Vista

[Mike21 (Michael)]

Thor recently put an end to my trusty computer. My home and contents insurance gave me the funds to by another beauty with a 22" screen (nice if my scope had the same dimensions). My technician sold me Vista with the option to step back/down to XP. He likes it, and so far, so do I. I know Vista seems to be a topic that no-one is ambivalent about; you either love it or hate it. What joys/disappointments can I look forward to? Please understand that I am not especially computer literate.

[toryglen-boy (Duncan)]

Originally Posted by Mike21

Thor recently put an end to my trusty computer. My home and contents insurance gave me the funds to by another beauty with a 22" screen (nice if my scope had the same dimensions). My technician sold me Vista with the option to step back/down to XP. He likes it, and so far, so do I. I know Vista seems to be a topic that no-one is ambivalent about; you either love it or hate it. What joys/disappointments can I look forward to? Please understand that I am not especially computer literate.

Vista gets often gets panned, and its not the best O/S ever, but its not that bad either. Vista is fine ... as long as your running Service Pack 1, then its actually not too bad, and Windows 7, that has had some very good reviews, is build around the same engine, so it must be ok.

[scarper (Mart)]

I use vista on several home machines, and have not had any more issues than I did with XP when the machines were running that.
I would be buying vista with a free upgrade to Windows 7...stuff xp unless you run some old school software that is

I remember when XP came out people bagged it big time now they bag Vista and praise XP.....Hopefully windows 7 will put a stop that pattern .
Enjoy vista its fine.

[MrB (Simon)]

Yeah, SP1 and plenty of RAM and Vista is fine, never had a problem.

[Mike21 (Michael)]

I do have the free upgrade which is due in late October by advice given to me. I've heard that it is not very different visually which is the only way an ignoramus like me can judge it.

[Waxing_Gibbous (Peter)]

I'm just getting to grips with it. I can only compare it w98 which I had been using since, er... 1998.
So far I give it 7/10. It hasn't dissappointed but it hasn't "wowed" either. So far its been stable and trouble-free, which is basically all I want an OS to be.
I appreciate the ease of importing pics and the inter-operation of various applications. But its overly loaded with eye-candy, I could care less about "aero-glass", and it's bit of a memory hog (on this PC anyway).
It really comes into its own when running Office applications especially in a networked environment.
My wife's had it on her work PC for about 18 months and she says its an enormous improvement over XP.
So all-in all I'd say plump for it and then take up the upgrade offer to Windows 7 which is being offered on-line.
Hope this helps.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Nothing wrong with Vista. Even pre SP1, the issues were minor but blown out of control by the media. Microsoft is no longer the darling of the computer media (OS X and Apple are), so they have to bash something, to sensationalise and make money by sales of media content. Most of the so called "experts" who bashed Vista know s.f.a imho.

I've used Vista now since May 2008 and it's been great. I had one lockup - last night believe it or not. I suspect my dvd burner is mucking up, and locked up the system, causing Windows to crash. I've seen OS X do this, and Linux too. In fact, on Saturday, I updated my Debian box from "etch" to "lenny". Well, what a screw up. Part of the way through the upgrade process it all stopped. And - network killed. I had a quick loko at the various network files, all looked good. I noticed udev was complaining on startup and dev population was taking 5 minutes but since I'm not really that keen on udev, nor familiar with it's inner workings I called a mate. Between the 2 of us brain storming, we fixed it - turns out one package wasn't configured properly by the system, and udev relied on this, and wouldn't configure until the other one was. Manually configured the first one, then udev which fixed most things. Oddly, the network card module (sky2) which was auto loading before no longer was loaded, and had been removed from /etc/modules, which is *really* unusual. That shouldn't have happened. Inserting the module into the running kernel, and adding it to /etc/modules fixed that, as well as a few minor modifications to /etc/networking. Just goes to show that not even Linux is fool proof, and it screws up too. In this case, far worse than I've EVER seen from a Windows operating system. This was a routine simple update for Debian I might add (admittedly from 'etch' to 'lenny', a major stepping stone, nothing that apt shouldn't have been able to handle.

Sorry for the geek comments lol..

Dave

[MrB (Simon)]

Originally Posted by Waxing_Gibbous

So all-in all I'd say plump for it and then take up the upgrade offer to Windows 7 which is being offered on-line.

Do you have a link to info?
Is the Vista to Win7 upgrade available to everyone with Vista or just being offered with new PC's?

[Waxing_Gibbous (Peter)]

Originally Posted by MrB

Do you have a link to info?
Is the Vista to Win7 upgrade available to everyone with Vista or just being offered with new PC's?

