[KellieCM]

PC World is looking for your feedback and input as we draft an open letter to Microsoft about what our readers think Vista is most lacking. Tell us what you think by answering these questions --

What is the most annoying thing about Windows Vista?
What do you hope Vista SP1 will fix, streamline, and improve upon?
Do you love or hate Windows Vista?

[garylcamp]

I tried to post this letter below to the comments to save XP but it did not have a submit button.


To answer your questions for this reply, The worst thing about Vista is Genuine (Dis)advantage program. It is spyware. I bought the program and should not need to keep showing my reciept, so to speak every day (or even 2 weeks). Infact I should not need to do it just to download updates to IE, Moviemaker or Mediaplayer either (for my XP). I am refusing to download it and moving to Linux as soon as I can.


gary


Save XP comment:


Vista is not what was originally advertised (no FS update and other things). It is bloated as are all new MS programs. It has even worse piracy protection and privacy/spyware than ever. I will not update to Vista. I recommend every one keep XP working and get a live CD of Linux and begin to move away. MS just keepss pushing to get everything out of its customers. Soon we will have to pay for updates, let them keep our files on unsecure servers and sufer continous ads as we work on MS programs unless we pay more still. They already said they want to make income on ads!


They supported n sold Win3.1 for years after it was superseeded n they can do that with XP too but they want to force upgrades to make more money. They are one of the richest companies in the world with huge cash holdings. Give us a break. We should not need to upgrade if we dont want to but they force it by not allowing XP to run Aero,etc. You cant get new IE, Moviemaker or Mediaplayer without GenAdvantageSpy

[RNR19952]

Vista is a huge slow POS
It has no advantages over XP
The menus are rearranged for no reason
Eye candy, shmy candy who cares
I have to make four clicks for everything
The start menu is crap, again more clicks for the same thing

[Evildave]

Can't uninstall that wretched (and enormous) mess called 'Media Player'. Apparently with a clean install, you can, but the patches locked it down.
All manner of things I can't touch because they've been marked by a ghost user named 'Trusted Installer'. The only Installer that I 'trust' is ME, yet I'm not 'trustworthy' enough to repair common registry maladies with regedit or remove things from Program Files anymore, even after booting as 'Administrator'.

Default user account still has 'Administrator' privileges, only now 'Administrator' has fewer rights and extra pop-up prompts still annoy me.

Can't manage the content of my own 'Start' menu without answering dozens of 'Are you sure?' followed by 'Security' elevation prompts. Clicking three and four deep 'Are you sure' prompts intermixed with 'Security' prompts tells me things weren't designed very well.

The learned automatic dismissal of these constant and annoying 'security' prompts by most users renders them ineffective. Users merely dismiss them without reading them, and all manner of malware can trivially trick users into dismissing them if it has to anyway. Typical users follow orders, even if it's to boot a CD into a command shell prompt and type ''fdisk'.
Partition Magic doesn't work, and the built-in partition resize won't shrink Vista's partition size below 90GB with only 28GB of data on it. Trashed the partition table when I did resize the Windows parititon below the installed size of ALL 150GB of the hard disk. Microsoft's tools made the empty space inaccessible, and wouldn't even grow the Windows partition back to reclaim it. Fortunately some Linux-based partition editing tools (on UBCD) fixed that.

Previous versions of Drive Image would not install. New 'Norton Ghost' sucks ass. Now use a 'Clonezilla' Linux boot CD (also compatible with Windows) and am content.

Certified driver support is virtually non-existant.

Horrible backwards software compatibility. NONE of my existing (and VERY expensive) versions of Developer Studio/Microsoft Visual Studio would install. I will not 'upgrade' again. Wave goodbye to yet another Windows developer. You're now a sideline to my Linux development, rather than Linux being a sideline to my Windows development.

Microsoft re-arranged all kinds of long-standing network and system configuration GUIs to the point that Linux felt familiar and easy by comparison.
Hardware requirements onerous. I should not need a gigabyte of RAM and several gigabytes of hard disk space just see the OS boot.

Due to enormous memory requirements, Hibernate/Wake is now SLOWER than shutdown/boot AND takes large amounts of dedicated hard disk space.

Other Windows applications (especially Adobe) have become equally bloated and out of control, making routine drive image backups unbearably slow and expensive, rendering the operating system LESS SAFE, as most people will be less likely to back it up routinely.

