Anybody else fed up with Vista?

Good lord. I knew the stories about the unreliability of Windows Vista. However, I needed a new system pretty badly, and when purchasing, I didn't think twice of buying one with Vista installed. I figured surely the kinks were worked out by now.

I'm going to lose it. I swear to goodness. I've never come across something so unstable. My biggest problem? Simply navigating through folders/directories, no matter what software I'm using! Sometimes I'll bring up a folder, and it won't list any files, even though I know darn well they're there. Other times, it will first list them in REVERSE alphabetical order.

But more frustratingly...it simply locks up many times. I've been trying to work on my website tonight, which is another story since I've switched to Expression Web from FrontPage and am trying to convert all my pages. I have it figured out, but, the dang thing keeps crashing on me! Expression Web has crashed 10 times in the last 2 hours, EVERY TIME just when I was simply trying to navigate through some folders, or look for or hyperlink to a file.

I hope to god the promised Service Pack fixes this stuff, or I'm going to uninstall Vista and load up XP.

I don't know what to say Terry. I bought a new computer last November and made sure that I had downgrade rights to XP included. They actually installed XP and gave me a disc to "upgrade" to Vista. The last review I read was, I believe, on the Digital Imaging forum. The report was short and sweet. The reviewer identified himself as a technical reviewer for Vista, not a Microsoft reviewer. All his personal computers were running XP PRO. I didn't need any more. I have heard that Microsoft is planning a SP3 for XP this summer. I hope that is true.

That said, I can see where you got hooked. The "reviews" that are swarming over the internet sing praises of Vista. I suspect that these are users who are either in the pay of Microsoft or those that don't try to take the system beyond its limits. Limits that are not supposed to be reached. I would investigate with the PC provider to see if there is some way to get "down grade" rights to XP. A hint that you will spread the word that they are supplying PCs with a pre-alfa release of an operating system may help to tip the balance in your favor.

I have also heard that, if XP SP3 is indeed released this summer, that the date for the end of support for XP will change from 2010 to 2015. This is all second and third hand at best, so take it for what it is worth.

I certainly wish you luck getting your new computer to work the way it was advertised.

I feel your pain. I just bought a new Dell laptop with Vista preinstalled. It took me about five minutes to figure out that I needed to dump Vista and reinstall XP. Vista wouldn't run a few important software packages that I absolutely needed to use. What a mess.

I have Vista on my laptop (thankfully, not my desktop which I use for photo work!). Piece of garbage IMO. Unable to hold monitor cailbration for even 5 minutes! Terrible. I consider it doing me a favor in one aspect though - it convinced me to never buy another PC! I will definitiely buy a Mac the next time I buy a computer.

I feel your pain. I've spent at least 8 hours on tech support chat with Dell trying to get mine to work properly. I've had multiple blue screen crashes and then for a period of 3-4 weeks it would just randomly go black for a few seconds and then recover with an error message about the graphics card driver. After those 8 hours of chatting it actually seems to be working properly right now... knock on wood. I'm with Bill and am seriously considering a switch to Mac which I never thought I'd do.

mike

I have a laptop with Vista on it and I absolutely HATE using it! What a piece of crap that software is. In so many ways..... I'll be upgrading my desktop soon and it'll be a Dell with XP.

I've got XP Pro running on my PC, and have no intention of "upgrading" to Vista.

My daughter is interested in graphic design, so I went into Dell's site last month to see about buying her a faster Windows box. Dell was so intent on pushing Vista with their products that I bought her a Mac Pro, which will become mine in 1.5 years when she goes off to university with a new Mac laptop. Then it will be goodbye Windows for this family.

I'm thankfully still running XP on my main system. My son's new machine has Vista - all I can say is thank goodness it's on his machine and not mine. I still have to fix his when something goes wrong, and finding Vista-compatible drivers is still a treat.

Hopefully the SP will make things better instead of worse.

I'm fairly sure my next system will be a Mac.

Last spring I met a gal who is the head of IT for a mid-western corporation. They uninstalled Vista from ALL of the company's PCs and reinstalled XP Pro.

