[themadjester]

So, I have not really used vista, I mean I have used other peoples vista enough to tell that I don't feel that "OMG I NEED THIS" and I have used word 2007 which left me less than impressed and gave me a taste for what vista would be like, but everyone I know hates it, especially those who are using it.

The biggest complaint I have heard is that it is slow. I remember when XP came out and everyone upgraded to a minimum 256 megs of ram, now vista is the same and I can't help but to ask myself why?

Now I am a student, and I have taken some programming coarses, I have also been an avid computer user for some time so I feel I understand this stuff fairly well however I got to thinking about this recently and I cannot for the life of me understand why vista warrents an extra system overheard of about half a gig. the flashier UI is simply a photoshop job and running it at a mildly higher resolution connot account for the change. Can anyone help me out here and explain what they have added (or done...) to vista that makes it eat so much more memory?

Add: along the same lines I have often wondered why compatibility issues like XP-> vista arise, I mean, sure there are some changes like the maxamin amount of memory addressing aloud but I find myself surprised these issues manage to crop up...

[YarrOfDoom]

Post #15 and #20 of this thread should answer your questions.

[jg007]

a lot of this can be explained by prefetch etc but you have to bear in mind that as windows has evolved more and more programming has been developed to try and catch more problems and provide more functionality to the end user and this requires a lot more code behind the scenes which has to be kept updated in realtime and tracked as everything else runs requiring more memory and probably requiring more variables / memory segments holding that data

also when you talk about a photoshop job it does not seem correct to look at it this way as the graphics interact with other items and are not just static images show on top of everything else

vista brings in significant changes and often when programs do not work with it it is because of how it was programmed in a non standard way or just in a way that does not work with legacy support

look at systems like the MAC OS which generally has poorer legacy support and as a result it has been easier for then to make it more secure and stable by removing features , Windows has tended to try to provide more support for their legacy user base and as a result has sometimes not been able to update the code as they probably would have.

I may not have explained this very well but if you look there are documents and discussion on this issue that don't just go bashing MS and glorifying all other o/s which can be interesting reading.

[jg007]

just to add..

I don't use vista simply because I pay for my software even from MS and I don't feel that the cost is justified but I do know plenty of people using Vista who really like it and would not go back to XP, most of these people are tech enthusiasts but I do know other people who are more standard users who use Vista and like it.

[Studlyami]

I switch 2 out of my three computers that had vista back to windows XP. I have used Vista business and vista premium and all the new enhanced "security features" were annoying and prevented myself from doing many actions that I was use to. Trying to remove these "features" was difficult and I was never able to fully remove them and when i messed up vista so bad that it was unstable i just reinstalled 2 of my vista installs with XP. There were many really nice features of vista, but I want to be admin, I want control of my files (huge issues with cut and paste) and I don't like pop up windows. If it wasn't for gaming I'd rather switch to a different OS than to use vista again.