Why do you say that?

I say that because I have had nothing but problems with Vista for over a year on both my system and customers systems. On any given computer XP will run faster than Vista. XP can be tweaked to a much higher degree than Vista. There is more software that works well with XP than Vista. There are more drivers avilable for more products for XP than Vista. Vista is more expensive than XP. Xp is less buggy than Vista. Ect, ect.

Those aren't reasons to avoid Vista at all costs, those are reasons to evaluate whether Vista is for you or not.

I don't personally have any driver problems with Vista, but then, all my hardware is from bigger scale manufacturers; ASUS, Creative, Logitech etc. All of those drivers are now very mature, and in general, offer more advanced functionality than their XP counterparts (with the exception of Sound drivers because of the audio stack changes).

Vista is generally pretty stable. Most "stability issues" with any Windows isn't caused so much by the OS itself as it is 3rd party software. Ironically, the majority of software problems are because programmers didn't follow the specifications correctly. I ran into this myself with a small network diagnostic utility I had written: an error with multi-threading logic occasionally led to a background thread trying to access the members of the fore ground Form. This didn't cause a problem under XP, but in Vista, it threw an exception (which I didn't handle) causing the program to crash. A quick look in the documentation for the Windows Forms API showed that such an operation was always illegal, just that under Vista, rather than ignoring it, Microsoft decided it should be an exception. Had I followed the API specifications properly, there would have been no problem.

Vista performance is indefensibly lower than XP in some areas, but remarkably better in others. Areas of exceptional improvement include application launch time and overall Windows responsiveness. This is because on one hand Vista leverage's modern hardware capabilities that XP does not, but on the other hand it does a lot more background work to support other "features". I wont defend the fact that a good deal of these features are of no advantage to the end user and may indeed be to their detriment, but that's the trade-off.

Unfortunately, there's now a lot of "tweakware" and amateurish opinion out there about how to optimise Vista, that doesn't help the situation. I don't get exposed to it much these days, but I still get the joy of it now and then. Unfortunately, Vista is in fact far more flexible than XP contrary to what you and many others believe, andTweakware exposes fairly deep level options that are probably not even understood by the programmer themselves, let alone the end user. Advice about "turning off unnecessary services and tasks" is an old standby that can does something somewhere between nothing and an actual performance loss. In cases, software which expects and depends upon a service that has been disabled, or expects system level settings to be within standard ranges, does not have adequate exception handling and crashes inexplicably.

The whole problem is compounded by people issuing edicts about how Vista is just categorically bad. FUD takes hold, and when they're finally pressed into using Vista, they tweak it until it's broken, or fill it full of bad software. And before you think I'm being unduly critical of software, think of this: there are probably billions people in the world who play a sport, millions of them are professionals, but only thousands are international renown. There are fewer programmers of course, but equal proportions of dabblers and experts.

In a few years time, performance issues wont be a concern because hardware will be that much faster. This will mean that people wont feel the need to tweak it up which will improve things. Programmers will be developing on Vista so they can learn all new lazy habits. Nothing much will change, just as nothing much has changed since XP was released, only now the naysayers sing XP's praises. It's a comic little cycle to watch.

In the mean time, I'd council you to be a help, rather than a hindrance.

You say Windows Vista is pretty stable. This is not been my experience with nor my customers experience with. I understand what you're saying about third-party software being at fault for large part of Vista issues, but you have to understand the average person does not think that way all their programs work just fine with Windows XP, and now they don't.

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Vista performance is indefensibly lower than XP in some areas, but remarkably better in others. Areas of exceptional improvement include application launch time and overall Windows responsiveness.

I have yet to see any area where Windows Vista is faster than Windows XP. It has been my experience that Windows Vista is significantly slower than Windows XP Especially when it comes to application launch time and overall Windows responsiveness.

