Submitted by ITtoolbox reviews Windows Vista, and they conclude: “If you value innovation, new technology and you can afford it, Vista is a great buy and I seriously doubt you’d regret it. If you’re a business user, the justification for the additional cost just isn’t there quite yet (with a few exceptions). I was pleasantly surprised how nicely it has come together (at least at this point).” My take: Soon, I will write an article about how I feel about Vista after having used it for a much longer time than was the case in my previous review. I will also have something to say on using Vista on some lower-end hardware (it ain’t pretty).
…look at the cost of the system. I mean usd 2000 is not something an average user will shell out for his personal machine.
And definitely not what most business users are going to be giving to their staff.
I would like to see a review of Vista written by someone who is using a typical computer from something like a call-centre.
You know, one of the Dell or HP bargain basement jobs that they sell to business by the 1000.
If Vista is to be adopted by business, it needs to run on these
There’s been loads of stuff posted about Vista on average spec’ed machines (not just linked articles but personal accounts from OSAlert readers).
Personally I’m a little board of reading about Vista this and Vista that. I think by now most people know the score, so I’d be more interested to read about Vista’s power (et al) in about 12 months time when hardware has caught up with software.
Personally I’m a little board of reading about Vista this and Vista that.
Watch out, you might get splinters!
It would be OK if the hardware really was lagging behind the software, and that Vista is only slow because of all this new tech.
But the reality is that Vista is slow because it is buggy.
It crashes a lot, and is slow even when there are adequate resources available. And, surprisingly, even when you disable Aero!
First off, I’ve got two Vista desktops running, and the “high performance” version cost me around $1,000 USD to build. Scores a 4.9 (CPU is “only” an AMD X2 3800+).
The other machine cost around $750, and scores a 4.6 (GeForce 7600GS pulls it down, but it’s a “work” desktop).
Both run Vista with no problems whatsoever.
As experiments, I’ve installed on a 5 year old Dell Optiplex GX150 with a 1.2ghz P3 and 512mb of memory. Vista runs, but not well, and I wouldn’t recommend it.
On a 3 year old Dell GX270 (3ghz P4, 1gb memory) Vista runs fine, but due to the FX5200 card, Aero only runs in Basic, not glass.
Likewise, performance is acceptable under VMWare 6 (512mb allocated), but that machine is for testing and documentation, rather than production.
Finally, a microATX GeForce 6150 system with a sempron 3000 and 1gb of memory also runs vista with no problems– glass can be enabled, but isn’t by default.
I don’t think I’d install Vista on anything less than 768mb of memory, and would prefer at least 1gb.
Now, when I say “no problems”, it usually means stable– on machines with 1gb of memory, Vista boots in an “acceptable” amount of time, given that I don’t frequently boot/reboot. Probably slower than XP, and perhaps faster than SuSE 10.2 (yeah, not saying much, I know).
I only play games on the first system I listed, and I’m seeing a slight (<5%) drop in frame rate from XP on the same box.
Bonuses for me: “Shiny!”– Ok, not needed, but I hate the Luna theme with a passion, so this is the first windows desktop I’ve had that didn’t look like Windows95.
UI: I prefer the new explorer interface. It’s much more efficient, and the near-global availability of search is appreciated. Exception to this is the near disaster of the Start Menu.
Reliability: Shocking, I know, but watching Windows recover very smoothly (Screen went black, flickered, desktop came back) from a driver crash on an earlier NVidia driver was remarkable. If I hadn’t looked at the crash log, I wouldn’t have known that the entire video subsystem had just crashed and restarted.
UAC: *sigh*. Good idea, needs tweaking. My entire screen doesn’t need to go black, then bring back the desktop dimmed with just the UAC prompt being highlighted– Dimming the desktop would be just as effective, and not nearly as jarring. I should note that UAC rarely comes up when I’m not expecting it.
The black flash on UAC is your video drivers. It will happen regardless of video card, but it’s slow with poor drivers.
The reason it’s necessary is that UAC requires switching desktops, which for some reason involves switching the video mode. You’ll notice the same black flash if you engage fast user switching (for exactly the same reason).
