MS Vista opinions

jmwest1970

Silverti,

Let's take the hardward conversation to PM. We've mucked up this thread too much.

As for Vista, I've been running Ultimate on my system for a few weeks now. It's not too bad if you disable the UAC. The biggest issue is what's been pointed out by most everyone and that's drivers. Software compatibility, or incompatiblilty, comes in a close second. I've had no issues with either at home, but my boss has both: his tv tuner card has no drivers and his Crackberry software won't synch with Outlook.

FYI, I don't think you need a blazing fast system to run Vista either. Although my Windows Vista Experience score is only a 3.4, this system runs very well. My system is as follows:

AMD Athlon 2400+
Abit KV7 mobo
1GB PC-2700 DDR RAM
ATI All-In-Wonder 2006 Video Card
Western Digital 160GB SATAII hard drive
NEC 16x DVD burner
Linksys Wireless-G PCI Card
Via AC'97 integrated sound card

Systems

The most important thing you guys can do right now with Vista is to buy a high speed 4 gig USB flash drive and stick it into a rear USB cable permanently. Go into "my computer" and right click that drive and set Ready boost up on the entire memory stick. Vista will use it like ram. Your box will spend about 15 minutes dumping commonly used files onto that drive. When I did this on my Dell laptop at work, it really did matter. Commonly used programs like Office opened immediately, without load off the hard drive. For more info check here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/31/windows-vista-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed/

Superfetch is explained also (aka whey you have 900 megs in memory just booting up Vista). Tom's does a good job of testing and providing perf differences with charts.

Refefer

My problem with Vista is that on a functionality basis, there is no real reason to upgrade. You get nifty sliding windows and alpha transparencies for a prettier desktop, but I personally don't need any of that; I want a rock solid machine that doesn't use up all its memory running an operating system.

I'm not entirely sure of the fate of Vista, but I have a good feeling that this will be the last version of Windows that Microsoft can put out with out substantial competition from the Open Source community, or other proprietaries such as Apple.

I'd stay with XP, if just for the speed/stability/resource reasons. My Dell D610 business laptop runs all the programs I need on a relatively slow hardware profile (Pentium M 1.5, 1gb of ram, 60gb hd), yet it can't cut it for Vista to run. How do I know? I tried. Photoshop runs about 3 times slower due to the much increased demand on resources, whereas it runs perfectly fine under XP for professional tasks.

There's a reason all major vendors are offering XP still

Kris Siegel

When I upgraded from Windows XP Pro to Vista Ultimate 64-bit, I was quite skeptical and kept my Windows XP disc not far away but I've got to say it's been quite a pleasant experience.

For Pros:

• Caching of the most used applications making them start faster
• New interface driven by the graphics card makes anything on your desktop possible. Developers can do almost anything now with the interface. From high quality animations to custom window sizes.
• Stability. Microsoft re-wrote much of the Operating System to remove legacy code and improve stability and maintainability. The drivers also run in the user space making bluescreens even less possible (yay)
• Instant searching for anything on your machine.
• Device support
• Media Center! No longer do you have to buy a machine with Windows Media Center to get Media Center.
• IIS 7 is a very nice upgrade to the old server.

For Cons:

• Device support. This is listed as both a Pro and a Con. Pro because Microsoft included more drivers than Windows XP with Vista so it should work with more devices out of the box. Con because some manufacturers haven't finished or even started developing Vista drives for older devices. There is light at the end of the tunnel, however; as many times you can force a Windows XP driver to work in the interm.
• Lack of Ultimate Extras
• WinFS would have been nice but isn't really missed as Vista already has instant searching capability.

ben62670 wrote: »

Vista sucks. It does not work with a lot of hardware out there(cameras, printers, and scanners). It will keep asking you if you want to do what you just told it to. It is a huge resource hog.
JUST SAY NO to Vista

This is mis-leading. Vista not only includes device drivers for thousands of devices out there but also supports more devices than Windows XP out of the box. Unforunately some hardware manufacturers are a bit behind the times but setting up your hardware is usually fairly easy. As for it "asking you if you want to do what you just told it to", you're referring to UAC (User Account Control) which is very useful. Very similar to how BSD, Linux and even OS X work; UAC will ask you to grant administrator access to a program requesting it. You'll only get these pop-ups if you do one of the following:

• Install an application
• Change a setting that needs to be changed via Administrator (i.e., user account changes and other various things)
• Certain updates for applications

As for Vista being a resource hog... well, it is surprisingly fast and doesn't use too much additional resources compared to Windows XP. Vista has a caching mechanism so even if you have 2GB of ram, it'll end up using about half of what's available to cache programs you typically use so it appears as if it's using a lot of ram but what it ends up doing is launching your applications much faster. Not only that, but if you run a game or application that needs most or even all of that ram, Vista quickly drops its hold on the cached data.

petrym wrote: »

The software drivers for peripherals are not up-to-speed and there are some that are still buggy; looks pretty, but you need some horsepower to run it. The "Are you sure you want this to happen" pop-ups are ridiculous. As an IT pro I'd say no for now.

