Vista reviews

[PeterCH]

I agree with what Ngaged said in his post, it isn't quite the same thing. I was running that transformation pack before using Vista, it isn't really the same as the true native interface.

And obviously Vista is going to be more recourse heavy, every new edition of Windows is, I'm not sure why people are still surprised. Vista actually handles the extra memory much better, and makes use of 2GB of ram better than XP would.

Those two crashes I assume might have been corrupt/incorrect driver crashes. Those are the only type of crashes I have had on my Vista install in over a month. I would just get frustrated with finding newer drivers for my wireless or the fact that M-Audio have no Vista drivers for my soundcard and try to force incorrect drivers on them, causing a crash.. Pretty stupid.

It's part of doing business with Microsoft.

The question is, will the new fancy, OS make you more productive?
Will it allow you to run the apps you do, to do the work you
do, faster? Or will you still do the same things, just with upgraded
programs (usually NOT for free) with heavier hardware and
maybe a few interface changes.

My main argument against Vista is - that at present MOST people - except maybe those who use huge amounts of RAM (photoshop, Maya, AutoCad
design) don't need Vista to do what they currently do. Their current hardware and software can do all these things well, MS OFFICE (you don't
need a new version of OFFICE unless your clients will have one - for compatibility sake), Browse web, IM, email, play a few Direct X9.0c (99%
of the games out there) games, edit a few photos, edit a few home movies etc.

Yes you can upgrade, because "Vista is cool" - IMO it's not, maybe
for the masses out there and school kids, but then IF you're
really doing WORTHWHILE things with your PC, you'll need to
upgrade your memory, GPU, monitor AND SOFTWARE.

Will paying so much money increase your productivity?
Is having a fancy interface woth the extra expense if
all you're doing is playing a few games and surfing the web?

I don't think SO.

As it is - my DESKTOP PC:

3.2 GHz 2GIG Pentium 4 with dedicated Hardware rendering/capture/effects card.
Adobe Premiere Pro.

As it is the PRODUCTIVITY apps on my SYSTEM are NOT COMPATIBLE
with Vista. I would need to get the new version of Matrox RT2 card
(which I don't think can even handle Vista ATM) which
will allow me to do the SAME THINGS I'm doing on this
PC at the moment - EDIT Standard Def Digital Video in PAL.
I'm not on HD yet.

When and IF I choose to upgrade, when I have an HD camcorder
I will go for the system - MAC or WinTel which is best
for me then, if it happens to RUN on Vista fine.
However to upgrade and trash - R25.000 worth
of software and hardware for a PRETTIER screen
makes no sense to me.



Realise that I'm making an upgrade decision here on
the basis of what I want to achive not that I want
Vista on my desktop. I want to achieve a productivity
goal. I don't want pretty graphics. I'll watch a DVD
full of pretty girls, sunsets, cars, whatever if I want
eye candy.

 

[ShockG]

Yeah but the interface is the chief selling point. The rendering of the pretty gfx is just bollocks - heck I use Windows Classic interface myself, never used Fisher-Price. Vista is not more stable at present, it requires more memory
and CPU time to do the same things as XP (is is always with MS Operating Systems) and at the same time newer g-fx cards don't have proper drivers for it yet.

BTW the G-fx card (DirectX) does a fair bit of accelleration under XP too.
2D graphics accelleration has been with us since 1990.

Someone here installed Vista and had 2 crashes in 2 weeks. My XP has only crashed about 2-3 times in over 2 years.
My 5 month Mac OSX Tiger has not crashed yet. More stable eh? Really?

Is it a religion here over at these forums to just talk /type with authority, leaving no room for correct? :/

Okay I'll address this paragraph at a time.

1. An OS from 2007 will require better hardware than as OS from 2001. This would seem to be obvious unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case for you and others. Do you expect a game from 2001 to have the same hardware requirements as a game from 2006? Did Windows'95 not need a better PC than Windows3.1x, Windows'98 over 95, 2000 over 98 and XP over 2000?

Also what do you mean to do the same things as XP? Well I would assume since both are operating systems; they would tend to do the same thing. If there is anything wrong with an operating system behaving like an OS please let me know how. Did XP not run some programs that ran in 2000 and 98 and 95 even essentially doing what the others could do as well? Did Office '97 not work on 95 and XP as well?

