Is Windows Vista the best Windows Microsoft ever made?

[Delicieuxz]

Windows Vista was the last Microsoft OS designed with power-users in mind, and I think that it is the best OS Microsoft has made to-date. And I think that looking at the system's design, free of its release challenges, shows that off clearly.

The criticisms of Vista at its launch were poor performance for budget hardware, and incompatibility. Windows 7 didn't perform any better when it released, but 2 years had passed, and people had already gotten over the shock that they needed to upgrade their 3+ year old machines thanks to Vista, and Windows 7 thus performed better relative to its release market than Vista did relative to its release market.

That said, latest-version Windows Vista (SP2) is reportedly better performing than latest-version Windows 7 (SP1), and Windows Vista also boots up faster than Windows 7. So, while Vista is better-performing than Windows 7, Windows 7's later release environment enabled a better performance for the average machine that it was installed to.

And regarding compatibility issue on Vista's release, that's just the nature of a big kernel change between the systems of Windows XP -> Vista. Windows 7 was basically a reskinned Vista, with features removed, and some streamlined, so drivers for the Windows Vista / 7 system design were already prevalent at the time of Windows 7's release:

http://www.techhive.com/article/153624/ ... under.html 


Here's a list of some of the things that Windows Vista does better than Windows 7:

-- Personalization - for some reason personalization options were reduced in Windows 7. And there's no option to use video files as animated desktop backgrounds in Windows 7.
-- Start menu functionality - it's not as configurable in Windows 7, and the option the use the "classic" start menu is removed in 7 (although I probably wouldn't use it).
-- Search - there's less search configuration in Windows 7, can't index across networks in Windows 7, can't save pre-defined search terms, can't search for file names only (without a typed command).
-- Taskbar - In Windows 7, quick launch is removed, the number of combined windows in a group on the taskbar is no longer displayed, there's no option to turn off taskbar preview, and lots of other functionality and configuration is removed.
-- (I think) the Visual design is a lot nicer in Vista.
-- lots of things changed in Windows 7 regarding Windows Explorer functionality.

-- Windows Vista has faster boot up times according to a benchmark using SP2 for Vista and SP1 for 7.

-- better performance overall in Vista with SP2 than 7 with SP1, I've seen reported from multiple sources.

And here's a complete listing of design changes between Windows Vista and Windows 7:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_f ... _Windows_71
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_72


For me, Windows 7 brought nothing new that I make use of, but it took away many things that I had used in Vista, and on earlier Windows versions, and which I still would use if those features were present in Windows 7 and later versions.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 are both solid OSes, with Vista having slightly better performance than Windows 7. Windows 7 really is just a re-skinned Vista, that is heavily stream-lined, having a bunch of features and lots of configurability removed, while also adding some new features (none of which I've used).


I think that Windows Vista truly is the best Windows OS Microsoft has produced to-date, and that if not for its circumstantial challenging release-environment conditions, Vista would have been received very favourably. And, conversely, If Windows 7 had released right after XP, rather than Vista, the consumer criticisms would have been the exact same - low performance on dated XP machine hardware, and device incompatibility due to there not being a prevalence of drivers available for the new OS architecture, which Vista and 7 share.

[ClownFace1511]

Vista 4 the win, lol jks 7 ultimate master race.

[Aniallation]

Honestly, it's still the best looking.

[Kherm]

It's the best looking OS to date IMO. 

[LancerBG]

Maybe time has been kind to vista but I dont ever remember having any issues at all with it. 

[rtpb5642]

Windows 7 is way better in terms of performance and reliability but windows vista looks better

[rtpb5642]

Maybe time has been kind to vista but I dont ever remember having any issues at all with it. 

I had nightmares with vista on both my old laptop and desktop. Utter nightmares.

[Dabombinable]

Considering how hard it is on system resources compared to Windows 7......no (upgrading a Compaq CQ60 from Vista to 7 made a massive difference).

