Vista Kicks Butt!

[TheCheat]

Just FYI- Vista has this feature called SuperFetch:

"SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads these into your system memory so they'll be ready when you need them."

It explains the "heavy memory usage". I see it as the OS managing memory much more efficiently.

 

[johnz]

btw on my pc vista only uses like 470 megs of ram while nothing is running, same as xp for me.

I'm usually around 1gb. a lot of that is Firefox with a bunch of tabs open, and Thunderbird which I always keep open.

 

[Wicked Klown]

I love the layout of it and it looks great over dvi/hdmi with no overscan at 1920 x 1080. Only downside is I can't figure out IIS7 and I can get MCE to play my movies at full screen.

 

[kayson]

Its funny how after all the Vista hate people are starting to realize its not absolutely terrible. But I still don't see it as being a huge improvement over XP :/

 

[Oroka Sempai]

It is not a giant leap over XP, it was really developed ontop of XP (all the betas). After 6 years, anything more than a service pack is a nice change. I would expect Vienna be more than Vista. Vista was more of a security update rather than a new OS IMO, but they threw in 6 years of beta tweeking just to make things look good (I miss the clock in the log in screen).

 

[RedDragonXXX]

I had Business edition installed on my s939 setup and it has been nothing but problems.

Went back to XP till they fix it.

 

[eightballrj]

It's GREAT unless you need to run Mechanical Engineering/ 3D Modeling programs such and Mathcad, Matlab, Ansys, Solidworks, etc etc. None of them have releases yet for Vista (soon is what all of them say). So, hopefully they will have a release for it soon and I can upgrade... er well Clean Install "upgrade" to either Business or Ultimate. My roomate runs it and I LOVE it!

 

[johnz]

It is not a giant leap over XP, it was really developed ontop of XP (all the betas). After 6 years, anything more than a service pack is a nice change. I would expect Vienna be more than Vista. Vista was more of a security update rather than a new OS IMO, but they threw in 6 years of beta tweeking just to make things look good (I miss the clock in the log in screen).

Yea, I'd buy that. I don't think we'll see to much in the way of revolutionary features in any O/S from any maker. It'll mostly be refinements of prevailing technology. Vista is very nice. It's about as different from XP as I'd expect from a new O/S. I doubt Vienna will be a mind blowing change from Vista either, but XP will look like Win 95 in comparison.

 

[Thund3rball]

Yea, I'd buy that. I don't think we'll see to much in the way of revolutionary features in any O/S from any maker. It'll mostly be refinements of prevailing technology. Vista is very nice. It's about as different from XP as I'd expect from a new O/S. I doubt Vienna will be a mind blowing change from Vista either, but XP will look like Win 95 in comparison.

Ya you are probably right and that's what blows IMO. About MS anyways, not sure about other manufacturers. It would be nice if MS actually attempted to make an OS that WAS better than the current one. One that used LESS RESOURCES not more, and allowed for MORE STABLE operation and up time. Skinning the same old back end with some fancy new gimmicks and charging me $100s for it is just lame. With Dell and other system assemblers/distributors offering Linux I think we are seeing the beginning of the end of the reign of Windows. It won't happen quickly but it will happen. All we need is some major software developers & games to get on board with Linux and Windows is done IMO. MS can't stay on top forever especially with their recent track record.

Having said all that, I am on XP and will probably move to Vista in 2008 Why? Cause I am not hard core enough for Linux.. yet.

 

[Oroka Sempai]

Having said all that, I am on XP and will probably move to Vista in 2008 Why? Cause I am not hard core enough for Linux.. yet.

So you will always stay one OS behind? We will start seeing Windows 7/Vienna betas in 2008, proable RTM 2009.


You cant make a OS do more with less resources. Look at Linux, yes it uses less resources, but it too is becomming bloated (some distros). The more an OS can do, the more resources it will use. Computers are becomming powerhouses these days... would you put Win 3.11 on your quad core system with 4gb of memory (not that you can)? Would you give your grandma a army tank to drive to bingo? Bigger hardware needs bigger software, otherwise it is a waste to buy a powerful computer.

