see a ton of posts bashing vista as being lame/buggy/full of known problems/etc...

i just got a new desktop that came with vista. i was skeptic using it becuase all i have read.....but i figured what the heck...if it is lame i will install xp and go from there.

i have yet to see a problem with vista. am i missing something? there is a small learning curve finding where things are...etc. but i havent had an issue. and all my software (cs3/all the show it stuff/kubota actions/outlook 07) all installed without a hitch and is flying.

what gives? im no computer techie guy either.... i put the cd in the tray....install wizard...zing done.

i really like vista.

what are the known issues? what software wont run on vista?

The sotware I use that I had issues with are:

Zone Alarm
YSI
Page Gallery
Fotofusion


It also crashed a lot for no apparent reason.

That is my biggest complaint about Vista. Also, I'm guessing it may be Vista related, but this computer has more memory and the exact same programs as my old one did (except I'm running Vista home premuim instead of XP pro), and photoshop runs much slower.

I have dozens of programs that have not been updated to guarantee that they work with Vista - and even if they were, I couldn't afford to upgrade them. My new system will have XP.

Hahaha, i'm in your boat on this one. I haven't had a problem. Ususally if an app doesn't run i just do the "run as administrator" and it works fine. It's pretty snappy and gets the job done, really i've got nothing to complain about. And i much love c:\users\me rather than c:\documents & settings\ etc.

Vista has worked with most of my programs. I haven't been able to to get DEC from Pictage to work yet with it. There was something else but I can't remember right now. My biggest gripe with Vista is the amount of system resources it takes just to run the software. It takes about 600MB of RAM just to run the OS! I only have a gig of RAM in this machine so it takes up too much of that. It's also at core duo 2 and it stills takes up about 50% of the processor at any given time. That's just too much! I built a new desktop this week and put XP back in. Whoa it is so fast!

Wow. That's actually kind of scary. There's a good reason things don't run as "administrator" - in a general sense it's to keep the app in it's own box a bit so it can't reach out and start doing horrible things to your whole computer. So when it doesn't run as intended in this "more safe" way - the solution is just to run it as administrator?

What if you have a computer used by an assistant and you don't want them to have full permission to do anything they could ever want on the computer?

Sounds like a big problem to me.

Even as an "administrator" on a Mac, you still arn't truly an administrator of the actual OS - that's an even more special user called the 'root' user which even as the owner of the machine you need to do some special hacking to get that sort of access to save yourself from mucking up your own machine.

It sounds as if you're being forced to give this same level of access to "any random program that mis-behaves a bit" just to make it run. "Hey Microsoft - good job solving the spyware issues!"


I'm not picking on you Bryce or anyone else on PC for that matter - I was there for years and years, and I took my fair share of stabs at the mac users in that time, but it was the lead up to Vista being released that made me switch. XP was "well, not great but it got the job done", and I really hoped Vista (back when it was just a concept) would be a brand new fresh from the ground up operating system that ran 99% smooth and stable and really was the best thing available - and it would seem it fell WAY short of that. They spent FIVE YEARS developing this thing - the largest and richest software company on the planet, given some of the smartest minds around - for five years - and this is the result. Bug city.

Half the users can't even burn CD's for goodness sake, and even after hours of getting the run around with their support - they still can't burn CD's. I was burning CD's back in 1993 from a DOS prompt - the technology really isn't all that complicated - until of course you give MS engeneers five years to come up with so many ways to over complicate the process that they loose all track of what atcually happens to the point users who rely on this thing to feed their family are utterly helpless when problems pop up.

I'm really disappointed in MS overall - they had such a potential and somehow managed to crash the whole thing into the ground. I LOVE the thinking behind Mac OS and the entire Apple product - not just that it's cool - I just love the concepts behind stuff. Making stuff so incredibly simple and obvious.

MS is starting to run away with this new "surface computing" technology - that's got MS patents all over it so that's probably their next big monopoly, which may mean they put even less into their software in the future. Their business model has always been "create something that forms the foundation of a tool the whole world will use and make sure you own it all with zero competition and regardless of the quality of the product, you'll generate a few billion dollars a year off of it".

Kevin. You must not realize who you're talking too... I probably know more about windows internals, user access and permissions, accounts administration, Linux and BSD internals (that's what your mac is based on) and general computer/server adminstration/development than anyone on this board, so please spare me.

The run as administrator poses no real problem for single users who are trying to get an application that they used to use on XP to work on Vista. Usually the applications that don't work are ones that need to register dll or ocx files and aren't savy to Vista's UAC scheme.

I don't have an office or an assistant using my computer, but if i did, i would give all of my employees admin access to physical machines, the data would be stored on the network, the data is the important part, not the OS or applications. After I install i'll make an image of the machine and if they screw it up I just bring that image right back down. You can never truly lock down a physical machine, so just give them admin access let them install their messengers, and other software and they'll be quiet about it just make sure that you protect the data properly. Say with on a windows box a system level service that authenticates to a local server and backs up the newly imported photos, and services on your server which backup your financial and client data db's to an encrpyted storage every 3 days.

It's not hard to log in as root on a mac, you simply need to enter the password that you chose during install. Or if you are an administrator on the machine run the command with "sudo" input your password and that will run it as root.


You can't blame the os for the Application not knowing how it works. You blame the application for not knowing how the OS works. That's why for many apps not designed for vista that do not understand the new UAC they need the run as administrator. It's not microsofts fault in this case. They made the system safer and the apps have to catch up.

For what they have done in vista like pulling video out of the kernel and bringing it to ring 3, and implementing a whole new widget set, and performing serious modifications to the base NT kernel i'm amazed that they retained so much compatiblity, especially in the Windows sweet spot of gaming. No this shouldn't have taken so long. But really the OS isn't their biggest seller, Office and Direct X are the 2 big sellers so it makes sense to throw Vista on the back burner for a couple years especially due to the success of XP.

Yes vista needs work, but it's not bad at all, once applications catch up it'll be in quite good shape.

And there's no excuse for not being able to burn a data cd on Windows. You drop the files on to the drive letter of the cdrom and select Burn.... or you buy Nero 7, or download the free Infra Recorder and follow the instructions. Maybe you just chose a bad example, but most people get along just fine.