What do you hate most about Vista?

my car is 3 years old. i get a new refrigerator in 3 weeks. don't try to drag and kick me, i'm allready here. and all my illumination is based on led lights. while expensive, they are awesome. and i have a fullhd beamer, complete digital tv including hd, and all my pc's have ssd's.
welcome to 2009
and aero rocks, and the stuff that got changed behind to make it possible.

UAC is exactly that sandbox, but for your whole system, not just for browser issues. what would it matter if they fix activex, and someone then exploits firefox? or itunes? or msn, or any app that uses the net? UAC blocks ANY of those attacks. it's a sandbox in that sence.

welcome to 2009 (i like that)


edit: i do have a winmobile phone from sony ericsson that allows me to remote desktop forward and backward to control my server trough it, or control the phone trouth the pc. i dj as a hobby, and don't do anymore using vinyl or cd's but dj-software and midi-controllers. what else could be "not yet 2009?"

 

Hey, I just found a bug in Vista
1- Open a folder
2- Hit the "Alt" key to show the menu bar
3- Press "Down" key
4- Do Win+M (minimize all windows)

Now you see the menu floating.

5- Press the "Right" key.

Voila, a full floating menu!

 

does it stay or go away? i get it on xp, too. but it goes away when clicking somewhere else.

this just shows menus really are own windows, specially managed by the os

 

Yea, it goes away.
It also happens in Windows 2000. BUT it is not there under Windows 98SE

 

does windows-m work on win98 at all?

 

Nothing. Loving it, esp x64

 

Actually it does! and this is when the Win key appeared on your keyboard. Sadly... it's one of it's few commands that it takes beside opening the start menu, hence why it was criticized so much back in the days.

See, whatever Microsoft releases it's being criticize. I can't wait average users criticisms for Win7 with it's new taskbar... hihi... if there aren't any.. then I think that would be a first.

 

i have complained tons of times about tons of details about win7 that i don't like. and found some average users who tested it thanks to torrents to have the same points. in essence: it's less nice to use than a normal taskbar by default.

yes complains will come. at least, from me

 

the windows key appear back in Windows 95

It was hated back then, like AERO.

 

I know that a friend of mine bought pre-95 keyboards just to not have that key (or ripped it off the keyboard even).

actually, thanks to aero, and the technology behind aero, we can finally savely press [win] during any running game, not having the system to hang, freeze, bluescreen or anything by any chance (and i've seen all of those cases )

 

No, it was an attempt at sarcasm . My point was that there really isn't that much in Vista to call it 'revolutionary' or 'the next big thing'. Unless you work for MS PR in which case there are probably 3,000 of them. This in response to all the posts saying that XP'ers are being 'left behind' and 'missing out' on something fantastic and dramatic. DX 10 is too tough for most notebook cards atm (I'm running an 8800M GTX and prefer DX 9 maxed out).

Security - the other minor benefit of Vista - in my humble opinion starts with the user. I dare say I am safer on XP with Spybot, Teatimer and Kaspersky than people who use Vista and don't know how to deal with UAC prompts.

 

well, there is. and this without working for ms pr. enough of this is in this thread.

and security is no "minor benefit". stay in your dreamworld that you're saver in xp. it got proven often enough to not be true in general.

dx10 is not tough at all, actually it's helping all cards that use it instead of dx9. it means more performance due to less overhead.

but of course, "naysayers" always think all of those are no big things. doesn't make them not big. it took long to develop, and even longer to handle it in a way that guarantees quite big backwards compatibility.

 

The thing I love about Vista advocates on NBR forums? They make it personal. Is it that hard to put your point across without calling someone ignorant? I am not claiming to have all the answers, I don't work in IT, hence I'm on a forum, and am interested in your (and others') opinions.

But please feel free to call me clueless or whatever you need to - but .... isn't the feature you refer to, a business solution to activex and UAC? So basically at home I would get a UAC warning about activex, whereas in the office I would be allowed to view the active X content in some form of quarantine? If this is so, then for you and me, it is just another plain vanilla UAC feature (which you can have free on XP with Teatimer, Spybot, Firefox with plugin etc).

