Windows Vista: The Facts

[Kursah]

That's some good info and such Slade, and really what I say about Vista is from my experiences with Vista. I spent about 2/3's (if not 3/4's) of 2007 on Vista. It's a good OS, but it takes up more resources, but it does feel fairly snappy. There are still some compatability issues yet to be resolved and the ever improving drivers will continue to quelm that in the same way it was taken care of on XP.

I liked and disliked how some of it worked, but overall, I feel that XP SP3 was my way to go, at least for now. As-far-as boot times, I dunno...mine generally took closer to 2 minutes, maybe more I can't really recall boot time. XP feels faster to me. Plus Superfetch (iirc) has to play around after Vista boots up to get things sorted...I had it disabled for a time, but turned it back on to see how well it worked before I went back to XP a couple months ago.

I think everyone should at least give Vista a try, it's not a bad OS imo, but there were some things that felt rushed, and some lacking support which is to be expected (even if dissapointing). As PC's get more memory and speed with newer generations, the impact of Vista on resources will become less noticable. DX10 gaming will eventually improve to better performance and support...but I think DX9c will reign supreme for years to come just due to the wider customer base, but we'll see.

I will someday go back to Vista, but it will not be soon. I enjoy my gaming, surfing and everything else I do on my PC just fine in XP. Plus with SP3 (the RC1 from MS), my system seemed to become a little snappier and just felt faster overall...it works good for me. But don't dog on Vista if you haven't tried it...no point in making steep judements without seeing both sides of the arguement. So try it out...find someone that has it and see if they'll letcha play with it for a couple hours. Install it on your PC for the 30-days and see if it's what you want.

Vista is stable, but I ran into a few problems that did annoy me, yet the overall experience was more of a minor headache in comparison to the migrane it could've been.

 

[Solaris17]

I enjoy it tremendously. When connected to the internet, it went and updated during install.
Plus all the re-skinned games are cool, found myself playing chess again

dude DX10 chess FTW!!! at anyrate i love vista its good stuff...imo however security safety and stability have never really benn a selling point for me...

i mean idc if it has better security features why? because i install my own anti virus firewall and malware cleaner...and on top of that shut off the OS one including security center....and after all that im probably more protected than i was...

safety? i dont worry aboput that much eaither its all about how you set up your protection not your options....forexample....i can open all my ports and enable all my sharing on my home wireless networkl we have 7 computers and non are hardlined i open everything and enable everything....but im protecteed because4 i limit what is allowed to be shared...what privleges those ppl have...and my firewall tells me every connection in and out..and requires my input and i have the option of approving it for good so it will stop asking me...that and though vista may have less malware honestly i think it isnt used much yet..and it extremely easy...not to get viruses..i install all this protection software i have 3...avast comodo firewall and in the latest installment of comodo it includes a malware catcher...and so does avast...and these progs constantly run in the background...but iv never run into any virus because i know were i surf and what sites are shady....

Stability may work for alot of ppl...but if your like me and most of us are..when we install wondows the things we tweak usually make it more unstable than it was before..and then we work around that....file modification..service shutdowns...blue screens overclocking..reg edits....lets be honest...i dont see how alot of tweakers look for stability when buying..because we know that will be comprimised as soon as we boot it.


but needless to say i absolutely love vista...i think i was going to say more but i had to pick up my GF and forgot the rest.

 

[AphexDreamer]

I dont care about DX10 and I've never had to call MS about suport for XP for 5 years.

Dude, what are you going to do when all the games being released are DX10 or higher only?

All these people complaining that Vista crashes and what not, It must be your hardware or something. Vista was a tad bit off I agmit but that was because they were tyring to bring a future OS, to a World that had so many old apps and hardware. XP did fine cause it wasn't that big of a overhaul as Vista is.

Old things become obsolete, face it. Just like from the FLoppy to the CD, no one gives a fudge for the floppy anymore. Thats the fate of all old technology. Face it, cause sooner or later youll be useing Vista or Vienna.

I don't mean to cap on anyone or anything, but honestly this crap needs to end, I wonder if the same shit happed when XP got release, People complaing about it. Oh well.

 

[pt]

I can too :shadedshu I even tried the lower version, Basic and it was bad

me 3
it came with my laptop, and it didn't even detected my wireless :shadedshu

 

[Easy Rhino]

vista works fine for me and my rig is over a year old. im not sure why all the hate.

 

[ShadowFold]

Dude, what are you going to do when all the games being released are DX10 or higher only?

I will move to the newer op, im not buying vista again.

 

[Kursah]

vista works fine for me and my rig is over a year old. im not sure why all the hate.

I just think it's another case of "you either like it or don't", plus things that were promised that didn't make it, and people just flat out expecting too much from it. I know I was slightly dissapointed when I first installed Vista, but I also was pretty stoked to be on a new OS that would do most of what my old OS was capable of for my needs.

 

[EddxPT]

Vista runs very good on average hardware with the proper drivers. The problem here is the concept of average hardware. Compare a core2duo with an a athlon64 or with a pentiumD and u can see the performance gap on average between every model from those families of processors. If XP does it for u, than don't change. It is the right symbioses between software and hardware that delivers the best experience. No point in using vista with a pentium3 with 512Mb of ram with a matrox g200 for instance. Use XP or linux and u will have a better experience in that case.

Also, remember : ram is meant to be used : Vista takes a little over a quarter of memory after boot up (with sp1) and if u have 4 gigs u will see on average 700 mb used. But try to open Internet Explorer or any other microsoft or a very used program and u will see little increase in memory usage. Prefetch works in my opinion and has advantages. RAM Speed and Capacity is the major bottleneck in todays systems. Bigger Caches on the cpu die can help to smooth the experience too.

