Windows Vista Update

Current Vista Bugs on my Machines

by Gian
(Boulder, CO)

Ok, so I have a Gateway convertible laptop and a Dell Core 2 Duo both running Windows Vista (the laptop is running the Tablet PC version. I have never EVER had more frustrating OS inconsistencies and bugs, and this comment comes from someone who ran Linux during the 0.99 phase and BETA tested Intel's whitebox with MS's 64-bit OS prerelease). Here are a few of the more annoying ones:

Laptop: When not plugged in, if the screen turns off there is no recovering it. You have to remove power and reboot. I can repeat this all day.

Copy/Delete/Transfer times are outrageous. It took ~ 8 minutes to copy 170Mb from one HDD to a flash drive. Tried it from one HDD to another HDD on the same vista machine and it took alittle longer. Same thing over the network between Vista machines. But change the OS on one of the machines and it copies quickly. Same thing wiht deleting files. It took 15 minutes to delete 4Gb from my HDD on Vista. 15 minutes!

Java console totally wrecks explorer and sidebar. After about 20-30 minutes my desktop is unusuable, have to ctrl-alt-del and kill explorer then start it back up and it's fine.

I got a Zune for my birthday 5 days ago and it won't run at all on any of my Vista machines. Yes, I've read the workarounds but it's funny beyond words that microsoft can't make a device that works with their premium multimedia platform. I've done everything to get it to work. The software won't install under any configuration and Windows Vista (i'm running latest patch, updates, etc) won't even recognize the Zune and can't install drivers. There's some real irony in here somewhere that I just can't see for the frustration of having to take my Zune back to CompUSA to buy something more useful.

Memory leak or crazy requirements, but both machines have 2Gb and start off running at 29-30% memory usage. I can reboot and not run *anything*, just let it sit there, and within 8 hours it's sitting at 50% memory usage. I have nothing running in the background except ZoneAlarm firewall and AVG's antivirus and antispyware. I've removed those and have nothing custom running and it still hovers around 45% memory usage. It slowly increases indicating to me a memory leak or reservation of some memory space over time without returning it. Who knows...

Permissions. There are some directories on my machine that says i need to be administrator. I change permissions and it still won't let me operate on the directory. There are some installed directories that I cannot delete now because it says Administrator doesn't have permissions. I've canged permissions, rechanged permissions, changed subdirectory and superdirectory permissions,a nd restored everything and tried again and nothing. I am starting to amass a collection of directories that are untouchable by even the Administrator.

Microsoft Police. It's not MS"s place to enforce laws and it sucks that I can't rip my favey DVD's for travel or whatever other reason under Vista. Windows Media Player 11 also removes the ability to remove DRM information from files, so don't upgrade to it.

I know when I want things to run on my system. Vista has indexers, svchost services and much more running at the most inopportune times. When I fire my laptop up I intend to use it, not wait an hour while the disk thrashes running searches and other BS. Sure, I turned it off but there are so many services running (IPv6, etc) that the average person won't use it's ridiculous. You really have to be diligent in researching all the services so you know which ones you can turn off so you don't eat up all your resources. Even with superflous services turned off my disk will start churning for no real discernable reason with both my vista machines.

Physical HDD Problems. On both my Vista machines, and even on my brother's Vista installation, since installing Vista we get this weird sound when accessing the HDD's (I have 3, he has 2), sort of this "beeeeep" then a hang for about 5-10 seconds. I thought my HDD was going bad, but it only happened upon upgrading and it happened with bro's box (exact sound and hang) so I'm thinking it's not the HDD. But it's concerning me as I'm wondering if Vista is actually working the HDD in such a way that it's gonna cause physical damage.

Short message: Stay with XP. It's so much faster and the pretty UI you get from Vista isn't even close to being worth the upgrade. Vista is FAAAAAAAAR from being production-ready, and even if it were, you have to give up more liberties to use it than you may like. I've included a picture of the device you will need to keep your sanity if you decide to install Vista.