I plan to start shopping for a new computer when we're in the states in December, and I'd like some feedback...just how bad is Windows Vista? What are my options? Does Microsoft plan to address any of the problems associated with Vista anytime soon, or will I just have to live with them...or should I wait 6 months to a year for something better?

It's bad enough Dell etc sell XP with various models. If you buy a white box computer of course you are even less tied down.

To be honest when I first got Windows Vista I thought it was a nightmare but now am very used to it. Overall if I had a choice I'd use Windows XP but Vista is fine. Every week more problems are being ironed out with Vista so you will be fine now.

Barb,
I've had my HP Pavillion laptop with Vista OS for about four months now, and haven't had any problems with it. (Knock on wood. )

The only issue I've had - and this is unrelated to Vista - is learning to use Microsoft Office 2007. In some ways the applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) are better and more powerful, but there was a learning curve. If you use plan to use them, I recommend the "Plain & Simple" guide to Office 2007 to help figure out the differences.

(I just read a book last week about a woman who worked as a contract programmer at MS and dated Bill Gates. His plan for "TWD" - Total World Domination - came close, didn't it?)

Thanks for the input. You know I'm a real technophobe who's also a slow learner. Why is it that "new and improved" always means "harder and more complicated"?

I like Vista and the new MS Office. Vista is easier to use than XP (it is not more complicated - it is much easier).

I just set up a new computer with Vista for my brother and it connected to his ISP and got that all configured when I left it alone because I was doing something else. I came back to the computer and said "now I have to get this thing online" and it was already online.

The new Word is very different, but is better designed. It takes a bit of time to see where all the options are - but then it seems to work better.

I had to download some new drivers for peripherals - but that all worked fine.

quote:

Originally posted by Pauline:
I had to download some new drivers for peripherals - but that all worked fine.

this is the type of stuff I'm scared of! What drivers? How do I know I need them? where do I get them? Most of the time when I think I need something like this, I go to a site, then am presented with a variety of choices....and of course I'm lost!

I guess what I'll need to do is find some techie friend to come and hold my hand for an hour or so while I learn my way around the new system. The nice thing about this approach is that (hopefully) I can learn some shortcuts and get some tips from someone who's already done the research.

I used XP pro and Vista in parallel for about 5 months before reformatting and installing just XP.

I don't hate Vista, I am not anti Microsoft. I just found that, IMO, it was very hungry resource wise to power features I didn't use.

On my 2 year old hardware (Dual core, 1GB RAM) , with a graphic card not designed to play high speed games, Vista is markedly slower than my XP setup. I have problems with some of my hardware (in particular an external data storage unit) and some software failed to work properly.

I really like some of the included software - the media centre, the improved desktop search, the music and photo organisers; but I can add most of this to XP in the form of free downloads (Copernic search, Adobe photo album etc).

To sum up, if I were buying a new PC today, I would be happy to have Vista, but don't see it as a huge improvement over XP.

TimW