When I first got XP, I could barely run it and desperatly needed upgrades. Some of my hardware never got XP drivers, some of my software didnt work. Look at XP now! Vista is in the same place, and will become a (more) powerful OS in some time (fall 2007 with SP1).

 

[dudleycpa]

After they took WinFS file system out I started to lose interest. I know I have to upgrade someday...it just won't be today.

 

[Oroka Sempai]

WinFS will be rolled out with SP1, IIRC it will be with XP SP3 too. They would have had to hold back on releasing Vista if they were to include WinFS. Now they have more time to tweek it, and it will be better.

 

[dudleycpa]

Thanks Oraka that is good to know. I remember one reason why they ditched it was because of time constraints.

SP3 for XP? I thought that was cancel.

 

[grumperfish]

This thread took an interesting turn..

Personally I plan to stick to XP until Vista SP1 and the impending system rebuild - probably will go with a 900-series p4 since I'm cheap though.. at least RAM prices have plummeted lately . From what I've seen of Vista so far there isn't really that much appeal to me at this point. When I switched from 98 (SE oh god) to XP I was blown away, but my time spent demo'ing Vista on friends' machines has left me with mixed impressions. Superfetch is nice and all and I understand it's usefulness, but I don't see the point in using a bulky OS that needs to harvest my unused RAM to give itself a slight performance boost when I'm typing up a word document. I certainly don't feel like waiting for for swapping on a 2gig machine in the process of doing this either. Even my ubuntu installation which is slightly bloated [shakes fist at XGL] uses 400mb of RAM at max with firefox, gaim, xmms, firestarter, vsftp, and gkrellm running while barely glancing at the swapfile.

Having recently started using ubuntu with beryl hasn't really helped my urge to upgrade either though. Outside of longer boottimes than I'd care for (running it on an ancient maxtor 10gig drive due to lack of current space and too much laziness to repartition) it's been the most stable OS I've used so far and quite fast. Adding to that the ease of setting up ntfs-g and the whole being free thing, if I do end up getting Vista in the fall it'll likely end up as my secondary OS unless WINE or cedega magically mature by then. Having previously briefly used Red Hat I've been amazed in the progress that the open source community has made recently. I'll probably pick up a copy of Vista this year, but I can understand totally why many people are holding back and asking OEMs for alternatives. Until I get a new machine there's no way I'd put Vista on this one (although it'd probably do alright with another gig of fast RAM), but for the time being the alternatives are looking better to me... except OSX but that's partly due to Apple-hate mixed with an intense dislike of the OS (particularly the UI), and many of the hipster-type owners I've run into through friends and work.


Edit: That's good to hear that WinFS will be implemented though. That's one of the only things I was really looking forward to with Vista.

 

[Audioaficionado]

WinFS will be rolled out with SP1, IIRC it will be with XP SP3 too. They would have had to hold back on releasing Vista if they were to include WinFS. Now they have more time to tweek it, and it will be better.

Sounds interesting... Got a linky or two?

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

werdz thats why vista blows, for now at least. I got the free copy from one of those MS things, and it made my gaming a poor experience, so I went back to XP. Here at work I have Vista as well, my PC has 2GB of memory, I have 180MB of that free, all I have open is IE, Outlook and Messenger, I just rebooted too.

This is not vista's fault, put the blame where it belongs, to the drivers of your hardware.


the drop in game performance is minimal at most for the majority of games anyways - 5-10fps at most. sure, if your at 30fps and you lose 10 it makes a world of diff but otherwise it wont be noticeble.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

One that used LESS RESOURCES not more, and allowed for MORE STABLE operation and up time. Skinning the same old back end with some fancy new gimmicks and charging me $100s for it is just lame. .

are you someone else who thinks Vista is nothing more then a purdy GUI, they didnt rewrite %60 of the code to just add some new gimmicks, just because you dont directly see the new stuff on the surface, doesnt mean it isnt there.

also, less resources? people want new goodies and new toys but always want it to use LESS resources, the same people who complain that Vista is using their video card on the desktop, well, would you rather that $600 sit there and be a paper weight doing nothing? if so , i will give you my address and you can send me your money.

