I'm not sure what's up with all of the hateful posts from Chad Harris, who
obviously has mental issues. This post is meant to convey facts about
Microsoft's newest operating system.

First, let me say that I've spent a lot of time with Vista from Beta 3 to
the latest RTM version. After months of working with Vista and comparing to
the mature Windows XP operating system, I'm less than impressed with Windows
Vista.

For the latest RTM release from MSDN, I completely formatted and installed
the x86 RTM to a P4 2.66 MHz system with 1 GB of RAM. I timed the
installation. It took three hours and 17 minutes from the time I popped in
the DVD that I made from the ISO image from MSDN to the time the operating
system was on the screen, with the pointer, awaiting input. Upgrades from
Windows XP take even longer. On my machine, an upgrade from Windows XP SP2 to
Vista Ultimate took four hours and 43 minutes. On these very forums, other
users posted about the long upgrade times. One user said his was going on for
10 hours. Paul smith with Microsoft replied "I've had Vista typically take
about 90 minutes to upgrade XP in virtual machine. So yes, 10 hours is slow.
8-)" and then proceeded to offer no technical help. Translation: It upgrades
fine on the 4 GB RAM Core Duo machines we're testing on here internally at
Microsoft, therefore the problem is yours, not ours.


Now onto usage. Here's what I've found:

1. Instead of an OS that boots faster, Vista takes a full 5 minutes to go
from the computer being turned off to being responsive enough to let me do
tasks. What that means is between the time I turn on the computer and the OS
gets through the "splash screen" and then to the actual desktop, it takes
about three minutes. Afterward, the machine is completely unresponsive for at
least another two mintues. CPU usage during this time is pegged at 100%.
There are no running programs or processes listed in task manager, so I have
to conclude that it's a bunch of services initializing. There is a services
tab on the task manager, but no CPU usage column to tell you which one is
hogging so much memory. You actually have to launch the resource monitor and
get familiar with it and try to decipher what's using up so much of your CPU,
and even then it's not clear. So, 5-6 minutes to boot and become usable as
opposed to 2 minutes on Windows XP. This was clearly a step backwards from
what we, the users, wanted.

2. Media Player 11 that ships with Vista has some major issues. After
loading the OS, I found that DVDs which would play flawlessly on Windows XP
no longer played well on Vista. The picture skipped and hung and was full of
artifacts. I had to set hardware acceleration to be completely off before it
calmed down. The problem doesn't happen when played on Real Player or
PowerDVD, only Media Player 11. I posted on these forums about this problem
and of course no one from Microsoft bothered to respond.

3. Many applications that worked in XP run poorly on Vista or don't run at
all anymore. Most notably is Office 2003. My Office applications are dying
for no reason or giving obscure error messages. I had to download the Office
2007 Pro suite off MSDN to get Office stable again. Don't expect Microsoft to
take you seriously when you report these errors. For example, several users
on these forums posted an error connecting with Live Messenger 8. Jim
Pickering replied with "Unable to duplicate on a 32 bit system running a
clean install of Vista RTM." Another user reported that Time.Windows.Com
(developer) didn't work on Vista and cited the behavior he was seeing. Colin
Nash with Microsoft replied with "Works for me..."

Translation: We don't believe you.

Other posts for help with applications not running on Vista are going
largely unreplied to. Nice way to treat your customers, Microsoft.

4. The added security is more of a pain in the butt than a help. I'm
constantly plagued with Vista asking me if the application which I double
clicked on is okay to run or the operation I'm trying to do in Internet
Explorer is okay to do. You know, this was mildly interesting at first, but
now I'm really annoyed. I know it's possible to turn these stupid warnings
off, but you cannot do it from the dialog box.

Pros:

I find Windows Vista "pretty". That's about the ONLY reason I can think of
to upgrade from Windows XP at this point. The aero interface is nice and
creative.

Cons:

Takes hours to install or upgrade.

The performance is sluggish at very best because of all the background crap
that Microsoft crammed into the operating system. For better performance,
plan on buying a Core 2 duo processor or at least 2 GB of RAM (and there's no
guarantee that will help much).

Vista eats an additional 2 GB of hard drive space over what Windows XP took.

Media Player 11 is buggy and frustrating to use.

The beefed up security in Vista isn't readily apparent except for annoying
dialog boxes that constantly ask you for approval. For the end-user, it's not
easy to disable these dialogs.

Unless you have antivirus software, plan on getting used to that little
yellow shield with the exclamation on the system tray. There's no way to
disable it without hacking the registry or buying some antivirus software.

The "improved" user interface for sorting and displaying files seems only
improved by appearance. The sorting scheme seems to be exactly the same as in
Windows XP.