 

name them. we'd like to know.

hm. swiss replica watches.. now i feel offended, being from switzerland

 

I don't get exactly what you talk about here. But Imagine what happens if you get some virus in a mail? or trough itunes, msn, what ever other programs connect to the net, all of them can get virii that want to install stuff on your system. on vista, you get, for free, by default, 100% security of your system against such things. you don't get that for free with teatimer, spybot, and firefox with plugins. the world is not just a browser. i love firefox myself, but my system shouldn't care about what gets the attack, it should take care of ALL of them.

and that's what UAC does.

 

Oh, grow up...

Oh? So that's why my game bluescreened yesterday? Yeah, Aero sure makes that problem go away.
Funnily enough, I can't remember the last time I encountered a bluescreen on my XP machine.
Apart from that, you're wrong. Aero gets disabled while you're running full-screen games, so it certainly has no effect on what happens when you press the windows key. And a fun little side effect of the changes to the graphics subsystem under Vista is that games use more memory. Yay!
DirectX9 has to duplicate a number of resources because DirectX9 games expect to create them themselves, but the Vista implementation also keeps its own copy.

And while we're talking about Aero, have you tried what happens if a 3d application overlaps the start button? Try it. Watch your performance go through the floor.

Really? I love Win7's taskbar. It's the single greatest improvement to Windows since Win2000. I'm even willing to accept some of the leftover annoyances from Vista as long as I get the new taskbar.

"Left behind"? Who is left behind, and how? You're making zero sense. it's not like a train that's departing. I can upgrade my XP machine to Vista or Win7 any time I like, you know. And as long as people see no need to do that, I fail to see why they'd either feel "left behind" or cry.

Some of us expect our OS to support our use of the computer. It's not a fashion statement, and it's not some kind of binding contract with Microsoft. I don't get fined for using XP even though Vista is out. I'm not "left behind". There is no one who can leave me behind. As long as the software I need works on XP, I am not left behind. And funny thing, the software *does* work on XP.

Oh! You mean all those features that are also available on XP? Yes, those sure are great selling-points of Vista.
Wake up, please. XP has plenty of security measures too. Most people don't use them, but there's nothing to stop you from doing so. Calling XP unsecure because it's possible to run in administrator mode is just about as meaningful as calling Vista unsecure because you can disable UAC.

I love how Vista fanboys apparently haven't realized that the only new thing about UAC is the fancy graphics. Windows NT has *always* had a robust securty model, and you've *always* been able to run as non-administrator, and that would always get enforced offering very good security. Vista has not actually improved on that, it has simply added a few mechanisms to make it *easier* to get administrator privileges when needed.

About executing downloaded code, last I tried on XP, I got no less than three warnings. And IE also warns you about ActiveX code, you know.

You have a bit of a point about address space layout randomization, which indeed isn't available for XP (except for a few corner cases). But you also forget that it's not really random. A location is selected among at most 256 possible options, and even then, the distribution is far from regular. Microsoft has even acknowledged this problem. You may find this to be an interesting read on the subject.

The sad thing about OS fanboys is that they spend their entire lives arguing about something that 1) they have no clue about, and 2) doesn't matter.

 

Oh my god.

No, that is not what UAC does. In Microsoft's own words, "UAC is not a security boundary".

And no, Vista does not offer 100% protection against anything by default. Even Microsoft strongly recommends that you use an antivirus scanner on Vista as well. UAC makes it a bit easier to manage user privileges, but the thing about malicious code is that it generally does not ask for permission in the first place. A virus which exploits a security vulnerability will by definition not be detected by UAC. And if it does not exploit a security, but instead asks the user for permission can be prevented with XP's security model as well. Just don't run as administrator. Problem solved.

An XP user who's aware that his system is not 100% secure is less likely to be infected with a virus than a Vista user who believes that his OS keeps him safe and there's no need to worry about anything.

 

UAC is about saving the system, not about saving YOUR data. this is true (and i hope they get that right somewhen in the future, but it's quite muddy and messy to begin with).

and the UAC is not a security boundary was a statement after they messed it up first time with win7. as long as it goes to secure desktop, like it does in vista, it does guarantee no system component or other user component can get harm (except maybe trough security holes in services, as they run as a system account).

uac means 100% savety that user-started applications (including virii and all) can not take over the rest of the system (except if you agree with it). doesn't mean they can't harm the user.

it is a guarantee, too, for microsoft, to never get in court because "they mad e a system that failed". as now they can say "you pressed continue".

