1) The first thing that is new which you will notice in vista is the looks.

2)It has got a whole new looks as compared to XP.

3)If your video card supports the Aero Glass interface, you get translucent title bars, cool animations and lots of eye candy.

4)There is a beautiful side bar with a good collection of gadgets as follows-

* Calculator that performs basic math functions.
* Analog clock (several designs to choose from).
* CPU and memory meters that let you keep an eye on the amount of system resources in use.
* Currency converter for quick international monetary calculations.
* Feed viewer for tracking news, sports, and entertainment headlines via RSS.
* Feed watcher for monitoring your selected RSS feeds.
* Notepad for quickly jotting reminders or bits of info you need to keep.
* Slide show applet that displays a continuous slide show of the photos in your Pictures folder.
* Stocks ticker that lets you track trading prices and see charts for your selected stocks.
* Countdown timer for alerting you when a specified interval has passed.
* Number and picture puzzles.
* Recycle bin.
* Games.

5)The next new thing that you will notice is the icons.It has a whole new collection of icons that looks great and increase its looks.

6)The Start menu hasn't changed much. You can still pin your favourites to the top-left side, and the right side still contains commonly used items such as Documents, Pictures and Music, Computer, Network and Control Panel, Search, and Help. If you want to restart, switch users, or put the system to sleep, you'll need to click the small arrow by the Shut Down and Lock buttons.

Ironically, this main (some would even say "only significant") advantage of vista, is just another aspect which makes me avoid it....... aero may look "huiiiiiii"..... but to me, it is just horrible in terms of usability AND function. Add to this the weird rearrangement of settings and different UI-navigation, and i still have difficulty to navigate vista, even after having worked with it on 100+ vista machines. This isn't just some "XP-UI interface bashing, episode #2".... with XP, i was annoyed by the sidebar and "simplified" control panel.... but that was peanuts compared to the UI-mess which vista is.

Visually, the only graphical advantage to me, about vista, is the icons and better support for higher screen DPIs.

It varies from user to user. I run Vista at home and XP Pro SP2 at work feels positively ancient to me as a result. I'd never go back on my home machine. As for UI, the only thing I don't like is the extra click or two it takes to determine a machine's IP address. UI features I like include:

1 - Breadcrumbs in Windows Explorer. Stolen from *nix, but nicely implemented, and clicking on the breadcrumb thread gives you the full path that you can edit, copy, paste, etc

2 - Thumbnail previews of windows on the taskbar

3 - Search intergrated into the start menu

As for the control panel, it's dead easy and there's hardly anything to figure out. To me at least.

This is the feature I still like the most in Vista. Aside from the flashy new UI, this is one of the first things I noticed. I didn't stay on Vista though, but I searched for an implementation of this feature for XP and found QTAddressBar, It works as expected although the appearance is a little mismatched with the XP look.

I compiled a list of Vista's improvements over XP not long ago. Here it is.

• Partitions can be resized (shrink & enlarge)
• Graphics driver is reset in case it stops responding (XP would simply freeze)
• DirectX 10 (mandatory for gamers in one to two years)
• Improved security through UAC
• Application-specific volume control
• Better audio quality (32-bit floating point processing)
• Taskbar and task switcher (alt+tab) feature a thumbnail preview
• Flip 3D (win+tab) as a fancier task switcher
• Better look and user-definable color scheme
• Improved start menu featuring a search bar that can be used as a "run as" replacement (press strg+shift to run as admin)
• Windows Mail as successor to Outlook Express
• Sidebar with various gadgets
• Dialog for copying/moving/deleting files or folders isn't terminated in case of an error (this was really an annoyance)
• Speech recognition
• Better multi-core CPU support
• Multiple concurrent versions of files
• Firewall with outbound control (disabled by default)

Whats new in vista? ... MORE bloat.

If you want something that will run on your ancient laptop, Vista isn't for you. But there's more to an OS than just system resource use.

What you know about my laptop? I have a ThinkPad T61, dual core, 2 GB, 240 GB HD, DVD-RW, and a MacBook dual core, 2 GB 120 GB HD, DVD-RW.

Now, tell me why is it that Vista is so good i need to install it over XP, OSX, or Linux please?

Actually, my opinion has long been that if you're comfortable with ANY current generation OS, there's no reason to switch. Would I upgrade to Vista if my XP machine were working perfectly? No. Would I get Vista on a new PC instead of XP? Definitely.