[Syntaxvgm]

Vista was the base 7 was the proper good OS. Everything made for vista works 7 and on driver wise too, so by the time 7 came out most hardware was actually ready. 

[LancerBG]

Considering how hard it is on system resources compared to Windows 7......no (upgrading a Compaq CQ60 from Vista to 7 made a massive difference).

 

Actually yeah now that you mention it I do remember people bitching about how hungry it was however those were people with weak rigs. Those were my MMORGP days and I remember those conversations. it was just clear who had the issues and they were the ones running shit on lower settings. As far as bugs and things like that I dont recall every bitching about it with VIsta. 

[Delicieuxz]

Windows 7 is way better in terms of performance and reliability but windows vista looks better

 

 

I had nightmares with vista on both my old laptop and desktop. Utter nightmares.

 

 

I understand that some people had issues with it, but I also never had technical issues with it, and the P4 2.4Ghz / 4GB RAM / GTX 260 PC I ran it on handled it without sweating, so I never experienced any performance issues, either.

 

Windows 7 doesn't have any edge performance-wise on Vista, according to all things that I've read. Both should run faster than Windows XP. I'm interested in reinstalling Vista on my PC to play around with it, and see for myself.

[Dabombinable]

Actually yeah now that you mention it I do remember people bitching about how hungry it was however those were people with weak rigs. Those were my MMORGP days and I remember those conversations. it was just clear who had the issues and they were the ones running shit on lower settings. As far as bugs and things like that I dont recall every bitching about it with VIsta. 

All I can say is. People who ran 32bit versions of Vista really got the worst end of the stick. Since it tried to cache as much to RAM as possible you quickly ran low or out of it. And yes, people never really bitched about bugs because Vista never really had any major ones. Unlike Windows 7 which has them to this day. (You know what? I'm going to try vista on this computer with its QX 6850, 6GB RAM and GTX 650ti 2GB).

[Dabombinable]

I understand that some people had issues with it, but I also never had technical issues with it, and the P4 2.4Ghz / 4GB RAM / GTX 260 PC I ran it on handled it without sweating, so I never experienced any performance issues, either.

 

Windows 7 doesn't have any edge performance-wise on Vista, according to all things that I've read. Both should run faster than Windows XP. I'm interested in reinstalling Vista on my PC to play around with it, and see for myself.

4GB of RAM is the actual minimum needed for Vista to run smoothly with minimal problems-the amount of RAM used by retarded manufacturers (I'm looking at you specifically Dell) is why Vista got such a bad name. (Funnily enough, it runs better than Windows 7 on my Tecra M5-which is a 32bit only laptop due to the retarded bios gating off 768MB of RAM even with a 64bit OS).

[linuxfan66]

4GB of RAM is the actual minimum needed for Vista to run smoothly with minimal problems-the amount of RAM used by retarded manufacturers (I'm looking at you specifically Dell) is why Vista got such a bad name. (Funnily enough, it runs better than Windows 7 on my Tecra M5-which is a 32bit only laptop due to the retarded bios gating off 768MB of RAM even with a 64bit OS).

i have a neighbor still running vista on a decent specced machine and yeah it doesnt feel that bad to use still.

[Dabombinable]

i have a neighbor still running vista on a decent specced machine and yeah it doesnt feel that bad to use still.

As I said, RAM is the main problem with it. Or more specifically how much you have.

 

 

Also, I'll be going offline for a while once I finish downloading this copy of Vista (I've miraculously still got the key from the laptop I upgraded since it was a fresh install of Windows 7 not a straight upgrade)

[JefferyD90]

Windows Vista was the last Microsoft OS designed with power-users in mind, and I think that it is the best OS Microsoft has made to-date. And I think that looking at the system's design, free of its release challenges, shows that off clearly.

The criticisms of Vista at its launch were poor performance for budget hardware, and incompatibility. Windows 7 didn't perform any better when it released, but 2 years had passed, and people had already gotten over the shock that they needed to upgrade their 3+ year old machines thanks to Vista, and Windows 7 thus performed better relative to its release market than Vista did relative to its release market.

