Vista..

[draggar]

I'm installing a beta version (beta for work) of Windows Vista on my other laptop at work (the one I use for high demand applications - data recovery, etc..).

Wish me luck.

[Geek King]

Other than some possible compatability issues with older hardware, you should be fine. You do have 2GB RAM on the machine, right?

[dendawg]

Beta??

Vista's been out retail for just about 2 years.....are you sure you don't mean Windows 7?

[Hanzoku]

I believe he meant by 'beta for my work' was his company has not started using Vista yet, and he's testing if all the company apps work correctly and quickly enough under Vista.

Vista's OKish, as soon as you turn off any and all account security. With that idiocy turned on it's hard to get a lot done without constant warnings and alerts.

[Broomjockey]

Vista's OKish, as soon as you turn off any and all account security. With that idiocy turned on it's hard to get a lot done without constant warnings and alerts.

Actually, only during initial set-up. As a test, I turned it back on a while ago, and I'd actually forgot about it until a week ago when I was trying out a new program.

[Fire_on_High]

You game on it, BJ? It gave me unholy issues with a lot of games, things like screwing up patches and cfg/ini file changes if not ran as admin. Much happier with Vista once I killed it off.

[Broomjockey]

You game on it, BJ?

Do I ga.... Geez. That's why I built the darned thing! I do almost nothing on it but game and watch DVDs (soon to be at the same time. I just need to get that second monitor finally). Crysis, TF2, Mirror's Edge, EQII, Assassin's Creed, Red Alert 3, Fallout 3. A decent cross-section of tech-heavy games, and not a one's given me issues except for occasionally (first run only) being asked if I'm sure I want them to connect to the internet. I don't even need to do the "Run As Admin" (though that might be because it's an Admin account ) Which games are giving you issues? Is it mainly older ones, or from a certain publisher maybe? Any sort of common denominator?

[Fire_on_High]

Basically all of them that I wanted to make any changes on, but you just answered the question...you ran on an admin account :-)

Killing UAC off pretty much stopped my problems, but it was literally everything. It would roll back any changes I made on things like res, key bindings, or volume as soon as the game was exited, unless I used "run as admin" each time I launched it.

Got quite annoying as I'd gone from an older Athlon based system with a 19" monitor I kept in 1024x768, to a C2Q based with a huge 1920x1200 monitor. At the very least, everything I copied over needed the res adjusted properly for that thing, and on top of it Everquest needed a fair bit of fussing with GUI spacing, fonts, and the like to be halfway usable. Which...promptly dumped the second I switched toons or logged out, til I clued in about the UAC thing.

[Broomjockey]

you ran on an admin account :-)

Killing UAC off pretty much stopped my problems, but it was literally everything. It would roll back any changes I made on things like res, key bindings, or volume as soon as the game was exited, unless I used "run as admin" each time I launched it.

... Why wouldn't you run an admin account? I can actually think of a few reasons, but I'm curious as to know what yours is, if you're okay with my asking. Personally, I'm the only person to touch my computer, or the person is supervised literally every second they're touching it, so there's no reason to do anything else.

On a slightly related note, there's still been a few things that I've had to do "Run as administrator" for. Usually older programs though, which need compatibility mode.

[Fire_on_High]

... Why wouldn't you run an admin account? I can actually think of a few reasons, but I'm curious as to know what yours is, if you're okay with my asking. Personally, I'm the only person to touch my computer, or the person is supervised literally every second they're touching it, so there's no reason to do anything else.

On a slightly related note, there's still been a few things that I've had to do "Run as administrator" for. Usually older programs though, which need compatibility mode.

It *is* an admin account. Hence the fuckwittery being so baffling :-) But with UAC on it was "run as admin" every time or nothing.

No idea, don't ask me why, there's no reason why turning UAC off should've had the results it did. Still makes no sense, but it worked...lol.

EDIT: Maybe the older stuff expects an account named "Administrator" and since mine is a named account with admin privs, it freaked a bit? Hell, maybe some of my permissions are simply weird due to how many games I knew would tolerate being copied rather than installed.

[Broomjockey]

No idea, don't ask me why, there's no reason why turning UAC off should've had the results it did. Still makes no sense, but it worked...lol.

Weird, you're right. I can't even see why it'd behave differently on my machine than yours (installed the original Red Alert once, didn't need to do any run-as-adminning on it), but my opinion when it comes to stuff like this is "Who cares why it works, so long as it does."

[draggar]

Yes, it's a beta version for work, XP is still the standard at work.

Honestly, I'm surprised it's going OK, although all I've done so far has been using IE to stream in web radio.

[burzikak]

To be honest you are better off waiting and going with windows 7 (it should be out this year). I'm running win7 beta at home and at work and it is a hell of a lot better than vista.

[Broomjockey]

To be honest you are better off waiting and going with windows 7 (it should be out this year).

Absolutely no business on the face of this planet that isn't doing software development is going to use a newly released OS, and even the developers would only have it on a limited number of machines.