Badmovies.org Forum

I've been using my new computer for about 4 days, squeakily learning how to do previously ordinary tasks... since I had a less then optimum experience with the Geek Squad (I don't have any files from my old computer, can't fax, no network, they were unprepared for all tasks, though what I paid for was itemized ~ Caveat emptor!) 

However, the real shock has been transitioning from XP to Vista.  Holy crap, did they need to eliminate most of the commonly used menus?  Only today did I figure out how to print a Word document!  They minimized routine tasks to the point of obscurity, have new features elbowing past necessary ones, plus frequent pop up balloons saying this isn't working (yes, because when you just asked me I said no! I don't want to update!)

Any comments on Vista?  Some things are definitely improved, but it sure ain't instinctive. 

I have been working with computers for years and years.  I played around with Vista at the store for a while.  I think that I'd rather have command line again (I frequently use it when working on the website anyway - but that is Linux). 

As you pointed out, Vista is even less intuitive than Microsoft's other products - and that is saying something.

I brought a new DELL laptop XPS M1730 for work that came pre-loaded with VISTA Premium and using it and tweaked it for about a month then I wiped it and loaded XP Pro, couldn't be happier.

I use Linux and XP primarily and XP PRO is far more stable than and faster than Vista.

Main reason many of my programs would not run on Vista.
Vista was slow compared to XP
Navigation is different and I'm not in the mood to change.

Most reviews I've seen come to the same conclusion, XP is better than VISTA.

I'll wait until Service Pack 15 for Vista is released then I might load it on something again.

EDIT:
Yes I got sick of the menu pop-ups asking me if it should continue with no "use this answer every time" box. Or Vista is doing this or that please wait and that annoying little circle just setting there spinning.

VISTA SUCKS

Microsoft tried to make Vista more like the MAC OS X operating system.  I hate Vista with a passion.  If I have caller at work who use Vista and b/c things are set on SUPER HIGH security the s**t is near impossible to resolve issues they have b/c of that. 

We gave a VISTA machine at work and we remote into in usually on a daily basis because of everyone jumping on the Vista band wagon.  We turned off the annoying are you sure you want to do this messages so it would make it easier for us to do our jobs.  I still can't remember names of items in Vista, in which I should since I have to use it quite often.

       

I've heard that a lot of computer sellers have demanded that MS allow them to ship new machines with XP rather than Vista.  Haven't tried Vista and don't want to; maybe Vista 3.1.

One reason I never cared for Macs early on was the lack of a command line interface.  Sometimes I just like to get my hands dirty with building my own or using the CLI.

I've got XP installed on my daughter's iMac, but I hardly use even that.   It's raison d'etre is to update my pocket PC when it needs it.

So to wit, no, I don't use Vista. 

Bought a Vista upgrade back when it came out, then found out (midway through the installation) that it isn't compatible with some of the hardware I'm using. Then I found out it has no uninstall like the XP upgrade. Had to reformat, restore from the backup (which was up to date, thank God), and reinstall a few things. So, put me on the "not impressed" list right off the bat.

As for working with it, I tried to help out somebody at work with their new laptop, and found that the simplest tasks became excessively complicated, while nothing else seemed to be sufficiently improved to make up for it.

I'll stick with XP and wait for the next OS that is undoubtedly just around the corner, the 98 to Vista's 95.

Big vendors like Gateway, Dell and others can still sell business systems with XP Pro until the end of June. As of right now Vista's biggest competitor is Windows XP.

We won't buy it at work until we  eventually have no choice.  They are  already working on a  Service Pack for Vista (it's over a gig in size).  There is also SP3 for Windows XP which should be out in the first quarter.  It' said to be very much faster than Vista.

I wish someone could break MS's monopoly because they are seriously stifling any kind of innovation as long as they have a strangle hold on businesses. 

I've got Vista on my new machine and would switch back to XP if it wasn't so much work to reinstall the OS.  I've gotten used to Vista, but I'm not thrilled.

Some vendors were actually sending out their new Vista machines with an XP CD so you could downgrade.

I know IBM still sells XP computers.  If you wish to get XP on your computer, some companines still have it on their business models, and gaming PC's.
 

Vista = Meh.

