Any new news on Vista?

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 8:52 am Post subject: Any new news on Vista?

I know I said I was going to wait on Vista for awhile, but seems everything I am buying or bought for my new rig is Vista supported. Mobo, processor, memory, video cards, everything but the raptor hard drive. It can take anything you throw at it I guess.
So is there any "GOOD" news or insight on Vista that any might have experienced or heard?
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Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 9:01 am Post subject:

Vista really isn't as bad as people always make you believe. A lot of the things people moan about it are little things that can be turned off. The UAC "are you sure you want to do this" complaint. If you don't like it turn it off, you do have an option so it isn't really a problem as such. I personally have had no issues with it and seems stable enough to use as a primary OS. More hardware is being designed for it and it really isn't that bad. Service Pack 1 coming soon (towards end of year) is meant to boost performance by up to 50% too.
Go for it Smile

or if you are still hesitant, dual boot Smile

I would recommend Home Premium over the Ultimate version though. The extra money it requires isn't really put to good use. When I tried Ultimate I had the Ultimate Extras which I thought were some massive new programs I could get....and what did I get? Texas Hold Em, an encrypting tool which all versions will have come SP1 and Dreamscene (moving wallpapers) which eats up ram quickly. That's it. Might as well go Home Premium IMO

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 9:37 am Post subject:

I read the reviews on Ultimate, it says it's a ram eater like you say. People say you need at least 2 gigs to run it. Would this be the same for the home addition? Would I be able to get the most out of it? Kinda "scared" here.
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Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 10:13 am Post subject:

2GB is recommended yes, for all versions. Just because it does have the 3D interface. But it is well optimized I think. It does devote more memory to gaming applications and such. Everyone slates it because it is a ram hog. Well, if you are a modern gamer who keeps up to date with new releases then more often than not the person would already have 2GB ram so it isn't a problem. I'm not sure on what you mean "get the most out of it" if you mean Home Premium against Ultimate then yes, they work the exact same way, just that Ultimate has 'extras' that really are not worth the extra £100 in our case. People complain about how things work faster on XP, well yeah, A) it's been out longer and B) it hasn't got the 3D interface, naturally it won't work as well but we are talking a small ammount of frames. If I put Oblivion on XP I probably wouldn't be able to see a noticable difference to be honest. I went for Vista as I got a new 8800GTS and I thought, well if I go to XP again, I already lose 50% of the reason I got that card - DirectX10. If you are a light gamer, as in you play games that do not require great ammounts of power I.E Guild Wars/ WoW then just go to XP. But if you are going to be getting your hands dirty with the new DirectX10 games and all new releases, then really, there is no better choice than Vista. Give it time, it will become mainstream eventually anyway. I remember these discussions with the word Vista being replaced with XP. It IS a new operating system, but it is in a far far far more reliable state than XP was after the same ammount of time being released. If you are going with all new hardware, you shouldn't be scared of the new O/S. The time to be a LITTLE concerned would be if you had really old hardware such as cameras and printers etc. But for example, our old Lexmark printer. Vista couldn't find the drivers so instead of blaming the O/S. I just went to Lexmarks site and got the Vista drivers, simple. A lot of it is down to the companies to provide Vista drivers, not Microsoft. Microsoft cannot rework every companies piece of hardware.

But if you have anymore questions, please ask Smile

Personally, I don't see what all the hullaballo is all about. It works as great as XP in MY experience, and I prefer how Vista is layed out and the ease of navigation etc. But it's each persons opinion.

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 10:28 am Post subject:

Thx, this helps alot. I will check into the home addition.
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Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 10:30 am Post subject:

BTW Jack, How do you like the 8800 GTS? I was looking at the 8600 GT through New Egg and thought I would go with that in SLI mode running twins. Any thoughts there?
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Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 10:32 am Post subject:

The 8600GT has been IMO the most disapointing nVidia card for a while. It barely outperforms the 7600GT in many tests and in some DirectX9 games, even lower.

Personally, I would avoid this card and use the funds to get a far far far more superior 8800GTS.

