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Aside from UAC... the biggest issue with Vista is that the required system resources was a significant jump over XP, and too many manufacturers shipped machines
by StevePerkins 10y ago
Aside from UAC... the biggest issue with Vista is that the required system resources was a significant jump over XP, and too many manufacturers shipped machines that were simply too under-powered for the preinstalled OS.
In those days, I remember seeing Vista laptops with 1 GB of RAM, on which Vista was unusable. People had to edit arcane registry settings to disable the "Aero" look-and-feel, and drop down to a more Windows 95-like display just to run at all.
It really was basically fraud, and infuriated everybody. If Microsoft had been more realistic about their "certified for Vista" specs, it probably wouldn't have been such a flop. On the other hand, new laptops jumping from 1 GB of RAM to 4 GB minimum overnight would have been a hard consumer sell, I suppose.
- yuhong 10y agoThis also reminds me of how the DRAM manufacturers tried to do the 1Gbit DDR2 crossover during 2007/2008, when 64-bit Windows was not common until mid-2008. Needless to say it was a serious mistake (I think Qimonda went into bankruptcy during that time). Even on laptops, DDR2 used BGA not TSOP.
- Maakuth 10y agoIIRC among other pressures, Intel pushed Microsoft to consider one of their weaker GPUs Aero compatible. That allowed many PC OEMs to ship Vista PCs with very underpowered GPUs.
- yuhong 10y agoThe weakest Intel GPU that can support Aero was the Intel 945G. There is also the 915G that don't have a WDDM driver, which is even more of a problem now given that they ditched XPDM support in Win8.
- Esau 10y agoUAC was not that big of a deal. I used Vista and it hardly bothered me. I suspect most of the whining came from people not used to the separation of user and administrative privileges.