First Impression: Windows Vista

[paradigm_shift]

Thoughts? Comments? Gripes?

[ProfMonnitoff]

Buying the smallest possible laptop wasn't so smart after all... seems like I'll be stuck on XP until I have a computer that actually has some performance.

[Klaas]

You need a pretty fast pc to run it. Most people need to upgrade, including me.

Better to buy a Mac, that's what I gonna do.

[chizzua]

The interface is much improved from XP. Compatibility with some programs is still not available which is somewhat annoying. They've added a couple of useless features (Tablet PC Tools, annoying administrative security pop-ups) and a couple of very nice features(Laptop Cyenter[Press windows key + x], 3D Alt-tab[windows key + tab]. Driver support is not up for alot of devices-- I can't even print on Vista. nVidia nor ATI has come up with decent drivers for Vista either so playing games is a hassle. For computers with not so great performance, there's the ability to use Flash drives as extra RAM which I thought would be very useful. The new searching is also very nice as well. It runs and starts up faster than XP in my opinion as well. Security in Vista is good, however I don't have much to compare it to as I have never had security problems with my computer even in XP as I scan regualrly. Overall, Vista is an improvement over XP, however they still need to work on basic things like driver support and and program support. There are many useless services/utilities/programs that come with a fresh install but can be easily overcome with basic registry tweaks to custmize your experience. For most people (especially those who are not remarkably computer savvy), I would recommend to wait to upgrade to Vista. I'm still triple-booting Ubuntu Linux, XP, and Vista myself. However, I use Vista mostly on an everyday basis because it is prettier and more efficient in the routine tasks I have to do.

You need a pretty fast pc to run it. Most people need to upgrade, including me.

Better to buy a Mac, that's what I gonna do.

*edit*

The only two reasons you would need a faster PC to run Vista then XP would be Aero-glass(which is mostly dependent on your video card and is not at all necessary) and maybe the new search feature on the start tab. However, if you have a decent amount of ram (1GB isn't too expensive these days and usually comes standard) there should be no problem in running Vista. Dual cores run Vista exceptionally well, even the low-end ones. So, if you can't run Vista atleast well enough to be usable, you'll probably need to upgrade your system regardless.

[swooc]

wow using usb flash drives as extra ram sounds like a cool feature. I'll probably wait till there is more compatability with programs and driver support till i switch over to vista. Though the new 3D interface really makes me want to switch now.

[DaBestSpoona]

I have it installed on 3 machines in my apt.

Living room

Home Premium

2.4ghz dual xeon

2 gigs of ram

7600GT

Main

Ultimate Edition

3800x2

2gigs of ram

7800GT

Laptop

Business Edition

centrino 1.4ghz

1gig ram

Impressions

the interface sucks, it looks like an amateur skin. The application flipping is nice though.

Iscsi, nice, but I doubt anyone is going to have network attached storage in their house anytime soon, unless they have sff iscsi nas in the works

Why the hell do I have to verify launching the event viewer and services or anything else in control panel each any time. They should just have a privilage mode a la root.

Networking is retarded now, it was fine before, why break it. It was much easier to configure my interfaces, share my folders in xp.

I use Media Center alot, sometimes when I delete a video it does it, but most of the time it doesnt. Interface is slow sometimes because it's constantly checking for thumbnails of all your videos, but checking sports scores while watching video is nice. Video recording quality hasnt improved since 2005. It bluescreens of death whenever I leave a video paused over nite, might be a ffdshow issue.

some of you might say get a mac, I have a mac. But I cant vpn into work on a g4, no parrallels support for g4's. And Frontrow sucks compared to Media Center.

[chizzua]

There's some requirements for the type of flash drive you can use I believe. I think it's 20mb/s read capability. For people with 2GBs or more of RAM the difference is negligible. I'm not sure how the Flash Drive/RAM conversion goes but I'm pretty sure it's not 1:1, meaning that 2GB flash wouldn't be 2GB of RAM. I'm almost positive that the Flash drive is mostly used for cache-- but improvements would still be noticeable. Other features I forgot to mention were-- virtual Folders, .zip compatibility(no need to download winZip any more but I still use 7-zip), better networking, and the Run is replaced with the program dialog box which is the same as the search feature.

One of my favorite things about Vista are thumbnail windows previews. It's not really much, but I think it's useful. On the taskbar if you highlight a program you can see a preview of the window in a little box.

One thing I don't like is how slow iTunes runs in Vista. It seems that Apple's coding doesn't fair too well in Vista. I've been forced to start using WMP11 which is decent but could use some added functionality. Audio themes have also been added which are nice, but some of them are pretty dumb. I think the audio quality seems better on Vista than XP as well. Those with IntelHD will be very pleased with the quality of their sound.

