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View Full Version : How did Vista and ME work for all of you?



kaldor
October 15th, 2010, 06:00 PM
Just curious. These are always said to be the worst mainstream operating systems ever. Some people claim they were horrible, while some people claim no issues at all.

Vista:

It did NOT work for me. It simply wouldn't work properly. I had bought a new laptop with Windows so that I could dual-boot for gaming/Windows-only needs. Every time I used it was a massive pain for me because I had to fight to get things working every time I booted into it.

My issues were..

1) I could never select "Remind me later" when there was an update. I would be busy doing work/chatting/gaming, and all of a sudden there were updates. I'd click "Remind me later", but as soon as I clicked that, everything exits and it prompted me to a "Windows is installing updates. Do not turn off your computer" message. The annoying thing was that this would happen almost every day. I never figured out the issue.

2) Windows update would not notify me if I was in a fullscreen game. I remember playing a game once (Quake 4 I believe) and suddenly, the computer rebooted on its own and begins installing updates. I lost save data in that game due to that.

3) Couldn't get most of my games working; the major reason for using Windows in the first place. I'd get 5-10 fps and I couldn't connect to any servers in one of my games.

4) Wireless disconnected randomly.

5) I often had login issues due to a graphics glitch. I would log into Windows, but as soon as I entered my username and password the screen would turn black and green lines would flicker on the screen. This happened about 25% of the time I logged in.

6) Froze a lot.

7) Random reboots for no reason (not windows-update related)

Vista was a bloody nightmare for me. All of this with a *brand new* laptop. After a while I simply removed Vista and resized my Linux partition to fill the entire HD. Funny that Linux ran my needed Windows programs (much) better than Vista did.

A friend's experience with Vista:

- Constant crashes
- BSODs regularly
- Applications not installing properly and being unable to be removed
- Brand new computer... didn't work well.

A family member's experience with Vista:

- He is not computer literate but has absolutely no issues with Vista.

Moving on to Windows ME.

I never used ME before, but I always heard the horror stories. That's why I was surprised when my friend said that Windows ME was the *only* OS that actually did what he needed to do. He used Windows ME up until 2008 when the motherboard in his laptop gave out. He claimed he never had any crashes or issues in the least and that everything worked great even after years of use. Weird :)


Note this isn't a Windows-bashing thread. I'm just curious about how it all worked out.

Canis familiaris
October 15th, 2010, 06:04 PM
Basically Vista was slow, bloated, booted slowly, crashed and was extremely annoying with UAC. That was before SP1 though. I haven't bothered to try Vista ever since. Windows 7 however is a job pretty well done, but I have moved on from Windows. :)

Calash
October 15th, 2010, 06:06 PM
ME was just horrible. We had a demo setup for about a month and I got to work with it a couple of times. In a static environmental we had odd slowdowns, crashes, and difficulty performing simple admin tasks.

Vista we have had for a while longer. We have a virtual setup and had a physical machine as well. The main issues at install is that Vista is very bloated. Over time we noticed it was eating up all our hard drive space storing old DLL files, UAC began blocking simple task, and the system became very unstable after several months of standard patches. Compared to Windows 7, virtual on the same host, it is a bloated sloth of an operating system.

Oxwivi
October 15th, 2010, 06:08 PM
Never tried ME, but Vista was absolutely horrible - the worst OS I ever tried. Windows 7 appeared godsend compared to Vista.

endotherm
October 15th, 2010, 06:10 PM
badly

overall, vista was fine to use, but terrible to build and administer. me was just totally worthless.

Frogs Hair
October 15th, 2010, 06:11 PM
I went from 98 to XP and then to Win7 . I did use vista and prefer Win 7 , My collage upgraded to Vista and is now back on XP needless to say the upgrade didn't go well.

Ctrl-Alt-F1
October 15th, 2010, 06:11 PM
I didn't really have any problems with Vista besides updating. If I try to update a fresh install of a Vista machine some things fail because they are lacking (dependencies). For example it tries to update the .net platform to the latest version before it has installed the interim version. This causes my pc to get upset. It takes about an hour for this update to fail and then I get to run update again after my computer installs the first batch. Then, I can finish updating (If I remember correctly deselecting the update didn't work either).

kio_http
October 15th, 2010, 06:13 PM
ME
Not bad at all if you have the proper drivers, it works very well. Many people had BSOD issues because although the 95/98 drivers "worked" they caused BSOD's.

Vista/7
Well does not serve my purpose at all. While systems that run them smoothly exist, I always tend to like an OS that uses minimum resource so that better harware means more apps, faster games etc.

WIndows XP
Win XP is great according to me. However it needs a few adjustments to get it in place in the modern world. My favourite Microsoft OS is Xp Media Center Edition (OEM).

Nytram
October 15th, 2010, 06:20 PM
ME was alright I liked it, used it for a quite a few years.

VISTA ugh it came free with my laptop, it eats up > 50% of my 1.5gb memory with no applications running. Maybe it's ok with a high-spec pc, i dont know, but on a lappy.. bad idea. Needless to say I installed Ubuntu on the laptop and never use vista.

CharlesA
October 15th, 2010, 06:24 PM
I didn't touch ME, but I did use Vista after SP1 and it was decent at least. The only problems I had were driver related.

Simian Man
October 15th, 2010, 06:27 PM
Vista worked great for me, and still continues to work great on one machine. Microsoft is kind of damned if they do, damned if they don't. Vista introduced several needed changes, but everyone blasted them when the inevitable hiccups came. The reason 7 is seen as so much better is that those few things have been handled. Both versions have worked great for a long time.

