My Experience with Vista... Part II.

[VIAN]

[Fade Out Ghostbuster's Theme]

I'm a bit tired so I apologize in advance for any stupid grammar mistakes.


First, I had some time to play around with Home Premium for a couple of hours and I would like to just add that Home Premium is not for everyone. What I mean by that is to serious consider wasting the extra $60 for a GUI that isn't that impressive in comparison to Home Basic and the Media Center that you may never use.


Now on to my Vista Experience Part II. This was done on Vista Home Basic. Let it be known, it has been over two weeks that I've been playing around with Vista.

Interfacing
I love the GUI. It's very pretty and I find most of it to be more convenient than XP. Vista feels like the natural evolution. I didn't notice it in the beginning, but I gave it a little time and thought about why these changes were made - and most of it made sense. Also, just playing around with Vista, things that I used to do in XP that I couldn't do here, I found were made even better by default, but they just look a little different, so there weren't immediately recognizable.

BTW, I still don't find the UAC annoying. I see that most of reasons it bothers me for are legit.

Speed
Vista is much slower than XP when moving a file, say 100MB, from one area to another. It feels like it takes twice the amount of time than that of XP. When using programs Vista is also slower than XP, although not to the extent of moving a file. Sometimes when I try to shut down, Vista might delay the shutdown process for 1-2 minutes.

Stability
Vista has crashed on me about a handful of times. It might as well have been the BSOD. I was just browsing with Firefox and then my mouse and HDD stops working.

This one time, or maybe twice, Vista just restarted itself for no reason. The kind of restart similar to pressing the reset button.

Conclusion
According to my experiences, Vista is better and worth it compared to XP, although it isn't ready for the masses due to stability issues. SP1, due out later this year, will probably fix most of these issues. Hopefully.

 

[Atheus]

The way you describe it makes it sound completely unusable if you want to get any actual work done...

Are you sure you don't have any hardware problems, and that all your components are fully supported? The random restart issue, for example, I would normally attribute to a power supply problem.

 

[rise]

Sometimes when I try to shut down, Vista might delay the shutdown process for 1-2 minutes.

nothing personal, but i always lol at this. who cares how long it takes to shutdown? the OS is doing its thing. do people stand there waiting for it to shut down after confirming "shut down" :laugh:

 

[Delerious]

Originally posted by: rise

Sometimes when I try to shut down, Vista might delay the shutdown process for 1-2 minutes.

nothing personal, but i always lol at this. who cares how long it takes to shutdown? the OS is doing its thing. do people stand there waiting for it to shut down after confirming "shut down" :laugh:

Yes I do stand there waiting. Sometimes XP hangs at the shutdown screen.

 

[VIAN]

Originally posted by: Atheus
The way you describe it makes it sound completely unusable if you want to get any actual work done...

Are you sure you don't have any hardware problems, and that all your components are fully supported? The random restart issue, for example, I would normally attribute to a power supply problem.

I don't think it makes it sound unusable. Just that it crashed about 7 times within 2 weeks. My PSU was fine two weeks ago.

Originally posted by: rise

Sometimes when I try to shut down, Vista might delay the shutdown process for 1-2 minutes.

nothing personal, but i always lol at this. who cares how long it takes to shutdown? the OS is doing its thing. do people stand there waiting for it to shut down after confirming "shut down" :laugh:

When I'm waiting for it to restart it's super annoying. And during that time you're waiting there is no indication that it is shutting down, so it bothers me since idk if Vista received the command or not.

 

[Fenixgoon]

XP sometimes takes 1-2 minutes to shutdown for me right now, heh.

 

[SickBeast]

Since I'm using Vista too, I'll give it my take as well.

I'm on Vista Home Premium 64-bit.

My rig:

Opteron 144 @ 2.7ghz
Asus 8800GTS 320mb
Asus A8N-E
2GB DDR400

Interfacing

I also love the GUI.

Keep in mind that it doesn't make your PC's interface into that of a Mac (my sister asked me that one). It's just a nice looking XP interface as far as I'm concerned; the windows and start menu look pretty, with very little added functionality.

I love the built in media centre and I think I even prefer it over iTunes which says alot.

The Widgets are very cool and I leave them running on my secondary display.

