VISTA

[MrHunters]

Anyone get to play with it yet?

Fresh install on my laptop started with over 500meg of virtual memory in use. No driver for the nvidia gforce2go card... and it blue screened twice... it was the beta 2 but still. Nothing is intuitive. Trying to find network settings was more than a pain and once you did find them every new window you open it shoots a warning at you that you are messing with system settings. Thanks microsoft for assuming I need you to warn me about changing my network settings.

I have the business upgrade but i don't know if i want to spend the time on this yet....

Microsoft says they are reinventing the wheel but I think they just moved a bunch of stuff around to make me frustrated. I have yet to read a review or a reason why one should upgrade.

PLUS the retail price for this so called operating system is OUTRAGEOUS. Maybe if they made their products a little more affordable they wouldn't have to deal with so much piracy.

No i didn't get a pirated copy before you ask. I pay 300 bucks a year to be a microsoft partner so I get all the newest piece of microsoft crap every quarter. Im going to spend more time with it but Im NOT upgrading anytime soon..

-end rant

[Raven]

Originally Posted by MrHunters

Microsoft says they are reinventing the wheel
but I think they just moved a bunch of stuff around to make me frustrated.

Im NOT upgrading anytime soon..

i thought thats all they did with Windows XP and I would never upgrade from
win2k professional which cost me 300 bucks yep...

it takes me forever to change XP back (purchased with latest PC)
to the way i like my operating system to work.... as it is...
i won't buy it...

i am gonna jump ship to linux and a dual boot scenario.
Screw Vista.

[MrHunters]

its not that im not willing to change. i am. but if i change i want my life to be easier... I realize when i say this i sound like a GOP but geesh.

Im going to have to use it, its inevitable since i work in IT but its going to be a while before driver support is where it should be. I feel bad for the people that just got the hang of xp.

ill try and scrounge up a hd this weekend and give it a go on a beefer machine.

[BrianS]

I bought it Tuesday... my new hard drive is arriving today as is my ram.. Ill be installing tomorrow.

Ill have my desktop set up with Vista.
Ill end up installing VMware for linux
I have my laptop for Windows XP.

Im excited to change, I think it will be fun and when I eventually change to linux, it will be on my laptop because I have a legal windows XP VMware client to work off. Vista is here to stay and its NOT as bad as everyone is putting it out to be.. Sure it has its problems, but so does linux, and look at the OSX launch - and OSX is prolly the best OS out there right now.

Noone is forcing anyone yet to upgrade. XP will be around for some time, but of course its just trendy as always to hate microsoft.

[MrHunters]

Originally Posted by BrianS

Noone is forcing anyone yet to upgrade. XP will be around for some time, but of course its just trendy as always to hate microsoft.

normally i would agree with you. I work with a die hard mac user who can't say ANYTHING good about microsoft... that gets tireing too.

i am 90% windows 10 % linux
I really like the fedora cores... core 6 is by far the best to date.

Im just saying my initial experience with it was far from great. Did i feel this way from 2000 to xp.... no I really liked that change, boot time alone was a major plus.

you will like the install. after you install the key you can walk away until its done.

why are you changing?
Im not asking to be a jerk.... I just want to know what is it about vista that made you say I need to upgrade?

If you have a latest and greatest habit I can understand but I would have downloaded the beta or trial version before I shelled out 3+ C notes. You can get a 90 trial that would give you a good idea if you like it.

is it trendy to hate microsoft? absolutely
do they deserve some of it ? most probably
are they trying to pull a fast one on the consumer.....? jury's still out but i have my vote in.

I think there is alot of great things microsoft is involved in but this just ain't one of them..... at least not yet.

[lurch]

ill test it when I get my hands on a pirated copy

[MrHunters]

business upgrade is already better than the beta.... so far.

[nightfighter]

I have a new Toshiba notebook arriving this week loaded with Vista. Are you griping about the software usage, or the actual upgrading process?????

[MrHunters]

im in the process of my second upgrade tonight.

I have the business upgrade which works off your original copy of xp.

I did a fresh install of xp then upgraded... that went smooth....
Im not trying to upgrade my exsisting copy of xp (imaged my box first) and its locked up twice now during the compatibility check.

When I did get to the interface of the fresh install its REAL purrty... alot different than the last beta which I was under the impression was close to whati i would see... not the case.

fresh install is definetly the way to go it looks like unfortuneatly

but i take back some of what i said above. not all. ill let you know more in a week....

