Vista - I Love Vista

Hello everyone,
Now lets get this straight, I am a grown man of 44, i have three children 7, 6, and 4, and I have been playing with computers since i was inputing binary on the switches of my 2650 SCMP kit microprocessor back in the 70's. I LOVE VISTA, yes i shouted it! Vista works, Vista runs nicely, Vista looks nice, Vista is the end of XP. And I still remember, like going back to an ex girlfriend, wanting to run back to Win98SE when i took my first faltering steps with the new shiny XP Pro.
Now that indexing has had time to settle in, i have a steady processor resting rate of around 10-20% with DreamScene and Sidebar running and the usual 7-15% i have experienced since XP when DreamScene is paused or stopped, but with all the sweet (neccessary!) dressing of Aero and all its trimmings.
Except for the MotoGP series games needing directinput and not liking XInput I have all my games running at least as well, and I do believe in some cases better than under XP. I have updated all my usual apps and have now alcohol runs better than XP, and after getting the latest WinRar I have a comfortable workspace enough to enjoy the journey into this brave new Vista world.
I LOVE VISTA.... oh and for the Linux naysayers, i have been compiling my own kernel since Version 1.something, and as nice as Linux has become, it still isn't Windows, and doesnt have the software base that is the forgiver of all Microsofts trespasses, so after my long journey through the wilderness, here we rest at this lovely place called Vista.
Colin

damn, my first post, and its in the wrong spot, sorry! I have all of the drivers for my dv6519tx perfectly fine with Vista, including Quickplay. Hope that helps.

woo hoo thankyou for moving me!

I am a grown man too, with grandchildren, who has used computers since CPM days, long before MS DOS let alone Windows, and I can say I'm not impressed by Vista.

I can live with it (after modifying it in various ways) but I can't say I love it, just as I didn't love 98 or XP before it.

The things I like best about Windows are not thanks to Microsoft. Unlike Apple's hardware monopoly you can run Windows on cheap hardware because there's lots of competition to keep prices down. There's a huge range of affordable software available for it (much more than for Macs or Linux) simply because Microsoft won the battle for having the most users (thanks to clever and aggressive business practices, and sharp lawyers, rather than good programming).

Like with XP and 98, I still find myself replacing many of Windows components with better freewares and sharewares, such as Metapad instead of Notepad, a better defragger, a better file manager, a clipboard manager (no new features for Windows clipboard in ten years). Even if I had Vista Ultimate I would still use the free DiskWizard instead of relying on Microsoft's mediocre "complete system backup". If you want to dual boot, you need the freeware EasyBCD or VistaBootPro to manage Vista's badly designed boot loader -- or replace its boot loader completely with a shareware alternative. The freeware Gparted is much better than Vista's disk management console. Vista's Paint is still the poorest image editor you can find, not improved in ten years.

The is no choice of themes (unless you take the risk of hacking some system dlls and use unofficial ones) because MS added a theme switching dialog but made it impossible for anyone to design and distribute fully compatible alternatives, so there are none. Like they said about the model T Ford "you can have any color task bar as long as it's black".

The Aero theme is actually less customisable than the classic theme was in XP. This is a separate issue from Vista's inadequate provision for switching themes. There's also inadequate provision for customising the current theme -- Aeros' window metrics are less customisable than in XP, where you could modify the size of the buttons on windows' title bars, the width of scroll bars, all the fonts and their sizes, etc. You can modify fewer of those things in Aero - and not in the smart looking new Personalization dialog because they neglected to include font adjustment. Instead they just tacked on a link to the old classic appearance dialog salvaged from XP (where only half of the things you can change actually get applied to Aero). Try removing every mention of Segoeui there and you will still see it used in many places, presumably because it's been hard coded in several system dlls instead of referring to the User's chosen preferences.

I guess you could claim that those things are all peripheral and at least "the core" has improved, but how true is that? It's hard to know because I can't inspect the inner workings (nobody can because it's a "black box") but of the Vista components which I have been able to investigate in detail (such as its booting system and disk management) not one of them is better than clumsy and mediocre.

It seems Vista's core just relies on advances in hardware (processing power, the price of ram, etc) to perform acceptably. The system core which I can't look inside is probably as untidy and inefficient as the parts I can look inside, such as the registry. The system registry isn't designed, it's thrown together like a shanty town. For example look at the part which deals with file associations, which has a basic structure from Windows 98 plus a heap of exceptions and hacks added on so it now looks like a mad woman's knitting.

