Is it just me, or is Vista, literally, a waste of space?
-
I am running Vista on my laptop as an experiment, and there are one or two nice touches but nothing, IMO, to justify all the hype, sluggish performance, gigantic memory requirements and general air of slight instability. My question is this: WHY DO WE NEED A NEW OS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH WINDOWS XP? I feel sorry for people buying a new computer who have Vista rammed down their throats. In my case, the answer is simple enough: just say no. And I'd like to see M$ be big enough to admit their mistake and to put their efforts into making sure that XP moves with the times. Not much chance of that happening, though. So, get out your flamethrowers one and all and tell me I'm wrong. PS: Anyone got a Vista driver for my EGA card? (remember those?) Just kidding :)
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
Well, for me Vista has a killer feature: UAC Previously, I used a limited user account under XP, and compared to that, UAC is a huge improvement. Instead of getting a cryptic error message that forces me to abort an installation and retry with "Run as">"Administrator">Enter password>OK, I simply get asked to enter the administrator password. But it's definitely bloated (as all MS software is) - don't install Vista if you have less than 2 GB RAM. But this isn't something new - all Windows versions are extremely bloated. XP needs 200 MB RAM, and the low-end PCs it was initially sold on had only 256 MB RAM. You'll see that Vista will run quite nicely on the low-end machines that will be sold in 2013.
-
I am running Vista on my laptop as an experiment, and there are one or two nice touches but nothing, IMO, to justify all the hype, sluggish performance, gigantic memory requirements and general air of slight instability. My question is this: WHY DO WE NEED A NEW OS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH WINDOWS XP? I feel sorry for people buying a new computer who have Vista rammed down their throats. In my case, the answer is simple enough: just say no. And I'd like to see M$ be big enough to admit their mistake and to put their efforts into making sure that XP moves with the times. Not much chance of that happening, though. So, get out your flamethrowers one and all and tell me I'm wrong. PS: Anyone got a Vista driver for my EGA card? (remember those?) Just kidding :)
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft) wrote:
I am running Vista on my laptop as an experiment,
That's your problem right there. Everyone who posts here how much they hate Vista inevitably seems to be running it as a "test" on some old hardware it was never designed for in the first place. Most of the supporters of it seem to have bought it with a brand new system that is powerful enough to run it. No offence but making a comparison that way is as looney as anything I've ever seen posted in this message board. We're supposed to be software professionals, people who actually *know* a thing or two. What you're doing is the equivalent of hitching a brand new motor home to a model T ford and bitching that the motorhome is crap.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
-
I am running Vista on my laptop as an experiment, and there are one or two nice touches but nothing, IMO, to justify all the hype, sluggish performance, gigantic memory requirements and general air of slight instability. My question is this: WHY DO WE NEED A NEW OS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH WINDOWS XP? I feel sorry for people buying a new computer who have Vista rammed down their throats. In my case, the answer is simple enough: just say no. And I'd like to see M$ be big enough to admit their mistake and to put their efforts into making sure that XP moves with the times. Not much chance of that happening, though. So, get out your flamethrowers one and all and tell me I'm wrong. PS: Anyone got a Vista driver for my EGA card? (remember those?) Just kidding :)
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
I have it installed (with the SP1 beta) on an Acer Aspire 5620 (pretty average spec laptop) and also have a dual boot to XP SP2 on the same emachine - and I find Vista to be vastly better. In particular the search doohicky on the start bar is just brilliant - I very rarely go trawling through explorer to find things any more.
'--8<------------------------ Ex Datis: Duncan Jones Merrion Computing Ltd
-
Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft) wrote:
I am running Vista on my laptop as an experiment,
That's your problem right there. Everyone who posts here how much they hate Vista inevitably seems to be running it as a "test" on some old hardware it was never designed for in the first place. Most of the supporters of it seem to have bought it with a brand new system that is powerful enough to run it. No offence but making a comparison that way is as looney as anything I've ever seen posted in this message board. We're supposed to be software professionals, people who actually *know* a thing or two. What you're doing is the equivalent of hitching a brand new motor home to a model T ford and bitching that the motorhome is crap.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
John C wrote:
Everyone who posts here how much they hate Vista inevitably seems to be running it as a "test" on some old hardware it was never designed for in the first place. Most of the supporters of it seem to have bought it with a brand new system that is powerful enough to run it.