 

do so yourself.

okay, the trick about aero:

because they wanted a full gpu accelerated gui, they knew drivers shouldn't be in kernelmode, where a failure would always result directly into a bluescreen. so they rewamped the whole gpu driver architecture to only have a tiny part of it interfer directly with the hardware in kernel mode, and the whole rest (full dx, etc) got transfered into usermode.

this means, compared to windows xp, a driver has MUCH LESS CHANCE to crash into bluescreen.

so you got a bluescreen yesterday? it may still happen. but it got reduced very much.

i'm not a fanboy, i'm stating facts. technical facts.

Read "Need for a new display driver model" to get some clue.

 

Well, and you don't realize that 99.9999999% or so of all home-installed windows xp USE ADMINISTRATOR RIGHTS ALL THE TIME. the default installation is the way it gets used everywhere, everytime. vista made it right for the first time BY DEFAULT, which, by itself, is a HUGE archivement.

on xp, it was quite a hazzle to not run in adminmode as a home user. tons of apps never worked, then (that's why vista does virtualize the program files folder as needed). and runas is not as nice as uac, as it switches the user.

yes, the ntfs file system had rights managements since years. but in vista, it got, for the first time, by default configured to save the system. no other installation did.

and besides, even runas is vulnerable on xp. uac on vista isn't, as you can't let software press "continue", so you can't let virii accept a uac-request.

 

Lol! You can't seriously believe what you just wrote in that sentence? Do you? This definitely ranks alongside posts like 'OMG!Vista uses all of my RAAAAM' - a real howler!

 

varadero, you don't have to believe me. i don't care. disable uac and use some funky tools some tiny guys program. they sure know better how to handle your security than microsoft, attacked over the years as the main target for everyone.

doesn't matter. uac is simple, and simplicity works in that case. it just happens to pop up too often for the average users.

uac makes a barrier between user-code & data and system-code and data.

if you find a whole in system code (like, in a service) that you can exploit, you can attack the system. but those parts got quite save as thei're done by microsoft, and are the same as on windows server 2008, one of the most save servers existing.

if you find a whole in user code (ie, firefox, outlook, msn, itunes, usb sticks, etc), you can attack and run around in user code, but never get into system code except over uac. this is just plain true as long as you don't have physical access to manipulate f.e. the ram directly from externally.

so no virus can go into your system except trough a system-code security hole.

problem is, having a virus in usermode is bad enough. it's a virus that can spy all your data, delete it, manipulate it, put illegal stuff on your disk, etc.

so to prevent that, you have to have some vire-scanner. but only for that.

for the switch between usermode and systemmode, you need two things: uac for a save barrier between the two, and updates to pitch possible holes in the barrier.

so with an up to date system, your system is rather save.

if you don't see the logic of this, then just forget it. have fun being cool bashing microsoft when they finally did something right as it annoys you, then, too. i still know people annoyed by the savetybelts in the car, too. they are cool guys, you know. they can drive without belt.

 

Yup davepermen is correct. So far UAC was not by-passed, and well can't... as it's not only auto-generated but it requires the system access.

(Sorry davepermen I can't rep you up at the moment, it doesn't allow me to :/)

 

Dave here has a good point here. While User accounts were always available on XP, it was not feasible to run them since many applications required admin priviledges. A feature that no one knows about or that no one uses is no longer a "feature." The Microsoft Office team understood this point.

The runas command was still a pain in the rear sometimes.

I'm not going to even address all the misinformation about UAC. I think Jalf made a good point in that UAC, while a helpful security feature, is NOT the same as running an anti virus. If your computer is exposed to hundreds of sites that you never have been to before, then it only makes sense to run an antivirus. You don't handle dirt and then eat pizza without washing your hands.

UAC is a dead horse now. Most people should turn it on, some people will always keep it off. The beauty of Windows is that they allow you choose. Those that want some of UAC's features but dont' want the rest should just write their own version of UAC. Otherwise enjoy the bargain.

