«

I went to see a friend this evening who has recently acquired a new
PC, purchased for him by his work so he can work from home. It is
running Vista Premium, about which I have heard much, most of it bad,
but this is the first time I have actually had the opportunity to
experience Vista first hand.

It is even worse than I was led to expect

It is far slower than Windows 2000 was on the PII 300 laptop with 64M
RAM I was loaning him in the interim, and far more crash prone. It is
running on a PB tech box with a GB of RAM, I cant recall what CPU or
video card off hand, but this is a fairly standard box with NO unusual
hardware or third party software on it at all - it is pretty much
fresh out of the box bar the drivers for the broadband modem.


On initial startup it looked OK, apart from IE being very slow and
with several windows only rendering partially. Copying files from the
old machine to the new was relatively painless, they copied onto the
new machine almost as quickly as they copied off the old. It looks a
bit like a version of Kubuntu a freind has, but without the speed or
reliability. The hourglass has been replaced with a small circle which
looks nice, just as well since I was to spend the next two hours or so
mostly looking at it.

Trouble really started after it updated itself and restarted. On
restart it threw up numerous errors, and I had to do checkdsk to get
it to start normally which it finally did after several restarts and
an hour and a half of waiting for it to "configure updates" during
which it crashed twice. Eventually got it going again so he could go
on the net, but when he went to turn it off it restarted and reloaded
ALL the updates all over again. And then crashed. Again.

I have recommended that he at least gets it upgraded to XP, or better
to Kubuntu. I saw Vista running on a laptop a guy at work brought in,
and he ended up upgrading it to XP in the end after putting up with
the flakiness and instability for two weeks.

I have heard people call Vista the new Windows ME. Having had
experience of both, I think that is probably unfair - to Windows ME,
anyway. Market ready it certainly isn't.

Regards
Peter Jenkins
see http://www.sensiblesentencing.org.nz

"Peter Jenkins" <> wrote in message
news:8c3e8a67-ec67-4ba6-ae20-...

> Trouble really started after it updated itself and restarted. On
> restart it threw up numerous errors, and I had to do checkdsk to get
> it to start normally which it finally did after several restarts and
> an hour and a half of waiting for it to "configure updates" during
> which it crashed twice. Eventually got it going again so he could go
> on the net, but when he went to turn it off it restarted and reloaded
> ALL the updates all over again. And then crashed. Again.

Sounds like something OTHER than Vista causing the problems here...

Peter Jenkins wrote:
>
> It looks a
> bit like a version of Kubuntu a friend has, but without the speed or
> reliability...
>
Anything with KDE is going to be slow and unreliable. I pity anyone
whose first experience of Linux is KDE-based. It's the Fisher-Price of
desktops. Chunky and clunky and breaks if you look at it funny.

Cheers,

Cliff

--

Have you ever noticed that if something is advertised as 'amusing' or
'hilarious', it usually isn't?

Enkidu wrote:
> Peter Jenkins wrote:
>> It looks a bit like a version of Kubuntu a friend has, but without
>> the speed or reliability...
>>
> Anything with KDE is going to be slow and unreliable. I pity anyone
> whose first experience of Linux is KDE-based. It's the Fisher-Price of
> desktops. Chunky and clunky and breaks if you look at it funny.

That is not correct. KDE runs just fine on all of the boxes I have tried it
on. And it was the first desktop I used with Linux (although things were a
bit more manual-matic back then).

Of course, that is the strength of open source; user choice. Some folk
prefer Gnome, others like KDE, others go with xfce, etc. I've tried Gnome
on several occasions, but it seems less flexible than KDE.

However, I agree with the OP that Vista is not pleasant to use. Turning off
the eye candy (Aero, translucent dialogs, desktop widgets, etc) does help,
and you have to have quite high end hardware. Even with all that, it seems
not as good as Win2000 for ordinary office tasks (running Excel, Word,
etc).


Peter

In article <>, Enkidu did write:

> Anything with KDE is going to be slow and unreliable.

