Hands Up If You Hate Vista!

Robin_T_Cox

Let's put it to the readership to decide, shall we?

For the benefit of latecomers, here is the link to the Motley Fool article again:

Everybody Hates Vista

http://www.fool.com/investing/value/...tes-vista.aspx

The authors of the article, having used Google, are fair about assessing its results. And equally fair when they conclude:

Even so, the backlash against Microsoft generally, and Vista specifically, is undeniably real.

russ_gillespie

robt wrote: »

I can't take this thread seriously anymore, there is someone behind a PC screen trying to argue with someone about an article that contains nothing to argue about.

Well said

Millionaire

Robin_T_Cox wrote: »

Let's put it to the readership to decide, shall we?

For the benefit of latecomers, here is the link to the Motley Fool article again:

Everybody Hates Vista

http://www.fool.com/investing/value/...tes-vista.aspx

The authors of the article, having used Google, are fair about assessing its results. And equally fair when they conclude:

It's a load of rubbish, most people will realise it doesnt prove anything imo

[Deleted User]

My experience with Vista can be said to be mixed, I think. Early last year I built a Media Center PC with a Foxconn G965 mainboard, plenty of disk and a MSI 7300GS (fanless) video card. I also cannibalized a USB wireless device from a superannuated laptop and bought a Keytronics wireless USB keyboard for it. (Which, I have to say, rocks; it cost around £20, works great on both the PC and the PS3, and doesn't completely chew through batteries - you can't say fairer than that.) I ordered an OEM version of Windows Vista Home Premium (64-bit) to go with it.

Okay, the more tech-savvy of you have spotted that deliberate mistake that I slipped in at the end. 64-bit was a good idea in principle, but woefully hamstrung by the complete lack of anything resembling decent software support for it.

At first, it all seemed to go fairly well. It recognized much of my hardware (though Internet access required an Ethernet 'lifeline' via the Macbook), the OS was pretty familiar territory, and it looked pretty smart.

However, almost from the outset I was plagued by problems like the computer failing to resume from sleep mode (I had to wait six months for a BIOS upgrade to fix that), Vista taking ages to boot up (turned out to be a video driver problem; I eventually had to ditch the 7300GS in favour of a newer - but still fanless, thankfully - video card), wireless only working when it felt like it (it transpired that the drivers I'd tried to use weren't really all that compatible after all, and the wireless dongle I had is not, and probably will never be, supported in Vista x64 - a £11 no-name WLAN PCI card fixed that, though) and bizarrely slow write speeds on external disks (eventually fixed by enabling write-behind caching on the external enclosure, disabled by default in Vista). As for the Topfield PVR, well that still can't talk to Vista x64 at all. (Unless a driver's been released recently.) It'll talk to XP, it'll talk to Linux, it'll talk to FreeBSD, heck it'll even talk to the Mac, but Vista x64? No way.

A year or so on, and it's generally working pretty well, though it took a fair amount of trial and error with software, and on two occasions replacing bits of hardware, to get it to do so - and it's still not 100% perfect. (One of the things I want to use it for is as a video jukebox, but I'm having a hard time finding software that will play ripped DVDs with subtitles properly.)

As far as the comments regarding AVG are concerned, obviously YMMV but I discovered it to have a substantial negative performance impact on the system, especially after SP1; I had to remove it in the end. So my Vista box is currently running without adequate protection I'm looking at alternatives to AVG, but given that it's not used for Internet access much, it's not a high priority.

tomsolomon

BillScarab wrote: »

According to that article 42,200 people hate Vista, do a google search for "I love Vista" and you get 42,800 so presumbaly Vista must be great because more people love it than hate it.

Wow you got far too much time on your hands dude....:D

sco0ter

Marvin_the_Martian wrote: »

My experience with Vista can be said to be mixed, .

Most of the problems you experienced were due to driver/Bios problems as you said and not down to VISTA

[Deleted User]

sco0ter wrote: »

Most of the problems you experienced were due to driver/Bios problems as you said and not down to VISTA

I didn't say that they were. The post was about my experience with Vista - I do not seek to make any absolute statements about the quality or utility of the operating system, and as always, YMMV.

That said, I think that the (comparative) lack of good third-party software and hardware support for an operating system does not reflect well on that operating system. It's all very well saying that it's not the operating system's fault that compatible third-party drivers and hardware are unavailable or of inadequate quality; but does that matter to the user of that operating system? It's one of the reasons why, for instance, many Linux zealots are Linux zealots and not (say) FreeBSD zealots.

By the same token, you could say that the comparative dearth of interesting home software titles for Mac OS, Unix and Linux isn't down to those operating systems either - it's the software houses' fault for failing to write applications for those operating systems. The thing about operating systems is that it's what you can do with them that counts. If you don't get the third-party support, the OS is in serious trouble. Case in point - BeOS.

What has happened with Vista, and particularly with its 64-bit incarnation, that left electronics manufacturers and their software engineers so woefully unprepared for Vista's launch? What has made it so difficult for them to bring out 64-bit and/or Vista-compatible versions of their drivers and software in a timely fashion?

tomsolomon

I have to agree with Marvin on this one.
MS has made it very difficult for third party vendors to produce hardware and software compatible with Vista.
Its either comply with DRM or we will make your life difficult.
Which is why Vista is suffering, and realy one of its only major drawbacks.

russ_gillespie

what is YMMV? :S

isofa

russ_gillespie wrote: »

what is YMMV? :S
- Google is your friend, use it :rolleyes:

If Google is your friend, surely you would have searched for YMMV

"your mileage may vary"

Can't believe this thread is still going on.