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Published on November 7, 2007 By Dan Greene In Personal Computing
I've had an OEM copy of Vista Ultimate 64 bit version, with all the updates installed expect the foreign language ones, for about a month now. This article details the features which I do not like.

7. Instant search tool, great useless tool, the constant indexing of my hard drive has not actually made it any easier to find what I was looking for. Sure if know the exact name of a file or the general size yeah I can save time because I don't have to wait for a search to complete, but I generally have to do several searches to find what I am looking for. Still not very helpful

6. Inconsistent loading of the OS. I turned on my comp when I came home and just let it sit, didn't log in nothing, went to watch some tv for a bit, had dinner, came back to a blank screen, a solid on harddrive light and dvd rw drive light on solid, no signal to the monitor. I pressed the spacebar, wiggled the mouse, tried esc, then CRTL + ALT + DEL, nothing changed. I had to reboot because Vista feel off a cliff while I wasn't using it. Fucking lame.

5. UAC, nuff said, annoying as fuck, turning it off, in my system tray the red shield icon sits, unable to ever get that out of there, every once in a while when Vista feels like pushing my buttons, it pops up like the robot from lost in space "DANGER DANGER" whatever. When you turn off a feature in Windows it should go away, and bother you no longer. Not the UAC, I'm sure there is a hack, but I am seriously not motivated enough to figure it out cause I am just gonna scrap Vista if SP1 doesn't radically change my mind.

4. I hate with Vista, that sometimes programs like Yahoo messenger, lock up or crash, Doom3 has done it, and it brings the OS down as well, Like I can CRTL + ALT + DEL and get to the menu of options, which are all bad execpt the task manager, which is the only thing I wanna see pop up when it happens, but when messenger dies for whatever reason, it locks the whole OS up. On XP with this same rig, via my quad core, I could just select the process, and kill it, and restart Messenger, with Vista, I can't get the power of the 3 cpus not maxxed out, to the task manager. That's bullshit Microsoft!

3. Disk utilities, specifically the defragmenter, I'll run that, then I'll run the Aus logic disk defrag, and get another 5-10% better defrag from doing that, WTF?

2. Lack of extras and I mean serious lack. There is no Windows Virus scanning, so I use AVG, but with Windows having historical vulnerability to viruses you'd think that they would be interested in providing a free anti-virus for people running Vista, but my biggest lack of extra falls into the category of Word Processing. There is no MS WORD, no EXCEL, nothing, on the "Ultimate" copy of Vista. Basically you spend $200 on an OS, and then you can spend another $150-$600 on word processing software? Seriously, a computers primary job used to be word processing and it has never really gotten away from that. Imagine, a coffee maker that doesn't brew coffee anymore, but controls your television. Where the hell is Microsoft on the ball on this one?

1. Slowness, I hate that this OS runs slower, and bogs itself down, on a monster system. It is probably more secure and maybe more stable than XP, but I was doing fine with XP SP2, security wise, and stability wise, and experiencing much more responsive OS tasking, and switching between what I was doing. Vista is all bullshit when it says you can do more with more.

There are only two benefits that Vista has going for it, one is DX10 and DX10.1, and being able to handle more than 4 GB RAM. That's it. I have decided that everything else about Vista is either pure fluff or less than the value offered by XP.

[MOVED FROM BELOW DUE TO JU's PISS POOR EDITING SCHEME]

Well here are a few things I would have included in the Vista Ultimate package.

1. Better Speech Recognition The Vista Speech Recognition menu is slightly faster but it doesn't seem to recognize my speech any more effectively than XP. Which is sad. Gates said that he saw us using verbal speech to communicate with our computers much more than typing way back in the 70's/80's. For sure it would be faster and more efficient than typing. My first experience with speech recognition was in the days for a 500 mhz cpu. Then again with my single core 2.4 ghz processor. Now that I have a quad core, of which Vista mostly doesn't utilize, the experience has not significantly improved. This type of a program could/would vastly improve the versatility of an OS. It would also give Windows a feature other OS's don't have setting them apart.

2. Real Word Processing: MS WORD Where is the Word Processor for Vista? Oh yeah it's in another $500 upgrade package aside from the OS. What bullshit. They don't even include the back burner Microsoft Works anymore. They could have at least given the user MS WORD 97 or 2003 or something instead of nothing with ULTIMATE! What they did give you is the antiquated notepad which doesn't even "nextline" properly but reads text files great. Except for the free Textpad program which works even better and opens more different kinds of text files. Wordpad was also included but it's the same Wordpad as WIN95. Really is that what I'm paying for with Ultimate, a word processor that was midrange 13 years ago?

