Hello, do you guys remember Windows Vista? It came out in 2007. I liked it better than 7. I'm being serious. I like their startup animation better, and just their UI better. I used to have a laptop that had it, and then I upgraded it to 7, and the laptop died. So I have a computer that has Windows 10 right now. So did you guys remember Windows Vista? Because I've heard a lot of people saying they hate it.
I've went on three computers that had it by the way.
Vista was good. Seemed much more stable than it's predecessor XP, and then there was something called Windows ME before that :pan:
I started with Windows 3.1 (1992) myself. Have 7 on my work desktop and 10 at home.
I wonder whats on the horizon. 10 has been out for 4 years now.
Quote from: TonyTrafficLight on July 12, 2019, 01:51:49 PM
Vista was good. Seemed much more stable than it's predecessor XP, and then there was something called Windows ME before that :pan:
I started with Windows 3.1 (1992) myself. Have 7 on my work desktop and 10 at home.
I wonder whats on the horizon. 10 has been out for 4 years now.
The first windows I had was 98. We didn't have a computer then.
Even when I had Windows 3.1 and DOS 6.0, I used commands in DOS rather than go into Windows. :D
When we first got PC's at work, my co-worker and I were aghast at having to use a mouse. "What, you mean we have to take our fingers off our keyboard?"
My 2nd laptop, bought in 2008, operated on Windows Vista.
I don't think I ever used it. I remember XP and 7 but not Vista.
I had to do an emergency purchase of a computer in college when my laptop got water spilled on it and wouldn't function. It came with Windows Vista on it. I hadn't ever used Vista so I decided I'd mess around with it for a while to try to form an opinion on it.
30 minutes later I was formatting the hard drive and installing Linux.
I had a PC with Windows Vista that I purchased at CompUSA when they were closing their DC-area stores and I got a good price. I never thought it was as bad as everyone said it was, though I like Windows 7 better (and I detest Windows 8.1, which is on my wife's laptop). The only notable problem I had with Vista was with ripping music to .WAV files. For some reason, the files it created were almost always corrupt. But that was easy enough to solve with aftermarket ripping software.
The first operating system I used was IBM PC-DOS 3.30 in 1987.
Oh look, an excuse to show off my vintage hardware.
I guess this is half relevant?
This beaut right here is an IBM PS/2 Model P70 386, manufactured in August of 1989, along with an excessively bulky 360K 5.25" diskette drive included.. Not my oldest machine by a long stretch.
The site looks weird because the orange monochrome gas plasma display only works in 16 shades of orange.
It also has Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on top of DOS 6.22 dual booted. Previously had PC-DOS, only other PC-DOS system I have now is an IBM PS/2 Model 30 286 with PC-DOS 3.3 and Windows 3.0 on it. That squeezes the crap out of its puny 20 MB hard drive, just as having two OSes dual booted on the 120 MB HDD on the P70 squeezes free space.
(https://i.imgur.com/rUhJWDn.jpg)(https://i.imgur.com/PqzWKV9.jpg)
Quote from: index on July 13, 2019, 11:27:03 AM
Oh look, an excuse to show off my vintage hardware.
I guess this is half relevant?
This beaut right here is an IBM PS/2 Model P70 386, manufactured in August of 1989, along with an excessively bulky 360K 5.25" diskette drive included.. Not my oldest machine by a long stretch.
The site looks weird because the orange monochrome gas plasma display only works in 16 shades of orange.
It also has Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on top of DOS 6.22 dual booted. Previously had PC-DOS, only other PC-DOS system I have now is an IBM PS/2 Model 30 286 with PC-DOS 3.3 and Windows 3.0 on it. That squeezes the crap out of its puny 20 MB hard drive, just as having two OSes dual booted on the 120 MB HDD on the P70 squeezes free space.
(https://i.imgur.com/rUhJWDn.jpg)(https://i.imgur.com/PqzWKV9.jpg)
Hey, at least AAroads works!
I installed the free Windows 7 upgrade from Vista on my desktop the instant it became available (I purchased it within a grace period when it was eligible for the free upgrade). I ran Windows 7 as soon as the beta was released and never looked back.
Vista ran OK on my desktop, but Windows 7 performed significantly better - with no hardware changes in-between.
I remember Windows Vista.
I remember all of them.
I was around three of five major computers. I was not around Commodore Amiga, but I was around I.B.M., D.E.C., and Apple.
