I really like Vista 😀

On better hardware and with plenty of RAM it's lovely. Miss those widgets or whatever they are called.

Yep, nothing wrong with Vista provided SP2 is installed and there's plenty of RAM. I miss some of the functionality Windows 7 took away from it, and still have it installed on my laptop to play games (main partition is FreeBSD with a Windows 7 VM).

I was a little unimpressed when I built my Vista x64 machine with 2GB RAM for the first time, ran Oblivion, and saw it run out of memory ten minutes later. An upgrade to 4GB, and then 8GB, happened quite rapidly..

ZellSF wrote:

Marketing is everything. Vista's not terrible, but marketing failed so people thought it was. That's why 7 exists, basically a service pack to Vista relaunched with a better marketing campaign.

7 is a little more than a service pack for Vista, it added a bunch of new stuff, removed some stuff, and rewrote a bunch of stuff to make it preform better.

Also MS tried to mark Vista as best they could, they tried alot of ways to make Vista look good, but it was so bad at release, until SP1 it was a broken OS. I was in the Vista beta, and Beta 1 was great, Beta 2 they added a bunch of stuff like the new network stack that wasn't really fixed until SP2, a lot of the memory problems of Vista where related to the new network stack.

Marketing really does not have anything to do with Vista's poor reception. It was a combination of objective issues (due to Microsoft's poor preparation and coordination with other HW/SW vendors) and people's natural tendency to resist major UI changes. Come Windows 7, the first was fixed and the second people got used to so they were whining less. In fact, most of this was fixed by Vista SP1, but the reputation was already tarnished so badly that no marketing would change that. They needed a new product, even if only by name.

I liked Vista back in the day and never faced any problems tbh. You need more than 2GB of ram though, I'd say 4GB is the minimum amount required. Part of the bad name was because of the OEM laptops/desktops of the time with 2GB of ram and really crappy cpus, ie cheap stuff for the masses 🤣

IIRC in vista days I had a P45-based mobo with an E8500 and 4GB (later upgraded to 8GB) of ram.

dr_st wrote:

Marketing really does not have anything to do with Vista's poor reception.

Except perhaps for one thing - the minimum memory requirements wheren't realistic.
I've seen several "Vista capable" machines with nothing more than 512MiB of RAM..

MS should have been more honest from the beginning, like for example by stating "Vista is a powerful OS, made for powerful computers" or
something along these lines. But no, they suggested that the average XP machine was good enough. Which in turn resulted in a bad experience for many users.

And the ugly "Aero basic" design wasn't a good idea either, I think. I remember that I bought a GF5200 just to be able to get rid of it.
Years later MS showed that it was also possible to do Aero Glass in software (didn't the Win 8 Preview have that ability ?).

candle_86 wrote:

7 is a little more than a service pack for Vista, it added a bunch of new stuff, removed some stuff, and rewrote a bunch of stuff to make it preform better.

Compare the new features in Vista vs the new features in 7. One is clearly a major new OS release, one isn't.

dr_st wrote:

Marketing really does not have anything to do with Vista's poor reception.

Marketing is a major influence on people. Maybe you could say marketing didn't have a much to do with it as I say, but to say it had nothing to do with it is just hilariously wrong.

dr_st wrote:

They needed a new product, even if only by name.

Relaunching a product with a new name is marketing.

So ive tried as much updates and fixes as could for getting vista to update and thats a no go and ive never had this problem with windows 7 ever and i have installed win7 over hundred times for customers and never a problem. This project has hit a brick wall before it started, im probably going to got back to windows 8.1 like ive had on it before.

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

So ive tried as much updates and fixes as could for getting vista to update and thats a no go and ive never had this problem with windows 7 ever and i have installed win7 over hundred times for customers and never a problem. This project has hit a brick wall before it started, im probably going to got back to windows 8.1 like ive had on it before.

If its anything like win7 your need the 2016 July and august update roll up to install updates. You make need other ones too.

You may need KB3145739 and Cumulative update rollup too.

ZellSF wrote:

Marketing is a major influence on people. Maybe you could say marketing didn't have a much to do with it as I say, but to say it had nothing to do with it is just hilariously wrong.

Relaunching a product with a new name is marketing.

No, I am really saying that marketing really had nothing to do with Vista's poor adoption. Just because marketing is present does not mean it affects anything. Vista's marketing was very aggressive (in fact perhaps too aggressive to border on misadvertising as Jo22 said about the minimum requirements). It was widely rejected not because of marketing, as you claim, but in spite of marketing. Because marketing cannot hide objective faults when people actually start using the thing.

Saying that Win7's presentation is a marketing move may be true, but it has nothing to do with Vista's failure (which already set in). You are confusing cause and effect here.

But if you suppose I am wrong, please feel free to correct me by explaining how you believe Microsoft's marketing caused Vista's poor image, instead of just saying it was so.

Vista was a complete and total failure. 7 is the new XP.

PeterLI wrote:

Vista was a complete and total failure. 7 is the new XP.

The failure of vista did not have to happen. People got cheap and lazy and it was too different. When 7 came along enough people had used Vista to be familiar with the UI and most low end computers were powerful enough that it did not have the same performance problems. 7 would had failed too if it was released in place of vista.

Vista was super slow and super annoying.

PeterLI wrote:

Vista was super slow and super annoying.

Was? so its no longer slow and annoying?

Anyway 7 on the same system will be just as slow and annoying. Sounds like you only used it on a cheap junk OEM system or early XP systems.

Don't feed the troll... 😀

My Lenovo ThinkPad W500 came with Vista. A few years later I upgraded to 7 before I gave it to a friend as a wedding gift. The W500 was a lot faster with 7.

PeterLI wrote:

My Lenovo ThinkPad W500 came with Vista. A few years later I upgraded to 7 before I gave it to a friend as a wedding gift. The W500 was a lot faster with 7.

Obviously user error. You should learn how to use a computer.

dr_st wrote:

Don't feed the troll... 😀

But I can feed him poisoned food

PeterLI wrote:

Vista was super slow and super annoying.

A college of mine showed me his Vista install back when it was still sparkling brand new, kinda trying to impress me with it.
He was unable to hide the sweat drops dripping down his neck though with all the pop-ups and annoying issues he encountered just to get some games running 😒

PeterLI wrote:

Vista was a complete and total failure. 7 is the new XP.

This is kinda how I look at it.

I think XP and 7 are really good Windows OS's.
Is there actually any good reason to prefer Vista over 7, apart from maybe purchasing costs or something?

Tetrium wrote:

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

This is what I want to know. Why Vista instead of 7?