I hope your laptop is stacked with ram... no less than 1.5 gig will do.
but your going to like the GUI.

I see why people are saying its very OsX

[nightfighter]

1024MB PC4200 DDR2 memory
120GB SATA hard drive

[nightfighter]

E176345 ·
Toshiba Satellite A135-S4427 Centrino® Duo T2250 120GB Notebook & Case

1.73GHz Intel® Celeron™ M Processor 430
512MB PC4200 DDR2 SDRAM
15.4" diagonal TruBrite™ TFT LCD
ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON® X200M, 8MB-64MB Shared Graphics Memory
80GB*
DVD SuperMulti Double-layer Drive +/- R**
Atheros® 802.11b/g wireless-LAN
4 USB, RGB, S-Video Out,
Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Basic
1-year LMW
6-cell Lithium Ion
14.2" x 10.5" x 1.47"
6 lbs.

[MrHunters]

NF if you can upgrade that memory... you page file will be working hard as is.

This is slightly aggrivating in that they say 512 is fine. But thats bare minimum.

Here is a pic of usage with only s-b open.

your going to have to stop all the "gadgets" to get under 512.

Maybe home version might take up less but i wouldnt assume that. Hope that helps.

you other specs should be just fine... microsoft added a cute little rating tool... I assume 10 being the best 0 being the worst... mine got 5's accross the board and this pc is no slouch.

::Edit::
Just noticed you have "shared graphics" heres another way they get you on this marketing thing... your 512 just went down to 448 right off the top.

It's fine that they made this monster of an OS.... theres lots of stuff i could use... but they need to be honest with the consumer that they need a monster machine to run it the way they advertise it.

It does go through a "system performance" check when you install vista.... i wonder if it add or removes services/apps according to your specs.... curious to see... let me know what you see when you boot up.

[MrHunters]

my performance

[MrHunters]

pc specs

i was hoping they would send the 64 bit version with my subscription but so far just 32bit.

[BrianS]

[QUOTE=MrHunters;457894]

why are you changing?
Im not asking to be a jerk.... I just want to know what is it about vista that made you say I need to upgrade?

QUOTE]


I moved over because

Job #1, I work for an at home tech support service called plumchoice, and I am expected to know it to support everyone else who is getting it.

Job #2, I work as an applications developer and one of my jobs over the next 7 months or so will be to develop our next gen build based on vista and office2k7

So in a nutshell, I am being forced by invisible hands to move over, not that I wouldnt anyway because I just like playing with things.

You didnt come off like a jerk at all...


edit: I just ordered the 64bit version of home premium and I think I am getting a heavily discounted copy of ultimate soon, so I will need to rebuild my machine again soon

edit2: I have a score of 4 for performance before I got my second gig of ram...

[JohnR]

I don't like the thought of all the crippling limitations of hardware changes and I think the DRM has goone way to far. I just ordered some new parts to go to an OC's 3Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb DDR2 PC8000, MB to go with some existing HW (need more FPS ). I have 3 legal copies of Vista and I'm really hesitant to install for a multitude of reasons.

Mr H - I haven't looked yet but does the partner program SW kit include Ultimate?

[The Dad Fisherman]

Ross, we just bought a new Toshiba A135-S4407 for the wife. The thing is seriously sweet. Have Vista and its OK....need to dig in more, other than the Usual Microsoft shuffle the Jury is still out. Not a big celeron fan, But you will be happy.
$649 after rebate at Cirduit City.

Intel®
Processor type Pentium Dual Core
Processor speed 1.6GHz
Bus Speed 533MHz
Level 2 cache 1MB
RAM 1GB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-4200)
Hard drive size 100GB
Video memory 256MB
Ethernet Yes
Wireless 802.11b/g

Originally Posted by nightfighter

I have a new Toshiba notebook arriving this week loaded with Vista. Are you griping about the software usage, or the actual upgrading process?????

[MrHunters]

Originally Posted by JohnR

I don't like the thought of all the crippling limitations of hardware changes and I think the DRM has goone way to far. I just ordered some new parts to go to an OC's 3Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2gb DDR2 PC8000, MB to go with some existing HW (need more FPS ). I have 3 legal copies of Vista and I'm really hesitant to install for a multitude of reasons.