The D.E.C. computers, (or just digital) connected to a local network using a giant Parallel port that plugs into the wall, not much different from a Telephone or an Ethernet line. They had a small monochrome (usually green) C.R.T. monitor with a network adapter built into it, and a keyboard. The LK201 Keyboard did not use "ALT", but instead "Compose Character". I don't think it needed a pointing device. The keyboard connection is not much different than a Telephone or Ethernet. These systems interfaced with a file server. They were replaced decades ago, and unfortunately not many exist. The company, and even the hardware architecture is gone as if it never existed.
The other computer I was not around when it was around is Acorn. However, that hardware platform does still exist. Every where. That means that even though I did not use any thing resembling Acorn then, I am now. I also have an interest in RISC OS but have not yet bought a Pi Device.
I have been around a fairly large amount of Apple computers, and I still have them, but none of them are new, and I will never get any thing new from Apple, except iPod and perhaps iPhone & iPad, but only iPhone and iPad by mistake. As said in the other paragraph, these three use Acorn hardware, but so does Samsung and many others. The fossils I was around that were fossils back then were always in classrooms. They kept their old fossils around usually as a computerized grade book. Apple II or similar computers, relying heavily on Floppy Disks (5.25) in one case an external power supply / power strip with two more plugs (meant for a monitor and a printer) complete with fan. The new computers of that time are Pizza Box computers running Ancient Mac OS with colour and graphics better than any I.B.M. style computer. The software and games had a higher quality version. Other software is Apple Works or Claris Works, After Dark Screen Savers, and Talking Alerts. The Pizza Boxes had Ethernet, Speakers, and Microphones. If it could be installed in a computer, it was. Also the mouse plugged into the keyboard. Macintosh and the newer operating system are not worth the money. I will always keep clamshell IBooks with Ancient Mac OS (9.2.2 with aDock and and iText and Classilla and hundreds of other software) but nothing newer than that.
I.B.M. computers seem to be much more rugged when compared to the clones. I always like the Japanese design of them. They are also very easy to maintain. Many that became obsolete some 10 years later were retrofitted to be print servers. There are four types of 1980s I.B.M. computers I had in my possession. One of which is a I.B.M. XT I connected a much newer Cannon Bubble Jet to it and it worked (!) The other three are 286 models. One was a very tall meant to sit on the floor tower computer. Another is a computer with a long narrow power supply with a fan in the middle (seen when the computer is opened). Two diskette drives in the front and a hard drive in the back. These were connected with a riser card between them instead of messy grey ribbons. The other I.B.M. computers I had are the all in one computers with apparently no clock battery, requiring a date and time set manually.
Unfortunately I did not use OS / 2. But I had used Dos Shell (DosShell) with Word Perfect and Lotus and several other software.
Yes I did use Windows 3.0, 3.1, and I do not remember if I used any other Windows 3. But I hated them. I was able to get whatever I needed with it, but I will never go back to Windows 3.Whatever and if I had to use an old I.B.M. I prefer Dos Shell instead.
Windows 95 at the time was a breath of fresh air. It added more screen savers while keeping the existing ones. It included Internet software such as Internet Explorer, Netscape, and some "Inbox" icon. Putting every thing directly on the wallpaper instead of cramming it into Program Manager made Windows 95 seem much more ahead of its time. But of course Ancient Mac OS and Amiga OS and RISC OS and every body else all ready did this. I also like the login music and the "It Is Now Safe To Turn Off Your Computer." message. Other software is Microsoft Works and Microsoft Office.
But the best remembered software is Microsoft Plus, Microsoft Bob, or at least software based on Microsoft Bob and Microsoft Agent such as BonziBUDDY. I never used Windows Millennium, which is where I assume they continued to use this software.
Ironically even if I remember Windows 95 and 98 and 98 S.E. as good for having Microsoft Plus and other media software, I also like Windows 2000 for seemingly being without this software. (!) This seemed to be a lot sturdier O.S. I never bothered to look at any Microsoft Plus in it.
Windows XP is an operating system that people continued to use for a very long time. This was around the same time that many people bought their own computers and started using computers. I preferred to make it look like Windows 2000, and did not care for Microsoft Bob's Big Bug Eyed Rover to be included in Search. I switched him for some red bouncing blob, also available in Microsoft Office. (which I had no problem with, as I had no problem with Bonzi either. The default assistant I set was Clippit.) I also switched out the Critical Stop sound.
You could easily do so many things with Windows XP, and people used it for so long, that many skipped Vista entirely. So the literal question in this topic is about my use of Windows Vista. I never did. I don't think Vista is important enough to upgrade from XP. And that is what I do now. I will not upgrade unless there is some reason to.