BTW I also run Ubuntu, both dual booted with Vista SP1 and on its own machine. I prefer Vista by far, but my point is that there's no need to swear by any one OS. Use 'em all if you can *shrugs*

In my case, the point is that i have tried vista, support vista on friends machines, and i see not a single reason why somebody would prefer it to XP, not to mention OSX or Linux.

1) It requires more memory than XP
2) It uses more procesor than XP
3) It can not do anything that XP can not do
4) It does all things differently from XP
5) Interface is horrible
6) It tries to be smarter than you
7) UAC

As soon as a friend gets a machine with vista, i move them to XP.

Which new version of Windows didn't? And just looking at the task manager doesn't really tell you the whole truth as Vista uses the more memory the more you have but makes it available again to applications if they need it. It's called Superfetch. Actually, that's pretty smart because free memory is wasted memory.

Which new version of Windows didn't?

Wrong. XP doesn't have something like UAC, for example. And per-application volume control is also unique to Vista. You seem to have missed the list of new features I compiled.

Now, that's just stupid.

That's even more stupid.

You absolutely wanted to have seven points, right?

You can switch it off. But I really don't recommend that. You might say "but I know what I'm doing" but then you could also disable any firewall and A/V software. UAC ist just an additional layer of protection. And after you have set up your system you should only get UAC prompts if you want to change something system-wide.

It's also a nice way to ensure that programs cannot tamper with system locations. Writing random files to the system folders? Polluting the registry with useless garbage? Not with UAC, until you explicitely allow it. So, UAC is not only a way to "protect you from yourself" but also a way to keep the system clean.

It also prevents any malware from installing itself into the system. Just double-click the worm from the mail attachment. Oh, it actually started, but then you can just close it via the task manager and everything is fine again because it couldn't work its magic.

If you are getting upset about UAC prompts all the time and just while performing general tasks, you don't seem to have realized that certain locations should no longer be used for storing personal data or that you can change file and folder permissions so that a normal user or especially your user account has write access to it.

You mention Linux. But Linux has something like UAC for years. The difference is just that applications for Linux adhere to where they should store user-specific data and therefore minimize the need for administrative approval. The Windows world just starts to acknowledge that. So give third party developers time to adapt to how things should have been since at least Windows 2000. It's just bad practice to operate with administrator rights enabled all the time. But having to log on and off just to copy a file to a system location would be quite tedious. UAC solves this very problem elegantly.

[quote name='Hancoque' date='May 2 2008, 05:52' post='562731']
[quote name='kwanbis' post='562730' date='May 2 2008, 06:54']1) It requires more memory than XP[/quote]Which new version of Windows didn't? And just looking at the task manager doesn't really tell you the whole truth as Vista uses the more memory the more you have but makes it available again to applications if they need it. It's called Superfetch. Actually, that's pretty smart because free memory is wasted memory.[/quote]
I mean that the OS footprint alone is much bigger than XP, with little to no benefit over it.

[quote name='Hancoque' date='May 2 2008, 05:52' post='562731']
[quote name='kwanbis' post='562730' date='May 2 2008, 06:54']2) It uses more procesor than XP[/quote]Which new version of Windows didn't?[/quote]
Again, much more than XP, and little to no benefit.

[quote name='Hancoque' date='May 2 2008, 05:52' post='562731']
[quote name='kwanbis' post='562730' date='May 2 2008, 06:54']3) It can not do anything that XP can not do[/quote]Wrong. XP doesn't have something like UAC, for example. And per-application volume control is also unique to Vista. You seem to have missed the list of new features I compiled.[/quote]
Yeah, UAC is really good and people love it. And volume control is useful in what situation?

[quote name='Hancoque' date='May 2 2008, 05:52' post='562731']
[quote name='kwanbis' post='562730' date='May 2 2008, 06:54']4) It does all things differently from XP[/quote]Now, that's just stupid.[/quote]
Says who? You? It is not for me.

[quote name='Hancoque' date='May 2 2008, 05:52' post='562731']
[quote name='kwanbis' post='562730' date='May 2 2008, 06:54']4) It does all things differently from XP[/quote]Now, that's just stupid.