Bottom Line:

It's like Microsoft completely ignored what the average user wanted in an
operating system. You're better off waiting for Vista to mature for at least
a couple of years before you decide to abandon Windows XP. The number one
issue I can see Microsoft getting hit hard with are the home and small
business users with relatively fast machines and performance issues.

Clean installation did not take that long for me. I have 2GB machine with
SATA RAID mirrowing. I did not time it, but I inserted DVD, whent though
screens and then left to read newspaper. About 30-60 minutes later Vista
prompt with User id waiting for me. I created user identity and started to
use the machine.

"tairobi" <tairobi> wrote in message
news:09a2
[..]

no install issues here. i'd be more inclined to say its your pc.
took about 1hour for me (about right for a windows install on DVD)....
comparing the speed to an XP install on cd.

i installed with 1gb ram
a 2ghz opteron @ 2.9ghz on a single drive hitachi SATA2 250gb drive.

theres always going to be software issues with new OS releases. it's
called evolution of the OS. if that didnt happen, we'd all be on 3.11
code that sucked (althought did need less system resources ;) same thing
happened with XP and drivers afaik.

do you use WMP11? i've always found since the new WMP skin (wmp7+) is
always buggy. i never use it apart from to play wmv/wma. a combo of
jetaudio and VLC for me. plays EVERYTHING I need.

if something is buggy (which tbh, vista isnt available public retail yet
& with stable+mature drivers) then find something that IS stable. if a
media player is unstable then use something else.

tim

tairobi wrote:
[..]

Hi,

What was Windows Vista Beta 3 you spent a lot of time with? I don't really
recall that version...

Lots of people, including me, are seeing 20-30 minute installation times on
average computers.

For me, it is usable more quickly after booting than Windows XP.

I can believe your DVD-playing and other compatibility problem. But
translating "Works for me" as "We don't believe you" is unfair and retarded.

There are smaller and bigger features in Vista, with which I can't live
without now.

I'd check my hardware if I were you, because Vista really has great
performance.

--Szajd

P.S.: Oh, by the way, instead of "hacking the registry", just double click
the icon, click "Change the way Security Center alerts me", and choose an
option (like "Don't notify me and don't display the icon").

"tairobi" <tairobi> wrote in message
news:09a2
[..]

tairobi wrote:

[snip]

At least some of those people who are nailed as "from microsoft" in your
post are MVPs. These are not Microsoft employees but volunteers from the
newsgroups, who Microsoft have given an award to recognise their efforts in
helping others.

Do -not- confuse a response from one of them as being from Microsoft. It
isn't.

As for your list of problems, I remember people making similar lists between
the time XP was finished and actually available in the shops, because during
this time, hardware manufacturers frantically produced driver and bios
updates for various issues, and software suppliers (yes, including
Microsoft) started to produce patches for their software, in order to make
it work properly with the new system.

Now, I'll confess that I'm not overly impressed with Vista myself. I have
serious reservations about various parts of it which have led to me
suggesting to my employer that we consider not upgrading to it at all, but
you need to be very careful about judging a system over its behaviour at
this part of it's life. This is a very "odd" time to be running the new
operating system.

tairobi wrote:

> I'm not sure what's up with all of the hateful posts from Chad Harris, who
> obviously has mental issues. This post is meant to convey facts about
> Microsoft's newest operating system.
>
> First, let me say that I've spent a lot of time with Vista from Beta 3 to
> the latest RTM version. After months of working with Vista and comparing to
> the mature Windows XP operating system, I'm less than impressed with Windows
> Vista.

[snip]

My experience is that it installs very quickly. Much faster than XP on
the same machine. All Vista versions I have installed took about 25
minutes for clean install on a Dual Core Athlon64, SATA hard drive, 1GB
RAM machine. I haven't tried upgrades though. I don't do upgrades.

And I like the User Account Control. It Is A Good Thing. But you can
turn it off if you want.

There are lots of things I don't like (don't get me started), but
installation speed and UAC are not two of them.

David Wilkinson

The people who are disputing the installation times are saying they are
either on Dual core procs, x64 machines or using SATA hard drives. That's my
point exactly. I am on a Dell Inspiron 2.66 GHz laptop with 1 GB of memory.
It's using a UATA hard drive, not Serial ATA. There are a lot of people still
using UATA. My point is that myself, the guys who post about long install
times on these boards, and those with comparable systems can expect long
install times. I stand by that conclusion 100%.

The MVPs may or may not be MS employees. In either case, they are still
MVPs, meaning they have taken on a role of some responsibility and should be
trying to help people actually using this software instead of offering
one-liner dismissals to people's problems. Microsoft should be ashamed of
themselves for not having dedicated staff open to assisting people on these
boards.

