I've got to disagree, I installed Vista Home Basic on a P4 2.0ghz with 512MB and integrated graphics. It didn't look as nice, and you could only run basic programs, but it was still functional enough to use. But yea, some things in Vista are pointless on such machines, Vista was a future/forward looking OS in many regards. And machines powerful enough to get the most out of Vista have been in the $500-$600 range for probably about 2 and a half years now.
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In Defense of Vista
- Thread starter Åndhrimnir
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TechieSooner
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^^^ That's true. It seems Microsoft realized there's enough old machines, AND it also seems that nobody really saw, in 2005, how big Netbooks were going to be- a need to run on lesser hardware. So they stripped some stuff that runs in Windows 7 (honestly I've got no idea how it runs so efficiently) and made it faster, I guess.
Yea I try doing it on XP and Vista sometimes and it pisses me off when it won't work...
Yea I try doing it on XP and Vista sometimes and it pisses me off when it won't work...
If you've been around here any length of time you should know better. Installing any software on a machine that's scraping the bottom of the system requirements is going to give you a horrible experience. Think about running XP on a 233MHz CPU w/ 64MB of RAM, the minimal requirements, and do you think you'd walk away with a reasonable impression of the OS?
Back in the day I had a 1984 Honda Civic with a 1.3L engine. Freeway driving sucked - cruising at 60MPH pretty much exhausted the engine, it was too light & constantly blown around by semis, it was impossible to get to a reasonable speed to merge into traffic. You'd think I was crazy if I said that freeways were worthless.
I dont think that Vista needs to be defended.
Its an excellent OS in its own right. I had no issues and it was beat up for no reason at all.
But Vista is in the past now. No point in continuing to hit the dead hose.
Lets move on with Win 7 and not look back.
+1
Vista, despite what the XP fanboys would like to believe, was an awesome OS (post SP1). XP was crap when it first came out too. But who cares, because now we have Windows 7, which is, at least in my opinion, better than any other Windows OS to date.
KillaChaos
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QFT. UAC was my favorite feature in Vista. More like UNIX.
FoxhoundOp
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Vista is OK. I have it on a computer here at home and I haven't really met anyone with it outside of the Internet that has any issues but it's nothing special. I don't know why it gets so much attention here.
It has a lot to do with marketing and perception in my opinion. Vista was a bit tough to use when it first came out. Driver support was lacking and it was a major change for people that had so many years on XP. I probably installed Vista two or three times before I stuck with it. SP1 improved things significantly and eventually driver support was there. Vista took a hard hit from Apple's advertising campaign and many people avoided even trying it.
Win 7 comes out, and Microsoft made sure it was well perceived, even before the release. I half believe that XP mode was built into Win 7 just so people would feel comfortable trying a new OS. I now prefer Win 7 of course, but I really grew to like Vista over the past year or two. With adequate hardware, it was a well running OS.
Win 7 comes out, and Microsoft made sure it was well perceived, even before the release. I half believe that XP mode was built into Win 7 just so people would feel comfortable trying a new OS. I now prefer Win 7 of course, but I really grew to like Vista over the past year or two. With adequate hardware, it was a well running OS.
I forgot to mention that my Civic was a great car for driving around town & delivering pizza. But, yeah... I took what you said as a bit of condemnation of Vista - I was focusing on "It didn't look as nice, and you could only run basic programs". Even though I got the wrong meaning from what you said, there's a number of people out there with similar systems that tried upgrading from XP and then told all their friends that Vista was crap.
Tawnos
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thanks for the quicklaunch fix
Might I suggest, before running to quicklaunch, actually trying the new superbar in its default mode? To launch new copies, either hold shift or middle click. To launch elevated, ctrl shift click.
QwertyJuan
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The four biggest issues IMO with Vista were...
1. Many older programs people had, that worked on XP, didn't on Vista
2. Drivers - terrible support at launch for MANY pieces of hardware. I remember fighting with video cards, sound cards, and printers. CLARIFICATION - this wasn't Vista's fault, but the fault of the hardware vendors.
