Is Vista any better to use now?

Question

I have been offered Vista for free. I currently have XP. Vista has always been offered to me since it came out but all the critics said XP was better so I just ignored Vista and stayed with XP. But now that it has been out for awhile, has it been improved any yet? Is it worth upgrading to Vista now considering I could do so for free? Thanks.

Answer 1

As a person who returned three Vista SP1 computers a few months ago, and purchased a Mac and also installed XP to get away from Vista, I would say some of the problems have definitely been worked out, but certainly not all like drivers or memory allocation or older software to work. Vista certainly has improved from the time it was first released, but it is still not better than XP. If you look any any post that disagree with this, you will never see anyone providing anything specific on why they think Vista is better-none that are legitimate. I have probably spend more money on Vista computers and worked closely with the OS more than anyone I know. The top thing you need to ask yourself is what do you gain from Vista?



Vista is still slower than XP even with newest tuning download. When trying to go from one OS to another, there are lots to consider:

1) What are you using the OS for?

2) What features is it that Vista has that is not on XP that you feel you must have?

3) Will the edition of Vista you have have less or more features than the version of XP you currently have?

4) Will the applications you have, run on Vista as well or better than they are currently on XP?

These are basic issues Vista PC are still having:



1) Older software applications are running poorly or not at all.

2) If you are into gaming, "NO" games that work with XP will work with Vista.

3) Memory allocation-In order to run applications in XP you need only 512 MB RAM, for Vista, you "require" 2 GB RAM

4) XP actually has more feature than most Vista Editions.

5) Resource hog-For most, when they buy Vista and run it, they find, despite the improved hardware they have and additional money they spent, their applications run slower on Vista than on XP. On the other hand XP will run any software faster and more efficiently than Vista-the only exception are very rare gaming applications that use Direct X 10 which is not a standard for anything.

6) Still problems with drivers for software and devices working.

7) Complaints that stated processor requirements are far too low.

An important point is, there are no issues with the quality of hardware -only the Vista OS.

MS keeps raising what they say are the requirements to run Vista. Here is what they claim are the minimum memory requirements here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/get/system-requirements.aspx it is important you read this before you make your decision. Many people say you need a minimum of 2 G RAM, but Manufacturers are now adding 3 GB into their new computers. MS use to say it was 512 MB and they were dedicated to bringing down memory allocation requirements, but they are going in the other direction to try to solve their other prblems. If you have every spoken to a person with an 800MHz Processor and 1 GB RAM, you will find some angry people.



If you speak to the Geek Squad or go to Best Buy or Circuit City or your local PC, or anyone who regularly deals Vitsa customers- with one thing is clear; there are still numerous problems with drivers because Vista still has not completed platforms that drivers can attach to for Software companies. And as some are being completed, software companies now must decide if it's worth it to even try 1.5 years after the OS was introduced. Microsoft still has a tremendous marketing issue in that some software companies and device companies no longer care about being associate with Vista. For them it's silly to invest further resources for Vista when the payback will only be for 1 year and then the sales may not cover additional investment costs (6 months to make the drivers and only 6 months after that before another OS system comes out from Microsoft. This is a problem that Microsoft created for itself. Software companies are beginning to migrate to OSX and Linux where roll outs are far more stable and where market share is slowly being taken away from Microsoft.



The key to knowing if Vista is ready for showtime is when large fortune 500 companies begin investing in Vista. That was always my standard. When I tried to break that policy with Vista, I had more headaches than I can count. If XP is working fine for you as it is for everyone else, my guess is it's working a lot better than anyone on Vista-what can they do that you cannot do? Or do better on XP? I'll tell you nothing! In my opinion Vista is the single reason why PC sales are down over a year and the last three months. It's also a major reason why Linuxs and Apple sales are way up over that same time period.



I have three free edition of Vista-Ultimate, Business, Home Premium and still have them in my refrigerator freezer. In my opinion, XP is still the strongest 32 bit OS out there, Windows 2000 is still 2nd and maybe Vista is next. Leopard is a 64 Bit OS, but can run 32 bit applications fine. When Vista improves to the point where it's simpler and better than XP, I will defrost one Edition of Vista and try it. Frankly, I don't see that happening before Windows 8 comes out. Viruses that are attacking Vista now are 10X stronger than anything XP ever experienced.



In conclusion, right now there are more people with Vista that would love to be in the position you are and have XP to use and never see Vista again ever that there are people with XP willing to give that up or seriously consider it for Vista.