The driver support is actually pretty good at least on the Microsoft side of things. Some hardware vendors need to finish up support but so far pretty much all major hardware manufacturers have Vista drivers available. Worst comes to worst you can typically use XP drivers as well.

While it takes additional power to run the Aero interface (i.e., a graphics card made after 2000 or so), you don't really need much more than Windows XP to run Vista. I've had to use it and install it on multiple machines at work and it runs really well.

As for your pop-up comment, please see my previous post about UAC.

jmwest1970 wrote: »

As for the popups from User Account Control, here is a Technet article on it and how to disable it.

If you're running Vista, I would recommend leaving UAC on. While it can be annoying when you first setup your PC, after the initial installation of everything you need you'll hardly ever see it unless you're constantly installing software and changing system settings. UAC can tell you if an application is trying to do something it shouldn't be doing or if a piece of software is trying to install without your knowledge so it can be a real useful feature especially in protecting yourself against viruses.

Refefer wrote: »

My problem with Vista is that on a functionality basis, there is no real reason to upgrade. You get nifty sliding windows and alpha transparencies for a prettier desktop, but I personally don't need any of that; I want a rock solid machine that doesn't use up all its memory running an operating system.

Vista has included quite a bit of additional functionality. Unfortunately most of it is not easy to spot.

• The caching mechanism has to be my favorite new feature. While it looks like Vista is using extra memory but what it's doing is caching your more used applications and files so you can start them up much faster than you have been able to do on Windows XP. This is why Vista seems to get faster over long term use.
• The new interface, Aero, is a lot more than a pretty interface to look at. It was a major upgrade that allows the operating system to draw everything on the screen via your graphics card, rather than the processor used with Windows 2003 and earlier. This means developers can make almost anything happen on your desktop. From really cool window effects to make windows wavy and what-not to really simple stuff like a custom looking window and it will be much faster than anything on Windows 2003 and earlier could have done. This also makes animated wallpapers possible (DreamScape is neat).
• The quick search is not only a great application launcher but a great way to instantly find anything on your system. Just by clicking on the Windows icon or by pressing your Windows key on your keyboard, you can instantly type/search for any application or document on your system. Very useful.
• A new driver system has been put in-place. This means your drivers run at a user level rather than a kernal level like Windows XP. What this means to your average user is that if a driver fails or crashes horribly, you won't get a bluescreen like you did in Windows XP but, instead, you'll usually be able to continue on in Windows and just get an information bubble about the issue. Now, granted sometimes you may not be able to continue normally depending on the hardware but it's definately a step in the right direction.
• Vista has had quite a major re-write and quite a bit of the old code from Windows 3.1 to XP has been re-written. This is a major step forward as it will not only increase the stability of the OS but make it much easier to maintain and to patch.

You get the idea (I don't want to go through and list all of the new features).

noimposse

Kris Siegel wrote: »

Words

You mentioned vista 64-bit, how is driver support for that exactly? I was considering getting ultimate when I get around to buying a core 2 but have been wary of getting 64-bit then finding out support sucks and I'll need to go back to 32-bit.

I'm currently using 32 on a work machine and everything has worked perfectly besides our call logging software (which was fine after some updates). I was too like most of the other guys that have posted, earlier in the year, but after using Vista for a few weeks now everything has been pretty positive. The UAC prompts aren't really annoying, they're there to inform and help. The interface may use more resources, but damn if it does look and function much better (which was completely needed to compete). Speed hasn't been an issue either really, so I have no complaints so far.

My only other question would be STEAM support. I play some counter-strike every once in a while and need to be able to get that to run smoothly. If I can't shoot me some terrorists, I won't be a happy camper.

Kris Siegel

noimposse wrote: »

You mentioned vista 64-bit, how is driver support for that exactly? I was considering getting ultimate when I get around to buying a core 2 but have been wary of getting 64-bit then finding out support sucks and I'll need to go back to 32-bit.

