[Solatar]

So, I know after Vista not everyone on this forum will probably jump for the next version of Micro$oft's OS.

With that in mind, has anybody downloaded and played around with it?  It's actually a lot faster than I expected it to run, but I've never had Vista installed on this laptop to make a true comparison. Installation (I installed it with the DVD .iso from a virtual drive) went flawlessly, quite unexpectedly.

While it's not going to replace my Kubuntu partition anytime soon, it could replace my main Windows partition (which is running XP). Anybody else around here tried it?

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Well at least one person has and not with good results:  http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,60366.0.html

[Rick James]

To be honest I, like many others, am not very keen on purchasing the next iteration of Windows. For me, XP was the absolute peak of what Microsoft could accomplish. Sure, it was buggy at first, but subsequent patches solved that those issues and turned the operating system into a product that was thankfully free of the myriad of problems with Windows ME. Vista's unreasonable content-restriction features were a real turn-off for me, and in my mind installing such features for the sake of the protection of intellectual property--given how flawed our concept of IP is--is insufficiently demanding on the patience of end users and generates results which are, at best, unreliable, and at worst nonexistent.

On top of that, Vista didn't offer anything new. Sure, there was DirectX 10, but given how huge the compatibility issues have been for quite a lot of games even that bonus is dubious. It offered a shiny new interface, but for the non-geek userbase--I.E., regular people whose knowledge of computers is limited to typing and pointing and clicking--there is nothing. New. It's got a shiny new interface, but at the end of the day it feels like XP bogged down by antipiracy firmware and the stability of a two-legged dog on stilts.

I am not anticipating Windows 7 to be any better.

Sigh. It's Sh!t like this that makes me want to switch to a Linux distro and just run everything I have with Wine.

[Ghostavo]

I have tried it both on my laptop and on my desktop computer. I was actually surprised there were drivers available for my laptop's graphic's card, since ATI hasn't changed their policy of not releasing drivers for the Xx00 and X1x00 mobility series.

Apart from minor issues which can be explained with incompatible programs, I'm actually liking it. The new taskbard is a joy to use and the rest of the interface feels really easy and intuitive to use.

[BloodEagle]

http://xkcd.com/528/

[Fenrir]

Windows 7 is what Vista was supposed to be. And I didn't find Vista to be horrible like people make it seem anyway.

[Ransom]

The UI improvements are great. I love the new taskbar. I don't know whether I can justify the money for the upgrade so soon after Vista, but it's definitely a step forward. I'm sure people will be happy to find that UAC is adjustable now, too.

It offered a shiny new interface, but for the non-geek userbase--I.E., regular people whose knowledge of computers is limited to typing and pointing and clicking--there is nothing. New. It's got a shiny new interface, but at the end of the day it feels like XP bogged down by antipiracy firmware and the stability of a two-legged dog on stilts.

I've found Vista to be more stable and more secure than XP ever was. And the compatibility issues were massively overblown. I never had a problem with it. Vista certainly did offer new things, but unfortunately almost all of them were under the hood and that caused the majority of people to dismiss it as a prettier XP with more pop-ups.

I've got to agree with what Fenrir said above me - Windows 7 is effectively the UI half of the update that began with Vista. Which is ridiculous, but for the people who never bought Vista this will absolutely be a worthwhile upgrade.

[Bob-san]

I've been using it. They changed enough to really annoy me. Some of the new features are nice though, but not all of them. I'm a little surprised by transparency when full-screen.

[IceFire]

I've given up telling people how my experiences with Vista on three machines now have been overall great experiences.  I appreciate the new features under the hood more than most, I like the search capabilities, I like the graphical upgrades (why should my OS look like shiite when the game I was just playing has a far sharper UI?), I even like the added security.

I never ran into a content restriction issue with anything.  At all.  Ever.  I don't do everything so maybe I haven't pushed the limits of that sort of thing but for all of the fear that never really caused me any issues.  Vista has been much more solid (touch wood) than my previous experiences with XP SP2.  XP is a fine OS...it served me well...but I wanted to move up. Soon as I built a new machine it was Vista Home Premium and I haven't looked back.

Win 7 looks like a fine upgrade but I'm not going to rush out either.  What I am hoping for is the general public to go....ok ...Vista had issues but 7 looks good so lets go with that.  Also it allows both the hardware vendors and Microsoft themselves to not punch themselves in the face by offering Vista on a bare bones system that could only do XP adequately and couldn't handle Vista (which admittedly has higher requirements - there's a break even point on that).  So hopefully 7 gets a better reception...and I can stop walking into offices running old clunkers like Win 98 and Win 2000.  Win 2000 is fine if your a programmer....actually no...use Linux instead at that point.

