Windows Vista 7-8 months into VISTA...was/is it worth it???

Hey all,

I got Vista Ultimate fairly shortly after its release date. I paid my upgrade fee of $259 PLUS tax, as I had just purchased another Thinkpad laptop, which has a valid XP COA on the bottom, so I've paid for two versions of Windows this year.

I find Vista "pretty cool ". It boots up significantly slower than XP. When Vista locks up, it REALLY looks up sometimes. And going all the way to the "Ultimate Version "...I don't know. It works. I'm annoyed at the boot-up time as I stated.

But what say YOU, everyone???

 

I've had Vista installed for a couple of months now and I'm not really impressed with anything other than the 'pretty' graphics.

I have not had any major problems, save one with Windows Mail which I finally found a fix for.

But I have not and will not recommend to anyone who asks to upgrade. XP will be supported for several years to come and it has most of its bugs worked out, finally.

Vista was released too soon IMHO. Far too many glitches and based on what I have read, this OS release was not quite as bad as XP, tho I wasn't really active then.

Nice article I have posted in my forum, I'll copy it here:
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/vista/broken_windows.html

Some good points in the commentary too.

 

I jumped into Vista as soon as it was released, and since then I have had only one major problem, caused by trying to install Zone Alarm Security Suite. This forced me to format and re-install Vista last week.
This compares very favourably with XP's release problems for me. In the first year of XP usage I had to re-install the OS four times, but Vista has yet to blue screen me! On installation Vista detected all my hardware except the graphics card, but nVidia had a Vista compatible driver available which solved the problem. The re-install greatly reduced my boot-up time, I don't know why, but it is currently at about 65 seconds to a working desktop and network connection, and the shut-down is much faster than XP ever was.
To sum up - Vista for me is much more stable than XP, boots as fast, shuts down faster, and is requiring fewer updates or hot fixes.
Maybe I'm just lucky, but it seems to me that most of the problems that people are experiencing with Vista are being caused by third party applications or hardware drivers, but there are lots of users who prefer to blame Microsoft for all their problems!

Roger

 

I am, I've not made any changes to the system what-so-ever since installing Vista.

I had decided I was gonna upgrade my vid card but have not gotten around to it yet. That's the weak link for me.

 

Hi Christer,

Yes, exactly the same hardware, in fact XP is still on the machine as dual boot.

Roger

 

Ok, that's about the response I I thought I would get. I think, I'm going to re-install it from scratch. I mean it works great when it does work, but XP never "locks up" on me, and granted I throw 10 things at either OS because I'm in IT, but XP has outperformed Vista in that dept. With Vista, I always think, "Alright, it's STILL booting up, so let me not launch this app.. ), which I have and will again on my XP install in a heartbeat I run a dual-OS system.

Any suggestions? I haven't optimized anything, tweaked anything, but then again, I don't have on XP either, so I am totally comparing apples to apples. I do the very same thing on whatever OS I'm on at the time. I'm trying to distance myself from XP, but then sometimes, when I'm in a rush, for example, I know I can do something quick on XP, when Vista would still be booting up.

 

Hey Christer, and everyone else who responded,

Yes, re-installing will force me to re-install XP as well. I don't really care, as I haven't used XP much anymore with the exception of anything that didn't work, or didn't work *as well* on Vista.

And yes, everything is happening on ONE laptop.

By the way, my Vista partition is a *logical* one. Should I make it delete the partition, and re-create it as a *primary* when I do the "start from scratch" idea??

Thanks guys!

 

Hi All,

My Vista installation was from an upgrade CD, clean installed in a prepared partition but not activated, then upgraded from within itself, leaving XP in its own partition. The XP was detected by Vista and added to the boot menu.
Just a word of warning Crunchdude, on my test machine and playing with the same layout of OS's, during a trial image restore, using True Image, I made the mistake of restoring the Vista image into a 'Logical' partition, and it wouldn't boot from Vista. XP in a 'Primary' partition was OK and bootable.
I don't know if that is a general rule or not!