New desktop is HIDEOUS. Even more hideous than XP's. Configuring back to 'Classic' desktop and start menu and turning off all of the ANNOYING animation still works, but I wonder how long these Microsoft MORONS will continue to support that?

Restrictive new 'protection' of media content continuously slows computer and impedes work with my own multimedia content, and is already hacked so it doesn't protect ANYTHING, yet driver certification is basically impossible to cover the requirements to 'protect' media. Incompatible with most HDMI and DVI interfaces to HD monitors and HD TV sets because they're not 'encrypted' right. Must use analog connections across the board, and image quality is noticably degraded.

Plays all my MP3s with clicks and pops like a scratchy LP. Booting onto a 'live' Linux CD fixed it instantly. Booting Linux natively also fixed it.

Re-re-re-activation a nuissance when trouble-shooting hardware. "Oh
PLEASE let me use my $3,000 computer Microsoft! I promise I'll be
good... oh, so you will only let me use SOME of it? Gee, uh thanks?"

In short, STRIP WINDOWS DOWN and provide NO native 'multimedia' support. Let other software vendors take that 'risk', and allow your end-users to 'live without' or selectively install the capability of dealing with all of that 'protected' garbage.

My Windows 2000 VMware session takes half the space and does EVERYTHING the Vista one does, albeit with OLDER software because the 'latest, greatest' bloatware from Adobe refuses to install on an OS below XP. My VERY functional Linux boot is TINY compared to both.

Now running Ubuntu Linux with Vista in a VMware session. Content with this arrangement. Will never 'go back' to natively running a Microsoft OS. Linux works my Vostro much better and faster across the board in my applications even though it did take a little longer to sort out all of the drivers. Tons of on-line help and HOWTO articles made all of that relatively painless.

[RastaMon]

My limited experience with three different versions of Vista (Ultimate, Home Basic and Home Premium) has been that Vista is ridiculously slow, even on fast hardware with sufficient memory.

[crazy4laptops]

Vista lacks in speed, and turns most computers into slugs. It takes up too much space also. (microsoft, not macrosoft) The only thing i liked was the resigned addres bar in my computer/network places/documents/control panel. The search in the start menu was also a cool feature. Other than that, I really feel no need for vista.
People want speed, speed, and more speed, did i make enough of an emphasis that people want a speedy o/s? Also, the operating system should not require the cpu to run at 20% when it is idle. (btw, installing xp will at least double the battery life on any laptop) The laptop version of the next windows, should have advanced power saving options and not require much power to run.

next o/s-

5 gigs max size
must run smoothly on 512mb of ram, 1 gig for performance
1.5 ghz processor minimum, 2ghz single core recommended
64mb video card

[Adama]

I have Vista. I like Vista. I like how it looks. I like how it feels. I like how easy and how fast it works for me. I wouldn't use anything else but Vista. I wrote about my experiences with Vista in the thread within this link forums.pcworld.com/thread/23951?tstart=30

I realize I may be one in a million, but I think that Vista is the wave of the future. And the future is here, now.

[AuroraDizon]

If I wrote a letter to Microsoft besides asking them why they can't come up with anything on there own (linux stuff + mac like interface) I would ask them what in the bloody hell they were thinking. Releasing something that needs a lot more testing and development. I mean the audacity of releasing something that is incompatible with so many things.

[piyushsingh]

hmm. i love vista, its the best OS till date by ms.
i want the sp1 to come as early aas possible. And yes it will increase performance, i know this as i have tried sp1 . The file transfers are faster , faster shutdowns and hibernate, remote access is faster , wireless transfer is better.
I dont have anything that can be included in this letter and all those complaints that have been specified in this thread can be easily solved by the end user . There is nothing more after sp1 that ms can do to a great os. So what should i include for this letter, ya one thing- "make vista's defragmenter a bit more transparent to reveal what it is doing".we all know vista's defragmenter is better than xp's but its a bit misleading to the normal user as it hides everything.
thanx
piyush

[Evildave]

Ah, yes. It liked to take off and 'optimize' the hard disk on its own. Invariably it did that when I was trying to get something ELSE done.

Once it begins, there's no way to make it stop, and no way to monitor its progress as with other versions of Windoze, either. You press 'cancel' (if you can find it) and it keeps right on going.

