Microsoft Vista Users Only Please: How do you like it so far?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’ve also had it since the day it came out- new computer. I have experienced some major problems with peripherals- everything has to have a driver downloaded, IME. If I hook up my webcam then my sound doesn’t work, and it only took me a month and shipping it off to the service center where they couldn’t find anything wrong with it (no webcam then), and a system recovery to figure it out why I didn’t have sound. Can’t use my brand new Lexmark all-in-one because it needs a driver- have tried many times to download it but it gets stuck in the middle and won’t finish, except now I can’t even get the download to start at all. My SIMS game keeps crashing, too.

I do like the appearance, it is pretty, but now I wish I would’ve gotten XP.

22

I bought my computer right as Vista started becoming the standard for a new laptop. It isn’t bad. I don’t think it compares to the Mac I looked at, but at half the price it does great. Given, I hardly use it for more than internet, producing music (on an amateur level only), and basic things like schoolwork and whatnot.

I have found a few things, such as the sidebar, that are more trouble than they are worth. I like it, but it takes so damn long to load other stuff on startup that it’s not worth it.

Brendon Small

23

The Xi super AutoCAD workstation I just got at work is running both XP and Vista. We had to get it with XP because some of the software we use, such as Maptech (at least the version we have) will not work with Vista an they are not about to fork out money to buy a compatible version.

I hate that I have to authorize just about every application to open- aaaaaarrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh!! :mad:

I have only been using this computer for 2 days… and I am not impressed with Vista. So far, I find that Vista is mostly eye candy that asks too many questions… sort of like a really dumb blonde.

24

I have been using it a couple of weeks and haven’t had to authorize anything. Follow that link I posted.

25

Have you USED Mac OS? If you have a program that installs 50 sub-installers, Mac OS asks once for your password, and installs everything. Vista will ask if it’s OK 50 times.

Mac OS won’t ask about every script-enabled web site you visit, every file you download, every executable you launch for the first time (and every subsequent time for some, who knows why?), every driver you install, every network connection you make, or completely forbid you from installing an unsigned driver AT ALL–permission or no (this last quirk is a 64-bit specialty for Vista).

I agree that the features are similar in concept between the platforms, but the implementation on Vista is horribly, horribly broken. The UAC comes up so often it conditions you to always click “Allow” without even thinking about it. Annoyance + conditioned to not use it = worse than nothing at all: especially since nearly everyone who figures out how to do it turns it off.

26

I hate it. MSIE crashes a few times a day. For the longest time it would usually not wake up. I turned off hibernate, standby, et al except for the screen saver, but it would still go to sleep and usually not wake up. I haven’t had the problem lately, because, for some reason, the screensaver doesn’t even start up. I made no changes; this just started on its own.

My car radio can play a CD with MP3’s, but not one made on this PC using Windows Explorer (because Nero doesn’t work.)

I have 2 monitors, and occasionally after it does manage to wake up, the cursor will be invisible on one screen.

Sometimes, after a while, things will just quit working, and you’ll have to reboot. Right-click not working is a common one.

I bought a wireless MS keyboard and mouse. The CD that came with it wouldn’t work with Vista. After I found, downloaded and installed the drivers for it, I can’t wheel click, because the software has something assigned to it, and you can change it to about anything you want to… except apparently for “wheel click”. So I have to right-click and click “open in a new tab”.

The sidebar randomly comes and goes.

Starcraft (1998) plays very jerkily unless I don’t have anything else running. I haven’t been able to connect to Battle.net with it or Diablo II.

Since this PC didn’t come with a Vista CD, just an option to burn a recovery DVD, I don’t know how to dualboot.

All in all, it’s a bloated piece of shit.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

27

We recently got two new laptops for one of our salesmen and one of our managers, and they came with Vista (kind of an experiment on my part, I figured I could always go back to XP if it didn’t work out).

And so far, I’m pleasantly surprised, and both users are happy. More details below for anyone who wants to see the longer version.

Vista does seem to be somewhat of a hardware hog. But these were new units, and I ordered them with more than the minimum processor and memory, so the performance is actually pretty good, better than the machines they replaced running the same programs.

And since they were new boxes pre-loaded with Vista, I didn’t have to worry about drivers for existing hardware, so I can’t speak to that issue.

I loaded our standard compliment of programs for the Sales staff: MS Office 2003, Adobe Photoshop 7, a couple of simple programs written in house, nothing special. In both cases, I used the built in facility to transfer files and settings from an older XP box, and in both cases it worked with no problem.