I had several Windows 7 computers. Windows 7 seemed to be a good enough reason to start using Windows 7. But I noticed a problem. My Pictures is now named Pictures. This can be easily be confused with "Pictures" which is short for Pictures Library. I hate these and deleted the libraries immediately. I never trusted the "My Pictures" etc. folders either and keep my files elsewhere. But Windows added a few more much needed functions. One of them is the Indexed Search, which is yet another thing that Windows needed that Ancient Mac OS all ready had. And even better than Ancient Mac OS and Windows XP, ... Windows 7 finally stops asking if you want to overwrite a file when two files are trying to have the same file name. I think it is Windows 7 (or perhaps Windows 8) that if you move a folder into a new location that happens to have a folder with the same name in it, Windows will merge the two folders with the same name. And again, I do not know if this is a Windows 7 or if they started it with Windows 8, but you can pause a file transfer, unplug the device, plug it in again, and click Resume with no problems.
As for Windows 8 I enjoy using said functions, but I had to make Windows 8 look like Windows 2000. I have always turned off every thing except "Use Thumbnails Instead Of Icons" (another improvement that I love) and use "Adjust Windows For Best Performance" for every thing else. (This feature is also there by default for Ancient Mac OS, but for Mac OS X there is no way to Adjust For Best Performance) I also have the Extra Large High Contrast Arrow, and High Contrast #2 theme. And also I have Classic Shell and Charms Bar Killer.
I do the same thing with Windows 8.1.
As for Windows 10, I will not upgrade nor buy any computers with it unless I know there is a way to adjust it to my preferred settings. If they add a function that I do not like, I want to turn it off.
My preferred computers are the biggest laptops that exist, 17+ inch screen, numeric pad in internal keyboard, quad core A.M.D. The same expectations for All In One Desktops with the biggest screen they have and it would be nice if All In Ones have a laptop battery to safely unplug from the wall. And of course A.R.M. hardware.
My current operating systems are Ancient Mac OS, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Android, and MorphOS. My future OS I want to add RISC OS, AROS, and perhaps ReactOS.
Quote from: Scott5114 on July 13, 2019, 04:13:15 AM
I had to do an emergency purchase of a computer in college when my laptop got water spilled on it and wouldn't function. It came with Windows Vista on it. I hadn't ever used Vista so I decided I'd mess around with it for a while to try to form an opinion on it.
30 minutes later I was formatting the hard drive and installing Linux.
I toyed with Windows Vista for a bit when it came out, but I would switch back to XP at times. I'm not really sure why anyway, but I never really felt like it grew on me like XP did. Then I got a computer with Windows 7 and used that until my junior year of college. After many pushes from one of my close friends, I eventually did a full switch to Linux (I was dual booting for forever). I just checked my laptop's uptime last night and it was 40 days! (and both my laptop and desktop dual boot with Windows 10, but I rarely use it)
I usually love seeing this when I start the computer up... I miss it. It's better than 7 and 8/8.1/10 in my opinion.
(https://media.askvg.com/articles/images/Vista_Startup_ORB_Pearl_Animation.png)
I don't think I ever had a machine with Vista on it. The very first computer my family had had Windows 3.1 on it, and then when my mom got remarried, my step-dad had a machine with Windows 95 (this was 1997). The first computer I bought as an adult had XP on it IIRC, and then I got one with Windows 7, and the one I have now has Windows 10 on it. I think the next computer I buy is going to be an Apple. I recently got an IPhone, and once I figured out how things worked in Apple, I found that I liked it much better than Android, so I am going to see how Apple desktops work. I probably won't be buying a computer for a while though.
My ancient desktop PC, which I rarely use (and really needs to be replaced), is on Vista. I never did the upgrade, in part since I have some older software than won't work on Windows 7/Windows 10. Other than that, I prefer the newer OS on my laptop.
Vista got a bad rep early on but I think that was due to some PC makers putting it on machines that were a tad under powered.
I'm currently working on a friend's old Vista box. She just uses it for basic web browsing and some letter writing and wanted it updated since it no longer gets any security updates. As built (Pentium Dual E2200 @ 2.2 GHz with 2 GB of RAM), it's slow booting but serviceable. I found some older matching RAM in my junk box, and with its current 4 GB it ran decently. With Windows 10, it runs much better than I would have guessed going in.
