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OEMs now have the option to provide XP downgrade to Vista Business, Vista Ultimate customers

Windows Vista is Microsoft's current flagship operating system for consumers. The operating system launched in late November for OEMs and was released to consumers on January 30.

Microsoft has long-touted the operating system as a revolutionary product for desktops and notebooks -- a product that would leave no consumers longing for the 5-year-old Windows XP operating system.

"Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 will transform the way people work and play," said Microsoft chairman Bill Gates on January 30. "Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 squarely address the needs and aspirations of people around the globe."

"The visual effects are spectacular; the navigation is streamlined and intuitive," added Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "They make it much easier to protect your PC, yourself and your children online. And they work together to help you accomplish more throughout the day."

In the months following the consumer launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft played the numbers game with sales figures. The company announced in late March that it sold 20 million licenses of Vista within two months compared to just 17 million for Windows XP. The number crept up to 40 million by mid-May and by late July; Microsoft reported that 60 million copies of Windows Vista had been shipped around the world.

Microsoft expects to have shipped one billion copies of Windows by the end of 2008.

Despite the many successes that Microsoft has touted with its operating system, some consumers just aren't impressed. Some have derided Windows Vista as being a bloat-fest with a prettier GUI and slower performance than its well-seasoned Windows XP predecessor -- ironically, both of those "flaws" were leveled against Windows XP in comparison to Windows 2000 after its launch in late 2001.

Other features that have irritated a number of consumers include the intrusive User Access Control (which can be turned off), application and driver incompatibilities, beefed up anti-piracy/activation scheme and Explorer's inability to remember View Settings among countless others -- feel free to add your own in the comments section.

The numerous issues many customers have with Windows Vista are compounded by the fact that many feel that Microsoft's pricing for the operating system doesn't quite mesh with the perceived value offered over Windows XP. Windows Vista is priced at $199/$99.95 for Vista Home Basic, $239/$159 for Vista Home Premium, $299/$199 for Vista Business and $399/$259 for Vista Ultimate (full/upgrade).

As a result of the complaints from customers and businesses regarding Vista, Microsoft recently began offering an "XP downgrade" option for OEMs. The decision to downgrade a Vista installation is fully supported by Microsoft, but it’s up to each individual OEM to provide the option to its customers. Unfortunately, the option only exists for Vista Business and Vista Ultimate installations – Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium users are out of luck.

Fujitsu, which took matters into its own hands by offering copies of Windows XP with its Vista notebooks and Tablet PCs, fully embraces Microsoft's decision.

"That's going to help out small- and medium-size businesses," said Fujitsu's Brandon Farris to CNET News.

Other PC retailers such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo also provide their customers with Windows XP if they so choose.

"For business desktops, workstations and select business notebooks and tablet PCs, customers can configure their systems to include the XP Pro restore disc for little or no charge," said HP spokeswoman Tiffany Smith.

"We've been offering it and we're still offering it," added Dell's Anne Camden.

While Vista Business and Vista Ultimate users have always had the right to downgrade to Windows XP per the licensing agreement, the actual implementation of the program has been lacking. The process by which to get XP media for new systems with Vista Business or Vista Ultimate pre-installed was often complicated and troublesome, but changes made over the past few months have made it considerably easier for customers.

Some companies, such as Dell, have even gone so far to allow consumers to purchase new PCs with Windows XP pre-installed; thus leaving Vista completely out of the equation.

With that said, the window of opportunity to acquire Windows XP is slowly closing. Direct OEM and retail license availability of Windows XP will cease on January 31, 2008.

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Well
By KeithTalent on 9/24/2007 11:33:09 AM , Rating: 4
While I do not doubt the validity of some of the complaints, I think there are many people that have no clue what they are talking about.

I have been running Vista for several months now and have had next to no problems. UAC is barely intrusive if you set things up correctly (it's actually a great security feature) and overall the OS runs smoother and faster than XP ever did for me.

I think a lot of the time, these 'issues' that people are having would not exist if they just did a little reading, particularly those people who say it is a huge memory hog.

Just my $0.02.

KT




RE: Well
By TomZ on 9/24/07, Rating: 0
RE: Well
By othercents on 9/24/2007 1:48:39 PM , Rating: 2
When you add all the "features" into Vista and compare it to XP, some people think Vista is slower. The menu takes longer to come up because instead of instantly being there is slowly shows itself to be cool. Someone told me today that the game Hearts runs slower and my only response is thats the way it was created. It looks better and is more animated, so it seams to run slower.

Most people want their computer operating system to take a background role instead of this foreground role that MS things it should have. Let me use my apps and let them perform well. Beyond that everything else usually just causes the computer to run slower.

Other


RE: Well
By Samus on 9/25/2007 2:49:13 AM , Rating: 4
Vista with 2GB RAM performs much like XP with 1GB of RAM.

XP with 512MB RAM performs much like Windows 2000 with 256MB RAM.

Windows 2000 with 128MB RAM performs like Windows NT with 64MB RAM.

Gee, go figure. Newer operating systems with new features and new security need more RAM. I would have never thought that computers would need more memory in the future!? /sarcasm


RE: Well
By leexgx on 9/25/2007 7:10:50 AM , Rating: 1
both of those "flaws" were leveled against Windows XP in comparison to Windows 2000 after its launch in late 2001

i agree and with your comment as well (i been useing XP when it came out and has been rock sold for my use)

but vista should of been an step forward all thay realy done is added DX 10 and Aero and UAC yes there other inprovements but you need an PC thats 20% faster then the Same spec pc to run vista as to XP

Xp and windows 2000 can run on the same hardware Vista cant
your OS should Not be Boltware and thats what vista is XP needs 64mb or so more ram than windows 2000 so 512mb is recommended but id recommed 512mb for windows 2000 any way

vista is an resource hog and you not got an fast pc to hide that it shows

i got VIsta and XP dual booting and vista is far slower even with the 4gb of ram

gameing on vista requres 3gb if useing high settings or game may stutter alot on high Q settings


RE: Well
By colonelclaw on 9/25/2007 11:49:34 AM , Rating: 2
can someone explain something to me, preferably someone who uses vista day to day?
i use my computer for work, i am a 3d artist, and i spend most of my day in either 3dsmax or photoshop. now when im working i want every last drop of cpu power and available memory working for me and my programs. all i want from my operating system is for it to sit in the background, let me work without interruptions, and never crash. so why does vista have sky-high requirements? why does it appear to want a quarter of all my memory (i have 4gb) to run and generally do it's thing? for me it doesn't seem to make any sense. also i rely on the power of my quadro gfx card to enable be to work fast. as far as i have read, vista will also be using my gfx card to do some of it's stuff - again, why? i need the gfx for my modelling.

i don't mean to bash vista unnessecarily, but it doesn't seem to offer me anything whatsoever, and even looks like it would slow me down. maybe you could confirm or deny this?


RE: Well
By elgoliath on 9/25/2007 3:49:54 PM , Rating: 2
What you are probably referring to is the fact that Vista doesn't typically let RAM go unused. It prefetches app's that you use a lot and preloads them into RAM so that they load faster. I haven't seen any more processor cycles going to Vista than went to XP (not that there aren't, just that I don't notice any difference and I dual boot with XP). My recommendation to you would be to just try it. We can go back and forth with this, but it all depends on your setup which we don't know.


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/25/2007 4:10:36 PM , Rating: 3
Why are you encouraging someone to try something when they have not expressed any need for it, quite the opposite colonelclaw has clearly expressed a scenario which XP comes closer to meeting.


RE: Well
By elgoliath on 9/25/2007 6:26:34 PM , Rating: 2
Perhaps you should re-read my post. I am not encouraging anyone to do anything. He asked some rather broad questions to which I gave a possible answer. I do believe I told him that without knowing his current spec's and more of what he is trying to do, his best bet is to just try it.

But if you want to really get down to it, more than likely 2000 will work even better unless something he needs is not supported.

Regardless, I don't think he gave enough info to decide which OS is better for him, but continue the FUD by all means.


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/26/2007 12:57:16 AM , Rating: 1
Actually, throwing around the word FUD causes you lose of credibility.


RE: Well
By elgoliath on 9/26/2007 12:18:59 PM , Rating: 2
lol- ok, I guess I have no credibility cause I said FUD. Do you even read what others or yourself write?


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/28/2007 2:47:07 AM , Rating: 2
Get over yourself, what you might have (or might not have) meant is not what I replied to, rather what was written.


RE: Well
By InsaneScientist on 9/25/2007 9:15:09 PM , Rating: 3
I can't claim to be a 3D artist, and I'm sure I don't need quite as much out of my computer as you do, but I do play high end games a lot, and, more importantly, I do quite a bit of video conversion (into H.264) on my computer.

I was actually quite worried about that initially, too, but I got to play for Vista for a while before release as a Microsoft beta tester, so I knew what I was getting into (I was really scared initially... you should see some of the memory requirements for the beta builds... >_< They finally got that sorted just a few builds before the final.).

I have, on several occasions, noticed that Vista starts unloading (a lot of) things from the physical memory (RAM) when you're doing something that demands a lot of RAM. Sometimes I'll exit from a game, and it'll be under 300, as opposed to the 700-900 that it normally sits at.
Since Vista tries to learn what you do, and loads those applications before you actually run them, it seems like the OS itself has a much larger memory footprint than it actually does. If those programs aren't running, though, which presumably they wouldn't be while you're trying to render something, then it's trivial for Vista to reallocate that memory space to what you're working on, since that memory wasn't really being used for anything more than an educated guess. And if you were running the program... well, it'd have to page it to the HDD if the program is idle, but XP has to do that too....

Personally, in what I do, going to Vista had a sideways effect on performance... it didn't go up at all, but it didn't go down any either (as far as processing tasks are concerned. Overall responsiveness feels much better than XP when using anything over 1GB of RAM... probably because of SuperFetch, the very thing that makes Vista look like a memory hog)

Like I said, though, I'm not a 3D artist (though I do use Photoshop a lot... I think I forgot to mention that), so the way it affected me may not be representative of how it'll work for you. Hopefully I've at least given you some food for thought, though. :)


RE: Well
By Nekrik on 9/26/2007 1:46:53 AM , Rating: 2
As far as Vista goes I don't see why you would need to be running any one of the heavier Vista versions. Ultimate requires the most resources, go figure, it has a ton of services. If you just want a workstation for a dedicated task you might try something lighter like Vista Business, it is much lighter than Ultimate, Premium, or Enterprise.


RE: Well
By colonelclaw on 9/26/2007 8:24:04 AM , Rating: 2
thanks for all the answers guys :)

btw the pc i use is a bog standard workstation - the newish 3ghz xeon dual core, 4gb ram, quadro 3500, fast hard drives etc

i think i'll just stick with xp64 for the time being until im actually forced into going to vista for some reason


RE: Well
By elgoliath on 9/25/2007 3:44:17 PM , Rating: 1
Vista should have been more of a step forward? How big of a step were any of these transitions:
3.x to 95? Big
95 to 98? average
98 to 98 se? small
anything to ME? downgrade
98 to 2000? average
2000 to XP? average
XP to VIsta? Average

The difference between Vista specs and XP specs is about relatively the same as the difference between 2000 and XP.

2000 can run on hardware XP can't. Go figure. Not really an argument against Vista unless you for some reason think the hardware industry is stagnant?

XP was slow on the first system I put it on.

It sounds to me like you have something else wrong with your system that you need to check out before you blame the OS. I've seen games run fine on Vista Ult with 1GB Ram and with 4 GB RAM. If your's is slow with 4 GB, as I said, there is something else going on.


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/25/2007 4:16:38 PM , Rating: 5
Another opinion-

DOS to Win n.n GUI - Revolutionary
3.x to 95 - Big
95 to 98 - small
98 to SE or ME - small
9x to 2K - Biggest change since the move from DOS
2K to XP - Small, the same OS but XP has apps and related services tacked on

XP to Vista - Medium, the 4th largest change since DOS


RE: Well
By afkrotch on 9/25/2007 8:30:48 PM , Rating: 3
Windows NT and Windows 2000 are not considered home consumer products. I'm not saying the change from 9x to NT was small, but should it even be part of this topic as majority was never using it.


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/26/2007 1:06:43 AM , Rating: 1
Does someone really need to tell you it's a home consumer product before you'd consider using it, so long as it meets your needs?

You write "majority" but you really mean multimedia home PC, right? Businesses were running more Win2k boxes than WinXP boxes even three years after XP had launched! While that's no longer true today, I would expect it will be the same with Vista vs XP in 2010.


RE: Well
By Procurion on 9/26/2007 2:26:26 PM , Rating: 2
Speaking as a gamer since the Commodore 64 and Apple 2e days-owned both in addition to a 2c(how many remember THAT one?) the transition from 95 to 98 was not "regular" or "average" by ANY stretch of the imagination. BSOD's in the midst of a game were non-existent compared to 95. Does anyone remember gaming boot disks? Then having to reboot when done playing so you could use your computer again? 98 was HUGE for gaming.

