A couple of months ago I got a brand new laptop from HP, the Compaq 6715b, which came with Vista Business pre-installed. At the time they didn’t offer a Windows XP version1. Usually I steer clear of new Windows operating systems until they’ve gotten a service pack or two out, giving them time to work out all the kinks of the new system with their huge beta testing public. However this time I needed a new laptop quickly and it was the best specification for the price that I could find, so I thought sure I’ll give it a whirl and see what it’s like.
Since then I have been using the system pretty intensively and have been slowly tweaking and adapting it to the way I work. I am at a point now where I am finding it difficult to justify continued use of Windows Vista. In my head the advantages and improvements are not outweighing the problems I am finding.
I made sure to get a decent enough machine, figuring that Vista would require a bit more power to get it running well. In that regard I felt the HP6715b was well kitted out and for your information I’ve reproduced the more crucial elements below.
- AMD Turion X2 TL-60 – Dual Core @ 2.00GHz
- 2Gb DDR2 RAM @ 667MHz
- ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 (using shared memory)
- 160Gb Hard Drive
- 4 Gb Kingston Migo Data Traveller 2 Plus (used for ReadyBoost on occassion)
Using Microsoft’s new “Windows Experience Index” the laptop scores a “Base Score” of 3.0, which is low due to the graphics card not being a dedicated one. The processor scores 4.8, RAM scores 5.9, and the primary hard disk scores 4.9.
What’s good about Vista?
- Driver installation can be instantaneous:
For example I plugged in a Canon S900 printer and it installed the drivers with no need for me to go looking for driver files. - Snipping Tool:
This is a useful little addition. However this functionality could be replaced by a third party application. - Integrated Search
I admit I do use the application search function in the start menu to launch a good few application. However I use Google Desktop for this on XP when I am not using HotKeyBind to launch applications. - Improved Task Manager
The task manager has a few nice additions, not to mention a new “Resource Monitor” that gives a good amount more information. - Better Taskbar Functions
Improved Battery, Network and Sound implementation in the task bar – albeit a little unresponsive.
Is that it? Is that all I can think of? Surely this is too short a list for something 5 years in the making? However, for the time being these are the only things that I can remember having liked and noticed during my daily use of the laptop.
The GUI looks nicer granted, however I have long had different styles applied to Windows XP which has completely satisfied me visually. The Aero effects that have received the most air-time are the new Flip task switching and the window transparency, neither of which I use out of personal preference.
Windows Sidebar? I prefer Google Desktop.
What’s bad about Windows Vista?
- Explorer forgets my view settings:
This is incredibly frustrating. I generally use the details view, but constantly find myself opening a folder I have recently visited to be presented with large icons grouped in some way I never requested. This is something noted by Chris Pirillo when he presented his reasons for leaving Vista. - Sluggishness:
This is one of the main issues I’m having with this operating system. I can’t shake the feeling that everything is running slower than it should be. As stated above, the specifications of this machine are fairly decent, and I can’t shake the sensation that everything from start up to application launching and application switching is taking longer than it should. - Instablities:
Firefox is much less stable than it was on XP, and granted this is not Microsoft’s fault, it does affect my computer usage immensely. Conversely, I have used IE7 a reasonable amount and have found it to be unstable and liable to crashing. 
User Authentication Control:
In all my years of using Windows operating systems I have never been hacked or infected by a virus or spyware. I am very much aware of what I am doing and though I know I can turn off UAC, it seems kind of wrong. So many things require UAC interaction. From changing a folder name in the start menu’s “all users” group, to Last FM trying to access my media player when I start it up, to every single network configuration change that I make (which I frequently do), to my needing to install Xampp outside of the program files folder and messing up my saved locations in my FTP programme due to UAC getting in the way of running Apache.Overall UAC really is just annoying.- Strange Glitches:
There are quite a few of these little idiosyncrasies that are combining to become quite frustrating. I can’t think of all of them at the moment, but they include:- Alt-Tab inconsistent! This is such a basic thing and it’s glitchy. Sometimes it will only allow me to move to the next window, point blank refusing to cycle through all open applications. Sometimes it seems to switch to a window but act as though I had just pressed the Alt key in that window, moving the focus to the menu bar.
- Dropping characters. When I switch to a new window it seems to frequently ignore the first letter I type on the keyboard. This is incredibly frustrating on instant messaging programs.
