So Windows vista’s out

[caravel]

I think the issue is not as to what games will and will not work, I would assume that almost everything that currently runs on Windows 2000 (NT5.0), Windows XP (NT5.1) and Windows Server 2003 (NT5.2) to run on Vista (NT6.0). This is still basically the same NT OS that began with NT3.x, when it separated from IBM's OS/2. It has a lot of extra bells and whistles, and a lot of extra bloat but it's the same animal. The main issues people will have are the extra memory usage, more restrictive DRM and product activation etc. This is why many people will avoid it.

[Xiahou]

Well, all I wanted to say was that just because it's anew OS from Microsoft, it's not necessarily bad. I'm just trying to judge things myself and get rid of certain prejudices I had before. I also did hate Windows back with 95, 98 and ME which were very prone to crashes, but XP was decent and with Vista I have experienced no major problems yet and I tried the Beta2, RC1 and now the final business version.

Because I know everyone is really interested in hearing what I have to say:
I was a Win95 hater- I thought 3.11 was fine. Once I was forced into it, I was ok with it though. I loved 98se, hated Me, 2000 was ok- but I don't like it on my personal PC (XP is better) and I like 2003 better on servers. Currently, I'm a Vista hater- I have yet to see a single "must have" feature that I want and it has lots that I don't.

[Husar]

The main issues people will have are the extra memory usage, more restrictive DRM and product activation etc. This is why many people will avoid it.

The product activation is exactly the same as in XP, you click a button and it activates itself. Now who avoided XP because of that?
DRM is something I do not know about because I don't think I have any DVDs that require it and am not going to buy any in the future.
And about the extra memory usage I would have to run Gothic 3 again, but my small test-run didn't seem to be different from what I had in XP, and it's a very memory-demanding game. How much memory it uses in idle state is not a great concern for me. For many fullscreen applications, AeroGlass is deactivated, I wouldn't be surprised if it cuts back on other things as well to free ressources for games etc.
But that's just a guess, I wouldn't want to try it on a 256MB machine, but that is horrible with XP as well.

I have yet to see a single "must have" feature that I want and it has lots that I don't.

Well, that's because there are no "must have" features, but that doesn't mean one should avoid it at all costs. If you can choose between Vista and XP, take Vista, if you have no problems with XP, keep it for now. I would have kept XP if I hadn't gotten Vista for free. I certainly wouldn't have bought it.
Though I wonder what features there are that you do not want?
Well, there is DRM, but as long as you avoid content that uses DRM, it's inactive and the content cannot be used with XP either.

[Hepcat]

I'll only get Vista when I am forced to. Hopefully thats a long time away.

[Xiahou]

Though I wonder what features there are that you do not want?
Well, there is DRM, but as long as you avoid content that uses DRM, it's inactive and the content cannot be used with XP either.

User Account Protection? The lack of driver support? Rapid install also seems like a needless burden. Then there's the bloated interface, which I guess you can disable but then you're left with what?

Vista seems like what I'd call a solution looking for a problem. Combine that with an even bigger dose of Microsoft tedium than we've dealt with under XP and I'm pretty disinterested.

[Husar]

User Account Protection? The lack of driver support? Rapid install also seems like a needless burden. Then there's the bloated interface, which I guess you can disable but then you're left with what?

Vista seems like what I'd call a solution looking for a problem. Combine that with an even bigger dose of Microsoft tedium than we've dealt with under XP and I'm pretty disinterested.

I said before that you can deactivate the user account protection, I'd actually recommend it because it didn't allow the NVidia driver to save settings. It's one of the few things that require a restart if you change them.
The only driver I installed is the NVidia graphics driver, the rest came with Vista, or not, in case of my TV card. But it's a problem of Hauppauge that they didn't develop one for Vista for my TV card. Driver support has always been a problem with a new OS and so far my experience with Linux concerning driver support was far worse than with any Windows I've had.
And you hate the interface just because 1. you've never used it before and 2. you want to hate it because it's cool to hate graphical improvements these days.
The fast install thing I have never seen, you are always searching for problems in the solution I think. I'm usually searching for the good things as long as the bad ones don't bother me. And the fast installation is one that I haven't seen yet so I don't know why it should be a problem for me?