I spend a lot of time using Photo, Lightwave, Maya and several others. You cannot compare gaming setups to workstations with Quatro or Fire graphics cards. It is like comparing a VW Beetle to a 1-ton pickup. On paper the truck has 4 times the horsepower and torque while carrying 5 or 6 times the payload.....but put both on a winding mountain road and try to have fun with them and you'll drive the VW every time. Apples and oranges.


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/26/2007 10:58:40 PM , Rating: 2
I saw plenty of systems that were similarly instable running 98, and/or evetually became stable running 95. The difference was drivers, while both 9x OS were fairly fragile, it was poor drivers largely to blame for the crashing (and apps too, but pertaining to gaming,) and later generations of drivers fixed more problems than the transition from 95 to 98 did. It just happened that by the 98 era a lot of driver bugs present in 95 era had been worked out.


RE: Well
By luhar on 9/28/2007 1:51:05 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
2c(how many remember THAT one?)


Mine's still in the garage! That was the computer I had through high school. I did start on a Vic20 though...


RE: Well
By just4U on 9/26/2007 9:50:58 PM , Rating: 2
I would say for the vast majority the step to XP was a very large one. It was the first OS based on the NT Kernal to be sold to the "masses"... and most who were moving to a new OS were on some variant of win 9x... Not window's 2k which was considered to be more of a business Operating system.

Win 2k was also a step in the right direction as it made the setup of the OS a cake walk compared to NT. But it was not targeted towards your everyday computer user and that's key to remember.


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/26/2007 11:02:15 PM , Rating: 2
I don't subscribe to the idea that 2k wasn't "for the masses". Then, like today, you had a choice of what to buy bundled with an OEM system, or as a separate OS purchase. In retrospect which would have been the better choice, 2K or ME? 2K by a landslide.


RE: Well
By just4U on 9/27/2007 1:17:27 PM , Rating: 2
I kinda agree but we are not talking about enthusiasts here or technically minded individuals. MOST people who owned a computer went with 9x not win2k which was not widely adopted accross the board. (A assumption on my part as I don't know anyone who bought win2k) With winxp there was no longer a choice Microsoft finally had their mainstream operating system based upon NT.


RE: Well
By Pythias on 9/27/2007 6:29:10 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
anything to ME? downgrade


Quote of the millennium. I almost fell out of my chair when I read that.

Keep em' coming!


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/25/2007 4:07:47 PM , Rating: 2
The thing is, it doesn't.

When there's more code occupying more memory and we're contrasting XP or Vista on the same system with any given memory throughput, it really takes longer to juggle that code in memory.

Further, it's arbitrary and wrong to think "just add more memory" as someone could as well do that with XP and enjoy more performance too.

Finally, your memory figures are not even close to correct. Vista might use a few hundred MB more than XP, XP may use a few dozen MB more than 2K.

The important factor is whether the OS is doing what the owner wants with the memory, or if the owner would rather not be hosting these applications and services they didn't. Everyone's idea of "need" is not the same.


RE: Well
By kileil on 9/25/2007 6:20:42 PM , Rating: 1
"640K ought to be enough for anyone"...


RE: Well
By headbox on 9/24/07, Rating: -1
RE: Well
By kirbalo on 9/24/2007 2:03:02 PM , Rating: 5
You CANNOT score higher than a 5.9 on the Vista Experience...iirc.


RE: Well
By cochy on 9/24/2007 2:05:41 PM , Rating: 2
He's probably been watching too many Apple commercials.


RE: Well
By h0kiez on 9/25/2007 2:31:58 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
You CANNOT score higher than a 5.9 on the Vista Experience...iirc.


Not yet. MS has said that they will adjust these numbers as time goes on (read: make higher scores possible). I don't think it ever was supposed to be out of 10, though.


RE: Well
By crimson117 on 9/24/2007 2:12:25 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
It's not just about performance. MS made approving drivers very difficult, so more than a year after developers got their hands on Vista, there are still no drivers for a lot of hardware. Many of the drivers that do exist were rushed out the door.


That doesn't make any sense...

MS made it hard to get drivers approved, so that's why there are so few...

And yet the few that exist were "rushed out the door" but still passed MS's hard driver approval process?


RE: Well
By threepac3 on 9/24/2007 2:42:47 PM , Rating: 2
There was an article the explained point for point many Vista myths -- This happened to be one of them.

Yes, the software must be approved for use in Vista x64 mainly, but its not like the code has to be shipped to Microsoft and tested by them like most people think. Developers use a tool that does that...


RE: Well
By omnicronx on 9/25/2007 9:54:55 AM , Rating: 2
Its not even the software has to be approved for x64, its that any Microsoft certified driver for vista has to be available in 32bit and 64 bit versions. If you only have one of the two drivers, it will not be vista certified. So in reality companies are just too lazy or think it will take too much time and money to develop drivers, so they dont, especially for legacy products that don't officially 'support windows vista'.

People should realize this is not fault of MS, companies just feel they have already sold you a product made for windows xp, so they feel no need for making a vista version, when it means more less in their pockets.

Microsoft's certified driver approach really is a good idea in theory, as driver incompatibilities have plagued windows users for years, and is really the only thing in my mind MAC OSX has over windows.


RE: Well
By encryptkeeper on 9/25/2007 10:12:44 AM , Rating: 2
Right now, driver incompatibility and a poor first impression are the biggest hurdles to get over (sounds like Windows 2000). Many consultants still see these as a great reason to avoid Vista for the business segment. The features just haven't been worth the headache in that sector, but it's also one of the biggest opportunities to make sales. If people use it at work, and they like it, they'll get it for home use.


RE: Well
By afkrotch on 9/25/2007 8:41:42 PM , Rating: 2
[quote]That doesn't make any sense...

MS made it hard to get drivers approved, so that's why there are so few...

And yet the few that exist were "rushed out the door" but still passed MS's hard driver approval process? [/quote]

It actually makes sense if you think about it some.

Rushed out the door. Let's say Nvidia makes a driver that works with Vista, is approved for Vista, but is rushed out the door, what could that mean?

That many features normally found within their drivers are simply striped out, so they can at least get the hardware to work. If they threw one out with lack of tempature monitoring, color controls, multiple monitor support, AA/AF settings control, and so on, but you could still view Vista, play games, and whatever else, that driver would have been rushed or feel rushed, yet could still pass the approval process.


RE: Well
By Behlal on 9/24/2007 2:30:12 PM , Rating: 2
Hi,

Just to back up what the other poster said, the Experience Index range is 1.0 to 5.9. Therefore, you are getting 5.9/5.9, i.e. 100%.

This is described here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsv...


RE: Well
By Locutus465 on 9/24/2007 9:34:48 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
And my system with overclocked quad-core, two 10k rpm HDs in Raid 0, 8800GTS, and 4 GB of RAM scored only a 5.9/10 for the lame Vista experience system test.


OH-EM-GEE, Vista doesn't give you extra credit like I used to get back when I was in grade school?


RE: Well
By geddarkstorm on 9/25/07, Rating: 0
RE: Well
By rdeegvainl on 9/24/2007 11:50:34 AM , Rating: 3
I've been using it pretty dominantly for the past few months, most everything works right, only a few quips right now, but that is just me still getting use to the way vista was set up to operate, the only thing is i would take XP over vista on the hardware i have right now, due to the following,
1. only 2 gigs of ram
2. no dx10 vid card
3. well there isn't a three for me,
that's all problems with the hardware, not vista, and these are legit issues to alot of people. so i can see both sides of this pendulum


RE: Well
By TomZ on 9/24/2007 1:13:57 PM , Rating: 2
2GB of RAM is plenty for Vista - there's no need for more unless you're running pretty memory-intensive applications on it (as you would with XP).


RE: Well
By Locutus465 on 9/24/2007 9:38:24 PM , Rating: 1
No it's not... My development machine was fine with XP and 2gb memory... Now it is hurting really bad... 4GB is required with Vista (64bit at anyrate).


RE: Well
By TomZ on 9/24/2007 9:54:48 PM , Rating: 2
I'm running 32-bit; maybe that makes a difference.


RE: Well
By Locutus465 on 9/25/2007 1:50:57 AM , Rating: 2
Probably does, 64b inherintly uses more memory anyway, plus there are architechual differences between the two. I choose 64b now because it seemed like a great time to finally make the switch and take advantage of all this 64bit hardware I have! Plus the added security etc... Honeslty I kind of wish they haddn't made a 32b version. It wouldh have been a bigger shock, but it damn well would have gotten hardware companies in line. Nothing pisses me off more than hardware OEMs that claim vista compatibility because their old 32b XP drivesr are supported by Vista 32b!!!


RE: Well
By leexgx on 9/25/2007 7:17:05 AM , Rating: 2
if your not useing DX10 for the work you do get windows XP x64 installed as that be able to use all your ram and your dev programs will work faster

my next reload on this pc will be windows XP 64 (Got vista 64 dual booting as well)

as vista Has 64bit at the same time as 32 bit one M$ will only cert drivers if thay have 64 bit ones as well and there are norm windows XP 64 drivers as well (you allso have Less M$ spware on XP 64x as well {no WGA})


RE: Well
By colonelclaw on 9/27/2007 8:25:51 AM , Rating: 2
XP64 is in my opinion the best OS microsoft ever released. when we rolled it out across my office, it required no relearning from XP32 yet the performance gains we noticed in 3dsmax and photoshop were enormous

turn off the nasty plastic interface and it's a rock solid and super fast OS that doesn't nag you every 5 minutes


RE: Well
By retrospooty on 9/25/07, Rating: 0
RE: Well
By TomZ on 9/25/2007 2:43:29 PM , Rating: 1
You posted that somewhere else, too, and I think it's completely an incorrect statement. I've got Vista running on a number of machines here, and it is neither slow, nor does it churn away at the HDD as you say.


RE: Well
By geddarkstorm on 9/25/2007 3:40:02 PM , Rating: 2
Actually, the feature in Vista that does that is an intelligent preloader system. Vista DOES chug away at the HDD, especially for the first 2 weeks, while it learns what programs you commonly access and then, upon boot up, it puts all of those programs directly into RAM memory. This increases program loading speed, for those programs Vista has learned you like. Also, because of this, Vista will gobble up all the RAM you have. Basically, you can never have too much RAM for vista as long as it's less than the amount of program data on your HDD. However, the preloaded programs that go into RAM are easily displaced by accessing other programs, and so there isn't a "full memory" issue--it just puts empty memory that would go to waste to use.

I think that's where a lot of Vista myths come from. As it is, it actually should be a bit slower than its max for the first two weeks as it learns how you work, then it'll be a lot faster.


RE: Well
By retrospooty on 9/27/2007 1:37:45 PM , Rating: 2
That and all the benchmarks showing Vista is far slower. LOL.

I just don't want to pay extra cash to be slower and have compatibility issues with certain hardware.


RE: Well
By Etsp on 10/11/2007 11:26:10 AM , Rating: 2
What benchmarks? Where? What kind of hardware? I think at this point, the difference is marginal at best using the hardware that vista was designed to use.


RE: Well
By audiomaniaca on 9/24/2007 7:23:49 PM , Rating: 2
So do I.

Switched from OsX to VISTA many months ago and NO PROBLEMS.

Vista is Heaven if compared to XP and even OSX. These people having problems must be doing something wrong or they're really unfortunate ones.


RE: Well
By StevoLincolnite on 9/24/2007 11:06:10 PM , Rating: 2
I'm happy with my Modified Windows 2000, only consumes 30mb of memory on Idle, and I have it dual-booted with Vista, I grabbed a copy of Halo 2, and managed to get it working on Windows 2000, and got a 30% increase in performance.

I think Vista is great I have allot less "crashes" than I would with Windows 2000, and it looks puuuurty to boot, then again people are complaining about performance, those same people should upgrade, every new Operating system ever released has needed higher system requirements, why should vista be any different?

Those that are worried about System requirements should stick to Microsoft Dos, or Windows 3.1.


RE: Well
By jajig on 9/24/2007 11:35:29 PM , Rating: 2
The lack of drivers and DirectX in DOS are causing issues for those people too


RE: Well
By StevoLincolnite on 9/25/2007 3:13:03 AM , Rating: 2
Windows 95 and 98 might be usable.
If not... God forbid... Windows ME... (Screams!)


RE: Well
By littleprince on 9/24/07, Rating: -1
RE: Well
By MatthewAC on 9/24/2007 12:07:35 PM , Rating: 2
You can disable the UAC, just go in user accoutns and check the box :P.

I've been running Vista since june, not a single problem except getting my HP printer to work, but that's HPs fault...


RE: Well
By cochy on 9/24/2007 12:17:10 PM , Rating: 5
You obviously have no idea what UAC is intended for. Most people run their Windows machines with a superuser account. Therefore malware that compromises your system won't be able to install/do much without you noticing the illicit activity via the pop-up dialogs.

Keep watching tv commercials champ.


RE: Well
By dijuremo on 9/24/2007 12:56:13 PM , Rating: 3
UAC is completeley retarded, those people who you are talking about will click continue no matter how many UAC prompts they get, they have no idea of what they are doing. It is very stupid that Vista comes with a disabled Administrator account, asks you to create an account that has administrator rights and the prompts you for every decision using UAC. Then anybody with phisical access to your machine can basically boot safe mode, then own your machine. If you did not know this, I will strongly encourage you to enable the admin account and set a password for it, then remove the account you created during setup and create a new account without admin rights.

