I can’t stand Windows Vista. I absolutely hate it and I’m considering upgrading to Windows XP.

(Note: This may seem to be a conflict-of-interest post, but these are my opinions as a user, not as a Microsoft employee.)

So, where do I begin? Ah, yes, the ubiquitous bullet-point list to sort out my grievances.

• Memory hog: Vista uses memory like nobody’s business. My computer at work started out with 2 Gigs of RAM. I decided to upgrade that when I noticed Vista routinely taking up 3 or more Gigs, even when I had only Firefox, Outlook and Remote Desktop Connection Manager. So, 2 Gigs later (for a total of 4 Gigs), I find Vista using 5 Gigs of RAM. And the same thing happens at home. Ahh!
• Folder settings: This is one of the most frustrating things about Vista. It’s especially frustrating because it’s hard to explain the problem, so St. Google has no idea what I’m asking. The problem is that every time I open a folder in Explorer, the folder’s settings have magically, and randomly, changed. Example: I open a folder, see that the files in it are shown as thumbnails instead of as a list and that the columns don’t have “Modified”, “Type” and other information. So, I make all of these changes, do my work and close Explorer. Fast forward half an hour. I open that same damn folder to find that instead of a list (or thumbnails) the files are shown as tiles. And they’re grouped by extensions. And the columns once again don’t have “Modified” or “Type”. So I scream obscenities, say yet again that I’m going to switch to XP and go on setting the folder to look as it should. Repeat 1-6 times per day.
• Audigy 2: I have an Audigy 2 sound card, and it doesn’t exactly play nice with Vista — the damn thing makes constant crackling noises, like static from a radio. The only way to minimize the effect is to turn down the volume, but then I can’t hear whatever it is I’m listening to. Ridiculous! Yes, yes, it’s not exactly a Vista issue, but it does take two to tango. Or, in this case, to work together.
• Compatibility: Compatibility of software, as well as hardware, sorta sucks. Yes, I have mentioned this above, and yes, I am running x64 Vista, a potent combination of new technology, but still, if the thing is available in stores and is selling like hotcakes, you’d expect either Microsoft or device/software manufacturers to step up and provide the necessary updates, but no, ain’t happening. What is happening? Well, I can’t use my webcam, my wireless access point, my e-book software (that’s a BIG problem), TaskBar shuffle, the graphics drivers are having problems (Nvidia at home and ATI at work), the above-mentioned Audigy 2 issue, “Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones” refuses to run, as does “Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow”.
• “Error detection”: Vista has this horrific feature that if it thinks that a program has crashed, it actually closes it. Maybe that avoids crashes, but a few times I’ve seen programs behave in a way that was expected (I’ve seen programs do that in XP) that I know won’t result in a crash, yet Vista just kills them. This actually happened while I was writing the post: I started another application that I knew would require lots of memory, which would force Firefox to be off-loaded onto disk, so that when I came to Firefox, it would take a few seconds to restore. Well, Vista noted those few seconds and thought that Firefox was crashing. In this case, Firefox came back soon enough, but there have been instances when Vista closed the browser, saying that it crashed. Hmm.
• TrustedInstaller.exe: Where to start with this one. Well, first things first, its name. I mean, come on, if you wanted to give somebody a good reason not to trust a program, you name it “Trusted”. At first I actually thought it was a virus or something, but it appears to be part of Vista (and no jokes about Vista being a virus!). TrustedInstaller is a program that pops up at random times and tries to utilize 100% of the CPU for something like 5 minutes at a time. AFAIK, the program starts up randomly.
• Not being an Admin: I’m not an administrator on my computer. When I run a program, I want to know that it has all the privileges it may need. WinRar, for some reason, has serious problems running if User Account Control (the thing that asks me to authorize every little thing) is enabled. Like, it may not start at all or, on a good day, I’ll have to actually authorize WinRar to start, something that I don’t have to do for other applications. Better yet, some programs don’t even make it so apparent that there’s something wrong: they run, without errors, and never bother to inform you that because you didn’t run them in Raised Mode (as Administrator) they are unable to complete a specific task. Argh.
