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From:Microsoft , Microsoft Software ,
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#73 |
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1 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
 Excellent, 2008-07-05
I guess I am one of the few who like vista. I feel it is the best os from Microsoft bar none.Even compared to xp sp3 which is faster than sp2 Vista is still faster on my system anyway. Works very well with my computer what can I say I am satisfied.
1 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
 My Vista SP1 Review, 2008-06-28
Vista is great very nice interface, fast boot times (faster then XP).
But a word of caution you need a newer processor (I would recommend a dual core), at least 2 gigs of Ram, and a descent video card. Also do not expect that your older programs will all run under vista many older versions will not, expect to be upgrading afew programs. But after trying it out for two months now I will not be going back to XP, There was certainly some frustration and learning involved in changing to a new operating system but eventually XP will no longer be supported and you will have to make the change.
6 of 7 customers found the following review helpful:
 Big Mistake, 2008-06-24
I've owned a new 3.0GB intel Pentium D dual core computer for about two months, now, that came with Vista Home Premium. Knowing what I know now, I would never have bought a Vista machine. I've spent almost half my working time since then trying to solve operating system problems.
Vista will not synchronize PIM info with my Pocket PC, in fact, it looks like Microsoft has abandoned the Pocket PC, altogether, but I had to spend hours and hours experimenting and trying innefective "fixes" to find that out. Gee, I wonder why they don't advertise that?
Vista constantly interferes with and disrupts the operation of my MSOffice applications (OfficeXP Professional). Outlook will not save my email passwords with Vista and they have to be manually entered each time it updates email. Every time. While I'm working a dialoge box pops up to ask for my password in each email account. I have to stop and enter it or it will pop up again in a minute or two. I tried turning off email updates, but Vista won't let that preference be saved, either. Word and Excel are erratic as well. I have the very latest version of Internet Explorer, but it won't save History of sites visited. Yes, I've played with all the settings. A little research yielded the fact that Microsoft knows all this - they have knowledge base articles on the topics that send you in circles -without any solution.
Many Software applications (obviously including Microsoft applications) must be upgraded to work with Vista, some work poorly, some don't work at all.
I hold a multi-user license to excellent Anti-Virus Software I like much better than Norton or McAfee; very effective and unobtrusive. Even with the Vista version it can't start automatically at boot with Vista, which not only means I have to remember to start it manually every day, sometimes forgetting, it means it can't remove certain viruses that require a re-boot deletion.
So by "UPGRADING" to Vista, I have, in essence, thrown away hundreds of dollars in software and hardware, most of which, I assume, Microsoft intends to recoup when I buy something from them to do what the old stuff was doing perfectly well before the "UPGRADE."
If you google "downgrade to XP" you'll find almost a quarter of a million links.
There's a reason for that.
5 of 10 customers found the following review helpful:
Ugh, 2008-06-22
I hate it. It offers no real advantages over XP, is slower, works with less stuff, and keeps getting stuck. I'm downgrading to XP...
6 of 10 customers found the following review helpful:
Ignore the Apple commercials. Vista is a great OS., 2008-06-20
I've had my laptop since August 2007. It came with Vista Home Premium 32 bit installed on it and I upgraded to SP1 when it was released.
I will say this outright: I used XP before Vista on the family computer and if your computer can run Vista smoothly, Vista will kick XP out the window. There are 3 things one must have to run Vista smoothly: a good processor (this is the minor one of the 3 since most people have good processors), a good video card, and at least 2GB of RAM. The video card and RAM are extremely important. If you don't have these, you will most likely not have a good Vista experience. One of Microsoft's mistakes when they created Vista was the RAM usage. The standard amount of RAM needed to run XP is less than 1GB. The standard amount of RAM needed for Vista is at least 2GB. Technically, I believe it can run on 1GB of RAM but I don't trust that. Vista is a much more powerful OS than XP, which is why it needs the good hardware. My computer is an HP Pavilion dv6000. I have an Intel Core Duo (not Core 2) 2GHz processor, 160GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM. I actually have an Intel chipset for graphics and my computer still runs fine. I do wish that I had gotten a graphics card just to make the performance even better. On a daily basis, with just the startup programs running, about 1GB of my RAM is used up. A tip: I don't know if Best Buy and other electronics stores are still doing this, but when I was looking for my laptop last summer the stores were selling crap. They were selling laptops with 1GB of RAM that had Vista Home Premium preinstalled on them. I couldn't believe that. I would avoid those. It's pretty much common knowledge now that computers need at least 2GB of RAM to run Vista smoothly. I bought my laptop from Costco.com because they let you customize it. You choose the base features and then you further pick what you want from the options they have. That way you can have a lot more power over what you want your laptop to have. My dad and I knew that I was going to have to get Vista because the stores don't care about how consumers like to buy new technology. Most people like to wait a while until the 1st Service Pack is released. The stores get new computers with the new OS preinstalled like the week it comes out. They don't care that people like to wait. My dad and I decided to customize my laptop online because we couldn't find any computers with 2GB of RAM in the stores. HP's site and Dell's site also allow you to build your laptop. I used Costco because they had the lowest price.
