Customer Reviews

Windows Vista Business with SP1 Upgrade [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Microsoft Vista Business came bundled with a Lenovo laptop. Various glitches prompted numerous calls to my Microsoft Certified IT expert. Most recently, the system would just lose contact with the Internet for unknown reasons, then just as mysteriously regain contact several days later. Sometimes a "route print" at the administrator command prompt would show two "0.0.0.0" route entries, and deletion of these would sometimes (but not always) remedy the problem. Anyway, my IT expert finally just took Vista off and installed XP. I'm guessing my final outlay on this headache will total $700, not to mention my time.

Absolutely avoid the Vista operating system. I loaded Linux Ubuntu on a spare machine while the laptop was in the shop, and got instant browser, email, and Microsoft compatible word processing and spreadsheet. No flash, just functionality.

If it were possible to give Vista a negative rating I would do so. Vista is unlike every other Microsoft Operating System ever produced. Every new Microsoft Operating System came with its annoying little bugs. Those of us who liked Microsoft Windows myself among them usually got used to living with the MS bugs or "Features" as they are called by the company.

Vista was inflicted on PC users because somewhere Microsoft got the notion that a more complex difficult to use memory hogging buggy wizard filled operating system was more secure thus much better. Vista is indeed far more secure than any earlier Microsoft product for one basic reason it never lets you do anything. You can not be productive on Vista unless you jump through more operating system generated hoops than you will ever see during a lifetime at the circus.

Don't get me wrong. I am not one of these geeky guys that wants everyone to switch to Linux or Apple. I love my Microsoft Windows XP PC but, Microsoft Vista is a gigantic LEMMON no amount of Service Pack tweaking will ever fix. I have XP systems and I will be keeping my XP computer. If I buy a new computer with Pretty but way lame Vista pre-installed I will reformat my disk and install my trusty capable XP operating system workhorse.

To say Vista is super slow at start up, during regular use and at shut down is an understatement in its most profound incarnation. If you buy a system with so much memory, new graphics, sound and other high priced, hogh powered hardware producing a system that costs a kings ransom Vista will speed up a little. Vista is a money hog because many old XP devices do not work on Vista at all and others need lots of tweeking to get them to work. Now Vista is so improved it will never crash, naw Vista just freezes up so completely you can not do anything productive. Vista will make you more productive because all its freeze up's will have you doing the same work again and again and again and again hoping it won't freeze before you can save it!

Finally Vista is a big useless paranoid fat nag. I mean at every turn Vista wants to reformat, check or otherwise make sure something you are doing is allowed. Vista is the Fort Knox of Operating Systems but think about it who wants to live and work in Fort Knox. Vista is an operating system as such it is an extention of your home or business. Adding Vista to your computer is like stationing thousands of nagging police officers whose job it is to challenge your every move every time you become even the least bit productive. Vista is an operating system with so many paranoid subsystems built in that it is effectively useless for its intended productive purpose.

For all the reasons I list herein I would strongly advise against purchasing Vista. I feel Vista is the prettiest operating system Microsoft has ever produced but under that pretty surface is a code full of maggots that grow into extremely pretty productivity killing computer bugs.

Before SP1 Vista was junk like most people say, SP1 reduced its' overhead by quite a bit. About 20% less ram and 10% less CPU usage. It is more secure than XP which is why I installed it. I haven't run across any incompatibilities after SP1 which was common early on.
You can install the full version from the upgrade copy, don't upgrade from xp to vista you will be sorry, that route is still a mess.

We have tried to make Vista work for a year on a $2,000 laptop. We spent days getting our Vista compliant design software to work. Everytime we had to load new software we lost too much time. Our new laptop also ran slower than the old one with XP. The last straw was when a Microsft program would not work and the fix on Microsoft's website was a rewrite to the registry. Finally we reformatted the hard drive and installed XP. Everything works better and faster.

I run a tiny IT department where we now have about 60 machines running Windows Vista and we are down to about 40 machines still running Windows XP. My impression is that Windows Vista is clearly superior to Windows XP in just about every respect and the overwhelming majority of our people who have switched, prefer Windows Vista. Furthermore, we have simply not experienced the problems reported by most of the other reviewers.

Compatibility: When we first started installing Windows Vista, we ran into a handful of applications that were not compatible, but this was appalling behavior on the part of those vendors: Vista had been in the works for 5 years, there had been a public beta for more than a year and the things that were enforced in Vista had been Microsoft recommendations for about 10 years. You can hardly blame Microsoft if some vendors still refused to co-operate. They deserve to go out of business. We now have no compatibility problems.

