Jay Kimble

I uninstalled Vista after 5 months. Got fed up. In response to your post:

1. Liking it because it comes with the .NET 2.0/3.0 runtime or SDK is like saying I like Vista because it comes with Visual Studio installed and I don't need to install it. It's not that big of a deciding factor in my opinion.

2. The search sucks. Full stop. Double-click CTRL and get the Google desktop out anytime. I don't want to fill out 50 fields to search by this or that. I just want to type in what I want to search by. And something doesn't work when after 1 week my Google desktop finds results that *indexing* hasn't figured out in 5 months.

3. Side-bar is a memory hog and eye-candy. I've installed so many gadgets on it and never used any of them. If it's always on top, it takes up space, if it's on the desktop, first off showing desktop hides it, and second, you forget it's there.

4. 1GB memory? I wish my under 1 year old Fujitsu S7020 with 2GB memory would run half decent, let alone 1GB. Forget Aero and all the other stuff that new hardware doesn't even recognize.

I went back to XP and I'm happier than ever. And sorry, as Scott (Belaware) also mentioned in one of his posts, the UAC is a lame excuse for security.

Finally, someone who thinks the way I do about Vista.

My favourite feature has to be the integrated search. I love how it makes any program easy to run. My quick launch area has about 2 programs in it and I have only current or recent files on my desktop as I no longer need shortcuts.

Hadi,

I've found every gadgets framework to be hefty and a memory hog.  Vista's feels a little less of a hog.  BTW, all desktop search technology feels the same for me too.

You obviously didn't discover the single field search box in the start bar.  That's search I'm talking about.

But, to each his own....]

Garry,

Have you installed Start++?  That's a must in my opinion.  It integrates with the search and lets you specify abbreivations for programs which makes it possible for me to type VS and get Visual Studio 2005 or type 'w elephants' and have the wikipedia entry on elephants appear.  It really takes the Desktop search to the next level.

@Jay

I haven't, I'll have a look at that. On my search, V brings VS2005 as top result, SQL brings management studio and I always have IE open which covers 90% of my work. Though that wikipedia feature sounds handy.

Funny, I'm on Vista and just waiting for some free time to switch back to XP.  Everything is basically slower and after the first couple of days I could care less about the eye candy.  I turned Glass off after a couple of weeks because it was just a distraction.  My favorite thing is the new Start Menu which makes apps like Start++ unnecessary IMO, but I can get that on XP with freeware like Colibri.

What really kills me is that so many of the apps I use are not fully compatible with Vista.  I never used a version of Windows that has such broad compatibility problems.  Visual Studio .NET (2002) - no, Visual Studio .NET 2003 - no, Visual Studio .NET 2005 - not fully but will work IF you always run it as Administrator.  So every time I start VS .NET I am prompted to allow it to run as Admin.  Seems ridiculous to me.

As one would expect it is also not as stable as XP.  I can't wait to switch back.

Jim,

You are welcome to your opinion.... I definitely noticed a speed up once I installed more RAM.  I agree with the complaints about some of the apps, but come on?  You're still using VS 2002 (when you can target 1.0 with VS2003... at least I think you can do that)?

You also don't know what Start++ is.  It's an enhancement to the Vista (and only Vista) start menu that lets you create shortcuts to apps/web sites/etc. minimizing the number of keystrokes you have to type.

Jay,

Just as back ground I'm on a new Core 2 Duo computer with 3 GB of RAM.  I had 4 until I figured out that I can't make any use of that last gig unless I'm on a 64-bit O/S.  I'm not really complaining about performance in general, rather that many common operations are slower than on XP.  I think it may be UAC issues or search indexing in the background but i can't really tell.  For example, the other day I noticed an install had put a shortcut on my desktop so I selected it and then Shift+Del - nothing happened for several seconds (at least 2.5), then I got the confirmation dialog.  Copying files seems to produce different performance whenever I do it, but it always seems much slower than on XP.  I really have no idea why, but whenever I sit at another team member's XP machine it seems very snappy.

I'll have to look at Start++.  I figured it was similar to SlickRun, which allows you to create aliases for apps or even groups of apps.  With the Vista Start menu is adapts to what I use so after a short period of using it <Windows> + V gets me VS.NET, <Windows> + SQ gets me SQL Server Management Studio, <Windows> + ME gets me Windows Media player and so on.  I'm not sure what more Start++ could do, but I'll check it out.

We have to maintain apps in 1.0 and 1.1 and despite a lot of information to the contrary and a lot of trial and error by our team we determined that you cannot do 1.0 development in 2003.  sigh.

I think I came across as ranting but my feelings are not that strong and I'm glad you like Vista.  I just felt compelled to reply since I have been evaluating Vista after using it for several months and came to the opposite conclusion.  I hope that it continues to serve you well!

Jim,

I'm going guess the main diff (beyond speed) may be in how we approached Vista...

I went from "I'll never install it" to "it just a new OS" to "hey, I kind of like it..."  which where I'm at...

If anything , I wrote this post for Sam... since a few months back he was lamenting the poor launch of Vista.

I'd bet on UAC as much of your issues...

The fact that I use VPC for a number of apps may also be helping the OS to suceeed in my eyes (I mostly use it for my Java Development... I don't want to clutter my main desktop with that stuff...)

That probably does help.  I use a VPC for the legacy stuff and I'm happy on the VPC's.  I was where you are a month ago but now I'm ready to go back.  Hopefully I won't change my mind after I switch :-)

One other complaint - Outlook started doing this to me several version ago and now I hit it often in Vista.  I'm not sure if it is a Vista problem but I seem to hit it a lot since I switched to Vista.  The "phantom focus" problem.  I'm a heavy keyboard user and often after a dialog is dismissed focus returns to...no where.  Or perhaps to some invisible phantom focus-holding object :-)  The main window of the app I was working in is active but no object appears to have focus and tabbing does not move focus to an object in the active window.  i have to Alt + Tab to get things happening again without using the mouse.  What's up with that?

At any rate, I wish you continued happiness with Vista.  I will miss some of the visual goodies.

I only gmail currently, so no Outlook for me... I may avoid it altogether because I think Outlook is becoming more and more bloated/buggy.

Are you really allowed to disagree with Goodyear?

You know he's pretty smart, but not infallible...