The computer guy who has been custom building my computers since 1991 will only install Vista on a new computer if it is with the understanding that there will be problems and that he will not work on fixing them.

My wife just bought two new computers for her law practice...both with XP Pro.

If Microsoft discontinues support for XP without having fixed the problems with Vista it will be time to switch to the Mac!

You know it can't be a good sign when you need 1 gig of memory just to run both the operating system and the Solitare program.

I have a fair amount of money in Windows-only programs, most of which I use. Even the Adobe products I have are Windows and will be at best, a pain to switch to a Mac platform. I know that when I look at my next machine, Macs will be looked at VERY seriously. Vista, or whatever it morphs to a year or two down the road, is looking like a technological barrier to productivity.

And that's my last computer i brought just a coupe of months ago was a Mac. I will never switch back

yikes. I might have to do what Keith does the next time I buy a new computer. unless it comes with XP.

As someone that has worked in computer engineering, mainly UNIX computers, as test eng for many years here in Silicon Valley, I've always hated the way when Windows crashes and freezes, whatever the version, one cannot do anything but hit the reset switch. Accordingly there is little a user can do to understand why a Windows system crashes. In the early days all computers had NMI switches aka non-maskable interrupt switches that in many situations can bring a system back into primitive debug modes. Note in some more primitive internal fault cases microprocessors cannot recover and must be reset. However Microsoft has never trusted the public with such tools because it is possible to corrupt memory. But if Microsoft wanted to they could incorporate such functionality into their system that would respond to freezing crashes more sanely. PC techs with access to internal hardware depending on the system design can sometimes get around that. I suspect Microsoft won't though because they really don't want the public to understand why their machines and OS problems are occurring. Thus by providing nothing they keep everyone guessing whether a problem is due to PC hardware, a running application, or the operating system. One only needs to remember how a couple decades ago when Intel was sued by all manner of lawyers after one new microprocessor for pc's came out and a bug was made public with major media coverage. The ridiculous thing at the time was there had never been a product release on complex OS software or micro chips that didn't have at least a problems so the lawyers were suddenly holding them to unreasonable expectations that has left the whole industry afraid since. Some would chime systems and OS software ought to be tested more rigorously. The problem with that notion is today their is a vast amount of software, peripheral hardware, and networking that interfaces to computers so running thorough testing is impossible. Thus manufacturers tend to use Beta sites to have early users thrash out the obvious bugs that got past the core engineering. ...David

Thirteen replies so far and not one in defense of Vista. That can't be a good sign!

It's amazing the difference you get in "real-world" discussions of Vista vs. some of what you find online.

I think Microsoft has a very active PR department...

I'm running Leopard, Tiger and XP on my Macbook Pro. The best of both worlds. Tiger is by the far the most stable. Lots to like about Leopard too especially with the parallels update but a few programs like my old Toast 7 doesn't run and it's not quite as stable as Tiger or XP.

Your description of Vista sounds just like my current XP Pro! Both my windows systems were getting sluggish so I backed everything up, reformatted the hard drives and did a clean install of XP Pro. Any difference in system performance? Nope. None. Nada. Zip. Both my PCs routinely crash when trying to do the most processor-intensive tasks such as----viewing the contents of a folder or trying to view a pdf file!

I've had it. No more Windoze for me. My next machine will be a Mac. (Now if I could just convince my wife to loosen the purse strings....... )

What's Vista ?

(OS X Leopard user here)

I hvae Vista on a machine I use for image processing (Lightroom and CS3) as well as general computing and I find it fine.

Its the same everytime Microsoft brings out updated software. Microsoft bashing. SO boring, SO predictable.

Yes it has different ways of doing things so a little re-learning is inevitable.

Problems with drivers? MS give software manufacturers lots of opportunities to work with them in up-dating their products so can hardly be blamed when they didn't co-operate.

On a quick reading the above replies include people who only ran it for five minutes, people who had problems with drivers, some who hadn't even used it, problems with monitor calibration (?), third part experiences and the inevitable Apple fans.