• Taskbar ordering: Vista has a tendency to, for some stupid reason, rearrange the programs in the Taskbar whenever a program “freezes”. See, Vista has this great sixth-sense kind of thing where it knows that a program is taking too long to run, so it does some weird voodoo with the program window, highlighting it in a specific way. Well, that’d be nice and all, except that 9 out of 10 times, the program unfreezes and keeps on working just fine, so you’re distracted every time a process takes a bit longer than Vista thinks it should. But, that’s not all. When this “freeze” cycle happens, the program moves in the taskbar from wherever it was to the very end, making it seem that it was the last program to be launched. It’s really annoying when Outlook moves from the spot it was in for the last three days to some random new location, all because it “froze” and made Vista crap its pants.
• Same content, new locations: Vista offers very little new functionality over XP, but you’d be hard-pressed to confirm that, as everything has been shuffled around: menus are in places, the control you were expecting in this tab is actually in a completely different form, etc. It’s like someone (Microsoft, in this case) took a book, let’s say a chemistry text book, swapped a few chapters around, put a “BRAND NEW” sticker on the cover and sold the whole thing for double the original price: it looks pretty, but there isn’t much new and now I can’t find the old stuff.
• GTA: SA: When I play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at work (after hours, of course), 3 times out of 4 my play is ended when the game crashes. This happens if I press the escape button to see the menu: there’s a chance that the game will freeze. Just from going from the game to the menu! I checked this at home just now and gotten the same results, that if I go from the game to the menu, eventually the game will crash. The odds of a game crashing on a single transition are fairly low, but considering that I have to pause the game a few times and will usually play for a lengthy period of time, the chances of the crash occurring before I’ve had my fill of fun is fairly high.
• Copying files: Try to copy a large amount of data, like a few gigabytes of photos from one disk to another, and Vista slows to a damn crawl. It’s horrific: applications stop responding, everything slows down, simple things like IE take 10-20 seconds to switch tabs, etc. If you’re planning on moving data, make a sandwich, cause you won’t be able to do much else. At least, not with your computer.
• Basic Theme Mode: If you’re using an application that needs 3D acceleration (I think…), Vista switches into a Basic Theme Mode, which is basically a prettier XP look, lacking the newer Aero interface. The problem with this mode is that it causes slower graphical performance in Firefox, IE, a Java IDE and some other applications: the mouse doesn’t move smoothly, it’s slow and jumpy. (What I mean by “I think” is that this happens when I use such applications as the in-browser Divx player. I remember there being other cases in which this happened, but can’t recall the exact circumstances.)
• Resource hog: Vista requires, and uses, a lot of resources. It’s not really an issue for me and everyone in the world is already aware of this little fact, so I don’t even know why I’m writing about. Bah.
• Sony Reader: More compatibility woes, but whatever. Sony’s atrocious software and e-book store require XP. 32-bit XP. And nothing else! You can’t buy books from the Sony Connect Store without the client software, and you can’t install the software on Vista! Argh! Until I flattened an XP server at work to install Vista on (need I say that that was a mistake?), I used that computer to buy books, but now I don’t even have that. I have a second partition with XP on my home computer, but that version is x64! Here’s hoping Heinlein’s “The Puppet Masters” will last until I’m in Chicago next week: my dad is running XP x86.

But, to be fair, there are things about Vista that are good:

• Vista is necessary to run “Halo 2″ and “Flight Simulator X”.
• Vista Ultimate x64 can reference 128 GB of RAM, while XP (x86) will only go as high as 3-3.5 GB.
• It looks nice.

You know, that’s it. I wish I could say something more, but I just can’t think of many reasons to use Vista.

Anyway, I think that’s about it. I started writing this post about a week ago and have been adding on items as I remember/encounter them, and I think it’s about time I posted this thing.