Struggling with Vista

This is my 2nd, i think attempt to run Vista (x64). It installed fine. Then the trouble appeared for the most trivial, apparently things...

- Of course i disabled transparencies and most virual effects, since the snappiness of XP was making me cry. Now it's ok.

- I didn't understand who thought that the new control panel and the default slideshow visualization mode (fade, which fits to screen) , is better than XP, but anyway... Googling i found there are people who think their photos were damaged or became "blurry"... Poor bastards.

- The FOLDERS!!! The FOLDERS!!! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, is there a way to have plain, old fashioned yellow folders, and have the preview only for video and image files? Or must i go to each and every folder that has images or videos and customize only that to show previews

- The preview itself... Why is the preview in Vista soooooo slooooooow compared to XP With XP a folder with images loads the previews in no time. With Vista takes for ever.

- The TASK BAR!!! Why isn't there a slim version too, like it was the "Royal" Theme in XP I hate the "fat" Vista taskbar. Found a workaround, will try it later.

- Ingenious adding a "delete" option in the right click menu of the recycle bin. Internet is full of people asking help because "I deleted my recycle bin".

- The START---ALL Programs. Why do i get to see the program folders instead of the executables Whose brilliant idea was that In order to launch an application you have to open the folder and click the .exe? I MUST be missing something!

- At least they have nice colours for the taskbar and windows now.

It's not os bad as an OS. But IMHO they made some things worse and more complicated.


If someone knows the answer for the folders question, please reply.

 

what have you tryed so far to try and get older style folders?
if you havent tryed it try ,folder options,tasks,use windows classic folders.

the start menu on vista is much better than on xp imo.
I dont see a problem with having to open the folder to see the .exe files.
otherwise it would just be a long list of .exe files that you dont know what they belong to.
I am use to vista thou since I have been using it for over a year.

I dont have the delete option on my recycle bin. im sure I used to on my first install of vista but not on my current vista 64bit install. I dont remember changing it when I installed 64bit version.

btw if you think the vista task bar is fat you should see the windows 7 one (double height as standard) vista is 1.5

how much ram have you got? and what type of processer and graphics card?

 

I have put classic folders and i can make then look only yellow (no half open thing with files coming out or pics, that confuse me), but then i also lose preview for images and videos (i check "always show icons, no thumbnails). If i choose "classic" but untick the "alwaus show icons", i get preview on all folders again. I 'd like just yellow, closed folders, but with preview only for video and image, just like it was on XP. I have googled for hours, i can't seem to find the answer...

For me it's a torture... I have installed Xdn Tweaker for example. I have to click two folders before i see the exe. Then there are in other programs secondary files (help files or auxiliary programs), that clutter the enviroment for no reason. I guess one can get used to it, but i prefer XP's...

I 've installed the 64bit SP2 alright and it's there! I deleted it successfully!

In 7 it's fatter Blimey! I found a manual tweak for slimming down Vista's, but the start button stays bigger. Anyway, better than nothing.

Athlon x2 5050e, 4GB DDR2 800Mhz, onboard VGA Radeon HD 3300 with 128 sideport memory and 256MB shared RAM.

 

OK. Vista 64 is very good, once you downgrade the glass crap and visual effects. I made the interface seems as snappy as XP's (almost). I think it's the UI that makes most people say that Vista is slow. It IS slow in image and video previews, but for the rest, it can do things as fast as XP and my internet connection seemed even faster.

Vista has a good engine, destroyed by a bad layout and hungry GUI.

64 bit is VERY fast, i 'd dare say some operations seemed even faster than XP with 64bit programs.

If Vista had the UI layout of XP , it would rock. Now it's too irrational. The folder look is still way too confusing for me. Nowhere to set how MB you want to go for System Restore. The Defragmenter has now no visual representation of how it defrags. The sidebar, could be very useful, replacing standalone gadgets and docks... But, they forgot to put an "auto-hide" option. That was all it would take. Now it's useless. Ironically, for XP there is the "Desktop sidebar" freeware, that has "autohide"...


Since Windows 7 is Vista SE, i think finally the XP users will be able to migrate. Vista isn't bad and superfetch really works! I had only 500 MB free out of 4GB and things were getting really speedy (except for previews). Sure feels more modern.

But, for now, back to my trusty XP. It still eats a bit less CPU and unfortunately some things in 64bit aren't optimized yet (like video codecs... It eats considerably more CPU in Vistax64 to watch the same video than on XPx32).


Windows 7, the next stop... And 64bit IS the future...

 

Did you test the hdd read/writes? I found vista64 to really blow in that respect. vista 32 was somewhat better, but not on par with xp. For me now, win7 hdd seems about on par with xp.

My test was something I consider real world, where i copied all files from a dvd game (cod4) to hdd and then ran setup. Could be any test I suppose. I should run ATTO and see what it shows.

Sul.

 

No, i did no test. I was too busy trying to find 64bit programs and alternatives to some of my 32bit programs that wouldn't work in Vista (or would cause UAC to block them at startup!). Actually i just changed HD too, so... But after a day of use (i suppose superfetch needed some time), i did get a general feeling that some things were faster than XP. And 64bit programs were certainly faster.

The entire Vista feeling changed once i trimmed down the visual effects. I still find the folder visualization confusing , but if i had to use to Vista i 'd get used to it. It's not bad OS at all. It's just cluttered by the Aero glass nonsense.

 

Oh and for hardcore XP fans that want to give Vista another try:

Apart trimming down visual effects and disabling transparency, do reduce the services too. A combo of "Vista Services Optimizer" and BlackViper's guide , make miracles.

 

Why bother with Vista at this point? Soon it'll be history as much as XP will.

 

The Aero interface is hardware accelerated so it's quicker than the Vista basic interface.

Vista uses massive thumbnail indexes with a few different sizes so it's pretty sluggish. One of the worst "features" of Vista.

You can get third party visual styles that have slim task bars.

 

I think it needs then a really good VGA, because by disabling transparencies and most of visual effects the UI became much faster on my PC. Suggested by MS too:

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/83ec0ffe-ee04-4d53-8b87-25d1f05c954e1033.mspx

In fact, in the performance score, i got from 5.1 to 5.9 everywhere, except for the VGA, which was 3.9.

Ah, that explains it! In deed, i noticed the different aspect ratio in the previews and i wondered why they bothered to go into such detail...

Yes, i thought so, but was too tired... When i will have time i will go to find some, more "colourful" taskbars (see Hydrangea for XP if you know what i mean).

Correct. But i didn't have Windows 7, so i borrowed the Vista disk of a friend. Windows 7 is simply Vista revisited (i guess they eliminated the "Vista" because it would bring negative pubblicity on 7). So, if i familiarize with Vista, i shouldn't have trouble migrating to 7 later.

So i do agree that the logical choice is 7. But i think it will be easier to pass to 7 , if one is first more familiar with Vista.