A close Call with Vista

[Lavaandy]

After updating my bios I restart my system to find Vista telling my that my trial period had expired and that I must activate now. I bought and paid for Windows Vista Ultimate and activated it the day I installed it. I can tell you this, the "reduced" capability mode really sucks.

Thanks goodness after another reboot everything returned to normal.

Just a reminder how Microsoft will F*ck you in the @ss any chance it gets, then ask for $200 in return for the service.

I hate Microsoft, but I need it for my work.

Just like women eh? Cant live with em' cant live without em'.

[Ace]

Well... I don't know about can't live without Windows...

Personally I certainly can't live with it. Why not move to Linux? Free OS, free software, stable, faster, easier to use, totally customisable, no ugly EULAs... many Windows programs work in Linux too, thanks to Wine.

[Lavaandy]

I did try Linux years ago. The last one I tried was linux red hat 5 or the like. I just cant give up gaming you:curse:

[Comixion]

Just a reminder how Microsoft will F*ck you in the @ss any chance it gets,



The only time Microsoft ever violated me in such a manner was when I handed over genuine US currency for my copy of Vista. Can you imagine such a thing? Cash for SW?!!:p

[jdrom17]

After updating my bios I restart my system to find Vista telling my that my trial period had expired and that I must activate now. I bought and paid for Windows Vista Ultimate and activated it the day I installed it. I can tell you this, the "reduced" capability mode really sucks.

Thanks goodness after another reboot everything returned to normal.

Just a reminder how Microsoft will F*ck you in the @ss any chance it gets, then ask for $200 in return for the service.

I hate Microsoft, but I need it for my work.

Just like women eh? Cant live with em' cant live without em'.
Now you see, this is why people turn to the dark side of piracy. None of this BS to deal with...

[Ace]

I did try Linux years ago. The last one I tried was linux red hat 5 or the like. I just cant give up gaming you:curse:

You'll be stunned how far it's come sine then! Some games will work through Wine now; albeit not many properly, and some will work through a VM (albeit not many). For all the others, there's dual boot. Best of both worlds!

Edit: And you should be using XP, not "Vista"!!! I practically puke every time I see a copy of "Vista". In fact, just typing the word has a similar effect...

[Comixion]

Why does everybody diss Vista?

Please splain your reasons for your immense hatred towards it. And make it thorough or it won't count.:p

[Ace]

Why does everybody diss Vista?

Please splain your reasons for your immense hatred towards it. And make it thorough or it won't count.:p

Hehe, oh please don't get me started, I don't have all week :-0)

Suffice to say that I was beta testing it from the pre-alphas all through to RTM, and have had to solve goodness knows how many people's problems on Vista. I could start typing lists, but I'd rather summarise (I'm starving!): I like an OS to be an OS and let me get on with doing what I need to do, whether that's work, fixing something, or whatever. Vista is one of those OSs that would rather interpose itself between you and the computer, and do everything in its power to be a royal PitA to stop you achieving what you want to.

Can anyone suggest something which can be achieved quicker in Vista than in XP? I won't even ask that question for Linux - it's not a fair comparison for Vista at all :-0) Quite apart from all this, though, moreorless every design decision (barring *some* more fundamental but less visible changes) was wrong, and my gawd the level of inbuilt DRM... how can you live knowing what's going on under the hood?!

An OS is meant to facilitate you performing a task. Vista is like XP (so bad), but much worse, as for many different reasons it prevents you from performing your tasks. Almost every Linux distro doesn't.

[Comixion]

Can anyone suggest something which can be achieved quicker in Vista than .


It installs quicker.:D However, I can't take a catnap during windows installations like I used to.

[Ace]

It installs quicker.:D However, I can't take a catnap during windows installations like I used to.

Haha :teeth: Maybe I should upgrade from Ubuntu to Vista based on that receommendation :-0)

Funnily enough you picked perhaps the only thing I can't remember about my Vista experiences - install time...

