Just a quick run down of things that suck about Vista.
1) it uses too much RAM and is way too bloated for very mundane tasks. It sits at well over 500MBs of RAM usage when I am doing absolutely nothing. This is WITH superfetch turned off (it was sitting at about 900-1GB used when that was on).
2) Sometimes the already annoying feature, Vista asking you if you want to open a program after you tell it to open it, occasionally bugs especially when installing things. By bugs I mean you click approve once for each and every little component the installer uses. Since most installs have hundreds of components it more or less renders some installers useless until the feature is turned off. It also makes it VERY hard to just trust programs you use regularly. I really don't want it asking if I trust WAR the 100th time I open it.
3) It lets me use less then half of my 4GBs of RAM. Yes, some will say "just get 64 bit" but that would require rebuying Vista which I'm not prepared to do, or dealing with pirating 64 bit Vista and having all the problems with updating that entails. Currently I have 4 GBs and Vista only recognizes 2GBs. I don't have some insane graphics card, just a 512MB one, so in theory I should have around 3.5 or at the very least 3GBs available.
4) the combination of only having 2GBs available and using 500 MBs to do nothing means that I get constant memory errors on high end games. Since programs can access a max of 2 GBs of RAM many are designed to do so (since XP used 3 GBs just fine, 200 MBs for the OS, 2GBs for the game, 800 MBs left over). What that means in practical terms is on a lot of games I get errors that say things like "tried to access 8040403 bites, must quit now" and/or blue screens of RAM dumping when it maxes out the RAM. Again yes, I could shell out another 100 bucks for 8GBs of RAM here and 64 bit vista ultimate there, but why should it cost a few hundred more dollars to emulate the performance of XP pro?
5) Vista can't run some of the best XP games that are only a few years old. The most notable example is KOTOR2 which is one of the best games of all time. It has spotty support for a lot of XP games and no support for another good chunk. I don't know why it is so hard to just support programs made in the last 10 years, I mean I have stuff I bought in 2000 for OSX and those work just fine still.... XP can run all the things Vista can (except Halo 2 as the ONLY exception) often better, Vista can't run a ton of things XP can especially from pre 2005 (and there are a HUGE amount of games I love from before 2005 that I really would prefer work) so why get Vista?
6) Microsoft has the worst tech support known to mankind which compounds any problems I have with Vista 100 fold. If I have a problem with mac software or hardware on my laptop, iphone, whatever I just make an appointment, go to the apple store 5 blocks away, and they fix it, whatever it is. If fixing it requires repairs those are done within a few days tops and all the questions I have are answered quickly, by Americans who understand English and don't speak Engrish, and its free. Yes, if you are out of the 3 year warranty and need a motherboard replaced you might pay, but you get tech support free its just the parts you have to buy. Microsoft on the other hand charges you for even the most basic tech support, and they have outsourced that support to either India, China, or both. I can't understand a damn word most of the people they have say, they seldom have any idea how to address my problem and getting assistance is like pulling teeth. I spent 2 months back and forth trying to get 64 bit Vista (because they say if you buy Ultimate you get the rights to both) and finally had to give up after they could neither help me with my RAM issues nor help me swap the 32 bit Ultimate for 64 bit ultimate.
7) Having 5+ versions is just stupid beyond belief. I mean in a way the Home/Pro split sort of made sense (though even that kind of sucks) but the 90 tiered Vista plan just flat out blows. The idea of a full featured version costing 400 dollars is just so bafflingly stupid that I can't get my head around it. This is in part because of my background with dealing with Apple. When OSX came out it was 90 bucks, no extensive copy protection crap to deal with, no DRM registering, none of that. New versions are never more then 100 bucks, there is only 1 OSX and it does everything, they don't make gimped versions and demand you pay more to get the real deal...I mean pro being 200 dollars was already pushing it, 400 dollars for retail Ultimate is just insane. Paying 200 bucks for an OEM version with no support is not much better. The idea that the only reasonably priced option, home basic, gimps your processor (it software caps your processors if you have a multi core system like I do), limits the amount of RAM you can use and bars you from a lot of the security an back up upgrades that supposedly are the key features of Vista. Customer choice is one thing, sending gimped software to force users to upgrade and be nickel and dimed to get the full feature set (or anything close to it) is quite another.
8) There is no real advantage over XP. Not one. It is one thing to say Vista isn't so bad, maybe its not the worst OS, but there's no value added for that 400 bucks Ultimate costs. I was quite stupid in getting Vista ultimate via OEM instead of going for XP. I was sucked in by the Direct X thing (which more or less does nothing, a minor improvement to lighting and shadows at the most for a big hit in performance) and have regretted it ever since. I now have 3 HDs, one with OSX, one with Vista and one with XP and more or less just transfered everything from Vista to XP after installing XP pro and let Vista just sit unused in most cases. It is quite simply sub par, and saying "its not THAT bad" is hardly a worthy endorsement for a 400 dollar product. I mean saying "it's not that bad, you can use it if you REALLY try and tweak it a bunch" is fine if you're talking about Mandrake Linux or something, because that's free, but for a 400 dollar OS to be as bad as Vista is is inexcusable.
The only way Vista isn't that bad is if you've never had any extensive experience outside the Windows world and expect to be crapped on by your OS. I can think of hundreds of things that have improved drastically in OSX since it's 2000 release (some of which Vista ripped off) but there is no such evolutionary improvement in Vista much less a revolutionary one, it's barely better then XP in some ways and worse in others, for a company with billions to spend on OS development that's bafflingly pathetic. I guess, like the Yankees will tell you, money can't always buy you real talent.
