good in vista?

[mattmorgan]

made the move to vista 64 ultimate today, been playing for few hours, it've got plenty of bugs hasn't it, and uses a bucket load of ram, but my question is, has anyone found anything really 'cool' in vista, something they can now no longer live without.

vista aero is nice but processsor hungry and something i can cope with out, and texus hold 'em's quite good fun, but other than that. not impressed. so please. please. tell me, whats 'cool' in vista? anything?



M

[David M]

Matt,
There have been a few threads in here about Vista, overall people do not seem to be all that impressed nor are they very motivated to spend the money. I have read a few magazine and internet articles about it and have read pretty much the same in those articles as well. On the other hand, not many have loaded Vista so not many have first hand knowledge. I hope though that you find Vista worth you're while.

Has it been worth while? Can I ask how much? What software have you run under Vista? Does it run better?...worse? Do you have a graphics card that can use DX-10?

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=176351

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=176111

[mattmorgan]

i made sure that i bought a dx10 graphics card when i built my latest machine a few weeks ago, vista is currently running on pc1 in my sig. vista cost £300 pound for the ultimate 64bit version, and i've now had a chance to use it for alot of everyday use type things, and well. slow... very slow. and before i get slammed because 'it's new, it's bound to have bugs'. from start up, as in after i burn the power button on, it take longer than xp64 to boot, and use's over 40% of my ram once booted to desktop with nothing else running. to combat this, aero and alot of the other eye candy has been scarified.

i have installed the standard programs i need, such as firefox, windows live mail, vlc, and other day to day activities, then more specifically, macromedia studio 8 which works fine for me, photoshop cs2, slow, but works, am yet to try any games, as i dont have any i haven’t completed at the minute, but i'm trying to find my copy of battle2142 to test that asap.

drivers are a real issue for xp, i can barely find any for my system, the oldest one for my wireless card works fine, but vista demands i update it to the most recent ones which then stops the unit working.

i'm still having to use ultramon to manage my dual desktops, which is fine, but i was hoping that Microsoft would have taken into consideration that a lot of people now run a dual monitor setup and tyr to help out a little, but then i guess thats not the way they work, is it!?

all in all if you HAVE to do it, stick with vista 32bit at least your be able to find the drivers for the most part

as for my original question... still nothing cool found.

m

[Panama Red]

I believe Vista's single biggest improvement is in the area of Security. Unfortunately, that doesn't show up as a "visible" improvement. The User Interface also received a face lift and Networking is now much easier in Vista than in previous versions. Try googling Vista Improvements and see what others have to say. You'll find a couple of MS tech articles at the top of the list that were done during Vista development. I was involved in the Vista Beta program and have a copy of Vista Ultimate on the way. I plan to replace XP Home on my primary machine so I can become more familiar with Vista. Maybe later on I'll be able to add to the improvements list as well point out features I may not care for. With more and more of my customers looking to a Vista upgrade I figure it's time now to gain personal familiarity.

[Dodge7]

A co-worker downloaded Vista RC awhile back... he likes it, and said he can't go back to XP, Vista just makes it easier in many ways.

It seemed to have a lot of good features and applications that XP lacks, but nothing that hits you right off, you have to use it for awhile. I would like the improved search function and a few others features, from what I have seen of Vista.

[MaxRat]

There are lots of things in Vista that are nice...

I like the parental controls...nice feature...

Networking is easier and faster than XP...lots faster...

There are issues that will be corrected over time I hope...

I cant say Aero is cpu hungry...even with MP-11 running and MSN running and IE with 4 tabs I am only at 03-05% on the scale...and thats with a 3400/754 single core...

now ram is another issue...it does like to use ram...and with 2gigs I am at 60% after being left on for 4 days...

If I reboot every other day ram usage stays around 25%

[TimPoet]

300 British pounds = 589.02 U.S. dollars

Kinda steep, there.

Problems were known for Vista 32, I can imagine even much more with 64.

Even lots of proggie incompatibility for XP64... again, even more for Vista's version of 64. Yikes!

Wonder how FEAR does on it.

[mattmorgan]

i'm still dual booting with xp so i can use a machine thats reasonably bug free, and i havent tried any major games as yet, but i cant imagine they'd run as well if the operating system is munching all a fair majority of my ram from boot:-S.

however i was told to day by a friend that vista can use a usb flash drive as virtual ram, is this just an extension of the virtual memory, a lie, or... a *cool* feature?

m

[The_YongGrand]

My goodness - the Vista is just drinking up too much RAM. I've seen computers with Vista Ultimate and 1GB RAM, and guess what, only 1MB left in the Task Manager.

[TimPoet]

Originally Posted by mattmorgan however i was told to day by a friend that vista can use a usb flash drive as virtual ram, is this just an extension of the virtual memory, a lie, or... a *cool* feature?

It's a cool feature, don't think it's used as virtual, cuz that implies HDD use, this uses the flash memory sort of like a buffer . Give it a try. I don't know if it's all automatic or if you need to activate it.

Prolly automatic.

[mojo]

Using a flash drive to increase your performance is called "Ready Boost" by the clever marketing types at M$. It's not really used as memory or virtual memory, but something different all together. It's simply a cache of frequently loaded files on your harddrive. While harddrives are pretty much king at speed for streaming large files, they are pretty slow in regards to latency compared to flash memory. Ready Boost puts all the tiny, frequently accessed files on the flash drive so it can access them fairly instantaneously compared to spinning up your harddrive and finding the file.

