O.k., so..........
Not real impressed
Thursday, September 21, 2006 by TheGuyPC | Discussion: Windows Vista
I suppose I should be thanking my lucky stars. I downloaded Vista and was able to run "Ultimate" without many problems at all. I had to do 0 (yes zero) driver updates and, short of a lack of compatibility with MSN Premium (go figure), everything worked great.
But I assume that MS is counting on the third parties to sell this. There is little, if anything, that I cannot do already. From security to eye-candy, it's soooooo yesterday (as my daughter might say)
I watched the video that Brad put out. It showed me a couple of things that I didn't know. (I would expect this as he very well should know more than I). But I haven't seen any reason to upgrade. The hardware expectations are extreme for the average home user. Frankly, I would council them to spend $50 on OD and get some free programs I know of.....they would be set for the most part.
If the Vista Basic is "Crap" as was said in the video, why bother? At the prices they are talking about? I can't justify that kind of money to anyone. What would I say?
I like the new security features...but I can easily accomplish the same with the programs I already own...(many free)... and a little common sense.
Microsoft has done a fantastic job of getting rid of many of the problems of Vista. But at what cost? There is really nothing new or special here for me. I haven't seen the possibilities...granted. But this is going to fall flat on it's face if they are counting on the general public to be visionary.
I remain amazed at how well it installed and ran. But disappointed at the outcome. I disconnected my hdd in less than 24 hours and went back to enjoying XP. (Which friggin' flew with this setup)
Without big changes...added features...OR SOMETHING, I wouldn't bother to chalk up the hefty amount they want. No way.
Pounce
PC
But I assume that MS is counting on the third parties to sell this. There is little, if anything, that I cannot do already. From security to eye-candy, it's soooooo yesterday (as my daughter might say)
I watched the video that Brad put out. It showed me a couple of things that I didn't know. (I would expect this as he very well should know more than I). But I haven't seen any reason to upgrade. The hardware expectations are extreme for the average home user. Frankly, I would council them to spend $50 on OD and get some free programs I know of.....they would be set for the most part.
If the Vista Basic is "Crap" as was said in the video, why bother? At the prices they are talking about? I can't justify that kind of money to anyone. What would I say?
I like the new security features...but I can easily accomplish the same with the programs I already own...(many free)... and a little common sense.
Microsoft has done a fantastic job of getting rid of many of the problems of Vista. But at what cost? There is really nothing new or special here for me. I haven't seen the possibilities...granted. But this is going to fall flat on it's face if they are counting on the general public to be visionary.
I remain amazed at how well it installed and ran. But disappointed at the outcome. I disconnected my hdd in less than 24 hours and went back to enjoying XP. (Which friggin' flew with this setup)
Without big changes...added features...OR SOMETHING, I wouldn't bother to chalk up the hefty amount they want. No way.
Pounce
PC
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Fairyy~
Reply #2 Friday, September 22, 2006 5:02 AM
I think there was too much " Vista " hype - by the time everyone tries it they expect something that is out of this world. ( For that price I want to say " WOW ")
Im still happy with what I have and PC , i'm sure you gave a fair evalution.
Reply #2 Friday, September 22, 2006 5:02 AM
| so I'll be happy with what I have and save my money to buy Christmas presents for my kids. |
I think there was too much " Vista " hype - by the time everyone tries it they expect something that is out of this world. ( For that price I want to say " WOW ")
Im still happy with what I have and PC , i'm sure you gave a fair evalution.
Fuzzy Logic
Reply #3 Friday, September 22, 2006 5:49 AM
Reply #3 Friday, September 22, 2006 5:49 AM
I'm sick of Vista, have been for months. I can't see it is going to do more for me than Windows already does. So I'll stick with what I've got. A good philosophy is to let those at the 'bleeding edge' suffer all the failures and iron out the bugs before jumping on the bandwagon. Makes sense 
The only reason some will pay double the price for Ultimate instead of Basic is because they think it makes them look cool. Can't have tatty old Basic now can we "I've got Ultimate......(flexes right forearm up and down)" Sad.
