Vista Aero or Classic?

Hi,

I'm planning to buy a new laptop that of course will come with a vista, I was wondering how the Vista Aero feels? and how many of you are actually using it?

On XP I switched to the classic theme almost immediately, I hate the XP theme, from the pics Aero looks much more appealing, not sure how is it's practical usability though.

Also is it true that you can't change the item highlight color under the Aero Glass theme?
http://www.vistareadygames.com/showthread.php?t=1198

 

go to best buy(comp usa,walmart, etc) and look at the display laptops

 

I don't like it, others do. You won't know for yourself until you try for yourself.

 

I like Aero. Its nice, and doesn't hurt performance. But, its all personal preference.

 

I also like Aero,so I'm using it.

But maybe you 'll like it,maybe not..Just give it a try and you will see.

 

Most likely when you use vista you will use aero, the classic and standard windows color schemes in vista are disgusting IMO it seems that vista was designed to look better with the aero color scheme. Don't know what you guys think here.
If you don't like the default aero theme then there are many other vista themes on deviantart.com that you could use.

 

Aero for me.

 

I dont have vista yet, Yet i also to, think windows classic is superior to windows xp, because the xp theme is a gross blue-color, not a nice blue, and the silver almost looks purple, and dull green sucks. However, vista aero black looks awsome when i see screenshots!!

 

Aero is better. Why buy Vista if you're not going to use it. I found out that if the software isn't compatible with Aero it will resort to basic mode.

 

It's more like a dark grey, and right now I'm using Teal Aero (which still looks grey in the taskbar, but not in the window borders.........

 

aero looks good, that's what i'm using right now. you really just have to try it out for yourself, but like what they said, the classic theme in vista looks digusting.

 

I didn not like aero at first, I thought it was just some sort of fad and was popular just because its the new thing. After over a month using it now tho I really like it. It just takes some time to grow on you.

I really hate the basic interface and windows xp now after using vista and aero for an extended amount of time.

 

Basic sucks. Trust me. Classic goes well with XP but not with Vista. Go for Aero instead.

Although Mac OS X's theme is nicer

 

Aero glass with the colours adjusted to a custom choice.. I wasn't keen on the defaults.

 

I did, but it takes like several hours of work to really find any annoyances and weaknesses of an interface...

One thing I know I hated in XP was how it "cut" menus of some applications, looked ugly.



Thanks for the replies everyone!

 

I use Royale Noir for my XP theme. Nice blue color.

 

It will hurt performance if your system cant handle aero or has less than 2 gig of ram

 

Some people refer to 'basic' as 'classic' but these are different. Basic interface looks somewhat similar to aero, but of course is much lmore imited in features and customization. But it is still totaly different from 'classic' XP theme. Myself I have 'basic' theme right now as its easier on my laptop (which is only intel graphics).

I couldn't figure out is there a possibility to change the colour of classic theme in vista? In XP, when you go to 'display properties'/'appearance' you can choose between 'plum', 'brick', 'desert', 'rainly day' (this one is cool) etc. but I couldn't find anything similar in vista?

 

Do you mean something like this?

 

I could be wrong but I thought Aero was drawn soley by the GPU not the CPU whereas Basic and Classic would be drawn by the CPU therefore using the RAM more .. so in some ways Basic and Classic would be more draining due to using the CPU & RAM?

like I say I could be wrong on this but it's how I believed it worked!

 

I meant this 'color scheme' (an XP shot). Here the colours already changed in the theme, you just apply the theme


Edit: Oh, I think youre right, your picture is the same window in vista, but it lacks this option 'color scheme' which is available in XP! Maybe this option is burried in vista elsewhere?

 

No. In Vista, as you can see, the only variations on Classic are the various high/low contrast schemes. They completely removed the majority of color schemes from the classic theme, as were present in XP. It's yet another example of MS trying to strongarm you into using - and loving - Aero. By taking away your choices, they wish for you to use *their* choice - Aero.

 

Overclocker, oh, thanks, pity.. another excuse to go back to XP

 

I'm rather surprised they didn't upgrade classic to the WinXP interface.

 

When I'm not gaming, I have Aero on, but when I am gaming I go to classic to free up about 100mb of RAM .

