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Vista is great if you buy a new computer...

I was thinking the same thing. I do not think I would upgrade my current box to Vista -- I currently run XP Pro --, but I am seriously thinking about Vista Home Premium on a laptop. The thing that gives me pause is, how many of my current programs will run under Vista?

If your like the author and have $1000 in disposable income for an upgrade, then sure Vista 'Aint that bad'. What about the 98% of computer users who already have a patched Windows installation, or a linux install that allows them: to email, browse the web, play flash/videos/mp3s, or seek entertainment? Is Vista "A'int that bad" for them as well!? Vista is an unnecessary evolution of the Win2000 line. If XP isn't working out and you need something flashy and new, then maybe a flashy and new version of XP is NOT what you need.

Try a linux distro, or (assuming MS hasn't locked you out of your liscense) reinstall XP! Seriously don't waste your money.

Hmm, depends on what you define as great I guess - if you've been a Windows user your whole life, of course you're going to be impressed by the most basic of enhancements.

For Windows XP - support has been pushed out for another year, SP3 is just around the corner, which will bring to question; why move to Windows Vista? I admit, I moved to Vista, and I will be the first to admit what a mistake that was (have since given the software to my brother for his gaming system) - Windows Vista just doesn't have it together; if it isn't for the problem prone drivers, its the buggy applications, and if it isn't the buggy applications is the slow feeling to it, everything seems to be very laboured when trying to the most basic of tasks.

I've since moved to Solaris Express B59, so I'll forward a review in the next couple of days, all I can say is this; its terrible that the billions of dollars spent developing Windows Vista, the operating system that was apparently meant to set the world alight and herald in 'new technologies', is slower and more buggy than the most beta of Linux distributions.

If OpenSolaris is anything to go by, along with Fedora 7 plans on the table, Microsoft should be very scared; *NIX is already eating Microsofts lunch in emerging markets like China and India; when the middle class in China and India start demanding applications for their *NIX boxes, companies will be forced to port their applications - until then, I'm happy with using the opensource counterparts.

While I may agree on the economical argument (get vista with a new pc, otherwise xp works fine), here you have no clue:

Vista is an unnecessary evolution of the Win2000 line. If XP isn't working out and you need something flashy and new, then maybe a flashy and new version of XP is NOT what you need.

Plain wrong. And no-one is requiring you to upgrade.
What's more, it's usually people writing these things about XXX-commercial-product who praise the 'innovation' in GNU/Linux for any random feature, be it better than commercial products or not.

Edited 2007-03-13 09:23

Still, my Pentium M 1.73Ghz/768MB RAM/Ati Radeon x300 128MB (dedicated) runs Vista just fine and dandy. I'm really interested in what all these people saying Vista needs 2GB of RAM are doing with their computer.

You talk about that like its a semi-archaic! I guarentee >95% of the desktop machines deployed throughout the world are not even that fast! (The most popular OS on desktops is STILL Win98!)

"The most popular OS on desktops is STILL Win98!"

Um, no.
http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox46-operating-systems-ma...
OS share as of Aug 2006:
1. Windows XP 86.80%
2. Windows 2000 6.09%
3. Windows 98 2.68%
4. Macintosh 2.32%
5. Windows ME 1.09%
6. Linux 0.36%
7. Windows NT 0.24%
8. Macintosh Power PC 0.15%

And go to any number of web stat sites, and you'll see very similar numbers.

To his defence, he was talking about most POPULAR operating system - not market share ;-)

Indeed you could have went to any number of websites to give them similar results. OR you could have went to a site that has ACCURATE results.

For example. Linux is in use in roughly 3 - 5 % of the worlds desktops at the minute. If it was the 0.36% that that website says, then how come everyone, everywhere is talking about Linux, and how they have just installed Ubuntu/Suse/Mepis etc..

Windows 2000 is still the OS of choice across all the business users desktops. In fact I do not know of any major corporation that uses XP, apart from the managers laptops.

Everyone knows Mac has 4 - 5% of the desktops.

Now, take these examples you shown us and expected us to believe. Why did you choose that page ? They are selling something. Something that I do not want to buy, but yet, if you have anything to do with that company, you will be using this site to drive traffic and hopefully sales !

The figures seam a bit odd.

