Windows Vista: The Best Case for Windows XP Ever

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by Dustin Sklavos

In this editorial Dustin shares his Windows Vista upgrade experience and why he's running with open arms back to Windows XP.

INTRODUCTION

I've been following Vista's development since builds before Beta 1. I've been able to play with Vista as it's grown up. My experience with the RTM version was a positive one, positive enough that I set aside a partition on my desktop explicitly for installing Vista on when it came out. And so when it came out, I got a retail copy of Vista Home Premium to install on that waiting hard drive space.

After using Vista for a bit, I'll be going back to XP and using that partition as a scratch disk for quite a while.

When you use a beta you operate under the assumption that it's a beta, thus flawed, and that these flaws will eventually be corrected. As a result, I was fairly positive about Vista last year. I felt like once these details were taken care of, we might have a worthy upgrade.

Of course, this was before any of us knew just how badly Microsoft was going to screw us, and unfortunately there isn't any better way to put it. Someone, somewhere in the heirarchy decided that &quot;customer&quot; was synonymous with &quot;beta tester.&quot; If that were the end of our woes it might not be so bad, but it's not.

So before I launch into what will wind up being a fairly damning tirade, I'll get to what ISN'T so bad about Windows Vista.

WHAT DOESN'T VISTA DO WRONG?

Well, provided you don't buy Vista Home Basic, the &quot;Intel Core Solo&quot; mongoloid inbred cousin of the family that no one talks about, you get to enjoy Aero Glass which is, admittedly, very pretty. If Microsoft did one thing right with Vista, it's with how they handle the personalization of the operating system. It's something they take so seriously that they've actually reorganized these features into a &quot;Personalize&quot; menu that shows up on right-clicking the desktop where &quot;Desktop Properties&quot; used to be. It's a nice touch.

The Games Explorer, ignoring how poor a choice for gaming Vista is right now, is a very welcome addition as well. It's &quot;smart.&quot; It's also a part of one of the smarter organizational changes of Vista.

Unless you've serviced a computer or gotten into the nitty gritty of your own, you may not be aware of how asinine the organization of your files is in XP and its predecessors. In Windows XP, your &quot;My Documents&quot; folder is located at:

<code>Cocuments and SettingsyournameMy Documents</code>

That's not too bad, until you see all the crazy folders scattered around these that lead up to it.

In Vista, it's:

<code>C:UsersyournameDocuments</code>

Cleaner, simpler. The newly redesigned start menu dedicates individual folders to music, pictures, video, documents, games, and so on. If you click your name, it'll show you these folders and a couple more, including a nicely dedicated download folder. No more downloading crap straight to your desktop or losing it in My Documents.

This abstraction is a far cry from having to make folders in old Windows versions and mixing up all your stuff. It's a really nice organizational touch and one of Vista's stronger, subtler points. Because of it, the casual user will NEVER have to think of the directory tree again.

Windows Sidebar is also a cute feature, but it's one that's better suited to the dual-monitor setups which are becoming a bit more common. It's a nice addition that's unfortunately undermined by a lot of the buggy gadgets floating around online, gadgets that may have worked in betas, but in newer versions have serious problems. Unfortunately, installing new gadgets isn't all bread and roses, as I'll explain later.

Windows Sidebar and Gadgets can be seen on the right side of the screen in this Vista screenshot

The Mobility Center is a nice idea that unfortunately isn't being embraced like it should. This isn't unexpected, it's just a shame. Clumping all of these laptop controls in one place is a great idea, but it's ultimately up to the manufacturers to take advantage of it.

Windows Vista Mobility Center

Beyond Aero Glass, Vista's just plain...nice to look at. Icons are vivid, operations are more animated, and the UI moves more fluidly by virtue of being offloaded to the graphics processor.

Windows Vista Aero in action

And hey, even Solitaire got a makeover.

WHEN &quot;INTUITIVE&quot; STOPS BEING INTUITIVE

Unfortunately, Microsoft's developers hate you. When you use Mac OS X, it's really designed to abstract you from having to deal with the internals of your system. It's all designed to create an experience, and consistency is key.

Now, Microsoft's developers feel that the menus at the top of the screen - you know, File, Edit, and their kin - are past their prime and not the way things should be. They could be right.

The problem is that we've been using those for ten years now. We use them in EVERY OPERATING SYSTEM ON THE MARKET. Even the primary innovators in user interfaces, Apple, haven't disposed of it. Why? BECAUSE WE'RE USED TO IT. Whether or not it's the best way to handle it is irrelevant at this point.

I refuse to believe there isn't a better option for controlling a computer than a keyboard and mouse (it's at least a fact that the QWERTY keyboard layout is not the most efficient). But they've been in use for over two decades. They're pretty much the way it is. Everyone is used to them. Such is the way of the menu bar.

You may wonder what the heck happened to it in Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and elsewhere. I know I wind up getting mixed up.

And this is the problem with Vista's interface: it's not intuitive. In fact, it's LESS intuitive than its predecessors. Windows tend to be busy, full of color and information that, while nice to look at, can easily confuse the neophyte. People that have spent years getting used to Windows now need to change their habits again.

Why?

Because Microsoft thinks making you learn a new system is better, underlining the difference between what a programmer finds intuitive and what an average joe finds intuitive.

USER ACCOUNT CONTROL (UAC)

User Account Control (UAC) is a feature that has been relentlessly derided since some of the earliest builds of Vista, and it's easy to understand why. Simply put: it's annoying as hell.

Windows Vista needs your permissioin...again

Let me explain. When you try to install a program, UAC will dim your entire screen and lock up the machine until you respond to the window in the middle of the screen that asks for your permission to run the file. Until you do this, you can't do anything else.

Okay, well...you double-clicked it. I know when I double-click something that usually means I want it to run, but your mileage may vary.

The intended purpose of UAC is security, and the idea behind it is that if spyware or malware tries to install itself in your system, it'll pop up so you can deny that software access to your machine. And that's not necessarily a bad idea.

The problem is that it asks you ALL. THE. TIME. With legitimate programs! I'm no designer so I can't tell you how to solve this problem, but it seems like Apple did.

I'll tell you where it gets really stupid, too. You remember Windows Sidebar? Well, let's say you find a gadget on their site you want to install. Here's what will happen:

1. Internet Explorer will ask you if you want to download file.
2. Internet Explorer will ask you where you want to download the file to.
3. When you try to run the file, Windows will first ask you if you're sure you want to.
4. UAC will then tell you the file is trying to run, and will ask you if you want to allow it.

