30 Days with Vista @ [H]

I've been running Vista Ultimate for about a month now

A64x2 3800+ @ 2.4GHz, 2GB RAM, Asrock S939 Dual Mobo, Gf 7900GT/8800GTS SB Audigy, 2x Seagate 7200.10 HDs (SATA) Antec HE550 PSU.

On the whole I've had a mixed bag-- better than Brian but not perfect. I did find that Vista is noticeably more stable using IE7 than Opera. However the majority of my crashes occurred when I was away from the keyboard too-- so I think it may be an issue with either screensavers or hibernation. I did have to disable sleep mode.

One thing I found interesting was Brian's inability to get his laserjet 1020 to work under Vista. I spent one morning doing some googling and found a workaround. Oddly enough the trick for me was to simply install the drivers from the CD and reboot. It works just fine.

I'm happy enough with it-- even with Nvidia drivers that I've no desire to go back to XP. Having said that I did put Vista on its own brand new HD rather than trying to upgrade or mess around with partitioning. I just installed each drive separately and use the BIOS boot menu as a boot manager.

No real problems at all. Not perfectly stable but no OS is.

However I do agree that it seems to play better with MS apps at present than with Open Source ones-- but I also think that will change as coders become more familiar with it.
 
I dont know if these points have been covered, but I'm going to put down my initial thoughts after reading the article.

You mention several digital cameras, did you try transferring photos with them? I've heard that vista REMOVED functionality from the camera wizard, in that it transfers all photos from a camera or flash card, rather than letting you choose to transfer say just the photos from the trip last week, rather than the ones for all the trips last year.

About the ipod, you are probably fortunate that that didn't work. There was a well known problem where if you did the "safely remove device" on the ipod, it would kill all the songs. Whereas if you just yanked the plug you were fine.

About the HP laserjet: This is just more of the same from HP. When I upgraded to XP way back when, basically any printer that was over 6 months to a year old they said screw it, we are only providing basic print drivers, and no drivers that will use any of the advanced functions like scan, or anything that would do OCR. They said you had to buy a new printer to use with XP. I'd be SURPRISED if they actually did anything differant with vista and provided drivers for older printers.

You mentioned xvid as well. Likely the reason MS didn't include it was because of the terms of its liscense, its GPL open source, and MS is infamous for not liking anything like that.

You compared VLC to windows media player. You may not be aware, but VLC in general uses plugins (that it comes with) to play video, NOT codecs. You could install VLC and not ever install xvid and still play your videos. So its quite possible something screwed up in the xvid install on your system, or you found some incompatability.

On CS S: My guess would be that you needed to create a permenant firewall rule, but I could be wrong.

BTW, some of the game problems could be sound related. You may not be aware of this, but MS decided to abandon directsound with vista. Instead they use XACT which actually originated for the xbox. My guess is they wanted to make it easier to port games back and forth and said screw the world using direct sound. (its funny reading the official Creative post about this where they say basically that for any games not using OpenAL, theren't no hardware acceleration with any creative sound card, and only 2 speaker sound, and other bad things). So anything that uses directsound actually uses an emulator in vista.

About activation, if its anything like XP, MS lets you do a limited amount of installs during a certain time period. They also wipe data thats more than 4 months old, so theoretically you could install on a new system every 4 months without a problem. But it still mostly only inconveniances legitmate customers. All of my XP copies (and I have at least 6 full retail xp pro, not counting the OEM that came with laptops, etc) are 100% purchased and legit. And yet I still have problems with activating them, having to call MS, etc.

I agree with you 100% about vista's UAC being like the "boy who cried Wolf"
I mean it warns you with at least 2 or 3 prompts sometimes when you merely rename a file! After a few of these, the average everyday person is just going to click yes without reading, and powerusers like us will just disable it. And BTW, asking for a password on every prompt would still have the same result. People would just choose an easy one and enter it every time (since it pops up far too often), those who didn't know how to disable the UAC.

Thats stupid that vista uses a new file system on CD/DVDs thats incompatible with XP. There's plenty of good optical disk filesystems that can do very long filenames, and can do very large files, etc. Presumably applications like nero can still burn it in standard form within vista though.

I join you in being surprised that vista 64 bit was better in some ways lol. I figured that given the problems with XP 64 bit, it would be far worse with VISTA 64 bit.

BTW, did you get a chance to run any memory checkers (like memtest86) on either system? Those unstability problems sound suspiciously like bad ram, and while it would be extremely unlikely to be the problem with both system especially given that you seem to have decent brands of memory, its worth a shot.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
This has a ton of great diagnostics on a boot cd, including a dos version of prime95, and every brand of hdd diagnostic program (like maxtor, IBM, seagate, etc), and several versions of memtest, etc etc etc.

Those are my 2 quick cents after a single readthrough of the article. BTW, good article overall.

Disclaimer: I haven't installed vista yet on any of my machines (I have XP on all of them), but I saw a bunch of issues with a buddy of mine who bought a laptop with it installed on it. He had issues with games and other programs. He ended up returning it for one with XP installed.
 