Roger

 

Read this about Vista SP1...
http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=41917

 

Hey Roger,

So if I do decide to re-install Vista from scratch, and will likely have to call in again to activate it. Are you saying I should just delete the partition (extended, NOT primary) and create a new one, that is PRIMARY??? What exactly is the difference? My Vista boots fine as Vista's boot manager pretty much takes over anyway. TWO primary partitions, ONE (laptop) hard drive.

THAT's what I'd like to know. Thanks everyone and merci and au revoir to Roger.

 

So nobody else? lol...I turned off Aero, which was one reason I bought the Ultimate version. LOL...Now I have to turn it off, so it'll be faster, even though my recently purchased Core Duo T60p is not only high-end and upgraded to 2GB of RAM and sports a 256MB FireGL video card, but it also has the Windows XP sticker that says "Vista Capable "...Pretty sad, no? ????????

 

That was VERY well said. I enjoyed that statement. I LOVE Vista. I just don't want a slower machine on my hands. Maybe I should re-install it, too, I even enjoy installing OS's lol...

 

I don't think it was worth it. I got mine 3 days before the release because newegg sent it out too soon. I botched the install and it ate up 1 TB of my files, but that was my fault.

Otherwise Vista has just been a pain. Trying to find the rightdrivers and adhere to a new OS is annoying.

 

this thread made me think of a good question. my laptop came with vista home basic - however no installation disc, but it does have the product key on the bottom. it did come with a "windows anytime upgrade" cd, but thats not vista. what the heck happens if i want to reformat? technically ive already bought Vista home basic with the laptop.

 

Another 2 cents:
Have Vista Home premium on two boxes, one running XP home as dual boot and other triple booting 2K, XP Pro x64 and Vista Home Premium, x32 onthe dual boot and x64 on the triple. Being able to compare programs (= OSs) on the same machine is something.

Have found the vista footprint is about 3X that of XP and its speed is noticably slower with all the fancy graphics, so I use classic theme for working and then it's speed is conperable to that of XP, just barely (i.e. satisfactory).

Getting used to UAC and all the mousing required, but occasionally turn it off, esp. for work offline, which is easy to do wirn zonealarm using the internet lock feature on the x32, or on the 64 machime in control panel, Network..., manage conn..., rt-clk the conn..., and disable. A bit of nuicance but not difficult when you get used to it. More often, I just rt-clk to run things as admin and just remain online, since security is superb on all machines using the programs suggested by Tmerc, Geri, and Dave et al.

ps - The 64 bit box is my 2 yr. old home buil a8V 939 with an AMD opteron 1.8Ghz dual core replacing the old ath 64 3800+, and a new nvidea AGP with 256. None of the drivers were vista ready, but the MS drivers that came with vista worked fine, so have no driver problems. Each box has 1GB RAM, the x64 with dual channel DRAM (64 bit wide bus) and neither box shows any need for more RAM, but I'm not a gamer.

 

On my virtual machine (I'm running vista ultimate, I got it for free but its a legal copy as a gift).

I really don't see much difference.

On one side, you have the really tight security, and on the other a cool graphics "engine" (used loosely). I really don't know if it was worth the $200-300 (I didn't pay this) and the slower cpu usage (for people with not great hardware).

 

My husband & I upgraded our hardware a couple of months ago & much to the cries of horror from my husband I decided to make the jump to Vista Home Premium, while he kept XP on his system.

I must say, to date I love it. I am having some issues with UAC and do often work with it disabled. That is a bit of a downer. I am a pretty interface, bells & whistles kinds of person so for me the change has been pleasing. Weird thing is that though my husband & I have the exact same hardware on each of our systems, mine seems to be running faster & more reliably than his, under XP. Not really what either of us expected. Not sure if that is because he is using a different antivirus/firewall package than I am, or if Vista just runs well on the hardware I've got. So there you go... if someone asked me whether to make the jump, I'd say that if they love new technology & get all a quiver about getting their hands on some new software, I'd say "yeah give it it go ". On the other hand for those who like to play it safe & don't really enjoy taking on a little learning curve, I'd recommend they stay where they are at.