This looks to be more of a Windows Me (millennium) release. Me was hyped as a new os but was really just a spiffy looking version of 98SE that not only ran slower but also came with a slow memory leak to boot. Frankly I think a lot of users have the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" mentality with their PC's. WHo knows maybe the 2nd coming of Vista could allow it to live up to the original hype, though I am not going to hold my breath knowing Redmond's track record.

So sad.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the excessive instability or the fact that it didn't want to shut down alot of the time. I think the software was sentient, it tried to torment you until you reformated... again.

Luckily i never had a problem with ME, even though i messed it up for 3 years.
Well atleast vista se or w7 will have the same requirements as vista now

More evidence that Midori will be the successor to Vista. About time Microsoft realizes it was time to start over from scratch. This might be a good thing...

Nothing wrong with Vista. Infact Windows XP is nothing but utter crap. I'm running Vista x64 Edition and that thing is just fast as it was on first day after installation. Apps and games under it work perfect. I think x86 edition is waste of time. If you want to play Crysis you need 4Gb of RAM. As soon as Microsoft kills x86 edition it will be better. I'm not sure why people dislike Windows Vista, but it's the greatest OS release after Windows 2000. I installed Vista like 9 months ago. In meantime i swapped my i680 mobo with i780 mobo, replaced SLI 8800GTX setup with GTX280 SLI setup...OS just works.

This article seems to be forgetting that Windows 98SE was awesome in its time. Compared to 95 and plain Jane 98 anyway.

I've got Vista x86. I don't understand why people hate it so much, although I agree that it shouldn't exist. There's nothing wrong with it though, except the limited addressable memory.

In fact, I also don't understand why people hate Vista so much. It's much more stable than plain vanilla XP, even in many cases, better than XP SP2. (XP SP2 is faaaaaaaaar more stable than XP) Just give the guys to roll out the next SP.
What the haters were able to do in XP better than in Vista? Maybe spreading their viruses around?

I've got 64-bit Vista as well, and I have absolutely no problems. I'll admit, I was hesitant when I made the switch from XP. I needed to upgrade to a 64-bit OS and heard bad things about XP 64, so I bit the bullet and get Vista. I'm glad I did, because I've found Vista to be the most stable Windows yet.

Microsoft has ironed out most of the bugs in Vista now, and its performance is not too far from XP anymore. People need to understand that there will always be a performance hit when you upgrade from OS to OS. Expecting Microsoft to come out with a revolutionary OS that has the same requirements as a 5+ year old OS (at the time) is ridiculous unrealistic. Yes, they botched the launch, and it had some pretty serious performance issues at first, but they've brought Vista to a level that is much more acceptable.

Don't forget that when XP came out, it required much more resources than any of the previous Windows (I remember RAM requirements for many programs being double for XP vs 2000 or ME). But now people love it and praise it as one of the best operating systems of all time.

The REAL problem is that bashing Vista has become so trendy that journalists everywhere are capitalizing on everyone's hate for it. I've seen so many of them writing 10 page articles in magazines about how awful Vista is because they know the article will be well received. It's like they're saying "What do you guys want to write about? Oh I dunno, let's just bash Vista, that always works!"

If everyone would just step back, erase their biases, and try a recent build of Vista, the community would have an entirely different impression of OS.

windows 98se was awesome compared to win 3.1 and win95... hopefully vista se will be great compared to vista

i ? vista, however, and dont see what all the hatin is for

Maybe if everyone ran Mojave, they'd see vista like we do...

I'm with duzcizgi and DavidOrr.

With all due respect, I don't quite understand the article. I was never under the impression that Windows 7 was going to be a major change from Vista. Although alot of tech sites said they 'hoped' it would be, the fact of the matter is that Microsoft never promised it as such. I hate to fault the author but this almost sounds like an attempt to convince people that Microsoft doesn't know what they're doing. Hasn't anyone at Tom's heard the beta impressions of Windows 7 yet?

Vista's bad reputation is IMO a direct result of the fact that Microsoft stupidly marketed it to users with systems that don't have the power to run it - so they've made their own bed. I run Vista on several systems and it's proven a solid OS, but I don't run it on anything older than about a year or with less than 4 gig of ram.

On a new box with plenty of memory and a decent graphics card Vista is solid and performance matches XP... but performance falls off much faster than XP as you push it onto older hardware.

say what you will but its harder to write a system for an infinite number of hardware configurations , then for standardized hardware.


with that said, it will be a huge disappointment if windows 7 turns out to be vista se. alot of running xp were holding out for windows 7 to come out.