A couple of things that they took out of Vista are Windows Messenger,and integration with IE, which I found refreshing. But, they took away Pinball.

Why the hell do I have to verify launching the event viewer and services or anything else in control panel each any time. They should just have a privilage mode a la root.

You can turn User Account Control(UAC) off. Run msconfig, go to Tools, disable UAC, Launch-- reboot.

Networking is retarded now, it was fine before, why break it. It was much easier to configure my interfaces, share my folders in xp.

I think turning UAC off will make this much easier as they won't ask for so many permissions. Have you tried the P2P sharing over Vista?

[DaBestSpoona]

Disabling UAC is kinda pointless, might as well use XP

P2P is fine, cept there is no support for PeerGuardian 2 yet.

[chizzua]

Nah, UAC is pretty annoying.

I don't really understand what your gripes about the Interface and networking are all about. The interface is an improvement over XP, are you using Aero and chaned the Window color and all that? The networking isn't that much different, either.

What do you think runs more efficiently, XP or Vista?

[DaBestSpoona]

Nah, UAC is pretty annoying.

I don't really understand what your gripes about the Interface and networking are all about. The interface is an improvement over XP, are you using Aero and chaned the Window color and all that? The networking isn't that much different, either.

What do you think runs more efficiently, XP or Vista?

I didnt like the interface because everything is buried menu under menu. The OS is somewhat condescending, mostly due to uac. The fact that I had to dig for the command line, well run prompt. Alot of things that were simple, now force you to goto a long wizard.

networking should be simple, without long winding wizards. Not this:

http://shellrevealed.com/photos/windows_vista/images/110/original.aspx

When you look at Office 2007, everything is very intuitive, you find everything you want to do really quickly, but in Vista, you have to go through way too many clicks to do something.

[chizzua]

Command line is just windows button + R.

The networking wizard is a one-time thing so it's not that bad is it? I have no problem with switching wireless connections on my laptop. I agree Office 2007 is really a great improvement. The search feature makes all those clicks unnecessary. Why not just use the search?

[DaBestSpoona]

yeah I should use the search

[sean_]

i only had a chance to fuck around with a bootlegged version of ultimate for a little while, but i gotta say it looks pretty

and it has hold em. haha. i'm going to use it a little more thoroughly and try to get some better impressions of stuff.

[smurf]

A rule-of-thumb I've heard a few places is you're pretty safe to upgrade if your machine is less than a year and a half old. Older, less powerful machines may not fair so well. Finally, for iPod owners, iTunes has major issues under Vista. There's a hack out there to help you limp alone until Apple updates their software in the next couple of weeks.

Buy a Mac.

[Robototron]

Buy a Mac.

STFU.

I've had Vista since November and aside from being really annoyed with the extra security at first, I haven't had any big problems. My audio driver wasn't working for a little while, but it's now been fixed, and as a Foobar user iTunes problems don't really bother me. The rest of my drivers work fine and so far I haven't run into any program incompatibality. The interface took a little getting used to, but it grew on me. I really like Vista so far.

[Tiranis]

Even as a Mac user I find the "Buy a Mac" people annoying.

Shut up, guys -- those who want to buy a Mac will, those who don't won't. End of story.

[Loop]

I am currently running an oem version of xp home.

I bought vista premium upgrade and it won't install files past 27%. We tried every single way of installation, no joy.

After several hours on the phone to customer support, taking various bits of my computer apart and plugging them into new bits, just in case., it still doesn't work.

I was then told that they were having the same problem with lots of users trying to upgrade an oem xp to a retail vista. Their suggestion was I sell vista to a friend of family member (which is of course illegal for the same reasons that I cannot return the software).

So I am £150 (just in case you hadn't realised vista costs twice as much in the UK as in the US) out of pocket with nothing to show for it but a very shiny drinks coaster in a fancy box.

Just a warning for potential upgraders out there.

[Servo2000]

I'm excited to install this on my new Dual-Dual Core Mac Pro for Bootcamp. I've heard it runs great, although I don't know if I'm going to do it for a while since I'll probably take a hit in actual application performance, since I mainly only use bootcamp for gaming.

[diewhitegirls]

I loved it, but my sound card wasn't compatible and after weeks of tooling with it, I uninstalled it. I'll reinstall the RC1 when they support my card.

[Pandemonium]

I'm really dissappointed that Vista would require so much, forcing me to buy a new computer if I want to use it.

I guess there'll probably be a significant mass of people still using XP.