The computer is basically worthless for anything but basic web browsing or typing in a text file while it's busy doing this for an indefinite period. Could be 15 minutes. Could be hours. It won't even try to guess for you, or give you a 'blue bar'.

The only way I found out what it had taken off to do WITHOUT MY PERMISSION was running 'perfmon' and looking for what process is beating the crap out of ALL of my hard drives at the same time. Sure, it can be 'disabled', as can Microsoft's retarded 'indexing' service (another major parasite to those who KNOW where they put files), but most users will never figure out what it is and what is making their computer crawl for entire sessions of using them.

Ah, and that leads me to Windows Defender. If Windows is so 'safe', why do they need to pester me to 'scan' system files periodically? If the computer WAS secure, it would be impossible for anything to change those system files in an unauthorized manner. Instead I have to 'drop everything' when WINDOWS demands a scan to make harassing warning pop-ups go away. What are they warning me about? I thought this was 'secure'. Antivirus scans only tell you that damage HAPPENED. Past tense. Your files have been compromised. Your email addresses sent to the spammers. Your tax files uploaded to identity thieves... but OH, look now we'll scan to make you FEEL better about 'security' and make a little 'discovery' after the fact. Goody.

I guess in short, don't grab control of my computer to house-clean, or pester me about it. I will get around to it in my own time and take care of it in my own way.

Oh, and those honking big "ARE YOU SURE???" prompts when you attempt to do ANY file operations from the desktop. The GUI equivalent of talking SLOWER and LOUDER to someone who doesn't speak your language. Nothing like humongous super-size buttons to make me go straight to cmd.exe and do the operation there with xcopy, move or rmdir /s /q, instead of using the GUI desktop to manage files. For the typical user, it's just the same incomprehensible dialog to dismiss with bigger buttons... except the typical Windows user doesn't even know how to use Explorer to make folders or manage files.

Maybe what Microsoft really needs is two products. Not 16 versions of 'Vista', each worse than the next. I mean completely different interfaces.

On the one hand we have users who want all the pretty colors they can stick in their eyeballs with a fork.

On the other hand, we have power users who want complete control of their computer and little, if anything between them and the metal.

What Microsoft does is try to compromise between them. Stick to a 'middle ground' to make EVERYBODY happy. This is fallacious thinking. When you try to please and appease everybody, you please ABSOLUTELY NOBODY.

What you end up with is a computer so artificially 'friendly' than nobody likes it. Typical users are still buried up to their eyeballs in technology that they don't understand, only now it's colorful and full of 'help' that they also don't understand. Experienced users find all of these unnecessary 'helpful' components to be in the way. Of course, it doesn't help that Microsoft did such a LOUSY job of implementing their very own version of disk tools and the security kludges like 'virus scanners' that were slapped onto the gaping, pus-leaking security wounds of Windows past, present and future.

I certainly don't need training wheels and bright colored rubber cushions on all surfaces. I don't need the OS to wipe drool off my chin, and wear a big red bicycle helmet to keep me from randomly banging my head on things.

Oh, wait. Maybe I do need that helmet when I'm running Vista. It certainly makes me WANT to bang my head on things.

[VladTheImpaler1990]

Well well, alot of negativity here, its really sad, but remember when xp came out every one was shooting microsoft in the foot.

Well firstly i can't say that vista is perfect, it uses alot of memory, for what it does, new SP1 makes all nvdia graphics cards obselete, and most 2-3 year old programs will not run or run probably, so there is a compatibilty problem,

The other question is will it fix the problems, mmmmmmmmm well lets hope so, i hope they just sought out this direct x 10.1 thing out and also make it less memory eating.

I neither love nor hate, its more a learning thing for me, i learned alot and cried alot but i got there, but i hope one day it will be as good and xp and i am sure it will be, remember things don't always come out first, remember the guy that discovered the light bulb failed 2000 times and you know what he said when some one asked how do you feel about the 2000 failors, and he said he just found 2000 ways how to not create a light bulb,

I tried to keep it short as microsoft willl not have the time to read SA's

Vlad The Impaler

[Evildave]

Well, I just gave up on 'Windows' completely for Linux. A minor learning curve, but well worth it. Microsoft can cram 'Vista' up their crack and spin on it.