I'm running both Vista and XP on different but comparable machines. I must say that although Vista is a step forward and handles alot of stuff like a dream, there are some annoyances like slower transfer speeds comparing to XP. I've noticed specially CD HD USB (in any order) to be quite alot slower than on my XP machine.

Other than that, when you take a couple of hours to clean Vista up after installing it; turn off all the annoying messages etc. - it's a very nice OS.

You've certainly got a point there, and I agree that Microsoft made a bad move with their marketing. I remember them tacking all sorts of stickers like "Vista Ready" and "Vista Capable" that just confused consumers. It didn't help any when the computers they branded as Vista Ready ended up running Vista like molasses.

Nonetheless, I think Windows 7 will fare better. Even if Microsoft doesn't add much to the OS, it'll finally have the power to run it. I think Microsoft was just too ambitious with Vista from the start- they assumed technology was going to catch up to where it needed to be when Vista launched, and it simply wasn't there.

In another year, even the $500 budget boxes will have 2 Gig Ram standard, beefier CPUs, and integrated graphics that'll actually run Aero. In fact, I'm pretty sure that current-gen IGP's run Aero sufficiently. Windows 7 is going to appear to be lighter and more swift, even if it's just a re-branded, glorified Vista.

Frankly, I'm surprised Microsoft didn't call Service Pack 1 "Vista SE" instead, a la Windows 98 SE. SP1 was quite a substantial update, and that would've been a perfect time to try and turn Vista around and re-market it. Ahh well, hindsight is always 20/20, as they say!

Consider the following: Windows Server 2008 is an enhanced version of the Vista Kernel. I am using it as a workstation, in fact (free copy from a trade show valid on for a year, unfortuantely) and it is lighting fast, even with Aero. I kid not. Surely you can read online about 'Windows Workstation 2008'. Windows 7 will be an enhancement of this. So, it will be Vista in a sense that Windows ME was windows 98 but I think it will be MUCH better because it will have none of the con's ME had. I mean, what did you expect MS to do, throw away all the work with Vista? Vista is an excellent evolution as on OS, with the main protactor being that its performance was not optimized; This is to be expected, it is A NEW OS. So, yes; The new version of Windows, Windows 7, will be an enhanced version of Vista. So what? it will be better because My server 2008 install runs FASTER than XP (if you can beleive that...) although not by leaps and bounds. Can we stop the negative speculation and at least give them a shot... after all, the only reason most of you use a computer is because of MS, they probably have an idea of what they're doing....

The problem with Vista is it hogs all your resources, and adds absolutley nothing. Windows Aero? what does it actaully DO? Now, if we could move from one screen to the next and switch focus, that would do something, but we can't. Seriosuly, name me on useful feature NOT called DX.10!

As for the 4GB Limit on 32bit systems: If vista didn't need 1GB to run, and 2GB to run well, there wouldn't be an issue with lack of RAM. You get diminishing returns after 2.5GB system RAM anyway, so unless you CF/SLI two 768+MB GFX cards, you shouldn't have any memory issues whatsoever under a 32bit OS.

To prove my point: I have two games I run on Vista, CoH and Crysis. When I run both in DX 9 mode, the XP install is always about 5 FPS faster, even though XP can only see ~2.75GB of my 6GB RAM. Why? Because Vista is slow and unoptimized.

I also find it funny, people complain about how unstable XP was when it came out (still as stable as 98SE though), but Vista was just as bad (I had a "File System Error" while installing to a pre-formated disk).

Finally, the reason coorporations won't use vista is simple: They recylce computers (my work comp is a Pentium III 1.2 GHz). We can't RUN vista, so why upgrade when XP works?

Also note: You can NOT run 16bit apps under Vista, as they are no longer supported. I need an OS that supports 16bits, because thats what all the software I need for work is written in.

I have precisely one problem with Vista 64. I cannot move or copy large files between my two Vista 64 PC's. It will literally sit there all day calculating how long it's going to take to do it.

I've tried several things offered up as fixes for this problem, but nothing has.

The only work around I have right now is that I can 'send to' a zip file from a shared directory to a new zip file on my desktop.