3. Faster and better performance than the previous OS Really instead of the whole sidebar crap they could have bumped the speed of the a window closing or opening from the half second you see, to something like a tenth of a second, increased the size of the red X bar so when you wanna close something, you close it on the first try every time, and instead of just renaming everything from XP to Vista, they should have errorer on the side of making fewer changes to names of things, because now everybody has to learn a whole new OS again. If I was going to have the sidebar, the first thing I'd have in there is a google map of where the computer is at, instead of a second clock, 4 inches above my digital clock on the system tray. Real big benefit Microsoft.

4. Driver Support for EVERYTHING I mean everything, Microsoft is the biggest company in the industry, they have an OS which is the basis for everything to run on and 3rd party devs to develop for, not the other way around. Vista, should have included all the drivers that XP had for programs and hardware, and automatically emulated 32bit mode when necessary. So that end users, i.e. me, don't have to go digging online to find drivers for stuff that works with XP just fine. On a 15 gigabyte install, there wasn't room for a folder with these updates/drivers?

5. Real Backward Compatibility With an Ultimate copy, or "Premium level copy" of anything, there should be support for programs that originally ran on older copies of Microsoft OS's. Start with DOS and work your way up. This should come standard, with Vista Ultimate and why not. Obviously end users aren't going to be able to remember every thing they run on XP or Win 2000 that ran on older stuff like 98SE, 95, and DOS. There are a very few but select programs that people keep and run be it because of older machines or just low IT budgets. Whatever, there is a need to run older stuff and that capability should be with Vista at the "Premium level copy" of the OS.

Comments (Page 7)
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on Nov 11, 2007
Home Basic runs fine on 512mb RAM from what I have seen in stores.

Server 2008 I have run with only 128mb, and it runs fine. It starts getting sluggish only when you get down to 64mb. 32mb won't boot
on Nov 11, 2007
Home Basic runs fine on 512mb RAM from what I have seen in stores.


That's without any apps added other than what's bundled. Add in Office 2007, WoW, and select other apps, and you'll see why it's a dog.

Of course, if you're dumb enough to buy a computer with 512MB memory to run WoW, etc, well, I'd say you shouldn't be surprised when your machine runs like a 90 year old on Quaaludes!
on Nov 11, 2007
Of course, if you're dumb enough to buy a computer with 512MB memory to run WoW, etc, well, I'd say you shouldn't be surprised when your machine runs like a 90 year old on Quaaludes!


Which is why it really isn't an issue yet.
on Nov 11, 2007
For example; a friend has Vista installed on 3.2ghz p4 with 2gigs of RAM, but his graphics card is only a 128mb Nvidia 6600GS, and therefore it lags, stalls and freezes because the card draws heavily on CPU and RAM to support the Aero GUI.


I still have an old Sony Vaio laptop that has Pentium 4, 512MB RAM and 64MB video ram. During the early Alpha days of Vista (may be even before real Alpha builds), I used to install it on this machine. With no drivers and all, it still worked. It was sluggish but was not dead slow. By the time Beta 1 was out, I was using a more powerful system.

I did run Office and Visual Studio on that laptop. Visual Studio demands more memory than many Office applications. It was slow and hard disk activity was very high, but it did work.

During the beta period I had a lot of horrible experiences with Vista. Many of them were resolved by the time RC2 was released. I had drivers showing up for my old Vaio Laptop!

Based on my experience, if you choose 64 bit edition of XP or Vista, you are bound to have problems with 3rd party software.

Just some scattered thoughts...
on Nov 11, 2007
Now so far as skinning it... my quarrels with it have nothing to do with Vista itself but rather SKS6 (finding a specific 'item' in 6 seems to be more of a pain then in 5). Other then that its just more parts and pieces.


As for the skinning issues... they are none other than that of understanding the new OS. That and how to deal with it's ways of presenting itself. Sure it is different and has somethings that some people do not like. But as far as the new SKS6 is concerned...it is the best thing that ever happened to windows.

SGT
on Nov 11, 2007
it is the best thing that ever happened to windows.


try pening a skin in SKS 5 that has been started in SKS 6   

not so much fun
on Nov 11, 2007
That's without any apps added other than what's bundled. Add in Office 2007, WoW, and select other apps, and you'll see why it's a dog.


