Vista? Good and the bad?

Answer 1

good...
Looks nice. Is the next great thing.

bad....
resource piggy, needs 2G ram to do what 512mb ram will do on xp.

Most are very concerned about all the call home and DRM (digital rights management) built into Vista.

In theory Microsoft has the ability to know all the audio and visual that you play .. and keep it from playing if they feel you don't have rights to it. It also has been bandied about that they might play it at degraded audio.

Also in theory Microsoft can stop programs like Open Office from running - software that has not been approved to run on Vista.

Lastly there are concerns that Vista may halt your computer in its tracks if it detects a defect .. and not allow you to continue unless you go out and get fixes. Good for security, bad for getting work done. And bad if this flag gets hacked by an evil bunch.

Much of Vista revolves around ensuring to companies that you buy everything digital, even some things that perhaps you did not have to buy in the past.

this is much like the fcc broadcast flag that has been shot down in congress and keeps coming up. a digital way to allow you to make a copy that only runs on one unique computer. You cannot watch/play it on another of your computers and you cannot give it to a friend. You don't have the rights to do it.

One of these examples is that on Vista home it is a licence violation .. to the extent that it might not run .. to run virtualization software like VmWare.

This then is fueling the interest in Vista alternatives...
like how long can I stay on win98 or winxp
can I go to a linux?
should I go to apple?

enjoy

Answer 2

I had the chance to use vista for the past month or so, and have had the chance to play with the install options, and i must admit it from the administration side of things it looks like it could save time with role outs, but when you dig below the surface it shows the cracks... the expense of hardware upgrade will be huge in some of my departments which at the moment run great on xp. I work in a collage so the users will have problems getting used to new interface of the office 2007 let alone a whole new operating system, my helpline calls will be continuous. As a home user i can see alot of benefits of the new interface but i must agree i dont like the start menu, but i do like the features like the ability to instantly increase your ram by simply plugging in a usb drive.

the biggest thing i hate about this type of big change new os, is that it doesnt give people many options. we have just got to the point where most people can afford a computer of some kind, most fairly good spec machines are now affordable but when something like vista comes out it ups the cost of machines and when everything around vista is reprogrammed to support it you end having a choice to upgrade or not. And because it uses digital rights management this means that a hundred or so tracks that are on my computer will most probarbly will not work anymore, not because they are dodgy or anything but because i have lost the discs ages ago so i cannot re-wrip with modern software.

just like i did with 98 to Xp i will holding on kicking and screaming before i change to vista, atleast sp2.

Answer 3

I have to agree with Aqualung and Diplomats. It's far too resource hungry for an Operating System. I get away with my slightly ageing 2.8GHz P4 with 64MB Ati Radeon laptop for quite a few 3D games still but, my 3D accelerator being quite old doesn't even allow Windows Movie Maker to run under XP as the graphics card's not advanced enough.

Hmmm, not quite sure how that is but still, not to worry!

It has a nice interface, with Aero Glass. I can't tell you about things like Flip3D because my graphics card won't support it (another gripe lol).

The last thing I don't like is the complete hand-holding. Vista add's a similar amount of a "Fisher-Price" look and feel that XP did to Windows 2000 lol. And, being a techie and a system administrator at work, the first thing I did was turn off the advanced security on Vista as, I prefer to be the administrator, not Windows :-P

Apart from that though, for the General Consumer, I'd say Vista would be tops. It's only coz I'm a bit of a nerd that I have a couple of issues :-)

Answer 4

It took the processing power of a BBC Micro with 64k to put a man on the moon. But to run Vista (slowly and with bugs) it takes a pentium 4 with half a gigabyte of memory.

This is definatly a step backwards People say everytime a new os is introduced that as technology moves forward its natral for the os to hog more meory.

If we kept things simple everything would run so much quicker (imagine running windows 3.1 on a new machine now). Why not go back to the old days when we bought hardware the software came with the device. Instead the software is already on your computer using up memory and resources you have paid good money for... and you probably don't even own half the hardware.

I think OS software should be quick simple and bug free.

Vista is Bad.