3. Significant hardware requirements for that time. Only the highest end of hardware at that time would make Vista "fly"... a low-end machine would CHOKE on Vista(Remember - a 3000+ or P4 3.0Ghz with 512MB-1GB was an 'average' machine at that time). Nowadays? That problem is gone... anything that you can buy off of the shelf will run Vista just fine.
4. UAC - people were used to just installing their software, then they got Vista and had to keep 'allowing' things to install. 90% of people had NO idea what their computer was doing.
Why is 7 so 'embraced'?? Probably the media, and the fact that if it worked in Vista, it will work in 7. All of the issues I mentioned above are gone.
1. Many older programs people had, that worked on XP, didn't on Vista
2. Drivers - terrible support at launch for MANY pieces of hardware. I remember fighting with video cards, sound cards, and printers. CLARIFICATION - this wasn't Vista's fault, but the fault of the hardware vendors.
3. Significant hardware requirements for that time. Only the highest end of hardware at that time would make Vista "fly"... a low-end machine would CHOKE on Vista(Remember - a 3000+ or P4 3.0Ghz with 512MB-1GB was an 'average' machine at that time). Nowadays? That problem is gone... anything that you can buy off of the shelf will run Vista just fine.
4. UAC - people were used to just installing their software, then they got Vista and had to keep 'allowing' things to install. 90% of people had NO idea what their computer was doing.
Why is 7 so 'embraced'?? Probably the media, and the fact that if it worked in Vista, it will work in 7. All of the issues I mentioned above are gone.
I would have to agree with most people here, Vista was awesome, and 7 is awesomerererer, heh.
I remember the same thing happening all through history. People refusing to upgrade from DOS 3.3 to 4, waiting for 5. The huge fight over DOS 6. Windows ME (which I never once had an issue with). Windows XP when it first launched was considered by many as the next ME. It happens over and over again. Unfortunately either the people doing most of the complaining either are too young, or have alzheimers and don't remember it has all happened before, and it will all happen again.
People like to point to drivers, do you not remember the issues with HP scanners, printers, and anything that needed to get through the 'new feature' called a firewall on XP?
People point to hardware requirements, do they not remember how much higher XP was to really run compared to 98 or ME (98 was 486DX66, 16MB RAM, 225MB HDD, VGA, XP was PII-233, 64MB RAM, 1.5GB HDD, SVGA)? 98 to XP was about four years, extrapolating that out Vista should have been released with the minimum specs of 3.75 generations of CPU or about a C2D 2Ghz, 384MB RAM, 3.4GB of HDD, and higher than SVGA graphics. Instead it ran on a P3-1Ghz, 512MB RAM, and 15GB HDD. So much lower CPU requirements, slightly higher RAM, much larger HDD and the same video hardware. Not too bad.
People point to software that will not run, lets see, Windows Vista released in 2007 and XP was released in 2001, a difference of six years. That is the equivalent of running Windows 95 apps on XP, and how well did that work?
Personally Vista dramatically improved my productivity immediately, it also gave me a much more pleasurable experience right out of the box than XP did. Sure, XP was more familiar and had more support but that also translates into old and boring. Once I installed Vista and used it for a while, I rushed out to equip all my machines with Vista, both at home and at work.
Now having used Vista since release and now moving to 7, there is no doubt that 7 is faster and a little cleaner. Having said that, it is also Vista SP3. That I can find there are no major changes between my Vista machine and my 7 machine. Small tweaks, yes. Improved performance, yes. Feature changes, yes. Major additions, no.
Allan
I remember the same thing happening all through history. People refusing to upgrade from DOS 3.3 to 4, waiting for 5. The huge fight over DOS 6. Windows ME (which I never once had an issue with). Windows XP when it first launched was considered by many as the next ME. It happens over and over again. Unfortunately either the people doing most of the complaining either are too young, or have alzheimers and don't remember it has all happened before, and it will all happen again.
People like to point to drivers, do you not remember the issues with HP scanners, printers, and anything that needed to get through the 'new feature' called a firewall on XP?
