A year after Vista's launch, it's time for a poll

[gman1981]

I've been using Vista since March and not had any problems.

[Splash]

Vista is just a tweaked version of XP

Erm.... no. It's a new OS, built from the ground up. Hence the new build number (Build 6000.something or other)

[Buzzsaw]

Loaded vista onto my new PC on the 23rd, then got to use it on the 24th.
A lot of updating went on in between. But, I'd rather it was updated on worked, than not and crashed.
Overall (apart from UAC, which I turned off ASAP), I quite like it. I'm not touching the new office, but then I've been happily using OpenOffice for years. I spent a lot of time downloading apps for XP. Vista has some of them (or similar things) already, the rest I'll have to addin myself.

[Splash]

Why are people so averse to UAC? If my Dad had it on his XP machine I wouldn't just have spent 5 hours cleaning up junk that he's installed without realising.

[pumpman]

I agree its no different to having to log on as admin using Linx or OSX when you want to do various things. In a couple of years itll be like the win98-xp move most people will have made the move , I know I left it a good 18 months before I switched to XP full time.

[mikerr]

Well I've been running vista for a few months, and am just about to go back to XP.
-I found this thread while searching for reasons to stay with vista...!

Things I'll miss:

The nice "ful meters" on drives showing how full they are.
The speed readout on explorer HDD file transfers (15mb/sec etc)
Vista MCE

:Shrug: XP is just faster and snappier on this machine (2GB C2D)

[Buzzsaw]

Why are people so averse to UAC? If my Dad had it on his XP machine I wouldn't just have spent 5 hours cleaning up junk that he's installed without realising.

The idea behind it is good, however, the way its been applied is too heavy handed. Having it check the first time a program runs, or anything not whitelisted etc, etc. would be ok. Every time I tried to do something (eg. start a game) it popped up, and other that turning it off, there seems to be no way to stop it. And my PC still moans at me, because its turned off!

[Bluecube]

I tried Vista when it first came out. It installed perfectly with no issues at all but actually using the PC was like swimming through treacle with lead weights tied to your feet. UAC p!ssed me off right from the start providing little if any information about what was being run - the people this would benefit most are likely say "Uh, what?" and just click OK. I also felt that the UI wasn't very intuitive spreading options for a similar thing all over place. I'd been having problems with XP so didn't go back to it and tried out Ubuntu. I've never looked back...

[Splash]

The idea behind it is good, however, the way its been applied is too heavy handed. Having it check the first time a program runs, or anything not whitelisted etc, etc. would be ok. Every time I tried to do something (eg. start a game) it popped up, and other that turning it off, there seems to be no way to stop it. And my PC still moans at me, because its turned off!

Login as administrator, find the executable that is prompting UAC, right click>compatibility>tick "run as Administrator". Logout as Administrator and back in as your regular account and run it.

The sad truth is that it has to be done heavy-handedly otherwise it wouldn't work, and devs would just ignore it. Windows has *needed* something like UAC for a long, long time. The thing that frustrates me the most is that a lot of the people complaining about UAC are the self same ones who moan about whow insecure the OS is: Microsoft have done something to improve security and you turn it off?

As for Bluecube - you find UAC annoying and yet get on fine with SU?

[Pup]

Well the options seem to be split between people that have tried vista and those that haven't. Of those that have tried it the majority say it rocks, yet however the overall vote is people that say they never tried it in the first place and are glad.

Although there are a number of people that have had trouble with Vista, especially early on as driver developers caught up, the poll just seems to reinforce my thoughts that most people who detest Vista are those that havent tried it and just listen to the 'horror stories' splashed around the net. In my experience, most people I know that have used Vista, like it. I think that once the average system is powerful enough to handle vista well enough, people will make the switch and realise it isn't so bad after all

[dangel]

I'm fortunate in that it's part of my job to evaluate new technologies for our product line - so i've been using Vista full-time for about a year and a half at work. Hand on heart, I prefer it to XP - there's just loads of nice incremental improvements over XP for desktop work and (just like XP) if you spend a bit of time customising it (and there's loads of built-in tweaking to do) to your needs then it'll suit most people.

Whinge about UAC - well turn it off and take reponsibility for your own security - it's your PC! People forget their are endless armies of zombie users out there who REALLY need something in-your-face to stop them doing something stupid.

The absolute killer for Vista hasn't really been anything that MS did (well aside from the file copy bug that was fixed many moons ago) but the quality of third party drivers. MS (quite rightly) decided we needed to get away from the massively flawed XP driver model to increase stability and third parties took far, far (faaaaaaaar) to long to catch up (nVidia/Creative i'm looking at you!). Things are much better now (of course).

So i'm Vista at work, Vista for my media center and XP for almost everything else. My main rig at home dual boots as this is just common sense for gaming. The eee runs linux and i've spent far more time configuring that than Vista - xandros is fecking fiddly and most guides start off with the phrase 'first open a command prompt'

YMMV so try it for yourself, try and keep and open mind and if you don't like something at least try and change it I sense we're a bunch of geeky people that like to fiddle so i'd recommend this:

Vista4Experts 1.0.0.1 - Freeware Files.com - Utilities Category

[Agent]

well aside from the file copy bug that was fixed many moons ago

Honestly buddy, its still not fixed for everyone. There is plenty of people still with this issue

[dangel]

Honestly buddy, its still not fixed for everyone. There is plenty of people still with this issue

I believe ya matey - although i'd guess there are far more who don't suffer with it than without purely on my own experience (i've yet to see it tbh on all the Vista machines i've put together).

For those really stuck with it then see my sig - Opus is a good cure (or at least worth a punt)

[oxygengiver2000]

I like Vista

[dangel]

I like Vista

You can't say stuff like that here!!! Sheeple don't like it when you don't go with the flow

[DrATty]

From the point of usability, Vista is great in my opinion. It has a couple of major flaws that mean I won't use it. I saw first hand what WGA can do to Vista a few months ago and can't afford to trust it for important systems. Vista doesn't support all of my hardware, including one very expensive item, so just isn't an option there. I'd buy XP but not at a premium. I'll make do until the next flavour arrives.
I am one of the few using Linux at the moment. It's not for everyone but it's free and brought new life to some of my old PCs.