As for not adopting Vista, I'm not saying don't ever upgrade, I'm saying
don't adopt it now. Every OS is buggy right out of the starting gate and
Vista has a multitude of them. My suggestion is to wait a couple of years for
Microsoft to start taking people's comments seriously and actually do
something to make this a better operating system and not a multi-million
dollar "mediocre" OS. It's funny how Microsoft touts that they have spent
tens of millions on Vista and this is the best they can come up with.

So far no one has told me any GOOD reason to upgrade from Windows Xp to
Vista other than the graphics are prettier. Anyone? Anyone? What about Vista
makes it absolutely necessary for me to scrap Windows XP and move to Vista?
So far, absolutely nothing.

"Tim Draper" wrote:
[..]

"tairobi" <tairobi> wrote in message
news:09a2
> I'm not sure what's up with all of the hateful posts from Chad
> Harris, who
> obviously has mental issues. This post is meant to convey facts
> about
> Microsoft's newest operating system.

Not facts, opinion. And poor ones at that.

Are you trolling?

The only issue I found at all correct was that old software may not
run in Vista. I have an issue with that as well. There are plenty of
1-2 year old programs that should run just fine, but they don't.

The rest of your post seems like a waste of time since none of your
claims seem valid, at least not with RC2 or newer builds (perhaps you
have a hardware issue?).

My computer installed Vista RC2 in 32 minutes, and loads from boot to
desktop in 57 seconds. I have a quick computer (it's a year old), but
even by todays current standards it's very fast. Yet Vista works fine
on a 5 year old P4 1.6 with an old 80gig drive.

"tairobi" wrote:

> For the latest RTM release from MSDN, I completely formatted and installed
> the x86 RTM to a P4 2.66 MHz system with 1 GB of RAM. I timed the
> installation. It took three hours and 17 minutes

P4 1.8GHz, 512MB Installed in 30 minutes. So you're just a troll

tairobi wrote:
....
> As for not adopting Vista, I'm not saying don't ever upgrade, I'm saying
> don't adopt it now. Every OS is buggy right out of the starting gate and
> Vista has a multitude of them. My suggestion is to wait a couple of years for
> Microsoft to start taking people's comments seriously and actually do
> something to make this a better operating system and not a multi-million
> dollar "mediocre" OS. It's funny how Microsoft touts that they have spent
> tens of millions on Vista and this is the best they can come up with.
>
> So far no one has told me any GOOD reason to upgrade from Windows Xp to
> Vista other than the graphics are prettier. Anyone? Anyone? What about Vista
> makes it absolutely necessary for me to scrap Windows XP and move to Vista?
> So far, absolutely nothing.

A healthy and reasonable point-of-view which I fully support. Let the
'early adopters' assume the role of guinea pigs (though they are not
fed but do willingly pay for it:-).

(Of course, I have a spare computer with RC2 b. 5744 installed:-)

According to the Microsoft Support Lifecycle
<http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223>
there will be support for XP SP2 till 2009 (mainstream) and till 2014
(extended), respectively.
Meanwhile, we do hope that the Microsoft staff will now have time to
devote themselves to finalizing XP SP3...

Roy

AMD64 3500+, 3gb RAM, 2 x 80gb IDE hdd.. install time for Vista (clean) was
22 minutes.. I found even with beta versions that Vista with all bells and
whistles ran quicker than XP in classic mode.. load times after powering up
are every bit as fast as XP..

WMP 11 works ok too, as does Media Center in Ultimate.. as with the release
of any new OS, some programs don't work at all, and some not quite as well..
I haven't seen anybody else say that Office 2003 runs badly, but maybe
others have problems.. I don't know because I am running Office 2007, but I
would suggest that 2003 runs badly for you because your machine obviously
has other issues judging by boot times.. Windows Live Messenger works well
enough too..

UAC will be a boon to companies where indiduals in the past have
'accidentally' made changes.. UAC can be turned off, however..

You seem to be of the opinion that MVP's are singing Microsoft's song
because they are obliged to do so.. sorry to inform you, that is totally
untrue.. one of the things that MS like about MVP's is that they are
independent and tell it how it is.. just as your installation is not working
so well enough for you to suggest Vista et al is not up to par, those who
have a really good working installation will suggest that all is ok, taking
into consideration that Vista is new..

Those of us with good working installations prove in some part that Vista
does work well, and that some of the problems reported may not be down to
Vista at all.. we certainly don't say it in an arcane attempt at
one-upmanship..

AVG and Avast free versions work with Vista, so there is absolutely no need
to 'get used to' the yellow shield..

At each and every introduction of a new OS, some make the call to not
'upgrade' for a couple of years.. wait for the bugs to be ironed out.. well,
come January, PC makers will be shipping Vista machines to the world at
large.. companies will be slower of course, because their operation is
mission critical and they can't afford down time.. they are as cautious if
Lotus notes moves from version x.0 to x.5 though, so no real surprise..

