During the Easter weekend, I installed Windows Vista on my primary desktop PC, a Dell Dimension XPSGen5.
Ten days on, I have no real complaint at all about Vista. Some niggles, perhaps, but none are such that I’d even consider going back to XP.
Usability wise, it is excellent. I just love the Aero Glass interface and the immersive interaction you get with every aspect of the operating system and the programs you run.
Keith Combs describes it all extremely well. While he wrote his post last year based on a pre-release beta, all he says is valid for the release version I’m using.
Some specific thoughts from experiences so far with Microsoft’s new operating system:
- Still trying to figure out the real value of the User Account Control (UAC) security feature. I use Vista with admin access yet UAC still pops up every time I want to do something that the OS thinks might be a bit risky (like install an app). It’s a nuisance so I’ve disabled it for now. This gives Vista XP-like behaviour from a security point of view. Glad to see I’m not the only one who finds UAC a pain.
- The new system fonts (especially SegoUI) and font sizes are very elegant indeed and make for a visually pleasing interaction with everything you see on your screen.
- As I have Windows Vista Ultimate edition installed, it comes with Windows Media Center. My PC’s not a Media Center PC by strict definition, but that matters no more as Media Center is now an integral part of certain Vista editions. I use MC to play DVD video. Wow, that’s an experience to relish. I especially like how easy it is to configure audio. A couple of clicks and everything is set up just right.
- The image preview feature is brilliant. Just go to a folder full of images and preview them easily and quickly in a window. No need to have any graphics app installed if all you want to do is view images.
- The major niggle concerns video. My video card is an Nvidia Geforce 6800 with 256 megs of video memory and the latest Vista-specific driver from Nvidia. I get weird behaviour from time to time with my screen which flickers sometimes and occasionally blanks for a second or two before returning to normal. This is sometimes accompanied by a complete computer freeze-up and hard disk activity for up to a minute. While I’m not experiencing serious issues as some people are reporting, it’s clearly something to do with the video card/driver. (Just spotted on the Nvidia site that an updated driver was released today.)
- All the bundled games are very cool! I especially like Mahjong Titans.
So on balance, a positive experience so far.
I can’t say the same for Outlook 2007, part of the Office Professional 2007 suite I installed at the same time as I installed Vista.
In a word, it sucks.
Functionally, Outlook 2007 does everything I need. It keeps track of my diary, organizes my contacts and let’s me manage my email.
Yet it does something so annoying which is the reason I say the application sucks.
Almost every time I exit Outlook, I get the error you see here.
When I start Outlook again, I sometimes see a system tray message to the effect that a data file didn’t close correctly the last time and Outlook is checking it for errors.
I’ve yet to have any issues because of this but I wish I knew what the problem was so cryptically referred to in the error dialog.
Not only that, often when I exit Outlook without this error happening, it doesn’t close completely (I can see a process in task manager still running, consuming an awful lot of memory).
So I then run Outlook again expecting to get the profile choices dialog, but it just loads back into the profile I was last in. Very annoying.
I’ve done a repair, I’ve searched high and low on the net and can’t find any info that will help me find a solution.
Could it be something to do with the different profiles I run? I have one for work email, which connects to a Microsoft Exchange Server, and one for other email which brings in emails from 4 different POP accounts.
Yet why would that be a problem? I had exactly the same set up with Outlook 2003 and never, ever, had problems like this.
Yes, it’s annoying!
So, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1= yuk! and 10 = fab! I give Vista a 9. Outlook 2007 gets a 2. At most.
I find it funny that the guy claiming it’s hardware problems works only on laptops. I don’t know any serious developers who do any kind of real processing or design/development/video editing or anything else on a laptop, so I would guess this guy is pushing a couple 1′s and 0′s through so he can send an IM to his buddy while he sips his mocha latte at Starbucks. Sure, for that, Vista probably works. For any real work, it pukes and stops responding. By the way I’m on a brand new Intel Core 2 Quad Processor with 4GB of RAM and a 512Mb video card, and it crashes and hangs more in one day than XP did in three years.
Since I read all the problems with Outlook, I decided to try to use Windows Mail… ha!
They didn’t even program Windows Mail to recognize to open a browser when you click on a link from within an email. Instead it searches my computer and tells me “http://www.vistasucks.com cannot be found”, and only after throwing the error actually opens my web browser and goes to the site. It is is blatant errors like these that make me think Microsoft headquarters is a front for a big meth lab or something.
I’ve had enough. I just ordered a copy of XP Pro, and am throwing this piece of junk in the trash. Good riddance Vista!
G’day nameless and media guy
I agree I am not a POWER USER like you – I have just used a notebook for my job in 40+ countries, 4-8 hours daily for the last 28 years. So I have probably had almost as many crashes as you have had hot breakfasts. I am sorry Vista does not work for you. Try Linux. And if you don’t like Outlook, try Eudora, it has rarely hung my computer in 15 years of solid (by my standards) use.
With XP Pro I had to reimage every 6 months or so. My Vista is still as quick as the day I bought it 13 months ago. Chaqu’un a son gout.
your suggest is good for vista.I do also not custom vista.maybe vista sp2 will let me like it.