Answer 5

Many of the machines at my work, a local authority Academy, will no longer be able to run this version of windows due to the overheads in RAM and processing power just to run the OS, never mind the other applications.
So more expense, for what benefit? How long will it take to install this wonderful OS? It took 4.5 hours for XP, and then you had to hope it had the drivers for all the parts that made up your PC!
While at home I run Apple Mackintoshes, the same version of OS X on both my 500MHz powerbook (2000) and my (2005) Mac Mini G4 1.42GHz, they both run fine, the difference, only that the power book is slower! Yes I did buy two copies of the OS, at £80.95 for the full and only version not difficult. Which was less expensive than the version before. It only took 1.5 hours to install and it is the same installation that I'm using at this time almost a year and a half trouble free years later.

So Good:
Will look nice, if you have the machine to run the full version.

Bad:
If not the you will have to [1] upgrade or [2] make do with the interface your system can support.

Feelgipe

Answer 6

Good. It's pretty.

Bad.
1)My computer ran quake 4 perfectly. With vista and latest drivers it is unplayable (and that's with 1.5GB RAM). A step backwards.
2)It's like going to the shop - only everything has moved around. It seems very much like winXP underneath but with more pretty-ness on top.
3) Securiy improvement seems to be merely asking you many questions before allowing anything to happen. Thereby putting the owness back onto the user when really the fundemental security flaws have really not been dealt with.
4) There are Linux distros which are just as powerful, more pretty and free. You better hope that Linux does not get it together properly with games writers or vista is stuffed.

Answer 7

To the guy who said having 2GB Ram on Vista is like having 512MB Ram on XP: lol What a load of rubbish!
You're talking absolute trash and it's a completely laughable how you could make such a totally unrealistic comparison. I have Vista with 1BG Ram and it runs very well indeed. If your theory was correct it would be like saying my PC has the equivalent of about 256MB Ram! This just simply wouldn't be enough to run the software and games i regularly run day in day out. I also like the way you don't mention processing power whatsoever like every one with the same amount of ram has the same capablities! What a laugh. Also you fail to mention graphics capabilites which so long as you have a graphics card that can run directx9 or above and 128MB dedicated ram will run the new aero interface perfectly as apposed to a card with 128mb shared system memory that would make your system perform poorly as your ram gets eaten up. Having 2BG Ram would be better of course and is the best way to go if you have the money and want to run many intensive taks but as long as you have a decent processor 1BG Ram is fine. So to all you people who are thinking of buying a new laptop or PC. Get a dual core processor and 1BG Ram and a dedicated graphics card with 128MB Ram or above and you'll be fine i promise! I'll possibly upgrade to 2GB in the future but at the moment my system runs perfectly with 1BG Ram so i see no need. Yes Vista is more resource hungry than XP but nowhere near to the extent that people suggest. It's inevtable more memory will be needed as technological advances happen just like the huge increase of hard drive sizes and FSB we have seen over the past 5 or 6 years. It's standard to have 1BG Ram on any new PC nowadays and that will serve you fine on Vista with a dual core processor. If you can get 2BG Ram all the better but as I say 1BG Ram is fine. Quite frankly people (like this guy) are massively exaggerating how much of a resource hog Vista actually is. It's only natural with technology moving forward at the pace it does that more memory, processing power and hard drive size etc will be required for the new software of today and the future. Why people think this is remotely strange or unreasonable and even seem to moan about this is absolutely ridiculous.

Answer 8

Xp was modelled on Mac OS, but badly flawed as it is very, very prone to viruses, I am an IT consultantwho spends more time sorting out the glitches in Microsoft code than in Mac code, I have been involved in IT since the birth of it, and worked within some very big companies, the only real MS OS that worked without flaw was Windows 3.11, but that only needed about 2Mb Ram and 40Mb HDD, I won't be buying or advising any of my clients to, BIG BROTHER Vista, which is already being targeted by virus and hacker guys. Instead I am advising my clients to all buy Macs.

Answer 9

MS have spent the last few years telling us that XP is the ultimate operating system! The question is: "What is XP failing to do for me that I really need it to do?" The answer is:"nothing".

People will, of course, be suckered into using it because it will be installed on new PCs; then the latest office etc software will become more bloated and require Vista to run; people with XP will be sent files that require that bloated software to open them; they will upgrade, but find that their PC runs slowly; they will buy a new PC; the new PC will have Vista installed...

Answer 10

I have run Vista for 3 months now in Beta 2 mode, It's very buggy and resource hungry, however the overall feel and workability of the system is really quite good. It is generally user friendly apart from a distinct lack of driver updates available. I like it and will probably stick with it.