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Windows Vista


weggy
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So Vista hits the market on the 30th, with Microsoft spouting that it will be so secure, you won't need anti-virus, and its the most stable windows ever, and it will wash your car...

Blah blah.

I've been prepping some Vista PCs at work, and have so far seen 3 BSODs, as well as initial boot times of 30 minutes or more. But,

what does everyone else here think of Vista? Are you going to rush out and buy it on release day? Could you care less? Are there any new features that scare you, or those you are excited about?

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I think the old Vista thread is still around somewhere. Most of the comments are about the DRMing of media files and some other complaints.

I'm not getting it. I already have a legit (and expensive) copy of Windows XP 64-bit last summer, I don't need to upgrade, I like having control over my files, and I don't want to use up all my processing power and RAM having slightly smoother looking windows.

Fuck Vista.

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I've been prepping some Vista PCs at work, and have so far seen 3 BSODs, as well as initial boot times of 30 minutes or more. But,

what does everyone else here think of Vista? Are you going to rush out and buy it on release day? Could you care less? Are there any new features that scare you, or those you are excited about?

I'm pretty excited about the extra DRM. Freedom is overrated.

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Wait a few years until you need a new computer when the Vista will have been updated a few dozen times and the thing is packaged with the essential hardware so you can be spared the headache. They're really aiming to make the Vista upgrade a hardware upgrade beyond just the software anyway.

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From the responses to Vista I've seen so far, everyone who hasn't used Vista yet [predictably] hates it, but the people who've tried the OS say it's quite an improvement over XP.

I'd frankly like to see less "prediction" [in all fields, not just elite geekery, but that's for another topic] from people who have never even used it, but shove these cryptic insider reports all over the internet. Wait a bit, K? You could try it out in a store and it will probably be much better than XP, given Microsoft's OS track record.

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I'm not getting it. I already have a legit (and expensive) copy of Windows XP 64-bit

i could have installed XP64, but i didn't think many programs were supporting it. GOD DAMMIT GET OFF MY SCREEN, FLY.

shit what was i saying

right, i heard there were problems with xp64bit not being able to run a lot of programs that would otherwise run fine in 32-bit xp. what is the advantage to having a 64-bit OS at this point in time? or even in the very near future?

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i could have installed XP64, but i didn't think many programs were supporting it. GOD DAMMIT GET OFF MY SCREEN, FLY.

shit what was i saying

right, i heard there were problems with xp64bit not being able to run a lot of programs that would otherwise run fine in 32-bit xp. what is the advantage to having a 64-bit OS at this point in time? or even in the very near future?

Anti-virus and other system programs might not work, because they are 32-bit specific. There are 64-bit utilities out there, though, so that's not too much of a problem.

The only real problem I've had is that the driver for the Nintendo USB WiFi Adapter (that little USB stick that lets you play your DS online) won't work. XP 64-bit detects it, but it won't run it. According to Nintendo's tech support, they do not now, nor in the future, plan to make 64-bit OS compatible drivers. So if use you one, you're screwed.

But everything is fine. I have old games, new games, media programs, and all my old stuff from my last system on here, and none of it has given me any trouble at all.

Off topic for a bit, would anyone like a Nintendo USB WiFi Adapter? Good price, hardly used, will ship to buyer...

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I'll only get Vista when I absolutely have to. Each new OS always has at least one or two games that are incompatible (like Dungeon Keeper 2). And I always have to waste my time finding and disabling some of the new "features" implemented.

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Please, PLEASE someone call bullshit on that one. I really don't want that to be true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Windows_Vista#Digital_Rights_Management

Third time in about 2 months that I've had to post this link. Note that the linked article is quoted there, and refuted as well(Under Supporters)

Of note are some parts though:

Revoking the driver of a device that is in wide use is such a drastic measure that Gutmann doubts Microsoft will ever actually do this. On the other hand, they may be forced to do it because of their legal obligations to the movie studios.

