Jan 05 2008
Surprise! I Love Windows Vista.
I’ve heard from lots of people their disappointment and perused so many blogs expressing hatred on Windows Vista. It seems that this is a natural habit of many people towards any Microsoft products.
Well, to tell you, I’m a Vista user too. I have Home Premium version in my laptop and been running for almost six months. For sure, I found some annoying things on Vista that make the previous Windows versions (like Windows XP) a little worthwhile. But hey, I found some great things people missed or under-appreciated.
First, the good thing about Vista is that Microsoft took a major revamp on its Graphical User Interface (GUI) that modernizes its look. By revamp, I’m not only talking about the windows transparency feature of Aero, but I’m pertaining to the overall aesthetic efficiency or the improvement of accessibility and folder navigation.
The folder navigation in Windows Vista is exceptional. As you refer to the image below, folder to folder navigation in the system is faster and easier. You can virtually jump to any folder you want in just few clicks. On the left side of Windows Explorer, the traditional explorer view or pane is enabled by default. This speeds up the navigation as it automatically scrolls horizontally whenever it is needed. This is an intelligent Microsoft work in removing the daunting horizontal scroll bar of the previous Windows versions.
The sidebar on Windows Vista is very useful to me. You can add little gadgets (this is similar to widgets) to it and applets like calendars, photo slideshow, among others. Microsoft provided a gadget library at Windows Live Gallery where people can upload and download gadgets.
The other things that I liked in Vista are the system utilities which let you assess or do comprehensive reports for better performance and reliability analysis. Security is robust in Vista, although its persistent User Account Control feature can be annoying to some. This can be disabled, however.
Here is a screen capture of the Windows Experience Index, an inbuilt system-wide benchmarking tool included in Windows Vista’s Performance Information and Tools. Mainly it is used to determine what software (especially graphics, resource-intensive applications) can run in your system – the greater the number, the better. In my case, I scored 3.1 and it’s pathetic.
Despite Vista’s glory, it is still quite detrimental to know that this operating system’s elegance requires higher hardware specifications compared to its predecessors. In my personal standpoint, this is just a normal characteristic of software technology evolution as it tries to parallel the extended capabilities brought about by modern hardware. The Windows Vista I have runs over a 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM, and 256 MB video memory (in-built graphics chip). You can see the details below.
If these hardware specifications are used for a Windows XP system, it would surely bounce to the roof.
To let you know these are the few major things I wish Microsoft would resolve or improve in the forthcoming Service Pack 1 (SP1) release for Windows Vista in first quarter of 2008 (they say in February):
- Speed of copying and moving of files in the Windows Explorer
- Random freezes, lost of responsiveness in some programs
- Performance of ailing Internet Explorer 7
- Overall system performance, reliability and stability
It seems however, after reading Paul Thurrott’s article for Windows Vista SP1, most of the issues I stated above will be addressed on SP1’s release along with new features. This is good news to me and to other prayerful Vista users. We truly need it.
In light of the issues, I can still proudly say that I love Windows Vista. It still keeps my work done, and its new environment inspires me and removes boredom. However, if you’re not too patient before the release of any service packs, you might be inclined to go for XP instead of Vista, or wait until 2010 when Windows 7, the next version of Windows, will be released.
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January 5th, 2008 at 2:11 am
I love Vista too. My wife and 4 year old use it without any problems.
I have noticed lag time the freezing was related to my MoBo BIOS. I thin the sata drive
January 5th, 2008 at 2:14 am
That is good to hear — I’m not alone. I’m already drowned of all hatred and disappointment reviews online. I know Vista offered something discouraging especially on the performance side, but let’s wait and see when its service packs are released. It will be faster and stable.
February 1st, 2008 at 6:14 am
i was skeptical at first but i put in a video card added some more ram ,and Finally deleted that xp partition
February 1st, 2008 at 6:19 am
Yes J, adding more RAM really helps for Windows Vista!
February 26th, 2008 at 3:49 am
You’re all starting to sound like a bunch of loonies!
