Windows Vista, though touted as the next big thing at the time of release, has failed to repeat the success of its popular predecessor Windows XP. Let’s take a look at some of the worst bits of Windows Vista that contributed to its failure.
After working on Windows XP for years and using Windows Vista since it came out and also trying out the pre release versions of Windows 7, I have formed my opinion that it is a wiser decision if you upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 and give Windows Vista a miss. Windows XP was a milestone in the history of Windows operating system, and according to many experts, the best version of Windows ever. It had tremendous improvement and innovation over its predecessors. Windows Vista was marketed as a product that was even more innovative than XP. And to be honest there are some truth in this claim too. Windows Vista had its fair share of new ideas, implementation, new technology that should have made it an even popular Windows version than Windows XP. But instead, Windows Vista got mostly negative reviews from users and experts alike. Overall, Vista seemed to be a good operating system, but a few things about Vista drew the negative reviews from all over the places.
Resource Hungry
One very important factor in Vista not getting a good start is that it is very resource hungry and to run Vista properly you need much more processor power and memory than you need to run Windows XP. For example, below is the system requirement for the Windows Vista Home Premium version.
1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
1 GB of system memory
40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
Support for DirectX 9 graphics with:
WDDM Driver
128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)
Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware
32 bits per pixel
Compare that to the system requirement of Windows XP here.
Of course, Vista has this feature where you can disable certain Vista features (like Aero); if you have a non compatible or older system but then you don’t get the true Vista experience without those features. For this reason, many of the users with a little older system and running XP happily for years just choose to ignore Vista.
Compatibility With Older Applications/Device Drivers
Compatibility with old application is another issue that bugged Vista. Many older applications and games wouldn’t run on Vista and people who needed to use those applications had to stay with Windows XP. Many device drivers also failed to work with Vista. This resulted in confusion among the users about which application runs on Vista and which does not. Microsoft though came up with the "Certified for Windows Vista" logo and the "Works with Windows Vista" logo to indicate if the program is compatible with Windows Vista, this didn’t solve any real problem for the user who needed their older application in their day to day work. Vista actually made their choice of applications limited and Windows XP provided them with much more choice. So it was not surprising to see those user stick to Windows XP.
Bad User Experience
Lastly, the one issue that brought Vista perhaps most of the bad press is its unimpressive user experience. Windows Vista had too many changes all of a sudden for the common user to adapt to it quickly. From changes in terminology to drastic changes (like hiding the “run” box) the average user had a bad time migrating to Vista from XP. And what contributed most to this bad user experience was the newly introduced UAC or User Account Control. Conceptually, it was a great innovation that tried to make sure your computer is secured and no one had unauthorized access or that no malicious program installed itself or made any changes to your computer. But however good it was conceptually, Microsoft messed up in its implementation and it became a feature that the user found irritating instead of useful. Fortunately, Microsoft has learned from this and some changes has been made in the way User Access Control works in Windows 7 for a better user experience.