I would consider yourself very lucky to have XP and give yourself a hand at being intelligent enough to get XP when you did. It was probably one of the best decisions you ever made. For me, there is nothing that Vista does, that I cannot do on XP better. I have never seen a person who claimed they liked Vista, quantify why they think its any better than XP-I would challenge the others that make that claim, to indicate specifically why



I hope this helped.

Answer 2

A lot of the people (not all) still complaining about Vista are people who have never used it or have tried installing it with hardware that couldn't handle it. It's pretty much the "cool" thing to say Vista is bad.



Like a few others have said, it's not that bad. Vista has some features that XP is missing that are really great to have. For example, Vista handles memory better than XP. I will warn that it can be hard to find a few settings in the control panel since they have changed things around a bit. Once you learn where things are, there are no problems.



Like someone else has said, don't install on an older machine because there is a chance it may not work well. (There have been people who have installed on older machines with no problems, but there is still a chance there will be problems.)



If you are happy with XP and don't feel like you need to move to Vista, then don't. But if you're really curious about Vista, maybe you should try it on a friend's computer first. Or you can always make a backup of your XP install and then try out Vista and then if you don't like it, you can always go back to XP without having to re-install everything.

Answer 3

I do not have vista, so I can't say how good or bad it is. Still I like to give my comments. I spend hours per day answering questions here at Yahoo Answers. I see a lot of people here who do not like vista and that it is crab. Your question is whether vista is better now than it was a while ago.

I think myself, that a lot of problems with vista had nothing to do with vista itself. A lot of computers with xp were not vista ready and with all kind of updates etc the computer was made vista ready. For example, Vista runs best with a min. of 2GB Ram. How many xp computers have 2 GB. Not long ago, we were happy to have 512 MB.

Now all computers are sold only with Vista and therefore I think, that Vista is doing much better and that there are less complaints now.

Not Vista became better, but the computers running with Vista are.

When I buy a new computer I will have vista on it.



Thanks for reading my comments about Vista from somebody who only used a computer with vista once.

Answer 4

Most of the problems that one would encounter with Windows Vista would be based on resource usage. If you have a machine that will run Vista smoothly, you probably won't encounter many problems. I get errors from time to time with software compatibility issues, but the clean interface and the ease of use makes the pros outweigh the cons, in my opinion.



I am also running Vista 64-bit, but I don't think that makes a difference.

Answer 5

Well i have Vista and it works much better then XP because i have XP in my cal-tap and it sucks for real but in my desktop i have Vista and men it works good and it has lot more cool stuff then XP anyway get it u will fall in love with it at 1st site lol

Answer 6

Vista has problems running old software, drivers for software applications and devices. Vista also has poor memory allocation than XP. I takes significantly less memory to run applications in XP than Vista. Pick your application-It doesn't matter.



Additional documented complaint at Vista is RAM and processor speed listed in its requirements are to run the OS only and do not reflect what is necessary run ordinary applications. The minimum processor requirements listed makes for a very slow running computer.



As manufacturers saw, as MS was working to complete development of its software, it noticed RAM requirement would increase. In order for MS to quickly compete development of its software it did not have time to improve memory allocation and memory utilization increased with developments is made to date.



I would recommend not listening to people who have never tried Vista. Since there is no testing ever done that indicates applications or memory allocation function better in Vista than XP and Microsoft has not questioned testing that shows otherwise, I would also question those who claim otherwise and ask them to provide proof. to avoid a he said she said situation.



In closing I would recommend staying with XP until MS can improve Vista to the point it can run applications faster and more efficiently, If you have hardware that is strong enough for Vista, you XP will cook. I would recommend sticking with XP

Answer 7

Basically it depends if Vista is being installed in an old computer or a relatively new computer (3 years old or less) - don't install in an old computer. Also depends if you are running new software (less that 3 years old) or old software - don't install if using old software programs - they may not work properly with Vista unless you can download an update from their website.

Answer 8

My brother just got a new laptop with vista. He's not the brightest crayon in the box when it comes to this kind of thing and has had really no issues with it. I think they may actually have worked out alot of the issues.

Answer 9

1) Unless it's a legal copy, you won't be able to run it long. Getting updates means that it has to be a legal copy (no cracks) - since it's actually checked on the Microsoft database before you get the update.



2) Make sure that you can get Vista drivers for all your hardware. Any hardware that doesn't have a Vista driver is hardware that's not there - Windows doesn't see hardware, it sees drivers.

Answer 10

If you have a minimum of 1 gigabyte of ram memory you should like Vista, anything less it slows your computer. Ram memory is cheap and easy to install.



Good Luck