I’ve heard lots of excuses for that black flicker, but none of them address the fact that the user doesn’t care WHY it happens, just that it does happen. I’ve experienced it and found it quite unsettling to start with, and just disruptive afterwards.
Compare to OSX where a desktop switch is shown by a 3d cube rotating with different desktops on each face (like beryl). Now that looks professional, finished and smooth unlike the Windows experience.
Those sorts of machines are one-time purchases — they’re bought and not updated until they absolutely, positively need to, or they go out of business.
My friend works at a call center that was still using Windows 3.1 as of last year.
But what’s wrong with that? If all the call centre users need to do is click some buttons and fill in some fields, where is the need for Vista?
Good point. Vista won’t run anywhere, I guess. I am working for an international IT company and walking through the office, I cannot say that my company is greedy. Sales, finance, legal all have newish Dells, I have a P4 dual core at 2.8 GHz which I got about 8 (?) month ago.
But these are business machines, they do what they need to do and that is run MS Office. There have CD ROM (!), only. Thanks to that, they will never pass the Vista upgrade test, excellent stuff, I say
Of course Dell will ship new machines with DVD, I know.
Security-
Isn’t a bit to early to say something substantial about Vista security since the OS isn’t that long on the market?
Games-
There aren’t many direct 10 games that i know off since directx 10 is Vistas gaming flagship
So what brings me to the question what Vista has for additional benefits *now*.
I would and will certainly build a pc myself with the hardware equivalent to the authors pc but i think i will duall boot xp professional and linux on it until i really have good reasons to do otherwise.
My post was on topic, it wasn’t insulting and nor was it spam. So whoever -1 me is breaking OSAlert rules and just moding me down because they disagree with my /opinion/.
*waits for this post to be modded down*
Welll you didn’t even give an opinion really, so I have no idea why you were modded down either.
I’m a little jaded reading about it too, and I’ll wait until the driver support is better before I splash out on a new machine running it. But from what I’ve seen, nice work. I never buy release 1 of anything (and if I can keep my gadget twitch under control, I’ll wait for release 3)
I thought the same, but after trying a dozen of Linux distros it seems unfair that I don’t give Vista at least a try on a separate HDD.
I’m curious if Aero will work on my Geforce2 card. The Vista Upgrade advisor says it will work. Oh well … only one way to find out …
I modded down this last post (not your first one) because it was off-topic, and unnecessary. Bad moderations are almost always countered by good ones, and right now your post is at +3.
Complaining about moderation, however, is off-topic. Mods please mod my post down as well, thanks.
The msft shill are out in full force on this board. I tried modding you up, but you were modded back down about one minute later.
I think you question is very much on topic. If msft shills are taking over this discussion, I think readers have a right to know.
BTW: I have no problem with people liking msft. I do have a problem with underhanded techniques to censor dissenting opinions.
BS – why not stay on topic? pro MS comments disappear in seconds in a linux related article. The community speaks – it’s the same people on all the articles.
I do have a problem with underhanded techniques to censor dissenting opinions.
The door swings both ways, I’m afraid. Look at any Linux or Mac discussion thread and examine how many comments are unnecessarily modded down because they go against community orthodoxy. Which means that there are a lot of childish people out there on all sides who simply don’t want other peoples’ opinions to be heard. It’s pathetic.
If Vista requires high-end hardware, that means that overall performance is not good, eq the lower the system requirement the better the performance, in my opinion MS has gone overboard with the requirements.
Edited 2007-05-02 13:02
I agree. And the author of this article seems to agree that you need expensive hardware to run Vista smoothly. Check out the system that the author of this article built for Vista:
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/windows/alex/archives/building-a-vista-r…
As for me, I have an HP Media Center PC with 2GB of RAM and a Pentium D processor running Windows XP (Media Center Edition). Maybe Vista will work fine on it, or maybe its Aero interface will bog things down. It seems like a gamble at this point. I keep reading that turning off Aero boosts performance substantially, but why should I pay a hundred or two hundred bucks for a fancy new OS if I very well might end up having to turn off one of its prime features (Aero) in order to use the OS? And then I read that UAC is basically an attempt to patch a fundamental design flaw in Windows, namely that it allows programs to assume that they are running in Administrator mode instead of in a normal user account.