...that's four freaking steps to install a plug-in for a program that not only comes with Vista, but in fact starts up with Vista by default!

Probably the most damning aspect of all this is the realization of how little it actually achieves. Sure, it will help reduce the number of spyware and malware infections out there by a little. But it will wind up pissing off a lot more users, and it shows up so frequently that people will just start clicking &quot;Allow&quot; without even thinking about it, much as people did to ActiveX prompts when spyware and malware were just starting to become a problem.

One step forward, two steps back.

What makes it more frustrating is that this feature was routinely derided and complained about throughout beta testing, and has successfully made it to retail release almost entirely unchanged despite frequent and almost universal protests. Why bother accepting feedback on it at all?

DRIVER PROBLEMS

Most people who've used Vista or at least &quot;caught a whiff of it&quot; by now know that it's having some driver issues (putting it mildly).

Two of the major offenders right now seem to be nVidia and Creative. Now while I'll take any chance I get to throw rocks at Creative's drivers, I'm going to be an nVidia apologist. The fact of the matter is that Vista got rushed out. More than that, the designers, despite using XP's architecture for Vista, changed the way the system handles drivers, citing &quot;driver failure&quot; as the leading cause of XP blue-screens.

This is not untrue. 90% of my OS crashes and blue-screens have been from driver failure. (The other 10% was just bad RAM.)

HOWEVER. Graphics driver related crashes that bring the system down almost NEVER occur during normal use of the operating system. XP is surprisingly stable, no matter how much the slashdot crowd wants to throw stones. Graphics driver related crashes and hiccups occur when? During gaming. And if you're gaming with super important stuff loaded in the background, well...why haven't you closed it? You're wasting performance.

The point I'm getting at is that this is a cure that's worse than the disease. I wonder why performance is bad and drivers are having a hard time maturing? Maybe because it's XP but it's not, and everyone has to scramble to write Vista compliant drivers.

This, of course, isn't the worst of it. But the worst of it you can level at the vendors and not Microsoft.

I had to go through the forums here, plus ASUS's website, and use a little old-fashioned know-how, just to get drivers that worked on my Asus A8Jm. Worse than that, the power management software that I enjoyed using in XP was crappy in Vista.

At least nVidia tells you where you can download your wonky drivers. ASUS makes you hunt for it while you stare at that &quot;Windows Vista Capable&quot; sticker on your laptop, wondering &quot;what did I do to deserve this?&quot; and &quot;wouldn't it just make sense to put a Vista link on the front page?&quot;

Oh, and so we're clear, the driver salad I wound up having to install was a nightmare. I know what I'm doing and this was too much, I can't imagine Joe Sixpack having to go through this hoopla.

And for all that effort, what happened? 100% CPU use coming out of hibernate/standby, an internet connection that drops me randomly assuming it works at all, a full 45 minutes less battery life, and for all this it nearly cost me a midterm.

Why was Vista released again?

DEFECTIVE BY DESIGN: DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT

This is the one that the Slashdot crowd keeps barking about, and with good reason: no matter how much spin Microsoft or any one of the other bigwigs puts on it, DRM is bad for consumers. They claim that DRM allows them more avenues to release things to you, the consumer, thus giving you more ways to enjoy these...things.

But the reality is that any one of these things, be they music, video, even computer games, could've been released without digital rights management. I used Apple's iTunes store once to buy one album, and when I found that music basically marooned on my iPod because iTunes refused to work properly, I decided it wasn't for me. I paid for it, why can't I do what I want with it?

This is what Vista's DRM promises to do for you. And by for you, I mean to you. Integrated into the system is technology called HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection), designed to &quot;close the analog hole&quot; as the bigwigs like to say. Basically, what HDCP means to you is that if you have an HDCP-enabled monitor, and an HDCP-enabled video card, you can enjoy HDCP-protected media.

Pardon me for being vulgar, but HDCP can kiss my analog ass. I have an HDCP card and an HDCP monitor because I'm an insane enthusiast, but many people don't have these luxuries. To enjoy these, desktop users'll be spending a minimum of $200 on a shiny new flat panel that is HDCP enabled and a minimum of $60 on a shiny new video card that is HDCP enabled, and this is all assuming that these pathetically cheap discounts are upgrades on your existing hardware. And notebook users? Well, it's not like you can change either your monitor or video card.

I don't see HDCP going very far, but its existence is pretty offensive to begin with, and allegedly is going to be tied to HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

Another delightful new technology is the TPM, or Trusted Platform Module. This is hardware that's been quietly shipping for a little while now, and you may or may not know if you have it. It's a little chip in your computer that does the following:

1. Makes your computer distinctly identifiable to you and only you, as no two TPM chips are identical.
2. Makes it so that DRM-encrypted data produced on/downloaded to your computer can ONLY be used on your computer.

More information is available in its Wikipedia article (found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module).

The first is a massive privacy violation; the second doing nothing more than facilitating even more restrictive DRM.

Windows Vista will inevitably make use of either, but its biggest use at this point is for what Microsoft calls &quot;BitLocker Drive Encryption.&quot; For notebook users this is conceivably a good thing, as it allows a user to encrypt more or less their entire hard drive. The problem as I see it, however, is that this encryption is tied strictly to Vista.

I remember going to a seminar delivered by Microsoft when Vista was still in beta in early 2006 and asking the presenter what exactly could prevent Microsoft from basically &quot;switching off&quot; your access to the encrypted volume. He couldn't give me an answer. So if you're pirating a copy of Enterprise, this is food for thought for you. I don't condone piracy, but I don't like the idea of Microsoft reaching out and touching anyone.

Mercifully, BitLocker's only available in Enterprise and Ultimate versions of Vista.

Of course, the nastiest bit of DRM in Microsoft's stable is for &quot;protecting&quot; their own baby, Vista itself. Most of you are probably pretty familiar with Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), which is a misnomer if I've ever heard one. The WGA included in Vista is capable of shutting down important parts of the operating system; Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has gone on record recently as saying &quot;We have new technologies built into Windows Vista, something we call Windows Genuine Advantage [that] we've really dialed up in capabilities with the Vista release...We [will] really ferret through how far we can dial it up, and what that means for customer experience and customer satisfaction.&quot; (http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;7680622;fp;16;fpid;1)

Most peoples' experiences with WGA in XP have been pretty dismal: some legitimate users have been locked out of their legal versions of XP by it, while some pirates have been free to continue using their illegal copies. So to say that Vista's WGA is even more potent doesn't exactly make me want to race to install it.

