180 Reasons why Vista is one of the best OS’s out there!
Vista slowly developed to one of the best operating systems out there.
A lot of people ignored the fact that Microsoft had to delay the development of Vista a long time, because they had to take care of some serious security attacks on Windows XP. I am not searching for excuses for Microsoft, I certainly agree that they shouldn’t have released an unstable product like Vista after 5 years of development. However I think that bashing Vista is not so fair after all.
Here are 40 reasons why I think that Vista is one of the coolest OS’s out there!
- 1. File indexing makes it possible to find files in a matter of seconds.
- 2. The Aero engine allows you to preview several windows at once.
- 3. The new sidebar has tons of great gadgets and helps to increase your productivity. Google Gadgets are now Vista-ready by the way.
- 4. Setting up wireless networks is now faster and very very easy.
- 5. Animated background wallpapers are way cooler than the boring static wallpapers.
- 6. Vista’s eye-candy is consuming less memory than most people would expect.
- 7. Vista is family-friendly and not made for geek’s alone.
- 8. Most drivers run in user-mode, making Vista a more secure system.
- 9. Applications that run in kernel-mode ask for permission, preventing unwanted damage.
- 10. Viruses and Trojans will have a hard time to attack the core of your system.
- 11. The enhanced sleep tool will shut down your system and save a lot of energy, but is able to start your system in a couple of seconds.
- 12. Automatic defrag and file indexing will make your system fly.
- 13. Absolutely great backwards-compatibility by now.
- 14. Enhanced memory management. Your system recognizes what are the most used applications of your PC and preloads them into the memory, making your system faster.
- 15. Enhanced priority system. Background tasks consuming a lot of memory will never make you problems again.
- 16. Since drivers are now running mostly in user-mode your system will not crash as many times as before.
- 17. Very cool built-in backup functions! Better safe than sorry.
- 18. Improved Security. The Windows Defender is a new little tool that will improve the general security of your PC.
- 19. Dramatically improved download speed if you have a high-end internet connection! Go Pro!
- 20. Finding wirless networks without any hassle.
- 21. Supports all the new and more secure protocols for wirless connections.
- 22. Cool Media Center, ready for hi-Def television on your PC.
- 23. Way less reboots after upgrading your drivers.
- 24. Built-in speech recognition, control your PC with your voice!
- 25. Easily setup favorite links in the explorer to get faster access to important folders.
- 26. Per-application volume control allows you to define a volume for every application individually.
- 27. DirectX-10 Support. Now that’s obviously a good reason to upgrade to Vista!
- 28. Improved Gaming Performance because of DX10. A lot of games including Age of Conan, Crysis, EVE: Online, Flight Simulator X (Patch), Gears of War PC, Hellgate: London, and Unreal Tournament 3 have all an performance advantage over DX9 players!
- 29. Very cool DX10 Shaders make your games look so beautiful!
- 30. Getting language-packs and other updates is now done in a few steps. Go multi-lingual!
- 31. Schedule backups!
- 32. Built-in Photo Gallery, that includes slideshows and basic editing.
- 33. Customizing Vista is a lot more flexible and allows developers to do some very cool things!
- 34. Scale icons on your desktop properly simply by holding STRG and moving the mouse wheel up or down.
- 35. Games don’t have to be fullscreen windows any longer! While XP caused a lot of problems starting several instances for example of World of Warcraft, Vista users will be able to mix 3D-applications and other windows without any problem.
- 36. Use your desktop as a place to increase your space for cool Vista gadgets! Simply drag and drop them on there.
- 37. Enhanced GUI, you can see and follow the exact path to your files and folders while browsing inside the explorer.
- 38. Built-in encryption tool to work in a very secure environment. Don’t allow everyone to get access to your sensible files!
- 39. Although I do recommend to get a third-party firewall, there is a built-in firewall that has been improved a lot since the release of Vista.
- 40. Improved parental control is a big plus in terms of children safety.
Oh yea bashing Vista is so cool!
Ok, still not convinced? Believe it or not there are another 40 reasons that speak for Vista.
Although many points are covered here I recommend to read another 40 reasons why Vista is a good choice.
Microsoft also did a list of 100 things they think are important enough to buy Vista.
Now it’s up to you. Vista SP1 has been around for a while. My personal reason for upgrading was that I needed DX10 sooner or later anyway. Another reason for me to upgrade from XP was that I wanted to setup a fresh and clean system. While you regulary had to format your PC before Vista, Vista is running smoothly for several months now.