The question here is rather old and remembers me the battle between windows95 and 98, and then 98 and XP... and what about linux ? linux just does not increases it's market share simply due to the fact of proprietary drivers and most games running out of the box only on DirectX. The same will happen to XP once DX9 gets fully unsupported.It will however not invalidate XP for office and general use. And lets also face it : going to proper DX10 hardware right now is still rather expensive.

Always ask : is there something i can't do if i don't change OS ?

 

[3991vhtes]

I will move to the newer op, im not buying vista again.

Lol, are you aware that the next OS will be based on Vista?

 

[Conti027]

I Vista!! it should be a club

 

[Triprift]

U should start one up id join ofcourse ud get a few xp lovers in there but oh well thats all parts of the fun and great to see a thread supporting vista for a change i thought my old eyes were failing me for a minute there.

 

[3991vhtes]

I Vista!!

ditto

 

[asb2106]

I AGREE!!!! I really like Vista, I think its a better looking and more stable XP. It really has been good to me. It does steal some 3dmarks though!

 

[Triprift]

I AGREE!!!! I really like Vista, I think its a better looking and more stable XP. It really has been good to me. It does steal some 3dmarks though!

Vistas been really good to me to the only small prob i had was when i had to reinstall vista after my lappy had to be repaired after the screen died was itunes not werking but just got drivers online and since then sweeeeet as.

 

[HeavyH20]

Well, if we go back a few years to the XP launch, every single comment made regarding Vista was made of XP. Big, slow, bloated, buggy drivers, resource demands, boot times, etc, etc. I run Vista 64, and, with the latest versions of the drivers, it is not much slower, if at all, than XP. Personally, I am sticking with Vista.

 

[asb2106]

Well, if we go back a few years to the XP lauanch, every single comment made regarding Vista was made of XP. Big, slow, bloated, buggy drivers, resource demands, boot times, etc, etc. I run Vista 64, and, with the latest versions of the drivers, it is not much slower, if at all, than XP. Personally, I am sticking with Vista.

vista just needs alot of memory and it runs fine. I have 4 gigs but i have noticed 2gigs or more will keep vista happy.

but it still steals 3dMarks!

 

[CarolinaKSU]

I Vista!! it should be a club

Such a short and hilarious to the point one-liner. For some reason I just busted out laughing at this.

 

[Triprift]

Start the club now someone pleeeease.

 

[asb2106]

I Vista!! it should be a club

you know its funny, when i seen it as < 3 i couldnt get it, but in the qoute I now see the heart, ahhh, made me laugh too!

 

[Frogger]

Well, if we go back a few years to the XP launch, every single comment made regarding Vista was made of XP. Big, slow, bloated, buggy drivers, resource demands, boot times, etc, etc. I run Vista 64, and, with the latest versions of the drivers, it is not much slower, if at all, than XP. Personally, I am sticking with Vista.

That is the statment !!!

 

[Triprift]

I will move to the newer op, im not buying vista again.

What if your unhappy with it will ya stick with xp call it the greatest then find theres no support for it when everyone else is enjoying Vista or windows 7.

 

[Deleted member 3]

Even on a clean Vista install, with 2GB memory it was eating something like 40-50%. Only after I tweaked the shit out of vista did it come down to an acceptable level, which was something like 25%.

Funny, but what's the point of loads of memory when the OS doesn't utilize it? Look at top under Linux for example, memory gets used. That's positive. Like topic says, superfetch loads things so you have to wait less. Besides, with memory prices as they are, just add some more GB's, 20 euros for 1GB, compared to the cost of the OS itself it's nothing.

And when saying "tweaked the shit out of it" you probably mean something like "I changed some settings but aren't listing them just so nobody knows what I'm talking about or what I actually did".


All I can agree on is game performance, benchmarks tend to prefer XP. However, how great was XP when it came out? I think Vista isn't as crappy as many people like to believe. Just because MS made it people shoot it down.

 

[Black Panther]

All my hardware works (X-Fi was a sonofa).

Actually the X-Fi isn't a sonofa...
Afaik, you can't use any sound card with Vista.
Vista programs your pc to process sound using the CPU.

I stand to be corrected - after all I never tried it myself.

I'm not anti-vista by any means, but I've seen that Vista uses much more memory to run its background processes than XP. I'd prefer to have the resources to be used by my game/s rather than the OS. Even the page file. If you run a dxdiag (or check the taskmanager) using XP you'll see your page file would be between 200-300MB. With a clean boot it can get below 200MB. On the other hand, running a dxdiag/ taskmanager using Vista you'll see your pagefile usage going above 800-1000MB...

I think Vista needs some serious patching/updates/SP before it can be a suitable OS for gamers.

As PC's get more memory and speed with newer generations, the impact of Vista on resources will become less noticable. DX10 gaming will eventually improve to better performance and support...

Also that makes a lot of sense. Vista will be staying with us for a long time... imagine what pc's will be running that OS in 3 years time!
Right now it's like trying to run XP on a PII with 128MB RAM or something...

 

[Triprift]

To be honest with ya bp the difference in games between xp and vista is now alot less than what it was and in most cases you woudnt be able to notice the difference in frame rates. In terms of interface,security & overall performance Vista has the advantage in my view.

 

[3991vhtes]

Afaik, you can't use any sound card with Vista.

You can, look at my specs

Right now it's like trying to run XP on a PII with 128MB RAM or something...

I ran a PII with 128MB RAM on XP. It was very mediocre