Windows Vista Rules.

[theprodigalrebel]

I was really enjoying this thread - I have been looking for lots of User Experiences with Vista RTM as I'm looking to shift to Vista Home Premium after I build a new system a few months from now.

The User Feedback was great before Quinton McLeod turned this into Yet Another Mindless Unfounded Microsoft Bashing Thread.

BTW, nice job BD2003 and all ye others. I only read the first 300 posts and skimmed through the 4th page - thanks for no longer feeding the troll.

 

[dev0lution]

First off, I'd like to say congratulations to everyone who's helped McLeodmouth get that much closer to Diamond Member.

Secondly, and more on topic, I'd agree that Vista is nice and I'm a bit sad to be back on XP MCE from RC1 (didn't want to wait to enjoy the new 8800GTX and missed some OpenGL titles). Search, Aero, Folder Organization, the new Start Menu, better MCE interface are more than enough reason for me to install in the next couple months

 

[Xyclone]

Originally posted by: rajasekharan
i see a lot of quarrel going in the direction of open source and closed one.....well i dont have 16,000/- to buy vista ultimate ...so i will get it pirated.......and if someone asks me for legimate copy i will show my BRILLIANT "Ubuntu" to them....unless they reduce the money none is gonna get that for 16k ...rediculously high...

QFB...

 

[rxblitzrx]

i LOVE vista. It's so stinkin' beautiful. Networking is off the hook from what I've experienced too.

 

[Mem]

My pre-order of OEM Vista HP version has been delayed ,was supposed to be 12th,went to 19th and now all the way back to 30th Jan,OCUK saying its due to Microsoft not them,oh well nothing I can do ,but it does give companies more time for new Vista drivers to be released,I still wonder what was the real cause for delay ,maybe too much demand?

 

[StopSign]

My Vista experience (as of 2 months ago on my old Athlon 64)

Pros
- Runs very fast and smooth
- Noticeably faster than XP
- Aero interface looks fantastic (much better than I had imagined)
- Software compatibility is rather good for a brand new OS
- Imbedded drivers for lots of common hardware
- Easy to install, a lot easier than XP even when installing from boot
- Installs relatively fast considering the OS is much bigger than XP

Cons
- "Revamped" Start Menu is an absolute piece of ******
- "Revamped" explorer will take some time to get used to
- Needs a lot of tweaking to get rid of annoying new features
- Default GUI font is "Segoe UI" which looks like Cleartype
- 3rd party driver support is extremely poor, but will likely improve vastly throughout this month
- My printer doesn't have compatible drivers as of now
- Control Panel is greatly dumbed down for novice computer users
- Aero interface requires an above-average system to use
- Looks like garbage without Aero
- Diskeeper is currently incompatible, and Windows Defragmenter sucks balls
- Sidebar sits on top of icons, which means no icons on either side unless Sidebar is disabled
- Bootscreen is all black with a green progress bar....what was Microsoft thinking?

However, I've had trouble installing it on my new C2D system. It would "stop" after I boot from the disk and it shows that DOS window. I'll fiddle around with it later.

 

[Mem]

Diskeeper is currently incompatible, and Windows Defragmenter sucks balls

I thought Diskeeper 2007 was compatible?

 

[BD2003]

Cons
- "Revamped" Start Menu is an absolute piece of ******
- "Revamped" explorer will take some time to get used to

Ya, it was a bit strange at first, but the favorites bar and the quick navigation breadcrumb bar is most excellent.

- Needs a lot of tweaking to get rid of annoying new features

UAC went out the door immediately on my system.

- Default GUI font is "Segoe UI" which looks like Cleartype

Cleartype is now on by default for all fonts.

- 3rd party driver support is extremely poor, but will likely improve vastly throughout this month
- My printer doesn't have compatible drivers as of now

Indeed. I'm sure itll get vastly better with time.

- Control Panel is greatly dumbed down for novice computer users

Agree...just use classic view.

- Aero interface requires an above-average system to use
- Looks like garbage without Aero

I wouldnt say it looks like garbage - just no better than xp.

- Diskeeper is currently incompatible, and Windows Defragmenter sucks balls

Defrag isnt as important anymore with the precaching, but even though it doesnt tell you anything, the windows one works fine.

- Sidebar sits on top of icons, which means no icons on either side unless Sidebar is disabled

I've no idea what you're talking about there...icons work fine for me with the sidebar.

- Bootscreen is all black with a green progress bar....what was Microsoft thinking?

Purposefully done to reduce boot times.

 

[Mem]

Diskeeper homepage says this.

Diskeeper Corporation will be announcing Microsoft Windows Vista? platform support in the coming weeks for the Diskeeper 2007 product line. Diskeeper 2007 will introduce several new enhancements, including added support for the Windows Vista operating systems. It will be a free update for licensed Diskeeper 2007 customers, as well as customers with current maintenance contracts.

If you are a volume license customer currently deploying Vista, please contact your Diskeeper Corporation Account Manager for additional information.

Link.

 

[Nothinman]

Defrag isnt as important anymore with the precaching, but even though it doesnt tell you anything, the windows one works fine.

Defrag was never that important...

Purposefully done to reduce boot times.