Just a little anecdotal reference to my personal Vista experience that may be a chuckle to somebody:

I upgraded both a regular Desktop PC and a Laptop to Vista. To the laptop it was a blessing: 5 minutes spent setting up a decent power profile and the batter lasts an hour longer than it did on XP. It boots faster than it did, and all of the critical devices had drivers. Take that with a grain of salt, as the laptop came loaded with Crapware in the first place.

And then on the desktop... we get a completely different story. Boot times have tripled, nothing using OpenGL works (but we already knew that), and Microsoft Visual Studio is a blacklisted application by default due to unresolvable incompatibility issues (Means we won't be using it at my workplace until our VS2005 License is up for renewal in 4 years or so).

My anecdote for you all is the dual comparisons of the upgrade from Windows 98 SE to ME, and the upgrade from Windows XP SP2 to Vista. Windows 98 SE was at the time a suprisingly stable and robust OS (take that with a grain of salt as well), and then ME came along. I can't vouch for anybody else, but I went out and bought (a then very expensive) full install, single seat of Windows 2000, for dire need of a working computer. I still have that package. It's a lifesaver. I keep it with a set of CDs that includes updates, drivers, and tools, and it works on nearly anything I throw it in.

Then we have XP with Service Pack Two- such a fundamental change that it really should have been a standalone operating system and not a free upgrade (according to Microsoft at least). It's (relatively) stable, it's fast. Everything works on it. Now we've got Vista.

I'm seeing a pattern here. Microsoft comes out with an OK operating system, an incredible improvement to that Operating system... and then utter garbage. Time will tell is Vista sticks to the template. For now, I'm waiting for WPF/DWM to get backported. That's the only consumer advantage I note, and it's the only thing my clients ask about when looking for Vista information. XP with shinies.

For the time being, Vista is staying on my laptop (an extra hour of accomplishment, yes!) My desktop system is going back to the XP / gentoo / OSX multi-boot setup I had originally. My advice for anybody who asks me is the same anybody in my unfortunate facet of the industry would give: wait. XP SP3 is expected in the short term hopefully, with Vista SP1 following. Unless the former borks so badly that the latter becomes a godsend, though, I'm staying where I am.
 
Let me start by saying that I have a lot of experience with Vista. My desktop, notebook, and media center box run Vista. I have run Vista on two different notebook computers personally (Toshiba M200 Tablet, Compal EFL30), multiple different desktops with both Intel and AMD CPUs, NVIDIA and Intel chipsets, ATI and NVIDIA graphics, and a wide range of hardware.

I'm typing this right now on Vista, of course. I have many, many programs installed accross my three PCs - from media to software development to games.

I'm a ECE/CS Sophmore (double-major at this point). I develop software for fun and write J2EE applications as a part-time job.

I've run nearly every Vista build since M5, including every build released on Connect and most of the TAP builds that leaked. I migrated my Media Center box to Vista after RC1. I migrated both of my regular computers to Vista last December, when Vista RTM was released on MSDN.

So, when I talk about Vista, you might understand that I know a lot about the history and internals of the OS. I am also probably somewhat biased because of the work I've done with Vista.

First, regarding UAC. UAC prompts are pretty much invincible. It would take a major compromise or a malicious driver to activate one of the UAC prompt's buttons without user action, and at that point requiring a password isn't going to mean anything. UAC prompts run on an isolated desktop and do not respond to any of the signals that you can send to normal programs (note that elevated programs display the same behavior). This concept has existed since (at least) Windows 2000, where it is used for the security dialog (CTRL+ALT+DEL) and certain other system-level functions. No vulnerability has been discovered in this system in the last 7 years, and while it's certainly possible that one may be found in the future, requiring a password does basically nothing to mitigate that risk.

If you really, really want the UAC prompts to ask for your password, there is a Group Policy setting that you can change. You can also, of course, disable UAC altogether.

Elevation prompts are annoying. They are supposed to be annoying because you're not supposed to see them very often. Unfortunately, there is a lot of software which writes to inappropriate directories (e.g. the Windows or Program Files directories). Many of these applications are automatically "shimmed" by Vista to avoid elevation (e.g. World of Warcraft and most other games, and thousands of other programs). Some applications (e.g. Steam) cannot be shimmed and must be run elevated. This will probably be resolved in a future version, because vendors understand that UAC prompts are annoying.

There are ways that UAC could be less annoying, but not without reducing the level of protection it provides. If you don't like it, turn it off - Vista will still be way more secure than XP.

Second, regarding drivers:

This is an unfortunate situation. Vista has a new driver model, and while it's compatible with many XP drivers, it is not compatbile with all of them. Printer drivers are a particular problem - HP, for example, never released Vista drivers for many of its older printers, which in many cases are only a few years old. Creative is also a prime offender in this regard - Live! cards have no Vista support and thus users must rely on third-party drivers (e.g. Kx Drivers).

This is largely not Microsoft's fault. Windows changes. XP was vastly different from 98. We all remember complaining about 98 hardware that didn't work with XP (my Logitech QuickCam 3000, for example).

