I received a new laptop that came pre-installed with Vista at Xmas. My initial thought was to wipe it clean and install XP on it. This was a reaction to all the bad press Vista has received. However I decided to give it a chance for a while and make up my own mind. Some points: ------------- Memory: First off you will need a LOT of memory (RAM) to run Vista. 2GB is recommended. Doing nothing other than running Vista uses up 500-600MB of RAM. Running it on a machine with 1GB of RAM would not be a pleasant experience. Looks: The operating system itself looks great, windows are transparent like frosted glass and they fade in and shrink themselves in quite an attractive way. These effects can be turned off for computers with lower graphic specifications, they are just eye candy after all. You can turn on an XP theme if you wish. User Access Control (UAC): One major annoyance with Vista is the addition of a new safety feature called User Access Control (UAC). The UAC feature requires you to confirm via a popup dialog whenever you perform an activity that is more 'core' than your average activity e.g. installing a program, turning on and off certain operating system features. I understand that principle behind the feature i.e. preventing unauthorised programs from performing nefarious activities, but the problem is you will encounter many, many of these popup dialogs in your daily usage of Vista. It gets irritating having to confirm everything over and over again. After a while I had enough and disabled the feature. I do believe I had to enable the Vista administrator account to disable it though. Features: Vista comes installed with an in-built firewall (Windows Firewall) and anti-spyware program (Windows Defender) which are two features that were needed so thumbs up. There is no built-in anti-virus program however which is a bit strange. Searching for files and folders has been vastly improved. Stability: I read a lot about driver issues and programs that didn't work with Vista. I have only encountered one program that wouldn't install correctly. Maybe I'm just lucky but I was able to get my old set of XP favourite programs installed and running correctly. Vista has also yet to crash, it seems just as stable as XP is. ------------- I have decided to keep Vista installed on my machine. Apart from a few annoyances that I was eventually able to get around I am happy with the speed, features and reliability of the new operating systems. I think your satisfaction with Vista may lie in how you normally use an operating system but my usage requirements it has served me well. Also remember that quite soon Vista will see its first Service Pack release and this should fix a lot of bugs and make it more efficient.
I think I'll stick with XP as Vista takes up so much RAM and I'd probably have to delete quite a bit before I could run it. I've heard an awful lot about Vista too that puts me off even thinking about it seriously. Do keep us updated on how it works out for you on your new laptop though Frank as I'd be really interested to hear what you think of it.
I'm a webmaster and do a lot of coding for my boss and her website. She got Vista for the business and it's horrible. Yes, the whole design better but there are so many incompatibilities with other web applications that it's almost unbearable. Another year to make Windows more vulnerable...
From what I've read, and what some friends have told me, Vista is great if it is what your computer came with (factory installed) but a good deal more problematic if installed as an upgrade. My laptop came with the XP home edition, and that's what I think I'll keep.
A nice review, Frank. We have two Vista computers: one Dell desktop with 4G RAM and one HP laptop with 2G RAM. I tried to upgrade the laptop to 4G RAM, but the upgrade cost is very expensive and I gave up. I agree that 2G RAM should be enough for running Vista. What I like the most of Vista is the built-in spamer filter. Very effective. I tried several external spammer filters on XP and none of them works great. What I hate the most of Vista is that it is slow and IE crashes frequently. I still have the problem of screen resolution. The Vista driver of the display cannot recognize the native resolution of my LCD panel. It's a Dell LCD panel for Dell computer, come on! The HP laptop is a bit fancier with a touch screen and styler, digital TV tuner, lightscribe DVD burner, fingerprint reader, Media Center remote, and a wireless bluetooth mouse (no battery required!). I havn't got much time to play with it yet. I like its light weight, but the screen is very small and texts are too tiny to read. I know it's a tradeoff and you cannot get both.
I have a laptop also, an Acer, that is the exact set up as Nan's HP. i love the Bluetooth btw. mine also came with Vista installed on it, an i have had no problems, with the memory, 2G ram, or any running of the computer period. to me i like it,, but then i have also had XP an liked that also,, to me the vista seems is easy to use, an easy to shut off what you don't want running or taking over on the computer. The screen on this computer is large, its a lightweight laptop, very nice to use.
Frank I am glad that you have given it a shot and that Vista is working well for you. My experience was a little more frustrating. My partners computer crashed so we bought a new one with Windows Vista. He is currently enrolled in school online for his bachelors degree so he needed one quickly. We found a great deal at a major computer retailer, and thought that was it. Nothing he had as far as programs worked on the basic Vista. The initial $800 investment of the new computer, and then an additional $1300 in upgrades was really frustrating. This was from RAM, memory, Vista Premium upgrade (this is needed to use all the online networking etc. for the online classes). Just buyer beware, make sure that the programs you need to run work with which ever of the FOUR versions of Vista are installed in your CPU. You will more than likely need to purchase upgrades. If you do, just bite the bullet and buy premium. I think that the programs where not ready for the market when released. There are way too many kinks and not near the number of downloadable patches to allow it to run programs you already own. In the end, it works, but the cost was way too much compared to XP.
Thanks for your input. My husband, who is a printer and a computer geek, works with Macs all the time and says that Vista is similar to a Mac OS. I have yet to try out Vista, but am looking to get a new computer for work. So far, not many in our area are willing to change over.
Mine is going on 3 years old......I am not hoping for a break down.. That is long compared to all my others........But I buy the cheapest package I can get....... Here in our area, if you buy the whole package it is cheaper.........I still have my first one, but got rid of the others......One was blapped virus. b
Nice review Frank Tell me - what edition of Vista are you running? From what I gather here it seems you are happy with your Vista edition. I plan on purchasing Vista, but need to make a decision as to what edition would be best.
Palm, I am running Vista Home Premium. This will contain all of the essentials. Any version above that will be for businesses. A month on from the initial review and I am still very happy with Vista. There are some minor oddities (such as programs not closing fully when commanded to) but they are nothing significant. Service Pack 1 for Vista will be available for download in April/May I believe and this should fix some outstanding issues.
Thanks for the quick response. I will take your advise when purchasing Microsoft Windows Vista, - Gosh and I thought the Ultimate Edition would be the package to take. I mean - it says ULTIMATE. But it would be overkill wouldn't it? ANd with a service pack coming up - thats great.
Frank Does Vista Premium required a newer computer with more GM or MB or whatever they are called? My machine is 3 in July and just wondering... Thanks b