Running a Windows box with Administrator rights is retarded, you really do not need to do it and if you do to use a specific kind of software, then whoever made the software to only work with Administrator rights is completely stupid (Quickbooks rings a bell.. took them 10 years to figure out how to set permissions on some registry keys to allow any user without administrator rights to run it). In all of the systems that I configure, I lock the C: drive (remove write permissions to regular users on C:, they can only write to their profile) and run the systems using accounts without administrator rights. I explicitly remove the default permissions that any user can write to C:. This basically stops any malware, virus, etc as the user without admin rights cannot simply write to C: or the Registry. If you ever want to install or run something you want then you can use "Run as" and use the Administrator account.


RE: Well
By peritusONE on 9/24/2007 1:15:36 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
UAC is completeley retarded, those people who you are talking about will click continue no matter how many UAC prompts they get, they have no idea of what they are doing.

quote:
Running a Windows box with Administrator rights is retarded, you really do not need to do it and if you do to use a specific kind of software, then whoever made the software to only work with Administrator rights is completely stupid.

So how is any of this Microsoft's fault?

I do not envy Microsoft, that's for sure. People scream and shout because they want something completely new out of their next OS, but then they scream and shout because their now-legacy hardware doesn't work anymore. Granted, they need to quit promising features and then not delivering, but I think they've done a fine job with Vista. It's stable as hell, it actually uses my RAM instead of letting it sit there (some call it bloat, I call it productive), and it has ran almost every piece of hardware and software I've thrown at it without issue (the only exception was their own Zune software, of which a quick google search at the time showed that I was apparently the only one with the problem of it crashing all the time....it's long been fixed, though). I'm happy with my purchase.


RE: Well
By threepac3 on 9/24/2007 1:17:14 PM , Rating: 2
I think the main point of UAC was to prevent spyware from installing unknowingly onto your computer. I don't think they will have physical access to ones PC in order to boot into safe mode?

I personally like the UAC feature the only reason I don't use it is because it makes some of my applications non functional.


RE: Well
By cochy on 9/24/2007 2:09:40 PM , Rating: 2
BTW, No system is safe no matter what OS/security measures you have in place if a malicious user has physical access to it.


RE: Well
By Some1ne on 9/24/07, Rating: 0
RE: Well
By Belard on 9/24/07, Rating: 0
RE: Well
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 9/24/2007 4:28:58 PM , Rating: 4
I'm not sure what you guys are smoking but I can open control panel, I can delete stuff from the desktop and more and I never see the UAC popup. The only time it comes up is when i try to open RegEdit, but it damn well should.


RE: Well
By murphyslabrat on 9/24/2007 5:01:01 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
Vista is SO bad on memory, that I'm starting to see $500PCs come with 2GB of RAM! 512mb was FINE for XP for basic users and $400~500 PCs of last year. 1GB was still better. But a 1GB Vista BASIC PC is WORSE than a 512mb XP.

Newsflash, A old Pentium III/NVidia Vanta LT 16MB/PC-133 256MB system that ran System Shock 2, cannot run it's successor (Bioshock) at all! And, that old P-III ran System Shock 2 better than my state-of-art (almost) computer runs Bioshock! But, you expected this, right? It makes absolute sense, as there is so much in Bioshock that developers way back when only dreamed of. Progression in features usually lends to progression in system requirements. While the contrast between System Shock 2 and Bioshock is quite stark, so is the comarison between Vista and XP.

With Vista, MS decided to set a much higher goal than previously. And what is the result? You can now afford to build a PC for $500 (I can do it for $320) with 2GB of memory. And that isn't sacrificing any other functionality, it has just driven RAM prices down that much. Look at the enormous plateau in RAM pricing that we've been seeing for the past several years, then out comes Vista and you have cheapo computers with the RAM actually work.

Then, on top of that, the average user actually has a need for a decent graphics accelerator. The areo interface, as well as all the anti-aliasing and visual effects, ?won't even run? on an old Vanta LT 16MB card. Now, people need new and cheap graphics cards capable of running a semi-modern 3D environment. And, like with the RAM, this means cheaper and better performing graphics accelerators.
quote:
Streamlined? The Display Properties on XP and older is far faster and easy to use with TABS than the new browser-type on Vista... which requires more hunting and going BACK to the main page to get somewhere. Never mind hiding some Network settings deeper rather than where it has been since Win98 (on the network tool tray icon or control panel).

Lo and behold, MS tries to make things easier and gets crucified. I happen to like the re-organization. It is remarkably intuitive, once you get used to it. Instead of jamming the 'up' button to back down a several-layer directory tree, then navigating back up a different branch; by default you now have the explorer panel, which lets you just click out the tree you want, and you are there. You can even drag and drop to two seperate drives, from the same folder. And yes, you do have to go to the control panel to change settings now. That is not a terrible loss, nonetheless, it is now easier to do with the new layout. Though, this is again assuming that you force yourself to get used to it, as it is quite different from the default view. Though, I admit, I have no idea about the saved view settings. I haven't tried changing any of them, so I haven't witnessed this behavior. Nonetheless, it would be a definite downside.
quote:
Truth, talk to many people at FRYs who sell or work on PCs - they don't like Vista. The sales people WISH they could sell HPaqs etc with XP. Yeah, you may say "Fry's is a bunch of idiots" - but they know more than more retail stores and even THEY know XP is junk. Business-only resellers are still only pushing XP... too many vista problems.

Of course, a new product is going to be frustrating for people who are only recently learning XP. And, it is a natural progression that they will get more customer-service calls. However, some people still want Vista, because it does have legitimate advantages over XP: it's newer, flashier, and the 64-bit versions don't suck (I haven't used XP-64, but I have heard almost as many horror stories about it as I have heard about Vista; but, a friend of mine has Vista Business 64-bit, and is seeing gaming performance increases over XP on the order of 1-13%). And, most critical in the minds of PC salesmen, it's a reason for people to buy better computers.
quote:
When it comes down to it, *WHAT* exactly does Windows 5.2 actually offer over 5.1(XP)?

Go read the wikipedia article. There are a lot of things that Windows Vista "offers" that XP doesn't. The consequentiality of these items is sometimes questionable, but the net effect is one of larger change. Also, Vista is not "XP with a facelift." It is actually based on Windows Server 2003...
quote:
The original "Longhorn", based on the Windows XP source code, was scrapped, and Vista development started anew, building on the Windows Server 2003 codebase, and re-incorporating only the features that would be intended for an actual operating system release.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_vista
quote:
Apple is still making their OS better and better but without the RIP-OFF pricing that M$ does

One disadvantage of the nature of software that is an Operating system: it is a low consumability product. Most customers aren't going to come back every two years, and buy a new version of Vista. So, MS and Apple both charge through the nose for their OS's, though Apple has much better prices (I like that 5-pack price).
quote:
Vista is a bad joke. 5 years, this is ALL they could come up with? Apple's Aqua GUI is older than XP... Vista has some aspects of it - but it's still not even close.... funny, 5 years and its nothing that can't be added to XP in minutes - then charge $200~400 to the masses! Bwahahahaha!

Again, Vista has significant (quantity of?) improvements over XP. However, I again agree with you, Vista could've pushed the envelope further. Even Apple has nothing on what is available in Ubuntu (the Linux distro I most often use). It is amazing, the visual effects go a long way to taking the computer from digital workspace to virtual environment. And, that was part of Vista's goal: to make web-browsing and text editing an excursion into a fanciful new world, a world that is fun to just use, let alone work in. And, I don't think it met that goal, but it did make a nice start.

As anyone who has bought RAM recently can tell, Vista has made steps to improve the virtual standard-of-living. But, whether the baggage that comes along with it is worth the advance is a question that we'll all asking again in five years, as MS releases a new Windows that, again, dwarfs the incumbent Version's system requirements.

As someone, somewhere, has probably said by now,
quote:
Shut up and eat progress!

And thanks for reading this book...


RE: Well
By retrospooty on 9/25/2007 12:21:51 AM , Rating: 1
Its not the qty of RAM, but you are right Vista is slower, and your hdd will chug away... The problem is it does it no matter how much RAM you have.


RE: Well
By TomZ on 9/25/2007 9:09:05 AM , Rating: 2
That's FUD, and you know it. Everything you said there is completely wrong.


RE: Well
By retrospooty on 9/27/2007 1:45:01 PM , Rating: 2
No, not fud, that is my experience with it on 3 separate machines, Visa ultimate on a mid range and a high end desktop, and Vista basic on a laptop.

My main machine is a Core2 running at 4ghz, with 2gb ram, an 8800GTX video card and a Raptor 150gb hard drive. Even with these great specs Vista is noticably slower in every action (except waking from sleep mode, that is good) Slower in everyday windows, slower in 3d games, slower in everything. Even with 2gb ram, it reminds me of my old laptop running XP with only 256m ram. HDD chugging away constantly.

If you like it, you can keep it. I am glad it works well for you. Major manufacturers disagree, and even Intel is offering downgrades for free... When was the last OS release you saw that had THAT value added option ?


RE: Well
By cochy on 9/25/2007 12:34:59 PM , Rating: 2
I have 4GB and my Vista system hardly swaps to the page file if at all.


RE: Well
By SavagePotato on 9/25/2007 12:50:13 PM , Rating: 1
The hard drive is "chugging" away because vista is doing tasks like indexing, superfetch, or even background defragmentation when there is free cpu overhead to do so.

The OS is working on optimization in the background rather than sitting there idle and doing nothing but soak up power.

The interface in vista based on initial articles I read at the time of release pegged the overhead of the interface at something like 15% compared to XP's at 30%. Those numbers may not be 100% and are a ballpark recollection.

All that "chugging" of the hard drive is the difference of say IE, or windows mail opening in half a second rather than sitting for 15 seconds opening the program.

Vista is attempting to be smart by precaching frequently used programs so that they open seamlessly (and they sure do). This is called superfetch I believe.

Please go out and get informed before spouting FUD as fact. The blatant Vista bashing with no informed fact behind it just doesn't cut it anymore, people are using it, liking it, and not accepting pure BS because they have tried it themselves and know it works fine.

I absolutely love it when customers try to get a little vista bashing on with me on the phone thinking "oh this is a tech, he's gonna hate vista and well bash it together and it will sound like i know what im talking about"

The absolute KICKER. One guy tried to tell one of the other techs that vista caused his Linux box to get a virus over the network(yes I'm serious). This is the level of asinine crap that people make up in the blind rush to get on the vista hate bandwagon. If you don't question that BS you might think that even a little bit of it is true but in the end it's 100% pure FUD.


RE: Well
By omnicronx on 9/25/07, Rating: -1
RE: Well
By SavagePotato on 9/25/2007 3:20:32 PM , Rating: 1
Grow up, seriously.

Learn to read and communicate on an adult level.

What is up with the comment about XP indexing? where did I say that XP indexes better than Vista?

Honestly you need to pull your head out of your ass before you go on an incoherent rant that makes no sense whatsoever based on the context of the message you are replying to.


RE: Well
By retrospooty on 9/27/2007 1:49:08 PM , Rating: 3
Nice post, it makes sense as to what is going on in the background, but the fact remains it benches far slower in 3d Apps, and when your HDD is chugging away constantly, your performance sucks... As the article indicates, Even Intel is offering downgrades. what do you think brought them to that end? Happy wonderful working OS? I don't think so. Its not bad, but I for one, just wont pay to be slower, and have compatibility issues. That is not worth any money.


RE: Well
By murphyslabrat on 9/27/2007 3:40:24 PM , Rating: 2
smart-allecky I know, but what is Intel doing offering free downgrades for Microsoft's product? ;j


RE: Well
By retrospooty on 9/27/2007 3:44:50 PM , Rating: 2
LOL... I get my multi-billion dollar companies mixed up sometimes. Obviously I meant MS. Now if Intel would have offered downgrades, it wouldn't go over nearly so well hehehe


RE: Well
By murphyslabrat on 9/27/2007 3:59:28 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, you were close, though, their both monopolies...well almost.


RE: Well
By Zelvek on 9/24/2007 12:53:37 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Opening the control panel causes a box to come up.


I just opened control panel and then individually open every option from within control panel guess what no UAC. Not until I ether try to do something like uninstall a program or open a program that could compromise my system do i get a UAC box. I have not done a single tweak to UAC its just like it would be out of the box.


RE: Well
By thesid on 9/24/2007 1:10:14 PM , Rating: 2
If you arent skilled (if skilled is the word) enough to disable UAC, then you probably need it coz you dont want your system messed up cause of your own actions do you?


RE: Well
By SavagePotato on 9/24/2007 2:15:47 PM , Rating: 2
Here is how much skill it takes.

Click on start.

Click on user portrait.

Click on conspicuously titled link "turn user account control off"

Click continue and reboot when prompted.

I can see how that gets alot of people up in arms, it's pretty advanced.