Just to buck the trend I'm running Vista happily on my PC that was already 2 years old at the point I upgraded it (It is now coming up to 3 years old). I am considering adding some RAM, but that is only because I like running lots of memory hungry programs while having a VPC running (which I'm doing a lot at the moment as I'm spending a lot of time looking at SQL Server 2008)
Upcoming FREE developer events: * Developer Day Scotland My website | blog
-
I am running Vista on my laptop as an experiment, and there are one or two nice touches but nothing, IMO, to justify all the hype, sluggish performance, gigantic memory requirements and general air of slight instability. My question is this: WHY DO WE NEED A NEW OS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH WINDOWS XP? I feel sorry for people buying a new computer who have Vista rammed down their throats. In my case, the answer is simple enough: just say no. And I'd like to see M$ be big enough to admit their mistake and to put their efforts into making sure that XP moves with the times. Not much chance of that happening, though. So, get out your flamethrowers one and all and tell me I'm wrong. PS: Anyone got a Vista driver for my EGA card? (remember those?) Just kidding :)
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft) wrote:
WHY DO WE NEED A NEW OS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH WINDOWS XP?
I agree here, i have been using Windows XP for over 3 years now. I find it a rather amazing OS considering it is MS software. Compared to ealier MS Operating Systems, XP is very good indeed. I do believe MS bought out Vista to early, at the early stages of sale, people were scared to buy it after hearing stories of bugs in it and errors. Maybe MS should have used Vista alot themselves before realising it to the public. Well, thats what i think, but with very little use of Vista i can't say much, although my brother uses it on his 1GB speed Laptop.
Benjamin Dodd
-
Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft) wrote:
I am running Vista on my laptop as an experiment,
That's your problem right there. Everyone who posts here how much they hate Vista inevitably seems to be running it as a "test" on some old hardware it was never designed for in the first place. Most of the supporters of it seem to have bought it with a brand new system that is powerful enough to run it. No offence but making a comparison that way is as looney as anything I've ever seen posted in this message board. We're supposed to be software professionals, people who actually *know* a thing or two. What you're doing is the equivalent of hitching a brand new motor home to a model T ford and bitching that the motorhome is crap.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
Actually, the laptop in question is 6 months old, but that's not really the point. I saw some benchmarks recently that showed that MS Office runs twice as fast on XP as it does on Vista, That, to me, is not progress. And I know that RAM is cheap but many machines have a 2 GB limit (and all 32 bit machines have a 4GB limit) so requiring the best part of 1GB to even boot is just plain greedy. The benchmarks in question are here: http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/11/windows-xp-sp3-yields-performance-gains.html[^]
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
modified on Saturday, December 08, 2007 3:17:12 PM
-
Well, for me Vista has a killer feature: UAC Previously, I used a limited user account under XP, and compared to that, UAC is a huge improvement. Instead of getting a cryptic error message that forces me to abort an installation and retry with "Run as">"Administrator">Enter password>OK, I simply get asked to enter the administrator password. But it's definitely bloated (as all MS software is) - don't install Vista if you have less than 2 GB RAM. But this isn't something new - all Windows versions are extremely bloated. XP needs 200 MB RAM, and the low-end PCs it was initially sold on had only 256 MB RAM. You'll see that Vista will run quite nicely on the low-end machines that will be sold in 2013.
Daniel Grunwald wrote:
XP needs 200 MB RAM,
Actually XP uses around 120 something on a fresh install on boot. I have ran XP on a Pentium 2 with only 64mb of memory and it ran fine. I was even bold enough to install XP on a Pentium 100mhz with 96mb of ram, it was slow as hell, but I could do my normal internet browsing and email.
Word, write letters and sh*t yo.
-
I am running Vista on my laptop as an experiment, and there are one or two nice touches but nothing, IMO, to justify all the hype, sluggish performance, gigantic memory requirements and general air of slight instability. My question is this: WHY DO WE NEED A NEW OS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH WINDOWS XP? I feel sorry for people buying a new computer who have Vista rammed down their throats. In my case, the answer is simple enough: just say no. And I'd like to see M$ be big enough to admit their mistake and to put their efforts into making sure that XP moves with the times. Not much chance of that happening, though. So, get out your flamethrowers one and all and tell me I'm wrong. PS: Anyone got a Vista driver for my EGA card? (remember those?) Just kidding :)
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
Someday we will have our minds blown by Microsoft Windows 7 or 8 and we will look back on Windows 2000 and XP as if they were Windows 3.1 or something.