Personally I think I’m about at my breaking point with Windows. Windows XP is fine for now, but eventually I’ll need a new machine for one reason or another. But I don’t think I’ll spring for a Vista system. There’s just something unseemly about it somehow — no way should you need over a full gigabyte of RAM for the operating system, for heaven’s sake.
I suppose I could switch to Ubuntu, but meh…
If I have to spend another wad of cash on new hardware to go beyond Windows XP, well, all my big files are on USB external hard drives, and the Intel-based Mac mini machines are looking very very nice right now, small but powerful, and the applications are all scriptable. Yum. I could even run Windows apps using CrossOver on the Mac.
Ok, please complete this sentance for (because I can’t) “Vista will being bring value (ie $400 Australia dollars worth) because of …
Would I upgrade if it cost $20, yes, but not for the sort of money MS wants.
Edited 2007-05-02 13:11
Think of it as a non-refundable pre-order for Halo 2
thats only if you have to pay for it my man….
^_-
Thom Holwerda wrote:
I will also have something to say on using Vista on some lower-end hardware (it ain’t pretty).
It sure isn’t pretty. I have a Gateway MT6456 Laptop with 1GB RAM, AMD Turion 64X2 CPU, and ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 Graphics. It has Vista Home Premium installed, and it boots slow, runs slow, and shuts down slow. Sure, the desktop appears fairly quickly, but that doesn’t mean it’s done booting yet. I’d like to think my system is middle-of-the-road rather than lower-end. I am hoping that adding another gigabyte of RAM will speed things up a bit.
Thats terrible – thats is a really high specification machine, there should be no reason why it shouldn’t run Windows Vista well – then again, I’ve got this HP Pavilion dv6209TX laptop (specs online) and Windows Vista performance is so-so.
Why is it so-so? because it is a Core 2 Duo which I expected awesome performance – what I got was it being castrated by the bloat of Windows Vista, it the performance doesn’t improve in SP1 then god help Microsoft.
Sure, right now and in the next year, end users aren’t going to be affected; by for large corporations, alot are going to be looking long and hard at a possible replacement; internal applications that will need major re-writing – if the rewriting is so big, would they be better off simply re-writing them for Linux or OpenSolaris, or some multiplatform language like Java?
With that being said, if the polish on Linux applications doesn’t improve to a level which end users expect, you’ll start to see people put up with bloat and slowness for the sake of having some decent applications running on their desktop.
Ultimately, although this being off topic, Linux has a window of opportunity, ESR said this in regards to the 64bit migration, and Windows Vista is providing that motivation, its up to OpenSolaris and Linux community to knuckle down and drive forward development – focus on the end user rather than pie in the sky ideas.
On laptops, I would expect that Vista is being pre-configured for “power saver” mode. While that’s good, the actual settings for that mode restrict the CPU to a range of 5-50% performance.
Switch to “Balanced” and see if performance improves.
Actually, I’m running “balanced” on either battery or plugged in. I’ve kicked it up to “high performance” when plugged it; we’ll see if that helps.
The performance shouldn’t be affected as the processor dynamically adjusts according to the load – same situation right now when I run Linux.
Although it probably isn’t as ‘fine grained’ as the frequency adjusting in Windows, there isn’t a noticeable performance hit.
Infact, when I had an iMac G5, which had the dynamic cpu frequency adjustment, there was a benchmark actually made on this exact issue – worse case scenario was a <5% performance hit.
I dunno. I’ve got a Pavillion dv9210 and a dv6040, specs are virtually identical for both machines (x2 1.8G, 2GB, 120GB), only real difference is the 9210’s weaker graphics (NV6150 vs NV7200) driving a larger display and resolution.
9210 was preloaded with Vista Premium, 6040 was XP Media Center. With the crapware removed (no smaller matter in itself), sitting the units side by side I’d be really hard pressed to find any performance differences in day-to-day use. Boot up, app launching etc. are more or less the same. I could probably find some differences if I looked hard, but it seems like more of a theoretical point if I have to look for them.
