September 2, 2007 at 2:37 am
was there an operating system (or any other piece of software) without bugs? no, definitely not. so, why all the hype? yes, there are some problems, but as a whole, there are many new and valuable things. and, unlike a decade ago, we do not have to 'wait for a service pack 1' to start using the new version of operating system, because it is being fixed every time we click 'tools -> windows update'. bugs will be solved eventually. the option of changing the environment and throwing all I know about windows and tools I run on it is simply not acceptable, because all the things work perfectly (compared to the burden of change). and, of course, is there any basis for the faith that things are all perfect on the other side of the river? in my opinion, there is no such guarantee. that makes me even less susceptible to change. no, thanks.
September 2, 2007 at 2:47 am
On release day I found I could buy an OEM copy of Ultimate for "only" $NZ400. So despite intentions of being rational about the whole thing, I couldn't resist.
The pleasant surprise was the very fast install and everything working on this almost 4 year-old machine (including attached devices, with some kludges being required for my colorimeter). Aero Glass worked okay with my low-end FX5200 card, but flip 3D was very slow. Within a month I'd laid out a further $NZ450 for an 7600GT card (painfully expensive because it had to be AGP to suit my "old" motherboard). Really this purchase wasn't necessary, but it does allow Flight Simulator and Virtual Earth to run smoothly.
My long-term problems are I'm sure due to the age of my motherboard and BIOS: (1) sleep mode isn't reliable so I always do a full shutdown and (2) the USB memory that I leave permanently connected for ReadyBoost is virtually never detected after a boot.
My nVidia driver is still beta. They they have some way to go yet before the Vista drivers and control panels are on a par with the XP drivers. The video drivers have I believe been responsible for many crashes. I say crashes, but by that I mean that I got messages saying Explorer or the video driver have stopped working, and they restart. A true crash is rare. The current beta drivers are stable.
So, all in all. I'm moderately pleased with Vista. But really, I was fine with XP Pro. For the typical home user I would never recommend going to Vista when they are happily running XP. There's really no obvious advantage with Vista. Media Center in Ultimate is extremely sluggish on my PC, and as for the Ultimate Extras - well, we're still waiting for something that justifies the many extra dollars for Ultimate. I did also update a couple of $hundred of software to get everything compatible with Vista. As I mentioned, the video drivers are still a work in progress, and other things like my audio drivers don't have nearly the features of the tried and true XP versions - yet.
If someone is buying a new home PC, or you're a corporate and want the security and rollout features of Vista then it's a different story. In the first case I'd say "no question". Get the PC with Vista. For a corporate I'd give a cautious "yes", on condition that the necessary applications are tested before making a final decision.
I also "upgraded" my 2 year old VAIO notebook to Vista, briefly. It worked, but no matter how many things I tried I could not change the brightness of the display. I need it for PASS in Denver, so I did a full backup then reverted to XP. If Sony releases a working driver I might try Vista on it again, but I'm not really sure why I'd want to - apart from curiosity.
As for Office 2007 - it's great. But it's great on XP as well as Vista. SQL Server and any number of serious applications run well on Vista.
Would I pay $49 a year to keep XP "around" (by that I assume you mean supported with security updates)? Probably not. So much of my software is on a subscription basis that it hurts. XP should keep running just fine at the SP2 level provided the antivirus and firewall vendors keep supporting it. In that sense, I pay much more than $49 per year to keep XP around ...
September 2, 2007 at 7:59 am
I never adopt a new Microsoft OS for my own machines until at least the 2nd service pack has been released. And for my clients, with much hesitancy. At years end I purchased a new notebook (Dell Latitude) with XP Pro, my first machine with XP previous were NT4 and Win2K. XP has been good stable and solid.
I put together a system with four boxes. The client needed very small sized machines for a KIOSK application. The machines he selected only came with VISTA preloaded. I was surprised that VISTA ran so slow. The machines were Athlon 64 around 3GHz (as I recall) with 1GB memory. The machine ran terribly dog slow.
Then I found out my application Intouch would not run on VISTA so I had to change to XP Pro. I changed the hard drive, loaded XP with all the drivers, (easy to find). WOW, you would not have thought they were the same machine. The platform screamed.
Now I am not sure why VISTA ran so dog slow but it will be a long time be I am an adopter. My son just purchased a new HP notebook with VISTA and he likes and says it performs fast for him.
So is it a Athlon 64 issue? I don't know. But then again, the 2nd service pack has not been released so it is not ready for me from a robustness standpoint.