Most people have no idea how much time is put into an OS and how hard it is to write it. The fact that every detail is combed over and over again and yet mistakes still get made is only a testament to the difficulty of Microsoft's position of writing an OS for 90% of the world's computer users. You don't like it? Run OS X. Or Red Hat. Or Run OS Warp. Do whatever you want.

I think the "left behind" phrase is being misunderstood. While it is more efficient to maintain the status quo on the short term, it is inefficient for our long term goal of a more efficient user interface. Look at your screen. The menus, the buttons, the file folder view and the monitor you look at has changed very little in the past 20 years. The biggest change was probably a move from the command line to a GUI.

And that is it.

You still use a keyboard that hasn't changed much, a mouse that has a lens instead of a ball and a Monitor that is thinner than a monitor 20 years ago. The User interface is still a set of icons, with menus and buttons. There is no strong scripting language. The file folders still laid out in a hierarchy. It's quite nostalgic but I'm ready to move on. I'm ready for a computer that ANTICIPATES my needs. All my pictures should automatically be sorted into the pictures folder. All videos I download should be sorted to the videos folder. XKCD only updates on certain days. Don't open the tab unless it's that day. That should be EZ. My car should be able to drive itself. Heck it already knows where it is and the directions to get to the destination. And why do I need to straighten my dollar bill to get a coke out of the vending machines. Peeps in Japan can use their cellphones. WTH.

And the sad part is, the technology exists. But we refuse to take advantage of it. I see threads about people trying to sync folders between two computers. XP/Vista's offline files AUTOMATICALLY syncs files on a network share. But I think less than half of those with a network share use it. I still am educating users about hitting "ALT TAB." Too many people complain about how Vista stacks your taskbar windows and adds to the number of clicks it takes to get to a window. Why take your hand off the keyboard in the first place.

The technology exists right now to increase our productivity by many folds. But we refuse to learn.

edit:

I think I made a post similiar to this earlier in the thread now that I think about it. I usually have these "We must evolve" rants at least once a week. Darwin is my hero!!!

 

Yes... I see XP Fanbois as the worst, I am sorry but I see all you XP fanbois the same. Especially when you use security and XP in the same sentence, well except if used correctly like "Where the hell is the security in Windows XP?". It's hard to take anything you say seriously now.

Nothing personal it just appears as you know little of what you are complaining about, and are attempting to pass your opinion as fact. Since I work in IT I guess that means I am here to help? Sadly I am no longer in tech support field of IT, and have moved on to more professional aspects of IT, and don't feel the need to spend the time informing others. I will be embracing the future as you cling to the past. Search UAC and other security features of Vista and it will help you. Vista has it's flaws for sure, but no where near the level of XP. Also if you don't think that you will be left behind, Windows 7 is very much like Vista, not like XP, and there is a learning curve (those who have gone straight from XP to Windows 7 Beta have had many difficulties). The future is not XP, the future is Vista and beyond (more likely beyond, as I am even more a fan of Windows 7).

As a side note relying on free third party software for your system security is never a good idea, it is better to use that in addition to built in Windows security features, with a little research you will find how much Vista has improved over XP. I know at Vista's release I was just like you, I tried for less than a week and uninstalled it. I tried it out again when it came with a new system (still pre-SP1) and have never looked back, all it took to re-enforce this was a Security Refresher course, did not take long to see how the benifits over XP are clear.

 

nothing bugs me in Vista

 

Off topic:

@Darkness62,
Nice computer names. Mine goes as far as LAPPY and COMPY.
Or on a network I use old computer names to mark their performance, such as compy 386, lappy 486, commodore 64, etc....

 

No, what daveperman said is that UAC gives you 100% security - which is patently and outrageously false. Nothing on this planet gives you such a thing as 100% security from everything. In any case, my point (a while back...) was that UAC is useless in the hands of inexperienced users, and that someone who ignores it is worse off than a person who runs Kaspersky and Teatimer on XP, paying close attention to all the alerts.

