For a Power User: Vista's Usability is better than XP's

I am a software engineer who is most at home in a Linux environment, specifically Debian based distributions, such as Ubuntu.

Lately, I've been without a computer (see: U330 shipping fiasco) so I've been forced to use my wife's Vista laptop. As this is my first real exposure to Vista, I have some thoughts:

Vista is NOT as bad as the hype suggests.
I miss multiple desktops with a passion.
The new start menu is phenomenally better than XP's. (To open just about any program installed on my machine, I hit the windows key, then type the name of the program I want... eg: [Windows Key] -> gimp -> [Enter Key] and The Gimp launches. Very smooth.
The new windows explorer is also a fair bit more intuitive than XP's. It's rather nice to be able to navigate folders at any point in the hierarchy. (especially since I use Tortoise SVN plugged into Explorer, so when I'm jumping around files in my working copy of the code I just checked out, the new explorer shines.)

Obviously the bloat and need for a fairly powerful system is a downside, but if you have the computer, I don't see such a huge downside in using Vista.

For an every day user, I'd never suggest Vista over XP... but for a power user, such as myself... my initial reaction to the usability is positive, with some caveats.

The primary thing is: the last job I worked, I was running XP in WebSphere ND from my laptop. Even with 4gb of RAM, the system still crawled with 8-10 JVMs running. The ND deployment manager alone is half a gig of memory used. I can't imagine trying to run all of that in Vista, which'll take 15% of my RAM just to start. A normal user will never have an issue with that, though.

Other things: Takes a while to boot. XP wasn't so quick either, though. Not compared to my past Ubuntu machines that are fully booted in under 1.5mins.

How much of Vista's disdain is fueled by the intarwebz people trying to out-bash the OS? A fair amount of it is an improvement on XP. I still prefer Linux, and don't intend to boot to Vista very often when I get my new computer... but I don't feel a strong need to go back to XP.

Thoughts?

 

I went with Vista in June of 2007 and would not go backwards to XP, myself.

 

Yea.;. i have so many friends who say "YOU USE VISTA???!!!111!! (ONE) !"
Then when i ask if theyd user it... "no, but it sucks"


i like vista personally, especialyl cause it has a managable (driver and software compatibility) 64x version

 

I agree with most of what you said about Vista (except the Websphere stuff which I don't know much about).

Regarding the boot times... the flip side of the issue is this: you don't have to boot Vista very often. Far fewer actions require a reboot in Vista than in XP. Also, hibernate is generally faster than booting and also shuts the power off. So... I usually just sleep or hibernate, and only reboot about twice a month: once with the updates on Patch Tuesday, another one some random time when I do something that requires a reboot like update a driver or something.

Regarding the "average user"... I think average users can benefit from Vista a lot too. Vista is more secure overall, good at diagnosing and resolving problems automatically, has a lot more features built-in (especially search indexing), a nicer appearance, improved volume control, more robust system restore, automated defrag, Defender, etc.

 

To the OP, I agree w/ the Title of the thread. More so w/ the words "Experienced User" rather than Power User! I guess they are related in some way; but what i'm trying to say is, I believe the average Joe will have hell w/ the little issues that .Vista brings.

 

Despite what I might have implied in a thread I started called " Vista shortcomings", I do like the feel and responsiveness of Vista 64 (from what little I know about it), its just that alot of the software I use just DOES NOT work in Vista 64.

 

Interesting bit about the start times. I'm using vista hp 64 bit and i manage to get mine to boot in roughly 38 seconds (is this good), but i guess this is dependent on what software you have running on startup, everyones pc is going to be different. I have done the tweaks etc to make it speed up, be interesting to see what other boot times are.

I went from xp to vista about 18 months ago and have never looked back. Good to hear a post praising vista and not bashing it!!!!

 

The average Joe is probably running Windows 98 (pre-SE) or Windows 2000 and using AOL.

 

you're too much JohnDoe...I beg to differ though...I believe the avg. Joe is running XP SP2 and only uses his computer to surf the web, check e-mail etc, use MS Office and print documents.

 

Hey now.. Windows 2000 was a great business OS! Are you sure you're not thinking of "Millenium Edition" for home users? I used 2K Pro from 2000 to late 2006, and would still be using it today if it was still supported. However, I really don't think it was ever that popular for the "average joe". Everyone else I know jumped from 98 to XP, and a few from the aweful Windows ME.