I think when I bought my previous laptop, it had come installed with Vista but with the service packs that made that OS more stable. (I had dabbled with either my mother's or brother's build with the first edition of Vista.) I don't believe I could get the 7 upgrade for free, but I wound up only getting that for $50 on Amazon, which was a deal at that time because upgrade releases of Windows were typically north of $100, and I remember it being much better. (One of Vista's long-running complaints was the frequency of User Account Control popping up, and Windows 7 made it much more tolerable.)
Quote from: catch22 on July 17, 2019, 08:08:18 AM
Vista got a bad rep early on but I think that was due to some PC makers putting it on machines that were a tad under powered.
I remember there being an issue with Microsoft setting the hardware requirements for a computer to come preloaded with Vista too low. It also didn't help that the makers of software and peripherals like printers and scanners were reluctant to try to support Vista until it was out, because it was delayed so many times, and features had a tendency to be dropped and sometimes reappear in a watered-down version throughout the development process. There was no way to know if Vista would actually be released or what it would include until it was already out.
I still use Windows Vista on my work computer. I have no complaints, I always thought it was a solid OS.
Windows Vista seems to be a revision of Windows Millenium. Both have good things about them. But for every good thing there are two bad things.
Quote from: In_Correct on July 18, 2019, 01:09:31 AM
Windows Vista seems to be a revision of Windows Millenium.
It's not. Millennium was the final released version of the Windows 95/98 codebase. Vista descended from the Windows NT codebase that was developed in parallel before then, coming down from Windows 2000 and XP. Vista is Windows NT 6.0.
I've had 95, 98, XP, 7, 8, and 10 on personal computers
Vista I only used when over at my grandparents
2000 I used when I took part in the bring your son to work day with my Dad, played PC games.
I can still get 95 games to work on my 10, with a little coding and registry key updates
I miss the game Purble Place by the way. Who remembers playing it?
Windows Vista absolutely sucked. The family and I got a Dell Inspiron with Vista for Christmas in 2007. It was very slow, buggy and uncooperative. Microsoft made huge improvements with Windows 7.
Quote from: mrhappy1261 on July 19, 2019, 01:55:56 AM
I miss the game Purble Place by the way. Who remembers playing it?
Oh, I do.
Quote from: ET21 on July 18, 2019, 09:19:16 AM
I've had 95, 98, XP, 7, 8, and 10 on personal computers
Vista I only used when over at my grandparents
2000 I used when I took part in the bring your son to work day with my Dad, played PC games.
I can still get 95 games to work on my 10, with a little coding and registry key updates
How?? :-o :confused:
Quote from: epzik8 on July 20, 2019, 06:26:26 PM
Windows Vista absolutely sucked. The family and I got a Dell Inspiron with Vista for Christmas in 2007. It was very slow, buggy and uncooperative. Microsoft made huge improvements with Windows 7.
Microsoft seems to get every second Windows version at least somewhere close to right. I owned, or used at work, every version of Windows between 3.0 and 10 on at least one PC each, before casting Win10 completely aside in favor of Linux Mint, once my newest laptop's warranty expired a few months ago.
It was 3.0 fair, 3.1 good, 95 fair, 98 good, 98SE better, ME bad, NT4 good, 2000 fair, XP good, Vista fair, Win7 good, Win8 bad, Win10 fair.
I didn't have the problems with Vista that a lot of people had, but it was far from Microsoft's best. In all of those cases, I got rid of Windows in favor of Linux, and performance on those machines more than doubled. And once there was cross-platform (Windows/Mac/Linux) major software available beginning about 15 years ago, there was, and is, no reason to ever install Windows again.
Quote from: In_Correct on July 20, 2019, 09:11:04 PM
Quote from: ET21 on July 18, 2019, 09:19:16 AM
I've had 95, 98, XP, 7, 8, and 10 on personal computers
Vista I only used when over at my grandparents
2000 I used when I took part in the bring your son to work day with my Dad, played PC games.
I can still get 95 games to work on my 10, with a little coding and registry key updates
How?? :-o :confused:
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home (https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home)
Mainly through this site or searching Google for how-to articles or vids on YouTube
I had a desktop bought in 2007 with Vista. Had a good deal of issues with the OS, relative to XP before it, and 7 and then 10 after it. Had many issues when the first service park was installed.
Fortunately, 2 years in, the motherboard suffered some sort of failure and I just replaced the whole computer. That had Windows 7, and 7 years later was still doing well until I elected to upgrade to a better computer. 7 was damn stable.
Quote from: SectorZ on July 23, 2019, 07:10:02 PM
I had a desktop bought in 2007 with Vista. Had a good deal of issues with the OS, relative to XP before it, and 7 and then 10 after it. Had many issues when the first service park was installed.
