I'm a software engineer who's used every Microsoft OS since Win 3.1 and I have Vista Ultimate w/SP1 on my HP Quad core rig and to be honest Vista isn't worth it. It's a resource hog, the UAC is annoying, file management is slow and sometimes even seems to just hang for a moment. The media center doesn't work as well as commerical applications. I'm going back to XP. Vista is an embarassment.

Then turn UAC off... Get something better than one gig of ram the media center is fine... if you dont like it go back to the old media center (which vista has). File management IS slow, but not as slow as xp's or mac's

That post was retarded, all you did was whine about the NEW features that are "glitchy" if even that! what about all the "old" xp features that STILL WORK.

Don't listen to the Macophillias. Vista owns.

I had some problem with my home machine running Vista at the beginning. The system runs better after SP1. Actually, a lot better. Vista seems to take control of 1/3 of memory no matter how much one has. With 2GB, it took control over 1/3; and with 4GB, it still takes 1/3. The hard drive space for Vista is insane (40GB). There is no excuse for that.

I actually like UAC. It is the way it should have been 10 years ago. Though M$'s implementation is just annoying, and they should learn how it was done by Spybot.

People need to clarify what they mean by "resource hog". If they mean the memory footprint then I think there is a lack of understanding. Vista uses free memory and does useful stuff with it. It also throttles it, so when you load a large app/game it will shrink its footprint.

Granted vista isn't the most amazing thing ever....ever but it is better than xp in many areas. I personally don't need or want to go back to xp, I am surprised to say that. I was weary before I switched but after some extensive research I found it was time to move on.

The biggest launch issue for Vista was Nvidia. Sorry to say, but its true. The drivers took well over a year to work out most of the bugs. They had the new driver model long before Vista released, but they chose to not bother working in it in advanced.

Games now run practically(its almost within the margin or error now) identical on Vista and XP.

One thing some do not understand is having lots of memory not to use it is a waste. So when Vista decides to cache up all your free ram to preload apps you use often, is it really a memory hog? It takes no more then the percentage difference from 98 to XP did.

Anyone remember how bugged XP was at launch?

personally I have it turned off but I know what you are saying. It has potential. They just need to make it less annoying. I hear the reason it's tough todo is that vista has to take into account backward compatibility and crappy coding practices

The biggest issue with Vista is the Hardware Vendors. They sell dirt cheap computers with horrible video chipsets, only 512 to 1024MB of RAM & then load the OS with a ton of crap offers/"free" software. The customer then gets pissed & blames Microsoft saying Vista sucks & Macs are better. If they spent a little extra cash on RAM & uninstalled the crap software they would see the benefits of Vista.

I'm running Vista Ultimate 64 Bit with 8GB's of RAM ($180) & I'm quite happy....haven't rebooted in Months.

After using Vista with and without SP1 at work, I can safely say that I'll stick to XP until MS manages to force me out of it. There is no logical reason to upgrade. None.

I'm so surprised that so many people complain about UAC but in the mean time praising Mac/Linux (Ubuntu). The reality is Mac and Linux also UAC and they also prompt the dialog box for admin tasks. And even worse, on Mac and Linux it requires to enter your password everytime and it cannot be turned off. Apparently those people have never used a Mac or Linux

Horse shit.He doesn't know what's he talking about.Everybody give him a thumbs down.

"Many of which can be attributed to bad GPU drivers from Nvidia nvidia . While it would be unwise for Microsoft to point the finger at a major hardware partner, internal Microsoft memos put 18 percent of all Vista crashes around launch time as a result of unstable Nvidia drivers."
Typo? Also,this is the reason I use ATi,their drivers always support the newest technologies with as few errors as possible - and yes,I do have both Nvidia and ATi graphics cards,ATi tends to be more acceptable.

I don't like vista either.

The upside:
1. pretty graphics.
2. UAC that runs every program on low privilege.

The downside:
1. Slow File system! Much slower when copying files from network share than XP (at least in my experience).

2. Bad UAC design. I have to keep clicking OK ever step of the way. After a while it became the normal and I will click OK on viruses. On XP/Linux you can just use a low privilege account. I always use low privileged accounts for development/games/web browsing etc. I fail to see why UAC is necessary. If microsoft really wants a robust system, it should make the security granular, like selinux, you can specify which operation is allowed every step of the way.

So it looks like 2 features that aren't what they should be and now the whole OS is condemned. Doesn't make sense to me, I switched from XP Pro to Vista Home Prem 64bit SP1 and wouldn't move back to XP. I so far haven't encounted any problems. It runs great and I have no complaints. I also have 4gb of ram.

For all those people saying "there is no reason to upgrade from XP." I've got news for you... there is "no reason" to upgrade to XP from 2000.

Vista is more of the same (and by that I mean improvements), but it isn't going to do your laundry and find you a girlfriend to do it for you.

DX10, security, stability, easy of use, aesthetics, etc. Vista is in every way superior to XP if you have a remotely decent computer.

"Smartest man on earth, next to the other two guys who know some basic computer knowledge here.." lol

Vista just had a unlucky run, because of Nvidia, and because Shrapple (definition of shrapple: Sucky-He11-raising-Ripoff APPLE) had so many unlogical and unfactual ads bashing it at the time, and because we have so many gulible computer illiterate idoits that actually LISTENED to a COMPANY selling them a $1000+ product!