Professional writers will be drafting the letter. That means they'll pick & choose what to say (using our posts to reinforce what they already decided to say) and rewrite it into their own words. Then one or more editors will further cut it down to make up the 'open letter'. When they finish it, nobody at Microsoft who makes these kinds of dreadfully self-destructive decisions will bother to read it anyway, so be as verbose as you like. :8} They'll just send back a form letter from their public affairs office that notes they received it, and that they always welcome such feedback even as it goes into the shredder.

The deepest problem is they're not working to make the best OS their poor crippled little hearts can make. They're building a media delivery channel through PCs.

As far as Microsoft is concerned, you're a 'consumer'. A commodity to be sold and traded. As demonstrated for decades, you will consume any old rubbish Microsoft force-feeds you through PC manufacturing bundle-ware pipeline. They've decided that $100 a pop for PC OEM licenses isn't enough. They want to also rent YOU as a commodity to various entities that want to send you pay-per-use products.

The fact that they deliver a P.O.S. instead of an O.S. doesn't matter to them as much as controlling a pay-per-use content delivery system that pays Microsoft endless royalties. $$$

They have you trained well. Soon you won't mind that after paying $200 for M$ Office, you ALSO have to pay fifty cents every hour you use it (so don't forget and leave it open). Just the cost of business, you'll say as the computer grinds away behaving like a PC/XT with digital alzheimers and then decides your current video adapter must be 'revoked' (becomes 'obsolete' as you put it) because someone in Greece found a way to unlock digital content through it.

Maybe after 2000 'Service Packs' Microsoft will get it 'right'. I'm not going to bother living through that hell.

Hmm, come to think of it, I have one of those BRAND NEW 'obsolete' NVidia cards in my six month old notebook. I hope NVidia and every other hardware manufacturer sues Microsoft into bankruptcy.

TELL ME: Why the F* should I need to throw away a BRAND NEW $300 3D video card just because Microsoft decided they want to securely distribute videos?.Looks like I switched over to Linux just in time, because if I was still locked into Vista HELL, that's what I'd have to do just minutes after one of their various "patch or DIE" patches gets installed. I'd have to pull the video card out of my notebook and use the 'built in' adapter... at least until Microsoft decided to revoke that driver as well, turning my notebook into a BRICK.

Oh, and if you want more (and truly EXCELLENT) fodder for your open letter, try this link...
http://www.cs.auckla...vista_cost.html

Or this version with the pictures...
http://www.cypherpun...peter/vista.pdf

A long read, but well worth it.

All some 'hax0r' has to do is PRETEND they've cracked something through a particular driver, and thousands, even millions of Vista machines will be disabled by Microsoft. Or (if Microsoft feels like punishing a hardware vendor like NVidia - which they DO, because of the XBOX SNAFU a few years back), they can just PRETEND there's a hack themselves and pull the rug out from under ANYONE they want to.

What will people do? Many will disable Microsoft's 'Automatic Update' to keep Microsoft from disabling their PCs. That means the MANY Vista security holes and exploits that are eventually found (NOT relating to playing a video for free) will ALSO have to go unpatched! But that won't be a problem. You'll almost certainly have to completely disconnect your PC from the internet in order to prevent Microsoft from revoking drivers, because they're certainly not going to ask permission when it comes to THEIR OWN security.

Your files are less important than THEIR files, after all, and YOUR investment in hardware is less important than THEIR investment in being able to rent you videos over the interweb.

[RNR19952]

You have hardware that has been revoked from M$?

BTW nice rant, you made a lot of valid point most people do not even think of less care about

[Evildave]

Thanks. Everyone tells me I rant, so I at least try to be good at it.

Most of them don't think or care about it because of sheer dumb ignorance. Most people still don't understand that the VERY worst thing you could do to a system is 'upgrade' your OS. People who upgrade from XP to Vista deserve 100% of the misery they get from it, just as someone who drills through his own hand with an auger bit deserves it. Look, you have a PC, it's working... so let's make BIG changes and have to go buy new software of all sorts because the new OS is not backwards compatible worth a damn, and appears to deliberately break other things.

If 'NVIdia' has been revoked in SP1 as mentioned by vlad, then I certainly do have revoked hardware. Let's see...

http://apcmag.com/7790/vistasp1needsnewhardware]
[Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta

Nope. Seems it's not really substantiated. SP1 comes with DirectX 10.1, which there won't be NVidia support for, so you'll be 'stuck' with DX 10.0 until 11 comes out, but the driver will otherwise work. That seems to be the extent of it. So false alarm on that end (for now...).

