Whats up with all you HATE for Vista. Impatient as hell

Well Said, Jalf! I agree with the idea that the end result was what really matters and Vista when compared to XP is sub par in certain areas for one: Gaming performance.
It is very well known that XP has better gaming performance than Vista but from personal experience I have to say the difference was far greater than most had suggested. Let's take the game: Orange Box for example, under Vista: Res 1024x 756, everything at Medium, no AA, no AF, no Motion Blur/Vsyn, I get around 30-40 FPS. The result was jaggy lined graphics with occasional shattering take it for granted it ran pretty good for 8600m GT.However, under XP, Res: 1280 x 1024, everything at High, 2x AA, no AF, no Motion Blur/Vsyn, I get around 42-50 fps. The result was smoother edges, no shattering, and higher quality in terms of graphics. I was totally amazed by the difference between the performance of the two OS. Additional to Orange Box, COD4 demonstrated a same trend of performance increase as well which let to my conclusion that Vista still needs to be work on and is at the moment INCOMPLETE. I hope Vista SP1 will turn things around, give the Vista fan boys rights to brag and us, the unbelievers a chance to accept the new OS.

P.S. The system was C2D 1.6, 2 Gig of RAM (This was not the fundamental cause of huge performance increase; 2 gig should just be enough under Vista Basic), 8600m GT@DDR2 Stock.

 

Its quite interesting how the XP fanboys so quickly forget all the driver issues that occurred when Win2000 and then WinXP came to market. I have a scanner sitting in a closet that is useless because the manufacturer refused to create an XP driver for it. I didn't blame Microsoft then and I don't blame them now. The manufacturer didn't want to spend the $$ necessary to create the driver because it created no revenue stream for them. (Of course I never bought another thing with their brand on it.)

It's also quite interesting that in such bold letter you state it doesn't matter who's fault it is and yet you go on to blame the problem on Microsoft???

Gary

 

It is quite interesting how you completely failed to read my post, despite replying to it.
(It's also interesting that not drooling over Vista automatically makes you an XP fanboy. What if I prefer Linux or Mac? Or Win98, even?)

Want me to repost the relevant bit? I'm sorry, I can't make the font bigger than it was though, so please concentrate this time.

No one cares whose fault it is

No one except you gives a damn what XP was like 6 years ago, just like no one gives a damn whether it's Microsoft or your printer manufacturer who's to "blame".

The fact is that today, a lot of problems occur under Vista, that you wouldn't see under XP. That is all that matters. Please enlighten me as to why *anyone* should care about what problems you or I ran into when we tried to run XP 6 or 7 years ago. Please tell me how that makes Vista a better proposition today. (Hint: It doesn't, it's completely irrelevant)
The only question that matters is "Is Vista a better deal than other of today's OS'es?" What XP was like 6 years ago, or how much people complained when Win3.1 came out is completely useless. But if something, say, your printer, works under XP, but not under Vista, then that is a point in XP's favor. No excuses, no "Yeah but it's not Microsoft's fault", and no "Yeah but it didn't work with XP when that launched either".
No one except you gives a damn.

You can spend the next year tallying up driver problems in Vista, Linux, XP today, XP 6 years ago, DOS 3.0 and explaining why the latter excuse the former, it doesn't matter.
No one (except the fanboys who feel their life crumbling when people don't worship Vista) gives a flying **** about how the driver problems under Vista "don't count because......."
They count because people today encounter them. People today don't encounter the problems that XP had in 2001, just like they don't encounter the 640KB memory limit, or max 8-character filenames so none of that is the least relevant to a discussion of whether Vista is worth using.
The problems that you run into when running Vista, however, are very relevant. No matter who or what caused them.

Very difficult to understand indeed. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, no. But it's still incorrect to say that "It's not Microsoft's fault". Part of it it certainly is. They can't take all the blame, no, but some of it definitely.
No matter how irrelevant it is, I can still correct people when they start speaking complete garbage. Saying that Microsoft has nothing to do with the software ecosystem on their OS is just silly.

 

None of us are saying that MS is entirely responsible for all the problems and incompatibilities you see with Vista. Just that some of the problem is their fault.

Jalf is also right, the vast majority of people don't give two flying rips whose fault it actually is, all they care about is that the new printer they bought with their new computer doesn't work for jack, and they had to spend 2 hours on the phone with tech support.