 

i'm using classic,but my laptop is capable of aero glass. (score: 3 for gaming, 5.9 for graphic to run aero)

 

Aero is the lesser of two fuglies.

 

Aero is nice... could be better, but I do like the glassy feel.

 

but it makes computer works slower. My computer has shown its age, and it often shut itself off when i'm using aero with heavy workload involving video.

 

I use the classic theme, and also turned off all the eye candy stuff. I mean, you don't buy a computer just to look at all the pretty menus and windows. You buy a computer to run programs.

Running the classic theme with all the eye candy turned off makes the machine run noticeably faster.

 

Ok, I tried vista, tbh, I didn't like the aero :/

It's so distracting, and because of the glass effect everything is kind of blended in together and it's hard to tell things apart fast, also while using it I noticed a glitch, when a window was on the desktop(no other windows behind it) there were some odd diagonal lines visible through the translucent aero.

Switched to classic.... much better, and more productive, although I didn't like the classic of vista, xp is better, vista's classic is ugly, the forward/back buttons are ugly as sin in classic vista.

Also in aero an annoying "preview" of windows was popping up everytime I'd hover my mouse of the program minimized in taskbar, and sometimes when I was just going to maximize it, it'd popup, kinda annoying.

I think I'm going to stick with the XP.

There were several things I liked with vista though...

1. Full row select in explorer
2. the address bar, loved it
3. navigation pane, auto horizontal scroll
4. UAC

If xp had the 4 above options it'd be perfect.

 

you can disable it from the properties of taskbar.

 

Thanks Alexkass!

 

So is there a peformance hit from Areo?

 

Yes. Then again, there's also a performance hit from Vista, so it's more of a question of how many hits you're willing to tolerate.

 

Im using Aero Glass. I figure might as well use it even if I dont care to much how an OS looks. I just want my games to run, which Vista barely does.

 

The classic theme sucks. It makes the OS very old. Aero is fine and It doesn't decrease the computer performance.

 

You must know something Microsoft doesn't, because they were the first to admit Aero decreased computer performance, and recommended disabling it if it significantly diminished computer responsiveness.

 

there is almost zero performance hit from Aero -it is rendered by the GPU and i remember a bevy of reviews attesting to that fact.

for starters -
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2007/1/2/6453
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/windows_vista_aero_glass_performance/page4.asp
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ff_aero_ux.asp

so long as your graphic card supports Aero, you should be fine.

 

LOL, well... depends on what you mean, lesser performance hit on the CPU, but do you really want to have an OS theme that requires a GPU? like zomg, the CPU doesn't take a hit, the gamers best friend, the GPU does!

I don't under stand how Microsoft managed to make things so bloated, I used to have Windowblinds with a seethrough theme, TopDesktop and Objectdock in XP and they didn't nearly use so much RAM, in fact Windowblinds + glass/transparant skin worked on an Intel GMA 830, try that on Vista.

 

score one for (zero) reading comprehension! the FiringSquad article above pointed to the fact Aero Glass did not lead to a drop in frame rates in games outside their margin of error (1% . you can say that Vista is a more bulky OS than XP, but in the age of dual core processors and multi-gigs of RAM that's just fine with me. if i cared that much about peak efficiency in my daily tasks, i'd just switch back to Windows 2000 and be happy with Luddite ways.

and yes, i would rather have the GPU process the GUI because it'll take the load off the processor. how novel! i am amazed that you're arguing against efforts that offload processing from the CPU. did you take up equal offense when video game programmers had the audacity, the AUDACITY to offload vertex processing onto GPU/video cards?

 

If we applied that kind of thinking to cars we would still be driving model-t's

If you use a computer as often as I do, you would beg to have the extra eye-candy! I've been running windows XP in 'classic' mode for years and I can't stand it! I welcome the new bling with Vista

 

Like my mum used to tell me, when getting a girlfriend, it's not the appearance that counts. It is the heart and soul that matters.

 

i'd rather take an working stable OS that didn't look very nice over a shoddy good-looking OS any day. that said, if i have to choose between an ugly shoddy OS or a nice-looking shoddy OS, i'd pick the nice-looking one. in this case, aero glass

 

You are right, but people have to remember that it's THE SAME OS they are talking about here! Same reliability + eye-candy... why not?

 

I definitely agree.