My basic impression is that Vista is harmless as a transition for newly purchased systems, but I don’t see anything that would make me rush out and want to upgrade, even aside from the fact that Windows isn’t my primary platform.
Rewriting major applications for a different OS that’s fundamentally different just so they can avoid using Vista? That’s a very bad business decision on several fronts:
1. It costs money to find developers that know the other OS
2. Developers must also know the OS they’re rewriting/porting from
3. It is wisest if they also already know the application they’re porting
4. Believe it or not, there’s likely to be retraining for a lot of people with such a major OS switch, regardless of having a GUI between them, or even if not. For all but the small businesses, this will require a lot of people losing a lot of time and productivity
5. To top it all off, then they need to send that whole mess through QA for exhaustive tests to make sure that it functions as well as the previous OS’s version of the system, and hasn’t added any new bugs in the process.
Even if they wrote very portable code (in which case they wouldn’t need to do a major rewrite) you’re still talking about an absolutely huge investment for the process. There needs to be a much more huge return on investment for the pain to make wise management believe it is a worthwhile gain that will result.
Unless the application uses something very specific to a previous OS (XP is likely in this case) that simply doesn’t exist in Vista, then the changes likely aren’t all that major to start with to make it compatible with Vista. The costs involved to convert any sizeable application to a completely different OS (Vista isn’t THAT different from XP from an application’s point of view) would only be worth it if there are thousands of computers you’re wishing to get rid of licensing and hardware upgrade costs for. By the time they’d get their application rewritten, it’s probable new machines that would run it fine would be just as cheap as they were new, and they can likely allow old ones to die off without too much problem. Lots of history has shown this to be reality. Besides, most businesses don’t replace their computers nearly as often as game addicts, because once again, that’s not good business sense. This thought of yours only makes sense to a zealot for a given platform or someone that hates another given platform, but has no basis in profitable business, unless you are selling to the same people.
Is that just pure Vista, or after you loaded on anti-virus, -spyware, -phishware, etc.?
That just blows me mind. I wonder how many simultaneous users that laptop could support with LTSP…
You read stuff on vista, and its like people have two different operating systems. For some people (like me), vista runs like a dream. Zero issues, great performance, all the new stuff makes for a far better experience then xp. Then for others its nothing but problems. Crap performance, wierd bugs, and things just generally not working in frustrating way.
This is the first version of windows I have ever enjoyed using, I find the UI improvements to be very impressive, and the feature set to bring windows up to an acceptable level for a modern desktop os. I don’t think its particularily revolutionary (like what they were initially talking about), and with all the time and the money they put into it I would have liked to see revolutionary. But if you simply compare it to previous versions of windows, it is like night and day when it comes to polish and usability.
I agree. My mediocre laptop ($900 Toshiba bought for $350) runs it just fine. I did turn off glass and dropped some effects & services to match the laptop, as I would have with xp, 2000, etc…
BTW: I tried that new ubuntu the other day on both the laptop and the 4800+ 2G ram system at home. let’s just say my annual linux distro tryout was pathetic. Crashes, hangs, SUPER SLOW, errors during boot. Craziness. It was basically unusable. I DO understand that this is not the case for everyone – just as vista working 100% is not always the case for everyone.
IMO: XP is a downgrade, and Vista is a worse downgrade.
Microsoft’s New Validation Policy
http://www.mypcpros.com/computer-blog/2007/5/1/microsofts-new-valid…
Now msft wants to validate every month? I just hope I can by with w2k until I can go all linux. Maybe I should look into getting a Mac, just in case.
For now w2k still works with all the hw and sw I want to use. I don’t care if msft stops security patches, I keep my data on seperate partition, and I rebuild the windows side every six months or so.
Now msft wants to validate every month?
And what is the practical cost to you? Seriously, griping about license validation has gotten to the point of being ridiculous, given how transparent the whole process is.
What’s more ridiculous is losers modding down perfectly legitimate comments. Weasels.
I had high hopes for Vista because they made changes that make some of the weak points of WinXP much more like Linux/Unix. Unfortunately, they aren’t dealing with a Linux/Unix base. So, their implementation in some areas left a lot to be desired. Being fair, their implementation in other areas is quite good.