[quote name='kwanbis' post='562730' date='May 2 2008, 06:54']5) Interface is horrible[/quote]That's even more stupid.[/quote]
No, is not. Interface is very important nowadays, that is why MS keeps trying new interfaces on each release.

[quote name='Hancoque' date='May 2 2008, 05:52' post='562731']
[quote name='kwanbis' post='562730' date='May 2 2008, 06:54']6) It tries to be smarter than you[/quote]You absolutely wanted to have seven points, right?[/quote]
m? why would i have to have 7 points? I can only point to 1 thing, market acceptance, and Vista is the worst OS for MS ever. I'm just pointing at MY opinion.

[quote name='Hancoque' date='May 2 2008, 05:52' post='562731']
[quote name='kwanbis' post='562730' date='May 2 2008, 06:54']7) UAC[/quote]You mention Linux. But Linux has something like UAC for years. The difference is just that applications for Linux adhere to where they should store user-specific data and therefore minimize the need for administrative approval. The Windows world just starts to acknowledge that. So give third party developers time to adapt to how things should have been since at least Windows 2000. It's just bad practice to operate with administrator rights enabled all the time. But having to log on and off just to copy a file to a system location would be quite tedious. UAC solves this very problem elegantly.[/quote]
I'm all to security, but UAC is really bad implemented. It asks you to confirm many times, many time from stupid things, like moving a file. etc. Google "uac sucks".

I absolutely hated Superprefetching.

I watched a 4Gb film on my HDD ONCE and it tried to stuff it all in my 4Gb memory on every boot for a week till I disabled it in services. The hard drive was screaming in pain.

I only use 64 Bit Vista to use the 4Gb on my MBP. Would have liked to have used Win XP 64Bit however drivers are non existent.
Then-again I do like some of the tech in Vista working in the background, but its disadvantages outweigh its advantages.

That is exactly my thinking.

I'm with you on this one

Oh, BTW, HI GUYS!! It's been quite some time since I last visited HA, heh.

I missed you all

Posts like Kwanbis' epitomize the hypocritical/contradictory nature of most of the anti-Vista sentiments. The usual "I don't like Vista because it does things differently from XP" + "I don't like Vista because there's nothing new in it" doesn't make logical sense.

"It can't do anything XP can't do"
- Oh yes it can. Vista is THE ONLY OS with CableCard support. Also ASLR, integrated search, etc.

"It does all things differently from XP"
- Huh? I wonder how that's possible since both OSes are binary compatible?

"Interface is horrible"
- ??? It's too similar to XP's for this complaint to not also apply to XP also

"It tries to be smarter than you"
- ???

"UAC"
- Actually, concrete data (as opposed to Digg/Slashdot flaming) shows that 84% of users leave it on. I guess that leaves you in the minority

No offense, Kwanbis, but it's obvious from your complaints - just mouth-offs with no proof or backing arguments - that you're flaming the OS for flaming's sake. If you just personally don't like it, just say it. But don't front silly reasons as if they were actually logical.

Well, if I could run an ABX test to prove it, I'd suggest that most of the Vista flamers, and most of the people who disingeniously flame those who say anything positive about Microsoft, as well, are motivated by a hate for a big American success story. But since I can't ABX the question, I won't suggest it, rather I will merely note that I would had I a way to ABX the question.

This is not to say that no criticism is warranted, please. That's a different question. There are some very good reasons to be annoyed with this or that part of Vista, reasons that have been published and publicized. Oddlly, here, we see almost nobody raising the real, documented, germane issues. You figure.

Just now. When I alter a extension of a file and click on an empty space to escape out and apply the change.
1. A really annoying pop up dialog box appears telling me if I really wanted to change the extension.
It also wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft added a "Is That Your Final Answer?" dialog box.

2. Upon clicking yes, the cursors behavior changes and a multi selection box appears when my fingers are no where near the left mouse button.

I am running Vista X64 SP1

I have nothing against Microsoft although I am a fan of Apple. Since Apple's OSX is designed to run on Apple's hardware, customer support is amazing IMO.
EFI, keyboard and graphic firmware updates all though apple software update...
Microsoft have a large task to test various configurations of computers and laptops and with new manufactures and technologies appearing, I can only see Microsoft's job getting harder.

My 2p.

Why not just press enter twice?

I have no idea what you mean here. Can you provide a screenshot?