- Window Multiplicity:
When I first started up my laptop I was amazed by the sheer number of explorer window instances that seemed to be required. I tackled this by installing the incredibly useful QT Tab Bar, which groups all those explorer instances into tabs in one explorer window. - Networking:
Getting to grips with the networking in Vista feels like a much more confusing system than XP (which in turn was in my mind much more complex than Windows 2000 – which just worked!). It all seems to be working now, but I can’t shake the feeling that I may have opened things up more than necessary just to make it easy to share files across our home network. - Sleep Mode:
To be fair, in general I like this new feature as it feels a lot more useful and snappier than XP’s standby mode. However, there have been one too many occasions where it has failed to return from Sleep mode and ultimately I’ve had to force the system to start from scratch, losing my session.This defeats the purpose of Sleep for me – whenever I am about to place the system in sleep mode I am inclined to save all files and make sure I am in no danger of losing anything. - Favourite Links:
This is a minor gripe about a nice idea that fails due to lack of proper planning. The explorer side bar now features the option to have multiple locations saved for quick access. Nice idea, though not a new one.This feature works ok, you can drag folders into it, you can reorder them (although you can’t group them). However, when you go to a save dialogue the Favourite Links are re-ordered in some arbitrary system I don’t understand. So my familiarity and recognition go out the window and I’m lost trying to find the folder I need.
Windows XP or Windows Vista
Ultimately I’m finding it hard to justify keeping Vista. I’m not finding that there are any features that are actually improving my computing experience. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this either. Joel Spolsky, a well-known software developer, has echoed my sentiments on this:
I’ve been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system — it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes. Whenever anyone asks, my advice is to stay with Windows XP (and to purchase new systems with XP preinstalled).
Jim Louderback, in passing the editorial helm at PC Magazine, finishes his stint with closing remarks about his bad impressions of Vista:
I could go on and on about the lack of drivers, the bizarre wake-up rituals, the strange and nonreproducible system quirks, and more. But I won’t bore you with the details. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain’t cutting it.
Christopher Null writes an open letter to Microsoft asking them to re-introduce Windows XP while they sort out the kinks of the new OS2:
Maybe you could freshen up XP with some of Vista’s visuals, but leave intact its menus and control panels, its functional networking, and its broad hardware and software support. You know, the things that people actually need to get their work done. Call it “Windows XP Reloaded” or something clever like that, and tack on $30 to the price tag for your trouble.
So, I’m asking the question, can anybody tell me why I should stick it out with Vista? There are only a few things I can think of that are advantageous, but I feel there are so many more reasons to move back to XP.
- At least there were none available. Interestingly you can now purchase the 6715b with Windows XP Pro.
- This is not something I can see happening though. It seems to me that Microsoft have invested too much time and energy into bringing this out to just admit its flaws and back-track. They could lose a lot of face and give a very poor impression to their customers – something I imagine Apple and the Linux community would welcome
6:41 pm
August 28th, 2007
not trolling, but seriously, there are other options.
7:45 pm
August 28th, 2007
Hi Steve,
Indeed there are other options (by which I can only assume you mean one of the Linux distributions).
This is something that has occurred to me on a number of occasions but I have always been held back by the music software I like to use, namely Cubase and Reason.
I know that there are alternatives for these on Linux but I have never felt that I have the time to spend on the inevitable learning curve associated with moving to new software. A similar reasoning that has stopped me from rushing out to try multiple other Windows based music-production software.
Regarding web development however there is very little that I can’t do on Linux that I currently do. Adobe Illustrator would need to be replaced by Inkscape, which I do feel is not quite at the same place as Adobe’s product. Style Master is another piece of software that I use extremely regularly which is not offered for Linux, however I am sure I could get by without it at this stage.
If I decide to drop Vista I am definitely considering virtually installing Ubuntu to test out developing through that. If I do this I can guarantee that you’ll hear about it on here.
Cheers,
Alex
12:11 am
August 29th, 2007
I am trying to dump it, for a customer’s new machine.
NONE of the old software works. This is a joke, right,
Bill Gates? I have been in contact with them 3 times
already. Little help. I have had the thing in their office
only ONE DAY!
Well, do we gang up and file a class action suit for,
say, 37 billion dollars US? It would garner attention,
no?