The first piece of Apple hardware I had was an Ipod. Now that was junk, inoperable interface and zero battery life which required returning to Apple for battery re-newal at an exorbitant cost. Gave up on it and gave it to my son. He didn't keep it long either. Bought my wife one. She gave up on it after 12 months. Two other sons had them (It was a big day for B&H). All of us have given up on them. We are all now using a variety of MP3 and video players.

First contact with Apple software was with Itunes which with one of its "Upgrade" re-arranged ALL of the music on my computer while deleting quite a few music files while it was at it. A really delightful experience and from reading on the net not just mine alone.

And all those unfortunate people who queued for hours for their new Iphone only to find the price cut to ribbons within a matter of weeks? Thank YOU Mr Jobs.

I'm not Apple bashing just trying to point up that all have their faults

Yes I've used Apple computers but if anyone thinks switching from a Microsoft
interface to an Apple one doesn't require a lot of re-learning they're in for a shock.

Vista is fine.

The old saying "A bad workman blames his tools" is as true today as it ever was.

Paul Mc Cann

I have few problems with the latest versions of XP and XP Pro, and what ever problems I encounter I can work out. In fact, the 3 XP machines I routinely use have been flawlesss for years. But I am also very careful about the programs I load, keep antivirus and OS patches up to date, etc.

We purchased a Dell with Vista for Ms. Emily this past year. I like the way Vista looks but it took me a while to figure some things out. The biggest headache to date is that I've spent hours trying to get her Vista Dell to find a network printer - one that every other PC we've used in our home finds without a problem. I'm sure there's an answer somewhere, but I just don't have the time or patience to track it down. So for now, Ms. Em can't print when she comes home unless she plugs in a printer.

Just like past Microsoft OS releases, it will take a few years to get it reasonably sorted, so I cannot blame new PC buyers from insisting on XP.

BTW, according to our site stats, more and more users are surfing in on Macs.

I have three computers, one desk top running XP, one lap top running XP pro and a desk top running Vista.

I have had hardware issues with the Vista machine that Dell has taken care of. A faulty USB bus was messing me up.

Is Vista different? Yes, but then so was XP when I upgraded from Win98.

Why am I running the desktop with XP? Because I have a few software programs won't work on my Vista machine, but isn't that the fault of the software vendor not MS?

The software vendors are in the business of making money, and they "DO" want you to buy the latest version cause that puts money in their pocket. It seems like it is easier for them to say "you must buy the latest version for it to work on Vista" than to make driver updates available for the older version of the software.

Terry, I had some issues running Expression Web on my Vista machine, until I downloaded the updates for it, after that it has been running as smooth as silk.

The problem seems to be that MS has given us a product we didn't ask for. When Vista was first announced it was supposed to be registry free. That changed. I have 3 machines running XP and every year to year and a half I run into major issues requiring a reinstall of the OS and all the software on one machine or another even though I keep all my security stuff updated and routinely get the MS updates.

What we want is a stable platform. I personally don't care if it is XP or Vista , Mac, or XYZ, just give me something that works.

Re the driver issues, I wonder how much extra our software costs because the manufacturers have to design new drivers every time MS decides to come out with a new OS?

The market is apparently speaking. As Jim mentioned more and more are using Macs and more and more are insisting on XP for their PCs and not dealing with Vista.

Paul McCann wrote "A bad workman blames his tools" is as true today as it ever was.

You seem to have the same attitude that MS has - smug. I guess it's my fault that freakin Vista can't hold monitor calibration? I guess it's my fault that Vista requires a ton of memory? I guess it's my fault that every time Vista updates it erases my existing drivers?

All I can say is that there must be millions and millions of us dumb ole poor workmen out there!

Bill, I couldn't have said it better myself.

I've been a big supporter of MS and windows for years. I've never "bashed" them or even considered switching to Mac. In fact, I've always considered Mac's success to be the result of shrewd marketing more than actual substance.

However, when I spend 4 grand on a product I expect it to work at least as well as what it replaces. That is not the case with my Dell Vista machine. Who's fault is that?

mike

I was using Vista for 4 months at work before buying a new pc and after struggling with it, I decided to go with Vista. So far I'm pleased with my choice. Microsoft Windows has been such a target for hackers, that MS put in mechanisms like User Account Control that try to thwart a virus or trojan taking over your computer without your knowledge. MS has also been burned by users deleting things that they had no business deleting so in Vista they refused to give them access to certain directories.

