Anybody using Vista?

[neglet]

Hey guys,

I think my current computer is on its last legs, so I'm probably looking to buy a new one pretty soon. I just wondered what experiences people were having with the new Vista operating system, and whether I should think twice before "upgrading." Any comments would be helpful.

[Jakester]

It's stable enough that you shouldn't experience any sort of weird random crashes, and it's pretty. The Aero glass effect is definitely snazzy. Plus, SP1 should be out next month or in January, which should improve things even more.
I've found that games still perform better under XP than Vista, but I don't think you're going to be doing a lot of high end gaming, so I wouldn't worry about that.

What's the issue w/ your machine?

[neglet]

Current machine is a four-plus-year-old Dell Dimension 4550 with a Pentium 4 chip, running XP. It's getter slower and slower to boot up--hubby swears it takes him 15 minutes, although my setup isn't more than 5 with the anti-virus software. This morning when I turned it on, it ran a sector check, which probably doesn't bode well for the integrity of the machine.

Another problem is that I'm running an old version of MS Office (2000), and my version of Word crashes a lot, so I need to upgrade there as well, which means upgrading to Vista. I also want to upgrade my printer (5 years old) to one of the new Kodak all-in-ones, which might require more power than I've got right now.

So I'm pretty resigned to the fact that I have to get a new computer soon, I just wondered if the stories I was hearing about Vista were something I should take seriously. I don't mind adapting to new software, but constant crashing would be a big problem. I use the machine mostly for writing and research, no serious games, some desktop publishing (I hope my 10-year-old copy of PageMaker 6.5 still works), and some photo and video manipulation. I noticed Dell sells some machines with XP instead of Vista, but if it's not going to be a horrible problem I'd rather upgrade Office at the same time.

[Jakester]

You can run Office 2007 on an XP machine. I'm using it on my corporate laptop, which is XP.

It sounds like your hard drive is failing, which you could simply replace, but at four years old, it couldn't hurt to just get a new machine. Just remember that you get what you pay for, and while there are some cheap PCs out there, they may lack the performance you really would like to get.

[rappites]

Sorry to interrupt the thread.

Well sort of. We bought a new pc with vista last year. It is made by Gateway from Best Buy. I thought these things came with windows package already. So, if we wanted excel and all that other crap we have to pay out like $300.


Which is crap.

[RedKarma]

CDW did the same thing to us last year.

We sent it back and just called someone else.

The only problem I have with Vista is when it goes to update Windows, you can't tell it not to, or ask it to do it later. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with Vista.

[mckracken]

I'm sticking with XP, thanks.

[Jakester]

The only problem I have with Vista is when it goes to update Windows, you can't tell it not to, or ask it to do it later. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with Vista.

Sure you can Start->Control Panel->Security->Windows Updates->Change Settings

Phil, to anyone who already has XP, there's nothing in Vista to make it worth an upgrade, so yeah, if you've got XP, stick with it. It's not like upgrading your Mac to Leopard or anything.

[Kaeos]

Hey Negs, Mrs.K got a new Dell a few weeks back an of course it came with Vista.

You remember the Mac / PC commercial where PC has the big brute in the black suit interrupting him every two seconds to ask permission? It's really true. The machine stops every time she gets and update or download's a program and asks for permission....twice.

Outside of that, I was using it a little for some of my radio show which required a Skype type program and a sound dashboard program. None of it worked correctly together.

I would go MAc at this point. :)

[mckracken]

the only reason I wouldnt update my machine is that I have TONS of graphics software running, MAYA7, TRUESPACE6.6, AMAPI3, PHOTOSHOP6, PREMIERE6, ILLUSTRATOR7, FLASH to name a few, oh and Jump Drive, my Digital Camera, my printer and scanner too... I simply cannot take the kind of chance a normal user would take in upgrading their OS... if any of these programs weren't compatible with Vista (or each other) I'd be screwed.

dead in the water.

[omicron]

yeah, McKracken, i'd definitely be worried if I were you. I've heard horror stories about finding drivers for Vista.

negs, you should be able to order a computer with XP (http://www.news.com/The-XP-alternative-for-Vista-PCs/2100-1016_3-6209481.html).

