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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 8)
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on Nov 11, 2007
kona0197, you have a DVD Burner..............show off!!!  
on Nov 11, 2007
(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!)


Well I use MS products as well. I know I use Windows more than Linux.

kona0197, you have a DVD Burner..............show off!!!


Sorry...

on Nov 11, 2007
I'm surprised to see you using Defender and IE7 - both are known to have issues.


No problems with IE7 here. Defender? No thanks. Although, I do use Windows Live OneCare.
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%


I have six friends, all either installed Vista on their computers or bought with computers with Vista on. All love Vista, have had no regrets and will not revert to XP. 100% satisfaction my end

Quote from wikipedia:

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." The semi-ironic statement refers to the persuasive power of numbers, and succinctly describes how even accurate statistics can be used to bolster inaccurate arguments.


@Kona - IE7 has flaws? You used to defend IE6 as the be all and end of of browsers. nothing beat it for security, functionality etc etc. You now use Firefox (as I do). Maybe you may come to see Vista in a different light sometime...
on Nov 12, 2007
Fat chance. Give me the money to upgrade to a decent PC that can run Vista and give me SP1 for Vista and then we will talk.

I'm telling you it's almost as if MS is in cahoots with the hardware industry...
on Nov 12, 2007
it's almost as if MS is in cahoots with the hardware industry...


That's total bollocks...the hardware mfg's have been in a perpetual state of evolution, constantly upgrading on previous models since the days of Win 95 - 98. It's not that MS is in cahoots with the hardware industry, but more that it is following the trend and designing its OSes/software to best utilise hardware advances.

Besides, with some PC mfg's pumping out underpowered Vista machines and disenchanting many users, some sections of the hardware industry are certainly doing MS no favours at all.

Mostly Dells. Dual Core AMD CPU. 2 Gigs of DDR RAM. Nvidia PCI Express Video cards. DVD Burners. Top end stuff.


Top end stuff? That's debatable! Dell may be an industry leader, but that does not make it the best, and given the bad raps I've seen Dell's getting in recent times, its loading of additional bloatware on top of the OS in a 'dealer engineered' partition, there is no way on earth I'd buy a Dell PC.

In fact, I would not buy a pre-built from any of the major mfg's...just don't trust 'em not to cut corners and costs to maximise profit while selling me a dud/below par machine with a load of crapware I didn't ask for.

on Nov 12, 2007
Top end as compared to what else we sell at Walmart. I never said Dell was the best. You can see though that that computer can run Vista fine but the guy wanted XP.

By the way my last Dell came with a Windows XP re-installation disk. All it ever installed was a barebones copy of XP with NO extra programs. And I had only one partition.

Sounds like it's been a bit since you tried a Dell...
on Nov 12, 2007
What I find odd is this. In order to run Vista efficiently you need a minimum of 80gb HD and 1024mb of RAM.Not to mention a high end graphics card for the glass effects. That shuts a whole lot of perfectly good PC's out of upgrading to Vista because they simply do not have a big enough capacity to run Vista. Yet those PC's can run XP quite happily. Apart from the graphics, Vista is really no better than XP.It is not faster than XP and it takes up far more disk space. So where is the progress? How can progress be claimed when it will not run on PC's that are less than eighteen months old with specs less than the ones I stated above.XP gives you more available disk space,is quicker, is more secure, can use any app without difficulty, more stable and any cosmetic difference XP can mimic so where does Vista become an advantage? I see none.
on Nov 12, 2007
I have to take back the comments on the speech engine. I think it's an improvement over XP. But it still fucks up a lot and is clunky. It also doesn't go fast enough for me.
on Nov 12, 2007
I'm surprised to see you using Defender and IE7 - both are known to have issues.


I've been using IE7 since it came out and no, it does not have issues for me. I use it on several systems in several scenarios.
Defender - not used on MY system, but I've installed it for several people. They have not had issues either, nor have they been plagued with adware.
From time to time I try FF again only to find that it leaks memory for me. I'll stick with my IE7 thank you, and I'll stick with my Vista at home. They run great and I've not really had that many issues since I built my new system. It's a big change for people and many home users are not comfortable with big changes when they struggle to get around on what they already have. That's the big flaw with Vista. Not the OS itself.

At work, Vista is NOT a wise choice due to the mix of server OS's and the lack of TOTAL compatability of Vista in that environment.
on Nov 12, 2007
I've been using IE7 since it came out and no, it does not have issues for me.


I had issues with IE7 for the first few weeks of release, as did several other people I know. Somewhere in there, though, it got patched and I like it in its patched form.

As for Defender, I know very few people who use it regularly.
on Nov 12, 2007
I tried opening 100 explorer windows to show how stable vista can be.. but then windowblinds stopped skinning them after about 60 and explorer crashed
on Nov 12, 2007
Sounds like it's been a bit since you tried a Dell...


Seems liket might also be a while since you actually bought one...those barebones XP installations, I'm told, is pretty much a thing of the past.


Actually, I've never tried a Dell, but I have friends & acquaintances who have. Most state the older XP Dell's were actually better than newer XP Dell's (no bloatware), that the newer ones DO have bloatware installed and tend to be less stable/reliable ....despite the more modern hardware being (supposedly) better on DELL configurations.

A couple of people complained that their new pre-builds came with MySearch toolbars installed, something I recall was classified as spyware. So what's with that??? To me, it's totally despicable that a brand new PC comes with trial software (essentially free advertising for the host co its and partners), toolbars/search bars over and above those included with the OS' default browser. Last I looked, MySearch, MyWay and DoubleClick were not default OS apps.
on Nov 12, 2007
Fact of the matter is that IE7 for Vista is much more designed to handle things. Runs faster than on XP and has better security. Oh and Kona defender is part of the windows explorer in Vista!

SGT
on Nov 12, 2007
Actually, I've never tried a Dell, but I have friends & acquaintances who have. Most state the older XP Dell's were actually better than newer XP Dell's (no bloatware), that the newer ones DO have bloatware installed and tend to be less stable/reliable ....despite the more modern hardware being (supposedly) better on DELL configurations.


I just bought a new Dell laptop (I, too, usually avoid pre-builds for desktops, though), and I can attest to the bloatware. Although I have IIS and Management and Monitoring Services installed for the apps I use the laptop for, it still should have booted faster than my boss' three year old laptop. The reason it didn't? Primarily the bloatware.

I did use the tweaks HG suggested on another thread, and although I knew many of them, I did find a few surprises.
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