I do not like Vista! It isn’t media hype, it is overloaded with jazzy looking features. I am not about appearance, I am about fast, efficient work. Never another Windows product again. This computer with any other OS would fly, with the bloated vista, it performs only satisfactorily, while I wait. My favorite Vista message:”____ not responding”. It can be email or my browser or any program. But WOW, it has really jazzy features. Grr. My other favorite was downloading a SP that left me unable to access the net, until I restored it.
Sorry. I don’t get “____ not responding” with Vista. I’ve been using it 14+ hours a day for two years.
All of the "jazzy looking features" can easily be turned off. The result is a superfast, efficient, and stable OS, if you have the hardware to back it up (i.e., don't expect Vista to run well with 256mb of RAM).
You can easily cut out the Aero glass and other visual features and make it look like Windows 2000. This also will also boost performance 7% or so
Also Firefox is much better on memory than IE7 so I use it with Vista
Windows 7 will be even better and faster with better code and a few more visual features
I have two computers. My little “put-put” - an eight year old Gateway with only 250MB of RAM and a 32GB hard drive with which I run Windows XP. I have to reformat the poor thing every two years or so to get off the junk that accumulates and be sure to defrag it at least once a month or it slows down. It hangs up or drags if I have too much going on, but it fits my needs as far as watching videos, surfing the web, general word processing and email.
I did get sick of the drag. I got broadband and I wanted to use it! (I also needed a computer that had enough memory to run my husband’s Ipod.) With economy in mind, I bought a used, one year old computer about six months ago.
This puppy roars! Quick start up. Zips around the net like a sports car on tight corners.
Within an hour I was p*ssed. Vista slowed down the performance of this computer so that it was as bad as my little grandma computer.
I tried to reformat the beast and to install XP over Vista, but it wouldn’t let me.
I unplugged the damn thing and went back to grandma. I plan on buying a nice hard drive for the new computer this summer and installing XP on it. In the mean time, my son uses it for video games.
I’d be interested to find out if Windows 7 is really better than Vista. Honestly, I don’t know what’s wrong with just sticking to the tested, tried and true XP. It’s a great little program! Doesn’t use a lot of memory. Rarely glitches. It works!
We have 2 Macs and 3 PCs in our household.
For what its worth, Vista with Service Pack 2 is incredibly fast. And its perfectly stable — more so than OSX 10.6.2 Snow Leopard