Am I the only one?

[Dzomlija]

Finaly they made a cool looking and performant OS. seems an update for XP and not for vista. Wista was just a bad joke they made while they was building 7.

Is it my imagination or am I one of the few who actually found Vista to be a great OS?

I feel oh so sorry for those poor, lost souls who prefer to accept rumors and speculation over fact. These are the people who decided that Vista was bad because they allowed OEM and computer stores to sell them poor hardware, or they listened to the Apple ads without realizing that it was nothing but propoganda from the competition that was afraid they could not keep up.

All those people who decided to stick with XP are going to have the hardest time of all moving over to Windows 7. Sure, Vista had it's problems in the start, but so did XP, and they've forgotten that.

I have yet to see one single shred of evidence that conclusively proves beyond all doubt that Vista is as bad as some people believe.

And I'm not thinking of "I heard that so-and-so had such-and-such a problem" or "Vista runs too slowly on my new laptop with 1GB of memory" or "UAC stops me from doing anything" or "I can't find x64 drivers for my 8 year old sound card".

We all know by experience that 95% of what gave Vista such a bad rep was not the fault of Vista, but of hardware manufacturers that installed it onto under-specced hardware, or got caught napping when it came time to update driver software for their hardware products.

 

[jw12345]

I agree mostly, but I don't think that you can absolve Microsoft from responsibility of sending out low-spec systems with the Vista certification. Microsoft caved and passed these laptops. There was even that infamous email by a Microsoft VP calling his $2100 Vista laptop as only useful as an email machine because of the problems.

And PC do have their share of problems that Apple went after. Apple attacked PCs, not just Microsoft. PC OEMs can be a sorry bunch, and I'd say most of the issues plaguing PCs are their fault. But, again, Microsoft is allowing it, so they deserve the blame too.

You might find this interesting: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/MSFT.pdf

 

[johnwillyums]

I agree with you both.
I used XP briefly at the beginning of my road to pc addiction (so not that long ago) and then went straight to a much more powerful pc with Vistax64.
I absolutely loved it from the very beginning and after SP1 it was superb.
I had zero problems or compatibility issues and could not believe that people would choose to stick with XP.
I also agree that all of that "Vista Ready" and "Vista Compatible" scam was very shabby and backfired big style in terms of sales.

cheers, john

 

[andych]

When I first tried Vista my PC just wasn't up to it (when it first came out) and I had a heap of trouble finding drivers for "Vista Ready" hardware...so I stuck to XP for about another 12 months.
I then updated the PC Internals and figured I would try Vista again and absolutely loved it....the difference some newer hardware made was immense and I found the new GUI to be more logical....for me anyway.
I really dislike the Vista haters...there are a vast number of them who have no idea of what they are talking about and just waffle on with things they have heard from others...or read somewhere....or are Linux or Mac fanboi's....
Vista....for me was great...no BSOD etc and Windows 7 is a big step forward from there as far as I am concerned....roll on the RTM.

 

[SIW2]

Vista always worked brilliantly for me - and still does

If it was released now - it would be very well received - it was just ahead of it's time.

 

[RST101]

My experience of vista was a pleasant one, even before sp1. To be quite honest I had no issues at all with it with regards to stability and performance and thought it was a better os than xp in all departments(including gaming). Why it received so much flack I will never know and like you say most of it came from hearsay. Xp fanboys were jumping on the bandwagon without ever having even seen the desktop never mind clicked on the start menu orb. For me vista home premium was a great os and never let me down.

 

[johnwillyums]

Let's not have a wake guys. Vista is still with us and I'm going to keep it on my system for a while yet.

 

[SIW2]

Definitely - with SP2 it's even better.

 

[Mark]

I still love Vista and will be keeping it for a long time to come, it runs just as good as Windows 7 on my system, minus a few extra effects but there are still more features overall.

 

[Captain Zero]

Vista always worked brilliantly for me - and still does

If it was released now - it would be very well received - it was just ahead of it's time.