If you have a new PC, then go for Vista. It’s worth it. Upgrading to Vista on an older PC might not be worth it, because I will not deny that Vista requires some good hardware. But if you have good system specifications, then there should be no problem at all. Seriously Vista seems to be very very stable in comparison
to XP. I remember that I frequently had to deal with blue screens before Vista. Haven’t seen a single one since I am running Vista and I have to reboot rarely.
If you want to upgrade now, why not check out the brand new Vista Store powered by Amazon.
In cooperation with Amazon we setup a store for Vista only! A very fast way to get an overview and buy the Vista edition you need.
Animated background wallpapers are way cooler???
Animating the background is a waste of resources. If you are starring at your background you aren’t using the computer correctly.
Yeah but Ubuntu can use Compiz to get insanely better eye-candy, still uses less CPU and RAM, AND it’s even more secure out of the box.
The only reason I need Windows anymore is to play games, sadly that’s not worth the $200 or whatever Microsoft wants.
People don’t have time to compile drivers and learn command lines, they just want a pretty and out of the box solution.
I just think that bashing Vista is not so fair and I wanted to list some things that I like about Vista.
After all I am using it right now and I can’t complain. I do not say Linux or any other OS is bad. Actually I love Linux and use it on my servers. I am a little bit familiar with Linux by now, but I wouldn’t install Linux on my home PC. For working and playing Vista is fine. Period.
39 Reasons why Vista is still quite inadequate.
1) File Indexing is available on XP.
2) http://www.otakusoftware.com/topdesk/
3) Gadgets reduce a mass amount of your screen, providing objects that would be simply desk toys. A clock, post-its and a jigsaw are easily found in the real world.
4) I’ve been in tech support for years, and never had to give help setting up a wireless network.
5) If you’re looking at your desktop wallpaper, you’re either slacking off work or have no friends.
6) ‘I have the choice to kill no-one, kill a family of four, or genocide an entire ethnic race.’ Just because it is not as bad as the worst case scenario, doesn’t make it an advantage. Also, an animated screensaver makes this a moot point.
7) I don’t believe XP was made for geeks alone.
8 & 9) Simple measures are easily made to avoid family members & imbeciles ruining what isn’t broken. Tell them if it’s okay to do anything if they haven’t had experience doing it before.
10) Are you advertising that Vista is okay running without a suitable firewall & antivirus program?
11) People need to get into the habit of turning things off themselves to conserve energy. This is just laziness.
12) There are plenty of alternative defrag programs out there. Linux’ ext3 file systems do not even require formatting.
13) Or, use XP and it’s perfect. last time I checked, that’s better than ‘absolutely great’.
14 & 15) XP has already been using priority based memory management & runtime for some time now, as well as CPUs taking this into account directly.
16) System crashes are not random, usually the PEBKAC.
17) Again, laziness. If you do not keep backups by yourself, I daresay you deserve to lose data.
18) Companies have been developing antivirus/spyware systems far better than side-projects Microsoft throw in to attract an audience. Windows Defender makes your PC safe, but anything else makes it safer. You’re advertising poor defences again.
19) I don’t see your logic in this. If you have a high end connection, you have a better download speed. Vista has no say in that.
20) I can’t see how hard pressing the ‘Search for wireless networks’ button is in XP.
21) If you can give me examples, I’ll listen.
22) The quality of video is not determined by Vista, but by the encoding within the file. A Media Center is just a flashy program to attract those who enjoy your animated screensavers.
23) As opposed to the ‘one’ I used with XP?
24) XP has speech recognition. Microsoft just didn’t advertise it, as it was mainly used for people with disabilities who needed it, rather than lazy people using it as a toy.
25) A Favourites is not a good replacement for a good filesystem and tabbed exploring. This promotes laziness.
26) Freeware apps have been doing this for years.
27) The only good reason on this list. This should’ve been an article on the benefits of DX10.
28,29) I said it’s the only good point. You obviously see this, so you choose to say the same thing thrice to pad your list.
30) …same in XP.
31) System Restore provides adequate backup to your installation. File backups should be managed by the user to avoid overwriting with incorrect data.
32) …XP again.
33) XP has been around for longer, and is easily more familiar to your developers you mention. Also, customise what, exactly?
34) Icons on a desktop are impractical, requiring you to minimise all other windows or move them to get out of the way. A dock or launching utility sorts this problem.
35) I haven’t seen a game made past the year 2000 that didn’t have the option to be run in a window.
36) You mentioned gadgets and a desktop before. Both were bad points.
