Is Vista that bad?
Discussion
Sorting out my Stepdad's newish PC the other day, which is about 10 months old. Its an entry-spec Dell desktop and is running MS Vista home. I've never experienced Vista before. What a horrid interface. Also makes his machine run like a dog -and it all seems to be OS/UI related slowness (with 1GB memory and about 30% HDD used).
Anyone else find Vista really slow? I'm thinking about buying him a copy of XP...
Anyone else find Vista really slow? I'm thinking about buying him a copy of XP...
Concur with the 2Gb sentiment. Also if it is a sempron or celeron cpu then it will be slow however much memory you put in.
Conversely I am running an Athlon 64 X2 4800 with 2Gb and it zips along quite nicely, once it's booted. And I quite like the interface. Each to their own, i suppose.
Conversely I am running an Athlon 64 X2 4800 with 2Gb and it zips along quite nicely, once it's booted. And I quite like the interface. Each to their own, i suppose.
Memory aside, keep in mind that despite being shiny, new, wonderful, secure and stable... it's Windows.
So it's open to all the crap that made XP go bang, except now it'll go bang with added pretty effects.
Spyware scan it, if it's running McAfee/Symantec AV pull them off... basically do the usual.
So it's open to all the crap that made XP go bang, except now it'll go bang with added pretty effects.
Spyware scan it, if it's running McAfee/Symantec AV pull them off... basically do the usual.
Most people who knock Vista have read about it and decided they don't like it because it's cool to do so, without actually living with it for a while.
All of our consultants are now running Vista laptops with either 1GB (adequate) or 2GB (better) and we have had no problems so far. That's a hell of a lot better than the equivalent period of time with XP. I have to support the stuff on top of my day job (working on client site) so it's pretty important.
For mobile working it's made things easier for us. We work at a number of client sites and connecting to network resources is a fair bit easier with Vista than XP. Fewer crashes, no problems with compatibility of our apps (Office, FTP stuff, SAP Gui) all lead to it doing what we want it to. I reckon the improved connectivity part has saved us the cost of the OS already in terms of our consultants time.
Ideally we would be a complete OSS shop. Our infrastructure is virtually free, based on Linux, google apps and zoho. Unfortunately due to our customers dependency on MS it makes it easier for us to use MS OS and Office. In this respect we use what is best for us and standard Vista is so much better than XP that there is not a chance we would switch back.
I do appreciate that all situations are different & a co with 15 mobile users is very different than one with 8000 desktops.
All of our consultants are now running Vista laptops with either 1GB (adequate) or 2GB (better) and we have had no problems so far. That's a hell of a lot better than the equivalent period of time with XP. I have to support the stuff on top of my day job (working on client site) so it's pretty important.
For mobile working it's made things easier for us. We work at a number of client sites and connecting to network resources is a fair bit easier with Vista than XP. Fewer crashes, no problems with compatibility of our apps (Office, FTP stuff, SAP Gui) all lead to it doing what we want it to. I reckon the improved connectivity part has saved us the cost of the OS already in terms of our consultants time.
Ideally we would be a complete OSS shop. Our infrastructure is virtually free, based on Linux, google apps and zoho. Unfortunately due to our customers dependency on MS it makes it easier for us to use MS OS and Office. In this respect we use what is best for us and standard Vista is so much better than XP that there is not a chance we would switch back.
I do appreciate that all situations are different & a co with 15 mobile users is very different than one with 8000 desktops.
I've got 3 machines with XP Pro, and 3 with Vista ultimate.
Initially I was a bit dubious about vista, didn't think it was anything special, but after using it for a while I have to say I'm actually very impressed with it. Yes it's a bit of a RAM whore compared to XP, but memory prices being fairly low these days means that's not really a life altering problem in my opinion.
I think Vista will come into it's own next year. XP feels somewhat outdated now having used it for some time, and I think more and more people are warming to it.
Initially I was a bit dubious about vista, didn't think it was anything special, but after using it for a while I have to say I'm actually very impressed with it. Yes it's a bit of a RAM whore compared to XP, but memory prices being fairly low these days means that's not really a life altering problem in my opinion.
I think Vista will come into it's own next year. XP feels somewhat outdated now having used it for some time, and I think more and more people are warming to it.
Targarama said:
Thanks.
Actually, one of the slow points is boot time/shutdown time. Guess I won't make that much better...
Don't boot up and shut down then, use the "sleep" feature which actually works this time and will recover a machine from being powered down in about 2 seconds.Actually, one of the slow points is boot time/shutdown time. Guess I won't make that much better...
Vista does seem to have a bad press, unjustifiably from where I am standing, it flies on my current machine but even on my old one (which would have been lower spec than any new machine) it was no worse than XP. Just make sure that you don't have any Norton Antivirus kind of rubbish on your machine as I guarantee that will be why it is slow.
FunkyNige said:
ih8thisname said:
I'm currently using Vista on the laptop...
It's running exceptionaly well, don't see the problem here to be honest mate.
