Vista Myths & Facts

[ahanix1989]

Alright, some people are rather wary of Vista... post any rumors you've heard about it, and see if it's true of the final version.

Couple easy ones

Memory Upgrades
Mac vs PC ad makes a big deal over how many PCs require a memory upgrade to run Vista. True, because your mom's 5 year old Gateway is going to have very little memory, because memory was much more expensive back then. Even an iMac will require a memory upgrade to run newer versions of Mac OS X. A $20 stick now may have cost $200 back then. Does your computer need to go into a shop for a memory upgrade? No. If it truely requires an upgrade to run Vista, the warranty is probably expired already, and you can do the upgrade yourself. You just need to take the sidepanel off, and press the new compatible stick in.

Wow, look at that -- 512MB of PC3200 DDR memory, $39.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231078


Application Incompatibility
Some programs are incompatible. True. Any you're going to use? Highly unlikely.
How often did you run into a program that refused to run on XP? That's about how often you'll hit one that won't run on Vista. I do a LOT of random stuff on my computer, using specialized programs, and I've still only encountered about... 5 programs that weren't Vista-compatible. The only one that couldn't be circumvented was MacDrive, which integrates into the operating system

User Access Control
That annoying prompt. Can EASILY be disabled ( C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k %windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Pol icies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f ), and only really bothers you when you first start using your new computer, installing all your programs. Once your stuff is installed, it will rarely bother you.

Stability
Rock solid. 100% of the crashes I've had were hardware-related (Video card power cord coming loose, old power supply fried, running on only 300 watts). My Media Center PC in my closet has been running 24/7 for the past three months, never once required a reboot. By comparison, the nice new iMacs at school are about as crash-happy as WinME was for me.

"Oh noes, wont teh animations slow mine pc down?!"
Hell no. The fading in Windows XP was slow and glitchy because it was being rendered by software. By comparison, the 3D effects in Vista are being done in DirectX, the same API used for 3D gaming. All the effects are hardware-accelerated, using your video card's onboard graphics processor.



Alright, I have to go to Mor's house, to move some stuff to her sister's apartment. Peace.

[Rapscallion]

Solid fact - when setting up a new PC from PC World, one apparently designed to work with Vista, it hung and required hard rebooting on three separate occasions.

User access control needing disabling? Er, that may be easy to you, but would avergae Joe or Jemima from the street know it?

I've found that the RoadAngel (satnav and road speed camera warning device) updating software will not work with the mobile device updating/connection system in Vista. It's being worked on, but if activesync worked on Vista then things would be peachy.

The inbuilt games on it are far better, though. Mahjong Titans for the win!

Rapscallion

[BlackIronCrown]

The main problem I see with Vista is drivers, drivers, drivers. Drivers for most hardware are either a) currently alpha/beta or b) not bloody written yet. Of course, the reason for this is Microsoft's rapid changes between one thing and the next when developing the OS.

Thus I wait for SP1 for it. By then, drivers should be up to speed.

[ahanix1989]

Hmm, surprisingly, I have no driver problems. Even crappy old drivers for hardware that was never supported by it's company (such as a Kyocera cell phone data cable) work

[HawaiianShirts]

Thus I wait for SP1 for it. By then, drivers should be up to speed.

Thank you for realizing that any service pack released for Vista would begin with Service Pack 1. I have had several customers tell me they would wait until Service Pack 2. Some of them may have known what they were talking about and meant it or were making a weak joke, but I think most are associating SP2 with XP and assuming that any fix released would be called "Service Pack 2" as if that's the technical name for it. I think we can reasonably expect some kind of significant release, but there's no way of knowing if they'll have to go as far as a second service pack.

I have one myth:
Vista requires no less that 2gigs of RAM to function.
Not true. Vista Home Basic will work on 512mb. Sure, Media Player will make songs skip and jump, and more than three windows open make the system crawl, but it works. 1gig is good enough for most average home users' needs, provided they keep the system clean and free of all the stupid junk people like to install. 2gigs certainly doesn't hurt, but it is not absolutely necessary.