As for "tweakware" I don't have a problem with it. As long as it's used with care and caution in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. It can save long hours going through registry entries and tweaking by hand. Take for example tweak UI, probably one of the greatest pieces of software ever developed. With one interface that allows you to tweak almost every aspect of Windows XP to your liking.

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In the mean time, I'd council you to be a help, rather than a hindrance.

Just because my opinions of Windows Vista do not coincide with your own does not make me a hindrance. When I see someone thinking of buying any program be an antivirus program or an operating system. If I know the product has known issues, and I've had personal bad experiences with it. I will try to steer people clear of this product.

Can you honestly rule out the possibility that your experiences with Vista are either coloured by your disappointment with the OS? Can you rule that you're treating it like it's XP?

I don't want to get too deep into the technicality of advances made in Vista, but if we talk about Windows responsiveness, moving the UI from software to hardware rendering has pretty much eliminated visual lock-ups. Now, if you went in and disabled Aero, don't blame Vista if you lost all the advantages of the new composition engine. If we talk about application launch time, provided you don't get in an disable a lot of services and maintenance tasks, it actually improves over time by way of pre-fetch caching, until launching every day apps is practically instant.

TweakUI was a User Interface tweak program only. Considering the not less than significant shift in UI paradigm in Vista, very little of what's in TweakUI even applies to Vista. I have noted though, that when presented with a new OS, some people try to make it look like their old OS, usually by turning off new features. In the process, they do even really try to learn how to use the new interface.

Compared to other operating systems, like Linux distributions for example, Microsoft OS' provide hardly any customisation options at all. Instead, they invest huge volumes of cash into investigating how people use the OS, and try their best to make its behaviour and interface as transparent as possible. That's they way most people want it, boot up, play, browse, watch, then shut down. Heck, most people rarely venture outside the start menu. If you're spending a lot of time trying to manipulate Windows into behaving the way you think it should, maybe you should be looking at Linux.

Even if we take Vista performance now out of the question, XP puts an upgrade cap on a system. The standard lift of a machine is 3 years+ for your average user. During that time, they may upgrade the RAM several times, possibly the CPU and probably the graphics card. XP has a practical limit of 4 GB of RAM, will not support emerging technologies like DirectX 10 and will not be the prefered development/support platform going forward.

I'm not opposed to making recommendations, but it need be rational. Warn people what they're getting in to, explain what they need to watch out for; that's reasonable. Making blanket statements is not.

gunslinger, Windows Vista is pretty stable. It is just how you treat it, keep it clean of viruses and other bugs and it is fine

The only set-back i see with vista is with games really. A little more time taking to load them but not with app's. Mind you mine is tweaked here there and everywhere so i have got it running abit faster that you must have it.

4GB DDR3 RAM and 500GB HDD x2 Vista fly's along with, and that is on crap motherboard (not my pc, a customers) OS on one drive and his app's on another one of the same drive

Have you sat there with a Computer running Xp and a computer running Vista and booted them up at the same time? They are about the same speed

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I am always about if you need a quick answer to how to fix a problem

As a matter of fact I have booted to PCs with the exact same specs , one with Vista and one with XP. The Vista machine booted to a usable desktop in just under two mins. The XP machine booted in 43 sec. ShUt down times were 11 sec for XP and about 6 mins for Vista.

syphus
" Can you honestly rule out the possibility that your experiences with Vista are either coloured by your disappointment with the OS"

Some of it might be that. I am very disappointed in Vista, it was hyped to be so much more than XP and in reality from what I have seen and tests I have done it does not even come close to matching XP.

Vista (Boot up) = 56 secs
XP (Boot up) = 59 secs

Vista (Shut down) = 50 secs
XP (Shut down) = 48 secs

Just tried it out and put a timer to it, and that is how long they took

I have the vista tweaked like anything though

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I am always about if you need a quick answer to how to fix a problem

Some of it might be that. I am very disappointed in Vista, it was hyped to be so much more than XP and in reality from what I have seen and tests I have done it does not even come close to matching XP.

