General Chat / Windoez Vista.

hello, friends. i am back!

i didn't really go anywhere, but i did purchase (yes, i said purchase) Windows Vista Home Premium, and i must say i really like it. everything as a whole runs much faster as the dual core management is superstantially better than XP. the GUI is well built and looks good, plain and simple. i'm not sure if that's just because i have a high definition display or not though... everything seems to look much crisper than it did with XP. so i would guess that Vista could be optimized for HD, but i'm not really sure. would be cool though.

anyway, my favorite feature, oddly enough, was the quick and painless install. it probably took less than 20 minutes to get everything up and running (note: i didn't actually time it, but it was damn fast). additionally, Vista will automatically fetch the drivers for most of your hardware (though you might go grab the latest builds just in case). so that eliminates a ton of hassle when doing a fresh install.

now, i was running XP Professional 64-bit edition which was more trouble than it was worth. granted, 64-bit support is growing and most of the major players have 64-bit drivers. but there really are no major programs that utilize it. so, knowing how much of a pain XP 64 was, i opted to go with Vista 32. and so far it's been out performing my XP setup in almost all areas (except for memory usage, but meh. typically it hovers around 50% while running Firefox, Trillian, Media Player, McAfee etc.). the nice thing that M$ is doing this time around is offering to send you the 64-bit version DVD, as it isn't no available at retail outlets. so, basically, you have to buy the 32-bit version and follow the instructions on getting the 64-bit version. not sure how this works exactly, but it's available which i thought was nice. Vista idles, with 2 gigs of RAM, at 22% while XP was at 1%. but not a big deal. unless you fail and only have 1 gig.

problems i've run into so far: when running World of Warcraft (which i have every setting turned up to high) if i alt-tab out, occasionally the FPS will drop to 20-30. it normally runs at 50-60. however, this may be a problem with dual core processors in general as my friend, who runs XP, has the same problem. i've also heard that nVidia's drivers are having some trouble with Vista.
the only other thing so far is the sound card, which i haven't really done much with as all my music and such is still on my old hard drive. but, when i first installed it the sound would pop and crackle from time to time. however, i reinstalled the newest drivers and made sure all my applications were running from Soundblaster. so far, so good.

so, does anyone else have Vista? how do you kids like it?

I'm getting Vista Ultimate Edition soon. You know, just cause it's ultimate. And it STILL costs less than a PS3!!

i'm running vista too and am loving it.
it's like you say, the dual cpu management is crazy.
although i think non-windows-experienced users will be screwed.

most important thing about vista: http://vlite.net/

Edited by posix, 06 March 2007 - 03:19 PM.

I'm getting Vista Ultimate Edition soon. You know, just cause it's ultimate. And it STILL costs less than a PS3!!

eh, it's pretty much the same thing as Home Premium except:

a) it comes with the 64-bit DVD.
it has crazy file encryption. that you will never use.

so, unless you want the 64-bit version really badly, save your money and just get Home Premium. because it's almost the exact same thing.

it's not that expensive. you can get an oem version of home premium online for like $120. and ultimate is $200.

anywho. i had it, but the sound driver was fucked up and i couldn't find one, so i am going to wait a little longer to install it again.

Edited by tracidEdge, 06 March 2007 - 04:06 PM.

^ Which is exactly why I went went Home Premium as well.

Loving it... I need to update my graphics card to get that aero feature (everything else works though), but I don't even care about that. I actually really like the buttons and everything the way it is now.

And yes, that install was extremely quick and easy. Love everything about it.

I'm getting Vista Ultimate Edition soon. You know, just cause it's ultimate. And it STILL costs less than a PS3!!

Uhm as far as I know Vista isn't a complete set of hardware so why the comparison. A good graphics card costs roughly the same as a PS3, so if you consider that, a PS3 isn't that bad of a deal.

