Microsoft has extended the life of Windows XP because Vista has simply not shown any life in the market. We have to begin to ask ourselves if we are really looking at Windows Me/2007, destined to be a disdained flop. By all estimates the number of Vista installations hovers around the number of Macs in use.
This is pretty much what I have heard from my geek-friends in England where PC’s are the norm. As it becomes more user-friendly, open source software is becoming more popular; there now does not seem much difference for a user, though it is not so easy to load for the novice.
Oh, how funny! I just got a new PC last night and have been cursing Vista ever since! It prompts you for EVERYTHING, the toolbar is stupid and it’s hard to find common stuff such as the refresh button, the bookmarks button, and even the thing to shut down the computer!
I was wishing for XP, sigh, but I spoke with friends in England today and they said changing the operating system invalidates the warranty! Nonetheless, my English friends hate Vista so much they’re paying a bloke to uninstall Vista and install XP on their new laptop.
Yes teatime, my spouse bought me a great machine last Christmas with Home Deluxe Vista. I absolutely hate it! only use it when absolutely necessary.. I use my old ME, lol, staggers, stumbles, etc. etc. But it mostly works, AND I know where everything is.
I agree, VISTA is for NEW users, not us old folks who know DOS…
Gloria in SC
“Friends in England…said changing the operating system invalidates the warranty!” —Teatime
What firm manufactured this computer? I want to add it to my watch-out list.
As an Microsoft IT guy, I have not installed it at home. Nuff said.
I bought it, hate it. XP was bad enough, Vista was even worse news. What I love: http://www.ubuntu.com – for people who are fed up with windows and want a great operating system that’s free. I’ve used it alongside of XP and Vista (purchased, legal) and found I very rarely use the Windows products now – as a programmer, only to debug things that Windows gets wrong so I can make things work according to sloppy Windows procedures for Windows users. & if you use windows, be sure to get Firefox at http://www.mozilla.com
Disclaimer: I work for a large Redmond-based software company.
I use Vista — at work, obviously, but also at home. I’m not wild about it, honestly, but I don’t hate it and I think there are some good things about it.
For me, the two big issues with Vista are, first, that it’s an enormous hog — machines that run XP just fine will buckle under Vista — and second, that there aren’t drivers for a lot of older peripherals. And by “older” I mean “a couple of years.”
(That latter isn’t entirely our fault — drivers are written by the peripheral manufacturers, and many of them took the opportunity provided by Vista to say, “Sorry, we’re not providing Vista drivers for the hardware you already have; why not buy this shiny new piece of hardware?”)
That being said, Vista does have some significant security improvements — which are mostly non-obvious to the user, aside from the User Access Control pop-ups — and there are bits and pieces of the new UI that I think are distinct improvements.
I wouldn’t advise anyone to upgrade an existing machine to Vista (I did it myself, but I’m adventurous that way) but if you’re buying a new machine I would suggest at least giving Vista a try.
My church plant has been using a Vista equipped computer since May. We finally junked it last week. None of the church-specific stuff (specifically, a program called Sunday+ that is useful for a wide variety of things) would work properly on it. We switched over to XP, and haven’t had any further problems. Dvorak is a long-time Mac hater (I remember reading his rants against them back in the early 90s), so if he’s thinking about getting a Mac, you know things are really bad.
I have my own Windows story that has been amusing me all week. My workhouse G-5 (Mac) finally had to be replaced and I discovered that my new Mac includes a “test run” of Windows Office. Okay, I thought that might be helpful, because people do send us images inside Word documents that are completely invisible to us with the software we have. So I double clicked on it to start the “test run” and … wait for it … it crashed my computer. 🙂
My wife and I both use Vista Home Premium, which came on our new (replacement) laptops. My wife doesn’t have an opinion, because she’s pretty much clueless computer-wise (and says so). I, on the other hand, liked Vista right away, because it makes my job as household tech support a lot easier.
I think D.C. is onto something here – Vista doesn’t work for Reasserters.
My new Dell came with Vista…no problems so far…..
Couldn’t happen to a nicer software company.
As a Microsoft Net Admin I can tell you it won’t get in here till they stop selling XP and probably not even then if I can still buy licenses.
Biggest problem….it’s a hog that never delivers the bacon.
Nothing new to care about really.
