Since I've been toying around and got flamed alot for voicing my bit of an Opinion about MS Vista, I thought : let's give it another shot under full productive conditions...

So I went ahead and installed Vista 64 Home Premium Edition SP2 and am taking it for a spin.

---

Well, here's my thoughts & experiences :

The good :
- Aero GUI Look&Feel looks nice when supported by your Hardware, kinda looks slick (liked the colors much better than WinXP default Desktop)
- has DirectX 10 and option for future DX11 (if you're a Gamer and want/need it)
- 64bit Driver and Software support hasn't given me much problems, only few Programs didn't work (and Vista64 gave advance notification about known problems, which gave a good heads-up)
- SP2 removed alot of the enourmously laggy response times indeed, general response speeds feel pretty much like Win7 RC I tried a while ago (still nothing I'd call speedy - but acceptable for everyday use)
- File Copy/Move Dialog gives nifty transfer performance details when desired
- Resource Monitor gives useful insights about system utilitzation

The bad :
Quite alot, don't know where to start, so everything in no particular order...

- UAC :
Considering that it has already been compromised, its concept being broken and exploits exist, this utter pain in the arse feature should be removed completely.
I mean, you click on an OS function - while being logged in with a User account with Administrator rights *hint*  , it asks for your okay (well fine, "Yeah I really clicked that, make it happen")... just for another 2nd confirmation Window to pop up and ask again.
Typical Admin response : "Yes, stupid, I want it, what didn't you understand about "make it happen!" ?!"
Additionally, UAC does a good job of preventing legitimate and correctly installed Software to start, you'll be lucky if you get an Error Message from the failing Software (because UAC won't tell you that it just trickedfu**ed you once again).

- Administrator vs Administrator
Can hardly believe - let alone understand - it, but... for Win95, Win98, Win98SE, WinME, WinNT, Win2000, WinXP, Linux, BeOS, OS/2, Solaris, BSD, Unix, MacOS and every other OS existing... Administrator means : Administrator.
When I'm Admin on a Computer, the OS has to obey and do nothing I did not tell it or allow it to do. And it has to do anything I tell it to do, including self-destruction should I so wish. Period.
Not for MicroSoft Vista, however...
Here, the actual Administrator is hidden and requires a manual tweak to unhide the account after a Google research. Additionally, the OS is lying about the User Account having Administrator rights - it does not, actually far from it!
That's a complete No-Go, right there.

- Background Services
Now we all know different Operating Systems come with their share of background services to afford stable operation and functionality of all User-Selected features.
Vista, however, takes the overload to a new peak. There's heaps & bounds of services set to auto-run that either do not make any sense, serve no purpose or mean severe security risk in the given configuration. A good ~70% of the services I could safely shutdown without losing any desired functionality - and that's bad news, considering not few of these services were plain undesired...

- Resource Usage
Most already know, but the way this OS is wasting resources (RAM, CPU, I/O bandwidth) left and right is absolutely... astounding.
It's not a showstopper, considering how cheap RAM and suitable CPUs have gotten, it's plain ugly to look at.
Where a fully patched Win2000 sits there at far below 100MB Idle usage, WinXP was the first to exceed it (mainly a toll induced by incorporating .NET)... Vista takes a good 400-500MB actual RAM right after booting, some 200MB+ being reserved just for the Kernel alone (!) which at least has enough dignity to move to Swap to some extend. You can actually further increase it by just activating some of the "Sidebar" functions. I can't recall active Desktop or TweakUI-type Utilities ever using anything in that vicinity, despite having had far more features to choose from.
I can fit 3 or 4 operating Systems with far more functionality into those dimensions.

- Font Antialiasing (Cleartype)
Basically a nice Idea for all those TFT panels that do not allow setting the sharpness of Pixel Interpolation and Display, where pixel-accurate thin fonts are used.
However, it not only antialiases the thin Fonts (where it works very well), but also for any other Font. That makes bigger or bold fonts look like your TFT is broken - or like you need to see an eye doctor fast. Blurry is the best description.