Since I doubt ANY major hardware distributor wants to replace an entire line of hardware, I'm pretty sure that the hacked driver aspect will be limited to local installations from a user, as opposed to fucking everyone over.

Personally, I'm not gonna install Vista for at least another 6 months or until I get some new hardware. A friend of mine runs it on his system though, which is pretty much comparable to my own setup, and it runs rather well from what I've seen.

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Haha... you know, its actually entertaining to hear anyone say that Vista is any improvement on XP.

I go to Digipen, which is a major programming college, and, as part of a deal with Microsoft, we get some of their software over a thing called MSDNAA (is an education alliance deal). Believe it or not, they recently added Vista professional to the package, and some of the students and faculty have Vista currently installed on their machines.

The short version: Vista is a complete piece of crap.

The end user will probably like Vista, simply because it is pretty and it will (seem to) do the simple stuff that they want to do pretty well. On a deeper level, though, Vista simply fails. In many ways, our students have likened restoring XP on their machines to upgrading Vista to XP.

Besides the obvious problems, such as the whole content protection debacle (short side note: I didn't know that, thanks to some millennium law passed, its technically illegal to watch DVD's on a Linux machine. Look it up if you have the chance), Vista has numerous holes that simply make it unreliable (one such hole, its seeming inability to effectively network to XP computers, screwed a team project we had this weekend), and sadly, they probably won't be fixed for a couple of service packs.

Take it from people with experience. Don't get Vista.

--Jack Kieser

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Haha... you know, its actually entertaining to hear anyone say that Vista is any improvement on XP.

I go to Digipen, which is a major programming college, and, as part of a deal with Microsoft, we get some of their software over a thing called MSDNAA (is an education alliance deal). Believe it or not, they recently added Vista professional to the package, and some of the students and faculty have Vista currently installed on their machines.

The short version: Vista is a complete piece of crap.

The end user will probably like Vista, simply because it is pretty and it will (seem to) do the simple stuff that they want to do pretty well. On a deeper level, though, Vista simply fails. In many ways, our students have likened restoring XP on their machines to upgrading Vista to XP.

Besides the obvious problems, such as the whole content protection debacle (short side note: I didn't know that, thanks to some millennium law passed, its technically illegal to watch DVD's on a Linux machine. Look it up if you have the chance), Vista has numerous holes that simply make it unreliable (one such hole, its seeming inability to effectively network to XP computers, screwed a team project we had this weekend), and sadly, they probably won't be fixed for a couple of service packs.

Take it from people with experience. Don't get Vista.

--Jack Kieser

Yeah my school has that too and I just noticed you can download Vista as a DVD or 5 seperate CD's. Anyone know why Windows has gone from the size of one CD to five CD's? That's pretty wild...

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So Vista hits the market on the 30th, with Microsoft spouting that it will be so secure, you won't need anti-virus

If you're not an idiot, you don't need an anti-virus program in XP. I certainly never did, and I'm only classified as an idiot in three continental united states.

Anyhow, I've been using Vista Ultimate for a few weeks now, along with IE7 and WMP11. I've had a few problems so far, but for the most part I'm enjoying it. As I said in another thread, it's nothing I'd pay non-monopoly money for.

First, my problems so far. None of the OpenGL games I play work. HL1, ePSXe w/ ogl2, etc. I think Doom 3 and Quake 4 work, but verrry slowly. This is because Microsoft isn't supporting OpenGL anymore, except ver. 1.4 (and that works through a wrapper that translates to D3D calls, so it's really slow). Essentially, it's now up to graphics card manufacturers to create OpenGL ICDs, which will allow the games to run at full speed. I can't say I blame Microsoft for not wanting to support a competing standard (in their own product, no less), but it's still a pain in the ass right now. It's the main reason I haven't completely ditched my XP partition. ATI doesn't have an ICD yet, and I don't even know about Nvidia. Edit: For those of you just joining us, ATI has released their latest drivers and OpenGL support has improved greatly. Many games work full or near-full speed, though there are problems with ePSXe.