I have a dual core laptop that came with Vista Home Premium.  As others have said, it is MUCH slower than XP and is an extreme memory hog.  I have yet to format and install XP on there as I can't see wasting the $300 or so that Vista costs.  I mainly only use the laptop for web browsing and such so, it doesn't bother me that much.

I do hate the constant security queries, asking if I want to continue running a program, if I want to allow a program to run, etc.  It's an aggravation.

It was less trouble wiping the drive and installing a clean copy of XP Pro SP2 than dealing with that crap called Vista.

I swear I think Vista is worse than Winders ME

Mista, no Vista! Word to ya sista.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I have become a lazy computer geek over the last year or so. Plus I'm not sure there are XP drivers for everything on my laptop. Probably are, but, again, I'm too lazy to find out.

We have a Vista machine at work we can remote into for calls if need be since we have a lot of users who use Vista.

I'm starting to get used to the different menus in Vista, so it's easier for me to remember that Add/Remove Programs in XP is called something different in Vista.
 

I'm learning... but I can't tell you at this moment how much I am despising VISTA.  I have all of my music migrated to this machine, and I'm playing albums and mixes I had created... I notice an arrow button in the upper right corner so I click it since there seems to be no other option for getting online information about the album which was easy with XP... it closed Windows Media Player... ?  Huh...?  The right facing arrow supplants the prominent upper right X when... when?  When Windows feels like it???   :hatred:

I've had the joy of a new laptop for a graduation gift. I have also had the displeasure of owning windows vista that came with it. I feel bad since beggers can't be choosers but still... 
Anyways for me its not the fact that they changed the set up screen. Its the fact I can't figure out what the hell I'm doing in word. Which isn't good when you have a freaking paper due tommorow! :hatred:
[

At least it looks pretty...

A friend of mine who works in IT hates it with a passion [along with macs and the like]

Personally I really don't care... I have my Xp and I'm happy for it to stay that way...

Most of the people I work with (IT company) don't like Macs either and hate Vista.  I don't mind Mac, I dont' think I would want to replace my pc with a mac, but it's nice to know.

I have become really used to XP as I use it at work and have it on 2 systems at home. About 2 weeks ago, I saw a sale on Compaq laptops and have been wanting one for a while now so I got it. It's not a super system but I got it mainly for internet and being able to be mobile with it...anyway...Vista Home Premium is installed...It's like starting over again with computers...nothing makes sense....and holy crap...it takes forever to start up....and talk about memory hog...the system has 1GB of RAM and I know that is the minimum they recommend (I've seen some systems being sold with 512MB and Vista installed!)...the only good thing about it is if you stick a flash drive in the USB port, it asks you if you want to use it to supplement the memory and I have done that and I do notice an improvement...it just suck that I should have to do that at all.

:thumbup:  I have XP on my old computer, which is just to my left, and I'm on it an inordinate amount of time considering this hot new monster is right here and should be making my life easier.  I have already had a problem with a "trojan horse" (one of those redirect b*tches that fortunately, at least, did not work right either... so, I never got to whatever horrible page it was intending to redirect me to).  I have since largely been using Firefox for browsing (also has its lame moments) however, all of this is indicative of the promised improvement in Windows security!??  (I had Spy Sweeper and Trend Micro installed as well).  Boulderdash !!   :hatred:

My old computer finally died (no more Windows 98 for me).  Like Odinn7 said, nothing makes sense.  I don't think I'll be able to use my printer/copier/scanner, I spent about 5 hours yesterday downloading the new driver from HP and it just isn't working.  At first the downloaded driver seemed to disappear, then I figured out the security wasn't letting it download.  But of course it didn't tell me this, it just seemed to download and then it wasn't anywhere to be found on my computer.  Not that I can figure out how the hell to look for something - whatever happened to being able to display a simple file tree?  So I made the HP site a "trusted site" (okay, two hours wasted figuring that out), then it downloaded, but for some reason it told me I didn't have permission to place it in the program files directory.  Would I care to place it in Jack's folder?  If not I should contact the system administrator.  Oh...what the f***?  I never set up an administrator, it's my home pc.  There was some swearing at that point.  Anyhow, a couple of hours later I finally got the new driver downloaded and was trying to install it, and though it recognizes my printer, it won't communicate with it.  Installation failed.  From looking around the net, I've read that Hewlett Packard's updated driver for Vista apparently doesn't work.  They suggest I buy a new HP product. 