- GUI performance issues
Saw the same under Win 7 RC, but ironically setting the GUI to "max performance" (every eyecandy turned off) will actually decrease performance. And it does this to a point where using the (supposedly now lightning fast) GUI even with a high-end GTX295 and latest drivers feels like running it off a 1997 8MB PCI card with rather average GUI acceleration.
Appears to be a bug in the Vista classic GUI design, as doing this does not seem to fit well in the Vista Display driver model optimized for Aero.

- Windows Explorer
Oh, that's a good one. Although not as catastrophic as Win 7, here's what happens when you open it by right-clicking the Start button :
...tons of tons of folders appear which make no sense at all (thanks, I have my own order when storing files on a harddrive). Up to a point where you have to actually search your Drives - which likely won't show all the way down below, even on a 40" display.
....My Images
....My Music
....My Documents
....My Movies
....My Sexual Preferences
....My evil world conquer Plans
....My (whatever) blah blah
Dozens of them.....

Deleting all of them also got me my very first "Oops, I need to re-install". After deleting one of these too many, the Explorer - anytime you opened it anywhere - popped up a hughe error message, stating it can't find the desktop.ini (despite it being right there, where I opened the Exporer).
Needless to say, my first trip to "System Restore" just told me "sorry, I took some 5GB off your HD space already for restore&index data but I can't do anything for you". Oh my, thank you Vista.
Ironically, even manually restoring the deleted folder and copying the missing file from another folder according to the error message did not change anything. Great.

Also funny, if you were always bugged about the Explorer always opening an initially rather useless Sub-Sub-Sub-Subdirectory on the C Drive - the entry Folder to your Start Menu...
It now does the same! Sounds fair, doesn't it ? Well, not quite, because this it where it takes you
C:\User\(Account)\AppData\Roaming\MicroSoft\Windows\Start Menu\

Not quite useful, isn't it? I can tell, it's not funny to close all those sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-subdirectory panes 50 times a day.
It's now even easier to click "Computer", which now is the only place where you can start browsing your Drives with a sane mind... Ouch.

- Explorer Part II : Window Size and Position
From the dawn of Windows, the OS has managed to remember the last position and size of the Explorer Window.
Apparently this was a long standing bug, because : now it will not anymore!
Add this to the 50 times pane-closing and scrolling 2 screens to find your Drives, and you will understand why alternative File Managers have suddenly moved back into User focus and interest.

The Explorer basically has become unusable, unless you have masochistic tendencies...

- Explorer Part III : Folders, File/Folder Sizes and Names
Hopefully you didn't get too used to having the Explorer display the Folders exactly like you wanted to in the past - because these times are over!
Unless you invest alot of time into telling it how to display every fecking single "folder type" the way you want. You may still select the Option to "Display every folder like this current one" - except it just won't work.
Additionally, once you've managed to sort all this out - don't dare to copy a new File Type Vista recognizes into that nicely displaying folder - because it will soon switch to another Format, just because it thinks your Document Folder has transformed into a Movie Folder...
And if you would like to how much space your Files actually take on the Harddrive - the Explorer unfortunately can only estimate that. That's right, it gives an estimate and has lost its capability to show you a real, true figure. You can download 3rd party Utilities to get that job done now - thanks to Vista screwing itself over the usage of Symlinks.

- Hard Drive activity
If you love your HD - don't install Vista.
Why?
Directly after you install Vista, your Harddrive will be under some form of permanent Benchmarking - at least so it will feel.
This will go to a point where you could safely disconnect your Case PowerOn LED and rely solely on the HD Activity LED - because it will be on like 90% of the time (!)

Even if you disable Prefetch, Restore Points, Indexing, Volume Shadow Copy and all similar features & services - the Problem remains to a large extend and opens another one : after closing smaller or bigger applications (and a resting LED), the game starts again at this point.

It really feels like just opening any Applications opens a brand new, full Restore Point on the HDD and literally Hundreds of MB are being transferred.