People point to hardware requirements, do they not remember how much higher XP was to really run compared to 98 or ME (98 was 486DX66, 16MB RAM, 225MB HDD, VGA, XP was PII-233, 64MB RAM, 1.5GB HDD, SVGA)? 98 to XP was about four years, extrapolating that out Vista should have been released with the minimum specs of 3.75 generations of CPU or about a C2D 2Ghz, 384MB RAM, 3.4GB of HDD, and higher than SVGA graphics. Instead it ran on a P3-1Ghz, 512MB RAM, and 15GB HDD. So much lower CPU requirements, slightly higher RAM, much larger HDD and the same video hardware. Not too bad.
People point to software that will not run, lets see, Windows Vista released in 2007 and XP was released in 2001, a difference of six years. That is the equivalent of running Windows 95 apps on XP, and how well did that work?
Personally Vista dramatically improved my productivity immediately, it also gave me a much more pleasurable experience right out of the box than XP did. Sure, XP was more familiar and had more support but that also translates into old and boring. Once I installed Vista and used it for a while, I rushed out to equip all my machines with Vista, both at home and at work.
Now having used Vista since release and now moving to 7, there is no doubt that 7 is faster and a little cleaner. Having said that, it is also Vista SP3. That I can find there are no major changes between my Vista machine and my 7 machine. Small tweaks, yes. Improved performance, yes. Feature changes, yes. Major additions, no.
Allan
TechieSooner
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Good points, like I had said earlier: same group that complained then complains now. It all comes down to change- people don't like it.
QwertyJuan
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True to a point... BUT I don't see as many people complaining about 7, as Vista... not even CLOSE actually.( Mostly due to the facts I mentioned above, but also due to the fact that the press has accepted it with open arms as well
)Vista RTM on a 2004 or older high-end machine or low-end system from 2006, with the drivers available then: Terrible
Vista SP1 or SP2, reasonably modern system (any dual-core CPU, >2GB of RAM, DX9 graphics with >256MB RAM, >250GB HDD), up-to-date drivers: Awesome. Just as snappy as Win7, no stability issues etc.
Vista SP1 or SP2, reasonably modern system (any dual-core CPU, >2GB of RAM, DX9 graphics with >256MB RAM, >250GB HDD), up-to-date drivers: Awesome. Just as snappy as Win7, no stability issues etc.
bigdogchris
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In some cases, faster. Vistas Superfetch is superior to 7's in almost every way.
- Yes, driver support had some issues but is that Microsofts fault? 7 worked well out of the box because you can use Vista drivers. I had to use a lot of Vista drivers for 7.
- 7 is not inherently more compatible than Vista is, it's just much more software is Vista compatible which makes it 7 compatible.
- I'm definitely glad 7 runs much better on low end hardware.
- UAC in 7 at the default level is pointless. It protects the user from themselves but doesn't project the system from attacks. Vista UAC was more secure.
100% agree with you here. Here is another one.
Vista has a lot of hard drive activity right after boot, software installs, or updates. This used to drive me crazy. My system will become very slow or unresponsive for several minutes. For some reason that issue disappeared when I replaced Vista with Windows 7. I had a friend complained to me about the same thing so I don't think it was my setup.
TechieSooner
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It's not because it's any better (it's the same thing, the biggest change was that it runs more efficiently), it's because all the hate stays with Vista.True to a point... BUT I don't see as many people complaining about 7, as Vista... not even CLOSE actually.( Mostly due to the facts I mentioned above, but also due to the fact that the press has accepted it with open arms as well
And yet it still does all its indexing and caching. That's what I don't get... I've got no idea how Windows 7 runs so freaking efficient. And Windows 8 is already rumored to have huge performance increases over Windows 7!
My only experience with Vista was in a computer lab at school. I pressed the power button, and after about 3 minutes, the login screen appeared (long wait?). I typed in the password on the whiteboard, poked enter, and waited 32 fucking minutes for it to load the desktop. I think I was the first person in the lab to get into the desktop... By then, we were preparing to leave the lab and go outside (it was a photography class). Waste of time and money.
Running Windows XP on a 386 is faster.
By contrast, I'm running Windows 7 right now on my laptop with 1 gb of RAM no problems at all. I wouldn't even dare trying this with Vista.
Running Windows XP on a 386 is faster.
By contrast, I'm running Windows 7 right now on my laptop with 1 gb of RAM no problems at all. I wouldn't even dare trying this with Vista.
techie81
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m³ñ;1035077127 said:
What?
