Why isn't Vista loved as much as XP?
section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 16.1.2008
Lately there are a lot of articles bashing Windows Vista for its lack of driver support, stability or poor performance. All of these concerns are true just like all previous Windows versions.
I remember sites cropping up left and right back in 2001 that were dedicated to showing consumers how to get hold of Windows XP drivers and if your hardware was even compatible! At the time Windows XP was completely new, Windows 98/ME drivers didn't work on this new OS - you needed either new hardware or hope that the manufacturer would code (beta) drivers for your devices. In my case I had a very expensive 10/100MBit Ethernet card from HP (the name escapes me, it's 7 years ago!) and I emailed customer service about lack of driver support and they told me they would never release one and it was being discontinued, despite the driver being included in all "Whistler" builds right up until about the 24xx releases.
I had to install the older 24xx build and then "upgrade" to the latest beta releases. I think I did that until the RC's and finally swapped out the card for something else.
In all fairness Windows XP for Windows users was a huge upgrade of an OS compared to Windows 95/98 and that sad excuse for an update Windows Millennium. Multi tasking was simply impossible without risking a blue screen of death and all of a sudden after its initial teething problems, became a very stable and reliable OS incomparable to the Windows 9x platform.
We forget all the ranting that went on here on Neowin when certain bits of hardware suddenly didn't work, or 3D acceleration was simply terrible up until shortly before its release and even then a lot of cards suddenly weren't supported under the new driver model.
I'd go as far as to say that XP really didn't cut it until SP2 was released, that is when Windows XP came of age and was finally something to write home about. There will always be the users (like me) that will use the latest and greatest despite lack of driver support and obvious performance related issues and we will go on complaining, writing and informing about those short comings until the appropriate people fix those issues. it is believe it or not part of my job
The OS costs money, it's my right as a consumer and hey, I am using it at work so it is also tied into my productivity, lets also not forget all those friends I have helped because they simply don't understand why their printer no longer works when they loaded a Vista upgrade over XP.
They will say: "Hey it worked on XP! Why not Vista?" and I simply respond, "It will eventually, when those OEM's and hardware manufacturers get off their lazy asses and support it properly.
So while it may look like a few of those articles on Neowin and around the Internet appear to crucify Vista, please remember that we are not the only ones doing that, real world average Joes are, and even big companies like Dell decided to back pedal by offering XP on their newer business line PC's and laptops (but not for the general consumer) when they are supposed to have some sort of influence on the hardware industry.
Just goes to show that Microsoft may not have much of a say in that sector as we all thought it did. I know first hand by speaking with Microsoft developers how unhappy they are at failed promises by certain hardware vendors to deliver good drivers. Given time Vista will rock as much as XP did and still does for many today.
source:
neowin.net
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Comments(10)
my $300 creative sound card will not work with vista 32 bit. when i contacted creative,
they told me it was my fault for upgrading to vista. only a fool would do that i was told.
threw creative sound card in trash, never to purchase one of their products again.
noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!! you could have given your $300 creative sound card to
meeeeee!!!
a lot of people expect vista to be the greatest out of the box with the huge development
time it took.
i ran 2k untill 12 months after xp was released due to it having issues
with my hardware, as soon as they were fixed i moved to it, same as vista.
i have
been running vista x64 for nearly 2 months and i would say it is 80% of what i expected
and thought it would be.
while it still has little annoying things, it still has
given me far less trouble than when i tried to run xp x64.
as for drivers, there have
been a few of my game controllers which the software do not work with it.
$300 creative sound card in the bin ?
you idiot !!
i alpha tested longhorn, then vista right up until the recent sp1. vista is a cpu
guzzling, memory hungry hog. plain and simple. it offers nothing performance wise over xp
professional. microsoft touts that it has better security because of features like user
account control. i personally do not like being tortured with a yes or no question every
single time i try and do something on my system. its silly and a bad idea, uac was a
rejected, recycled feature that was left out of windows 2000, testers hated it, so they
removed it. with a good anti spyware, anitvirus installed xp is just as safe and secure. i
recently switched back to xp pro, and i can tell you the wow really did start now! xp runs
circles around vista. i can guarantee anyone reading this that benchmark test after test
proves that xp outperforms vista. vista really is just eyecandy. xp can do anything vista
can do better, using more efficient memory handling, and less cpu cycles. my pc is not
really outdated, 2 single core xeons, 3.4 ghz, 4 gigs of ddr2 ram, 512 mb nvidia card, wd
raptor hard drive. i just got tired of menu options hidden hidden under layer after layer
of useless garbage. i do not like my os telling me i do not have sufficient priveledges to
accomplish a task either. plus, vista has digital rights management software watching
every move you make. its choked full of microsoft spyware. they call it 'safe computing'
when they spy on you. microsoft trusts you because you are being watched via their
spyware. microsoft made a deal with hollywood to take their copyrights off the dvd and put
it right in your os. this also slows vista down because video/audio has to be filtered so
much, coded, unencoded back and forth. yes, xp has drm, but nothing like vista. again, i
switched back to xp and it is a breath of fresh air. i will try windows 7. microsoft has
lost respect for the general public to release an os like vista. but then vista was not
designed for the public user, it was created for corporate america to protect
'intellectual property'. this is a fact people. anything, and i mean anything vista can
do xp can do it better! research everything i am telling you and make up your own minds.
fair enough?
i agree with everything you've said.
simply because i've also experienced all of
it.
used vista 5 months and back on xp now :)
hell xp had far more issues, vista has less issues. as i recall the transition to vista
from xp was much smoother when compared to windows me to xp. overall i think vista x64 is
the best os to date - there are some small issues but nothing to cry about. xp era is over
- now vista rules!!!
people that have crappy hardware and driver support for said hardware (or have never
applied a chipset driver update in their life) should stay clear of vista.as for gaming
the difference between vista and xp is now minimal due to improved driver support. vista
is as stable as a rock and has proved trouble free for most of its users. so plan on
spending a few milliseconds getting used to the differences and you'll be happy you're
using a current os. if you already have a copy of xp, upgrading now isn't imperative.
however, if you're spending a red cent, don't throw your money away on xp.
i made a back up of vista when i installed it on the 2/2/07
i restored vista
yesterday and it took 7 shut downs (not restarts) and over 2 hours to install the over 100
megs of updates
and in doing so, did you learn your lesson to install windows the right way?
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Creative Sound Card
By PackedFunk on 17.01.2008 - 05:01