[TechZeal]

Now lets try an dbe fair here... :) Vista in Beta and even from first release is nothing compared to what it is today with SP1.

I get to long on screen and logged on much faster in Vista then I could ever in XP. And I did everything possible to make each as fast as possible. Once you have SP1 and use a variety of tips provided in the PCStats Guide for Vista... It's great. This is my favorite example... :)

Driver support is finally here for nearly everything. The annoying popup of "are you sure you want to do what you just chose to do" is great once you turn it off. No HD trashing once you turn off the superfetching. Minimal bandwidth drain once you change automatic updates to "ask to download" option.

Point is, Vista can be great once you take an extra step to remove the extras you don't want that was given to you. Same effort that you put into customizing Linux. I'm not saying it's better as that would be a matter of opinion here not a fact I can dispute or prove. But for me, my opinion is that it is a viable choice for an OS even if it's from M$.

[Comixion]

As I said before...."You have to whip Vista, not let Vista whip you":)

[AKHandyman]

Which brings me to the edge of my seat, trying desperately to convince myself that Vista is what I should install on a medium range gaming rig I want to build. I have some pieces and parts to put together:

Quad 6600 w/Zalman cooler
4GB OCZ DDR2 PC 8500 Reaper memory
DFI X38 mobo
2 ATI HD3870's (Crossfire)
320GB Samsung HD
1 SATA DVD/CD combo drive
700W OCZ GameXStream PSU
Antec P180 Case (on caster wheels!)

What do you think this should sell for? I am curious as to what anyone thinks ... :rolleyes:

And should I put Vista on it? (64-bit Home Premium)

[TechZeal]

Not sure on the sell price, but yes, throw Vista HP 64bit on there... Do the updates.. and if you sell locally, you can off a tune up service for a small fee. Or...

1. You're a nice guy... or...
2. You don't want them unhappy and crying for dicount/refund... ;)

and to the tune up before sale... some of the adjustments mentioned above... ;)

Won't take you long and only need a few of them.

[AKHandyman]

1. You're a nice guy... or...
2. You don't want them unhappy and crying for dicount/refund... ;)

and to the tune up before sale... some of the adjustments mentioned above... ;)

Won't take you long and only need a few of them.
One, I know I am a nice guy. I am the only computer repair man within hundreds of miles of where I live.

Two, I don't think there are many in my community that would shell out $500 for this rig. I am thinking that is about all I can get ... without losing my shirt entirely ... :p

I do know of one particular person who might be interested but it might take a bit of used-car salesmanship to sell it ... :D

[Ace]

That looks like a pretty nice setup from where I'm standing, but I haven't been dealing with hardware much for a while so someone else will have to give you an estimate.

Personally I would advise XP over Vista, and Linux over either of those, but I understand that Windows has its place in the market. Its place is, though, currently far too large.

I'm sure if I had really taken the time to "fix up" Vista and disable all the extra gunk, along with goodness knows what else, it could have become more usable than it was. There's simply too much I don't like, however, and with all of it being entirely proprietary, there's nothing much I can do about most of the issues I have with it.

Now we have such good Linux distros (free) with so much free software, I just don't see why I should pay a lot for an OS I highly dislike in the first place, only then to need to pay lots more for much of the additional software required.

In the Windows marketplace, I can't stand Vista as it stands, but I admit if you put in the effort it can be improved. Indeed, the first things I would do after installing a release of Vista would be to start disabling some the things that were annoying me. Ultimately, I still couldn't live with some of the ridiculous dialogs and UI, but I appreciate some bear great similarity to those in XP. So, they're not by themselves deal-killers, but they are extremely annoying and unintuitive (IMO). There are just too many problems.

I still think XP is (after you do a little fix up work) a semi-reasonable OS. It however does not have much future.

So, if you don't like the look of Linux (you can try a distro easily by burning a "live cd" image to a disk), it looks like Vista is Microsoft's offering. For many (most?) people I'm sure it's usable, but I don't have the time or willpower to try and convert it into being something vaguely suitable for me.