TechieSooner
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m³ñ;1035077127 said:
Like the IT folks at the computer lab couldn't have configured it wrong or had driver issues or something?
Yep, let one experience form your opinions forever
You're in the wrong forums and wrong industry to expect everything to always work flawlessly.
Åndhrimnir
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Well said. This whole hobby is pretty much a game of diplomacy - you have to lower your expectations sometimes, and always be careful not to piss any(one/thing) off too much.
QwertyJuan
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m³ñ;1035077127 said:
LOL, and all machines are like that are they?
Naw, I'm studying to be a mechanic, not an IT professional.
And my computer had booted up the second or third of all computers in the room... I checked the stats of the computer before I left, it had 1.5 GB of RAM, and a P4 CPU, don't remember the speed.
I also recall waiting 4-6 minutes for stuff to actually happen after you did stuff. IE, clicking "start" had a 3-5 minute pause before it popped up, right click the "Computer" icon had a 2 minute pause before the drop down appeared, etc.
The lab next door had brand new, at the time, P4 machines with 4 GB of RAM and 2.8 GHZ P4's, and they logged on in into Vista pretty quick, but applications were just slow and sluggish. I was running XP Pro on a Socket A system at the time with 512 megs of RAM, and it was faster.
This was at a community college, in a rarely used computer lab. Configuration, budget, whatever probably was not a high priority, but geeze, even after you go it on a 'somewhat fast' box, it shouldn't take 10 minutes for Paint to open. It shouldn't take 30 minutes to log in (on a local account). It was BS.
I'm willing to bet that Vista would throw fits on my laptop. There's a whopping ONE native Vista driver for my hardware anyway, and not a single one for Win 7. Yet it runs fine.
I'm training to be a mechanic. I fix everyone else's fuckups every day. Is it too much to ask for an OS that works somewhat decently? Hmm, I guess this is the wrong place to talk about that, sorry. I also use my laptop to tune my car, I trust XP Pro enough to have reflashed the Flash ROM in my car. I'm not sure if I'd trust Vista enough to do that, at least not on this laptop. You mess up, or the software jacks up, and you gotta buy a new computer for the car, just like messing up a BIOS reflash.
And my computer had booted up the second or third of all computers in the room... I checked the stats of the computer before I left, it had 1.5 GB of RAM, and a P4 CPU, don't remember the speed.
I also recall waiting 4-6 minutes for stuff to actually happen after you did stuff. IE, clicking "start" had a 3-5 minute pause before it popped up, right click the "Computer" icon had a 2 minute pause before the drop down appeared, etc.
The lab next door had brand new, at the time, P4 machines with 4 GB of RAM and 2.8 GHZ P4's, and they logged on in into Vista pretty quick, but applications were just slow and sluggish. I was running XP Pro on a Socket A system at the time with 512 megs of RAM, and it was faster.
This was at a community college, in a rarely used computer lab. Configuration, budget, whatever probably was not a high priority, but geeze, even after you go it on a 'somewhat fast' box, it shouldn't take 10 minutes for Paint to open. It shouldn't take 30 minutes to log in (on a local account). It was BS.
I'm willing to bet that Vista would throw fits on my laptop. There's a whopping ONE native Vista driver for my hardware anyway, and not a single one for Win 7. Yet it runs fine.
I'm training to be a mechanic. I fix everyone else's fuckups every day. Is it too much to ask for an OS that works somewhat decently? Hmm, I guess this is the wrong place to talk about that, sorry.
I also use my laptop to tune my car, I trust XP Pro enough to have reflashed the Flash ROM in my car. I'm not sure if I'd trust Vista enough to do that, at least not on this laptop. You mess up, or the software jacks up, and you gotta buy a new computer for the car, just like messing up a BIOS reflash.TechieSooner
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What you missed is that Vista does not normally run what way. What you experienced was an exception to the the rule. You need to be mad at the people running the IT there, not at Vista.
Perhaps. I still wouldn't run ECU Flash on my laptop with Vista on it.