It would be funny to install Vista on a UDMA disabled IDE Drive. CPU usage would be 100% all the time and that HDD LED would like never go out again.

Needless to say, this truly insane I/O behaviour will not quite increase overall System responsiveness nor Gaming performance.
Lifespan of an average HD could easily be cut in half or less.
If your HD is noisy during I/O - buy ear plugs!
Absolutely unacceptable.

- Defrag
...after seeing the permanent HD Benchmark, one might make a frantic attempt at optimizing HD performance with a nice run of Defrag.
While it will work, it now doesn't show you anything anymore (not even a lame progress count). Additionally, its capabilities are less than that of a limited freeware Defrag software (apart from attempting to decrease Boot time speed, it's defrag of Files only and not even all Files qualify). Hardly worth calling it such.

- Installing Updates
...since the dawn of Windows, installing an Update has caused Windows to perform the installation, request a restart, do some mild configuration at boot and then get you back where you belong - the Desktop, ready to go.
Well, now it's inviting you to play a little game : how many restarts does it take and how often will the "Installing, Part 1 of x, xx% done" repeat itself.
It just steals time but it's a strange mix of funny and irritating to watch, seeing the OS telling you upto 4 times that it is (supposedly and apparently) doing the very same thing - over and over, until it actually finishes and actually boots all the way.

- System Options/Settings
Forget all you've done since Win95, i.e. right-clicking a network icon in the Tray and make a quick adjustment to IP settings or alike.
If you make the mistake of following one of the "Wizards" offering their help (which are a bit like those annoying people who persistently want to sell you their goods in some 3rd world country), chances are you end up somewhere you've never been. Chances also are, neither those Wizards, nor the Windows Help will get you out of it, because instead of simply setting a fixed IP for your LAN you like created a WLAN/LAN bridge for a Company level WAN you don't even have.
Things basically are not where they belong (and where they have been for 15 years of Windows) or their functions are scattered across 6 different menus.
Setting up your screen resolution, background image, Screensaver, GUI style, GUI effects, advanced Display and Monitor properties and 3D Preferences... used to come from one Applet and occur inside one single Window - that is no more, be prepared to take a tour through a better part of the Control Panel applets just for those "quick" settings - if you find the right ones that is.
Additionally, some of these Control Panel applets will open a new Window, while some will open in the same Window.
It makes for some classic moments of Admin work when you close the Applet Window to "go back", just to find out you just closed the entire long-searched Control Applet Page which holds the one setting you're been looking after for 15 Minutes. Sweet...

- Security and Privacy
Here's where Vista is really blowing up.
Given all default options and standards after an installation, you could basically also rent a shared hosting at Homeland Defense or the NSA.
You're sitting in front of a shiny looking GUI that in the background permanently creates tons and tons of indicies from absolutely all conceivable File types - including their content. Absolutely unprecendented.

If any other piece of Software would do anything like that, it would be labelled a critical security and privacy risk and end up as something like "Vista.W64.harvester" in the Antivirus and Spyware listings.
If i.e. a Google Bar extension or their Chrome Browser would do anything like that, you'd see every IT magazine on the planet warning unsuspecting Users of it - the company name would be torn to pieces by both professional IT and the users.

Add to that a mix of Update and Callback services that the integrated Firewall (naturally) lets all on free bypass, plus a permanently active Harddrive - an experienced Admin cannot possibly trust that System... not even for a split second.

During the experiment with Vista64, I have all those "services" disabled completely and still can't put any private Data anywhere near this System - because it still does it to some extend.
It's all stored safe&sound in Backups on my Linux hosts and on external USB Drives.

The whole System basically gives the Look&Feel like it is heavily compromised with dozens of Trojans competing for I/O bandwidth - right from the default Install.
If any other OS would suddenly behave this way, its Admin would rip off the LAN cable, cut power and do in-depth Antivirus/Trojan/Rootkit scans. And that's a default Vista, this is exactly what you get.