So the fact that the printer won't work is HP's fault, the fact that it took me all evening to figure that out is Vista's fault.  Other than that, I guess I can't really b***h too much.  Well, I'd like to print something but I guess they don't really give a damn.  It will take me a while to figure out how to do things that used to be simple, but I guess I'd get that with any new system.  Most of the stuff I did went fairly smoothly, downloaded anti-virus software, downloaded another program, accessed the internet and set up my e-mail, etc.  This internet browser kind of sucks, I've got Google search down in the system tray, and a Google toolbar (a tad redundant?) and the actual browser toolbar is mostly empty space, but I guess I just think it looks weird because it's new.  It took me half an hour to figure out how to get the DVD tray to open.  You'd think they could stick a little button in some noticeable place for that, but no.  You basically have to go into Windows media player to find an eject button.  Of course I wanted to load software, not play a freakin' CD, but whatever.

I hear your pain, Jack!   :thumbup: 
My HP printer driver does lots of weird sh*t and does not work as I'd expect it to (perfect, just like VISTA) all of the menu options are moved or changed or renamed (snappy names are all over VISTA like "Rip" or "Burn" or "Quick Print...")  :lookingup: 
The way my new printer scans is basically to scan TWICE.  I am not liking HP these days.  And I hate VISTA.   :hatred:

Years ago, when Windows was in its first incarnation, Norton released Commander.   This was a directory tree style front-end for DOS machines.   It worked like a charm.  Fast, easy convienant.   Not really pretty, but it beat Windows 1.0 (or what have you) into the ground. 

My new toy (the laptop) has Vista, and its not BAD.  I had to disable some of the "helpful" functions.   but I'm no more annoyed tthan I was when Vista came out.   I will say it seems very stable. 
-Ed

Well, my dad's new computer has it. It's all right for doing most basic tasks, and I got it to work fine with most of the accessories from his old computer (which ran Windows 98SE), but it does very much have to be bent to the user's will before it's much good. That is, once it's loaded, you have to go through it with a careful attention to detail, wiping out all of the "helpful" new features, such as the desktop gadgets and the paranoid security system. (That latter "feature" in particular is to blame for that irritating little warning window that keeps popping up practically every time you open a program.) It runs a whole lot of bloatware on startup that takes up a lot of processing power (hence the slowness), and you have to stop this stuff from starting.

You also have to clean out some of the programs that come with it, such as its pre-installed version of Internet Explorer, which in my father's case had so many crappy bells and whistles on it that I finally just got my dad a copy of Mozilla Firefox and told him to use that instead. In general, Windows Vista reminds me a lot of how Windows XP behaved when I first got a computer running it: I treated every request it made for access to the outside world as a possible hacking attempt from some treasure-hunting thief. Once you've killed off all of Vista's attempts to bring you "important offers" from the aforementioned gold-diggers and stripped out the stuff you'll never need, then you can begin installing the stuff you want--if you can find the proper drivers for it, which sometimes don't exist.

In the case of this particular computer, there was a hardware problem as well: it didn't even have any parallel port on the back! Fortunately, the old printer he was using did have a USB port on it as well, and of course there are lots of USB ports on every computer manufactured these days. Still, I thought for a while that we might have to attach the printer to an older computer and network to it from there.

Now that I've done all that, the thing pretty much works fine for everything we need it to do. In terms of stability, I'd say the real problem with it is that it's too stable--if it gets confused about some program, it more or less freezes whatever that program's doing and just lets it hang there forever. The OS never crashes, but sometimes it won't let you close the program or start a new instance of it until you restart the computer.

In other words, it's a lot like an NTFS version of Windows ME, except without the blue screens of death.

Update:  Never did get the old HP printer to work with this new computer.  Got a new Canon printer - 100% Vista compatible.  So imagine my surprise when I had exactly the same problem with the new one.  Bought a new USB cable since it kept telling me "Device is not responding".  Made no difference.  A few days later I found a brand new USB cable I had stashed in the back of a drawer.  Must be one of Murphy's laws.  Anyhow, after several days of trying to download new drivers, figure out where Vista puts them, figure out what drivers Vista is looking for, I finally took it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy.  Yes, I admitted defeat.  Printer works now, $30 later. 

LOL! That's sad, isn't it?