Wherever I look "under the hood" (under the bonnet as they say in the UK) I see the same messy mixture of code from older editions such as Windows 98 and XP with a few new tricks added on top.

There are some improvements but it has also gone backwards in other ways. The Start menu has a new Search feature but the Programs menu no longer cascades, so you have to click to open each folder. Explorer has new breadcrumbs and several new bugs...

Vista is usable. With a lot of work and freeware modifications it can become bearable, but "lovable"? No way. I put up with Windows because the applications I use have been cleverly programmed by other software companies to be able to run in it, and the makers of the hardware I use have written drivers for it.

Well I'm in the camp of being impressed with it, very much so. I'm a grown up as well plus a woman, in fact a pensioner with grandchildren but not one that's had the advantage of using computers since they started.

I didn't touch one until September 1998 and that ran Windows 98, never did go to the second edition, moved then to WinME followed by XP Home and finally Vista Home Premium.

Educated myself on how to use them by reading whatever magazine I could afford and lurking in the newsgroups and forums, I haven't had any problems yet with getting any of my old programs to install and work on Vista, apart from my Bluetooth dongle, and I'm finding things are running so smoothly it's a joy to use.

Hi Colin there is a lot of application software available for Linux, it is easy to see why Linux does not have the same quantity of application software that Windows has, in that most computers come with pre-installed Windows, so Linux was confined pretty much confined to people who built their own computer or installed it in a dual-boot mode alongside windows. Linux has hit the point of acceptability, that it is starting to be offered as an option on new retail mass market computer systems and it is becoming easier to create a Linux and Windows dual boot system on a Windows installed computer. With all those things Linux is just going to get more and more popular and that popularity will bring with it more and more application software. I like Vista is has many good points, but it is not terrifically better than XP and I personally would not be getting too exicted about it

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

is there anything Vista cannot do? i love Vista...

No..Vista does everything. Runs everything. And that means hardware as well. I have never had vista not run a printer, scanner or web cam. You pick the hardware or app and I can get Vista to run it without breaking a sweat.

The people that cant get them to run...can't get them to run no matter what platform they are trying to use.

XP, OS-X, Linux, BSD or even DOS.

They just can't handle a computer.

And I "LOVE" Vista to.

It's stable, and compatible with everthing. It's the best MS has produced to date.

Get over it.

I agree 100%!!!!!

I wish everyone would try Vista on a newer computer before they say it sucks to no end.

I mean what goes through people's head that running Windows 98 machine would run Vista like a champ? Of course it won't and why should it?

Vista is keeping up with technology and for those who say it runs slow or whatever really when was the last time you bought your pc?

IMO Vista runs everything you need it to run, runs it will, and even with 2gigs of ram it still does a good job.

Microsoft released a GREAT product and I wish more people would see how good it really is. I now love using my computer with Vista. Makes it so much easier, fun and exciting because its harder to **** up unlike xp.


O and it also can and runs on slightly older 2006 tech and up decent IMO and that is a huge plus on the new Mac OS that will be cutting off everyone that has a IBM cpu inside on the next release.

Totally agree. I run an Intel Quad-Core 9550 with 4 Gigs of RAM and 2 500Gb SATA2 drives in a RAID-o array and things fly. I've tried the same rig on XP and notice no significant gains in performance like some fan boys claim.

To many people believe to much of rumor and what is said and don't give things enough of a chance.

That little experiment from Microsoft showed that they screwed up by not telling people what Vista was and they got their self into this mess and we better hope they bail them self out with Windows 7!

I would really hate Microsoft to lose tons of market share to Apple. I just wish more people see this and understand that Vista is good and does not suck like Apple tells you and so on.

Really Microsoft would not even have this problem years ago if they were able to take out Apple when they had the chance. Now they have to deal with them. More like they were not allowed to by the government lol....

"Grew up" on 3.1,and continued ever since.Even used ME for two months,before using 2000 Professional Edition,then XP.Been through my "linux phase",and had "a play" with Compiz.Indeed,I still have OpenGEU linux installed on a low grade spec system.But after using Vista at work,one year,and counting,trying it out on family,and friends,desktops,and laptops,I took the plunge over five weeks ago,and bought a laptop with Home Premium installed.Finally saved up the cash,to use it at home.A few tweaks here and there,but overall nothing complicated.
MS take a lot of "unjustified flak" these days,simply because they are...well...MS.Do not believe all the doom sayers.Vista is fine.