Reviews

All Reviews > Software > Operating systems > Desktop OSs

January 30, 2007

Windows Vista: the definitive review

Has any OS been so maligned and so praised during a painfully long development cycle as Windows Vista? The march to Vista's launch has sometimes seemed longer than the Hundred Years War. UPDATE: UPDATE: Windows Vista SP1 - the final, definitive review

Now that Microsoft's new system is at hand, the debate can begin. Is it a look into the future of OSes or the last, dying gasp of an old way of computing? Should you upgrade your system to meet its considerable hardware needs? Is it anything other than Mac OS X Lite?

Some may complain that Vista isn't as revolutionary as it should be after five years. But you don't judge an OS by the amount of time developers have put into it. You judge it by how useful and how pleasurable it is to work with – and in these respects, Windows Vista is a clear winner. It's beautiful, has greatly improved security features, offers superb networking capabilities and, maybe most of all, it's fun to use.

There are so many new features in Vista that it's hard to take them all in at once. To help you, we've broken down the key aspects into four key categories, all of which bring significant improvements.

Aero interface

Click here for PC Advisor's review of Vista's new Aero interface, which revolutionises your view into Windows.

Security Center

Click here for PC Advisor's review of Vista's new Security Center, which attempts to put protection at the heart of the operating system for the first time.

Windows Search

Click here for PC Advisor's review of Vista's search tool, Microsoft's best-ever attempt at helping you find files using a Windows tool.

Continued...
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | NEXT >

User reviews from Reevoo.com

Microsoft Windows Vista scores 7.1 out of 10 based on 87 reviews

Reevoo reviews are by people who definitely bought the product

The 2 most helpful reviews:

04 Jun 2008 Leslie, Farnborough

Good Points

It's easy to upgrade your PC from Windows XP to Vista. Microsoft Vista is much more reliable than Windows XP.

Bad Points

Microsoft state that RAM of 512MB is a minimum requirement for the installation of Vista. I would suggest that this should be 1GB in order for the operating system to work as efficiently as Windows XP.

11 May 2008 Anonymous verified purchaser

Good Points

EASY TO SET UP AND USER FRIENDLY.

Bad Points

Overall score: 7.1

See more Microsoft Windows Vista reviews on Reevoo.com

Find the best price for this product online:

User Reviews

Saturday, 24 November 2007

Reviewed by brj

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 3 months

Strengths:
Easy to resize Vista partition to permit dual boot with Linux. Good for leisure use.

Weaknesses:
Slow to load, resource hungry, crashes more than XP. most new features unwanted. Poor for business.

Overall Evaluation:
Now co-exists with Ubuntu which has become my OS of choice.

Thursday, 19 July 2007

Reviewed by Pine Man

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 5 months

Strengths:
Very fast loading and closing down. Excellent search program. Good looking. Far more stable than any other Microsoft o/s.

Weaknesses:
The only weaknesses I can find are Windows Mail, which is much, much, much slower than Outlook Express and the intrusive use UAC.

Overall Evaluation:
Very good indeed but not helped by third-party vendors, a lot of whom, still haven't upgraded their hard/software to enable it to operate properly with Vista.

Friday, 20 July 2007

Reviewed by MikeBabb

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 3 months

Strengths:
Very sleek design. Some useful additions such as resizing thumbnails of pictures in Explorer. Better help files and fault finding wizards.

Weaknesses:
Feels 'dumbed down' compared to XP. Great for home users but painfully obstructive for proper business use.

Overall Evaluation:
Feels a bit like XP SP3 gone wrong. The few nice additions could really have been done with minor tweaks to XP. A business would already have proper security in place so I feel that there are few benefits of using Vista in the workplace other than the usual "must have the latest and up-to-date version" psychosis.

Sunday, 02 December 2007

Reviewed by nw.wolf.uk

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 2 months

Strengths:
Improved user interface and many vast improvements to menus which are now less cluttered. In addition to this it seems a lot more stale and secure than a lot of people will have you believe.

Weaknesses:
Getting started is a little strange as it does not confirm fully to what we have come to expect from the Windows OS however, play around with it and it soon becomes easy!

Overall Evaluation:
Home Premium is fantastic! Have to admit had been looking at going away from Windows to Linux. However, the updates and bugs seem to have been ironed out pretty much since first release. Have to admit would encourage anyone not sure to at least have a play around and make their own mind up and not be lead!

Monday, 16 July 2007

Reviewed by Crikey

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 4 months

Strengths:
Pretty plus I like its new search capabilities

Weaknesses:
Price scandalous, too resource hungry, poor support from software and hardware vendors, not a lot of NEW features for a new OS and especially for one costing so much.

Overall Evaluation:
Vista should simply have been released as Windows ME II - it is about as useful as it. Poor value for money. A sad state of affairs that so many software houses have not written drivers for current versions of their products to suit Vista meaning further outlay of money for new software WHEN/IF it becomes available. My suggestion is Microsoft, quick release SP3 for XP

Monday, 08 September 2008

Reviewed by Cabeza

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 7 months

Strengths:
Not at all liked here, especially with teenages. Can't download msn explorer on vista. Having had all the window releases from windows 95, I rate XP as the best to get along with.