(Speaking of junk... I saw an XP computer the other day in for diagnostics. The customer complained it was running slow. He had two anti-virus programs running, but no spyware protection. His system was infected with tons of spyware. He also had two "desktop buddies" running, an animated mouse pointer, and seven toolbars in Internet Explorer. He'd been complaining that the computer was running slowly. Not surprising with all that on 384mb of RAM. And then he added that his browser kept redirecting him to porn sites whenever he tried to go to Google or eBay.)

But back on topic: Perhaps someone here can clear something up for me. I can't seem to get a straight answer regarding Microsoft Office. Naturally Office '07 works on Vista. Some people tell me Office '03 or earlier will not work at all. Some say only Office '07 and '03 work, but nothing earlier than that. Some say only Office '03 will install but will not function properly and cause system crashes. Who's right? I haven't had the chance to figure it out yet.

[digilight]

I would point out though, that first editions of anything are prone to problems. It happened with XP, 98, 95, etc, etc (See mention of SP1....god it was tempting to say SP2, but my back hurts and I can't duck fast enough right now).

As far as software being compatible or not. I have a friend who uses some rather pricey and specialized software for his screenprinting and sign making business (around 2 grand for each of the two apps), I also have a friend who owns a property management company who uses a very specialized accounting type software for the associations. THey have both decided not to upgrade to Vista yet, simply because they can't afford to to upgrade the software and data bases IF they are not compatable.

I won't upgrade myself in the shop for the same reason, I wont upgrade at home because i'm cheap and lazy. And VEESTA (sorry I had to) has no service pack available yet. Give it time and the problems will dissapear.

[TNT]

This is another one of those conversations that makes me feel old...

Way back when, I bought an IBM computer with 2mb of RAM and Windows 3.1. Most people argued that 2mb was the bare minimum, and 4mb was the real minimum. At $100 a megabyte, I couldn't afford anything like that... but I did compromise and go to 3mb. Dang, that 386SX ran a lot faster then...

[ahanix1989]

Exactly, memory was a LOT more expensive in the past, which is why manufacturers skimped on it. Your old Bondi Blue iMac only has 64MB of memory, not nearly enough to sufficiently run Mac OS X. Which requires... omg, an upgrade.


I know for a fact that Office 97, 2003, and 2007 work. I've used them all on Vista (depending on which CD I happen to grab first, when I just need Word)

[BlackIronCrown]

Way back when, I bought an IBM computer with 2mb of RAM and Windows 3.1.

My first comp back in the day was a custom-built job - a 286 with 1024k RAM and a 10MB HDD. EGA video. Hot stuff for the time. I was able to run DOS/Win 3.1 on it. Don't ask me how; to this day I have no clue how I managed it. It did run slow, but damn...

[Dreamstalker]

Solid fact - when setting up a new PC from PC World, one apparently designed to work with Vista, it hung and required hard rebooting on three separate occasions.

My mom's "Vista ready!" laptop with 1.5GB of RAM is still dog-slow, and refuses to come out of hibernation (hard reboot is needed). As for the UAC, I've tried every fix I know of to get rid of it, and it still annoys us.

BTW, anyone know a good free AV for Vista?

[SongsOfDragons]

Personally?....I'm happy with XP for now. This laptop's 6 months old and apparently is Vista Compatible buuuut my vague glimpses of the OS in ToysRUs a while back looked...I dunno, kinda ugly. I wouldn't go out of my way to get it but when this baby dies and I'm looking for a new one, if it comes with Vista I'll just go 'meh' and deal with it.

[Dreamstalker]

Yeah...I need a new laptop right now, but can't seem to find anything without Vista (I hear one version of Vista allows you to downgrade to XP, but it's Business Premium or something which I do not have the money for).

[Thrifty]

Mac vs PC ad makes a big deal over how many PCs require a memory upgrade to run Vista. True, because your mom's 5 year old Gateway is going to have very little memory,


My aunt bought a new computer, with vista, and had to go buy more memory because the computer was running so slow because it didn't have enough memory to run vista efficently

[Crazyredhead]

I'm waiting for the service pack for Vista, I just don't know if my computer will. My little man broke my NIC card CD, so if my computer crashes I won't have internet, unless I want to go out and buy a new NIC card for 98SE. System Suite antivirus decided to drop 98SE from there supported list, the program used to work great. System Mechanic pro7, doens't work worth the damn. My computer was very slow and froze up alot with it. Uninstalled it and it works great.