[lilxkid24]

Annoying thing is vista V
- lacks speed compared to xp
- decreases your fps in games
- doesn't allow kernel memory editing using cheat engine
- ie 7 is like 10x slower on viista than xp
- old software doesnt support it and games
- burning a cd or disk takes FOREVER using that windows thing
- file transfer is at ridicuoulous speds
- eats up a lot of my memory while doing nothing uses like 800mb when xp is like 340-400
- too much confirmation crap even though you can disable it from uac it still gives annoying popup saying not a good idea to disable uac
- nothing is really new in vista, it just gives you more junk that makes it look good, nothing significant only good is DX10
- longhorn kernel WAS NOT USED IN VISTA
- Just because the future is now doesnt mean its good, no point in using a crap os when you can get a better alternative
- VPN doesn?t work correctly, even though there are a few work arounds for this it is still not an easy process.
- Almost all the graphics are a resource hog
- No ?open with? when right clicking on a file.
- Search function sucks and not accurate
- Lack of drivers for older and newer hardware
- Older hardware does not run good at all
- Defrag runs automatically without asking you
- It is overpriced to BUY


- SP1 not that many significant changes.

Only thing i love about vista- dx10 other than that i don't like it at all and never plan to going back to vista so i do not like vista at all its a crap operating system that i wouldn't even use even if i got it free

[Expotanne]

I have a major problem with Vista Home Basic as Microsoft have managed to actually market an Operating System that doesn't even recognise their own products. I use a Multimedia Natural Keyboard at home with Intellitype Pro 6.1 software (which I had to download from their website as my own drivers were not good enough).

It then came up stating that there was a known compatability problem between Vista and the keyboard but what it spectactularly failed to do was provide a fix. I then tried to get hold of MS themselves via their 'customer technical support' only to be told that they don't do a free support for my keyboard and if I wanted to proceed with my query, they would charge me £46 plus VAT!

So I think what is missing is the capability within Vista itself to recognise and run cleanly and quietly old (and not so old - my keyboard is barely 2 years old) Microsoft products.

[Evildave]

I think what they're trying to tell you is this: "Go spend £55 on ANOTHER Microsoft (not Logitech or any of those other brands) Keyboard! One with a Vista sticker on it. And when you blindly upgrade to our next OS upgrade... that keyboard won't work either, and you can buy ANOTHER one... you dumb limey sheep!"
You see, their marketing WORKS.
Maybe someone should collect a garbage truck load of Microsoft branded junk (software and hardware) that doesn't work with vista and dump it in the middle of Microsoft's campus in Bellevue, WA. Key the disks, pull the cords out of keyboards and mice to tie around effigies of Bill Gates, that sort of thing so they don't get to reclaim them.
With cameras rolling from multiple perspectives, so it can be covered on the news.
Yeah, whoever does the actual dumping will probably get fined for dumping/littering/public nuisance, etc. and have to pick it up, but that's a small price to pay to embarrass a major corporation on national television.

[Evildave]

All in all, what Vista is missing is ELEGANCE.

Simplicity. That sort of thing.

Complaining about 'having to' run Vista is like driving a Hummer H2 around town to run minor errands and whining about your gas mileage and parking.

Many of you people are decrying Linux as a 'geek toy' actually run Linux already. Linux is EMBEDDED in many networking appliances, like wireless routers and broadband MODEMs (with routers built in), and all manner of small electronic devices, including cellular phones. The chances are pretty good that Linux is already running in your home and you don't even know it's there. Ironically, those of you who use a router with a 'firewall' to protect your Windows systems are probably using the one built into Linux to do it.

But that's sort of the point. The OS should be INVISIBLE, taken for granted. Just do it's job competently and not get in your way.

Something like the Asus EEEPC will never run Vista. Neither will Vista ever be used in something like the 'One Laptop Per Child' initiative (both ship with Linux). For one thing, Linux is free, so it cuts the cost of the machines made to run it quite a bit, since you're not paying tribute to Bill Gates. For another thing, these are made inexpensively and light-weight with low power parts. You want to put as little battery in to get the most hours possible of runtime. In the case of the OLPC XO, they even considered a hand-crank to charge the battery. It needs two watts to run it. Your Windows notebook PC needs closer to 40 watts. The 'latest' power-hungry hardware possible that Vista needs just to bring up a desktop aren't even a consideration.

