Like many others, I was also eagerly waiting for the Microsoft Windows Vista after hearing about its many goodies, sleek sexy interfaces and improved security features. I was having a notebook given by my company that came pre-loaded with Windows XP, and I very much liked it for its performance on this system powered by Centrino Duo, 2 GB RAM and 64 MB nVidia graphics.
During the last quarter of 2007 there were various offers by vendors such as HP, Dell and Acer, and my brother was wanting one Compaq notebook powered by AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor and 1GB memory. The good thing (at that time!!) was that the notebook was pretty cost effective and it included the Vista Home Basic 32-bit version, and a HP Webcam & HP stereo headset were complimentary. My brother and I were fascinated to lay our hands on a Vista-loaded computer, and finally we bought it!!
Well, we were not very enthused on seeing the Vista installation ‘time’ that took nearly 81 minutes, which to me is at least 80% to 90% more time than it would take to install Windows XP. Anyways, we were restless to see the Vista blooming on our new notebook screen, and finally it happened. The first few days of using the Vista-powered notebook gave us a feeling that the operating system itself is very very very slow, and we repeatedly frowned at the ‘Designed for Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic‘ sticker twinkling on the notebook.
After a few days, I got vexed with this so called intelligent (what crap!!) operating system and installed a legal version of Windows XP – getting rid of Vista. The system was blazing fast with the good old XP, but there were a few drivers (e.g. wireless adapter, Bluetooth) that were missing. I tried downloading and installing them over the Internet, but with little success. I contacted HP support (text chat) and asked for the drivers; they were kind enough to supply me with the drivers, however kept insisting that the notebook is designed only for Vista, and XP-specific drivers for my notebook model is not available as yet. Anyways, the drivers that they gave me failed to work, which left me with no choice than to load that God-forsaken Vista on my new notebook.
Typical problems faced:
1. After ‘Welcome’ screen, you have to wait at least 2 minutes to get into the desktop
2. Click on ‘My Computer’ or ‘Network and Sharing Center’, and 6 out of 10 times, you have to wait for more than 45 seconds before you could see your hard drives, removable disks, webcam, network connections, etc. – Ridiculous
This is what you see for 45 seconds after clicking on ‘Network and Sharing Center, same applies to ‘My Computer’ too!!
3. 5 out of 10 times, my notebook will not shutdown properly – come on buddy, XP is a scorcher!!
4. Click on ‘Save as’ or ‘open file’ on notepad, Wordpad, MS Paint, MS Word/Powerpoint/Excel, it takes a lifetime to open the ‘location’ on disk.
5. If a program stops responding, it throws three options on you when you try to close the non-responsive program, one of them being ‘close the program’ – which again takes 34 seconds (sometimes even more!!) to close the program. Never click on ‘Wait for the program to respond’ – I would stop counting in seconds if I clicked on that, I’d start counting in minutes rather!
Well, I thought the above complaints were restricted to Vista Home Basic, which just had a dual core AMD processor and 1 GB memory to run on. I was wrong!!
Recently, my company gave us the option to upgrade to Vista Enterprise edition, and also listed the desktop and notebook model numbers that are compatible with the Enterprise edition. As I mentioned above, my notebook is powered by Centrino Duo, 2 GB RAM and 64 MB nVidia graphics, and was also listed under the ‘compatible models’. All of the timings that I’d mentioned above for the various tasks are TRUE in the most powerful Enterprise edition on a equally powerful notebook configuration.
Microsoft – what have you given us?? Are you indirectly asking us to switch to Suse Linux Enterprise Edition 10 or Ubuntu? I guess, if this is going to be the case, soon all research papers from IDC, Gartner, Forrester, McKinsey, and so on, would list Windows Vista’s annoying nonperformance as the key driver for greater Linux adoption in many countries, if not most!!
Wake up! I want the speed of XP and the elegance of Vista. Looks like I can’t eat the cake and have it too 
Watch out for more pics on this slowest and most annoying operating system from Microsoft!!
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Updated Aug 29, 2008:
So here ‘m armed with a screenshot of a local file transfer…
I’m just so frustrated with this stupid operating system that I wanted to shoot all those developers and the community supporting this OS on their knee caps. I downloaded a couple of movie files on my hard drive, about 700 MB each, and wanted to transfer them to another folder on the same drive. So how much time do you think this simplest of operations would have taken on a Windows 2000 or Windows XP? Take a look at the screen shot below…
this is the fate of file transfer on a Pentium dual core system with 2 GB memory…
Tags: annoyingly-slow, Enterprise edition, Hom-basic, Linux, Microsoft, nonperformance, Vista, Windows
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well dear, you have now started disliking windows vista !!well i Gurantee that 80% of the people around the world hate it the most !!
Yeah right Nick! I just didn’t want to use the word ‘hate’ as it is too strong a word
I used to wonder, they spent more than 5 years in developing this silly OS – why didn’t they put it to sufficient testing before releasing it to the public!?! I believe the only useful feature is the ’start menu’-integrated search.
But with 4gb ram Vista works fine.
“But with 4gb ram Vista works fine” – Yeah, just fine! 4GB to open ‘My Computer’ ‘My network Places’, ‘My Pictures’?!?!
Hi Naren Welcome to the world of Ubuntu
’ (no I dont wat to seduce you as it has its own problems)
It a Vista killer ‘I am using superlatives
All I can say is that I am using Linux for years now, no virus, no bloat-ware, I compile my own optimized software which runs 50 to 70 times faster then pre-compiled ones.
My laptop battery runs 30 to 40 percent more than XP-Home on Ubuntu because of better CPU scaling and multitasking.
Vista home is also fast but not optimized at the core level Cpu scaling, multitasking etc. and I think high power usage is due to NTFS limitations. Linux ext3 is a very advanced file system, very fast, I think second fastest (after ReiserFS) and at the same time is quite reliable and never fragments, so you never need to use a defrager.
It also holds the record of second longest running server after Unix.
There is an good comparison on wiki
Very true!! I’ve been using Ubuntu for more than 3 years…right from day one of its launch! I was given 40 free copies that were shipped directly from the UK!! Though there were problems with it, I believe the latest version of Ubuntu is just too good to realize that you are using Linux
It even detected my friend’s Tata Indicom data card (not as some generic device!!).
It is very user friendly, and MS lovers calling Linux non-user friendly doesn’t hold much water nowadays! I’m said that I’m not supposed to install Ubuntu on my office notebook
o lay:) so we are after all birds of same feather
yep, we are
I wish all those vendors could bundle Ubuntu along with the notebooks and desktops, instead of Windows Vista!! Some vendors like Dell and Lenovo do offer Linux loaded notebooks, but they are not marketed properly 