---

That is just the tip of the iceberg, a "quick & dirty" list of all that came to mind as I wrote. I could easily extend this for pages and pages.

In my book, Vista takes the bottom spot of all existing OS'es I have tried so far - and there were many since my old CP/M days on an Apple IIc.

Recommendations : lots of Aspirin, a burning desire for pain & suffering, several pounds of chocolate (or similar) for Endorphines. You will need them, if you approach Vista as a grown, experienced Administrator - this OS is certainly not made for this breed of people.

Despite I've got a DX10 graphics card, I've never used Vista and I never would.

I'm still using WinXP SP2 and I'm happy with it.
There's no important game demanding on Vista up to now.

I think, Vista isn't a real OS, it seems more like a Trojan in a colorful "media-center-horse".  ;)

I have been providing support for a couple Vista PC LANs for the last 6 months.  I read up on all the issues and have tried to mitigate them as much as possible.  Hopefully Windows 7 will be more user intuitive and even more useable.  I'd give Vista a 7 out of 10.

However, I personally do not use it at home, as I still prefer XP.

FalconFly wrote on 23.07.09 at 02:47:30:

...

nicely said,I agree with everything..one thing you have forgotten to mention-when running under vista,most 3d games are quite a bit slower (when compared to xp),and some even require better hardware to meet minimum system requirements (faster cpu/newer graphics card,crysis is a good example)..and dx10? all talk and no walk: speed improvements-none at best,better image quality-questionable..

Indeed, I ran some DX9 vs. DX10 benchmarks while toying around and DX10 always turned out significantly slower than DX9 - often while looking almost exactly the same.

The only useful DX10 effect I've seen to date were water surfaces, which do look quite a bit better. But if that is worth the performance loss remains doubtful.
(only ATI hardware can regain some performance when using DX10.1, but that's about nowhere to be seen in any games so far)

Given the tremendous overhead Vista is carrying, I was surprised to see it even reach the reduced performance levels is shows, I wouldn't have been surprised if it was even worse.

Overall, I'm not surprised one bit that Vista only made it into the market being bundled with OEM Systems and Notebooks. Had I not bought my copy for another purpose (needed 64bit Windows fast for only one special purpose and couldn't get XP64), I'd be one hell of a frustrated customer...

..and dx10 was actually supposed to make things faster,if memory serves.one way or another,vista will be remembered as one of the biggest screwups ms ever did,whether they like it or not..

but I must admit that they can use even this kind of situation to their advantage-try asking win7 users why they like the new os,half of them will reply with hey,I like it,its much better than vista-and they are right,anything is better than vista..using an older bad product to make the new one look like gift from heavens,way to go ms,just hope no one will realize that win7 is what vista should have been from day one,especially not those poor b@stards who have paid full price to get the boxed versions.


in case I haven't linked this before: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

Over all, I hate it.

It's slow, it's bloated and for me, it's rather useless. After the AdminPak for Server 2003 wouldn't install or work correctly in order to do support for our network along with network speeds in general ( I realize they fixed the network speed issues on SP1 but still) I've stayed away from it. VPN connection status was beyond horrendous at first and using it for supporting other OS's is just insane. "Click start\run and type in CMD" "Where's Run at?" "DUH!"

DX11 in Win 7 is what DX10 was supposed to be until Nvidia forced MS to cut it down because of lack of hardware support so I don't know who's to blame for DX 10 being as gimped as it is. MS for bowing to Nvidia's wishes or Nvidia for having MS do it because they weren't ready for Vista. Nvidia is in the same boat right now with Win 7 however MS has stayed strong with not bowing down to Nvidia this time. ATI will have DX 11 parts out by the time Win 7 launches.

Win 7 testing, I'm finding that although it may look like Vista (which, personally I don't really care for) I'm starting to like it... quite a bit actually. I'm running the 64 bit version and very few apps won't work, most of them my DVD burning stuff. Nero works fine however DVD Wizard Pro has some issues and a couple of others.

I still need to test it in a work environment and MS has stated that it'll work much better for business use so I'm hoping.

