I got vista business a few days before launch and was excited to have it. I knew from the start not to install over xp so I got partition magic and made a new partition. Installation went fine, no problems there, it was actually kinda quick. When I saw the desktop and the new look I was pretty excited and couldn't wait to fool around with everything. Here are my thoughts on what I have done thus far. IE: IE is basically the latest version of firefox with the ability to load a mini image of all pages in one window with some missing options. I noticed that there seems to be more protections but thats about it. Nothing really special to make you wanna switch if you have a browser you like already. Firefox has some extra options that make it a bit more convenient. Games: I didn't really give the games dept. a full run because I didn't want to spend time installing all the apps. I did however run into my xp partition and load up Max Payne 2. I noticed that everything seemed to work fine, the frames weren't bogged down and it loaded. Everything was fine except sound and subtitles. After a few minutes the sound just cuts and won't come back until I turn the game back on. Everytime the same thing happens, sounds works for 3 mins then cuts off. Other than that, its fine. I also checked out the games explorer and the default games that come with windows like minesweeper and solitaire. Games explorer is just an explorer window that list in different views games that you have played with little details like the kind you would find under a mp3 file, such as publisher, version, year and so on. You can also add games as it appears that games explorer doesn't always automatically grab your games for you. Next I checked out the default games. There are a few new editions to the list but nothing great. New is purples place, a title for kids, made up of simple mini games. Next is a game where you have multiple balls on the screen and you use your mouse to draw walls to deflect the balls into holes. It was fun for awhile and a bit challenging. Then there is titan chess. What can I say its chess, its 3d and its titanic. There you have it. Since I suck at chess it was just a matter of time since the cpu beat my ass on normal without losing any vital pieces. After this brief venture I truly believe that it will be useless to game inside of vista for the first six months of its release as no dx10 games will be available during that time. Look and Feel: Like I said before it was nice to do things in vista. It had a new look and feel, it had a aero theme just to make you feel special and you do for the first few hours. Some common file types have new looks and by default all the icons on the desktop are bigger. More view types are added into explorer but again, nothing really special to make you want to use those new view types. The highly talked about sidebar throws up a few items without you asking it to and by default it put a feeder reader, a clock and a gallery of pictures that I have never seen before. I found the clock useless since I have one in the taskbar and for the life of me I could not configure the feed reader. It has options but you can't choose what feeds you actually want. You can only add or remove the preselected microsoft feeds. Something annoying yet deletable is how everytime you do anything basically other than surf the net and shut down you are asked for permission to continue. I didn't mind it though because you simply have to click yes or no to continue with your action. The start bar has been revamped as well. No longer does your programs list cascade into a list that takes half the screen, it just loads right into start panel. Imagine in xp where your recently used programs were. If you click on all programs, the list simply opens in the that area and works well with small font and more scrolling. The control panel has a lot options listed and a lot of the new items just appear to be things from vista that were just hard to find. For instance there is now a icon that plugs you right into the file type configuration so you can choose how to open certain file types instead of the method of going thru the explorer options in xp. All the shine and glitter of the new look and feel will not keep you very long. Issues: I just wrote a little essay about one problem regarding sound that can be found here :http://www.hardwareforums.com/vista-turned-off-my-music-sounds-then-plays -shutdown-theme-when-i-turn-off-17089/ In case you don't want to read it, I basically go into to detail about how vista cut off my music while I was listening to something I downloaded a long time ago. Another issue that I'm having is that the sound from my tv tuner refuses to work. It will work for 5 minutes or so then nothing. Now when I turn it on, I get no sound at all. I'm not sure what the issue is and haven't researched it yet so I can't say for sure although I have heard that a lot of hardware will not work with vista. The software issue besides the one in my other write up is that alcohol 120 no longer works. I have a older version and it just didn't make the cut. Overall: I have had vista for almost a month and have used it for half a week. Why? cause right now xp is just better. My games work, my tv works and I have no issues with software. I have not used vista in some time, that would in part explain why this writeup is not so thorough. I just couldn't remember everything. The shine and glitter of vista corroded away withing hours of getting it. I got it friday afternoon and was 90% done with vista friday night. I'm not lying. I'm not saying that vista completely sucks but at this rate I may only use it for dx10 games. I also noticed that vista takes really long to shut down and when I say really long I mean it. I have a 3.4 ghz p4 ee with 2 gigs ram and it takes between 6-10 minutes to shut down ( estimate from the few times I have shut down). It takes so long to shut down that you will think your comp froze and will end up doing a hard shut down. Also vista froze up on one of the first times I started it. Another thing that makes me quite uncomfortable is vista is always connected to the net. I know it sounds a little crazy cause with internet nowadays pc's are always connected but I honestly feel like vista may be monitoring some activity and when my music cutoff and went dead I knew something was up. In my honest opinion I feel that vista did not come from the demands of the user but the wants of the music and movie industries. Vista is nothing more than a DRM tool. I was enticed by the pretty pictures and nice colors but all in all Vista is a visual upgrade. Thats why I was done with it in one day. You get it, install it, see its pretty and thats it. If you look at the state of things with music and movies you will realize that vista exist to get a tighter control on multimedia with DRM. There is no apparent need to switch to vista. Microsoft made reasons like security and dx10 but thats just how desperate they are. XP could have had dx10 and if it did, I doubt any gamer would touch vista. Just about every analyst sees that no one will update to vista immediately and the only way MS will spread the vista seed is by packaging it with new pc's. I think that right now vista is not a necessity but in about 5-10 years when xp gets old and people can't hack it you will see that either MS will have won or some other company will step up and start taking shares from MS. For the time being save your money and buy something useful. Vista won't be useful for another year or so for most and even then who knows what tricks MS will have up their sleeve.