Speed

I've actually found Vista to be faster than XP in everything except for gaming. I find it boots up faster and shuts down faster. It's got a great 'sleep' function that is faster and more seamless than XP's 'hibernate'. Once superfetch figures out what programs you like, even behemoth programs like OpenOffice Writer open up as though they are notepad.exe.

I find that the internet is more responsive.

Stability

Vista has been very stable for me, probably more so than XP was in fact. I had one BSOD, but it was overclocking-related.

Compatibility

I'm adding this section because it's been the only area of concern for me with Vista. Only 2 of my 6 games have worked on it, and even when they do work they're *significantly* slower than on XP, even when using beta drivers.

My applications have all worked aside from nTune.

Conclusion

Really it's true what other's have said - Vista is an *awesome* workstation OS, and a terrible gaming OS. Really for most people, Linux is a better bet because it's free, and in all honestly you can probably game about as well on Linux as you can on 64-bit Vista at this point, especially if you own an 8800-series card.

Within a year or so I'm positive that they will work out the gaming kinks, but right now, it's nothing more than a fun toy to surf the web on if you're a gamer. Make sure you dual-boot XP!

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: rise

Sometimes when I try to shut down, Vista might delay the shutdown process for 1-2 minutes.

nothing personal, but i always lol at this. who cares how long it takes to shutdown? the OS is doing its thing. do people stand there waiting for it to shut down after confirming "shut down" :laugh:

Actually Vista installs automatic updates on shutdown sometimes.

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: VIAN
I don't think it makes it sound unusable. Just that it crashed about 7 times within 2 weeks.

Are you being sarcastic? I wouldn't even consider working on a machine which crashes 7 times in 2 years, let alone 2 weeks!

 

[fierydemise]

What did we all tell you VAIN? The interface seems jarring at first but give it a little time and it all feels so natural.

 

[GrumpyMan]

I've never had a blue screen on XP, 7 in 2 weeks? Ridiculous. Not putting down the OS just seems strange.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Since I'm using Vista too, I'll give it my take as well.

I'm on Vista Home Premium 64-bit.

My rig:

Opteron 144 @ 2.7ghz
Asus 8800GTS 320mb
Asus A8N-E
2GB DDR400

Interfacing

I also love the GUI.

Keep in mind that it doesn't make your PC's interface into that of a Mac (my sister asked me that one). It's just a nice looking XP interface as far as I'm concerned; the windows and start menu look pretty, with very little added functionality.

I love the built in media centre and I think I even prefer it over iTunes which says alot.

The Widgets are very cool and I leave them running on my secondary display.

Speed

I've actually found Vista to be faster than XP in everything except for gaming. I find it boots up faster and shuts down faster. It's got a great 'sleep' function that is faster and more seamless than XP's 'hibernate'. Once superfetch figures out what programs you like, even behemoth programs like OpenOffice Writer open up as though they are notepad.exe.

I find that the internet is more responsive.

Stability

Vista has been very stable for me, probably more so than XP was in fact. I had one BSOD, but it was overclocking-related.

Compatibility

I'm adding this section because it's been the only area of concern for me with Vista. Only 2 of my 6 games have worked on it, and even when they do work they're *significantly* slower than on XP, even when using beta drivers.

My applications have all worked aside from nTune.

Conclusion

Really it's true what other's have said - Vista is an *awesome* workstation OS, and a terrible gaming OS. Really for most people, Linux is a better bet because it's free, and in all honestly you can probably game about as well on Linux as you can on 64-bit Vista at this point, especially if you own an 8800-series card.

Within a year or so I'm positive that they will work out the gaming kinks, but right now, it's nothing more than a fun toy to surf the web on if you're a gamer. Make sure you dual-boot XP!

Interfacing: I find very natural now,the layout I actually prefer over XP.



Speed :I find fast mind you I'm using Vista x64 with 4GB of ram and 4GB ReadyBoost drive.


Stability: One word "excellent",don't know what a BSOD looks like in Vista just yet.


Compatibility.


No problems at all,some games you have to run in WinXP SP2 compatibility mode and make sure you select "run as Admin" in properties of the game concerned(ie SWG).Bear in mind with Vista x64 you can't run 16 bit games due to no 16 bit legacy support in the OS.