I feel the complete opposite. Vista has worked out great for friends and family that have little to no computer experience. But for everyday users, and especially power users, small changes in Vista can be frustrating at first. Many things cannot not be accessed the same way they were, and many things now take several more clicks to accomplish.

I'm sure some of these changes from 95/98/ME/2K/XP to Vista are probably for the better, but long-time Windows' users have to break their 'muscle memory' from years of repeating the same procedure in the same way.

For the most part, I really like Vista. But as a power-user, it's the small changes that I still find frustrating.

 

I've used almost every operating system, on multiple platforms, that has been released since the mid-1970's, and several that were 1960's vintage. As PC operating systems go (the scale is different on different platforms, PC operating systems have lower expectations across the board) Vista is a B/B+. ME was a solid D. Windows XP (pre SP1) was a C-, and a shaky one at that.

 

back to the OP

for a power user, has anyone set up the start-up services for optimization for a workstation computer? such as heavy processing, cad, maya, rendering, rhino, blah blah blah.....

I'm sure tweaking the services.msc would be different in comparison of a power user to a gamer to a normal user, right?

so i guess my question is has anyone set up a list for a workstation user?

 

Good to hear another positive and truthful voice out there, sometimes people who bash vista just throw crap and nonsense around.

i Honestly use BOTH. but i feel better with XP in gaming, i still love playing homeworld 2 (incompatible with vista and DEP probs). and i honestly feel that 2gb is way more than XP needs and can be sorted out for gaming.

But for Photoshop, Illustrator, Office work and Powerpoint projects i would go with vista anytime, thanks to superfetch and quirky tweaks such as live preview, id use Vista ALL THE TIME

why cant we have best of both worlds eh?

 

Vista isn't that bad. Just tweak some services and it only uses 500MB of RAM with 40 processes. If you wanna tweak it even more, disable all the flashy looks and Aero. That takes off about 100MB of RAM usage.

I kinda like Vista's UAC feature. I don't use any anti-virus software because UAC practically tells you what a program wants to do. I have never gotten a virus in 16 months using Vista.

I personally don't like Superfetch because it eats up RAM by loading programs I don't use a lot. Most people think Vista is bad because they use really old hardware (my friend has a Pentium 4 desktop with 1GB of RAM running Vista). Most laptops with a Core 2 Duo processor and 2+ GB of RAM will be able to run Vista well.

 

i got it down to 34 processes, and 812mb of ram... i'm pretty sure that's all I can do... with a start up of 52s (the bios and raid controller take up 30ish seconds of boot time, is this excessive?)


don't use any flashy stuff... well the vista basic theme but it's not too graphically intense, plus turned superfetch off because i really was sick of the constant thrashing of the hdd (it stopped the activity)

 

Just a quick question - what's inherently wrong with filling up available RAM - better it should just sit there not being used at all?

 

What? The zeros and ones in your unused memory are not in the pattern you would like them to be?

 

+∞

I bought 3gig and I'm almost disappointed it only uses 1.5
That's with a load of programs running too.

 

View attachment 25476

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Maybe you could use some more of that real-estate by setting up a RAM disk (I think someone posted a how-to recently)?

 

Vista SP0 > XP SP0
Vista SP1 > XP SP1

Hopefully there WILL be an SP2 which continues that trend.


EDIT: @Shyster1: I'm not disappointed at all - free resources are always welcome. I'm simply ______ (I can't think of the word I want to put here so I'm leaving it blank) at the fact that forums all over the internet whinge about Vista's hogging, yet I very rarely (if ever) go above 1300MB usage.
It's just another Vista-orientated urban myth.

 

But, is _Vista SP1 > XPS3, or _Vista SP1 < XPSP3?

 

Haven't used SP3 so I can't comment.

 

How about _Vista SP1 and XPSP2?

 

I prefer Vista.
I've NEVER had a problem with it, only one program has ever crashed, and Vista killed it and continued as normal. In XP if a similar crash occurs, your system tends to grind to a halt.

 

Any particular reason(s)?

Also, just FYI, in case you were thinking "here comes another XP wing-nut," relax, I'm not trying to get into an XP/Vista fight with you (or anybody else), I'm just interested in the comparisons - I've already made my decision on which way I'm going for my own idiosyncratic reasons, at least until 2014 (when I'll probably switch to a linux variant); however, since I've never spent any in-depth time with _Vista I'm sure that I don't know all of the little details, so I'm open to changing my mind if I find that your reasons make sense in my own context (which, of course, has nothing to do with whether your reasons are good or bad - you seem like an intelligent, competent person, so I'm more than happy to assume that they're better than average).