I never tried ME, I went from 98 to XP.

pwnst*r
October 15th, 2010, 06:28 PM
ME sucked, but Vista has been great for me.

lisati
October 15th, 2010, 06:38 PM
I've only use 98SE, XP and Vista.
One of the things that annoys me about Vista is the way updates restart your machine: usually when you've started something that might take a while and have wandered off to do something else only to come back and find your machine has restarted without finishing what you've started.

CharlesA
October 15th, 2010, 06:39 PM
Vista worked great for me, and still continues to work great on one machine. Microsoft is kind of damned if they do, damned if they don't. Vista introduced several needed changes, but everyone blasted them when the inevitable hiccups came. The reason 7 is seen as so much better is that those few things have been handled. Both versions have worked great for a long time.

Indeed. They got a bit of a bad rap since manufacturers didn't write good drivers that were compatibly with Vista too.


I've only use 98SE, XP and Vista.
One of the things that annoys me about Vista is the way updates restart your machine: usually when you've started something that might take a while and have wandered off to do something else only to come back and find your machine has restarted without finishing what you've started.

XP did that as well. In Vista (and 7) I noticed it'll ask you to "postpone" it, but that only works if you are actually in front of the machine.

weasel fierce
October 15th, 2010, 06:44 PM
ME had the advantage of being able to run old games better than XP. I had several games that would fail to run on my friends XP machines.

However, it seemed to need rebooting almost constantly to actually keep working, or it'd slow to a crawl.


Vista I've only seen on two machines and it was unbelievably slow for the machines spec's. Never had a chance to mess with it much, so unsure if it was the setup or not, though one was supposedly a fresh install.

BrokenKingpin
October 15th, 2010, 06:47 PM
They both sucked for me. ME would blue screen on me just sitting on the Desktop. Vista is just bloated and buggy, but no where near as bad as ME.

Half-Left
October 15th, 2010, 06:57 PM
Windows is a terrible platform for drivers, since it makes the OS crash the most and people use it as an excuse to defend Windows' stability. It's part of the Windows platform.

endotherm
October 15th, 2010, 07:05 PM
Indeed. They got a bit of a bad rap since manufacturers didn't write good drivers that were compatibly with Vista too.

well, this one was kinda their fault. they made changes to the video model to support securepath and to try to hack areo for the intel 915 chipset (hence the vista capable vs vista ready contraversy) in the last 3 months prior to rtm, so none of the device manufactures could release the drivers that they had previously expected to work fine with vista. securepath relies on the signed driver model, so it puts a serious burden on device manufactures, as WHQL certification and signing for a single driver could cost up to 250k per version. additionally WHQL wasn't turning approvals around fast enough to keep up with the last minute requests. as a result, the only drivers available at release time were for any given manufactures current product line, without much legacy support.

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/0BAF623E6F8B23DECC257400006D96E0
http://pcworld.about.com/od/officehardware/E-mails-Show-Vista-Capable-C.htm

securepaths vista implementation is a clear example of how DRM hurts legit customers.

ronnielsen1
October 15th, 2010, 07:09 PM
ME was just horrible. We had a demo setup for about a month and I got to work with it a couple of times. In a static environmental we had odd slowdowns, crashes, and difficulty performing simple admin tasks.

I liked ME - Vista NO

KiwiNZ
October 15th, 2010, 07:10 PM
I believe that ME should be that which is NEVER mentioned on here, it should be that which gets you banned IMMEDIATELY ,that which will get you exiled to the island of a million Mother in Laws.

ME was an abomination, a hurtful, hateful, hideous illness . It was a nightmare a horrible , horrible never ending nightmare that ruined lives, broke marriages, destroyed whole communities until it was eradicated.


Vista was a Beta version of Windows 7.

NightwishFan
October 15th, 2010, 07:13 PM
I was one to never have any issues with Vista, other than the fact it was slow. I spent so much time 'optimizing' it that I decided to try Linux instead.

Duncan J Murray
October 15th, 2010, 07:21 PM
I went 3.1 -> Win98 -> XP -> Win7

Mainly because of the bad things I'd heard about Vista and ME.

Win XP wasn't bad to start with, but after 9 years of updates, it wasn't the same thing.

However, my favourite operating systems were EPOC, Symbian, Workbench 3.1 and, now, Ubuntu 10.04.

D

Spice Weasel
October 15th, 2010, 07:22 PM
ME - Never really had any problems, but it was too restricted and slow for me.
Vista - Same as above, only worse.

inobe
October 15th, 2010, 07:23 PM
ME was broken from the start, just hopeless..

vista was all wrong, windows 7 was vista minus the excessive weight that slowed it to a crawl, 14 gigs of space taken after a fresh install and five minutes to boot, why ?

Bölvağur
October 15th, 2010, 07:24 PM
Windows ME froze up and gave me bluescreen all the time. But I didnt find it any different from previous releases so I never thought ME was bad.

blueturtl
October 15th, 2010, 07:26 PM
I saw ME once. The guy using said it was ok. Looked like Windows 98 with a new theme.

Every time I see Vista somewhere it's usually completely jammed from excess hard-drive activity. What seems to keep the HDDs of Vista machines so busy, I will never find out I guess. I suppose Vista would fly on an SSD. However I think the interface is terribly cluttered and inconsistent. They've hidden many useful things behind a wall of clicks, and brought forth things that waste valuable screen estate that I never need.

inobe
October 15th, 2010, 07:30 PM
vista wasn't optimized for ssd drives, i believe that feature can be added to windows 7 with a patch.

you wouldn't want to defrag ssd drives, fare warning for those that don't know.

forrestcupp
October 15th, 2010, 07:52 PM
I liked Me. It was a little unstable, but they really added a lot of new features. A lot of things Windows is known for began with Me, like automatic updates, system restore, integrated support for zip files, UPnP, Windows Movie Maker, etc. I really liked it, especially since I only spent about $5 on it at the college bookstore. ;)

I also liked Vista a lot. It was a lot more beautiful than its Playskool ancestor, XP. I didn't really have any of the trouble everyone cried about, even before SP1. I actually had a lot more troubles installing and running XP when it first came out than I did with Vista. When XP first came out, there was a lot of hardware that met the minimum requirements that XP just wouldn't install on. It kept hanging. I didn't have any of that kind of trouble with Vista.