Windows 7 Superfetch is far less aggressive than in Vista, hence the 'efficiency'. For me, a couple of minutes of HDD activity on a clean boot makes no difference, even if I want to do something while it's doing it. But since I usually just sleep the PC, it's a non-issue anyway
.True to a point... BUT I don't see as many people complaining about 7, as Vista... not even CLOSE actually.( Mostly due to the facts I mentioned above, but also due to the fact that the press has accepted it with open arms as well
Microsoft could have re-released ME after Vista and it would have been hailed as the greatest OS release ever. Vista has such hate that what came next didn't matter, which should be obvious since they just tweaked Vista and re-released it as 7
Allan
hedron
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Vista was utter garbage. That OS that was way too bloated and took 25% of my CPU process just sitting there idling and always churning the hard drive constantly for no reason what-so-ever. People say this is because of the caching that Vista does. Bullshit. 7 does the same thing yet no churning and no wasting process for nothing. I tried to install SP1 but I could not because Vista is so bloated that you cannot install a service pack on a 20GB partition because there is not enough hard disk space.
Microsoft should have canned Vista before it left the coding floor.
That said, 7 isn't a lot better, as it's still way too bloated, but at least it doesn't quite suck as bad. Which makes it tolerable enough to use.
Microsoft should have canned Vista before it left the coding floor.
That said, 7 isn't a lot better, as it's still way too bloated, but at least it doesn't quite suck as bad. Which makes it tolerable enough to use.
Gorankar
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Vista was and is still a great OS. I would not have upgraded to Win 7 myself til some time next year when I built a new PC, if it were not for the $50 deal they ran on it just b4 it launched.
I like UAC personally. I have Win 7 set back up to the default Vista level. To be absolutely honest, UAC, is the reason I ditched Unbuntu for my non gaming needs. I used to swear by the Xp/Unbuntu dual boot. I used to swear by Firefox as well, but with IE in a sand box and IE 8 actually being a decent browser I don't use FF that much any more either.
I like UAC personally. I have Win 7 set back up to the default Vista level. To be absolutely honest, UAC, is the reason I ditched Unbuntu for my non gaming needs. I used to swear by the Xp/Unbuntu dual boot. I used to swear by Firefox as well, but with IE in a sand box and IE 8 actually being a decent browser I don't use FF that much any more either.
This was something I experienced actually. It was supposed to be a low priority task, not interfere with what I was doing, but that was never the case. Vista was usually OK, but there'd be times when the harddrive was just grinding away for hours on end. I'd try to do something and the OS would take FOREVER to get it done. I suspect because of the harddrive grinding.
Originally, I figured it was just a corrupted install, so I reinstalled. Same behavior manifested after a month. Figuring it to be a malware infection, I spent hours looking for some hint of anything, with no luck. Ultimately, this behavior manifested on 5 installs for me. I just recently installed 7, so we'll see if the same thing pops up.
Can you qualify this "lot" better? I don't think I could. It's better but not by lots. I never had an issue with UAC on Vista either because I used a little app called TweakUAC and put UAC in quiet mode. Not turned off, just quiet so it didn't nag me all the time just because I was moving one shortcut from one folder to another in the start menu. My main PC has Win7 now but I still have Vista on another PC so use both and like both. The complaints were mass hysteria from the neophyte masses who believe everything they read on some mainstream media site and most likely never even had Vista. Sure, there were some annoyances but the were all minor IMO and nothing that made it a crap OS.
No, 7 does NOT do the same thing. The cache system has been rewritten and the superfetch system on Vista is actually superior to 7, but too many people bitched so it got stripped down.
Maybe you should have read the minimum system requirements for Vista before installing it, it requires a MINIMUM of 20GB with 15GB free to install at all, FOR THE BASIC VERSION! If you were running Home Premium, Business or Ultimate, that number rose to at least a 40GB drive with 15GB free. Those numbers are for the base install, add more for SP1, then more for SP2, just like XP was. Maybe you should try reading instead of blaming Vista for your shortcomings.
Allan
TechieSooner
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Obviously you haven't tried it past a month. I have a 3 year old Vista install that runs just as fast as the day I installed the system. Give it time to get past that initial caching and it does get better.
However- review sites never quite figured that out- and relied on an un-cached version of Vista to write their reviews on.