I will look in for more of your comments and those of
others. I would like to know if anyone, ANYONE! has
had success with the thing.
the HaT
1:26 am
August 29th, 2007
hey alex,
hope you’re well.
just seeing that it’s said about there being other alternatives is all.
a small thing, but i’ve just tried the stylemaster demo from their site with wine, and it seems to work. it starts up ok anyway. fwiw.
see you soon,
steve.
11:24 am
September 6th, 2007
@steve: I forgot about WINE alright, I’m going to play around with VMware and see what I think. It all runs a little slow on my desktop, but I think the laptop should be able to handle it.
Unfortunately Virtual Box, which looked promising at first, seemed to have some difficulty with graphics drivers etc.
Also, time is always an issue, and there isn’t much time left to start playing around with learning a new OS.
5:16 pm
September 29th, 2007
“The Hat” was asking if anyone had success with Vista, so I wanted to reply. First, I definitely believe everyone really is having the problems they say. For me, though, it has been running beautifully on my new system. I have an HP m8120n (with some upgrades): Intel Core 2 Quad @ 2.6 GHZ, Vista Home Premium, 6 GB RAM, 2 x 320 GB Hard drive, and 1 x 500 GB Hard drive, and NVIDIA GeForce 880 GTS (highly recommend it!).
I use it for video and audio production, primarily on Adobe Premiere CS3 and Sonar 6.2 Producer Edition. I have had far less problems on my new Vista system then I ever did on my XP system. The drivers for my firewire mixer work just fine. My video cameras were picked right up, and CS3 hasn’t given me any trouble. Things that weighed my old system down hit that quad core at 5% use. I’ve been able to run every single game I have, including ones that never worked on XP, from Unreal Tournament to Mechwarrior 2 (thanks to the higher specs and emulators working better, like DosBox). I use OpenOffice, which runs flawlessly. Everything has been very responsive, and the internet runs quite snappy for me.
I’m not saying this to defend Microsoft at all. I think Vista is best used for now with higher end systems with well-known brand components (e.g. NVIDA). Mine rates 5.8 overall on the Windows Experience Index, and my experience has reflected that. For average or older systems, I might be best to keep XP or linux.
However, to answer your question, my experience in audio and video production on Vista has been very good. Maybe I’m just a rare exception, but I can only speak for myself.
12:22 pm
October 17th, 2007
Alex, have you considered getting a Mac? I switched from XP to OS X about 6 months ago and while the first 4 weeks were touch and go as to whether or not I preferred the Mac over XP, I haven’t looked back since. I would never ever go back to using a Microsoft Operating System.
You can run XP as a dual boot and under parallels on Mac so you’re not loosing out on any MS stuff. You’re gaining a superior machine and a far superior operating system.
1:25 pm
October 17th, 2007
Hey Cormac.
Well, I must admit that I really have never considered getting a Mac. Obviously it’s hard to ignore the various adoring mentions from Apple fans. Thing is that I tend to like having control over all the components I put in a machine as I have been custom building my own systems for aeons now.
I don’t like the idea of being tied into a single supplier in case of problems or desire for updates and find that I can construct decent custom systems for a much lower price than I could possibly purchase from Apple (or any other provider for that matter).
I have no real problems with XP, and it sounds like they’re going to be updating to a new Service Pack with some additional functionality in the near future.
Whether Vista’s upcoming Service Pack will sort out its problems is another question.
Obviously I can’t really say that OS-X isn’t for me, having not tried it. I guess I can always “try-before-buy” and test it out on a dual boot on one of my own systems. I might not get the performance of having a dedicated system, but at least I’d get to see what people are going on about when they post adoring messages about Mr. Jobs’ creation.
In all honesty, I think the adoring Apple crowds is one of the things that puts me off them so much! Not wanting to start any debate on the issue here at all, ultimately when it comes down to it, these systems have much the same components from chips, chipsets, hard drives, and so on as any other machine. They’re all equally prone to failure, quirks, and other oddities, and I find it hard to take when people go on about the superiority of the Apple systems. I am of course just talking about hardware here, but I think it’s the only thing I can really consider having no experience of the OS itself.
Ultimately, what I’m saying is that I perish the thought of becoming an Apple Fan boy, or an anyone fan boy.
1:41 pm
October 17th, 2007
I know what you mean about the fanboys alright. I said I would avoid falling into that category but I have, on occasion, muttered the words ‘you should get a mac…. because they Just work!”. But it is true. They do just work.
