Is Vista really THAT bad?

rogerg (Roger) · #1 25-06-2008, 08:22 PM

G'day all,

I will be buying a new laptop in July. Dell XPS M1330 it looks like.

I will use it for some astronomy (CCDSoft, TheSky6, Gemini mount, Canon 350D, Q-Guider).

Is Vista really that bad as everyone makes out? I mean really, do I want to go to the trouble of nuking the laptop and installing XP when I get it? To be honest I'd prefer to have newer software than older (referring to the OS), if it works.

I'm getting the M1330 for portability, including battery life. Am I going to find a big improvement in performance if I nuke it and install XP instead of Vista? Is it really that bad??

Thanks,
Roger.

Tandum (Robin) · #2 25-06-2008, 08:50 PM

The real problem is microsoft have changed the security model for windows. In XP you run as an administrator which means you have access to anything and everything. In vista, everyone runs as a user/guest, and programmers program software as administrator. So, when you run said software, it may try and access areas of the registry or hardware which it does not have rights to do and it will crash and burn in a screaming heap.

In a lot of cases you can set the program to run with administrator rights or run it in xp compatabilty mode, but this does not work for everything. Closer to home, maxim claim on their web site that canon will not allow 3rd party control programs to control their cameras in vista, meaning they won't release details.

I have found it a lot easier to run xp on the laptop controlling the scope and doing everything else on a quad core Vista desktop. That way the laptop can be almost any old ****box. You'll soon see what does and doesn't work

leon · #3 25-06-2008, 08:56 PM

Yep, it is

Leon

Tandum (Robin) · #4 25-06-2008, 08:59 PM

hahahahahahahaa

Ric · #5 25-06-2008, 09:32 PM

Hi Roger, I have Vista Home edition on my laptop and this I purchased separately and loaded myself onto a clean laptop hard drive.

I did this after hearing and reading a lot of reports that the Vista editions that are loaded in the factory are the systems with all the faults and problems. whether this is true or not I can happily say that I have never encountered any problems at all with my system.

The main astro programs that I run are:

MaximDL with DSLR plugin.
Star Atlas Pro.
Registax V4
Astroplanner
Deep Sky Stacker
Meade Envisage
Paintshop Pro V10
DSUSB check

Everything has been running smoothly for over a year now and I very happy with the whole setup and it's happily intergrated with the Canon 400D, DSI II and the LX200R.

My laptop is an Acer Aspire Duo core 1.73GHz, 120GB HDD and 1GB ram which I'm also very happy with although if anything I would like to add another 1GB of ram to make it a bit speedier.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Omaroo (Chris Malikoff) · #6 25-06-2008, 10:10 PM

Roger - no, it isn't.

Like Ric, I'm more than happy with my Vista self-installation. As Ric did, I also tend to install systems myself on existing hardware that I have lying around. I've since updated to SP1 recently and all is still very stable. I've been running for nearly 2 years from Beta to now.

I personally think that it's way better than the loudest knockers want to let you know. One or two problems and they seem to want to emotionally and passionately condemn it for everyone, and often without really bothering to delve into it properly themselves - damn irresponsible if you ask me. ALL operating systems are compromises, and NONE work flawlessly across the board. I wouldn't touch XP for years because of the risks it posed to a mission-critical publishing workflow. Linux and Mac won the day for years in our camp.

It's worth some initial hassles - if you have any. Sure, the security model is different, but in my game (VERY expensive advertising between competing companies) we need tight security. I really don't mind being asked when I want to change, overwrite or update something - some consider the "inconvenience of it all" to be the devil. Come on. At least I haven't suffered from any virii - ever.

It's becoming truly plug and play for the newer hardware. Canon 350D? Plug it in - "Canon 350D installed" comes up ten seconds later. Same for my Nikons. Even my old Meade LPI was the same - I didn't have the original drivers on CD any more, which was a death sentence for the camera on XP, but on Vista it just said "installed" as soon as I plugged it in. Quite phenomenal.

It's so much better than XP in some regards, but I suspect we're going to get flamed for saying so. I use it day-in, day-out - professionally as an IT and development director within the publishing industry - and find it more than fine.

dugnsuz (Doug) · #7 25-06-2008, 10:43 PM

Roger,
I use it on a dual core desktop with 1Gig Ram (I know I know - minimalist),
it's so bloody slow.As others have said...it's a RAM hog.

But, regardless of the performance issues of my machine,and as an "everyday user" it looks like MS have produced a Mac Aqua interface clone sitting on top of a security paranoid version of XP!!!!

That's my opinion, I could be wrong!

ps...like the above, I haven't encountered any compatibility issues with my Astro software either so that's a plus!