P.S.: There's one thing about Vista that I really dislike. The new Explorer (not IE) doesn't let you blend out column headings in other views than the detail view. Furthermore the new menu bar cannot be disabled. And what's annoying most is that no matter how you set it, it's not possible to have one view for all folders that really sticks. Therefore I've been looking for an alternative and found an excellent one that beats the original Explorer in every way: XYplorer. I've put a shortcut to it in the 3rd place of the quick launch toolbar in the taskbar. So, instead of pressing Win+E I now press Win+3, which is equally convenient. By the way, launching shortcuts from the taskbar by pressing Win+<Number> is also a new feature of Vista.

I could but that's not the point.
1. Vista by default disables the viewing of extensions in explorer
2. Renaming a file causes Vista to highlight everything except the extension
3. The dialog box asking to confirm the operation.
4. If an extension were to be accidentally changed, we have the undo command, plus previous versions, system restore, windows file protection.

That's over the top IMO and the dialog box we can live without.
Thats nanny Vista looking after you.

Alright, so you want to select multiple files with your mouse, you hold down the left click button and select an area indicated by an opaque blue 4 sided shape.
Well once I confirm file rename and focus switches back to the Explorer window, the cursor switches to this behavior without me touching the mouse.

EDIT: Umm, maybe its not Vista I'm talking about but Windows in general.

As does XP.

I see this as an improvement because in most cases you don't want to change the extension but only the name. For the rare cases that you do want to change the extension also, you can just press shift+end or ctrl+a to select everything. It's comparable to the bigger back-button in Firefox 3. At first you want to "just disable" the new behaviour because "it's different" but then you realize that you use the back-button far more often than the forward-button and you appreciate the change.

That's because "normal" people might accidentally change the extension and find themselves unable to open or execute the file. Again, in most cases you don't want to change the extension but only the name. If you want to rename lots of files you might better use a tool for batch renaming or use the command line.

I can reproduce this. Seems to be a bug. But this only happens if you use the "click on any free space" confirmation. If you just press enter this doesn't happen.

LANjackal, as i said before, the market has spoken, and peoplde DO NOT LIKE VISTA.

There are rare exceptions of people that do like it but it is one of the worst OS receptions by the users ever, possible only surpassed by Windows ME.

Anyway, as i said, you can not give me a GOOD reason to move from XP to Vista.

And also, just so you read, i didn't said "vista sucks, linux rules", or "vista sucks, OSX rules", i said, "XP is an OS that has nothing to envy from Vista, does the same in much less resources, it has a better interface, etc.".

Even more, if you ask me, the BEST OS by microsfot, is Windows 2000. The only reason i don't use it and instead use XP, is because patches are non existant.

But there is NOTHING that XP and VISTA is doing right now, that 2000 can not do, or that Microsoft can not update to do.

So this is not a fanboy agains microsoft, as you can see, i'm recommending another Microsoft OS.

By the way, what the hell is CableCard?

Older windows do not waste free RAM - they are using it for the disk cache. Pretty smart already. Could you explain us what Vista need this memory for? It not necessary for running system (in this case Vista didn't give memory back to the apps).


Newer understand all this "guardian" stuff. Did you ever denied to install some file into your system or disallow to add record into registry? How is that can be? People do install the new games. People do make updates. Who cares what apps do with your registry? Sure, they modify your system. If you do not want it - just do not install. How user can decide that it really "tamper" case? I talk about usual people here. Paranoidal enthusiasts already have this instrumentarium

But HOW!
Enabling the viewing of extensions means I want to interact with them.
Then, Id have to manually highlight the extension in order to rename it.
If that person still manages to "accidentally" rename the file there's undo and other technologies to undo the change.
All users can live with out that dialog box.

Oh and I don't see how UAC protects against garbage in the registry when uninstall programs don't bother removing programs correctly.

Here's a description of SuperFetch. When I upgraded my memory from two to four GiB I noticed that Vista still "used" the same percentage as before the upgrade. That clearly shows that Vista uses more memory for optimizing things if more is available. Therefore you cannot judge Vista's memory consumption by simply stating "it uses x MiB, which is higher than XP's, thus worse".

Well, I don't even use installers on my main system. I install everything in a VM and copy files and registry settings over to the main system while trying to throw away as much as I can. That's sometimes a tedious process as some files have to be registered or drivers and services have to be installed manually. But this way I know what these programs do and what they need to run.

