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"Not Ready For Prime-Time" on by Silver-Surfer57
Pros: Nice visual improvements. Reminds me a lot of a Mac.
Cons: Many programs won't work. Amazing lack of drivers.
Summary: I have the business version of Vista and have been running it for about a month now. I did a clean install just to make sure there were no remnants of XP. Installation was very smooth and took about 40 minutes.
First the good: I really like Aero and the other visual changes. The desktop is much sharper and I assume that's because it takes advantage of my video card's capabilities (I have a GeForce 6800GT). I received a 3.2 rating on my AMD Athlon 2400+ system with 1GB RAM, so that's not too bad. Even though there's more running it seems to be smoother. The sidebar is pretty nice and unobtrusive. Vista will keep a list of any problems it encounters and will search for solutions on the web. Nice touch.
Unfortunately, at this time, I think the bad outweighs the good. Several programs that I have installed no longer work on Vista. Nero is one of them and that makes creating CD's/DVD's much more difficult. Vista does have burning software, but it's so basic that it's practically worthless. The "new" Windows Explorer is nice, but it seems a direct copy of the Mac.
The worst problem is drivers. It took me hours to get the right combination of drivers to get my scanner working again. I'm pretty upset that my HP 5150 printer software no longer works. The driver works fine, but the software that allows me to clean the inkjets fails so now I have horrible looking printouts. You'd think with all the time Vista has been in development that this wouldn't be an issue. My Logitech mouse driver doesn't install and, believe it or not, it didn't even install the software for my Microsoft keyboard. I had to search Microsoft to find it.
Another weirdness is the Games component. At first I was pretty impressed that it scanned my system and not only put in the games I had installed (which, btw, do work fine so far), but changed the icon to match the game box and had the manufacturer info on it. The weird thing is that it only seemed to do that the very first time I scanned. I've installed 2 new games since and can't get them to show up like the others.
Overall, I do like the OS, but I don't think it's ready for the general public yet. Like XP before it, I think it would be worth waiting until all the kinks are worked out of it. I'm very very surprised that, given all the testing, Vista is just as bad off as XP was when it was first released. I've been a loyal MS user for years, so it's not easy for me to admit that they missed the mark this time. -
"Vista, best thing since ME!" on by bb2012
Pros: None that come to mind.
Cons: Lets say there is a lot.
Summary: Vista has an 11GB install size, compared to 2GB with XP it should be 5 times better or more secure right? Wrong. Vista is really the worst thing since ME. I don't know about you, but I like to try out new software every once and a while. When I tried to do just that, Vista's new brain child - UAC(User Access Control) pops up everytime and asks me whether or not I want to continue. I tried to find the fastest way to disable it. It took me an hour of searching Google and MSDN where they hid the answer very well, to try to find out how to disable this annoyance. Once I found out how and disabled it, half of the software I tryed to install did not work. Then once I had all my software intalled and was ready to give Vista a fair evaluation, I found myself saying wow this looks exactly like XP with a Vista Theme on it. After a closer examination I found exactly that, Windows XP Core, Vista Theme. 11GB of fluff. Windows Update took away a need for ever having a new OS but as all companies do, MS needs more money and we need our toys, and so Vista was born.
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"Vista is a joke" on by mrpiddly1
Pros: new look,
Cons: tries to be OSX which it fails at
Summary: Windows vista is like some Frankenstein creation between OSX and windows XP. As expected the results are not good. While the new look is much better that the blue windows of XP, it is still very ugly compared to OSX. The effects is nice, but for people with old or crap computers, dont expect much. Instillation was horrid and took me most of a day just to install it and put my files onto it. It crashed a few times in instillation too. Once it was installed, the trouble began. It had some problems with my external hard drive and internet connection so, it froze when I opened up that drive. I fixed that by spending a hour clicking in endless control windows until I found a little box to un-check.
As I said earlier, Vista is much like OSX, but dont get your hopes up, looks aren't all that matter. The window flip thing is nice, but very unpractical and I prefer tha layout of OSX's Expose. The widget like things in Vista are a huge rip of of OSX. I found them difficult and not worth the time. Plus, they are always on the screen so they are very annoying. You have to close all other windows to see them. There is also a very small selection of widgets(hopefully this will change) IT would also be nice to have an easy widget creator much like in leopard but Microsoft isn't know for easy. The preview function is nice but soemtimes comes up randomly. As for windows live search, ripoff of spot light, that did not work for me and told me that there was a system error when I searched.
Text to speach is a complete failure and possibly the worst feature of vista. The whole operating system is very none friendly to people with hearing or seeing problems (i do not have them, just my speculation) Also, the photo viewer is nice but is slow as hell even on my fast computer. It also doesn't like half my photos because they are in the wrong format. Other features have their highs and lows but I left vista very disappointed. They took 5 years to create a ripoff of OSX, and they didnt create a good ripoff, they created another OS that is impossible to use and that only a hacker can fix. -
"That's it?!" on by justinpowell
Pros: More like a Mac.
Cons: It's not a Mac; hardware requirements too high; too expensive
Summary: I use both Windows XP and Mac OS X and have extensive experience on both platforms. Windows XP was a worthy upgrade to Windows 98/ME that offered a more stable, modern computing environment and more features. Nonetheless, in my experience Mac OS X has been a more advanced, stable, secure, and easy-to-use OS.
Windows Vista does not offer a compelling upgrade from Windows XP and the hardware requirements are too high for such a 'ho-hum' upgrade. The retail price is also way too expensive for what you get. The full (and only) version of Mac OS X is $129 whereas the crippled Vista Home Basic is $199. The full Vista Ultimate is a whopping $399, almost $300 more than Mac OS X! -
"5 yrs later, still no need to upgrade" on by bigpetis
Pros: Flashy Aero graphics (if you have the RAM to spare), DirectX 10, cool black toolbar, more security (sarcastic YAY)
Cons: Gadgets? why not call them "Rip off of Apple programs" Oh look a search bar in the Start Menu, oh wait Apple beat them to that too,
Summary: I think it is ironic that Bill Gates along with many more computer engineers spend 5 years on this OS and not even CNET tells you that you need to upgrade. I mean, what has Microsoft been doing for all that time. If I had 5 years to make a product and on top of that a year to see what your competition has done, I would make one spectacular product! Also they have already started work on their first service pack for Vista. Wait a tick, your telling me that you haven't even released the product to the public and you already need to make a service pack for it. Sounds like they are rushing out the OS a little to soon.
Windows Vista Ultimate user reviews