Go to www.microsoft.com.au and follow the prompts.
As far as I know its NOT being issued with any current PC's and October(?) is the scheduled roll-out. If you can wait until then you'll probably be able to get a Core i7 box for 20% less as well

[Mike21 (Michael)]

Once I've sifted through all the Boffin jargon, I think the sum total is that I'm on an allright path. I have plenty of CPU power to drive vista. I have one of those intelquad thingys. It's so powerful (too many bits or something) that Celestron haven't written the software to drive the Neximager for my processer. Never fear though, 'cause I use my girlfriend's laptop to go out imaging. Thanks all for the feed back.

[Jules76 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by MrB

Do you have a link to info?
Is the Vista to Win7 upgrade available to everyone with Vista or just being offered with new PC's?

Windows 7 upgrades are being handled through here:

https://windows7upgradeoption.com/


Now there's two ways the Windows 7 upgrade is being offered:

1) If you purchased a PC from a large brandname OEM (Dell, HP, Toshiba etc) with Vista preinstalled, you'll need to contact them to order it, not Microsoft.

2) If you purchased a PC from another source (eg. a small Computer shop/online store etc), then the copy of Windows Vista you received MUST include an "Upgrade to Windows 7 offer form" which has a coupon code and details on how to claim online.

The problem at the moment with 2) is that there are still quite a few copies of Vista being sold without the coupon, and some places will be looking to offload them (sometimes at a cheaper price) to get rid of them. If this is you then this is what the FAQ on the above link says:

I did not receive a Microsoft Offer Form with my new computer. What should I do?



Not all computers are eligible for the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program. If you believe your computer is eligible and a Microsoft Offer Form should have been provided, please do the following:

1. Contact the computer manufacturer.
2. Validate eligibility with the manufacturer.
3. After eligibility is validated, contact the Program Team and request fulfillment.

FYI the eligibility period is for PC's sold between June 26, 2009 and January 31, 2010. As long as you purchased the PC with Vista between those periods you should be fine.

[Dennis79 (Keith)]

I think Vista is fine.

The main criticisms for Vista are:

1. When it was first released there were many driver issues which meant alot of people were no longer able to run programs, printers and other add ons. In some cases it was just a matter of updating the drivers but in many cases, mainly older programs and equipment, the user was forced to buy a new version of whatever they were using for it to work.

2. There are many changes. Compared to XP, the menus changed dramatically in looks, location and the sub menus. Many people couldn't find settings etc they wanted to change. Over time this isn't a problem.

3. It uses LOTS of computer resources. You need to have lots of RAM to run it properly. In some cases this means upgrading the entire machine as well as windows, mostly it was just a RAM upgrade. An easy fix but a forced one.

4. The emphasis on security went a bit overboard. All the permission settings drive you bananas. If you can spend sometime looking through the control panel menus you can disable almost all of them. Eventually an easy fix.

5. There were unecessary features. Things like Aero are bit of a waste of time as you can acheive the same by holding down Alt and pressing tab. Aero uses alot of memory so many major gamers and programmers were peeved at this.


At the end of the day the only problem I have is the ocassional permission thing popping up (or when setting up a network game, it doesn't pop up at all, very frustrating) and the over use of my computers resources. I'm not that concerned by either of those.

[toryglen-boy (Duncan)]

Originally Posted by Dennis79

I think Vista is fine.

The main criticisms for Vista are:

1. When it was first released there were many driver issues which meant alot of people were no longer able to run programs, printers and other add ons. In some cases it was just a matter of updating the drivers but in many cases, mainly older programs and equipment, the user was forced to buy a new version of whatever they were using for it to work.

2. There are many changes. Compared to XP, the menus changed dramatically in looks, location and the sub menus. Many people couldn't find settings etc they wanted to change. Over time this isn't a problem.

3. It uses LOTS of computer resources. You need to have lots of RAM to run it properly. In some cases this means upgrading the entire machine as well as windows, mostly it was just a RAM upgrade. An easy fix but a forced one.

4. The emphasis on security went a bit overboard. All the permission settings drive you bananas. If you can spend sometime looking through the control panel menus you can disable almost all of them. Eventually an easy fix.

5. There were unecessary features. Things like Aero are bit of a waste of time as you can acheive the same by holding down Alt and pressing tab. Aero uses alot of memory so many major gamers and programmers were peeved at this.


At the end of the day the only problem I have is the ocassional permission thing popping up (or when setting up a network game, it doesn't pop up at all, very frustrating) and the over use of my computers resources. I'm not that concerned by either of those.

the very first thing i did when installing Vista, was to use the NETUSE command to unlock the hidden administrator account, gives you far more control, and stops all those boxes popping up.

