JonesPC

Its been just about 7 months since I installed Vista on my notebook. Im use to using it, I like it, and I’m to the point where Windows XP is starting to seem like "the old OS".  I did something the other day that I usually do every 6 - 8 months. I wiped out my hard drive, reformatted, and reinstalled Windows Vista. I know some people don’t ever reformat / reinstall their OS but I do a lot of experimenting. I install and uninstall a lot of software, games, tweaks, hacks etc. After a while, I just start to have little nagging problems and slowdowns that just wont go away until I start over.

The other week Leopard was released for the Mac, and of coarse many of the podcast I listen to were doing all of the Windows bashing, claiming Leopard is great, Vista is bad. I hear it so much now that I have gotten to where I don’t pay attention to it anymore. Not because Im a windows user, not because Im not a Mac user. But mainly the reason is because Ive never used the Mac OS for more than a couple of minutes. I have no fair comparison of the two. So, instead of getting all worked up or trying to join in on the conversation, I basically just ignore the issue.

When I was reinstalling Vista, the thought crossed my mind to go back to XP. Why? Well one podcast in particular (I cant remember which one) were really dogging Vista. Maybe Im lucky, but I just haven’t had a lot of the problems that I hear people talking about. When I first installed Vista, I tried to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R and had problems. I went and installed a new driver for the video card in my laptop and since then Ive played plenty of games on my PC without a hitch. I havent had any USB problems, I haven’t had any crashes, not one BSOD (I actually thought that was a thing of the past that people are still talking about for fun). The only software that I have installed that didn’t work with Vista was Skype and I think that is fixed now. I did end up getting tired of Vista’s UAC but I got rid of it

One problem in particular that was talked about was a problem that I have seen. One Podcaster had a problem with his Vista machine disconnecting from the internet when using wireless. It would stay connected to the network, but it would only be local, no internet, causing him to reboot to get it working. This podcaster claim to have it happen to him several times a day. Like I said, that has happened to me, but it has only happened maybe 2 times a month at the most. Its not a common occurrence.

Most of the problems people have complained about, even though I haven’t had those problems,  were always problems with some piece of software, or hardware driver not updated to work with Vista. I never considered those problems to be Vista problems. They were software or driver problems. You really cant blame Vista for software or drivers if its up to the company to update their stuff…thats how I see it anyway. On the other hand. The network problem that the podcaster complained about was indeed a Vista problem. Since I have also seen this problem I started to wonder if maybe Vista is as bad as everyone say and I just have been lucky

Will I one day start to hate Vista like everyone else?