Word, write letters and sh*t yo.
-
Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft) wrote:
WHY DO WE NEED A NEW OS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH WINDOWS XP?
I agree here, i have been using Windows XP for over 3 years now. I find it a rather amazing OS considering it is MS software. Compared to ealier MS Operating Systems, XP is very good indeed. I do believe MS bought out Vista to early, at the early stages of sale, people were scared to buy it after hearing stories of bugs in it and errors. Maybe MS should have used Vista alot themselves before realising it to the public. Well, thats what i think, but with very little use of Vista i can't say much, although my brother uses it on his 1GB speed Laptop.
Benjamin Dodd
Benjamin Dodd wrote:
I do believe MS bought out Vista to early
Really? It was 2 years late!
Kevin
-
Benjamin Dodd wrote:
I do believe MS bought out Vista to early
Really? It was 2 years late!
Kevin
Really? I didn't know that. But like was said earlier, there is nothing wrong with XP :). I have just compared my XP memory usage meter to that of mt brothers XP. It turns out, his laptop is using 500MB of RAM with no applications open. While XP was using 100MB of RAM with no applications running. So, Kevin, do u believe Vista has been a success?
Benjamin Dodd
-
I am running Vista on my laptop as an experiment, and there are one or two nice touches but nothing, IMO, to justify all the hype, sluggish performance, gigantic memory requirements and general air of slight instability. My question is this: WHY DO WE NEED A NEW OS? WHAT IS WRONG WITH WINDOWS XP? I feel sorry for people buying a new computer who have Vista rammed down their throats. In my case, the answer is simple enough: just say no. And I'd like to see M$ be big enough to admit their mistake and to put their efforts into making sure that XP moves with the times. Not much chance of that happening, though. So, get out your flamethrowers one and all and tell me I'm wrong. PS: Anyone got a Vista driver for my EGA card? (remember those?) Just kidding :)
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
I'ven seen people at work buy new laptops and desktops with Vista on them. I have also seen Vista crash seriously enough to require a new install on these machines. I have also seen Vista to work perfectly well on machines. For me that is the issue - you just don't know if it's going to blow up in your face or not and that is too much of a risk. As far as I'm concerned Vista is off the books for me until at least SP1 is released. Mind you I remember when SP1 was released for XP it actually bought more bugs with it than the fresh off the tree XP. Anyone remember the compatibility mode issues with XP? Oh it's all too depressing... I think I still have some cold beer in the fridge though :)
You always pass failure on the way to success.
-
Really? I didn't know that. But like was said earlier, there is nothing wrong with XP :). I have just compared my XP memory usage meter to that of mt brothers XP. It turns out, his laptop is using 500MB of RAM with no applications open. While XP was using 100MB of RAM with no applications running. So, Kevin, do u believe Vista has been a success?
Benjamin Dodd
Benjamin Dodd wrote:
But like was said earlier, there is nothing wrong with XP
I agree. I was just pointing out that technically Vista was late. And that is ironic given that most of us, it seems, are happy enough with XP! :)
Benjamin Dodd wrote:
So, Kevin, do u believe Vista has been a success?
No. And I've yet to use it myself. Maybe we'll have to wait for Minwin. http://www.neowin.net/news/main/07/12/03/microsoft-partners-minwin-could-soothe-vista-headaches[^]
Kevin
-
Benjamin Dodd wrote:
But like was said earlier, there is nothing wrong with XP
I agree. I was just pointing out that technically Vista was late. And that is ironic given that most of us, it seems, are happy enough with XP! :)
Benjamin Dodd wrote:
So, Kevin, do u believe Vista has been a success?