Karlsson · #8 25-06-2008, 10:55 PM

I agree with Chris and Ric - in this family we have two laptops running on XP and two running on Vista ('Home' as well as 'Business'). Dad here is the maintenance bloke for all of them: Vista is fine, provided it runs on a machine meeting its minimum specs.

Admittedly I am not an imager, so I do not run any imaging software, but I do have some ancient versions of hairy mathematics software that have never posed a problem in Vista... it does tend to ask more questions than XP though, but many of them can be switched off.

Vista Business comes with the option to change to XP, but I never felt the need to do so - no complaints from me....

rogerg (Roger) · #9 25-06-2008, 10:59 PM

Thanks for the comments/opinnions guy's, much appreciated

vash (Ashley) · #10 26-06-2008, 01:31 PM

when I bought my laptop a while back I searched around and found a laptop that is fairly high spec that has both XP and Vista installations available, in the future I can upgrade to vista once all the problems that people complain about are fixed, but at the same time, everything I have runs fine in XP - guiding - processing does both with ease,

Why change if it works?

h0ughy (David) · #11 26-06-2008, 02:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Omaroo

Roger - no, it isn't.

Like Ric, I'm more than happy with my Vista self-installation. As Ric did, I also tend to install systems myself on existing hardware that I have lying around. I've since updated to SP1 recently and all is still very stable. I've been running for nearly 2 years from Beta to now.

I personally think that it's way better than the loudest knockers want to let you know. One or two problems and they seem to want to emotionally and passionately condemn it for everyone, and often without really bothering to delve into it properly themselves - damn irresponsible if you ask me. ALL operating systems are compromises, and NONE work flawlessly across the board. I wouldn't touch XP for years because of the risks it posed to a mission-critical publishing workflow. Linux and Mac won the day for years in our camp.

It's worth some initial hassles - if you have any. Sure, the security model is different, but in my game (VERY expensive advertising between competing companies) we need tight security. I really don't mind being asked when I want to change, overwrite or update something - some consider the "inconvenience of it all" to be the devil. Come on. At least I haven't suffered from any virii - ever.

It's becoming truly plug and play for the newer hardware. Canon 350D? Plug it in - "Canon 350D installed" comes up ten seconds later. Same for my Nikons. Even my old Meade LPI was the same - I didn't have the original drivers on CD any more, which was a death sentence for the camera on XP, but on Vista it just said "installed" as soon as I plugged it in. Quite phenomenal.

It's so much better than XP in some regards, but I suspect we're going to get flamed for saying so. I use it day-in, day-out - professionally as an IT and development director within the publishing industry - and find it more than fine.

Chris you only say that cause your a mac lover and love Gooey interfaces

but then i like gooey interfaces too !! errk does that mean I love macs.??...

Personally I prefer XP and in some things it runs faster and b etter than Vista- and vista can be a pain in the rear with its permissions. But ( swallows breath) I think vista is OK

, so i do concur with you

with technoogy movin ahead (and I mean way ahead) all the time I guess it wount be a bad move to get it

Omaroo (Chris Malikoff) · #12 26-06-2008, 02:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by h0ughy

Chris you only say that cause your a mac lover and love Gooey interfaces

but then i like gooey interfaces too !!

LOL! Actually David, I run most of my Macs as RAID servers in a "headless" configuration - i.e. the Aqua GUI doesn't run at all. All our Linux and Unix servers run headless too - and don't even have X installed.

I do, however, like to run the latest of the late on my desktop, because if I don't, my customers will - and they'll find the bugs I've never seen in our code. So - bleeding edge it is for me and "Iiii'm luvving it!"

snowyskiesau · #13 26-06-2008, 03:04 PM

For those who have resisted Vista until now, you might want to hold out until WIndows 7 is released in 18 months or so.
XP is officially withdrawn from retail sale as of June 30 (not sure when support stops?). It may still be available as an OEM install on new hardware until early 2009.

I'm happy to keep running Linux with the Compiz window manager. Gives me all the graphics bells and whistles I could hope for at a price that's just right

[If I ever get into astrophotography, I may have to rethink this because much as I like Linux, the number of useful astro packages it supports, is limited.]

acropolite (Phil) · #14 26-06-2008, 03:10 PM

IMO Vista is a bloated crappy attempt at evolution.

If that's the best that Microsoft can produce then it's time they handed the whole box and dice to the open source community to fix it....

Forcing the masses to use it by discontinuing support will only come back to bite microsoft.

renormalised (Carl) · #15 26-06-2008, 03:43 PM

Quote:

[If I ever get into astrophotography, I may have to rethink this because much as I like Linux, the number of useful astro packages it supports, is limited.]

Geoff, since KStars is ASCOM compliant, you can run just about all the mounts you'll ever come across, you have the GIMP for image processing and if you want you can download IRAF for image processing (does all the other packages can do), and you can run all your Windows software in WINE or VMWare anyway. So you're not missing out on much