My iMac has one cable going into it. Yup just one, a single power supply. The built in bluetooth takes care of my mouse and keyboard, the built in speakers are adequate for my needs, the built in wi-fi is very strong and of course the monitor is built into the unit. I had to move my sisters desktop PC a few days ago and I think she had 13 cables popping out of it. It’s little things like that which make me happy when i go back to using my Mac.
As far as hardware and upgrading goes…I purchased 2GBs of RAM from Crucial last night and I’m going to be upgrading the Harddrive to a Seagate Barracuda soon enough. So you do get the opportunity to get your hands dirty (not as much as on Windows though)
5:32 pm
November 7th, 2007
[...] poor first impressions of Windows Vista pre-installed on my new HP Compaq 6715b laptop, I wrote asking the question should Windows Vista get another chance. I posed this question not just on this blog, but to Windows Vista discussion groups and anyone who [...]
9:17 pm
November 13th, 2007
I have a 6715b. It came with Vista but IT reloaded it with XP.
It has problems resuming from standby in XP, sometimes various hardware does not re-start.
When it was running Vista it would not always wake up from sleep.
I have tried Ubuntu 7.10. The install was difficult due to the ATi drivers. The Ubuntu Forum has a formula to follow.
Running Ubuntu ATI video, audio, mouse, wired, wireless all working. Suspend / Resume do not work.
Bottom line is I don’t have an OS that works perfectly on the 6715b. I suspect the BIOS is the root of the problems.
4:55 pm
November 15th, 2007
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your comment. That’s quite interesting to hear.
Certainly now that I’m back on XP I haven’t really had any complaints, barring one, that the laptop seems to have a problem going from standby to hibernate.
I consistently get a message something along the lines of:
“Insufficient system resources exist to complete the API”
I think. Which of course is a pain in the ass. It means if I’ve left the laptop unplugged on standby it will attempt to switch to hibernation mode after a set amount of time. This always fails and then the laptop inevitably runs out of battery power…
I haven’t really investigated, but there may well be a solution out there, it’s either, as you mention, BIOS based. Alternatively I think there might be a driver that needs to be updated.
I must check out to see if there are BIOS updates available.
Cheers,
Alex
7:37 pm
December 30th, 2007
I don’t usually comment on stuff like this but this time I felt compelled…
Purchased a high end hp preloaded Windows Vista system from Comp USA about 4 months ago have had NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS. I had them upgrade the ram, graphics card upon purchase. (sound card was upgraded two weeks later) My specs are as follows; Intel Core 2 Quad @ 2 GHZ, 3 gb of ram Vista Home Premium, 2 x 250 GB Hard drives and NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT and dedicated sound card can’t think of the name. Been using it (often unsuccessfully) for video and graphics editing (nothing overly stressful for the cpu) I’m using Adobe CS3 production premium and am having considerable freezes and glitches both Adobe and Microsoft related been on the phone with Adobe tech numerous times (good luck getting a hold of MS support) have even encountered the Blue Screen of death a handful of times.
Xp was great…two service packs later. I’m not going back though, there’s no way I’m going to personally pick up the tab for MS and buy yet another Microsoft OS (Windows XP)
I’m tired of Microsoft releasing unfinished products to the public, people like me lose jobs over this kind of bullshit.
I’m getting a Mac Pro Workstation in the Spring/Sumer, this way at least I’m getting what I paid for.
3:53 pm
December 31st, 2007
Hi Videoman,
It certainly sounds like you’ve had some of the myriad woes that many people have experienced. Your system sounds so beefy that it should fly along, but definitely Vista seems to be causing no end of problems.
I’m considering a desktop upgrade in the next few months and will definitely be looking to get a powerful system with at least 4gb ram – which means that I really have to think about going to a 64bit system – but realistically this may cause more issues than it’s worth, and it might be worthwhile just going for a system with 3gb ram and run Windows XP on it so that at least I know everything will fly along and run smoothly.
Adobe CS3 seems to have a handful of its own issues, XP or Vista – certainly I’ve had massive problems with random behaviour in saving .ai and .eps files, but crashes have been few and far between.
