Customer Reviews

Microsoft Windows Vista Business FULL VERSION [DVD] [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Windows Vista is clearly better than Windows XP in a hundred little ways, from the search boxes to the sidebar. The new and improved Vista features are listed all over the place, so I won't go into the details. I will say, however, that they do make an improvement in everyday computer use.

On the other hand, Vista suffers a thousand little flaws. For one thing, iTunes isn't compatible yet. Then, NVidia doesn't have decent drivers yet. Firefox doesn't work with the Windows Media plugin yet. For some strange reason, whenever I save a file in Microsoft Visual Studio, I get impossible-to-delete temporary files in my working folder. Some piece of incompatible software is creating them. Is it Windows Live OneCare? Visual Studio? Tortoise SVN? Who knows? Oh, and did I mention that Vista crashes whenever it tries to come out of sleep mode? I could list more problems, but you get the picture. Vista is not really stable.

My advice is this: If you are building a new system, go ahead and install Vista. You will have a bumpy road, but it's better than buying XP now and upgrading later. Otherwise, wait about six months for Microsoft and the other software companies to get their act together. You have been warned.

This must be the slowest OS on this planet. All the DRM 'enchancements' and other bloatware that MS decided to put in the kernel has made this the slowest operating system ever built, you need a 20% faster computer to get to the same level with XP.
Then there's the issue of endless 'Are you sure you want to do this' confirmations whatever you try to do. Clicking thru these dialogs gets so annoying you wish to throw your PC out the window. This is definitely the last piece of MS software I'll ever buy.

So I have a brand new Dell laptop. Came w/ XP and a free upgrade to Vista Business Edition.

I have just backed up my computer to take it back to XP. Not even the slide show works in Vista, drivers are not as well supported (even with the 32 bit release that makes waste of my 64 bit processor), no up folder toolbar icon, annoying security, IE is still not as good as FireFox, stuff is harder to find, can't connect to external monitors for some reason, and the picture slide show built into XP does not work, camera and GPS driver problems, the list goes on ... They only good thing, the search box they should have put in 5 years ago when Google did it for them (with their desktop plugin)

At this point I wished I bought a Mac ... but I guess I'll go back to XP for now ... I have always been excited about Microsoft products, I was even one of the first adopters of Windows 95 when it came out and everybody had mixed feeling ... but this time, I think Microsoft has SERIOUSLY messed up. This OS is worse than the previous OS ... bad sign for them ... and I've never used a mac much, but I'm sure it's the way to go now. Why didn't I get a mac?... not really sure still, but I develop software (mostly on Windows OS platforms) ... So I thought it would be safer for my development future. Oh well ... XP works pretty well.

I have had to set up a few new installs of the Vista Business on some servers and I was disappointed with the overall performance.

My biggest gripe is when I tried to remotely log in from another PC and I sat there waiting and waiting only to discover that the Vista default setup is to ask permission to run even the most basic operations and was actually sitting there waiting for someone to click 'YES' to allow the process to run. How irritating! Kinda self defeats the idea of remotely logging in doesn't it?.

Also if you happen to rename the administrator account the change is not registered somewhere in the Remote Connections authorization. So when I *thought* I was remotely logging in under the new admin account name Vista wouldn't let me in and it was only after searching for what seemed an eternity - some hidden place it took me 15 minutes to find, I discovered that the the new admin account name had not been authorized when I did the name change. yikes!

For those who need to run VNC Server on Vista, be aware there are issues - installing and running that you will need to work around as well.

It seems like Microsft drastically changed the menus, overdid the default security features, and installed a new hood ornament. Other than that I don't see what the big deal is.

I am a web developer and I had a test run of Windows Vista Business on my development machine for about a month. To sum it up -- a terrible and painful experience.

I do most of my work on my Dell 640M laptop:
1.6 GHz Intel Dual Core
Built-in video
2 GB RAM
80 GB hard drive

My laptop came with Windows XP and I got Vista Business as a "free" upgrade, even though I had to pay over $30 for shipping.

First, I installed it as upgrade -- a terrible idea. It was incredibly slow and would freeze on simple tasks like copy/pasting text or files. Many programs would crash or simply would not load.

Off goes the upgrade, on comes the clean install...

Things are better this time around, but boot time is at least twice as slow compared to Windows XP.

