what about comparing scenarios in vista, with the same scenarios in xp to make it easier for people (inclusive me) to see the difference between vista and xp in everyday use

And what about nvidia graphics cards in vista! I hear they are causing problems!

Added to my RSS reader.  :)

Speaking of eXPerience, try searching for "file copying slow Vista" using Live Search or Google. They maybe MS will acknowledge that Vista is RC3.

Great news, more discussion is good.

The only thing I wish about Vista is that you could customize it to look more like XP.

Not because I care for myself, but my wifes Grandmother wants a new Laptop, and she gets real confused with even basic user interface changes.  So having Vista on her new machine will literally be a nightmare due to the interface changes in IE6 and Vista.  I know the changes arent that dramatic, but its a shame that you cant revert back so that people like my wifes grandmother can stay with what they know and are used to.

Sorry I meant IE7 and Vista

Hey newscientist2000:  note that you can turn off Aero glass and revert to the Standard UI theme:  http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2006/07/06/440510.aspx.

Searching for help. I have been using a new computer with Vists basic for two weeks. It continues to be a disaster. After searching web sites, blogs, using available phone tech support I am at a loss. Many of the web sites and blogs I find are technical information sites far above my average user questions or needs. I just want a computer that runs smoothly, and quickly like XP did. Without bemoaning the facts, just two examples. Reboot takes nine minutes. Opening something simple, Word, might happed in five seconds or thirty.

PS. Your contact form would not accept Name or Email? I hope I see something that can help.

Thanks for the advice Nick, every little helps :-)

I would have to agree with Bruce. Vista has definitely not been a good experience. I often have problems with IE being unable to do a right mouse click on a link to open in new tab or window. I have been unable to use Visual Studio 2005 to create new databases in SQL Server 2005 Express. I have on several occasions had only Default Programs and Windows Update on Start Bar. I often click on stacked programs, and I am unable to select one of he windows for example IE 7. I am running Vista Business. It is a brand new Toshiba Tablet that came load from factory. I do not have Vista Disk as I would definitely like to reload Vista from scratch as I am not sure how well it got installed by Toshiba. I have been unale to find a place to download a trial so that I could use that to reinstall Vista. Everything is up to date with the exception of my Wireless Adapter. I also often get messages about Windows Search Protocal stopping. I would appreciate any direction and help. I have looked all over the place with no solution. I am beginning to regret giving in and getting Vista and thinking people may be right that this is the next Windows Me.

The great thing About bookmarking this blog is that it now has a cool little Windows Vista Icon on my IE6 favourites.  I rebookmarked this site to get the icon for this site too.

Great Job, nice Icon.

So far I am using Vista Ultimate 64 bit on one of my 5 computers and it seems good. I will not upgrade all my computers, as 2 of them are too old. I have purchased the family discount and intend to have 3 running vista eventually, but my highest performing machine has windows vista ultimate 64 bit and has only given me hardware incompatibilty issues due to no driver support from hardware manufacturers (Creative Labs and Kensington). There was one problem I cannot explain. When using google earth with my mouse wheel, rolling up or down both zooms in. This is frustrating but does not make it unusable by any means. I wish there was a way that XP drivers could work on Vista so some of my "obsolete" hardware could be used. Also, finding the Mute for the microphone is incredibly difficult, but it does actually exist.

As far as stability and speed, my machine runs very well with vista. No issues whatsoever, but I do make sure that I have all new drivers installed which I'm sure makes a HUGE difference.

Oh My God - Windows Vista is horrible!!  What do we know - Steve Jobs is not at the helm.  I just bought a Dell with the "upgrade" to Windows Vists instead of an Apple.  My thoughts - hey, Microsoft has made all of its upgrades seemlessly, so I will not have to spend the hours assoicated with learning a new software, as I would with an Apple.  What an idiot I was.  Windows Vists is so counter-intuitive to XP, that I had to call customer service to figure out how to turn my computer off.  EVER single thing I try to do with the software takes hours of time to sort out - horrible!!!!!!!!!

I'm going out of my way to tell every person I encounter to not upgrade unless you have 100 hours of time to learn the system.  Then I talk to my Apple user friends who just laugh at me - "you should have bought an Apple - it's plug and play and easy to navigate".

Hi Nick, I am using Vista at home and enjoy it very much.  I installed a new hard drive and installed on it leaving my XP install and all data on the old drive.  

