Windows 7

[Geti]

pff. those who say windows sucks, get a life. say "i prefer another OS"
i use a mixture of windows and linux, and its only because i dont have a mac that i dont use that.
linux - speedy boot, fast everything, i usually use it for netbrowsing, im, etc.
windows - games
mac - multimedia.
seriously, if i had a mac, id put 2 new hard drives in it and be able to boot everything, because each OS is brilliant for something (or the market is centered around it). then id install CS3 on the mac, all my games on windows, and all my fractal editors, IM, and 3d modeling on linux.
but i dont have 1 grand for a mac + another 2 for CS3.
so that was redundant.

...

ontopic ->
ill wait to see what this brings, looking pretty good now. hope its GUI is happily modable. im not actually that much of a fan of the whole ribbon thing, and i like things more black than glassy.

[Ravenclaw]

I've been using Vista for about a year now, and I don't hate it as much as some people do. I haven't encountered any major problems expect for issues with dvd reading, and the security pop-ups are occasional and not that much of a nuisance. But if W7 pwns Vista, I'll upgrade.

[jean-luc]

I think that Vista's problems are hugely overblown. I've been using it for 4 months now, and I'm perfectly happy with it.

[Slanelax]

Some of my main problems with Windows Vista is compatibility. I used to use XP a ton, and I tried moving programs from XP to Vista, and it's worse than trying to count the number of chins on my old elementary principal.

Vista is a bit slow, and is also slows down other programs that have to force me to change Aero stuff.

Good news is: Windows 7 is coming out.
Bad news is: I just got a new computer, so I'm nearly broke so I can't really get any new stuff now.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

I think that Vista's problems are hugely overblown. I've been using it for 4 months now, and I'm perfectly happy with it.

I'm of the "don't believe everything you hear" school of thought as well, but my experience actually matches up with the popular opinion of Vista. I keep a partition with Vista Business just in case I ever need to use Windows. I boot into it maybe once or twice a month just to keep things updated so I'm not overwhelmed with "Windows has 387 critical updates!" I haven't customized it at all, I haven't messed with system settings beyond superficial changes, and I don't keep anything important on it. All I have on it is McAfee Anti-Virus and Spybot S&D.
Every time I boot it up, it takes bloody ages to bring me the login screen, and even longer to sit around and lie about having loaded explorer. The network connection will attempt to share my hard drive with the entire subnet no matter how many times I turn off sharing. I don't remember the last time updating Spybot went smoothly -- I frequently have to end up force-quitting, uninstalling, and installing an updated version. And to top it all off, it takes 2-3 minutes on average for the computer to react when I tell it to reboot (I actually timed it), all the while it's claiming ~0% CPU usage. Then the updates themselves will hold off the rebooting for another five minutes, because clearly the best time to install critical updates is when the user is trying to pack up and leave (or at the very least force a reboot). This happens every time. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
Then I boot into Ubuntu, which I've probably irreparably damaged with some of the more unstable performance tweaks I've given it, and it boots in seconds. KDE, which I've also pimped out (jacked up the eye candy settings to the extreme end), also loads in seconds. And it only takes a few more to open a terminal and type:
sudo -s
aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade
And not only does that patch the OS, but also updates all the software I've installed. By this point, Vista would have just recognized that I had pressed the Enter key at the login prompt.
Every single time. In my experience, it's always something with Vista.

It could be that I only ever boot Vista after installing updates and only ever shut it down with more to install, but come on, a free alternative does this lightning fast in comparison and doesn't even have to reboot to put critical updates in effect immediately. How badly do you need to suck at the OS game to make a product that's consistently outperformed by a free alternative? Marketing can cover this stuff up for only so long -- I hope for Microsoft's sake that they come to their senses in developing Windows 7.

[TheSeer]

Heh. I've had a similarly opposite experience.

Vista boots as fast as... well computers boot. The networking was (and is) super-dooper seamless. Spybot... well, that stuff doesn't sound like a Vista problem anyways. Updating, lesse, "update" in the "start" menu, check for updates, install updates and perhaps a UAC prompt. One keyboard press, one word typed, 3 clicks -- pretty comparable to the Linux method. Admittedly, it doesn't update all of my software aswell but it can update some non-MS apps, it's just a matter of developer support (I think...); I've *never* had a problem with updates, ever. Infact, I haven't had any problems with Vista at all except for the poor performance of Frets on Fire (which has been resolved since I updated my graphics drivers).