I have to say that Win2k is still the best Windows for me as well though. I just don’t like an OS to get in my way. I’m OK with taking some time on an initial setup to make sure things work. Anyone that installs an OS will do some kind of tweaking to get things working right, even if it’s just a little. Only Apple has the luxury of releasing software with good certainty of knowing what it will run on, and even OS X has some setup during a new install. After installation though, I don’t want my OS to question how I use my computer or make it unreasonably difficult (sometimes practically impossible) to do something that isn’t approved of by the OS. I can understand the requirement of a password for certain activities, but why should I have to prove that I am not a criminal on a regular basis?
I am very grateful that Linux and open source software in general has progressed to the point it is at. Due to the Windows monopoly, I still boot into Win2k occasionally, but I am very happy using Linux 90+% of the time. Even my mother is able to use and enjoy Linux (pretty much 100% of the time).
All in all, I don’t see any compelling reason to buy Vista. I probably wouldn’t avoid buying a computer with Vista installed, but after using it, I still think that I would install Linux and make Vista my fall-back option when I have to use something (software/hardware) that only supports Windows (and hope that it supports Vista).
After the horror of Windows 98 (stability-wise) the version I had running was Win2K. This is easily the best and user-friendliest version of Windows ever released. After this it all went downhill. They must have realised a few years ago it was too good to continue offering it so it was EOL’ed.
Win2K was a reasonably pleasant stop on the transition to Linux for me as I couldn’t get SUSE 7.0 installed. A year later I succeeded with Mandrake 8.1 and that was the beginning of the end of Windows for me.
There is no reason a user should be feeling “guilty until proven innocent” and any person shouldn’t allow Microsoft to make him/her feel that way.
Windows 2000 pro is my favorite windows release. NT4 is a close second (what?!?! you say? well, its really really fast and I’v enever had stability issues). I had some high hopes for vista, but alas, it’s not all that great it seems. I havent used windows on a machine at my house since I got OSX to boot on my pc (yeah, I’ll get a mac eventually).
oh well. If I ever have to use windows, I’ll keep my NT4 w/sp6 and windows 2k pro sp4 cds around.
Just ignore the tomcat guy he jumps at anything that is critical of his beloved Microsoft Windows. You should just continue using Win2K as long as you want.
I have settled my hope on WINE and Reactos for the future but they are not that compatible and functional yet.
It’s even easier just to run it in a virtual machine if possible, unless you really need it running on physical hardware. 3D will even be supported for Windows 2000/XP/Vista in VMware Workstation 6 so you can run games and modeling applications there.
With VMware Workstation/Player automatic snapshots can be made every time you fire your Windows up. If something goes wrong just revert to a snapshot from a time when everything was still working ok. This is a painless and maintenance-free way of running any version of Windows.
Mac OS X is a great operating system too, maybe not as fast and stable as Linux, BSD and Solaris but intuitive and reasonably secure. If the Mac Mini had discreet (NVidia) graphics I would really consider buying one to run Linux and Mac OS X side by side.
for one of the first times. I wasn’t terribly impressed; I didn’t hate it, but I certainly didn’t love it. It’s a better Windows, which for me doesn’t say much. The feature I wanted to test out most was the Window Button-Tab thing, which to me wasn’t as good a solution as Expose. Why do you have to hold the Window-Tab buttons down (or add the control button) to keep it on the screen?
I think OS X provides a much more pleasant experience.
“If you value innovation, new technology and you can afford it, Vista is a great buy and I seriously doubt you’d regret it.”
I guess if you consider DRM/activation/WGA, horrible system requirements, vile EULA, and contemptible price “innovation”, then Vista is for you.
Vista is garbage:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
I guess if you consider DRM/activation/WGA, horrible system requirements, vile EULA, and contemptible price “innovation”, then Vista is for you. Vista is garbage
Leave it to a MS hater to choose the least important aspects of the product to highlight.
Give this a try. You might even learn something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista
Ugh, I’ve received that link countless times. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful compilation and 100% true for those who use Windows 2000/XP/2003, but please understand that for someone who uses other operating systems, only two or three or those points *are* inovations.