Drivers for Vista, you mean the GeForce8800 drivers? Well consider that XP drivers have had almost 7 years to be tweaked and perfected while Vista has had less than 4 months. Also consider that XP drivers were much like 2000 and '98 drivers before, running in only kernel space. In Vista a driver exists in user space and has a greater abstraction from the hardware than before, simply because the OS itself renders the GUI through the DX API for supporting hardware this also allows much better resource sharing, but I won't go into that at all.

BTW GeForce 8800 WHQL driver will be available by end of this month

2. No there is no desktop hardware acceleration in XP that relies on DirectX. What you are talking about is GDI acceleration which has been around since Windows'95. All gfx cards that had '95 drivers had GDI acceleration for video and the normal desktop to avoid screen draw on window positioning and the like. This was only slightly better than a VESA driver for DOS environment programs.

Vista is the first to have true 3D context Direct3D interface. In Vista you are always in a 3D context when Aero is enabled. This is not the case with anything else because you first have to send a state change and get into 3D rendering mode before you run your game or whatever that uses acceleration.

Someone here installed Vista and had 2 crashes in 2 weeks. My XP has only crashed about 2-3 times in over 2 years.
My 5 month Mac OSX Tiger has not crashed yet. More stable eh?

Well I find that hard to believe, but anyway. I used to re-install XP almost every two month at the least, because it either became too slow, became cluttered needed a clean up etc...
What your 5 month old Tiger installation has to do with Vista is something I'm not sure I understand. That someone who installed Vista is not you, do you know why their computer crashed, could it be drivers, a hardware failure? It could be any number of things.

Vista has crashed about 10 times for me already, but all of that was due to my aggressive overclocking with the CPU or RAM failing either because of heat or lack of voltage, either way all of this was my doing and it would happen in every single operating system in the world.

Vista is by far more stable than XP, I can attest to that because where 3DM06 would have caused the whole system to hang, in Vista it only hangs itself and I shut it down that's it.

As it is the PRODUCTIVITY apps on my SYSTEM are NOT COMPATIBLE
with Vista.

And that is Vista's fault because? :/
Maybe see if the company who makes the hardware you have has Vista drivers no?

Realise that I'm making an upgrade decision here on
the basis of what I want to achive not that I want
Vista on my desktop. I want to achieve a productivity
goal. I don't want pretty graphics. I'll watch a DVD
full of pretty girls, sunsets, cars, whatever if I want
eye candy.

I am productive in Vista and its good that it looks so nice.
Flip 3D gives me more desktop space than the traditional 2D desktop view of XP. Nothing ever loses focus and stops working, when I shift to another window. I can in the taskbar see in real time what movie I am encoding, see the percentage of my DVD burn, type up documents in excel and or word and have winamp playing in the back. My system is never hogged down to non functionality because I put in a DVD disc which is still waiting to spin or has bad tracks etc... I carry on working. Should burning a disc fail, I don't have to shut down the entire system, nero will be closed and that's that.

Vista at its worst is by far better than XP at its best. Measure OS for OS don't factor in things that are outside of Microsoft's control. IHV's failing to provide a driver is not to be blamed on the OS. Vista was not a surprise to anyone, they all knew long before its release what was required.

Now state again what it is you have against Vista, and use valid arguments this time

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

I suppose the argument would be : You can't do anything that you couldn't do in XP, and it doesn't change (much) the way you get things done.

But this is true for any operating system. You could probably still do all the things you needed to in much the same way on Windows 98 as on XP. You could still "Browse web, IM, email, play a few Direct X9.0c (99%
of the games out there) games, edit a few photos, edit a few home movies etc. " on Windows 98. This is assuming you can install 9.0c on 98 as I have heard you can.

There may have been a bigger jump in usability from 98 to XP with networking and the explorer interface, but it was also mostly the same. Yet people lambaste Vista as a downgrade etc. and hold XP in a much higher regard than you would have seen before.

Granted I haven't used or even seen Windows 98 in years, so maybe I forget how big the change was.

 

[LabAnimal]

I said in a previous post that ripping 2 discs at the same time in Vista causes the CPU to run 100%, and in xp it doesnt... well I'm wrong - same in XP... I've also ripped the same 2 discs in Vista, quality sounds them same - which makes me wonder!.