As a backdoor consideration, much of the 'developing world' will be using Linux by default. While Microsoft tries to squeeze every penny out of you spendthrifts with Vista machines, Linux is gaining millions of new users. This will establish it as a Global Standard to supplant Microsoft based OSs, at least until they finally fold and adopt a Unix based kernel and slap their own desktop on top of 'X'. The thing is, you the end-user wouldn't even notice if Microsoft did switch to a Linux kernel and run Windows apps through one of the various emulation layers like 'WINE' that they spent some time and money fixing up. It would be no worse for application compatibility than 16->32 Windows or XP->Vista. Apple already did that some versions back, so if you're dreaming of switching to that skinny Apple notebook, consider Linux a bridge to that.

People who used to have the 68000 based Atari or Amiga computers in the late 80's still remember something: A graphical OS that was built into ROM. You turned on the PC, and THERE IT WAS. The GUI desktop was up and you were ready to go even before the monitor warmed up, and those machines had half a megabyte of RAM (i.e. take Vista's minimum requirement of 512MB and divide by 1024). They were FAST, too. Some of you younger kids never got to see that. This would be a nice improvement. A PC that ran the OS in ROM. One fat DMA transfer, jump to the start address and it's running.

If I get an 'all-in-one' PC like a notebook computer, when I press the power button, it should just be up and ready to go. No POST or hardware scan (other than USB/Bluetooth/etc. external buses). No boot time. Just click and here's your desktop. Sort of like resuming from 'standby', but without drawing any power to keep the RAM up. With any luck, advances in Flash technology will bring those 'instant on' days back, but a standard like 'Vista' would put that day off for years.

[anfy]

Wow, a lot of people really hate Vista....

I can see why, but I think most people who complain about Vista are running it on old machines. I am running Vista on my new laptop computer and I have very few complaints about the performance and resource usage -- because new machines HAVE the resources to use.

That's the thing though. So many people upgrade to Vista on their old machines and go "why does it run so slow?" Despite the (low) hardware requirements set by MS, I think that Vista had new hardware more in mind than old ones. A system running a Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM (NOT 1gb) can run Vista with no performance problems. In the rapidly advancing PC market where systems 3 years old can be considered obsolete (by some), it makes no sense to complain about how badly new software runs on old hardware. People who say "Vista uses 800MB of RAM while XP only uses 300" should think... XP was designed in an era when the standard memory on a new computer was 256MB, 512MB at most... but nowadays computers have a standard 1 to 3GB RAM! New features (whether you like them or not) added to an OS obviously need to take up more memory. If you want low system memory, why not run Windows 95? (my old windows 95 computer ran fine with 16MB of RAM)

On the topic of RAM, most people who post here don't realize that Vista uses superfetching to cache things from the HD into memory... while the OS might take 500MB of RAM, superfetching is taking up 300MB or more to "cache" what you might use... and if you run a program requiring the memory superfetch is using, it will clear out for the program instantly. As they say, "memory not used is gone to waste".

Having said that, I do agree that the base system does take up a lot of memory. Windows Vista takes up 800MB of RAM by itself (with superfetch), while Linux (Ubuntu 7.10) takes up ~200MB, OS X 10.4 takes up ~250MB, and OS X 10.5 takes up 300~350MB on startup. This brings me to the first thing that I think Vista needs to improve on.





- A modern system should be able to run comfortably with 1GB of memory.

Before I upgraded my memory to 2GB, my new computer ran ridiculously slowly... but as soon as I upgraded it, everything became so fast!

Secondly, the new disk defragmenter doesn't tell me anything. I liked the old disk defragmenter where it told me what was happening. I understand that to make things simpler an not so "in your face", the disk defrag was changed... but please at least allow the "advanced" view as an option?

Another thing I have problems with is startup and shutdown times. Way too often, my machine locks up during the logging off or shutting down stage for no apparent reason. This happens with XP too. I know some people have no problems with this, but some people do (in my case an in the case of 2 other new laptops my friends own). In comparison, a Mac shuts down almost instantly (after the apps close, which is another story).