Mr H - I haven't looked yet but does the partner program SW kit include Ultimate?

nope if you can find there faq for "action pack subscription" they only shipping the business upgrade to help the piracy situation.

lose out on all the "testing" of the other features.......

::morning edit::

well spec wise your just fine i bet you will get 10's accross the board ...but driver wise i'd hold of if your hardware manufacturers still only have beta out..... i get stuttering all the time right now with sound it is a pain.. I guess that it has to be that way but still.

i agree with you on the drm issue 100%


office 2007 on the other hand.... awsome! the ribbon idea made office sooo much better.
This is probably the first revision since 95 thats worth getting. its drastically different and easy to use.

[MrHunters]

Originally Posted by BrianS

You didnt come off like a jerk at all...

good. sometimes posts don't come across they way you mean them

Oh and to be fair.... im a huge microsoft supporter after all if it wasn't for them i'd be out of a job

[Raven]

Originally Posted by MrHunters

good. sometimes posts don't come across they way you mean them

the reason for that is.... no inflection of voice....

[Megabyte]

PC Recommendations (M$ & me)

I've release 2 and the product version running on my office network.

1g Ram Min - 1.5 Recommended by me
256m Ram Video
1 Gig USB Memory Stick - Put in USB slot performance increases about 30%
FAST ATA hard disk 7200-10,000 RPM

Almost no existing PC should have VISTA installed without the above specs being met. I don't believe people with their present PC's should upgrade (my $.02). Way underpowered.

A lot of patience and wait until SP1 is released.

It ain't like XP. It's a whole new learning curve.

Made simpler by M$ Heheheheeeeeeeeeee It ain't easy to pick up the lingo.

My $.02

Bruce

[BrianS]

my almost 2 weeks release update:

vista works great in every aspect for me except for 1.

Videogames - specifically World of Warcraft - run like crap.

I put the blame squarely on my nvidia card. There are NO drivers yet. From what I hear from all my ATI friends, they are running fine.

I can play the game, I am just glad I am not prone to siezures... Lots of flashing.


Outside of videogames, I havent run into an issue yet. I will admit I havent installed all that much. I am going to be installing Photoshop/Premeire/VMWARE and a few other goodies shortly. We will see how it goes I guess.

[Raven]

I am going to be installing Photoshop/Premeire/
>>>VMWARE <<<and a few other goodies shortly. We will see how it goes I guess.

i went to bestbuy to get some music and wanted to get partition magic and they don't even sell it anymore... bummer...

got a nice pioneer radio installed in the wife's car....hers had a melt -down. lol

[bassmaster]

Originally Posted by MrHunters

pc specs

i was hoping they would send the 64 bit version with my subscription but so far just 32bit.

dont buy it ,,,,, Junk
me an my bud both wanted 64 bit for our gameing rigs
we both have high end raid 0 sli rigs and fx chips
anyway he got it and it would not load he went to micropuke site and they want 60 buks an hour plus on there forum i guess they have like 150 peps in the same boat.
i like win xp pro both my rigs run fine no upgrade here
I got a really nice laptop and I can get the vista upgrade but im gonna bow out of that also.

[fishsmith]

Anyone run into problems copying Office 2003 to Vista?

I just got the Toshiba noteook mentioned above (almost free wireless(DLINK $60) router at circuit city, you have to mail in two slips a $20 and $40 )



Why these machines don't come with word and excel is my big bzatch to Bill Gates and Co.

So far no problems, they're really trying for the Apple look and feel.
If you don't like Vista OS forget about buying a pc from a store, they're all Vista now.

[MrHunters]

i use both mac and pc.... i wouldnt say its a total mac rip off.
ive been using vista since i started this thread.... its fine for every day stuff as long as your pc is beefed up. gaming sucks however.

havent had and issues with office.

try openoffice if you are have problems

[Mr. Sandman]

I have been a big Unix (many flavors) guy for a long time. Always had windows machines too though just to communicate with the rest of the world. I was involved in the computational Fluid Dyamics world for a while and still dabble now and again...all on unix. That OS is just better for hard core computation as the OS is much smaller and cleaner. Multi-threaded apps run much better under unix. But even with todays linux, IMO it will never be really adopted by the home user. But it is free and they cloned/stole all the MS office stuff as well so it is possible to use unix.