For one thing they show 2.32% Macintosh users but only 0.15% Macintosh Power PC. Given that non Power PC Macs was discontinued for over 10 years ago, this seam quite strange.

Unless of course the Macintosh figures refers to new Intel Macs that only have been around for a little over a year. In that case that would mean a very rapid increase in Mac usage that would make Steve Ballmer throw chairs as never before.

And go to any number of web stat sites, and you'll see very similar numbers.

And they would be equally meaningless, because there is no direct correlation.

Web site statistics measure which browser on which platforms are used for the task of accessing the website, not the installbase of either.

It's a bit like measuring the market share of car models by taking taxis as the sample for one's statistic.

A lot of web usage, some people claim that it applies to the majority of users, use work related machines, e.g. office computers, to do their web browsing, so this kind of configurations end up being counted more often than privately uses machines.

For example most day-by-day statistics show a sagnificant drop of Windows 2000 visitors over the weekend, since Windows 2000 is quite common in office settings, but not very common in homes.

Interesting. These figures are from MarketLink; they're a bit more recent.

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2&qpmr=15&...

According to these folk, Vista has already surpassed Linux on the desktop. Not bad going, considering the false starts, bad press and a marketing strategy that can only really be described as 'subtle'.

"And go to any number of web stat sites, and you'll see very similar numbers."

Because website stats are like, really reliable.

It's all the matter of sample taken. In Poland, all big websites and many smaller ones use one analysis company -- Gemius. Their report covers nearly 100% of polish internet users. For March, they report now (in percents):

Windows Total 90.9
Windows XP 80.0
Windows 2000 4.8
Windows 98 2.9

Unix Total 9.0
Linux 8.2
MacOS X 0.8
FreeBSD 0.1

Interested parties can look for detailed stats at https://www.gemius.pl/Engine/Main.php

You talk about that like its a semi-archaic! I guarentee >95% of the desktop machines deployed throughout the world are not even that fast! (The most popular OS on desktops is STILL Win98!)

You're right about that; even in 'first world nations' like Australia and New Zealand, don't be surprised to see people still running PIII/PII with less than 256MB RAM, and a 40GB hard disk.

For my machine, its what I would consider 'top of the line' for its price range, and given its specifications, I was shocked at how terrible it ran Windows Vista - and this is a 'Vista Capable' Laptop btw; installed Solaris, Linux, Ubuntu, and it was a speed demon; loading in a few seconds, effects without sluggishness, applications loading snappy.

Windows Vista seems to be a product looking for a problem to solve; yes, it has some good technologies, but the whole thing is castrated in terms of performance for the sake of providing backwards compatibility - Microsoft should have said 5 years ago that they were going to throw away all legacy crap; Windows Vista was going to be new, legacy free, and designed for the future - Windows XP support coninued for another 4 years plus give away Virtual PC who need compatibility with "Windows Classic applications".

My Core 2 laptop had 1GB of RAM and, when multitasking, Vista was quite slow. I had to move to 2GB to keep myself from pulling my hair out. Previous I was running Windows 2003 on my laptop with 1GB and things were just dandy.

I agree. Things are great over here with 1.5 GB (minus ~128 for intel integrated graphics). I was pretty frustrated when I had 512 MB.

He bought those items obviously to play games. Who needs 2 7600's in SLI for email? Not even vista is that resource hungry (vista is about 10% slower across the board compared to XP, with re-architectured brand new drivers none the less)

"Most importantly, all my games run flawlessly now that I have descent SLi support."

Why doesn't Aero run on older hardware? Because it takes advantage of DX9 shaders to improve the efficiency of drawing windows. Beryl (which I also use) is much better about allowing any driver with basic opengl (and appropriate aiglx/xgl support) to render the windows, but you trade efficiency for CPU driven effects (for example I can't run Blur because I don't have shaders, while Aero is always using a blur).

That's just it, it can run on existing hardware.

The Dx9 card spec for Aero Glass is to allow developers to have the freedom to do anything a Dx9 card can do and not have to limit their application to anything less. A Dx8 card can be forced to run the full Aero.

Considering how AWFUL OSX 10.0 ran Vista really isn't that bad.

Now what I would expect an OS to do is not something Microsoft ever does in the development process so...
In my eyes, it should be a major .0 release adds features and such which require more hardware, and then the .0+n release should get more and more efficient until the next .0 release.