Starting up is equally slow. Not the actual startup, but the fact that after you log in, a lot of programs (stupid OEM-ware) are still loading, making the computer almost unusable for a few minutes after logon. This should be improved.

Also, I think that incorporating 64BIT with 32BIT would be beneficial to the OS. 64BIT allows RAM more than 3GB, and a lot of performance and other improvements. Mac OS X does this nicely by incorporating both into their operating system without any compatibility problems (which 64bit windows does), and in that way it's powerful.

Lastly, something should be done about the registry. It slows down the computer, and often a lot of unused/missing/remaining/broken registries cause problems. I understand that it's impossible to just remove it out of windows, and that 3rd party software fixes it, but Windows should be able to do that itself, to make sure that a system running windows for 2 years will run just as "fresh" as one that was just reinstalled.



That's all I have to say (for now), thank you PC World for your efforts!

[Evildave]

I have a six month old Dell Vostro with 4GB of RAM with a Dual Core CPU and an NVidia GEForce 8600M cord, and it came with M$ Vista.

I hate Dell for putting Vista on this machine. The problem will soon be completely corrected. I haven't booted Vista natively in quite a while now, except to de-license things to put them in the VMware boot.

I do not agree that the OS should soak up all possible resources just because they happen to be there. That is the OPPOSITE of what the OS should do.

The OS should manage what is available as efficiently and predictably as possible, provide a stable API to those services, and provide a user interface to manage and control those resources and applications ... and nothing more.

If I have 4GB of RAM, I should have as close to 4GB of RAM available as possible. Not 2GB and change. In a few more years, if I have a terabyte of RAM, then when I boot the machine, I should see very nearly a terabyte free, not a few hundred gigabytes free as Windoze BloatZilla 2020 would clearly be. If I have 128MB, I should see quite a lot of that free, too. Just because there is memory available to consume does NOT mean the OS should consume it, or require some arbitrary minimum beyond what it needs to get running. Currently I'm looking at 538MB or ram and no swap used with tons of windows open and an excessively pretty desktop crammed full of buffered, real-time updated windows rendered onto 3D textures.

Linux developers still tend to remain minimalist, which means even your oldest PCs can be very usable with the newest Linux-based applications. Nothing keeps you from using ANY distribution of Linux on any machine besides hardware compatibility... but the older the P.O.S. machine you have is, the more likely all of the Linux drivers will work. Very different from Microsoft demanding ever more astronomical system requirements, and refusing to license older versions of Windows for newer machines, and dropping support for older hardware. If you're going to give grandpa that older notebook on your shelf that you can't find the system recovery disks for so he can check his email, put Linux on it. It will run better than it ever did, and he won't notice the difference other than the fact that it doesn't quit working after six months due to a heavy malware infestation, or Windows bit rot.

Microsoft just keeps indiscriminately shoveling useless crap into their general purpose computer OS and calling them 'integral parts' , and every new OS release there has been more of it.

Your computer should be able to boot WITHOUT Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player.

I bought that RAM for MY applications and their requirements, NOT so Microsoft can crap all over my machine with their own SPYWARE, use up cycles to encrypt my data buses for their paranoid delusions of DRM and make my PC into some form of demented movie streaming DVR. Not to mention the THREAT of driver revocation hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles.

If I wanted a media player to stream movies to my TV with, I'd order one of these silent, inexpensive appliances purpose built for the job for a tiny fraction of the cost of a PC, and it would work out of the box and connect to whatever server (even a NAS appliance) I had set up. The High-Definition digital image and sound are NOT blocked by anything like Vista's paranoid DRM. Vista could never fit in them. They're all Linux-based appliances, and probably very green compared to booting a desktop machine and cranking up your stereo volume to mask the noise of all of those fans and disk drives. Pretty much every cheap 'information appliance' you see that has an interface to configure it through a web browser is running some flavor of embedded Linux.
http://www.pixelmagi.../products/mediaplayers/hdmediabox.htm
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=438
http://www.mvix.net/780_OverView.html

With Linux, if you want a 3D spinning cube of desktops like 'Compiz' playing different videos on every facet, you can have that. If you only want a command line interface, you can have it that way, too, or anywhere between the extremes, or beyond them. Just pick your parts ala-carte, or find a distribution where someone already pieced them all together and tested them for you.