Now THAT requires you to hold your sign high!

Vista is epic fail in business use - you couldn't even install Microsoft SQL 2005 on Vista without troubles when Vista launched. Ridiculous file copying over network, like half hour for a few Mb file. CD's burned on Vista unreadable on XP machines etc,etc...

The worst part about Vista and XP is activation (DRM).I still prefer Windows 2000 Pro.
I truly hate DRM.

Fixed in SP1 I get the same speeds with XP and Vista

I believe vista is a upgrade towards gamers, buisness wise i don't think it does a buisness any good. I have yet to own vista so idk if i am right or wrong as of yet. Running Win XP64-bit and i like it, just wish my CS:CZ would work on it=/.

So, I read this article, and every paragraph except for the last one beat vista down for all the crap that went on before sp1. What the hell?

If an update comes out, why still complain about the old version?

The OS runs fine now. Mine uses less than 1/4 of my 4GB of ram.

The OS runs like crud on machines you can buy because vendors load them with low ram and tons of crappy freeware that all starts when windows boots. If your machine is running with no-crap-attached, even if it does have 512MB of ram, it runs just as fast as windows XP with 512mb of ram.

Good god people, Vista is an excellent operating system now. get used to it. There's no reason to keep XP, and no reason to switch to a mac.

For what it was meant for, gaming systems (I'm right with that, right?)
It works beatifully on a strong system, and it doesn't really hog that much resources, comparing to the features it incorporates in those 1gb.
Win defender, search indexer (I love it since my 1tb drive, searches now just take a couple of seconds) the new caching system also works great, turn it off and apps are noticeably slower to load..

On old systems... It's a disaster, and it's released on MUCH to low specced systems most of the time, Vista on a laptop is just stupid.

And I would agree, 100% of my issues with vista at launch was Nvidia, but not graphics, motherboard drivers. They crashed ALL the time in all kinds of ways. Eight months into vista, nvidia finally released a driver that worked, only the odd BSOD.

Now with an all-AMD system, it's stable as a rock.

Oh, and BTW: my university is converted all of their engineering machines to windows vista. They run applications soo much faster, and there are many pluses to networking vista; features that XP didn't offer. I like the business version of vista. It's great.

The clusters still run on linux though!

I will switch to vista when I get my updated nehalem system, or when ssd's become cheap enough. Still very improbable that I would get vista.. Windows 7 maby? DX11?

Vista is great! I work at a small PC store in northern Ontario and Vista has been a godsend to the bottom line. We are averaging 5 to 8 downgrades a week – and we are a 3 person business. I've never seen so many new Dells in my life. Thanks to Vista we have been able to re-establish relationships with customers who previously bought all of their hardware from Dell and HP. It’s hard to turn to Dell to remove Vista from your laptop. Better still at $79 a downgrade (XP not included) our service bay is humming. It started pretty slow but after SP1 the downgrade momentum has grown. It seems that most of our customers are still having problems with Vista and are just giving up. I know that M$ and many of the people posting here claim SP1 fixed most of the issues but the reaction of our customers would suggest that we may have mislead again.

My own experience with Vista has been mostly negative. I moved from a 64 bit version to a 32 bit but there are still a have dozen games/programs that either won't run or randomly crashed. Working in a PC store my hardware is always up to date and my RAM slots are overflowing.

I dual booted for awhile but I found I was favoring XP to the point that Vista was just taking up space. Last week I finally wiped it from my system. I am jealous of the guys who got Vista to work without issues. It breaks my heart to see my 8GB of RAM being displayed as 3GB in XP and I'll miss the promise of DirectX 10 but that's about it.

I'm going to upgrade to Vista Premium 64 bit pretty soon whenever I get my new computer built. DDR2 ram is so cheap these days that it really isn't an excuse. I don't see how you can possibly complain about UAC because you can turn it off in like 2 minutes if you want. If M$ gives you an option you don't want and you have the ability to turn it off so easily why the he11 are you complaining?

i've been using vista since the first beta. it's rock solid on most hardware, and the new features are great! i can see people trying to run it on their obsolete systems and bumming out on the results, get a decent system, and it will run like a train!

Never heard this before.

Dudes, vista sucks. Time to get of the microsloth train. They keep making things "better" by bloating the crap out of them.

wow, UAC annoying? Turn it off and stop complaining. Slower than XP? well of course its slower- it was released 5-6 years after. Don't you think hardware has improved one bit? By that flawed logic, XP ought to be faster than 2000, me, 98, 95, and 3.1. I hate seeing these illogical statements by people who have no idea what they are talking about.

Bag Vista all you like, But I must say after service pack 1 and adding more ram(6gb total) to system, It is now as fast if not faster than xp.
2gb doesn't cut it, 4gb or more is the sweet spot.
I will back up everything and install 64bit vista(ultimate comes with both versions), And see how it performs as 32bit vista is limited and only using 3-4gb of the 6gb i have installed.
From what I have heard 64bit is more stable in certain games, Age of conan doesn't crash like it does on 32bit!
In my opinion I think most peoples problems probably come down to having an average system with not enough ram or outdated graphics card,folks its not windows 98/xp having 1gb or 2gb is a joke on a graphics intensive operating system!
Save those $$$ and upgrade, Then judge Vista!

I deem vista winner and anyone else loser in this argument by the sheer amount of positive vista ratings.

owned.