Vista completely failed: a matter of public consensus and record: case closed.

http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/14/the- … ts-history.aspx

7 is/was extremely successful. So much so that Microsoft desperately shut down retail sales. Otherwise it would have/will live(d) on like XP.

http://news.filehippo.com/2016/12/windows-10- … still-dominates

The Lenovo W series are a top of the line Lenovo product. There is no "learning how to use" a computer involved.

Tetrium wrote:

Is there actually any good reason to prefer Vista over 7, apart from maybe purchasing costs or something?

No, there isn't. Win7 will do everything than Vista does and a little more.

Vista is a good OS despite its public image and the opinion of trolls. "Good" in the sense that it's more stable, has more useful features (for modern computing) and is more fun to use than Windows XP. It may even be a little more stable than Win7 in some situations, but minimally so. This is not enough to offset the additional useful features that were added in Win7, nor the rapidly disappearing support by all key hardware and software vendors (including Microsoft).

At the same time, XP's older kernel has some features to support older hardware/software which were removed in Vista. So with Vista you are really stuck in between. For retro computing, XP is better. For modern computing, Win7 is better.

Vista was a disaster. That is clearly evidenced by numerous computing industry opinions / articles. 🤣

PeterLI wrote:

Vista was a disaster. That is clearly evidenced by numerous computing industry opinions / articles. 🤣

Opinions mean jack. Vista was planed. And most of those writers were payed off.

As for why one might use vista over 7. Last I looked it does not have the spyware updates or gwx! It's cheaper too.

Edit

Oh and vista can use a video or animated gif for a desktop background. I don't think 7 can do that.

Good luck & have fun!

I actually liked windows vista back in the day. It went years w/o needing to be refreshed (reinstalled) like winXP did. I was really glad when I switched to it - but I did have proper hardware for it - dual-core Athlon X2 4400 (939) and 4GB of ram - in ran pretty well.

I think it was unpopular because it was forced into machines with 1GB of ram or less, old single core CPUs and driver development for vista was really slow.

kanecvr wrote:

I actually liked windows vista back in the day. It went years w/o needing to be refreshed (reinstalled) like winXP did. I was really glad when I switched to it - but I did have proper hardware for it - dual-core Athlon X2 4400 (939) and 4GB of ram - in ran pretty well.

I think it was unpopular because it was forced into machines with 1GB of ram or less, old single core CPUs and driver development for vista was really slow.

There were a number of reasons why people irrationally hate on Vista, but you just nailed the biggest one on the head.

1st Hate Reason: "High" System Requirements for its time
Windows XP had requirements that were in-line with older PCs and followed a predictable power curve from Windows NT. Windows Vista was so far off that curve that it shocked the hell out of everyone paying attention. For Vista to run smoothly, a dual-core CPU was essential. A Pentium dual-core would suffice, but I wouldn't go for anything less than a Core 2 Duo or the Athlon X2 64. Hell, if you can, get the 64-bit version of Vista while you're at it. For RAM....4GB or bust. Even Windows 7 barely ran acceptable with only 2 GB of RAM. I know....I have that in my Netbook (it has since been upgraded to W10 and boots faster).

2nd Hate Reason: Driver Support
This one is a mixed bag. Because of all the additions to security, Microsoft had to push back the timetable on the release of Vista, so hardware manufacturers got pissy and didn't write updated drivers for the WDM model that was being introduced by Vista. Why was Microsoft changing the driver model? To increase security, of course. The drivers had to follow the WDM model in order to mesh with the new kernel while at the same time allowing higher security on the OS level that corrupted drivers could introduce. They also made it mandatory to get driver certification for 64-bit systems (32-bit versions could still use unsigned drivers). It pissed a lot of people off, but made it VERY hard to hide malicious code in the drivers - a common complain with Windows XP and older systems.

3rd Hate Reason: UAC
Again, Microsoft was pushing security because of all the people bitching about XP's security holes. So they introduced a separation of User-level permissions and Administrator-level permissions and the cross-over was called the User Access Control (UAC). It's that "annoying" prompt for you to put your password in or something anytime you did something that required administrator privileges to perform (install a driver, install a program for all users, mess with files in the \Windows directory, etc.). But the prompt kept popping up on all kinds of older software because the software was written BEFORE Vista and just ASSUMED it had admin rights....even when it didn't need them to do its job.
So because of UAC, software writers had to go back for their new version updates and FIX the code so that it didn't do dumb shit with Windows kernel-level files, DLLs, or whatever it was doing that kept prompting for admin rights. If anything, Microsoft's move here helped software writers to tighten their belts and suck in their fat gutted programs to behave in a more best-practice manner.
But that fix took YEARS...the whole time between Vista and 7, I might say. Hell, even after 7 was released, you still found software that occasionally uses UAC prompts.
The reason I LIKE UAC is because it halts any process requiring permissions that could possibly let a rogue program go nuts on my PC. It tells me the signing authority, the program executable name, etc. I can then cancel the app (and Windows shuts it down) and research that file and digital signature and see if it was malware trying to get into my system. It was a GREAT thing for securing my PC from unwanted trojans or malware.
Unfortunately, nobody knew this and system admins kept turning UAC OFF (STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!!) in order to shut up the whining employees on their network. Turning off UAC basically gave all programs carte blanc to do whatever they wanted with no user intervention, no report generation, no nothing because all programs ran as if they had whatever permissions they asked for. After all, the user went and told Vista to just shut up and do as it's told, right? Yeah. Again - stupid. But hey, you can't fix stupid. I know - I've tried.