[astro744]

I have a love/hate relationship with Vista. Here's my experience:

Bought older model Acer PC with Vista pre-loaded. Came home and found no Microsoft disks and had to create my own recovery disks since this vendor does not provide disks with pre-loaded machines. Hate that!

Found some of my flight-sim addons did not like Vista and no support was planned. This annoyed me too.

Bought a second hard disk with Windows XP license and set-up a dual boot (using Bios configuration only, works well). I now have an XP drive and a Vista drive that happily co-exist together with Vista being the default.

I had 1GB of RAM and I upgraded to 4GB. XP is happy and sees all the RAM and allocates about 3.2 as free. Vista crashed after a few seconds of booting up. I ran in safe mode and ran msconfig and told Vista to use only 2GB. Now Vista is OK and reports 4GB and 2GB in different system properties dialogs. It looks like Vista seems to be a bit fussy with certain hardware.

Vista SP2 fails to install, something to do with third party disk management (Acer hidden recovery partition may be at fault). The web is full of Vista SP2 fails to install messages.

I am now used to it and run all my applications on it except for FS2004. I don't like the file manager and the way it handles placement of docs, pics etc. and the fact that it never seems to remember column widths and other settings.

On the plus side Vista does now have a much better movie maker with the ability to create custom DVD's. The eye candy is nice if you get Home Premium upward. Networking with an XP machine can be either easy or difficult and I had both expreriences.

For general computing you are usually better off with the latest unless you have specific needs. You will be fine with Vista.

[MrB (Simon)]

Originally Posted by astro744

I had 1GB of RAM and I upgraded to 4GB. XP is happy and sees all the RAM and allocates about 3.2 as free. Vista crashed after a few seconds of booting up. I ran in safe mode and ran msconfig and told Vista to use only 2GB. Now Vista is OK and reports 4GB and 2GB in different system properties dialogs. It looks like Vista seems to be a bit fussy with certain hardware.

So is it actually using all 4GB?
I heard many reports of my model Acer having the same problem.
Rumour is that the Intel chipset is fine with 4GB RAM, but the Acer bios is only good for 3GB
Needless to say I only installed 3GB.

Vista SP2 fails to install, something to do with third party disk management (Acer hidden recovery partition may be at fault). The web is full of Vista SP2 fails to install messages.

Ahhhh.
Guess I'll be waiting then.

[astro744]

Originally Posted by MrB

So is it actually using all 4GB?
I heard many reports of my model Acer having the same problem.
Rumour is that the Intel chipset is fine with 4GB RAM, but the Acer bios is only good for 3GB
Needless to say I only installed 3GB.

Ahhhh.
Guess I'll be waiting then.

I'll check tonight where exactly I get the 2GB/4GB dialogs in Vista but I am definitely getting Vista to report both. I do believe only 2GB is being used by Vista since I had to set this figure using msconfig. There is definitley a Vista related conflict with the Acer Bios, Mainboard, chipset or RAM since the same hardware combination works fine when I boot to XP.

Not sure that SP2 offers much but I was hoping it fixed the RAM issue I have but I am unable to install SP2. I would normally do a complete re-install as suggested by Microsoft, but even though I have a Microsoft licence sticker on the box, I do not have the Microsoft Windows Vista media since Acer's policy was to pre-install and get the user to create recovery disks. These are not official Microsoft Windows disks and I didn't want to risk doing a system recovery since my system is working and stable.

I did notice a performance improvement over 1GB of RAM in Vista and XP but it would be nice to use the entire 4Gb in Vista. I'm waiting for Windows 7 but am not sure if I buy the upgrade version whether I will need my Vista media during the install. I'm likely to buy an OEM disk with licence for Windows 7 and start from scratch or likely just get another PC when Windows 7 SP1 is out and the bugs have been ironed out.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Dennis,

Agreed on most points, but I'll add:

1. That's not Microsoft's fault - that's simply down to lazy software developers and driver developers. Nothing more and nothing less.

2. People tend to hate change. The interesting thing I see is that people don't seem to ***** about swapping say from XP to OS X - even though they are radically different in UI.

3. 2GB will see Vista run fine. That's not a lot of RAM imho - most machines ship with 2GB these days (including laptops).

4. They are there for a reason. Microsoft has been lax security wise for many, many years. I always chuckle when I hear about viruses etc. Funny, Linux, BSD, Solaris and OS X all have very little issues in this respect. Better security by design. Microsoft Windows was never designed to be a secure system, and Microsoft have really hacked it to make it more secure. Inelegant hacks I might add. If you've ever used a UNIX, you'll understand why things are they way they are. It's for a good reason. I would NEVER recommend people disable UAC.

