I held back on getting a new computer because I feel (right or wrong) when new OS come out it pays to wait a bit and see if there are any unseen bugs in the new software.
What is the general opinion on Vista, are the bugs (if any) worked out. Outside of being a memory hog, I haven’t read too much about it.
Anything to watch out for?
Ever considered a Mac?
I got one almost 2 years ago, just to play with (surplus from work) and I was quickly impressed.
I got my first brand-new iMac 3 weeks ago and it’s hands-down the best computer I’ve ever owned. I’ve completely made the switch now and only hang on to my Windows PC for connecting to my VPN over weekends.
Once I leave this job, I’ll probably shut it down and move it into a closet somewhere. I’m a full-time Mac user now.
Not great, but I imagine it’s exaggerated a bit. Microsoft did start offering XP again to manufacturers, though. That’s not a good sign.
I believe the UK version of CNet.com rated Vista in their top ten list of of all time technological failures.
Also, there are reports the soon to be released XP service pack 3 makes XP run circles around Vista in terms of speed, performance and ease of use.
If you really want to get a Windows PC, forget Vista and stick with XP.
Take a look at this article. . XP, with a beta of SP 3, has twice the performance of Vista with a beta of SP 1 - which is just a tiny bit faster than the original Vista. Now, the tests were run with 1 GB of memory.
By the way, sales of Vista in stores is 59.7% below sales of XP at the same point after its release, and I’d think there are more machines out there now. So, I’m not sure that bugs are the issue, but crappy performance certainly is.
My wife’s laptop came with it. It regularly failed to recognize her dvd drive, although I don’t think this has happened since I tweaked the registry. It also failed to recognize a new HP external hard drive, so she had to send that back and get an Iomega.
She has had no problems with her software that I’m aware of. She doesn’t run all that much, though, just PhotoShop, Dreamweaver, MS Office, and some games.
Personally, I’m staying with XP. If I were in a position where I’d be forced to use Vista on a PC, I’d get a Mac. I might waver in that if SP1 addresses Vista’s many technical problems. However, I am quite opposed to the low-level DRM support, so I don’t know.
Neither my husband nor I have had any issues with Vista. He installed it on his desktop when he did some other upgrades and it came loaded on my sweet new gaming laptop.
The only issue I’ve had with Vista has turned out to be more of a conflict between a game I’d installed and Daemon tools (hint, they didn’t like each other) which made my DVD drive disappear for a while.
But now it’s back. Everything’s working fine. Performance wise I notice no difference from my old XP box. I’ve installed a canon printer with no problems whatsoever, it happily takes my various plug-n-play devices and I haven’t had any other conflicts or crashes since.
I upgraded my laptop at work (I’m an Admin, so I have the luxury to do so if I wish) and noticed a slight *increase *in performance compared to XP.
Rhiannon8404’s new laptop came loaded with Vista. We have had no problems with either machine.
Still, I haven’t yet upgraded our main home PC…
Vista for Christmas?
That’s about like getting a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking!
Vista doesn’t seem to have anything better than XP except for the aero interface and DirectX 10. It basically does everything XP does but looks a little better doing it. That alone doesn’t seem to justify the pain of learning a new OS and finding compatible hardware and drivers.
The only thing I can think of anyone wanting Vista for over XP is that it has DirectX 10.
Is there anything else Vista can do that XP can’t?
I would not suggest upgrading to Vista if you have XP and are happy with it.
I would suggest that if you’re buying a new box and it comes with Vista standard, it’s a perfectly serviceable system to have installed as part of the package. This may be different over there but at the time I was buying my new PC (only about three months ago) it actually cost more to get them to install XP rather than Vista. That’s how I ended up with it, and as I said it’s been pretty much fine since then.
Oh NO, for the love of god, DON’T install Vista. Crappiest OS from MS since Windows ME. I used it for a while, but in the end I just couldn’t take it, and switched back to XP.
Vista is slow, has compability issues, and while it does look good, all that eye-candy really does not make it any easier to use.
I was in the “Vista is fine. Don’t worry, it’ll be OK” camp, not very long ago.
And then two people I know had horrid problems with it, and had to go back to XP. Both problems were networking issues that IT couldn’t solve. No performance complaints, though, but these were both laptops, so who expects blazing performance on a laptop? In my personal experience, Vista performance was OK, but the machines I use (I’m a developer) are insanely fast, so it may be I didn’t notice performance issues that others might.
That story, and many others, are all citing a benchmark made by Devil Mountain Software. The details, methods, and specific results are not cited, other than that it was a “Office productivity test suite”. I can’t find a source for the actual study, nor for Devil Mountain Software, aside from this oblique mention on a website they supposedly set up:
I’m certainly not calling bullshit, (especially because the stories about Devil Mountain’s benchmark seem to have overwhelmed almost everything else googable about Devil Mountain), but I’d like to see the actual performance article or blog entry, not stories about (nor stories about stories about) that study.
OK, I found the Devil Mountain blog, here. Still reading, I’m in a meeting. 
I’ve been using vista on both my main gaming PC and my home theater PC, as well as my PC at work since just about the day it came out. If it was february I’d tell you to wait 10 months. But it’s almost december and the Os is perfectly functional.
The only problems I’m having right now is the spastic nature of the sleep command on my theater PC, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, though I’m thinking it might be some hardware device waking it up. I have to do some checking.
Other than that it’s all good. Office 2007 runs just fine, my games perform either slightly slower (like 1-2 fps) or the same to slightly faster (2-8 fps) as they did on my xp rig (though this may be the function of newer video drivers).
If you’re getting a new PC I’d say don’t worry about it and get Vista.
My caveats came from reading the comments on the CNet story. I personally would be interested in the results with 4 G of memory in both cases. I actually deleted a little snarky comment about anyone getting Vista for Christmas should also ask for a bunch more memory.
I think any company selling an OS should make sure it performs somewhat reasonably with a minimal configuration. Not blazing speed, sure. I had a loaner laptop with Vista and half a gig of memory, and it was the slowest response I’ve ever had, and I’ve worked on PDP-11s. It’s true that no one in their right mind would buy a config like that, but they were being sold.
There appears to be an update to the article on CNet, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.
OK, on the Devil Mountain stuff: they seem to be comparing Office 2007 on Vista vs Office XP on XP. Which seems very Apples to Oranges to me – are they testing Office or the OS? They’re testing both, with no commonality, which doesn’t seem like a good methodology to me. So the headline might just as easily be “Office 2007 50% slower than Office XP”, which it well could be, and have nothing to do with Vista.
Hmm, I know one of the engineering managers for Office, maybe I’ll see what his take is on this.