THats true...VISTA is nothing more than just a GUI update to XP. Microsoft always comes out with an idea to force their product in the market just like their MS Office hah:
Thanks. I thought I would let people know what vista is really about. I know there are a few people excited about it as was I and I can imagine that they too would be let down to see that vista for the time being is nothing more than a pretty gui. Also I didn't mention it before but I played around with MP11 also. Its nothing new or special. They didn't even take the time to add any new visualizations, the lazy bastards! Just about everything is the same except the layout. All the same functions, options and everything. I would like to see a list from MS about whats new in MP11 because the only thing I saw was a integrated store for buying music I guess. I have no idea what the hell MS was doing for all these years to make vista but since they are forcing it on people with stuff like dx10, people will upgrade sooner or later.
I've been testing Vista RC1 release on AMD 64 Venice, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9550, 40 gb hdd. Here's what i've found. Built-in DVD writer too slow. No good for writing multi-section dvd. So i have to put everything i want to write in one folder and write them at once. I can't find any options for finalizing the dvd/cd. If any of you have found something plz let me know. I used vista built-in tools coz Nero 6 is not compatible. Zip : too slow as well. While zippin/unzipping, better leave it run without touching anything. it can hang. WinRAR works well with vista. Windows Media Player 11. AS usual, it sucks. DivX doesn't work well with it. Don't be surprise to see the Media Player (Not Responding). Microsoft tried it's best to help it out. So I sent the error msg and the genius from Redmond found a solution. it says "Upgrade to Retail Copy so that they can help". File Sharing & Security is simplified. Consequently, it's too confusing. I shared a folder for everyone to read. Then to stop the share, it says "you could not stop sharing this folder", some files are still shared. I still don't know which files are still shared. No one is in the process of accessing the file in my network. Basically, what ever you share/unshare it always take "a few minutes". Delete & Cut : what ever you delete it calculates the time remaining and come up with something like 85 minutes to delete. Vista always makes sure the file deleted is not shared between other users. Once I got rid of some internet temp files and since then. everytime i log on, a box comes up to say something like the file is no longer shared if i delete it with buttons Continue & Cancel and nothing else. What ever you click it still shows up on the next log on. I have to put up with this message every time i log on. Any ideas? Program Uninstall : uninstalled program folders (from start menu) are not automatically removed. I had to manually delete it as they are all shared among users. RAM : Physical memory taken is always 500+ MB. That's ok. but I only have 1GB bank, ..so thinking to buy another stick. Browsers : IE 7 ok. except there's room to improve. So i use Firefox instead. works perfectly fine with vista. Windows firewall : as usual very basic. Sound and Graphics : Way better than Xp. Good luck everyone.