XP was taken up far faster than some pundits believed.. I think that Vista
will do the same, and those who do not take it up will be looking for some
excuse that an app they hardly ever used in reality was the reason for not
upgrading straight away.. that is not to say that I think everybody should
upgrade, but you know how it is.. some of us don't like to be left behind in
the rush..




"tairobi" <tairobi> wrote in message
news:09a2
[..]

You make several valid points.
And I don't disagree with the points you make, but however windows vista
does offer a lot of benefits over Xp, and you also must consider that it
is a new OS and as far as I'm concerned any newly released OS should be
considered "unstable" I haven't had any bad experiences with Vista however
many people have had some bad experiences I guess that has a lot to do
with hardware compatibility. The longest it has ever taken me to install
vista has been about 2.5 hours but on average most installs take me about
1.5 hours.

and my system is by no means a high end system I have a P4 3.0Ghz cpu and
only 1Gb of ram with a nvidia 6200 Agp video card which runs Aero very
well.

At the moment I have Vista RC2 5744 on my primary Hdd and XP on my
secondary Hdd and Linux Ubuntu and a third Hdd thats the way it will stay
on my Pc I will definatly buy Vista when it's in the stores but I will
keep Xp as a backup OS for at least another year but I do most of my work
on Ubuntu.

Even though I agree with the main points you make in your post I don't
really see them as a reason not to buy VISTA


On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 01:01:41 -0800, bazad wrote:
[..]

"tairobi" <tairobi> wrote in message
news:09a2
[..]
> Windows XP.
>
> Bottom Line:
>
> It's like Microsoft completely ignored what the average user wanted in an
> operating system. You're better off waiting for Vista to mature for at
> least
> a couple of years before you decide to abandon Windows XP. The number one
> issue I can see Microsoft getting hit hard with are the home and small
> business users with relatively fast machines and performance issues.


1.5 GB RAM, 100GB UATA 5400 (!) RPM Hard Drive, Mobility Radeon X600 (64 MB
RAM onboard, 64MB shared), Mobility AMD Athlon 64 4000+ Processor running at
2.6GHz. Nice notebook but it's a year and a half old and sorely out-dated
by what you can buy today, and it barely meets the minimum Vista Ultimate
requirements.

Yours, with only a GB of RAM is at the very minimum, and your graphics card
may be the source of many of your issues.

Installing #5384 took forever; both x86 and x64. Installing #5728 x64 took
about an hour from soup to nuts. All installs were not upgrades and into
freshly formated partitions. Start-up and shut-down times are right about
the same between XP and Vista. I have not actually timed the difference.
Newer versions are said to be a tick quicker in both the installation
process and the start-up/shut-down times.

Obviously, with as much anecdotal evidence available here either everyone
else is lying, or you have a unique problem with your computer. Which do
you think it might be?

As far as running Vista instead of XP, there are several features that are
much better than XP, such as the indexed searchbox on the Strart Menu, for
instance. The built in security is nice, as well. UAC has actually blocked
a worm or trojan that ran rampant through our office network running XP and
Norton Antivirus.

I may run out and buy Ultimate off the shelf in February. I may wait until
SP1. But that would be for myself, not all the computers we have at my
office. Those will not be upgraded, merely replaced by newer computers as
the old ones cease to be useful, and whatever OS is installed on the new
ones, that's what they will run.

I think people should not upgrade to Vista RTM for one substantial reason:
most companies that sell computers, especially notebooks, will not support
the hardware if the OS is not the original one that came with the computer.

Microsoft did listen to what people wanted: more security. Now that it is
here, everyone howls about UAC being too intrusive, and the EEC forced
Microsoft to break their security to allow Symantec and McAfee to be lazy
and not find a new way to do business.

tairobi wrote:
>
> The MVPs may or may not be MS employees. In either case, they are still
> MVPs, meaning they have taken on a role of some responsibility and should be
> trying to help people actually using this software instead of offering
> one-liner dismissals to people's problems. Microsoft should be ashamed of
> themselves for not having dedicated staff open to assisting people on these
> boards.

They're too busy working in the anti piracy scam department. WPA, WGA,
etc. are proof that MS not only doesn't care about their paying
customers but considers them to be their enemies. Vista is further proof
of that. Personally, I will keep XP until I learn Ubuntu and then it's
the end of the road for Microsoft and me and I have been faithful to MS
since MSDOS.

Alias

> There are lots of things I don't like (don't get me started), but
> installation speed and UAC are not two of them.

True for me as well.

Don't bother to show off all the specs but installation is pretty fast and
that's probably the only good thing about the OS. LOL.


"David Wilkinson" <no-reply> wrote in message
news:4620
[..]