Why Don’t You Like Windows Vista?

by Jeff Weisbein on October 15, 2008 · 10 comments

Why don’t you like Windows Vista?

This post isn’t about bashing Vista, nor am I. I liked Vista when I used it for over 2 years, it worked for me. However, I will not deny that people have had issues with it either in the past or the present. That being said, I’m looking to find out either specific problems and/or issues you have experienced first hand with Vista – not heard through the grapevine.

Face it, even Microsoft has to a certain extent – Vista has a very bad rep. The Mojave Experiment shows that. Microsoft has to figure out a way to make Windows 7 (the next Windows operating system) a positive experience right off the bat or they will be in some serious trouble. The last thing Microsoft needs is another Vista disaster.

So I am asking you two simple questions:

What was wrong with Vista (I’m looking for firsthand accounts) / why didn’t you like it?
What would Microsoft have to do or include in Windows 7 that would make you want to use it and switch from either XP or Vista.

Leave some comments and be creative (yet realistic) I want to know why you didn’t like Vista and what you would like to see in Windows 7!

http://gnimsh.wolfnix.net Gnimsh

The wireless would randomly just not work, at all. I had ubuntu 7.10 installed and would boot to that and it worked flawlessly, but in Vista I could not detect anything. I recently fixed this exact problem for a friend of mine, and by fix I mean installing ubuntu. She is not technical at all, and has yet to run into problems with it.
Some times I would have to wait 10+ minutes for it to actually shut down.
Did I mention resource hog? Said friend’s hard drive was 60 GB, but only had 20 gb free. 2 of those GB were her files, the rest was Vista’s suspend and hibernate file. Talk about bloat. Ugh.
Really the only things I liked about Vista were the way the user folders were set up (User/documents user/music) and the program search in the start menu. Both of those were cool. Oh also the sound drivers for vista sucked for my laptop, XP always played music louder.
All in all I wouldn’t go back to XP unless they had better driver integration for all laptops (mine was “vista ready” and the company had no XP drivers, I had to mix and match and this was time consuming) and ultimately not unless I can make my system do exactly what I want. And I want windows to be exciting, I want to watch my programs compile (but only once in a while) and get the feeling of accomplishment that comes with doing it.
Sorry for talking about linux so much :p
Sir_Sid

An authentication system that is nicer to the user. I mean if you type your password to install a program once, that should be it. And it should keep you authed for a few minutes after in case you are installing additional software. Having 3 boxes pop up is a tad annoying. Also cutting base ram usage would be great.
http://bluephoenix.tv Keaton Taylor

Well like you Jeff I have not experienced any issues with vista other than the blunders here and there. However working at the geek squad I have seen numerous accounts when people just want to install a windows update or just uninstall a program and thing go out of whack. One on the more notable things that I see at Geek Squad is windows updates not wanting to install or finish installing. This is a huge issue in some cases it leaves the computer completely useless, and the only way to resolve it is to 1. Try a system recovery (put the computer back in time) 2. Just restore the computer back to is factory out of box state. This leaves the EU with a very frustrating experience. Honestly I feel that vista is still very new software and it needs time. I do feel that it is not all Microsoft’s fault that the issues are here because I have seen one to many 3rd party developers “cough, cough webroot” who do not want to play by the rules causing issues within the vista programing. If Microsoft really want’s to stay on top it’s time for them to start thinking outside the box and creating new ways of doing things. One thing I would like to see in Windows 7 is a better integration of media content so that you can access the media flawlessly from any program. So say like have an index for all programs installed on the computer to use to find all your photos, music and movies. Well before I continue to rant I will stop. Great questions Jeff keep up the great work!
Honda_Boy