Really interesting perspective here. I never looked at it that way. Maybe I never gave it a chance, I was hot on the install when it was first available and it wasn't the most user-friendly OS I'd used.

Even with that said, I'm ok with having missed that boat and am happy to use W7.

 

[BruBern]

Not to mention the multiple discusions I have had with people listening to them tell me how crappy Vista was then only to go on to say "I have never installed or used Vista" At that point I usually just turn and walk away or turn the TV up louder because I am wasting my time and breath talking to this person.

I have used Windows Vista x64 since beta and never looked back!!

 

[Gilly]

i could never understand how people prefered xp over vista it was so damn ugly ...i was very happy with vistas performance even prior to tweaking it services etc...
but can i go back now having used 7 ??

 

[jw12345]

In my social circle, nobody really talks about OSs or technology, but the few complaints I have heard have been about Vista being slow, aero not working, drivers nonexistent, incompatibilities, features being knocked off of OS X, etc. All of which are true to an extent. Vista itself wasn't a bad OS, but it's deployment was bungled by MS, OEMs, and peripheral manufacturers. The percent of computers sold at launch that were Premium ready was extremely low (I think around 10-20%)

People just didn't get together and decide to all hate Vista. There were very legitimate reasons. Many of which no longer apply years later, but at the launch were pretty serious.

Read: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/MSFT.pdf
It details the entire ready vs premium fiasco. About mid-way they discussed how all of a sudden laptop shipped shots through the roof and the average computer price plummeted, dragging down specs, something MS was blind to until too late.

 

[Klaw117]

The family computer in my house is running Vista and it works perfectly. Then again, all we use it for is web-surfing, so I probably can't say anything unless I put some more software on there. Still, I find it to be a good system. However, the only thing I didn't like were the compatibility issues. There have been reports that some multiplayer games, while working with certain antivirus systems, would not work. For example, Freelancer+Norton+Vista=No multiplayer.

Luckily, Microsoft has fixed this with Windows 7 and I absolutely love it. Vista got most of its bad rep from hardware dealers and Mac ads. Thanks to the Mac ads that are purely Anti-Microsoft, I've lost all respect for Apple. You don't see Microsoft dissing Apple like the way Apple disses Microsoft.

 

[themouse]

I was an idiot, I went out and purchased an OEM copy of Vista as soon as it was released. It was installed once and was that bad removed in about a week. I never even activated the license. I then tried SP1, that lasted about a week and a half so I ended up purchasing a license that has never been used. (At the time I had high spec H/W) feel ripped off but Win 7 made me a believer again

 

[tissle]

I installed vista when it first came out. The only problem I had was that it sucked for gaming when it was initially released. But you can blame that on nVidia.

Vista just got a bad rep because many people installed Vista on old computers expecting it to run like XP did.

I used vista on a decent machine and it ran pretty well.
Also, for a time, it was 'cool' to hate vista and many people...just hated to..to hate.

After all said and done, I think Windows 7 is a better OS than vista, but vista is not really that bad.

 

[nate42nd]

Vista is a good OS but it will go down as one of the biggest blunders in tech history. IMO

I like it and have had very few problems (until the last week when I was locked out of my C drive) but it will be on a steep decline and become obscure when 7 is released.

Too bad because it's a good OS.

 

[Jon55]

Vista64 was and still is awesome (after SP1 came out). Those who said it was like Windows ME are very ignorant and have clearly not used ME.

 

[Pinger]

Vista64 was and still is awesome (after SP1 came out). Those who said it was like Windows ME are very ignorant and have clearly not used ME.

ME has to go down in history as the worst OS ever developed. I liked Vista better then XP, which we all should as each new OS evolves from the last, just as I'm finding I like Windows 7 better then Vista.

 

[kodi]

I have used Vista since it was a Beta and have had no problems with it.
I will continue to dual boot it with Windows 7