5. Aero is in reality uneccessary, I agree, but, looks count. OS X looks perty, so does Linux with beryl etc. Microsoft is simply keeping up with the joneses, and you can't blame them in all honesty. If you want good memory management, Windows is not the platform to be on! Oh, and get rid of that GUI whilst you're at it...

Microsoft and Vista have been very unfairly bashed imho.

Dave

Originally Posted by Dennis79

I think Vista is fine.

The main criticisms for Vista are:

1. When it was first released there were many driver issues which meant alot of people were no longer able to run programs, printers and other add ons. In some cases it was just a matter of updating the drivers but in many cases, mainly older programs and equipment, the user was forced to buy a new version of whatever they were using for it to work.

2. There are many changes. Compared to XP, the menus changed dramatically in looks, location and the sub menus. Many people couldn't find settings etc they wanted to change. Over time this isn't a problem.

3. It uses LOTS of computer resources. You need to have lots of RAM to run it properly. In some cases this means upgrading the entire machine as well as windows, mostly it was just a RAM upgrade. An easy fix but a forced one.

4. The emphasis on security went a bit overboard. All the permission settings drive you bananas. If you can spend sometime looking through the control panel menus you can disable almost all of them. Eventually an easy fix.

5. There were unecessary features. Things like Aero are bit of a waste of time as you can acheive the same by holding down Alt and pressing tab. Aero uses alot of memory so many major gamers and programmers were peeved at this.


At the end of the day the only problem I have is the ocassional permission thing popping up (or when setting up a network game, it doesn't pop up at all, very frustrating) and the over use of my computers resources. I'm not that concerned by either of those.

[astro744]

Originally Posted by astro744

I'll check tonight where exactly I get the 2GB/4GB dialogs in Vista but I am definitely getting Vista to report both. I do believe only 2GB is being used by Vista since I had to set this figure using msconfig. There is definitley a Vista related conflict with the Acer Bios, Mainboard, chipset or RAM since the same hardware combination works fine when I boot to XP.

Not sure that SP2 offers much but I was hoping it fixed the RAM issue I have but I am unable to install SP2. I would normally do a complete re-install as suggested by Microsoft, but even though I have a Microsoft licence sticker on the box, I do not have the Microsoft Windows Vista media since Acer's policy was to pre-install and get the user to create recovery disks. These are not official Microsoft Windows disks and I didn't want to risk doing a system recovery since my system is working and stable.

I did notice a performance improvement over 1GB of RAM in Vista and XP but it would be nice to use the entire 4Gb in Vista. I'm waiting for Windows 7 but am not sure if I buy the upgrade version whether I will need my Vista media during the install. I'm likely to buy an OEM disk with licence for Windows 7 and start from scratch or likely just get another PC when Windows 7 SP1 is out and the bugs have been ironed out.

OK. I get 4.00GB RAM reported in Vista if I right click on 'Computer' in the start menu (right side) and select properties.

I get 2046MB reported if I select CTR-ALT-DEL and select Start Task Manager and click on performance tab. (see physical memory).

If I run msconfig from the start menu (type msconfig in Start Search field at the bottom) and then click on Boot tab followed by Advanced Options I get a Maximum Memory check box. It is here that I set 2048MB as my limit. Note the 2MB difference to what is reported in Task Manager. More important though is the 2GB difference reported by Vista in different dialogs.

Note my system was extremely unstable after I installed the 4GB until I set the maximum memory limit. The time-out for instability was non-uniform but usually within a minute of booting. I changed the maximum RAM setting in safe mode which was stable.

As I mentioned before I have a dual boot system (two physical hard disks) and when I boot to XP Pro I get 3.2+ GB RAM reported (cannot check right now). As I understand it the remainder is allocated to Windows for variouis system resources.

I'm not that concerned since my system is stable and up to speed for what I am doing. I only mentioned it for your information should you have similar issues at any time. I think Vista is a little (lot) more critical than XP with the type of hardware (combinations) it is happy as was XP over 98.

[marki]

You can only run 4+ GB of Ram on 64bit systems. I think the max for 32bit vista is 3.2GB or thats what it can read. The manufacturer of my ram voids warranty if you try to run more then this on a 32 bit OS.

Mark

[Jules76 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by marki

The manufacturer of my ram voids warranty if you try to run more then this on a 32 bit OS.

Are you sure about that? Because whether or not you make full use of your RAM has no bearing whatsoever on manufacturer warranty claims. I work in the Service dept for a large OEM/wholesaler, so Im very familiar with warranty procedures for various hardware components.

The only thing i'd see it voiding would be in the way of tech support. I'm aware some big brand name OEM's stipulate that if you put more then 3GB of RAM in a system with a 32 bit OS, that they will not support any issues that may result. In other words, they don't want to have 100's of customers ringing up complaining about not seeing more than 3GB and blaming them.