How reliable is Vista?

I agree... vista's been stable for a while... even before sp1.

 

I've never had one BSOD and I've had Vista for almost a year now. :O

 

I never had a BSOD on either XP or Vista for at least 5 or 6 years now.

I guess I haven't been messing around enough XD

I haven't had any problems with Vista and I've had it for...about a year I think, I got it shortly after it was released.

 

I've never had a problem with Vista. Even before and after sp1 came out.

 

Have you ever turned on your computers

 

LOL I like this post.

BSODing is common when you overclock so I've had about 100 of those myself.

 

Or when you dear to try free appplications, flash the BIOS wrongly, get the wrong drivers,.......

 

I think vista is probably the most customizable and flexible OS out there right now, while still remaining reliable. I have messed about with my Vista installation so much yet only experienced 1 BSOD, and that also because I installed the wrong driver for my vidcard.

I say Vista FTW.

 

I've had 1 BSOD in Vista so far (almost a year) and that was because of a driver problem.

 

Been using Vista for a long time now and I enjoy the OS a great deal. Saying it doesn't have anything over XP is pure bull**** so don't even try to convince me otherwise. As soon as I installed XP on my other laptop you know what I really really missed?

The nice interface, I know you can skin XP but I'm perfectly fine with Vistas look. XPs default skin looks like something from Toys'R'US to be honest.

The network center. Love this thing, everything in one place.

The mobility center. Same here, I use it all the time to mute the sound, increase or decrease the backlight and switch power-schemes when I'm on the go or just want the computer to stay cool and quiet at night.

The search fields that are all over the place in Vista. My External HD is a mess, so I use the search fields all the time to find files almost instantly.

Vista is a good OS. I can't believe that people still say it "sucks". If you don't like it, give me some GOOD reasons why you don't like it and not the same old opinion you pulled out of your ass back in 06. I don't like haters. However, I do like those with a real opinion on the thing. If you're a hater, get out.

Yeah, consider that a short rant. It wasn't aimed at anyone in this topic, just at those that always feel they should tell me what they think of the OS. (I.e. "Don't use Vista, it sucks. lulz VistAIDS. Vistake. Vista sucks, MicroSUCK. yadda yadda.)

 

No more problems than with XP.

 

Sounds like it is a lot better then it was at launch. Ill give it a try for the summer, if I don't like it, back to XP, hopefully not though. The good thing about not having my computer control freak of a father living with me anymore, my computer is truly mine, he has no input on what goes on it.

 

There is a saying in the industry. Never buy Version 1.0 Always wait for the second version, cause hindsight is 20/20. Plus driver developers have had time to adapt to Vistas new driver model (for some drivers, this was a HUGE HUGE change.)

 

That is completely true.

We get various software CDs in the mail every month or so, guess how many of these new version ever go on the computers? None.

No system is every bug free, you can only hope that they will remove the showstoppers after the first version.

 

How many versions did windows ME and 2000 had?

 

Vista is quite stable, indeed more stable over the long haul than XP.

Vista once tuned tends to maintain itself better by fixing itself or present fixes when available, is more secure overall because of its user/permissions model, and has a bit more overhead than XP.

XP can be stripped more barebones... but frankly if you are bright you are going to install many of the things Vista comes with to start with. It will always be easier to attack, tends to need reloads every 6-12 months, but will produce higher fraps readings by about 5-7% when you can turn those hacking protections off due to having less overhead.

Basically its all preference at this point.

I won't order another PC with XP on it for myself, but I couldn't blame anyone that did if they just said "I like XP better".

The ones complaining that Vista cannot cut it, has massive performance differences, or is unusable are quite frankly lying or just parroting.

(Vista does indeed have problems with some older games however. There aren't any that I cannot get to run, but I have had to give up sound on some of them.)

 

In short, Vista is wonderful and a beauty to behold. Just so damn pretty.

Pity though that I don't like playing around with an OS or people that quite simply complicate my life.....

My computer is used 95% for work purposes. XP does everything I require of it properly. 100% of the time. I like and trust XP.

For me, the the other 5% is used for gaming and other stuff.

XP runs the other 5% else flawlessly too. Never any issues or unexpected BSOD.

I have often asked myself: What is the point of Vista?

For me none. XP is my chosen OS system for getting the job done.

Do I hate Vista? No. I just trust XP.

Cheers,
Theo

 

(Insert Vista is fine post # 2394329 here) (Insert witty comment and emoticon)

(Insert request to use the search feature next time)

 

I like Vista...

 

parroting? i think not. it has been proven by many benchmarking tools but also in real time usage that vista is quite a bit slower than xp and dont think im biased cos im using vista myself

 

I had to say this is a well written post right here. I wish I could articulate thoughts like this.