RE: Well
By The Sword 88 on 9/24/2007 2:42:49 PM , Rating: 2
You would be amazed how many people are confused by that. Seriously, lots of people have never used their control panel on the PC, I know they all ask me for help.


RE: Well
By BMFPitt on 9/24/2007 6:46:45 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
Seriously, lots of people have never used their control panel on the PC, I know they all ask me for help.
These people. They're also known as the reason UAC exists.


RE: Well
By colonelclaw on 9/25/2007 11:55:37 AM , Rating: 2
what are the actual dangers of turning off uac? if i do it i'd like to know what im potentially letting myself in for


RE: Well
By SavagePotato on 9/25/2007 12:18:39 PM , Rating: 1
Nothing more than the dangers in XP.

If you conceivably try to install something you shouldn't, Example Winantispyware2007(malware rogue spyware app,) you would not get prompted whether you want to continue or not.

Which of course wouldn't likely save 90% of the average user base anyway, since they click anything that comes up in their face.

As long as you use common sense you won't have a problem.


RE: Well
By SavagePotato on 9/24/2007 1:16:53 PM , Rating: 2
This is a perfect example of Vista fud at it's finest. Clicking the control panel does not in any way bring up the UAC prompt. As the other fellow below mentioned nothing in the control panel does either till you try to uninstall a program or access and admin function.

If you base your opinion of Vista off mac propaganda adds you lose 100% of your credibility.

Add to that the fact you can simply turn it off if it bothers you to click continue when you install software.

Vista also runs fine on crappy systems. The one im sitting at is running 1 gig of ram and an athlon64 3500+ single core, it's running vista basic and it runs just fine.


RE: Well
By TomZ on 9/24/07, Rating: 0
RE: Well
By SavagePotato on 9/24/2007 2:08:07 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Sorry, you're wrong about that. There are plenty of controls in the "Control Panel" that invoke UAC. These are settings that apply to the machine as a whole and/or to other users of the machine. By definition changing these settings requires elevation. I can give you a number of specific examples if you don't believe me.


Holy crap, do you honestly read a post before you reply?

He said you click control panel and it prompts you for UAC, that is 100% screaming bullshit false, opening the control panel does NOT bring up uac, my post goes on to say when you get to admin functions in the panel it does.

READ for christs sake.


RE: Well
By TomZ on 9/24/2007 2:43:53 PM , Rating: 1
Sorry, you're right - I misread your post and took it out of context.


RE: Well
By BMFPitt on 9/24/2007 6:46:00 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
Dunno if you see the same mac commercials I do, but they are so true.
That's the saddest quote I've ever read.


RE: Well
By Hare on 9/24/2007 12:21:32 PM , Rating: 2
Same here BUT. What about companies with thousands of computers, centralized application installation/licence service, backup etc? I personally have no worries with Vista Business but I can imagine big corporations having more than a few problems rolling out Vista workstations.

Ps. With 2gb RAM my computer seems a lot faster in Vista compared to XP. At least I'm more productive. I don't care what the benchmarks say. Vista is a nice OS.


RE: Well
By TomZ on 9/24/2007 1:15:15 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, but there is no expectation that there will be large-scale rollouts of Vista to big corporations the same year Vista is released. Give it a couple of years. Lots of companies are just now upgrading to XP.


RE: Well
By Spivonious on 9/24/2007 3:18:22 PM , Rating: 2
Yep, we're still getting rid of some NT4 machines. There are currently no plans to evaluate Vista, although if we won't be able to get XP after January 1st, then maybe we should start looking.


RE: Well
By Locutus465 on 9/24/2007 9:37:05 PM , Rating: 2
I've been using Vista almost exclusivly since last December for my development machine. The only complaint I have is the memory footprint, but then again given the price of memory, I understand why it is the way it is. Over all, I don't see why there needs to be a downgrade program.


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/25/2007 4:02:52 PM , Rating: 2
Your basic premise that it is ignorance causing people to want something other than what you do is ridiculous.

Remember, it's their system and they have every right to their own subjective decisions on which OS they choose to run. The key thing is, choice = good.


RE: Well
By SavagePotato on 9/25/2007 4:27:05 PM , Rating: 1
Ah but the door swings two ways on that.

Calling an OS a useless heap and making up BS to support that opinion under the assumption that it is horrible and noone should use it is useless. And the definition of ignorant behavior.

Choice is something everyone should have, however choice based on false and exaggerated claims is not something everyone should be subjected to.

If Vista doesn't do what you want here is a news flash. You don't have to use it.

However you also do not have a god given right to make up ridiculous FUD to support your opinion in an attempt to drive others over to making the same choice as yourself.


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/26/2007 12:54:26 AM , Rating: 2
No it doesn't swing both ways because _I_ didn't claim it's a useless heap nor make up BS.

Don't use one fallacious argument to try to prop up a similar opposing argument.

Let's look at facts, shall we? Numerous websites have show problem after problem including reduced performance even when both systems had recommended amounts of memory.

Vista has had such severe problems that people couldn't even delete a lot of files without severe lag, that's how bad things are for some. That kind of defect alone makes it unfit for anyone to use. FACT.

Vista may be great eventually, contrasted with (well, nothing actually, since there is no commercial OS competitor we can't say Vista is good at all as a contrast to (nothing)). What we can say is that Vista has caused a lot of problems for people who didn't need it. We can also say those who claim to be elite pointing out basic problems Vista tries to solve, couldn't possibly be elite if they couldn't solve those problems with XP.

It doesn't make Vista bad per se, but it does need some serious work before it's ready to replace XP for anyone treating it as more than a toy OS.


RE: Well
By TomZ on 9/26/2007 9:14:02 AM , Rating: 2
What you fail to realize is that there are many millions of people quite happily using Vista out there. There are some with complaints to be sure, but the vast majority of Vista users are just getting on with their work, play, or whatever.

At our company, we have Vista on all our workstations, and not a problem at all. We do electronic CAD and software development, and everything works at least as well as XP. Some of the diagnostic features make finding OS configuration problems easier in Vista. Really, Vista is great today, even without SP1 (which we have on at least one machine here in beta form).


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/26/2007 11:10:36 PM , Rating: 2
I never claimed there weren't millions of people using it successfully, but there are also an alarming number having glaring problems. That's the way it goes when an OS needs a bunch of patches, some people are effected by certain issues and others aren't. Until you are SURE your particular platform and apps work acceptibly with the Vista version you choose, it is inappropriate to assume that because it is working for some, that it is anything other than an OS needing a service pack or two still.

How is it that in this day and age you feel "finding OS configuration problems" is not easy in XP? Surely you managed to use it for several years? If Vista works good for you, great, but the mindset that it works for you therefore the problems others have don't matter, is short sighted. Likewise it was not prudent for many to switch to any of Vista's predecessors before there were a lot of bugs in those, patched. I'm not saying "don't run Vista", I'm saying there are a lot of issues and if someone doesn't need Vista's feature, if they were fine using XP, today XP is still the better choice. Taking a gamble to get gain from a newer OS is only worthwhile if you need what you'd gain. Many people just don't need that yet.


RE: Well
By SavagePotato on 9/26/2007 9:49:16 AM , Rating: 1
Hmmm ok lets reveiw.

You say Vista has problem after problem with performance. (Basicaly more exagerated fud based on early driver problems reducing performance primarily in games or 3d apps.)

Vista is so horrible that users can't delete a large amount of files and this makes it UNFIT for ANYONE to use. (a known issue with folders or archives with large numbers of files pertaining to drive indexing, which can be turned off mind you, and is being rather quickly adressed in service pack 1)

By the sounds of it to me you have said this OS is unfit for anyone because of one, a grossly exagerated performance issue that almost everyone agrees is fixed, and a file transfer issue with a workaround. That is the definition of making up BS.

I base my opinion of Vista on the last eight months I have been personaly using it on not just my home machine but multiple work machines with very low hardware specs. In that time i have had many conversations with the so called users that felt vista was satans operating system and you know what? Yep thats right every single complaint tirade was either based on fud, lies, exagerations, or their own complete ineptitude to handle learning something that is outside their normal scope of things. I even had one person go so far as to tell another technician that Vista is crap because it incapacitated his Linux box by giving yes thats right giving his Linux box a Virus over the network the second he hooked it up. Now where does Total horse crap like this come from? Where else but the torrent of online bull that people like yourself propagate.

Now, I think you have mentioned your some kind of technician somewhere. If you are I really don't think I need to go into the explaination of why Vista will be a very important transition over the next 5 or 6 years. Anyone with some level of technical knowledge should be able to realise that the 32 bit adress space issue is not a small issue, but a big huge brick wall in the way of progress, primarily being held in place by the same dinosaurs you so rabidly defend on their "computer rights"

What you need to do is get over the fact that it works, people with knowledge are using it, using it well, and enjoying using it. That it's doing everything that needs to be done for a large base of users, and that the wall of FUD is slowly getting beaten down on the misinformation and crap that detractors like yourself spread.


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/29/2007 12:49:58 AM , Rating: 2
What you need to do is get over the fact that using a default install, no changes by the user, it is defective if it can't even delete a lot of files without severe prolonged lag. This is an obvious defect even if your *leetness* can't accept it.


RE: Well
By Christopher1 on 9/27/2007 5:49:21 AM , Rating: 2
I have to say that I have had few, if any, problems with Vista myself. The main problems I have had is that a driver installation package tries to run in restricted mode when it needs Administrator access (iTunes installers and RealTek installers are hell for this!) and I can't run very old real mode games on my computer anymore because Microsoft dropped support for real mode in Vista (something I laud them for, because real-mode= a lot of problems!).

UAC is a little intrusive every now and again...... but I am going to try to fix that by changing some settings in it, which I was afraid to do up until now because there wasn't a 'idiots guide to UAC', which even though I am computer-savvy.... with software I sometimes need that.


RE: Well
By P4blo on 9/27/2007 12:56:11 PM , Rating: 1
With respect, your PC might be good but we all know that experience is going to differ greatly depending on your setup. I have a Vista Ultimate PC in the office and it's cracking, runs like clockwork and even the file system works.

Contrastingly I have a really nice rig at home with Intel 965 chipset, top line components and Vista Ultimate has been a pile of shite since day one. A complete bugfest. One assumes that the office Dell I use has had the benefit of Dell testers trialling Vista carefully before hand and maybe even ditching hardware setups that didn't work well or the drivers were not mature enough.

Either way I find Vista rocks and sucks in equal measures!


....FUD
By BitJunkie on 9/24/07, Rating: 0
RE: ....FUD
By mrEvil on 9/24/2007 4:17:35 PM , Rating: 1
Wow...clueless muppets....what an intellectual concept.

OR try some people who are getting high-end gaming machines where Vista fails to run certain games. You know, there are some clueless muppets who do that as well as productive work with their machines. By the time it "eventually" will work, the newer games will be out along with new hardware for them. Live in your Vista utopia, as I have had more blue screens with Vista (2) in the last two months than I have had in the last 3 years of XP.

Broaden your horizon and try to think outside of your small box for a minute.

XP was not perfect at the launch either and it took SP1 to address a major number of issues, so what makes you think everyone in the world should leap off the ledge like the rest of the lemmings?

It does not matter whether it is Microsofts fault or the 3rd party drivers fault, if it run on XP and not on Vista, where do you think the user base is going to be at? 60 million sold and they are lucky if 50% are installed.


RE: ....FUD
By BitJunkie on 9/24/2007 5:03:19 PM , Rating: 2
I run WoW, LOTRO, GRAW2, Bioshock, Company of Heroes, and Shadowrun with no problems. It has Vista Ultimate 64 bit, with 4GB of RAM a C2D Quad running at 3Ghz and I have fully functioning drivers with no problems.

Maybe you can explain to me what high-end gaming is all about, because clearly im a out of touch.


RE: ....FUD
By SavagePotato on 9/25/2007 2:15:16 PM , Rating: 2
High end gaming means running a cracked copy of a four year old game with compatibility issues on a three year old system with a cracked copy of vista and complaining you aren't getting your moneys worth.

Seriously thats probably alot of the internet kiddie FUD fest described in a nutshell.

One thing I have learned about humans in the last couple years in dealing with customers... Is people LIE... ALOT. Most of the time, to cover up their own asinine stupidity in technical situations.

I would wager to say that a good 80% of the forum vista complainers are just flat out lying because they can. The other 20% are too mundane to wrap their mind around changes to something like an OS so they scream bloody murder to cover up their own incompetance.

The average customer is someone that needs an onsite service call, because they are having a meltdown about their screen icons being too small, and they want to set their resolution to 800x600 but again are too mundane to even manage to be able to carry that out having been told how to.(by the way thank you microsoft for adding large DPI fonts in vista for those poor geezers)

Seriously 80% of computer users should not be allowed to use a computer.


RE: ....FUD
By mindless1 on 9/25/2007 4:44:07 PM , Rating: 3
I understand your shallow mindset completely. You think that (attempting to) master Vista makes you elite, then you try to overemphasize the differences to reinforce the idea you know more.