Ultimately, Microsoft insists that its stance on DRM, particularly HDCP, was the result of pressure from the movie studios, which I find somewhere between hard-and-ludicrous to believe. Windows is a monopoly; everyone knows it. Just like how the RIAA told Steve Jobs to change the prices on iTunes and he was able to tell them what to go do with themselves, Microsoft could VERY easily have told the MPAA off. But they didn't.

CONSUMER UNFRIENDLY: UPGRADES / VERSIONS

To me, some of the nastiest DRM is when for all intents and purposes you should be able to do something, and you can't. There's no reason you can't other than a flag in the software that says &quot;no.&quot; So I can't help but get a little bit irked by the fact that every version of Vista is on each DVD of it sold, regardless of how it's labeled, but you can only use certain features if you have the right key. It makes the differences between the myriad versions that much more absurd.

Oh my, and how many versions there are. First of all, keep in mind there are 32-bit and 64-bit versions of each of these excepting Starter:

• Starter
• Home Basic
• Home Premium
• Business
• Enterprise
• Ultimate

I'll condense the nonsense for you. Starter doesn't exist for most people. Home Basic is the &quot;Core Solo&quot; of the Vista line-up, offering none of the bonuses that most people would want Vista for, namely Aero. Home Premium offers you Media Center functionality (which I admittedly do like), but the Mobility Center (Microsoft's feature geared towards notebook users) is (inexplicably) minorly crippled; I believe the &quot;Sync Center&quot; allowing synchronization with a desktop is missing. Business is more secure and has more fully-featured networking abilities. Ultimate just plain has everything. Enterprise is strictly for business customers.

One of the most damning things about this market segregation is the fact that Microsoft's site doesn't make any of this crap easy to learn. Beyond that, Home Premium is more expensive than XP Home Edition is; I had to pay extra when I ordered my laptop to get Premium instead of the useless pile Basic is, and I'm going to wind up paying extra again to get a copy of XP to install on it so I don't have to use Vista.

It gets worse, though. Here are some other restrictions you should know about:

1. Only Ultimate ships with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions included. All other retail versions ship only with the 32-bit software; you'll have to order the 64-bit discs from Microsoft. Your license WORKS with it, but you need to order the disc if you don't have one handy.
2. OEM versions come in 32-bit and 64-bit only. So if your shiny new notebook came with Vista and you eventually want to make the jump to the 64-bit version, good news! You're going to have to buy Windows Vista. I mean, you already own it, but you'll have to buy it to get the 64-bit version. Sure, you can order an OEM 64-bit version, but you still have to pay for Windows Vista AGAIN.

But wait! There's more!

Let's say you're upgrading to Windows Vista from XP or 2000. Now, somewhat more knowledgable users know that upgrading an existing operating system installation to a new one is generally a bad idea. XP had a scheme wherein if you had the upgrade version, you could do a clean install if you verified you had a CD of the older operating system. Not anymore with Vista!

If you buy the upgrade versions of Vista Home Basic or Premium, you'll need an activated installation of XP already on your system. So if you reformat your system once in a while (I do it almost pathologically), you'll now need to install TWO operating systems to get an install of Vista going.

As of the writing of this article, the only way to get a clean install of an Upgrade version is to install from the CD without using a CD key, and instead of activating it, promptly do an in-place upgrade of Vista with the key. This is a hole that I suspect will be closed at some point.

People like me who would've considered buying the upgrade version of Home Premium are now basically looking at spending up for the retail version if they want the freedom to do a clean install. Hooray!

64-BIT HOSED AGAIN

How Microsoft can continue screwing the pooch on 64-bit operating systems, I'll never know. The hardware is by and large out there. The majority of shipping notebooks now have 64-bit capable processors. The VAST majority of shipping desktops have 64-bit capable processors.

So when I look at Apple, who can change their underlying hardware from 64-bit to 32-bit to 64-bit and the end user NEVER NOTICES, I have to wonder why Microsoft has to ship different versions at all.

64-bit Vista has inherited all the problems of XP 64-bit as well: no 16-bit application compatibility, touchy 32-bit compatibility, hit-and-miss hardware compatibility. It requires 64-bit drivers even though I seem to remember at some point Microsoft saying that Vista would use a unified driver for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista. Oh well. Who needed WinFS anyhow?

64-bit processing is supposed to IMPROVE performance, but performance in 64-bit Vista is generally down over the 32-bit version (whose performance is also down from XP!)

What really concerns me is that 32-bit Vista is the one being rolled out right now, even on 64-bit hardware, which is again going to seriously cripple widespread adoption of 64-bit computing. And remember what I said about OEM versions of Vista not being licensed for 64-bit?

This wouldn't be a huge deal if it wasn't for the fact that high end users like yours truly are about to hit the 4GB limit of system RAM. 32-bit Vista (and XP) can only address a total of 4GB of RAM; even then, the operating system will never show that much RAM installed. Usually it displays an amount between 2.75 GB and 3.25 GB being available. Long story short: the RAM limit in 32-bit computing is about to get hit, with even mid-end notebooks now shipping with 2GB of RAM installed.

Vista was supposed to be the great savior for 64-bit computing, but it's a bust.

CONCLUSION

Windows Vista is Windows ME Part 2. It took five years to develop because three of those were spent building a brand new code base that didn't work at all and wound up getting scrapped, and the remaining two were spent just tweaking the XP code base. Almost all the features we were promised early on were discarded and what we end up with is a warmed over Windows XP that doesn't even do us the dignity of working properly out of the box. I think it's particularly telling that they've already announced the next major Windows release for late 2009.

It shouldn't have been rushed out. It shouldn't have even been released in its present state. This launch is vastly worse than XP's was, and reeks of arrogance on Microsoft's part, leveraging a monopoly on a world of consumers. I couldn't NOT get it on the laptop I ordered from HP. I'm not going to sit here and preach about Linux, which I still think is even LESS ready for primetime than Vista is. What I AM going to tell you is that against XP, the security features in Vista aren't worth it if you compute smart (something I wrote an article on a while back), DirectX 10 will take a while to reach critical mass for gamers, and frankly...XP just works. And it works a heck of a lot better right now.

