Windows Vista Myth Busting

In My Humble Opinion
1

So how is everyone liking Windows Vista? Do I sound like a sales-person? In fact, I am a guy who is thinking about buying a notebook computer from New Egg. I have heard that Windows Vista will not run a lot of programs that people have. Consequently, people have returned many of their new computer purchases because they cannot afford to purchase all-new software for the Windows Vista machines. Having poked around on the Windows Vista web-site and finding no-mention of compatibility or lack there-of, can anyone tell me if they have experienced any of this first-hand?

I run AutoCAD 2000 a lot. One of the reasons I am buying this computer is so I can do some CAD work whenever/wherever I want to. I also have a copy of Adobe Acrobat 7.0. Both programs I would like to install on my new computer. I am not even going to buy the thing though, if I have to go out and purchase anew either of these programs just for Windows Vista.

I would really like to know if there are any other problems associated with Windows Vista that are not advertised. It seems as if there are many people out there who are a little less-than-impressed with the software’s performance at this time.

Ok thats about all. Any information is always appreciated.

P.S. has this issue been addressed earlier on the StraightDope? It seems like I remember, but my search doesn’t turn anything up.

Ok now that is really all. Thanks people.

Ficer67

2

I’m a sys admin at a super computer institute, and we won’t put Vista on any machines because there are too many driver issues and to a lesser extent, software incompatibilities with some of the dozens of scientific softwares we use. Generally, Microsoft OSs, in my experience, take about two years or more to work the bugs out.

3

<mod>

This is asking for opinion.

Moved to IMHO.

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<not-a-mod>

Can’t stand Vista - trouble finding my way around and can’t seem to integrate it into my home XP network. Can’t even get the damn thing to share a printer with the XP machine.

Stay far away until at least Service Pack 2 comes out.

</not-a-mod>

4

The truly perplexing thing, is that all of the computers come with Windows Vista already installed. Companies may have extra Windows XP licenses lying around. I only have the one license that my desk top computer came with.

5

I’m IT, and I won’t purchase any new systems with Vista. Having said that, I just bought two laptops for one of our after-school programs on the cheap, as they’ll take some abuse and didn’t want to spend too much on them. They came with Vista.

I won’t purchase any new systems with Vista.

Sure, it’s pretty (but my Mac’s been pretty for much longer). It took me 45 mins on each machine just to get to the place I could install the software I wanted, after setup, and changing settings (and finding where those settings were, as many things have been re-named/moved), and deleting all the friggin’ bloatware. Removing some programs required me to confirm that I wanted to do what I was telling it to do five times. Five times!

“Are you sure?” Click - yes. “No, no - really sure?” Click - yes.

Ye gods!

And then, while playing some games (before I turned them over to my employees), 3 times the games quit so that Vista could tell me something very vital about installing upgrades or the importance of flossing or some such (and yes - right out of the box, 20 or more patches and security fixes).

FYI - MS Office XP works fine on Vista. That’s the only old program I tried.

Good luck, Ficer

6

I’ve been looking at Tiger Direct and I think that you can still get some laptops with XP.

7

Dell still sells with XP as does Tigerdirect and several other online outfits.

So far Vista stinks. Worst new Op System Ever!

No really, I hate it. We are staying on XP at work and considering Ubuntu for the future.

For the first time in my life, I am wondering about Macs.

Jim

8

I bought a Mac.

Seriously, my old computer fried, and it was time to get a new one, just about the time that Vista was released. I’d heard enough about driver incompatibilities and onerous DRM that I was reluctant to buy a Vista machine, so I waited the extra two months to save up enough money to buy an Intel-based Mac with Mac OS 10.4.something (was 10.4.8, is now .10).

But I can still run much of my old Windows software under Codeweavers Crossover (a commercialised version of the WINE compatibility later), and if I need to, I can install Windows on a separate partition and either dual-boot it or use it in the Parallels virtual machine.

9

I’m a Mac person with only incidental experience with Windows, but I suspect it will get better. I would not want Vista now but in '09? With the 18 GHz quad-core laptops coming out and the blisteringly fast graphics cards, I suspect it will be a no-brainer to go with Vista instead of XP by then.

Hey, at least they seem to be making a serious attempt to pave over the potholes that have been a part of Windows insecurity for way too long. Give 'em credit for that.

Too bad so much of the overhead is glam flash in the GUI. I bet if I polled Windows users they’d just as soon have the Windows95 GUI if they could have a better kernel, reliable security, and modern state-of-the-art protocol stacks and API support. Right?

10

So if I go buy a new computer tomorrow, as I am planning to, should I avoid buying one that comes with Vista?

11

I can not believe a Mac user wrote that. Without a trace of irony. :wink:

Vista is fine, if annoying until you turn off some of the security. I’ve been using it for months, no problems. Just having some of the security holes plugged is worth any inconvenience, and its got some very nice features in the desktop that I like. I still use XP as well, and don’t see Vista as a “must have” upgrade by any means, but its not really all that different from XP in practice.