I work for a company who contracts me out to a state agency.  I create images for new computers and ghost the images to new computers.  In the last year we have shipped over 1500 updated computers to sites and I am starting a new project that will deliver over 1600 to the sites.  I am very experienced with XP, I have now spent a great deal of time configuring Vista to be used by the agency.  Of course security is very important and I have only a few minor issues with Vista.  One major thing that I have noticed is that I cannot do a repair of a Vista install.  With XP we only needed to start on a bootable CD, bypass the first repair option and choose the second one.  This would put the users computer back in business quickly.  With Vista we do not have this option, the repair option just wants to install a previous backup.  None of our users have tape drives!  How many home users have a 10 GB tape drive?  I do but I am not the normal home user.  I suppose that it is the way the system was designed but it just seems to me that the developers paid way too much attention to those misguided people who envy MAC users, they created a good OS but left out the things that business users need badly.  I know of no other way to get this information back to MS.  I am convinced that the average business user does not want a MAC, if they did you would not have a job and neither would I.  I have worked with MAC's since 1990 and own a 17" iMAC so I am more than just a grouch.  I think that Microsoft needs to fire the MAC heads and get back to the business that has made you rich, the business users.  I am also one of those folks who still has a bootable 160K 5 1/4" floppy disk with DOS 1.1 on it and my copy of Lotus 123 ver 1.3 will still run on Vista if I choose to install a 5 1/4" drive, you can't do that on any MAC, let's keep it that way on PC's.  

Hi Nick, if they ever decide to come out with a "PRO" version of Vista (as in XP PRO) instead of this Vista ME version then business will be able to use Vista, until then it will just be fodder for the MAC lovers.  I use it at home with no problem but it is not fit for business use.

Ted

HI everyone,, ive had windows vista premium for a little over a week and i absolutly hate it!!! it wont let me watch video clips on the net, it keeps shutting down insted of sleeping.. i cant find any help.. if anyone has the same problems and found any answeres PLEASE HELP ME>>

Thanks Andrew

In ref to wilkesda11 usually any OEM (Toshiba) must offer the media (CDs or DVD) for a nominal charge (maybe 10 or 15 US dollars) of operating systems sold without said disks. I just bought a Dell refurb that came with Vista Home Premium and it came with the DVD but everytime I have purchased a PC that did not have media a single phone call got me the media sometimes at no charge.

Hey s10hotrod, I may be able to help with some of your issues. Please give some specifics. I know my way around Vista fairly well. The help files in Vista can work for you if you can ask the right questions.

I have encountered certain major sites that use Flash video (Foxnews) in which IE7 and the latest Flash 9 and curent Java simply won't display the videos. The tests on the Adobe Flash links play fine and almost any other flash vid. I was able to "fix" this on several PCs by just installing Firefox. Oddly IE7 then began to display those foxnews vids! Something in the code on foxnews gets misinterupted by IE7. I have also fixed this by rolling back to IE6.

Does anyone have any info about the defrag utility.  I am getting an error about a missing path to dfrgui.exe when I try to defrag.  I cannot run it from a prompt nor when I right click to try to run it as administrator.  My user is the admin on my Home Premium version.  Any thoughts appreciated!!

The file you are looking for is by default located at %SystemRoot%\system32\dfrgui.exe. If the path is not available it could be a firewall issue, your administrator permissions could be broken or the file could be corrupt or missing. If you donot find dfrgui.exe in your system32 folder you may have another copy at C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft-windows-defrag-adminui_31bf3856ad364e35_6.0.6000.16386_none_96df4cc29359e295. Hope this helps. Note your Search may not see the dfrgui.exe file until you open Search Options inside Search Tools and tick "Include system directories" Be sure to Switch out of Indexed Locations and Directly into your System drive usually C:.

Those "Indexed files are remarkably fast but can miss lots of files. Hope this helps.

Hi again, its been awhile since ive been on here. Im having a little trouble figuring out

how i can get a mail download set up and a

e-mail client? at least thats the message i think im gettin. Vista is still hard for me..

And why when I open a web file I get a bunch of symbols and letters that doesn't make any sence and in the middle i find what I need to see? any help would be great.. thanks

Hey s10hotrod:  you're better off posting your questions to one of our Windows Vista newsgroups for assistance, as we're not equipped to provide direct product support via this blog; go here:  http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.mspx.  Thanks for reading!

I use windows vista movie maker heavily as I have a large library of home movies I am editing. Unfortunately, one of the main edit tools is transitions which when added to the timeline or storyboard freeze the video so that no further editing can be done. There are some suggested fixes on the web which I have applied but to no avail. Since so many kudos have been given to the Vista version of this program I am baffeled as to why this problem has not been highlighted as a major hinderance to the use of moviemaker.

I have windows media player version 11.0.5721.5230 on my xp machine and version 6.0.6000 on my two vista machines. I am trying to listen to my dozens of christmas albums but cannot change the web assigned genre to christmas in vista as there is no christmas genre listed. There is a christmas genre in xp so it has been left out in the revision. Why? Gangsta and booty rap were options but not christmas.This simple but needed change needs to be made. A holidays genre would also be helpful.