rant: Vista

So, I've been using Vista for the past month or so, I forget exactly. It's mostly a pretty good OS, I mean a decent improvement from XP to say the least.


In the beginning, when I first installed, everything went blazing fast, although, I was stuck on the Vista Basic theme, because my graphics card was a piece of shit in the eyes of Vista (and myself too, but that's not the point - it was only one model under the required, give me a break). Just like XP, it's started to slow down and slow down as I installed more applications. By now, I'm at a similar speed to what I had in XP. Now I'm no longer impressed.

Then recently, I've been starting to get BSODs. I got a few BSODs for converting an album (using dBpowerAMP) along with doing a few other things like tagging an album (using MusicBrainz Picard) while browsing folder in Windows Explorer. I've done that in XP before, exact same workload, never a BSOD. I even got a fucking BSOD while playing Counter Strike 1.6 -- out of no where, my computer just goes quite and I see that beloved blue screen we all hate. By then, it was the 4th one, and I'm thinking, okay, last chance Vista, last chance.

Before I went to sleep tonight, I set my computer to convert 6 albums (~10 songs per album). I've done the same in XP before, actually, 10 overnight -- that's even more. I wake up, and I try to get on my computer, unresponsive. What. the. fuck. So I shut it down, grab some breakfast, and I come back and log onto my computer to be greeted with this lovely screen:

​

Just like I figured. I mean, how can XP handle a bigger workload, yet Vista whimpers at the thought and shits itself when it does it? Now, I have no clue when it crashed exactly, it was fine when I left it to go to sleep, but obviously not the case when I woke up.


Anyways, I'm going back to XP in a few days once I get my files and settings backed up. Vista is all about "eye candy"-- only if you have a nice graphics card, for those that can't afford a good one, they're stuck with a theme which has a terrible shade of blue, can't even fucking change it, unless you like Standard [aka Classic] -- and "security" -- man, if they're talking about UAC, that's the biggest and most pathetic waste of time ever. I mean, you've copied a whole shitload of OS X already, why not at least copy their authentication system properly already? -- and also apparently they've made networking better -- I still can't connected to my dad's printer properly, and yes, I have the proper drivers and all, even though Vista insists I don't, and when I finally do bitchslap it to obey me, it freezes up on me. Improved networking? HA. I still don't see an easy way of transferring large files over networks either, I have to resort to either FTP or an seperate program [Total Copy, that's you] to transfer them safely. Otherwise, it just takes hours and hours and hours. You walk back for an hour, and that 60mb file is STILL 25%. Yeah, fuck that.

You know, I don't even know why I switched over to Vista when it got leaked. I mean, I should have known to switch back when iTunes first started to crash when left on pause for a few minutes. But no, I gave Vista a chance. I don't see much special about Vista anymore. Unlike Vista, I'll be on the Vienna (next version of Windows) beta, and I'll honestly try my best to change Windows for the better, because to be honest, Vista is just a copy of XP with a few ribbons here and there. [For the record, I'm a Windows Live Butterfly, specializing in Messenger, so I have my connections now, which before (when the Vista beta started) I didn't, lol].


So, if you're sitting there, thinking about switching to Vista and you're on XP, ask yourself: Is there anything wrong with XP? If your answer is no, then you're lieing to yourself, or you must have slept with Bill Gates and he gave you a special copy of XP that doesn't magically crash every 10 seconds. If your answer is yes, then yeah, you're right. If XP is still mostly usable for your ever day tasks, then continue using it, as Vista isn't much more, honestly. The only thing I have to praise Vista about is Speech Recognition. Although, it still hasn't figured out "fuck you" which it hears every 5 seconds as it keeps asking me to repeat it due to misunderstanding. =\

I've used Ubuntu and OS X before. Ubuntu just mostly flew over my head, as Windows has dumbed me to down to laziness, so I can't be bothered to go the extra set compiling things and whatever else I've heard people having to do in order to install something. OS X, on the other hand, I've loved. Everything ran smooth, I mean, I even accidentally opened all of my apps in the Applications folder once accidentally, which took my computer about 5 minutes to process and in the end, it didn't crash. Windows on the other hand would have slowed down to slower than a snail, stalled for about 20 minutes, then shit out a BSOD (not tested, but I'm assuming from the simple things I've put both XP and Vista through, Vista especially, they would have done so).

Hasta la vista, Vista, you're done.