12

Well, the software we write is apparently incompatible with Vista. We’ll get it fixed eventually, but it’s taking a while 'cause our supposed-to-be-Vista-test-machine had to have 2003 installed 'cause our supplier couldn’t get Vista installed on the supposedly 100% “Vista-ready” hardware. :rolleyes:

13

The thing is, I can and do run Mac OS X 10.3 on a G3 (B&W) machine with only a very modest performance hit. This is an almost 10 year old machine, and it runs this “flashy” operating system without hiccuping. You can’t even run Vista on a machine that had bleeding edge performance 3 years ago.

If Vista is “not all that different from XP in practice,” what in the hell good is it at all? Microsoft seems to have sold the world–or at least, PC integrators–on the notion that New Mediocre is better than Old Mediocre.

Stranger

14

Nonsense. I’m running Vista on a 3-year-old machine in my office.

15

I wonder how many of the poor reviews of Vista are done by people who have actually used it for an extended period of time. I’d surmise that it’s similar in proportion to OSX.

If I were IT, I wouldn’t be thrilled with adopting a new system with no benefit to myself, either.

16

I’m a software and network consultant, and recently added two new laptops with Vista to a network running boxes with XP, 2000, and 2000 server. I got one kind of by accident, and decided to use it a test, and then one of the owners specifically requested a new laptop with Vista. Since the first one had worked pretty well, I went ahead with the second.

Photoshop 7 definitely runs under Vista, I’ve installed it on both laptops with no problem. I don’t know about AutoCad 2000, haven’t tried it.

I’ve had fair luck with older programs under Vista, but not 100%. Most of Office 2000 worked ok, but I had some problems with Outlook 2000. I’ve got a 5250 Terminal Emulation program that runs over TCP/IP that we use quite a bit that was written for Windows 98, and it runs with no problem. But Quark 6.0 installs but won’t run.

All in all, I’d say probably 90% of the stuff written for XP that I’ve tried runs with no problems, programs older than that are chancy.

Installing peripherals actually seem better under Vista, especially the USB stuff. But again older hardware may not have drivers available, or the XP drivers work but are flakey. I tried a USB to parallel port adapter to hook an older ink jet printer up to a laptop, and it works mostly, but quits working every couple of days for no apparent reason. But for the stuff I’ve tried that says it has a Vista driver (or Vista Certified as many seem to be marked) I’ve had very quick and easy installations.

Vista is memory hungry, don’t even try it with less than a gig, preferably two. It runs on 512 meg, but it’s sloooooooow.

The warnings when you try to do anything related to system config or setup are a pain, but they don’t affect my users much, they never try to do those things on their own. And I think it could be a positive thing for security, but that really remains to be seen IMHO.

All in all, especially after the horror stories I’d heard, I was pleasantly surprised with Vista.

17

Me too. I’m in no rush to move to Vista and indeed may switch to Linux when XP becomes untenable, and I’m not impressed by the attempt to ram Vista down our throats by having it the default OS on new laptops.

But that said, we’ve had a couple of el cheapo laptops in with Vista on them, and they run very smoothly [ETA they do have 2GB RAM]. All our standard apps run without a hitch. I was expecting to have loads of problems, but no.

18

Razorette bought a new Dell laptop with Vista on it, ended up sending it back because she spent as much time trying to download new drivers for it as she did installing her software in the first place. One key program didn’t even have a Vista update yet. If you can get a store to sell you a new laptop with XP on it, do that, by all means.

By the way, Vista’s biggest shortcomings are advertised – in Apple’s Mac commercials.

19

I have been running Vista for about 6 months now and although I liked it at first, Ihave to say I am severely unimpressed with it.
It looks very, very pretty but it is very, very slow in comparison to XP.
It takes a lot of getting used to before you know how to get around in Vista.
And it isn’t safer at all as far as I can tell : I have already had pop-ups appearing with all security settings set as Vista wants them.
I have had my browser taken over by scripts which redirect you all over the place and try to install all kinds of MalWare.

I am trying to find a cheap license for Windows XP so I can roll back because Vista doesn’t add anything and just makes your system much, much slower.

20

Heh. Well, I would’ve made exactly the same point (and DID) back when OSX first came out. Minus the glitz, OSX would’ve run just fine on PPC 603 based computers. With it, it was intolerably slow and sludgy even on G4s. (OS X got faster over time, but without the GUI flashy stuff even 10.0 might have run decently). And I don’t care for Aqua so I’ve got OS X skinned to look and feel like OS 9. OS 9 with preemptive multitasking, protected memory, a journaling file system, excellent stacks and APIs, etc etc, to be sure, but no Genie effects or Docks for me.