On VISTA

[nadinbrzezinski]

if you can avoid it, WAIT until SP 1...

There are way, and I mean WAAYYYYYY too many nightmares right at the moment...

Lets put it this way... a printer took two hours to install... my handheld, found the hole, and the sort of solution, but it is far from satisfactory...

And it has been one issue after the other....

FUN, NOT.

God I remember this from XP, but it was less painful, or... over the years the pain went down, I don't know

[Warpy]

1. XP was every bit as bad. I remember waiting months for

printer and scanner XP patches, and these were not brand X printers or scanners.

I don't remember any problems with the software, itself, being particularly buggy, unlike things I've heard about Vista.

[cynatnite]

2. My all-in-one works except for scanning...can't do it...

HP says they won't upgrade software so it'll work with Vista. :grr: And I love this all-in-one. It still is a good piece of equipment and works great.

Vista is a total pain in the ass. Some things I can't do that I could do on XP. I bought this PC earlier this year because I wanted teenager to have my XP.

XP was a pain in the butt, but not as bad as Vista, IMO.

[liberalEd]

20. some vendors do that, bad idea in my opinion

When XP came out, I had just recently bought a Canon slide scanner. Canon just decided they wouldn't provide an XP driver for it. It wasn't even that old a model, and it wasn't a cheap basic scanner either. At the time it was pretty much the highest resolution you could get in a desktop film scanner.

For years I kept an Win/ME system around just so I could use this scanner. In fact it's still there, although I'm not scanning slides these days.

Why a bad idea? To this day, seven years hence, I still resent Canon for doing this. I don't dwell on it, but I remember whenever I consider a purchase. It doesn't always sway me away from Canon, but it's another data point.

[cynatnite]

22. I do harbor ill will for HP on this...

I love my all-in-one. It's a good piece of equipment that's worked wonderfully. We spent $200 on it because we needed the extra features. I know many here don't care for HP, but I've always liked their products. We've spent money on them for years and the only other product we've ever had problems with was a hard drive failure(Western Digital product) which HP replaced for free, sent me disks, and walked me through the process of getting the computer up and running.

I feel I've been a loyal customer for many years and their refusal to offer a driver for it really pissed me off. Ask hubby...he heard my rant :)

We still don't want to replace it, but eventually we'll have to because I want the scanning ability.

[Occulus]

34. That smells like an antitrust violation of some sort n/t

[Deja Q]

3. Took me 5 minutes for my printer; what's your brand?

More amusingly, Microsoft claims to offshore because Indian programmers are better and that it'll cost less.

Hmmm, Vista costs rather more than XP and the bugs speak for themselves. (I've had problems too... mostly a good experience but Microsoft should be ashamed.)

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Cannon

and trust me, the Ipaq, I just reported the major hole with the system... and tech support I found the solution by talking to the tech... and not acceptable at all.

(mostly copy and paste to somewhere else, the whole file system, and then delete from your hand held, and copy back) suddenly the files are no longer copy protected... never mind they never were under the properties tab

Oif, next nightmare... the driver for the new logitech keyboard

And did I mention I am shuddering at the thought of PC Mover?

[liberal N proud]

4. Only have VISTA on my new laptop

Use it only for travel and meetings, no printing from this machine as I email or copy everything to another XP machine for finishing.
I have not had any problems with the few things I have synced up, overhead projector, flash drive and upload pictures from a digital camera.

[Clark2008]

5. The printer is NOT Vista's fault.

Printer companies have known for years that Vista was coming out. Did they rush to get their equipment Vista compatible? No. Have they put patches/updates up on their websites? No. They want you to purchase new equipment rather than afford their customers updates to existing equipment.

Vista has bugs, but that particular problem belongs to the printer companies.

[tridim]

8. Bingo, most of Vista's problems are driver related

Even so, they released it too eary. MS gets no pass from me.

I've been running XP pro 64-bit for about two years and have the exact same issues as people are having with Vista. Fortunately I lucked out and all my peripherals have 64 bit drivers.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. It is a mixture

since MS did not release the software on time for the drivers to come out

By the way, WACCOM, they did an amazing job. The waccom was up and running in 30 seconds flat

[tridim]

13. Yep, my tablet worked right away

Surprised the hell out of me. :)

Luckily all my high-end 3D and graphics software has been 64-bit/multithreaded for a long time.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. You may know this then

I have Z-Brush 2.0, not impressed with customer service

Anyhow, been thinking of PC Mover... should I even try?

Oh and the Waccom, they were at Comicon this weekend, they told me WHAT exact driver to download at the con

[Ms. Toad]

37. Maybe not Vista's fault,

But certainly MS licensing policies were larger contributors to the problem. Ever read through the MS driver certification/signing process? MS pretty much requires that third party developers give up their first born child (or at least significant rights to their software) in order to be permitted to play nicely with the MS operating system.

