is Vista worth it?

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mattbiernat · #1 Post by **mattbiernat** » Sun Aug 24, 2008 6:00 pm

so the new service pack has been around for a while and so did the Vista operating system. what is the general conclusion on Windows Vista? is it worth upgrading from XP? is it gong to get improved overtime into a fully featured and usable OS? or is it going to get abandoned (like windows ME) and a new OS is going to come out soon.
is getting a new laptop with Vista something that could cause me only trouble. are all the driver issues worked out? i know this topic has been discussed but i want to know if something has changed, if people are slowly getting better performance out of Vista.

#2 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun Aug 24, 2008 7:17 pm

It is a complex question.

1. Vista is new. I have a T61p that I ordered with Vista Business 64-Bit. It has offered all kinds of problems that I finally have mostly worked out. Microsoft has provided some support and fixes (registry fixes if you can believe it) and vendors have updated their software to work properly. I still have wireless problems, but have an Intel card on the way to me and I will see if that fixes it.

2. Windows Explorer is a tool I use constantly. In Vista, it is a botched, butchered mess. It will never be fixed - Microsoft has said as much to me. (The lack of cut, copy, paste, delete and the up-function is what is missing for me. Yes, I know I can use the context function, but I constantly used the special icons, and they are gone forever).

3. Search is broken in the sense that it cannot find text in .TIF files. Major shortcoming.

So after spending several thousand dollars (PC, Office 2007, Netscreen, Adobe 9 and a myriad of other software upgrades), Vista does less than XP (for my needs).

Some people have had success. That is good for those people and Vista will have its following. I can make it work, but it does not meet my needs. XP Pro does meet my needs.

Microsoft has said Windows 7 will be built on Vista and not on XP, so I hold no hope at all for future Windows systems. Microsoft is not listening to its user community.
... JDH

mgo · #3 Post by **mgo** » Sun Aug 24, 2008 9:28 pm

mattbiernat wrote:is getting a new laptop with Vista something that could cause me only trouble. are all the driver issues worked out? .

After messing with Vista ever since the beta days, and after using it daily, Vista for me is pretty good. Of course as jdhurst mentioned some of it's functions are hopelessly goofed up and will probably never get fixed.

My standard reply to users is, keep your XP, there isn't enough to make it worth the money to go over to Vista.

If you have Vista, adjust it for performance settings, switch to "Classic mode" and you should be ok. Just make sure you spend a few dollars for 2 gig of ram for Vista, and perhaps a faster hard drive.

My 69 year old eyes appreciate the advanced, smoother screen that Vista paints, and that makes it a keeper for me.

#4 Post by **bill bolton** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 4:34 am

jdhurst wrote:Vista is new.

Vista has been in full release for 18 months, so it hasn't been "new" for a while now!

As far as stability goes, Vista x 64 is MUCH, MUCH better for me than XP ever was!

Cheers,

Bill B.

Tseng · #5 Post by **Tseng** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:06 am

When the Vista released in 2006, I gave it a try. Did not like it because it is bloated. Plus I did not have a dual core CPU then. Performance is not good.

Now I have got a T61, which has a T7700 & 4GB memory. Plus the SP1 is out, and most importantly, vLite is out too. I am able to take out the components I don't need before the installation. The clean installed Vista lite does give me the smooth feeling and better memory management.

My conclusion regarding Vista is: definitely worth it if you can make it lite.

#6 Post by **jdhurst** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 9:39 am

bill bolton wrote:<snip>
As far as stability goes, Vista x 64 is MUCH, MUCH better for me than XP ever was!

Cheers,

Bill B.

I am not having any difficulty with Vista stability, but since XP (on my two machines) has been 100.0 percent stable, it is hard to beat that. Even on my client machines, XP has proven totally stable. So Vista is stable, it works, and can do things - it just doesn't meet my picky needs like XP does. Cheers ... JDH

lew2 · #7 Post by **lew2** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 1:51 pm

jdhurst wrote: 3. Search is broken in the sense that it cannot find text in .TIF files. Major shortcoming.

Just curious -- what search agents find text in .TIF files? I thought those were image files either from photographs, scanners, or fax images. There are search agents that do OCR on these?

#8 Post by **jdhurst** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 2:51 pm

lew2 wrote:
jdhurst wrote: 3. Search is broken in the sense that it cannot find text in .TIF files. Major shortcoming.
Just curious -- what search agents find text in .TIF files? I thought those were image files either from photographs, scanners, or fax images. There are search agents that do OCR on these?

