Vista and Windows 7 - reactions

[Dreaming]

Hey guys.

I guess this is a question as to whether what I'm thinking has any grounding in reality, and also a slight vent. I'm not properly annoyed of course, just... fed up maybe .

Anyway, as a vista user I have been getting stick for the one and a half years or so I've been using it, either directly in a jovial friendly way or indirectly by reading articles that say vista sucks and XP is what the pros use and only noobs use XP. This rhetoric in many cases was picked up by people who should know better and imo was generally misinformation about Vista.

So now Windows 7 is coming along and the same people who said Vista was a piece of crap, are saying it looks like microsoft are finally headed in the right direction. But to me, it seems the reason this is said is because people convince themselves Vista is rubbish and fill in the blanks themselves.

Many of the features people will like about Windows 7 and praise it for are likely remnants of the Vista development, afterall. It doesn't even really matter, it's just one of those things that rubs me the wrong way. People shouldn't pretend Vista was absolutely rubbish and finally Windows 7 is amazing, because in reality it's just another iteration of windows and each version generally speaking is better than the last.

I wonder, maybe, if a few months into the Vista release, if they had re-released it with a new service pack as Windows 6 with free upgrades for Vista users if it would have had a warmer reception. Before anyone says it, I'm not saying Windows 7 isn't an improvement, but like the XKCD comic "anything is better than vista" when clearly (to me) Vista was a capable OS.

[aidanjt]

This deserves a sticky :|

[Jay]

I use Vista everyday (more than XP these days) and I am still not a big fan.

[Biscuit]

I havent tried 7 yet as i dont really have time atm to be tinkering with such things but +1 i got vista from early stages and the only problems i ever had was bad drivers

[Jay]

Vista very clunky on the network side of things

[strike-down]

Have to agree with jay there, networking was a real letdown for me on vista, but otherwise it seemed fine on my PC after SP1. Thats the main reason Ive dual booted with XP.

[aidanjt]

Really? I've gotten silly network transfer rates with Vista. Best performance comes with Vista/2008 CIFS servers, works well with Samba also.

[strike-down]

Yeah, if you can get it working its fine, but there are so few options in there. That was one thing that I found the beta better at doing. I used to use a PC to connect to the interwebz and use it as a proxy with DHCP functionality. XP, could do that in seconds. Vista, where the hell are the options?
But vista was not a bad OS by anymeans, dont get me wrong. Just lacking in that respect

Want a failed OS? Windows ME

EDIT: I also had a problem similar to one biscuit currently has. Getting Vista computers to see other OS computers.

[Dreaming]

Vista very clunky on the network side of things

Fair doos though IIRC it's got the same kernel as Server 2008 with SP1 so that's a little worrying. I don't expect Vista to be perfect, but I think it's fair to say it's gotten a bad rap. I'm looking forward to Windows 7 though have my doubts about 'feature creep' in certain areas (if anybody has used "Games for Windows Live", they know what I'm on about..).

It just doesn't look that different, Paul Thurrott has said it's been touted as a major release by the marketing gurus but he classes it as a minor release from Vista.

However, the language Microsoft uses to describe the technical underpinnings of the Windows 7 suggest that this product will in fact be a minor release, or what the Windows Server team would have called an interim, or R2 ("release 2") release.

I expect from the anticipation and excitement the reaction will be a positive one, but considering the reaction to Vista was overwhelmingly poor - this is only a stone's throw away in technical terms. I think it indicates in some* cases there is a disparity between the actual software and people's impressions of it.

[aidanjt]

Yeah, if you can get it working its fine, but there are so few options in there. That was one thing that I found the beta better at doing. I used to use a PC to connect to the interwebz and use it as a proxy with DHCP functionality. XP, could do that in seconds. Vista, where the hell are the options?
But vista was not a bad OS by anymeans, dont get me wrong. Just lacking in that respect

Erm, that's the point of DHCP, it removes the need for client-side configuration, all you need is a real DHCP server to set proxy servers. Or manually do it in IE's settings.

EDIT: I also had a problem similar to one biscuit currently has. Getting Vista computers to see other OS computers.