Win 7 does seem to run much, much smoother then Vista though and generally over all seems to have less hiccups. I've had less driver issues and MS seems to be working a lot closer with companies, both hardware and software, then with Vista development.

Time will tell though.

Good OS.  Not Great, but good.  I have never had a problem.  It is highly tweakable and you can make it do whatever you want.  My hardware works fine with it, sure the performance could be better with XP, but if you have that argument you might as well go back to Win2k so you can have your "performance".  Or step up in the hardware department and upgrade.  Latest and greatest hardware/os/drivers = enjoyable enviroment, anything less and you shouldn't be using an OS that is out of your league.

Long story short folks, whether you like it or not it's the future and you are going to have to put up with it.  8-)

rottentreats wrote on 23.07.09 at 20:09:06:

Long story short folks, whether you like it or not it's the future and you are going to have to put up with it.  8-)

Good news is, that this statement (luckily) is false...
We'd be screwed otherwise ;)

I totally sign the first post.
I used Vista Ultimate x86 for about 4(?!) month in Dual boot with WinXP, where I tried to NOT use WinXP. When I startet up WinXP after ~2 month of non-usage, I was shocked how fast everything was :o I clicked - and BANG: open!
I already forgot how it's got to be, Vista kept me more and more in deep trance with that shiny f-*_+g *explorer is seaching for the continuously indexed files*-green progress bar - what useless piece of cr*p!
Windows 7 is somewhat better, but that shitty progress bar is still there - I just hate it! why can't it just show the damn folder right away?! XP can, why not Win7? Or even worse - it shows the content, you open a video (for example), THAN the green bastard starts searching (or WHATEVER it does), and your video doesn't start til it's done or you cancel the "search" ::) that is mostly in folders with many files and mostly in network folders, but it still sucks! I just don't have that crap under good old XP, I hope M$ improves this til launch.

I must admit Win7 somehow manages to feel relatively smooth on underpowered systems (especially with unsufficient RAM), my IBM T23 with PIII-1,13GHz and 512MB (where I installed it too, for fun :D ) is still pretty usable, what you DEFINITELY not tell from a freshly installed Vista on a system 1GB - just open 1 or 2 apps and you're done working ::)

Even on a 3GHz Dual Core, 4GB of RAM, a 15k RPM SAS HDD and after alot of tweaking Vista just felt slow as hell. What a piece of junk >:(

rottentreats wrote on 23.07.09 at 20:09:06:

sure the performance could be better with XP, but if you have that argument you might as well go back to Win2k so you can have your "performance".

nope.xp may be a bit more ram hungry,but apart from that,there is no (or next to none) performance penalty when running 3d games.vista is not just more ram hungry than xp,its simply slower.

To each their own I guess.  Vista x64 is rock stable and faaaast for me.  (older system built quite awhile ago - Core2Duo @ 3.8Ghz, 8GB of ram, 10k wd raptor, 2x BFG 260 GTX Maxcore's in SLI)  Win7 x64 will be installed as soon as it is released, it is running on a few other computers in the house and laptop and its great, but I would not notice a different on my main rig, so I will hold off on reformatting.

Whether it be Vista or Win7, or any other following Micro$oft OS, it will never meet peoples expectations.  I however take it as it comes and appreciate it for what its worth.  No point in b!tching, won't get you anywhere.  Once again though its all opinion/preference.  (and the computer you are operating on and its configuration can really change opinions)  I sometimes think that the people who dislike Vista just don't know how to use it properly.. or are doing something wrong.  Good luck people :)

..seems like you are one of the few people that run the vista x64+nv sli combo without issues.good for you..I do agree there is no point in b!tching,but sometimes,its just too much fun ;D


anyway,I don't really care about ms oses anymore,my end user support days are over (providing only legacy support for the closest family,thank you logmein),and I'll be bailing to linux as soon as I move to my new place (eta 1 year,gotta sort some stuff first),I have succesfully tried the last distro of ubuntu-its easy to understand/customize,plays movies/music,streams online videos,and plays many older games just fine with wine-and thats all I have been doing on my home pc for the last year or so.not mentioning its secure,free,and it does exactly what I want and when I want.

works for me.