I think a lot of people criticized Vista only because they heard other people criticizing Vista. My only complaint with Vista is that is the time period where they started moving toward DRM a lot more.

Canis familiaris
October 15th, 2010, 08:23 PM
Vista was a Beta version of Windows 7.
Windows 7 had a free beta trial to be fair. I guess Windows Vista was Beta version of the Beta Version of Windows 7. So what was Windows Vista Beta then? Beta of the Beta version of the Beta version of Windows 7. :shock:

KiwiNZ
October 15th, 2010, 08:52 PM
Windows 7 had a free beta trial to be fair. I guess Windows Vista was Beta version of the Beta Version of Windows 7. So what was Windows Vista Beta then? Beta of the Beta version of the Beta version of Windows 7. :shock:

That was said in jest

My entire post was said in jest ](*,)

I think I will just give up

Canis familiaris
October 15th, 2010, 09:30 PM
@kiwiNZ lol but you missed the 'jest' in my post ;)

mkendall
October 15th, 2010, 09:52 PM
That was said in jest

My entire post was said in jest ](*,)

I think I will just give up

But that post was the first thing you've written here that makes any sense.

Quadunit404
October 15th, 2010, 10:32 PM
- Windows ME? Don't even get me started on it. Even though I had it for 11 months (November 2000 - October 2001) I still have a lot of bad memories of that OS. Over 500 bad memories.
- Vista? It was okay. It was slow, but that was due to my PC. Did not find it to be as bad as everyone said it was. Sure, it had its problems, but I never experienced a lot of them between 2007 and 2009.

Dustin2128
October 15th, 2010, 10:33 PM
I've only used ME in passing, so no judgement to be passed for it. As for vista, I've got SP1 installed on an old laptop due to ATI and wifi issues (plus the fact that its not technically mine...), and it is acceptable. Granted I turned on the classic interface and got post install bloat removal down to a science (as a minimalist style person, its like fingernails on a chalkboard to have such an insanely bloated system), but it's fairly stable.

Grenage
October 15th, 2010, 10:43 PM
ME was a wrecked 98, imho.

I found Vista to be solid, with most complaints being down to either the new interface or installations on dated hardware. Windows 7 seems to be a heavily refined Vista.

Vista was also the start of proper x64 support; I think MS refused to sign x32 drivers unless manufacturers also provided an x64 driver. That was a good move.

My only issue with Vista/7, is that the interface is too bloated for me. I have to click on far more buttons to perform a simple task like changing an adapter address. I'm not a big fan of the new control panel, but it's hardly a show-stopper.

earthpigg
October 15th, 2010, 10:45 PM
Vista drove me to dig up the Ubuntu 7.04 CD someone had given me a year or so prior.

So, to Windows Vista, I say thank you. :D

lobralleo
October 15th, 2010, 11:01 PM
ME was a nightmare for me: the first time I installed it, it ignored my partition table and just wiped the hard drive clean, including the separate partition where I had all my personal data... luckily, I had a partial backup for the important stuff, but I still lost a lot of documents, game saves and much more. After that, the frequent crashes, BSODs, compatibility issues and other problems brought me back to Win98.

Vista was overall a good experience: if definitely heavyweight and a bit slower than expected, I found it very stable, smooth and pleasant to the eye. Granted, first I had to get rid of all the bloatware included by the manufacturer :)
Contrarily to many others, I never had a single compatibility issue while using it (guess I've been lucky...).

Schrute Farms
October 15th, 2010, 11:06 PM
ME: Slowdowns & BSODs in two (five?) words. I made a copy of it from a friend a little after it came out. I went back to W98 after about a week. It might have introduced some good ideas, but it should have been aborted! IMHO: Worst. O. S. Ever! If you want/need to use a MS OS from that era, use W98.

Vista: I've never used it on a regular basis, but I had the pleasure of fixing my daughter's laptop with Vista once. It was incredibly slow due to bloat & viruses. If you logged in and let the computer sit, the HD would spin constantly for close to 45 minutes. I managed to speed it up tremendously. I disabled & stopped as many startup progs that I could, it still wasn't perfect though. When I gave it back to her, I told her to always walk away from it for about 10 minutes after she logged in so all of the bloat would load up. If she tried to do something while the HD was spinning, it would slow to a crawl. If she let it do it's thing, it ran decently after it was through. I, too, wonder what all it's loading at startup.

Old_Grey_Wolf
October 15th, 2010, 11:36 PM
I remember buying a computer that had Windows ME installed by default; however, there was an option to upgrade/downgrade to Windows 95 SE or Windows NT 2000. I don't remember what option I chose. All I can remember is that I didn't use Windows ME; because, it had developed a bad reputation in a short period of time.

I have Vista running on more than one box as either a dual boot or a VM. I need it for work. I really haven't had problems with it. However, it is running on dual or quad core processors with 4 to 8 GB of RAM. On those machines it doesn't use an exorbitant amount of the resources.

I have Windows 7 running on a Notebook, dual booting with Linux Mint 9. I also have it running on a machine I use for a multimedia server. It is working quite well on those machines. The Notebook is a single core 1.66 GHz processor with 1 GB of RAM.

doorknob60
October 16th, 2010, 01:06 AM
Vista - I got initial bad impressions of it since I used it on a laptop with only 1 GB of RAM. Also, as usual, it had some preinstalled crapware from HP (though I think the RAM was for sure the biggest problem). When I later installed it on my desktop with 2 GB of RAM (and also on my P4 with 1.5 GB actually), it ran quite well. Windows 7 is still better, but Vista isn't that bad when used correctly.