The thing with the 8600GT that attracts people is that it's cheap, and has DirectX10. The bad thing is, it can barely RUN DX10 games at a playable framerate so what's the point?

But I would seriously AVOID it. I was looking at it, but I was looking at reviews and it really isn't much faster than a 7600GT I'm afraid.

My 8800GTS is the 320MB version but don't let that put you off. The 640MB version only shines at really high resolutions due to the extra memory. The card itself is fantastic. I am playing Oblivion at 1280x1024, all on high (No AA as it's not needed at that res) and I fetch around 40+ FPS outside even in wooded areas.
Lost Planet I run on DirectX10 of course and I get around 40+ FPS. Again at 1280x1024. I can't fault it to be honest.

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 11:26 am Post subject:

what he said.

if your not networking your home, you dont need ultimate. premium is fine. it's weird when you go to install it, though... I guess I'm so used to how XP installs that I couldn't even be sure vista was working right.

and the stuff about the lower 8XXX series is spot on. my friend got the 8600 and he's mad cause his fps dropped from the 7900 Sig Series I gave him.
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Humanism- Less Filling, Tastes Great.

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 11:36 am Post subject:

We are on a network (Me, my father and mother) and it works just dandy. Easy to setup, straightforward and infact I didn't have to set up anything. I installed Vista, it found the router, found that others were using it and said is this ok, it was. I say it is a home computer and it's done. Simple.

Vista install is so easy.

Country and Keyboard layout
Windows updates Yes/No?
Product Key and auto activate Yes/No?

And that's it for about 30-40 mins depending on CPU speed

Setup username and password, choose a wallpaper and that's it.

So streamlined now you just let it do whatever it's gotta do and that's it.

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 3:32 pm Post subject:

I believe 10K was referring to a Domain oriented home network. Home Premium doesn't allow connecting to Domains, only workgroups.

A few other things you won't get in Home Premium by default:

- The imaging/backup capabilities.
- New Hard Drive Data Encryption tech and shadow copy.
- No RDC (Remote Desktop Connection).
- Ultimate comes with both a x64 and an x86 version of the O.S.. In Home Premium you have to actually order the other version from Microsoft (It's free I believe though).

That's about all I can think of for the time being. Home premium will be just fine for the average "Joe User".

As for me? I freakin love the heck out of Vista. Here's a list of my personal pieces of software that doesn't work for me yet:

- My Line 6 PodXT's USB driver doesn't work in Vista at all yet.
- My Cisco VPN Client doesn't work in the x64 version of Vista.

That's it. Absolutely everything else I use works fine. To get around the above problems, I'm using VMWare Workstation to run a virtual copy of XP over my Vista install (Dual Booting is so last year because it takes time to reboot and I'm impatient).
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Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:20 pm Post subject:

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:37 pm Post subject:

Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:55 pm Post subject:

Nope. I use Vent on a daily basis too.

Also, I would choose which version of Vista (x86 or x64) based on your PC. If you have an older PC and only have 2 gigs of RAM with no intentions of upgrading soon, go with x86.

If you're fairly up to date with hardware and are running 4GB of RAM or intend to any time soon, you MUST go with x64 or you
're throwing RAM away. Because of how x86 OS's communicate with GPU's (Especially those with larger sums of RAM) you will NEVER see the full 4GB of RAM. We've already been through this discussion i nthe past in this forum area. Go look it up for a more detailed description.

THIS is why Ultimate is nice. You can go x86 now then X64 later once you upgrade.
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Posted: Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:05 pm Post subject:

I have a laptop with vista home premium on it and though I do not use it for much vent works fine on it I just installed it as I would for xp.
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Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 6:43 am Post subject:

DON'T GO WITH the 8600 gt!! they are junk IMO, I was suckered into them and could barely get 120fps with two in SLI WTF junk, then one of the two died after 3 weeks. XFX was great and I am now waiting on 2 XFX 8600 gts XXX editions hopefully with the 730MHz I will get better performance. I will keep my fingers crossed , if not 8800 gtx is in my future.
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