The V Word...

[jmurray01]

Yes, I'm talking about Vista - possibly the most hated Microsoft Windows operating system created.

That said, it is one that I have returned to recently.

As some of you may know, I was a Windows 2000 user for many years (and still would be if I could) and about 3 years ago switched to Windows XP when I needed to use mobile broadband, as the dongle for which was not compatible with 2k.

Last month the old 2004 Viglen had got to the stage where it couldn't even send an email without going into "Not Responding" at least once so I decided to replace it. For some strange reason Viglen had set the maximum installable RAM at 512mb, so there was nothing I could do to improve the performance.

Back in 2008 I bought an eMachines E520 which had Vista Home Basic installed and although the laptop itself was nothing but problems and I gratefully sold it for a loss in 2011, I never had an issue with the O/S. In fact, I thought it to be very efficient and almost as stable as Win 2k which I was running on my desktop at the time.

Therefore, when I upgraded last month I decided to avoid Windows 7, which I have not had good experiences with on the PCs at work, and go for what I knew to be decent and most importantly - modern enough to run most 2015 applications etc...

I'm now running Windows Vista Business on a Dell 760 Optiplex USFF and am very impressed. I am considering expanding the RAM from 2GB to 4GB though as now that I have installed some programmes on the PC it has slowed down slightly - but the stability is still very impressive.

I would be interested to hear if anybody else is still using Vista and if not what you do use.

 

[bagintheback]

I used Vista for about 3 years on the family laptop. At the time our primary computer was an iMac G4, however as PowerPC support diminished, so did it's use. We've could't have been more thrilled to have upgraded to a new Intel Mac in 2010. Vista, at least in my experience, was awful. BSODs were a common occurrence, drivers were constantly having to be reinstalled, and it was painfully slow at startup. The only major application that had to load was Norton, but that really bogged it down. The 4GB of RAM with a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo the Dell had was way more than Vista required. 


 


I too enjoyed 2000; it's a very stable NT system. I'm surprised you don't like 7. My family has had nothing but positive experiences with it, with both personal and professional use. 

 

[vacuumlover]

iv'e been on windows Vista basic for god knows how long iv'e never had problems with it. I quite like it and windows 7. But then again all i really use it for is email,Youtube and here i used to like using windows XP but stopped using that ages ago

 

[seanc]

I work in IT and Win2K was brilliant for its time. XP is long in the tooth now and I groan whenever I see it.

Vista was always slow. It works, but I always know that if I put Windows 7 on the same PC, it would be faster. Vista just wasn't optimised properly.

If I were using Vista or 7, like I do at work, I would disable the Aero interface and switch it to Classic interface. Vista basic at least didn't use any of the Aero effects so was quicker.

I'm testing Windows 10 at the moment, it's very unfinished, I'm not sure what to make of it.

 

[human]

I got a second hand Dell Vostro 1700 laptop a couple of years ago that came loaded with Vista. One of the first things I noticed was Vista couldn't address all the RAM that was physically installed in the machine. It had 4GB but Vista could only address 3GB--weird. So for that and other reasons, I upgraded to Win7. Suddenly, I was addressing all 4GB of RAM and the whole machine was running faster and smoother. I still don't use it much as I'm a Mac person at heart and prefer my 17-inch MacBook Pro to anything running Windows.

 

[seanc]

Human, did you end up going from 32bit windows to 64bit? 32bit windows can only address 3-3.5GB RAM.