Microsoft doesn't want to wait another five years for its next operating system release, but have you noticed anyone really complaining about the wait for Vista? I only complain because I think for five years of development you should have something to show other than an interface overhaul and widgets. We didn't NEED Vista the way we needed XP when it was released.

Vista offers no compelling reason to upgrade. There are other, better places to spend your money, and the only reason I can think of for forcing OEMs to produce machines with Vista AND ONLY VISTA is to make some extra money on all those copies of XP that they're going to sell when consumers figure out what a pile Vista is and make the jump back to XP.

AVOID.

 

What can I say... I agree.
I don't think I've ever appreciated XP as much as in the last week after I switched back...

 

Vista is much more attractive sure, but when it all boils down XP is much better and solid.

Pulp if I had the time right now to sit down and write my thoughts they would have been exactly what you said

 

1000000% agreed

vista is like jessica simpson, looks nice but can't do any housework

and i'd rather trade function over form any day

 

Yeah guys, youre probably right...I was really eager to work with Vista...but its really nothing else than a nice makeup they gave XP. Plus, I hate all those menu arrangements for absolute beginners, who dont know where to look for them. An advanced user would never look for them in those places. Maybe in 4-5 month it will get better with all software, drivers...Lets be honest ... XP had a slow start, too.
Remember those rumors, that XP is unable to run games?

generally, I agree.

 

Let's see just how many people are still running XP in a year's time..

 

Ouch! Steve Ballmer, you've just been JACKED UP!

 

I know business people that still run Windows 2000 Professional, why?

Because it's solid.

 

There is only one thing that I (admittedly half-heartedly) disagree with you on. I believe that certain variations of Linux actually ARE easier for the End-User than Vista, and way more secure. I would give my parents a copy of Ubuntu years before I would suggest they touch Vista. On top of that, their computer won't even begin to run Vista... but it would run Ubuntu without a hitch.

So yeah, I haven't used RTM, but if everything I've heard is true, it's not much (if any) better than RC2, which was fairly stable, but in NO WAY ready for release. + rep for you sir.

 

Wow, and to think I was looking at those pretty curved Vista packaged boxes at Best Buy considering a purchase. Thanks for the heads up. I'll keep XP running thru Bootcamp on my Macbook Pro. If it ain't broke don't fix it!

 

One thing in defense of Vista is the fact that drivers still aren't up to snuff and for stuff like gaming the situation will improve as time goes by. There are some things in Vista I like that aren't covered here, the search feature is much better and being able to type in a word to bring up an application you want to open is nice for those that don't like to take hands off the keyboard.

But, I do agree with many points here. I'm still on XP myself, but I will be making a "permanent" jump to Vista in a few months.

Oh, and with that UAC stuff, I think just about everyone is turning that off. Which is a pain in and of itself because it's just another thing you have to remember to do. Sort of like whenever I get an XP machine and switch from Category View to Classic View.

 

100% agreed, they are going to need one hell of a service pack to get me to switch over.

Oh and just to note and i'm glad you pointed it out. Creative's drivers were what pushed me back to XP. My Audigy 2 ZS Notebook Vista drivers were absolute CRAP! Here was the problem:

1) None of the settings stayed the same after you closed out of their 'beta' customization panel
2) None of the programs that came with it worked in vista (no more speaker control, eax control, diagnosing, advanced options, sound mixer, effect mixer, etc)
3) Sound Quality decreased by so much it wasn't funny... It sounded worse then my crappy notebook speakers. And not to mention 5.1 and 7.1 sound doesn't work in Vista with SoundBlaster...

You get the picture... basically there were no official drivers, no programs worked, sound quality sucks, and surround sound stopped working...

 

Check out this site. I haven't tried it but it is supposed to give you the look of Vista on XP. Find it here:

http://www.windowsxlive.net/?p=361

 

wow, looks like that funny Mac ad "cancel or allow" didn't exaggerate anything about Vista. I think I'm gonna stay put with Bootcamp & XP for my daily windows needs for now.

 

Well, it was a little exaggerated. But not by much. People really will just start clicking away without looking at the warning, just as in IE and Firefox. Heck, I did it when I was running Vista.

 

Lets all wait till SP1 comes out.
remember how bad both 2k and XP were before SP1!
And how about security holes in Vista? I've heard as of RC2, they still had a ton of major holes brought back from 98. Never heard if they were fixed for retail... but knowing MS and how poor RC2 was...

I'll keep on using OS X and XP until Vista is ready to be released...

 

A very useful feature.

I'm glad I recently bought a computer which still had XP Pro, but is eligible for a cheap Vista upgrade (which I have ordered but shows no sign of coming soon). My plan is to be able to do a first hand evaluation of Vista, figure out what is good and bad from my point of view and then go back to XP for a while.

Apart from the remaining bugs, what worries me is backwards compatibility (I have a few ancient programs which I occasionally run - such gems as Supercalc so I can load an old spreadsheet and save it as a Lotus file, which Excel can then read). I'm not worried about the eye candy (my XP is set to best performance and looks like W2K) so that I have more speed and less heat.

Indeed, the one feature about Vista which might tempt me is the display scaling. I had read a year ago that 10 point print will look like 10 point print irrespective of display resolution and size. In XP, changing the global DPI setting does have some unwanted side-effects, particularly for dialogue boxes.

It seems that the price of notebooks with Vista preloaded tends to be lower than the equivalent hardware with XP. I wonder why? Or is it just the downward trend of prices?

John

 

Great review...from my reading I can only agree. My conclusion is putting Vista (32 or 64-bit) on a shiny new C2D system is like putting lipstick on a pig.

A can add that had I not been locked into Windows development with Visual Studio for the past 6 years I would be running either Solaris or some flavor of Linux and doing just Java stuff (btw I HATE Java but that just shows how much more I hate MS.) But contracts dictated I could not follow that path. But two years from now I can, and likely will, dump Windows. I have already started by learning Sun's developer tools and getting up to speed on Java. So I'll hit the gound running in the not too distant future and likely never look back.

I find the comparison of the current release of Vista to ME is really accurate. Also the dumping of the old OS core because "it did not work" is likely why we are now stuck with this POS-OS. I really doubt that SP1 or whatever can fill in the gaps and/or stabalize things to the point where it's useful. Last given the poor performance of the OS think of it this way, what if the thing did not have C2D & CD CPU's to run on? How bad woult it be then?