So there you go: my Big-3 reasons why Vista is so hated and unjustly so. I would like to point out that Windows 7 released with pretty much the EXACT SAME hardware requirements to run properly as Vista did...but in the few years between, PC hardware makers had caught on and all systems were by then coming out with Dual-core processors and AT LEAST 2GB of memory, etc. And W7 used the same WDM driver models that Vista used, so the same drivers worked...drivers that had by then already been released for Vista (Printers, I'm looking at you HP and Canon!).

Yep! Most of what FFXIhealer said above.

Thing to remember XP had being the dominant OS for at least 5 years by that point, Sure it had been round longer but it always takes a few years for the older OS's to drop off networks, so everyone from IT to the user new what to expect, and the most part liked WinXP

From my point of view, Vista's major "flaw" was that it was 64bit. A lot of software wasn't ready for that, In my case usually printer drivers.
Plus the added security and UAC which outright broke programs.

Both needed to be changed (certain customers, were getting XP PC's infected with malware rebuilt every week as we couldn't get the authority to lock them down)

I don't have any love for vista, but always thought of it as the scapegoat OS. People don't like change so it was never going to be well received.
By the time Win7 came out, software had also been updated to at least run on 64bit systems and the new security model so the upgrade process was a lot more seamless.

MS are usually a bit optimistic with their minimum requirements, I think vista especially so though which didn't help anything.

I actually installed it earlier this year for a bit of a play, on a duel socket LGA 1366 based system. It ran fine, but couldn't really see a need to keep it around as it is right between XP and later OS's

Excellent post by FFXIhealer, you summed it up perfectly.

A moment of silence for all those poor souls that had to run Vista on 512MB systems (Vista Capable!)!

FFXIhealer wrote:

2nd Hate Reason: Driver Support
This one is a mixed bag. Because of all the additions to security, Microsoft had to push back the timetable on the release of Vista, so hardware manufacturers got pissy and didn't write updated drivers for the WDM model that was being introduced by Vista. Why was Microsoft changing the driver model? To increase security, of course. The drivers had to follow the WDM model in order to mesh with the new kernel while at the same time allowing higher security on the OS level that corrupted drivers could introduce. They also made it mandatory to get driver certification for 64-bit systems. It pissed a lot of people off, but made it VERY hard to hide malicious code in the drivers - a common complain with Windows XP and older systems.

I think this single reason is enough to "not like" Vista (or rather 3rd party manufacturers). I had a lot of problems in IT-support when people couldn't get their old printers and whatnot to work with Vista. I know we had to change our whole PoS system because most 3rd party companies still used XP until Win 7 was released and skipped Vista completely. It was just bad luck that our machines happened to have Vista for that brief 2 year period when all the other companies downgraded back to XP and waited it out.

From a purely desktop user perspective, Vista was actually pretty nice at the time - much prettier to look at than XP, for starters. 32-bit Vista ran fine on the two Dell XPS420s my dad bought new, optioned up to 4GB and Q6600s with 8800 vid cards IIRC. These computers are both still in daily use with Vista on them! Of course the 8800s died, and were replaced with ATI 5770s.

From factory the boot times were insanely slow, but improved 100-fold with the installation of an SSD, and removal of Dell crap and HP bloat printer/scanner software. UAC was disabled pretty quickly, but I'm sure that probably isn't a good thing on my spam unaware mother's machine ... meh I don't touch that one anyway.

Also, the XPS420s have "SideShow" displays on top, which are pretty much useless, but an interesting gadget nonetheless. Was handy to play Solitaire on it while waiting for the computer to boot 😖

Vista was over promised and under delivered. It's as simple as that.

sf78 wrote:

I think this single reason is enough to "not like" Vista (or rather 3rd party manufacturers). I had a lot of problems in IT-support when people couldn't get their old printers and whatnot to work with Vista. I know we had to change our whole PoS system because most 3rd party companies still used XP until Win 7 was released and skipped Vista completely. It was just bad luck that our machines happened to have Vista for that brief 2 year period when all the other companies downgraded back to XP and waited it out.

