I have noticed lately that many people are either unsure of or unhappy with Vista. Then there are those very few that are ecstatic. I’m not writing this for those people. I’m writing to the first group who are miserable with Windows Vista and are looking for some kind of reprieve.
Deep Breath
So here we go in our attempt to help you with Windows Vista. First, let’s have a small change of heart with some of Vista’s features annoyances. I know the UAC drives you nuts and all the visual “enhancements” aren’t that enhancing. However, Vista is definitely the most idiot-proof designed OS’s that has come from Redmond (for all you Windows Robots…this is the name of the town Microsoft is based). Thanks to many of these improvements, your system is actually more secure.
I agree that Vista is a system hog. Hopefully Vista’s Service Pack 1 will help alleviate some of this. According to Microsoft, the update will fix quite a few problems (such as resuming from Hibernation, memory leaks due to certain screen savers, and just an overall speed-up) so when it comes out in early 2008, I suggest you download and install it right away. However, for those of you who love living on the bleeding edge, there is a way you can download Vista SP1 now. Just go to this page and follow the instructions. This is the Release Candidate 1 version. What that means is that not all of the problems are worked out, so download at your own risk.
Blurred Vision
As far as some of the visual effects making your eyes twitch, they are easily turned off. All you have to do is find an open space on the desktop and right-click. Up will come the typical menu with an option called “Personalize”. Click on it and adjust the Aero Glass features or just turn it off completely. If you do this, your Windows system will be the old familiar XP that you know and love.
You have to give the developers props for wanting to give you what should have been a very visually appealing operating system but if you don’t like it, they made it pretty easy to switch back to XP-style. And remember, that isn’t the only thing you can customize about your system’s UI. Go hog-wild and make the machine truly yours.
UAC Hell
If you don’t like Vista’s UAC blacking out the whole screen and asking you if you really meant to do ANYTHING, then you can turn it off. In fact, this is so easy I have already written a post about how to do this called Pros and Cons of Vista’s UAC . I suggest you think about this before you do it. The UAC may be implemented horribly, but it does its job. That job is to make sure you know exactly what your computer is doing and that it has your permission to do so.
Just imagine you turn the UAC off and you go to a malicious webpage that tries to install some code. Normally, the UAC would come up and ask you if you initiated the code. You would simply be able to tell it you hadn’t and you would be completely safe. Now, remember that you turned the UAC off and you never see the pop-up warning you. Your system allows the code and you have a trojan horse. Those nasty little buggers are getting harder and harder to get rid of. Some even require a complete reinstallation of Windows Vista, itself.
So remember, would you rather be safe with slightly annoying pop-ups, or would you want to take your chances without it?
Silver Lining
So what is the silver lining of Windows Vista. It really is an upgrade. Don’t believe me? Look at how many fixes and patches it took to get XP to the same security. I recently had to redo the hard drive on an old PC that was bought before both SP1 and SP 2 for XP. I spent more than 3 hours getting all the updates and installing them. And that was even before I installed anti-virus and a firewall. Let alone the time it took for the hard drive to be defragged afterwards. Be happy with your Vista machine. It is a whole lot better than you know. Give it a month before you run out and buy Windows XP Pro to downgrade to. You may just save yourself $150 you didn’t need to spend.
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41 Users Responded In This Post
You would simply be able to tell it you hadn’t and you would be completely safe.
The basics of it is this, don’t upgrade to Vista yet (at least until SP1 has shown to improve things) and don’t go back to XP if you got a new computer with Vista on it. You can have the improvements of Vista on XP and you can dumb down Vista so they both work the same. Just lean to work with what you have.
I haven’t even used Vista yet. I am quite curious about it but I have no intention of “upgrading” for awhile.
I’ve been quite happy with Vista apart from the fact that I had to reinstall the whole OS as it ceased to start any applications, even the Task Manager, after a while of running. It really was the weirdest thing. In addition, my system began to take almost 10 minutes to shut down. After a reinstall things are fine again, though. So I’m not going to downgrade, even though I was tempted a while back.
Jewelry Love - And you would have no reason to upgrade now. I would wait until after SP1 is proven to be good code.
Riksa - Vista is actually a pretty god operating system once you get used to it. The reason most people are downgrading is because of problems like yours and they give up easily. Kudos for sticking it out.
I can sympathize with your dilemma. I just got the new vista on my new computer and am not very pleased. I wish that I didn’t have it. Though, I will admit I am still just getting used to it. Maybe I will stick it out and see.
Good luck!
Other than UAC - which frankly seems to make a computer far less secure than XP, if it ‘forces’ everybody to turn it off - I’ve been happy with Vista.
I bought a laptop that came with Vista. Knock on wood, the thing hasn’t crashed or frozen once. Very secure, very fast on good hardware - MS says offloading a lot of the UI work from the CPU to the GPU helps with that. It makes sense that it would… I agree the AeroGlass is … well, it’s nice, but not at all functional. On the other hand, as a software developer, the instrumentation in Vista is very nice. Some of the little things, like having the filename minus the extension selected when you go to rename a file, are handy; not essential, but slight and common time savers.
It took me most of a year after the release to give Vista a try, but I won’t be going back. Even with the UAC annoyance.