Windows ME, I have very little experience with it (went straight from 95 to XP), but the limited experience with it I have is generally pretty buggy with blue screens, but not too much worse than Windows 98, so whatever.

Artemis Fowl
October 16th, 2010, 01:11 AM
Honestly, Vista worked perfectly for me. Of course, Vista was on my first computer, so I had only the challenge of learning how to use a computer, not how to switch operating systems. Vista did everything I needed too, as does ubuntu, but better.

danbuter
October 16th, 2010, 01:39 AM
I had no issues with Vista, and think 7 is a nicely updated version of it.

For those of you with update issues, go to Control Panel and change your updates to notify only.

drawkcab
October 16th, 2010, 03:28 AM
ME was fine for the average user so long as it was never connected to the internet. As soon it was, it picked up 14,385 viruses.

By 2003, 2004 I just planned to reinstall ME every month or so. :(

Warty Warthog saved me from all that! :guitar:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_UqUwVPikChs/SQyF1AFuSxI/AAAAAAAAHec/8LyQr8Mk2h0/s400/warty-warthog.jpg

cinnabubbles
October 16th, 2010, 03:39 AM
Vista wasn't too bad, I didn't run into all the issues people complained about it seemed cos I'm such a light user. I really enjoy 7, and am keeping it in a dual boot setting of Ubuntu on my desktop while my netbook runs solely Ubuntu.

now ME?

EPIC. FAIL.

I seriously was IRRITATED with it, one of my parents' computers they bought had it loaded on, and I was just so frustrated with it. Once XP released, I practically BEGGED my parents to buy it so I could upgrade the family computer to save me the headaches of reformatting the stupid computer because ME decided to bork itself.

mamamia88
October 16th, 2010, 03:40 AM
Vista didn't work at all that's why I tried Ubuntu

swimstarguy
October 16th, 2010, 03:53 AM
With my old computer I had more problems with Ubuntu than with Vista. *shrug* I didn't really have too many problems with Vista either and no problems with my XP computer at work.

Not too many issues with 7 on the new computer but none with Ubuntu. Only reason I stuck with it so far.

inobe
October 16th, 2010, 03:59 AM
what really sucked about ME it sold for 200$ u.s. dollars ?

and millions bought it, why would they release crap and why did everyone let them get away with it !

Half-Left
October 16th, 2010, 04:04 AM
Windows ME was a joke. Windows 2000 was the daddy of Windows in my view. Vista, people paid for that? HAHAHAHAHHAHA

Giant Speck
October 16th, 2010, 04:07 AM
I've never used Windows ME.

I still have Windows Vista on one of my laptops, though.

jkxx
October 16th, 2010, 04:23 AM
I guess my experience has been a little different from everyone else's here:

Vista had some issues as RTM but they were almost all fixed with SP1. It's so good now I still use it and swear by it as the most stable OS on my PC (besides freebsd). Compared to this 7 is more like Windows ME to me, looks goofy and has caused nothing but problems. In fact the Ubuntu I installed yesterday replaced a win 7 that decided to deactivate itself for no reason :D

As for ME, yes, it's an abomination. I actually threw a friend's store-bought CD of it in the trash to get rid of it. That's really all you want to know about Windows ME.

Khakilang
October 16th, 2010, 04:37 AM
I went from Window 98 to Window XP and Ubuntu 9.10 save my day. ME doesn't work for me either, I always end up upgrading RAM and CPU. I even had customer downgrade from Vista to XP simply because it was too slow and this time upgrading the hardware doesn't really help but Window 7 was ok but still have some security issue. Mu customer and friends really help. Microsoft should offer a free upgrade for their Vista customer.

Once I am into Ubuntu I never look back even with Window 7.

TNT1
October 16th, 2010, 04:38 AM
Microsoft should offer a free upgrade for their Vista customer.



They do. All Vista machines come with free upgrade to XP...

ME FTW! I still have a ME disc.

Khakilang
October 16th, 2010, 04:43 AM
They do. All Vista machines come with free upgrade to XP...

ME FTW! I still have a ME disc.

You mean downgrade?:confused:

TNT1
October 16th, 2010, 04:48 AM
You mean downgrade?:confused:

That depends on your point of view:)

annoyingrob
October 16th, 2010, 04:48 AM
The only difference I noticed between ME and 98 was that several of my USB devices stopped working on ME, and were not supported, so I downgraded to 98.

Vista was after I had gone to linux, so I didn't even bother with it.

SadisticCheeto
October 16th, 2010, 04:58 AM
The only problem I remember having with ME was that System Restore would never work correctly for me. Never bothered to find out why. I still liked it. Vista was great when I first got this laptop, but it eventually was sluggish after some time. On my last install of Vista on here (many months ago), it was just too slow to me compared to my usage of Windows XP and various Linux distros. I'm not one of those who hates it, but I would prefer not to use it.

Dr. C
October 16th, 2010, 05:06 AM
Windows 3.0, Windows 3.1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows 95 and Windows 98, Windows 98 SE and Windows ME all had a fundamental weakness, namely that during normal use they used three resource stacks. When the resource stacks were used up, they would blue screen and crash.

The workaround to avoid data loss was to run the resource meter application. When the resources dropped below around 20% it was time to shutdown all applications and reboot. This strategy that worked since Windows 3.0 did not work at all with Windows ME. The resource meter in Windows ME would stay in the 90% range and then without warning would drop to 0 and crash. It was the only version of the of the DOS versions of Windows that could not be prevented from crashing.