Yeah, I'd be pissed at Dell/HP/Canon/Kodak/Brother/etc. too. They all had ADVANCE NOTICE of the WDM model and guidelines, but when Windows delayed Vista, they all suddenly got PMS and stopped doing any work for it. Then BAM, Vista gets released and suddenly nobody's printer works. Wow...what the hell happened? Vista must suck! Nope, blame Dell/HP/Canon/Kodak/Brother/etc. They had a hissy fit and didn't do their damned jobs.

does anyone remember the failed update back in 08 that lead to continues reboot and if you didn't have any system restores set, well you where shit out of luck. I got hit with that back in the day when I was upgrading my Dell Optiplex GX270..... I miss my GX270 I use that for a long time it had a 3.4GHz p4 socket 478, 4GB RAM, 1TB SATA HDD and a ASUS Radeon HD 3450 512MB (AH3450). It was the flat desktop dell ended up going back to xp pro and i used that setup from 08 to 2011. I did have 7 running on it for the last year or so.

FFXIhealer wrote:

Yeah, I'd be pissed at Dell/HP/Canon/Kodak/Brother/etc. too. They all had ADVANCE NOTICE of the WDM model and guidelines, but when Windows delayed Vista, they all suddenly got PMS and stopped doing any work for it. Then BAM, Vista gets released and suddenly nobody's printer works. Wow...what the hell happened? Vista must suck! Nope, blame Dell/HP/Canon/Kodak/Brother/etc. They had a hissy fit and didn't do their damned jobs.

Really? They all had a hissy fit simultaneously? Like they were working on it up to a certain time, and then everyone coordinated to stop doing any work at the same time? Allow me to be a bit skeptical; there must be more to the story than this.

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

does anyone remember the failed update back in 08 that lead to continues reboot and if you didn't have any system restores set, well you where shit out of luck.

You can never be totally out of luck. There is always some trick that will fix stuff like that; it just may be very not obvious and if it's not made public fast enough, you may as well reinstall.

dr_st wrote:

FFXIhealer wrote:

Yeah, I'd be pissed at Dell/HP/Canon/Kodak/Brother/etc. too. They all had ADVANCE NOTICE of the WDM model and guidelines, but when Windows delayed Vista, they all suddenly got PMS and stopped doing any work for it. Then BAM, Vista gets released and suddenly nobody's printer works. Wow...what the hell happened? Vista must suck! Nope, blame Dell/HP/Canon/Kodak/Brother/etc. They had a hissy fit and didn't do their damned jobs.

Really? They all had a hissy fit simultaneously? Like they were working on it up to a certain time, and then everyone coordinated to stop doing any work at the same time? Allow me to be a bit skeptical; there must be more to the story than this.

While I can't explain what happened exactly, I can only say that Microsoft indeed makes pre-releases of their software available to developers at an early stage, along with documentation and software development tools. So yes, the tools were out there to update your drivers for the upcoming OS, and test them on various pre-releases over time. Somehow, a lot of companies did not. Then again, various companies did, because there was also a lot of hardware that did work in Vista at release time.

For some reason people were REALLY sceptical about Vista before and after it's launch. It seems that most companies were happy with XP finally running as it should after all the updates and service packs and were reluctant to start the whole upgrade process all over again. Especially when XP can be run quite well with very old hardware, so they didn't have to invest anything at that point. Why hurry and spend money now when you can wait a year or two to see if the thing really catches on?

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

does anyone remember the failed update back in 08 that lead to continues reboot and if you didn't have any system restores set, well you where shit out of luck. I got hit with that back in the day when I was upgrading my Dell Optiplex GX270..... I miss my GX270 I use that for a long time it had a 3.4GHz p4 socket 478, 4GB RAM, 1TB SATA HDD and a ASUS Radeon HD 3450 512MB (AH3450). It was the flat desktop dell ended up going back to xp pro and i used that setup from 08 to 2011. I did have 7 running on it for the last year or so.

Not vista, but do remember XP SP3 destroying my internet connection and costing me 3 days of my life that I won't get back. Haven't installed XP SP3 since. 😵

XP/Vista/7 all go into the same junk box 😉 I just hate the way they use filesystem cache. Only 8.1 and 10 are doing it right (not sure about 8.0 as I've skipped it).

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

does anyone remember the failed update back in 08 that lead to continues reboot and if you didn't have any system restores set, well you where shit out of luck. I got hit with that back in the day when I was upgrading my Dell Optiplex GX270..... I miss my GX270 I use that for a long time it had a 3.4GHz p4 socket 478, 4GB RAM, 1TB SATA HDD and a ASUS Radeon HD 3450 512MB (AH3450). It was the flat desktop dell ended up going back to xp pro and i used that setup from 08 to 2011. I did have 7 running on it for the last year or so.

I remember being worried about this at the time. Not sure what I did, but I ended up not risking anything. I hadn't let it auto-install the affected update when I was made aware if this issue. I Probably either waited till the broken update was removed or temporarily disable automatic updates and we never were affected by it.