 

So, if you're sitting there, thinking about switching to Vista and you're on XP, ask yourself: Is there anything wrong with XP? If your answer is no, then you're lieing to yourself, or you must have slept with Bill Gates and he gave you a special copy of XP that doesn't magically crash every 10 seconds.



^^ that made me laugh lol..

I dont have much to say about XP because I am hardly in that partition only when I need to do assignments am I.. and then my dad can hear cursing and screaming at it about 5 minutes later

 

Are you using the official copy? Or one of the beta versions?

This could be a problem with your graphics card, did you update drivers for everything to vista? Also, some programs may still not work until the official release of Vista.

 

dont use Vista until it has
1. been released at retail and
2. has been flushed of bugs that occur with new operating systems (and there will be many with Vista).

beta versions always have errors

 

Tomi, what build of vista were you using. If' you're using RC1 or RC2 (Builds 5600 and 5744) there is still a ton of debugging code which Microsoft left in until Vista went RTM in build 6000. You should be sure you're using the RTM version before you really test drive Vista.

You know, Microsoft was holding off on the Vista release to consumers until Jan. 30 for a reason. Essentially their partners need more time to rewrite their code so it was fully compatible with Vista, This also includes hardware manufacturers, who will need to rewrite (and on the x64 platform, have Microsoft sign) completely revised device drivers. This may be one of the reasons you're having so much trouble with BSOD's.

Additionally, if you're using some software which patches the Windows kernel to complete a task, the new KPP in Vista may be intentionally shutting down your system with a BSOD. Basically, it's a new security device built into the Windows kernel which prevents malicious, or non-mailious (in many cases), software from modifying the kernel code at runtime.

 

RTM (Build 6000) x86. Ahem, BillGates (no, I didn't take the update patch, obviously). I wouldn't bother ranting about a beta, as I know it's a beta for a reason; especially if it's an OS. And I wonder if anyone noticed that the full build ID was in the screenshot, if anyone bothered to examine it.

I'll probably give it another go in a few months though. Although, all my drivers seem to be up to date. I was thinking perhaps it was a driver error too, but I couldn't think of what could be causing it.

Yay for using unreleased products.

 

I dunno what crappy version of XP everybody else always complains about, but I've been running the same version of XP for going on 4 years now, hell, I don't even have SP2. And I've gotten the BSOD...3 times, ever? Well more than that, but 3 times that wasn't my graphics card's fault. Most of the time when it happens is when my brother's playing NoLimits or some kind of full screen game that has advanced graphics, and it'll just lock up.

I've personally never had a problem with XP that wasn't easily fixable.

 

To be honest, same here. Running on XP SP2, I only get the usual slow downs. Never so many crashes, or anything. I think I've maybe had only 1-2 BSODs in XP in the past year or so. Hence why I'm going back, pretty stable, apart from the slow downs, which obviously still exist in Vista (then again, it's also hardware related).

btw, how many times did you sleep with Gates?

 

I've never gotten the blue screen of death while using Windows XP. I think I'm lucky.

 

I haven't had a BSOD from non graphic card related issues since Windows ME.

 

Remember, XP was like this for the first year as well. Every OS is unstable until they release at least 1 major patch... and vista isn't even released yet.

 

You know, you're right. Why the hell am I ranting about an OS in it's early stages?

That's what I get for ranting only a few hours after waking up. Oh well, a few points, apart from the BSODs still stand. Unless MS can completely revamp networking in Vista within updates. Oo

 

Never had a blue screen while using XP on multiple computers, and I do some pretty graphic-intensive stuff (gaming, design, etc) as well as having a great deal of resources being used at one time.

It's all about being smart with what you put on your computer, cleaning it up properly (spyware cleaning, defragmenting, virus scanning, cleaning out the registry, etc).

 

Heh, of course, as all of you are saying that you've never gotten a BSOD, my dad got a BSOD in XP a few hours ago. He called me to his computer and I just cracked up laughing.

Apparently he tried to burn an image from a network location, so I'm not too surprised.

 

I get them all the time. Its especially bad if your AGP port is fried and you're trying to play games on an AGP video card

 

I have never had a BSOD death in XP - must probably because I am hardly in that partition

I have had SP1 on it for absolutely ages and I only recently upgraded to SP2 because a program I am using on my college course requires SP2 to be installed.

It can be deathly slow though and I have no games on it at all. But meh I'm living with it