I want/need a new computer but the funds are lacking. I'm a little hesitant on the new Vista, I haven't seen Vista listed on very many compatable list for many programs, and I don't want anything that is going to make me look like a fool for going with the most current electronics.

[Mr. Rager!]

I bought a new laptop about 2 months ago... it came with Vista Premium already installed.

I've actually been really happy with Vista. It takes some time on getting used to some of the stuff, but overall, it's been good. It runs smoothly, and quick. Of course, I do have 2GB of RAM.

XP was really a huge step from previous Windows editions. But, I find Vista to be a huge step up from XP. I guess you just need to make sure that your computer is up for it. We all went through the same thing when it came to upgrading to XP, right?

[Crosshair]

The thing for me is, what does Vista offer that XP doesn't already?

Users who don't know better can still FUBAR the OS easily enough.
Useless eye candy.
Moving stuff around for no good reason.
Bloated hardware requirements. (2GB, are you F***ing kidding me??? It's an operating system, not a Photorealistic video game. I want it to take as FEW system resources as possible.)
DRM stuff that nobody wants and eats over 100+ MB of RAM.
Vista often pegs the CPU at 100% for no reason whatsoever, I didn't know Windows Explorer took so much CPU.:confused:

I found a quote that descrimes my reaction as well as the reaction of many other people I have talked to.

"Windows Vista: The 'Meh' Starts Now!"

[RichS]

DRM stuff that nobody wants and eats over 100+ MB of RAM.
Vista often pegs the CPU at 100% for no reason whatsoever, I didn't know Windows Explorer took so much CPU.:confused:

That's the DRM & 'Genuine Advantage' ;) consuming CPU cycles. One podcast I heard said that Vista checks 30 times every second to see if it's compliant. :rolleyes:

Only way I'll even touch Vista is if DX10 games become plentiful - then, I'm dual-booting XP & Vista. XP support will be around until 2012.

When support ends, I'll be forcing myself to use Linux, probably Ubuntu. I'm fed up with DRM. Only hurts the consumer, never stops the pirates.

[Mr. Rager!]

I think a lot of what people are reading when it comes to the DRM is all a myth.

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877_11-6156413.html

That's a pretty good article on Vista.

[gbm85]

That DRM crap is only related to playing high-definition video. If your computer is so lacking in power that you're worried about Vista's hardware requirements, I seriously doubt you've invested in an $800+ HD-DVD or Bluray drive. Oh, and I doubt you have 20+ GB HighDef rips just sitting around on your hard drive either.

Running all programs without admin privileges by default, even if running as an "administrator" user. Yeah, that's nothing new...

Running Internet Explorer in protected mode by default (with even less privileges than a "limited" user. Nothing new there either.

Warning you every time you do something that could harm the operating system or installed programs. I've seen that before...

Offering hardware-level drive encryption without requiring any third-party applications. Yeah, they've done that before. That's why you never hear about stolen laptops with personal information on them...

Allowing you to save wireless settings onto a flash drive and configure the rest of your network just by plugging it into your other machines. Yeah, they've had that for ages.

ReadyBoost, which allows you to dynamically allocate page files to external disks such as flash drives or USB hard drives, just by clicking a single button with no reboot required. Sounds very familiar.

And the list goes on.

[reformedwaitress]

Fact from what I've seen: if you are annoyed by the Mac OS (I can't explain why, but the little spinning things at the bottom and such just piss me off) and if you hate it when things are dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, Vista's probably not the OS for you cause it'll probably just piss you off.

Is it possible to make it look like the old Windows classic, like you could on XP? That's the only way I can deal with XP was with taking the XP specific display features away. If that is possible, Vista might not piss me off. If not? I want absolutely nothing to do with it. :p