This I understand, bootsplash on Linux can slow down boot by a noticable amount since VESA access is so slow. But what I don't get is why they made the progress bar useless. In Win2K it actually worked as intended, when it was full that part of boot was done, starting with XP it just loops around infinitely so you never know how long it'll sit there.

 

[stash]

Purposefully done to reduce boot times.

Somewhat true, but it was mainly a branding thing. They don't want the brand to look like VGA ass.

 

[StopSign]

Originally posted by: BD2003

- Sidebar sits on top of icons, which means no icons on either side unless Sidebar is disabled

I've no idea what you're talking about there...icons work fine for me with the sidebar.

What I meant was you can't put icons in the space under the sidebar. The sidebar is given its own space on either side of the screen. I've always organized my desktop in a certain way and it involves having icons on the left and right edges of the screen. With sidebar...I can't do that.

 

[stash]

You can move the sidebar to the left or another monitor.

 

[StopSign]

I'm not living at home right now and I can't use two monitors because the desk/room doesn't have enough space. When I do run two monitors I usually don't keep the second one turned on because the way I laid it out, they're not side by side. Plus, my second monitor is a 14" CRT whereas my primary is a 19" LCD.....

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: StopSign

Originally posted by: BD2003

- Sidebar sits on top of icons, which means no icons on either side unless Sidebar is disabled

I've no idea what you're talking about there...icons work fine for me with the sidebar.

What I meant was you can't put icons in the space under the sidebar. The sidebar is given its own space on either side of the screen. I've always organized my desktop in a certain way and it involves having icons on the left and right edges of the screen. With sidebar...I can't do that.

Well, you can turn the sidebar off, yet still keep the widgets - they just don't morph into the little small versions.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Defrag isnt as important anymore with the precaching, but even though it doesnt tell you anything, the windows one works fine.

Defrag was never that important...

Purposefully done to reduce boot times.

This I understand, bootsplash on Linux can slow down boot by a noticable amount since VESA access is so slow. But what I don't get is why they made the progress bar useless. In Win2K it actually worked as intended, when it was full that part of boot was done, starting with XP it just loops around infinitely so you never know how long it'll sit there.

It's just there to let people know that the computer hasnt crashed, I suppose. It's fairly pointless either way.

 

[StopSign]

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: StopSign
What I meant was you can't put icons in the space under the sidebar. The sidebar is given its own space on either side of the screen. I've always organized my desktop in a certain way and it involves having icons on the left and right edges of the screen. With sidebar...I can't do that.

Well, you can turn the sidebar off, yet still keep the widgets - they just don't morph into the little small versions.

That I did not know.

 

[TMoney468]

What is everyone's Vista Performance rating? You know, the think Microsoft runs and gives you a score for the power of your system? I was fairly surprised, I have a P4 @ 2.8 GHz, 1 GB Ram, x850 XT, and I got a 4.3 performance rating.

 

[StopSign]

I think I got 4.1 with:

Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.5 GHz
2x512 MB
6600GT

It either takes graphics into heavy consideration or it favors Netburst.

 

[Nothinman]

It's just there to let people know that the computer hasnt crashed, I suppose. It's fairly pointless either way.

I just don't see why they broke the progress bar, it obviously worked in the past and they decided to break it but still leave it there in XP. It's also sort of amusing because now that most desktop Linux distributions have added bootsplash support with progress bars theirs are all accurate. =)

 

[tickyour]

My Rating is 5.3: http://img374.imageshack.us/img374/2796/vistaratingkn6.jpg

CPU: E6600
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3
RAM: G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
GPU: BFG Tech GeForce 7950GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16
Maxtor 300GB 16mb hdd

so far I'm really impressed with the OS. very intuitive, easy to use, elegant and very fast. There are a few compitability issues at this time, but nothing major. I have to do furhter testing before I can come to a full conclusion.

 

[dev0lution]

I was getting 4.9 with a C2D E6400, 2GB 800Mhz ValueRAM, X800XL and 80GB WD SATA drive.

Didn't retest after I got the 8800GTX since there's no driver yet.

Cdrive HDD capacity and not being 3.0GBs is probably holding back the rating a bit.

 

[Looney]

I've been using Vista Business for a couple of weeks now (legitimate RTM copy, got a VLK version). Very nice, and i was very impressed with the beta to begin with. The only game i've tried is EQ2, but it runs better in Vista than XP, even though it's still only got 2gb of ram.

If you haven't tried the voice recognition yet, omfg it's amazing. Absolutely amazing. Sci-fi amazing. I can seriously dictate FASTER than i can type, AND with less errors. We're talking about a 99% successful recognition rate at normal speech fluency.

 

[Xyclone]

I get a 4.8 with an X2 3800+ (2GHZ), 2GB DDR400 Mushkin Redline, X1900XT, and a 160GB Seagate IDE driver.

The CPU and HDD are the weakest points (each score equally low @ 4.8).

 

[Quinton McLeod]

I thought this thread died already. You people are still discussing this service pac-- err... I mean, OS?

Listen, the only people talking about Vista with such anticipation are you guys. Everyone else in the world openly admits that Vista isn't the second coming.

I'm not saying to not get Vista. I'm simply saying to wait awhile until it becomes bug free and has proven itself. Right now, it hasn't proven itself. In 6 months, Leopard and Fiesty will be out. Plenty of time to see what is what and which OS is cool to migrate to.