OK, one more last comment. A source of frustration for me is how XP PRO still runs in short-bus mode even though it's their PRO OS. I mean if someone needs to run the top of their line OS and still needs to handheld for the most basic of tasks perhaps that person should not be allowed to run around w/o a helmet. It's just frustrating to face a constant barage of confirmations or "warnings"...I know how this crap works just leave me alone so i can work...now it reads that Vista is WORSE...good gawd I never thought that would have been possible! Oh, well, Solaris here I come...they will give me the OS for FREE as well as their best in breed Java development tools...OpenOffice, all FREE...no more MSDN Subs @$1000+/yr just to keep updated with MS and their crap. Though I will miss Visio and Foxpro just because they are old friends and I have used them since before they were assimulated.

Yup...MS is working in full helmet-wearing short bus mode anymore, just like their OS.

Great Review!!

 

*ducks flying chair*

But yeah, I stand by my experience. I'm sure after SP1 it'll be a lot better, since that'll have given the manufacturers time to get their drivers in order, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a warmed over XP and the worst release since Windows ME, probably even worse than that, given the state of the shipping operating system and the driver support.

XP's launch wasn't even this messed up.

 

This article raised some salient points about Vista, and I share many (if not all) of the author's frustrations. But then there was this:

I'm sorry, but every blog I've seen railing against Vista's autohiding menu bar comes across like Dana Carvey's Grumpy Old Man from SNL: "Why do they have to go and CHANGE everything? Back in MY day, we had a MENU BAR and we LIKED it!"

They only thing you seem to dislike about Vista's hidden menu bar is the fact that it's different -- and yet elsewhere in this article you complain that Vista isn't different enough to justify the changeover from XP! What's the message you're trying to send to Microsoft, exactly? It seems to be: "we want something that's new, different, revolutionary -- but not too new, different, or revolutionary because we're set in our ways!" Do you even want a new OS, or would you rather just use XP for another five years?

I applaud MS for hiding the menu bar -- I think it was the only really bold step they made in all of Vista (and technically they made it already in IE7). I just wish they'd had the cajones to do more; if we're ever going to move towards any truly revolutionary UI improvements, the change is going to have to come from the top down just like this. We had to adapt to the menu bar in the first place, so I'm sure we'll be able to adapt to something else quickly. After all, isn't adaptability what keeps us humans on top of the food chain?

 

WOW! That's all I can say. Actually I'll say a little bit more than that.

You people sound like whiners.

I'll start with UAC. I for one appreciate it. Back in Windows XP days, 6 years ago, I never worried about viruses and malware, but now you have to. Every time that stupid UAC pops up I know that I have some protection taking place. I have kids and their XP machine has been hosed many times with spyware. Antivirus protection is running and is constantly updated. UAC is minor annoyance but one I’ll happily live with.

A lot of this article deals with one time things. How many times do you have to worry about the versions that Vista comes in? You purchase one and move on. Why even bring this up?

DRM. Do you really know what goes on behind closed doors? Jobs told RIAA to shove it why didn’t Microsoft. No. you are speculating. Stick to what you know.

I've used Vista since the public beta2 and since. Crap didn't work early but MANY things were fixed. I use it now on two computers and love it. I have installed all my software that I have used in the past and it works. I play games on my laptop and do everything I used to do with a more secure and beautifully looking OS than before. I couldn't imagine going back to XP. File menus are gone and now the sky is falling. Dude get use to it things change. We may or may not like the change but EVERYTHING will change.

Many people stated in their posts that they would continue to use boot camp and dual boot between XP and Mac. I think this gives you away. This isn't really an article to point out Vista weaknesses. It’s an article to player hate Vista.

If you like Mac's go for it enjoy it. Just be fair. Is Vista the next best thing since sliced bread? No. It sure is better than XP.

 

Wow. Interesting article.

I haven't used Vista since Beta 2 and it seemed okay then since as you say you were expecting beta software. But, it's interesting to hear people's experience with RTM. I think Vista is a pretty "decent" operating system if you look at it in exclusion, but it just looks really bad considering the long delay, expectant hype, and all the features that were cut.

The funny thing I find about driver support was that in theory, the OS wasn't rushed. I thought the original timetable from even just a year ago was to launch at the end of back to school season or at the latest in time for Christmas. You'd think vendors like nVidia would have already factored that in for their driver development. Vista was pulled back half a year and people are still not ready. I suppose they could all be waiting for RTM to have the final build, but even then, Vista was released to corporations in November, and Business and Enterprise edition have the exact same code from a driver perspective, so people couldn't come up with anything after 2 months on the final version? I guess I'm most particularly disappointed with nVidia since they were always prided on good unified drivers, but ATI seems to be pulling ahead depending on how good the new OpenGL implementation on Catalyst 7.2 is.

Anyways, like most other people I'm waiting on SP1 at least, since I don't like to use first generation OS versions. Vista has been reference to ME, but I'm thinking it might be similar to 98 too since it was supposed to be Windows 97, but was delayed and without much improvement over 95. With XP SP2 basically being XP Second Edition, I wonder if we'll get a Vista Second Edition? Microsoft did say that they'll be adding in EFI support in later builds and ATI is already talking about DX10.1 and presumably Microsoft is still working on those cancelled features that may make their way back into Vista.

(On another note, I used Windows ME for 2 years and I didn't feel it was a failure of an operating system. It rarely crashed, certainly not anymore than 98 or 95, seem fast through most of it's life until the very end, but that's just it being bogged down by long use. Admittedly, it did get corrupt at the end of the 2 years, but I think that was the fault of something I downloaded rather than the operating system itself. Although I suppose vulnerability is the OSs fault. It was okay in the end anyways, since I was transitioning to XP at that time anyways. I just never understood the stigma against ME.)

 

Yes, but there's only so much a service pack can do. If Vista's abysmal, it's over.

Mmmhmmm. Oh yes. This is my usual time to make a plug for open-source and free software. Get Linux. Visit the Free Software Foundation today to see what you are missing.

 

That is PURE GOLD. It is exactly the way I feel about Vista especially after having lived with it for last week while our IT department was checking it out. Windows ME is the exact comparison that I drew. I also completely agree with you about Microsoft's attempts to change established ways we use the computer and interact with the system. The UAC, DRM, and unintuitive arrangement of options that I sometimes use (not those frequently used like back and forward buttons) makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes because I can't seem to find where something is. Plus, Vista is less stable than XP. I remember scrambling a few months ago to adjust our web pages to be compatable with IE7. That same scramble is back to get adjusted with Vista, but this time everyone feels the hit and that exponentially worsens the problem (if all the systems "upgraded" to Vista from 2000 and XP).