Vista or not any game like WoW or any other big title release within the year wont run with 512mb of ram. That's just not enough ram. Sure WoW will run with that much in XP but it won't be very pretty or smooth.
on Nov 11, 2007
My History with computers is I started with Windows ME and everyone was whining about it and I never had a problem at all with it. I upgraded to XP and I have never had an issue with that either. Loaded up Vista Ultimate. Tried it,threw it out as a bad joke and reloaded XP and got more resources from doing it and anything Shell wise of Vista's I can mimmick on XP and it does not take up as much disk space so all round I am a winner.Vista from my experience is all blow and no go. I get no problems with any application on XP. Vista from my experience is selective about what apps it will or will not accept. Not good enough.So my windows on XP do not revolve......I feel mortally deprived....not! Love XP and will stick to it for the forseeable future.....more value than Vista.  
on Nov 11, 2007
Home Basic runs fine on 512mb RAM from what I have seen in stores.


My nephew bought a Compaq with only 512mb RAM and Vista Home Basic loaded....ran sort of OK if he wasn't using any 3rd party apps, but just loading FF slowed it to a crawl, and Yahoo Messenger/Mail would near freeze it.

Personally, if I were Bill, I'd be giving a right royal bollocking to cheapskate PC manufacturers who only install 512mb RAM on Vista machines...it does nothing for MS' or Vista's rep, and surely disenchants users who paid good money to see WOW, only to get "what a crock of shite this is!"

What amazed...er, stunned me the other day was when I was perusing the junk mail of one of Oz' major retailers, and Compaq, HP and Dell machines were actually selling for $200+ more than Vista machines....more to the point, many of those XP machines had 1gb RAM and better CPU/GPU specs than their 512mb RAM counterparts. Go figure.

It's no wonder some Vista users are blowing up big-time....the volume of their WOW has been muted by the mfg's and thus is inaudible. I mean, it serves no purpose for MS to set benchmarks with 'Vista Ready/Compatible' tests if mfg's set their standards to just on borderline/barest minimum with barely adequate resources to tun the OS, let alone a 3rd party app or two.

To add insult to injury, one of the mfg's was offering an upgrade to 1gb RAM for AU$100 ....that actually equates to an extra 512mb for $100. For $40 more I can go to my local PC store and purchase 2gb of DDR400. To the uneducated the 1gb upgrade might seem like a good deal, but in reality it's daylight friggin' robbery.
on Nov 11, 2007
I find that hard to believe. I personally know around 10 people that have installed \ bought a machine with it on... every single one of them has let me know how much they regretted it. Thats 100% That is also not including all the skinners I know who despise it.

Of course, your experience may differ.


I agree. Over half the people buying a PC at work - Wal-Mart - say they are gonna ditch Vista for XP.

Hey - even MS said Vista wasn't ready OK?
on Nov 11, 2007
Over half the people buying a PC at work - Wal-Mart - say they are gonna ditch Vista for XP.


Just what ARE the specs of those Wal-Mart sold systems?
on Nov 11, 2007
Mostly Dells. Dual Core AMD CPU. 2 Gigs of DDR RAM. Nvidia PCI Express Video cards. DVD Burners. Top end stuff. Had a guy tell me yetserday he is reformatting the drive as soon as he got home to install XP.

I told him if he says NO to the Vista EULA he might get a OS refund from Dell as I've seen that happen for a few guys that use Linux.

Oh yeah - we also sell HP/Compaq, Emachines and Everex machines.
on Nov 11, 2007
Screenshot Image "Won't Die"

I tried once to 'crash' my Vista rig... just wouldn't happen, I was actually just tring to raise the cpu temp. Check the red boxes for the cpu run %'s, memory usage and temps.

Here is what was running...
5 DX gadgets, 8+ sidebar gadgets, Photoshop, xchat, IE7, Streaming webcam
AVG and Defender both doing scans
WMP, WinAmp and Xion all playing
... all that with the Aero GUI, guess I could have been running a dream too but didn't think about it at the time. It ran like a champ, nothing bogged slowed froze crashed whatever.

Keep your XP, I'll stick with Vista thanks
on Nov 11, 2007
I'll stick to XP SK - I'll even try to dig up the link to the site where MS said it wasn't ready. One of my friends has the link.

I'm surprised to see you using Defender and IE7 - both are known to have issues.

By the way what are your specs? Not all of us can afford to upgrade all the time to meet Microsoft's standards. Heck it took me a while to even get a DVD Burner...
on Nov 11, 2007
I'm surprised to see you using Defender and IE7 - both are known to have issues.


(kona...we might wanna lay low for awhile with these Microsoft fanbois...they're like the Borg...we don't have the might to tick 'em off yet!)
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