[Jakester]

Oh, I've an older P4 machine that I built from scratch. It's got an Indel D945PEBT2 motherboard in it, and I ran that Vista Upgrade Advisor on it, and was told I'd have no problems upgrading it to Vista. Um....well, it lied. Intel stopped supporting that board, and hasn't made any Vista drivers for it. So Vista won't install. Frakking Upgrade Advisor. Oh, and my Linksys MIMO wireless card doesn't have Vista drivers. It's like two years old, but it turns out that there was some sort of licensing issue with some of the firmware or something and they had to stop making the card, so they've also stopped any additional software development for it. S'what I get for early adopting, I suppose.

[UNCLEagent]

I have purchased three mid-range priced PC's during this past year - all with Vista. And all three experience frequent crashes and freezes at leats once a week. Plus the other situations already described here.

I used a barebones $200 cheapy with XP for three years before it finally blew up. And it MAYBE carshed once or twice in its very heavy, daily usage.

I am seriously researching paying somebody to completely strip my computers down and install XP.

I absolutely HATE Vista.

1) Whereas my old Celeron cruised smoothly and swiftly with XP on 1 meg Ram, Vista is horribly slow after upgrading to one meg on a Athlon X2 processor.

2) My 80 Gig harddrive was already at 40% capacity without loading ONE single program or file of mine.

3) I experience system freezes and crashes at least once a week. On three different PC's. No gaming. No video. Just browsing and minor Office and Photoshop.

4) Booting up and switching users used to take seconds with my older Celeron and XP. Now it literally takes several minutes.

5) Overall, the system (AMD 64 Athlon X2 - 1 meg ram) is HORRIBLY SLOW compared to my three year old Celeron running XP.

Just my opinion as a non-techie who doesn't have time to fuck with this shit and wants their computer to function in a simple, decent fashion - I'd say - FUCK VISTA and go with XP.

I used to swear by Windows before Vista. Now I am seriously listening to Mac users. I never cared to when I was running my XP.

[Sgt. Awesome]

As far as I can tell Microsoft releases a good version of windows every four or so versions. 98... XP... so Vista is sort of like a beta version that they've released. By the time it is in SP2 there should be noticeable improvements.

From what I have heard it is broken and is not compatible with older software.


Office 2007 is very pretty though...

[neglet]

Thanks for all the feedback, guys. We decided to take the leap and get the new machine with Vista and Office 2007. Ordered 2 GB RAM rather than the 1 GB on the base system and extra gigs on the hard drive, so hopefully that will avoid some problems.

Now I just have to back up all the crap on my current computer, in case my hard drive crashes before the new PC gets here. If I go dark sometime over the next three weeks, you'll know why. :p

[Jakester]

You definitely want 2 gig of ram with Vista. It would also help if you have a decent graphics card -- but you'll need to ensure that your motherboard has a PCI-Express x16 slot on it. The on-board graphics on most systems just sucks ass and uses system memory for video memory, which can hamper your performance.

[rappites]

^^sounds like a personal problem.

[Monic]

Neglet.... definitively 2 gig is necessary with Vista. Good decision!

You will need some patience to get use to Vista. Big changes compared to XP. I personally found Vista less "user friendly" than the previous versions of Windows, but it is just my first impression after "playing" a little with it.

Also, from what I heard from clients at my work place, Office 2007 is very different than the previous versions. Some of our clients are paying new training courses to their employees. But I didn't try it myself.

[Queen Mae]

Office 2007 is very pretty though...


I am in love (possibly 'lurv') with my Office 2007. Who knew MS Office could do all of this nifty stuff? I had no clue!

[rappites]

It is pretty kewl

[Jakester]

Since this is turning into a PC gripe fest...I believe the main PCI-Express slot on my motherboard died on me. It makes me sad.
I've been having sporadic lockups for a while, but I attributed them to my video card, because it's always ran really hot. I called my card manufacturer and they agreed and sent me a new card late last week. I swapped cards, and while things seemed better, they weren't perfect, so I reset my BIOS back to the default settings (I had overclocked my CPU a little bit -- really, just a little from 2.4 to 2.8) and BAM! Everything was stable. Until last night. When I got home from the daughter's dance class, the PC had shut down and greeted me with a long repeating beep and no video.

I reseated the video card. I swapped video cards (I still had my old one); I swapped memory. I reset the BIOS (again). No lurve. Now I say Grr.

[WhiteKnight]

I'm a late entry into the discussion, but I'd like to add that if you are one of those sad people left in the world who don't have access to DSL and are too poor to pay for cable or satellite Internet, Vista will infuriate you to the point of mental break down.

