Is Vista compatible with...

[CurseTheSky]

Very soon, I will be upgrading to Vista Ultimate x64. XP is nice, but after using my girlfriend's new laptop with Home Premium, I'm sold. There is a significant performance hit over XP, but the new seems to outweigh the bad. I'm more than ready for a new user interface as well.

The problem is, I'm still using Microsoft Office 2003. I don't have the cash to shell out for 2007 right now, and I need Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. for school. Will it install fine, or will I have to upgrade to 2007?

Hardware wise, I'm disappointed that I will have to put my X-Fi on the shelf, but I can deal with it. I also use the Logitech G9 mouse, and G15 (new version) keyboard. Has anyone had problems with their drivers? Finally, please glance at my signature - do you see anything else that might give me trouble?

Thank you.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
Very soon, I will be upgrading to Vista Ultimate x64. XP is nice, but after using my girlfriend's new laptop with Home Premium, I'm sold. There is a significant performance hit over XP, but the new seems to outweigh the bad. I'm more than ready for a new user interface as well.

The problem is, I'm still using Microsoft Office 2003. I don't have the cash to shell out for 2007 right now, and I need Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. for school. Will it install fine, or will I have to upgrade to 2007?

Hardware wise, I'm disappointed that I will have to put my X-Fi on the shelf, but I can deal with it. I also use the Logitech G9 mouse, and G15 (new version) keyboard. Has anyone had problems with their drivers? Finally, please glance at my signature - do you see anything else that might give me trouble?

Thank you.

Google search engine says yes it works fine,link.

X-fi should run fine with Vista x64, there has been a few driver updates from Creative.
G15 and G5 there are 64 bit drivers at Logitech site.

Your hardware should have no 64 bit driver problems.
Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 3.42GHz, overclocking wise best to install Vista with nothing overclocked to check stability etc..then you can go for overclocking later.

 

[JustaGeek]

I installed Works 2006 with the Word 2002.

Word works perfectly fine - you just have to call Microsoft to re-activate it.

 

[Griffinhart]

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
Very soon, I will be upgrading to Vista Ultimate x64. XP is nice, but after using my girlfriend's new laptop with Home Premium, I'm sold. There is a significant performance hit over XP, but the new seems to outweigh the bad. I'm more than ready for a new user interface as well.

You shouldn't be any performance hit going to Vista on the same hardware. If your girlfriends laptop is slower than it should be it's likely from all the bloat the pc manufacturer loaded it up with.

This is only anecdotal but... Originally I installed Vista 32 on my machine back in January. It was an AMD 64 X2 4400+ with 2GB. I never thought it was slow, but all the negative press started to make me wonder. A couple of months ago I upgraded my system. I sold my old system to a friend. While I was setting it up for him I installed XP pro for him since I didn't have a Vista License for that box anymore. Once everything was installed, patched and working I didn't see any performance increase over Vista on the same hardware. In fact, just the opposite. After 9 or so months of Vista's superfetch learning my usage paterns apps seemed less responsive under XP. Not that it was slow, just that it wasn't quite as responsive.

The problem is, I'm still using Microsoft Office 2003. I don't have the cash to shell out for 2007 right now, and I need Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. for school. Will it install fine, or will I have to upgrade to 2007?

Office 2003 works just fine under Vista. I'm still running it on one PC (ran out of 2007 licenses)

Hardware wise, I'm disappointed that I will have to put my X-Fi on the shelf, but I can deal with it.

You won't need to put your X-Fi on the shelf. It works with Vista and there are drivers. While Creative's drivers aren't the best thing out there, they do work. The big issue some have with the X-Fi is that direct sound won't use the hardware acceleration of the soundboard. But many games support OpenAL which is a free download from creative for X-Fi owners.

I also use the Logitech G9 mouse, and G15 (new version) keyboard. Has anyone had problems with their drivers? Finally, please glance at my signature - do you see anything else that might give me trouble?

I'm running a G15 and G7 mouse. Early versions of the keyboard and mice drivers were a bit bad, but that got fixed pretty quickly. Right now there are no problems I can see with the current drivers.

 

[VinDSL]

Maybe not pertinent, but...

I'm running Microsoft Office 2000 (with all the latest patches/updates) on Vista HP - even though it's NOT supported by MS - works great!

The only thing I did NOT install was Outlook 2000, since Internet Mail Only (IMO) mode will fail due to the missing wab.dll (Windows Address Book) file. Plus, the Calendar app in Vista has all the same functions as Outlook 2000 anyway - which is the only reason I used Outlook 2000...

Moreover, I don't use the POP mail protocol - I use IMAP, and prefer Outlook Express (pre-Vista) and Windows LIVE Mail (highly recommended Vista upgrade) to all other mail clients, including Outlook xxxx.