 

Parroting some blog by joe-shmoe does not make it proof.

and most of the reliable ones have gotten 5-15%... which isn't substantial by most people standards. (5% is margin-for-error level actually)

the problem is, 10% snowballs into "quite a bit" to the XP fanbois then someone is claiming "twice the performance" and eight people parrot him...
Very few people actually TRY this on their own systems...

my person experience (and I have taken apart and re-loaded OSs on more computers than most people have seen) is 5-7% after tweaking...

The most recent web comparison of Vista and XP gaming showed "almost no difference".
To be fair, I think they were a bit too nice to Vista even.

 

i am not basing my opinion on other's results, i have conducted benchmarks using passmark and pcmark and both show xp to have better performance than vista. I notice a big difference in my real world testing also. Some may find the difference minimal, yet many see quite a significant difference. The benchmark tests were definately not errors considering I averaged the scores I got over 3 repeats

 

Granted. XP was written at a time where 20gb harddrives were huge. Of course is going to be faster in benchmarks.

I remember there was a PCWorld spoof of the XP is faster than Vista topic. It was called DOS trouces Vista.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143819-page,2-c,dos/article.html

The point is these PCMark benchmarks are way off the mark. They use to be more relevant, back when hardware could not keep up with software. Nowadays and even during the Athlon days, hardware started outpacing the growth of software. What is the biggest productivity killer these days? It sure ain't CPU cycles. It sure ain't HD burst rate. It sure ain't the amount of memory. And it sure ain't how many actions can your computer can process in 2 mins.

The biggest productivity killer for computers is spyware, virus, malware, bugs and misc training issues. This is where Vista shines. And no artificial benchmark can measure these.

 

For me, however, Vista does everything I need just as well as XP, with no more BSODs than XP, so....

 

Same here, no more BOSD's. But I do find Vista takes longer to boot up, especially now that I have XP SP3, this SP3 boot flies.

 

Misunderstood features in Vista
http://download.microsoft.com/downl...e Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista.pdf

 

Good article!

 

Yes, theres a pretty interface. Anything tangibly useful that you could name?

So far the only thing the network centre has done is to ensure I can never connect to a network and to attempt to ensure that I can never actually use any connection I do manage to make. Improvement over XP? Yes. Useful? No.

All of which are manageable via keyboard shortcuts or the system tray.

There's a solution to this: Implement a passable filing system. I find the Vista search to give results even more cluttered than most of my folders.

Here's a good reason why I don't like it: It uses large amounts of resources to do nothing useful. I had an old Inspiron with 1.2 GHz Pentium III processor, 20GB HDD and it could run any game of the day. My present-day ultraportable: 1.2 GHz Core Duo, 2 GB RAM, 70GB HDD running Vista and it can become overload from Webbrowsing!

I am racking my brains to find something included in Vista which I had to install on XP and I simply cannot find it

 

I have a similar stance to the general and have had a similar experience with vista. If it wasn't for the visuals i must say that i would not be using it right now. For one i don't even have use of the vista search feature and number 2, the network centre may be improved, but the difference is so minute so as to make not much of a difference to your experience considering you'll only need to access it rarely. As soon as Cairo is released on the 28th June, I will reinstall xp with sp3 (since I have no need to use vista to get a nice gui), and install Cairo onto it. Info on what Cairo is: http://www.cairoshell.com/
I have been chosen for milestone 1 testing, so if anyone is interested I will relay back to this forum my experience of it.

 

I like Vista and you don't, General. Let's leave it at that.

 

ive tried vista for one week. i switched back to xp because i was afraid i couldnt get some apps to work and sch was going to start. i needed my comp back up and running to something im familiar with.

also seeing that vista uses 1gb ram. i'd prefer xp so i can install more apps jus to play around.

 

Hardware will never outpace software. There will always be new software that runs slow.

I agree that artificial benchmarks are useless. What's more important is subjective speed. Stuff like accurate progress bars, reduction in hourglasses cursor use, and animation can make a computer feel faster.

If you can't keep a XP system free of badware, Vista won't be the solution. Vista's also got more bugs and glitches, as it's newer.

 

One of the things that pisses me off is how some people complain about the high system requirements. Of course, in order to add functionality, you need to add more code. The more complex the operating system is, the more powerful the hardware needs to be.

People seem to expect operating systems to improve in every way, while maintaining the same hardware requirements.

 

the problem though is that is so many ways vista is not an improvement.

 

Using XP and Ubuntu doesn't mean "vista is not an improvement".

 

lol its xp vs vista all over again

 

might want to clarify that one. not sure what you are trying to say.