Initially I hated it for my main rig and would not use it. I had no choice with the laptop as it came with Vista Home Basic 32-bit and I had no spare XP licenses left. Though really I never had to many problems other than minor annoyances out of the laptop. There’s just a few things I don’t quite get why MS did. Like why does the image viewer in Vista lack the ability to display animated GIF’s? Why does the Photos screen saver only display the photo centered with no transition effects, while the XP My Pictures screen saver would show images all over the monitor (or over other monitors in multi monitor setups) with transition effects. Plus other little things. Also the dang security questions for each and every little thing. Actually that’s easily rectified by disabling User Account Control.
Now I had some more problems with the Vista Home Premium 64-bit I had bought for my desktop. First off, it just didn’t work right, it was slow, it took forever to boot and shutdown, my Audigy wasn’t fully functional due the lack of full driver support, I had video issues with my favorite video player (Zoom Player), and a bunch of other things….. well I recently tried Vista again months after SP1 came along. I figured out my Video problem. I just changed the filter in my settings to the same one XP and 32 bit Vista used and problem solved. I bought an X-Fi to solve my sound problems (and god do I love that X-Fi). The slowness problem was completely absent this time, it even started up extremely fast and shutdown really quick as well. The whole thing is stable and runs perfectly.
2 things had prompted me to try Vista again on my main system. For some weird reason, XP Home SP2/3 never ran right on this particular system being slow (like taking longer to load FF3 on an Athlon X2 6000+ with 4GB of RAM that on the older system with an Athlon 64 3500+ with 1GB of RAM), taking too long to start and WAY too long to shutdown, and some program instability. The other reason is retarded but what finally pushed me to do it. Crysis. I bought the game without thinking. I have a DX10 video card but forgot Vista is required for DX10 (I know the game can run in DX9 mode but I wanted to play it in DX10 by golly) so I finally installed it that day. I sorted all my problems out with the OS itself in a day or 2 and ordered and received my X-Fi shortly after to resolve my sound issue (I coulda used integrated but I hate integrated audio).
So now I use Vista on my desktop and LOVE IT! All my apps open almost instantaneously (I’d go make a sandwich waiting for Word 2007 to start in XP), it boots quick, it’s stable, it looks nice (I had 3rd party themes on XP but geez does Vista ever look better) and I just fell in love with my system all over again. My only problem left is the Windows Photo Gallery not being able to display animated GIFs. The old My Pictures screensaver was my favorite (I’d have it set to show my anime wallpaper folder) but the Vista Photos one stank….. so I just copied the XP one from my XP install and added it to Vista :P
Matt

There are so many reasons why I don’t like Vista, and these all do come from personal experience.
1. Crazy system requirements. There is absolutely no reason to design an OS that is such a resource hog–especially for the average user. The eye-candy isn’t even appealing to me.
2. Support for older hardware. The way that vista was built not only demands a newer machine (due to the high system requirements), but many of my peripherals no longer worked. My HP scanner simply was not support, and the software that came with a Creative Zen just wouldn’t install.
3. Security. First of all, the UAC is annoying. I know that it can be disabled, but the whole thing is stupid. The average user who doesn’t know what they are doing is just going to click ‘ok’ anyway and the UAC is pointless. Windows should set up 1 administrative account, and other smaller account that are required to type in a password to do administrative things… like some other OSes out there.
4. Cost. Microsoft has already been terrible about this. You’d think that having seven different versions might allow for a cheaper version, but no. The cheapest one is the same price as previous Windows systems, and now you just have to pay more as you go up.
5. The entire NTFS filesystem just doesn’t make sense to me. I used to be fine with it because that’s all that I knew. Now that I have switched to linux, it’s difficult to comprehend what they were thinking. I’d love Windows 7 to maybe be a little Unixish.
6. Stability. I haven’t actually run Vista since right around the release of SP1, but still then apps would freeze and the system would lock up.
Some good things about linux:
1. I love that I can update all of my software seamlessly with one command in the terminal. While we’re at it, I can install and uninstall programs just as easily. 99% of the time I never have to search the web for an application, I don’t have to download and then run through the installer. I can just download and install it with a single command. The same goes for uninstalling
2. It’s free. I know some people like linux because they are free to modify it. I like it because its free for others to modify (not me, I don’t have the time or the know-how) and its free as in cost.
3. Scalability. If I wanted to, I could run a huge server, a desktop, or even a phone with relatively few modifications. I really hope there aren’t any servers running on Vista.
4. Really good support for older hardware. Linux is great at running on old machines. An easy way to resurrect a box you had sitting in a closet. Unfortunately, newer hardware support is often delayed.
5. Choices. With linux I can run gnome, kde, xfce, enlightenment, fluxbox, or a number of other desktop environments on the same OS. With windows, I’m stuck with what they give me.
And some good things about Windows:
1. It’s usually the standard. New software and hardware is developed to work with Windows, not the other way around. Because of this, support for other OSes is often pushed back.
2. As a branch of #1, Microsoft and Windows is the primary choice in the business world. There are many ways to integrate with other OSes in this area, but it simply isn’t as easy as Windows-to-Windows.
There’s so much more to be said here, but I just wanted to get my feet wet.
Chris H.