As for Direct3D games, they work just great. CS:S works just as well as in XP. It is a bit slower if you're running Aero Glass, but on your more hardware-taxing games all you have to do is right-click on the shortcut, properties, compatibility, and select "disable visual themes" and "disable desktop composition". Easy enough. And often it will automatically shut off if you're running something that's really taxing your system.

Now, I play a lot of music on my computer. I recently switched over to using Windows Media Player 11 (from Winamp, and good riddance for the most part), and it plays my entire MP3 collection perfectly well. The content protection doesn't really take effect until around 2011 afaik, and by then you'll likely have compatible hardware. It might be a pain to no longer play my MP3 collection, but I'm not really one to complain about having my illegally copied music taken away. Boo-hoo.

One note for people with AC'97 onboard sound: Vista's included driver blows ass. The ones from the Realtek site work very well, but you might get some RunDLL32 errors when you go to adjust your settings. It's nothing more than a minor annoyance, since the messages are easily closed and don't cause any real problems.

Video drivers. I have a Radeon X1600 Pro, and in XP I used the Omega Drivers with ATI Tray Tools, and all was beautiful with the world. There are no Omega drivers for vista, and ATI Tray Tools gives me a memory leak, so I'm forced to use the Catalyst Control Center. The ATI Vista Beta drivers haven't been updated since December 13th. They also install the Visual C++ Redistributable for some reason.

I'll say it now: the interface is wonderful. It looks and feels great, and everything is easily accessible. As far as the start menu goes, I like the search box and the ability to scroll through the programs menu (instead of it taking up the entire screen if you have a shitload of programs installed, and you no longer really have to organize it manually). I'm not a huge fan of the new documents folder structure, but that's because I'm used to the way it worked before. It will be nice to have my documents completely separate from the pictures/videos etc. folders. Windows Explorer isn't really any better or worse.

Now, someone mentioned networking, and said it was a pain in the ass. Well, not in my experience. I've had to transfer some files to/from my XP laptop, and the only problems I ever had were on the laptop. One thing to note: vista defaults to using WORKGROUP as the network name, instead of MSHOME, which may confuse some. But I'd say the networking is the biggest improvement over XP so far, and I have no idea what kind of problems you might have with it.

Also, I really like the new Media Center. They added a few things, such as the ability to play all the Windows Games (solitaire, spider solitaire, hearts, mahjongg, chess etc.) from a remote. There's also a lot of online content available to make up for the lack of Video-On-Demand support (to my knowledge), so you can get stuff from Comedy Central Motherload, Yahoo, NPR, and a few others without leaving the chair. For people who don't use their computer as a PVR, though, this is probably useless to you.

Let's see... speech recognition works well, but it's profoundly useless to anyone who can type faster than 10wpm.

That's all I can think of now, so I'm ready to answer any questions.

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It's been five years since Windows XP? OS X has been on DVD for a while now, not sure how many versions, or exactly how many CDs though.

Six years, actually. Also, Windows 95 used to come on either a bunch of floppies or a CD back when it came out, and Windows 3.11 only required 9 floppies.

New features tend to take up space.

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I just checked the size of my Windows folder. 8.5 gigs. Yeowch! Maybe I'll get rid of a few of these features I don't use.

Also, I'll note my specs: Athlon 64 2800+, Radeon X1600 Pro card, 1gig ram.

One thing: I wouldn't really recommend Ultimate to anybody. It has a lot of stuff that the average gamer will never use. I'd recommend Home Premium for the visual fanciness and Media Center, but if you don't care about either then Basic will work just fine I suppose.

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Admittedly, I know very little about Vista and really don't care that much. I don't find the OS upgrade all that appealing or useful for my purposes. The new Mac OS excites me much more.

Hurr. Mac bias. I think it's the same kind of lukewarm excitement people had over Windows 95, Windows NT and Windows XP. It's a systematic change of OS and not some newfangled, great innovation like Apple keeps touting their OS's. Marketing tactic. lol

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