I personally can’t stand Vista and have already downgraded. I will probably keep XP for at least another year. What I want from an OS is stability and speed. Vista is a downgrade from XP in both of these areas.
Sure, you get some extra features with Vista but it isn’t worth it. Yes, you should ‘downgrade’ to XP if you can even call it that.
It took me about an hour to turn of UAC after booting my new Vista controlled laptop. I hated it. Also, a lot of my stuff refused to work correctly, but I just as stubbornly refused to downgrade.
Now I’m at home, and have no desire to go back. SP1 excites me, I’m curious how much better it’s going to make the OS.
When my laptop crashed a few month back I set out to get a new computer, and ended up making the choice to get a mac. Its a choice I’m glad I made. I bootcamp on to XP when I need to.
Not returning to Windows until vista gets better, or they come out with something new.
if you can really really see a difference with vista and you want to go back to xp, i say go for it. i am not a OS techie, so i can’t tell the difference between the two. thanks to a friend, i adjusted my vista so it looks like xp.
hmmm vista is fine on mine — the only thing is has over xp is that it looks better.
I feel like UAC is basically saying windows is giving up against viruses. We cannt tell whats a virus and what isnt so lets just let the users do it. That said I think I am going to try and leave it on for awhile because I would rather deal with the trouble of it than deal with viruses. I wish I could customize UAC instead of totalling turning it off.
I was going to upgrade my other PC after a HD crashed, not know. I’ll just put XP back on it. Good to see the warnings against Vista before I bought it. thanks.
I have vista and I prefer XP but my laptop came with Vista - You can not download a lot of things like the Alexa bar for one.
Don’t upgrade just yet…it is not that great.
Don’t think about a downgrade. Think about Mac OS. I made the switch and feels great!
The people who have the most trouble with it are people who have older applications (especially work related that can’t be changed) that won’t work on Vista. Every time they try to dumb Windows down more it gets more aggravating to use. I haven’t used Vista yet and dont want to upgrade even after reading your article. thanks for sharing.
If you ask me i will tell you for downgrade to xp. To me xp is more user friendly then vista.
I have tried it and aren’t sure yet. I think I will leave it a while before putting it on my main PC.
As far as microsoft operating systems go everyone always has a fit about everything thats not perfect about them and never seem to say anything good about them. I’ve yet to try Vista yet but when I buy my new computer next month I’m sure it will come with it and I’ll spend a few days getting used to it. I’m sure that it will be better than xp and I’m not sure why someone would downgrade from vista to xp. Just spend some time learning the features and if you don’t like them like you said you can always turn alot of them off.
i would downgrade… vista takes up too much space, rendering it not worthwhile.
I live in a student hall and some of my neighbors bought new laptops recently, all Vista equipped. Only one was happy with it - and this was her first laptop ever. Everyone else who had XP experience are still cursing at their new Vistas. One had already installed XP as the second OS
I have no desire to upgrade to Vista! I’ve heard horror stories. Good ‘ol Microsoft. The Big behemoth strikes again! I’ll wait til they get some more bugs out, but it will be onging.
Vista may be idiot proof, but all the pop-ups confuse new users to the point they do not even want to use their computers. I have several older people who bought new pcs with the intent of joining the crowd, but when they are already afraid of clicking the wrong thing the pop ups are too much.
Fortunately you can still buy a PC with XP loaded on it, giving Vista more time (years?) to become right. Or you can just buy a Mac…
My mom just bought a Dell laptop and I made sure that she got it with XP loaded. After all, she already calls me enough for tech support. I didn’t need that headache!
I recently got a new PC at work that has Vista on it. I am constantly having issues with common programs like Outlook. I do not like the explorer as it is very confusing and I wish that it had XP instead.
Loving your new layout! (Sorry, I haven’t been by in a while…)
Like Thomas said. Switch to MacOS. It is so much easier and healthier for your nervs!
You should definitely downgrade. I have one computer with Vista on my home network and it is the only one that I am constantly having to support.
Just do it, XP is much better, it uses less resources, it has now a certain age with lot of patches and service packs.
I have been told not to upgrade (?) to Vista unless the machine was designed to run on it. Since I’m not buying a new ‘puter, I’m sticking with XP and my Mac.
It is a shame that Vista doesn’t work out of the box as advertised for some people. Boy, we feel sorry for all of those people who installed Vista and then decided to downgrade to XP because of all the problems they are having.
I have suffered through Vista for a year. I will endure, it is the way of things. It sure would be nice if Microsoft would release sp1 though.
I would say I am pretty happy with xp. With all of the talk about how bad vista is I don’t want to switch.
I definitely agree.
Vista does have a lot of plus points.
But from what I’ve heard, it takes a huge toll on a lot of systems out there, especially gamers not being able to get the performance they should be due to vista sucking it all up.
Luckily, thats not much of a problem for me. four gigs of ram does me well. and a good computer.
Vista has alot of nice features but it has to much bugs
I think vista needed another year in development!
Vista is terrible…I’m keeping XP
I personally do not like Vista, and I still do everything to slow down the Vista introduction on company’s and customers computers. However, time to move, like it or not. Dell is dicsontinued XP support in 2010, even thou Microsoft aknowledged that it will support XP up to 2014.
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