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"A very attractive replacement to XP that steals most of its ideas from Google Desktop and Macs." on by jfowers
Pros: Aero looks great, search is very accesable and useful, Times Reader is great
Cons: iTunes is incompatable and widgets are pretty useless, not as stable as Microsoft implies.
Summary: The main reason that I'm posting this review is to comment on CNET's abject hate of the search function being one level down. Here's the thing, if you're about to type then your fingers are on the keyboard. All you have to do is tap the Windows button to and the start menu pops up and anything you type goes into the search box. Then push the enter key and presto--no need to click anything or "delve through layers." This is a hundred times more convenient then having search on the desktop, which would require me to minimize all of my windows just to search.
One thing I don't like is Windows Sidebar. The gadgets can't be resized, and are for the most part to small to be useful (looking at you, RSS reader). For whatever reason there isn't a gadget to control media players, which was one of my favorites on Google Desktop (far superior to Windows Sidebar).
I don't regret my free upgrade (courtesy of the University of Florida, go Gators!), but I wouldn't pay money for Vista. Most of the useful features are free through programs like Google Desktop and Window Blinds, so whats the point of spending hundreds of dollars? -
"make sure you have a working system to fall back on" on by theoboeguy
Pros: visually appealing
Cons: so many kinks to iron out
Summary: I recently had my business laptop die on me and replaced it with a Dell loaded with Vista Business. So far, I have had major time consuming issues with Outlook. I originally tried my Outlook 2000 which is not supported. Apparently this is because of a file called wab32.dll that was located in Outlook Express does not exist because OE has been replaced by Windows Mail. Now that I am loading in Outlook 2000 from the Office XP suite, I am getting all kinds of error messages and warnings from Vista that a program is trying to hijack my email addresses from outlook...and I most certainly don't have any viruses or anything! You would think that somewhere along the line, the designers would have realized that people coming into vista will be using Outlook 2000 or 2002, and they seem to have done NOTHING to bring these business users into this new platform.
Aside from that, the system isn't really very fast, which is surprising, and it seems to have an awful lot of thinking to do. I know Microsoft wants to create this "totally new experience" and the website claims like "simplifying your business so you can have more fun!" and others that are equally nauseating. Vista has provided me with no benefits thus far. -
"More "Flash" but not nearly as refined as XP." on by MDJTS
Pros: Superficial flashiness (that does not translate into usefulness)
Cons: Drivers less capable than XP; Some useful existing hardware will never be supported
Summary: It is infuriating to have a great printer (Lexmark C524dtn) with duplex capability and not be able to duplex under Vista but have to go to an XP machine to do the duplex printing. This is a driver issue that should have been ironed out before Vista's release. It is even more infuriating to see that detachable disk drives by major manufacturers (e.g. Iomega) are not supported under Vista but are supported under XP. Furthermore, the web sites for these devices state that these devices will not be supported in the future because of "major architectural changes" between Vista and XP. This is absurd. We shouldn't have to upgrade peripheral hardware every time there is a "major" OS upgrade. Even worse: The hardware requirements for basic satisfactory operation are substantially greater for Vista than for XP. XP will run reasonably well on 500 MB or even less. Vista is intolerable on 500 MB and becomes comparable performance wise to XP only at about 1.5 to 2.0 GB of memory. Ridiculous. Vista would never have been released in its present form if Microsoft has serious competition in the OS business. I think XP is superior to Vista in its present form and will be serviceable for almost all applications for many years to come. Microsoft should not be allowed to drop support for XP.
Updated
How would you feel about not being able to re-read a book on your bookshelf because the letters have expired and to read it, you have to purchase new letters? If you own a large Type 1 font library (as I do), you will not *ever* be able to use these fonts under Vista. You will either have to purchase Type 3 versions (Adobe is phasing out Type 1) or will have to pay $300 - $1,000 for a font converter (which may or may not render the fonts correctly). XP implements Type 1 fonts flawlessly and seamlessly. There is no reason that Vista cannot support Type 1 fonts other than Microsoft's (and Adobe's) refusal to provide this support.
