I just bought a refurbished laptop a few weeks ago, and out of all the other specs that were offered, the one I picked had the ones that best matched my needs. Unfortunately all the laptops that came even close to what I needed had the Vista OS. I figured, can’t be that bad, right?
It is. It really is. I understand it’s a new OS and there are kinks to be worked out, but DUDE! It shouldn’t take a few minutes just to turn on, especially since it’s a new laptop with tons of RAM and HD left. It also shouldn’t be hard to close programs. When you click on the ‘X’ at the top right, that window should close. The computer shouldn’t make bell-like noise, think about it, then close 30 seconds later. When I click on the X, the window better close right away, especially if it’s a safe website I’m looking at.
Vista also doesn’t listen to me when I click on certain buttons. When I click on a button, it means I chose that button, not the one next to it. I can’t tell you how many e-mails that got sent to ‘reply all’ and not just to the person that I want to reply to.
Don’t even get me started on trying to use Photoshop on it. It takes a few minutes, that’s right MINUTES, to open up. And the cursor is slow so you have to move your mouse slowly so the program listens to you.
I never had any of these problems with Windows, even the earliest editions. Sigh. I might have to bite the bullet and buy XP just so I don’t destroy my new laptop.
What are the specs on your machine? I’m running it on a new Dell Lattitude 820, and it runs like a champ. ('Course, it came with 2 gigs of RAM standard…)
Does the machine meet the “recommended” (not “minimum”) specs for Vista? I seem to recall that Microsoft recommends 2 gigs of RAM for use with Vista, but I may be imagining that.
And I just went to Microsoft’s website looking for the requirements for Vista, and couldn’t fond them.
Instead, Microsoft tried to download the Vista Upgrade Advisor onto my PC without asking me and by providing a dialogue box that didn’t describe what software it was installing, and didn’t have a cancel option! Not nice. I killed the dialogue box via the XP task manager. (If the dialogue box wasn’t the Vista Upgrade Manager, it certainly showed up at an oddly-coincidental time: just when I opened the Vista Upgrade Advisor link.)
Funny, I went to microsoft.com and searched on “Vista Requirements” and first on the list was Recommended System Requirements. Nothing tried to “automatically load” on my machine, either. Of course, I use Firefox so if you’re on IE YMMV.
Edit: The advice about “minimum requirements” is good, though. That page recommends 0.5-1GB memory (depending on the Vista edition), whereas I’m hearing on the internet that 2GB is the real minimum. If you’re wanting to run Photoshop, I suspect you’ll want at least 4GB.
I’m currently running Illustrator on my home PC just fine with 1GB memory. But then I’m still running XP. And thanks to the very informative OP (and other things I’ve read just like it), I have no plans to upgrade any time soon.
Heh. My GF just got a brand spankin’ new laptop with Vista last week, and as her pet nerd I’ve been struggling with it a bit. (Most annoying: convincing it to use the ethernet adapter consistently instead of checking to see if a WAN has become available every few minutes. “Nope, still no wireless connection – no internet for you, then. [INTERNET DISCONNECTED.]” Argh.)
The slooooooowness of start-up is a hassle, too - both for the OS and for applications.
Mostly, though – I think it’s just little things that are going to take getting used to. Was driving me nuts that it stopped shutting down differently - turns out that the “power” button on the start menu just gives you the last shutdown option you used, so if you “sleep” once, it becomes the “sleep” button. Press it, it appears, to shut down, close the lid and it wakes up. Fttt.
MSIM was a pain in the ass to get running, because of security incompatibilities with some Acer OEM stuff.
It sure is shiny, though. Personally, if it were mine I’d wipe it and put XP on it, I’m sure it would run along nice and peppy. I’m sure by the time not having Vista starts to become a handicap, it will have become a lot less irritating.
1GB of RAM, 99.7GB of HD (64GB free as of this morning).
Even when I first turned on the laptop, it was running really slowly and would crash at times. My friend also got a new laptop with Vista and he’s also having problems. In fact, the first time he turned on his brand new laptop, Vista crashed.
Nope, mine didn’t return from sleep at times. If I let it sit for like 30 minutes with no battery in then, sometimes, it would come back from sleep. There was an issue with the USB driver that made it hang up on start up. For some reason WMP would play video in fast motion. Plus it was slower than my previous laptop despite far greater resources. Ended up returning it.
Me too. My real computer is off being fixed for the next month or so. The loaner they gave me has Vista. Of course I don’t know how much of the aggravation is from Vista and how much is from ths crappy HP laptop.
Wow, based on this and other comments I’ve read about Vista, I don’t have to worry about upgrading to it anytime soon. I’m still using Windows 2000 Pro. I have XP Pro still in the shrink-wrap, so I guess I’ll be good for awhile. That’ll give them time to either work out the problems with Vista, or come up with something even worse.
Being the proud owner of a dozen or three machines that easily meet the “recommended” specs for Vista (and I’m an MSDN member, so I get most Microsoft products free as long as they are used in accordance with the prophecy) I thought I’d throw Vista on a machine I intended to use for running tests and terminal connections and remote desktop stuff, just to check it out. I lasted almost a full half hour before I wiped that sucker and tossed '03 Enterprise on it. I can’t imagine voluntarily using Vista, ever. For anything. If/when I get a new machine at home, I’ll kill Vista and load XP.
Good lord above I hate Vista, for all the reasons listed above as well as for a thousand little things that I’ve forgotten since my 30 minute encounter with it.
My students with new computers don’t know how to use Vista. When they manage, they send me zipped files that can’t be opened on any machine accessible to me. At the other college where I teach, a bunch of student have e-mailed me but I haven’t received their e-mails. What their e-mails have in common is Vista.
I suspect 1 GB of RAM is too little. I had a loaner with .5GB of RAM, and that really sucked. Now I have my XP laptop back, I can type and not go out for coffee before the keystrokes show up on the screen.
It definitely convinced me to wait a year at least to get Vista.