Weaknesses:
No operating disc to re-format. Vista crashed after 5 months. Would not recover from built in recovery. Had to send computer back to manufacturers to be re-formated.

Overall Evaluation:
Lap top, with vista premium, now being used by daughter at university, fingers crossed. Desk top in spare room, hardly used. Upgraded old desk top to make XP a bit faster. Will stick with XP until planted in chipboard box.

Sunday, 21 September 2008

Reviewed by jay123456789

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 2 years

Strengths:
Everything

Weaknesses:
Nothing except 1 or 2 simple bugs to be solved in the new service pack in one month

Overall Evaluation:
Excellent because you can you can use almost any software by just going on there website i prefer the look aswell a lot better than XP

Monday, 29 September 2008

Reviewed by dragonmist

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 3 months

Strengths:
Are there any? Apart from resolving minor crises quickly... most of which never happened with XP.

Weaknesses:
Unstable compared to XP. Crashes easily. Resource hog. Came ready installed so no choice.

Overall Evaluation:
If I was able to remove it and install XP without having to pay the PC shop to do it I would, but it seems to be impossible. I did try, but it said I didn't have permission to do so. ???? My PC. I bought it. Whose permission do I need?

Monday, 05 November 2007

Reviewed by garfinkle

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 8 months

Strengths:
Windows Vista is visually stunning. Dual Core support is far superior than previous versions. Windows Solution finding works excellently for issues. Overall performance is excellent.

Weaknesses:
UAC needs improving. Windows Indexer slows down explorer quite a bit. Copying multiple files are a bit slow due to time calculations. Ultimate extras havn't been as good as expected yet.

Overall Evaluation:
In overall evaluation Windows Vista is the best windows system to date with excellent performance and constantly improving support for older hardware and software. Applications and multitasking is handled a lot better in Vista. Graphically this is the nicest operating system available (from base install, not including shell extensions). 5 out of 5 for me. Keep up the good work.

Friday, 16 May 2008

Reviewed by FrankC

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 8 months

Strengths:
Looks pretty.

Weaknesses:
Security features are a nightmare. Its slower. Power hungry. In short I want XP back. XP is faster, more reliable much better

Overall Evaluation:
You can keep Vista. About the only good thing is the Aero interface but that slows down your computer even more. All in all I consider Vista a DOWNGRADE rather than an upgrade. Dont buy it, stick to XP. Easier, faster, more reliable XP.

Friday, 31 October 2008

Reviewed by peterh1

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 9 months

Strengths:
I've never had a problem that was'nt resolved quickly and efficently... vista is the bomb and flows like water..love it for speed and hate it for hardware resource starvation... you decide!!?

Weaknesses:
Not to many software choices at the moment..? But the giants of the computer world learn fast and will step up to the stage and provide...

Overall Evaluation:
vista homepremium run's like a dream on my acer 5920 laptop with an 4-GB upgrade and standard intel t5550-1.83ghz so fast and great effects... love it -love it can't get enough of it...

Thursday, 09 August 2007

Reviewed by thespian1

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 7 months

Strengths:
Search is excellent, especially quick with indexed locations; Explorer has some well-thought out shortcuts or changes.

Weaknesses:
Although it has been long in development there is very little to no support from hardware and software vendors. UAC is so fustrating, yet you can't afford to turn it off. Roll on SP1.

Overall Evaluation:
I wish I had kept with my XP OS until SP1 had come out. Vista is a leap forward, but everyone should wait until Nvidia, Microsoft and everyone else has got the majority of problems sorted.

Tuesday, 06 May 2008

Reviewed by skeek

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 2 months

Strengths:
Ease of use, easily installed, looks great,

Weaknesses:
Took too long to come to market and can be very expensive not many 64-bit programmes written for it

Overall Evaluation:
I use Ultimate and it is just great really shows how old XP has become. There is nothing that I don't like about Vista and once you get used to getting around it feels like you've always used it.

Monday, 05 November 2007

Reviewed by alanw5

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 9 months

Strengths:
I have a medium to high-end PC and Vista runs like a dream on it. Quick boot, quick shut down, smooth operation. Clean-installed OEM 64 bit Vista Ultimate amazingly fast (20mins or so).

Weaknesses:
Very occasional error messages, but always been resolved.

Overall Evaluation:
I would recommend to anyone with a PC running dual/quad core Intel (6600 or above) and at least 2GB ram. I build my own PC's so I always ensure component compatibility. Mine is Intel E6850 Dual Core Intel; 4GB Corsair XMS2 memory; XFX 8600GT Grahics; all running on Abit IP35 PRO mobo. powered by Seasonic 600watt PSU.

Saturday, 20 September 2008

Reviewed by oojimmyflip

Star Rating:

Duration of ownership: 90 days

Strengths:
None I can see took ages and ages to load it onto my AMD 6000+ dual core 4 GIG ram machine that put me off straight away.

Weaknesses:
Not enough compatable software available and I'm not going to buy more software to do the same thing but with a different operating system.

Overall Evaluation:
Vista is junk unless youve been hiding in the cellar for 20 years and never heard of Windows XP pro service pk2. I build home PCs and Vista will do nothing better than windows XP Pro and in my view it is much slower in many respects. Has no one noticed that the demand for windows XP is such that it has increased dramatically in price in the last year?