Windows Vista: The most controversial OS, 18 years on 🤬

XDA April 28, 2025
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Windows Vista: It was hyped as the glossy, shimmering future of computing, but turned into a digital punchline. Vista arrived three years late after a hellish development cycle -- and became infamous for sluggish performance, driver crashes and obnoxious security alerts. It's been 18 years now since Vista launched, and if you remember powering on your wheezy old Dell Dimension to the chorus of this iconic startup sound then you, like me, probably look back on Vista with at least a twinge of nostalgia. 2007 feels like a very long time ago... and yet still oddly connected to the present. The iPhone was a thing -- though only just. The social media boom was well underway. But at the same time, it was only a decade removed from the PC craze of the 1990s, when Windows looked and the PCs on which it ran looked very different. That's the world Windows Vista crashed into in January of '07. So in our deep-dive on this often misunderstood piece of software, we're going to dig into how Vista became Vista, the legacy of the OS, and whether it really deserves the derision it's faced over the years. 0:00 Intro 1:07 Longhorn: Vista Pre-History 6:04 The Reset: Vista Becomes Vista 9:14 The Launch (And The Backlash) 16:51 Fixing the Fallout: Vista Done Right? 20:03: Reflections 18 Years On Further Watching: Dave Plummer / Dave Cutler Full Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi1Lq79mLeE Plummer / Cutler on the XP / Server 2003 Split: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxmZPMg7vIs More on Longhorn (pre-reset era) from Dave Plummer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpRZ8BQiiMo Bruce Springsteen plugs Vista SP1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPv8PPl7ANU Check out XDA on https://twitter.com/xdadevelopers https://www.facebook.com/xda.developers and https://www.instagram.com/xdasocial/ When you make a purchase using links in the description or comments, we may earn an affiliate commission. See more: https://www.xda-developers.com/page/terms-of-use/

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