Microsoft Ending Vista Support April 11th, Says Few Older Computers Ready for 10

[Naito]

SP1 on was quite solid - used Vista happily for a few years. You can definitely notice the age when you go back to it...

 

[bug]

Still have Windows Vista running on one of my VMs. Strangely I do like Vista's interface over both Windows 7 and 10.

I never understood why people hate Vista so much. It ran perfectly on my old build of Q6600 with 8GB of RAM, way better than XP.

Well, you admit that it's strange to like Vista's interface over 7 or 10. And then you ask yourself why people hate Vista? Because of the interface! I don't deny after using it for a number of years, any interface will grow on some users. But back in the day, it was confusing, limited and plain annoying.

I remember blaming Vista for all my GPU issues, being too young to realize that the driver vendors were more to blame...

I also remember the old generic AHCI driver crashing constantly on my old ABIT motherboard with it's strange SATA setup...

This wasn't entirely driver vendors' fault. Vista came with WDDM and afaik the API was finalized way to late for vendors to properly implement it. AV vendors have also complained about the late API freeze at the time.

Whether it was ahead of time or not, Vista was the wrong product at the wrong time.

 

[Ubersonic]

I never understood why people hate Vista so much. It ran perfectly on my old build of Q6600 with 8GB of RAM, way better than XP.

Basically, Windows XP was much easier to use than 9x had been due to the death of so many DOS mode applications, and at the same time the cost of owning a PC dropped dramatically. Due to this in the years between the release of XP and Vista the average IQ of a PC owner also dropped dramatically as the mouthbreathers could now make the interwebs work.

The end result was that when Vista launched with the exact same launch issue that XP/9x/3.11 had (running like **** on the minimum spec hardware) the neanderthals raged and threw their toys out of the pram. By contrast Windows 7 was essentially the same core OS with a shinier GUI but it got let off easy because it was now three years later and the average PC spec had increased.

 

[R-T-B]

Whether it was ahead of time or not, Vista was the wrong product at the wrong time.

In the same sense that OS/2 was, I agree. Both were fairly technologically cool, but completely pushed the wrong way against the culture of the time until they were forgotten.

Granted, there are different reasons (OS/2 was mostly mismarketing whereas Vista had many other problems), but the "wrong product for the wrong time" thing still applies.

 

[wurschti]

At the time of Vista, I found on some torrent site a Lite version of it, and it ran amazingly well. I found it just as snappy as XP, but I could play DX10 games like Crysis with all the eye candy enabled. Of course at a point in time without updating it became obsolete.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Sure, let's upgrade to Win 10:

 

[Parn]

I have to say Vista became pretty solid after SP1 and definitely worthy as a day-to-day OS after SP2. I was actually using Vista Business SP2 as the main OS on my Windows box for quite a while until all the issues with the initial Windows 7 release settled down.

In terms of RAM usage, Vista isn't bad compared to 7/8.1/10. The main issue was that when Vista was initially released, most mainstream PCs only had 2GB of RAM which was simply not sufficient 7/8.1/10 were born in an era where 8GB (or even 16GB) RAM had become the norm.

 

[bug]

Sure, let's upgrade to Win 10:

View attachment 85164

Tbh, that card is 8 years older than Win10. Even so, Win7 drivers work fine on Win10. They don't use WDDM2.x, but they work.

 

[Ubersonic]

Sure, let's upgrade to Win 10:

Vista/7/8/8.1/10 drivers are interchangeable as they are all variations of NT6, if they don't install it's because the installer program has been set not to do it but you can just extract the installer and manually apply the driver via device manager.

 

[Warrgarbl]

Well, I ran Vista for 4 years on my 3Ghz Wolfdale Core 2 Duo (with a 8800GT). Never had issues with it and the performance was perfectly fine. However, I came late to the party and never experienced Vista pre-SP1. As far as I can tell this was where things were bad, although much of this probably also was attributable to x64 coming through and drivers having trouble with that (and the increased security).

 

[newtekie1]

Good, they should cut support for Windows 7 at the same time, that OS needs to die just as much as Vista does.

 

[Vayra86]

Im rolling back to Vista right now just to annoy MS.

Nah... just kidding

 

[bug]

Well, I ran Vista for 4 years on my 3Ghz Wolfdale Core 2 Duo (with a 8800GT). Never had issues with it and the performance was perfectly fine. However, I came late to the party and never experienced Vista pre-SP1. As far as I can tell this was where things were bad, although much of this probably also was attributable to x64 coming through and drivers having trouble with that (and the increased security).