That said, latest-version Windows Vista (SP2) is reportedly better performing than latest-version Windows 7 (SP1), and Windows Vista also boots up faster than Windows 7. So, while Vista is better-performing than Windows 7, Windows 7's later release environment enabled a better performance for the average machine that it was installed to.

And regarding compatibility issue on Vista's release, that's just the nature of a big kernel change between the systems of Windows XP -> Vista. Windows 7 was basically a reskinned Vista, with features removed, and some streamlined, so drivers for the Windows Vista / 7 system design were already prevalent at the time of Windows 7's release:

http://www.techhive.com/article/153624/ ... under.html 

Here's a list of some of the things that Windows Vista does better than Windows 7:

-- Personalization - for some reason personalization options were reduced in Windows 7. And there's no option to use video files as animated desktop backgrounds in Windows 7.

-- Start menu functionality - it's not as configurable in Windows 7, and the option the use the "classic" start menu is removed in 7 (although I probably wouldn't use it).

-- Search - there's less search configuration in Windows 7, can't index across networks in Windows 7, can't save pre-defined search terms, can't search for file names only (without a typed command).

-- Taskbar - In Windows 7, quick launch is removed, the number of combined windows in a group on the taskbar is no longer displayed, there's no option to turn off taskbar preview, and lots of other functionality and configuration is removed.

-- (I think) the Visual design is a lot nicer in Vista.

-- lots of things changed in Windows 7 regarding Windows Explorer functionality.

-- Windows Vista has faster boot up times according to a benchmark using SP2 for Vista and SP1 for 7.

-- better performance overall in Vista with SP2 than 7 with SP1, I've seen reported from multiple sources.

And here's a complete listing of design changes between Windows Vista and Windows 7:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_f ... _Windows_71

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_72

For me, Windows 7 brought nothing new that I make use of, but it took away many things that I had used in Vista, and on earlier Windows versions, and which I still would use if those features were present in Windows 7 and later versions.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 are both solid OSes, with Vista having slightly better performance than Windows 7. Windows 7 really is just a re-skinned Vista, that is heavily stream-lined, having a bunch of features and lots of configurability removed, while also adding some new features (none of which I've used).

I think that Windows Vista truly is the best Windows OS Microsoft has produced to-date, and that if not for its circumstantial challenging release-environment conditions, Vista would have been received very favourably. And, conversely, If Windows 7 had released right after XP, rather than Vista, the consumer criticisms would have been the exact same - low performance on dated XP machine hardware, and device incompatibility due to there not being a prevalence of drivers available for the new OS architecture, which Vista and 7 share.

If nothing else, a very interesting read and thanks for posting.

 

One thing I would like to ask, how do YOU define a "power user"?

 

Also, in your list of things comparing Windows 7 and Vista I noticed some discrepancies.  First off, you can index across networks.  You just have to actually go in and put it in the searchable indexing.  Microsoft realized that, with Windows Vista, when you had network devices it would eat up 100% of your network utilization just to index that network drive.  The bigger the drive the longer it ate that up.  Also, I wonder what "functionality" you're referring to with the start menu changes, because nothing actually changed.  They cleaned it up a tad bit by getting rid of some unnecessary lines and spaces, but everything that was there in Vista was there in 7.  Another thing is that "Quick launch" wasn't removed.  The whole taskbar is now a quick launch bar, they simply combined them.

 

Vista MAY have faster boot times, but not when using a SSD.  Vista doesn't perform much better with a SSD than a platter HDD.  (so you can count "supporting newer hardware" in the plus for Windows 7, 8, and 10).   By the way, there is nothing wrong with reskinning a OS.  Especially with the consideration of Vista to 7 because a lot of things around the core OS changed.

 

While I feel like Windows 8 is the best OS Microsoft ever made, and disagree with Windows Vista being the best by a long shot, I did find it to be a good read.  Do a little more research and give us some more meat to the post and it would be a excellent post.