Didn't it ever occur that those who choose XP, do so because it meets their needs, it proven to do so? If you think everyone has to agree with you else "80% of users should not be allowed to use a computer", you have become terribly confused about the purpose of a computer. It's meant to serve the users, all of them. You own your computer, not the other way around.


RE: ....FUD
By TomZ on 9/25/2007 4:57:25 PM , Rating: 2
You seem to be engaging in some circular logic there. How does a typical user define his/her OS needs? They probably look at the OS they have on their current machine and say, well that is fine why would I need anything more? I think that's the situation you have with XP.

But Vista does more than XP, period. Are these things important to you? Are they important to me? Some are, some aren't. But to be sure Vista can do everything XP can and them some, and so upgrading to Vista expands one's expectations about their OS needs.

What, XP can't natively author and play DVDs? What, XP doesn't have deep self-diagnostics that can fix things like restarting stopped services to repair a wireless network connection? What, XP doesn't have search for programs and in the control panel that make it much faster to invoke things? Integrated Windows Update?

Are these all features critical? No, but they useful to a great many people. That's why they're in there, and that's why Vista is "better" than XP.


RE: ....FUD
By BitJunkie on 9/25/2007 7:07:08 PM , Rating: 2
I understand your shallow mindset completely. You think that (attempting to) master Vista makes you elite, then you try to overemphasize the differences to reinforce the idea you know more.

Actually I'm laughing at a generation of benchmark obsessed so called "Enthusiasts" who can't do anything unless there's a forum somewhere with a Seasame St, ABC style guide. If you think Vista is hardwork, you never tried running Windows 3.1 on top of DOS 6.0. This is ezmode computing, if you can't make it work you are an embarassment to the "enthusiast" community. And yes, I'm firmly aware that I'm not making many friends by posting that, but feck it it's not like I want respect from a bunch of ezmoders anyway ;)

Flame me.


RE: ....FUD
By TomZ on 9/25/2007 7:49:19 PM , Rating: 2
Ironically, Vista is the easiest OS I've ever installed. Just put in the disc and off it goes. No muss, no fuss. I think this is because it has more drivers included. I always had to manually load lots of drivers after installing XP. PITA.


RE: ....FUD
By BitJunkie on 9/25/2007 8:14:43 PM , Rating: 2
I got Vista up and running on a box and managed to kill the memory controller on the nVidia 680i based mobo by doing something stupid. Anyway, I decided to try an intel P35 mobo out of interest, I wipped out the dead mobo, put in the new one and was expecting to have to reinstall Vista at that point. Before going through with the reinstallation, I shoved in the Vista DVD, booted up the PC. What happened? Vista gracefully loaded up a set of drivers for a totally new chipset and controllers and booted up first time. I'm still using the same installation now with zero problems 6 weeks later.


RE: ....FUD
By mindless1 on 9/29/2007 12:52:05 AM , Rating: 2
YOu're kidding, right? You actually think loading up default stripped down bundled drivers is GOOD?

LOL, you have no valid comments.

The best thing possible is that the OS has no drivers whatsoever bundled with it. Install the proper, full, modern drivers as the very first linked driver to the specific hardware ID.


RE: ....FUD
By BitJunkie on 10/3/2007 10:19:44 AM , Rating: 2
Yes I do. Take your Motherboard out of your XP machine, drop in a new one with a completely different chipset and see if it will boot. It probably won't do, but if by some miracle it does, see if XP will automatically connect to windows update and pull down the latest whql drivers and update the default drivers for you.

I'd be prepared to bet $100 that on both counts you'll be screwed, and got so far as to say you'll have to go through the install routine to get it working.

One final point, how can an OS hope to boot if you don't bundle drivers with it? You can't assume that every machnine is going to be connected to the net when you throw your OS on it.

If you're going to "wank over your opinions" (cheers Linus) make sure they have a good starting premise before you go and throw poor logic at them. At least then there's at some chance you'll end up in the right field.


RE: ....FUD
By SavagePotato on 9/25/2007 10:51:47 PM , Rating: 1
Theres nothing to master. It's an operating system. If you can use XP theres no reason you should have trouble with Vista. Theres nothing realy elite about that.

Half the people that complain or more are people that are barely able to execute simple tasks outside the narrow path of knowledge they have aquired about using the machine.

One gets jaded after enough calls from people that don't know what the hell the start menu is, and you start to wonder WHY some people use a computer in the first place. Or after marveling at enough professionals who made it through how ever many years of university but boggle at changing their desktop resolution even when told what to do.

Those are the "80%"

So no using vista properly doesn't make you "elite" just maybe able to walk talk and chew gum at the same time.


RE: ....FUD
By mindless1 on 9/26/2007 1:27:58 AM , Rating: 2
I agree, there is nothing elite about it, but some are trying to pretend everyone should run the OS that is better for needs they don't have.

I still disagree about that 80%, they are MS' bread and butter, we techs are a very small minority. If XP or Vista is the right thing for those techs, so be it, BUT they still have to have the mainstream everyday joe sixpack OS that brings in the profits.

Remember that when a user can't do simple things, it might annoy you but the reason they can't is not your fault and not their fault. People who can write, walk and chew gum, do many fairly demanding activities such as drive cars, should be able to operate a computer, not just the 20% with advanced learning and/or experience on the topic.

MS needs to address usability more but not the way they're doing it by dumbing it down. They need to do the opposite, instead of insulating the user they need to use proper terms and clear accurate explanations. They want to keep the user ignorant of the details but that is bound to perpetuate the problems because we dont' all have exactly the same PC or OS needs.


RE: ....FUD
By SavagePotato on 9/26/2007 10:26:00 AM , Rating: 1
The reason the same person that can operate a car, or even a big rig, or tower crane, can't operate a computer is simple.

Fear.

People are utterly and completely afraid of computers to the point that it paralyzes their learning ability. I have many conversations in a day that get prefaced with "I am totally computer illiterate!" They simply believe it is incredibly difficult to the point they stop even trying to learn and the mind turns into a brick wall.

I have observed this in so many people. My own father was a person that could rebuild an engine, but he couldn't operate the remote for the satellite receiver. He refused and refused angrily to ever even try operating a computer. Low and behold though, when 911 happened, he wanted to watch CNN constantly for updates, miraculously he suddenly was perfectly able to learn to use the satellite remote in record time, on his own.

And thats ALL that it comes down to. The will to learn, people don't have it. They believe computers are difficult to the point of actively hindering their own learning process or stopping it all together. It has been my observation that people like myself or others I have met with the same ability and want to learn about anything and everything are in the extreme minority. You will see a great deal of them on the internet out of simply it's inherent technological nature. The majority of society I believe however, are the self stunting learning avoiders.


RE: ....FUD
By Christopher1 on 9/27/2007 5:56:25 AM , Rating: 2
Quite right about XP not being totally fleshed out on launch. It did take Service Pack 1 to fix a lot of things people complained about, and some weren't fix until SP2 and still haven't been fixed to date, though they are very minor problems.

Personally, I don't think you are getting 'blue screens' from Vista or something in Vista. If you are getting 'blue screens', something is either failing in your machine or a installation got damaged somehow, as my Toshiba Disc Creator software got hosed and started giving me blue screen on my Vista machine..... which they sent out a notice telling me to un-install/re-install and update my Disc Creator.


RE: ....FUD
By mindless1 on 9/25/2007 4:39:10 PM , Rating: 3
Corrections to the errors in your post:

1) It's the customer's money, if they don't want to have to buy new hardware to do the same tasks, then there's no reason to think that because they had to once in the past, it is ok for you to decide THEIR money should be spent again.

2) You brush aside "bits that don't work", but you're just not getting it- the operating system is a platform to run the user's choice of applications, not the other way around. The OS is a means towards an end, not the goal in itself.

3) You can complain about security in the former and then a solution you didn't want in the latter. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

4) Basically the XP option is for people who don't have a need to switch OS. They are using XP fine, productively, and nothing Vista brings to the table that some suppose everyone is supposed to want, is important enough to justify it. It's really a shame you can't grasp that you don't need to change something that meets the need and for millions of people, XP is that. These people may eventually switch to Vista or one of it's successors but on their time-table, when THEY need to.

5) This wasn't the case so much with the transition from Win2k to XP, you might ponder why it is now from XP to Vista and I'll give you a hint - They're not the clueless muppet who swallows whatever is fed to it like some who simply run Vista because it's the newest thing, rather they're making subjective decisions about their needs. You might be also when running Vista, but even your needs might change.


RE: ....FUD
By TomZ on 9/25/2007 5:01:22 PM , Rating: 2
Here is what I think. If you are using an old computer, or have apps or devices that absolutely will not work with Vista, then you should run XP. Otherwise, if you are buying a new machine or otherwise have a relatively new machine, Vista works really well. It really is as simple as that.

Personally, I would hate to have to run XP again. Once you start using Vista, XP sucks. I've used XP for many years, and Vista for only 1 year, and my preference is crystal clear.


RE: ....FUD
By BitJunkie on 9/25/2007 7:37:07 PM , Rating: 2
I've used: Windows 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP and now Vista. I've seen the transition between each of those manifestations of the Windows platform and I've NEVER read as much rubbish about a new release as I have for Vista.

If you're happy with XP then good for you, live with it. That doesn't mean though that you should come and flame a perfectly good OS because your kit can't run it properly. Of course a new version of Windows is going to ask more of hardware - where's the surprise in that? It's been the case with pretty much every version of Windows so far (with the exception of 95 to 98 maybe).

I'm not advocating that people should go buy a barrow load of new hardware just to run Vista but im sure you're aware from reading the comments following this article - most of the critisim of Vista is from people who are pissed because they can't just drop a new OS on to old hardware and get the same or better performance.

Windows Vista is not like a new driver release where you EXPECT performance gains. It's a freaking OS. Get a grip.


RE: ....FUD
By mindless1 on 9/26/2007 1:15:20 AM , Rating: 2
You are calling it rubbish because you keep illogically rejecting that just because you might happen to have a good experience, that is not any statement about the experience others have with it.

Likewise, if you (Must have had, or else why would it be important to change to VIsta?) had problems with XP, similarly there are others who didn't have these problems. If everyone had clear cut easy to define problems, MS would have totally eliminated them right away. What remains are the multitude of different needs, uses, and hardware configurations which can make things work well for one person but that in no way makes it the same for everyone.

You write about dropping a new OS on old hardware. That is proof Vista is slower, that even on brand new cutting edge hardware XP will run faster, because no old hardware within about 8 years old can't upgrade the memory past 1GB which is plenty for a basic Vista system for most common uses. Remember Vista is being sold on systems not just to the elite but to everybody, we can't ignore that the OS itself is an order of magnitude more demanding than surfing the net, running an office app or email. That is a bit backwards, an OS is not supposed to make you it's slave.


RE: ....FUD
By BitJunkie on 9/26/2007 3:02:20 AM , Rating: 2
Okay, as one of the Seasame St brigade, let me break it down for you:

A) CPUs and GPUs evolve over time to achieve greater performance;

B) Software and in particular an OS also evolves to provide more functionality and a more robust system with fail safe systems that enhance the user experience. They do that by leveraging that evolution in hardware capability;

C) If you try to put a new OS on to the same hardware that's running an old OS and compare performance OF COURSE you will see that the new OS is sucking up more MIPS and Memory. It was DESIGNED to do that.

If I was to drop Win 95 on my current hardware it would fly in terms of load times, does that mean it's better and more robust than Win 2k, XP and Vista? The driver support may well be more established than Vista at present (although I doubt it's more stable) does that mean Win 95 is better? I would argue it isn't because it's not achieving 1/10th of what Vista can achieve.

As for why I upgraded to Vista? I didn't have a reason, I just wanted to be early on to the adoption curve, to see how it was all working and in some way contribute to wider community by testing things out and helping to get drivers debugged and to enjoy seeing how the software world was evolving - that's what being an enthusiast is all about - not pwning benchmarks. That's almost a "lifestyle" choice if you don't understand that then I suggest reading something like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovati...


RE: ....FUD
By mindless1 on 9/28/2007 2:59:06 AM , Rating: 3
A) Yes, so why cancel out that performance gain?

B) Functionality is not an end onto itself. When that functionality carries a penalty, that penalty has to be weighted against whether the functionality was even needed (by the subject using it).

C) You write "of course" as if it is an excuse. If all the great hardware advances are just cancelled out by software bloat, only those who actually need specific software advances would sanely upgrade. Hint: Those who are staying with XP know it suits their needs. Get a grip on this reality.

Next you proceeded to state some non-applicable argument about Win95, when what is on-topic is WinXP.

You write "lifestype choice". Ok, be shallow and run a MAC. Intelligent users will choose what suits their computing needs, an OS is not a lifestyle. If you think it is, you ought to get up from the system every now and then, it is a tool to run applications, not your life.


RE: ....FUD
By BitJunkie on 9/28/2007 5:15:04 AM , Rating: 2
A) Cancel out the performance gain on today's systems (maybe). What about in 5 years time when Vista is close to end of life and using vastly superior hardware - the OS then would appear to be grossly underutilising harware capabilities.

B) Agreed, and I never argued otherwise - your definition of bloat is my definition of utility.

