What's your problem?

[RUINER ACTUAL]

I was lucky enough to get a laptop in the "Vista Generation" as I'm calling it. Too late for XP, and a year too early for 7. Most of my friends have Vista as well. Recently, my hard drive died and I had to re-install everything. I had the choice of upgrading to Windows 7, but I stuck with Vista (partly because of compatibility issues with some things. I will probably partition my HDD in the future). I tried it for a few days, and really did not like it, and I don't understand what all the hype for it is about. The way I see it, some computer geeks got pissed that it was a Windows OS that wasn't XP, and it changed some things they didn't like, and that got spread to the general population, so everyone automatically hated it before they even saw it. Then 7 comes out, and everyone is up in arms about it because it isn't Vista. Did I miss a meeting or something? After using 7, I think it feels more like a Mac OS, and that is the last thing I want on my PC.

So, Escapists, what is your problem with Windows Vista? And what makes 7 so god-like? Please answer only if you have some experience with both.

 

[delet]

I've never understood all the hate towards Vista either. I have vista running on my computer and it runs better on games than many other people. I'll often be in a game where other people are experiencing lag and I get none (Not exactly sure if that has to do with my computer or not, but it seems to be slightly connected.) I've never had a single issue with Vista.

I also agree that 7 just doesn't feel right. I think it's more the Task Bar for me which is a very lame nitpick, but I don't have enough time with it (and I am aware that you can apparantly change it.)

To each their own I guess.

 

[MorsePacific]

Vista runs fine for me, after a small bit of tweaking. No more work than I would've put into an XP install.

The main problem I find with Vista is that the desktop uses a whole bunch of memory when it's just idling, but it's not much of a problem when I have 4 GB. That and the UAC (which I turned off entirely) were the only problems I ever had with Vista.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I'll give the short version. Vista is disliked for any of a combination of reasons:

1) Vista requires dramatically more resources to accomplish the same task as Windows XP. Most people purchase budget computers. The budget computers first bundled with Vista were barely capable of running the OS, much less the software they might actually want to use on top of it. The result was fantastically poor performance and for most the only reasonable explantion was "Vista is terribe" rather than the (more reasonable) "The PC vendor is terrible and they have pulled one over on me".

2) Vista is not based off a legacy desgin. While this allowed for immense improvements in areas people won't care about at the moment (no more 4gb memory limit for example) it also meant that programs were not necessarily going to make the jump without some help. Lots of developers dragged their feet in this regard. People go where the software is, and when the software stayed put so did the user base.

3) Vista looks different than XP. Things are in different places. This causes confusion which leads to rage.

4) After a sufficient fraction of the population determined vista was terrible based on one of the previous points, the opinion spread among people who had never experienced the OS. Of the three preceeding, the third is by far the most common complaint. The second is primarily a concern of professionals of various sorts. The first was simply a screw to the cheap early adopter. Essentially, because people often want to appear to know what's going on, people happily hop onto bandwagons even without real understanding or relevent experience in the field. One can make a dismissive claim of Vista and few expect any support of such a claim thanks to the widespread belief this is true.

Personally, I use vista at work and have it installed on an alternate hard drive for my laptop. At home I use Windows 7 professional. The latter choice was simply one of convenience. When I built my current system about 6 months ago, I realized I could just use the Windows 7 Release Candidate for months and thus offset buying a copy of Vista (or XP I suppose). Then, through work I was given a copy of Win 7 professional and I decided "what the hell" and installed it.

 

[FranzTyphid]

I actually only have XP
i feel like an outcast

 

[reg42]

I used Vista for a long time, but I downgraded when I got my new HDD. Vista was great and, sure, it has it's bugs, but XP is hardly perfect; I think I actually have more problems with XP than I had with Vista.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

I used Vista for a long time, but I downgraded when I got my new HDD. Vista was great and, sure, it has it's bugs, but XP is hardly perfect; I think I actually have more problems with XP than I had with Vista.

Thats kind of strange. I don't think I've heard that before. You never hear about XPs faults. Fuckin sweet picture by the way.

 

[jasoncyrus]

Vista runs fantastic for me an I've only had to reformat it once because the graphics card driver update got corrupted mid install by a power failure in the street and toasted the drivers.

As long as you keep everything updated and dont try to run present software on hardware thats out of date, you shouldn't have any problems, especially with DRM and the like.

