If Vista would've had good drivers from the get go and the minimum requirements

[Vishera]

I mean it seems to me like these were really the two major things people hated about it. The fact that aero required more power than most people had (mostly because XP was so easy to run, but also partly because of the tech available back then) and that the person system has little to no basic drivers, and drivers were slow to be rolled out by manufacturers and Microsoft. So if it hadn't required so much space, RAM, GPU power, and was quicker to be supported, would it have gotten such a bad name?

 

[Alaric]

Windows 7 used the same kernel as Vista, so the basic structure of Vista was sound, the reputation suffered for the reasons you mentioned. Windows 7 was just Vista +. It had better driver support out of the box in part because so many Vista drivers worked on 7 and because M$ actually included a better driver catalog in the OS with W7.

 

[Kenrou]

 

[Alaric]

MAC OS/X ? He must be in an Apple store. I don't know many other people who would recommend that. LOL. Vista wasn't that bad. Vista to 7 was roughly equivalent to W8 to W10, minus the hideous assault on user privacy and control. LOL

 

[Kenrou]

Thought Vista's main issue was that nothing ran properly + constant crashes ? Never used it (went from WinXP to Win7) but heard some very gnarly horror stories from friends that had it...

 

[Alaric]

My ex got a laptop (Dell) with Vista Home on it (32 bit) around 2007 and it still does everything she wants today. The only problems were a couple HDDs failed over the last 10 years, but that's it. It ran everything that was installed. I even use compatibility mode for Vista for my camera software in W7. LOL

 

[||Console||]

I never had a problem with Vista I think most of the problems were with pols old printers

 

[c627627]

I had multiple OS with identical software and hardware installed on all OS... Windows XP/Vista/7/8 and later 10.
Windows 7 was snappier than Vista.

I could "feel" Windows 8 being snappier than Windows 7 but it was more pronounced with Windows 7 over Vista.


So it comes down to how there are people on the forums who "know" exactly what Windows 8 being snappier over Windows 7 means.
If you are one of those people, then you understand why Windows 7 was "better than" Vista, without even going into driver issues, etc.

 

[Alaric]

It would be a normal expectation that each successive OS would be "better", but I'd take Vista over 8 or 10 without hesitation. And so far W7 is the "betterest" for me.

 

[trents]

I never had any problems with Vista personally. I always thought the bum rap it got was undeserved.

 

[mackerel]

I got Vista early on for my then HTPC. Core 2 duo era hardware. No compatibility problems with it. The only minor niggle was that one time a bios update reset activation and I had to phone up MS to get it reset.

Performance, it was slower than XP in some ways, mainly due to the increased resource needs. This was improved by a later service pack. There were some things that just seemed inexplicably slow, but that "feature" carried over to 7, 8 and 10 too. Some file operations just seem to take far longer than any logical reason I can think of, and is more likely an inherent flaw in design choice.

I also ran it on a netbook. Can't recall exact specs but it was 1c2t atom class processor, 1.5GB ram, and it was fine on that. Since Vista support expired I have replaced it with Win7 on that, and actually the Vista interface was a better use of smaller screen sizes. Think of Vista was Win7 like architecture with XP like interface.

 

[Alaric]

I wonder how much of the differences in speed were due to hardware progress at the same time. The laptop I used it on was/is using a single core Pentium. My first W7 rig had a Phenom X4 and twice the RAM (4 GB vs. 2 GB). I fully expected my W7 rig to be noticeably faster. And it was, a lot faster, but Vista would have been a lot faster on it, too.

 

[petteyg359]

Thought Vista's main issue was that nothing ran properly + constant crashes ? Never used it (went from WinXP to Win7) but heard some very gnarly horror stories from friends that had it...

No, it ran everything just fine, and Microsoft even gave it out free to lots of XP users if they installed a "usage metrics" tracking application for a month. No silly upgrade-and-lose-your-previous license like 10, either. Came with 32- and 64-bit discs and 2 Ultimate Edition retail keys. The clueless technically-inept PEBKACs that seemed widespread were exactly that (clueless technically-inept PEBKACs).

I think I was using a C2D E6400 at the time, with 8GB RAM.

