Anything *GOOD* to say about Vista?

Just curious, I've heard all the crap about Vista and it's many, many flaws. My question is this: Is there ANYTHING good that can be said about Vista? Does it have ANY redeeming qualities? Is there ANY reason I should even think about considering an upgrade to Vista?

It has Direct X 10, which is the only way to play games that will be coming out sooner or later.

Throwing it away is good to say about Vista.

Apparently. I have no plans to "upgrade" to Vista ever. I didn't see the point of that OS six months ago and I don't see the point of it now. It's just a huge train wreck! As for DirectX 10, I'll find some other way to get it.

Agreed!

Making a complete OS upgrade for DirectX 10 and a few flashy new features (Flip3D) seems like Microsoft is selling Vista purely with their marketing tools.

I mean, going from 3.1 to Win 95 was HUGE. And then to go from Win 98 to XP (I totally skipped ME and only use 2000 for NT) was again, HUGE. I think we've seen the last of the "BIG" upgrades for a while. Vista is just a disaster and I love the new Mac commercials.

Windows up to 3.1 was a GUI stuck onto DOS; Win95 tried to hide that a bit but made it worse...

Windows NT could have been a great OS created by great VMS engineers, but someone decided to stick a lot of fucking DOS code into there and there went the chance. Windows NT versions up to 5.1 all stuck even more DOS code into the system (except maybe NT 4.0 ?). With NT 6.0 (right ? they don't market version numbers a lot), they've run out of DOS code to be compatible with, so they try to destroy a system that could have had more potential more and more.

I don't mind it. I wouldn't upgrade anytime soon but I may install it one day. It's a lot easier on the eyes and to use GUI wise and they have made some security upgrades (but at the cost of creating many more?).

The security upgrades? UAC is a bandage for a problem that should have been solved...

As they say, you can't polish shit.

THE MARKET - Morons on computers

Microsoft realizes that the majority of their users are morons. They will randomly delete files, format drives, change settings so things don't work, edit the registry after playing a round of solitaire, just about anything to screw the machine up. They also realize that people who do things like this, often pay for their software, unlike people who are more versed in using a computer who don't. Therefore, they decided to target these types of users to try to give them a more 'visually appealing' operating system with more 'bells and whistles' while trying to prevent them from screwing stuff up by applying bandages to areas they deem 'at risk'.

THE FEATURES - At the core? Nothing really. Graphically? A bunch of stuff.

If you take Vista, turn the theme off so it looks like Windows 2000 and change the taskbar over to Classic, you won't notice too much that is different. There are a couple things that I've seen that I do like and that should have been added about 5-6 years ago.

#1 - Copying files now provides more information. No more flipping between 99 minutes and 15 seconds left like the good old copying dialog from years ago.
#2 - The alt-tab feature with little thumbnails of the programs. This is a neat feature, wish XP had this! Oh yea, it does. Just gotta grab the PowerToy from Microsoft created back in 2001.

Now on the with the bad...

#1 - I CAN SEE THROUGH IMAGES TO IMAGES BELOW! WOOOOO ... Yet another attempt to copy MacOSX.
#2 - Dynamic toolbars based off what type of file is selected. Holy crap, good luck describing to people over the phone what to click on when on every person's machine it could be different.
#3 - Aero 3D desktop viewer thing. What a joke, really. I think this was just something for hype and their commercials. I see no real purpose to this other than to show someone who comes over to your house 'look what i can do!'
#4 - DirectX 10 - big deal. Like if Vista wasn't invented, it wouldn't be on XP ?
#5 - The stupid warning crap before you change anything. First thing every user would turn off.
#6 - The reactivation period. Your copy of Windows is constantly in contact with Microsoft saying 'am I legit?' and Microsoft saying 'sure'
#7 - Price. The Premium version is a joke and horribly expensive. The Home Basic price is a few dollars more than Windows XP Home. Another issue is related to #10, hardware requirements. You can buy a cheap Sempron processor, 512mb of ram, a case and dvd burner and an integrated motherboard for around $300 canadian. Toss on a copy of XP Home for $90 and you're off to the races (and the machine will run well!). Try doing that with Vista. I can't justify selling a Vista loaded machine with this same hardware. It just won't run well, and alot of the bells and whistles will automatically be disabled.
#8 - IE7 ... how can I uninstall this?
#9 - Bloated. Did these little gadgets on the desktop, and some graphical upgrades to the interface really justify an increase from 1.5GB XP install to 7.5GB Vista install? What the hell is in this thing? Maybe Solitaire took up a gig or two.
#10 - Hardware requirements. This is a major issue. For the bells and whistles people read in the magazines and if they get convinced, and they buy, their old machine with 256MB of ram and maybe some old XP 2000+ processor aren't going to cut it.

THE MISTAKES

Microsoft made more than a few mistakes:

- took too long
- have little to show for the time
- got sued by tons of people (European Union, Symantec, many others)
- made something the market didn't need

I really hope Linux as a desktop workstation makes a further move ahead. These next few years will be telling for Microsoft as I personally believe Vista won't be a flop, but they will definitely lose money.

Excellent post Chris.

I hope that Linux or Mac really get some desktop percentage very soon.

Best thing I can say about Vista?



It doesn't give you AIDS.


Probably.

It's got some really nice eye candy? That's positive.

Great post Chris. Regarding Vista we can only talk about graphics but that should not be the reason for a chageover.

Said By happy2bg33k

It's got some really nice eye candy? That's positive.

It may be positive if said like that. But MS is just catching up on the rest of the world. A bit.

seriously, with beryl I can have iCandy that Vista will never have on my laptop that Vista will never run on.

I read somewhere that Ubuntu won't include beryl because of stability problems. The question remains when will hardware companies get some APIs released to make good drivers for their cards.

yeah, compiz IS more stable than beryl, I believe. But beryl is the one with the cooler plugins and the one everyone uses.

Alright, I got some good things to say about Vista.

I got it today through a school deal.

Anyways...

Easier to navigate (must more user friendly)
Fantastic games interface
Looks great
Neat widgets (RSS, Clock, Photo album)

Said By dexaroni

Easier to navigate (must more user friendly)

This statement is comparing to what ?

Said By dexaroni

Fantastic games interface

what do you mean by that ?

Said By dexaroni

Looks great

More like looks better than any Windows so far IMHO

Said By dexaroni

Neat widgets (RSS, Clock, Photo album)

Like that's a novelty. SuperKaramba, gDesklets, aDesklets and OSX's thing have existed for ages

Said By free::zombie

Said By dexaroni

Easier to navigate (must more user friendly)

This statement is comparing to what ?

Said By dexaroni

Fantastic games interface

what do you mean by that ?

Said By dexaroni

Looks great

More like looks better than any Windows so far IMHO

Said By dexaroni

Neat widgets (RSS, Clock, Photo album)

Like that's a novelty. SuperKaramba, gDesklets, aDesklets and OSX's thing have existed for ages

Windows XP... duh.

Instead of having a games list, you have an arcade section, which shows how far you are in the game, what the esrb rating is, etc, then you click on the game you want to play in that.

Yeah, looks better than any other windows so far. AND OSX AND Ubuntu... sure, those CAN look far better, but as far as default gui goes, Vista takes the cake.

And widgets are a novelty. Whats your point?