C) I think if you read back you'll see that I basically said that "if you are happy with XP great". There's a big difference between people quietly getting on with their life and using XP - and coming out to flame Vista for no reason other than they don't understand how MS develop their OS and how Vista fits in to the bigger picture. Great, stay with XP if you want to - if it meets your requirements then superb. If that's the case why do you feel the need to rage against Vista, unless you feel threatened somehow?

The comment about Win 95 is valid. The point I was trying to make, and you clearly missed was that: Your argument can not only be applied to XP, but every previous version of Windows. As nobody in their right mind would argue that Win 95 is still a valid choice for an OS, I suggest that there is a flaw in your argument somewhere. Eventually XP will become as defunct as Win 95 did. Maybe you want to exercise your mind around why that could be.

You didn't understand the point I made about lifestyle and you clearly didn't read the link I kindly provided to assist with that. I was trying to get through to you that some people don't need an excuse to upgrade an OS i.e. it's not a pragmatic balancing of pros and cons. For some people they are very interested in seeing how technology is evolving and want to be at the vanguard of new technology. If you think that I only run windows and am stuck in that mindset you are wrong. I've been following the Red Hat flavour of Linux since Red Hat version 6.0 and onwards in to Fedora Core and dabbled with other *nix variants.

There are legitimate critisims to be levelled at Vista - particularly around DRM, but your arguments are not helping that discussion at all. You are basically resisting change for your own reason and are for some other reason very angry at MS for daring to release a new version of Windows that you aren't ready for.


Downgrade for me...
By The0ne on 9/24/2007 2:47:46 PM , Rating: 3
I've downgraded from Vista Ultimate to XP Pro 64bit just this weekend. I couldn't stand the operating system anymore. I can be consider a light power user but with Vista is frustrating if you don't know what happening and what to do about them. Granted there are things a user can do but if you imagine yourself be the average computer user, which can be VERY hard for some of you apparently, and having to navigate a new OS it's very difficult. Here's are some things that are annoying:

1. UAC. First time took me a while to find it and turn it off. Average user won't know, won't bother and will most likely click yes without a clue.

2. Power settings. Default is set to save battery with a hit to performance. If you haven't already done so change it to performance to get more. I haven't tested it on laptop and would't want to. This is a feature average users will not know 95% of the time. Even I didn't know until I started poking around and confirming with tests.

3. Drivers. Most are not mature enough when available. Nvidia drivers for my 7900GTX and 8800GTS are a bit buggy and sluggish. Don't know about ATI.

4. Software support. Related to drivers but some are still not mature for the platform.

5. Software performance. Performance for most softwares, including games, are poor under vista. Some, like SolidWorks, are still trying to work under Vista. Getting Bitcomet to work properly is a pain. Setting share folders similar to XP

6. Sluggish feel when navigating even when set to "performance" instead of quality. Booting quicker to desktop is nice but background tasks slows things down when you want to run something. Nice trick for the average user but painful for those that know what's going on.

7. Memory hog. I have 2gig and have very little leftover for usage cause Vista takes all. And still the performance issues above.

8. Too much HD space taken. Why? Can anyone one of you, more advance users, explain this without the normal well it's new and has more features. What's so new and what are these features that makes Vista so bloated? I'm sure many can remember the old and more efficient programming days. Orcad 2.x on 2 floppy disks!! Even that program has bloated.

There are some advantages to using XP. I like the on the fly partitioning for example. And encoding is quick with my PC setup. At this point I don't see a reasonable advantage to using Vista over XP Pro. I wouldn't be making comments that doing some basic things in Vista is "easy". It isn't easy for someone, even advanced users like me, to know what to do when a new OS shows up.




RE: Downgrade for me...
By arazok on 9/24/2007 4:55:18 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
7. Memory hog. I have 2gig and have very little leftover for usage cause Vista takes all. And still the performance issues above.


This is my favorite misconception of all time. Go to the task manager of Vista and look at your memory usage. Vista will be using nearly ALL of it. OMG!!! But wait, if you do a little research on it, you will find that this is super fetch anticipating what programs you use most and loading them into memory before you run them - making the system faster. If you run an app that needs memory, Vista simply dumps the programs and frees the memory up - instantly.

This is how the OS should work. Unused RAM is just wasted money.

Vista uses about 500-700MB of ram for the OS. Everything else is for programs.

quote:
8. Too much HD space taken. Why? Can anyone one of you, more advance users, explain this without the normal well it's new and has more features. What's so new and what are these features that makes Vista so bloated?


Ok...

1)Fully Indexed Drives
2).NET Framework 3.0
3)SuperFetch
4)Aero
5)Media Center
6)Sleep Mode

To name a few.


RE: Downgrade for me...
By The0ne on 9/25/2007 1:29:25 AM , Rating: 2
I don't think what I said was meant to be a misconception. I know what Vista is doing. Superfetch isn't new, it's been around for quite some time now. Even when it USES the memory it still doesn't "seem" to perform any better. Even when I take 700MB+ to run one of my virtual OS's it performs almost the same. That's good and that's bad. Bad that it doesn't seem to be helping much by using Superfetch. And good, in a way, that it doesn't slow everything down even more.

And you're seriously going to justify Vista being bloated with what you've listed? Have you done any programming? Have you try other third party softwares that are well written? I'm sure you've tried other OS's that are just as full-featured but not as bloated. They're not the same and that's the problem. Almost everything MS programs is bloated. With DVD capacities and such why worry right.

And for BitJunkie comment's they're just lame responses. If you read carefully I haven't said what is different from what you've said, a bit less arrogant (except for this response of course)

Did I bash UAC? No, I said for the average user and even power users it takes time to find these things out and set to how you like them. You're going tell me you were God and somehow magically knew what the hell to do with Vista when it came out? Don't make us laugh.

As with any software, especially OS's, support is going to follow behind. But with Vista it seems to fall behind and not move any further, or rather at a snail's pace. There are differences from 16bit to 32bit and how long it would take to transition from one to the other. But from 32bit to 64bit can be challenging, thus I believe the delay in support. In addition, this isn't like a HUGE step forward from XP much like from 3.xx to 95 to XP. This is like having XP and NT to me; it's pretty and has some nice admin stuff.

I don't disagree with you on this point. In fact, I've outline 3 notes pertaining to that. I'm not sure what your beef is with me on it except to tell me and others to shut up and just wait for the support many months down the road when there's a perfectly good OS (XP) around.

Games will run under Vista. Did I say they can't? I said that games will not perform as well under Vista in most cases. Don't believe me, God no. Go to Anandtech, Toms and other websites to get the low down on Vista game performances. If you think those are worth your upgrade then yay for you. There are differences between having games score the same or "slight" better. There's a huge difference when games perform horribly under Vista and you can't fix it due to driver/software support but you can have it running great on XP.

quote:
Basically the XP downgrade is for clueless muppets who can't be bothered to figure out how to use a new version of an OS and adjust their attitudes to a safer, more secure and better coded environment. If kit you want to use doesn't work yet then bitch at the hardware vendor and provide feedback to MS and eventually it will.


And thus proves you're the bigger idiot. Grats on knowing it all God almightly LMAO. I'll take a second to ponder why such a power user like yourself happens to know everything just like that.

READ MY WORDS. It takes a while to learn a new OS even for power users! Vista is nice and runs good but there's not much of a benefit for me to switch from XP Pro 32/64, and maybe this is true for a lot of other users. There is a good reason why so many users from all levels have issues with Vista. There's a reason why IT departments won't even touch Vista. Maybe you'll understand if you at least try to understand where they might be coming from instead of always commenting from your behind. LoL.


RE: Downgrade for me...
By BitJunkie on 9/25/2007 5:26:48 AM , Rating: 1
My response may be arrogant. It may also be intentionally provocative to push back against all the uninformed FUD. You may also notice that my post wasn't directed specifically at you, but feel free to indulge your paranoia. As for admins avoiding Vista, maybe you can tell that the CTO of my fortune 500 oil company that is about to role out vista group wide in the next 2 months (just finishing app compat testing).

There's more truth to my comments than you give credit for. That's okay though, you're more than welcome to be a late adopter, but if you take that choice don't go whining about a perfectly good OS in public forums until you have tried it properly.


RE: Downgrade for me...
By leexgx on 9/25/2007 7:40:02 AM , Rating: 1
i agree with his post not yours

hope your company upgrade works ok (network issues are going to be fun)

quote:
but if you take that choice don't go whining about a perfectly good OS in public forums until you have tried it properly.


thats the thing its not an perfectly good os you requre alot more powerfull pc to run it

i allso find CTO's can get fooled into things easly that can cost alot of money and set there mines on things that are not particle and Vista is not an Proven OS for an Important busniess environments there be alot of support issues with it that will most likey be an pain

if your was useing 2000/XP it probly been up and running months ago

allso alot are going have to be retained on how to use it as most users are not very bright when it comes to windows (like whats an start button is it an button on the keyboard for e.g.)


RE: Downgrade for me...
By SavagePotato on 9/25/2007 1:15:44 PM , Rating: 1
Actualy it realy doesn't require that much more power to run. The work system I'm on now has 1 gig of ram onboard video and a 3500+ athlon and it runs fantastic.

If you want to run it on a lesser system than that I would have to ask why. If you have old or existing hardware in place upgrading the OS in this day and age is almost NEVER a good idea. Why would you pay $300 for an os to put on a turkey of a computer when you could buy a $500 computer that runs vista perfectly and is preloaded.

Before you bark at that comment the computer I am sitting at cost about $500 and runs it NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER. Period.

I don't mean to be terribly insulting either, however if it took you a long time to figure out how to turn UAC of, then your not a power user. Are you a power user that doesn't know how to use google?


RE: Downgrade for me...
By leexgx on 9/25/2007 7:27:43 AM , Rating: 1
hmm some one downrated you that was an Very good responce to the stuff he posted

i agree with you compleaty all of it good post


RE: Downgrade for me...
By BitJunkie on 9/25/2007 8:16:10 AM , Rating: 2
I'll be sure to mail a link to your posts to my company's CTO. I'm sure he'll thank you personally for saving his ass after dropping the ball and forgetting about support costs.


RE: Downgrade for me...
By arazok on 9/25/2007 1:15:36 PM , Rating: 2
I'm just going to focus on your response to my thread.

quote:
Even when it USES the memory it still doesn't "seem" to perform any better. Even when I take 700MB+ to run one of my virtual OS's it performs almost the same. That's good and that's bad. Bad that it doesn't seem to be helping much by using Superfetch. And good, in a way, that it doesn't slow everything down even more.


Superfetch will not help something as complex as a virtual OS run noticeably better. I've noticed a considerable improvement in the launch of my games and apps over XP however, but only after I have run them a few times. Also, the applications don't necessarily run faster, just load faster.

quote:
And you're seriously going to justify Vista being bloated with what you've listed? Have you done any programming?


My list was partial so there is more to that 'bloat', but yes I will justify it with that list. And I am a programmer, which is why I understand what the OS is doing better then most other OS's.

quote:
I'm sure you've tried other OS's that are just as full-featured but not as bloated. They're not the same and that's the problem. Almost everything MS programs is bloated.


Actually, I don't believe there IS another OS that is as full-featured as Windows, which is why it's the dominant OS. I also find MOST of MS's apps, and particularly it's OS to be of superior quality to what other companies produce. You can find fault in anything, but point for point I give MS the advantage.

quote:
With DVD capacities and such why worry right.


Well, why worry? If Vista needs an extra 10-20 GB in the age of terabyte storage, who cares? If it's taking it, it's because it's needed for some function. It's not like they tried to make it take more space for no reason.


RE: Downgrade for me...
By The0ne on 9/26/2007 8:08:13 AM , Rating: 2
Let me guess you're a high level programmer. Done any firmware programming. Done any programming with limited memory space? Yes, the comparison is different because it's on DVD and installed on huge HD's. You're right, you shouldn't care. There's no reason to. You have a bloated product out selling like hotcakes what do you care. All this horsepower of a computer and yet it's bogged down by what? I'm sure you know the answer as well as I do.

I'm an engineer, background in digital and analog design. I know how the parts work :) I know bloated inefficient programming is the cause of these "slow-downs" and maybe some hardware design issues too :D Anyhow, my argument is that there's really no sense in having a program that could be small, when programmed properly, taking up gigs of space. If I accept your practice I be designing giant gadgets instead of small ones. Hell, I have the space right? And why make it user friendly to begin with, add tons of buttons and steps to get what you need done. I hope you see my point in this bloated issue.

Now imagine an efficient design with efficient software driving it. You know what the possibilities of this can be? Read the PS3 article about the research. That's amazing with a PS3. I can't fully complain however because all this has ramped technology quickly and thus we're seeing more and more advance designs. Our problem, as I'm sure you'll have to agree, is making full and efficient use of it. And I don't mean throwing "crap" at it until it works. When 64bit programming and multi-tasking becomes more mature I don't think many of use here are fully utilizing the Vista 64bit experience. People like it and like to use it but they don't actually make full use of it (me included).

