Windows 7/8 wouldn't have Aero implemented.

 

Also, I really find it stupid when people think that windows Longhorn was cancelled for Windows Vista. Longhorn was the codename of vista. Even though the early builds look very very different, it's really the same thing underneath. Besides, I really hated that marble giant back and favorite button :p

What was supposed to be "Longhorn" was cancelled due to feature creep, and Microsoft directing resources to Trustworthy Computing and Windows XP SP2. 

[Jose_49]

I remember "wowing" XP users with the amazing win+tab effect which still works in 7. Does it still exist in 8?

Windows 8 killed it in favor for the Metro Task Switching. 

 

To be honest that was some eye candy whose effect wore off soon.

 

Anyways, I loved a lot that feature back in the vista days :D

[gameboy1977]

Windows Vista is sooo worst, because of hardware problem!

[PeRTeX]

Windows XP still is the best OS to be run on older systems.

Even if Windows NT 6.x OS requires at least 1 GB of RAM, Windows XP will still be the best option.

 

Windows Vista was not installed on new computers or downgrades to Windows XP were so many because hardware during Vista's release was not ready yet. By the time of Windows 7 and newer versions, hardware was able to catch up.

 

The blame is not on Windows Vista alone. It is also because of the hardware at that time wasn't designed with Vista in mind or barely runs Vista.

 

Windows XP System requirements

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#System_requirements

 

Windows Vista Hardware requirements

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Hardware_requirements

 

Windows 7 Hardware requirements

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#Hardware_requirements

 

Windows 8 Hardware requirements

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8#Hardware_requirements