As for Windows Vista it is horribly bloated in order to accommodate the DRM. What it requires is very high end hardware. The solution became taking a look at the "vista" in the horizon, not liking the "vista" at all, and running to Ubuntu 6.06.

By the way Vista and ME have one thing in common. The main reason for their introduction was DRM.

inobe
October 16th, 2010, 06:08 AM
Windows ME was a joke. Windows 2000 was the daddy of Windows in my view. Vista, people paid for that? HAHAHAHAHHAHA

well like an idiot i payed for ME :oops:

but i held the me cd for years, i tried offering it to people for free and no one wanted it :P

just recently i mailed it to someone from the ubuntu forums, they were happy to receive it in the mail, even without the original bootdisk.

JDShu
October 16th, 2010, 09:01 AM
I actually thought ME was fine at the time. Sure I got BSODs every day, but how was that different from 95 and 98? I'm not even sure if XP was that much better.

Vista was fine, I got through college with it. I did end up with some ridiculous malware on it, but I suspect that was my own fault.

ronnielsen1
October 16th, 2010, 11:46 AM
I actually thought ME was fine at the time. Sure I got BSODs every day, but how was that different from 95 and 98? I'm not even sure if XP was that much better.
I'd have to agree. I actually didn't have too many problems with this OS (other than viruses, spyware etc) and considered it 98 updated. I might have been lucky

NightwishFan
October 16th, 2010, 11:53 AM
I was a long time owner of ME. I went from ME to Xp, and consider Xp far worse. It was unusable on 128mb of ram, 700mhz. I had the BSOD problems like most users, however the biggest problem was graphic card support. Nothing worked. :/

Linux_junkie
October 16th, 2010, 12:52 PM
I bought my current laptop 2nd hand with Vista pre-installed and the first few hours I thought everything was ok then I noticed part of the laptop overheating (in fact you could boil an egg on it) and when switching it off to cool down and booting up again Vista (or the computer) would not recognise the HDD. After several attempts to reboot it did finanlly "see" the HDD and was able to log in to Vista.

To cut a long story short, after a couple of days of this problem and the next time it recognised the HDD I installed Ubuntu on it completely overwriting Vista and to this day not had a single problem with the HDD since.

Never did find out what caused the problem but I put it down to either the system files were corrupt or there was a boot virus on the HDD.

3rdalbum
October 16th, 2010, 01:37 PM
Vista is utter crap on a laptop. Or, to be more blunt, laptops are crap for Windows.

On a desktop it's a reasonable system. If I had to use Windows on my desktop computer I'd be happier with Vista than with XP, and almost as happy with Vista as with 7.

cgroza
October 16th, 2010, 01:39 PM
Never tried them. I jumped to Ubuntu after 3 years of XP. And XP is my first Windows I ever used.

andymorton
October 16th, 2010, 01:43 PM
I never used ME but Vista was probably the worst OS I've ever tried. It slow, buggy, programs would crash all the time, wireless connection was completely unreliable and often it would take an age to shut down (30mins+). I could go on and on.

The only good thing about Vista was that it persuaded me to try Linux. :)

andy

wkhasintha
October 16th, 2010, 01:56 PM
Vista==FAIL . even MS would agree. Slow , bloated POS.
Haven't used Win ME.

Schrute Farms
October 17th, 2010, 04:38 AM
Vista is utter crap on a laptop. Or, to be more blunt, laptops are crap for Windows.

I've noticed that too. I don't know what it is about laptops...maybe the slower HD?
My desktop & my laptop were put together/bought at pretty much the same time. Original Athlon 64 systems with 512 MB of RAM. My desktop ran pretty decently on 512, but the laptop is slow as crap, even with all the bloatware taken off. It is what made me go to Ubuntu.

Spr0k3t
October 17th, 2010, 05:20 AM
Several months before Vista was released, I had made the decision to finally make my move to Linux. This was my first taste of Ubuntu with the 6.06 release. Previously I had used other distros, but this one was good. Vista was released and I still hadn't touched it. I think it was up until maybe a year ago that I had yet to work with Vista at all. I had seen pictures, hear horror stories, read the rather amazingly one sided reviews... and also the "funded by Microsoft" reviews about Vista.

As for ME, I didn't use that one either. Prior to ME, I was a big Amiga user... die hard if you will. When 2K was finally released, I made sure to procure myself a copy of that one directly from one of the many moles found inside the Microsoft walls.

So, I can honestly say... I haven't had one problem with either operating system. Of course one would have to use them prior to having any problems though.

MisterGaribaldi
October 17th, 2010, 05:57 AM
Windows ME


I had to support a number of WinME-based systems at a former employer. Nothing was more frustrating than dealing with slow-downs, crashes, and system corruptions at rates unheard of on a Win95 or Win98/98SE box. Honestly, it was a waste of *our* time and a waste of our customers' time to have and to support that pile of crap.


Windows Vista


My PC came with an OEM of Vista. To save myself from actually having to *spend money* on Windows, I've kept it with Vista. Of course, I've also dual-booted the box with Linux. As far as Vista goes, it's decent enough. I think it sucks because it's just another release of Windows. Just like with every other version of Windows I've ever used (and that's a few) it gets rusty and eventually requires a format-and-reinstall. So, in *that* sense, it's neither better nor worse than most other versions (ME obviously excluded) which came before it.

Lightstar
October 17th, 2010, 06:50 AM
I didn't use either.
Went from XP to 7
doesn't matter all that much since most of my time is spent on linux.

In all that time helping friends and people fix their pc, I have only seen Windows Me once.

HermanAB
October 17th, 2010, 08:48 AM
ME was fine if you re-installed the whole machine every 6 months...