Games installed.


KOTOR
KOTOR2 with DLL .patch fix for sound.
Jedi Academy
WoW
Might & Magic 8
Vanguard
Steam ,Cs,DoD,TFC etc...
UFO-Afterlight
Starcraft with exp pack
Morrowind with all expansion packs
Oblivion
SWG
UT2004
Silverfall
Jedi Outcast.
Space Rangers 2 without starforce
Dark and Light (which is now free)
Baldur's Gate with exp pack
Baldur's Gate 2 with exp pack
X-COM-Enforcer
9Dragons

Conclusion :No problems to report and no BSOD.



This is what I mean by running as admin and selecting XP compatibility mode,SWG is used as an example in this case link.

 

[Zap]

30 Days with Windows Vista

HardOCP had one of their guys live with Vista for a month (final version, purchased at retail midnight release), and then write about it. He had it installed on two systems, one new and fast, the second a few years old. The older system got slower. Newer system, not much difference. Had some gaming problems. Had a couple crashes and other instabilities that the same two systems didn't exhibit under XP.

 

[mechBgon]

Too bad you forgot the Security part, guys. Go to Control Panel > Windows Update and look your Vista installation's update history. How many Critical updates are in there?

Now go to Windows Update with a WinXP system, and look at XP's Critical update history for the same timespan, using the link at the left. Interesting, huh? I'm not waiting 'til SP1. Vista's already doing far better than WinXP SP2 in this area.

And Vista's designed to make it much more practical to use a non-Admin user account for security.

I got Vista a couple months ago. I haven't had any BSODs, crashes, lockups, stallouts or explosions on Vista Ultimate x64. I'm using Vista's in-the-box drivers, which might have something to do with that.

My very old image-editing software is a little buggy on Vista, but it had issues even on XP when run without Admin privileges, so go figure. My even-older 3D-accelerated 3D modelling software has some slight glitches. I was sad to discover that my beloved Sidewinder 3D Pro joysticks, being gameport devices, aren't supported So those are some downsides for me. I'll survive.

 

[Mem]

My very old image-editing software is a little buggy on Vista, but it had issues even on XP when run without Admin privileges, so go figure.

I could not run my old Printmaster printing software(due to it being 16 bit,yes that old) however that gave me a good excuse to upgrade to Printmaster 16 which works great and I actually prefer it to the older version I had.

My even-older 3D-accelerated 3D modelling software has some slight glitches. I was sad to discover that my beloved Sidewinder 3D Pro joysticks, being gameport devices, aren't supported So those are some downsides for me. I'll survive.

I was very impressed with 64 bit driver support for all my hardware,I had all 64 bit drivers within 5 weeks release of Vista x64,even drivers like Leadtek Winfast USB 2.0 DTV tuner,ColorVison Spyder2Express USB monitor calibration tool,Thrustmaster have had Vista x64 drivers for my Firestorm gamepad since lastyear,some companies could learn a thing or two from their driver/customer support.

 

[rise]

Originally posted by: Delerious

Originally posted by: rise

Sometimes when I try to shut down, Vista might delay the shutdown process for 1-2 minutes.

nothing personal, but i always lol at this. who cares how long it takes to shutdown? the OS is doing its thing. do people stand there waiting for it to shut down after confirming "shut down" :laugh:

Yes I do stand there waiting. Sometimes XP hangs at the shutdown screen.

i don't remember the last time xp2 hung on shut down for me and vista 32 never has.

When I'm waiting for it to restart it's super annoying. And during that time you're waiting there is no indication that it is shutting down, so it bothers me since idk if Vista received the command or not.

yes, when oc'ing it was a pita but thats done with for now. it does say "windows is shutting down" on vista 32. plus, right when you accept shut down, the desktop changes and shut down begins within seconds. as Scik Beast and i said, vista is just doing its thing, sometimes downloading updates and whatnot.

 

[randomlinh]

I'll just add running vista, even w/ 2GB of ram, on an P4 based celery stick is painful (with the normal vista theme and stuff, which was the purpose of the test).