Erk.
Reply #4 Friday, September 22, 2006 6:00 AM
Reply #4 Friday, September 22, 2006 6:00 AM
Meh ....I'll wait.
XP does the job just fine for now...
Vista can take a back seat till I'm ready.
XP does the job just fine for now...
Vista can take a back seat till I'm ready.
Fairyy~
Reply #5 Friday, September 22, 2006 7:23 AM
I remember when windows ME was the hot OS - yeah - hot alright , my computer crashed twice in one year - and then microsoft said it was a defect in that series of ME...uh huh.
Exactly - but its always been that way with " new " stuff. Some just have to have it - Since I upgraded to XP I have not had any problems at all - its been years. Why would I go lookin for one ?
Fairyy - Vistaless
Reply #5 Friday, September 22, 2006 7:23 AM
| iron out the bugs before jumping on the bandwagon. Makes sense |
I remember when windows ME was the hot OS - yeah - hot alright , my computer crashed twice in one year - and then microsoft said it was a defect in that series of ME...uh huh.
| The only reason some will pay double the price for Ultimate instead of Basic is because they think it makes them look cool. Can't have tatty old Basic now can we "I've got Ultimate......(flexes right forearm up and down)" Sad. |
Exactly - but its always been that way with " new " stuff. Some just have to have it - Since I upgraded to XP I have not had any problems at all - its been years. Why would I go lookin for one ?
Fairyy - Vistaless
Keikonium
Reply #6 Friday, September 22, 2006 7:25 AM
Agreed. Altho, Vista runs sooo much better on this computer than XP does (no idea why... XP seems to use a hell of a lot more memory than Vista does
) I think I shall stick with XP for a while. At least until the first service pack for vista shows up lol.
(Besides, with WB, WindowFX, and a few other programs I can emulate vista pretty nicely on XP... or just use the Vista betas)
Reply #6 Friday, September 22, 2006 7:25 AM
| A good philosophy is to let those at the 'bleeding edge' suffer all the failures and iron out the bugs before jumping on the bandwagon. Makes sense |
Agreed. Altho, Vista runs sooo much better on this computer than XP does (no idea why... XP seems to use a hell of a lot more memory than Vista does
) I think I shall stick with XP for a while. At least until the first service pack for vista shows up lol.(Besides, with WB, WindowFX, and a few other programs I can emulate vista pretty nicely on XP... or just use the Vista betas)
Jafo
Reply #7 Friday, September 22, 2006 8:25 AM
Reply #7 Friday, September 22, 2006 8:25 AM
Copy-paste the content of this thread into a text editor....
do a text replace of each reference to 'XP' with 'win98'
...and each reference to 'Vista' with 'XP'....
Reread.
Nothing new....
....at all....
Fairyy~
Reply #8 Friday, September 22, 2006 1:40 PM
thats not true - the price is new
Reply #8 Friday, September 22, 2006 1:40 PM
| Nothing new.... ....at all.... |
thats not true - the price is new
Gideon MacLeish
Reply #9 Friday, September 22, 2006 1:49 PM
Seems the rule of thumb with Microsoft more so even than the others is to wait until the OS is well established. Win 98 had a lot of bugs, many of which were corrected with 98 SE, and Windows ME completely BLEW! My experience with ME made me reluctant to even try XP, which I actually LOVE (although I FAR prefer XP Pro to XP Home).
Thanks for the reviews. I'm watching the reviews on Vista, and may try to talk my instructor into letting us test it on one of our machines to see what we think of it. But I'm still quite undecided.
Reply #9 Friday, September 22, 2006 1:49 PM
| remember when windows ME was the hot OS - yeah - hot alright , my computer crashed twice in one year - and then microsoft said it was a defect in that series of ME...uh huh. |
Seems the rule of thumb with Microsoft more so even than the others is to wait until the OS is well established. Win 98 had a lot of bugs, many of which were corrected with 98 SE, and Windows ME completely BLEW! My experience with ME made me reluctant to even try XP, which I actually LOVE (although I FAR prefer XP Pro to XP Home).