My wife's Vista laptop just lost the printer driver again last night and re-installing the printer took about 1 hour. On linux the same printer installs in about 10 seconds.

Vista is sloooooowwww and buggy.

Vivendi14
October 17th, 2010, 05:17 PM
I used Me for around 6 years. It worked fine for me but it required extreme caution while browsing the internet. Also had to completely reinstall the system atleast once every 6 months.
Have never used Vista at home but have used it extensively at school, friends' houses, etc; there's always something wrong with the system. It just doesn't feel as smooth as Xp, no matter how powerful the system is running it.

Austin25
October 17th, 2010, 06:03 PM
Vista was just overall slow. It took too long to boot. UAC was bugging me too often to protect me. (It bugged me about running programs I compiled myself.) I have a tablet, and if I ever shut it down while it was flat, then boot it upside right, the screen would be upside down.

MooPi
October 17th, 2010, 06:14 PM
I didn't use either but I had to deal with lots of broken systems due to virus. The interface in both was terrible and gladly I never installed. My Microsoft experience has been , 98, XP, Seven. I used 98 until XP came out and still use XP for a dual boot system,( I use it to play StarCraft). I installed 7 for my most recent gaming system and haven't turned it on but once in the last month. I may be selling it soon.

Verbeck
October 17th, 2010, 06:34 PM
Vista was slow, took about 5 minutes to start up completely and the home premium version didn't have the full remote desktop function by default :o

nothingspecial
October 17th, 2010, 06:36 PM
This thread is funny, because I have only ever used linux, except for the time between aquiring a new computer with windows on it trying it, realising I don`t know what I`m doing, and nuking the hard drive in favour of linux.

The thing that makes me chuckle are the posts you find here saying "windows works perfectly, ubuntu doesn`t" And yet I read this.

forrestcupp
October 17th, 2010, 08:06 PM
Vista is utter crap on a laptop. Or, to be more blunt, laptops are crap for Windows.
I currently only use laptops, and I have run XP, Vista, and 7 on laptops. I've never noticed them working any worse on laptops than I did on desktops.


Vista==FAIL . even MS would agree. Slow , bloated POS.
Actually, MS never admitted the quality of Vista was bad. The only thing they admitted was that sales were bad. I still believe that most people think Vista was bad because they heard other people saying that.

I liked Vista. I like 7 better, but I liked Vista.

inobe
October 17th, 2010, 08:19 PM
I currently only use laptops, and I have run XP, Vista, and 7 on laptops. I've never noticed them working any worse on laptops than I did on desktops.


Actually, MS never admitted the quality of Vista was bad. The only thing they admitted was that sales were bad. I still believe that most people think Vista was bad because they heard other people saying that.

I liked Vista. I like 7 better, but I liked Vista.

they admitted it when then stated that 7 was stripped of stuff that dragged vista down., technically 7 was vista, same kernel but lighter than vista.

snipped from wikipedia.


on October 16, 2008, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed compatibility between Vista and Windows 7, indicating that Windows 7 would be a refined version of Windows Vista



Gates later said that Windows 7 would also focus on performance improvements. Steven Sinofsky later expanded on this point, explaining in the Engineering Windows 7 blog that the company was using a variety of new tracing tools to measure the performance of many areas of the operating system on an ongoing basis, to help locate inefficient code paths and to help prevent performance regressions.

Zoot7
October 17th, 2010, 08:28 PM
ME, I never used it at all.

Vista worked pretty well for me post SP1, minus some hiccupps when it came to gaming. Windows 7, however is working extremely well for me.

Aside from that, there were quite a few friends/relatives/friends of friends that I had to switch back to XP from Vista for the simple reason that their new shiny "Vista Capable" laptop wasn't really that capable after all.

JDShu
October 17th, 2010, 09:58 PM
Aside from that, there were quite a few friends/relatives/friends of friends that I had to switch back to XP from Vista for the simple reason that their new shiny "Vista Capable" laptop wasn't really that capable after all.

This was true of my sister's netbook. Why a netbook with a VIA processor had Vista preinstalled, I will never know.

chriswyatt
October 17th, 2010, 11:21 PM
My mum has Vista and she's been quite happy with it. Only problems I've been aware of:


I think a service pack upgrade may have caused the video drivers to mess up once, I managed to fix it for her quite easily.
Ethernet port randomly decided to stop working, I tried an Ubuntu Live CD and it was fine but through Windows it just wouldn't detect the cable at all. Looked up this problem online and it seems to be a common Windows issue. Very strange, couldn't figure out how to fix it and I tried loads of things.
Her printer stopped working, though she was using LPT through USB which is a dodgy method anyway, so I wouldn't use this point against Windows or any other OS, it's just a legacy method which isn't guaranteed to work. Though it did work for a while so an update probably broke it. I did suggest her getting a LPT PCI card but she didn't trust in my confidence that it would work, though I'm 98% sure it would. Tried explaining how it's legacy and blah blah blah but I don't think she understood me.
Seems to be slowing down these days, it's taking longer and longer to boot, usual Windows decay. I wonder how Windows 7 is with the old Windows decay problem?


So it hasn't been too bad really, she's been quite happy with it. Definitely compared to the headaches we had with Windows 98 I would say Vista wasn't too bad. I feel Vista got more bad press than it really deserved.

I think my brother may have had Windows ME for a while, I remember it being crap. One particularly bad memory I have of it is Scandisk running in the Windows GUI rather than out of it on bootup, and restarting pretty much every 10 seconds. God, what idiot thought that was a good idea!

JustinR
October 18th, 2010, 01:59 AM
ME was alright I liked it, used it for a quite a few years.

