My Beef With Windows Vista After 6 Months Of Using The Operating System

Microsoft Windows Vista logo, reviewBack in late August of last year I purchased an Acer Aspire 3680 – 2682 laptop from Walmart in southern California which came with Windows Vista Home. You can read up on the specifications here. The only reason why I left the Windows Vista operating system on it was because I didn’t want to hunt down and install of all the device drivers over again, if I had replaced it with Windows XP.

My first beef is that Windows Vista will not work efficiently with a PC or laptop with RAM memory of less than 1 Gigabyte (GB). The Acer Aspire 3680 – 2682 I purchased came with 512 MB and I can safely say that before I upgraded the RAM memory it ran sometimes unbearably slow. After I upgraded the RAM memory with an additional 1 Gigabyte (GB) , using a Crucial PC5300 notebook memory module, it is now running much faster.

Windows XP did not have such a problem. I recall using laptops / notebooks with Windows XP installed on them with 512 MB of RAM and similar 1.5 GHz Intel CPU and it ran just fine, no slow downs. It would seem that Windows Vista is a fat pig here, I mean fat in the sense that it likes to use up a lot of resources like memory. This is probably due to in-efficient Microsoft coding which takes many service packs and years to optimize after release. That is why Windows XP after many years and service packs is now a solid product, and now Microsoft have to ruin the party by introducing Microsoft Windows Vista.

I read in a past Business 2.0 article that this is all business as usual between Microsoft and PC makers like DELL, Hewlett Packard which is to drive new sales of hardware. It is in the end of course a collaboration between these tech giants to make more money from the consumers. You introduce a new operating system like Windows Vista which requires more powerful hardware (minimum requirement: 1.9 GHz Dual Core, 1GB Ram), which then in turns drives sales of new personal computers and parts from hardware makers.

Now going back to my beef with Microsoft Windows Vista. Like I mentioned, I added 1 Gigabyte to my laptop which now brings the total RAM memory to 1.5 GB and the laptop runs quite fast now…..so what is my beef?

Well for starters

1. Windows Vista seems to ask or prompt the user for every little damn thing. This happens to be a big peeve for a lot of people I talk to about Windows Vista. Like you click an icon to open a program like Spybot Search and Destroy and Windows Vista prompts you and ask……uhm “Are you sure you want to start this program? Click OK or Cancel.” Well ya, of course ya I wanted to start the program that is why I clicked on the icon. Windows Vista seems to prompt users a lot and it is just annoying.

2. Programs that use to work on Windows XP now does not work properly on Windows Vista. So far for backward compatibility. This means that, I have to now find and purchase a newer versions of certain software that I use to use on Windows XP. O.K more money for software makers.

3. Sometimes, Windows Vista would freeze for like 30 seconds, while it does something in the background for no reason. This one is very strange and I know that it doesn’t have anything to do with my hardware. Sometimes, laptops or notebooks would freeze due to over heating, but I have a Targus laptop cooler so that can’t be the reason. To date this is still unexplainable.

4. I’ve save the best for last. Windows Vista would restart by laptop without prompting me to install updates. This has happened to me at least three times so far. Once I go to get a cup of coffee or step away from the laptop and when I get back Windows Vista is sitting pretty there at the login screen. The other time it happened right in front of my eyes, a dialog box popped up that said Vista downloaded some update and is installing it, and proceeded to do its thing and restarted.

It is projected by computer industry analyst that Microsoft will sell 500 million copies of Windows Vista by 2010. However, based on a lot of people I talk to and from other post that I have read on blogs online, it would seem that Windows Vista is not scoring high marks in user experience, so Microsoft has it work cut out for them.

This could possibly explain why Apple is now experiencing more Apple computer sales, because of people flocking away from Windows.

Well, those are my beefs with Windows Vista, if you have any just feel free to post some comments.

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One Response to “My Beef With Windows Vista After 6 Months Of Using The Operating System”

  1. [...] Today Microsoft has Windows Vista, and so far I have not heard a lot of good things about it in terms of user experience from people. Many people whom I have talked to really do not like it, and this includes me, you can read about my rants about it here. [...]