Microsoft Windows XP Pro search finds it natively. I don't need secondary add-ons. I search and bingo - XP finds it. Alway has. Vista cannot.

For those who read my posts, I beat the living daylights out of my operating systems. This is why I say Vista does much less than XP - it is because it truly does less. ... JDH

mattbiernat · #9 Post by **mattbiernat** » Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:11 pm

interesting JD, but there have to be long term solutions to that. whether we like it or not XP is eventually going to give up its ghost (in 5.5 years)

hellosailor · #10 Post by **hellosailor** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:53 pm

There's a lot to like in Vista, mainly small stuff. And IN THEORY the core code is all new and more secure and stable than ever before.

Well...I'm finding Vista to be the most fragile version of NT that was ever released, all you have to do is sneeze and you can lock it up. Install an innocuous old app that ran fine under NT5, NT5.1, and all of a sudden--Vista won't shut down, or restart, without a crowbar.

Some folks blame this on buggy Lenovo applets and say to reinstall without the Lenovo tools (which have had multiple documented problems) but I can't help thinking--NT was never this fragile before.

Even NT3.51 knew how to blow away bad apps and keep on running. Vista? It's been a house of straw. And that's from a long-time NT enthusiast. Terribly disappointing, if you don't NEED anything that's is Vista, wait another year or two for NT7 and see if that does any better.

Quagmyre · #11 Post by **Quagmyre** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:17 am

mattbiernat wrote:so the new service pack has been around for a while and so did the Vista operating system. what is the general conclusion on Windows Vista? is it worth upgrading from XP? is it gong to get improved overtime into a fully featured and usable OS? or is it going to get abandoned (like windows ME) and a new OS is going to come out soon.
is getting a new laptop with Vista something that could cause me only trouble. are all the driver issues worked out? i know this topic has been discussed but i want to know if something has changed, if people are slowly getting better performance out of Vista.

The question if "Vista is worth it" cannot be generally answered. It depends too much on how you use your computer.

If you have been happy with Windows XP, there is in my opinion no really compelling reason to switch to Vista.
Vista is definitely slower and uses up more resources than XP, even with Vista SP1.

Compared to Vista, XP is lean and fast, pretty stable and has good driver support with almost all issues worked out.

My recommendation:
If you are a power user and get along with XP well, stick with it. Vista is probably even going to annoy you.

If you are a more non-technical user who has been struggling with XP ever since because of security/malware/spyware/virus issues, you might want to take advantage of the improved security features of Vista.

As far as software support goes, Vista does not seem to be well received by developers.
Most new software is just made Vista compatible, but there is hardly any software yet that heavily relies on Vista-specific features (with the possible exception of sidebar gadgets and the like).
According to an article on the net, most devs seem to hibernate and wait for Windows 7 to come out before they'll embrace specific new features.
Hence, we can expect software to be fully compatible with Windows XP for quite some time to come.

#12 Post by **jdhurst** » Wed Oct 15, 2008 11:51 am

Quagmyre wrote:<snip>

As far as software support goes, Vista does not seem to be well received by developers.
Most new software is just made Vista compatible, but there is hardly any software yet that heavily relies on Vista-specific features (with the possible exception of sidebar gadgets and the like).
According to an article on the net, most devs seem to hibernate and wait for Windows 7 to come out before they'll embrace specific new features.
Hence, we can expect software to be fully compatible with Windows XP for quite some time to come.

This is very true (and the gist of many of my own posts on the subject).

However, vendors and manufacturers have shown themselves to be a bad lot in that (a) Vista SP2 is coming out before Windows 7; (b) Windows 7 will be built upon a Vista base; and (3) 64-bit computing is the way of the future. Software developers have their heads up their collective butts if they think waiting will solve any of their problems. ... JDH

Stargate199 · #13 Post by **Stargate199** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 11:41 am

I agree that most developers are going to wait for Windows 7. Vista is a good OS, but not without its flaws, and many of those are visible. Software and Hardware compatibility is the big one. Hardware support seems to be better with SP1 and I have never run into software compatibility, but both are still big issues with Vista. Security is much better in Vista, but it comes at the cost of the UAC (User Account Control). Since I am a power users, this pops up all the time, so I disabled it. Disabling it does lower the amount of security that is present because it will confirm that you want to open a program that was downloaded. Vista is SLOOOOWWWW to boot up (takes 3 minutes on a 2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM for me). I have a PIII 1.26 computer that boots XP in 20 seconds. Once Vista boots up, it is fast. I have noticed applications seem faster of Vista than XP on the same machine.

