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Question of the Day: Is it acceptable for adults to walk around barefoot in public?
Vista's UI is a 'step back,' analyst says
- Thread starter rpm
- Start date
From what you've heard - yea... perhaps you should try it yourself!.
Vista has its bugs, it has its nasties, but they are not as bad as half the people make them out to be.
I don't really have a driver problem The only things i can't use is my Nvidia MX440 as my 3rd monitor... no loss, the card isnt supported. My Blue tooth Dongle aint working either - no loss, hardly use it!.
Vista is great. People so love to nit pick. So what if it take 3 milliseconds to display a menu, I mean gee whiz. And the people who can't aim with their mouse pointer doesn't deserve to work with a mouse.
Anyway, it's early and I'm grumpy.
Anyway, it's early and I'm grumpy.
Vista's eye candy fools the users into thinking that they are more productive. And so they foolishly defend it.
You use or have used Vista? The RTM Vista and not a beta or RC1 nor RC2. Have you used it for more than a week? If you have, then I believe you are entitled to your opinion. If not, then please... hush.
I've been on vista now since early december. And its running quite smooth after several updates etc. The new set of ATI drivers work well. the system is surprisingly responsive.
I've copied and cracked several dvd's to test DRM - honestly.., they copied just as well as in XP. I've shrunk dvd's - works perfectly. I've ripped mp3's, Works fine.
Photoshop CS2 works great, switches off Aero when you launch it, no biggie.
Audition 2 is slow, but it was slow on XP aswell!. Using Audition 1.5, it moans about installing and not being compatable... but works 100%
BUT Vista is ofcourse not without its issues. I tend to look past these knowing it will be resolved, and i find these problems irritating but not too bad at present!. :
1. There seems to be scheduled functions to run in the background. need to track them down because Vista seems to think that they can execute when you play games!
2. After installing that moving desktop background thing, i can't display dual monitor wallpaper, it just won't span both screens
3. My network seems to loose internet connectivity... or atleast that's what it claims, but i'm still online. doesnt really affect my online experience.
4. The original XP problem is back. When XP came out, it had an annoying problem with Icons disappearing from your running tasks... ITS BACK : )
5. Explorer isnt as nice as XP's
6. The file & folder layout of Vista sucks compaired to XP.
Otherwise, I think Vista works great.
I've copied and cracked several dvd's to test DRM - honestly.., they copied just as well as in XP. I've shrunk dvd's - works perfectly. I've ripped mp3's, Works fine.
Photoshop CS2 works great, switches off Aero when you launch it, no biggie.
Audition 2 is slow, but it was slow on XP aswell!. Using Audition 1.5, it moans about installing and not being compatable... but works 100%
BUT Vista is ofcourse not without its issues. I tend to look past these knowing it will be resolved, and i find these problems irritating but not too bad at present!. :
1. There seems to be scheduled functions to run in the background. need to track them down because Vista seems to think that they can execute when you play games!
2. After installing that moving desktop background thing, i can't display dual monitor wallpaper, it just won't span both screens
3. My network seems to loose internet connectivity... or atleast that's what it claims, but i'm still online. doesnt really affect my online experience.
4. The original XP problem is back. When XP came out, it had an annoying problem with Icons disappearing from your running tasks... ITS BACK : )
5. Explorer isnt as nice as XP's
6. The file & folder layout of Vista sucks compaired to XP.
Otherwise, I think Vista works great.
Have used it for about 2 weeks(RTM), moved back to XP.
And my machine is WAY over spec. So Vista ran fine.
I'll have a look at it again when I want to play a game that does not support DX9 anymore.
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Vista's eye candy fools the users into thinking that they are more productive. And so they foolishly defend it.
If you actually understood how to use a pc, window interface, the internet in all its glory, you wouldn't post the same dribble twice
Its not about productivity, its all about enjoyment!
I would say, give it a run for longer than 2 weeks. It does take some time getting used to Vista. I've been running it now since MS let us download it off of their website. I think that it has been 3 months now. I am running it at home, and at work and it hasn't affected my productivity one bit. Whenever I now work on an XP machine, I find myself longing for my Vista PC, it's just that much nicer, better.