I spent 25 minutes one evening in a failed attempt to check my Hotmail account. I was connected at about 38.6kbps (which blows to begin with, but it still shouldn't take half an hour to load Hotmail) and got so pissed off that I yanked the powercord out of the back of the machine.

As for SP2, I doubt I'll ever get that far because it will take just short of a century to download the file over a dialup connection.

My verdict: Shittiest Windows release since ME. :mad:

[Queen Mae]

My verdict: Shittiest Windows release since ME. :mad:

Oy, that must be bad.

I'm glad I didn't upgrade to Vista

[UNCLEagent]

Oy, that must be bad.

I'm glad I didn't upgrade to Vista

A lot of people have advised me that simply upgrading my PC to minimum 2 megs Ram and maybe doubling my HD to 160 GIGs will fix everything, but I have to ask - if XP was able to perform everything to my expectations and actually exceeded them, with only half the requirements - what is it in Vista that makes it worth the upgrades and expenses in both hardware and software?

I can see absolutely NOTHING in it's performance or features that is supposed to be better than XP. Well, other than the weekly freezes and crashes....:headscratch:

I won't say that Mac is better than PC - I will say that from personal experience - Vista is a major disaster when compared with my past experiences with XP.

Question to all -

Would I do better to TRY to give Vista a chance here by purchasing more memory and a bigger HD? OR - spend the same money (probably less) to buy XP and load it into the hardware that is existing?

Can somebody explain please - what is it about Vista that makes it worth the increased demand for resources?

It's not just me and my bitch fest - even Mac has made a very funny commercial pointing out the many people who are choosing to 'downgrade' their PC's to XP - that tells you something about Vista.

[Lavoruis]

when I need a new computer. I will buy Windows Xp pro.
and have some strip out Vista for me

[Jakester]

The extra memory isn't a bad idea period. You'll see better performance in XP if you were to "downgrade" to XP as well.
You will likely see improved performance if you turn off Aero and use a different theme (like Vista Basic or Classic).

[UNCLEagent]

Thanks, Jake.

Here's a question bothering me about downgrading.

I can format C as well as the next chimp. No prob. I can load XP as well as anybody.

But do I risk really fucking something up in the process? Such as - XP (I assume) is just ONE part of the entire package. If I format C, do I risk losing pre-installed programs that are there for a reason, specific to my machine? Stuff like the CD drivers? The drivers to read the motherboard? The drivers that read the DVR and the screen/monitor settings and so on?

I imagine the LOGICAL answer is - "Don't fuck with formatting C for just that reason! - Just uninstall Vista and install XP."

Simple - but I have been told all these years that systems with Windows do not allow you to do that cleanly. Windows - like a parasite - fixes itself to your PC in the most remote and ingrained places, so that a clean uninstall is impossible, short of erasing the entire drive. Attempting to 'uninstall' this program and overwriting it with a new one will only fuck things up beyond recognition.

True?

[mckracken]

sounds like it is... never trust Gates... he is the anti-Christ

[Jakester]

Formatting will wipe EVERYTHING.
Removing Vista in favor of XP, though leaves you with those driver and software issues as well. Sure, they're still there, but those drivers...ARE FOR VISTA, not XP, so you'll need to download them (the relevant XP drivers) off of the interwebs and put them somewhere on your hard drive before you make the switch.

What you've been told is sort of true. The programs that were on your old OS aren't automagically installed on the new one, so they're just sitting out there, chewing up space, as are all of the old user accounts and all of their associated storage. That's not really Windows' fault, though. It's just sort of the way it is.

If you want to make the switch, formatting is the best option, but make sure you have media for any software that you want to reinstall, as well as any drivers for your hardware.

[Sgt. Awesome]

That's the problem about buying a computer from the big yellow ticket. They don't give you windows with your computer... they pre-load it, but you do not get a disk, or any of the required drivers. My mom bought a laptop from them, when I found out that they pre-loaded everything I went down to the store and made my displeasure of their procedures a matter of public record. I got a burned cd filled with drivers out of it though... no windows disk... but we will not be shopping there again for computers.

[MPG]

Would I do better to TRY to give Vista a chance here by purchasing more memory and a bigger HD? OR - spend the same money (probably less) to buy XP and load it into the hardware that is existing?
My opinion on this: If you have a desktop computer, downgrade to XP. If it's a notebook, it's a much trickier question. The OS installation on notebooks contains not only the standard operating system but also a lot of tools and gadgets that handle notebook-specific stuff like power management, etc. That makes it much harder to just take a "generic" operating system and install it on the notebook (this is also one reason why installing Linux on a notebook can be somewhat of an adventure).