In a lot of ways I think the XP transition is an unfair comparison, because XP wasn't really a new OS, it was Win2k with window dressing, which is why the transition was so smooth. I don't remember any real driver or stability issues, certainly not to the same extent we have with Vista.

The only driver problems I remember were with older, consumer grade hardware that was released for Win98 and Win95. Almost anything else had a Win2k driver, and 95% or more of those worked with XP. You can gripe and moan about this, but companies aren't going to write drivers for 4 year old hardware for a new OS for consumer hardware. If you don't like it, buy business class hardware, or don't buy the new OS. I agree that it's a crappy policy, but it makes great economic sense from their perspective.

But again, fairness aside, no one cares WHY this time around is different, all most people are going to know is that they opened up their XP computer, and almost everything they had worked with it and everything in the store worked with it. That's STILL not the case with Vista.

Edit: One more thing, please be careful calling people XP fanboys, I certainly am not one, and I don't think Jalf is either, I just happen to agree with him and others that XP currently has the more complete and enjoyable user environment.

 

My life is not crumbling. I could care less if you, or anyone else, likes Vista or not. But just as you state: "I can still correct people when they start speaking complete garbage" I, too, will do the same.

Suggesting that Microsoft has ANY blame in the lack of a Vista driver for a particular piece of hardware is just such an example of "speaking complete garbage". Please explain to all of us here, how it is Microsoft's responsibility, because some manufacturer would rather try to sell you a new scanner than create a Vista compatible driver?

I can, and most assuredly do, lay blame on Microsoft for other aspects of problems folks might have with Vista. But this driver arguement... well to use your own words is "complete garbage".

My pointing out the historic instance of this same issue occurring with XP or Win 2000, was in no way apologetic for Vista. It was to point out how this is the same old song and dance we heard when they came out. Legions of Microsoft haters lined up to cast aspersions at Microsoft because of the dearth of drivers from hardware manufacturers then and here we are years latter and nothing has changed.

I think your argument that it doesn't matter whose fault it is is another instance of "complete garbage". It does matter. It matters, because if we are to move forward SOMEONE has to fix the problem. Throwing up your hands and exclaiming in 20 point type that it doesn't matter does nothing to fix the issue, now does it?

Gary

 

Then some folks here need to extend the same courtesy to those of us who are enjoying our use with Vista and yet are called fanboys when we suggest this whole driver issue is specious at best.

Gary

 

Remember the DOS hackers total disgust at Windows 2. or whatever for losing the command line? it goes on and on and will keep repeating itself throughout history lol

 

I agree...I think people are just afraid of change......conservatives
they neglect to rewind a number of years and forget to see that xp had massive problems too at launch...it is only good as it is now because it is had years to identify and fix leaks. Vista will be just as great in a few years

 

I've never called anyone a fanboy of anything, but I agree that name-calling has no place on either side of this debate.

MS IS responsible for whether or not hardware had drivers at launch, and they are still somewhat responsible for the driver situation.

MS did not get finalized copies of Vista to hardware and software companies in any where near enough time before launch for them to code stable drivers. MS was actually making serious changes to Vista almost until it shipped. This lead time is critical with ANY OS, with an OS release that totally revamps how drivers are handled it is indispensible.

The reason MS did this is clear to everyone, they sold lots of Vista vouchers with systems last Christmas, and their OEMS would have stormed Redmond with pitchforks and torches is they'd announced that Vista wouldn't be out until May or so.

Since then the hardware guys have been trying to work hotfixes into what were basically beta drivers they shipped with Vista, while trying to figure out what they're doing and how Vista works with these pieces of hardware. While they're doing that MS has been releasing a constant litany of patches, a good number of them affecting drivers, to correct all of the things that should have been fixed before Vista was released.

On top of all that, SP1 is looming on the horizon, and promises more significant changes to the Vista environment. Certainly hardware manufacturers bear some responsibility here, but it's hard to blame them for wanting to wait for SP1 to really dig into the whole thing. Remember, all this driver development costs a lot of money, and if SP1 is going to make moot a lot of what they are doing now it starts to look a lot like wasting money.

I'm not an MS basher, and they really got it right with Win2k and XP, I also and not an XP fanboy, because I only switched when they end of lifed Win2k and basically turned off all the "XP" features. I'm also not simply afraid of change- before they started axing all the features that were supposed to be in Vista I was really excited about it, even with the stupid GUI.