I also got random BSOD’s with Vista on my laptop – something that I haven’t experienced since XP pre-SP1 or SP2. It makes it very hard to justify going to Vista. Perhaps if Vista SP1 gets some excellent write-ups I’ll consider it in a few months time – but that might be something I’ll regret no-end.
2:51 pm
January 18th, 2008
Well actually I am using Windows Vista home premium on my desktop and find it allot more responsive than XP, I think that a dedicated (not shared) video card can really help allot in performance, also 2+GB RAM is needed.
But well I’m kind of a geek, and yes there is some strange behaviour in Vista (like sometimes stuttering in soundplayback, and filecopying being slugish sometimes) but overall I really like the experience, it boots up allot faster then my XP machine, and it’s extremely stable, even if a driver fails Vista still survices.
So well I wouldnt recommend it to hard on a laptop, but on a desktop I’m certainly not moving back to XP.
I think Vista can really get the most out of newest hardware, more then XP, but for slower systems (and laptops) it’s still a difficult choise, XP or Vista
10:10 pm
January 18th, 2008
Alex,
I made different experiences with Vista although I don’t know if it’s due to my more efficient hardware or the Vista updates (prior to SP1) we have seen so far.
- Haven’t noticed any of the glitches you wrote about
- No crashes so far, not with Firefox, IE7 or any other software
- UAC doesn’t affect me so much, to be honest. Had to deal with it while I installed my software (as administrator), it was kind of annoying sometimes but only for a short time
You don’t write about …
… the advantages of UAC when working with a standard user account (no need to jump to the admin account anymore)
… that Aero is much more than just eye candy. As it’s vector based and using the 3D power of your GPU opening windows and showing its content is MUCH faster and responsive. That’s one of the main reasons I like working with Vista.
And: Flip and Flip3D is a major improvement IMHO ’cause I work with a lot of open windows and programs. My workflow really feels quicker now. I also like the new look and functionality of windows explorer.
Whenever I use XP on other computers now I feel like traveling back in time …
10:27 pm
January 18th, 2008
Alex,
just forgot to say: I totally agree with you about the Apple issue mentioned before in the thread. For me it’s like Apple wants to guide you with one hand through the wilderness of IT while the other hand goes into your pocket to get your money. I liked OSX though as it’s fast and responsive but after my Vista experience I don’t feel envy any more.
11:21 pm
February 15th, 2008
Alex, you mentioned…
“I consistently get a message something along the lines of:
“Insufficient system resources exist to complete the API—
This can be fixed with a hotfix from Microsoft. I blogged about it on my site :)
Cheers,
Phil
PS. I found you while trying to find out why my sister’s 6715b kept hanging under Vista!
7:51 pm
February 21st, 2008
Hi Phil,
Sorry for the delayed reply, but I was away on holidays for the last few days.
That looks very interesting and I’ll definitely check out the hot fix. As to why they didn’t include the hot fix in Windows Update like you mentioned is quite strange. I haven’t been using the laptop too much over the last while so it hasn’t been bothering me, but hopefully that will sort it out.
Many thanks for the heads up, and I hope you sorted things out for your sister. It’s a nice laptop but I’m definitely going to wait a while before going back to Vista…
Cheers,
Alex
2:07 am
March 27th, 2008
I recently bought a Dell notebook which obviously came with Vista.
I had to work a lot around it the first weeks to get firefox and some other applications to work. I am happy with “the way it looks” but you can get that in xp or ubuntu with less resource hogging. I have 2 Gig Ram and 500 of them are constatly used simply to keep vista working. I have considered myself moving to xp but It just makes me really sad knowing that I payed for a OS that I wont use.
11:15 am
April 13th, 2008
@Javier: It might be worth looking at Peter’s comment regarding downgrading to XP.
While he’s talking about something relating to HP specifically, it might be worth checking with Dell to see if they offer anything similar.
6:37 pm
July 10th, 2008
I’ve just got a new machine with Vista SP1 pre-installed and I have to say I really like it. It’s got some small but usefull changes, like having a Download folder as the default location for downloaded items, but it also allows you to specify any folder on the system, each time you download. Maybe XP does that, I just never found how to select a folder with XP, it just had a default location which was the Desktop (this could be changed in the settings but not on the fly). Needless to say, I could rarely see the desktop for the clutter. Oh, and I managed to get the system networked in 10 mins, my XP machine took 1 week and a network specialist to get sorted. Overall, I’m very pleased.