 

[Erja_Perttu]

I use Vista, and I've never had a problem with it. I like it and I'm gonna stick with it.

 

[e2density]

Windows 7 is basically Vista except released when Vista should have been...they released Vista way too early. I love 7.

 

[Pigeon_Grenade]

i havent had any real issues with vista myself

 

[Olrod]

I've heard people say that "Vista is Windows 7 beta". However I went directly from a Laptop with XP to a Desktop with 7 so I have no first-hand experience of Vista.

I'm glad the Paint program is better, I like to doodle. That was the worst thing from changing between Windows 98 to Windows XP was the loss of functionality in Paint, I had no idea what on Earth they were thinking when they downgraded the Paint program for upgraded OS.

 

[TimeLord]

I have absolutely no problem with Vista on my Laptop. It works fine with everything I use, gaming and all.

 

[Stoic raptor]

I love Windows 7. Purely for the looks.

 

[Dragoonit]

vista isn't too horrible. I just don't like when it asks for permission to do everything....i double clicked that icon cuz i wanted to use that program, so dont ask if its ok to run this program....

 

[TheBluesader]

My problem is with Dell. They caved to RIAA demands and removed stereo mix from their sound cards. Yeah, really. So I looked for a software fix that was still available(all are too old for my new laptop) all night and could not find one(the claim it is a hardware issue, not true, the liars). I ended up having to record my LP on my XP gaming desktop

Totally, dude (or female equivalent). I had the same problem, and when I tried to install new sound card drivers to fix it, I got blue-screened and had to restore-point out of it. Since then I've found doable 3rd-party software work-arounds that at least simulate stereo mixing well enough that it sounds okay. But damn, what a pain in the butt.

.....We were supposed to be talking about Vista vs. Windows 7, right? I have XP on my machine, and only used Vista on my bro-in-law's PC. And he's going to school for server/networking stuff, so he has all this crazy Star Trek technobabble-esqe stuff running that makes doing anything feel like Linux. So I don't know how much of that is Vista's fault or the programming stuff's fault. But his PC is also Yahtzee's Space Monolith Computer, so there really aren't any RAM issues.

And I've never used Windows 7.

So what I'm saying is, I have nothing at all to contribute to the thread topic. But I like typing. So that explains that.

 

[reg42]

I used Vista for a long time, but I downgraded when I got my new HDD. Vista was great and, sure, it has it's bugs, but XP is hardly perfect; I think I actually have more problems with XP than I had with Vista.

Thats kind of strange. I don't think I've heard that before. You never hear about XPs faults. Fuckin sweet picture by the way.

I know right. Maybe I'm just an unfortunate bugger.
Shot for the compliment.

 

[Dusty Donuts]

I've never understood all the hate towards Vista either. I have vista running on my computer and it runs better on games than many other people. I'll often be in a game where other people are experiencing lag and I get none (Not exactly sure if that has to do with my computer or not, but it seems to be slightly connected.) I've never had a single issue with Vista.

I also agree that 7 just doesn't feel right. I think it's more the Task Bar for me which is a very lame nitpick, but I don't have enough time with it (and I am aware that you can apparantly change it.)

To each their own I guess.

No, it's Vista alright. My older brother has Vista, and he downloads everything twice as fast as me.

 

[MiserableOldGit]

As a rule of thumb its best to have a negative opinion of any microsoft product-you're bound to be right most of the time...

 

[HaraDaya]

I like Windows 7's taskbar. Yeah it may be a bit OS X'ish, but that's not a bad thing. Face it, Macs have always been ahead in terms of GUI. What I don't like about Macs is how it feels like I'm not the one in control of the damn thing. And with Windows 7 it's kinda like a mix of what I like in both OS's.
That. And DirectX10.
As for Vista, I had one of those "budget" laptops (a month or so after Vista's release). It was terribly slow, so after a few days I installed Windows XP. Now I've installed Windows 7 on it, and while this might not prove anything, I did notice the fan doesn't go nuts every minute now.
I think what I didn't like about Vista was that the bad stuff outweighed the new cool stuff.
Windows 7 does come with some of the things Windows XP users found annoying in Vista. But with a couple of Google searches you'll find other people annoyed by the same thing, and most likely a solution.

Here's one thing that does annoy me though. I like to have the taskbar at the top. But to my dismay a lot of new windows open up BENEATH the taskbar, making the window title unclickable, and then I have to click resize on one of the edges to make it pop back out.