Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit (7-years later)

[flibberdipper]

So I've been using Windows Vista Home Premium x64 for a while now, and I figure it's time to voice my opinion on it.

 

PERFORMANCE

Once my computer is done booting up, it's actually pretty fast, seemingly faster than what Windows 7 or 8 were on it. It doesn't boot nearly as fast as Windows 8, but it does edge out Windows 7 by a few seconds. It logs in pretty fast, but it does seem to take a while to get all of my startup programs going.

 

RAM USAGE

RAM usage is surprisingly good. This is after it's been booted up for some time, so it has had some time to soak up more RAM. After boot it's usually around 40% on RAM and 30% or so on Swap.

 

GAMING

I can't really speak about this, since my GPU is so damn weak, but from playing some games on low settings it does seem to work pretty well, and at least I can play Halo 2 on it without having to do any tweaks.

 

RELIABILITY

This thing is surprisingly stable. The only thing that has caused it to bluescreen is the ASRock OC Tuner utility. But it seems to do that on every operating system I have tried. It ran for a week or two folding and it never had any issues.

 

OVERALL

Overall, I am very happy with Windows Vista, now that they have all of the patches and updates out for it, and it doesn't suck any more. Even after I get a new graphics card, I will probably keep Vista installed, since it runs GREAT on my system. Everything I want to do works, I don't have to use Windows 7 drivers on another OS (like I had to do with Windows 8). And I can play Halo 2 without having to do any tweaks. Just install and go. The only thing that I'm sad about is that my Windows Index Score went down, so I guess now your FX-6300's are safe (since in Windows 7 I was getting close to the same score...) and it dropped about .3 to .5.

 

[othertomperson]

My old laptop originally had Vista on it. I got it with a free upgrade to 7 once it came out and installed it after four months of using Vista. The first thing I noticed was a general performance increase. I didn't do any benchmarking with Vista or 7 so I couldn't tell you objectively how much. And like I said, that's four years ago now, so maybe it's got better. I didn't think it was as bad as people were making it out to be though.

[Akolyte]

I've never used vista.   Never plan to, but I'm glad you like it. When vista was in store, my family had an old single core 1GB of memory desktop.  Those were horrible days, waiting minutes for internet explorer to open and games lagging really badly. 

[flibberdipper]

My old laptop originally had Vista on it. I got it with a free upgrade to 7 once it came out and installed it after four months of using Vista. The first thing I noticed was a general performance increase. I didn't do any benchmarking with Vista or 7 so I couldn't tell you objectively how much. And like I said, that's four years ago now, so maybe it's got better. I didn't think it was as bad as people were making it out to be though.

 

I've never used vista.   Never plan to, but I'm glad you like it. When vista was in store, my family had an old single core 1GB of memory desktop.  Those were horrible days, waiting minutes for internet explorer to open and games lagging really badly. 

It's honestly not that bad now guys. I had also used it for 3 months on my netbook (Intel Atom N270 and 1GB of RAM) and it was even pretty fast on it.

 

 

I've always had the image that Vista was absolute crap, but I have never actually used it to confirm... Great that it's still working for you.

IMO, it's getting closer to being as good as Windows 7.

[Tam3n]

I've always had the image that Vista was absolute crap, but I have never actually used it to confirm... Great that it's still working for you.

[Erik4boss]

I've always had the image that Vista was absolute crap, but I have never actually used it to confirm... Great that it's still working for you.

It lacks homegroups and stuff like that is in Win7. But I was not bothered by Vista when I last used it (1.5 years ago)

[qwertywarrior]

i reported OP for disturbing content

[aeterna789]

I'm also using Vista 64bit Professional Edition and I never had any problems with it. Vista is stable and and very rekiable now that it has been patched and updated.

[Dredgy]

Vista seemed a reasonably good OS to me. XP had stagnated and it was time for something new. It also pioneered the best feature of Windows 7 and 8  - the start menu search. I couldn't live without that now.

 

Day to day use seemed fine for me. I was running on a Core 2 Duo and 2GB of RAM and never had any performance issues but I ran ME without a hitch too, so I may just be lucky. Whatever else you say  about Vista - it was a necessary step.

[flibberdipper]

It lacks homegroups and stuff like that is in Win7. But I was not bothered by Vista when I last used it (1.5 years ago)

That's my only complaint about in, other than Aero when you maximize a window.

 

i reported OP for disturbing content

lol

 

I'm also using Vista 64bit Professional Edition and I never had any problems with it. Vista is stable and and very rekiable now that it has been patched and updated.

I agree 100%.

 

Vista seemed a reasonably good OS to me. XP had stagnated and it was time for something new. It also pioneered the best feature of Windows 7 and 8  - the start menu search. I couldn't live without that now.

 

Day to day use seemed fine for me. I was running on a Core 2 Duo and 2GB of RAM and never had any performance issues but I ran ME without a hitch too, so I may just be lucky. Whatever else you say  about Vista - it was a necessary step.

I also got lucky with Millennium. Ran well until my hard drive started to die and I had to reinstall Windows every time I booted it up.