It certainly is more convenient for me to have the "found new hardware" pop up when I plug in whatever new piece of hardware I want to install, then work without a hitch. That said I'm asked I have a hard time recommending that my clients consent to the non-negotiable, extremely one-sided contract terms that MS imposes.

[david_vincent]

7. I thought this thread was about

Americorps VISTA !!! lol!! The joke's on me... I haven't used anything MS makes in over six years, although my machine at work runs XP (I have no choice). Funny you should bring this up, I was just looking into PC-BSD as an alternative -- check it out at http://pcbsd.org
For the past couple of years, I've been using MEPIS Linux with only minor problems. I'm pretty happy with it, far happier than I ever was with Windoze. When are you folks going to stop carping and start switching??

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. If hubby was not a gamer

I would have orderd a PC without OS and installed ubuntu

But wine does not play well with others...

I have two logical drives, and I will probably split my drive and install ubuntu on it... and xp, for the few programs that don't play well with, well you guessed it.. vista and linux

[MuseRider]

11. I have had 0 problems with it.

Odd how that is. I have had it since early this year and I have not had a single problem. Everyone has their own experience and since I am a point and clicker only it is so easy for me.

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. I get that, I am a power user

I love Word 07... for once it was worth it

But getting devices such as my hand held to ahem work... well just took six hours and to talk to the tech, and from what he said I figured out what I needed to do

[liberalEd]

21. I had a couple of issues with Vista

1. Initially iTunes was pathetic with Vista. Constant crashes. Once it wiped out my library (that's not as bad as it sounds - it means I had to redo my playlists) and I know people have had the iPods messed up (although those are recoverable). iTunes is now, and has been for a while, fine with Vista. iTunes 7.3 was awful, but that was cross-platform suckiness.

2. A couple of device drivers were not immediately available. For example my digital camera did not have a compatible driver for a few months. This is not really a problem and I didn't even notice it until someone pointed it out. Normally I only connect the flash media to the computer. Anyway, this has now been resolved. Printer was the same except it basically worked but some features were not available until a driver update became available.

3. Two programs (including, ironically Microsoft Office) needed to be run once as "Administrator". Until I did that one kept asking me to register and Office kept requiring me to accept the EULA. A single "run as administrator" fixed them.

Other than that, Vista has been stable for me. I wouldn't run out and buy it to upgrade an XP computer, but I wouldn't hesitate to get it on a new computer (this is how I got it.)

[doubleplusgood]

29. iTunes problems on Vista

I went from XP on one PC to Vista on another. Some iTunes functions totally suck on Vista...try adding some cover art for a CD using cut-and-paste...takes 20-30-seconds for the "paste" pop-up to appear & then as long to do the paste for multiple tracks. Also got IE 7 on the new PC & strange things happen....URL's seem to disappear at random from the address bar, even though I may have used them recently, doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to it. I wish I could have gotten XP instead.

[Yael]

12. VISTA + Laptop = Battery drainage

If you don't turn off the feature that makes applications 'float' open and closed, it will drain your battery twice as fast.

:hi:

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. YIKES

[tridim]

19. That's good advice for desktops too

Shut off floating windows and cut your energy usage in half.

Turn off your pretty screensavers too. I constantly have to fight that battle at work.

[Ilsa]

23. Yep. That happened to me as well. So far, I'm sort-of-okay w/ VISTA. nt

[Captain Angry]

15. I've had no problems, and have installed it for dozens of people.

And that includes people using 15 year old printers as well as brand new hardware.

The only thing that could be "a problem" would be finding wireless drivers for a long since discontinued notebook.

That said, nobody should install it just to install it. They should install it when it offers them something new. Right now, few people will benefit from a Vista installation.

[CRF450]

24. My dad bought a new HP with Vista and has had no problems either

My sister has it too on a Gateway laptop, and one of my best friends has it on HP laptop. My sister has a few older programs that wont work on it, other than that, everyone I know that has it have 0 problems. My only problem with it, is that its a real memory hog. Just idling it takes almost half of 1 gig. It needs atleast 2 gigs of memory to run good.

I'm fixing to build a new gaming system and its gonna have Vista, mainly because of Crysis.

[Captain Angry]

26. Two things.

1: When it idles, and is flipping through resources, don't forget about the background indexing software it runs. It is supposed to make local searches faster. But it freaks people out that their HDD is always running when they're not using the system actively.


2: That looks sweet. I won't upgrade my gaming rig to Vista until the DirectX10 stuff is out, working, and NVidia has a new card out to really use it. I have a dual dual-core Opteron with 2GB of memory, so I'm ok on resources. I have a 7950GTX in there for normal stuff. But when Unreal3 and such hit, I will lag with the current stuff until the 9xxx series Nvidias hit, and I'll jump on it.

