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Windows Vista

Discussion in 'Community Broadband & Computers' started by Kaosdad, Apr 24, 2007.

  1. Kaosdad

    Kaosdad Will work for Rum

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    Success Stories?
    Horror Stories?

    I'm considering taking the plunge, but at $250/pc I want to make darned certain it's not going to be $1,000 in aggrivation..... well, that's a silly statement considering it's Micro$oft!

    If you respond, please include if you did the "Upgrade" or a bare metal install. What broke? What went well? What kind of hardware are you running?
     
  2. Mr. Linux

    Mr. Linux Senior Member & Moderator Forum Staff

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    If you're even *thinking* of going to Vista, start with a clean install. I played with numerous betas and release candidates and can vouch for the fact that 'upgrades' will drive you over the edge...

    Personally, I own a couple copies of Vista, but they are still sitting in their original boxes, uninstalled. (I have a friend who works for Microsoft, so I got them at a VERY deep discount...) I haven't installed either copy, and I probably won't be until well into the summer, once more patches come out and some of the crazy driver issues are resolved...

    My recommendation? Wait until SP1 is near the horizon, or even released. Industry mags/journals/blogs are indicating that Microsoft is having a tough time selling Vista; Dell has started selling boxes with XP preloaded instead of Vista again, and other manufacturers are following suit. Microsoft has even started to sell an XP/Office 2007 bundle again, so that tells you the adoption rate isn't where MS wanted it to be...

    Finally, having been through all the Betas and Release Candidates, in my personal opinion, Vista currently is a lot like XP, except with a prettier interface and somewhat better security, but that's debatable in my book... If XP is meeting your needs, you're not missing anything until Vista SP1 comes out...
     
  3. Pictor Guy

    Pictor Guy New Member

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    I would second the recommendation to wait for SP1. Driver issues and irritating interface along with heavy video demands from the OS are good reasons to stick with XP or consider a better OS, IMO. Wait until the OS has been optimized some more and hardware vendors offer enough driver support. Even Dell has started offering XP again on new PCs.

    Just my two cents.
     
  4. Kaosdad

    Kaosdad Will work for Rum

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    Hey - I'm VERY happy with XP. It's stable and runs all my favorite games with no issues. Besides, it's paid for! As far as I'm concerned - XP FOREVAR!!!
     
  5. afgm

    afgm Ashburn Farm Resident

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    I plan on staying with XP until I buy a new computer. I currently have no need to go to Vista, all my software supports my needs, and Vista is a young product. I also refuse to purchase the OS at the ridiculous price they are asking for it. No value in it. I'll get it installed on my next new PC.
     
  6. boomertsfx

    boomertsfx Booyakasha!

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    Using Vista Home Premium here for a while (RC until then)... works fine. You get into more problems with the 64-bit versions, so I would just stick to 32-bit for now. The only bad thing about home premium is lack of remote desktop, but there is a hack out to enable it (and concurrent users... so you can login from work while the wife is on eBay =)) I still need to upgrade our HTPC to Vista, but haven't had the time yet... soon though..
     
  7. T8erman

    T8erman Well-Known Member

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    Bingo! We will get Vista (and all the other unnecessary bundled crap) when we get a new computer next year. All the current issues should be resolved by then.

    Then you just have to worry about the newer issues! :D
     
  8. boomertsfx

    boomertsfx Booyakasha!

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    Yeah, the retail prices are crazy... I got educational copies ;)
     
  9. neilz

    neilz New Member

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    FWIW ... anyone who tries to put Vista on a machine that's more than 2 years old, and less than 1 Gig of RAM is also going to have a slower machine. XP was supposed to run fine on 256 MB, in reality you needed 512 MB. Vista Home says it needs 512 MB to run, in reality, you'll probably need 1 GB.

    Also ... if you have a computer that uses an onboard graphics card using shared memory, you have to make sure that 32 MB is set aside for the video card.

    Those who said they're going to wait for when they get a new computer have it right, most new computers have been built according to the specs that M$ provided for Vista.
     
  10. WesGurney

    WesGurney New Member

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    I recently bought a Dell Latitude laptop with Windows Vista Ultimate edition (Dell had a special to upgrade to Vista Ultimate for $50). So I have been running Vista on my laptop for about a month now. I'll give my 2 cents on it.

    Here are some Vista features that I have found useful:

    * Windows Mobile Device center - Replaces ActiveSync with a whole suite of syncing tools. Makes it pretty simple to manage different devices and sync your contacts/calendar/tasks and notes (using OneNote). Its backwards compatible with ActiveSync so you can sync on both Windows XP and Vista.

    * Updated Bluetooth support - They add some new profiles with the Windows Bluetooth stack. They include the stereo headophone and headset profile so you can use your Bluetooth headset for your cell phone as a speaker/mic for your computer.

    * Better audio control - You can control the volume on a per application basis. Each application has a volume level you can control. Makes it useful when you have multiple applications open that play sound, but only want to hear one of them.

    * Faster startup/boot and wakeup times - Takes about 15 seconds to get to the Vista login screen after seeing the Dell BIOS screen. Also sleep/hibernate times are improved as well.

    * Gadget bar - At first I was a bit skeptical about this one. The area on the side of the screen called the Gadget bar. Its about an inch wide and runs up and down the right side of the screen. Microsoft opened up the API to allow the public to create new gadgets. I have a couple of fun ones like the weather forecast, a stylish clock, and a CPU/memory meter. People have generated hundreds of these things - they remind me of Firefox extensions.

    * Aero/Glass desktop - Pretty much eye candy with the see thru windows frames. It seems they also improved how multiple monitors work. In Windows XP, if I was watching a movie under Windows Media Player, it would only display on 1 monitor at a time. In Vista, if you drag Windows media player so half is on monitor and half is on the other and it shows the content on both monitors at the same time. It seems little things like that actually makes Vista "feel" faster and more stable from a video/graphics standpoint.