Considering how AWFUL OSX 10.0 ran Vista really isn't that bad.

You cannot compare Vista with a >5 year old system. Vista is DISMAL.

"You cannot compare Vista with a >5 year old system. Vista is DISMAL."

By that statement, it wouldn't be fair to compare it to XP then, but amazingly that's just what everyone is doing. So that being the case, it's perfectly fair to compare it with early releases of OSX.

Yes, they are comparing it to XP, which is wrong, as it is 5 year old.

Instead they should compare it to XP SP2, or they should compare it to how they think it should be......

"One mans food is another mans poison"

And why not? It is a similar upgrade as far as the actual scope of what's new, etc...

Vista takes no more hardware than the current OSX.

And why not? It is a similar upgrade as far as the actual scope of what's new, etc...

Vista takes no more hardware than the current OSX.


Hmm, this is news to me. I run OSX 10.4 on a 5 year old PowerMac G4 with NV17 very well. So I can smoothly run Vista on a 1GHz cpu with a NV17 video card? Great :-)

No, he is refering to when MacOS X 10.0 was first released vs. Windows Vista when first released - what the original poster deliberately ignored is this; firstly, many of the technologies in Windows Vista have been running on Windows XP in one for or another, and secondly Microsoft has billions where as Apple back in the 10.0 days had millions to spend.

Also, add into account that MacOS X was a clean break; not only did they have to port Darwin to PowerPC, they had to develop Carbon, get classic working, bring a whole new heap of technologies such as display pdf and the likes - all this will be heavily unoptimised; but like I said, it is a completely different situatin with Windows Vista, which was an evolution, meaning, we shouldn't see the massive performance and stability problems we see now - I could understand if they completely gave it an overhaul, but lets be honest, Windows Vista is nothing more than Windows 2003 Sp1 + nice gui + add ons that already existed on Windows XP as seperate downloads.

You obviously don't know what Vista is, then.

Microsoft had to develop WinFX (new API, same as carbon was a new API). Classic is nothing more than a virtualized environment, nothing that had really requires to "get working".
Display PDF is akin to XPS (which does include display stuff, not just a file format), and Microsoft developed XPS from scratch, not so with Apple. Completely new network stack, completely new presentation layer (not just a GUI, everything about how it works is different).

None of this already existed on XP as a separate download and all of it is brand new.

"massive performance and stability problems".... Where are these massive performance and stability problems?
Which performance problems are you talking about?
The UI itself actually performs much better than pre-Vista ever did, is that a problem?
Am I saying that there are no performance problems? No. File operations took a hit, gameing has taken a hit (which it is yet to be seen whether that is driver, OS, or both, as there is a completely new driver architecture, forcing nVidia, ATi, etc... to start from scratch).

Stability problems? Please, oh please, show me these stability problems. Been running Vista final since the code was available to testers and (contrary to past Windows experience) things have gotten better over time, rather than worse, though it may still be too early to tell if the system will degrade like all other versions of Windows.

I suggest instead of spreading crap around that you've heard from other posters (ie, Vista is XPSP2+fancy UI, or 2k3 SP1 + fancy UI) you actually learn about it before you open your mouth (or, rather, start typing).

Also, add into account that MacOS X was a clean break; not only did they have to port Darwin to PowerPC, they had to develop Carbon, get classic working, bring a whole new heap of technologies such as display pdf and the likes - all this will be heavily unoptimised; but like I said, it is a completely different situatin with Windows Vista, which was an evolution, meaning, we shouldn't see the massive performance and stability problems we see now - I could understand if they completely gave it an overhaul, but lets be honest, Windows Vista is nothing more than Windows 2003 Sp1 + nice gui + add ons that already existed on Windows XP as seperate downloads.

Windows Vista is as much of an overhaul as OS X was, and though MS had 1 reset, Apple had 2 or 3 before moving to the NeXt codebase. For Vista, in brief, the deployment and boot architecture is new. The kernel has received new scheduling and memory management subsystems, I/O, security, and power management enhancements, support for transactions. The IP stack is new. The display and printing architecture (driver model, graphics API, window manaager, etc.) is new. The audio stack is new. The driver, application, and update installation architecture is new. The application development stack is new. Of those, only the applications stack was ported downlevel, not all APIs are available, and you will have reduced performance vs. Vista in some cases due to the lack of similar architectural changes on downlevel OSes.

