Windows Vista discussion

Vista’s rating out of 10

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0 voters

Try not to vote if you haven’t used Vista…

What do you think of Microsoft’s latest operating system? Before I had any experience with it, I was skeptical. I had heard all these rumors about instability, too many bugs, inefficiency, etc, especially that it was basically Mac OS X. Because of that, I stayed away from it. I was content with a properly-executed XP installation; why should I switch? The only reason I had ever been told was: “DirectX 10. It’s coming…” and that hardly seemed reason enough to upgrade my memory, CPU, and everything in general (plus spending $200+ on the OS itself).

I hadn’t really experienced it until I got a laptop that had it installed. Sure, it looked fancy and everything, but the resolution was too low for it to actually work, and it was eating up a lot of my precious memory. So I tried disabling everything, and as it turned out, that looked like crap. And the only reason I would choose Windows over Linux would be for gaming, but it wasn’t like I could do that on such hardware as is typically found in laptops. So I installed Ubuntu over the whole drive and was done with it.

I give Vista a seven out of ten. Hats off for trying, Microsoft, but you did a better job with XP.

Vista is better than XP, but not by a great amount.
DX10 is worth it for gamers, and UAC helps it be more secure for the unwashed technoobs out there (And lets face it, without them, M$ would be out of buisness).

The startmenu search is an incredibly usefull feature, though it can be emulated otherwise, and its aero desktopwindowmanager gives the desktop a less rigid, immobile feel. Plus it’s fully 3D, so compiz-style effects with low system usage are a possibility.

Sure, it has bad points, it uses more RAM, but so did XP, as opposed to 2k, and modern PCs are powerfull enough to take it easily.

(PROTIP: Vista’s superiour memory management+all advanced options turned off = 200MB RAM used, plus a gamer’s environment)

Also, Tim, no, I’ve never had a problem with XP, but my point is it has way more redundancy. A few weeks ago my PC failed to start up 80% of critical proccesses, Vista booted up, told me it had some trouble, and was using alternate methods. Sure, it was using an extra gig of RAM, but it booted fine, and I was able to reboot with ease.

Vista is pretty slick looking and I do like the for-mentioned functions. I would not use it in a domain environment because it takes twice as long to setup and troubleshoot. (Trust me, I know.) After SP1 it should be a lot better. The system we have at home has 2GB RAM so thats not an issue. You have to get a machine thats worthy of Vista, 1GB just don’t cut it.

SP1 will come through windows update, right?
Or do I have to take special measures?

SOUNDS LIKE A PERSONAL PROBLEM.

I dunno, XP works fine if you take care of your computer.

I’ve installed Vista on my home computer recently, and so far, these are my impressions over continued use of the OS.

Windows Aero: Looks pretty, does its job, hogs resources? Yes, but if you can afford it, why not? You can always turn it off and have basically a black/blue XP.

Memory usage: Not all that bad, sure, it’s way higher than XP, but it comes with a lot of processes set to Automatic Loading that you likely won’t ever use. Turn them off and watch memory usage plummet down.

Security and user management/privacy: They FINALLY copied Linux. Good job. Enough said.

Hardware management: MUCH better PnP support, and finally make good use of the Internet to find drivers and shit like that.

Intarwebs security: IE7 comes with it, Defender, even if it’s as useless as every other antivirus, as spyware detector it does a decent job as well.
More secure program execution and kernel access protections make it much more stable and secure.

Cosmetic changes and Utility widgets: Things like start menu search, per-app volume control, improved Task Manager, etc, are things that were always easy to implement and they finally have been implemented. It’s always a plus.

Built-in Voice Commands: Best thing to happen to a OS. Sure, it ain’t new, nor fancy, but it works, and it’s there.

My only real complaint about the OS is that, as a musician myself, I find it hard to work with sound input due to a lack of Recording devices control panel on the volume control panel, like XP had. That was a step back.

In short: Vista will do great if you understand that it’s not XP, and programs are largely, but not NECESSARILY compatible. If you use stuff made for Vista, it’s safe to assume it’ll deliver a satisfying experience for anyone.

Its a weird its a piece of shit and its great, as a gamer heres my position:
aero: cool
DX10 ok heres where i have the most to say its a weird situation: if you have vista and a radeon ShitT er XT or an 8/9 seeries card then where DX10 optimised games look like sex onscreen but older games are all in like 24 bit colour or something
UAC: it messes up Xfire is it can go to Hell and stay there
Space: may i ask why it takes 4 fucking hours to install it? and why it takes up 15 Motherfucking GB?
Final thoughts: i think that until you can make DX9 games look good again and make UAC just fuck off and not bother me in some way or another at launch (xfire wnat’s to update… or UAC is off turn it on you MoFo) then its a good OS but for now i just as soon dual boot or skip it ATG

UAC is annoying, yes.
DX10 is a big thing for gamers, but only because microsoft made it so.
Aero is a vram hog, sure, but unless you’re gaming, when the hell do you need all your vram? Plus it looks shiny cuddles aero
Space: It… err… fifteen… 4 hours… um… No comment.