Fortunately, 2 years in, the motherboard suffered some sort of failure and I just replaced the whole computer. That had Windows 7, and 7 years later was still doing well until I elected to upgrade to a better computer. 7 was damn stable.
I think i had the same problem back in the day. SP1 sucked and SP2 was much better. I didn't go to windows 7 until 2011.
Could people get Windows Vista back in November 2006?
Quote from: mrhappy1261 on July 27, 2019, 06:11:10 PM
Could people get Windows Vista back in November 2006?
I remember when it came out and my uncle told me he could get it through his MSDN subscription.
Quote from: ipeters61 on July 28, 2019, 11:08:11 AM
Quote from: mrhappy1261 on July 27, 2019, 06:11:10 PM
Could people get Windows Vista back in November 2006?
I remember when it came out and my uncle told me he could get it through his MSDN subscription.
So people could get it back then interesting. I was thinking no one could get it until January 2007.
I love this desktop background..
(https://i.imgur.com/hWnuNjE.jpg)
What I DID hate about Vista was that when I play shockwave games, the Shockwave player would crash. It would get on my nerves. :banghead:
That was a major downside for me at least.
I was in the studio audience for the Windows ME launch video staring Bill Nye. I've been looking for a copy of it ever since, but have never found one.
Quote from: KeithE4Phx on July 20, 2019, 10:52:09 PM
Microsoft seems to get every second Windows version at least somewhere close to right. I owned, or used at work, every version of Windows between 3.0 and 10 on at least one PC each, before casting Win10 completely aside in favor of Linux Mint, once my newest laptop's warranty expired a few months ago.
It was 3.0 fair, 3.1 good, 95 fair, 98 good, 98SE better, ME bad, NT4 good, 2000 fair, XP good, Vista fair, Win7 good, Win8 bad, Win10 fair.
I didn't have the problems with Vista that a lot of people had, but it was far from Microsoft's best. In all of those cases, I got rid of Windows in favor of Linux, and performance on those machines more than doubled. And once there was cross-platform (Windows/Mac/Linux) major software available beginning about 15 years ago, there was, and is, no reason to ever install Windows again.
I've got a slightly different opinion: 3.0 bad, 3.1 good, 95 fair, 98 fair, 98SE good, ME skipped this one, NT4 good, 2000 fair, XP good, Vista fair, Win7 good, Win8 fair, Win10 bad
Back in the days before widespread IT professionals, I had to serve as a network administrator using first Lantastic and later NetWare. The migration from DOS to Windows was terrible, and even when Windows 3.1 came out many of our secretarial support staff refused to use it. There are still several file management things that I have to do in DOS because Windows never provided those capabilities: C: DIR\P > directory_listing.txt
Although I've got a Computer Science degree, I've not ever tried to keep us with this part of the industry (catchphrase: I don't do Windows). Until my son came along, I was pretty bad about keeping ancient technology running and skipping generations. I'm still using a Vista machine as my backup server, albeit permanently disconnected from the Internet. And this machine is running Windows 8.1 under Windows 7 emulation with the start button removed. I've got a hand-made "start button" icon in the bottom left of the Taskbar that executes the Windows shutdown command. I recently had to reorganize my Taskbar icons because the most frequently used button was too close to the hard Shutdown function. :ded:
I can't say I've ever used Vista. I know for sure I haven't owned a computer with it. My laptops went from XP to 7 to 10.
I had a Vista machine way too long. Vista was a GREAT OS. The problem with Vista was the security interface. It either was on and allowed users to do hardly anything (even open some software) or you turned the safety completely off and anything went.
It literally was less secure than XP unless you allowed the security interface to run. My personal least favorite was Windows 8. They took away beloved features and added little if anything.
Vista was just a worse version of 7. 8 was just a worse version of 10.
Quote from: Scott5114 on July 13, 2019, 04:13:15 AM
I had to do an emergency purchase of a computer in college when my laptop got water spilled on it and wouldn't function. It came with Windows Vista on it. I hadn't ever used Vista so I decided I'd mess around with it for a while to try to form an opinion on it.
30 minutes later I was formatting the hard drive and installing Linux.
:clap:
Quote from: ErmineNotyours on March 28, 2021, 10:39:23 PM
I was in the studio audience for the Windows ME launch video staring Bill Nye. I've been looking for a copy of it ever since, but have never found one.
MS and Bill Nye hired a hit squad to track down and destroy any remaining copies.