On one laptop, I had to set it up to print to a networked printer (HP LaserJet 4100 with a Jet Direct card). With the XP machines I’ve put on the network, I’ve often had small problems getting XP to see the printers. Nothing serious, I’d have to enter the IP address by hand, or add the port manually. On the Vista box, I started the add printer function, told it there was a printer on the network, it showed me a list of the six different HPs, let me pick the right one, then installed the driver. No problems, went perfectly the first time.

With the other unit, the printer was an old HP Inkjet with only a parallel interface, which the laptop didn’t have. I got a $13 USB to parallel adapter, plugged it into the printer, then into the laptop, and Vista loaded the USB adapter, then saw the printer and loaded that. It did take two tries, however. The first try didn’t install completely, I had to unplug it, remove the device, then plug it back in. Then it installed both devices with no problem.

Although I did the warnings as I installed programs, configured the network, etc., I didn’t think it was all that bad. Users may well get conditioned to always allow changes, I guess time will tell on that.

So far, both users report no problems (with Vista, there were a couple of reports of things that I didn’t get transferred correctly, but I believe that was my error). One user says Vista is ok compared to XP, the other seems to think it’s definitely better than XP. He was able to make it work with his home network connection (wireless connect to a new DSL installation) with no problem, and it still connected the office network correctly.

So although I was very leery going in, as I said above so far I’m pleasantly surprised and cautiously optimistic.

28

optimistic about what?
That you might have succeeded in getting your new computer to do what everybody else in your office has been doing for the past 5 years with no problems?
That you worked hard (it sounds like you put a couple days of work into the configuration, etc)–and in the end you have almost the same thing you had before, but with a few bugs …

Have you seen any actual advantage to Vista?

29

Optimistic that my users will have no serious problems as they continue to get their work done on these boxes, and with which they are happy. This is, after all, what the computers are for.

No problems for 5 years? Have you ever run Windows?

And “Might” have succeeded? Are you taking my service calls?

One system has been in service for about 3 months, the other for a couple of weeks. All apps have been run and tested, network connectivity confirmed, no problems reported. Both units have been out of the office for road trips (one has been out three times I think) and have come back and re-connected to the local network by the users with no problems. At this point I’m (and this may sound familiar to you) cautiously optimistic that things will continue working as well as they have been.

If it takes you a couple of days to load a few programs and set up a network config on a couple of boxes, you’re a little slow to be working in my shop.

I put in about three hours per box, much of that waiting for data transfer from the old boxes. Another hour or so at each user’s desk, but most of that is getting the old box out of the way and re-routing wires to connect to the new box, and that has nothing to do with Vista or any OS.

As I mentioned, it did a better install of the network printer than I’ve seen in the past, it loaded and transferred the files and settings more completely than many of the XP to XP transfers I’ve done, it has better security settings, and according to the users, it looks nicer and they like the way program menu works better.

You seem to have a real problem with someone who has had a good experience with Vista. Chill out, it happens.

30

I’m the surrogate IT person in my family and I had to set up two laptops with Vista over the winter holidays. Even with a fairly good plan of attack going in, (Thanks Black Viper! ) it still took a few hours to get the machines to be usable. Much of the time was spent familiarizing myself with the locations of settings that I was familiar with in XP and <rant> the incredibly annoying insistence of OEMs to set up a windows machine to maximize their profitability through bloatware rather than offer the user a functional machine out of the box.</rant>

The first one, an Acer Celeron 1.6, was truly a black Friday bargain nightmare. Suffice it to say 512MB RAM is not enough to run this OS. Even once optimized, this machine was still WAY too sluggish.

The second machine, a Dell Inspiron, was much better, once optimized, with a full Gig of RAM, but still felt sluggish compared to my 3 yr old XP machine.

To me, based on my very brief but intense experience getting these machines set up, Windows Vista was not worth the investment or memory requirements. But I am primarily a Mac user for personal use and I’ve been used to a functional search tool and beautiful interface for many years. I have already tweaked my XP boxes to have many of the features I want through 3rd party apps (Google Desktop for Spotlight/search, Windows Exposer for Expose, Launchy for Quicksilver) so I can see how Vista might appeal to a more mainstream user that wants more eye candy and functionality, but I would guess that unless the system in question has a fast processor and at least 2GB of RAM, he or she will be disappointed by the performance, at least out of the box. Some of this is due to the (IMHO) ridiculous overhead that Vista commands, e.g., checking thirty times a second to make sure you are not doing anything naughty with copying HD content, and some is due to the typically horrible bloatware and startup programs, not unique to Vista, that OEMs install on every machine.