TEN good reasons to upgrade to Windows VISTA right now

[invader]

Every time I look in this forum, I see a message from someone demanding that
they be supplied with ten good reasons for upgrading to windows vista.

I'm tired to having to read through those messages so I, having used windows
vista for the past two weeks, have written up a list of the top ten reasons
to upgrade. Hopefully this will put an end to this issue once and for all.

The top 10 reasons to upgrade to windows vista:

1) Your computer is too fast and you need to slow it down.

2) The 2-pixel border around your windows hides too much of your desktop. If
only you could see through those 2 pixels, you could get so much more work
done.

3) You're horribly worried that someone might put a Blu-Ray disc in your PC
and premium content would leak out of your computer unencrypted.

4) You have 10 hours of free time and don't know how to allocate it.

5) You suffer from narcolepsy. If only your computer would, every so often
without warning, dim the screen and pop up a bright "allow or deny" dialog
box to wake you up.

6) Your have too much software installed on your PC and wish half of it would
immediately stop working, so you would have less distractions.

7) Windows Activation was so fun with XP that you want to repeat the
experience, plus calling technical support people in foreign countries every
time you make a simple upgrade is really fun!

8) $400 for a desktop background that looks like a waterfall is quite
reasonable.

9) Your wife tells you that she won't let you buy that $350 video card unless
you can prove it's necessary for serious non-game applications like web
browsing and email.

10) Dammit, I'm sorry. There just aren't ten good reasons to upgrade to
windows Vista. I tried hard. I really did.

 

[nick]

I congratulate you! Fantastic post!

I wish I would see more people like this around....

sigh.....

 

[CanaKiwi]

Maybe the 2 of you should hook up and take it off-list.

wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more!

I congratulate you! Fantastic post!

I wish I would see more people like this around....

sigh.....

 

[Larry Maturo]

You realize some people have really good luck using Vista. I have it
installed
on my laptop at home and love it. I did do a fresh install, as has been
recommended in this group many, many times, so 6 is mostly irrevalent to
anyone wanting to use Vista, and remain sane. I also used the Vista Upgrade
advisor to make sure there were drivers available for my hardware, and when
some things didn't have drivers, I waited for Sony to release them before
installing
Vista. You also have to realize that a lot of old software won't work on
Vista. I
knew this going in, having researched it first, and made sure there wasn't
anything I
just had to have that wasn't supported under Vista. Is Vista horrible? No
Does
it upgrade as easily as previous MS OS's? No.

-- Larry Maturo

 

[Geta Klew]

Hmm, I thought there was only one good reason, ever, to upgrade to a newer
version of anything - to be more productive. Am I the only person in here
who actually uses their computer for work?

Vista works great for me. It took a while to get to that point. But it was
definitely worth it. Most the people in here will be using Vista, or the
next release of it, probably by 2008 or maybe 2009. They'll look back at the
way we did things from Windows 3 to XP and wonder what in the world we were
thinking. But it'll take most people that long to come to that realization.

 

[Richard]

The difference here Larry is that you went about things the right way, ran
the upgrade advisor, did some research got all the drivers you needed then
did a successful install which works well.
Rather than jumping in feet first & posting "Vista sucks" when it all goes
the way of the pear.

 

[Adam Albright]

Hmm, I thought there was only one good reason, ever, to upgrade to a newer
version of anything - to be more productive. Am I the only person in here
who actually uses their computer for work?

No, you're not the only one using Vista for work and duh... that's the
reason I've been bitching. Vista has interferred with, outright
prevented, stalled, slowed down and annoyed to the extend I've got
little work done the first couple days using Vista, mostly due to the
moronic UAC nightmare. By the way, I use my computer mostly to do one
of the most demanding tasks anyone can ask of any PC, professional
grade video editing. I use full blown powerful robost applications to
do that, not the mickey mouse type included applets that comes with
some versions of Windows.

Vista works great for me.

Good, glad to hear it. That does not mean it works "good" for
everybody, which is afterall what this "support" newsgroup is suppose
to be about. Not blindly praising Vista, rather finding solutions to
problems people are having and there seems to be plenty.

 

[Conor]

I congratulate you! Fantastic post!

Loonix losers...takes very little to please little minds..