Thanks for the reviews. I'm watching the reviews on Vista, and may try to talk my instructor into letting us test it on one of our machines to see what we think of it. But I'm still quite undecided.
Fairyy~
Reply #10 Friday, September 22, 2006 3:11 PM
I had to have my arm twisted to install Xp - I was scared to even try it and so happy after i did.
Reply #10 Friday, September 22, 2006 3:11 PM
| My experience with ME made me reluctant to even try XP, which I actually LOVE (although I FAR prefer XP Pro to XP Home). |
I had to have my arm twisted to install Xp - I was scared to even try it and so happy after i did.
TheGuyPC
Reply #11 Saturday, September 23, 2006 12:38 AM
Reply #11 Saturday, September 23, 2006 12:38 AM
It would be nice to see some 3rd party software previews just to see what is possible.
I suppose noone wants to tip their hand at this point.
Still, it's fun to try it out if you have a spare hard drive. I think there can be little doubt that Vista will become the norm at some point. I don't see it becoming another ME. It was very stable while I ran it. But the price is astronomical. Couple that with hardware upgrades and you're talking about a major investment for many people.
Maybe they'll bring it down a notch or ten in price. I kinda doubt it though.
PC
BTW, thanks Fairyy~. You're good people.
I suppose noone wants to tip their hand at this point.
Still, it's fun to try it out if you have a spare hard drive. I think there can be little doubt that Vista will become the norm at some point. I don't see it becoming another ME. It was very stable while I ran it. But the price is astronomical. Couple that with hardware upgrades and you're talking about a major investment for many people.
Maybe they'll bring it down a notch or ten in price. I kinda doubt it though.
PC
BTW, thanks Fairyy~. You're good people.
WebGizmos
Reply #13 Monday, September 25, 2006 4:10 AM
Reply #13 Monday, September 25, 2006 4:10 AM
I would definitely not buy it at the suggested price...way to much money...and I'm not to keen on purchasing another set of bugs to work out....my xp works just fine and I see no reason at all to fix what ain't broken.
BlueDev
Reply #14 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 5:38 PM
Reply #14 Tuesday, September 26, 2006 5:38 PM
The big problem I have with most every review of Vista, this one included, is that it compares apples to oranges. Compare a default installation of XP with a default installation of Vista and you actually have a point. As it is, this article is just blowing smoke.
"The default install of Vista is no better than my own personal, tweaked out version of XP, with loads of third party programs."
Rubbish.
I haven't tried Vista, so I can't comment. But it is pointless to compare anything but a default install of XP to a default install of Vista if you really are trying to compare the differences between the two.
"The default install of Vista is no better than my own personal, tweaked out version of XP, with loads of third party programs."
Rubbish.
I haven't tried Vista, so I can't comment. But it is pointless to compare anything but a default install of XP to a default install of Vista if you really are trying to compare the differences between the two.
TheGuyPC
Reply #15 Friday, September 29, 2006 5:27 PM
Well, I'm not sure who you are quoting here...but, while apples to oranges may apply, the default "Ultimate" version of Vista should damn well make my XP look bad. It doesn't. The "tweaking" comes from the same programs that I will have with Vista....so you are the one blowing the smoke.
Of course you haven't tried it, so you are judging my review based on nothing other than personal opinion.
(of me I'm guessing).
My point, though you cannot seem to comprehend it is this......
I can spend $xxx to have a lightning fast, tweaked out version of XP
-or-
I can spend several hundred dollars MORE than $xxx to have Vista Ultimate, which does little more than my BASIC XP with Object Desktop. THEN....I can spend even more money to try and get it working as fast as XP would be with half the setup.
1/2 the $ (XP tweaked) = 2x the setup (- Vista)
Now, if you want to shell out the extra dollars for (less than) nothing? That's your decision. Though I would strongly suggest that you try out Vista first.