Anyway back on topic. I'm toying around with Vista Ultimate atm (not legally if you were wondering, but I missed out on the betas) The only reason I have it installed is some try out stuff and to know it a bit better, because the new PC my father is gonna buy probably comes with Vista and since I'm the one to maintain it. I won't get Vista for my own computer because it hardly matters to have it since DX10 doesn't exists for AGP cards and that I don't have a dualcore anyway.
For the rest Vista looks very crystal sharp and I like the the menu lay-out it's using. Some stuff is better reachable too. There's something I hate of Vista though: the constant barrage of security screens when I just want to delete or even MOVE a file. That really needs to die (probably some option to turn it off should exist I guess). For the rest I hardly see any benefit for it atm. DX10 is hardly used and the functionality isn't that much different from XP so upgrading XP just to get the newest is rather stupid and a waste of money if you ask me. I'll probably get it sometime when I buy a new system which won't be within 2 years. For now I'll use this 'old machine' (3+ years, but upgraded lately) which will serve me just fine for the coming years on XP (P4 3.0Ghz, 2GB PC3200, Gainward 7800GS+, audigy2, 200GB(IDE) & 250GB(SATA) harddrives.

edit*
Forgot to add. It's usually wise to wait until a new service pack is available for Windows, just to get stuff sorted out properly (XP needed it quite back) Also driver support isn't ideal atm and older hardware and uncommon hardware might not work, atleast not now.

Edited by tyandor, 06 March 2007 - 04:20 PM.

Oh yeah, that security shit... changed that immediately. That was prolly the only annoying thing I've run into.

hmm... excuse me if I haven't read something, but in everyone's opinion, is Ultimate really worth the extra money? What is the difference between the two?

hmm... excuse me if I haven't read something, but in everyone's opinion, is Ultimate really worth the extra money? What is the difference between the two?

if you want to encrypt files like a raving lunatic, then Ultimate Edition is for you! but for everyone else, Home Premium is the best route.

^alrighty, then
thanks Tyler

I prolly won't get Vista until I buy/build a new desktop. No way it do anything useful on this old laptop!

Good to hear that Vista works pretty well. I'll just have to make sure to have like 4 gigs of RAM or something.

Vista has convinced me to switch to Macs and Linux.

Idles at 22% on 2 gigs of ram?
Damn, that's pathetic.


I'm trying to switch to Linux, but it's not going smoothly.
Not a fan of Macs.

Vista has convinced me to switch to Macs and Linux.

don't lie, you think Justin Long is hot.

don't lie, you think Justin Long is hot.

Who?

Who?

you know. the guy that plays "Mac" on the "Mac and PC" commercials.

Idles at 22% on 2 gigs of ram?
Damn, that's pathetic.
I'm trying to switch to Linux, but it's not going smoothly.
Not a fan of Macs.

If that's just normal background load, pathetic is the *polite* word. I'm sure there's a military saying for that kind of performance, perhaps one involving urine. Was it re-building its disk indices in the background or something? Please tell me that's not really idle load, is it?

I switched to Linux in '03. It was a learning experience, to say the least. But I'm glad I did it now. Happy to help if I can.

High-end Mac desktops are sweet, but their laptops seem a little flimsy. OSX is amazing. I'm not a fan of sole-source vendors in general, but at least Apple's products generally perform quite well at the tasks for which they are designed, which is more than I can say for their #1 competitor. What MS customers pay to put up with is beyond absurd.

oh man so microsoft is a fucking retard.

i had to reformat my computer, right. so i was installing xp media center edition like normal and it's all "hey i need disk 2 for this file" even though disk two was already in the fucking drive. long story short, it turns out the file was on disk one.

way to go, bill.

Interestingly enough, after I read Tyler's positive Vista report, I ran into a whole slew of negative Vista posts on other message boards.

In any case, since I'm too lazy/computer deficient to switch to Linux, and most of the programs I use are either Windows exclusive or just easier to use (for me) on Windows, I'll just wait till Windows gets their shit fixed before getting a computer with Vista.

But I guess I'll definitely be outfitting it with 4 gigs of RAM.