7 is largely the same as Vista. Superfetch is still there. As Heatless posted- I think they've just made it less aggressive. IE, the idle I/O has been greatly reduced, I'm sure.
Even Superfetch on Vista only worked when you were idle. But people didn't like their computer "doing stuff" when they weren't working on it (which totally blows the mind- that's exactly when I want it doing maintenance tasks).
Once you upgrade your hard drive space from the 1980s, come back and let us know if it's still an issue.
I think it's a few reasons.
#1 is the speed. Obviously it runs much more efficiently, and that's huge.
#2 is just new UI enhancements, the taskbar being the biggest. It's alot easier for a new user to pick it up and run with it.
#3 is, as much as Vista-haters won't admit it, is that it's built upon the pioneering that Vista has done. Vista laid the groundwork for 7. It had to be done.
You do realize the whole point of UAC is notification, right?
Turning it "quiet" is essentially the same thing as turning it off.
malware.exe wants to access C:\windows. With UAC off, it'll access it. With UAC "quiet", it'll access it without prompting. No difference.
I've heard this stated once before but I looked all over the Windows 7 Engineering blog to find NOTHING stating Microsoft (quoting the other claim) "threw out Superfetch and started over". There were minor tweaks, but by all reason, Superfetch is the same.
I mean, there's reallly not much to improve upon, Superfetch's goal is quite simple. The extent of changes to Superfetch is probably just lowering the I/O priority on it.
I will have to go check and see where all I read it but you are correct in that I have never heard anything about them throwing it out or redoing it from scratch. From what I read the priority was indeed lowered along with streamlining the data fetch routines to return less information. The net effect of this is longer waits until something appears in the catalog, longer delays once data is changed before that change is reflected in the catalog, and a slimmer and faster catalog.
So, for example, a program is moved on the drive, it takes longer for 7 to reflect that change and preload code from that program than it did in Vista. Additionally, it takes longer for 7 to add the new program to the catalog and begin caching it.
Allan
hedron
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1) If taxing the CPU and HDD 24/7 is somehow superior to the rewritten superfetch on Win7, then please do explain how it is superior. Win7 performs a hell of a lot better on my laptop than did Vista.
2) Don't tell me about reading the min specs, I installed Win7 Ultimate on a 10GB partition and it worked perfectly and ran faster than Vista did on a 20GB partition. That's besides the point. There's absolutely no reason what-so-ever that an operating system needs 10GBs much less 20GBs of space. None. Zip. Zilch. And all your fanboism isn't going to change that.
Please note that I had used the word, "partition" which is not the same as, "hard drive."
http://tweak-uac.com/uac-quiet-mode/
Is the "quiet" mode of UAC less secure?
If you've used TweakUAC, you've seen the "quiet" option it offers that lets you suppress the elevation prompts of UAC without turning the UAC off completely. In such a mode, you keep all the positive effects of UAC, such as Internet Explorer operating in the protected mode, applications starting without the administrative privileges by default, etc. The only thing that gets changed is that you will no longer see the infamous "Windows needs your permission to continue" messages whenever you attempt to make a change to your Vista configuration, or when you run a program that needs administrative rights.
However, reading what other people wrote about TweakUAC in their articles and blogs, I often see comments suggesting that using TweakUAC to operate UAC in the "quiet" mode makes your system less secure. Such comments show that there is a lot of confusion about how UAC works and what it is protecting the system from. Let me try to clarify it a bit here.
I can see how the confusion may occur: whenever someone is presented with the "Windows needs your permission to continue" message, it creates the impression that UAC is looking after the user, and protects the vital system settings from being destroyed or corrupted. The user is probably thinking, "If a virus or spyware gets into my system and attempts to do something dangerous, UAC will alert me, right?" Wrong.
There is only one single "moment of truth" when it comes to malware getting unlimited access to your system, and it occurs when you attempt to run a program you have downloaded from an unknown web site:
Please go read the rest of the article.
I like Vista and 7 both, but I'd like to see Microsoft pull a Snow Leopard, Apple shrunk the installation size with SL, it's a good thing, since that would mean less disk space wasted on OS partition. Of course this might just be personal preference, but more free space means better performance especially non-SSD.