Comments on: I should have upgraded to Vista Sooner!

By: adam m

adam m — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:43:19 +0000

Just be glad you waited the first few months where aweful. I like Vista, I have found that MOST of my problems with Vista are due to 3rd parties not Microsoft themselves. I purchased a new laptop right after Vista came out, if you remember you didn't get a choice of XP or Vista at the time. When I got the laptop home it took up to 15 minutes to suspend, and after resuming none of the USB ports worked, neither did the audio or built in card reader. A good number of applications simply would not install, and of those that did many didn't run properly. 1 year later all is fixed but the card reader, it still does not work after resume. All but a few applications are working correctly. In the mean time I installed Ubuntu 7.04, all the features of the Laptop where working better under Linux, than Vista. Being familiar with Linux this drove me to use the OS more than ever. I am now quite comfortable with my Linux laptop and rarely boot into Vista.

By: Lloyd

Lloyd — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:33:13 +0000

Hey Todd thank you finally someone who agrees with me, i fix computers and my fellow technicans are also nay-sayers and tell me dont praise Vista, but i early adopted it, since Beta! I love it and agree with u 100%

By: Richard

Richard — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:51:24 +0000

My experiences with Vista, while not QUITE as positive as Todd’s, has been an overall positive experience.

The intial issues I had with Vista crashing/BSODing constantly were eventually tied down to dodgy nVidia drivers. As SOON as nVidia managed to supply drivers that actually worked, vista has worked flawlessly.

There’s been a lot of bad things said about Microsoft in relation to vista, but the only bad things I’ve had to say about it don’t relate to Microsoft at all.

True, I wouldn’t be recommending that EVERYONE upgrade their machines immediately, but I certainly wouldn’t be dismissing the possibility because of all these “naysayers”, even the ones from Microsoft…

By: madmari

madmari — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:54:35 +0000

Todd,
I am not sure why but my previous two comments critical of your OSX posts never showed up. Is anyone censoring the comments just because of the content?
Anyway – the same ComputerWorld has an article out saying that: “Windows is ‘collapsing,’ Gartner analysts warn”. Interesting stuff – worth reading.

Mario

By: Tim Verpoorten

Tim Verpoorten — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:12:36 +0000

Well since you didn't like my first comment, I'll just leave a link that says it all... http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/04/vista-64-bit-ap.html

By: madmari

madmari — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:08:35 +0000

Todd, Big mistake. There is an excellent rebuttal to the Computerworld editorial here: http://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/09/vista-beats-os-x-really/ I am a long time PC user. I used to build my own computers, I provide PC help and I work in IT. 3 years ago I switched to a Mac and I never looked back. Since then I started recommending Apple to the poor souls whose computers I have to clean off all the viruses and spyware. I know that if they follow my advice I'll be losing clients but I do it anyway. And I'm glad to say that to date quite a few made the switch and no one regretted it yet. Mario

By: Susabelle

Susabelle — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:06:49 +0000

I agree with John. Don’t be TOO much in a hurry to switch over. I had my Vista machine running for six months before I felt comfortable with using it as an everyday workhorse. There were issues until the first two or three HUNDRED patches were applied. That is no joke, I’m talking HUNDREDS of patches. Having started using Vista a year late, you are avoiding much of the trouble we early adopters had.

As with my looooooong voice mail the other day, there are issues. My primary ones are with navigation: stuff isn’t where I expect it to be and I spend a lot of time fumbling around looking for things because they’ve been renamed, regrouped, and just plain ole disappeared! One other ongoing problem I am having that there seems to be no fix for is that any time I plug in a USB storage device, whether it is my iPod or one of my gazillion flash drives, Vista wants to “repair” the drive before I can use it. This is annoying and I’ve always said “don’t repair” because I don’t want it futzing with my data or my iPod. The other annoyance for me is having to say “yes, it’s okay, I MEANT to install this” every time I’m trying to update something or install a new program. Yes, I know it’s for our own protection, but I don’t need it or want it and it is difficult to turn off.

By: Barry J

Barry J — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:42:10 +0000

Todd,
Funny, I had just the oposite experience. Most of the apps our group at work were trying to run, didn’t. Not to mention that Microsoft moved a lot of the controls to different locations which drove many of the veteran Microsoft users crazy. Also, I know many software developers who had to spend a lot of time and effort to get their software to actually run on Vista. Maybe it’s because you are a late adopter that you didn’t run into these problems. As for the little dig about the Mac… When I opened my MBP on the first day and it just worked. It hasn’t stopped yet. 0 down time or problems. And that’s including a major upgrade to Leopard. Lets hope Microsoft can get back to a bloatless working OS in Windows 7.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:36:35 +0000

“To all the nay sayers out their, this OS is absolutely better out of the box than my mac was”

Them’s fightin’ words…

Seriously though, I used Vista for a few months, and just could not get comfortable with the system. I found it slow and painful. I reverted to XP at work, and never stopped using my Mac at home.

By: John Meadows

John Meadows — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:09:51 +0000

Todd: While I am happy that your experience with Vista is positive, I would caution against inferring too much from your one experience. Given that: a) a number of the "nay-sayers" you seem to be dismissing were executives of Microsoft, based on the recently released Microsoft emails. The emails were rife with complaints about driver stability, compatibility, etc. b) Microsoft felt forced to extend the support period for Windows XP, given that so few people felt like switching c) Microsoft has had to backtrack and announce that Windows XP will still be available for budget notebooks and subnotebooks, after both the fraudulent "Vista Capable" debacle, and the recent success of the Asus E PC, proved that Vista in its current is not a suitable OS for budget notebooks and subnotebooks d)the overall Vista uptake has been tepid, at best I will take the prevailing opinion that Vista is a troubled O/S. I'm sure there were folks for whom Windows ME worked just fine.