[Xiahou]

Where's the incentive to upgrade to a new OS that has no features that I want and includes many features that I'll want to turn off?

And you hate the interface just because 1. you've never used it before and 2. you want to hate it because it's cool to hate graphical improvements these days.

Yes, I guess it us "cool" to be skeptical of a shiny new interface that looks pretty, but involves no real productivity savings and requires a significant hardware investment just to be able to run it. How trendy of me.

Your defense of it seems to revolve around how it's no worse than XP. How is it an argument in favor of a new OS when the best things you can say about it is that it's no worse than your current on once you turn off all the annoying "features"?

[Husar]

Where's the incentive to upgrade to a new OS that has no features that I want and includes many features that I'll want to turn off?
Yes, I guess it us "cool" to be skeptical of a shiny new interface that looks pretty, but involves no real productivity savings and requires a significant hardware investment just to be able to run it. How trendy of me.

If you would call an Athlon XP 2400+ and a GeForce 6600GT a significant hardware investment...because that is the system I ran the beta 2 on. and yes, I even played games on that beta 2, the demo of Company of Heroes is one I remember, it ran pretty fine on low to medium settings IIRC.

Your defense of it seems to revolve around how it's no worse than XP. How is it an argument in favor of a new OS when the best things you can say about it is that it's no worse than your current on once you turn off all the annoying "features"?

I never said anything about annoying features, annoying for me is usually when you cannot turn it off. And like I said before, it's not really worth upgrading, but if you have to buy a new OS anyway, you could just as well go for Vista. Have you even ever used Vista?

[Xiahou]

I never said anything about annoying features, annoying for me is usually when you cannot turn it off.

Annoying for me is when it's something nobody wants or uses, but is forced on you anyway. When you work on as many different PCs as I do it's very much an annoyance to turn it off whenever I need to get work done.

it's not really worth upgrading

Ah-ha! My job is done here.

[Husar]

Ah-ha! My job is done here.

If that was all you wanted, your job was done before it even started.

I thinkthe difference between you and me is that I have one private computer which I use for gaming so I like to have some eye candy and so on and can take some time to figure out how to get rid of annoying features.
I can understand that doing thousands of things on hundreds of computers can be annoying, but I found installing Vista easier and faster than installing XP and that was mainly because it had all the drivers you need(on a business machine, you wouldn't really need the ForceWare driver) and there are not as many upgrades to download and install as there are for XP(I remember more than 70 even after installing SP2). The Business version also comes without built-in games and maybe other gadgets I don't know of. Maybe you should just try it if you can get your hands on it.

[Bijo]

I wouldn't mind getting my hands on Vista... if I could only do so cheaply. I got a question though: Vista comes both in 32- and 64-bit, right? Just wondering, for some reason I can't find that simple info anywhere.

And here, to rub some more salt into certain people's wounds, I found a nice link where you can subscribe to the Vista magazine: http://www.windowsvistamagazine.com/...a&mg_id=20289b I stumbled upon it accidentally, so I thought I'd share it with all of you who like Vista so much

[Lemur]

I got a question though: Vista comes both in 32- and 64-bit, right? Just wondering, for some reason I can't find that simple info anywhere.

Yes, Vista comes in both flavors. The 64-bit version has a number of security advantages over 32-bit, but there are serious compatibility issues to consider.

I hear Windows Vista Magazine has a centerfold with suggestive pictures of Aero Glass ... sign me up!

[Bijo]

Thanks Lemur. That was a good read :)

I hope the 64-bit version will get better support and such soon enough.

[Lemur]

Ars Technica has finally put out their full review. They're always worth a read.