The "advanced" mode on this Asus Eee I'm using to type this is KDE. I'm
using KNode for USENET, the KStars planetarium app, the Kalzium periodic
table ... all running quite nicely on a 900MHz Celeron M processor with
only a half gig of RAM.

Peter Jenkins wrote:
> I went to see a friend this evening who has recently acquired a new
> PC, purchased for him by his work so he can work from home. It is
> running Vista Premium, about which I have heard much, most of it bad,
> but this is the first time I have actually had the opportunity to
> experience Vista first hand.
>
> It is even worse than I was led to expect
>
> It is far slower than Windows 2000 was on the PII 300 laptop with 64M
> RAM I was loaning him in the interim, and far more crash prone. It is
> running on a PB tech box with a GB of RAM, I cant recall what CPU or
> video card off hand, but this is a fairly standard box with NO unusual
> hardware or third party software on it at all - it is pretty much
> fresh out of the box bar the drivers for the broadband modem.
>
>
> On initial startup it looked OK, apart from IE being very slow and
> with several windows only rendering partially. Copying files from the
> old machine to the new was relatively painless, they copied onto the
> new machine almost as quickly as they copied off the old. It looks a
> bit like a version of Kubuntu a freind has, but without the speed or
> reliability. The hourglass has been replaced with a small circle which
> looks nice, just as well since I was to spend the next two hours or so
> mostly looking at it.
>
> Trouble really started after it updated itself and restarted. On
> restart it threw up numerous errors, and I had to do checkdsk to get
> it to start normally which it finally did after several restarts and
> an hour and a half of waiting for it to "configure updates" during
> which it crashed twice. Eventually got it going again so he could go
> on the net, but when he went to turn it off it restarted and reloaded
> ALL the updates all over again. And then crashed. Again.
>
> I have recommended that he at least gets it upgraded to XP, or better
> to Kubuntu. I saw Vista running on a laptop a guy at work brought in,
> and he ended up upgrading it to XP in the end after putting up with
> the flakiness and instability for two weeks.
>
> I have heard people call Vista the new Windows ME. Having had
> experience of both, I think that is probably unfair - to Windows ME,
> anyway. Market ready it certainly isn't.
>
> Regards
> Peter Jenkins
> see http://www.sensiblesentencing.org.nz
>

Yet again an inept user blames his tools.

"Bobs" <> wrote in message
news:47743b06$...
> Peter Jenkins wrote:
>> I went to see a friend this evening who has recently acquired a new
>> PC, purchased for him by his work so he can work from home. It is
>> running Vista Premium, about which I have heard much, most of it bad,
>> but this is the first time I have actually had the opportunity to
>> experience Vista first hand.
>>
>> It is even worse than I was led to expect
>>
>> It is far slower than Windows 2000 was on the PII 300 laptop with 64M
>> RAM I was loaning him in the interim, and far more crash prone. It is
>> running on a PB tech box with a GB of RAM, I cant recall what CPU or
>> video card off hand, but this is a fairly standard box with NO unusual
>> hardware or third party software on it at all - it is pretty much
>> fresh out of the box bar the drivers for the broadband modem.
>>
>>
>> On initial startup it looked OK, apart from IE being very slow and
>> with several windows only rendering partially. Copying files from the
>> old machine to the new was relatively painless, they copied onto the
>> new machine almost as quickly as they copied off the old. It looks a
>> bit like a version of Kubuntu a freind has, but without the speed or
>> reliability. The hourglass has been replaced with a small circle which
>> looks nice, just as well since I was to spend the next two hours or so
>> mostly looking at it.
>>
>> Trouble really started after it updated itself and restarted. On
>> restart it threw up numerous errors, and I had to do checkdsk to get
>> it to start normally which it finally did after several restarts and
>> an hour and a half of waiting for it to "configure updates" during
>> which it crashed twice. Eventually got it going again so he could go
>> on the net, but when he went to turn it off it restarted and reloaded
>> ALL the updates all over again. And then crashed. Again.
>>
>> I have recommended that he at least gets it upgraded to XP, or better
>> to Kubuntu. I saw Vista running on a laptop a guy at work brought in,
>> and he ended up upgrading it to XP in the end after putting up with
>> the flakiness and instability for two weeks.
>>
>> I have heard people call Vista the new Windows ME. Having had
>> experience of both, I think that is probably unfair - to Windows ME,
>> anyway. Market ready it certainly isn't.
>>
>> Regards
>> Peter Jenkins
>> see http://www.sensiblesentencing.org.nz
>>
>
> Yet again an inept user blames his tools.

