Worst Windows Ever

[FireXtol]

Poll is pointless.... ME wins.

[baja_yu]

Vista is a close second. (my opinion)

[I_Love_My_Vans]

Poll is pointless.... ME wins.

Don't have children

[Nightwalker83]

Poll is pointless.... ME wins.

Vista is a close second. (my opinion)

I agree!

[FireXtol]

Don't have children

Preaching to the choir.

[mendhak]

Who voted 7?

[chris128]

Someone tell me what was actually so bad about Vista? I think people love to just jump on the bandwagon and say Vista is rubbish when really they don't have much actual experience of it.
The only problem I have with it is that it is quite slow on older machines and the UAC prompts are a little excessive (but of course you can just turn UAC off). On a decent spec PC and with UAC turned off though,I think Vista is a perfectly acceptable OS - I used it for about a year and didnt have any complaints other than just not knowing where things were (but thats exactly the same in Windows 7). When it first launched of course it was a different story as there were lots of driver and application compatibility issues but now the majority of that has all been resolved. The fact that drivers were not available for Vista for every device in the world when it first launched is not really Microsoft's fault - its the device manufacturers fault. If you bought a brand new car and you wanted a certain sound system for it but you found that the sound system company didnt make a version that fits your car, you wouldnt say that your car was rubbish would you? You would say that the sound system company need to get their act together and bring out a version that fits this new car. As it stands now, pretty much any program or driver that runs on Windows 7 will run on Vista, so no one can complain about application compatibility with Vista now really if they say that Windows 7 is great.

That brings me on to the thing that annoys me most about this - how much people love Windows 7 when it is SO similar to Vista. If Windows 7 had actually been Windows Vista Service Pack 3 then people would have said it was rubbish and not given it a chance, but because its supposedly a new OS everyone was willing to give it a try and treated it as something totally new... so they found that Vista with a few minor tweaks (ie Windows 7) is actually not bad at all. You only have to look at the internal version numbers of Vista and 7 to see that even Microsoft consider Windows 7 to be a very minor update to Vista, as Vista is version 6 and Windows 7 is version 6.1.

Of course I'm not saying that anyone should choose to use Vista instead of Windows 7 - simply because there are improvements in Windows 7 and it is the latest version. I'm just saying that Vista is no where near as bad as people love to pretend it is in my opinion.

[FireXtol]

Well, Vista's 'biggest problem'(or 7's, for that matter) is XP.

According to a recent survey around 75% of businesses still use XP, and just a few years ago that was only around 10% greater. At current momentum, XP is going to likely be the longest mainstream(and likely supported) Windows to date.

Lets see, there was the "Vista Ready" BS stickers, lack of 64 bit drivers, poor performance, and reliability issues. These caused many people to install the 32 bit version, but I hear 64 bit adoption has greatly been improved with 7(nearly half of installs).

I'm sure by now a lot of those major issues have been ironed out, otherwise Vista's little brother 7 would be facing the same negative image. Computers get faster, and inefficient software becomes more acceptable and/or largely irrelevant.

First impressions matter, and Vista's was pretty bad.

I really don't think you'll see most people switch until they see an absolute need to do so. Windows 7 doesn't really present anything novel. There are(and have been) 3rd party programs available to facilitate any 'new' Windows feature, and they often don't require a new version of Windows.

I think Windows is only going to get more bloated. Departing from an OS into a more 'appliance-like device'. Kind of like a game with expansion packs. People will buy Window's Starter Edition, then buy the Movie Maker expansion pack, or Internet Explorer expansion pack, etc. Kind of like Apple does. Good software for the Mac? Apple buys it, and makes it an Apple product.

As these OSes start implementing 'App Stores' what's to stop them from simply phasing 'the old ways' out of commission?

The worst Windows has yet to come.

[dilettante]

I have to agree with Chris. There was simply and plainly a lot of FUD out there around Vista.

Windows 7 is merely a light evolution of Vista in most ways a user can actually see. There are a number of siginificant changes but you never see a user mention them.