That's easy, just make sure a CIFS server, or some kind of UPnP service is running on the system. Not that it's needed unless that machine is an actual point of interest, which usually only happens when you run such services.

[Barry]

I have to say that Vista was crappy untill SP1 came out, after that I became a fan of Vista

[HSK]

For my needs, and my hardware, Vista was fine - I could never use XP again. And if Windows 7 is an improvement, then I welcome it.

[Spud1]

It's quite a funny situation really, and I have to point 99.9% of the blame at the tech media/press.

Windows Vista was (and technically still is as 7 is not final) Microsofts best consumer OS. It was the most stable, the best looking, the most secure and the most feature rich consumer OS they had ever released.

However they made mistakes. It was rushed - so many of the hyped up features were dropped completely (and thus many people were dissapointed). They also released it at least a year too soon in terms of where the IT market was at - most people simply didn't have fast enough computers to run Vista with all its bells and whistles..and to a consumer, unless you have ALL the fancy effects turned on then Vista is just a bloated version of XP..regardless of the fact that its not at all. Along the same lines is software availablility - at launch Vista was hit by massive compatibility issues - none of which were their fault I might add (if application developers followed Microsoft guidelines for Windows development their apps would have worked perfectly) - which will have just made Vista an even less attractive investment.

Vista was a great technical success(as evidenced by the fact that Windows 7 is virutally identical "under the hood"), and now the next iteration, Windows 7, will hopefully be a success in consumer markets, as Microsoft have concentrated much more on the "user experience" this time around. The compatibility issues are also now virtually non-existent (as the core of Windows is the same, anything developed with Vista in mind (or that sticks to the rules) will work fine.

I've been running Win 7 beta 1 for approx 2 days now, which isn't very long, but long enough to get all my drivers and software installed - and I had zero problems. Installed fine in ~20mins, I put in the boot camp driver disk and all drivers installed, and then Windows update found me a couple of newer ones (eg the Nvidia Win7 driver). Looking forward to the final release

[aidanjt]

I have to say that Vista was crappy untill SP1 came out, after that I became a fan of Vista

Erm, why?.. Aside from patches and hotfixes, the only thing SP1 brought was some minor responsiveness improvments to disk and network I/O. Hardly the steller improvements that SP2 brought to XP.

[synaesthesia]

SP1 helped a few little minor niggles but yeah, otherwise it wasn't a huge improvement. Saying that, I bought Vista on the day of it's release and only installed it properly 5 months afterwards due to crap driving on Creative's part for my X-Fi. Other than that, I've found it as an OS just as reliable as XP (in fact the only blue screen I've ever had on it was down to more dodgy driver - thanks, nVidia) and faster in gaming performance terms. Besides which, there's not much alternative on the 64bit side of things, XP64 isn't a patch on Vista 64 for general support which is another plus side for the Big V.
Other than that I've made my views on W7 clear in the other thread - it's nippier than Vista, runs very stabley and I've had no problems with it as yet - and it's currently getting one hell of a hammering

[TheAnimus]

After playing with Win7, i'm giving serious thought to putting it on my Q1 Ultra (which will take aaaages as the HDD is so slow).

But, i have to admit. In many ways its just a service pack. A damned expensive service pack. It seams microsoft have decided to copy apple.

There are some good new features, uPnP support etc. But little compared to vista. As for the performance i've not really noticed much improvement at all. This is on an overclocked Q6600 + 9800GTX with 4GB of ram running 64bit.

I'm not overally keen on the icons in place of text thing either. I can just about read, i'm a dislexic with a spelling age of 11. But i can manage to read the words for a running application, i don't need an image to replace the scary letters thanks.

I felt it was odd when vista did away with the "start" text i feal that was too far.

But whats truely amazing is how the press is really warming to 7, compared to the slating vista got. One of the reasons i got banned from another UK tech websites forum was for slagging off their review of an early vista beta, they had started to complian about the installer, even thou it was mentioned that they had a totaly new one for the RCs, and it was just this old one from XP for the Beta.........

In finance we have this phrase of running with the bulls. Do tech jurno's have something similar?