Next thing I tried to do is to use a briefcase to synchronize my development projects. There's this big site I'm working on with probably 1000 files in it, and Vista could never quite finish copying all the files to the briefcase over my home network (no such problems with XP). About half-way through, it would just freeze.

The Aero interface looked nice, but I had to disable it because it was just too much for my built-in Intel video chip. Still, simple operations like copy/ paste result in a small freeze, then up comes the system warning which other reviewers mentioned and then finally the "paste" part.

Same 5-10 sec freeze when I do development work and call up some application or try to display a simple HTML page from my local IIS server. Again, no such thing with XP.

Next gripe is the system shutdown. The default option is now "Sleep" which is real fast. But if you select, "Shut Down", prepare to wait. Possibly, forever. All in all, it ends up turning off about 30% of the time, other times you just see the never-ending "Shutting Down..." screen and have to turn the power off manually. All my applications/ drivers are Vista-capable, so this should not be caused by 3rd party application sotware "in theory".

Next, what is up with changing item labels? "Add or Remove Programs" is gone. "Programs and Features" is apparently much cooler according to Microsoft's marketing dept.

I get a feeling that they just moved the stuff around to make it look "newer". There are no improvements and often things are hard to find/ not intuitive on the control panel, in display properties and other areas.

Windows Explorer used to be great. I'd add copy/paste buttons to the toolbar and such operations would be a matter of a few clicks. Not anymore. Even simple browsing ("directory up" for example) buttons are gone. So you go through Desktop, then my computer, then C: to get to your main hard drive partition. Ridiculous!

Applications in general (I work mostly with Adobe/Macromedia Suite -- Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, etc.) run *much* slower on Vista compared to XP, often with the beforementioned freezes whenever a simple operation is performed.

After about 1 month I had enough. Back to Windows XP Professional. Couldn't be happier. Everything is fast, responsive. It lets me do my work without getting in the way just as an operating system *should*.

Sorry Microsoft, I am not going to be a beta tester for your unfinished, bloated product just because it is "new" and shiny. An "upgrade" usually implies a better, faster, more intuitive O/S. Vista offers none of these things except a shiny interface and a few useless visual effects. All they do is drain system resources.

If you're looking for a fast, reliable and secure O/S, go with Windows XP Professional. Don't waste your money on Vista.

VISTA is nothing but frustration.

I'm the IT administrator for a medium-sized business. I've installed virtually every version of DOS and Windows Microsoft has put out since the early 80s. VISTA is the worst operating system I've ever seen. It is BUGGY, UNINTUITIVE, a RESOURCE HOG, and INTRUSIVE. It boils my blood every time I have to use it.

The browse boxes are so unintuitive, it is hard to figure out what Microsoft had in mind. They removed the "up one level" button in favor of a button that gives you a list of your most recently viewed folders. It takes lots more clicking around to get to the folder you want. This is total STUPIDITY.

The wireless networking is so buggy as to be nearly useless. You'll need to continuously reboot your machine to get your connection to work.

You'll come to hate the "whirli-gig" and you'll get lots of NOT RESPONDING messages when you try to launch or use applications. If I had a dollar for every time I got a NOT RESPONDING message, our Dell M1330 laptop would be free by now.

So often, I'll launch an application and the whirli-gig will come on the screen and then I wait . . . and wait . . . and wait . . . and wait. What is this Core Two Duo laptop doing??? VISTA has so many intrusive processes, it is frustrating to even launch an application (and my machine is a 2.4 GHZ Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM and a 7200 RPM drive). This machine would fly on XP.

If you enjoy spending lots of time trying to figure out why your machine won't do simple things reliably, if you want to spend lots of time talking to technical support people with thick accents who really can't help you because the operating system is basically JUNK, then by all means buy VISTA.

We are abandoning our VISTA experiment and going back to XP because it is reasonably reliable and because we need to get things done on the computer rather than always battling with its VISTA-isms. VISTA is a huge step backwards for Microsoft and I seriously doubt that Service Pack 1 will be enough to fix such major design flaws. Maybe when they come out with VISTA RELEASE 2 their poor sales will force them to listen to consumers.

I sure wish I could convince all my competitors to buy VISTA machine because it would absorb so much of their resources it would give our business a real boost.