The total experience has been a bit bittersweet, having to get the latest software of the software I used, but then again, this is fine. 95% of my software still run on Vista, the other 5% I had to get. Once MS has ironed out all the little kinks, they will have an OS worthy of being a successor to XP.
The total experience has been a bit bittersweet, having to get the latest software of the software I used, but then again, this is fine. 95% of my software still run on Vista, the other 5% I had to get. Once MS has ironed out all the little kinks, they will have an OS worthy of being a successor to XP.
ToxicBunny
Oi! Leave me out of this...
I have been running Vista for about 2 months now... While it has its nice things, there are way too many lil things that just grate on me. I will be rolling back to XP soon.
UAC being the big one, and yes i KNOW i can turn it off, but then some things stop working the way they should.
UAC being the big one, and yes i KNOW i can turn it off, but then some things stop working the way they should.
warichard
Well-Known Member
Search from Start Menu in Vista is far far more productive than the old "search for your app somewhere" method of doing things in Vista, I can probably launch my every day apps (and most of the hard to find stuff that would be menu's and windows deep) also in a couple of seconds because of it. In that way Vista is leaps and bounds more productive than XP or any preceding OS from MS.
The DRM thing, I have no idea what people are going on about, most people seem to believe that it's somehow a method for stopping you playing un-DRM'd content, what absolute rubbish - and can only come from people who have never actually used the OS and tried.
Vista's UI is quite attractive (though I felt the original Longhorn designs were FAR cooler than what Vista has now) and I find the new explorer layout to be quite intuitive myself, definitely allows me to show more content (or less if I want) in an easier fashion than XP did, and having access to common folders at all times on the left bar makes a lot of sense and allows me to get to my user folders faster than XP did in the past.
UAC I feel, while irritating when first installing your box, is a welcome addition and the only times I get UAC prompts now is when either a) I run an app designed for previous versions of Windows that inexplicably require admin access (when they shouldn't and don't) or b) install something, which is not *that* frequent so as to get irritating. The frequency in which I get the popup is very low now as my installation has begun to settle.
Finally there are some kernel level changes which are quite important, such as Superfetch for improving application load times, improved threading, better use of memory (of which Superfetch is a part) and some non-kernel changes which are pretty welcome, such as a "new and improved" network stack - though I must say I've seen a couple of problems with it that have been a bit irritating, and of course the desktop window manager (dwm) which provides you with those nice desktop effects, which while not essential, definitely adds to the whole experience - and for developers who want to extend the system it's far better than XP (and previous Windows version's) GDI-based UI.
That said, Vista isn't perfect, there are some issues:
1) Sometimes if I resize the task bar the quick launch icons jump up by probably 12 pixels, resulting in them being offset incorrectly... can't believe none of the testers picked up on it, or maybe it's just on my machine.
2) The most irritating thing about the (now infrequent) UAC prompts is the screen blanking, I can't believe MS finds that acceptable - there *must* have been a better way to do it.
3) nVidia's drivers are pretty damn sucky atm, so the animated desktop stuff *apparently* takes more CPU than it needs to, but that's more a nVidia problem, not MS.
4) Some apps just don't work, but that list is shrinking now with compatible updates coming out, thank gawd.
5) The new Media Center stuff is okay, but some of it feels like a huge downgrade in usability compared to MCE 2005. Also it's partially broken my ability to transcode videos to the XBOX 360 so I'm waiting for a more stable update to the transcoder to come out.
Is Vista an "ESSENTIAL WINDOWS UPDATE!!!11!!1" no, not really, XP is going to do you fine for quite a while, but while it's not *essential* to update to Vista, there are lots of compelling reasons to do so, for security I would absolutely recommend upgrading to Vista, it is just more secure than previous Windows versions, full stop. If you have a beast of a machine, and want to ultimately get all you can out of it (including a more efficient OS), I would say Vista is probably also a good idea. Note however when I say the OS is more efficient and you want to get all you can out of it, that doesn't mean I'm talking more FPS in games, it means that overall the OS is better at scheduling threads to other applications, arguably better at running media applications, and generally more responsive than previous versions of Windows.