If you have never used Vista before, give it a try for two weeks and see if you like it or not,

hellosailor · #14 Post by **hellosailor** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 6:16 pm

Stargate-
"Vista is SLOOOOWWWW to boot up (takes 3 minutes on a 2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM for me). "
That's not Vista, that's something wrong in your installation. I can tell you from months of hairpulling that Vista is incredibly fragile, there are many ways that hardware and software can bog it down. Someone else here found a huge culprit that had been kneecapping his system--and mine as well. All you need is to keep an SD card in the thinkpad SD-socket, and boot and shutdown times can quadruple, along with folder directory load/display times. No one knows why--but it is easily replicated. Card out, system fast. Card in, system slow.

I also found in months (literally) of trying to install software, most of it older Nt5/5.1 certified or well-behaved, that many apps can cause Vista to fail to log off, fail to shut down, or take over 15 minutes to do those tasks--and then reboot to a blank desktop.

There are some major holes in Vista, if apps that behaved well in past versions of NT can do that much damage to this one. But--Vista behaving that poorly, means Vista has something stuck in its throat. The only way to tell for sure is with a clean reinstall of the OS, followed by diagnostic installs of your software, and hardware drivers, because even the Vista-certified ones aren't always good.

That mean install one, shut down and restart, run the app, shut down and restart, see if anything has gone sour. If it works, wait 24 hours, then repeat with the next app. (See how it can take MONTHS?)

MS really screwed the pooch on this one, NT is supposed to be robust and not collapse like a house of cards. It is supposed to shut down roque apps--not cower under them. Getting Vista to behave like the heir to the NT name, can be a true ordeal. Even with hardware that says "Designed for Vista" on it!

#15 Post by **bill bolton** » Thu Oct 16, 2008 8:02 pm

hellosailor wrote:NT is supposed to be robust and not collapse like a house of cards.

What was supposed to be and what it actually was, are quite different things.

In the wave of anything but IBM that overtook Microsoft at the inception of "NT", they threw away the parts that would have made the NT platform truly robust.

Its taken them a long time to get to the point of understanding just what they threw away and just why the psuedo-VMS approach really wasn't such a great idea after all, and to start putting real robustness back in via the Vista and Server 2008 platforms.

Cheers,

Bill

hellosailor · #16 Post by **hellosailor** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 9:06 am

So, Bill?
"and to start putting real robustness back in via the Vista "
You think Vista has put MORE robustness back in??

Compared to NT5.x? How so?

I know with NT5, MS radically reduced the number of reboot requirements and improved BSOD issues, and then with 5.1 the BSODs were supposed to be again reduced.

But actually, on Vista I've seen more frequent BSODs and seen them for both hardware and software reasons. I suppose thinks like 15-minute shutdown stalls could be called more robust than simple crashes--but at least the outright crashes (the old way) didn't waste my time wondering if the system WOULD ever shut down.

I know there are reasons I want to stay in Vista, I just often have a hard time remembering why.<G>

(This from someone who stayed in NT5 for almost 7 years, and mainly ignored XP as something my own stable machine didn't really NEED.) Win95 to NT4--not so brutal. NT4 to NT5--outright pleasurable. NT5 to Vista---OUCH! Six months of fighting to dig out the nasties (like the SD-card issue) and I'm first getting back to the stability I had with NT5. Although I'll freely admit some of that is my own fault--I just REFUSE to upgrade everything "Yet Again".

#17 Post by **GomJabbar** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 11:26 am

My personal experience with Vista Ultimate SP1 has been fine. I didn't buy Vista until SP1 came out. Many things I like, some I don't. I don't really recall any BSOD or other incompatibilities, although it is true I have not tried to run many legacy apps.

These are my quibbles...
Some of the changes to the UI are a little hard to adapt to from XP.
It does run a little sluggish on my T42.
Fn + F3 will not turn off the display backlight.

UAC is not really a problem, as I do not encounter it that much. I heard that UAC is less obtrusive in SP1. I welcome the improved security. In fact, I don't bother having a non-administrator user account now like I did in XP.