[CRF450]

27. The Geforce 8 series use DX10 and it will be in Crysis

The game will run DirectX 9 and still look good, but theirs many effects and such that'll be missing without it. I'm opting for a 8800gts, newegg.com has a 320mb version for $275.

So far the game looks better than any PS3 or Xbox 360 game I'v ever seen!

[Captain Angry]

30. The people I know with the 8xxx series are disappointed.

It sounds like some stuff was left out, and won't be integrated until the 9xxx series. They wanted to have something DX10 compliant out right away, and will have something truly obnoxious available in a few months.

[CRF450]

31. "They wanted to have something DX10 compliant out right away"

Thats the problem, theirs nothing out now using DX10. Once DX10 games are released then the geforce 8 series will really shine. One things for sure though, the 8800's are dominating the competition. I read that Crysis runs very well maxed out with a good Core 2 Duo cpu.

[Captain Angry]

32. I hope you're right.

But my information has shown that the 8xxx series won't shine as brightly as expected when the real thing (DX10 games) hits.

[insane_cratic_gal]

18. I agree

I have it, and I want my xp back!

I haven't been able to download any security patches or auto updates or even use go back features.

it sucks!

I keep getting this error
If prompted, provide your network credentials. If Windows doesn't prompt you to provide credentials and you see the error code 8024401B instead, click Try again.

except I'm never promoted for my network credentials .. it's a home network! It's like an endless loop I'm stuck in

[Junkdrawer]

25. I had to shell out an additional $130 to put XP Pro on my new laptop...

:mad:

The final straw was that Vista wouldn't support VB6 or .Net 2003 or Crystal Reports 9 or Sql Server 2000 or ....

I literally couldn't do my job with a Vista machine...

[napi21]

28. Well, lightening fried my old computer and I couldn't find a new one

with XP, so my new one had VISTA. I onlu had one problem, and that was with PaintShopPro 8. It was just too old. I have to say, I sure didn't realize PSP 11 was the current version!!!! WOW, I guess I just get used to using something and don't realize how long I've had it!

I have an HP all-in-one and although I did have to call them to get access to the new drivers (they told me not to use the install disk) it works just fine!

Other than that one problem with PSP, I've had NO Problems at all with VISTA. I suppose it depends on what you want to do.

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. My real issue was with the handheld

talking iwth the tech I figured out what to do...

And yes, outsourcing help really shows now... but that is a whole different rant

I know of several progies that have ahem, issues... but that is a whole different rant

[napi21]

35. I didn't see if you mentioned what brand of computer you have, but

I purposely bought another HP because of their on line chat help. All the reps I've ever dealt with knew what they were talking about, I just couldn't understand them! With the online chat help, they can read what I type and I can read their responses. I've about given up on trying to coerce the mfgs into hiring people in the country they are servicing, but at least with HP I don't have to keep saying REPEAT THAT, I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND, SAY AGAIN! THAT pi**es me off big time!

That's the #1 reason I bought another HP!

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. This is a gaming machine

custom built, hubby is an intense gamer

I would have gotten an HP myself, since I have an HP laptop and my handheld is an HP... and they are very reliable

But for the 3D work, this screamer will be a joy to work on

[Ms. Toad]

38. You've had a vastly different experience with HP

than I have.

:rant:

I've had three HPs, and this will be my last because of their (lack of) customer service. On line chat provided responses which indicated they grabbed a word or two they understood, cranked up the the canned response to that word or two, fired it off to me and shut down the chat line. I had to go through that process three times for one recent problem and twice for a second. After the first round, I began by requesting they stay on line until I indicated they had answered my question. Didn't work. I was twice promised phone calls within 24 hours. Been about 3 months - still waiting for those phone calls. They had my 7 month old laptop for 36 days out of a 42 day period - in large part because it had to be returned when they (1) reinstalled the initial software and declared it "fixed" for what was clearly a hardware problem (2) failed to address two identified problems in the first go-round (in addition to the main hardware problem they "fixed" with software) and (3) failed to address one of those problems a second time.

Love my computer when it works, gotta have the separate number pad which no one else seems to make - but hate the fixing process. I'm also about at the end of my rope with design flaws/quality control issues (#1 was either fried by the retailer - or had a defect (what the retailer claims) so #2 was "on the house" #2 is now a desktop because they put a processor they knew was too hot for a laptop to handle and the power jack kept melting off the board - a desktop converter keeps it happy, but it can't travel anymore, and #3 was part of a bad batch of LCDs (at least three in the lot sent to the store from which I purchased the computer)- and it had two bad memory devices, as well.)

:rant:

[MazeRat7]

39. Never use version 1.0 of anything..... unless you have to...

Trust me on this on this one point as I am a software architect by trade. It never works "perfect" on the first "official" release... and sometimes not very well even after multiple service pack releases...depending on complexity, blah...blah... blah... your mileage may vary. :)



MZr7