    I mainly use my laptop for development so I haven't done much gaming benchmarks on it. I run Ubuntu Linux under VMWare V6.0 that supports that native virtualization under Vista. I'm a big fan of virtualization and my Linux virtual machines seem to run faster under Vista for some reason compared to my desktop which runs Windows XP.

    While I have been mostly pleased with the performance and features, I have had two issues that caused me to reboot it:
    1) A couple days after I had it, it blue screened on me after I put the laptop to sleep.
    2) Yesterday it froze on me - no mouse movement, frozen keyboard, had to reboot.

    Other than that, haven't had any issues with it.

    Wes
     
  11. afgm

    afgm Ashburn Farm Resident

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    Wes,

    Thanks for the write up. I like the quick start. Do you think that is related to a new OS, or do you think it will last. Last that is, being a quick start.
     
  12. Mr. Linux

    Mr. Linux Senior Member & Moderator Forum Staff

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    I think the quick boot Wes is seeing is a combination of Vista optimizations, a faster computer, and the fact that the OS hasn't been 'gunked up' with other stuff yet. At least that's what I noticed with the Betas and RC's... The bootup times will slow down a bit, but not as bad as what some people see with XP.
     
  13. WesGurney

    WesGurney New Member

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    Not quite sure. Its probably a combination of the new OS and the fact that I don't have many extra programs loaded in the start up.

    I will add that the wake up from sleep does seem a bit faster than Windows XP. Would be interesting to see if it continues to stay fast six months from now.

    Wes
     
  14. L0stS0ul

    L0stS0ul hmmmm

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    I've been using vista business for about 3 weeks now. It came on my new Dell XPS system. One thing I would recommend if you are going to use the system for gaming is to reinstall the OS that dell ships with. All the junk they put on the machine really slows vista down.

    I actually really like the aero desktop. For a little while I put it back to the original style but you really loose something without it and changed it back. Since the desktop is rendered in the GPU instead of the main processor like XP the desktop is really fast so using aero is not a big deal for gamers.

    Vista is service happy and there are many that you can go in and disable that can help with ram usage. When I got my dell the system just booted up with an empty desktop was using about 600mb of ram. On an XP machine I could usually get that down around 100mb. I've not done a tremendous amount of tinkering yet with the xp services but I have it under 500 now.

    It took me 1 day to disable the user account control. Oh my was the nagging annoying. I am also using the latest Mac OSX at work and by default it's nags are also annoying though. I turned them off on the Mac as well. If anyone needs to know here's how to do it

    http://lifehacker.com/software/vist...our-permission-to-continue-prompts-230866.php

    I actually like it. I don't think I would bother upgrading an existing XP machine to vista but I would not hesitate to buy a new one with it. now if only those directx 10 games would come out :)
     
  15. Mr. Linux

    Mr. Linux Senior Member & Moderator Forum Staff

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    L0stS0ul, you mentioned gaming, but didn't specify if you actually used your system for gaming. What's been your experience with games? What games have you successfully run/not run on Vista?

    Since my installs were 'test' systems, I've never really used them for gaming. A lot of what I've read says most stuff works, but sometimes with a few quirks, etc.

    Any thoughts?
     
  16. L0stS0ul

    L0stS0ul hmmmm

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    I somehow missed this post.

    I've not done extensive testing yet and the only games I have had a chance to play on it are FarCry and Halflife 2. Both worked without issue and looked great. I had to install DirectX 9 to play FarCry. I'm trying to find my Fear CD's so I can play that but I don't know where they are.

    I did just do a fresh reinstall of the OS so I'm just now reinstalling the games. Dell really junked up the machine with all their stuff. Fresh install of vista uses 400mb of memory after a clean reboot. About 200-250 more than a well tuned XP machine. Still much better than the 550mb that the dell install was chewing on.
     
  17. SchwarzFamily

    SchwarzFamily New Member

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    BE CAREFUL!!! I never am the first to upgrade operating systems, but I decided to be an early adopter for Vista. I didn't really have a functional reason to do so, but got swept up in the marketing hype. My upgrade went smoothly, but when I went to run some key pieces of software, I ran into major roadblocks. Example, one of the primary uses for my computer is to pump music through my wireless music bridge to my stereo and onto my deck. I came to find out that Cisco has not released the updated Vista driver and won't until late summer. Net, find the top 5 pieces of software you use on your PC and do some research to make sure they'll function properly on Vista before making the jump.

    Overall, I find Vista to be nice, but only marginally more useful than XP. There are some nice new tools and navigation, but nothing that should create any urgency to upgrade.
     
  18. GeorgeSC

    GeorgeSC Southern Walker

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    WOW,
    I would have expected something like "FORMAT C:, and install Fedora Core 6" from you, HAHA LOL :naanaa:
     
  19. Kaosdad

    Kaosdad Will work for Rum

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    Yeah - I was waiting for that too. :D
     
  20. Lee

    Lee Permanent Vacation

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    I am NOT tech savy at all, I have freinds that are including my kids and all said stay away from Vista possibly until the end of the year or ever. Like everyone said here we are not missing much if anything.

    Anyway I bought a high end dell xps about a month ago and the rep even suggested going with xp instead of vista. He said their tech support was getting way too many calls on vista. Oh the computer my son built for me awhile back outperforms and runs better then this high end dell, I guess because it comes with a lot of preloaded junk, which I told them not to, but junk stuff came loaded anyway. Looks like I am going to have to reformat and load only what I want. It is a shame you can't buy a name brand computer without a ton of junk in it.

    Lee j
     

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