Vista - Advantages and Disadvantages

[BXtreme]

hw much time in minutes ? and I didn't need to install any drivers except video, all other were already installed
I don't use bluetooth, but wi-fi worked really well

 

[Pinchy]

Didnt time it

Yeah Wifi installed straight away. I just confirmed that the driver for bluetooth of the Dell site works great

 

[xylomn]

I agree vista works great for myself too....

I have had a few application problems with it:
- FFXI (fixed with a little patch)
- Citrix Web Client (used to access my university's servers from home not 100% compatible)

but apart from then I generally had good experience with its compatibility which will only get better... I've had no problems finding drivers either...

The one area where I think vista falls down at the moment is the number of 3rd party firewalls that are compatible with it atm... antivirus are fine, theres kaspersky, nod32, bitdefender, avast, avg, etc. that are already compatible.

Atm I'm using kaspersky internet security with vista atm but once COMODO 3 is released on 16th April (I think) I'll start using that with either Kaspersky or nod32...

I believe the majority of peoples negative opinions of vista come from using either the unfinished beta versions or unjustified flaming siple because its microsoft...

A good OS

 

[Pinchy]

Anyone know how to let a networked computer access a main drive, like C?

Ive shared the drive, and enabled "full control" under permissions for "everyone", yet on the laptop, i try to access the c drive, and it says "Blah blah is not accessible. You may not have permissions to access this drive....Access is denied"

The only folder that lets me get in is the "Public" folder.

 

[BXtreme]

check this site out : http://www.driverheaven.net/windows...ta-networking-sharing-problems-solutions.html

 

[Pinchy]

Nothing. It looks like im having the same problem though.

 

[BXtreme]

or this http://www.microsoft.com/technet/network/evaluate/vista_fp.mspx

 

[Pinchy]

I can share a folder fine...but i wanna share the whole drive.

Ive gone through this:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/681406.html

But my permissions are set to "full control" for "everyone"...seemed to work for them, not working for me

 

[fireblade77]

i like most of whats been said above but i have a couple of sound problems that r makin me
i have an x-fi fatality sound card and for some reason i cant get team speak to work right.
if i talk into the mic i can hear what i say come back through my speakers, now some people i know have the none fatality x-fi and dont have this problem
also
if u go into control panel and click sound options there is no headphones option just stereo - quad -5.1 or 7.1 but in the x-fi options u have headphones so when i go into counter strike and try and select headphones it always defaults back to stereo and doesnt sound as good.
this also happens if i take the sound card out and use the onboard sound but this solves my team speak problem.
apart from this i think vista is great, but all of the above is doing my head in

 

[Pinchy]

I dont see why so many people were complaining about Vista's "game performance loss"

Ive installed Counter Strike Source, and it works just as good as it does in XP. No perf. loss at all!

The only part i find weird is that in options of CS:S, it says my software is DX9.0, altho its DX10.

 

[DOM]

The only part i find weird is that in options of CS:S, it says my software is DX9.0, altho its DX10.

cuz your card is DX9 I think

 

[Pinchy]

But i remember with my FX5200 and mx440, the FX5200 had DX 8.0 as the hardware and 9.0 as the software and same with mx440; had DX7.0 for hardware and DX 9.0 for software.

 

[aboyfahy]

Quick question

Just wondering does anyone have any problems running vista home premium on a laptop with only 1gb of ram? I have been hearing nothing but bad things about this and im just after purchesing one and its almost delivered so its to late to ask for another gig!!!!!​

 

[Deleted member 24505]

even on a desktop,you really do need 2gb for vista,it is a bit of a ram hog,but its easily solved by adding a second gig of ram.

can you not buy a second gig yourself for the lappy?

 

[Pinchy]

I installed it on my brothers laptop with 1.2GB of RAM and it ran perfectly fine. I have added another GB of RAM to the laptop since then, but thats only because he does design work and needed it (altho 1 --> 2GB did boost the general computers speed).

 

[aboyfahy]

quick question

Ok thanks for the replys! I would say ill be safe enough for a while with 1gb. Is it easy to add another gb of ram or should i get someone to do it for me?This is basically what i have on this link so if anyone else owns ownes let me know about there experience with it. www.dell.ie its the dell inspiron 1501 [/URL]​

 

[Kursah]

I used Vista Ultimate 32bit for approx 6 months and I eventually got it working pretty damn good with minor losses in syn bench scores, most games ran fine with little to no FPS drop. But when my buddies talked me into playing BF2142 and using Ventrillo for VOip, I couldn't get my mic to work at all! Nobody could hear me, they'd just hear a buzzing noise. I go to XP and it works just fine. Well things have changed and now I have an X-Fi Extreme Music, I know Alchemy is getting better with every release. And we'll see what happens after SP1 is released. I thought I remember reading improved defrag, load times, boot times, etc.