The biggest differences in Windows 7 for consumers were (a.) manufacturers did get their act together and finally produce drivers using the new driver model, (b.) UAC was relaxed, perhaps to the point where its purpose is more or less defeated, and (c.) there was a huge hand-holding marketing campaign around Windows 7.

People also forget that "XP" was two different OS releases.

XP SP2 was an overhaul of a scale similar to that between Vista and Windows 7. The difference is that forces existed within Microsoft then that convinced Ballmer not to gouge customers or they'd resist adopting it. Those forces have been squelched or expunged from the company.


Business adoption rates of a new OS tend to be driven by the blue collar side of IT. Those guys hate to actually learn anything new that might eat into their time smoking on the loading dock emailing their Mom on their CrackBerries. Thus they tend to strip off the OS the manufacturer delivers on new machines and reinstall an old OS image before dumping the machines on users in crippled form.

[JuggaloBrotha]

That brings me on to the thing that annoys me most about this - how much people love Windows 7 when it is SO similar to Vista. If Windows 7 had actually been Windows Vista Service Pack 3 then people would have said it was rubbish and not given it a chance, but because its supposedly a new OS everyone was willing to give it a try and treated it as something totally new... so they found that Vista with a few minor tweaks (ie Windows 7) is actually not bad at all. You only have to look at the internal version numbers of Vista and 7 to see that even Microsoft consider Windows 7 to be a very minor update to Vista, as Vista is version 6 and Windows 7 is version 6.1.

Except the core changes between 7 and Vista are the types of stability changes that MS wouldn't (and so far havent) do for an SP for Vista, because it involved changing the security layers in the kernel/OS to be more efficient. Then there's the UI, which is much, much more user friendly (love the new taskbar) that MS wouldn't have done in a simple SP either. So given all changes everywhere that make Win7 so much better than Vista means, to me at least, Win7 is a different OS. Saying Win7 is just Vista SP3 is like saying XP is just Win2k SP5 (so XP SP3 is just 2k SP8). I have yet to see someone say XP is nothing more than 2k SP5, so I don't get why people are saying Win7 is just Vista SP3.

Of course I'm not saying that anyone should choose to use Vista instead of Windows 7 - simply because there are improvements in Windows 7 and it is the latest version. I'm just saying that Vista is no where near as bad as people love to pretend it is in my opinion.

I don't know about other people, but when Vista would crash on you even after SP2 was release that's a problem and I don't think it's drivers in my case since my laptop is now running Win7 with half of the drivers being the Vista drivers and Win7 runs just fine (has been since November 2009). I think the crashing was Vista just being stupid (among other things). I've even got a Vista VM not working correctly when my Win7 and XP VM's are running fine, the Vista VM is configured just like the Win7 VM and after playing with it for 2 weeks my conclusion is that: Vista just sucks. This is just me though, maybe other's have better luck with Vista than I ever did. But Win7 is the OS for me with XP in 2nd place on my fav windows OS list.

[FireXtol]

XP is just Windows 2000 with crapware that's not uninstallable. XP is also defective by design, whereas 2000(or prior)... not so much.

I'll use Vista, I'll use 7, and I'll even use XP(though, why bother). I actually find Vista slightly more tolerable than 7, but that's probably because I think that 7's shell was designed by monkeys and goats!

Come on you Windows 7 lovers, admit you're all closeted Mac-fanboys(or girls) and clear your conscience. Then again Mac 'stole' most of its 'innovative' features from OSS....

And no, I'm not some 'crazy zealot' like you all probably consider Richard Stallman to be. I have no reservations using proprietary software. I simply refuse to buy defective(by design) crap, and I have no problems(I won't think any less of you) if you do. Big difference!

[minitech]

Me is horrible! I still have it on an old laptop. It gives me shivers just thinking about it.

[kregg]

Who voted 7?

I did.

Windows ME FTW. <3

[Bonker Gudd]

How do I vote for 3.11?

[Shaggy Hiker]

I'd vote for 3.x, as well. Those 16 bit days pretty much sucked.