This is kind of off topic I suppose. But the last OS Ive used is windows xp and thats on my laptop. And its a laggy piece of shit. I would only guess that anything after it are even more bloated slow pieces of shit also.

How big are typical windows installations these days? What, like 1 or 2 gigs. Just because the computers are faster, the programs are even bigger. And most of the time for no good reason. It seems like the days are gone when the programs would be optimized to be as fast as possible, as to use the least amount of resources as possible. Theres no reason you should have to have a 2ghz pc with atleast 1 gig of ram just to run a OS at a respectable speed. wtf?

Ok. Im done venting.   ;)

I must say I'm pretty okay with Vista, it's not as bad as many people make out, especially with all the service packs and updates performance is pretty decent too. It can definitely be improved though, I think Win 7 will be Vista done right.

I've had Vista on different setups, and it all works just fine really. Even with SLI.

I won't go back to XP that's for sure.

I've done some more hardcore-testing, taking Vista all the way down to the roots.

- Disabled Autostart for all Services that are not required for starting the OS (still allowing it to start them when required, which ironically it failed on User Account managing, Sound Output and the Aero GUI)

It is now running with a mere 20 of its 127 (!) default Services.
16% leaves the OS with all normal functionality, that's quite a record.

The result :
Now stripped of all unneeded overhead, but also taken away the opportunity to steal as much RAM as it wants, the effect was quite... astounding.

Vista still takes (without any Prefetch Cache) a whopping 500MB+ RAM.
It is slow, oozingly slow, now being forced to run like WinXP or any other Windows.
Being apparently written in an unprecendented level of unoptimized garbage debug code, it depends on caching so many System functions, as operating it in the same manner as all other Operating Systems would basically be nothing less than a pain in the arse even on high-end Hardware.

Now feels alot safer but about as fast as a feature-packed, aged WinNT install on a 64MB RAM system running off a cheap 4GB IDE Drive (until used Apps are cached of course) :D
Note : all while running off a 2.5GHz Quadcore with 4GB RAM and 250GB HD o.O .... and mind you, I haven't even loaded or worked any Programs yet! , this is just to get onto a naked Desktop and navigate basic OS functions *omg*

This is what the developers apparently urgently needed to hide, cost it what it takes - in this case Resources. LOTS of Resources.
Vista basically runs to a large extend from a Cached RAM-Disk in order to fake the feel of a performant OS.
Truth is, however, exactly the opposite. A cheap, resource-intensive masquerade.

Any other OS worldwide - in this stripped, absolutely clean config - would boot&run like a supersonic missile.
Not Vista, however, being the insanely overloaded slug it is.

I'm looking forward to throwing this POS off my harddrive again, my predictions not only have been hit dead-on, in many cases they have been exceeded (as usual, the curse of being a very analytical person).

The deeper I dig and the closer I look, the more dirt is becoming visible on Vista under its shiny hood :P

Interesting, maybe disabling all those services is actually not the way to go. I've gone through the services, and actually found only a handful that I needed to disable. And Vista is seriously quick for me, on my quad core system with 4gb ram. Overall snappiness is on par with XP, easily even, and my XP install was trimmed to ultimate speed. Also with games Vista is very quick and have noticed a speed increase in benchmarks actually. I would say that Vista has gotten better and better with all the updates, but even in the beginning it wasn't too bad. Certainly not bad enough to warrant a switch back to XP.

But, IMO win7 will be Vista done right. Vista should have been a lot quicker with less bugs straight from the start.

But lets not forget, XP was a pain in the ass when it first came out, it took much longer then Vista to get up to speed compared to win2000.

Mind you by the way, before I forgot to mention it, I've disabled quite a bit, sidebar, HD indexing. disabled UAC, disabled Windows Defender, disabled system restore, no hibernation stuff (diskclean up immediately recovered the hibernation file, 4Gb large!! lol). Things like that do speed the system up as well. Vista at stock isn't particularly 'clean'. Disabled one or two services like the search service, and similar basic services.

