Zardon

Actually its nearer to 120 million copies sold. 88 million were sold by October of last year » Windows Vista: More than 88 million copies sold | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

BlueMak

Sandok you surprised me. All this talk about Vista and your main problem has to do with a known issue of a third party program, and you still blame Vista? I mean...wow!

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Alex

Yeah Sandok I gotta agree man, you are way off the mark arguing about this under the circumstances. I am not a huge Vista fan myself but im learning to appreciate it and i see its getting better. Your claims are really quite ludicrous, best not saying much more.

Sandok

People please, Kaspersky and Vista isn't what made me abandon MS's newest OS. As I said, that's JUST BOOT TIMES.

All the other problems I have encountered are still real (such as the sluggishness) and those are the major issues. And no, not even Vista's great ReadyBoost and Intel's Vista only Turbo Memory could help.

Zardon

Sandok, while i appreciate your views, in this case you have been reporting issues primarily caused with software you have been running which are incompatible with the OS, this has been confirmed by the makers of the software. You also have tested an older version of Vista, so until you spend some time with SP1 and install software which will not possibly cause some of the slugginess and boot problems you have been describing then its hard for me to validate your claims. I know a program I had installed in the past caused huge issues in the OS which required a reinstall so I speak from vast experience on Vista. I also was one of the first beta testers 2 years ago and have seen the OS progress and develop over time.

I really would appreciate if you didn't post misleading information on the forums, it is confusing for the membership. thank you.

lets move on.

Tipstaff

Over and over again there are 2 issues that keep popping up that quickly turn people off of Vista, and it's almost always OEM manufacturers fault, but also Microsoft's lack of control over enforcing a minimum spec that OEMs can install Vista onto, a lack of educating the public of what can and can't be run on Vista, what kind of system Vista should and shouldn't be installed onto, or what version of Vista is right for specific users.

First, manufacturers sell computers, mainly laptops, that don't meet, or just meet Vistas minimum requirements. See, there is a long standing rule in the computer industry: whatever Microsofts minimum specs are, double it, and that is Microsofts real recommended specs. As such Vista Home Basic should be installed on systems with 1GB of ram, while all the other versions should be installed in a system with a minimum of 2GB of ram. But no. The majority of these systems were, and still are being shipped with 1GB of RAM, older hard drive controllers, slow hard drives (4200RPM in some laptops), slower processors, and almost always had Vista Home Premium installed on them. While these specs are fine for Home Basic, Home Premium just runs like crap on said specs. Vista Home Premium SHOULD NEVER have been allowed to run on hardware that was known to not meet it's "real" minimum requirements. I don't care that Home Premium is the one "best suited" for laptops because of Mobility Center. On the majority of laptops it was installed on it ran like absolute crap. Seriously, boot up a system that came installed with Vista over a year ago, and you will find that it can take up to 30 seconds to boot up, 30 seconds to open anything, and 30 seconds to shut off. You'd be pissed off with Vista if you had just paid $800 for a POS like that too. All one had to do was install 1GB more ram, and it was a whole different experience.

Over the course of the year newer laptops have come out, ones with faster processors, SATA hard drives, and 2GB of RAM has pretty much become the norm setup these days for any machine (including XP machines). Plus manufacturers have, on the most part, learned what a massively pissed off consumer base can do to you on the Internet. So now you see laptops with better specs running Home Premium (or some OEMs going back to selling systems with XP.. at least for a little while longer), and lower end laptops running Home Basic. And I have to say, these newer systems run Vista pretty damn solidly. However, the problem is still there as some manufacturers still sell systems that don't run Vista properly.

The second problem is that people are buying a version of Vista that they will never need, or that they can't run. I mean, I constantly have to point people to THIS page on Microsofts site. Really read over the comparisons of the different versions. Do you need all that extra stuff in Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate? Did you know you can install 3rd party versions of software that will do the same thing or better without the overhead that having these in Vista already incur? People come into my shop thinking they need, absolutely need, as if their life depended on it, Home Premium or Ultimate, only to find out that Home Basic was more than they needed (hell, I wish Microsoft would allow Vista Starter to be sold here, cuz that is exactly what about 25% of my clients need). I've had these same people come back to me, telling me how their friends, who bought Vista Ultimate, couldn't believe how fast their system, which has Home Basic on, was running circles around their system. Seriously, if all you are going to do is office work, Internet, or gaming, Home Basic is perfect for almost 80% of users. If you are going to do video editing or photography work, Vista Home Basic is still all you need. If people would buy the version of Vista they need, not what everyone else is buying, they wouldn't get as hyper when it doesn't perform they way they think it should.