Vista only has to reboot only at the more major updates (I rarely turn off my PC anymore, just standby), similar to this other OS I know when it receives kernel updates (although I think that might be changing...).

Anyways, like your situation, I had Ubuntu (8.01) installed on a partition, which I booted into every now and then for the same reasons you did for Vista. It didn't support my wifi chipset, it took forever to work with the LAN, it takes maybe twice as long as Vista to get to the login screen and blah blah blah blah blah.

For me, Vista works perfectly, runs well and... I've not met *one* person in person that has actually used it and disliked it. Well, one, but they didn't like it because Oblivion wouldn't work... on their integrated graphics.

[jean-luc]

I think that Vista's problems are hugely overblown. I've been using it for 4 months now, and I'm perfectly happy with it.

I'm of the "don't believe everything you hear" school of thought as well, but my experience actually matches up with the popular opinion of Vista. I keep a partition with Vista Business just in case I ever need to use Windows. I boot into it maybe once or twice a month just to keep things updated so I'm not overwhelmed with "Windows has 387 critical updates!" I haven't customized it at all, I haven't messed with system settings beyond superficial changes, and I don't keep anything important on it. All I have on it is McAfee Anti-Virus and Spybot S&D.
Every time I boot it up, it takes bloody ages to bring me the login screen, and even longer to sit around and lie about having loaded explorer. The network connection will attempt to share my hard drive with the entire subnet no matter how many times I turn off sharing. I don't remember the last time updating Spybot went smoothly -- I frequently have to end up force-quitting, uninstalling, and installing an updated version. And to top it all off, it takes 2-3 minutes on average for the computer to react when I tell it to reboot (I actually timed it), all the while it's claiming ~0% CPU usage. Then the updates themselves will hold off the rebooting for another five minutes, because clearly the best time to install critical updates is when the user is trying to pack up and leave (or at the very least force a reboot). This happens every time. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.
Then I boot into Ubuntu, which I've probably irreparably damaged with some of the more unstable performance tweaks I've given it, and it boots in seconds. KDE, which I've also pimped out (jacked up the eye candy settings to the extreme end), also loads in seconds. And it only takes a few more to open a terminal and type:
sudo -s
aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade
And not only does that patch the OS, but also updates all the software I've installed. By this point, Vista would have just recognized that I had pressed the Enter key at the login prompt.
Every single time. In my experience, it's always something with Vista.

It could be that I only ever boot Vista after installing updates and only ever shut it down with more to install, but come on, a free alternative does this lightning fast in comparison and doesn't even have to reboot to put critical updates in effect immediately. How badly do you need to suck at the OS game to make a product that's consistently outperformed by a free alternative? Marketing can cover this stuff up for only so long -- I hope for Microsoft's sake that they come to their senses in developing Windows 7.

I beg to differ. In the last month I've seen it install updates maybe 3 times, and it's always been 2-3 updates at a time. and keep in mind it holds updates until you restart - it doesn't attempt to install them while you're actively using the computer.
Vista Ultimate boots about 4s slower than Ubuntu 7.10 for me.
I've only found 1 application that doesn't work properly with Vista, and it works fine if you run it in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode, which is quite simple to do.
Your sharing problem is pretty screwy. I call it PEBKAC. Just go to the control panel, computer management, shared folders, and clear the entries there.

The bell just rang. More later.

[scythe]

-snip-

I've had a similar experience as you, to the point that Vista has occasionally crashed on booting, a hilarious problem. Spybot works fine but waiting fifteen minutes for spyware checking isn't my cup of tea, and updating AVG is a nightmare.
Meanwhile Linux loads in seconds. Even Flash, notorious for running terrible on Linux, works seamlessly.

Also, an alpha release of Windows 7 was broken to bit-torrent a week or so ago. I don't know much about it, but it was on the front page of digg and reddit.

[jean-luc]

A continuation...

The update system is the same as XP. it indicates (via an icon on the button) when shutting down will include installing updates. You can easily tell it to shut down without installing updates. The update installation process is typically very brief (40s or so for me). Vista's hibernate, resume, shut down, and booting is at a reasonable speed for me. I am particularly impressed with how quickly it shuts down and hibernates. There is no 2-3 minute delay. I can make a video for you if you'd like.