But for everyday use, go to benchmarks for comparison and make your decision. Vista is good to have, runs fine but takes a bit getting use to and looks pretty. But if you're running fine on XP and the upgrade isn't worth it, stay still Vista matures a bit more.

Once thing for sure though, I would have love to see PCMag do a article on the number of mouse-clicks it takes to perform and operation for Vista and Office :) Ah, the good old days.


RE: Downgrade for me...
By TomZ on 9/26/2007 1:51:10 PM , Rating: 2
Ah, the good old days indeed. I cut my teeth in programming with lots and lots of assembly. And boy those programs were blindingly efficient, elegant, and very minimal.

But the problem you fail to realize is that, when you focus so much on efficiency, you also trade off productivity. And that means that you have less time to put in really useful features and less time for testing/QA. So in a nutshell, the way we have "spent" our "wealth" of having big HDDs, big RAM, and fast CPUs is that we've added tons of really nice features into the OS and the apps, and we've also eliminated a lot of prior limits. No probably any more to open multi-megabyte spreadsheets, for example.

This trend is progress, and it is a wealth that is well-spent. While I agree that it is possible for programs to go off-course and develop a case of "bloatware," I think those are not real common. For example, clearly Vista and Office don't fit into that category by any stretch of the imagination.


RE: Downgrade for me...
By Proteusza on 9/25/2007 5:47:02 AM , Rating: 4
The most stupid thing that MS did with Vista, in my opinion, is throw away hardware accelerated audio. They only did so to satisfy their big chums, the RIAA. Other than that, I dont have any problems with Vista.


If Vista is so great...
By jskirwin on 9/24/2007 12:33:43 PM , Rating: 2
Why should I get it - other than because I have no other choice?

Consider that I'm an expert user who runs older versions of Office (2k3), recent games (where's my f***ing Crysis demo g-dd-mmit!) and older copies of Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

What does Vista give me that XP doesn't?

I'm asking because I have yet to see a compelling reason to upgrade. When I went from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 I could run 32 bit apps. When I went to XP from '95, I got better networking features. Now my home network is humming with all XP machines - so what's the killer reason for Vista?

DirectX 10? A pretty interface that brings my OC'd C2D rig to a crawl?




RE: If Vista is so great...
By GoodBytes on 9/24/2007 2:08:24 PM , Rating: 1
DX10 doesn tno slow down your games... this could be of 3 factors:

1- The video card company did not do any drivers other then the last minute. So it has issues, but right now it's much better

2- The game that your playing, was very badly programed for DX10.

3- Your video card is too crappy for the settings your setting your video card and game. Or well too crappy, don't' expect to play Crysis with a Geforce 8300 or equivalent.

Also Vista offers you feature to increase your productivity, like SuperFetch so you can start Photoshop, Dreamweaver and other programs much faster. So you get more time working then waiting for loadings.
Moreover, Vista gives you useful things such as switch between application (Alt+Tab or Win+Tab) by seeing exactly what application is running with a live preview. A picture helps more then reading that text line under your icon.
Also you have stuff like Win+#, where it will automatically run the application set on the quick launch bar. Lets say you have Firefox as second shortcut on the quick Launch bar, you can just do Win+2 to open it.

You also have volume control per application, so you can make all your applications at the same volume. For example, if you listen to music, and you have ad-aware that makes this alert noise to tell you, that you have spyware, you will not be death.

Do you empty your Temp dir.. You know how annoying it is when you try to clear it and theer is one file you can'ty delete, well instead of waisting time by re-selecting everything and remove that file, and hope for the best, Well how Vista has a Skip and Retry option on all of its actions on all locations.

As you may have heard you have instant search which works like a charm. And IE7. Now you might say that you don't care about IE as you don't use it, but some programs like Winamp online radio stations, uses IE. So it will now use IE7 which is more secured then IE6.

If you play games you already should have 2GB of RAM. So it should not be an issue. With 512MB, WinXP is pain to use like Vista with 1GB. Turn back to it, and you will see.
Its like when you got your high-speed internet it was nice and all, but could you go back with 56K? No, 'cause you got used to higher speed. But if you compare both, you will fall in love with your high-speed, and realize how fast it actually is.

Vista has a better Networking manager, everything is all regrouped for you on one convenient location. All other features are improved big time, less bugs and issues.

Those are just few of the new things Vista has. You might ask why Microsoft isn't pushing these? Well, simple. It will sound very bad if you watch a commercial that say "Windows Vista has a Retry and skip button on it's dialog box when you cut/move/delete files and folders".


RE: If Vista is so great...
By SavagePotato on 9/24/2007 2:30:57 PM , Rating: 2
Ill give you a reason.

It is the same reason everyone will have a need to upgrade to vista.

More than 4gb of ram. This is why microsoft forced companies to develop 64 bit drivers alongside 32 bit to get windows certification. Because like it or not the days of 3GB of ram being enough will end.

Does that mean YOU need to upgrade your existing box to vista RIGHT NOW. Not in the least. When the day comes that you want more than 3 gigs of ram though, you are going to be reaching for vista. The driver support for XP64 is almost non existant and Microsoft saw that coming with vista. Thats why Vista64 is actualy usable and has driver support.

This is the single most central reason why Vista is a future minded OS that will help bridge the gap of the very painfull switch to larger memory support. This was tried with XP, the driver support wasn't there, It was ahead of it's time as 99.9% of users didn't need more ram.

The end of that time is comming and with it the painfull screaming death of 16 bit code support (that will likely still leave some buisnesses using antique software with their pants around their ankles)

So in summation, if your hardware does what you want, and runs great in XP, don't upgrade, noone said you have to. When you find yourself getting a new machine down the road in a couple years that has possibly more ram than XP can handle, thats the time to worry about upgrading.

Or if you plunk a set of shiny sli 1gb graphics cards in your system and suddenly discover that the video memory goes toward your total system adress space and you already have 2 gigs of ram, yeah, vista64 is going to start to look pretty good.


RE: If Vista is so great...
By SavagePotato on 9/24/2007 2:41:02 PM , Rating: 2
Before anyone points it out the initial 4gb in the first paragraph yes it is supposed to say 3gb, which is the most you can address without the shaky large memory support switch in XP that allows 4GB in theory (ie when it actualy works)


RE: If Vista is so great...
By glitchc on 9/24/2007 4:33:14 PM , Rating: 3
Say what? Vista x64 has better driver support than XP x64? Boy I wish that were the case, since I wouldn't find myself overwriting the Vista drivers with XP 64-bit drivers for most of my hw.


RE: If Vista is so great...
By SavagePotato on 9/24/2007 11:41:34 PM , Rating: 2
I don't know what your running but I have no problem whatsoever with vista64. It was quirky at launch, having switched to it for the ram support it has been flawless. Not one single solitary complaint.

When I had been using XP64 just to try it out I had to switch back to 32 when i got my 7900GTX, since Nvidia didn't bring out drivers for it for like three months after launch.

If you don't think things are better with vista64, I say smoke more crack.


RE: If Vista is so great...
By jskirwin on 9/24/2007 4:38:09 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
More than 4gb of ram.


Is this really a problem?

I suppose I can foresee a time when 2gb won't be enough, but the only time I run into any trouble is when I run VM ware on a box.

Are applications really pushing the RAM envelope? Given my limited niche, it's hard for me to say.


RE: If Vista is so great...
By SavagePotato on 9/24/2007 11:38:15 PM , Rating: 2
Do you realy think 3 gigs of ram is going to cut it for the next 5 or 6 years based on the rate of change. I personaly don't.

And what about after that. The changover to 64 bit has been if anything excruciating and hampered by dependence on 16 bit code support. Sure Apple already fully supports that, but theres no software for the mac anyway so it's easy.

XP64 was a dismal and unnacepted step arguably much less neccesary based on it's timing. But for myself personaly I already see the 32 bit barrier as a hindrance. if for nothing else but the incredible amount of memory on graphics cards and the fact that they are additive to the physical adress space. Do the math, if you have a gig or even 2 gigs of video ram which will likely be a reality within 2 years, heck it's even technicaly reality now as there are 1 gig sli capable cards (which pretty much noone uses in the case of the xt2900's). That drops your remaining adress space to 1 gig.

The ram limits of 32 bit computing are a huge barrier, and only for one reason, the death of 16 bit support. Can't come soon enough for me.


RE: If Vista is so great...
By 1078feba on 9/25/2007 10:59:50 AM , Rating: 2
Never used a x64 OS, so I can't speak to driver issues with Xp64 v. Vista64, but the rest of the post is spot on.

Will be making the leap to Vista64 probably after SP1 hits (SP1 will be applicable to Vista64, right?), but I'm still using an AMD 939 NForce 4 board, and there are some quirks with that chipset, as I found out recently trying to use Vista x86.

I, like you, am very heartened to see that MS has realized that on the OS/software side of the PC equation, they are going to have to lead the charge into permanent x64 territory.


RE: If Vista is so great...
By SavagePotato on 9/25/2007 1:02:36 PM , Rating: 1
My first install of vista was 32 bit on an Nforce4 enthusiast level board and the experience left alot to be desired. This was at launch so there were problems to be expected.

The Nvidia support was just NOT up to par at that time for the chipset level. I don't know how things have progressed thus far for the Nvidia chipsets but going to the tried and tested P965 Intel was a breath of fresh air in Vista.

Some of the main problems I had with the Nvidia rig were bluescreens, quirky behavior and worst of all raid corruption on the Nvidia controller. 100% of these problems evaporated in the Intel chipset, I've never had a scrap of corruption on my raid disks and everything runs liquid smooth in vista64 using high memory support from the mainboard for 4 gigs of ram.

To be honest I do NOT look back fondly on my time as an Nforce4 board owner. I had issues even in xp. Most notably USB failing to work on older bios revisions at times, and my Raptor 150 failing to boot the OS on newer bios revisions. Not an impressive experience and this was an asus enthusiast level board.


RE: If Vista is so great...
By TomZ on 9/25/2007 1:15:19 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
will be applicable to Vista64, right?

Yes - SP1 will available for 32- and 64-bit. But are available as part of Microsoft's limited beta right now.


Banned at Work
By kelmon on 9/24/2007 1:22:23 PM , Rating: 2
I don't know how common this is but Vista is outlawed at my company (no names but let's just say they deliver a lot in the US) by the IT organisation. This also extends to anyone who wants to connect their home computer to the network via VPN. I expect that this will change eventually but I am quite certain that XP was adopted a lot faster than this. Mind you, they did take ages to adopt Windows 2000 since that was a big change versus Windows 95.




RE: Banned at Work
By killerroach on 9/24/2007 2:06:56 PM , Rating: 2
It's entirely possible that your corporate network uses software that either doesn't work under Vista or hasn't been tested to the satisfaction of IT under Vista. Several universities have had similar issues, but it had nothing to do with Vista, but rather that some of their networking software (in particular network security and VPN programs) just didn't play well with Vista (which isn't much of a surprise, as Vista did make some significant changes to the network stack). Slowly those programs have been updated to support Vista, and people are starting to look again at allowing it.

Nobody ever could accuse an enterprise IT outfit of being particularly agile, that's for sure, but they can't afford to be. When incompatibilities can cost time and money (and, in your business, lots and lots of potential frustration as well), it tends to be IT's job to go through anything with a fine-toothed comb before they allow it. And the more stuff they have to inspect, the longer it'll take (as I'm sure that corporate software packages have gotten far more complex since the Win2000 days).


RE: Banned at Work
By threepac3 on 9/24/2007 2:45:37 PM , Rating: 2
**Cough** The corporation I work for is still using 2000 Pro **Cough**

Though we are currently rolling out XP.


RE: Banned at Work
By AlphaVirus on 9/25/2007 12:56:45 PM , Rating: 2
My corporation (major oil and gas) is also still running on 2000. Do not be fooled into thinking that is a bad thing though, mostly the expense of licensing fees is what holds them back from moving forward.

However they are making plans to rollout Vista next so currently they are doing away with old licensed programs that are becoming obsolete.

Personally when I found out how much it cost them to provide a program to 1 person let alone thousands of employees...lets just say I am glad its not coming out of my pocket.

Vista is not a bad OS, I have been using it since Feb'07 and I have not had any problems. No BSOD (if that still exist), a few simple crashes from drivers not being optimized. Also I wish people would quit blaming M$ for all their problems, remember the software devs have to create working drivers for their own programs.


Vista problems
By mrdeezus on 9/24/2007 8:20:29 PM , Rating: 2
What about all the hardware compatability problems?

My Canon PS 530 and Archos camcorder 420 mp3 player are still not recognized in windows vista home premium.




RE: Vista problems
By SavagePotato on 9/25/2007 2:44:35 PM , Rating: 3
That is not a hardware compatibility issue. That is a manufacturers failure to provide driver support for their product.

Windows does better than any other operating system at recognizing just about any gadget do-dad or device plugged into it and having an os provided driver.

If you are waiting for the os that supports every single last piece of hardware known to man without any effort from the hardware manufacturer, you are going to continue to wait.


RE: Vista problems
By mrdeezus on 9/25/2007 6:49:22 PM , Rating: 2
No. My mp3 player and camera work fine in xp.