37) XP’s default explorer does not utilise this, but a folder path can be created by clicking ‘Folders’. Breadcrumb navigation and tabbed browsing (which Vista does not have) can be added with simple addons.
38) Encryption tools have been around for years, and are vastly improved upon compared to Vista’s additional addon.
39) The first mention that you need something else other than what Microsoft gives you. Very wise.
40) Parental control is only required for when children surf the internet alone, which should be managed by the browser, or an antivirus/firewall app. Unless, of course, you plan to keep your porn collection within their reach.
If this doesn’t make it past moderation, then I ask the author to have a look and see if my points are arguable. It’s not the OS, it’s what you do with it. We don’t need flash and cash to get things done. The pursuit of Vista is probably an overall setback to getting work done while you set everything up and get used to it. Then find the absolutely great driver updates aren’t… perfect.
Uh Oh.. I knew that there would someone come up with counter-arguments.
You got some good points, but keep in mind that I am not only writing for people who are familiar with all that tech stuff. I for example know people who would have problems setting up a WLAN connection. And I know people who like animated background wallpapers or who have problems scheduling their backups.
I certainly do not have these problems, nor do I stare at my desktop background, because I have better things to do
Actually I do not use animated wallpapers myself, but I know that a lot of our readers like them. The feature itself is very popular.
Believe it or not.
Also because the Vista desktop is completely rendered in 3D (polygons), 3D applications have less problems if they are mixed with other windows. At least I know of a couple of games that crashed from time to time if you opened up several instances or if you switched between the windows regulary.
Don’t have the time to fully answer you here, will do that tomorrow.
It’s a controversial topic unfortunately.
I appreciate your comment although, gives this blog a bit more stuff to talk about
Its pretty obvious to anyone reading this that windows is the only OS you’re really familiar with, which i think nullifies any sort of claim that this was an objective analysis. Oh, and if vista is so great, explain to me why microsoft feels it necessary to extend support for XP until 2014?
in short, you sir, purchased a crap product and are in complete denial, or you just don’t know enough to realize it.
but hey, ignorance is bliss.
To those of us who work in the field, it was really no surprise that Vista sucked so bad. Pretty much every-other major windows release is total crap, but somehow sheep like yourself still flock to it.
Vista is the new Windows Me. remember how you people ate that up?
So to anyone considering upgrading to Vista: don’t. Like i tell ::ALL:: my clients who want to upgrade, wait for Windows 7, which should be out 2009-10.
Your ignorance is bliss too.
I know that XP is better than Vista, I won’t deny that since I am using both.
Microsoft extended the support to 2014 because the majority of people are still using XP or even downgraded. A big mistake, since all those people (yes your clients too) will have a hard time to go from XP to Windows7.
The jump from Vista to Windows 7 will be flawless and I won’t have to invest as much time as you (in the future).
Vista is not user-friendly “from scratch” but after a few very easy tweaks it’s running smoothly. If I need all resources I’ll reboot and switch to XP fast, because Vista is eating more RAM.
So to anyone considering upgrading to Vista, do it today and be prepared for tomorrow. Use the best of both worlds.
1 reason to boycott MS:
Any software company that releases a version that minimum requires of 5 times the amount of resources as the previous version(but still won’t run smoothly unless you double it) is doing something wrong.
having used all 3, 7 > Xp > Vista.
1. File indexing was in XP, and in other OSes long before. Nothing unique or killer in Vista.
2. Basic feature of desktop compositing before Aero was even created.
3. Gadgets was a feature stolen from OS X, and I’m willing to bet Apple got it from someone else.
4. As it had been on most any other OS with wireless support. The trouble is drivers, not user friendliness.
5. What a waste of resources! You’re not going to be spending your time on your computer staring at the desktop. Plus Microsoft requires you to shell out serious cash for the Ultimate version of Vista for this feature. In the end, not even remotely a killer feature.
6. At the time of this writing, there was Compiz Fusion on Linux that had much *much* more effects one could use, looked better with most video drivers, and worked comfortably in only 256 MiB RAM. Windows Vista normally would refuse to even turn on Aero’s compositing if the machine had less than a GiB of RAM, and ran it horribly slow unless there was 2 GiB of RAM. So, no, Aero’s system requirements were actually worse than people thought.
7. Parental locks are a joke and Vista was far from “geek friendly” which is just as bad as it not being “idiot friendly.”
8. User mode drivers are not more secure, they’re simply slower (System calls mean overhead for drivers.) and require more tools to work, which increases the chance of security issues due to more lines of code to exploit.