[Beirut]

A review from wargamer.com.

http://www.wargamer.com/articles/vista_impressions_1/

I love this line in the Vista warranty:

LIMITED WARRANTY. If you follow the instructions and the software is properly licensed, the software will perform substantially as described in the Microsoft materials that you receive in or with the software.

Substantially? You mean almost?

Ten days after Microsoft cashes my check for purchasing Vista, a substantial portion of the funds will be released to them.

[Caius]

Is there a Vista demo?

[Lemur]

Sort of. Kinda. Microsoft has a Flash-based web demo. It's not great, but I suppose it's better than nothing.

Also, I believe Vista will function for a period of time before activation shuts it down, so if you know somebody who has a legit copy, you could try it out for a little while before it nukes itself.

[Caius]

Thank you!

[Lemur]

Poll numbers for Vista ain't so great. Why do we resist? The Borg will assimilate us sooner or later.

The Harris Poll of 2223 US online adults in early March found that 87% were aware of Vista. Unfortunately for Microsoft, only 12% of Vista-aware respondents were intending to upgrade to Vista in the next 12 months.

A similar Harris Poll in December 2006, just one month before Vista’s consumer launch, found that 47% of those online were aware of Vista, and that 20% intended to upgrade in the coming year.

It seems that while Microsoft’s “Wow Starts Now” marketing campaign has boosted awareness of Vista, it hasn’t substantially increased the total number of people planning to upgrade.

[edit]

Also, HardOCP has a nice write-up of living with Vista for 30 days. They did the same thing with Linux a while back.

[Husar]

That living with Vista for 30 days sounds like a fair article(read only the conclusions), but since he mentions a lot of annoying prompts and data loss I guess he did not deactivate that annoying user account protection stuff, IMO the OS is a lot better without it(maybe not if your PC is supposed to be a fortress and you want to give each and every permission yourself, i.e. if you're a controlfreak ).
And I personally haven't come around any stability problems so far, except for unoptimised software, which, of course, is an issue(I'm thinking of Stalker which crashed with every second attempt of saving the game )

But all in all, a nice summary.

[Lemur]

Another good reason to stay with XP for a while:

Vista ate my hard drive. The guy's been at it for weeks, and he still can't figure out why Vista is taking up 50 gigs extra on his hard drive.

[Husar]

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6174799/index.html

[Husar]

http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/...fm?NewsID=7205

I think I can agree with this, there should have been only one Ultimate version for 100$.

I have XP Pro and Vista Business and neither has media center. Now my TV card is getting really old and I can't even receive some "standard" channels which moved their frequencies, so I was thinking to get a new one. But most packages say "experience XYZ etc pp with windows media center".
Can only hope that some of them bothered to make a stand-alone program for their cards. I can't and don't want to afford a Vista for several hundred EUR, most of my advertising comes from the fact that I got it for free, if I had to pay for it I wouldn't have Vista now.
It's still quite nice, but horribly overpriced if you altready have an XP.

[Lemur]

Acer is not happy:

The head of Taiwan-based personal computer maker Acer, Gianfranco Lanci, hit out at Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, saying that the "entire industry" was disappointed by it. "The entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista," the head of the world's fourth-biggest PC maker told the Financial Times Deutschland in its online edition on Monday.

Never before had a new version of Windows done so little to boost PC sales.

"And that's not going to change in the second half of this year," Lanci said.

"I really don't think that someone has bought a new PC specifically for Vista," he added.

Microsoft's operating system commands a market share of around 90 percent, with Apple and Linux accounting for the rest.

While the industry had waited for years for Vista, the software was not really ready when it was launched to great pomp at the start of this year, Lanci complained.

"Stability is certainly a problem," he said.

Acer, with annual sales of 11.3 billion dollars (8.2 billion euros), ranks number four in the PC market behind Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo.

[Husar]

If you click the link in my post above, you might come across the same story...

Ok, I checked it again, mea culpa, I wanted to post the same story but apparently found a wrong english link, that also explains why it didn't fit 100% with the german news I read.
Should have had a look at the date earlier.