Is Windows Vista causing you a pain in the…

“Microsoft Windows Vista error”!

That is my constant thought in using MS Vista.

I just purchased a great new laptop. It’s a Dell XPS M1330. An amazing machine.

Then I started having problems connecting to my router via wireless.

So, I called Dell’s tech support and they promptly sent out a tech to replace my wireless card. I thought my problem was fixed. WRONG!

It still didn’t work. So I called Dell again and they sent another tech. This tech said it was probably a Microsoft Windows Vista problem! He said he had the exact same problem.

I did a little search on the Internet on Windows Vista with wireless and it is all over the place.

Read what others are saying…

“I’ve been a faithful windows user and recently, as I’ve upgraded from my oldie PIV to a brand new Quad-Core system, I’ve decided to upgrade the operating system as well. I was told that Vista was a bit resource hog when compared to XP but as the new system was incomparably more powerful I believed I could only experience an improvement. I was wrong. The desktop feels sluggish and the computer is constantly idling at 20% system load. A couple of games simply aren’t able to run and a few others run slower than running on XP. Then there’s the annoying questionnaire over if I really want to do whatever I want to do… I mean, the shiny graphics are nice and all but eye candy doesn’t make me do things faster, does it? To make matters worse, I’ve just gave Ubuntu a try on my old PIV system and although it also has some nifty shiny 3D graphics on the desktop, it doesn’t even use a quarter of the resources Vista hogs up. It’s a shame I can’t run my games there but if I could, I would switch in a heartbeat and I wouldn’t look back.” — Anonymous

“My first impressions with vista, were great, it booted quickly, it looked fantastic and stright forward to use, and then the problems began. When looking for drivers many manufactures even now do not fully support vista and you end up using Beta driver which often still have bugs in them. Other types of software have compatibility issues too. I have always used Zone Alarm internet security. I took a long time for a stable version to be released. Most other software issues are now being solved by developers or microsoft updates. The good news is the ease of use, virtualy everything i have connected to my computer has been found and had driver installed instantly. Back-up facilites are excellent as well as computer maintainance. For novice users Vista is a big leap forwards, maybe slightly more frustrating for advanced users. After nearly a year of use there have been no crashes, so excellent reliablity Overall I love Vista, it has taken a while, the initial attraction quickly wore off but I has now come back again and I can see the point of all the changes from XP ” — A. Rees, England

“I HATE the experiences I have had with Windows Vista. Windows Vista is much too large for most of the reasonably priced computers that are on the market, and, of course, comes installed in them. Anyone who buys a new computer with Windows Vista on it has to upgrade their internal memory at least one gigabyte just to get it to run smoothly. If you attempt to downgrade from Windows Vista to an earlier version of Windows, good luck! You will have to go out and further purchase a CD-ROM for erasing your hard disc, not to mention an earlier copy of Windows, because Windows Vista will NOT allow you to downgrade while it is the operating system installed on your hard drive. This is ridiculous and asinine, and caused me countless hours of trouble. If you do decide to stick with Vista, which takes up too much hard drive space, then you are left with an operating system which really isn’t, in any way, superior to previous operating systems, at least as far as your average home computer user is concerned. You would be better off using Windows NT for Heaven’s sake! So, in conclusion, I really have not enjoyed my experience with Windows Vista. For the life of me, I can’t understand why Microsoft doesn’t make a small but powerful operating system without all of the fancy visuals that take up too much memory and no one really wants or needs.” — Anonymous

“My new laptop came eqipped with Windows Vista, which seemed a good thing at the time. Sadly, it’s not. For example, my free anti-virus software doesn’t work with it, my GRE study guide doesn’t work with it, and various other education software packages that I need for classes don’t work with it. So my shiny new Gateway sits under a growing dustpile and I am forced to use the library computers. If that weren’t enough, the actual interface of Vista is counterintuitive and seems intentionally dumbed-down. Options seem to be missing or relabeled in, I suppose, everyday lanuage rather than the jargon we’ve all become accustomed to. It took me five minutes just to find the control panel. I generally have to use the search function to locate files and programs. The design is so different from previous Windows versions, that things that came second nature need to be relearned, which is a huge time waster. I have yet to see a change that I’d label an “”improvement.”" The added security features, that I haven’t figureed out how to disable and the incessent updates (”"preparing file for deletion…”") seem to make common tasks take twice as long. Vista looks flashy and “”modern,”" but I’d much rather have a funcional, intuitive system to help me get my work done faster.” — Michelle, USA

“It’s quite obvious by now that Vista is a large bloated resource hog with incompatibilites with pretty much anything made more than a year ago, but I really didn’t think it would be so bad on my fairly recent Toshiba A70 laptop which had been upgraded to 1.5G of RAM and operates at 3Ghz. Surely this is enough. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It seems that Vista does not support my video card. It is an ATI radeon 9100 IGP, while it is onboard (as is often the case with laptops), it is a sufficient card for my purposes, and the 3-D support works well enough for most games released at before 2005. I wasn’t going to give up so easily however, and I went to the net to try looking for a driver which could support my video card. It seems that ATI has moved on and won’t be writing any drivers for vista for this chipset, meaning my only hope would be to use a wrapper of some sort to try and support the XP driver, it was starting to seem like more trouble than it was worth. In the end, I couldn’t use anything other than the built in VGA driver for Vista. All the windows scrolled very slowly, and none of the advertised 3-D features work. Good job Microsoft.” — J. Edwards, Canada

“I helped out a gentleman in my neighborhood, an AARP member who was partially retired, setup and learn about his new computer. He had never owned one before, but ended up buying a DELL laptop with Vista for Christmas. Three months later, he called for my help because he could not figure it out. When I got there, and after the 3 minutes to boot up, I realized it had the bare minimum memory requirements, and a ton of software demos loading that he would never need. He said to me, “”I bought a new computer, I was disappointed it took so long to start up or do anything.”" We immediately doubled the memory and I set about the task of removing the unnecessary software and simplifying the experience for him. Two hours later, I had trained him enough to do the basics. The worst part is, I knew he was disappointed with his purchase of a ‘new’ computer because it was so slow and hard to work with. If he had WindowsXP or anything else, I think he would have felt good about his purchase, all because of Vista. Secondarily, he was always confused by the endless stream of pop-up requests to confirm what he is doing is OK. Disabling the security would lead to worse things, but the operating system shouldn’t confuse someone!” — Anonymous

So what do you think about Vista? Let us know!

Tags: microsoft, vista, vista error, windows