Anyway, I could never go back. I've got the open source software bug :-0)

[jdrom17]

Go with Vista as that computer is more than adequate and I believe ATI drivers work better in Vista than XP.

[AKHandyman]

Well Ace, I was with you for a period of time that being I wasn't interested in Vista and thought it to be a POS OS. But I have run into a number of people who have bought new computers that had Vista pre-installed. Not much these people could have done except check with me before they bought the computers, but they weren't customers then. :p But now they are because they didn't know how to use Vista. I had to go to their homes (yes, I do housecalls :p) and help them set their new computers up and actually give them some lessons.

I have come to accept Vista for what it is: Microsoft's latest operating system that gets shoved down the throats of unsuspecting consumers without much say so. I am forced to use it (reference rig) for troubleshooting and the like, especially to help customers get acquainted with the perturbing OS.

But I suppose if I were to install XP on this gaming rig, it would have to be XP Pro 64-bit.

I will think about taking another bunch of pieces and parts and try Linux on it. I have always wanted to try, but have never found the time to invest in learning.

[Comixion]

Dam , I wish you were selling this 3 weeks ago before I bought that store bought computer for my daughter.:fighty:
I say part it out. So , since that's settled.


How much for the PSU?:D

[VanillaTbone]

Not trying to jack the thread, but I can give ya a little hint about Superfetch and you might actually like to turn it one after I say it... :thumb:

Follow my instructions to make Superfetch only cache system boot files....

Open regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box and browse down to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\
Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

Find the EnablePrefetcher key on the right-hand pane, and change the value to one of these:

Disable Caching: 0

Cache Applications Only: 1

Cache Boot Files Only: 2

Cache Everything (default): 3

You'll have to restart your computer before this takes any effect. You could consider clearing out the \Windows\Prefetch folder after making this change to start with a fresh cache, but keep in mind that the next boot will probably be slower since Windows will have to cache everything again.

Hope that gives some of you guys a little trick to test out now...

Have a good one fellas.... :thumb:

[Comixion]

http://comixion.esmartweb.com/thread%2520hijack.x

[AKHandyman]

Well this thread was about Vista ... so I don't think it was totally hijacked ... ;)

[Phoenix64d]

Why does everybody diss Vista?

Please splain your reasons for your immense hatred towards it. And make it thorough or it won't count.:p

ALL TOO GLADLY. BTW I've used Vista Business, so these statements are halfway informed.

1. Comparing XP and Vista on the same system, Vista is noticeably and comparatively SLOW. I am typing this from a university q6600 with 4GB of RAM with Vista x86. It is slower than the e6600's with 2GB on XP from last year. I tap my fingers waiting for apps to open damnit. I don't have any benchmarks, but a real world test...

My old Athlon XP 3200+ (non- 64 bit processor mind you) @ 2.2ghz compresses/decompresses .zips and .rar faster than my friend's Core2Duo @ 2.0ghz with 2gb shared RAM/Vram. We unzipped the same file. I beat her.

I think the worst thing MS ever pulled was convincing people that its massive memory usage offers a performance "increase." I hear that superfetching does not always release memory in the way it's supposed to, so that may be the culprit. Which leads me to the fact that...

2. You have to spend $$ to buy extra RAM just to used their damned OS. Which is really annoying, because Vista is already

2. EXPENSIVE. Enough said.

3. It's "improved" and "cleaned up" interface is just XP's reshuffled. You will find yourself hunting for simple commands in Vista and MSO 2007. They tried to improve what wasn't broken, and in fact made it more difficult to use.

