Your Opinions of Vista

[GraemeM]

Okay my post is going to be a rant, but other people share your experiences and opinions of Vista, good or bad
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Well I tried loading this up tonight, and I think after only about an hour playing with the thing, it's safe for me to say what a piece of junk it is.

The installation went incredibly smooth (although it could give a bit more info about what's going on). It booted up nicely and installed most of my drivers automatically. The new interface is pretty good, it adds some nice visuals without getting annoying. The new Gadgets bar is an interesting idea. The new start menu was interesting, I'm not sure how I'll feel about this in the future. THen the trouble starts...

So first I need to install drivers for my sound card, thi takes me way longer than it should, but eventually I get them. Still, at this point not much had gone wrong. Now I try playing music, apparantly an AMD 3400+ with 1gb of ram and a nice Sound Blaster Audigy 2 soundcard isn't enough to play music! The thing constantly skips, no matter what song or program I use.

Then I started installing something else, and well the install froze up (fine, not Microsoft's fault), but then it won't let me close it. I even went to "end process", and Vista wouldn't let me end the process. I had to restart the computer. This led to me wanting to restart my computer. After accidentally putting it in standby, I logout of my username into what is a bizarre login screen. Anyways, finally I get it restarted.

So I'm back to trying to get my music playing, and I figured I'd try playing some wmas instead to see if it made any difference. Since most of my collection is mp3s, I tried the new search function. Well Microsoft had a decent search thing back in the Windows 9.x days. The one in XP was bad, this one is quite possibly the most horrible thing I've seen. Anyways, turned out wmas werent any better.

So I keep navigating, and wow its different. I'm not sure if its bad or just takes gettings used to. The "view" options of how to view files are excellent, but I really think they were premature in getting rid of the File, Edit, View, etc. from Windows and all of their new programs. The way you view the directory is odd, and you ahve to double click it to get to change directory (you have to try this to see what I mean)

Anyways, next I want to add some bass to the music, so I open up the sound panel. First I'm impresed, as it has volume knobs for individual programs, which is a nice feature, but then I notice every single other feature from the XP sound panel is gone (including the bass).

Throughout this whole time there are warnings and pop ups everywhere. XP warns you about every possible security threat or human stupidity threat out there. It also keeps giving me errors about Windows programs not responding. Also, while the freezing isn't bad, it is freezing up too much for a fresh install.

So anyways that's it. I realize this is Beta and there will be bugs, and some of the options I may get used to with time, and some probably turn off if I look a bit harder. There were things with XP that I didn't like at first, that I got used to, but I never found XP this bad. Like I said, I've only used it for an hour or so, so I can't give a score on how I'd rate it, but my initial reactions are not good.

It's just unfortunate that there really are no good alternatives. At once XP becomes outdated, we may have no real choice. If only more programs would work with Linux, I think this Windows may be the one to make me finally switch.

[GraemeM]

Update:
you know I was just about to post a couple things that impressed me. THe location bar when browsing, while annoying, actually has some cool features I didn't notice. I also found out where all the old sound panel controls are located, and it is different, but shouldn't be much more difficult.

But then more problems. First the audio just cuts out on me out of no where. It may be okay when I restart this, but I don't know. Then a folder I'm browsing will refuse to close. It is stuck in the location bar. As usual, ending the program through the taskbar does nothing. Are beta releases supposed to be THIS bad? I've used beta programs before (although never to the level of an OS), and they usually have a few MINOR problems.

Edit: and immediately after posting this, the computer froze and I could only use Internet explorer. I couldn't minimize it or click shut down or anything. Had to shut off the computer. I'm posting this from a Linux live CD.

[Hi Ho]

Experiences with Vista vary greatly. It is still in beta. Many people seem to overlook that fact. It is not a finished product. The whole point of a beta is to find problems and try to make it work smoothly on as many hardware configurations as possible. As you pointed out, you realize this, but many don't seem to.

I have installed Vista and I had relatively good luck with it. My initial reactions were very good. I had a bit of trouble getting my Creative sound card to work but when I did it worked fine. Creative's "Vista" drivers didn't work at all.

There are quite a few features I like in Vista. The indexing and instant search function is one of my favorites. The Aero interface is very nice and I like the new start menu. My XP start menu tends to grow off the screen. Vista seems to be responsive on my not so fancy system.

I had completely switched over to Vista for a while to see how it fared with the whole family. It did OK but after a while the little bugs started to add up and people were getting annoyed. I haven't messed with it for a while but I think I will boot it up again soon.

When Vista is a finished product I will probably buy it. For now, it's still a beta.

[DarkPacMan77]

I haven't tested it with the intent of waiting to see if all the "hype" is actually good hype or bad upon the release of the final product. Windows has been reliable (idc what anybody says, 95%+ of the world uses it) but I don't feel comfortable using a beta of many things... especially not an OS.

I have heard good things, want them to be true, and hope that vista isn't just "ANOTHER" update to an already good OS.

[MaxRat]

Well I have beeen running Vista with no problems....

1st of all...locate drivers you need thru "windows update" or find Vista drivers for your card or you must run them in XP compatability....

Also the sound popping and cut out is probably due to the wrong settings for your sound card...For some reason Vista puts the Mic level at 100%...turning it off will greatly help....

I have no problems playing music on either of the 3 pc's I have it on...

You just have to know to get around the obsticles in Vista...reading the sticky up top will sure help....And you have plenty of power with that 3400...I have it installed on an old XP-2400 and it runs fine...

[David M]

Welcome to the world of Beta releases. Other than to satisfy personal curiosities, I don't know why anyone is bothering with Vista yet. I hope nobody thought they were going to be able to run software smoothly? It makes absolutely no sense to make judgements about an OS based on it's beta release. If anyone wishes to be a guinea pig who works for Microsoft for free then so be it but it is not my cup of tea.

As for me, I am going to at least wait for Vista Service Pack 1 to come out so at least most of the irritating problems and breeches of security that will be in the original release will hopefully have been partially corrected.

[Kareeser]

Our higher-than-average expectations may have something to do with Google.

It seems that everything Google releases (short of its web search) is labelled a beta, and works with virtually every system.

At any rate, I found a mistake in your rant

Throughout this whole time there are warnings and pop ups everywhere. XP warns you about every possible security threat or human stupidity threat out there. It also keeps giving me errors about Windows programs not responding. Also, while the freezing isn't bad, it is freezing up too much for a fresh install.

XP? or Vista?

[GraemeM]

Originally Posted by Kareeser Our higher-than-average expectations may have something to do with Google. It seems that everything Google releases (short of its web search) is labelled a beta, and works with virtually every system. At any rate, I found a mistake in your rant XP? or Vista?

Sorry, Vista.

Speaking of that, anyone tried creating and deleting a file. TO create a simple textpad file, 2 confirmation boxes to create it ansd 3 to delete it. They are trying to make this thing too idiot proof. I just really hope there is somewhere to turn this off.

Anyways, after reading some replies, maybe I have been expecting a bit too much from a Beta release. I just didn't expect it to be this bad. Actually, since I'm on it now, it hasn't been too bad (although I haven't done anything complicated) The audio thing really gets me (it's not the mic volume, it's occasional skips in the song, not crackling). I have no idea what's going on with it.