Tim wrote on 29.07.09 at 19:31:47:

Interesting, maybe disabling all those services is actually not the way to go. I've gone through the services, and actually found only a handful that I needed to disable. And Vista is seriously quick for me, on my quad core system with 4gb ram. Overall snappiness is on par with XP, easily even, and my XP install was trimmed to ultimate speed. Also with games Vista is very quick and have noticed a speed increase in benchmarks actually. I would say that Vista has gotten better and better with all the updates, but even in the beginning it wasn't too bad. Certainly not bad enough to warrant a switch back to XP. But, IMO win7 will be Vista done right. Vista should have been a lot quicker with less bugs straight from the start. But lets not forget, XP was a pain in the ass when it first came out, it took much longer then Vista to get up to speed compared to win2000.

I'm running a similar setup to you Tim and to be honest I think Vista Ultimate is the bollocks,I have a dual booting system with xp pro ,I love it,I did notice a slightly higher framerate with GRID on XP,but,apart from that,gimme Vista any day

"A friend" has been using Windows 7 Ultimate RTM for a week now.  It blows away anything M$ has had on the market for a long time.

/edit - On a side note.....
@ Tim:  why don't you try easing up on your double+ postings  ::)

Worst system made in the last decade. Buggy, first of all. My games and application often crash, etc... I wish I had not tried it, because my personal archive is gone too!!!! :-(

IMHO Vista has long been overtaken by Win 8.

After all, Vista did work just like Win7 minus the lower GUI response times and the downright insane harddrive I/O. At least those issues could be migitated by an SSD.

I just installed a Vista on a system for data processing purposes and apart from the update marathon (which is another Vista insanity) - it chugs along nicely and is easy to setup.

In comparison, my new laptop shipped with Win8.1 preinstalled and after an entire weekend of trying to get it to do anything the way I wanted - it got booted straight from the HD and was replaced by Win7.

IMHO it's simply impossible to create something more inconsistent, impractical and downright unusable than Win8.
If there is a way to make it even worse - I wouldn't know how.

FalconFly wrote on 27.07.14 at 00:42:51:

IMHO it's simply impossible to create something more inconsistent, impractical and downright unusable than Win8. If there is a way to make it even worse - I wouldn't know how.

I'd consider buying a new laptop if Win7 was still around, my fiance has Win 8 on hers and even with some hacks and stripping some stuff out is a horrible operating system.

FalconFly wrote on 27.07.14 at 00:42:51:

I wouldn't know how.

I can give you one: Windows 2012 Server: It is absolutely insane what you have to do, to log yourself off if you're connected via remote desktop to one of these things, holy mother of Posseidon's salty a**  >:(

Since this post got regurgitated, I figured I'd throw in an opinion as well on Win 8.

I've got an iPhone 5S for work and a Lumia 925 with Win 8 for my personal phone and I absolutely love the thing. That said...

On a desktop or laptop, it should be thrown out the window, ran over by a truck, have gas poured over it and set to flame. On my phone, it's not big deal because I'm not using it for much as far as needing to get into the configuration to the thing but holy crap, trying to find anything in it is so bad.

My parents bought new laptops that came with Win 8 on them around New Years because of XP going away and I ended up upgrading them to Win 7 because neither one (both in their 70's) could work a Win 8 machine. The common sense train went into a tunnel during creation of this mess and never came out.

The Win 9 public beta comes out in Sept so it will be interesting on what comes of it but as OutOfRange said, the only worse then Win 8 is Server 2012. It's got some cool ideas but implementation is a voyage into hell.

The new CEO of MS seems to get it though and seems to want to bring MS back into a respectable tech company. As he said in one of his first speeches, MS has become old and more or less "Your dads tech company" when it comes to innovation since Ballmer took over. He's pushing for what seems to be some cool ideas but only time will tell.