Cost, never mind the OS itself, which is outrageous. They bring out a never version of office which does even less new than XP at ever more outrageous prices. It’s at the point that if you want a full version of Office, imagine that, and a full version of Vista the cost of the 2 are MORE than the computer. maybe I’m wrong but there is something wrong with the math here. Neither of these products have done anything substantially new in 7 years. What is the point of upgrading?
My advice, get XP on your new PC and save money ob the software and hardware.
#4 Irenaeus: I’m not sure but I can ask them and let you know.
Dvorak wrote:
… trying to take a page from IBM?! Rotsa ruck with joe average computer-owner, guys! Meanwhile I’m weighing the relative merits of hours spent on musical hold trying to get my new tablet PC’s mfr to cut some kind of deal on an XP “downgrade” from Vista Business and Office (orifice) 2007 versus putting up with the many Vista annoyances for a small number of improvements over XP Pro. (“For three transgressions and for four …” — Amos, numerous places.) Vista was billed as some kind of deus ex machina but has more the look, feel and smell of fimus ex tauro.
I replaced MS Windows on all our computers with Mandrake Linux about 5 years ago. With all of the woes of Vista, I am glad this is what we are running I did it as an emergency install when my wife’s computer’s harddrive crashed. It was almost too easy compared to the difficulty I had in reinstalling MS Windows previously (Linux=1 hour, MS Windows = 5 hours).
We bought my wife a Dell laptop with Ubuntu Linux this past June. A month ago I replaced my old Mandrake installation with Ubuntu. I had to give it some locale information — language, timezone, etc. We have few difficulties except for some things that are encumbered with patents on formats. The folks outside the US do not have this.
Get a Mac. It works easily and well. I couldn’t use it if it didn’t. 🙂
I recently bought a new notebook computer which only came with Vista. A significant factor was that this same model had been sold for more than a year with XP, and all the drivers for XP were available on the manufacturers web site. If necessary, this would make it easy to wipe Vista. However, I also did my homework on Vista, and located a couple of sites with some excellent recommendations on what to do to fix most of Vista’s quirky defaults, including that UAC. Additionally, I bought a copy of Laplink’s PCMover software, which transfers settings, programs, customizations, etc. The result is that after a weekend, perhaps 6-8 hours total, I now have a computer which is running every program exactly as before, looks about the same, and is according to benchmarks is only slightly slower. Note that I have several programs of technical nature, some dating back to WIN95.
There is no question that Vista needs a service pack, sooner rather than later. Also, MS chose some truly odd defaults, including many services which run for no good reason. And it really, REALLY needs a good FREE book for users of previous versions explaining the changes, and a rationalization for them. All that having been said, with a bit of proper planning, it has shown it can be an excellent OS.
I think I know something about operating systems, having paid my bills until several months ago doing IT support and database and web application programming. I switched to Linux on my laptop about two years ago, and rarely venture into Microsoft land now. My wife’s desktop still uses XP because I don’t want to retrain her, but even she prefers WordPerfect 8 for word processing.
My only complaint: Netflix’s new instant viewing feature only works with Microsoft Windows running (gasp) Internet Explorer.
APB, if you remember the names of those sites or still have links I’d love to check them out! Thanks.
Last January I bought a new Dell that came with Vista. After three weeks spending every free moment trying to get it to work I gave up. I sent back the computer and had one built locally with XP. The killer for me was trying to get Internet Explorer to work on Vista. The Dell service person told me I needed at least 2 gig of ram for it to work well. With only the 1 gig Dell sold the computer with it seemed like going back to a 14K dial up for the web.
I’m happy with my new XP equipped computer.
Bought a new laptop computer in May with XP, but while I deliberately avoided Vista, I decided to bite the bullet and get Office 2007 (had been running Office 2000). I hate Office 2007 with a passion. All but the absolutely most basic WordProcessing task or work in Excel takes 20-50% longer (or much worse) because the entire menu structure has been revamped and I have to hunt for menus and commands, etc. (Trying to do a chart with 2 Y axes recently in the new version of Excel was an utter nightmare. 30-40 minutes for something I could have done in 5 minutes in Excel 2000. Sigh.)
I have no plans of getting Vista anytime soon, nor does anyone in my office. I’m seriously considering a Mac for a new home desktop.
There is a hilarious spoof of Vista at this site that a friend sent me…people I shared it with who had Vista were quick to give it a thumbs up and rue the day they got Vista…
http://www.blimptv.net/mostpopularV1.html
As for me, my motto has been to never upgrade unless it is absolutely necessary…