True. Afaik (only used Vista on occasion myself), the main issues were an annoying UAC and a UI ill-suited for the desktop. Microsoft worked on both of those (though I think the UI couldn't be fixed completely).
The base of Vista was solid (after all, 7 was nothing but Vista+polish), but trying to shove everything down customer's throats was "a bit" too much.

 

[trog100]

vista only had one problem.. MS put all the emphasis on how pretty they could make it look as opposed to how well it performed.. it arrived when the term "bloatware" was popular.. vista was a perfect example of bloatware.. it would run fine on todays hardware but it didnt run so fine back in the day when it arrived..

for example i have put windows ten on some ten year old hardware.. it works fine and improves the performance.. vista on the on the hand needed high end hardware of the time to work and even then it wasnt that quick..

windows seven put the emphasis back on performance.. MS learned a valuable lesson..

trog

 

[TheLostSwede]

I'm nostalgic, but not necessarily how you think. I had a lot of pain in this era, but I always liked learning computers, and boy was it a time of learning.

You seem to have missed out on DOS 3.01...

 

[Fx]

Still have Windows Vista running on one of my VMs. Strangely I do like Vista's interface over both Windows 7 and 10.

I never understood why people hate Vista so much. It ran perfectly on my old build of Q6600 with 8GB of RAM, way better than XP.

I understood why, but that is also why I never had one lick of problems from it.

Vista was very resource-intensive for its time. It loved to have lots of memory especially. Apparently, businesses with legacy programs didn't have much luck either. So basically, the problems primarily stemmed from a new generation of OS technology mixing with hardware that was designed for previous generational requirements. Many people never connected those dots.

I hazard that any computer that can run Vista can handle Win10 within reasonable expectations.

 

[Ubersonic]

it would run fine on todays hardware but it didnt run so fine back in the day when it arrived..

That applies to every Windows release prior to 7 (which was a dressed up Vista).

 

[OldSchool Tech]

Vista worked well for some users, but to say that its anything as good as windows 7 is a big joke. It ate 800mb of RAM right after installation while Windows 7 was at 400mb. The difference in efficiency is steep to say the least. Windows 7 is so good it even makes windows 10 bad lol. Imagine, even AMD's new proc architecture armed with all the new instructions run better on windows 7 than in windows 10. You can check some forums on that, but the fact of the matter is, with windows 10 AMD says you have to wait for optimizations. Outclassed right from the start. Thats my 2 cents. TY

Oh yeah and I agree Vista did run a lot better after SP1.

 

[Hood]

Sure, let's upgrade to Win 10:

View attachment 85164

No Win10 drivers for a 2006 laptop GPU? Not surprised, really, the CPU won't run it.

 

[Dave65]

Vista was bad but not as bad as people let on.

 

[ManofGod]

I absolutely loved 64 Bit SP1 Vista. In fact, hated the fact that the removed the immediately loading of programs into ram on boot up in Windows 7 without anyway to make it behave like Windows Vista. People would complain about hard drive thrashing because they did not understand why it was occurring in the first place.

 

[bug]

I absolutely loved 64 Bit SP1 Vista. In fact, hated the fact that the removed the immediately loading of programs into ram on boot up in Windows 7 without anyway to make it behave like Windows Vista. People would complain about hard drive thrashing because they did not understand why it was occurring in the first place.

That's how thing work: you want people's money, you need to actually sell them your product. Because people are usually clueless and like it that way.

 

[R-T-B]

You seem to have missed out on DOS 3.01...

DOS 5.0 was when I started.

 

[Prima.Vera]

DOS 5.0 was when I started.

God I miss DOS for games. It was THE BEST Operating System for gaming by light years. It was using virtually NO RESOURCES for itself and you could access ALL available resources. And back then producers weren't lazy like today's...

 

[kn00tcn]

Good bye Windows Vista you big pile of pooh! Bloated, slow, non responding POS, most Vista computers I just updated to 7 and that transformed the Computer completely! or installed XP that just put Vista performance to shame! No love lost here let me tell you over the thousands of PC's ive worked on with that crappy OS.

sounds like total nonsense, why would 7 magically be so much better than patched vista, it's only fair to compare 2009 vista to 2009 7 unless you're a dick

God I miss DOS for games. It was THE BEST Operating System for gaming by light years. It was using virtually NO RESOURCES for itself and you could access ALL available resources. And back then producers weren't lazy like today's...

wouldnt a console (any generation) be the best for games? but you probably mean usable OS

are you saying witcher or doom is lazy? cuz they arent...