Vista is not a bad OS, but I don't think it was worth the wait either. If you're big on the newest stuff, it's the way to go, but Vista seems to take up more resources and such in comparison to XP. I did like the Aero interface, the side-bar features and such, but atm I don't think I could go back to it, just nothing there I could find justifiable enough to keep it on my system as of yet. Again, give MS some time and I'm sure the polish and shine will come through and it will improve. I may just wait for "Windows 7" to come out in a couple years and stay on XP, hard saying.

Overall, Vista is not bad, I may give it crap and call it ME 2, but I spent enough time with it to justify my reasons. For how I like my system to work, it does not work for me, and I got sick of trying to make it work for me when I could go back to XP and in a couple hours have it ready to rock. But that is just my opinion.

 

[Darknova]

Most of what you have put as "Advantages" I personally see as bloat.

I use nLite on every install of Windows to strip out everything I don't use, which would be most of that.

I love XP x64 purely because of compatibility reasons and that there is much less "bloat" than Vista. The only thing I'm disappointed about is no DX10 support, but either Alky will break through, or Vienna will be released by the time DX10 is a neccesity (anyone played Crysis? Screw DX10, it looks amazing in DX9).

In the end I'd just strip out everything from Vista that makes Vista Vista. So it'd be pointless to go out and spend £200+ for DX10 for me.

 

[Grings]

Im hoping i can get server 2008 for a reasonable price when it's released, half the vista problems arent there, and without the fancy stuff running its no more of a resource hog than xp, the only minus is theres no chess

 

[imperialreign]

My father recently purchased the Vista upgrade . . . and I've been debating on moving up. I'd really like to wait until SP1 is out for Vista, though . . .

Questions:

Does Vista support making a USB boot drive? XP doesn't, and it's a headache sometimes to make boot disks (cause my crap 10 yr old 3.5 is about to die), remember where you left your 3.5" disk, finding one that works, etc.

What is the typical pagefile usage? Even with 2GB installed, and running on minimum processes, etc, XP still uses almost 50% installed mem.

Is it really that much faster over XP? What about with file indexing off?

 

[Pinchy]

Ok thanks for the replys! I would say ill be safe enough for a while with 1gb. Is it easy to add another gb of ram or should i get someone to do it for me?This is basically what i have on this link so if anyone else owns ownes let me know about there experience with it. www.dell.ie its the dell inspiron 1501 [/URL]​

Its pretty easy. On most dell laptops, there is an area at the back which you can unscrew and put the RAM DIMM straight in.

But when my buddies talked me into playing BF2142 and using Ventrillo for VOip, I couldn't get my mic to work at all! Nobody could hear me, they'd just hear a buzzing noise. I go to XP and it works just fine. Well things have changed and now I have an X-Fi Extreme Music, I know Alchemy is getting better with every release. And we'll see what happens after SP1 is released. I thought I remember reading improved defrag, load times, boot times, etc.

I get a stack of audio issues too. Surround sound not working in WMP, front panel mic not working properly, having to re-configure the sound whenever I want to use headphones, etc etc. Ive kind of gotten used to using Nero media player and changing all my settings when im gaming...but its something I would really like to be fixed.

Most of what you have put as "Advantages" I personally see as bloat.

Vista is nothing special, but if you have to choose between it and XP, id probably go with it .

My father recently purchased the Vista upgrade . . . and I've been debating on moving up. I'd really like to wait until SP1 is out for Vista, though . . .

Questions:

Does Vista support making a USB boot drive? XP doesn't, and it's a headache sometimes to make boot disks (cause my crap 10 yr old 3.5 is about to die), remember where you left your 3.5" disk, finding one that works, etc.

What is the typical pagefile usage? Even with 2GB installed, and running on minimum processes, etc, XP still uses almost 50% installed mem.

Is it really that much faster over XP? What about with file indexing off?

The "create an MS-DOS disk" checkbox when you try to format the drive is still greyed out. But you can always use CD's as bootable disks .

My mem usage after around 30 mins of computer being on, with Nero/IE7/MSN being the only applications I have loaded. (Added as an attachment)

TBH, I kind of forget how much faster Vista is over XP because I havent used XP in such a long time ...

 

[Darknova]

Vista is nothing special, but if you have to choose between it and XP, id probably go with it .

Yeah but I have XP x64...and having to choose between those isn't anywhere near as plain cut. x64 is basically a server OS (it's recognised as one by a lot of programs) with extras to make it desktop friendly. It uses less resources than Vista, installs into a much smaller space, and when fully customised to my liking, loads up into less than 100Mb including drivers.

You can't do that with Vista. The only problem is Vista has DX10.