No. And I've yet to use it myself. Maybe we'll have to wait for Minwin. http://www.neowin.net/news/main/07/12/03/microsoft-partners-minwin-could-soothe-vista-headaches[^]
Kevin
OK, thanks for the link. Have just read the short paragraph: "In the year that has passed since Microsoft released Windows Vista to business users, the operating system has gained a reputation in the channel as a bloated memory hog that many companies are avoiding like a trip to the dentist". This is true, i heard from college buddies that it uses a lot of RAM. "But Microsoft partners have a more positive opinion of Windows 7, the next generation of Windows that Microsoft expects to ship in the 2010 timeframe. That's because Windows 7 will be based on MinWin, a scaled down version of the Windows core that will also serve as the framework for Windows Server and Windows Media Center". 2010 can't wait. "MinWin's source code base takes up about 25 megabytes on disk, compared to about 4 gigabytes for Vista". 25 MB :o, what does this mean exactly? "Solution providers see this as a sign that Microsoft has learned its lesson from trying to cram too much into the Windows OS, and some feel that Windows 7 will be a roaring success in the market". Didn't the say that about Vista? Information found at http://www.neowin.net/news/main/07/12/03/microsoft-partners-minwin-could-soothe-vista-headaches[^] Any views on this? Will Windows 7 be a success or will Microsoft crash and burn? :)
Benjamin Dodd
-
Actually, the laptop in question is 6 months old, but that's not really the point. I saw some benchmarks recently that showed that MS Office runs twice as fast on XP as it does on Vista, That, to me, is not progress. And I know that RAM is cheap but many machines have a 2 GB limit (and all 32 bit machines have a 4GB limit) so requiring the best part of 1GB to even boot is just plain greedy. The benchmarks in question are here: http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/11/windows-xp-sp3-yields-performance-gains.html[^]
Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk
modified on Saturday, December 08, 2007 3:17:12 PM
I read somewhere that due to their architecture, laptops can only make use of 115MB of their 4th GB. Meaning that the max available memory for any 32bit laptop is 3GB 115MB. I'm tracking this down, I'll edit this with the citation as soon as I find it. --Modified Here are the citations: Clickety 1[^] and the confirmation from MS: MS Confirmation[^]
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook "There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance." Ali ibn Abi Talib "Animadvertistine, ubicumque stes, fumum recta in faciem ferri?"
-
OK, thanks for the link. Have just read the short paragraph: "In the year that has passed since Microsoft released Windows Vista to business users, the operating system has gained a reputation in the channel as a bloated memory hog that many companies are avoiding like a trip to the dentist". This is true, i heard from college buddies that it uses a lot of RAM. "But Microsoft partners have a more positive opinion of Windows 7, the next generation of Windows that Microsoft expects to ship in the 2010 timeframe. That's because Windows 7 will be based on MinWin, a scaled down version of the Windows core that will also serve as the framework for Windows Server and Windows Media Center". 2010 can't wait. "MinWin's source code base takes up about 25 megabytes on disk, compared to about 4 gigabytes for Vista". 25 MB :o, what does this mean exactly? "Solution providers see this as a sign that Microsoft has learned its lesson from trying to cram too much into the Windows OS, and some feel that Windows 7 will be a roaring success in the market". Didn't the say that about Vista? Information found at http://www.neowin.net/news/main/07/12/03/microsoft-partners-minwin-could-soothe-vista-headaches[^] Any views on this? Will Windows 7 be a success or will Microsoft crash and burn? :)
Benjamin Dodd
I expect when it arrives it won't be as lean and mean as they suggest. But it will probably be acknowledged as an improvement on Vista. I'm interested in seeing how small Silverlight 2.0 will be on its release. Basically, they're trying to cram in a substantial part of .NET 3.5 in 4-5 MB.
Kevin
-
I expect when it arrives it won't be as lean and mean as they suggest. But it will probably be acknowledged as an improvement on Vista. I'm interested in seeing how small Silverlight 2.0 will be on its release. Basically, they're trying to cram in a substantial part of .NET 3.5 in 4-5 MB.
Kevin
Kevin McFarlane wrote:
they're trying to cram in a substantial part of .NET 3.5 in 4-5 MB.
OK, hmmm MS on a mission. Will they succeed? Maybe craming this will only making the situation worse :) Well we will have to wait till 2010. Come on Microsoft surprise us :)
Benjamin Dodd
-
Well, for me Vista has a killer feature: UAC Previously, I used a limited user account under XP, and compared to that, UAC is a huge improvement. Instead of getting a cryptic error message that forces me to abort an installation and retry with "Run as">"Administrator">Enter password>OK, I simply get asked to enter the administrator password. But it's definitely bloated (as all MS software is) - don't install Vista if you have less than 2 GB RAM. But this isn't something new - all Windows versions are extremely bloated. XP needs 200 MB RAM, and the low-end PCs it was initially sold on had only 256 MB RAM. You'll see that Vista will run quite nicely on the low-end machines that will be sold in 2013.