VISTA ugh it came free with my laptop, it eats up > 50% of my 1.5gb memory with no applications running. Maybe it's ok with a high-spec pc, i dont know, but on a lappy.. bad idea. Needless to say I installed Ubuntu on the laptop and never use vista.

I thought the minimum system requirements of Vista included 2GB of ram?

Docaltmed
October 18th, 2010, 02:22 AM
Vista is why I'm here. It came pre-installed on my then state-of-the-art HP tablet. I was subjected to a minimum of 5 reboots daily, each of which ate up several minutes -- in short, 30 minutes of my day was being spent nursing a crippled computer.

I started looking for a solution, found Ubuntu, gave Vista the boot on my computer, and then booted Microsoft from my entire company (so to speak). Smartest thing I ever did.

themarker0
October 18th, 2010, 02:27 AM
Did anyone use this on a computer actually made for it? If you got one that kicks around the minimum on both, well duh. If you used it on a computer that works in the recomended, and i had 0 issues. ME i was to young to remember, but i have a copy here, i popped it on a 5 year old decent machine, worked fine.

siimo
October 18th, 2010, 02:57 AM
Vista is rock solid. Only people that blame it are the ones that never tried it themselves and started bashing it after reading some reviews.

My Vista laptop currently has 64 days of uptime. No issues at all and I use it heavily for software development.

Specs: AMD Turion X2 2.0Ghz, 3GB Memory which isn't a speed demon by any means and owned it for 2.5 years now and it gives very good service.

Khakilang
October 18th, 2010, 05:47 AM
Vista is rock solid. Only people that blame it are the ones that never tried it themselves and started bashing it after reading some reviews.

My Vista laptop currently has 64 days of uptime. No issues at all and I use it heavily for software development.

Specs: AMD Turion X2 2.0Ghz, 3GB Memory which isn't a speed demon by any means and owned it for 2.5 years now and it gives very good service.

Although I don't use Vista but I had quite a handful of negative feedback from my customers and friends. And some of them had even ask me to downgrade their OS back to Window XP. Some of them may have upgrade to Window 7. If its work for you than stick to it. My customer's opinion come first.

matsuzine
October 18th, 2010, 07:00 AM
I don't mind Vista. It finally feels like a modern operating system. What is shocking to me is the size of the thing. My basic Vista install takes up 40GB. My fully loaded ubuntu is 1/8th of that, and uses a fraction of the RAM. So while I think Vista is okay, I've got to wonder a little about it from an engineering standpoint -- it's definitely not more with less, is it?

Nytram
October 19th, 2010, 08:39 PM
I thought the minimum system requirements of Vista included 2GB of ram?

I don't know but 2gb minimum sounds about right from my experience of vista. It's a hp 530 and it actually only came with 512mb originally, I added the extra gb. I've never tried running vista with only the original memory in it, I dread to think what it's like..

norm7446
October 19th, 2010, 09:03 PM
My first try of Vista was with the RC version. On the first re-start after installation it Blue Screened on me just before it reached the Desktop. All I said at the time well Ok it is Windows after all. Did not use ME much as just got really into computer's in 04. Spent much of that time with Win2000Pro. With which I never had that much prob's with other than not many games would work with it.

PhilGil
October 19th, 2010, 09:08 PM
The only experience I've had with Vista is my wife's laptop. It seems stable enough, but she doesn't mess with the OEM install very much. Echoing what others have said, the only negative I've noticed is that booting/shutting down and performing admin tasks is slow, slow, slow.

I was in school studying IT during the Windows ME debacle. I don't know anyone who actually ran ME longer than it took them to "acquire" and install a copy of Win 98.

bshosey
October 19th, 2010, 09:16 PM
I started with Windows 3.1 then 3.11then 95 then 98 then 98SE them ME then 2000 then XP then Vista then Win 7. Also had NT3.51 and NT4.0. Really the only one that I really liked was Windows 2000. I think it was right before Windows Vista came out I started to use ubuntu. I switched to ubuntu full time when my Vista machine started to act up. I despised Vista the worse. I do have one Windows 7 machine that I use just to sync my iPhone and for testing. And yes I do not like Windows 7.

siimo
October 19th, 2010, 09:35 PM
I don't mind Vista. It finally feels like a modern operating system. What is shocking to me is the size of the thing. My basic Vista install takes up 40GB. My fully loaded ubuntu is 1/8th of that, and uses a fraction of the RAM. So while I think Vista is okay, I've got to wonder a little about it from an engineering standpoint -- it's definitely not more with less, is it?

8 or 9 Gig of that is just Printer Drivers, I think I read that somewhere.

Grenage
October 19th, 2010, 09:53 PM
I would have thought, drivers in general.

RichardLinx
October 20th, 2010, 12:52 AM
I have a feeling the OP didn't install Windows properly. He probably just followed the prompts and thought drivers would be part of the installation.

Slug71
October 20th, 2010, 01:04 AM
Never used ME and Vista just sucks. Wayyyy bloated and unresponsive.
Im surprised it doesnt ask me 3 times if i want to go take a dump.

RichardLinx
October 20th, 2010, 01:07 AM
Never used ME and Vista just sucks. Wayyyy bloated and unresponsive.
Im surprised it doesnt ask me 3 times if i want to go take a dump.

Kind of like how Ubuntu asks you three times if you want to do anything. "root password needed... Please enter keyring... root password needed for <insert application>"

CarpKing
October 20th, 2010, 01:20 AM
I managed to skip them both. I used 3.1, 95, 98 (which had issues, probably because it was an upgrade), XP, and 7. I haven't used 7 for long, but it seems alright. I've used Ubuntu for just about everything since 2006, though.