I’m not willing to criticize the way these features are implemented — in fact, most of them could be given as examples of good implementation. I’m merely willing to point out that Vista hasn’t really innovated, but rather caught up with competition.
please understand that for someone who uses other operating systems, only two or three or those points *are* inovations.
Whether or not any of the points are “innovative” relative to a competitor’s OS is really irrelevant. What matters is whether they’re innovative relative to previous versions of Windows — because that is Vista’s primary competitor.
I was referring to this phrase in the article:
If you value innovation, new technology and you can afford it, Vista is a great buy and I seriously doubt you’d regret it.
Which is simply bullshiFt because Vista is neither innovative, nor new technology.
Besides, seeing Microsoft’s attitude towards those willing to purchase computers with Windows XP, I’d say they have a great way of being as anti-competitive with others as they are with themselves.
If Microsoft were serious about following their own tradition, they should buy themselves and release a bloated, buggy version of Windows XP with features nobody really needs, in order to get rid of the main competitor.
Oh sorry, they’ve done that already :-))
“Leave it to a MS hater to choose the least important aspects of the product to highlight.”
MS is a disreputable company:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
Vista is an unacceptable OS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_Vista
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/software/pc-makers-to-microsoft-vista-is…
MS is a disreputable company
Vista is an unacceptable OS
And you, sir, are nothing more than a shill for one of MS’s competitors…
“And you, sir, are nothing more than a shill for one of MS’s competitors…”
Your favorite OS is crap, just accept it with a smile
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/tec…
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38732
Your favorite OS is crap, just accept it with a smile
FYI, although I comment on Microsoft-related topics a lot, Windows isn’t my “favorite OS”. I use a number of different OSes, and I can’t say that I really have a favorite. But, as much as I like Linux, it’s my opinion that Dell’s current experiment with desktop Linux (like its previous experiment years ago) is ultimately going to end in failure. I don’t see any consumer demand for Linux at all.
“it’s my opinion that Dell’s current experiment with desktop Linux (like its previous experiment years ago) is ultimately going to end in failure. I don’t see any consumer demand for Linux at all.”
Vista is low quality:
http://www.trnicely.net/misc/vista.html
There will be many consumers, schools, businesses, and governments interested in using a quality, secure, reliable, not DRM/activation/WGA infected, fairly priced OS, with reasonable system requirements.
It seems Toshiba might be selling Linux computers also:
http://www.slashgear.com/toshiba-rumored-to-install-linux-on-notebo…
Vista is low quality:
http://blogbeebe.blogspot.com/2007/04/i-am-not-lawyer.html
There will be many consumers, schools, businesses, and governments interested in using a quality, secure, reliable, not DRM/activation/WGA infected, fairly priced OS, with reasonable system requirements.
Oh, really? If so, why doesn’t the Mac have greater market share? Duhhhhh …. uhhhhhhhh …. ummmmmm …..
“Oh, really? If so, why doesn’t the Mac have greater market share? Duhhhhh …. uhhhhhhhh …. ummmmmm …..”
Because Apple forces people to use a Mac. If Apple would let OSX run on any computer, their marketshare would be MUCH higher.
“Leave it to a MS hater to choose the least important aspects of the product to highlight.
Give this a try. You might even learn something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista“
I’ve read this page several times. There is nothing on there that would interest the majority of users apart from the new interface. Which is very flash. I bought a new graphics card for Beryl so its not to be underestimated.
There are only 2 things that interest me on that list that is greater parental controls…but I’m not a parent, and the Media Center just to see what its like, but I’m using MythTV right now and am not 100% happy with its overly complex nature.
Seriously instead of blanket posting that link *highlight* what you consider an improvement thats worth spending serious money on, becuase both Vista and the hardware it runs on are very *expensive.
I’ve read this page several times. There is nothing on there that would interest the majority of users apart from the new interface.
Tell me, one-eyed-creature: you actually presume to speak for the majority of users? Give it a rest.
Well I admit I have limited experience of Vista but we a couple of PCs running Vista the users report that they seem to be slower than XP, maybe not opening applications but opening, resizing images and simple things that take 1 second on an XP machine take 2 on Vista. So performance doesn’t seem great to me.