I just replaced my windows office desktop last week with a new intel dual-core dell with vista. I got 4GB of mem and a plenty of disk and a higher end graphics board (just a single board not a dual graphics setup). My overall impression of vista is that is is more polished and more secure but the problem is IT IS FRIGGIN H U G E . The OS alone takes at least a GB of memory!!! I thought something was wrong with my memory, with windows reporting it only had 3 GB, I pulled the memory and re-seated it and it still came back with 3GB....then I went into the BIOS and it reported 4GB is installed. with noting running the OS ALONE takes a full GB. As nice as it is IMO it is a bit bloated. Windows is also not good at dealing with timesliceing when the demand gets heavy. You don't want to run several batch jobs in background and then click on a desktop ap...it will come to a stop. Unix is much better at this.

That said, it works fairly well, is pretty fast but my advice it don't upgrade unless you get a NEW machine. Don't upgrade a sub 3GHz machine with vista. I have to say I am not ***that*** impressed with this performance of the dual core intel, it is snappy but not as lighting fast as I was hoping for. A few months back I upgraded my home server with a fast AMD (with XP) and I think that is snappy, apps jump, the bottleneck is disk speed. And it is inaudable...super quiet.

One thing that annoyed me was that vista what calls "broadband" . Upon setup it was trying to dial-out on its "broadband connection" I have a GB ethernet card and I had to force it to use it by deleting the "broadband connection" and then reconfigure it to use the GB card. Once that was "fixed" things went more smoothly. Overall I like it but what a memory hog!

I am probably going to try the 64bit soon ( on a different workstation platform) and kick the memory up to 16GB to run a couple of larger jobs. I think Vista was made more for 64 bit.

One thing I do like a lot is office 2007. IMO this is much improved and a much more polished look and feel to it. Much more mature esp between office aps. Have not tried everything yet but the basic look is very comfortable. With just the OS and explorer running total memory usage is 1.17 GB, 977 threads and 80 processes...that really is insane. If you get vista on a 32 bit system...go max memory 4 GB you will need it. Running something like Photoshop and Indesign aps which are memory hogs in their own right on top of the OS will gobble up everything you got. If you put it on a 1 year old+ computer and it is not a screamer beware, you will be disappointed.

BTW these Nvida graphics board fans are noisy and need a separate power feed to the board. They are fast and the graphics are great but if you don't need it step it down to a fanless graphics board and you will be happier without the noise.

[MrHunters]

Mr. Sandman.... Nice review!I agree with you 99.9 percent!

I kinda go the other way on graphics though... If you can stand the noise its worth the performance boost.

It's also nice to hear an articulate review from a unix guy that doesn't start with Micro$oft SUX!

that just gets tiring after a while.

How do you feel about the driver support for all your hardware.?

16Gig of ram!... Can you screen cap that?

[fishsmith]

Great review Sandman.

So far I'm happy.

Today I'll try to install Office 2003.

I need lots of emulators for my job, I support WebshpereMQ. its installed on 100's of servers most of which are unix, but also mainframe, VMS, Tandem, linux and windows. No doubt windows require the most support.

So far I have successfully installed exceed, putty, pagenet and fuji finepix, some hiccups with finepix, but no show stoppers until I tried to load nortel's VPN that worked on xp, it will not load, keeps kicking back "unknown O/S". Without this everything I installed is basically useless outside of work. Looks like March 2nd is the date Nortel will have a compatible version.

[Mr. Sandman]

As for the driver support, I think most printers and cameras and things will be fine. I noticed however that not all of the really hot graphics boards were not offered with Vista (yet)...they seem to be adding more all the time though. Mine is a Nvida 7900 Gsomething and it seems more than enough for what I need for the next few years.

My son will agree with you on your graphics board thoughts that is for sure. He could care less about the noise he want to run his games at max res and max framerate and will spend hundreds of his own $ to do it. I keep trying to throttle his deisre to upgrade...its almost like a drug. (I wonder where he got that from? ) Me, I like silent machines. There is something elegant about a powerful machine that is completely scilent. I will probably move this machine to the other side of the wall into a pantry just to keep it quiet in my office. I think if you are into gaming or do a lot of DVD or TV watching on your computer you really need the graphics power, I do little gaming but use a post-processing 3D viewing software that relies heavy on OpenGl. Also the calendar photo shop stuff runs better with the board.

My son plays the new ms flight sim and that thing looks amazing in full detail but it max's out his machine, and it s fairly new. At least he uses the horsepower.