Also, add into account that MacOS X was a clean break; not only did they have to port Darwin to PowerPC, they had to develop Carbon, get classic working, bring a whole new heap of technologies such as display pdf and the likes - all this will be heavily unoptimised; but like I said

What?

Basically, they ported an old Unix clone to PPC. The display engine was pretty much there already, because NeXT used a similar system licensed from Adobe, called Display PostScript. It was also as buggy as hell for about two years. The biggest thing they added was widgets; which looked suspiciously like Konfabulator to me.

2GB and so on, purely nonsense. Try it first before bashing it. I do know it's lot of fun, but it's most of the time just noisy. I have to use it at work, together with applications like Statistica (same machines as before).
Btw. I'm a FreeBSD user, with a decade of Linux experience too, but I can divide between mere bash and reality. It's a bad system because of DRM, closed-source, the whole mumbo jumbo. It's maybe equal to XP, with some small advancements and therefore you don't need to update. Urban legends make me just sick of this so-called opensource community.


http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html

Uh, beware it's a Windows guy, but with knowledge :o)

I'm writing this on an Athlon XP 2600+ running Vista. Don't recall exactly when I bought this computer, but judging by Wikipedia it should clock in at about four years by now.

Runs completely fine. Performance isn't noticably different from the time I ran XP on it. So I'd say the rumours about hardware requirements are a bit exaggerated. :-)

I agree whole hartly with your statement and actually pointed out something along those lines in the article. Although I don't mind paying this once, I would rather not have to do it again. If I do run into problems with re-activation, I will crack the system, no holds barred!

As I stated, this is the first time I have payed for any version of windows and although it's a hefty sum, considering all the years I have got out of them (MS), it's a fair trade.

The next time I spend any money on an operating system it will be for a Linux distro or worthy hobby OS.

Whoa, whoa. XP did so introduce a number of performance penalties, particularly SP2.

System Restore, Windows Firewall, the security console, automatic updates, 'automatic' wireless, remote assistance, that Luna disaster (well, in my opinion )... etc. are all not "free". They suck RAM and cycles. A default XP/XP-SP2 install takes a while to lean out to the point where performance equals or minorly exceeds W2K. The extra stuff exceeds performance enhancements.

Multiple monitors, wireless, digi-cam's, etc. under XP may not have the benefit of XP's OS-based support; however, where applicible, that's all supported in drivers. (XP never accepted my quad-screen setup, either.. only under linux ;P)

W2K was the best thing you could do in a Win95/98 world - because of the huge reduction in random crashes. XP was a lame offer - pretty colours and a dog that "helps" you search (and takes up a whack of your screen). Atleast Vista, while issuing in the next generation of DRM expansions, offers a proper accellerated desktop (Aero) and a snazzier colourscheme. It looks better, and hardware be damned, that will catch up - in a way it's almost forward looking.

"Whoa, whoa. XP did so introduce a number of performance penalties, particularly SP2."

Could you please provide links that backup this claim? From what I've read and based on my own experience there was no significant performance difference between XP and 2K, and SP2 didn't make much of a difference either.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2001q4/os/index.x?pg=9

"Toss aside the WPA, the bundled services, and the new GUI (especially the new GUI) and you're left with this fact: The numbers don't lie. Regardless of how you feel about all the aforementioned goodies that Microsoft claims make Windows XP better than its predecessors, based on our tests, there's no reason to call XP a performance dud."

http://www.short-media.com/articles/does_service_pack_2_slow_you_do...

"The test PC equipped with Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 was an average of 0.5% faster than the same hardware with Service Pack 2 installed. The percentage difference between faster and slower is insignificantly small."

As for the proper multi-monitor support, I was referring to the fact that 2K did not support multi-monitor video cards properly, i.e. if you had a single video card that supported multiple monitors, you could only have a single desktop span over them, but not multiple desktops with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color depth etc. Matrox was the only company that figured out how to hack its way around the limitation by tricking the device manager into thinking that there are two physical cards installed, and kudos to Matrox for that, yet still it does not take away the fact that there was this limitation in 2K which was removed in XP.

Wassup with that?