I am 100% with you on that one though

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I am always about if you need a quick answer to how to fix a problem

The only reason someone would be disappointed with software, is because they actually paid attention to the marketing hype. If you sit back and just take it as it comes, you are able to maintain a more objective view point.

I really cannot understand why people are talking about Vista performance like it's a significant factor. New versions of Windows always use more resources compared to old versions, because those resources are available. I wont deny that Vista's boot takes longer to boot than XP. Have you tried booting up Windows 98 lately? I did this in a virtual machine a few weeks back and bloody heck, it takes about 15 seconds to cold boot.

Performance is what you trade for new capabilities. I can't seen a single review so far of Crysis that said "Crysis sucks because it has a far lower frame rate than Far Cry.". It's easy to find them same tired benchmarks showing file copy is slower, boot time is longer, game frame rates are lower etc etc. But for that, you get a lot more features and a generally more intuitive interface. Thanks to Aero, applications cannot lock up the desktop any more. SuperFetch makes optimal use of RAM to make application load time practically instant, you don't even need to browse the hard disk or navigate the start menu thanks to the desktop search engine, and if you have to, explorers stacking, filtering and breadcrumb bar makes it easier to get around. Copy performance might be low, but now multi-file operations will gracefully handle errors and give the option to continue. Improved permissions handling and User Account Control now means you can actually can run as a User, for desktop security.

Being a computer technician is not a trade. Anybody who can tie their shoe laces can slot together a PC out of their garage. Anyone with opposable thumbs can reinstall Windows. It's dead easy to get an MCSE. As they say, in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is King.

Being a good computer technician is different. It means actually having an in-depth understanding about the technologies you're dealing with; where they are strong, and where they are weak. It means being patient and understanding how problems arise and how to resolve them. I moved out of the retail PC industry about some years ago an on the greener pastures, but I still build up high performance PCs for friends and colleagues, and I still assist people with their problems. I have only encountered one or two problems with Vista that I could not resolve. Of the 10 or so people I recommended Vista to has been very happy with it, because I've explained the differences and helped them through any adjustments. I don't really want to knock you personally, but 10 out of 10 happy people seems like a better achievement than 1 out of 35-40.

To start with the reason I was disappointed in Vista was because I thought it was going to be a pretty good step up from XP because of the time it took to develope.

You say that "SuperFetch makes optimal use of RAM to make application load time practically instant"

This has not been my experience or the experience of most of my customers or other techies I have talked with. When I try to open my pics folder in XP it renders all thumbnails in that folder in less than one second. With every Vista machine I have worked with I click then wait on the little green bar to make its way across the top. Sometimes it takes 3-4 sec. sometimes longer.
As for apps. its the same thing. They seem to take much longer to open if the open at all, sometimes I just get a " this program is not responding " warning at the top.

The 35-40 customers I was speaking of had vista come with their system. They called me because they were sure they had sypware or viruses slowing their system down when if fact it was just the sluggish proformance of Vista compared to the snappy XP they were used to.

Why exactly are you so pro Vista?

I do prefer windows xp it is more stable and does not take up a lot of resources.

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Windowsvista

I agree with you... But all I'm saying is cast your mind back a few years.... Don't you remember the outrage because XP was so resource hungry?

OMG wen i press ctrl alt delete thers liek 25 thinks runnin n im liek doin nofin!!! help!!!



...

Ah, those were the good ol' days.

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Windowsvista

I have to say I'm pro vista as I am currently running Vista ultimate x64 and have virtually no problems (only with formatting drives manually).
I dislike when people say "more resources" since every next gen OS should since its meant to be a step forward so obviousley it will require more power, I believe it has many more benefits then xp and previous os as long as you get used to the incremental changes within the architecture of it.

However these days its up to the user so if you like it, you like it, if you dont, you dont.

" However these days its up to the user so if you like it, you like it, if you dont, you dont."

Now that I agree with. Thats why I got a Macbook last week.