[fleeingpepper]

I don't think that would make a huge difference...But does it?

BTW, $600 FOR VISTA! Dad gum! That's as outrageous as the PS3.

[LeftyAce]

And the PS3 came bundled with 9 cores....

[mattmorgan]

yeah i'd also be interested in any results for this type of memory useage, anyone got anythign conclusive?

[mattmorgan]

not... a cool feature as such. but the bundled dvd maker has enabled me to burn off some movies that gave me problems with nero vision. so.... i guess thats good... right? :P

m

[David M]

Vista sales in the dumps. (You will need to scroll down four stories.)

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/page/2/

[Stryker]

I'm not sure why some folks are so shocked that Vista sales are lagging. By no means do I think it's a "bad" OS (I've used it on friends' machines several times for extended periods), but anyone who looks at the pros and cons of upgrading will most likely figure out it's not really worth it (yet). A bit of advanced functionality, some very nice interface changes, generally a good OS. However, when you look at the price, driver support, software support, etc... I just can't justify upgrading. Don't misread this as "Vista is bad". I like it very much from what I've seen and can see some advantages as mentioned above.

I've never been one to upgrade to a new OS until the frist service pack is released, but unless the first service pack includes a pretty drastic price drop I won't be moving from XP any time soon.

Just thought i would chime in with my 2 cents.
Stryker

[David M]

I guess thats it in a nutshell. The cost to benefit ratio does not justify purchasing it just yet.

[Jiroma]

msn and vista. Cant get msn to open at all with. it says that data execution prevention has stopped msn from starting. Any ideas.

Jiroma

[doubledragon5]

Waht is the recommened configuration for use with Vista? How much ram should you have and what type and speed of cpu?

[mattmorgan]

Well i'm running on my sig pc 1 and have set the defaults to 'better performance' as it was performing like crap. as much power as you can give it, is best in my opinion, i bought it and have since uninstalled it, it's been relegated to the store room shelf not to be touched until they sort all the stability problems, and release all the drivers for the 64bit version.

[LeftyAce]

System requirements:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...uirements.mspx

and this; it will scan ur current hardware and tell you what features will work on your computer: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...deadvisor.mspx

But if you don't already have it, don't bother getting it 'till they get it straightened out. And don't buy hardware for it until you're ready to buy the OS; hardware prices always go down :-)

[HAL9000]

I tried the upgrade advisor out of curiosity, it never works, always says I'm not connected to the internet... funny, my ability to post here says otherwise.

[Pride]

Vista isn't bad. There are a lot of annoying bugs but nothing critical. As well there is nothing I just can't go without. I have 3 computers 2 running Vista the other is XP. One of the computers has Vista Ultimate the other Vista Home Premium. Home Premium looks better to me but only because the monitor is MUCH nicer. Vista is truly an HD gem. While the Home Premium computer is a laptop with a beautiful HD screen the Ultimate Extras on the other computer are nice such as Dreamscene and Some of the games. My opinion the monitor kind of makes this OS as far as eye candy.

As Panama Red has said the best features are the security (all though very annoying) and the networking. Unfortunately most people don't notice any of this because they simply don't deal with it.

But just think down the road 3 or so years. All of the Vista doubters will be praising it. And wondering how they would survive without it. Since Windows 3.1 or whatever updated to 95 it's always been like that all of you including everyone else will eventually come around to Vista.

[Strider]

I have 4 computer at home, 1 Linux, 2 Windows XP and this one Windows Vista Ultimate and my advice is if you don't game exclusively and still can tolerate a few minor bugs (Mine is iTunes still not working 100%...videos not playing properly) then switch to Vista. However, if you want a rock solid OS then stick with Windows XP for as of right now (it'll change in a year or two) for Windows XP basically can do anything that Vista can do minus the cotton candy effects, which is a minor thing.
One thing that I found out about Vista is you can separately control the volume in the system, I don't think I'm wording this correctly but what I mean by this is you can mute sounds coming from I.E. or Firefox while still listening to iTunes fore example. This to me is a nice little feature.

[HAL9000]

Originally Posted by Pride But just think down the road 3 or so years. All of the Vista doubters will be praising it. And wondering how they would survive without it. Since Windows 3.1 or whatever updated to 95 it's always been like that all of you including everyone else will eventually come around to Vista.

I've said that at every OS release... most people don't listen, but I'm sure you can find doubters of every OS and how they were not going to upgrade, now they love it. Sure, there are some exceptions, like GLC finally upgrading to XP, he still prefers his Win2K, but overall, it's the same broken record with every release.

Personally, I'm not upgrading anytime soon as I have no need or desire to. It's been 2 years since I've even done a hardware upgrade on this machine as I hardly use my computer anymore... so the 3 year time frame... I might still be one of the stragglers.

[glc]

I don't upgrade OS just because it's there and I can - I have to have a valid reason, like I need to use software that won't run on the old version. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[HAL9000]

I would imagine with more and more people having switched to XP, your upgrade on one machine was more work related than anything.

[doubledragon5]

Those systems specs are huge as far as the premium version goes.. No need for me to upgrade anytime soon.. I like my XP period...

[Jiroma]

Sorted my problem re Messenger working in vista. This would seem to be the answer to other problems too. What you have to do is right click and open as " administrator" and the program works fine.


Jiroma