September 2, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Vista, its a nice desktop period. Trying to setup wireless,etc. on a mates laptop with Vista is a nightmare (hidden BSID), maybe because its something new to learn (tricks, etc.) but there seems to be a fair share of bugs.
I'll wait another year before the service pack is released.
September 3, 2007 at 7:16 am
I'm not going to move into Vista.
I found that the huge amount of resources required for running it on a simple desktop is completely unacceptable.
September 3, 2007 at 8:09 am
I am a Sr. Software Architect and I have no issues with Vista. I have been running it on my 4 year old Dell Latitude and now on new HP Pavillion. I even installed it on a 3 year old Dell powerEdge that I had been using as a server and is now the media hub of my house.
All I did was turn off UAC and its been running just like any other windows OS, with all the cool wizbangs of a new one.
Just for the record, UAC is a filter for those out there that like install smily face icons in their AIM clients. If you haven't turned it off yet, then your one of those people that needs it. If you haven't figured out that you can turn it then you probably shouldn't . You are not in the 3% of the world that uses some OTHER operating system for desktop work.
I surf lagit sites, install a couple of games, but overall I use my machine for development in Flex and VS. I process word documents and do design diagrams in design tools. I run multiple messaging applications, and host all of my media via Zune AND iTunes. I even have my machines act as Media Extenders to my Xbox 360's. Which the new Media Center is a dream by the way.
I also think you need to draw the line between people who whinned early and where we are now. Vista has had many patches and updates that have gone out since its release. I am definately a vista fan and I do very complicated things with it.
September 3, 2007 at 8:50 am
I am also a developer, and I do run Vista Ultimate at home. I've run into a couple of issues but nothing that can't be overcome. My work is a little different as my users aren't people at all but other machines. I write interfaces between systems, laboratory instruments, etc.
Issues I've encountered:
On my box I run:
Overall, there are many good things about Vista. There are many things that need to be worked on -- and not just by MS. Considering that XP hits the "no more OEM and direct sales" mark in under 5 months (Jan. 31, 2008), people better start doing some testing now! Only system builder licenses will be available after that from the "normal" sources.
September 4, 2007 at 6:16 am
I had a PC store by us build us a new PC with Vista. After it was all done and delivered I found that they put 64 bit Vista on. I guess it was a misunderstanding. We have had it for two months now and we like it. The only issue we have found is that there is no flash player 64 bit so websites with flash do not work. I simply installed 32 bit Firefox and we can us 32 bit flash for now. Other than that everything works fine. I do agree though that the amount of space Vista consumes is way way too much. They need to cleanup the code. I think they changed Office 2007 way too much as it takes some getting used to.
September 4, 2007 at 8:19 am
I like Vista. I've been running it since a late Beta about a year ago (or was that two years ago). After GA release, once I got initial driver problems solved for my almost-three-year-old laptop, everything just worked and worked well.
I'm in big agreement with UAC and wouldn't turn it off for the world. It is a very good security blanket and should be there.
Obviously if you are using hardware older than the GA release of Vista you may have problems if your hardware vendor refuses to issue drivers (because they want to sell you newer, "improved" hardware). Don't blame this on Vista and Microsoft. It would have happened no matter what OS MS released because the hardware vendors are in the business of selling new hardware - not supporting the old.
September 4, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Vista Ultimate has been running great on my Inspiron 9400 since Vista went RTM. The wireless networking tools are so much better than in XP. UAC was pretty annoying for about the first two months, but now that everything is configured correctly I hardly even notice it. SP1 really improves on performance and stability, even though it is still in beta. I do still have to use a VPC image of XP for the Cisco VPN client, but that's because it's like pulling teeth to get a Vista VPN client from Cisco.
Joshua Perry
http://www.greenarrow.net
September 12, 2007 at 10:44 am
Well, I built the desktop. This time around I had numerous little annoying bugs with vista. One involved the ctl pannel just dissappearing... turns out there are some issues with services stopping. Only fix for now is to restart the services everytime you restart your computer....
Also, installing Nero created another error. This was only remidied by uninstalling nero or renaming a file in nero which kills the video portions of the program.
I love the look and a few options that are embedded into vista (you can get just about anything from vista on xp through add on programs). But, the performance drain is pretty high, and there are still a lot of bugs. I guess I was truly lucky with my laptop. I think I will be going to windows xp pro again, atleast for the desktop, until an official service pack comes out for vista.
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