I'm not just hating on MS. The Vista launch was a massive screwup from start to finish, and it was almost guaranteed to be that way from the moment the marketing and financial guys got involved and made them promise to have it done by early 2007, when it was abundantly clear to everyone that it wouldn't be ready.

I do happen to personally not care for Vista, but that's more because I see no compelling technical reason for it to exist, and it really, really, ticks me off that MS is using DirectX10 and it's control over the OEM channel to force people to upgrade (just like they forced a bunch of us to migrate from Win2k to XP) when there is no real reason (other than profits for MS) for us to do so.

 

I'm not at all impressed with Vista. Hopefully it will improve by SP2; SP1 appears to do little to nothing to improve performance.

 

Scoober....I'm going to put Linux on my old Acer Laptop...I haven't used Linux in about 5 years or so, and didn't know all that much then What's the most 'dumbed down' out of the box noobie friendly version I can download so guests and kids can use it for the internet? I prefer Gnome desktop btw....something like Mint? thanks

EDIT: I guess this should have been a PM...saw your sig...but it's too late now

 

Sorry, I never meant to imply that YOU were the one calling anyone a fanboy. I apologize if you though that!

Again, I must strongly disagree. It most assuredly was in Microsoft's best interest to have drivers available for as wide a range of hardware as possible. But it was not their responsibility. There is a big difference. How can they be responsible for the actions of third party hardware manufacturers?

I am a developer and a certified solutions partner, so I understand the concept of lead time and know what the delivery of finalized copies of Vista was. But they didn't prevent any company from making drivers available. It might have caused them to have to release revised drivers. All of these folks had plenty of time to get drivers out. If they didn't how is it that some hardware folks got theirs delivered on time and didn't require patches or updates? But I was, after all, talking about the folks who to this day have still not made drivers available for some hardware. This spurious argument about lead time does not address those folks who didn't release any drivers at Vista roll out or those who still have not released any drivers.

While there have been a flow of patches for Vista, I don't think I'd characterize it as a "litany" nor do I think that a good number of them affected drivers. No question some have, but again, how does the affect those who never released ANY drivers?

It is absolutely ridiculous to even suggest that anything coming in SP1 would cause any driver developer to be forced to scrap any substantial portion of work they might have done on a driver that conformed to even the earliest of specs on Vista driver development. I am not saying it might not cause a change in someone's driver code. But to suggest it as justification for delayed development is silly at best.

I have not and will never suggest that Vista is without fault. I think the implementation of UAC is stupid since it doesn't have the capacity to remember certain items I have specifically given it approval for. And there are other issues too.

I am just calling bull on the drivers "issue" that's all.

Again, I apologize if you thought I was suggesting you were the one calling names.

Gary

 

I've heard a lot of good things about Mint, which does use GNOME by default, but I have not tried it yet.

Another distro you may want to check out is PCLinuxOS; it uses KDE by default. I've heard a lot of good things about this one as well, but have not tried it out myself.

I've been using SimplyMEPIS (MEPIS) lately, I haven't mastered it yet, but so far it's been great, and very user friendly. There is a way to easily install all of the non-free codecs and such you will need for media and things, so that's not a problem. The default is KDE, which I prefer, and have actually found to be more stable, and more M$ Windows like than GNOME, which many coming from M$ Windows find to be a great advantage.

Don't forget that it's usually easy to install GNOME on most distros, so you could run GNOME on SimplyMEPIS with no problems if you want to try it out.

To get started I recommend checking out this great thread started by John B, http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=187152.

 

Thanks, I'll read thru that...I haven't used KDE in a long time...I used to think it was clunky and Gnome seemed more, well, MAC like so to speak....I liked getting away from a windows feel....I'll check it again...thanks

 

You make a good point, and I would agree with you that GNOME is more Mac OS-X like.

 

I think lead time is more of an issue than you are making it out to be, and it was the primary complaint that I saw from hardware folks at launch. Obviously drivers have varying levels of complexity and difficulty and take different times to develop. MS is partly responsible for the state of drivers at the release because they control when developers got their devkits and when the release was.

MS is, at the final evaluation, responsible for the end user experience when the OS was launched. They knew that lots of drivers weren't ready, particularly display drivers, and that they wouldn't be ready at launch. MS should never have launched a major OS with the level of driver support that they launched Vista with. Fairly or unfairly they had to know they were going to take the blame for any problems, and they launched anyway. The primary lesson of the Vista launch, I think, is another lesson on what happens when you let marketing make decisions instead of product development.