[portej05]

I'd like to second IceFire's comment
I upgraded to Vista on the desktop when I got laptop with Vista preloaded (Dell).
The networking was much smoother than it was under XP.
I haven't hit a single problem with the content restriction stuff, and I do try to push limits sometimes
UAC can be annoying, but I like knowing when I'm about to run something that needs superuser privileges (and I'm a bit confused about why VPView always needs them) - you don't need superuser privileges to write into the registry (I've got a number of MFC applications I've written that write data in there, and I never get hit with UAC)
The under the hood changes to Vista also seemed to help things. Some applications actually ran slightly faster.
There're also some new commands in the prompt (e.g. ls, cat, grep)
Overall, I like it.

[Bobboau]

the only thing I found to be noticeably better in Vista over XP is how it handles networking.

[Fenrir]

From what I've seen, Vista got the same treatment that FireFox 3 got. Both had compatibility issues upon release and so some people ran back to the previous versions and swore in their wrath that they'd never upgrade. Then the problems were patched over time and the problems are largely solved. But good luck telling 'em that and not hearing the same thing said a year or two back.

[Solatar]

I was wary of Vista as I saw a lot of people around me have problems (and molasses computers) with it.  For me buying Windows 7 upon release wouldn't be that bad as I haven't bought an operating system since XP came out.

For those who sprung for Vista it's awful soon for them to ask them to spend more money to basically get what Vista should have been when they first released it.

[Mongoose]

All I can go on is my brother's experiences with Vista, since his new laptop came with Home Premium preloaded, and according to him, there have been all sorts of little..."quirks" he's had happen to him (and not in the good sense of the word).  Certain little tidbits randomly stop working and then work fine the next day, desktop icons disappear and reappear, the UI does little funny things...I don't think he hates it outright, but I'm sure he'd go back to XP in an instant given half the chance.  I used it for a bit myself, and lord help me if that UAC didn't drive me half-mad within minutes.  I don't really give a damn if it's a more secure setup, or if it represents more of a Unix paradigm about security...it's one more unnecessary step (and sometimes an additional one beyond that) in the way of completing tasks I'd be performing multiple times per day.  I'm not a drooling idiot; I don't need the OS to hand-hold me through whether or not I want to run a particular program.  I want to be able to click on something and make it happen without having to jump through hoops.  And while I'm aware that one can turn the function off, it seemed to me that doing so made that incessantly-annoying Windows Security icon pop up in the taskbar, which would utterly kill its usefulness of informing me when there's something I should actually be concerned about.

As for Windows 7...who knows.  I'm certainly encouraged by early reports about it, but I don't know that the machine I'm on could handle it comfortably even with the upgrades I have planned for it.  If I ever build some sort of uber-machine, maybe I'd consider dual-booting it with XP.

[CP5670]

I am still on XP on my main machine, mainly because there was never any compelling reason to switch. Vista works well enough from what I've seen, but so does XP. DirectX 10 was supposed to be the main draw from a gamer's point of view, but that has been quite a flop, and by the time I customize Vista to my liking, the interface, features and performance will be similar to what I currently get anyway, although I do like Aero's use of vsync.

64-bit support will be the main reason for me to upgrade at some point, but the 64-bit version of Vista has extra issues that aren't in the 32-bit one, and those are likely to persist in Windows 7.

There is also one reason for me not to switch. The Yamaha SYXG50 virtual midi driver I use probably will not work on Vista or 7, which means I would get distinctly lower quality music in a few old games that use midi tracks (notably Descent 2/D2X-XL).

[ssmit132]

As I mentioned in the "Whatever happens..." thread, the only reason I was unhappy with Vista to start with was because it decreased my performance. Other than that, I've had little trouble with it. Well, I did disable UAC because it was getting on my nerves at the time, (maybe I should turn it back on) and it's annoying that some old games can't run on it.

I wonder what the official name of Windows 7 will be. Brings up a nice quote from Computer Stupidities, though.

Except you have Windows version 7 there, eh? I only have Windows version 6.

[Fenrir]

Windows 7 IS the official name for it...

[Commander Zane]

I like how people complain about over-security issues with Vista. Turn the damn option off. Problem solved.

[Ford Prefect]

I've been using Vista x64 for a couple of weeks now and I have no complaints so far. Although, Word 2007 is really confusing. I'm glad it was just a trial version bundled with the laptop 'cause I had to get rid of it and put 2003 on.

[portej05]

Word 2007 is really confusing. I'm glad it was just a trial version bundled with the laptop 'cause I had to get rid of it and put 2003 on.

yep, wanted to SAVE a document on someone elses computer... had to figure out where the save button was first... took a minute or two.