The best new feature IMO is Media Center. Of course Media Center was introduced with XP, but you could only get it with a hardware purchase. AFAIK Media Center is only available in Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate.

dr_st · #18 Post by **dr_st** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 1:23 pm

bill bolton wrote:As far as stability goes, Vista x 64 is MUCH, MUCH better for me than XP ever was!

I wish it was for me.

I have a fairly powerful desktop PC (Intel QX9650, 4GB RAM, etc.). I Installed Vista64 SP1, with all the updates. The system works fine, but there is one major glitch: it seems that copying files across the LAN (Windows file sharing) often triggers total lockups (mouse cursor freezes and nothing works except hard reboot). Occasionally these lockups also happen while the PC is completely idle.

My guess is either some driver conflict or software incompatibility, but it is a pain to figure out which one (still haven't got myself around to do that).

hellosailor · #19 Post by **hellosailor** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 2:54 pm

There are some differences in how Vista handles networking, like implementing IPv6 and using the Teredo tunneling protocol to push IP6 addresses out through older IPv4 equipment. Those can be killer issues on a LAN if there is just one router, one hub, that doesn't support them. And a lot of old stuff doesn't.

So, a shot in the dark: Find your network setup, find any references to IPv6 and "teredo", and kill them. If the problems go away--something on the LAN needs upgrading. If they persist, re-enable the stuff you killed, if you have any present need for IPv6.

My home router is one of many that just won't handle it.

red bioroid · #20 Post by **red bioroid** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 1:29 am

I debated the OS before clean loading to my new laptop.

I'm glad I went with Vista X64. I got the screen to look like XP and a lot of Vista's bloated features were disabled or mimumize and it works like a charm. Vista had advantages over XP and no downside on my end in terms of noticeable speed or reliability so I don't know what is the fuss about Vista's flaws. In fast, it appears to be faster.

#21 Post by **jdhurst** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 9:11 am

The original post was in August - it is now nearly December. There has been a lot of water under the bridge in that time.

Since the original post, my T61p Vista Business 64-bit machine has become my daily driver. That means, in one sentence: NO crashes allowed - EVER. Mission accomplished.

1. Stability: Just like XP - No crashes, very stable.
2. GUI: I stripped out everything Vista stands for and have it looking like and working like XP.
3. Speed: Duo Core, 3Gb of ram, super fast hard drive = Very fast computer. No issues
4. Search: Added FOXIT PDF filter for the search and I now have it finding everything except TIF files. Reasonable and very fast. Indexing does not slow down the computer once it is at the incremental stage (most common operational condition).
5. Remote Access: SafeNet put out a new version of their VPN software and I can get to my clients very easily.
6. Adobe: They came out with V9 shortly after V8 to fix all the bugs. I more or less demanded they provide a free upgrade and they did. So I have Adobe Standard V9 running very well.
7. I am gradually taming Office 2007 and have it running well. I am using compatability mode as I don't wish to make problems for my acquaintances.
8. I got a registry patch from Microsoft to fix Windows Explorer. Such an action was an outright admission on their part that it was broken precisely as I said it was.
9. I purchased xplorer2 for daily use. It has its shortcomings as well, although the vendor says a 64-bit version is coming soon. In the meantime I use whichever one fits.

The key for me (and it has been ever thus) was to get the machine in operation and then fill in the bits. Once SafeNet and Adobe came out with revised versions, I went into production and have no regrets.

... JDH

hellosailor · #22 Post by **hellosailor** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 10:49 am

jd-
"8. I got a registry patch from Microsoft to fix Windows Explorer"

Can you elaborate on that? I've gotten mine to be fairly stable mainly by not keeping an SD-card in the slot but still don't trust it entirely. Noticed a Green Bar in explorer more than once though--and that tells me it still isn't quite right.

liteswap · #23 Post by **liteswap** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 10:55 am

@jdhurst: I'm glad to hear that! I'm in the process of speccing a replacement for my now-tired, four-year-old T42 (will one of the hundreds of variants on the T500 - are there more than ever before or is it just me?) and I started looking fior an XP-based machine. Wrong - there are none that meet my hardware requirements so I'm going to be stuck with Vista,.

I don't mind saying that this has been a major slowdown in my thinking about upgrading my T42. In fact, it's delayed the decision by several months as I can't see why I would want Vista.

So when I get the T500, my first impulse will be to wipe it and put XP on there...so tempting! But should I, if some here report that Vista can be made to work like XP, without the annoying bits intruding too much?