Ok, I am going to try give a propor experience of what Vista is like for me in here, and I have to admit, I might of been wrong about Vista so sorry to everyone who I have pissed off with my rants about how vista is so good Ok, first of all I am going to talk about performance, Loading, shuttdown down, drivers etc... Well, I have always noticed one thing, the Installation of Windows Vista took allot longer than XP, yea it takes up like 6+ GB of HDD space, but this condiguration screen at boot thats like a slide show type thing was preety annoying, once I got onto the desktop, yea it was faster than XP, I noticed apps like WMP11 perform better under Vista but WMP11 is slightly different in Vista, one thing I couldent help noticing is when streaming videos online, when WMP11 loaded up, was on changing media for ages which was really annoying, allthough for compatability I found this great Codec Pack that makes WMP11 better: Ultimate Vista Codec Pack: Play Everything Thru WMP - WinBetaSecrets v3 Internet Explorer 7 Deffenitly is Faster in Vista than in XP, but then again these are litrally intergrated into Vista so thats possibly why they are more stable, but I dont use IE7 anyway, Opera FTW!!! I use a burning program called Deep Burner Pro, preety good, works well in Vista, seems to also be more responsive. On boot I had around 35% - 45%% of my ram used, I have 1GB of ram, for the first time ever I noticed that my 2.8Ghz overclock actually speeds up loading on boot, does quite abit in Vista. The main things that load on Boot that I have installed are dESKTOP Sidebar, ATi Display Drivers, SB X-Fi Drivers (better sound in Vista :s), yea, I stopped Windows sidebar from loading, sure it looks nice, but its a total waste of memory, I cant even find how to customize the RSS feed to load up thigns I want, any, Desktop Sidebar is something you should look at, better than Windows Sidebar, more features and uses less memory at the same time. At the moment I am running, clock widgit, weather widget, stock panel, performance panel, newsroom, quick launche, msn, search bar and its using around 6 - 12mb of ram, but currently I am in XP and its usually less in Vista, but I am using a better skin for it in XP so that may add to extra memory usage. Desktop Sidebar Home Page About this Shutdown, 6-10 mins? I dont understand that, running AMD Athlong 3700+ 2.2 ghz @ 2.8ghz here with 1GB of ram, shut down time is around 1-2 mins, still yea, 2 mins is slow . Anyway, Yea one of the main things that kept me using Vista was its look, some people find explorer messy and unorganised now, I personly like it allot better, also there is something about the overall picture quality, the desktop just seems so much more clear, sharper :s, more refreshing, I dont know why, maube just the enviroment, but anyway, yea i personly I think that the Graphics are allot better than XP, and also the welcome sounds, less annoying than in XP, but you can customze the welcome sounds in XP anyway to give you the same as Vista. There is Problem with the power saving, I find it quite annoying at times, I frequently hear one of my HDD's shutting off, and when it shuts off and I click on start, Explorer freezes whilst the HDD starts up, I wonder if the constant shutting down of a HDD cant damage it, I am guessing in the space of 8 hours, the same HDD shuts down around 40 times, but i guess I can stop it from shutting down in the power saving options, but every little bit of power saved is good About when deleting large files or copying large files, the Calculating Time Remaining really takes longer than in XP, but overall Transfer rate is the same as in XP. I noticed that even in XP when some programs were uninstalled that the entried in the start menu were still there and had to manually delete them. UAC (User Account Control): This is very annoying, I turned it off, the UAC prompts come up for more things than it really should, but UAC cane be turned off in User Settings, or just type UAC or User Account Control into the search on the Start Bar and it should come up. I have been using Windows Vista for around 5 weeks now, and it got very slot, was talking with a guy on MSN and he suggested deleting all the Tempory Files and this seemed to be a cause of slowing the system down, I deleted all the Tempory Files and it seems to work, got abit of performance back. I find the Disk Defragmentation program in Vista is not very good, does not show you the stats of the HDD's etc..., good alternative to this is Diskeeper, but it aint free. Control Panel: I dont like it really, and I dont like the classic view too, the XP Control Panel was easier to navigate. I also found some problems with loading web pages, my college uses this web interface called Novell Virtual Office, I found that this would not load in Internet Explorer at all, Opera Loads it perfectly in Vista but with Opera the download options are lsightly different and I have no options for downloading folders or my whole drive. Games: Ok... preety bad in the end, there seems to be a preety bad problem with AA/AF, I have made a thread on this to see if anyone else has the problem, basically, every games I tried when AA/AF was enabled in game just did not load, for example with Oblivion, there is jsut a black screen flickering, the back to desktop and greeted with a message "Oblivion Has Stopped Working", so I disabled AA/AF in the oblivion setup and loaded the game, works fine. Started Playing Battlefield 1942 again, in some places on maximum settings and using a hack so I got 1440x900 res I am experiencing extreme lag and its unplayable, but when I am playing BF1942 in XP Its flawless performance same for all other games. But with Oblivion, I was plesantly surprised, all maxxed out obviously with no HDR or AA/AF and running at 1440x900 and was workign brilliant, I was getting slight lag, but nothing that made the game unplayable, so that was grate in Vista. Another thing that will be putting Gamers off Vista is the fact that there currently is no EAX, I dont know if there ever will be in Vista, but i expect Creative will sort something out, I mean its one of the main things on Creative Cards for gaming. So really that sums up my Vista experience, if I could give it a rating, it would be aorunr 7/10. This thread should be stickied, would be very good for people who are thinking about upgrading to Vista
Basically, at the moment, Vista is SHI*. I have to admit that its more stable than xp and the Gui is really nice But its more slaggy and slower. Biggest issue, HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE COMPATIBILITY. my sound blaster live wasnt even detected and i couldn't install the drivers, so i searched and got modded drivers that were compatible. and now it says memory error. restarting in one minute. Fu**in crap Wait till service pack 1 at least.