NightwishFan
October 20th, 2010, 01:27 AM
Kind of like how Ubuntu asks you three times if you want to do anything. "root password needed... Please enter keyring... root password needed for <insert application>"

No, you never used Vista in the early days then. :)

RichardLinx
October 20th, 2010, 01:32 AM
No, you never used Vista in the early days then. :)

Keyword being "early". And actually, I did. ;)

KiwiNZ
October 20th, 2010, 01:34 AM
I am of the belief that MS bowed to the pressure of the OEM's to release Vista prematurely in order to stimulate the sales of hardware.

Windows 7 is what they had always intended Vista to be. Windows 7 is an excellent operating system.

cmat
October 20th, 2010, 01:44 AM
Vista was absolutely trash the final straw was when a cryptic error during a software installation forced me to swap out my new DVD drive with another.

Windows 7 was a great improvement for it though. Even though a bug after Windows update caused the system to be unresponsive. I had to delete some sort of service WMP uses with Linux and that fixed the problem. I disabled updates to prevent such a thing from happening again. Hasn't been much trouble since.

djsroknrol
October 20th, 2010, 03:29 AM
Me experiences with ME back in Las Vegas were not good...random freezes and crashes were the norm. The "self healing" parts never worked right either.

Vista Home Basic, on the other hand, works well for me to this day, except when security essentials and MS update are battling each other for bandwidth and the computer slows to almost unresponsive...at that point, i just walk away and let it do its thing and in an hour, it's ready to go again.

The only reason I put up with it is for school and the kids....otherwise, I'm using Ubuntu.

:popcorn:

witeshark17
October 20th, 2010, 04:27 AM
My bro used win ME and it was more trouble than useful. It was as if it was really a beta... :guitar:

Ugluk
October 20th, 2010, 05:15 AM
I think Vista is a little wonder: it can run World of Warcraft on my notebook with 448 MB RAM.

I didn't use ME much, because the distro was corrupted and was giving various error messages during install and program errors during work.

JDShu
October 20th, 2010, 06:34 AM
I have a feeling the OP didn't install Windows properly. He probably just followed the prompts and thought drivers would be part of the installation.

I have a feeling this poster did not read the OP. He probably just skimmed the post and jumped to a conclusion.

john77eipe
October 20th, 2010, 01:07 PM
Windows 7 is what windows Vista should have been....

I use dual boot with Ubuntu and win 7. Both are cool in there own way.

kaldor
October 20th, 2010, 09:27 PM
- Graphics drivers not installed.
- OP doesn't understand you need decent hardware to run games at a
playable frame rate.
- OP complained he couldn't connect to servers - Perhaps he really is a
moron.

- Graphics drivers were installed.

- Maybe 2 GB of RAM and an nVidia card can't run a game from 1999.

- Example: When refreshing master server list, nothing would show. When connecting via a command (such as Q3's /connect ipaddress) it would not work either. On the Linux partition, both approaches worked.

I did read this (http://linsux.org/forum/index.php?/topic/8146-linux-youth-tries-windows-vista/page__s__06ddf152d8e3263da19e8df1cc9746e1), since I read often enough on Linsux.

Maybe you guys should actually think before posting crap about others in the Flame section. While usually the posts are valid, the one against me was simply wrong.

- I *did* try Windows Vista.

- My drivers *were* installed

- WINE did run my needed Windows apps/games.

- Mixing up "Postpone" and "Remind me later" is hardly valid enough to say I didn't ever use Vista.

-
Unlikely, it usually either minimises the game or simply waits until you leave a Direct3D game. obviously it did not.

-
Install your drivers.
Get decent hardware.
Use a game with decent servers.
Stop making things up.

1) Drivers installed
2) Hardware decent enough 2 years ago
3) Quake 4 and Quake 3?
4) Why would I?


I thought you were talking about Windows, you seem to have gone on to talking about Ubuntu. How would you know that anyway because you invalidated all of your other points by getting the whole Windows update thing wrong in point 1.

Right.


Also the part where Linux ran all your Windows programs, that's rubbish and you're making it up.

Like I'd have a reason to make that up.

Maybe send that back to Linsux ^^

And for the record, I use OS X, various distros and sometimes have to resort to Windows XP in Virtualbox due to work and school-related software.

Don't flame what you don't know.

sydbat
October 20th, 2010, 10:51 PM
- <snip>

Don't flame what you don't know.Oh kaldor, just stop visiting sites like Linsux. Obviously they are not a supportive community like Ubuntu Forums. They have to take the frustrations about the inadequacies of their lives out on others in bullying and childish ways. Ignore them. If people stop visiting sites like that, they will go away.

Reokie
October 20th, 2010, 11:18 PM
Not only was the actual OS of Vista crap, it was crap that had high system requirements, compared to XP. Add that to the fact that because it was the first "Major" release since XP, every retailer and the kid at the limonade stand loaded Vista on even older systems that could not handle it, all for the ability to charge for for a more expensive, "new" OS. Actually, I switched to Ubuntu FROM Vista :). It only took a observation at the drasticly shorter boot times for me to fall in love with it.

kaldor
October 21st, 2010, 12:25 AM
every retailer and the kid at the limonade stand loaded Vista on even older systems that could not handle it, all for the ability to charge for for a more expensive, "new" OS.

This.

sanderd17
October 21st, 2010, 12:32 AM
I've used ME as my first OS, it was horrible, after a few months we were left with a computer that refused to start up sometimes and always refused to shut down. BSOD were also really common.

I love Vista though, it's the reason why I've switched to Ubuntu. Without Vista I would at least be a few years older before I knew Ubuntu and I would probably not have tried it.

Now I know, even if MS brings a really good O out, I won't be able to adapt to it: I'm used to the freedom of Linux.

So thank you Vista to show me Ubuntu.

cariboo
October 21st, 2010, 05:24 PM
Closed by request.