I got a notebook with Vista myself, and it works reasonably well (but it does have 2Gig RAM). I haven't had any crashes, and the few weird issues at the beginning were fixed fairly easily with patches. But on the other hand, I mostly use the notebook for playing Counterstrike at LAN parties, so that may not be a very common usage profile. :D

[neglet]

Well, the new computer arrived yesterday (it wasn't even supposed to be shipped until Wednesday), so next time I post it should be from the new machine. (I hope.) Got a long morning ahead of archiving and transferring shit.

[Bokchoi Cowboy]

I love the Mac commercials regarding Vista. Especially the one with the PR Lady: "By downgrading he means they are upgrading...."


http://www.apple.com/getamac/






I still wouldn't buy a Mac if I didn't have too, but this Vista crap may make me change my mind.....

[neglet]

Okay, so I've got the new system humming along, no real trouble except for using my printer, which is five years old so there isn't a Vista driver for it. I was going to wait until the new year to get a new printer, but this one is so unreliable with the new system I don't think I can.

So, anyone got any recommendations on printers? I mostly print text (I am a writer), the occasional web page (research), and once in a while photos--although I might do it more often if I had a better printer. I like having copy/scan ability, too, so I guess I need an all-in-one. Any thoughts?

[omicron]

http://www.pcworld.com/product/reviewfinder.html?id=12

Check out their reviews here. Should be able to get a decent printer for 100 bucks. It's the ink costs that kill ya. :)

[neglet]

Thanks. I'll look those over, plus some other reviews I found. Ink prices are a bitch, ain't they? Kodak is promising their new all-in-one has cartridges for $10 and $15 bucks, but from what I read their text quality isn't that good. I think I'm going with the latest mid-range Canon Pixma, it's gotten pretty good reviews across the board.

[Sgt. Awesome]

I've been using epson printers in my house for a while... but only the top end for printing photography and designs. I've also got an old 660 for basic text printing... that thing is about 6 or 7 years old I believe. The HP we got for our second computer, that then became our main printer, kicked the bucket before the epson did. Only problem is the ink has to be special ordered because it has been disco'd.

But I'm pro-epson.

[Bark]

Going back to upgrades and downgrades, I strongly recommend buying Norton Ghost and an external hard drive to store backups on. You could downgrade within an hour or two and put your system into the exact state it was in before the attempt at upgrading.

It also backups your pr0n so that when a bad site infects your system, you can take your computer back in time before the infection.

[neglet]

My new printer came on Saturday, less than 3 days after I ordered it (shipped via FedEx Ground, 7-9 business days they said! Must be the holiday rush). I lurrrrve my new printer. It's snazzy, it prints fast and the pics look purty. And I haven't even tried the special photo paper yet!

[omicron]

Look what I found:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2415/2092813749_5a98f53e52_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2086/2093591502_b9ae3e6891_o.jpg

It's an old Pentium 75, with 24MB of RAM and win95. And it still boots and has it's 14.4kps modem with it. :lol:

[UNCLEagent]

And it looks like it weighs a ton!

Jeeze

[Bark]

That's nothing. My dad had a "laptop" back in the late 80s, early 90s. It was twice the size of his briefcase, weighed 40 pounds, took five minutes to boot into DOS, and burned through the battery in 90 minutes. It would take three hours to charge up again. I'm surprised it didn't have a hand crank to charge it up.

[RedKarma]

Does anyone know where Vista hides your cookies?

I stupidly deleted them all, and now I need 1 or 2 back. However, Vista is very stingy with search information, and asking a question over at the Windows site is equal to gouging your own eyes out and filling the sockets with vinegar.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[omicron]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2193371,00.asp

[Jakester]

My XP installation blowed up for no apparent reason last week. Fricking hang on mup.sys. I went to the recovery console and restored it, but no love. Had to re-install. That hosed my MBR so it wouldn't boot to Vista anymore, so I had to fix THAT because Vista re-does how the MBR operates.
I'm slowly restoring my XP installation (by slowly, I mean so far I've installed the drivers for my wi-fi card and that's it). I'm just not in an OS tinkering mood lately. Been sick and I just don't want to deal....bleeeargh.

[Bark]

Norton Ghost, my friends. It's a time-travel device to go back to when your system was good. I swear by it.

[RedKarma]

Thanks for the article, Omi. It helped a lot.

[Jakester]

Very wise, Omi. Very wise.