vista software

1. ( 3 of 3 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 29 2008

   I've been using Windows Vista in various incarnations since shortly after it was initially released and have since migrated most family members to Windows Vista. Unfortunately, Windows Vista has not been marketed properly by Microsoft and suffers from negative perceptions from people that attempt to install it on inadequate hardware (Microsoft's fault for bending to manufacturer pressure to sell obsolete computers) and word-of-mouth negativism from people that have never used Vista. When combined with adequate hardware, Windows Vista is a good operating system with lots of built-in media management features. In fact, Windows Vista is superior to Windows XP in many ways: * Improved media management support for movies, pictures, and audio. Plug in a digital camera and Vista automatically downloads the pictures to the Pictures folder. Combine this with Windows Live Photo Gallery (a free product) to tag your pictures and browse your photo collection by date taken or by tag. * Improved security so users no longer run as a system administrator by default. * Improved user interfaces to make using the operating system easier. * Volume Shadow Copy makes it a snap to recover previous versions of files and folders. * Backup and restore files easily to external hard drives. Some of the disadvantages of Windows Vista: * Windows Explorer attempts to automatically determine how folders should be viewed, but it nearly always gets it wrong and the folder view changes at random. Fortunately, a simple registry hack is available to disable this misfeature. * Microsoft marketing decided to release umpteen dozen editions of Windows Vista to confuse the dickens out of everyone. The recommended editions are Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate for home users or Vista Business or Vista Ultimate for business users that need to connect Vista to a domain controller. All other editions are superfluous and should be ignored. * Microsoft marketing changed the license terms but utterly fails to spell out the licensing terms in a clear and concise manner in its marketing materials. If you are upgrading from Windows XP to Windows Vista, you can install any of the Upgrade editions on top of Windows XP; however, the Upgrade editions do not allow you to perform a clean install. If you want or need to perform a clean install either now or in the future, you cannot use the Upgrade editions.

2. ( 1 of 4 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 25 2008

   Who wants to buy a new computer if you have this operating system? Never in the history of the business world has one company been allowed to force customers to constantly buy new, inferior products. I put off buying a computer because I had heard horror stories. Vista is like operating systems before XP. It just suddenly freezes and you have to turn your computer off to make it work again. I'm doing constant damage to my computer by being forced to turn off the power. The new office software is beyond confusing. Absolutely nothing is the same. Buy this at your peril!

3. ( 1 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jul 23 2008

   I successfully installed Vista Home Basic on my laptop, and whilst being far from overwhelmed with the product nevertheless believed it to be a step up from XP**. I then decided to 'upgrade' my desktop PC to Vista Home Premium, and boy I am wishing I had never even started that process. I used Upgrade Advisor, and confirmed that my PC was fine, and then satisfactorily installed Vista, but then the problems started. First off: Vista is significantly slower than XP, and that slowness becomes creeping until your PC virtually stops to allow Vista to do basic chores one takes for granted in XP. Suddenly, your PC can spring back into life, and all seems okay, then ..... back into the slow lane again. Also, Vista has fallen into the Adobe trap - it is much more invasive than XP and wants to take control of your life, not just your PC. Pehaps I could have adjusted to its way of doing things, after all at 40 something years old, I'm no young Turk, and the onset of grey hairs and a fear of social networking makes me a techno-geriatric, however Vista gave me no opportunity to adjust. You see the software kept crashing! When I say crashing, I mean that the PC would switch itself off and re-boot (I don't mean anything so gentlemanly as log-off or shut down, I mean power off in an instant). It kept doing this, and I could find no pattern to its decision making in this respect. Plug in a thumb drive - CRASH! Adjust a couple of photos in Photoshop - CRASH! Browse the web - hmm, seems to like this .... - CRASH!. I didn't try everything I could to solve the problem, but I gave it a good attempt for a couple of weeks, and I have no patience left in my soul for the condescending remarks of an ultimately hopeless support system. My PC worked fine for a long time with XP. My PC now seems to be working fine again - with XP. Yes, the solution for me was to scrub Vista and re-install XP. Hey Vista looks nicer/more contemporary or whatever, but XP works. In summary, if you are thinking about upgrading to Vista, please think long and hard. It is prettier than XP, but it offers very little added functionality. The killer though, is that it is very unreliable - you may be lucky, but in my view luck should have nothing to do with it. An operating system should work, all the time. Vista doesn't. ** The reason for me moving to Vista was for the much better sound capability it offers. I use my laptop as a music player through my main hifi and Vista's handling of high quality sound is much better than XP. On my laptop Vista has been a success. So there we go - one reasonably competent computer user, and a 50% success rate at switching to Vista.

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