You are right though, the shoddy launch and inadequate pre-launch dev-time doesn't excuse a current lack of Vista drivers, and doesn't really excuse the shoddy state of many current Vista drivers. All I can think of is that they are waiting for SP1, both to make sure it doesn't make them waste time and, more importantly I think, because SP1 is supposed to lead to widespread adoption of Vista by consumers and business.

Developing Vista drivers might just not look like a good investment of capital right now, between the terrible reception it's had from the technical press and numerous user complaints, along with Dell and others going back to offering XP. Add in the extremely slow adoption rates of Vista by the business segment and it starts to look less and less financially feasible to develop Vista drivers right now.

It definitely stinks though, particularly for all the people who have no choice but to buy a Vista system.

 

I've said it before and i'll say it again. I want to like Vista but when it comes to performance of games it fails miserably. I'm running it on my business laptop and so far it's been solid.

But performance wise it falls apart when you apply games to it. Directx10 has been a lot of hot air. It really doesn't offer many performance enhancements in fact it lowers them by quite a lot. Hopefully Vista will at some point get spit shined and polished and hopefully i'll be able to throw the latest games at it and it won't miss a beat.

 

We'll from what I've read SP1 is not the answer, maybe SP2 will be better, whenever that comes out.

 

I've read the same thing. I've also read that some things run slower with Vista SP1 while SP3 for XP has increased it's performance. So i'm looking forward to that. It looks like i'll be using XP for quite sometime on my gaming rig.

 

Personally I dont care which OS is on my machine as long as it is stable, fast, and gets the job done with a minimal amount of fuss.
And since Vista didnt fit that ticket at the moment, XP Pro was installed, and since it is already on there it isnt worth the wasted time to install Vista.

 

XP SP3 is supposed to be up to 10 times faster in some tasks than Vista SP1!

 

Looks like I'm in it with my XP Pro install for the long haul then.
I dont place much value in eye candy for an OS if it slows the system down. Yes yes, I know, lots of people here say that we cant expect a 1 year old OS to compete in speed with a 7 year old OS, but honestly, its an OS, it has one sole purpose on the computer, and they both basically do the same thing.

 

LOL, that validates what Jalf has been saying. Use the best OS that is out right now and that still is XP. It also makes MS look bad increasing the performance on XP while Vista has taken some steps back with SP1. Again this is what I have been reading.

One thing that has bugged me about Vista is how the multi boot configuration file has been hidden. In XP you could easily edit the file. I just had to do that with a triple boot system.

In Vista it's hidden unless you use a program like EasyBCD.

 

sprtnbsblplya, I couldn't agree with you more, and that's why I will primarily be using either XP and Linux, and Vista manly for lessons in pain only.

 

10 times faster? 10 times faster? Do you have any idea how much that is? So something that would take 6 seconds on xp would take a minute on vista? You mean a 10 % increase in performance in sp3. In a disputable officebench benchmark which claimed that the test took vista about twice as long.

 

Yep, I just got back on XP on my old laptop, and after using Vista for several months all I can say is Ugh! I don't care if it's 100 times faster...actually I'm wiping out XP on that machine altogether and putting Linux on it.

 

Understandable. Theres a difference between disliking it for the right reasons or opinions and disliking because of false information. That 10x faster is just downright wrong. Thats how false information spreads, just like it already has.

 

Agreed. Vista was the worst when it came out about a year ago, I installed it the day WSU offered it, and uninstalled it about 2 days later.
Now I'm sure it has come a long way at this point though.
But since I already have XP on my machine, no point in upgrading for eye candy and a few added OS tools that dont make much of a daily difference in use to me.

 

Source? That's going to be a bit difficult given that SP3 only gives a 10% improvement to XP.

Gary

 

Maybe 10% is what he meant to say.
Wow, this thread has gone on a long ways for such a simple topic.
Didnt realize that choosing sides for an OS was so controversial...

What used to be Windows vs Mac users is now Vista vs XP users.

 

No, the article that I read clearly stated that on certain tasks that XP SP3 was up to 10x faster than Vista SP1. I read it a few weeks ago or so, and I don't remember what "certain" things they were or where I read it, but I did.

Perhaps it was an editing error, or maybe there is something with that kind of a difference, I don't know, but that's what I read; not saying it's golden, I'll try and find it again.

 

Lol well said, though shhh lets not start up a war.