We don't need Vista like we've needed older systems. There was a reason I switched from 98 to 2000 and then to XP. 2000 had major compatability and architecture improvements over 98. XP had major graphical, interface, and organization improvements over 2000. Vista just looks pretty--that's about all it really does that's new. I don't need looks. I need compatability and performance. A pretty flashy interface was on the top of Microsoft's to-do list and they forgot all the other stuff. Security "enhancements" like UAC and DRM are no use if they get in the way or prevent me from doing something I want to do.

There are still several systems in this building that use 2000. Most are XP, but there are some running 2000 as well as several Mac labs. The Computer Science department I'm enrolled with also runs Solaris (Sun Blade 3500's?) systems for their private network and nearly every instructor runs a Mac or PC with Linux installed (The actual CompSci department network and website is fully hosted on those Sun systems. We do not use PC's although our assignments are required to work cross platform between PC's and Unix. The Unix systems make simple things like turning in assignments and working anywhere via SSH as so painless and non-stressful. The Windows network I can't say the same for, but it does work.). My experiences with Ubuntu were much more positive than with Vista. I really enjoy XP a lot more than I used to since being forced to use Vista. It's that same feeling I got when moving from 98 to 2000 and then to XP. It felt like a real upgrade and like we were moving forward. Vista is pure beta software.

Let's wait for SP1? Microsoft knows most businesses and many users will wait for the first major service pack in order to adopt a new OS. So what did Microsoft do? They're accellerating the release of SP1 for Vista. It will be out very soon and won't contain anything other than minor patches rolled into a WGA package. I have yet to read anything major getting fixed or having new functionality upgrades like we got in SP1 and SP2 for XP. Reasoning that the service pack will fix the problems is not a reality when the manufacturer purposely intends to rush that service pack out and intends to release it. XP's service packs took a while because they weren't planned to get released right away. Yes, they were in the future, but it wasn't a rush like Vista's are. Microsoft wants Vista's first service pack out the door ASAP because it thinks that's the only way to get businesses to move over. With XP and 2000 some businesses and users would wait, but many took the plunge even before SP1 because they just needed to have the new features and functionality that worked.

What Microsoft has done is purely release Beta software in much the manner that Electronic Arts releases its games. Vista can be equated to the release of Battlefield 2. Sure, it works and it looks pretty, but without any patches you can barely browse for a server to connect (something that was *****ed about and then ignored by EA in the beta) and hopefully stay connected, which was not likely. That and there's bugs, hacks, and exploits all over the place. Did the subsequent patches fix that? They fixed some of it, but not everything. It took them 8 tries plus 2 recalls I think.

I can see it now. SP1 gets kicked out the door just as fast as Vista did once Microsoft got tired of it taking so long. I'm just waiting for it to be an EA-style patch that creates a host of new problems or damages installations so that Microsoft needs to recall it and put out an SP1.1. That type of production and patching style may work on a non-critical video game, but for the core of your system it's just unacceptable for Vista to be this way.

 

you bring up pretty good points, but ill have to disagree with you on blaming microsoft for not putting out 64bit vista in 64bit systems. That is totally the pc manufacturers call. If you find a 32bit vista in a 64bit ASUS laptop then thats ASUS bad call.

 

Wow did you guys use Vista for a day, then get pissed off because you can't find things that were there in XP. I have been using Vista RTM for over four months and I still find new things that have been changed or added. You guys are ripping on Vista for not being stable well I can tell you in four months i have only had one blue screen that was caused from .NET because v2.0 is not compatible. So I would say it is just as stable as XP, because I never got blue screens in XP either. I can't believe anyone has said anything about the speed of Vista. Sure it eats up your RAM, but it goes to caching of your most opened programs. My laptop with a Pentium M feels like a dual core because I can click two programs at once and they will both open much faster than XP. Even my two year old desktop feels like it got much faster. The P-4 hyperthreading actually feels like it does something. One last thing in comparison, XP has so many memory leaks that I can feel the computer slowing down each day it is on. This is why I always turn off my computer at night, but I tested sleep mode on my laptop in Vista and I had amazing results. I left my computer on for 5 days putting it in sleep maybe six times a day and the best part is the computer felt fresh every time. there was no slowdown.

 

LOL! Yet another reason to hate Stu Yah.

 

I'm pretty happy I started uni in September and thus was able to purchase a laptop with XP. I don't *need it*. Why should I? XP runs the programs and games I want to just fine and does the things I want perfectly. Contrary to Apple, I also have no security concerns with XP, although I have common sense and know how to control my system

Vista does have the whole aura of "money" around it. Microsoft will have to try harder to convince a sceptic world* as to otherwise. *Even if its a minority and every one else are sheep, its still a significant minority

P.S. Interesting paragraph on TPM. I have it on my laptop and have no idea what it does. Still don't after reading wikipedia. I haven't initialised it and don't feel the need to as I know what is going on with my laptop

 

I think Vista will be ok after SP1 is released, until them im not upgrading.

For $119 for the OEM version of Home Premium, I will do it.

 

"The WOW starts NOW"
More like, "WOW, IT SUCKS!"

I tried Vista on one machine, but downgraded (more like upgraded) back to XP after trying vista for 1/2 an hr. i get driver problems, sounds don't work, organization is actually worse. they took a bunch of tabs and spread it out into diff applications. WOW. IT's a total ripoff from MAC OSX except it's 1/2 like OSX but 1/2 like the other windows.

gaming lags more than xp. programs take longer to boot. startup time is slower. don't really give a **** about aero when I have window blinds.
gadgets? just install them.

so yeah. def. not worth the $$$ to upgrade to vista

 

It's funny how analogous your situation is to mine.

-I'm a college student
-It's the middle of midterm season
-I have an A8Jm
-(difference) I got a free copy of Vista Business from the engineering school here and was considering installing it

Well, there goes that thought

 

Well thanks a lot Pulp. I never realised Vista was that bad Lets hope Service Pack 1 improves things a bit.

 

And you figured all that out in an 1/2 hour.

I've used a Mac for maybe 1/2 hour ever so I don't know what I'm missing out on. If I wanted to try it out could I just buy the OS and slap it on to my laptop or do I need to buy an entire PC?

