Windoes Vista - comments

[Pablo]

With a deep in take of breath I bought a new laptop and decided to keep the Windows Vista software on it. I've heard a few nightmares and I must admit, I usually wait a year until issues have been sorted.

Only had it 2 days and have had a few issues with incompatibility with other programs I've tried to instal, but overall it's not been the nightmare I thought it would be.

IMO it's very pretty, and there's a couple of new functions I like e.g. shortcut keys to open programs but all in all it's not that different to XP. I'm a little disappointed that boot up takes the same amount of time.

Any body else taken the jump, if so what's your opinion?

Cheers,

Pablo.

 

[Squidders]

I have been running Vista since Beta and haveultimate edition on my laptop... love it to bits... can't say I have oticed any performance issues with it either.

Yes it uses memory and CPU like a pig but it's designed for new hardware.

I have experienced a lot of pain with software... mostly because many software vendors haven't done the work to bring their stuff up to date. Many of the larger software houses were good enough to make their stuff vista compatible early on.

I would advise most people against a pure software upgrade but if a new PC can come with Vista, I would go for it.

 

[giancarlo]

Good going Pablo,

I haven't taken the leap yet, but 2 of my friends have upgraded and both had a few problems with driver compatibility and things not working correctly.
One of them actually had to setup a dual boot on his system so he can get his 7.1 sound card working when he needs it.
I think that's the main problem at the mo, just getting older stuff working, actual OS seems cool.

I think you're safe getting it on any new system you buy now though, since the manufacturers would have tested all the components and configured all the system to run with compatible drivers.

I think I'll wait 6 months or so before I take the plunge ( unless i get that new laptop I've been promising myself for the last 2 years.... )

Cheers
Carlo

 

[mace242]

I too have been using it since early betas. I'm not that impressed overall. It just isn't the leap over XP that I was hoping for and they've not put in loads of the features I wanted. Though I have noticed that it seems more stable than XP. Guess I'll see what thay can put itno SP1. Still - looks pretty - espescially with a nice british red decktop backdrop.

Recommendations: 1. Run with 2gb of main ram at least. 2. Turn off the sidebar - what a pointless waste of resource hogging space.

 

[Pablo]

Recommendations: 1. Run with 2gb of main ram at least. 2. Turn off the sidebar - what a pointless waste of resource hogging space.

I certainly think it would struggle with anything less than 2 GB ram. The sidebar is a novelty at the moment but I don't think it will last. The little notepad is quite handy although I also use "stickies" which is a great little utility.

*sp widoes = windows - gess whzs knot uset 2 the knew qeybord yt

Pablo.

 

[Squidders]

ok... I have to say something here...

Currently, using the sidebar, Outlook, Word, Windows Update, messenger and about 2 browser sessions with about 9 tabs / open pages.... my machine is using 889MB.

I would recommend 1.5GB of RAM as an upper ammount unless you render huge images or do other memory hungry things... regardless, those activities are not a function of Vista needing loads of memory... so far one of the biggest memory pigs I have seen is Firefox.

 

[mace242]

Not going to into jargony depth but Vista has a level of ram where it behaves slightly differently. Windows XP did too. For XP it was 1gb and for vista it is 2gb. You will get better overall performance running with 2gb and memory is cheap generally so the extra is worth it. Though if you're clever and turn stuff off you can run with far less. I am typing this on a laptop with vista ultimate installed and it only has 512mb!!

 

[David.s]

I also got it pre-installed on my new laptop. At first i was very impressed, looked good, ran well etc. but now iv had it a few months and installed my usual programs its running a bit slower and when i log in and open a web browser it always says "internet explorer needs to close" blah blah.


generally i think its good but less impressed the longer i have it.

 

[mace242]

I'm just not impressed with ie7 and have ditched it in favor of firefox. Give it a try it may be better for you.

 

[Bushcraft4life]

Defo run it with at least 2 GB of ram. Or if you haven't you can use a USB flash drive plug it in and vista can allocate it as extra ram. I think you can buy a 4 GB pen drive for about a tenner now. As for probs i had loads when i made the jump. As i have a gaming pc it decided to update all the drivers for Nvidia blah blah blah totally messed it up. But now its running smooth and looks pretty too.

Firefox is excellent btw

 

[tinderbox]

Or if you haven't you can use a USB flash drive plug it in and vista can allocate it as extra ram. I think you can buy a 4 GB pen drive for about a tenner now.

Flash devices have a limited life when subjected to lots of write cycles, somewher around the 100,000 mark. While that is plenty for a storage device it's soon used up if you treat it like RAM.

 

[mace242]

Vista can't actually use it as physical RAM. It'd be far too slow anyway. What it does is called ReadyBoost and is used in conjunction with SuperFetch. Read about them here:

http://www.computerworld.com/action...Basic&articleId=9001435&pageNumber=3#memboost