[Dabombinable]

If nothing else, a very interesting read and thanks for posting.

 

One thing I would like to ask, how do YOU define a "power user"?

 

Also, in your list of things comparing Windows 7 and Vista I noticed some discrepancies.  First off, you can index across networks.  You just have to actually go in and put it in the searchable indexing.  Microsoft realized that, with Windows Vista, when you had network devices it would eat up 100% of your network utilization just to index that network drive.  The bigger the drive the longer it ate that up.  Also, I wonder what "functionality" you're referring to with the start menu changes, because nothing actually changed.  They cleaned it up a tad bit by getting rid of some unnecessary lines and spaces, but everything that was there in Vista was there in 7.  Another thing is that "Quick launch" wasn't removed.  The whole taskbar is now a quick launch bar, they simply combined them.

 

Vista MAY have faster boot times, but not when using a SSD.  Vista doesn't perform much better with a SSD than a platter HDD.  (so you can count "supporting newer hardware" in the plus for Windows 7, 8, and 10).   By the way, there is nothing wrong with reskinning a OS.  Especially with the consideration of Vista to 7 because a lot of things around the core OS changed.

 

While I feel like Windows 8 is the best OS Microsoft ever made, and disagree with Windows Vista being the best by a long shot, I did find it to be a good read.  Do a little more research and give us some more meat to the post and it would be a excellent post.

Windows 8 is the best OS ever made by Microsoft? Lmfao, then why was it so much of a failure? You could even downgrade to Windows 7 for free.

[JefferyD90]

Windows 8 is the best OS ever made by Microsoft? Lmfao, then why was it so much of a failure? You could even downgrade to Windows 7 for free.

Nothing you can do in Windows 7 cant be done in Windows 8.  And MANY task in Windows 8 are done with fewer actions.  Also, everything is simpler and just makes since.

[Dabombinable]

Nothing you can do in Windows 7 cant be done in Windows 8.  And MANY task in Windows 8 are done with fewer actions.  Also, everything is simpler and just makes since.

Your talking about Windows 8. The OS designed for touchscreens when very few Windows users actually had them. Lol take a step back and realise how foolish your sounding. And you obviously have never used an OS before Windows 8.

[JefferyD90]

Your talking about Windows 8. The OS designed for touchscreens when very few Windows users actually had them. Lol take a step back and realise how foolish your sounding. And you obviously have never used an OS before Windows 8.

Okay, now you're just sounding like a blind sheepel.  Instead of attacking blindly, make a legitimate point.

[Dabombinable]

Okay, now you're just sounding like a blind sheepel.  Instead of attacking blindly, make a legitimate point.

Your talking about Windows 8-the worst OS ever made by MS after 95 and 3.1, not Windows 8.1 (AKA Windows 9), which isn't that bad from the times I've used it-though Windows 7 still makes more sense on a desktop.

 

I told you to take a step back for a reason.

[mstef]

Off topic:

.... Windows 8 is the best OS Microsoft ever made....

What kind of drugs you are taking? According EVERYONE (including and mainly MS) W8 is absolute shit, garbage, junk, etc... When you made "best whatever" it's normal to have record sales (or at least close to record)- "strange" why, but W8 was less used than old XP... 

 

On topic:

 

Vista maybe is "best Windows"... In some other world, in another parallel Universe... In this world and Universe Vista is better than 8/8.1, but both are worse than 7. Even XP is better in some aspects than Vista and 8... Sadly W10 is no better than Vista... 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

4GB of RAM is the actual minimum needed for Vista to run smoothly with minimal problems-the amount of RAM used by retarded manufacturers (I'm looking at you specifically Dell) is why Vista got such a bad name. (Funnily enough, it runs better than Windows 7 on my Tecra M5-which is a 32bit only laptop due to the retarded bios gating off 768MB of RAM even with a 64bit OS).