RE: Vista problems
By SavagePotato on 9/25/2007 10:17:08 PM , Rating: 1
yes that is because your mp3 player and camera don't have driver support in vista, beleive it or not that's not microsofts solemn duty to provide drivers for every last device on the planet.


Bad publiciity
By crystal clear on 9/24/2007 12:18:01 PM , Rating: 2
M.S. should be aware of bad publicity arising from geniune
disatisfaction of the users really hurts Vista sales !

Here are few examples-

Vista Ultimate buyers fume over missing Extras
Microsoft fails to deliver premium add-ons by 'end of summer' deadline


http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com...

Seagate exec: To fully leverage the Vista, you need between 250GB to 1TB of storage


http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com...




RE: Bad publiciity
By theapparition on 9/24/2007 12:30:46 PM , Rating: 1
Hey CC,

quote:
Seagate exec: To fully leverage the Vista, you need between 250GB to 1TB of storage


LOL, do you really expect the Segate exec to say, "To fully leverage Vista, all your current hard drives work fine. No need to buy anthing bigger from us."

Of course they are going to say, get a bigger drive. Yes Vista takes close to 10GB, but I have it installed on one machine with a 60GB drive. Runs the same there as if it were installed on a machine with 1TB. It's not the OS, it's all the stuff you add afterwards that eat up drive space.

Vista is a great OS, but is not perfect. Time will only make it better.


RE: Bad publiciity
By crystal clear on 9/24/2007 1:01:18 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Vista is a great OS, but is not perfect. Time will only make it better.


Thats exactly the problem today-yes its not perfect & time will make it better as you say correctly .

Buyer expectations were & are high about Vista but only to be let down because as you say Its not Perfect !

Buyers prefer the XP today until Vista as you say Time will only make it better ,till then ....but how long...the waiting period is too long .

They prefer to play it safe & choose XP .


RE: Bad publiciity
By nitrous9200 on 9/24/2007 3:14:52 PM , Rating: 2
I ran Vista Beta 2 on a 20GB 5400RPM maxtor (also an A64 3200, 1GB of RAM, 6600GT), i didn't have much storage space but there was only a small amount of lag. I could still use all of the features, that's just the high-level exec trying to get people to buy products from their company...

Vista not only looks great, but performs fine (people that call it a memory hog don't understand what SuperFetch does) and is loaded with little tweaks everywhere that make it a pleasure to use. Don't forget all of the apps that come with it, like the photo organizer and DVD maker, that evens the score between it and OS X.

Most of the problems people are having are with upgrading an older system to Vista, which has never made sense with any operating system.


In all honesty...
By Samus on 9/25/2007 2:51:26 AM , Rating: 2
This is the best AT thread ever.




RE: In all honesty...
By 1078feba on 9/25/2007 10:45:56 AM , Rating: 2
No bro, I really dig the two grandaddies:

1. Intel VS AMD

&

2. PS3 VS XBOX 360

Man, I skip Monday Night football, family reunions and vacations to read those LMAO!

Batten down the hatches, don the asbestos suit and kick start the nuke reactor on my flame thrower!!!


RE: In all honesty...
By TomZ on 9/25/2007 10:49:43 AM , Rating: 2
This is DT, not AT.


Good for them
By acer905 on 9/24/2007 12:05:00 PM , Rating: 3
Personally, i don't like Vista. Not because of any flaws i see in it. In fact from what i have seen i think its a fairly good OS. It might have had a few bugs, but it was way better than when 98 first came out. And do i need to mention ME? But, the reason i don't like it is because it just feels off when i use it. Yeah i could probably get used to it. But i don't see the need to. So i'm rather happy that they are at least offering a downgrade option. But i say that they should offer a buy and download version of any past OS they have ever put out. Its not as if it would really cost them anything, except a bit of storage to keep a link to a download on their website. If pricing was respective to the age of the system, then they could still make some money off of the older stuff, and anyone who likes the older stuff could still use it on something. I like XP pro. I would like to keep using it as long as possible.




RE: Good for them
By oTAL (blog) on 9/24/2007 2:33:43 PM , Rating: 2
Except that by selling Win95 they would have to support it... which would cost loads of money...


History repeats itself.
By Domicinator on 9/24/2007 4:38:24 PM , Rating: 2
As stated in the article, people said all the same stuff about XP when it was released. And now it's suddenly the be all end all because Vista came out.

I am running Vista Home Premium on both my notebook and gaming PC and I have had no problems. Things were a little shaky at launch with drivers and stuff, but didn't take long to improve. All in all, I can honestly say I should maybe have waited until about a month after release to buy the new OS, but I'm not regretting that I was an early adopter.

I'm not doubting that people have had problems, but all this stuff happened with XP too. I have no desire to ever go back to XP. I have been waiting for Vista's DX10 graphics and improved UI for years, and I finally have it. Plus, I've been able to accomplish something that I never accomplished with XP--I'm now sharing my media and printer with all 3 computers on my network with no problems. I was never able to get this accomplished on XP.




RE: History repeats itself.
By paulpod on 9/25/2007 1:57:08 PM , Rating: 3
This argument has been used a lot and is true only for a certain type of computer user.

"Power users", however, have achieved a level of productivity and expertise on XP that far exceeds anything possible on 95/98/ME. Furthermore, when XP came out it was clear that huge realms of new functionality were being enabled.

Vista paints the opposite future in terms of productivity and functionality. Just getting the "Run..." box back on the start menu takes extra steps. The same productivity reduction exists for EVERY management operation.

And for reduction in functionality, take TV tuner software as an example. Where there used to be a rich set of choices, there is now just one choice (and its clones). And that happens to be a "10 ft" interface intended for TV displays. The ability to use a dense, computer monitor/mouse TV tuner interface (like ATI's old MMC) is gone forever. AMD's "Catalyst Control Center" is an MCE clone, useless for viewing TV on the monitor.

Things like NVidia's simple, $20 Purevideo decoder plugin have been replaced by bloated, $80 PowerDVD clones that increasingly will need to be repurchased (or re-keyed by support calls) everytime you reinstall the OS.

In the end, Vista is everything I hate about MAC OS. No user choice in software approach. No ability for smalltime software vendors to directly connect users to the power of their video processing hardware.


vista = ME2
By HardwareD00d on 9/25/07, Rating: 0
RE: vista = ME2
By TomZ on 9/25/07, Rating: 0
RE: vista = ME2
By SavagePotato on 9/25/2007 2:26:13 PM , Rating: 1
Anyone that engages in conversation with adults and uses the term "noob" while simultaneously claiming they are a "power user" and spouting complete stupidity comes of as exactly what they are.

A know it all kid that has been emboldened in their beleif that they are god because they managed to compile their first linux kernel.

Every single sentence in your post identifies your lack of knowledge and highlights your ignorance. Everyone who has read it is now dumber for having been subjected to your thoughts. May god have mercy on your soul.


RE: vista = ME2
By BitJunkie on 9/27/2007 5:43:20 PM , Rating: 2
I'll second that request for mercy. I'll also add that if the OP had actually used the new office suite in anger for the last 6 months (as I have) he'd have realised that the, UI while different, *GASP* is actually highly streamlined and intuitive. The new design removes so many stress points when you are familiar with it - it actually does make working feel easier, enjoyable and less like you are fighting the application.


RE: vista = ME2
By Domicinator on 9/25/2007 8:30:37 PM , Rating: 2
More and more gamers ARE happy with Vista these days. The driver stuff has mostly been fixed. I haven't had a problem since about a month after release. I am playing a very long list of games with my 8800GTS on Vista and having problems with none of them. Most of the games I'm playing have been released in the last year. I don't feel like typing out the whole list.

Name one thing Vista can do that XP can't? DirectX 10. If you have not seen a game run in DirectX 10, then you have not lived. Lost Planet and Bioshock both look amazing, and I can't wait for Crysis.

Check out the latest issue of PC Gamer. They did a whole story on why it's time to change to Vista. DirectX 10 is upon us. Just about every big holiday title this year is going to be DirectX 10 capable.


A few things to add
By lufoxe on 9/24/2007 11:29:23 AM , Rating: 4
I inquired Microsoft about this recently, as I had accidentally ordered 3 copies of Vista business instead of XP pro. I thought this was old news, but I guess not. It has to be an OEM copy of vista business or premium, the OEM needs to provide their own OEM CD as well as OEM product key (I know I thought the same thing) Microsoft assured me that any OEM key would do. When you go to activate it, it will fail of course and you'll have to talk to a representative. When you do, tell them that you are exercising your right under the EULA of Vista (business or ultimate, make sure you tell them which one) to downgrade your copy. They won't ask any questions. Which I found odd, especially since they didn't ask for the vista key. So I can still upgrade when things are patched, and working nicely.




Well here is the difference
By sprockkets on 9/24/2007 12:17:57 PM , Rating: 2
I built a computer around the Intel mini itx board with 1GB of ram. It took it 35 seconds to boot XP with everything, or 1:45 to boot Vista.

Yeah, I know it isn't 2GB of RAM and a faster processor and graphics, but this is what I forsee: The only path up from 2GB of RAM is 4GB, and we seen how that isn't even worth it due to the non 64 bit version is only able to use 3 of it. Processors are not getting much faster clock speed wise either. At least in 2001 there was no problems getting clock speed to go higher with the then current processors, nor problems with just having 512MB of RAM.

The worst part of Vista is probably how once it gets good after a year, it will be replaced 2 year later with the next version, which is said to be a total rewrite. Fun.

It is nice, but the Aeroglass effects are crap after using Compiz Fusion. Vista also did away with the CD audio inputs, thereby rendering my Leadtek tuner card USELESS.




RE: Well here is the difference
By threepac3 on 9/24/2007 12:29:43 PM , Rating: 2
For your last point to compare Windows Vista to Linux is pretty useless, considering how hard it is to setup Linux and Compiz/Beryl in the first place. I don't think Microsoft was planning on making Aero as flashy and distracting as Compiz in the first place, to tell you the truth.


RE: Well here is the difference
By JoshuaBuss on 9/24/07, Rating: 0
Error in your numbers
By mikecel79 on 9/24/2007 12:18:44 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Microsoft expects to ship one billion copies of Windows Vista by the end of 2008.

They expect there to be 1 Billion copies of Windows by the end of 2008, not copies of Vista. Your own previous article headline even says it.




RE: Error in your numbers
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 9/24/2007 1:19:46 PM , Rating: 2
Corrected


Ouch
By Polynikes on 9/24/2007 12:25:41 PM , Rating: 2
Well, I guess this is basically an admission that their OS needs more work. Either that or it's Microsoft giving in to their ignorant customers who didn't try the OS out before buying a PC with it on there.

I'm hoping they can further improve Vista in the future, as someday I want to enjoy some DX10 gaming, but I'm happy to wait for a while so they can iron things out more.

I'd also like to see some other shell replacements made for it.




RE: Ouch
By fsomalia on 9/26/2007 10:24:16 PM , Rating: 2
Agreed. There's no reason to move to Vista from XP, and Microsoft knows that.
IMHO, I think it's ingenuous treat these anti-Vista movements as "product of ignorant people". These people are who will use Windows anyway, and they aren't getting good impressions.
All that remembers me what? Windows Me. People tried it, people disliked it, Microsoft heard them.
I'm going to wait the Service Pack 1, and give another chance to Vista. If I dislike it, I'm going to stick with XP. Probably until a killer DX10-only game appears.


Older Machines
By Callys on 9/24/2007 1:28:42 PM , Rating: 2
My father runs a real estate office here in San Diego. I am the consulting engineer/administrator for their network. Employees provide their own systems. Over half the computers in the office have 512mb of ram. Most of the systems are aging processors. Very few are modern 64s or dual core intels. Once you get a few network processes going, giant streams of email downloads (most of them get 100s a day) and regular system processes....Vista just doesn't work on 512 ram. Not even close. Employees rarely associate a faster box with more productivity so they tend to ride out their machines as long as possible. I am glad MS will be offering the downgrade for these types of individuals that made the mistake of choosing the wrong OS for their application.




RE: Older Machines
By TomZ on 9/26/2007 9:19:35 AM , Rating: 2
I think you're right about that - I wouldn't recommend Vista for use on an older machine with 512MB of RAM and a slowish processor. My old laptop was like that, and it runs Vista slower than XP. In that case the benefits of Vista don't outweigh the performance degradation.

But there's no reason you can't have a mixed environment for a number of years. When folks get new machines, have them run Vista, and keep XP running on the older machines. The two OSs play nice together and will work fine with Windows Server (I'm guessing you are running that).


People desist change as long as humanly possible
By Ihmemies on 9/25/2007 10:14:12 AM , Rating: 2
Every little change is a nightmare to a normal person, assault towards their identity. They create the illusion of safety around them by sticking to old habits, software, etc.

Without *forcing* the progress by spoonfuls down their throats, we would be forever stuck in recession. Sadly Microsoft's public relations division wasn't up to the enormous task they faced.

I'm eagerly waiting the complete UI revamp of Windows. They did it with Office 2007, so everything is possible ;-)