You know, I think vista just mainly cares about a decent speed processor. I just recently build a new machine (E7200), but since I ordered the parts on the egg, the video card is still shipping. The only old card I had that would fit the motherboard (I couldn't wait to try it out) was an old PCI FX 5200. Installed vista and it runs everything including Aero just fine, even with the extremely dated graphics card.

Conclusion, just thought it was interesting how much of a difference the processor makes, rather than the much touted "Aero Graphics"

I personally think Vista slows down a ton after you install stuff. I have been using it for about a year on this rig: Raid 0 on 160GB HDDs, SLI 8800GT, E8400 at 3.8GHz 4GB Reaper RAM. The first time it boots the loading screen "scrolls" like 4 times. Now mine scrolls like 25 times, I can go take a leak and come back and its almost ready for my password... It does this every time I format and install things.

All I have are some games (which shouldn't slow startup...) AIM ad hack edition (which does NOT startup with Vista cuz I disabled it)

All that really boots up is 3 or 4 sound driver processes (which seems dumb but there's about 4) and my AVG anti virus, RivaTuner, and about 4 Nvidia processes.

Other than the terrible boot times I like Vista x64 on my rig.

Running 3 OS on same PC: x86 XP Pro sp3, x86 Vista Sp1 and x64 Vista sp1. Each OS on it's own HD. 32bit vista was behind in responsiveness vs xp but x64 vista got them both beat. Windows startup and programs load time is amazing. I have 4GB Ram, only 43MB is free at all times-alot is cache; only has 325MB of swapped. I did dedicated upto 6GB paging on separate HD but it never use move than 500MB. Vista does use alot of RAM but if you got it then use as much as possible. XP always leave at least 1GB free and has a high paging: 1.5GB sometimes 3-4GB. Maybe it's the x86 factor. Vista x64 does have it quirk like delay opening folder with a lot of sub folder and slower multiple files transfer to network PC. MS should have release only x64 to the oem and only make available x86 upon request.

here's and idea, create something or your own that works the first time. I understand there are a lot of drivers and DLL and junk, but hate to break it to you MS, HUMANS HATE CHANGE... so you are stuck with a long term problem.

the reason vista sucks is, it confuses the GENERAL PUBLIC. Sure you arent confused with it, great, but what you fail to realize is the Private Company Sector is what makes things a standard. If EVERY company started running MAC OS X Server + OS X workstations, guess what, you'd see MAC OS X start to sell all over the place.

The company/private sector is what makes things a standard, not home users.

I am not failing to do anything, I am a private user and don't care what businesses use. MS confused people, not Vista. As stated above MS confused with Vista compatible stickers and lots of people are afraid of computers, it doesn't matter if they even use one at work or what OS it is.

Businesses don't use Vista because there is no point and it costs too much frikin money to switch a large company OS for no benefit. We all know that and that is not what we are talking about.

I just wish MS would come up with a unified driver model that works on all of their current OS's. People bought puters with Vista only to find that older hardware no longer works. For example, HP OfficeJet 6100 is not fully supported in Vista. HP's response is that I have to buy one of their new products to get full Vista support.

This is what is killing Vista in the business sector. They can't use Vista without updating a lot of their HW.

Do the authors bother to do research before writing an article? Windows 7 won't be vista SE, vista is ... vista 7 "lite". They released vista which is run on the longhorn core that was designed for windows 7. A portion of the features of windows 7 were released as vista.

Try some... ya know.. research?

idiots.

Um...you do know that the hardware manufacturers write drivers and not MS, right? Makes it kind of hard for them to write a unified driver architecture.

[citation]Do the authors bother to do research before writing an article? Windows 7 won't be vista SE, vista is ... vista 7 "lite". They released vista which is run on the longhorn core that was designed for windows 7. A portion of the features of windows 7 were released as vista.[/citation]

Exactly. Vista was originally supposed to be what Windows 7 will be, but they didn't have it ready in time.

Uh, yea. What I am talking about is the ability of OEMs (like HP) to write a single driver that will work on various MS OS's. They rewrote the driver model with Vista, forcing OEMs to write new drivers. Many chose not to write drivers for their older products, forcing people to replace perfectly good hardware just so they could use Vista.

For the last time, VISTA DOES NOT WASTE RESOURCES! Everyone who complains about Vista taking up too much RAM, if anyone was intelligent enough to know why this happens before criticizing it, they would know that the RAM is CACHED to provide faster access to recently used programs and parts of the OS.

PLEASE PEOPLE. Get your facts right before posting CRAP.