I have used vista for 5 months now on a new laptop (2.5 GHz, 1.5 GB) and can honestly say that that the "improvements" over XP are marginal at best (and annoying at worst) and that the backward incompatibility with even recent hardware and software is intolerable. I do not want to spend the time and effort doing it, but I feel compelled to install XP over vista. -
"not all it's cracked up to be. ugly and hard to use." on by psychoxl99
Pros: Isolating the kernel will be good for security. A lot of minor improvements over XP.
Cons: Removed the "All Programs" part of the Start Menu, UAC is a nightmare, very ugly colors you wouldn't want to spend all day looking at.
Summary: After toying around with Vista Business for about 4 hours, I got frustrated enough that I ended up wiping my hard disk and reverting back to XP. I had made an image of the hard drive before upgrading with Norton Ghost so it was easy. I'm back on XP and frankly have no intention of upgrading in the near future, if even the distant future.
The appearance features weren't all that did me in, but they were the most disappointing because it had been hyped up so much as such a supposedly beautiful operating system. On appearance, XP's solid blues and greens are so much better than Vista's 10,000 shades of teal, plus the grey/black for maximum nausea. If they wanted it to look good, the least they could have done was package some themes rather than telling users to download nonexistant themes if they didn't like the layout.
The "Flip 3D" feature of "Aero" is killed by the fact that you have to find a little button on the taskbar to use it - or do an awkward 3 key combo - so it's not convenient the way it should be.
Other disappointments included the fact that the "All Programs" menu in the start menu doesn't expand the way it does in XP and previous versions. If you want that, you have to revert to a "classic" theme for the start menu and taskbar, which is basically straight out of Windows 2000, so it clashes with the rest of the desktop (and it is not as convenient as XP's start menu because it only has a single column).
Instead, the start menu in Vista just has a scrolling list of expandable folders, which is about as easy to use as if I were trying to use Windows on my Blackberry. You have to scroll up and down to find anything.
The User Access Control is one thing I thought wouldn't bother me, but it does. Unless you turn it off, it will warn you whenever you run a program it doesn't recognize, which included something as benign as WinRAR. And there is no way I could find to flag a program as "Acceptable." It warned me about WinRAR several times in a row.
Certain folders now take forever to load, for example the Control Panel, which even on my very fast computer takes about 5 seconds to load. On XP it loads right away.
There are now 2 startup pages instead of one. The second is an animation with a nice sound, but before you get there you get a black screen with "(c) Microsoft Windows" at the bottom and an ugly, puke-green progress bar where the bars aren't even evenly spaced. You'd think they would have at least tried to create a good presentation for the opening screen.
Some of those things I could get used to, but the desktop appearance and ease of using the start menu are things that I consider nonnegotiable.
It seems like they made changes to the user interface because they felt like they ought to be making changes, not because they had any compelling reason to do so. This is the same feeling I got when I upgraded to IE7, and which is why I started using Firefox a few months ago after being a longtime IE enthusiast through IE 6. If Vista doesn't crash and burn and force Microsoft to change direction, I think XP will be the last Windows I buy (I got this Vista upgrade for free with my new Dell laptop). I love XP, I just hate Vista. I'll go for a Mac or maybe Linux, if they make Linux easier to use (i.e. multimedia-wise... this would probably require widespread adoption of non-proprietary formats, so it's probably too far in the future).
Now that I think about it, the "commoditization" of operating systems that Microsoft fears seems like it would be pretty good from a consumer perspective... we need more competition in this market, especially if it can be commensurate with standarization. The compatibility issue is the only reason having Windows as a monopoly has been good for consumers thus far, and this can be solved with standardization. -
"Stay away at least 6 Month" on by mitra911
Pros: Looks Very Attractive
Cons: Nothing works neither Printer Driver nor any other XP based software
Summary: Before You Buy Vista Business Edition,Just check whatever you use Like Printer, Internet Because none of the things supports in this advance version.Microsoft doesn't bothered how existing system works.
Windows Vista Business user reviews