One user who has a highly organized desktop is annoyed by the way Vista moves things when they are opened. Oh and installing an older version of MS Office was a nightmare – well at least unpleasant. Other than those gripes the users seem relatively happy but not wildly impressed.
And in reply to a pervious post you can’t run aero on a Geforce 4 card although Vista will run without Aero.
I tried vista yesterday and I liked, is smooth stable and fast (if you have enougth ram).
I will use it on a daily basis.
Edited 2007-05-02 16:02
I’m a Mac lover with a year old iMac running OS X. I was not going to upgrade any machines to Vista any time soon. However Compaq had a good deal on a laptop with a dual-core Turion processor, 1GB of RAM, a decent graphics card and 100GB hard disk, so I bought it last weekend and have been using it a bit for personal use. I work with computers all day, mostly XP and Linux, and the stuff I’m doing with this Compaq running Vista are basic web browsing, typing out LaTeX documents and using OpenOffice to do some spreadsheet stuff. I hate to say it, but I love it. The new Vista interface is really cool. While I’ve always stuck with the W2K look and feel under XP, I love the new UI. I do see some performance issues, but those are happily solved by turning off some of the unnecessary Aero eye candy (I do the same on OS X BTW.
So to sum up, a decent $600 laptop running Vista is pretty sweet in this OS X lover’s book.
The guy I live with is a global IT manager for an Australian company, and he’s *always* been pro Microsoft. He said something very recently, which caught me off guard (since I’m pro Linux/open source) – that Microsoft has lost the plot and Vista is useless and there’s no way he’ll be recommending it to his boss for a variety of reasons. He felt that this [Vista] would be the death knell of Microsoft and just encourage people to move to Mac or Linux (preferably Linux since it’s cheaper to run). He also made comments about Microsoft’s deliberate interference with OEMs, so that it is almost impossible, if not impossible to buy a new PC or laptop with XP Pro loaded. He was not impressed with Microsoft’s tactics whatsoever.
I was absolutely gobsmacked by his comments. Especially coming from someone who has been pro Microsoft for so long. And I mean staunchly Microsoft. This is a guy who’s called Linux a bunch of s*it software in the past, and made fun of open source developers as being inadequate programmers who can’t get a real job as a programmer. At first I thought he was mocking me, since Linux/open source/windows has been a heavy sore point between the two of us for over 5 years now, including some very heated arguments, but after a few seconds I realised that he was fair dinkum. I’ve also noticed him moving to open source software more often, such as Ethereal, FireFox and VLC.
Now, if an above intelligence IT professional who’s been in the game for a long while and is very good at his job is thinking this about Microsoft…then I don’t think it bodes well for them. Sure, there are many companies who’s bosses are dumb, and like to play boss, even about things they know f*ck all about, and those companies will probably move to Vista without any fore thought, because the *boss says so*.
As I run a helpdesk for the product that I support, every single instance of customers using Vista so far has been negative, none of them have wanted it, they’ve all wanted XP, they’ve all experienced problems with software and hardware, and all of them but one have been unimpressed with the new GUI. All of them have bitterly complained that they were not able to buy the operating system of their choice (XP) from the OEM vendor. I think that speaks volumes.
Vista is an overpriced product – near $800 for Vista Ultimate in Australia. Can you honestly tell me that that is good value? Cos, if you do, you’re deluding yourself and probably a Microsoft fanboy to boot. This is just the software side of things. Now you’ll need to equate all of the updates to software that you’ll probably have to pay for, or buy new versions of, in order to get them working properly on Vista. Then there’s the hardware side of things – by all accounts Vista runs like an absolute dog on older hardware, even 2-3 year old systems like AMD 3000+…Hell, I could go out and buy Tiger and run it on my 5 year old PowerMac G4 without issues. Doesn’t that tell you something?
Anyways, for those that buy Vista, you’re fools imho. It offers little above what XP offers, and removes your freedoms even more so. No thanks.
Dave
You’re right that for the money $800.00 AUD Vista ultimate is not on.
BUT
Vista Ultimate x64 is not such a bad product as everyone makes it out to be. I have been using it for a few weeks and with some minor tweaking it is quite a solid OS.