[papeles]

OP has the "i didn't try better so this is ok" syndrome. W7 and even 8 will give you more performance in most of the computers you put it on.

[nokturrduk84]

I always liked Vista. I miss it so much, I reinstalled my Windows & went from 7 to Vista Ultimate, but sadly my network card drivers didn't support Vista OS, so I had to go back to 7. People where always complaining about Vista back in old days, but it was caused by resources in needed. BUT Vista was a huge step from XP, which was not such resource hog, but it was terrible (bad security, viruses, ugly... You had to reinstall it every month or two, cause it was very vulnerable to the viruses) & after new patches of Vista I believe it must be very reliable & good OS.

[flibberdipper]

OP has the "i didn't try better so this is ok" syndrome. W7 and even 8 will give you more performance in most of the computers you put it on.

I used Windows 8.1 Pro for a month, and Windows 7 Professional for a year and a half. I loved both, but my rig doesn't love them back.

 

I always liked Vista. I miss it so much, I reinstalled my Windows & went from 7 to Vista Ultimate, but sadly my network card drivers didn't support Vista OS, so I had to go back to 7. People where always complaining about Vista back in old days, but it was caused by resources in needed. BUT Vista was a huge step from XP, which was not such resource hog, but it was terrible (bad security, viruses, ugly... You had to reinstall it every month or two, cause it was very vulnerable to the viruses) & after new patches of Vista I believe it must be very reliable & good OS.

It's been on for 2 weeks solid, no problem (other than ASRock's crappy OC panel making it bluescreen, but it happens all the time). I like Vista.

[papeles]

I used Windows 8.1 Pro for a month, and Windows 7 Professional for a year and a half. I loved both, but my rig doesn't love them back.

Really? Don't get me wrong but i find that hard to believe.

[flibberdipper]

Really? Don't get me wrong but i find that hard to believe.

It's true, oddly enough. Vista runs the fastest, and it seems to be the most stable.

[Gilbernata]

I loved vista until the day it crashed, wouldn't boot, and became completely unusable.

[flibberdipper]

I loved vista until the day it crashed, wouldn't boot, and became completely unusable.

On my last Vista install I got a virus that tried to open everything in Adobe Reader.

[Superarragon]

I miss Vista... It came pre-installed with my old computer, and the performance went down a lot after my dad put Win7 on it...

[Altecice]

Vista was fixed after SP2.... its a decent (no so little) OS now. when you turn off the bloatware its even better.

[atrash]

I've used Vista Home Premium on a C2D laptop before for 4 years until the laptop went dead. Bought the OS on the launching day here somewhere early 2007 iinm. My only bad memories with it was went the OS just won't update. I emailed Microsoft and this very patient guy rang me somewhere from Singapore and we spend the whole day on the phone trying to fix it. Other than that well known memory hog problem (I upgraded the ram to 2GB which cost me a bomb that time), the OS ran just fine for me.  

[flibberdipper]

I miss Vista... It came pre-installed with my old computer, and the performance went down a lot after my dad put Win7 on it...

My netbook came with XP, and Vista was a little faster, other than YouTube, 720p video, and games.

 

Vista was fixed after SP2.... its a decent (no so little) OS now. when you turn off the bloatware its even better.

It works great now. But people will not give it a chance since it sucked when it was new.

[Altecice]

My netbook came with XP, and Vista was a little faster, other than YouTube, 720p video, and games.

 

It works great now. But people will not give it a chance since it sucked when it was new.

 

Sounds like Windows 8 >8.1 all over again

[flibberdipper]

Sounds like Windows 8 >8.1 all over again

Yup.

[EricX2]

There are times when I work on friends computers that are Vista and it's so hard because I know that computers that came out when Vista was around are usually not that great. Everybody I knew who had it had a horrible system. Mostly single core with 1gb of RAM or less, seemingly very few people ever updated to either SP1 or SP2 which fixed almost all of the original issues. When I used it with my Core 2 Quad q6600 and it ran Vista awesome.

 

One thing about using Vista now is that it's so much like a hodgepodge of Windows 7 and Windows XP... the start menu is kind of like 7 but there is no windows snap, the taskbar is like XP with a separate quicklaunch bar instead of being able to pin... I love pinning.

[Simmytu]

I've always loved the overall visual look of Vista, more then 7 to be honest. It felt more visual appealing compared to 7's "ironed", if that's a word to describe flat 2D'ish design compared to Vista's 3D look with shadows and such, especially with the taskbar and start button. 

I found it weird that my aunt's Packard Bell PC, which had much more powerful hardware a Pentium 5200, 4GB RAM and GT120 compared to our Pentium 2200, 3GB RAM and low end GT8xxx card to be exact.

It just couldn't run Vista 64bit properly. It crashed and blue screened a lot of times. Now I know that the PC is just a pile of crap, the hardware is failing one by one cough..OEM's coughh.... 

 

Anyway, I still liked Vista on "stable" systems and great that you did test and run the OS even after 7 years after it first launched.