But it does look nice. I'm not sure if I like the new scrolling start menu. Then again, I've become accustomed to quicksilver at home, heh. I can't comment much on anything else because it's not particularly usable IMO because the system itself is crappy. But at least it's a step in the right direction. From a business perspective, I wouldn't jump at it just yet... heh.

 

[mAdMaLuDaWg]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Too bad you forgot the Security part, guys. Go to Control Panel > Windows Update and look your Vista installation's update history. How many Critical updates are in there?

Ummm... yeah, wait until Vista becomes as popular as XP and I guarantee you that the updates will be pretty much of the same frequency.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: mAdMaLuDaWg

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Too bad you forgot the Security part, guys. Go to Control Panel > Windows Update and look your Vista installation's update history. How many Critical updates are in there?

Ummm... yeah, wait until Vista becomes as popular as XP and I guarantee you that the updates will be pretty much of the same frequency.

Microsoft's predicting something like half the total bugs that XP had, and between WIC, services hardening, UAC and other security advances not present in WinXP, the security impact of successful exploits is generally going to be much more limited. No question, it's a significant improvement in out-of-the-box security.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: mAdMaLuDaWg

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Too bad you forgot the Security part, guys. Go to Control Panel > Windows Update and look your Vista installation's update history. How many Critical updates are in there?

Ummm... yeah, wait until Vista becomes as popular as XP and I guarantee you that the updates will be pretty much of the same frequency.

+1

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom

Originally posted by: mAdMaLuDaWg

Originally posted by: mechBgon
Too bad you forgot the Security part, guys. Go to Control Panel > Windows Update and look your Vista installation's update history. How many Critical updates are in there?

Ummm... yeah, wait until Vista becomes as popular as XP and I guarantee you that the updates will be pretty much of the same frequency.

+1

Document for your consideration. Could be edjumacational

 

[BladeVenom]

A Microsoft document? You don't think they might be a little biased do you? I'd take that about as seriously as Bill Gates claim to eliminate spam by 2006.

Didn't they say the same thing about XP when it came out. "XP is the most secure operating system ever produced."

 

[wheresmybacon]

Originally posted by: VIAN
Stability
Vista has crashed on me about a handful of times. It might as well have been the BSOD. I was just browsing with Firefox and then my mouse and HDD stops working.

This one time, or maybe twice, Vista just restarted itself for no reason. The kind of restart similar to pressing the reset button.

Conclusion
According to my experiences, Vista is better and worth it compared to XP, although it isn't ready for the masses due to stability issues. SP1, due out later this year, will probably fix most of these issues. Hopefully.

With this last point here I cannot understand how you arrive at your conclusion, unless of course an unstable OS is what you're looking for...

 

[stash]

I'm not going to say publicly (and definitely not officially) that Vista will have less vulnerabilities over time. But...

Vista is the first Windows OS to be developed completely under the Secure Development Lifecycle process at Microsoft (for a good book on SDL, read SDL: A Process for Developing Demonstrably More Secure Software by Michael Howard and Steve Lipner). Some other products to be developed using SDL at Microsoft are SQL 2005, SQL 2000 SP3 and SP4, and IIS6. All of these products have had very low numbers of vulnerabilities.

Enterprise Strategy Group wrote a paper comparing SQL 2005 to Oracle and MySQL with respect to vulnerabilities and it wasn't even close. The paper was not commissioned by Microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/itan...t/docs/ESGNov2006SQLServerSecurity.pdf

 

[Seeruk]

2 points about your issues.

In 2 years of using Vista I have had 3 BSOD. All three of them were a couple of weeks back and it was always whilst playing a DivX movie and thought it was related to that (seemed unlikely though) or radeon drivers as that is the only box in 2 years that hasnt been nvidia. I did a reaaaaaaaalllllly thorough purge of codecs on my system, wiped em all out and reinstalled ffdshow and no issues since (I was shocked to see 3 other codecs battling for DivX supremacy which I know I didnt install knowingly..... my gf is claiming innocence but you know women )

Second point.... I have had a handful of phonecalls from people over the months since release asking them to look at BSOD issues and EVERY time it has been either Creative drivers (sound cards and webcams) or because they were just using those that are installed automatically for crucial things like chipsets! A thorough update of all drivers to the latest supplied by the hardware manufacturers themselves has cured all ills every time.