A Gloomy Vista for Microsoft

I'll have to say Vista is highly problematic I purchased a Mac for my daughter to use at school and its like night and day. My next upgrade will be a Mac machine

I use Windows XP at home, and just started to use Windows Vista at work. I am an Excel power user, and was very pleasnntly surprised to find that Excel 2007 actually runs about 2x faster under Vista, and I think this is because memory management is better under Vista. And the same for the internet explorer!

I have received a Sony laptop as a gift. Yes, it has Vista on board. I have been a Mac user for years until my last one died of overuse. I was a radio show host in the Bay Area (S.F.) and I used my Mac for producing and editing my shows before air time. I would also use it to record downstream sounds, interviews for clips to add to my program. With Vista, all of that came to an end. I can no longer record to my hard disc via internally. For simplicity, I used to go to the local library and use their computers that were running XP. I found I could download my sound clips onto a flash drive using Audacity. I now have an expensive laptop at home with Vista and I still have to run down to the Library. Point is, "Microsoft, fix this. If you do, your world of sales will change"!. Dissapointed but not giving up, I have been searching Craigs list to "swap" computers. I look forward to having a Mac again. I really got used to Vista and found it sort of like a Mac. If I could get Audacity to work I would shout to the world how wonderful Vista is, until then.....

I am a Vista Ultimate user on a dual quad Intel laptop with 2 meg of memory. The OS loads slowly, but other than that, it has performed flawlessly. Everything I have tried (devices and programs) have worked fine. Performance is also excellent, at least for my needs. I have also had no security problems using Windows Live OneCare which protects and optimizes the machine. I previously had multiple programs for these services. So, my feeling is that the OS is doing well, though the public perception could be improved.

The most important line is in the next-to-last paragraph. If you must run Vista, run it on a Mac. We're running Vista with bootcamp on more than two dozen iMacs with much better performance than on a PC. Microsoft will continue to slip as there has been little vision for the company and the current economic adjustments will finally force companies to demand hardware and software with a product life cycle longer than two years.

My biggest issue with VIsta was the fact that I couldn't load and use certain software. It took me 3 days to get my new laptop to cooperate with me after loading software I needed for my job. Fortunately I am fairly tech savvy, but I was disappointed with the herculean effort it took to get the darn thing to work right. And, there is still one piece of software that I cannot use as it conflicts with Vista and causes IE to stop working properly, which as we all know means Windows stops working properly.

Other than that, Vista seems to work well, though I don't see any significant advantage to using it vs. XP. Knowing what I know now, I would have insisted on XP for my laptop. It would have saved me a lot of headaches, and I bet I'd be running all the software I wanted on it.

Note: the software in question is Sprint wireless web. Ido have WiFi, but if I am away from a hot spot I need to access the Internet remotely, and cannot do that now.

Also the hot sync software for my Treo 755p is not compatible with Vista. I have to sync it to my old desk top pc which runs XP to back up files, and re-enter contacts into my laptop which runs Vista.

This man clearly explains the fundamental problem with Microsoft.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/09/what-advertisin.html

Having used Windows since Windows 3.1, I have to say that the complaints about Vista are quite ludicrous. I'll admit it wasn't a smooth transition from XP to Vista for me, but since SP1 it's been fantastic. Also you'll always have problems when switching to a new OS. I remember owning a Mac and having OS 9 on it and then having to switch over to OS X, it was a nightmare. Nothing was compatible with it and there was barely any software support for OS X it's first year of launch. I've also heard complaints from friends of mine who own Macs when Apple switched to Intel, there was a lot of incompatilbilty problems on that front because older software that ran on OS X Tiger would no longer work on OS X Leapord. But because Microsoft has a larger user base and people love to hate Microsoft, you hear the complaints more frequently.

I'm running Vista and for the most part it is fine. I upgraded my computer from XP to Vista and there were several things, mostly VPN client software, that I couldn't use anymore, but that has been corrected over time. My biggest problem is that I have a Pentium M instead of a Duo Core or Quad so the operating system easily pegs out the processor to 100%.
I can see how people can have issues with Vista and it has taken a long time for the product to get to where I consider it stable, but does work and it is far more secure of a product than XP was. With that said, I don't see any really compelling reason for a company to move away from XP; there is nothing all that earth shattering in Vista that I couldn't live without.

Ok, so let me get this straight.. A CEO hits the power button on a laptop loaded with Vista, and that???s Vista???s fault?? Ya, ok.. Then the genius hit???s ^-alt-del?? Ok, so the power isn???t on and he???s hitting the kb.. Smart.. I've been running Vista Ultimate on 2 Laptops and PC at home with no issues at all.. Problem is these vendors are making garbage for systems and don't test them as well as they should.. That's one thing the dictator (jobs) at Apple has going for them. The CAN control the hardware and software, I'm sure all of MS's partners would love that.. If it does'nt work, bang on the hardware vendors doors..

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I'm certainly not an expert at OS or computers, but I love my new HP with Vista. I actually own a boutique design firm, and while my designers all use Mac's, I wouldn't use one for administrative purposes or web development. The Mac's are down far more often than either my desktop or my laptop, and if it's a serious problem, I have no one around who can fix the machine. The closest Apple store is 100 miles away. I've owned both for over 10 years now, and although Mac's do have the 'cool' aspect, I don't see how they are 'better' in any sense. Again, I'm not an expert on the details, that is just my opinion from using both types of machines. That being said, I have seen issues trying to put Vista on an older machine. But if anyone is looking at the newer models, I think Vista is definitely the way to go.

My guess is that the laptop that wouldn't turn on had been in sleep mode. This is a well-known problem outside of Redmond, even with SP1. Even when the machine powers up correctly, it takes too long. On the campus where I take classes part-time, I see students walking around the campus all the time with their laptops open, looking like a bunch of ridiculous waiters.

People like Microsoft operating systems because when something breaks with the software (or the hardware, for that matter), you can actually do something about it. Apple is a monopoly - until really recently, you had to buy all your hardware from Apple, get your hardware fixed by Apple, etc. I've run computing departments at a major university. When our Windows computers went down, I can do something. When the Mac computers went down, the only thing to fix them was to re-image the software (meaning you lost everything on the computer). Vista's only drawback for me is that it is attempting to save customers from screwing themselves - something Mac has prevented for years by not allowing its customers the ability to do squat to configure their hardware or software. Unfortunately, there are people out there who need protected from themselves. For those of us who like to tinker, Windows is the only way to go.