Daniel Grunwald wrote:
a killer feature: UAC
Killer...indeed.
:badger:
-
Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft) wrote:
I am running Vista on my laptop as an experiment,
That's your problem right there. Everyone who posts here how much they hate Vista inevitably seems to be running it as a "test" on some old hardware it was never designed for in the first place. Most of the supporters of it seem to have bought it with a brand new system that is powerful enough to run it. No offence but making a comparison that way is as looney as anything I've ever seen posted in this message board. We're supposed to be software professionals, people who actually *know* a thing or two. What you're doing is the equivalent of hitching a brand new motor home to a model T ford and bitching that the motorhome is crap.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
I agree completely, in fact I've installed Vista onto my primary desktop machine and it runs like a dream. In fact almost everything seems faster on Vista than XP. Testament to this fact is that I've got XP installed on another hard-drive which is in the computer and all it requires is a reboot and since I've had Vista I've run XP once to find out if a sound problem I was having was drivers or hardware. Turned out it was hardware. I'm don't know whether this plays any factor but it is Vista x64 which I'm running, I had a few issues to begin with but those were down to driver issues with Vista x64, since those have been sorted it's been wonderful. I still use XP for somethings but run it inside a VM because some programs required for my course flatly refuse to install on Vista x64 and by the sounds of it these VMs are running on higher specced machines than his "host". Specs of machine in question: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0GHz) overclocked at 5% 2GB DDR2-6400 RAM nVidia 8800GTS 320MB Graphics Card (SLI-capable but couldn't afford two) 2*120GB 7,200RPM IDE drives (spares from old machines), one with XP one with Vista. Will probably get rid of the XP one over Christmas 500GB 7200 RPM SATA II drive for data 500GB 7200 RPM External IDE (USB 2.0) for backups & CD images, on most of the time. Machine seems quite happy running Half-Life 2 etc under Vista 64 at high resolutions.
-
OK, thanks for the link. Have just read the short paragraph: "In the year that has passed since Microsoft released Windows Vista to business users, the operating system has gained a reputation in the channel as a bloated memory hog that many companies are avoiding like a trip to the dentist". This is true, i heard from college buddies that it uses a lot of RAM. "But Microsoft partners have a more positive opinion of Windows 7, the next generation of Windows that Microsoft expects to ship in the 2010 timeframe. That's because Windows 7 will be based on MinWin, a scaled down version of the Windows core that will also serve as the framework for Windows Server and Windows Media Center". 2010 can't wait. "MinWin's source code base takes up about 25 megabytes on disk, compared to about 4 gigabytes for Vista". 25 MB :o, what does this mean exactly? "Solution providers see this as a sign that Microsoft has learned its lesson from trying to cram too much into the Windows OS, and some feel that Windows 7 will be a roaring success in the market". Didn't the say that about Vista? Information found at http://www.neowin.net/news/main/07/12/03/microsoft-partners-minwin-could-soothe-vista-headaches[^] Any views on this? Will Windows 7 be a success or will Microsoft crash and burn? :)
Benjamin Dodd
-
I recently bought the wife a laptop that came pre-installed with Vista Home Premium. On boot it was using 650MB of RAM - and with only 768MB total that's a whopping 85% of memory gone just to get started. Even after disabling as much fluff/craplets as possible, I still couldn't get memory usage below 500MB - and it ran like a dog. So I upgraded it to XP SP2 and it feels like a totally different PC (and even with the neat Google Desktop sidebar installed it's only using 200MB on boot - a third of the memory required by Vista.) I was both annoyed at the manufacturer for supplying a machine that clearly isn't up to running Vista and MS for an O/S that eats through memory like there's no tomorrow. Sure, XP uses more memory than 2000, but only tens of MB, not hundreds! The experience has put me off Vista - however, that's a moot point as the company I work for has banned it's use and has no plans to switch - the only machines with Vista installed are a couple of QA PC's.
Well put. You have my support! :)
ROFLOLMFAO