Microsoft Introduces Windows 7, Ending Vista Brand

Vista deserves a lot more respect than it gets. Microsoft has already fixed a majority of the issues that plagued vista from its initial release. I purchased a $3,000 computer for my home office a year ago along with Windows XP. A few months later I decided to give 64bit Vista a chance and I haven’t looked back since. I now feel I am using my computer to its maximum potential now that I am running vista compared to when I was running XP. People need to stop complaining about “over active security measures”. Normally, when people complain about Vistas security measures they are referring to the UAC (User Account Control)



Which takes about 30 seconds to disable and you will never be prompted with it again.

“But…but…disabling it just defeats the purpose of having it in there!”

No, it does not. If you can’t figure out how to disable it, then you deserve to be prompted with a “Are you sure you want to do this?” message each time you change vistas settings or install a 3rd party program. UAC's purpose isn’t just to protect your computer from potential outside threats, but from YOU as well. 99% of the other problems people have with using Vista are created by user error.

“But…but…but…it runs really slow!”

Then stick with XP. There is something called system requirements, look them up and do the math.


[edit on 30-10-2008 by beyondtopsecret]

Ah, I have no idea what everyone is talking about... Luckily.

I'm using Mac OS X Leopard. I can run Windows XP under Parallels if I 'need' it for anything.

I think Vista just has some really bad branding - Microsoft seems to have lost what they were marketing Windows for in the first place.

People still seem to prefer their 7 year old or so XP over Vista, it's quite a situation.

reply to post by beyondtopsecret


Sure, that's why I can't even install the Vista Service Pack on my machine. I've tried it twice, and both times it resulted in the blue screen of death. It wouldn't even start in safe mode, allow me to log in as an administrator, or restore my system from the startup menu. I finally was able to restore my system after a long process of doing things that I don't even remember.

Microsoft has continually chosen to release garbage to the consumer, and only those who are ignorant of genuine, integrated operating systems would think that Vista (and in my opinion, all other versions of Windows at least since Windows 2000 Professional) is a well written, user friendly, and overall good operating system.

(Please also refer to my previous post)

i wont change to vista. i like an overabundance of ram. i just thought that i would pass on a little info i got from seagate,that may effect what you buy in the future.
i recently rma'd a hard disk and was told that pata and sata drives will no longer be made. they are switching to sczi sata drives and will have a different type plug andrequire another motherboard. i havent seen anything about this in the media,but it came right from a tech at seagate

reply to post by pjslug


I hope you kept record of the error codes of the BSOD’s. If so, I would like for you to post them here. It sounds like the issues you are experiencing are from a faulty hard drive or bad ram most likely the latter.

You should try a memory test. Burn this to a cdr (the free version): www.memtest86.com... and boot up your computer with the disk inside. You should pass the test with NO errors. If you even have as much as one error you are going to have some serious issues.

I apologize if all of this information is old to you but I can’t help but try to diagnose the issues you experienced with vista after you listed those symptoms.


[edit on 30-10-2008 by beyondtopsecret]

I think this is Mac backlash, in a way. Mac's are glorified Ipods, in my opinion, but they are also very simple to use. Vista is a brilliant OS, but you have to know what you are doing to use it. Fact is, the majority of PC users are lucky to know how to send email. So while some of us love the power and productivity of Vista vs XP, to the everyday user, XP is preferable. A sad day for computing. The last thing we need is more dumbed down software. At least there is still hope in the open source arena.

when xp came out it was not without its nay sayers. say what u like about M$ (don't get me started on Office!) but XP was (and still is) a very competent OS. It can be stripped down and specialised to do very specialist tasks with minimal footprint.

Re: vista sys reqs. Noooooo... an OS should use bare minimum system resources, anything else is a burden to the tasks u wish to do. it's like haveing an amazing eco-friendly hydrogen car that does 500mpg but putting a huge, cumbersome 2 tonne chassis on it!

Originally posted by Alucard Hellsing
reply to post by merka

 

Yeah, of course you can play games on vista, but u have to admit, it's not exactly the ideal OS for gaming is it ?