Same for me, I don't find it slow at all.It's running exceptionaly well, don't see the problem here to be honest mate.
Dual-booting one of the machines between XP and Vista, I'd be hard pressed to say there was much of a performance difference. No doubt you can benchmark a difference, but that's not the same as noticing a difference day-to-day.
As said above, it's fashionable to knock Vista because it's a Microsoft product and therefore must be rubbish, and it's cool and amusing to say you should wait until there's been an even number of service packs. I'm neither fashionable nor cool, so I'm happy that I can just use it day-in and day-out with no issues. Each to their own.
TheLearner said:
Memory aside, keep in mind that despite being shiny, new, wonderful, secure and stable... it's Windows.
So it's open to all the crap that made XP go bang, except now it'll go bang with added pretty effects.
Spyware scan it, if it's running McAfee/Symantec AV pull them off... basically do the usual.
It's actually very different underneath. I do agree with dumping McAfee or Symantec though. AVG or Kaspersky are better with much lower overheads.So it's open to all the crap that made XP go bang, except now it'll go bang with added pretty effects.
Spyware scan it, if it's running McAfee/Symantec AV pull them off... basically do the usual.
Zod said:
TheLearner said:
Memory aside, keep in mind that despite being shiny, new, wonderful, secure and stable... it's Windows.
So it's open to all the crap that made XP go bang, except now it'll go bang with added pretty effects.
Spyware scan it, if it's running McAfee/Symantec AV pull them off... basically do the usual.
It's actually very different underneath. I do agree with dumping McAfee or Symantec though. AVG or Kaspersky are better with much lower overheads.So it's open to all the crap that made XP go bang, except now it'll go bang with added pretty effects.
Spyware scan it, if it's running McAfee/Symantec AV pull them off... basically do the usual.
The new stuff might well be Fort Knox, it's the old stuff welded to it, unchanged, by lazy devs that'll get you every time. So in some respects Vista is armour plated... and in others that armour is simply pretty paper mache.
Running Vista Home Premium on this laptop (2Gb Ram) and its great. Easy interface - very intuitive. Very stable, very helpful too. Flies along quite happily. I was initially sceptical of Vista, but liked it so much on the laptop, I got a new PC with it on. 8Gb RAM, Quad core jobbie, and its great. Only downside with 64bit s/w is the lack of drivers for my webcam and fingerprint reader - I'm sure they'll come in time.
Give it a proper try-out, then knock it. But don't go with less than 2Gb Ram IMHO.
LB
Give it a proper try-out, then knock it. But don't go with less than 2Gb Ram IMHO.
LB
One of the things that makes Vista slow is the HDD access speed. When you first fire up Vista it spends a long time fiffling about in the background. Indexing and stuff.
On a slowish single core processor, with a slow HDD, this can make it like swimming in treacle.
But it does get an awful lot quicker once it has "settled down".
I run Vista on a 800mhz single core intel cpu. It works pretty fast, even with the sluggish 1.8" HDD.
In fact if you turn off all the bells and whistles with something like Vispa, it is pretty quick.
They annoying thing is that you have to fiddle with it to get it to run properly. That really isn't a good feature.
On a slowish single core processor, with a slow HDD, this can make it like swimming in treacle.
But it does get an awful lot quicker once it has "settled down".
I run Vista on a 800mhz single core intel cpu. It works pretty fast, even with the sluggish 1.8" HDD.
In fact if you turn off all the bells and whistles with something like Vispa, it is pretty quick.
They annoying thing is that you have to fiddle with it to get it to run properly. That really isn't a good feature.
Mr E said:
I'm still utterly staggered it's acceptable to require 2Gb of RAM to run a home operating system.
I'm running in 512Mb, and the machine only really starts to struggle when I'm chewing through large amounts of photo processing.
It's the same with a Mac. That's the modern world.I'm running in 512Mb, and the machine only really starts to struggle when I'm chewing through large amounts of photo processing.
More RAM is always better - in the Mac world the recommendation is for as much RAM as you can afford.
DDR2 is ludicrously cheap (around £15-20 per Gb) so no reason not to have lots on a fairly recent PC. My next will have 4Gb - Vista and OSX will use anything left over from the apps to cache stuff.
I find a big cause of vista slowdowns can be the shadow copy stuff that takes backup copies of changed files. If you've got other backup procedures, you can safely switch it off and it won't hit the disk nearly as often. The usual culprits like McAfee and Norton suites trying to scan everything going can also be a cause of slowness, just as on previous versions of Windows.
DDR2 is ludicrously cheap (around £15-20 per Gb) so no reason not to have lots on a fairly recent PC. My next will have 4Gb - Vista and OSX will use anything left over from the apps to cache stuff.
I find a big cause of vista slowdowns can be the shadow copy stuff that takes backup copies of changed files. If you've got other backup procedures, you can safely switch it off and it won't hit the disk nearly as often. The usual culprits like McAfee and Norton suites trying to scan everything going can also be a cause of slowness, just as on previous versions of Windows.
Edited by sjg on Friday 30th November 14:52
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