#24 Post by **jdhurst** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 11:32 am

hellosailor wrote:jd-
"8. I got a registry patch from Microsoft to fix Windows Explorer"

Can you elaborate on that? I've gotten mine to be fairly stable mainly by not keeping an SD-card in the slot but still don't trust it entirely. Noticed a Green Bar in explorer more than once though--and that tells me it still isn't quite right.

Windows Explorer for Vista out of the box was and continues to be one of the most botched messes in Vista. It got rid of the Up Arrow, Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete. Yes, I well know there are workarounds, but 100% of the workarounds take more keystrokes and are less productive.

But the real issue for me was that settings for detailed listings of folders and elmination of all the icons didn't stick. I do not need or want pictures of my business files. I complained so loudly to Microsoft that it hit second level engineering support and a registry patch was emailed to me. I ran it once, and most of the details stuck, and then, after a month, I ran it again, and since then, all of my details in my folders remain intact.

I haven't seen any green bar. There are green artifacts on some folder and filenames and I think it has something to do with Microsoft's collaboration tools, but I don't know that for certain.

... JDH

#25 Post by **jdhurst** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 11:39 am

liteswap wrote:<snip>
So when I get the T500, my first impluse will be to wipe it and put XP on there...so tempting! But should I, if some here report that Vista can be made to work like XP, without the annoying bits intruding too much?

This is your decision, and I do not want to be seen as pushing my views on you or anyone else. But, yes, Vista can be made to work like XP. In addition, the screen drivers in Vista are better than XP, so I moved down from highest resolution on my T61p (1 point type) to 1280x1024. It renders essentially native at the lower resolution. I simultaneously upped the resolution in my XP Desktop (with NEC Multi-Sync screen) to 1280x1024, and that worked as well (going up is less problem than moving down, in my experience).

So after months of work, I have Vista running to my (very picky) satisfaction, and will not be returning my T61p to XP.

I can give you an interesting metric to chew on.

Windows 2000 out of the box and installed: 8 hours to production
Windows XP Pro out of the box, installed: 8 days to production
Windows Vista 64 out of the box, installed: 8 months to production
Windows 7: who knows - 8 years?
... JDH

liteswap · #26 Post by **liteswap** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 11:54 am

I hear you. I too took some eight or so days to get XP working on my old T42 exactly as I wanted it (very picky here too!) - in a way that's what I'm dreading: spending eight weeks getting Vista to work exactly as I want, since it's effectively a new OS from my pov...

SafeHarbor · #27 Post by **SafeHarbor** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 8:40 pm

Hi, guys,

Here's my take on fixing Vista's folder forgetfulness:

http://www.brighthub.com/computing/wind ... /9629.aspx

You guys will have to let me know if you find my linking to my own articles annoying. This is kind of a first for me being a writer there as well as a reader here, but I won't abuse our relationship.

If anybody thinks this un-cool, please tell me.

Lamar

#28 Post by **GomJabbar** » Sat Nov 15, 2008 10:42 pm

Helpful tips are always welcome, whether from a link, blog, knowledgebase or other source. For material not your own, just make sure the original author or source gets credit. Plagiarism of course is uncool.

I just quickly skimmed over your article and it looks be an easy to follow tip.

helmet4000 · #29 Post by **helmet4000** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 3:13 am

I just installed Windows Server 2008 64-bit on my X61 and it is configured to operate like a desktop. A microsoft enginner in India suggested doing so:

http://blogs.msdn.com/vijaysk/archive/2 ... op-os.aspx

It does seem snappier than Vista X64 and I have only run into a couple of things: Kaspersky doesn't like it, but Symantec 10 does.

ThinkVantage System Update does not like it.

This site explains the process of turning Win 2008 into a workstation OS.

http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/

As a university student, I was able to get a free copy from Dream Spark. They have a copy of Server 2008 Standard 32-bit and they give you a key that also can install the 64-bit version that you can DL from MS (about 2.4GB).

#30 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun Nov 16, 2008 8:26 am

SafeHarbor wrote:Hi, guys,

Here's my take on fixing Vista's folder forgetfulness:

http://www.brighthub.com/computing/wind ... /9629.aspx

<snip>
Lamar

Hi Lamar - I tried the Bag tips in an earlier build and did not have complete success. I don't know why. Even with the Microsoft patch (which does, itself, play with Bag limits) had to be run twice. I don't know why that would be either. However, I finally have it working fairly well. ... JDH

is Vista worth it?

is Vista worth it?

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vLite is the starter

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