Someone who has a medium style gaming pc is gonna feel and see the difference in the higher end games he plays, as opposed to someone with a decent gaming system...

Im going to have to strongly disagree there. Since the release of vista SP1 game have been running the same if not better in vista compared to XP - it has become a non issue.
Many people out there see the oem installes of vista or they go and listen to what they are told by friends or some IT professionals out there and judge Vista on what they are told and often (I see it every day working in a computer store) they are told things by people who havnt even used the OS or have had crappy issues with oem install of vista.
Ill admit that out of the box vista needs tweaking to make it a little nicer to use but then what operating system doesnt? If you configure it correctly it will become much more responsive and it will be a lot quicker then what it comes across from a normal install.

From what Ive seen of the latest public buid (6801, not the build displayed at the latest PDC which happens to be build 6833 which is an internal build) it is looking a lot faster then vista is out of the box. As in the animations are smoother and quicker, there also seems to be lag on the machines that they were displaying it on. But so far I think its going to be a good OS to use, they have rethought out most of the UI and refined it out, they have also refined a lot of other parts of the OS - updated kernal among other things. If anyone else has used server 08 as a workstation then the speed that you see using that OS is much like what you will get with win7 - its a much more cut down version of the OS, updated kernal and some of the fat has been cut off it - but the speed of that OS as a workstation is close to what you will see with win7.

reply to post by beyondtopsecret


No, unfortunately I didn't. But I have a 1 yr. old Dell and I've never had any problems with it, aside from the OS. I have added memory to it, so it is a possibility. What really pisses me off is why Dell sent me the 32-bit version of Vista when I have a dual core 64 bit AMD processor. And if I want to talk to someone from North American support, I have to pay extra. Indian support is free. Just try getting them to understand what you're saying.

This country is an absolute joke.

[edit on 10/30/2008 by pjslug]

Originally posted by Alucard Hellsing
Hope it is better than vista, man it sucks!

Had to downgrade my new laptop to xp, couldn't stand the lagged response and over active security measures..

I wouldn't move to Vista myself, but my partner did when her new laptop came with Vista earlier on in the year. The two issues she's had are what you describe yourself. However, have you disabled the search indexing? When I did that for her, it made a massive difference to the overall speed of the machine, more than any of the other 'tweaks' I did.

reply to post by pjslug


That’s terrible that you should have to pay extra for North American customer support. I feel your pain buddy. I am a graphic designer as well and learned through my experiences to avoid purchasing name brand computers. I have not had a reason to contact any customer support since I built my computer from the ground up. Most computer part manufacturers have great warrantees in case you have to replace any parts.

Also, I would now definitely recommend checking out and running Memtest on your computer to make sure everything is in working order since you went out and purchased extra ram. Let me know the results if you get a chance to try it out.

A suggestion for all of you that want to use a new O.S. and have recently bought a computer. Contact the computer vendor and see if you can add microsofts "software assurance" to you computer. Software Assurance basically allows you to upgrade what you purchased the SA for for free. You can get SA for microsoft products, including the O.S. and Office. It winds up being cheaper then to buy a new computer, and considering the windows 7 is expected to be similar to xp vs vista in regards to hardware requirements, your current computer would be able to handle it.

Just my opinion anyway.

Camain

Originally posted by Spectre0o0
...they are switching to sczi sata drives...

I suspect you were either mistaken about what he said, or the "tech guy" didn't know what he was talking about.

First, it is spelled SCSI, and computer geeks pronounce it "Scuzzy". Second, there can be no such thing as a "SCSI SATA drive". The way they send data across the connecting cable is totally different.

SCSI can both send and receive data at the same time (synchronous). SATA drives cannot. SCSI sends/receives data in parallel, while SATA sends data in serial (hence the name SERIAL ATA, or SATA for short.) This is why the old drives are now called PATA, which means "Parallel ATA". One of the differences between PATA and SCSI drives is that the PATA could only send or receive data, not both; whereas a SCSI drive can do both, making it faster.

reply to post by sir_chancealot


Tech guys who really knew stuff are a dying breed. They learned on DOS and had intricate knowledge of the OS and the hardware.