As far as the quote goes..........
I speak for myself. If I need your help I'll ask for it........thanks.
PC
Reply #15 Friday, September 29, 2006 5:27 PM
| "The default install of Vista is no better than my own personal, tweaked out version of XP, with loads of third party programs." |
Well, I'm not sure who you are quoting here...but, while apples to oranges may apply, the default "Ultimate" version of Vista should damn well make my XP look bad. It doesn't. The "tweaking" comes from the same programs that I will have with Vista....so you are the one blowing the smoke.
Of course you haven't tried it, so you are judging my review based on nothing other than personal opinion.
(of me I'm guessing).
My point, though you cannot seem to comprehend it is this......
I can spend $xxx to have a lightning fast, tweaked out version of XP
-or-
I can spend several hundred dollars MORE than $xxx to have Vista Ultimate, which does little more than my BASIC XP with Object Desktop. THEN....I can spend even more money to try and get it working as fast as XP would be with half the setup.
1/2 the $ (XP tweaked) = 2x the setup (- Vista)
Now, if you want to shell out the extra dollars for (less than) nothing? That's your decision. Though I would strongly suggest that you try out Vista first.
As far as the quote goes..........
I speak for myself. If I need your help I'll ask for it........thanks.
PC
BlueDev
Reply #16 Saturday, September 30, 2006 12:45 PM
Reply #16 Saturday, September 30, 2006 12:45 PM
You are the consumate tool.
For the last time, comparing a customized version of XP with loads of third party programs to a default install of Vista is idiocy. But then again, all I have to do is look at the author.
For the last time, comparing a customized version of XP with loads of third party programs to a default install of Vista is idiocy. But then again, all I have to do is look at the author.
rabidrobot
Reply #17 Saturday, September 30, 2006 3:10 PM
Reply #17 Saturday, September 30, 2006 3:10 PM
oooooo-kay, so...
Anyway, I too was disillusioned with, in particular, Beta2, and to a much lesser extent RC1. I wanted Vista to totally wow me, and I also wanted every little annoyance I had with XP (and no arm flexing here, I run XP-Home!) gone. But some annoyances remain, the System Sound and Mouse Cursor selection GUIs are unchanged, for example.
On the other hand, I can understand that these _are_ little annoyances, things that very few, relatively, users of the OS will ever even encounter, much less use frequently. And MS had to prioritize where the effort went, and decide which aspects of the OS were worth the time to change.
I am also a bit disappointed that the OS itself only touches the surface of the potential involved with the new technology Vista introduces. You don't have to read too many of Brad's posts on "Sparkle" (now Expressions Interactive Designer) and .Net3.0 (nee Windows Presentation Foundation) from earlier this year and late last year to get pretty psyched about the posssibilities. Vista itself seems to be just a tease--it seems we'll have to wait for new apps (although not necessarily "third party") to really find out if the user experience is better, that productivity can be improved along with all the security considerations, etc.
Because the potential is huge. Think of an ObjectDock that is a cylinder, spinning like a slot machine to expose whatever individual item you might want (just an enthusiastic hobbyist brainstorming here). Think of expanding the desktop metaphor into the third dimension, allowing stacks of things, easy to visualize and organize. I think customization for Vista will really knock our socks off, but I don't understand, again, why MS didn't do more to wow us from the first boot up.
So, in the end, the best comparison might not be how cool each OS can be on X amount of dollars, or how fresh installs compare, but how fully tweaked, customized, user specific setups compare. Will I be able to do more, faster, on Vista, and have more fun doing it? I think so. Eventually.
rabidrobot
Reply #18 Saturday, September 30, 2006 3:16 PM
Reply #18 Saturday, September 30, 2006 3:16 PM
I am having a really difficult time getting used to the new forums and the way it will format and reformat a post on editing. My apologies for that big block of text. It isn't how I typed it. But I gootta rtun, can't fix it now
starkers
Reply #19 Saturday, September 30, 2006 5:05 PM
Reply #19 Saturday, September 30, 2006 5:05 PM
Okay, there's going to be some who won't like Vista and stick with XP, but that's their choice, just like it's mine to run with Vista when it eventually goes gold.