Vista has been in development for 5 years. The driver model has been largely in place since the restart, and has changed very little since beta 1 (July 2005). There is no excuse for vendors like NVIDIA not being ready. ATI was ready. Intel was ready.

NVIDIA's Vista drivers sucked at launch, and they still suck. ATI's are pretty much as good as their XP counterparts. If you game and use NVIDIA hardware, don't switch to Vista - their drivers are reasonably stable, but they are slow and most of the features you expect are missing.

We all complained about XP. Businesses stayed with Windows 2000 for years after. Most Windows 98 drivers didn't work. Activation was annoying. Many applications broke. There was no more DOS. The UI changed. It required vastly more memory than 98. It bugged you to get a damn Passport.

Sound familiar? We all ended up using XP anyway. And we'll probably end up using Vista.

So, what's the difference? The difference is that 98 was a horrible, horrible OS. XP, on the other hand, was actually pretty decent.

I'm not going to run down the ways in which Vista is better. If you care, the Wikipedia article is quite good. But suffice it to say that Vista is a vastly better OS in many, many ways.

If you've ever needed to load RAID drivers from a floppy, had to spend two hours on Windows Update getting your system patched, deleted (or screwed up) an important file, run out of battery life while in standby, lost your notebook with private files, forgot where you put an important document, had graphics drivers crash the system, had to reboot to install drivers, or gotten nailed by spyware, perhaps you might appreciate what Vista does.

If you prefer XP, or if Vista doesn't work on your hardware, or your applications aren't compatible, or you don't to spend the time migrating, that's OK! No one is forcing you to switch to Vista. XP is supported until 2014!

But it seems like everyone wants to hate Vista. This is, after all, Microsoft we're talking about.

Vista isn't a lemon. It's not right for everyone, at least not right now - but it is by far the best product that Microsoft has ever released.
 
Devistater said:
You mention several digital cameras, did you try transferring photos with them? I've heard that vista REMOVED functionality from the camera wizard, in that it transfers all photos from a camera or flash card, rather than letting you choose to transfer say just the photos from the trip last week, rather than the ones for all the trips last year.
Click to expand...

I have a 2 year old son, needless to say I take about 150-200 digital pictures a month to keep the grandparents happy. The crippled Camera Wizard was one of the first things I noticed about Vista (other than the constant annoyance of UAC).

With WinXP, the Wizard shows you thumbnails of all your pictures, and lets you select all, or just some of them, and import them with the same, or different names.

With Vista you are shown only one thumbnail, the very first image on the camera, and asked to assign a name. All the pictures then get imported using that naming convention. No choice or option, it works that one way and no other. So I tried to "fool" Vista by importing a second time, and using a different name. Vista actually prevents you from doing that because it recognizes that you've already imported the pictures once and won't let you do it a second time.

This new concept of "forget how you used to do things, you now have to do it this way" is by far my biggest complaint about Vista. It's what I've referred to in other posts as the "Forced Paradigm Change". Since when have we ever allowed an OS to decide whether or not to allow us to import pictures? If I want to import them twice, I had better damn well be able to. I can appreciate the hand-holding for newbie users, but taking away the ability for me to over-ride that hand-holding is just ridiculous, short-sighted, and infuriating. It's as if certain features where developed with complete disregard for how they used to work in WinXP. For someone with zero PC experience it might make sense, but for some who has been importing pictures into WinXP for 5 years, it just makes me smack my forehead and say "What were they thinking?".

I really hope this isn't the way of things to come, because I really dread having to re-learn how to use my PC every 5 years. Yes there were significant changes from Win98 to Win2K, and WinXP, but this was just too much, espcially given that there was no "safety net" to enable the old way of doing things.

Oh, and one other gripe before I go, Printers. I have an R200 for which the native Vista Drivers shipped with the OS. I plugged in the printer, it worked fine. Then I plugged it back into my WinXP machine, shared it, and tried to have my Vista machine print to it. No go. Vista tries to download the drivers from the XP machine, which of course don't work, nevermind that it already has perfectly good native drivers built in. I solved this by setting up a new local printer on the Vista machine, creating a custom port, and then assigning the network share address for the printer to that port. Made me feel like it was 1995 all over again.

And BTW - some of you know where I work, so I'm clearly *not* a Microsoft basher.
 
I find this experiment to be quite flawed in that nVedia was used. It was know since Beta 2 that they have driver problems. No attempt with ATI hardware makes this a very biased experiment.
 
Max Mike said:
An intentional irresponsible and inflammatory review… smacks of a reviewer trying to create buzz more than an objective review.

I have been using Vista on three of my computers with various configurations for two plus months without a single crash… I have installed it on quite a few other with very few problems, a few software incompatibility issues and lack printer drivers but nothing major or crippling.

This reviewer set out to fail and succeeded.

A real fair in depth review was needed, warts and good… and we got inflammatory hyperbole instead.
Click to expand...

i second that.
 
dot_Zen said:
Honestly, you're just not used to a Microsoft OS actually using RAM as it should be used. Vista manages RAM better than any other retail Microsoft OS.
Click to expand...