The DRM thing, I have no idea what people are going on about, most people seem to believe that it's somehow a method for stopping you playing un-DRM'd content, what absolute rubbish - and can only come from people who have never actually used the OS and tried.
Vista's UI is quite attractive (though I felt the original Longhorn designs were FAR cooler than what Vista has now) and I find the new explorer layout to be quite intuitive myself, definitely allows me to show more content (or less if I want) in an easier fashion than XP did, and having access to common folders at all times on the left bar makes a lot of sense and allows me to get to my user folders faster than XP did in the past.
UAC I feel, while irritating when first installing your box, is a welcome addition and the only times I get UAC prompts now is when either a) I run an app designed for previous versions of Windows that inexplicably require admin access (when they shouldn't and don't) or b) install something, which is not *that* frequent so as to get irritating. The frequency in which I get the popup is very low now as my installation has begun to settle.
Finally there are some kernel level changes which are quite important, such as Superfetch for improving application load times, improved threading, better use of memory (of which Superfetch is a part) and some non-kernel changes which are pretty welcome, such as a "new and improved" network stack - though I must say I've seen a couple of problems with it that have been a bit irritating, and of course the desktop window manager (dwm) which provides you with those nice desktop effects, which while not essential, definitely adds to the whole experience - and for developers who want to extend the system it's far better than XP (and previous Windows version's) GDI-based UI.
That said, Vista isn't perfect, there are some issues:
1) Sometimes if I resize the task bar the quick launch icons jump up by probably 12 pixels, resulting in them being offset incorrectly... can't believe none of the testers picked up on it, or maybe it's just on my machine.
2) The most irritating thing about the (now infrequent) UAC prompts is the screen blanking, I can't believe MS finds that acceptable - there *must* have been a better way to do it.
3) nVidia's drivers are pretty damn sucky atm, so the animated desktop stuff *apparently* takes more CPU than it needs to, but that's more a nVidia problem, not MS.
4) Some apps just don't work, but that list is shrinking now with compatible updates coming out, thank gawd.
5) The new Media Center stuff is okay, but some of it feels like a huge downgrade in usability compared to MCE 2005. Also it's partially broken my ability to transcode videos to the XBOX 360 so I'm waiting for a more stable update to the transcoder to come out.
Is Vista an "ESSENTIAL WINDOWS UPDATE!!!11!!1" no, not really, XP is going to do you fine for quite a while, but while it's not *essential* to update to Vista, there are lots of compelling reasons to do so, for security I would absolutely recommend upgrading to Vista, it is just more secure than previous Windows versions, full stop. If you have a beast of a machine, and want to ultimately get all you can out of it (including a more efficient OS), I would say Vista is probably also a good idea. Note however when I say the OS is more efficient and you want to get all you can out of it, that doesn't mean I'm talking more FPS in games, it means that overall the OS is better at scheduling threads to other applications, arguably better at running media applications, and generally more responsive than previous versions of Windows.
The_Unbeliever
Honorary Master
I don't like eyecandy - slows things too much down, and I always turn it off at the first opportunity I get.
Eyecandy which I'll allow is the widgets that light up when a mouse is moved over them (the minimize, maximize and close buttons) - but this is in SuSE.
Never tried Vista, don't want to.
In XP I have turned off all eyecandy to get the best possible performance, don't want to wait for the menu to open - it is time wasted anyway.
But that's just me.
Eyecandy which I'll allow is the widgets that light up when a mouse is moved over them (the minimize, maximize and close buttons) - but this is in SuSE.
Never tried Vista, don't want to.
In XP I have turned off all eyecandy to get the best possible performance, don't want to wait for the menu to open - it is time wasted anyway.
But that's just me.
well... I'm not running RC2 or RTM, i'm running the final edition with all the updates (Ultimate), UAC is turned off. - No problems there at all.
I found that the file structure is irritating with most of the folders protected, but if you understand how XP /Vista Security or atleast folder security works, then you will be able to unlock those folders and modify them as you need (without messing Vista up!)