Stability: We find Vista and XP to be approximately the same, but with Vista slightly better, because there are more effective tools for finding and fixing device driver problems. In both systems, the only real reasons for system crashes are bad third-party device drivers and occasional hardware problems.

Start-up time: Here Vista is a huge improvement, because sleep and hibernate modes actually work consistently, so a typical start-up time from sleep mode in Vista is only a few seconds.

General performance: Windows Vista's interface does not have the instant snap of Windows XP, but that is not because Vista is slower. It is because Vista's interface has more animations and if an animation is instant, you won't see it. The overall effect is of a lazier, smoother pace, but real system performance is similar to XP. Some things are faster, some are slower and most are about the same.

Style of working: There are several changes to the way one should work with Windows Vista to get the most out of it, so we give new users a 10 to 20 minute introduction to those changes and they have no further problems and universally prefer the new approach. Windows Vista is more logically organized and much quicker and easier to work with. Going back to Windows XP feels positively awkward.

Hardware requirements: Windows Vista needs more memory and uses what it has more effectively. Memory is cheap, so we just use enough memory and the systems are great. Beyond that, its hardware needs are about the same. Some of our installations were upgrades. If the graphics card is old and slow, you don't get the Aero interface. It looks more like XP's, but that is not a step backwards. It is just not a step forward.

Internal changes: There are several internal improvements to Windows Vista -- most of which are not obvious. These range from better networking, improved manageability and better scheduling, through to better security. The security is noticeable in two ways: If you are constantly changing your machine's configuration, the security checks are very noticeable, but most people don't constantly change their configuration, so this is not a problem in real use. On the other hand, the increased security results in far few problems. We have anti-virus and anti-spyware software on our XP machines and regularly have problems with them. We have no extra security software on our Vista machines and have not had a single incident in 2 years.

On the whole we have found Windows Vista to be a very good operating system and clearly better than Windows XP.

I have not had any application or driver install correctly on Vista, even programs certified for use with Vista. This is the worst garbage I have ever seen and is occuring on more than one computer. Don't move away from XP Pro at any cost.

I purposely purchased Vista Business because I thought that Microsoft would ensure that their more expensive product would be more stable and productive that the other versions of Vista. I was wrong. Vista freezes more than any version of Windows I have used previously. I have had a new version of the blue screen of death. It does not recognize either my new printer or one of my displays even after attempting multiple updates of both of these drivers (both automatic updates, and manually).

To be blunt, Microsoft has taken a signficant step back with this product and seems to have wasted time on making a product that is more Apple-like than making a product that works.

I was very pleased with this product. It provided me with the connectivity I needed to do business on the go. I admit it was difficult to upgrade from my vista basic version. I had to delete everything off my computer and then re-install the computer programs with the backup disks. But, as mentioned, I am up and working...

Vista is indeed a revolutionary OS. The user interface was a MAJOR improvement over XP. The Game Explorer is a very nice addition for gamers. And best of all, it doesn't crash! It's just stable.

I have used Vista Business since its release in January 2007 and it has been absolutely rock solid. It's fast (faster than XP even on systems with more than 4Gbs of RAM), much more secure than XP, compatible with older software, sexy Aero effects, and boasts loads of new features and improvements. And I already mentioned the much improved interface.

Yes, it does have a few bad things. UAC is one of them, but that can be easily turned off. Slow file transfer over the network was indeed a problem early on, but was fixed even before SP1 came out. And DRM is still just as bad as in XP.

Windows 7 is coming out in a few months, but it's not out now, so Vista still holds the crown as the best Windows version out there. Actually, Windows 7 is nothing but Vista SE with a new name. I ran the Windows 7 release candidate full time for a month, and realized that I had been running "Windows 7" since January 2007. Heh. I will still upgrade to Win7 though, if I find it for cheap (the current upgrade prices are NOT worth it if you already own Vista).

Overall, this OS has served me well over these past three years, and just felt compelled to write a positive review. Good job Microsoft! :)

I was a little leary about upgrading to Vista after reading the reviews. The upgrade took a long time. Drivers were slow to install. The constant security reminders were a nuisance. HOWEVER...once it was installed and I turned off the UAC (user access control) reminder screens, it has worked like a charm on my Dell Dimension 8300 laptop with 1.5GB memory. Faster than XP easily. Much more responsive. Never crashes. It just takes a little patience to get it set up and adjust the security settings.