How compatible is Vista?

Moonflowers

I've been looking at getting a laptop for my dad, but they all seem to have Vista as standard. I've heard that this isnt incredibly reliable & that people have problems with it. What are your views?

Also, if I get him a Vista laptop, will he be able to use some of the software that I have? (I'm not talking about illegal software btw, but extra copies of things that I have, like MS Office)

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Psychofly

There really is nothing wrong with Vista these days. The issue before was with drivers, particularly on the 64bit. It's more stable and more reliable than XP was although it does take a little bit to get used to it since there are differences between XP and Vista.
For home use I certainly wouldn't worry about it, the only people that are really affected by the the sort of problems that plagued Vista when it was first released were gamers (who typically have higher end systems with newer hardware) and businesses (who often have strange adhoc or little known software). For day to day internet browsing, basic use and moderate gaming there is no reason to not go with Vista.

Willowx

I have been using Vista for over a year, since the October or November of 2007 and have never had a problem with it. In terms of crashes I haven't had any which certainly wasn't the case with XP, as with any OS it may take a few tweaks to get it set up how you like it. The settings are fairly obvious if you want to change them.

In terms of compatability, with the exception of a printer which was probably getting on for 15 years old I haven't had any problems, all the major companys have drivers well and truely sorted now. For the MS Office software both 2003 and 2007 will definately work and if there is any other specific software you want to know about I'm sure someone will know if you ask.

Marty_J

Psychofly wrote: »

For day to day internet browsing, basic use and moderate gaming there is no reason to not go with Vista.

Unless of course you want an OS that's very very good instead of just mediocre.

loudcox

I'm in complete agreement with Psychofly on this - I'm an IT professional who has been using both since Vista was released. With SP2 installed, networking is excellent and vastly simplified over XP for home users. It's also stable!

In terms of visual styling, it can look and feel vastly different to XP, which some users find difficult to adapt to. It can however be made to look and feel very XP-like with nothing more than a few clicks.

There are very few bits of mainstream software that are incompatible, however do check the software vendors' websites for information on your particular version (or look in the help files). The incompatibility problem was much more of a problem at Vista's launch but it's now insignificant.

Knub

Aye, I have many spare copies of MS Office that I just have kicking around!

Vista is fine now really, especially since SP2 came out. It might be different to what he is used too but everything works fine.

Whoever told you it isn't reliable and that people have had problems with it are about 1 year out of date. For most people now it works fine.

If you buy him a brand new vista laptop the chances are he will be able to "downgrade" to XP anyway...

Psychofly

Marty_J wrote: »

Unless of course you want an OS that's very very good instead of just mediocre.

Justification of your opinion ? Anecdotal evidence ? Other quirky one liners ? Would be helpful if you explained what you meant by this.

Moonflowers

thanks for all your feedback. At the moment my dad is using my old desktop, pre Windows XP! so I'd hope to be able to load the sofware he's already got onto a new machine, but I will check the software online to if it should work ok.

He isnt particularly IT savvy & so I dont want to get something he'd have problems with, so it's good to know you think Vista is sorted now.

Btw - I've got 2 copies of Office, cos Dell sent me 2 by mistake when I bought my laptop. Would be great if i could just give the spare to him to use.

Psychofly

If you've got 2 copies with 2 CD keys then I think legally you'd be OK to use them both.

savemoney

Vista64 sp2 is slow on my pc at booting up, it takes almost 4 minutes now and I got a fast system with lots of ram 4gb. I have had a few problems recently with it cant get nero latest version to even install but tahts down to poor nero, older build version 8 works fine

Windows 7 (64 bit) is far quicker than Vista takes around 20 secs to boot on a much slower system to my pc that uses vista64

custardy

20 minutes? well thats me sold