Does this mean that FEM applications can be run on Vista without having to add /3GB in the boot.ini file?

As for the review, it's hard to believe that the OS is generally unstable based on the limited experience of a single user, considering all the beta testing that has been done.

Also, highly emotive statements like "I begged Managing Editor Jason Wall to let me reformat my computer and stop testing" does not belong in an objective report. Like he could not exist on the same planet as a PC with Vista installed. The reviewer demonstrated the same kind of attitude when reviewing hardware (e.g. Dell), and it just seems unprofessional.
 
Where's the linux crowd telling everyone to chill and to buy hardware that is compatible with the OS? That's the first thing you hear when you have a hardware problem with Linux: "Did you not do your research? Should've bought hardware that is linux compatible". On top of that, where was the research on how to install the printer, where was the research done when trying to troubleshoot CS:S and the various other problems mentioned. In the Ubuntu review, the reviewer goes on message boards, searches the internet etc. et al.

Just wanted to set the record straight. Appearantly, when testing 2 different OSses, 2 different standards are used.
 
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" - Uriel Septim


Hahaha

I enjoy Vista at work, I have to have a XP virtual machine for my company's VPN, but thats all. Video drivers are my biggest complaint, the UAC always adds a lot of "snow" to the bottom of my secondary monitor, and don't even think about rotating secondary monitors!
 
People just need to settle down about this review and quit taking it personally.

This review was based off of HIS experience which may or may not have met what the user reading experienced. I personally like Vista (and I use Linux alot also ::gasp::), but I am not going to bring out the "pitchforks" just because he had a bad experience. Yes I think 99% of the issues were a driver issue, which is out of the hands of Microsoft, but at the same time it does reflect on their product.

Vista is still in its infancy just like XP was 5 years ago. Give Vista 6 or so more months.
 
Hmmmm.....

I can agree with you on a few points, but I have to disagree most heavily on the stability. Vista has been more stable for me than any previous version of Windows; I think I've got almost two weeks of nonstop uptime (video conversions and BT downloading) on my main desktop ATM. I could never get more than 3 days out of XP before it needed a reboot. I feel your instability is the result of Vista not playing nice with the crappy brand of parts you chose in your test system (such as NVIDIA, MSI, AMD, SoundMAX, Chaintech, etc). I want to pick on your choice of NVIDIA in particular - it is a confirmed fact that NVIDIA doesn't have a single decent Vista driver at the moment, and even their supposedly "fixed" 101.41 Betas are a piece of crap compared to ATI's latest Catalysts. My desktop, which I mentioned the uptime on, is made of quality (and therefore slightly more expensive) components such as ATI, Adaptec, and Intel for both the motherboard and CPU. People laugh at me when I stand by my claims that non-industry-standard brands aren't stable (and that includes AMD), but I think the stark contrast of yours and mine stability experiences doesn't lie. ;)
 
Our department's experience in testing the OS has been that it is, as one engineer put it "extremely stable". The problems are that the majority of non-MS software simply does not work or requires excessive tweaking in order to get it to run - Citrix, Cisco VPNs, Adobe, Exchange 2003 Tools (FFS!), the list could go on and on.

But wait... the newest versions of some of those will run you say! So I have to purchase all new versions of the software I need in order to purchase an OS upgrade that (at this time) offers no real business benefits, all the while bringing anything that could be remotely considered 'legacy' hardware to its knees. This is simply lunacy from the standpoint of the average medium business. The bottom line in business is the bottom line. :p

I like MS. I love XP. But compatability problems galore and little incentive to upgrade mean we will certainly not be forking out the cash to do a company-wide rollout.
 
Oh I had one more question for the author, its more personal than directly related.


Why did you download install booth open office and abi word? It seems a bit redundant, do you find abi word better for some tasks? I'd like to know because I just staunchly use open office but if abi word has some great advantages I'd love to know.
 
I said it before, and I'll say it again...

Vista is a disaster and I am going to use XP and Debian

Screw Microsoft and their money grabbing
 
ScYcS said:
Where's the linux crowd telling everyone to chill and to buy hardware that is compatible with the OS? That's the first thing you hear when you have a hardware problem with Linux: "Did you not do your research? Should've bought hardware that is linux compatible".
Click to expand...
The reason linux people worry about hardware is because it's hard to convince manufacturers to make linux drivers for all hardware they release. Further, there is no business unit of linux aimed at PR with manufacturers of consumer grade equipment. As a result, we have to be careful what hardware we buy.

Regardless, it's a good mentality to have: Check your hardware against what your OS vendor says it supports.
 
XOR != OR said:
The reason linux people worry about hardware is because it's hard to convince manufacturers to make linux drivers for all hardware they release. Further, there is no business unit of linux aimed at PR with manufacturers of consumer grade equipment. As a result, we have to be careful what hardware we buy.

Regardless, it's a good mentality to have: Check your hardware against what your OS vendor says it supports.
Click to expand...