I'm currently using 32 on a work machine and everything has worked perfectly besides our call logging software (which was fine after some updates). I was too like most of the other guys that have posted, earlier in the year, but after using Vista for a few weeks now everything has been pretty positive. The UAC prompts aren't really annoying, they're there to inform and help. The interface may use more resources, but damn if it does look and function much better (which was completely needed to compete). Speed hasn't been an issue either really, so I have no complaints so far.

My only other question would be STEAM support. I play some counter-strike every once in a while and need to be able to get that to run smoothly. If I can't shoot me some terrorists, I won't be a happy camper.

I ran Vista 32-bit for a while on my work machine but have since moved to 64-bit on both my work and personal computers and I've got to say I haven't run into any compatability issues. There seem to be quite a bit more 64-bit drivers for Vista than XP 64-bit and it runs really well. The only problem I ran into was the fact that Adobe's CS2 installer is junk and cannot correctly install by default on a Vista 64-bit system unless you either manually use a DOS path for the installation, install it into a directory other than Program Files (or Program Files (x86)), or install each piece of software manually.

nVidia drivers have been solid for me.

As for Steam... well, I couldn't live without my Steam and I can say every game that I play using Steam works flawlessly. The only problems I've ever had with Steam on Vista 64-bit was when I tried a demo of some game that required a Physics card and it attempted to install 32-bit drivers. It's an easy fix as you just need to download the correct drivers first but even on XP I heard that game caused issues anyway so no biggie.

I haven't noticed any framerate issues since upgrading to Vista in my games

noimposse

Awesome, thanks. I'll have to pick me up a copy once I get the core 2 and something better than this 6600gt.

dylan

Silverti wrote: »

Never listen to Dell.

I can honestly say that Dell’s business practices are very shady at the least and I deal with them almost daily.

Ditto and Amen. I work for a $1.6B company, and looking towards 2009 for Vista. For the other IT guys, have you taken a look at ZTI (if you have SMS)? Pretty slick, and Vista plugs in really well.

Also, for the spec's before... if you have an EA agreement with MS you are usually eligible for Windows upgrades. So you can buy XP Home from the vendor, wipe it and reload your image of XP Pro (since you're going to image anyway). Can usually save $80 or a so on each system. EA also usually supplies downgrade rights, so you can keep using XP Pro if you get Vista Home. Ask your rep.

Kris Siegel

noimposse wrote: »

Awesome, thanks. I'll have to pick me up a copy once I get the core 2 and something better than this 6600gt.

One thing I forgot to mention. On my work machine, iTunes works perfectly fine (64-bit Vista) but for some reason I haven't been able to get it to work at all on my home machine. I would imagine it's something I did wrong since it's fine on my work machine but just wanted to let you know just in case.

The 64-bit version is definately great. Even if you only run 32-bit applications, they can still take advantage of the additional RAM you can install in different ways. :cool:

izafar

Kris Siegel wrote: »

One thing I forgot to mention. On my work machine, iTunes works perfectly fine (64-bit Vista) but for some reason I haven't been able to get it to work at all on my home machine. I would imagine it's something I did wrong since it's fine on my work machine but just wanted to let you know just in case.

Are you getting error while launching iTunes? if that's the case then you need to do the following:

1. Download and install latest iTunes version from apple web site (I believe it is ver 7.3.1)
2. Goto the iTunes folder in Program Files and right click on iTunes.exe and select "Run as Administrator"

I hope this would solve your problem.

jmwest1970

dylan wrote: »

EA also usually supplies downgrade rights, so you can keep using XP Pro if you get Vista Home. Ask your rep.

Downgrade rights only apply to Vista Business and Ultimate.

Kris Siegel

izafar wrote: »

Are you getting error while launching iTunes? if that's the case then you need to do the following:

1. Download and install latest iTunes version from apple web site (I believe it is ver 7.3.1)
2. Goto the iTunes folder in Program Files and right click on iTunes.exe and select "Run as Administrator"

I hope this would solve your problem.

Actually, it will open fine if it asks me to install an update. If it doesn't, it'll just freeze and I have to close it.

If it stays open after it asks about the update then if I try to play anything, I get a horrible bluescreen.

Now I've tested my PC as much as possible (including the ram) and everything works perfectly. I only get a BSOD when I attempt to play something in iTunes and I have no idea why. I've tried running it as an admin but that doesn't do anything.

I'll try the latest version and see if they fixed any of the issues.

noimposse

Time to try Foobar or Media Monkey!

izafar

I believe the manual upgrade to new version will fix this. This is a major issue with iTunes/Vista combination. The apple software update program clashes with iTunes and as a result both fail. I had similar issues like your when ver 7.3 came out. When ver 7.3.1 came out I got the crash problem at startup.