4. DRM. DRM. DRM. MS sold its soul (and ours) to Sony et al. It hogs resources. To make things worse, it has a bad reputation for breaking legit videos and music as well as High Def Audio for those files. If I used Vista as a Home Entertainment System and found this out after shelling out $400+ I'd be pissed. I guess MS forgot that we were their customers, not the Digital Entertainment Companies that pay them millions to block our media and invade our privacy. Here is a great article for the reading: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

5. Coercive marketing. It's a bad product that people didn't buy. So why not force us, right? Let's stop making security patches for XP, only release DX10 for Vista, etc. Fookers didn't learn their lesson from IBM and Apple. If another mainstream OS comes along that works with all of my stuff, I am jumping ship in a HEARTBEAT BECAUSE I **HATE** BILL G.
----------------------------------------
Perks of Vista?

6. DX10. I think thats why most people buy it.

7. It comes at a performance price, but at least the GUI is pertty. But this is not a good reason for any sensible person to buy this.

8. Firewall handles incoming/outgoing now. I've got a better idea. Download a free, non MS firewall.

9. I'm not a laptop user so this means nothing to me, but a few friends tell me there are improvements to the way it handles wireless networks.

10. Upcoming security patches, and increasing driver support. Used to be a lot of complaints about drivers, but I dont hear/read so many anymore.

Those are my reasons. There are more for me not to buy it. But that's just me.

[jdrom17]

ALL TOO GLADLY. BTW I've used Vista Business, so these statements are halfway informed.

1. Comparing XP and Vista on the same system, Vista is noticeably and comparatively SLOW. I am typing this from a university q6600 with 4GB of RAM with Vista x86. It is slower than the e6600's with 2GB on XP from last year. I tap my fingers waiting for apps to open damnit. I don't have any benchmarks, but a real world test...

That copy of Vista probably doesn't have SP1 and it's probably full of sh*tty software that the university put on it to prevent people from messing with things. Probably has some crappy antivirus too and just overall configured poorly.

Vista and XP both run equally fast on my PC. It's by no means laggy in Vista.

[Comixion]

ALL TOO GLADLY. BTW I've used Vista Business, so these statements are halfway informed.

1. Comparing XP and Vista on the same system, Vista is noticeably and comparatively SLOW. I am typing this from a university q6600 with 4GB of RAM with Vista x86. It is slower than the e6600's with 2GB on XP from last year. I tap my fingers waiting for apps to open damnit. I don't have any benchmarks, but a real world test...

My old Athlon XP 3200+ (non- 64 bit processor mind you) @ 2.2ghz compresses/decompresses .zips and .rar faster than my friend's Core2Duo @ 2.0ghz with 2gb shared RAM/Vram. We unzipped the same file. I beat her.

I think the worst thing MS ever pulled was convincing people that its massive memory usage offers a performance "increase." I hear that superfetching does not always release memory in the way it's supposed to, so that may be the culprit. Which leads me to the fact that...

2. You have to spend $$ to buy extra RAM just to used their damned OS. Which is really annoying, because Vista is already

2. EXPENSIVE. Enough said.

3. It's "improved" and "cleaned up" interface is just XP's reshuffled. You will find yourself hunting for simple commands in Vista and MSO 2007. They tried to improve what wasn't broken, and in fact made it more difficult to use.

4. DRM. DRM. DRM. MS sold its soul (and ours) to Sony et al. It hogs resources. To make things worse, it has a bad reputation for breaking legit videos and music as well as High Def Audio for those files. If I used Vista as a Home Entertainment System and found this out after shelling out $400+ I'd be pissed. I guess MS forgot that we were their customers, not the Digital Entertainment Companies that pay them millions to block our media and invade our privacy. Here is a great article for the reading: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

5. Coercive marketing. It's a bad product that people didn't buy. So why not force us, right? Let's stop making security patches for XP, only release DX10 for Vista, etc. Fookers didn't learn their lesson from IBM and Apple. If another mainstream OS comes along that works with all of my stuff, I am jumping ship in a HEARTBEAT BECAUSE I **HATE** BILL G.
----------------------------------------
Perks of Vista?

6. DX10. I think thats why most people buy it.

7. It comes at a performance price, but at least the GUI is pertty. But this is not a good reason for any sensible person to buy this.