 

Wy thnk u

Well in terms of basic functionality, nothing has gone.
It's a bit oversimplified perhaps, but once you change the control panel back to classic view (which I did the first time I turned on the laptop), the control's back.

Whilst it may not be a good enough reason to upgrade in itself, aesthetically it's far superior. It's so clean, all the apps fit in - it just makes general computing so much nicer.

The search functions are great, especially the start menu. Hitting the Win key and typing the first few characters of a program's name is divine. I miss it so much on other systems.

Explorer is so much nicer to navigate, pictures on folder icons, being able to switch folders on the fly (eg going straight from some subfolder right back through several parent folders with a single click in the address bar).

Power management options are vastly superior, being able to switch power plans on the fly is great, I don't need huge computing power on the go.

It's way easier to nerf windows software, IE etc. Associating file types takes seconds, you can change the default "Internet" icon pinned to the top of the start menu with ease.

The sidebar is another minor plus, but I love it. Clock, calender, cpu monitor, weather and a notepad all at my fingertips.

Wireless support is vastly improved, in all aspects.

The built in security, while not perfect, is a major upgrade, which means a lot more computer illiterate users (I don't mean this in a degenerative way at all, but I can't think of a better word apart from n00bs) will have systems a lot cleaner than they would with xp. UAC is a pain, but it means I know exactly what programs are up to, and day to day it doesn't pop up a lot.

On weaker systems, Vista is pretty sluggish, but once you get to a point of relatively modern hardware it's so snappy. Searches are so fast, file transfers too (although that's partially due to the fact that I'm more used to old-skool USB 1 in day to day usage ).

This might be a matter of system/manufacturer, but Sleep & Hibernate work way better in Vista too.

Drivers are almost a non issue. Trying to set up a printer recently in XP, we scurried around Dell's site (it was a Dell printer Mum got from work - we didn't pay for it I swear! ) looking for drivers/software. Vista: 5 secs of device recognition, done and dusted, plug and play.

Did I mention it's pretty?

EDIT: Wow, that's a long post... I hit submit so I wouldn't lose my progress and now I'm wondering whether I've enough, and if anyone's gonna read it....

Vista's better with file types, unzipping is faster and better than in xp. If it doesn't recognise an extension it'll ask you do you want it to search the web for something that can open it.

I'm supposed to be doing a maths assignment so I'm gonna leave now...

EDIT 2: Another cool thing is during file transfers, if there's already a file with the same name in the destination folder, you get more options than Overwrite/Cancel. It can automagically rename one of the files so they both fit.

It's pretty too....

There might be a bit of repetition in there but meh.

 

If you want multiple desktops for Windows, try the Virtual Desktop Manager XP Power Toy. Been awhile since I've used it so I don't particularly recall how snappy it is, but it does at least provide multiple desktops in the same fashion as many Linux or Solaris systems do. Hopefully that'll make Windows feel a bit more familiar for you - I know it can be a useful thing to have. However, do note that it is an XP Power Toy, and may or may not work with Vista. If you decide to test it on Vista I'd be curious to know if it works. I don't know of any Vista-native equivalent.

As for the just typing the name of the program in the start menu, you can achieve the same effect in XP by creating a folder of shortcuts to your programs, adding it to the system path, and then whenever you type Win+R for Run you can just type in "Opera" or "NetBeans" or whatever to start up a program. Not quite as easy I'll admit, but it achieves the same affect.

The thing about Windows boottime is that it slows down. XP was under 40 seconds when I first installed it, and Vista under 50, but it generally increases. Now I'm in the 60-90 second range with XP - haven't measured it precisely recently. But it's certain security software for Windows (such as Norton) that can really make it boot slow - keep slow security software off and Windows will keep reasonable if not great boot times. Put that security software on, and yeah, Windows can take forever to boot.

The problem is that with the number of low-cost consumer notebooks being sold with 1 GB or even 512 MB or RAM, an OS that routinely uses over 1 GB of RAM is using too much memory. I've used XP with 512 MB and programs that brought memory usage around the 666 MB range, and even with just 150 MB above total RAM supply, it ran exceedingly slow. So I'm sure if someone's putting 1.2 GB of Vista demands on a 1 GB machine, it's slow, whereas if they were using XP on the same machine and same programs RAM usage would be around 700 MB and everything would be much more snappy.