First thing I did was use vLite to make a custom install of Vista, this allowed me to piss of software components I didn’t want or need including DRM.
Secondly, I turned off Super Fetch, this is the culprit that gobbles up your ram and can be quite detrimental to the OS performance when requiring heavy HD usage. Super Fetch also would be what is slowing down Vista startup times as Vista would be reading application files for your most used apps into system memory for quick access.
I run Vista on a AMD 3800+ @2.61Ghz with 2 Gig ram and performance is fine. Audio is great and MS has done a great job with Vista’s Sound but I still use 3rd party audio apps to listen with.
Only gripe ATM is not being able to tell my Nvidia card to use component out to my TV. Still, at least I can use Ubuntu x64 for that. Also Explorer’s built in DVD burning leaves a lot to be desired and it also can’t handle .img files like Ubuntu can.
C’est le Vie
that damn sidebar, while alright if you do nothing but buisness work. if you like games, look at the processor usage on that thing, and watch how things run with and without it. Oh and the activation, ive already had to prove I wasent a Pirate by calling them once, apparently they have false positives since I know nobody has used my cdkey off the box.
Past those…. Vista is actually kinda nice. everything I use works as it did in xp, and those people screaming bout UAC, i have to verify myself more in linux than windows now, it does adapt to you somewhat ya just gotta use it. And not a virus or piece of spyware since install, which is of course trivial since if you pay attention you shouldent ever have to worry about it, but not once has it made it through where I had to check on xp every so often.
I think it will get muuuuch better as time goes on, just as xp did. Microsoft is just not a winner on first ups, and never has been, they are a sp1-2 type of threat.
I’ve grown up with almost everything but Windows as my primary platform. But since my old trusty Barton 2500+ died and I was forced to buy something else, I got myself an X2 3600+ and I also go the opportunity to install a Vista Business via an eAcademy license (My Old Xp Home did only support 1 processor, also it was an OEM license).
Vista looks pretty nice and the functionality is fine (Add an Object Desktop and you can even compete with a Linux+Beryl (As I understand it Ubuntu got Beryl installed and activated as std). But IMO Vista smells a but of hacks, that has been hastely added the last year, due to pressure from the PR-folks.
But with an X2, an GF7600GS+256MB and 2*512MB matched sticks, it really doesn’t fly as I’ve seen Xp Pro do on similar configurations (Also AFAIK Frequency scaling for AMD CPUs isn’t supported Out-of-the-box, due to some diplomatic complications between MS and AMD).
It does utilize the ACPI of the motherboard (OpenSUSE doesn’t, which is kind of a drag), I still am missing a handfull of drivers, and from time to time I’m getting told that as an administrator I haven’t got enough priviliges to access a local file on the PC, of that these files are open, even if it has been severel days and reboots since I’ve accessed the file the last time.
The 2D desktop (let face it) looks pretty nice and the Looking-Glace-clone of a taskshifter works fine – but I till prefer my KDE environment- I prefer it so much that I have even bought a subscription to Cedega – so I’m able to play some of my PC-games on OpenSUSE.
Within half a year to a year I’m sure that Vista will be ready for the public, but today it still has that smell of quick-and-dirty-hacks.
But one thing is a surprise – it seems like their old 3D soundsystem as default is unaccelerated. What is accelerated is OpenAL – Hurra, but what is suddenly going on there. OpenAL is not controlled by MS (Which normally is a requirement for MS to add something to their porducts) – weel AFAIK.
Now I know this is rather low end, but come on!
I had a P4 2.4GHz 1.5GB DDR, 300GB SATA HD, RADEON 9800XT
Utterly AWFUL performance. It was just so damn slow to do anything on it and totally unusable IMO.
So I decided to replace the system with a Core2Duo E6700 (now clocked to 3.2Ghz), 4GB DD2-800 and Geforce 8800GTX and Vista now runs AMAZINGLY! It feels like a completely different OS and has totally changed my opinion of Vista. I like it.
It’s all in the hardware folks. If you want Vista, time to dump that aging PC. If not, stick to XP and use it for another year or so.
Edited 2007-05-04 20:22