“Oh, yes, I love my new couch (with the spikes and other bloodletting devices). All we really had to do was get a much bigger house, and a secondary generator to provide the power it sucks up. Oh, and some of our other furniture isn’t compatible with it, so we’re waiting for the new upholstery that we can only assume will fix that issue… ”
Vista is truly the OS you will want and need when you are forced to get a 5GHz machine with 8GB of RAM and a 10TB Hard drive, but if you aren’t getting one of those, spare yourself the pain of trying to run it on your old PC/Laptop - or even many newer ones. It just doesn’t work as well as your old OS on that hardware.
February 26th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Vistagnostic, that’s pretty true and a little frustrating. Vista indeed requires a good set of new hardware for it to be able to stretch her legs. If you want Vista, get new hardware.
July 6th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
When we had xp it was so slow. At first we had a Gateway with Windows Me which was a terrible choice. After a year with Windows Me our motherboard blew. After we got that replaced, we upgraded it to xp, and the xp blew all the usb ports on our Gateway. We had a friend who has a degree in computers and he downgraded it to Windows 2000 and then the Gateway died. It was a terrible computer, but we thought the worst with xp was over but guess what it was not. After all that we got a Compaq with xp from our local, everyone was telling us its the best deal on a computer you could get we had for about a half a year and the cd/dvd drive died and then the local cable company drilled through our main power and blew our tv, computer, sump pump in our basement which flooded it, etc. Then we got another compaq from wal mart and instead of the cd/dvd drive breaking this computer was slow as hell! This computer was terrible the screen kept shaking they thought that we did not have a ground. Xp crashed a lot. We started to miss the Gateway. The compaq then made our keyboard freeze up making us having to use the on screen keyboard and sometimes the computer would not come out of hibernation mode. It made our DSL really slow it took 15 minutes just to get either firefox or internet explorer to pop up. I don’t know i punched or kicked that damned computer. I have an iPod nano 2nd generation and i almost screwed it up because iTunes froze and i could not eject it. We had used the system restore destructive method i don’t know how many times. It is the worst operating system that Microsoft has ever made in my opinion. Then after we got fed up with the Compaq, we got an Acer with Windows Vista Home Basic and it is the best computer we have ever had. Its fast. Reliable. Does not freeze up at all. We have no complaints about this computer and Windows Vista. It is so easy to use and I really don’t understand why so many hate it. I tell everyone who needs to get a new computer and are wanting to get a reliable and fast computer get an Acer or a computer with Vista. Even though I prefer Macs over anything else I love Vista
July 30th, 2008 at 2:32 am
I also love Vista, and I can’t understand why people are still using Xp. I love all the new features and i have been experiecing fewer crashes than i did when i used Xp. I think some people just anything major new release that Microsoft launches
July 31st, 2008 at 10:52 pm
[...] course, the news got me excited as I am a Vista lover myself despite the odds that were brought about by its original package. I am certain that many patient [...]
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
[...] from scratch on this laptop, along with other things. Its specs and performance have been featured on the Vista-related post I published earlier this [...]
August 13th, 2008 at 6:02 am
You think your base score is bad? I have a 1.0 base score, and 512 mb of ram! Now that’s bad!
August 27th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Me too. One of the weirdest complaints I see is that it’s slower than XP. It’s a new operating system, designed to take advantage of newer hardware.
Windows 3.1 ran slower than MS-DOS on the same hardware. Same with Windows 95, 2000, and even XP. When you run a new generation OS on the same hardware… *of course* it’s slower. Duh. How could it not? Alter the laws of physics?
MS simply can’t win. When they’re not getting bashed for not being innovative, they’re getting slammed when those innovations require new hardware. It’s weird.
Despite the cute Mac commercials, I’ve been running Vista for about 8 months, and have not had a single crash, a single virus, and all my apps work.
August 29th, 2008 at 7:06 am
[...] Microsoft with that after they released Windows Vista Service Pack 1, which encouraged me to love Vista even more and recommend to my friends that it’s now worth upgrading from Windows [...]
October 5th, 2008 at 7:46 am
I’ve been running Vista since February and I’m actually impressed, I know it has high system requirements but I wouldn’t recommend anyone upgrading to Vista, however if you buy a new pc which should run it very well I say stick with it. I’ve yet to crash or need to restart my system to do something going awry in the OS. I’ve had to restart my system a few times because I overclocked my graphics card too much. This is probably the most stable OS I’ve used. And I really like all the security features as well.