Wow, you really can't keep it technical and non personal can you? Love the gollum pic. So keeping cool is just a bit too much for you... Pity - I thought you may have been making a valid point (in between the links and pics). The hatred is just dripping from your post, and you can't even be bothered to address the point... Hard for anyone to be convinced of the merits of a Vista upgrade by hate merchants like you.

 

It does give you 99.99% security. Are you happy now? and that 0.01% missing is room in the case it does get hacked. Windows offers you security, it is up to you to be stupid or not. You buy a house and you have 5 locks on it. Your house has been robed because you left the locks open... is that the company that makes the locks fault? or yours?
Microsoft can't do anything about that, there is always stupid people. Microsoft doesn't like to treat its costumers like idiots. It's so sad, that I know many stupid people that learned the option to deactivate security system of programs like Kaspersky, they turn it off, and leave it off, and then they complain how the software sucks when they infected.

 

UAC is actually convenient. You don't have to log off of a user account and logon to an administrator account to elevate your permissions. And then logoff administrator account and logon to user account when you want to "run safer".

 

I'm sorry you take everything so personal, didn't know you counted yourself amongst the XP Fanboi's like Jalf. It's alright though the bitter hurt feelings are normal when the belief system imposed on you by others comes crumbling down around you. Any malice you read into my post was aimed at Jalf, who tossed around fanboi at anyone who's opinion is different than his to cover up the uninformed nature of his canned response, his argument about address space randomization actually made me laugh out loud "not really random" ROFL!!!! Like it matters? XP system files are always in the same place vs 256 different locations. Which is easier for a hacker to compromise? Anyway, Jalf's arguments where not valid, just the retoric of dyed to the core fanboi his opinion has been fed to him by others there is really no point of trying to communicate with him. Anyway I am sorry you are so thin skinned, and take everything so personal. Here's another pic to cheer you up.

 

The 2 things I hate most about Vista is the annoying UAC and high memory usage.

 

Most of it is cached information, and is purged when the RAM is needed.

 

I’ve been using Vista on a laptop for a good year now and couldn;t go back to XP. The Standby and offline files features are excellent and much improved compared with XP. Speed and performance is on par with XP to be honest particularly since SP1.

I’ve also been testing the x64 version lately which is excellent again. The sheer amount of driver support for hardware is stunning. For example- I was able to install Vista SP1 X64 onto a high spec HP notebook without ever needing to install any drivers and performance was excellent.

The issue for me why Microsoft changed some simple things when there was no benefit gained from it, eg trying to view your networking hardware is now a whole process in itself instead of clicking Start> Network Connection as in XP.

And something else that pains me is the multitude of versions of the OS, 5 in total I think, H basic, H premium, Business, enterprise and Ultimate. What a joke and completely unnecessary.

 

On a laptop, Vista is the obvious choice. Microsoft itself admits that hibernate and standby didn’t work particularly well in XP, while it takes a matter of two or three seconds to have your whole system up and running again when you resume from standby in Vista. If you’re anal enough to delve into the deeper dialog boxes, you can also take an incredible amount of control over battery-saving settings.

 

Most of what I really hated about Vista were fixed/improved after SP1, except wireless. It takes 2-3 minutes to connect to my home router while both XP and Ubuntu connect in less than a minute.

 

Oh, like XP!
- XP Starter Edition
- XP Home
- XP Professional
- XP Professional 64-bit
- XP Professional 64-bit Itanium
- XP Professional Embeded
- XP Embedded for Point of Service
- XP Fundamentals for Legacy PCs
- XP Media Center
- XP Media Center 2005
- XP Tablet PC

Now THAT is funny! 11 of them

 

If UAC is truly "annoying", and I mean you see it CONSTANTLY, you're doing something outside the scope of the vast majority of users. There are specific things that cause UAC to trigger, and they are not things people usually do. They are also the result of "not best practice" coding on behalf of apps that trigger it.

I encourage you to spend a day using Vista as you usually do. When "annoying" UAC triggers, write down what you were doing which made it happen. Then post that day's results here.

For the record, in my normal day, I see UAC maybe twice, and one of those I know is from an app that doesn't follow best practice.

 

I hear ya. I mean it's insane. I have to click Start, then right-click Network, then left click Properties, then left click "Manage Network Connections."