People using Windows are used to not having to authenticate for anything (due to Microsoft not forcing proper security practices with NT from day one), and so when they try Vista, which asks permission for exactly the same things as does Ubuntu or whatever other Linux distribution, they get annoyed, and turn it off.

It's really stupid, but understandable, as well.

Except.. Unlike linux, Microsoft made the really stupid mistake of letting the user turn it off in the first place.

So true!

Another difference is you don't have your whole system taken over by the security prompt with either Linux or Mac OS X.

So true!

Another difference is you don't have your whole system taken over by the security prompt with either Linux or Mac OS X.

I think this was done for a reason. The UAC runs in a separate 'account'. This is to prevent someone from accessing the system by spoofing the login dialog box. I thought it was overkill, until I read this:

http://alastairs-place.net/archives/000079.html

Which is probably why MS went for a more secure implementation.

Edited 2007-03-13 00:33

It's really easy to do in Linux.

Edit /etc/passwd and set your uid to 0.

Sure, it's insanely stupid. But you can do it. Easily.

when they try Vista, which asks permission for exactly the same things as does Ubuntu or whatever other Linux distribution, they get annoyed, and turn it off.

Except that on any Linux distribution you only need to authenticate once in order to update all of the software on your entire system. With Vista, each individual application requires another authentication. The lack of a centralized software update system for Windows (no Windows Update doesn't count) is a major difference between routine administration of a Windows box versus a Linux box, and this is also one of the primary sources of UAC annoyance on Vista.

"The little things make a big difference when I compare Vista to XP."

Exactly. I'm hardly a windows fanboy (in my day job I'm a UNIX admin with a heavy penchant and bias towards linux desktops), but I've been running vista enterprise here at home on my not so new dell I got as a hand-me-down from work and rather liking it. It's still windows all in all, but there's a lot of nice touches and refinements they've put into it now which does make using it a nicer experience than XP say. (also using Office 2007 on it which I'm increasingly appreciating as an excellent office suite)

In terms of the machine I'm using, the only variable which is beefier than your average store bought system today is the RAM, 2GB, so I'm not seeing any real slowness there (if anything it feels faster). The machine uses an older onboard video, so no Aero for me yet, but even so, aesthetically I find the layout nicer than before. Shoot, I've even kept the default wallpaper still up, don't really feel the need to tweak at much things.

It's still windows all in all, but there's a lot of nice touches and refinements they've put into it now which does make using it a nicer experience than XP say. (also using Office 2007 on it which I'm increasingly appreciating as an excellent office suite)

I couldn't agree more. My main desktop is PCLinuxOS, I just wish they would finally release a 64bit version. As for Office 2007, the betas where really cool. I run OpenOffice on Vista at the mo mainly cause I'm broke. €1500 later and it's become a very expensive upgrade ;-)

I feel bad for desktop linux users. Why do they settle for less?

They don't. Only someone who as never experienced the power afforded by a Linux desktop would even consider Linux to be less.

I don't know if you have tried Linux but if not, I suggest you give it a whorl! ;-)

"I feel bad for desktop linux users. Why do they settle for less?"

You are Right, we do settle for less:
Less DRM
Less Activation
Less WGA
Less System Requirements
Less Pricing

(quote)
"I feel bad for desktop linux users. Why do they settle for less?"
(end quote)

(Supreme Dragon)
You are Right, we do settle for less:
Less DRM
Less Activation
Less WGA
Less System Requirements
Less Pricing

Yeah!! Spot on, Supreme Dragon!!
I would add (when it comes to Linux and *BSDs - they have -

- "fewer crashes"
- "more speed"
- "more security"
- ... and they're more fun.... :-)

Less apps.

"Less apps."

You are right, I guess those virus and spyware writers had better get busy.

.. and games now I think about it.

Oh, and drivers. I forgot about the drivers.

They arn't settling for less. Linux runs Linux, MS-DOS and Win32 applications natively. Wine is an API not an emulator. Mono and it's new C#/VB compilers will bring more .NET apps to *nix, Java is gaining first class support, Web 2.0 will open the doors to cross-platform web applications.

Even if Linux sucked in every way imaginable, it would still be a haven for all the Microsoft haters in the world.

I personally don't hate Microsoft and use Windows often (Linux/BSD more and more) but there are many people who do and refuse to use any MS products outside their workplace.

Edited 2007-03-12 21:11

Yeah, people who value their personal data.