8. Firewall handles incoming/outgoing now. I've got a better idea. Download a free, non MS firewall.

9. I'm not a laptop user so this means nothing to me, but a few friends tell me there are improvements to the way it handles wireless networks.

10. Upcoming security patches, and increasing driver support. Used to be a lot of complaints about drivers, but I dont hear/read so many anymore.

Those are my reasons. There are more for me not to buy it. But that's just me.

I had to ask.......................:p

[Phoenix64d]

It does have SP1, most of the security settings are done through Windows, and its slower all the same like I said before. The school hasn't changed the software on the computer (aside from getting newer versions).

I'm guessing your 4GB buffers the impact. But the abundance of benchmarks that show that many apps perform slower on Vista than XP on an identical comp notwithstanding, the best way is to put an XP system and a Vista system side by side so you can see it with your own eyes.

[JoshKorn12]

ALL TOO GLADLY. BTW I've used Vista Business, so these statements are halfway informed.

1. Comparing XP and Vista on the same system, Vista is noticeably and comparatively SLOW. I am typing this from a university q6600 with 4GB of RAM with Vista x86. It is slower than the e6600's with 2GB on XP from last year. I tap my fingers waiting for apps to open damnit. I don't have any benchmarks, but a real world test...

My old Athlon XP 3200+ (non- 64 bit processor mind you) @ 2.2ghz compresses/decompresses .zips and .rar faster than my friend's Core2Duo @ 2.0ghz with 2gb shared RAM/Vram. We unzipped the same file. I beat her.

I think the worst thing MS ever pulled was convincing people that its massive memory usage offers a performance "increase." I hear that superfetching does not always release memory in the way it's supposed to, so that may be the culprit. Which leads me to the fact that...

2. You have to spend $$ to buy extra RAM just to used their damned OS. Which is really annoying, because Vista is already

2. EXPENSIVE. Enough said.

3. It's "improved" and "cleaned up" interface is just XP's reshuffled. You will find yourself hunting for simple commands in Vista and MSO 2007. They tried to improve what wasn't broken, and in fact made it more difficult to use.

4. DRM. DRM. DRM. MS sold its soul (and ours) to Sony et al. It hogs resources. To make things worse, it has a bad reputation for breaking legit videos and music as well as High Def Audio for those files. If I used Vista as a Home Entertainment System and found this out after shelling out $400+ I'd be pissed. I guess MS forgot that we were their customers, not the Digital Entertainment Companies that pay them millions to block our media and invade our privacy. Here is a great article for the reading: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

5. Coercive marketing. It's a bad product that people didn't buy. So why not force us, right? Let's stop making security patches for XP, only release DX10 for Vista, etc. Fookers didn't learn their lesson from IBM and Apple. If another mainstream OS comes along that works with all of my stuff, I am jumping ship in a HEARTBEAT BECAUSE I **HATE** BILL G.
----------------------------------------
Perks of Vista?

6. DX10. I think thats why most people buy it.

7. It comes at a performance price, but at least the GUI is pertty. But this is not a good reason for any sensible person to buy this.

8. Firewall handles incoming/outgoing now. I've got a better idea. Download a free, non MS firewall.

9. I'm not a laptop user so this means nothing to me, but a few friends tell me there are improvements to the way it handles wireless networks.

10. Upcoming security patches, and increasing driver support. Used to be a lot of complaints about drivers, but I dont hear/read so many anymore.

Those are my reasons. There are more for me not to buy it. But that's just me.

1. How is slower? When is it slower? Compare the services running on both machines. I ran Windows XP 32 bit on my machine(specs below) from December to June, then I put Vista(Home Premium x64) on the system after that. I'd say that if anything, some applications load faster(most likely due to the caching).

I hate to break it to you, but unzipping(decompressing) is a HDD intense activity more so than it is a processor intensive. If the HDDs aren't identical(with no issues either) than the test would not be fair.