Anyway, I don't *think* you'll have any problems with Microsoft Office 2003 on Vista x64, but you'll never know until you try it.

My understanding is XP x64 is actually a subset of Server 2003 x64 - but Vista x64 is a totally different animal, so you cannot directly compare the two...

 

[CurseTheSky]

Glad to hear it, thank you all.

I had actually done some previous research, but I like to hear first-hand from people what their experiences are. For example, I JUST purchased a new case, and realized that one of the features I didn't like is removable; I couldn't find a single site that stated that. I was worried that all the accounts of "XXX WILL WORK in Vista" would turn into a "XXX WILL WORK in Vista... after hours of screwing around and cursing."

There are also tons of people saying that X-Fi cards STILL don't work in Vista. Hearing that they do work here puts me at ease.

Again, thank you all.

 

[Skeeedunt]

I'll super double confirm that Office 2003 works fine. FYI, if you're a student you can also get Office 2007 for $60

 

[VinDSL]

Um...

You guys DO know about (the intentional) incompatibilities between MS Office 2007 and things created with older versions of MS Office and MS Office clones, right? (Thanks Microsoft!)

Many publishers, for instance, won't accept manuscripts created on MS Office 2007, and so forth, and so on...

Personally, if I didn't care about 100% compatibility, I'd go with StarOffice 8 (available *FREE* through Google Pack via some sort of oddball cross-licensing agreement loop-hole)... $50-$100 through retail channels!

It's a nice jesture on Google's part (trying to kill MS Office 2007 and all) but I cannot go that route, because 100% of my docs, et cetera, were NOT created with MS Office 2007 or pre-2007 clones!

 

[nerp]

Office 2007 is fully backwards compatible AND saving on the same format as 2003, 2000, XP, etc, all you do is change a teeny little setting for "compatibility mode" and nobody will have any idea what version of Office you used.

Office 07 is a much more pleasant interface than Staroffice if you ask me. I'd never feel comfortable writing on a deadline in something powered by Java, either.

 

[BehindEnemyLines]

Originally posted by: VinDSL
Um...

You guys DO know about (the intentional) incompatibilities between MS Office 2007 and things created with older versions of MS Office and MS Office clones, right? (Thanks Microsoft!)

Many publishers, for instance, won't accept manuscripts created on MS Office 2007, and so forth, and so on...

Personally, if I didn't care about 100% compatibility, I'd go with StarOffice 8 (available *FREE* through Google Pack via some sort of oddball cross-licensing agreement loop-hole)... $50-$100 through retail channels!

It's a nice jesture on Google's part (trying to kill MS Office 2007 and all) but I cannot go that route, because 100% of my docs, et cetera, were NOT created with MS Office 2007 or pre-2007 clones!

By default, Office 2007 saves files in a newer format .DOCX. It's simply a ZIP file (yes, you can change the extension to .zip and open it) that contains other files including a text XML document of your writings).

You can easily change the default format from .DOCX to 97-2003 compatible .DOC format in the options. Optionally, you can download Office 2007 Converter that allows older Office versions to open .DOCX file (not edit and save). I personally change my default to 2003 compatible just to be safe until .DOCX becomes more widely used. Have you used it?

 

[VinDSL]

Exactly!

Stick with Office 2003 (or less)...

 

[XBoxLPU]

Originally posted by: Griffinhart

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
Very soon, I will be upgrading to Vista Ultimate x64. XP is nice, but after using my girlfriend's new laptop with Home Premium, I'm sold. There is a significant performance hit over XP, but the new seems to outweigh the bad. I'm more than ready for a new user interface as well.

You shouldn't be any performance hit going to Vista on the same hardware. If your girlfriends laptop is slower than it should be it's likely from all the bloat the pc manufacturer loaded it up with.

Or the notebook doesn't have a lot of memory and a slower HD compared to desktops.

Vista really didn't shine on my hardware until I upgraded to 4Gb of memory. 2Gb of memory wasn't slow by any means though

 

[Griffinhart]

Originally posted by: VinDSL


Moreover, I don't use the POP mail protocol - I use IMAP, and prefer Outlook Express (pre-Vista) and Windows LIVE Mail (highly recommended Vista upgrade) to all other mail clients, including Outlook xxxx.

You know, I was looking at Live Mail today. For a free mailer, it's pretty decent. I'll probably migrate my Dad to it from Windows Mail.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: Griffinhart
You know, I was looking at Live Mail today. For a free mailer, it's pretty decent. I'll probably migrate my Dad to it from Windows Mail.

Windows Mail was horrible, IMHO - my only disappointment with Vista...

Checking around, I discovered Microsoft hated Windows Mail too, hence the introduction of Windows LIVE Mail - which has been most excellent!