How reliable do you think Vista is? I would just like to know, just so I know what you guys thin of it if I do0 decide to upgrade. Thanks!

Reliability isn't the problem -- Vista is probably more 'bulletproof' than XP which is itself already very stable and reliable. No, the problem with Vista is it's exceedingly slow startup time, it's high RAM requirement to run at the same speed as XP (if you use XP with 1Gb RAM you'll need 2Gb for Vista to get the same speed), and, not least, it's lack of any real 'must have' productivity feature which XP does not already have. Fancy visual effects are all very well but I don't consider them worth paying for, and you're not getting much else besides that. Just read many of the Vista forums for posts which read "I hate Vista, how do I downgrade to XP?

For those buying their first new PC, of course, Vista is what you get. And that's fair enough. But upgrade to Vista if my current XP PC is working fine? -- no thanks. Microsoft's problem since XP was launched (and improved further with SP2) is that there's very little left in the way of real improvements to tempt users to buy Vista as a self-install upgrade. 90% of Vista sales will be as pre-installed copies. The other 10% will be self-installers/upgraders with more money than good sense.

Yeah, I guess Vista is really just not as good because it just ahs more eye candy and is more of a resource hog.

Everyones experience is different but let me share this with you before you upgrade.

I just came to the site as part of my desperate search for help. I have had vista installed for 4 months. I havent enjoyed the experience and I do miss the simplicity of xp but it was stable although I personally find it annoying to use.

However today my PC stopped running any DVD or CD based media. When looking for a search I found other people having the same problem. No fix no patch and not a great deal of help around. Seems to occur normally just before or after an anti virus program or a windows update is installed. Tried de installing most things and partial rebuild. The DVD drive doesnt even boot the windows dvd if I restart.

I would expect that completely reformating my hard drive would probably allow me to reinstall as presumably vista cant confuse my hardware once its gone but I am trying to find a solution first.

Up to this point I had learned to live with the annoying continual requests to confirm I am allowed to use my own pc and that yes I am indeed giving administrator permission etc but now its completely vandalised my PC I am on the hunt for my old XP disks so its down to the cellar to raid the backup boxes for me.

£180 for Windows vista premium, cannot use my full 4 gig corsair paired ram (need full 64 bit version for that and may not be able to get the 64 bit version drivers for all my hardware) and now I cant use my DVD / Cd roms either. PC is high spec indeed and only 4 months old. I am left with an expensive and non mobile blackberry for email and surfing if I dont reinstall the whole lot. Could take me a day or 2 and I dont have the time to mess about personally.

Your left wondering if they do it to us on purpose.

Tried to make this as direct and factual as possible without ranting which is a challenge at present but there is my experience for you. Wish I had know before I made my choices but sadly I tend to only look for advice after the event hehe. Also agree with the comments made previously about the resource hogging. My laptop which was fine under windows died under vista. Went back to xp due to the resources. So I guess what I am saying is unless your really into pc support and have a great machine you like tinkering with dont do it.

After the latest round of reliability update that came out a few months ago I haven't had any problems in that department. I find it more reliable than XP. Compatibility-wise things aren't as good, although I've gotten everything but an five year old scanner to work.

hehe i got a free upgrade to vista thats one of the reasions i upgraded to it the other was to play halo 2 on my pc i dont have an xbox

My Vista box does well, but I too have has compatability issues. I haven't had any program problems - most works just as good as XP - maybe a bit slower. Vista has its growing pains just like early XP had. With that said, I still love Windows XP.

I have been running 2 Vista Home Premium machines since May and have not had any, besides a couple of older programs, issues whatsoever........both have been 100% stable so far and I could not be happier........

Well this is an interesting poll now isn't it?

My experience with Vista starts with Beta and Alpha builds which were terrible in the beginning.
Hey wait a minute, pre-release builds awful? who knew that a pre-production environment
would be unstable. But what about after the release?

Well, I believe that OEM's didn't have ample time to produce software and drivers for Vista to be
an "overwhelming" success. This I believe in part to be a faux pas on Microsoft's "Holy Grail" of
operating systems. Early, there was a driver from one company that caused the Optical Drive to stop working.
That was a printer driver, I believe that came from a programmer that didn't read all of the
documentation on drivers however. This was fixed in about a month or so of discovery.

Originally, I had no ideas how to get my older software to work with Vista.
The way I got my old software to run was to run in compatability mode for XP and
to run as Administrator. I've had numerous successes with this. Only the Version of Yahoo at the
time didn't work right away because the visual styles in vista caused some issues, but I was able to
work this out with compatability mode as well.

The only thing I can't do as of this point is run my Graphics driver in XP compatability mode, which I may
have just figured out as I write this. I'll get back to you if I get that to work.

Further, I think that Vista lends itself to technically seasoned people first and foremost.


All in all I think that Vista reliabilty comes in about 4.5.
If this was about useability, I would give Vista only a 3.5
that being said, most issues are rooted in the change from one OS to the next.

Vista is a stable, security conscious OS like mentioned above it has many features that turn it into a resource hog and make it rather slow on the standard desktop PC. I am looking forward to Windows 7 hoping that it will bring all of the features of Vista into a light fast bullet-proof OS.

i have 2 vista pc's in my house & 1 xp machine ,,, all high spec pc's,,, i have noticed thet people who upgraid there xp machines to vista seem to have more problems than preinstalled vista systems,,,,, up to now, with the tweeks and all the windows updates both vista pc's are running very fast & very stable,,, and i suppose as time goes on vista will get more stable & compatability issues will be sorted out by software & hardware makers just like it did with win xp,,,,, every one seems to have forgoten the isssues with xp when it first arrived & how unstable it was,, but now years on xp is the god,,,, just like vista will be in a year or two when everyone gets use to it.
good luck

Upgrades and new hardware are the bane of Vista adopters!!! I'm at the point that my wife's next system will be a store-bought one. The major manufacturer's have time to test their builds and work out their bugs before releasing them for sale.

Vista is designed as an OS for everyone (as are most Microsoft OS's). So compromises had to be made in it's construction. For example, I hate Aero but lot's of other people love it, so it's here to stay.

This is also the benefit of Vista (and other Microsoft OS's). Since it's designed for everyone, a lot of people will write programs for it. So you'll be able to (eventually) find a program that'll do whatever you want it to do. You can't find this for other OS's - just because they're not that widely used. For those OS's you'll have to locate someone willing to program what you want - or you'll have to learn to program yourself.

This should continue with the next OS from Microsoft. More features for more people to use - resulting even more use of resources. This is vaguely reminiscent of the time before 16 bit OS's were supplanted by the 32 bit OS's - lot's more things for a system to do and less resources for it to work with. The 4gB limit on RAM for 32 bit OS's is starting to hamper things a bit - so I'd expect that the next Microsoft OS release to concentrate on 64 bit versions. 32 bit will still be around for a while (because of all the 32 bit computers out there) - but 64 bit is making significant inroads now and it's ability to run 32 bit apps makes it even more attractive.

FWIW - I finally gave up on 32 bit Windows on Xmas day and upgraded to 64 bit Vista. The only issue that I had was obtaining 64 bit security apps (Avast antivirus and Kero Personal Firewall were the only one's that I could find for free).

when you say upgrade, dont do an upgrade install from xp to vista. do a clean install or you will not like it :-p

Sorry, my apologies for not being clearer. I didn't upgrade my 32 bit Vista for 64 bit Vista - I clean installed 64 bit Vista on a separate drive - that way I can still boot into the 32 bit version if I need to.