But so you also in the same breath admit that it's in the hand of the hardware manufacturers to provide working drivers and not Microsofts fault if, say, the HP printer didn't work properly.
If that is the case (and it is imho), how can the reviewer blame it on Vista? Would that not be a wrong conclusion from the reviewer? And, keeping it at this level, should Ubuntu be blamed for the lack of native Linux games available? No. The reviewer has to be objective. [H] compares apples to apples. That's their motto. I didn't see the apples to apples in this review. I saw a review trying to find flaws. If i read a statement like "I can't find a flaw in Windows Defender without having malware on my computer", then i have to say: Maybe it worked BECAUSE you had windows defender. You even say in that statement that you're trying to find a flaw....
 
bigstusexy said:
Oh I had one more question for the author, its more personal than directly related.


Why did you download install booth open office and abi word? It seems a bit redundant, do you find abi word better for some tasks? I'd like to know because I just staunchly use open office but if abi word has some great advantages I'd love to know.
Click to expand...

I typically do word processing in AbiWord and everything else in OpenOffice. AbiWord is just a word processor - OpenOffice is a full office suite. Additionaly, I find that OpenOffice is more compatable with "track change" features in Microsoft Word.
 
I'll throw in my 2 cents here.


Honestly, I have to laugh and also be dismayed at the review, mostly because of the conclusion that "it's a lemon."

Funny - seems like history repeats itself.



Windows 2000 debuts. It's shipped without directx, and gamers can't game on it (nevermind that it never was intended to be used for games, according to MS. I know this because I went to a seminar on it before Win2k was released). Reviewers call it a lemon. People swore they would not upgrade from Win 98 to it. Then MS caves, adds in DX functionality, and provides a host of updates. 6 months to a year later, everyone who said no to win2k is on it proclaiming it to be the most awesome, stable gaming platform ever.

Then XP comes out. Reviewers and tech heads say that they see no point to XP, and that Win2k is the most stable gaming platform ever, and that XP has issues. Then 6 months to a year later, new drivers and patches are released, everyone migrates to XP, and everyone is loving it.

And now here's vista. And it seems like here we go again.

The prudent and appropriate thing to say is to not migrate to Vista NOW. To wait for drivers and patches to mature. Seems the reviewer has been neglecting his history.

In 6 months to a year from now, most people will be on Vista, and generally loving it. Drivers will mature, and software companies will have out Vista-ready stuff. I just laugh at all the people laughing and dancing in this thread, because they think in their minds that Vista is a failure. And I laugh because these were the same people laughing and dancing when they thought Win2k and XP were failures - funny, but you'd think they'd learn by now.

Anyway, for my own personal experience, I have been testing Vista for the past 6 months, since the beta. And only last month did the drivers finally start to catch up to the system. And to be honest, now I use it all the time. I can't imagine going back. Keep in mind also, I went from XP 64 bit to Vista 64 bit - so even the dreaded 64 bit version of Vista is totally solid.

Thus far, since I migrated, my only real complaint is not on Vista, but on Creative to get their head out of their ass and make decent drivers - the latest ones I got allowed me to get sound, but my mic does not work. And that is on Creative, not MS. Otherwise, gaming on Vista has been a wonderful experience especially on the 64 bit platform.

To the techie, who doesn't mind scrounging for drivers, I would recommend going with vista today. To the common user, I would tell them to give it another 6 months and then pull the trigger.

All elitist snobbery bullshit aside, Vista is a blast to use, personally. Especially when using the Ultimate 64bit edition, like me. :p
 
ScYcS said:
But so you also in the same breath admit that it's in the hand of the hardware manufacturers to provide working drivers and not Microsofts fault if, say, the HP printer didn't work properly.
Click to expand...
Regardless of who's responsible for getting stable drivers into vista, it's MS who will take the blame. And rightly so; their claim to fame is hardware/software compatibility. That's why they have the install base they do.

Linux's popularity isn't based on it's hardware support. In short, it's an invalid comparison.
 
ZionHalcyon said:
Then XP comes out. Reviewers and tech heads say that they see no point to XP, and that Win2k is the most stable gaming platform ever, and that XP has issues. Then 6 months to a year later, new drivers and patches are released, everyone migrates to XP, and everyone is loving it.

And now here's vista. And it seems like here we go again.
Click to expand...

I will say that I have fond memories of win2k. I ran it only after it had been out for a while, so it may have been refined since it came out. It was unbelievable. Even with my XP machines that stay on for months, yes, they still work, but they always feel slower than when you first start them up. No win2k machines. They could be on for WEEKS and you'd close a program and be back at the desktop and it would respond and feel like a freshly booted machine. XP has never quite been that good for me. Much better than it used to be, but never like win2k. *sigh* I miss windows 3.1. Anybody? Anybody? Yeah, I hated those non descriptive general errors too.