With 1.5 GB or more, true, Vista doesn't cause RAM problems, but 2 GB isn't yet standard on the low end.

I still find Windows' built-in power management tools a bit weak (not that I've found as OS with that good of ones built-in). IIRC Vista does allow you to cap the CPU at 50% power, which is a step up (or can XP do that? I actually don't know), but isn't nearly the most you can do. With third-party tools you can set the CPU well below 50% power (I'm at 600 MHz of 2.2 GHz at the moment) and lower the voltage for substantial power savings there as well. And that is much more effective than either Vista's or XP's power management - hence why I use exclusively RMCPUClock and BIOS screen brightness controls for power management now and just leave XP's profile on maximum performance all the time.

Associating file types, there Vista does have an advantage. I can never remember where you do that in XP, but IIRC it was decently straightforward in Vista.

File transfers seemed slow in Vista to me, though. Particularly for small files - it would often sit there with 0 bytes left to transfer for 10-15 seconds with no explanation at all as to how those 7 bits or less could take so long to transfer. For larger files it wasn't that great, either - probably comparable to XP.

Windows has asked about unrecognized extensions for as long as I can remember, so that's nothing new. The automagic renaming isn't anything new, either - it's not great in XP, just adding a (1) or something similar in the filename, but I don't recall any particularly ingenious renaming scheme in Vista, either.

But back to the main point...

Doubtless some of it is. But certainly a decent number of the Vista bashers are Vista bashers because they actually did have bad experiences with it. Bad experience in compatibility and stability is why I switched back to XP after 5 months of using Vista. Vista simply didn't run two of my favorite games at anywhere near an adequate level, it lost my account password, didn't get along with my CPU as well as XP (the CPU whine problem, and a very major problem when I had Vista at that) - there were one or two other issues but those were the main ones. Althogether not worth the effort when XP solved all the issues instantly.

So I certainly do recommend XP whenever I'm asked about Windows OS'es, or at the very least Vista Business so the user can downgrade to XP Pro if/when they find incompatibilities staring them down. And I do defend XP a fair amount as I do find it to be the best Windows OS. But I never would have become a Defensor XP had I not tried Vista - and sometimes you do have people on the Interwebs who bash Vista (or countless other products) without ever actually having used it yourself.

My bottom line is if you have Vista and like it and it's working for you, good for you. But if you don't have Vista, don't have any particular reason to get it, and know XP works well for you, stick with what works, even on a new computer. The reason? Vista's compatibility and stability problems - it's not worth risking them when you know perfectly well that XP will run all your programs just fine.

The corollary is that if you can try Vista for free, it doesn't hurt to try it. I figure that's what I'll try to do with Windows 7 (beta testing) and if it actually works with my programs, which I rather doubt, then I might get it at some point; if not, I can always use XP and my extra license of Server 2003 until 2017 or so.

 

Well, so far, I'd be willing to give _Vista a spin if the replacement notebook I hope to be getting soon comes standard with it; however, at this point I don't think I'd be willing to pay extra to switch to it. I understand how conveniences that seem trivial at first (or when you haven't used them) grow on you until you realize that you really did need that easier way of doing things, so I have to admit that since I haven't worked with _Vista (monkeying around on it in BestBuy doesn't count in my book), I can't really say that I wouldn't feel the same about some of the conveniences you folks have been listing - on the other hand, none of the XP issues that have been mentioned are particularly irksome to me, either, so I suppose that aspect is neutral right now.

I can see the point about how a system that is more secure against the user her/him-self makes sense in regard to the casual user - the same sort of person who couldn't drive a stick-shift if their life depended on it - however, I love driving stick, and consequently I do not like an OS that always seems to be actively trying to work against me whenever I try to dig in a little under the hood, so to speak. I've had a go with linux, so I know how frustrating a DIY OS can be; however, I've gotten increasingly tired of the opaque way in which XP works, and it seems that _Vista is, if anything, even more opaque.

Nonetheless, particularly since XP is now on extended support, meaning only security updates, not new functionality updates, I'll check on _Vista (or Win7 if it comes to it) to see what develops - perhaps after a year or two of extended support, there'll be a sufficient gap between the functionality of XP and _Vista to make switching over more appealing.