Anyone here had problems with Windows Vista?

[Sever]

My experience with Vista has been terrible, but i think that can be attributed the machine that it was pre-bundled with. It's an HP Pentium 4 R with half the required amount of RAM for the OS to run. An average of 5 minutes or so is required after start-up before apps start running at acceptable speeds, Multi-tasking is barely possible with only one account open and not at all possible with two. It hangs frequently on exitting an account with tasks running in the other. (To make matters worse when this happens, the machine has no physical reset switch and Vista bypasses the on/off button, meaning that in such instances, the machine has to be unplugged from the wall!) I've been too scared to see what happens with three accounts running..

I'm shaking my head at the marketing decisions that took place in this instance. The way i see it, neither company (MS or HP) benefits from such a crappy pairing. Both companies look bad when they put their head together and produce the wonder that i'm typing on now..

Whenever i boot up my XP gaming rig, it reinforces the notion that i don't care how pretty the GUI is, as long as it does what i want, when i want. I think i'll hold out upgrading my system to Vista until absolutely necessary.

[Ilander]

Vista is a dual-core beast, that is assured...and it should have 2 GB of RAM...really, I think that the 32-bit versions of vista are in an awkward position, since they only support 3 GB of memory... 64 bit version supports 8 at least (depends upon version, up to "128+ GB" whatever that means).

I think that the hardware that comes out this coming year will really make it shine, as we don't really have a feel for what a larger allocation of memory can do to our computing experiences...but I think that that is the most important aspect of vista.

[Firestormalpha]

My Vista serves it's purpose right now. No critical issues since I'm more of a casual gamer. But my one biggest irritation is it's lack of ability to run Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief Deadly Shadows, because Eidos got it into their heads to make those games ONLY compatible with XP. Other than that no real issues, my guess because I barely use the capacity of my PC anyway. I could probably run on a slower system, just not with vista obviously.

[Sazerac]

Don't have Vista (and don't plan to get it anytime soon). A very close friend of mine whose tech pronouncements I trust almost like biblical prophecy referred to Vista as "the 2nd Windows Me" and gave extremely good reasons why:

Incomplete or shoddy coding
Gross incompatibilities with core drivers and apps, especially graphic card drivers
Resource hog
All-too-frequent crashes/BSODs

It could be that these issues will eventually be addressed in a service pack. But I tend to agree with my friend, from what I've seen. Vista is to XP SP2 as Windows Me was to Windows 98 SE. I'm sticking with XP until I hear further.

[Kakero]

Someone I knew uses Vista on his new acer laptop, it gave him so much problem and to me as well since he will call me to check his laptop whenever it causes trouble.

~ The bright/dark setting on vista will mysteriously turn very dark and you can't see a damn thing whenever he turned on the laptop.

~ The laptop takes a very very long time to shut down. You could finish eating your dinner and it's still trying to shut down.

~ His clients were unable to read his vista version of excel/word when he attached it in his email. Also, he is unable to read his client's excel/word that was sent to him. I had to lent him one of my laptop that uses XP so that he can do his work.

~ Frequent program crashes, hanging and slowdown.

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

Ahh, now this is more of what I was expecting!

[Bungleau]

You may have been expecting it, but I haven't seen it. I've had no issues with screen displays or shutdown times. As for Office, Office 2007 has an option to save documents and make them compatible with Office 2003. I've been sending *hundreds* of documents to people not on Vista or Office 2007, and the only compatibility problems I've had have been when I forgot to tell it to save things as compatible.

As for opening other documents, there's usually some sort of conversion tool that's installed when you install Office. Perhaps that hasn't been set up for Kakero's friend...

All that aside, to my understanding at least *some* of the versions of Vista come with the option to bust the OS back to XP and let you move it back up to Vista later, when you think they've got all the kinks worked out. And that's at no charge... so I'd get a Vista machine, try it, bust it back if needed, and wait for future updates.

[TheDutkanator]

I have been using Vista Ultimate 64bit for the past 3 months and I LOVE it! I did a fresh install on a formatted drive and am running all new 64 bit hardware. This thing kicks ass!

A lot of people will try to tell you Vista sucks. The truth is, its newer and better than XP, it just has a LOT of changes that makes even the most experienced XP user have to re-learn a lot of the basic Windows functions. Things are stored and referenced in different ways, security is much tighter and WAAAY more customizable, and any issues people are having with multi-player gaming CAN be fixed and usually doesn't require a patch to do so, just a setting somewhere (tho it can be very hard to find at first, it's just learning where stuff is).

DO NOT do an upgrade to Vista! Backup your XP files, format the drive, and install Vista fresh. Make SURE you have PLENTY of RAM! Vista does use about double the amount of RAM that XP does (although it does so in a MUCH better way).

For those of you having issues with Vista "bogging" down your system, you either needed a fresh install instead of an upgrade, or you need more RAM.

YOU WILL HAVE TO LEARN!! Vista is VERY different in some aspects that can have you getting VERY frustrated. Just think back to the day when you got your very first PC... did you know how to run every tiny little application in that? Hell no! Be patient, be willing to learn, and use a CLEAN INSTALL with plenty of RAM!!

Many average home users who have a single bad experience will tell you VIsta is crap. The fact is, they are using sub-standard hardware and crying it doesn't run properly. I have not had one single issue with my machine, and in fact, I can boot it up from NO power at all and be running 10 apps within 30 seconds. NO BS!

I attribute my experience to my choice of hardware. I custom built this machine myself, one piece at a time from scratch from parts on eBay.

ASUS P5K Deluxe Wi-Fi Edition
Intel Core 2 Duo (QUAD CORE!!) 6850 (4 cores at 3ghz EACH, all 64bit)
4GB DDR2 8000Mhz RAM
nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB


-Nicolai, Vista Lover

[Harkoliar]

well i would think it does come down to systems. i have been holding abit back because i know quad core will come in the market big time soon then perhaps vista would be a good option for me


but for my old spec hardware, no way will i install vista. i might get the same response of 10 min shutdown.

[Bungleau]

Just came across this article on the top ten things wrong with Windows Vista. I think the summary is simple: compared to XP, Vista wasn't a big enough improvement to motivate and justify the expense and process of moving to it.

Interesting reading, nonetheless... especially the part about the Windows ecosystem. I think that's where the real answer lies... everyone else has to want to join you.

*edit* Whoops! How'd *THAT* link get in there? Try it now...