The main tool in this case or at least workbench is ****ed. Microsoft has
done themselves more damage than good by ever releasing Vista in such a
bloated and very slow condition in the first place.
XP has lasted well, yet the next Windows OS is being released around 2010.
Which proves that even Microsoft have relised that they ****ed up big time
with Vista.

E. Scrooge

"Peter Jenkins" <> wrote in message
news:8c3e8a67-ec67-4ba6-ae20-...
>I went to see a friend this evening who has recently acquired a new
> PC, purchased for him by his work so he can work from home. It is
> running Vista Premium, about which I have heard much, most of it bad,
> but this is the first time I have actually had the opportunity to
> experience Vista first hand.
>
> It is even worse than I was led to expect
>
> It is far slower than Windows 2000 was on the PII 300 laptop with 64M
> RAM I was loaning him in the interim, and far more crash prone. It is
> running on a PB tech box with a GB of RAM, I cant recall what CPU or
> video card off hand, but this is a fairly standard box with NO unusual
> hardware or third party software on it at all - it is pretty much
> fresh out of the box bar the drivers for the broadband modem.
>
>
> On initial startup it looked OK, apart from IE being very slow and
> with several windows only rendering partially. Copying files from the
> old machine to the new was relatively painless, they copied onto the
> new machine almost as quickly as they copied off the old. It looks a
> bit like a version of Kubuntu a freind has, but without the speed or
> reliability. The hourglass has been replaced with a small circle which
> looks nice, just as well since I was to spend the next two hours or so
> mostly looking at it.
>
> Trouble really started after it updated itself and restarted. On
> restart it threw up numerous errors, and I had to do checkdsk to get
> it to start normally which it finally did after several restarts and
> an hour and a half of waiting for it to "configure updates" during
> which it crashed twice. Eventually got it going again so he could go
> on the net, but when he went to turn it off it restarted and reloaded
> ALL the updates all over again. And then crashed. Again.
>
> I have recommended that he at least gets it upgraded to XP, or better
> to Kubuntu. I saw Vista running on a laptop a guy at work brought in,
> and he ended up upgrading it to XP in the end after putting up with
> the flakiness and instability for two weeks.
>
> I have heard people call Vista the new Windows ME. Having had
> experience of both, I think that is probably unfair - to Windows ME,
> anyway. Market ready it certainly isn't.
>
> Regards
> Peter Jenkins
> see http://www.sensiblesentencing.org.nz

Vista is an eye opener alright. I'm damn glad the laptop that I got to use
Vista on isn't mine.
Windows 7 will be worth seeing. Should be like XP on steroids.

E. Scrooge

On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:12:53 +1300, "Mickey Mouse"
<> wrote:

>"Peter Jenkins" <> wrote in message
>news:8c3e8a67-ec67-4ba6-ae20-...
>
>> Trouble really started after it updated itself and restarted. On
>> restart it threw up numerous errors, and I had to do checkdsk to get
>> it to start normally which it finally did after several restarts and
>> an hour and a half of waiting for it to "configure updates" during
>> which it crashed twice. Eventually got it going again so he could go
>> on the net, but when he went to turn it off it restarted and reloaded
>> ALL the updates all over again. And then crashed. Again.
>
>Sounds like something OTHER than Vista causing the problems here...

I just knew Mickey Mouse would be the first to reply, with a defence
of Vista!

In article <1198800043.127874@ftpsrv1>, *sling did write:

> Windows 7 will be worth seeing. Should be like XP on steroids.

You hope.