 

For about 90% of user actions, hardware currently outpaces software. What percentage of your time do you currently stare at the hourglass nowadays. Between MSOffice, Internet and email, your day of productivity is currently limited to yourself and NOT the hardware. Pretty much the only thing an average user is gonna seriously wait on is backups. Or if they are starting up their system. (why people completely shutdown their systems is beyong me. Hibernation is for all purposes, mechanically off. And most people will describe S4 as the system being off.)


Actually, Vista is far less suspectible to badware. While yes, it is more suspectible to bugs since it is newer, its architecture is miles ahead of XP. Malware taking full control of Vista is very unlikely now a days. Even with a malicious website. IE now runs as a limited user. In fact, even the admin account runs as a limited computer. Only when you actually elevate it (UAC) does it bust out the admin token. So again, even if a program takes complete control of your computer, UAC will likely stop it in its tracks before it can get too far.

 

How so?

10char

 

It sure seems like software gets bigger than hardware gets faster. I'm running MS Word 2000 and it does pretty much everything that Word 2007 does, except the newest version of Word requires 2GB of memory and a double CPU to run smoothly. Only recently has a 2GHz C2D and 2GB become a baseline for budget computers. For the first few months of Vista, systems with a 3500+ single core CPU(!) and 512MB(!!) were loaded with Vista Basic instead of XP Home. Here's a fun shot of IE7 under Vista.

 

LMAO at that pic.

 

Of course

I just don't feel a need to overclock...I mean my newest game is 2 years old XD and I don't expect anything more then merely playable out of my computer XD

 

Office 2007 will run just fine on a 2Ghz single core (my AMD athlon) and 1 GB of RAM. Heck. My aunt runs MSoffice 2007 on a P3 with <strike> 512 </strike> edit: (256!!!!!!!) RAM and her son does Powerpoint makes powerpoint presentations. Granted that is extreme, but saying Office 2007 needs a C2D and 2GB is just untrue. For the record, minimum requirements are 1Ghz and 256 RAM.

 

Do you perhaps work for Microsoft? I was just wondering because you seem to be very egar to defend them about anything.
I'm asking, because if you do, please tell the developers to add a "Close all windows" button to the Access VBA editor in the Office. That is because at least in the XP it gets very slow with slower machines when it tries to open hundres of windows at once and all of them with animated effects. I mean it remembers what windows were opened when you close the editor and when you open it again, it will re-open the same windows.
And when you tell that for the developers, please tell them also to change that VBA legacy system to Visual Studio driven .NET solution instead. That VBA crap is so OLD compared to the modern VS editor / .NET features that it makes me cry everytime I have to do something there.

 

I don't work for Microsoft. I just call it as it is.

This was the incorrect values of the minimun requirements for Office, so I corrected that for ya. Like I said, I just call it as it is.

Yes, Vista will have more bugs and glitches because all new software will always have more bugs and glitches than more mature software (XP). Vista is not the solution if you can't keep a XP system free of badware? On the contrary, current and future programs are far less likely to take over Vista. For one, Vista, unlike XP, defaults to a limited user. In fact, all accounts technically run as a limited user.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc138019.aspx

Like I said I just call it as it is. I don't need to defend Microsoft. The question of the thread is "How Reliable is Vista [compared to other OSes]"

Microsoft pretty much answered that themselves by making Vista a competitively stable and secure platform.

I just call it as it is. If I see something biased, unsubstantial or just plain untrue, I call it for what it is.

edit : Oh yeah btw http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suggestions.aspx?Sitename=5&Type=2

 

That was not my comment originally, but now that you mention it, the fact is that advertised minimum has nothing to do with the real life minimum. Sure you can probably run the software, but only if you like slide-shows. Just like games
But unlike games, user is the actual bottle neck with Word/Excel/etc, so perhaps we can allow little bit jerkines.

 

Hm, glad I found this thread.

Anyway, is it worth to upgrade your XP Pro to Vista Ultimate? Is there anything I will miss or will my games perform slower? Anything else good in Vista exept the DreamScene feature?

 

I won a free copy of Vista U 32/64 from Microsoft and I would never pay for it as there isn't enough there to justify the price. Basically Vista U adds Dream Scene, Texas Hold Em, Bit Locker, and recently sound themes. I might add language packs to VU, as they appear for download but not in my copy of Vista Premium.

As you can see not a whole lot there for the extra price. Too bad MS didn't have a Gamer's Edition that was stripped of the bloated code.

 

I think alot of the bloat can be attributed to the fact that windows has to maintian decades of backwards compatability, and in the case of vista, thousands of shim programs (hacks, patches, whatever) are included to trick old apps (like some games) into thinking they have root privilages when in reality they are running in a limited account under vista's new security system.