Is Vista really absolutely carp?

Avoriaz

My own 6 year old Dell Inspiron Windows XP laptop has failed* so I have borrowed a friend’s laptop running Vista.

His Acer Aspire 4315 has a decent spec but it is an absolute dog. It takes about two weeks to boot up and spends half an hour thinking about life, the universe and everything before deigning to react to any mouse input. Everything takes so long to happen.

I much prefer my elderly XP Dell.

I had heard that Vista was intellectually challenged but I hadn’t realised quite how bad it is.

I’m shopping for a used but good condition laptop on eBay so I plan to avoid anything with Vista on it. That leave an later XP or a very recent Windows 7 machine as my only options.

*http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2330805

aliEnRIK

I have a Vista machine and its nothing like you describe so (Same as your other post), I suspect somethings running that shouldnt be

Also, UAC (A security component of Vista) is probably switched on. It SHOULD be switched on mind, but ive switched mine off as its a total pain n the a*se

Avoriaz

aliEnRIK wrote: »

I have a Vista machine and its nothing like you describe so (Same as your other post), I suspect somethings running that shouldnt be

Also, UAC (A security component of Vista) is probably switched on. It SHOULD be switched on mind, but ive switched mine off as its a total pain n the a*se

Thanks.

I'll try that but I don't want to mess with it too much as it isn't mine.

My friend normally uses an Apple laptop but has this cheapish Windows Vista laptop as a spare and kindly lent it to me for a few weeks.

I shouldn't really complain too much as it is working a bit better than my broken XP machine.

diable

Yes it is carp.

luci

I have Vista on the desktop and laptop and haven't had a problem with either.

However I don't power it off unless I have to. I use Sleep or Hibernate so that it starts up quickly and would suggest using that if you use the laptop a lot.

timmmers

Apart from what Rik already said...how much HDD space have you got left and how much RAM ?

Once you get to 25% free Vista can be painfully affected and sluggish, and if RAM isn't much and you have alsorts running it's all going to build up.

Test the machine over at https://www.pcpitstop.com with the freebie tests and see what it flags up ...it will tell you in simple terms what's not great and how to improve things.

I prefer XP any day but Vista isn't all that bad if your machine is powerful enough.

rodman

yes indeed its crap, im running windows 7 , much better now!

JasX

aliEnRIK wrote: »

I have a Vista machine and its nothing like you describe so (Same as your other post), I suspect somethings running that shouldnt be

Also, UAC (A security component of Vista) is probably switched on. It SHOULD be switched on mind, but ive switched mine off as its a total pain n the a*se

I did the same with vista UAC in the old days when I had that OS, yes vista isn;t always exactly completly hopeless as you describe but I did find it generally pretty abysmal and would agree with avoiding it

could you stretch your budget for the next £330odd dell special offer to come along? they usually represent pretty decent value for 'day to day' / non gaming laptop use

Old_Wrinkly

luci wrote: »

I have Vista on the desktop and laptop and haven't had a problem with either.

However I don't power it off unless I have to. I use Sleep or Hibernate so that it starts up quickly and would suggest using that if you use the laptop a lot.

All that wasted energy and heat production .... :eek:
Think of what you are doing to the planet, young luci ... :rotfl:;)

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

I have Vista and never had any problems,ever.

banger9365

vista is fine has long as you have a pc that can run it ,most are under powered to run it right,
almost the same has win 7 put win 7 do's not need a power full pc to run right