For users like me, these mechanisms are a total pain in the a**, but once you know how to turn them off, they're a minor annoyance.

I like Vista. It's pretty and stable. I like Window defender that constantly checks for spyware and is always asking to download new definitions. Like Bill, I am having trouble with monitor calibration but I don't believe that is OS related but driver or monitor related. I need to do more research on that.

I didn't have a lot of money to spend. For $2k I got a powerful computer with a gorgeous 24" monitor and 4gigs of RAM. I looked at Mac prices and the best I could do is an IMac at at least $500 more.

If you've never worked with Vista, perhaps you should stick with XP but if you're familiar with it then it really isn't a big deal. And with the popularity of digital photography, I believe MS will make it more photography friendly with each upgrade.

- Dan.

Paul McCann wrote..."A bad workman blames his tools" is as true today as it ever was.

Let me guess...you work for Microsoft? Why else would you come up with a statement like this?

A "bad workman" blames his tools? So it's my fault that Vista hangs, just when navigating folders? It's my fault when Vista simply locks my entire system?

I've updated every driver I could, and have downloaded every Expression Web and Vista update, and still there are problems. Can't even navigate to different folders? How much more basic could you get? Pardon me if I choose to blame Microsoft rather than my "bad workmanship".

Check this out: We are not alone evidently.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Tu5CPVoP8

I know I'm in the minority, but I wanted to take a moment to say something nice about Vista Ultimate 64. Like many others, for the past year I've bashed all things Vista (and probably rightfully so in many instances). However, I've now changed my tune.

I recently built a new extremely high-end machine with first rate components from scratch, and it just was not up to snuff with XP Pro. The performance was sluggish at best, and photoshop would literally run out of memory after working with one image. I was ready to purchase a Mac. Out of one final act of desperation to try to salvage the money I had dumped into this high end computer, I purchased the thing I thought I would hate the most: Vista 64 Ultimate (I also downloaded all the appropriate 64-bit driver for my Eye One 2, Epson 2200, etc. etc.).

After doing a clean install of Vista 64 Ultimate, my machine now is the processing beast it was meant to be. It eats up everything I can throw at it with plenty of power to spare (and trust me, I push it too it limits regularly). CS3 is just a joy to use now. I've not had a single driver or incompatible software issue under Vista Ultiamte 64 yet. My computer has not crashed once, and Photoshop has never run out of memory. The color calibration is locked in solid without any mysterious dissappearences. Depsite my skeptism, and all the negativety about Vista out there, I'm now a card-carrying convert to Vista 64 Ultimate. As an FYI, the key to Vista success as far as I can gather from reading other experiences on the web is to do a clean install. It was not the devil I thought it would be.

I'm not saying Vista is for everyone. If XP Pro works for you, why change? But in my particular case, Vista saved me about $5000 (the $2000 already spent to build my machine and the $3000 needed to buy a Mac and the acccompanying mac software). I still have my eyes set on a MacBook Pro down the road, but for now I'm more than happy with my Vista 64 system. And I say this as no lover of Microsoft.

Hi Brian. I'm glad to hear it's working out for you! To what do you account the difference in performance, the fact that's it's 64 bit, or something else?

I think the 64-bit really helps the speed. I've been a long time user of XP Pro, and have set it up any many machines with nothing but success. But I just could not get it to recognize my RAID setup properly and I had all these strange idiosyncratic issues (SATA drives dissappearing and reappearing, memory hogs, etc._ with XP Pro and the new hardware. I tried different versions of XP Pro, slipstreaming in the updates and the appropriate drivers, and nothing made a difference. With Vista, everything just works, and it works fast. I'm fairly good with computers, but I understand that technology is occasionally idiosyncratic. In my unique circumstance, with my high end machine, Vista solved numerous idiosyncrasies.

My experience mirrored Brian's with Vista 64.