Now you have guys who only know a little about a narrow range and they just solve problems by wiping and reinstalling. (not that this is bad)

Fortunately we still have people out there who can disassemble and check to see what the OS is doing.

But guess MS knows this.

So what do they do?

There's a mandate to make the code as obscure as possible in an attempt to thwart the knowledgeable from knowing that MS is really the Ultimate Black hat (as would be Intel and SONY), hiding their backdoors and their chip registration hardware and their rootkits.

Some kid running scripts or hacking into a poorly designed system to look around is not the true danger.

MS, the big industry, Monsanto, Big Pharm - these are the bad guys. IMO.

Originally posted by Alucard Hellsing
reply to post by ThichHeaded

 

Every new pc will come out with visa, and only large corps like ibm, hp, mecer etc will have the option to downgrade machines to xp, not the consumer.

Bull, if its a computer it can run XP, I have a Sony laptop that Sony only supports vista for it, every one hates vista so people found all the drivers for the hardware so we could install XP on then.. the pc is now 2 times faster and more stable.. hey and what do you know the with XPi get stereo mix in my sound card, so vista is actually disabling features in you hardware.. I call that fraud.

Runs XP great, smoking fast, and very stable.. I had vista on this for 2 months before I could nto stand it any longer..

Every PC i buy with vista immediately gets xp installed!

And for licensing just use the license from the PC you replaced.



[edit on 30-10-2008 by E-ville]

reply to post by pjslug


Most likely, they sent you 32-bit Vista because relatively few applications yet are designed as true 64-bit compatible apps.

That said, there is no inherent advantage to running on a 64-bit platform (unless you're installing on a server machine) where many of the apps you would want to install won't even run. They should have ASKED you if you wanted 64-bit and left it to your discretion to decide whether or not you were making a stupid mistake by doing so, however, I can understand their logic in assuming you would want the highest level of off-the-shelf compatibility.

AB1

Ya almost have to feel sorry for microsoft... they even tried to trick people into trying vista with that mohave campaign.

Being a mac guy excuse me while I wipe away my crocidile tears.

What ya wanna bet that 7 will be little more than a rehashed xp.

I just thought I would give my personal experience with Vista. I am a pc gamer. I originally installed XP on my vista-bought pc. After having to wipe the computer and losing my xp copy, I installed Vista. My biggest complaint is pretty much the UAC (user account control) and Firewall and I completely turned them off and I NEVER get viruses. Games work just fine and rarely I have to run an old program in XP compatibility mode which has worked fine for me.

MY CONCLUSION: Vista is not nearly as bad as you hear, but it's no breakthrough either. The only thing going for it is it's pretty.

reply to post by grover


Actually grover, it's not. I've seen pics of it. It's the closest rip off of Mac OSX they've ever made. Here's to that great spirit of Microsoft ingenuity!!

And by the way, did you guys hear about what Microsoft did, and rightfully they had every fair reason to: they sent out a code to Chinese versions of Windows that would disable all non-legally owned versions. The Chinese are pissed because it affected so many businesses that can't run now. But they deserved it! If you steal, prepare to pay the consequences.

reply to post by alphabetaone


They did ask me, because I requested the upgrade from Microsoft Vista Home Basic to Home Premium... and I specified that I wanted the 64-bit version.

That was one problem. The second problem is that I asked them if an integrated video card would be fine since I run no games and they said yes. Well it wasn't fine at all. It caused my monitor to flicker and gave me such horrible headaches I couldn't even look at it, and I have a nice Dell Ultrasharp 20" widescreen (which uses the same top-of-the-line LG panels found on Macs). So after an hour or two on the phone, I got an Indian to send me a free ATI Radeon 256MB DDR video card -- and it completely fixed my video problems.

I also have almost 4 gigs of RAM and Vista still makes my hard drive spin NON-STOP! If I turn off virtual memory, the computer crawls. XP never had that issue.

I could list hundreds of other issues with Vista, but I'm sure you've heard most of them.

[edit on 10/31/2008 by pjslug]