Do people not understand the O/S is what makes your computer WORK period, combinies everything to operate in one environment and simply WORK, it should be the system using the MOST resources if anything considering the amount of work it has to perform just so you can watch a video, or answer grandma's email.

Vista USES your system, and it uses it WELL, it makes things faster, when you decided t play that hardcore video game it ALLOCATES resources to the game or application.

i dont see why people get so worked up that something is using the CPU / RAM / Video card... isnt that what you bought them for? to do something.....

I had Business edition installed on my s939 setup and it has been nothing but problems.

Went back to XP till they fix it.

Till who fixes it?

AMD drivers?
Video drivers?

What was the problem?

People always blame the O/S - i think mainly because it is microsoft, is always their fault, not the programmers who made the program and didnt follow guidlines, or the Driver Development team who decided to cut corners or just not do it right (NVIDIA).......

MS provides all the info / data / code people need to make drivers / programs for the O/S plenty of time before the O/S is released, you dont think these companies had access to the Beta's the public had access too?

Yea, I'd buy that. I don't think we'll see to much in the way of revolutionary features in any O/S from any maker. It'll mostly be refinements of prevailing technology. Vista is very nice. It's about as different from XP as I'd expect from a new O/S. I doubt Vienna will be a mind blowing change from Vista either, but XP will look like Win 95 in comparison.

And for a reason, people do not like change, look what changed from:

2000 to XP - people complained
Xp - Vista - people complained

And really, not alot changed.......

can you imagine if they completely over hauled the O/S, the layout, completly new, diff - people who FLIP!

You cant make a OS do more with less resources. Look at Linux, yes it uses less resources, but it too is becomming bloated (some distros).

exactly, i tried running Fedora 3 on a p4 2ghz and 256mb of ram (minimal install, integrated graphics), and it was slow and sluggish, just the interface or opening anything,i put it to 512 and it ran smooth, when Linux becomes as popular as Windows on the Desktop it will be just as slow and bloated, same route FireFox is taking, as they realize people want X feature and Y feature, they realize just why it takes so many resources.

FireFox used to be small, fast and efficient, now it is turning into another bloated slow browser and so is Fedora for an o/S now, hopefully Ubuntu wont go the route of Fedora.

 

[johnz]

And for a reason, people do not like change, look what changed from:

2000 to XP - people complained
Xp - Vista - people complained

And really, not alot changed.......

can you imagine if they completely over hauled the O/S, the layout, completly new, diff - people who FLIP!

Maybe I'm a small thinker, but I don't see how the windows system(used generically here) can be improved on much. There's some small tweaks that can be made, but on a whole the windowing method of running a computer works very well. That's why I don't think there'll be huge changes to the gui(what everybody notices, and uses to compare O/Ss) in newer versions of Windows, Linux... or whatever.

O/S refinements will be mostly under the hood, and incremental so their not going to jump out at you when you first log on to your new O/S. Superfetch and Readyboost are good examples of this. They definitely speed up computing, but it's not like doubling your clock speed, or hd transfer rates. It's a small speed bump, that when combined with future tweaks and additions will be noticeable over lower versions of whatever O/S you happen to choose.

If I were to predict the next "mind blowing" feature of future O/Ss, I think it'll be voice recognition. It works ok now, but when it works with almost 100% accuracy, using conversational speech patterns, that'll be a small revolution in computing.

 

[Hazaro]

Too many people with different accents. You'd have to make specialized voices. Well I guess that wouldn't be too much of a problem. I'm a genius!

I'll probably make a little place for Vista when I run out of space on my 250gb and get a 500gb.

 

[Peepaw]

I'm one of those that will wait. XP works just fine for now.