 

[Conor]

10) Dammit, I'm sorry. There just aren't ten good reasons to upgrade to
windows Vista. I tried hard. I really did.

Another Loonix loser who doesn't follow his own advice.

 

[invader]

10) Dammit, I'm sorry. There just aren't ten good reasons to upgrade to

Another Loonix loser who doesn't follow his own advice.

Until someone provides me with the time machine, I can't go back in time and
decide not to upgrade to Vista.

... and what do you have against Linux? Each operating system has its niche
and will be used accordingly. Furthermore, I don't believe I've mentioned or
endorsed Linux in any post in this forum. Is everyone who doesn't like Vista
a "Loonix Loser" ????

 

[invader]

The difference here Larry is that you went about things the right way, ran

the upgrade advisor, did some research got all the drivers you needed then
did a successful install which works well.

I did all that too. Ran the upgrade advisor. Uninstalled the software Vista
was incompatible with. Provided it with even more disk space than it said it
required. Made sure all hardware was compatible. I even checked ahead of time
to make sure I was able to do an in-place upgrade.

However, that still doesn't make aero any more useful, doesn't make vista run
as fast as XP, doesn't make the existing software work correctly, doesn't
stop UAC from popping up all the time, ...

 

[Geta Klew]

Hmm, I don't get any UAC prompts when I edit video. I only get them when I
install an app or click a shelded Control Panel option. Which is probably
less than once a day. That one extra mouse click doesn't bother me at all.
But hey, to each his own.

Vista certainly isn't for everyone. My kids have been bugging me for it for
months. But they're going to get dual-boot machines, like it or not.

 

[invader]

No, you're not the only one using Vista for work and duh... that's the

reason I've been bitching. Vista has interferred with, outright
prevented, stalled, slowed down and annoyed to the extend I've got
little work done the first couple days using Vista, mostly due to the

I also use Vista for work. I estimate that I've lost 10-20 hours upgrading
from XP to Vista and dealing with the issues. That's fine with me, as I
budgeted to spend those hours working with Vista. However, I did count on
getting some tangible benefit out of upgrading. As far as I can tell the
computer is slower, the popups are annoying, and the aero interface is a
minor facelift.

And no, I'm not simply Microsoft-bashing. I like XP. I've used every version
of Windows from 3.1, and each version has offered significant benefits. Vista
is the first version where it is difficult to find any significant
improvement from the previous release. I don't know what these Microsoft
programmers have been doing for the past 5 years, but whatever it was, it
wasn't working on the operating system.

Does UAC make windows more secure? Maybe. It seems to put all of the
responsbility on the user to make a decision. When a UAC window pops up, it's
like the old "Abort, Retry, Ignore?" prompt -- you have no idea what the hell
to say to it, so you just click something and see what happens. Take a case
in point Firefox. I'm happily browsing and then UAC pops up with "a process
called update wants to run. Allow or deny?" How the hell should I know? I
took a guess and assumed it was Firefox, which turned out to be correct.

I think UAC will just start annoying users to death to the point they always
click "allow" to make the damn thing go away.... and then what security do we
get out of that?

 

[invader]

Hmm, I don't get any UAC prompts when I edit video. I only get them when I

install an app or click a shelded Control Panel option. Which is probably
less than once a day. That one extra mouse click doesn't bother me at all.
But hey, to each his own.

It probably depends on the software. Everytime I load up Macromedia
Dreamweaver I get a UAC popup, which is of the usual "doesn't tell me enough
information to make a decision" variety. As the legacy software gets upgraded
the problems should go away.

I suspect much of it comes from software that accesses registry entries that
Vista thinks its not supposed to (such as file associations which were a mess
in XP).

 

[CanaKiwi]

Just as well you tested it in a lab environment before upgrading so you
could make an educated and INFORMED decision that it was the right thing to
do for you.

 

[Adam Albright]

Hmm, I don't get any UAC prompts when I edit video. I only get them when I
install an app or click a shelded Control Panel option. Which is probably
less than once a day. That one extra mouse click doesn't bother me at all.
But hey, to each his own.

Leave it to amateuers to never understand the problem. You honestly
think I would go on and on complaining about one more mouse click?