2a. Name an operating system(windows based) that hasn't required more memory than the previous system. Then your argument will be valid. God forbid new software have higher requirements. I bet you don't complain when they raise the requirements for games. Operating systems are no different.

2b.(You have two 2's) For the most part the pricing was very similar to the P release. The only exception to that would be Ultimate, but that version is more of the a la carte version than anything else.

3.What are these simple commands that you have to hunt for? I'd like to see that. The built in search feature that doubles as a run command is probably the best thing I've ever seen them do.

4. DRM you say? Show me a file you've been unable to play because of the DRM "restrictions" that are in vista. If anything, it's good that they did this because if they didn't you'd be where linux is right now. They can't legally play DVD/HD-DVD/Bluray movies. That would mean that the average consumer(which is who everyone should be focused on) would have to either pay MORE money to get things to work, or they would just not be able to use it at all. I have 220GB of movie rips, 167GB tv shows, 23GB of MP3.....all of which play just fine on my Vista PC. I have yet to see how DRM has "slowed" or limited my playback by any shape or form.

5. Ummm...show me where Microsoft said they are going to stop releasing security updates for XP anytime soon. Every article out there states that it will be 2014, by then Windows 7 will be out with rumors of the its predecessor floating about. DX 10 vista only, it's not the first time a feature was Windows version specific. DX 10 really hasn't made that much of an impact to begin with. Hell, DX 11 is supposed to be out with Windows 7, might as well forget DX 10.

6. Most people buy it because of DX 10? I could ask every one of the customers I help at work and I bet you 9/10 of them would give me a blank stare if I asked them what DX 10 was. Do I think people overall prefer it to XP(at first use)? No, I think they'd rather have a product they are comfortable with(this happens with everything). Over time they normally see the benefits of using Vista and begin to like it. Networking for the average user is 10x easier in Vista than it is in XP. In XP you basically had to know what you were doing in order to get anything accomplished.

7. Yes, at first there was a performance hit at first. That performance gap is no where near what it used to be. You also have to take into consideration that most apps weren't designed to run on Vista and therefore could be adding to that issue. As more and more apps have code specifically for vista, that gap is disappearing. How is that any different than GFX companies tweaking drivers over time? If you want more numbers, here they are.
http://tinyurl.com/59qn5t

8. Why download a 3rd party firewall? To tell you the truth, a PROPERLY configured windows firewall is just as good, if not better. Why? Because when 3rd party firewalls become corrupted(IE the drivers they install and what not) It can totally kill your network connection. Sometimes to the point where you have to replace the winsock files with good copies from another computer. I've seen ever firewall company under the sun have this issue at one time or another. I've only seen 1 corrupted windows firewall. Software firewalls are a pile of crap anyway. I'll take a hardware firewall over that any day of the week.

Mainly that's an XP problem, but that's because Vista is smart enough to solve these types of issues on its own.

9. Wireless networking is much easier for the user. It's truly the first OS they have released with the wireless user in mind. It is the future of technology, you can only expect it to improve.

10. Drivers/software compatibility really falls upon the company providing the product. If they can't get their act together and get with MS before a operating system releases, they'll hurt their customers. Look at Nvidia's drivers when vista came out, it reminded me of ATI's older days.

Don't believe the uneducated hype against any product. #1 thing you have to remember, most the people in this world don't research issues for themselves and rely on being spoon fed info(even if it's bias/incorrect).

[ElrichMeister]

Ive grown to like vista over XP, i have no issues with performance, hardware, and software. Networking in Vista is so much easier, thats why i switched all my computers in my house to Vista. The Mediacenter software is amazing, vastly superior to the Xp Mediacenter. I believe most of the issues that people complain about are Business IT, because they have their custom software which was created for XP. For consumers Vista runs pretty darn well, if you are updated. And one more thing MSO 2007 i love now, once you find where all the options are at, it becomes alot easier to use.