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mediaguy, i do dev work on my laptop every day, all day. It is the only computer that I use (of course, I am constantly ssh’d into linux servers). Lighten up. Every users experience is different. Did you not read the whole post list.? You are showing that you are in your mid 20′s with your arrogant post.
NH, thx for the helpful site.
Wal
Walrus (and Johnrichco), I do apologize for the tone of my post. It was in response to a statement made by johnrichco implying it was the hardware that was causing problems and implied in a strong manner that Vista is fine. I found it incorrect, based on my own experiences and had to clarify that it does not work for all occasions. After posting, I realized my post did sound snotty (johnrichco, sorry about the Starbucks comment), and I apologize. My anger was not directed at anyone here, just in my frustration over a very buggy operating system.
John did respond to my post appropriately, and I hope that we can all see that we are coming from different perspectives. Because it works on a laptop does not mean it will work in a multimedia studio was my only point. I have since abandoned Vista, and gone back to XP, and am much happier now.
I am well beyond my 20′s, and am not arrogant – I was worked up over how poorly Vista performed for me for three months, and got a bit snotty in my post. My apologies to anyone I might have offended in my post.
I also have a problem with Vista Ultimate SP1 and Outlook 2007 SP1 (installed local).. it closes perfectly outlook.exe, but somehow when i open outlook after a couple of hours after a restart it closes the network connection (mapped drives) and they get a big X over them.. Strange thing is that programs running from a mapped drive works great untill i open outlook, so there must be a bug in Outlook07 causing this..
The .pst is on a network drive, but same thing happens when it’s on the default location
(C:\Users\—username —\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook)
I have searched high and low on the net, but have’nt come up with a sollution.. so, have anyone experienced this ?? and maybe have a sollution for me ?
thought maybe it was the nic’s who forced the network connections to hibernate, so i turned off the control “feature” without any resault.
and as i said, other apps are working find till i open outlook!.
Same issue. Windows XP, Outlook 2007 Professional. Many users are OK. One particular user has problem. While in Outlook (one copy of Outlook.exe in task manager) she’s OK. When she exits outlook – window closes, 2 copies of Outlook.exe in task manager (one large 50,000KB the other small). Problem if she tries to restart Outlook. If she closes both OL.exe in task mgr – she has to start OL in safe mode. Exiting out of safe mode works GREAT. I’ve disabled all add-ins. She uses NO pst files. Mail is on Exchange Server. I’ve created a brand new OL profile – same problem.
Any REAL help?
no way, my system is fully powered and i have all of the same problems that the guy is having that started this thread. and i still looking for a solution.
intel core 2 duo 2ghz
dell xps
3 gb ram
32-bite operating
7200 rpm drive
That shutdown addin didn’t work for me (and besides, I hate nag screens – that should have been made clear about in the above posted ad for it). With it, I could not close Outlook 2007 on Vista Ultimate because it would immediately error and re-launch Outlook on shutdown after I’d handle that closing nag screen! I had to go into Tools/Options/Shutdown and disable everything so Outlook would shut down and I could uninstall it. That need would totally confuse some users…
My shutdown problem isn’t 100%, though I’d say around 80% of the time trying to close Outlook will result in the error. My system has been auto-sending info to MS about this for several months now, but no fix. It used to be ok, the problem seemed to have appeared only after some update. I do notice that when I get a junk mail notification that something was placed into that folder – there never is anything in the junk mail folder. Hmmm.
I wish I had not spent all the $ to get the full (non upgrade) versions of Office 2007 (one Office Pro on Vista Ultimate, one Office Ultimate on XP Pro). The simple tasks I spent so many years learning how to accomplish in earlier versions of Office can be done in Office 2007, but the learning curve is steep and badly detracts from employment labor time because of it. I cannot import .csv files direct into Access, I must first import them into Excel and then import the Excel file into Access. What an annoyance. I paid a LOT for these various annoyances, too!
Nothing in this thread has fixed the intermittent but near constant error that occurs when I close Office 2007 in any way on my Vista computer. However, I’m not having this problem on the XP computer. Hmmm.
Well, I also have problems with Accounting 2007, the primary application that enticed me to spend all those Office 2007 $. I’m fed up with this, but stuck for now. Next time I buy new computers they will not have MS software on them, and that’s coming from someone who’s been using through all incarnations since before Win95! In DECADES, MS can’t get it right and I’m still paying to have errors in their applications, but I’ve stopped paying now. Way to go MS, you’ve chased off another loyal user. I want to pay for more features, not pay for buggy apps!
Advise not bad tool for work with Outlook files-moving messages from ost to pst,program allows to convert data from *.ost to *.pst files, that can be read by Microsoft Outlook or any other compatible mail client,allows to process any encrypted *.ost file and extract all data from it,can transform *.ost files to *.pst files, that can be easily opened by Microsoft Outlook email client, or any other compatible program,will prompt you to show a path to *.ost file,can process ost pst move even with damaged file in *.ost format.
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