I'm actually ready to give Vista a try, but my most suited computer is my laptop....which is also my most heavily used computer. Makes me a little nervous.
 
havand said:
I will say that I have fond memories of win2k. I ran it only after it had been out for a while, so it may have been refined since it came out. It was unbelievable. Even with my XP machines that stay on for months, yes, they still work, but they always feel slower than when you first start them up. No win2k machines. They could be on for WEEKS and you'd close a program and be back at the desktop and it would respond and feel like a freshly booted machine. XP has never quite been that good for me. Much better than it used to be, but never like win2k. *sigh* I miss windows 3.1. Anybody? Anybody? Yeah, I hated those non descriptive general errors too.

I'm actually ready to give Vista a try, but my most suited computer is my laptop....which is also my most heavily used computer. Makes me a little nervous.
Click to expand...

Just remember to back up anything vital. And I can't vouch for laptops - my system is a desktop.
 
All told I will hold on to XP till the successor of Vista. Would love to see DX10 and up on XP though.;)
 
griff30 said:
All told I will hold on to XP till the successor of Vista. Would love to see DX10 and up on XP though.;)
Click to expand...
MS could have developed DX10 for XP, and then 2-3 years from now released a entirely new OS while completely bypassing Vista. XP still has a lot of life left in it.
 
I have said it before and i will say it again windows me is a bertter os than vista the reason sure me was as stable as a crackhead but it didnt mess with your fair use rights and from the experiences i have heard from friends that have bought vista every one of them returned it within a week. m$ droped the ball on this one there is no compelling reason to upgrade to vista when xp is perfection. M$ really needs to stop listening to content providers that cant even sort out there own content (blue ray and hd-dvd) and get back in the game I hope to god sp1 fixes vista if not xp will be king for a very long time
 
I have a question for the author. He stated that he couldn't get his HP 1020 to work over the 30 days. It's a statement that, honestly, troubled me. After a bit of research, and from my own personal experience with the HP 1012 (an even older printer than the 1020 from the same series) It did cause me to question things.

On the windowsvista.com discussion forums, users have reported being able to get that particular printer to work. My 1012 didn't have drivers available either, but I had no problems getting it to work using the HP Laserjet Family PCL5 drivers included on the Windows disk. Now, I understand that your average user may not be savy enough to figure that out, but HardOCP isn't exactly a site for your average computer user. Did anyone try to use the basic PCL driver to at least get the printer to perform its basic function?

I don't know what to say about the stability problems the review experienced. It's nothing like my own experience. My household has 4 active computers. All of them have been running Windows Vista for 60+ days with none of the stability issues mentioned. Those systems are:

AMD 64 4400+ x2 w/ 2GB PC3200, NForce4 Mobo(dfi lanparty), and an 8800GTX running Vista Ultimate 32-bit. (My gaming and primary use machine)

AMD 64 3800+ x2 w/ 2GB PC3200, NForce4 Mobo (BFG Tech), and a 6600LE w/128mb running Vista Ultimate 64-bit (my media center box that's used by the family to surf and check e-mail and used to stream media to a 360 as an extender)

AMD 64 3000+ w/ 1GB PC3200, NForce3 (Shuttle box) and a 6600GT w/128mb(AGP), running Vista Home Premium 32-bit. (My Dad's PC)

Dell Inspiron 6000 1.6Ghz Pentium M w/ 2GB of memory, 300XL mobile video processor running Home Premium 32-bit.

All 4 installations have been exceptionally stable. All are running w/ Aero turned on. I have two printers attached to all of these machines via a netgear wireless printserver. An Epson r200 and the HP laserjet 1012. Every machine can print to either printer without a problem.

Every machine with the exception to my media center is attached to my wireless network.

I have an Epson 4180 Scanner, Saitek flight controller, External WD firewire HD, Nikon D50, Cannon Powershot, USB headset for Ventrilo and a Creative X-Fi gamer sound board. All of these are attached and working properly to my main rig.

I have yet to have an OS crash or BSOD on any of these machines. That's not to say the experience has been perfect. I have had a few application crashes. Paint Shop Pro XI once ( it did the same thing on my friends XP machine), EverQuest 2 occasionally gets memory error (SOE is working on the problem), and Company of Heroes occasionally crashes to the desktop, but it did that under XP. It's probably an issue with 8800GTX drivers. I have not had to restart the OS after any of these problems though.

I'm admittedly an early adopter. But, I am having fewer upgrade problems moving from XP to Vista than I did moving from Win2K to XP and it's nothing compared to the problems I had moving from 98 to 2K.
 
pigster said:
One thing that you may want to consider is that you should revisit it and use IE and MS Office instead of Firefox and Open Office - I'm not convinced it's the operating system causing all your trouble.
Click to expand...

Some of us don't have a choice but to use Firefox and OpenOffice.
 