 

[rescuetoaster]

No, it ran everything just fine, and Microsoft even gave it out free to lots of XP users if they installed a "usage metrics" tracking application for a month. No silly upgrade-and-lose-your-previous license like 10, either. Came with 32- and 64-bit discs and 2 Ultimate Edition retail keys. The clueless technically-inept PEBKACs that seemed widespread were exactly that (clueless technically-inept PEBKACs).

I think I was using a C2D E6400 at the time, with 8GB RAM.

Upgrade and lose your license?
Is that an honor code situation? Because I've literally never had an issue re-using windows 7 licenses to register.

 

[petteyg359]

No, it ran everything just fine, and Microsoft even gave it out free to lots of XP users if they installed a "usage metrics" tracking application for a month. No silly upgrade-and-lose-your-previous license like 10, either. Came with 32- and 64-bit discs and 2 Ultimate Edition retail keys. The clueless technically-inept PEBKACs that seemed widespread were exactly that (clueless technically-inept PEBKACs).

I think I was using a C2D E6400 at the time, with 8GB RAM.

Upgrade and lose your license?
Is that an honor code situation? Because I've literally never had an issue re-using windows 7 licenses to register.

Your Windows 7/8 license is your Windows 10 license. You cannot have both at once. When they gave free copies of Vista to XP users, they actually sent DVDs in the mail with retail keys attached, so you could still use your XP license as long as you wanted alongside the Vista license.

 

[EarthDog]

It would be a normal expectation that each successive OS would be "better", but I'd take Vista over 8 or 10 without hesitation. And so far W7 is the "betterest" for me.

holy cow, no way...

 

[Kenrou]

It would be a normal expectation that each successive OS would be "better", but I'd take Vista over 8 or 10 without hesitation. And so far W7 is the "betterest" for me.

Win8.1 by a mile for me, faster/more stable then all those before (IN MY OWN EXPERIENCE) and apart from DX12 there is absolutely NO reason to upgrade to Win10.

 

[Alaric]

holy cow, no way...

I know, right? Who'da thunk it?

 

[petteyg359]

Win8.1 by a mile for me, faster/more stable then all those before (IN MY OWN EXPERIENCE) and apart from DX12 there is absolutely NO reason to upgrade to Win10.

There is one thing Windows 10 does better: It actually calls itself version 10

Windows Longhorn 6.0.5048
Windows Vista Beta 1 6.0.5112
Windows Vista CTP 6.0.5219
Windows Vista TAP Preview 6.0.5259
Windows Vista CTP December 6.0.5270
Windows Vista CTP February 6.0.5308
Windows Vista CTP Refresh 6.0.5342
Windows Vista April EWD 6.0.5365
Windows Vista Beta 2 Preview 6.0.5381
Windows Vista Beta 2 6.0.5384
Windows Vista Pre-RC1 Build 5456 6.0.5456
Windows Vista Pre-RC1 Build 5472 6.0.5472
Windows Vista Pre-RC1 Build 5536 6.0.5536
Windows Vista RC1 6.0.5600.16384
Windows Vista Pre-RC2 6.0.5700
Windows Vista Pre-RC2 Build 5728 6.0.5728
Windows Vista RC2 6.0.5744.16384
Windows Vista Pre-RTM Build 5808 6.0.5808
Windows Vista Pre-RTM Build 5824 6.0.5824
Windows Vista Pre-RTM Build 5840 6.0.5840
Windows Vista 6.0.6000
Windows Vista RTM 6.0.6000.16386
Windows Vista SP1, Windows Server 2008 SP1 6.0.6001
Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2 6.0.6002
Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 6.1.7600
Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM 6.1.7600.16385
Windows 7 SP1
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 6.1.7601
Windows Home Server 2011 6.1.8400
Windows Server 2012 Developer Preview
Windows 8 Developer Preview 6.2.8102
Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 6.2.9200
Windows 8 RTM 6.2.9200.16384
Windows Phone 8 6.2.10211
Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2 6.3.9600
Windows 8.1 Update 1, Windows Server 2012 R2 6.3.9600
Windows 10 Technical Preview 4 10.0.9926

 

[Kenrou]

There is one thing Windows 10 does better: It actually calls itself version 10

it's the little things that make our day