One of the coolest things about Vista is it's smart. If a program stops working, then Vista will automatically recognize the situation and search for a solution. I'm pretty sure XP doesn't do that. Also, my iPod (the only Apple product I own) recently started giving me problems. When I connected it to my computer to restore it with iTunes, a window came up and told me that the iPod could be damaged or messed up and it had some tools to try to fix it right there. Talk about smart. I had to buy an iPod classic which is currently working fine.
My only complaint about Vista was the boot up time (notice I said "was", not "is"). My computer used to take 6 minutes to boot up in the morning. I didn't mind it though because I start my computer up while I'm getting dressed, etc. in the morning. SP1 cut the boot up time in half. The UAC is annoying, but you can turn it off. I have never had any problems with drivers, crashes, instability, blue screens of death, incompatibility issues, or anything else of that nature. When I plug in something like a new USB device, Vista finds the driver and installs it automatically within seconds.
I think a few of the reasons I've had such a good experience with Vista (besides the hardware) are that I've been able to avoid what I'm hearing are the biggest problems with it. The first reason is that I have a new compuer with Vista preinstalled on it. This did a few things. One, I didn't have to actually upgrade from XP to Vista. Two, because it was a new computer, there were no programs that I had previously installed on it that I had to update (except for the programs that came installed on it, such as Roxio). The 2nd reason is that so far I've been able to get the programs I need in versions that are compatible with Vista. Because they had to work with Vista, most of my programs are the newer versions (such as Office 2007). I like it though because I have all the new stuff. I've heard that upgrading from XP and getting programs designed for XP to work with Vista are the big problem areas. Most of my friends who bought new laptops for college last summer don't mind Vista and haven't had many problems with it. A tip: whenever you're considering buying a new device for your computer such as a mouse or hard drive or whatever, make sure it's certified for use with Vista before you buy it. The box in the store should have a sticker on it that says it's certified. More and more Vista-compatible software is coming out. I think Vista will be a more widely accepted OS once there are more programs released that are compatible with it, that is, if Vista can survive in the market for that long. I hope it can.
Some people say Vista takes getting used to because everything is moved around. Not true. Some things are moved, but they are only moved in minor ways. Vista is a lot like XP in my opinion. My computer and Control Panel are still there as well as the start menu (the word "start" isn't there anymore, it's just a circle with the Windows logo in it) and they have the same content in them as they did in XP. The content is more detailed and looks nicer in Vista. I think another review may have said that there's no way to search the computer. Not true at all. You can search your whole computer right from the start menu. The windows in Vista operate nicer than in XP. You can do more things and other things that you did often in XP are easier to do. The interface is Vista's strength. It kicks XP's butt. The sidebar is also cool. Vista's interface makes XP look like a basic piece of junk. I discovered something very interesting on the internet today (today= August 11). Apparently there is an experiment being done where people are demonstrating Vista to computer users who don't know it's Vista. Pretty much all of the people in the Mojave experiment didn't have Vista because they had heard all the negative hype about it. Their opinions were drastically different for the most part after the demo of it. The site also has a lot of helpful information about Vista such as how many devices and programs it's currently compatible with, etc. as well as statistics. The address of the Mojave Experiment is: http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/#.
A little on Microsoft Office 2007. Yes, it's a different interface than the previous versions. But, it's very neatly and intuitively organized that it's pretty easy to learn. It took me about 10 minutes to learn Word 2007. The functions are organized first by 7 main tabs, which are Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailing, Review, View. Then they are further subdivided into categories. Here's an example of the organization: say you're typing a Word document and you want to spell check it. Which main tab would you find spell check under? You're reviewing the document, right? So go to review. Spell check is the first function. It's under the subcategory of Proofing. Guess where bibliography tools are located? Under References and under the subcategory Citations & Bibliography. Very well and intuitively organized. I can't comment on the advanced features of Office 2007 because I've only used it for school and email.
I recently let my mom use my laptop because the computer we have in our house is an outdated piece of crap (Pentium 3 700MHz, 300something MB of RAM). She isn't tech savvy at all and barely knows what OS stands for. She had never used Vista or Office 2007 prior to using my laptop. When she was done using it I asked her how she liked Vista and Office 2007. She loved them. Of course, my dad won't dare install Vista on our home computer because he would be screwed on the hardware by a mile.
Another thing: as I'm writing this I have 5 of my most RAM consuming programs running: Media Center, Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook, and iTunes. I think my laptop is running slightly slower than it normally does, but the difference is hard to notice.
Overall, Vista is a great operating system and it makes XP look like crap IF your computer has the hardware to handle it and if the progams are compatible with it. People who are having problems should check their computer hardware and their programs and not be so fast to blame Microsoft and Vista. When I see the Apple commercials that make fun of Vista I laugh at them because one of my friends who is very tech savvy, smart, and majoring in computer engineering told me that Leopard got hacked within 2 hours of being released and that MacBook Air got hacked within 2 minutes.
I know this is a pretty long review, but since Vista's such a controversial OS I wanted to be as helpful as I could. And by the way, I'm not a Microsoft employee. I'm a college student.
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