I'm using a Dell Inspiron 9300. It sounds like a lot of the ASUS laptops are having problems.

 

I can't agree with you more. Vista sure looks nice with Aero and all, but when it comes to software compatibility, it's pure garbage. Logitech Setpoint drivers crashing, S3 powersaving mode crashing, Vampire Bloodlines running slower with my 8800GTS on Vista than my 6600GT on XP; I mean, it's just pathetic.

 

Great article. However, I just ordered an HP laptop (yesterday) for my dad with XP. Business store. Slightly more expensive, but very very very worth it.

 

I would make the case that Ubuntu, a linux distro, is probably a better upgrade choice than Vista.

Why?

- you can still access your XP data and run applications through WINE.
- Ubuntu is human centric distribution and i've already read reviews saying that installing it is smoother than installing Vista.
- comes with hundreds of free productivity software like Open Office, Firefox, Gimp... and more are being created all the time.
- you have unix under the hood, just like OSX, so your proficiency ceiling is much higher should you need it.
- linux desktop and window management (beryl/compiz) is arguably more advanced than Vista and OSX. Oh, and it will run on mediocre hardware.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqcyAhWzqSo

- like OSX, viruses software isn't a necessity.
- Ubuntu is free.

If you'd like to try Ubuntu, just burn the iso and boot it up the CD - you don't have to install it to check it out ( why didn't microsoft provide that option with Vista? )

Why you might not want to move to Ubuntu:

- not all of your old windows apps are going to run under Wine, and some are tough to get running. Thus heavy gamers or those buying new games should stick with Windows. Those dependent upon Windows applications, such as photoshop, should also probably stay with Windows.
- easy to step off the path and that requires learning something about linux.
- while there are tech support options available from Ubuntu and a vibrant user community - do not expect your local best buy techie to be able to help you out.

 

Great Review Pulp.


I do not understand why people are rushing to install such a bloated and bug ridden software.

Shame on Balmer and Microsoft for releasing such piece of crap!

Balmer claiming slow sales of Vista on Piracy! The guy got balls!

At least some people are trying it out for free before realising that they would have wasted their hard earned cash on such a shameful piece of software.

Still happy with XP and for the shortime, Microsoft could not pay me enough money to used their Vista.

For Vista, it's Alta La Vista, Baby!

 

i dunno about that...a lot of laptops and pcs are now coming with vista without any option for xp...i know a lot of people are gunning down vista...and have every right to...but the best thing is to wait until sp1 and then see how good it is then...yeah it has its bad sides...a hell of a lot lol... (i probably will end up downgrading/dual boot as soon as my laptop comes) but it does also have some strong points to it and eventually people will be saying the same thing when the new windows 'vienna' comes out in 2 years time...

 

I pretty much completely agree with you, and I am in fact using Ubuntu right now. However, it should be noted that Beryl/Compiz is not included in the current releases of Ubuntu. Instead, the picture below is what you will see.

 

That's exactly the same situation I'm in, but add on the fact that I also work for my university on the branch that connects Marketing/Communications with IT. They haven't actually released Vista to the students to get through the MSDN Academic Alliance subscription the college is in. Rumor has it Microsoft has a problem with our Unix systems being used by the Comp Sci department. I don't know if that's true though. About 5% of our computers are Win2000, 45% WinXP, 30% Mac OSX, 20% Sun Unix, but the CompSci department works almost exclusively on the Unix network.

I totally agree with that! I remember when I set up a machine with Ubuntu for my parents. They really liked it since it didn't pop up any strange error messages or behave strange. It was also a lot harder for them to click on something wrong. Ubuntu has something like UAC, but it's much much smarter.

 

This "article" just caused my formerly high opinion of notebookreviews go crash down quite a bit. In all honesty, it's not an editorial it's an ABM rant that has no place masquerading as an objective review.

I have been using Vista (both alone on a PC and dual booting on a Mac) since the beta test days. Thus far I can say:

1) No driver issues at all. My Mac has the Radeon x1600 and my PC a GeForce 7900 GS. Both are functioning quite well. So do my speakers, printer, my synaptics touchpad on my notebook, the whole works.

2) UAC. I have had UAC pop up exactly two times since I installed RTM (when I had it pop up a few times while I was installing my software). So, I think UAC is going to vary a lot depending on the software you use. If you are using software that constantly (and in my opnion needlessly) is asking for admin rights, then yes UAC is going to hit you a lot (as well it should).

Comparing this to the Mac world is irrelevant. The reason you don't get nailed constantly by Mac apps for permission is that Mac apps typically aren't looking for SU or Root privileges. The real problem is that Windows apps were EVER written to require admin rights. fortunately as newer versions of these apps come out they are slowly getting rewritten to operate under reduced privileges.

3) Speed. Both my Vista installs fly along and have experienced no lockup, BSODs or the like. Vista's new model of RAM use had indeed improved the responsiveness of my system.

3) Aero is a great UI. I agree with an earlier poster that it seems the rap on Aero is that it's too different, while in the same breath Vista gets slammed for not being different enough? Aero is on the whole well thought out and visually appealing. If I were to rap on it I would state that they didn't go far enough (we still have vestigal versions of My Documents, My Pictures et al). I would have junked the entire subfolder structure and just had a directory called "files" on C, and used the excellent desktop search engine to organize everything.

So, overall, it is WAY more secure than XP, faster and in my experience stable.

If you want me to describe bad OS experiences perhaps I'll do an editorial on my journey though three different Linux distros (Gentoo, SuSe and Ubuntu)...

 

For some reason after reading this it makes me want to try Vista even more...

 

hauhau!
U know jes??

 

I had been looking to replace my 4-year-old HP Pavilion notebook with XP Pro since last fall and was waiting until Vista was released and installed on notebooks. I received my new HP Pavilion dv6000t this past Monday. All I can say is that I have never enjoyed a new OS more, and I've been using computers before a lot of the folks posting here were born. MS Dos, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Second Edition, Windows 2000, and XP Professional---I prefer Vista to them all.

Are there some problems with Vista? Are there driver issues? Doubtlessly. My pen scanner will not work with Vista but a driver is to be available soon. However, that's the only problem I have. Besides, why haven't software and hardware companies gotten their drivers ready for Vista?