And as I previously mentioned, Vista only took 4s longer than Ubuntu to boot when I timed it. Also, Spybot's issues are Spybot's issues - I don't recommend Spybot because it's simply bad software in my experience. Try using an antivirus/antispyware application with resident protection, which will severely reduce the need to run complete scans. I particularly recommend an antivirus/antispyware application like Avast!, NOD32, or Kaspersky that can run boot-time scans, with only core Windows systems loaded. These scans are faster and more effective, since it would be extremely difficult for malicious software to tamper with these scans.

[smartalco]

Vista's hibernate, resume, shut down, and booting is at a reasonable speed for me. I am particularly impressed with how quickly it shuts down and hibernates.

Compared to what? XP? because its slow as fuck for me (as is XP)

[Geti]

vista does have impressive hibernate/standby in and out times, but ubuntu 8.04 (havnt updated yet, net is capped again) boots 6 times as fast as XP from power button to usable GUI. i wouldnt dare try to install vista on that computer, what with it being 5 years old, but still. thats unbeatable.
i only boot XP on that box anymore to game or use photoshop.

[jean-luc]

Vista's hibernate, resume, shut down, and booting is at a reasonable speed for me. I am particularly impressed with how quickly it shuts down and hibernates.

Compared to what? XP? because its slow as fuck for me (as is XP)

compared to XP and Ubuntu 7.10 (Where I work we have a cluster of machines running 7.10, since I don't use Linux much at home they're my reference. They might get upgraded to 8.10 one of these days... if I do it...).

[T3chno]

Vista's hibernate, resume, shut down, and booting is at a reasonable speed for me. I am particularly impressed with how quickly it shuts down and hibernates.

Compared to what? XP? because its slow as fuck for me (as is XP)

You should make the kill time faster.

[Donfuy]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-101341 ... uselArea.2

It's Vista faster, with a new cool taskbar (although I don't usually like fat taskbars) and with some new features.


Seems great.



EDIT: And this got my attention:

Certainly, Windows 7 had no problem simultaneously installing and launching applications, downloading files, browsing the Web, and carrying out other tasks on our modest 2.8GHz Pentium 4, which has only an 80GB IDE hard disk and 512MB of RAM.

[Exüberance]

from xkcd:


bahaha, someone hates Vista.

I'm really looking forward to Windows 7. Please don't screw it up again. Please don't screw it up again. Please don't screw it up again. Please don't screw it up again. Please don't screw it up again. Please don't screw it up again....

[T3chno]

I still fail to see what they screwed up in the first place. :/

[smartalco]

As far as I can tell, their beta download page requires activeX, which requires IE, which makes me hate MS more

[Donfuy]

Can't Microsoft show some niceness to the competitors?

What are they trying to show with this? That their browser is best and we all should move to it right now?

I love you MS, but screw you.

[jean-luc]

Well, I can now legally have Windows 7!
Not much appears to have changed in this beta from the devel copy I had before.
I just had an opportunity to play with the People Near Me + Windows Media Player 12 services today, by playing music from my library on a friend's computer. Buffering took too long, but I think that was just the network we were on. I was rather happy with it.

the Home Group thing I'm not so in to, but I can see it being a godsend for average users.

[Geti]

its damn fast o0

[smartalco]

One question (now that I'm running the beta), what is the best way to import all my settings from my XP drive? (XP and win7 are installed on different drives)

[jean-luc]

One question (now that I'm running the beta), what is the best way to import all my settings from my XP drive? (XP and win7 are installed on different drives)

There's a File and Settings Transfer Wizard or something like that, but it may not be ready in 7 yet.

[smartalco]

Theres 'Windows Easy Transfer', but it won't let me do anything from my other HD

[T3chno]

One question (now that I'm running the beta), what is the best way to import all my settings from my XP drive? (XP and win7 are installed on different drives)

Drag and Drop?

[Darkandroid]

only a few thing bug me about vista:
The default cursor. (Wtf is with the shortened cursor anyways?)
And WPC. (Can't read VG Cats anymore, or even use google half the time.)

I haven't done much customizing, other than changing the taskbar, ect. to black and using Areo scheme just for the '3-D' window switch.
(O.o just realized Ctrl-Tab switches between tabs.)