Do NOT believe all the knee-jerk garbage you're hearing about Vista, as 90% of it is being pulled out of thin air by people who obviously never even tried it. Linux and Apple trolls scour the internet for chances to add negative reviews to an operating system they'v never even tried.

Then there are the XP hypocrites who have been using XP for so long that they fear anything new.

Hypocrytes you say? Yup. This same negative "new Windows sucks" propaganda wave happened when Windows 2000 was released in 1999 (nobody wanted "NT") and again when XP was released in 2002 (incompatibility problems, verybody absolutely HATED that "Made by PlaySkool" interface). Everybody hated each of them until the next version of Windows came along. Then, suddenly, they LOVED the older version and tried to cling to it. Not only pathetic, but now very predictable. Vista is just the latest victim.

I have absolutely no love affair with Microsoft, trust me. But it's time for an actual professional with a masters in programming and operating systems to set a few things straight.

Fact: Windows Vista was in development a whole year before Windows XP was even released. Microsoft had been working feverishly on this OS for 6 years at the time of its release. Little id you know that nearly EVERY Microsoft product that comes out is extensively tested by a public usability testing program that is totally seperate from their beta testing program. Microsoft doesn't let anything out the door until all the usability testers (the general public that come to visit the Microsoft facility in Redmond, Wa) say they like it. Vista was OK'd by both internal and external beta testers in addition to the usability test program, or it never would have been released. I have personally done usability testing at Microsoft 17 times now (I like to get my 2 cents in), and I know how this process works. Microsoft releases software BY CONSENSUS, and Vista is what the people themselves ASKED FOR.

Fact: For its entire life, the virus magnet that is known as Windows XP has been solely responsible for the onslaught of spyware, malware and waves of viruses. Not Mac. Not Linux. Not DOS. Not Unix. It was Windows XP. Prior to XP, Windows would see a problem virus come down the pike once in a while. Then XP came along, and we've been swimming in viruses and Malware ever since. Even loaded with antispy and antivirus software, WinXP STILL gets infested and slows to a blue-screening crawl. As you read this on your XP box, I guarentee that you have spyware on your system. Run a scan and see for yourself. If you're just running Windows Defender, I guarentee you're LOADED with it and don't even know it - get better software immediately.

Fact: Though complaints about Vista's UAC are many, the Internet is not filled with Vista users begging to be saved from viruses and spyware they can't recover from. Those poor souls are pretty much all XP users. The Vista users complaing of any viruses and spyware are the ones who turned UAC off or clicked right past the UAC warning prompts without evn reading them.

Fact: OF COURSE Vista is going to be slightly slower than XP on the same machine - just like Windows XP was slower than Windows 2000, which was much slower than Windows NT4, etc. etc. This is the natural way things are SUPPOSED TO BE AS HARDWARE GETS FASTER AND FASTER. C'mon, what do you honestly expect? New operating systems are about new features, not "running faster" on the same hardware (anybody that knows anything about operating systems knows that new versions are NEVER faster than the previous version, no matter what operating system it is - just take a look at any Linux distro or new version of any Mac OS). It's up to HARDWARE to make things run faster, not the OS. Your system is not fast enough to run Vista? THEN GET FASTER HARDWARE LIKE YOU HAD TO DO FOR XP. Has everyone forgotten that today's hardware is anywhere from 4-10 times faster than than the hardware that was available when XP was first released? And that XP absolutely crawled on our systems when it first came out and that we all complained about it? And that Vista runs at virtually the same speed as XP once booted up - only with tons of new features? And that soon you will need a new OS to even be able to operate the dual quads already on the market and the dual octo-core systems right arounnd the corner? C'mon, people, get a grip and get kick that common sense glad into gear.

Fact: Since SP1 came out, Vista runs GREAT. I can run any Win32 program I want in Vista that I install, and as of SP1. I might even be able to run old 16 bit apps now, haven't tried that yet. Thanks to the freeware release of VDMSound, I am running old DOS games under Vista with full sound. I repeat - DOS games. Some of the few remaining software products currently being described as "Non-Vista compatible" can be made to work under Vista if you do a little reading and tweaking.

Fact: Before SP1 came out for XP, XP ran like crap and had tons of compatibility problems. Everybody hated it, even the way it looks. Bet you forgot that.

