Comments on: How popular is Vista?

For each Vista user there are 8 Windows XP users

[michael7272nalder]

reams of the stuff printed....lol ha hahaha haha hah aha

[michael7272nalder]

c ya on the b side catch the mouse?tyuud bgy^^^.

[csharpman]

I think john55440 hit the nail on the head. You get Vista when you get a new computer. If you have an older machine that runs 2000 or 98, you're asking for some real misery if you try to run Vista on it and if you have a machine that runs XP, why switch? I just bought a laptop with Vista on it and I'm not having any problems. (I did have to meticulously scrub it of the usual crapware and disable some of the silly user account protections. Microsoft seems to have gotten into this weird mode where users can't be trusted to do really simple things, but I think this, too, will pass.) Will I upgrade the two Windows XP machines in our house to Vista? Probably never. I've been there - upgrading OS, memory, hard drives, graphic cards, processors - not worth it. If the durn thing doesn't do what you need it to, get something else and take the tax write-off on the old stuff.

The point is: if there's 8 XP boxes out there for every Vista box, I'm not surprised. That just means a lot of people have computers that are more than a year old.

[808man]

I haven't had any negative experiences with Vista since I purchased a new computer in June of 2007. My old computer with XP expired. Initially I was hesitant due to all the negative comments on software compatibilities but none came to fruition. Everything worked fine. Even the start up time on my Vista is very acceptable. So far so good...knock on wood.

[ray jackson]

I think you will find vista catching up very fast as most retailers are now selling all there products with vista allready on the system i have found vista a pain because most of my software that i was using on my last computer with 2000 pro will not run on vista

[Grimbles]

Been running Vista Home Premium for about 3 weeks alongside XP on a dual boot system.....Vista is superb and is a lot faster than XP on my machine, when I boot back to XP now it looks and feels so clunky and passe........Comparing Vista to XP is akin to comparing a Ferrari with a Mazda.

[JCipo]

Let me add one more comment to this Vista thing. As an experienced software and computer designer (mostly from the past) I have been able to successfully get all of my important programs to finally run with Vista. I have cut down the startup time as well. However, this was done with almost 30 years of training.. Why does one have to be a computer pro to get Vista operating properly? I feel that Vista is still a hostile program that, if it could speak, would say.....you do it my way or else. An operating system should not be designed like this! And Microsoft could clean up this program if it wanted to, but when your number one, who cares.

[mariyajokes]

Guys !! Look at every review from PC World to ZDNet / CNET and on most popular computer related sites. The bottom-line from everyone is unanimous - Vista sucks. It may be a great OS and a great improvement in terms of technology and features but as it was mentioned rightly on one of the computing articles - the major changes are for sysadmins and improvements on security issues as well as for security conscious users. Lots of eye candy to compete with Mac OS X and the Linux distros but at the cost of speed and reduced performance.

I bought my new laptop about 8 months ago - it had windows vista home premium and the laptop was more or less top-of-the-line but as the days passed the startup and shutdown as well as hibernation time took longer and longer. A detailed check and analysis revealed that my very fast machine had suddenly become slower and Vista was actually saying that i need more RAM in just 3 weeks !! ridiculous - of course there were quite some interesting features like the memory management features as well as ability to use a USB thumbdrive or memory stick as additional memory to speed up file access etc and "smart" copying feature - the one in XP and every other windows version sucks !! Besides that there was very little to entice me to keep using Windows Vista. However file copying and deleting took soooooo painfully long and not to mention the user rights popup (that i disabled later) kept popping up and a variety of other hassles including a very slow machine made me decide to downgrade to XP and see whether my machine would perform any better !

To my surprise XP beat Vista hands down on the speed, performance and reliability and ever since I haven't bothered using Vista. Now I know that the "Home" versions of MS software is usually crap, slow and riddled with bugs or many useful features disabled to entice you to upgrade to the Professional / Business / Ultimate editions (aka XP Pro). XP Home sucks much like Windows ME. Somewhere in the comments one person has mentioned comparing Win 95 and XP. Please my friend !! we are not comparing Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 !! - XP is NT based and 95 / 98 is primarily DOS based in a way. However you may compare Win 98 to Win XP and I will say that many older devices and programs don't work with Win XP so people have to switch to Win 98. Many of my customers prefer that - despite the fact that MS has stopped producing, selling and supporting the OS.

There should be a strong reason to upgrade / change your OS. For Win XP it came in the form of improved performance, stability, security and enhanced driver facilities etc. The differences between Win 98 and XP were too great to give people more than one reason to upgrade - any existing complaints with XP's performance were laid to rest with XP SP2. Vista has yet to see such SP to convince more people to upgrade. That and the fact that many older devices and programs will not work with Vista make it less attractive for people whose hardware and software is serving them well. Vista may be great for gamers and such alike but not for power users. The people who won't notice anything will be people who have very less interaction with the OS itself. People who use the OS extensively will find Vista's performance and other issues disturbing despite all its new "features" and enhancements.

Vista has too far memory and system requirements and most people won't literally consider upgrading just to be "hip" and cool .. Gamers and Modders may do that but not ordinary folk. For some businesses adoption may be a part of cost-cutting in form of reduced support costs by using the latest OS / software but other than that its not that lucrative to upgrade to Vista or spend the money on that. I've been recommending to all my friends and clients not to use Vista but ask for XP when purchasing new systems (and yes XP Pro SP2 at that). Now I haven't used Vista Premium / Ultimate / Business edition but I believe these may have better functionality and performance than the Home editions - but if the home edition is anything to go by - that may not truly be the case.

In the end - one has to decide - am I happy with my current system and performance or do i want to upgrade to a faster machine with Vista that will only make it slower and crawl no matter how fast it is !

And if you don't like MS - use OS X or Ubuntu. If your antique hardware doesn't support any of them - may I suggest Puppy Linux. Will make your Pentium II seem like a Core Duo !!

[lt x]

I've been using Vista since September when I bought a Sony Vaio. Overall, I'm satisfied with the product but it still has its quirks such as having to rebuild the Search Index once in a while because Vista's Search Index isn't smart enough to know when a file is no longer on the drive. Yes, Search can still result in files that have been deleted a long time ago, or not find files that do exist on the drive. A plus for Vista: If you're the type of person who is REALLY invested in file organizations then Vista's search options are much beter than XP's. I am not a big user when it comes to organizing files such as music and photos. I don't need to have mu music oraganized under Song, Artiist, Genre, Bit Sample, etc. I use my computer to do basic things like record and play music, watch movies, word processing and some simple music and video studio editing. There are some things that XP does that is much quicker than Vista for example, I still haven't figured out how to Refresh the view of a file using Vista, so I use the XP Classic View and hit Refresh. Simple things like that is what slows my production a bit but thank Thor that Vista programmers had the foresight to allow us to use Classic View with Vistas in order for users like me who don't have the time or patience to figure out how Vista does it. My laptop with Vista and 2GB RAM is about 20 - 30% faster than my XP laptops. Vista isn't as bad as critics say, but it isn't as fantastic as Microsoft claims, either.

[jacobMarley233]

What's with all the Vista bashing. It's a good OS. XP looks like crap in comparison. And the user interface is pretty nifty. You guys can stick with XP if you're so old that you have trouble learning a slightly different interface, but for the rest of us still with a pulse Vista is just fine.