Microsoft Vista, strike one

I never upgrade an OS unless I buy a new PC. Personally, I was happy with Win 98 but bought a dell with XP and used it for the last 2+ years with no problem. Old software that was useful doesn't stop working just because something new is released.

I heard somewhere that "Vista" is actually Korean or something for "Customers? We don't need no stinkin customers, we are Microsoft, we need no one"

Last year my wife bought laptop to work at home. All they had was Vista. So we have a new machine with a new version of MS Office too. The other day we were workign on a presentation together and I needed to help edit in Powerpoint, Excel, Word and had to do some web surfing to boot. I could not figure out how to do simple things like Save-as, cut and paste, spell check, open a blank sheet, etc... Open a new browser window or tab, It wasn''t like something had evolved and I had to figure out how to catch up (Not that any previous upgrades of Office were easy to adapt to...). It was as if the MS people had all sat down and said, " "How can we make them do all their regular stuff in totally new ways and piss them off the most?" Vista? Not another copy in my house for a whole lotta years. I will be looking at SUSE and MAC next go around. Zcat

I started using Vista, but it seems to me that it took a step backwards in the areas of easy use. I find it interesting that it seems more difficult to use than XP. That is, I have to relearn everything over from where I've known things to be. The good thing, is that great search engine right above the "start" button. But I no longer want my family to upgrade to Vista because the "tech" phone calls I get from them will double as it seems more difficult to use. A lady at work just bought a new computer and has been asking me if she could return it and get one with XP on it. Anyone from Microsoft listing?

Want to game, don't install Vista. Want to surf the net, don't install Vista. Don't want to punch a hole through your monitor, don't install Vista. My other box is XP and I have to say it works pretty well. Don't install Vista.

I ran into the same problem with XP. Since then I have been using openSUSE with great sucess. Once you get past the learning curve you will never want to pay Microsoft again. Why pay for your milk when you can get the cow for free?

You say you primarily run Outlook, Office, Excel, Firefox and Word. So why do you need to upgrade? I run primarily Firefox, LabVIEW, LTspice/SwitcherCAD, MPLAB IDE, Office 97, Nero, so I use Windows 98 at home. It does everything I want. I bought it, and Office 97, on eBay a LONG time ago. I know I''m an oddball, but I can be doing simulations with million point FFTs on my 1GHz AMD machine that I got on new on eBay for $200 YEARS ago, and it goes pretty fast. At work, they make me use XP. The lastest "security patch" has brought my 2GHz Dell, with 8 times the memory of my home machine, to its knees.

Why would you want to "upgrade" to Vista ? It is broken by design. MS is trying very hard to prevent anyone from using anything that they might not have paid for. If this prevents the odd 1 to 90% of legitimate users from using the apps, then so be it. I am sure that all the ipod users that pirated their music did not have any problems when using Vista, only the people who actually bought their music had problems. It is already difficult enough to make apps stable without the OS stopping or killing apps based on some obscure ruleset that tries to identify pirated products.

I guess it depends on what you need to run. I'm still happily using Windows 2000 / SP4, which, I've been told, with Automatic Updates, is essentially the same as XP. I plan to stay with W2k until there is a compelling reason to update. True, it's not as pretty as XP, but that's pretty minor. Being cynical, it seems to me that the only real reason that MS has created Vista is to be able to continue trying to make the old versions obsolete and therefore sell more new ones (I guess I can't blame them from a business perspective, but sheesh, what a pain). I strongly suspect that W2K or XP could be easily updated to do/run most or all the extra stuff Vista does with much less hassle than actually changing the whole OS. Oh well, enough ranting...

Why does this surprise anyone? Microsoft is a marketing company, not a software company. Bloated code, runs slow and quick to obsolete otherwise good hardware - why upgrade indeed. I develop embedded systems and use several flavors of -ixs and use a Mac at home.

bcstrator, We have just such a story on CAD and Vista at designnews.com, but because our blogging is inflexible we cannot put the URL here.

Piense, There is no happy ending. I'm sticking with XP indefinitely. The time and hassle of installing Vista even though I have copy is not worth the effort. I'll go to Vista when we buy a new PC (there's no choice, actually). But it'll be a long time before I buy one.

Dear Mr. Dodge, Dunno why the obvious question hasn't occurred to you... Why struggle with Vista? Go get yourself a Mac. It will run all the software you cite, and lots more besides. Hassle free! And OS upgrades install themselves, restart the compute when they're done. Best, Stan -- Stanley Froud Industrial Communications 175 West 76th Street New York, NY, 10023 212 787 0448 sfroud@nyc.rr.com

John, your problem was upgrading. Upgrading an OS is like wallpapering over a very poor surface texture. I was on the public Beta team for this OS and realized early that I would purchase a stand alone copy of Vista as soon as it hit the store shelves. I bought the Home Premium edition and installed it on a freshly formatted disk in less than 30 minutes. That’s right, start-to-finish, in less than 30 minutes. When I purchased my copy of Vista Home Premium the well known computer store in our area gave me a copy of Windows Live One Care at no cost (regularly $49) which I’ve grown fond of. It works well with XP and Vista providing anti-virus protection and much more. For your readers sakes I should mention that Vista requires approximately 15Gb disk space once it unfolds from the DVD disk. It requires a minimum of 512Mb RAM but prefers 1Gb and if you want to experience the 3D screen presentation available in Home Premium and other higher cost Vista products you’ll need a graphics adapter up for the challenge. I recommend NVIDIA equipped cards over ATI products. I tired 3 different ATI products without success. The graphics adapter will require a minimum of 256Mb of memory. To sum it up, stay away from upgrades, go with the stand alone OS products and don’t even consider Vista on an older outdated PC. Buy a new one with the latest faster components. Good luck to everyone!

It is not likely I will upgrade to Vista at all. I have looked forward to every other OS upgrade, this one I will avoid at all costs. I may even move away from Microsoft all together, there are choices. Vista is ridiculous and so are the decision makers at MS for shoving it down our throats. This will cost them.

You forgot to mention anything about CAD systems running on Vista. Apparently many slow to a crawl. Nice work from the spaghetti coders.

I was going to replace my home Red Hat install with XP. Since Microsoft is not selling any licenses for the older OSes, such as XP, they are driving me to Mac sooner than later.

My hope for a slimmer faster OS from Microsoft is lost. If I have to buy new, better, faster hardware anyway, I'd rather have a used Mac for home use than a new PC.

This is typical for a Windows upgrade, which is why I never do it. I only go to the next version of Windows when it comes on a new machine. Vista has no compelling reason to upgrade, as DX10 applications are not there yet.

I know you are probably rushing to finish the new issue of design news, but I really want to hear the end of this story! I have been toying with the idea of upgrading to Vista, but am waiting for your expert opinion before making a final decision...

Stay tuned....

Does this story have a happy ending?