Everything else, hardware and software, works fine. My Brother laser works flawlessly. My word processing programs are fine. BibleWorks 7 made a patch available with the consumer release of Vista and it works without a hitch. Firefox is no problem. I don't do gaming, and that may be where a lot of the issues lie. Maybe I'm just a computer simpleton and live in make believe. Whatever.

Some things that are more intuitive to a beginner are more difficult for those of us who have been using Windows for some time. We've been trained to find folders and files in a convoluted fashion. I'm learning things about Vista daily and I like it.

Would I upgrade if I had an older computer on XP? Probably not. I think more issues arise from upgrading than buying a new computer with Vista installed. Would I buy a new computer and put XP on it instead of Vista? Definitely not. I enjoy not having blue screens.

I really am amazed at the poster who discovered in all of 30 minutes that Vista wasn't worth using. Incredible. Sorry guys, I just can't agree with you. Enjoy XP; I'll enjoy Vista.

Bill

 

So XP smells like a rose now. When did this happen?

If I remember correctly, when it came out in 2001, pretty much only Paul Thurott liked it. Does anyone remember the complaints about the Fisher-Price interface? Or all the hardware and software incompatibilities -- including all the games that needed patches just to even start when XP came out, let alone get good framerates? What about the privacy rights concerns surrounding XP's new product activation feature? And didn't we used to complain about XPs sieve-like security problems every day until SP2 came out -- three years after the initial release? And even then we refused to install SP2 because we thought it would cause compatibility problems or violate our privacy or some such nonsense.

You know, I see all the Vista flaws the OP mentioned every day on my machine, but yet for some reason, I can't get all worked up about them the way some people can. Maybe it's because I'm used to it: for many of you, this is the first OS migration of your adult lives. It's only natural that it's a traumatic event -- but things used to be even worse. I remember when MS released new OS versions every 2-3 years, and most of them were failures out of the box. Remember Windows 98? Of course you don't, because you had Windows 98 Second Edition. Windows 98 was so bad that they needed a freakin' do-over. And as I mentioned earlier, your beloved Windows XP took TWO service packs to straighten out.

Compared to all this, the Vista rollout is relatively smooth. By the time the the hardware and software vendors pull their heads out and release updated drivers (within 2-3 months, tops), it'll be at least as stable as XP ever was. And by the time SP1 comes out, no one is going to be missing the menu bar. Except in Windows Live Mail Desktop. But WLMD sucks, so...

 

First, thanks to Dustin for his time and review of the consumer release version of Vista. Everyone has brought up good stuff, and Cogitatus makes some good points.

While I'm not planning on upgrading to Vista until required (and I'm not necessarily an MS fanboy), this really has been a relatively smooth release. And other than the elimination of the easy-to-verify OS they used to use, my understanding is the install goes much easier than it ever used to. Try a websearch for "upgrade to win 98" or similar to see what it was like in the "old days".

I think the main problem is MS's vision for its future. It really wants to be the entertainment/info center for the home. And they realize that many people are attracted to something "pretty looking" more than they care about what's under the hood. But they're not sure whether to focus on computers or home entertainment, and their current hodge podge of an OS shows that lack of focus.

In Win 98, plug-and-play was a big selling point. But there were issues with it (drivers, lack of hardware that used it, etc.) Just like Vista! Even now, PnP isn't as integrated as it could be. But then the future for peripherals (printers, external drives, etc.) is probably some flavor of Bluetooth or wireless.

From what I've read, I think MS did drop the ball on UAC. As stated, users will just get tired of it, or of entering a good (read that as "long") password, and revert to short, stupid passwords so they can just click through quickly. Or they'll disable it. If users are disabling a security feature, it's not well designed.

Their attempt to further lockdown digital content is very worrisome and insulting. But the issue isn't caused by people legally buying music/video/etc. It's the illegal downloads that drive that. If people weren't stealing to such an extent, there probably would have been a lot less interest in trying to manage how content is used and played. Not that I'm defending it, but it's a big part of the root cause of DRM.

 

I for one am a little interested in Vista...interested enough to dual-boot with Vista as primary and XP as backup (though I will not be able to set that up until tomorrow).

But here's the problems I'm encountering already:
1) I cannot find a media card driver for 64bit Vista. Now, there might be one already (and I think when I tested 64bit RC2 there was one)...so this may be moot.
2) My scanner already has drivers up, but I haven't tested them yet.
3) My printer does not have drivers, but the manufacturer site says Vista's default print driver will work until the vendor can product specific drivers. Probably a month of two wait.
4) My TV Tuner drivers are in beta...no excuse. But I don't mind right now because I don't get decent TV right now anyway.

I'm installing 32bit Home Premium, with the intent to reinstall to 64bit Ultimate in a few months. So far, all my laptop drivers seem to be readily available for both versions (except for that card reader as mentioned).

We'll see what else is going on...but I'm optimistic. There's always my XP Virtual Machine that I'm going to have running for when an app doesn't work!

 

Hi sanpabloguy,

I think you have a pretty good analysis in some areas. Vista definitely is trying to move the OS to a sort of "home entertainment center" focus in some respects. However, I would not call it a hodgepodge.

A major part of Vista that no one sees is the near total rewrite of the guts. In Vista windows has been reshaped into a componentized system, making addons and upgrades much easier to do (and a lot more secure to boot).

As to UAC, as I noted I have had very little issue with it (perhaps the fact that my software is all commerical and I keep it up to date factors into that). I do not expect the great majority of Vista users to go rummaging in the system to disable the security, or to resort to silly short passwords. What is more likely is that consumers will start paying more attention to buying software that plays well with Vista (does not set UAC off because it does not ask for admin rights).

As to DRM, you are spot on about WHY DRM is being pushed. DRM is not being driven by some manichean scheme to deprive people of the freeodm to use their own property; it is a reaction to theft and the (extremely unethical) idea that if you buy one copy of something where the price was for one copy you are entitled to "pass it around" by making copies.

 

Which card reader do you have? Mine has Vista Drivers that work perfectly.

 

I could not have summed it up better. I have been warning my computer illiterate friends and family away from Windows Vista for weeks. Finally I can point them to this article, say plop yourself down, take 15 mins and READ it. Save you hours [days? weeks?] of headache, not to mention money.

And if your whole thing is "Ooooh shiny", get Stardock's Windowblinds and one of the 10,000,000 vista skins out there. Peep my setup from a few weeks aback, running on rock solid XP. ZERO reason to "upgrade". POS.