IT IS TOO MUCH WORK.

/sarcasm.

Also, in the eight years I have been using XP, "Start>Network Connection" has never existed.

 

I really hate to Windows Vista. it is not at all user freindly when compared to Windows Xp. Further it is there with more Graphics Interface. So it take more memory (RAM) for run. minimum it required 1GB. else we can't do smoothly.
Mostly all applications can't work on that.
and more over its hasn't got good looks.
So i prefer and am still using Windows XP.

 

Desktop ( acer AL1916W) We recently updated 2*2 GB memory and ever since we constantly get the memory crash blue screen everytime we start the computer up. After it restarts it goes prefectly ok and we dont have this error untill the next time we start up. Blue screen mentions something about disabling memory shadowin in th BIOS but I cannot see any memory option in the BIOS.

 

Ah.. so it's Microsoft fault in what sense?
1- You have an Acer. If you go home and your system is works then it's a manufacture error.
2- Your motherboard or RAM is faulty. Contact the company for replacement. RAM is USUALLY life time warranty IF it's from a quality brand (that is an easy trick to know if your RAM sucks or not in quality (not performance)).
3- READ the Blue Screen, It clearly says the problem. It's only 3-4 words.. you can do it
5- How does HARDWARE related to SOFTWARE. If your hardware is not working, how is your software supposed to work. It's like if you plant a tree in the desert and don't water it and you complain why the leaves are not growing, and say "Wow the tree sucks".

4- Use Mozilla Firefox, it has a spell checker.

BTW, Sorry for my rudeness and welcome to Notebook review forum, where this community is not like this my post

 

hi friends
Some of the problem am facing with VISTA...
Vista has more shut down options. That’s how power users think, the more options and customizability, the better. And then, there are those that aren’t power users where more options just usually end up adding to the mess and confusion which mislead the users.

 

These options are there in XP and Windows 2000 (and older Windows). Nothing was changed.

 

hi
Vista need high system requirements, and cannot support all applications. Vista occupies more cache memory space it is a big disadvantage in my point of view.Gaming application are very slow and am facing big problem as am a game lover.

 

If you don't have the computer power to run Vista, then you are not a gamer.
A 450$ Canadian computer will run Vista smoothly... a gaming video card is more expensive then the computer. My AMD Athlon XP 2500+ with a Geforce FX 5900 S.E with 2GB of RAM, where NOT ONE GAME runs smoothly not even at minimum settings, not even half life2, runs Vista smoothly.

There is no game slow downs, proving that you never touched Vista before. Doesn't mean Vista uses more RAM that your system is slower. LEARN HOW A COMPUTER WORKS!

 

Here is something I hate about Vista, no JOKE.

When you do Alt+F4 to close a program or all programs, the seocnd teh desktop reaches focus (ie, no application, is focused) you get the shut down dialog box. Now in XP when you do Esc and re-press Alt+F4, it goes to the next application. But in Vista it's just stuck there.

When I tried Windows 7 public beta available from Microsoft, the issue was still there. I don't think Microsoft will ever fix it.

 

@GoodBytes

First, he says it crashes on boot then on the reboot it works fine. If it was in fact a hardware problem it would crash every time. I believe it is a problem with vista. Hardware and software are directly related, hardware runs software and software controls hardware...

Secondly, just because people don't want to waste money doesn't mean they are not gamers. I've used linux on older machines and got the same performance in games that vista gets on a newer system, it uses a lot of resources that could be put to use by games and other programs you are running. Also side note, running games in linux, even in wine, you will see games drop ~20ms off latency. Thats because linux handles networking a lot more efficiently than windows OSs.

Lastly, I'm sick of vista fanboys flaming on people who don't like vista because they have problems with it. It's a crappy OS at best and I will not use it if I have the option to use something else.

Did it ever occur to you that the reason why games don't run smoothly on that system you mention is because of vista? Install XP or even linux and be amazed at how much faster it boots, shuts down, opens programs, and well... does anything in general.

 

Considering that the HDD is not corrupted, my experience suggest otherwise to your statement. Plus, he said that it happen shortly after adding RAM. This should be indication that the RAM is faulty. It is hard to diagnostic a problem without exact details of the error produced by the BSOD. The more details I have, the more the solution will be more exact and complete.