Yeah a link would be nice though thats probably wrong. I'm fairly certain you misinterpreted 10% because thats the only given because there was only one benchmark done. Though even that benchmark is iffy.

 

Anyway vista sp1 will be much more advanced than xp sp3

 

Thats a very subjective opinion determined by needs.
To some people Linux is more advanced than any Windows ever produced, but for a majority of people, that will never be the case.

 

We'll, I haven't been able to find that article, but one I did find stated that M$ is aware of the performance disparity, and inferred that performance tweaks will be made prior to the official Vista SP1 release; let's hope that's true!

 

And a space shuttle is much more advanced than a bicycle. And yet a bicycle is better suited for transporting me to university each morning.

 

I couldn`t have said it better myself.

 

xp is better? of course?

why is this a subject of debate?

 

Because people need to justify to themselves the worse performance that Vista gives them, since it`s the future

 

Vista has been very good to me, I use it more than XP.

 

I think if you have a system with plenty of power and resources, combined with SP1 and a few tweaks here and there, Vista can be a very good OS.

 

Nobody said Vista is a bad OS. XP is just better though

 

Well, am an XP user from the early days, and still am, I had Vista briefly though. My impression was that Vista was more about eye candy than anything else for the most part. The things I hated about Vista, like UAC I think it's called, can be turned off, so that's good. M$ just felt pressure from Mac OS-X eye candy and special effects, so they shifted their focus more in that direction, and ditched some of the more functional aspects of Vista that were supossed to be included.

 

Generally, I prefer XP at this moment in time. XP runs all of my programs that I generally use, unfortunately vista seems to have issues with both Counterstrike Source and COD4 and also removes IPX support, something that most of the Command and Conquer series needs for multiplayer. Apart from games however I have as yet to have difficulties with Vista and now I have resolved many of the driver issues with my PC, it runs very stable. However, XP is still on the dual boot menu for gaming.

Generally though I don't like the idea of an operating system that hogs so many resources. It should be a platform to run other software on, but nevermind. I'm sure the bugs in it will be fixed in time.

 

the only thing is i hate about vista is the lack of 3rd party support. Nvidia....

i love aero however.

 

Now, I could be wrong on this, since I only have Gophn's word for it in a post on the Clevo/Sager forum, and I've been too busy/lazy to research it, but, according to Gophn, XP SP3 will basically replace the XP kernel with the _Vista kernel (or, I suppose, more accurately, both XP and _Vista will henceforth have the same kernel).

If true that would mean that the basic difference between XP and _Vista comes down to the UI (including the unseen bits that don't contribute to aeroglass but that contribute to hooking up user-level functions with kernel-level functions), so it would be remarkable if XP SP3 has significant performance gains over _Vista, and 10x would be


Finally, apropos of certain poor souls who feel compelled to defend _Vista 'cause it's "the future" - I hate to do this to them, but even that bit's a canard, at least with respect to the consumer/nonbusiness versions.

Currently, according to MS' lifecycle support policy, mainstream support for _Vista Home ends on 04/10/2012 (jeez, 5 days before taxes are due - I bet we see a ton of "a virus ate my tax return" excuses in 2012 )and, because _Vista Home is not a business application (as if that weren't obvious ), there will be no extended support for _Vista Home thereafter - which, boiled down to brass tacks, means no security support for _Vista Home after 04/10/2012.

On the other hand, in large part due to the public (and private, I'm sure) uproar over the inexcusably long delay in releasing _Vista, MS extended the end-date by which XP Home would no longer get security support by basically putting XP Home on a par with XP Pro. Mainstream support for XP Pro stops on 04/14/2009; however, XP Pro continues to get extended support until 04/08/2014 - which boiled down to brass tacks means that XP Pro will have security support until 04/08/2014, and as a result of MS' extension of support for XP Home, so too will XP Home.

In other words, Win XP Home will continue to enjoy security support for at least 2 years after _Vista Home loses such support. To put it more bluntly, XP Pro and XP Home will continue to be viable OSes for two years after the point at which _Vista Home has become worm-food (or, more aptly, virus-food)


Now, I know that, because mainstream support for XP stops on 4/14/09, that I'm going to be missing out on all the fancy new extras MS will lard onto to aeroglass, and my desktop will start to look a little antiquated (my pop still runs Win 98 on his desktop system, and I was shocked to see how crude it now looks in comparison to XP and _Vista); however, at least I won't be providing educational funding to wanna-be hackers and, whaddya callem, ... script-kiddies.