 

I'm running it just fine on my 2008 Packard Bell ZG5 (32bit 1.6GHz single-core Atom and 1.5GB of RAM).  Fresh install vs fresh install, on this set of hardware it wipes the floor with XP as well as Win7 and uses 800-900MB of RAM. 

I noticed the same thing on other PCs too, Win7 is just a slouch compared to Vista.  Slower, uglier and a lot less powerful.  Anyone who claims otherwise obviously hasn't done a proper comparison yet.

 

Too bad my main rig's motherboard seems to have a real dislike for Vista (it crashes the installer every single time), otherwise I'd be running it still.  I'll pick it over Win7, Win8.1 or Win10 any time. 

 

 

@Delicieuxz : While Win7 doesn't feature Dreamscene by default, the functionality is still in there and can be unlocked even on Home Premium.  A tool like Dreamscene Seven will do the trick just fine.  Not saying you should use Win7 over Vista, just saying that it is possible.

[Delicieuxz]

If nothing else, a very interesting read and thanks for posting.

 

One thing I would like to ask, how do YOU define a "power user"?

 

Also, in your list of things comparing Windows 7 and Vista I noticed some discrepancies.  First off, you can index across networks.  You just have to actually go in and put it in the searchable indexing.  Microsoft realized that, with Windows Vista, when you had network devices it would eat up 100% of your network utilization just to index that network drive.  The bigger the drive the longer it ate that up.  Also, I wonder what "functionality" you're referring to with the start menu changes, because nothing actually changed.  They cleaned it up a tad bit by getting rid of some unnecessary lines and spaces, but everything that was there in Vista was there in 7.  Another thing is that "Quick launch" wasn't removed.  The whole taskbar is now a quick launch bar, they simply combined them.

 

Vista MAY have faster boot times, but not when using a SSD.  Vista doesn't perform much better with a SSD than a platter HDD.  (so you can count "supporting newer hardware" in the plus for Windows 7, 8, and 10).   By the way, there is nothing wrong with reskinning a OS.  Especially with the consideration of Vista to 7 because a lot of things around the core OS changed.

 

While I feel like Windows 8 is the best OS Microsoft ever made, and disagree with Windows Vista being the best by a long shot, I did find it to be a good read.  Do a little more research and give us some more meat to the post and it would be a excellent post.

Thanks. What I mean by saying that Windows Vista is the last OS Microsoft designed with power users in mind is that Windows development, ongoing until Vista, adding increasing control and adventurous possibilities into their releases, but that after Vista there was a snap-back, where Microsoft started removing everything superfluous, started reducing micro configuration options, and the design of Windows has seemed to me to be increasing austerity-driven, from Windows 7 until Windows 10.

 

Vista is the last OS before that direction change, and is the peak in Windows preference accommodation.

 

 

 

I'm running it just fine on my 2008 Packard Bell ZG5 (32bit 1.6GHz single-core Atom and 1.5GB of RAM).  Fresh install vs fresh install, on this set of hardware it wipes the floor with XP as well as Win7 and uses 800-900MB of RAM. 

I noticed the same thing on other PCs too, Win7 is just a slouch compared to Vista.  Slower, uglier and a lot less powerful.  Anyone who claims otherwise obviously hasn't done a proper comparison yet.

 

Too bad my main rig's motherboard seems to have a real dislike for Vista (it crashes the installer every single time), otherwise I'd be running it still.  I'll pick it over Win7, Win8.1 or Win10 any time. 

 

 

@Delicieuxz : While Win7 doesn't feature Dreamscene by default, the functionality is still in there and can be unlocked even on Home Premium.  A tool like Dreamscene Seven will do the trick just fine.  Not saying you should use Win7 over Vista, just saying that it is possible.

Thanks, I'm going to check that out.

 

I wonder if downloading an updated Vista ISO, like the one that has SP2 preinstalled, will fix any issues with running the installer for you.

[anticeon]

Vista is the most beautiful OS but the performance is terrible simply bcus its firs version of DWM/WDDM