My only issue in vista (64 ultimate) was the photoshop cs2 registration thing mentioned in the review, only have asingle sata drive as well. Besides that i like the new os alot. Thing that pisses me off is MS are the ones getting flack for it, when its plainly obvious theres so many companies out there that seem to be acting like vista just snuck up on them and didn't do proper driver development. Those companies are now half assing it in vista and scrambling to release barely tested driver packages. :rolleyes:

Lots of points in the review i didn't agree with, seems the reviewer went into this with a rather large chip on his shoulder and nitpicked at things that were insignificant.
 
griffinhart said:
I don't know what to say about the stability problems the review experienced. It's nothing like my own experience. My household has 4 active computers. All of them have been running Windows Vista for 60+ days with none of the stability issues mentioned. Those systems are:

AMD 64 4400+ x2 w/ 2GB PC3200, NForce4 Mobo(dfi lanparty), and an 8800GTX running Vista Ultimate 32-bit. (My gaming and primary use machine)

AMD 64 3800+ x2 w/ 2GB PC3200, NForce4 Mobo (BFG Tech), and a 6600LE w/128mb running Vista Ultimate 64-bit (my media center box that's used by the family to surf and check e-mail and used to stream media to a 360 as an extender)

AMD 64 3000+ w/ 1GB PC3200, NForce3 (Shuttle box) and a 6600GT w/128mb(AGP), running Vista Home Premium 32-bit. (My Dad's PC)

Dell Inspiron 6000 1.6Ghz Pentium M w/ 2GB of memory, 300XL mobile video processor running Home Premium 32-bit.
Click to expand...
I knew I wasn't the only one who's had rock-solid stability. With the amount of unnecessary bloat that was installed on the Vista system, and especially since both systems had the same crap installed, I am inclined to think that one of your 1337 Microsoft alternatives is at fault. What's wrong with Microsoft Office, Firefox, and Trillian? Those are the only programs that anyone really needs. I also am wondering if the author wasn't trying hard enough to get stuff to work, such as the HP printer that griffinhart mentioned. You say you wanted to mimick an average Joe's experience level, and in that case I have to ask why you were editing Linux config files in your last "average Joe" write-up? I'm not accusing [H]ardOCP of bias, but like the last two Vista editorials, this article stinks to high heaven of "let's point out all the bad and ignore the ten good things there are for every bad thing."
 
Ok I think some of you folks are missing what a review is. If I am reviewing say a Dell XPS, and I get it, plug it all in and all I get is a bunch of beeping. Ok the machine is broken, after some tinkering you are able to boot the machine, ok great everything is going well, but then after several days of using it you encounter system instability after another, sure the specs look great on paper......but if the machine does not work it doesn't work. You can really write oh hey, the dual 8800GTX's were great and provide excellent quality gaming, if the system won't let you run any game more then 5 seconds right?

Ok so you were able to get your HP printer working by using a different driver, ok great when was the fix released when was the review done.

Also to even suggest or hint that [H]OCP has some sort of bias is laughable at best, when I read the hauppage 950 review I do not see linux screenshots, I see windows XP screenshots. My vista install is going well after sorting through BSODs and driver issues, if your vista install is good then guess what kudos to you. The article should not have an impact.
 
I'm wondering if the spontaneous reboots that the author experienced were actually crashes.

Windows XP also has the option to automatically reboot instead of displaying a BSOD (This is the default AFAIK). I generally uncheck this option. I've had multiple clients and co-workers who have complained about XP spontaneously rebooting, who also claim that it NEVER crashes. A couple of clicks later and the truth is revealed.

The option in XP Pro SP2 can be found by:
1) Right click on the "My Computer" icon and select properties.
2) Select the "Advanced" Tab
3) Under the heading "Startup and Recovery" click the "Settings" button
4) Under the heading "System failure" make sure that the "Automatically restart" box is not checked.

I'm wondering if Vista has a similar option that can likewise be unchecked. Also he should have checked for dump files.
 
As I Lay Dying said:
Ok so you were able to get your HP printer working by using a different driver, ok great when was the fix released when was the review done.
Click to expand...

Well, since the PCL5 driver came with the Vista DVD at release, the "fix" was released before the review was even started. The point being that such an easy obsticle to overcome wasn't. Why is that?
 
Brian Boyko said:
I typically do word processing in AbiWord and everything else in OpenOffice. AbiWord is just a word processor - OpenOffice is a full office suite. Additionaly, I find that OpenOffice is more compatable with "track change" features in Microsoft Word.
Click to expand...

I got that part I was just wondering because in short to me having AbiWord with Open office seems redundant because OO's writer program. Maybe its just a case where I like to use notepad (or notepad++) to write html/css no matter what really.
 
About time someone posted a true story of this joke called vista.

Most writers last dec were telling people oh hell get 10 copies its the greatest thing ever.
NOW they don't say its a piece of junk they just don't say anything. Mainly so they don't get 10,000 post saying well look what you said in Dec.

My only conclusion is they had to do something for money and this is it...a money hit and nothing more...of course just my opinion they have ten tons of DRM to turn on yet...
And it was a scam for the likes of HP and the software vendors to force updates on the idiots.

one other thing it was last year when they talked about ALL the new features that would be in Vista over one year they removed almost every feature that they said would be included...but the price stayed WAY UP.