Concerning the casual user, though, it heavily depends on how the user is aware of the possible downsides of "installing every crap". But think about it this way: If software that normally shouldn't need admin rights shows an UAC prompt every time it runs, people are pissed of. Then you can blame UAC or you can blame the developer of the 3rd party application. If you do the latter that might convince the developer to fix the issue and the program suddenly behaves like it should have for years. The problem is that in the consumer world nobody cared about admin rights because everybody used it in XP. That's also the reason why every sort of malware got the chance of infesting so many systems, create bot nets or steal credit card information. UAC is now the effective countermeasure. So, it's not really helpful to suggest dumb users to disable UAC. Better teach them how to use it correctly.

If you used a limited account in XP and needed admin rights for something, you had to log off and on again with a different account. If it's for something trivial like renaming a file *that* seems to be over the top. UAC solves this issue by providing temporary admin rights for a subset of the system, which is not only more convenient but also much more secure. UAC is an advantage in any aspect. It's not a disadvantage in any way because if you absolutely have to or want to you can just disable it and use your system like XP. But again, this is absolutely not advisable and has nothing to do with "I'm not stupid, I know what I'm doing". If there were other people around my PC I would even activate password protection for UAC. This way I could assure that nobody secretly installs stuff on my PC that doesn't belong there or doesn't conform to my way of installing new software (see above). Linux is the clear winner in this aspect but hopefully the Windows world will catch up if developers are finally forced to play by the rules. UAC makes mandatory what was rather optional before.

As I said before, most of the time you won't want to change the extension. And it's not really an issue to press a key combination if you want to. You might see it as an unnecessary in-between-step but if you get used to it you don't even think about it any more.

Thanks for the link. Not impressed though. I do not use "prefetch" with XP as well.
Do you know how is big Vista's core? I mean, after giving all free memory to apps, how many Mbytes left for Vista in comparison to XP?


So, this "UAC" would probably perfect to your way of living? But I still do not understand how it can help me (as the member of "general public")? Why should I bother what keys NAV wants to write into registry? How can I know if this particular program should not use "administrator" rights?

Don't you muddled up UNIX with home OS? As for me, my personal (home) OS should not have any rights and accounts management at all. Do I miss MS-DOS?


Not agreed at all. Virus/bad-ware protection is not OS responsibility. OS should present infostructure for special tools. And let specialists handle it. By doing practically "nothing" UAC&Co may serve bad - one may think that UAC is all he/she needs for PC protection...

It should not in a perfect world. But today it's necessary to secure every aspect of a system to protect it from harmful things. Be it to ensure that your wife doesn't install that trojan ("but the ad said that...") or be it that you're protected from a malicious browser exploit. Dangers lurk everywhere in the internet.

Well, and I disagree with you. So you would rather leave the system unprotected and rely solely on third party software to protect you? I don't think that's very wise. It's also a fallacy to believe that installing tons of malware protection suits will be the ultimate solution, simply because they don't detect everything and aren't always able to properly remove what they detected. Security has to start with the operating system. It's something that we should have learned from XP.

So, have any of you tried "One-Care"?

This piques my interest: Why don't you use prefetch on XP? AFAIK XP's Prefetch is not as memory-hungry as Vista's, and really helps my computer's performance.

After all, what XP's prefetch does is only to prefetch the relevant modules when and only when an application is started.



Exactly. "Normal" users won't understand what's going on, and considers UAC a nuisance. "Power" users have better tools under their belt. So, UAC is something quite useless, and if I find it running on my system, that's one of the first things I'll turn off, push a wooden stake through its heart, and bury it under a crossroad.



You do have a point there.

I'm not against boot prefetcher. But I reboot machine too rarely to be annoyed with slow boots. XP boots faster than my DSL modem - do we have any "prefetcher" for this?
What I do not like is application prefetcher mode: it requires some components to be run to work correctly: scheduler and defragmenter (both MS's); otherwise it just leads to potential slowdowns.

customer support? can you provide an example?

What is 'bloat'. Something that takes up HD space, ram or both?

Bloat occurs when the marginal cost (code size, computer resources of any kind) of a feature approaches the marginal benefit of the feature itself. As you can tell, the latter part of the foregoing is subjective.

Videocodecs encode faster videos on XP.