Overall i think the file layout is the biggest disappointment for me as i'm used to root having just the Windows, Program Files, & Documents and Settings folders... now its a whole lot. I am also used that all my documents and files, mp3's videoclips etc are all filed under My Documents in XP. Vista its shortcuts and thrown inbetween a whole stack of locked folders which i dislike!.
ads
Senior Member
What's the big issue? This is Microsoft. You just have to wait two years and at least two Service Packs, and it'll just be bearable, once you've upgraded your hardware.
For those who want something that works, try MacOS X. Apple released Tiger (10.4) in 2005, without any major issues, and is releasing Leopard (10.5) in a couple of months time. It's not difficult if you know how. 10.5 will even dual-boot into Windoze as standard if you can't kick the habit. Microsoft is really losing the plot now, with ridiculously delayed releases that are broken at launch.
For those who want something that works, try MacOS X. Apple released Tiger (10.4) in 2005, without any major issues, and is releasing Leopard (10.5) in a couple of months time. It's not difficult if you know how. 10.5 will even dual-boot into Windoze as standard if you can't kick the habit. Microsoft is really losing the plot now, with ridiculously delayed releases that are broken at launch.
Ekhaatvensters
Executive Member
Vista eye candy is just a load of bull used to entice non-productivity users into the fray. For me an OS has to be there to co-ordinate the hardware, software and user interface in order to allow me to do what I want to do, easier, faster and with less frustration. For me the Windows XP Classic/Win NT 3.51/Win2K interface is KING in the MS market - I also use Mac OSX and its far easier than Windows but it gets some getting used to.
An OS isn't about fading in of folders, transparency, pretty icons and other crock, its about letting me get my work or my play done with less hassle.
The OS is the tool, no mechanic or surgeon buys a wrench or a scalpel
because it's pretty but because it's easier to handle, or is more
FUNCTIONALLY efficient in some way.
Vista lags behind in this. Pretty graphics, AERO, Flip3D - it's all just stuff a power user will SWITCH OFF anyway, like the ugly FIsher-Price interface of XP. Waiting for some stupid menu item to fade in is a waste of time,
and as for transparency, there are many apps for Windoze XP which let
you use it - yet I always disabled the feature within minutes of enabling it,
it just clutters the desktop and makes things harder to read, heck
MacOSX has abandoned it too, years ago.
In MacOSX AQUA (what AERO would love to be) is unobtrusive and wastes none of my time. No stupid menu popups appear, my attention is not stolen by message boxes which pop-up as I'm in the middle of typing stuff in the browser/word processor. MS should just give us a leaner, less buggy, FASTER
operating system. Vista fails on this, for not only is it a bigger resource hog it
also has a more cluttered interface.
So folks stay with XP or move to MacOSX or Linux. Remember VISTA is there ONLY To make additional money for MS, money you already gave them when you bought XP. Paying a grand and more for pretty icons and transparencies just doesn't make sense.
An OS isn't about fading in of folders, transparency, pretty icons and other crock, its about letting me get my work or my play done with less hassle.
The OS is the tool, no mechanic or surgeon buys a wrench or a scalpel
because it's pretty but because it's easier to handle, or is more
FUNCTIONALLY efficient in some way.
Vista lags behind in this. Pretty graphics, AERO, Flip3D - it's all just stuff a power user will SWITCH OFF anyway, like the ugly FIsher-Price interface of XP. Waiting for some stupid menu item to fade in is a waste of time,
and as for transparency, there are many apps for Windoze XP which let
you use it - yet I always disabled the feature within minutes of enabling it,
it just clutters the desktop and makes things harder to read, heck
MacOSX has abandoned it too, years ago.
In MacOSX AQUA (what AERO would love to be) is unobtrusive and wastes none of my time. No stupid menu popups appear, my attention is not stolen by message boxes which pop-up as I'm in the middle of typing stuff in the browser/word processor. MS should just give us a leaner, less buggy, FASTER
operating system. Vista fails on this, for not only is it a bigger resource hog it
also has a more cluttered interface.
So folks stay with XP or move to MacOSX or Linux. Remember VISTA is there ONLY To make additional money for MS, money you already gave them when you bought XP. Paying a grand and more for pretty icons and transparencies just doesn't make sense.
RichardP
Banned
from what I heard, sex with a unhappy gorilla isnt as bad as it sounds... but I am not going to try it either
only joking