Fact: Turn UAC (User Access Control) off if you want Vista to behave like XP and not prompt you for confirmations. It's as easy as un-checking a checkbox in Control Panel (User Accounts). Note: This will drop Vista security down to the same "virus magnet/pants down" level as Windows XP, however, so you decide. The nice part is that you CAN decide.

Fact: Are you a gamer? Then you already know that Direct3D (DirectX) 10 is Vista-only. All you XP gamers can sit in your own DX9 drool if you want to. Meanwhile, we Vista users are walking around in DX10 games that look like movies. You oughtta see Crysis with dual nVidias running SLI.

Fact: Think you don't like Vista? Waiting for Windows 7 to come out in Q1 of 2010 (at the earliest without any of Microsoft's now legendary and predictable postponements)? You might be interested in knowing that Windows 7 is merely a re-packaging of Windows Vista - just like Windows XP was a re-packaging of Windows 2000 because 2000 didn't sell well (see for yourself at the command prompt - type "ver" and take note that Windows 2000 is Windows version 5.0 and Windows XP is version 5.1). Windows Vista is version 6.0. Dig up all the screen shots of Windows 7 you can find on the internet - take note that the title is "Windows 7" but the version number is 6.1. In other words, STILL VISTA. So get used to Vista. Better yet, GET Vista, or you'll eventually be two Windows versions behind when 7 comes out - which won't be until 2010 (at the earliest), and then that version of Vista will be around for 5 years until the next version.

Vista's here to stay, folks. You have a choice of slipping into even more obsolescence with XP (which is just Windows 2000 with lipstick, a 9 year old product) or you can move forward with Vista and Win7.

For me personally, Vista has been spoiling me rotten since SP1 came out. Every time I get up from my Vista machines and sit down on my XP machines, it feels like I'm sitting down on a machine in "Safe Mode". Vista makes XP feel old, limited, cumbersome and inadequate. The search functions of Vista alone remove all need for clicking through layers of start menus, even often allowing me to not have to touch the mouse - this alone makes XP feel like an antique. I wont even get into how cool Desktop Search is, SuperFetch, ReadyBoost, or the other many new features that make Vista MUCH faster than XP in many respects. Read that last sentence again, and then look those things up. You may commence drolling on your poor ol' outdated XP box's keyboard.

BTW: No, I do not work for Microsoft, and I have been a huge Linux fan since 1997 (SUSE Linux, to be exact, version 11 is fantastic). I ignore the fact that Linux always takes much longer for apps to load up (and runs clunkier in general) and that both KDE and Gnome always seems to look/work a lot like the latest version of Windows.

This program is two years away from being ready for the public use. WAIT until there are many updates and repairs before you buy. It is so bad that I am thinking of changing to Apple, no computer should be this much work. I would pay twice what I paid for this program to get back my old XP version.

I wouldn't have bought it voluntarily, but a few months ago I needed a new notebook and had a hard time finding what I wanted with XP installed on it. So I took a chance on one with Vista. What I found is that the negative commentary about Vista is all too true; if anything, Vista's critics are too kind. What can you say for a new OS in which one of the most basic functions---Search---is literally unable to find files by their exact names? I've never found one file on my notebook using Search. And although Vista's graphical interface is undeniably attractive (this explains my 2 stars), most notebooks don't come with the memory to run it. I upgraded to 2 GB in order to make it usable. Even though I'm aware that Microsoft and their PC manufacturer hostages always pull this trick, it still rankles when an expensive new business notebook is pretty much useless for basic word / email / spreadsheet programs with 1 gb of ram installed. Even with 2 GB I had to do a lot of streamlining, tuning, and tweaking to get Vista to run smoothly. Forgive me for clinging to the antiquated idea that this is the software designers' job, not mine. Thankfully there is a lot of information online showing how to do all of this, but it shouldn't be so necessary.

I'm not sure why anyone would pay for Vista as an upgrade or stand alone OS installation if they have a choice. Maybe by SP3 the people at MS will have this thing straightened out, but of course by then they'll have moved on to their next OS nightmare, expecting all of us to come along too. What fools we all are.

The worst thing you could do to your business is install windows vista on any of you machines. Vista is a bloated, slow, buggy piece of junk that could ruin your business. Stick with XP and don't even think about Microjunk vista. I would give it zero stars as a rating, if I could. May bill gates burn inhell.