And yes, you read that right. You can game on Vista Home Basic. Surprise! I bet the majority of you guys didn't know that, did you? Microsoft never once said you couldn't, just that everyone that is gaming is buying Home Premium or Ultimate because reviewers are using that OS, or that they assume they need it cuz someone else, a friend or what not, is using it, so they need it too. Well, you don't, and to be honest, gaming on Home Basic is a pleasure. Home Basic has none of that resource overhead the other versions have, and because of that it just runs smooth. Seriously, just read the sheer amount of posts from people on how to tweak Vista in order to get resources back, to turn things off to get it to run faster, on and on and on, and all the while I'll just sit here pointing my finger at Vista Basic. Those very same things are off, or don't exist on Home Basic. As such it runs much faster, uses less resources, it's smaller, and runs everything that the other versions run too.. including DX10 gaming bliss. There are still things to tweak to get that last ounce of resource out of Basic, but it's a fraction of what you have to do in order to get Ultimate to run as smoothly as Basic does out of the box.

Anyways, sorry about how long that was, but I guess I just had to get that off my chest. I was once a Vista hater, and now that I'm better educated on what hardware to run Vista on to get the most out of it, and so fourth, my views on it have changed dramatically. Just remember to buy the version of Vista you need, run it on hardware that meets at least 2x the minimum specs suggested by Microsoft, and just remember that most things hardware wise (printers and such) over 2 years old will most likely not work on Vista (which, btw, is again not Microsofts fault.. if the manufacturer of your printer really wanted to they could put Vista drivers out, but they won't cuz then you won't buy a new printer from them, and they want you to buy that brand new "Vista Compatible" printer of theirs which is no better or is exactly like your old one). Do that, and your experience with Vista will go a whole hell of a lot smoother.

Edit: Holy mother of pearl. I didn't realize how long that was until after I hit the "Submit" button. Sorry guys and gals.

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Dark Lord

what ever is being said about it, i still wont touch it till i absolutely have to.

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Zardon

great post tipstaff, nice to read the views of an experienced system builder.

BlueMak

Zardon any chance MS sponsoring a competition to give away some Vistas?

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

YAYitsAndrew

Sweet! Thanks to this discussion I did some checkups on my system and found out that my memory is my number one performance killer since I only have 1gb. Sure is great when the problem on your system is memory, fixing it is just like playing really expensive legos.

Looks like I can pick up 2gb super cheap since I can only do ddr400.

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"It is because the resistance to paying for copyrighted material, although often characterized as arising from a supposed technical burden or principled concern for the public interest, arises rather from exactly the same segment of the brain that is dominant in shoplifters."
- Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism

So you think piracy isn't hurting anyone?
www.yayitsandrew.com

MIG-31

I'm still waiting for Creative Labs to release a decent driver for the XFI series.This is the only drawback about Vista i have..

EAX Sound is far better under windows xp than Vista for me.

I also found the Early builds of windows XP was more problematic than the this Vista Build im using now.At least untill the first xp service pack was released.So hopefully the vista sp1 may bring some good to us all.

EDIT: But i do think you need a decent spec pc for vista.My previous pc struggled with Vista untill i switched to an intel Dual Core setup.

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temeteus82

yeah i'm with the same boat with mig.

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Judas

Vista ultimate doesn't even have a real purpose for even the enthusiasts... nothing has been provided thus far from microsoft that justifies it "yet".... i really do hope sometime that there is something steller for extras...


But yes, I see these toshiba/dell/hp/compaq....etc... all loaded with vista and all these "copy pasted" built for xp, skin graphed and failed transfers to vista programs that these companies insist on using..... usually by the time you tear these rediculious programs outa of the system, it's more useable, but my gaud.... what a hunk of junk usually all the time.

I'm quite fond of the recent Acer 5715z laptops, basically perfect for any user, 1gb of ram, but not overloaded in any manner, still some garbage to remove.. but very easy to clean up.. and it works... it just works.

Any new system that i build today, is loaded nearly always, vista x64 of either home basic or home premium, i've yet to have to install ultimate on any machine because usually after explaining the differences and the lack of reason to get it, and also explaining to them that the vista anytime upgrade is always right there. they usually back off on the idea.

2gb with a E2180 are the 2 things i've been starting with for a x64 home premium machine. usually popping a hd2400 pci-ex card in the machine....... those 3 things alone have proven to work wonderfully with no issues thus far.

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