I’ve been using Windows Vista Ultimate for over a year before switching over to Mac and OS X 10.5.2. Here are a few items that I’m really happy to leave behind.
As a side note, the Dell XPS 410 I purchased 1 year ago, fully loaded for near $2500 is now going for less than $450 on eBay. So my first item could be hardware value retention, since Mac hardware retains it’s value very well.
- Windows Media Player. I’ve never used a slower, buggier, more bloated piece of junk software in my life.
- Random Error messages with no clue how to fix. image acquisition / start up items blocked (if you’re on Vista, you know what I’m talking about).
- Buggy and slow iTunes. In OS X scrolling my huge music library is silky smooth.
- Buggy Quicktime. I’ve spoken to many people on Windows whom I share the issue of not being able to play the HD trailers on the Apple site.
- Spyware, Viruses and Virus scanner. The scanner software is a hassle and a resource hog.
- Maxing out at 3GB RAM. Typical Windows machines are 32 bit. I put 4GB ram into my Vista system and it only recognized 3GB. Ripped!
- File Browsing is slow, stalls often. Doing normal file browsing often causes a 10-30 second “stall” while the system does who knows what. In fact, I can make Windows Vista crash on demand, it’s not hard to get the “Windows Explorer is not responding” message. I can’t say the same about OS X.
- File permissions issues. If folder is set to “Read Only” often times I could not undo this without creating a new folder and copying all the file into that folder (hack!).
- All those flashing, pop-up approval screens for EVERY change made to the system. Sure, on Mac you have to enter the admin password for certain system changes. On Vista, times the frequency by at least four and the annoyance by five.
- Adobe Premiere. Say Hello to Final Cut.
I will follow up this post with a Top Things I WILL miss about Windows. But I assure you, that list is much shorter.
Your “Top Thing I WILL miss about Windows” should be “1. Writing a Top 10 Things I will NOT miss about Windows Vista on my blog.”
I’m not quite ready to switch to a Mac, but I’m sticking with Windows XP as long as possible.
As a lifelong Mac user, I can’t tell you how frustrating Vista has been (I have a little tester lappy). I’ve been somewhat forgiving thinking that it’s been a matter of familiarity, but I never had this much of a problem adapting to XP. I never in my life thought I’d miss XP, but I do. I really really do.
Paul, welcome to the club. You toyed with me once, sounds like this time it’ll stick.
[...] though I have a license). So there’s nothing that I miss that much, but to follow up my post, Top Things I WILL miss about Windows Vista, here are a few items that would be nice if they were on [...]