At the moment I'm running the 5728 update to RC1 and I'm happy with what I've seen so far....with tweaks and improvements yet to come prior to final release, Vista will become as stable/reliable as XP. It's only early days yet, so harsh criticism of Vista at this stage I think is unwarranted, particularly when it comes from someone who hasn't even tested the betas to have even the slightest feel for it.
There is one criticism, however, I do agree with, and that is of the proposed price range of the Vista versions. MS really needs to reconsider that if they want the average PC user to get enthusiastic about upgrading...if they don't then sales will be disappointing and fall short of their hopes/expectations.
As for the hardware requirements, well yeah, Vista is more resource intensive than XP, but my it runs adequately on my wife's machine: 2.66ghz Celeron, 512mb DDR400 RAM, ATI Radeon 9550 256mb, Soundblaster Live. Okay, her Vista experience is currently 2.9 and not so fast, but with the extra gig of RAM going in next week, her overall performance will improve and the score to 3.3, which according to MS is a reasonable rating for most home users.
Now my wife's PC is by no means top end or high performance, so if Vista runs on it and meets her needs, then it will run reasonably well on most mid-range PC's for the average user. The only person who'll want to get more out of it is the power user, and if they are indeed a genuine power user, then their machine is already more than Vista capable, so I don't understand this bitching about hardware requirements. The only people who might have a Vista performance concern would be those running something like a 486 dinosaur...in which case, they'd be pushing to get the best out of XP as it is and should be looking at a hardware upgrade anyway.
The fact remains, Vista will soon become MS' flagship OS and we're going to have to get used to it....like it or not, that's where Windows is headed.
At the moment I'm running the 5728 update to RC1 and I'm happy with what I've seen so far....with tweaks and improvements yet to come prior to final release, Vista will become as stable/reliable as XP. It's only early days yet, so harsh criticism of Vista at this stage I think is unwarranted, particularly when it comes from someone who hasn't even tested the betas to have even the slightest feel for it.
There is one criticism, however, I do agree with, and that is of the proposed price range of the Vista versions. MS really needs to reconsider that if they want the average PC user to get enthusiastic about upgrading...if they don't then sales will be disappointing and fall short of their hopes/expectations.
As for the hardware requirements, well yeah, Vista is more resource intensive than XP, but my it runs adequately on my wife's machine: 2.66ghz Celeron, 512mb DDR400 RAM, ATI Radeon 9550 256mb, Soundblaster Live. Okay, her Vista experience is currently 2.9 and not so fast, but with the extra gig of RAM going in next week, her overall performance will improve and the score to 3.3, which according to MS is a reasonable rating for most home users.
Now my wife's PC is by no means top end or high performance, so if Vista runs on it and meets her needs, then it will run reasonably well on most mid-range PC's for the average user. The only person who'll want to get more out of it is the power user, and if they are indeed a genuine power user, then their machine is already more than Vista capable, so I don't understand this bitching about hardware requirements. The only people who might have a Vista performance concern would be those running something like a 486 dinosaur...in which case, they'd be pushing to get the best out of XP as it is and should be looking at a hardware upgrade anyway.
The fact remains, Vista will soon become MS' flagship OS and we're going to have to get used to it....like it or not, that's where Windows is headed.
boss0190
Reply #20 Saturday, September 30, 2006 11:35 PM
Reply #20 Saturday, September 30, 2006 11:35 PM
The people complaining about Vista's price are more than likely the people who will spend $30 a week at Starbucks and $40 a week on fast food or a couple of pizza deliveries without a thought. Consider what you're getting out of Vista for the price and years of use you will get from it and the price is no big deal. Cut out a couple of coffees and a pizza a week and it's paid for in a month.
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Reply #1 Thursday, September 21, 2006 12:56 PM