With UAC on, it sometimes blocks access to files and folders that were
created long ago in XP by one application or another. This has at
times caused complex "special ownership" permission issues which are
difficut to deal with. This kind of issue shouldn't be a problem, but
it is, because oh my God... Vista wasn't really tested by people that
do complex tasks! It was played with mostly by Microsoft employees and
apologists, many wishing to become or or already MVPs.

Because Vista is too dumb to have transferred ownership logically,
when it, not me UPDATED my system doing a upgrade it, not me created a
host of issues that weren't there under XP.

You do know what a upgrade is don't ya? When you have an extensive
system, meaning nearly a million files in my case, you don't do a
clean install, that would be looney. Upgrading means Windows
understands what it is carrying over. Or it is suppose to known. Guess
not.

I have an idea for Microsoft. Create another newsgroup for
PROFESSIONAL users of Windows. MVP's and the kiddies can have this one
to play in and give the same cut and paste answers over and over to
works towards receiving browny points.

 

[Adam Albright]

I think UAC will just start annoying users to death to the point they always
click "allow" to make the damn thing go away.... and then what security do we
get out of that?

I think that was the fear and is rapidly becoming the reality. If I
turn UAC on, I tend to just click allow without thinking about it
since I already know what UAC is nagging about.

 

[Adam Albright]

It probably depends on the software. Everytime I load up Macromedia
Dreamweaver I get a UAC popup, which is of the usual "doesn't tell me enough
information to make a decision" variety. As the legacy software gets upgraded
the problems should go away.

I suspect much of it comes from software that accesses registry entries that
Vista thinks its not supposed to (such as file associations which were a mess
in XP).

Yep, probably. What bugs me is this kind of issue:

Over the years I've created all kinds of "projects in limbo" which
just means I may have started, but not yet finished some project or
there's a bit of footage I may use again and stuff like that or I
could have tried a new application to see if it does a better job than
what I'm using now. Going foward, in time this problem should resolve
slowly. Meanwhile I have thouands of such folders Vista for sure will
nag about.

Now watch how irritating UAC can be:

If I've created a series of files and processed them to burn on a DVD
that could have happened in any number of different applications I
have. Just off the top of my head maybe 15 different ones I use
depending on what I'm trying to do. At some point, typically weeks
later I may burn a DVD, then test it, if it plays ok, fine I'm done
with the source files. Under XP, I could simply delete the files then
folder these were in and be done with it in a second or two.

Not any more in Vista.

If I try to delete a file created by one of these applicatons it first
pops up a nag screen and tells me I need permission. I click ok, then
another screen pops up saying I don't have permission to delete the
folder. I go to the file's properties, then the idiotic Security tab
and see anywhere from 4 to 6 owners listed. I created NONE of them of
course.

Time after time, 'me' as a user with full administrative rights has
been given only read and execute rights by Vista. There is a special
user that turns out to be the application I used to either create or
do something on the file. I no longer remember which of many of my
applications I may have used, often several, Vista don't say. It just
nags I don't have permission to trash the file.

So next I click on edit, then this special user, then attempt to
elevate it to have full rights so I can just drag the damn file to the
recycle bin on just delete it.

Sometimes I can give it full rights, other times the permissions are
grayed out and stay that way no matter what I do. Then the only way I
can delete the file is first stop what I'm doing, which usually means
quitting several applications, some in the middle of doing something,
then turn off UAC, then shut down, then reboot with UAC off, then find
the file again, then finally delete it. If I didn't have enough sense
to also delete the other typically 15-20 files also in this folder I
no longer need while UAC was off, I would have to repeat this looney
dance over and over that many times and that's just to delete ONE damn
folder and that's one type of problem I'm running into.

If Microsoft thinks this is progress or "helping" me I can suggest
several highly recommended shrinks in the Redmond Washington area.
I say again Microsoft does NOT fully test Windows under real world
situations. This is proof.

 

[Lang Murphy]

Simple, then... go back to XP and cease sharing your opinions about Vista
here. Opinions matter little. Example: my opinion is that Vista works fine
for me. No problems. Does my opinion matter to you? No... does your opinion
matter to me? No...

Lang

 

[Fred Morrison]

Great list! Would you please consider doing a similar list for Office 2007 in the
microsoft.office.misc newsgroup? I can think of one thing to put on that list:

You have too much room on your screen and want a pretty ribbon to sit at the top of the screen
taking up two inches of space across the entire screen width.