9. Admin permissions != Kernel permissions. Those apps are not running in kernel space. And you’d be surprised how many apps running with admin permissions didn’t ask you first because Vista uses a poor permissions model that doesn’t include file ACLs.
10. No objective explanation given in this. And Sasser raped Vista machines.
11. “Enhanced sleep tool?” You mean hibernation or “suspend-to-ram”? Not a new feature introduced by Vista. If you’re going to talk about a feature, get the terminology right.
12. File indexing actually slows down the system when it is indexing. And all just to shave off maybe three seconds of search time. And Windows hasn’t managed to get a reliable live defrag working since XP’s first service pack. Why do you think third party defrag tools are on the rise in Windows. Also, fragmentation is only really an issue in Windows because it implements a really stupid physical layout system.
13. “By now?” And no, it’s backwards compatibility didn’t work that well until 7, which still has problems with backwards compatibility.
14. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!. Windows has a terrible memory management system. Piss poor memory reclamation, memory leaks everywhere, not to mention the OS itself takes up far more memory than it should. A kernel should only take maybe about 10 MiB RAM, maximum.
15. “Priority system?” Again, learn your terminology. It’s called a “process scheduler.” And no, Windows’ scheduler is very bad at what it does, especially when SMP comes into play, when it frequently drops the ball on even bringing up other cores/CPUs and does a VERY uneven job distributing the processing.
16. Vista crashed and blue-screened anyway, largely because being in kernel space wasn’t the problem with the drivers, but the fact that the kernel itself is of piss-poor design and panics on a whim.
17. Backup functions nowhere near as robust or flexible as rsync, you mean?
18. Anyone who relies purely on Defender and Windows Firewall is practically guaranteed to have been infected and botted by now. Do yourself a favor and get COMODO.
19. The NT kernel throttles back its IP stack, not to mention Internet connectivity speeds are decided by your connection far more than the OS.
20. I’ve seen Vista completely overlook a lot of networks in my area Linux picked up without any effort at all.
21. As any OS should. Why is this considered a plus for Vista when all the other OSes do so as well?
22. Windows Media Center is a toy compared to things like XBMC or Boxee, supports too few formats, only speaks in one protocol, has zero file sharing support, and didn’t get Netflix until Windows 7. Is horribly inflexible.
23. Until it is “no reboots after upgrading your drivers” Windows is still miles behind all the other operating systems supported today, which require ZERO reboots after upgrading drivers and only require reboots with kernel upgrades. Even then, Linux has a feature called kexec which allows users to change kernels without rebooting.
24. You mean that feature they demonstrated in public that had zero reliability and got all the words wrong?
25. Standard feature in any file manager. Also, I think Windows had that since Windows 98. Not a killer feature.
26. Standard feature of any sound API.
27. DirectX 10 was actually nothing new over DirectX 9. It was simply a failed tactic to get game developers hitting Vista.
28. See above. DX10 was just DX9 hardcoded to reject XP.
29. See 28. Also, shaders were a part of OpenGL before DirectX even had a good 3D API. OpenGL is always about 5 years ahead of DirectX.
30. That’s not only standard on Linux, it’s a core feature of the GNU toolchain installed in every Linux distribution since the dawn of time. Microsoft was actually very *very* late to this party.
31. Cron + rsync. Another feature part of UNIX since the dawn of time. Plus rsync is oodles more flexible than Microsoft Backup.
32. There’s been photo gallery apps ever since computers could support multimedia. Nothing to write home about.
33. Vista is NOT flexible. Take Aero, for instance. It only allows maybe about a dozen changable settings. Compiz Fusion, on the other hand, has over 80 individual effects plugins, each of which you can select independently, and each of which have dozens of settings of very high granularity. That is merely scratchign the surface of how inflexible Vista is compared to things like Linux.
34. Very ugly scalable icons. Not at all vector based like they should be.
35. Games could go out of fullscreen all they wanted. They just chose not to. This has nothing to do with Windows and everything to do with how games are designed.
36. Again, gadgets were blatantly ripped off from OS X.
37. Oooh, breadcrumb navigation. Now we HAVE to use Windows now. Horribly minor feature OS X had before.
38. I think I’m repeating myself now: Linux had it since forever. It’s called GPG.
39. Which leaks like a sieve and gets cracked within seconds of system discovery. It’s improvements are not even nearly enough.
40. Parental control is so very easy to bypass. Chances are your kids have already done so.