Last thing this is a lemon WELL SAID
 
As I Lay Dying said:
Also to even suggest or hint that [H]OCP has some sort of bias is laughable at best, when I read the hauppage 950 review I do not see linux screenshots, I see windows XP screenshots. My vista install is going well after sorting through BSODs and driver issues, if your vista install is good then guess what kudos to you.
Click to expand...

If anything HardOCP is in the Pro-MS camp, especially the forums. I'd rate /. forums more Pro-Linux than HardOCP is Pro-MS, but not by much.

Basically my take on Vista was that UAC (accurately described as having an overactive boy scout with an endless supply of chocolate covered expresso beans to _help_ you along) + nearly 10% or so slower at gaming was a deal-breaker for me. The issues that I had with compatibility basically just killed all of my interest in it. Vista's use of a new proprietary format for optical discs is simply disgusting, I mean my God, how proprietary do you have to be (Vista) to not even be compatible with yourself (XP). At the very least they need to release a compatibility plug-in for XP like the one that brings .DOCX support to older versions of MS Office. With all of the things about Vista that made me want to throw the computer out the window, had I come across the disc burning thing I may have snapped. I'm ridiculously picky, the machine is my bitch, not the other way around, and I get seriously pissed when it has the idea that I'm not in charge.

In all fairness, I have to admit that while I did test quite a few of the RCs (including the last one), I've yet to install the final retail. I'll probably be installing Retail Vista Business on a spare drive or a VM in order to do some testing, and for educational purposes. From a personal perspective, I found Vista to be annoying to the point that I'd avoid using my fastest computer in order to not have to deal with it.

Oh, one thing to note... A friend of mine bought a new laptop and after a couple of weeks rolled it back to XP. While it doesn't surprise me that I'd be annoyed with it and give up on it til SP1 or later on my homebuilt stuff, it was suprising that this guy with a "made for Vista" laptop decided he was sick of it. The point is that the lack of being able to quickly use "run...", "cmd", "ipconfig", etc is not a big deal for him; whereas for me it's a serious pain. He's a standard user/gamer type user... I'd just dismiss this completely, except that I've been hearing about this more than I expected. When XP was new, I don't remember hearing about more than a couple of cases of people rolling a machine shipped with XP back to 98 or ME, and those were cases of where an "in-house application" would not run on XP. In other words, only the most extremely rare of circumstances.

It's interesting that even though Norman decided to roll his laptop back to XP, that his machine is still considered to be a "Vista" machine according to the "market statistics" people like to quote. I'm more interested in how many people are actually using it, which is probably better represented by tracking these numbers using web servers. http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2
 
nunyabiz said:
I have been using Vista for over 5 months and never had any data loss. I have used the beta, RC1, and then the Business edition I have now. I overclock and run a raid array, and it has worked like a champ.

I realize that I am just one person, but I am sure there are many others. I just hate to see something called a "lemon" in a reveiw just because one person had issues.
Click to expand...

I think we're seeing a LOT of people who are not having, and have not had, any problems with Vista. Cases like this one seem to be a total fluke to me. I've been using Vista for two months, as a power user, with this system (http://misc.rwven.com/system.png) and I haven't encountered any problems at all. It's a self built system as well so you know some manufacture it FOR Vista in the first place. I even ran the quake 4 demo yesterday and it ran flawlessly even after warning me that there were compatibility issues. The ONLY games I've run that have compatibility issues are Darwinia (lousy performance on ALL vista systems) and HL2:EP1 (Crashes at load points sometimes).

Vista isn't perfect. Nobody is denying that. UAC is a total farce and the first thing I did was disable it and there are other issues worth mentioning as well. The problem is that you get an isolated case like this and it does a LOT of damage to the image of Vista when in fact your normal user experience is nowhere near this catastrophic. I've had no data loss or anything that would make me consider Vista "unstable" and most Vista users can mirror this.

My only REAL gripe with the OS is the fact that too manufacturers waited until three months after its release to come out with drivers for it. This is NOT MS's fault. This is just a case of lazy hardware makers who have had two years of betas and dev tools to work with...and they instead ignored Vista and their customers entirely. Lexmark JUST came out with drivers for my printer a couple days ago and Logitech has yet to come out with drivers for my harmony remote. I don't blame MS for these failures at all.
 
MagnusDredd said:
If anything HardOCP is in the Pro-MS camp, especially the forums. I'd rate /. forums more Pro-Linux than HardOCP is Pro-MS, but not by much.
Click to expand...

why? because this is an enthusiast website, where the majority of hardware, games and everything else runs on Windows? :rolleyes:
 
bigstusexy said:
I got that part I was just wondering because in short to me having AbiWord with Open office seems redundant because OO's writer program. Maybe its just a case where I like to use notepad (or notepad++) to write html/css no matter what really.
Click to expand...

I use MS Word for my own purposes generally. Since we have many poor students in the district I work for, I've run quite a few of the Open Source alternatives through the paces. From what I've observed, Abiword is simply a lot more polished than Open Office Writer. It's also much faster on slower machines (whether it's old hardware or virus ridden) and has a smaller memory footprint.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top