1. Windows Explorer (not IE, Windows Explorer) likes to randomly freeze if I don’t use the taskbar enough. This means that I cannot use the start menu, switch windows, click desktop icons, and the clock freezes. Since I am in a web browser for long periods of time, I don’t really notice when it freezes (since Firefox still runs then), and I see an incorrect time on the clock. You can’t count the times I see “5:30 PM”, wondering why I’m so hungry, only to discover it’s after 10.
2. Reliability on basic mechanisms of the OS. Such as Explorer. Have to restart that kind of program is frustrating and could be fixed easily, I’d hope.
1. Software. This isn’t as much of a working problem, but cost. Microsoft Office 2008 is a little too expensive for a 15 year-old. As such, I have Microsoft Office 2000 SR-1, which was at one time on my computer that ran Win ’98. Being able to barely afford a $550 laptop, with no extra money for software, I am on a fairly good computer with crappy software.
2. Either have some basic software with the OS or (better) up the price a bit to bundle the OS with a Microsoft-equivalent of iLife or iWork.
And fix Windows Movie Maker. Uhg.
1. RAM Hogging. Vista can look nice. I actually like Aero. But 1GB of RAM to run it? IF I want to play any game, especially one of my favorites, Sims 2, I have to change the visualization to Vista Basic, then change it back once I’m done. As far as I know, OS X doesn’t take up 50%+ of the RAM you get.
2. Take up less RAM without sacrificing a good visualization.
1. Windows Updates take waaay too long. And only really seeing them when I turn off my computer is quite inconvenient. I usually only see updates when I go to bed, so I have to set my computer aside for 20-45mins to download anywhere from 1 to 10 updates.
Also, when I had to reformat my hard drive, I turned off my computer at 1am, when I thought the hell was over. Then I saw “Downloading 1 of 57 updates”.
Gah.
I got no sleep.
2. Quicker updates? I dunno, maybe fix most of this crap before release. Then beta test for a while…actually LISTENING to your beta testers (sorry, just one through-the-grapevine thing) and fix more. Then the stuff that actually are updates could be more obviously presented to the user so they can see if they care about that type of update. If it fixes a feature I never use, the Sidebar for example, and might take 15 minutes to download, forget it.
There are more.
Like better ads.
Apple ads crack me up!
Vista makes me laugh for the opposite reason than they want. ;)
Chris H.

On Linux:
Love it, but crappy card that came built-in to this laptop isn’t supported by Ubuntu very well, so I have to use Ethernet to hook up. Eck.
sgijoe

Anyone that has a complaint against UAC, needs to install this!
http://www.nortonlabs.com/inthelab/uac.php
Norton Lab’s UAC Replacement, FTMFW.
http://www.besttechie.net/ Jeff Weisbein

@sgijoe: That looks interesting.
JoelP

I have had update errors, incompatibility problems causing to constantly crash, Heavy RAM usage.