A BSOD at startup and even under Safe Mode (so no drivers loaded) suggest hardware failure or corrupted HDD (hardware failure). Not software.

A gamer has basic computer to play games. Any computer since 2003 that is set to be for "games", is powerful enough to run Vista with Aero (a RAM update is at best needed)

Vista OS only supports the latest technology. Microsoft said hundred of time, that Vista will not run properly with old hardware due to a lack of support for such old standard. This decision was done to increase policy security from different areas from the system (including, software policy, hardware to software and vise-versa security, and system security.. if you don't know what I am talking about, take 2 computer courses in university (software system and computer systems). Also if you install Vista and jump to games immediately, then your game will be slow due that the HDD is in use as Vista does a complete indexing of several areas of your hard drive. Under normal operation of the OS, it does it only when it's idle and stops when not in idle anymore. For the first time, Vista will do it no mater what. Your reaction is similar to the one of Windows 2000, when similar critics was said to it, because Win9x software and driver did not work under it (as it's NT... completely different kernel), and many device drivers were not optimized. About a year later, XP came out.. exactly Windows 2000, with compatibility mode which does little and barely works, broken firewall (in SP2) which ask you to allow a program to access the internet AFTER is accessed the internet, at certain times, theme, welcome screen, a little faster boot system, and improved help documentation. Despite criticism at XP released, you seam very happy with it.
Since the time around Vista SP1 was release, drivers were develop and optimize enough to solve this gap problem. A newer OS will take more computer power. For Win7 it's more GPU power for Aero. Every OS, including Linux is guilty of this, as new features require more resources. If you are not happy, You can anytime downgrade XP to any Windows you want including MS-DOS (you thought the downgrade program was only from Vista down XP? Nope, you can do that on all edition of Windows since day 1)

-> This "resources" that it takes is freed when the user needs it. To run Vista on a PIII 512MB of RAM is easy. Increase page file size to XP level, then disable theme service, and disable Superfetch service and indexing. Vista will be at about 330-350 MB used.. just a little over XP.

Congrads, you found a (among many) upside to Linux and Unix.

I am sick of idiots that say something is crappy, because they heard someone saying that without listening to the exact reasons. I am not a fanboy, I just spread the truth. You want the downside of Vista, I can name them to you. I always said that Vista is a great OS for individuals and small businesses. However, for larger scale companies it is not... this is why IT managers says Vista sucks. NOT because it has that kind of issues, but how Microsoft miss manage the release of Vista, with a big surprised, lack of documentation, and no one was ready, as Microsoft did not manage the delays properly, and pushed Vista 32-bit (the one with all the issues you heard at released.. yup Vista 64-bit was clean), and Microsoft acted the same was as XP, where the 32-bit version, last minute done first, and the 64-bit as XP 64-bit -> for "special" system), which was the contrary they should have done.

Did it ever occur to you that the reason why games don't run smoothly on that system you mention is because of vista? Install XP or even linux and be amazed at how much faster it boots, shuts down, opens programs, and well... does anything in general.[/QUOTE]

 

There is only one upside to using any windows OS, games. The only reason I use a windows OS is because the vast majority of games only work on windows and it takes way too long for me to get them all working in wine. Vista is the slowest, most insecure, and ugliest OS I have ever used (It ties with ME). It isn't good for the average computer, small companies, or anyone really because of the many security problems it has. Six hours after it's release the password encryption was broken, a keygen was made, etc. Until microsoft changes some simple design issues their OSs will always suck.

Microsoft OSs are only used because they are preloaded on the system and thats convenient, or the software you want to use will only run natively on windows (games). Companies have tried to offer other OSs such as linux but microsoft threatens to stop letting them use their OSs. In fact, the whole netbook deal (some come with linux) has microsoft worried. I don't know how else to say it, vista is trash, there are no benefits to using it, you HAVE to use it because microsoft right now has a monopoly. Hopefully companies will make their games work on linux (if they support openGL which is what mac uses they can easily port their games to linux) and my dream of never having to touch a microsoft product again will come true.