a little concerned about moving to vista

NorthstaNder

NorthstaNder

NorthstaNder

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25 Nov 2006
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Ipswich, Suffolk
hi folks,

getting a new laptop on wednesday which will have vista home premium installed on it, and i'm selling my trusty desktop pc with xp on it.

i've read that people are still having issues with vista. am i likely too? or as i'm getting it with new hardware should it be ok? the only other hardware i shall be installing is my hp photosmart c5180 printer (already got the vista drivers for that) and my brand new (bought today) seagate external hdd.
 
It should be fine. Vista bashing is just in fashion. You might get slightly lower battery life on Vista than you would on XP but that's about it.

How much RAM does the laptop have? If less than 2GB I'd recommend upgrading to 2GB to run Vista smoothly.
 
I've been using Vista since June/July on my PC, and it's been very good. Would be a lie to say it's as absolutely solid as XP tends to be these days, but I've had no particular problems so I'm very happy with it.

One recommendation I would make is that you clean install Vista onto your notebook when you get it (assuming it comes with a Windows disc and not a restore disc); that way you get rid of all the junk apps that they tend to pre-install, and you can start fresh. Also worth downloading all the latest drivers from the manufacturer's website, for added performance/stability.
 
No problems - I bet vista won't even ask for those printer drivers.

Vista has an excellant driver database. I've build 2 machines this week with vista and neither of them required any special drivers for the scanners or the printers that were being used. Even the wireless mouse and keyboards were picked up.

The only issues you may have are with Vista 64 and the sound drivers but even these issues are becoming a thing of the past as driver support is becoming vastly improved.

I've had Vista installed for 6 months with XP in dual boot, dropping XP completely 2 months ago. I don't think I'll be going back.
 
just run windows update on it, this'll resolve most of the issues it can have, if the laptop comes with vista, it's unlikely the manufacturer has had any problems with it

external hard drive, no problem
printer -you have the driver, no problem
 
Must admit, i was a bit wary going to Vista with my new build, but it has been fantastic so far, so quick and snappy. Was more surprised with most of the hardware scores I got, lowest was a 5.0.

Had a prob with my bluetooth device, but it sorted itself out last night, so enjoy it I say
 
I'm about to make the switch to Vista HP but there is one driver my laptop needs that I can't find anywhere.

Its definately going on my HTPC though.
 
I was startled to see how good a Vista install was. I put it on my dual core Athlon (939 board) and it recognised every piece of hardware and just started fine.

I just moved to a quad core Core 2 and yet again it has the drivers for everything. I had to get a parallel to USB cable as there was no parallel port on my new board. I plugged everything in and was about to have troubles when Vista announced it had installed it and it work perfectly.

Now some people think Vista is a bit bulky and a bit slower and they may be right but nothing beats an OS that installs everything straight out of the box. I really hated all the nForce and so on drivers to install after installing XP.
 
Vista is ok when using a lot of ram.

I got a job of looking at a laptop for someone for christmas last night and it had 512mb of ram with vista home edition and boy did it run slow, even with classic mode.

I did a format of the drive with just vista and drivers and it was fine up until I started installing applications e.t.c. What a nightmare so I suggested buying more ram for the laptop.
 
512?! Ouch, was that Home Basic or Home Premium?

Good thing RAM is cheap these days - I've seen a certain website selling 1GB SO-DIMMs for £13 each, which is a bargain really. Tempted to get some so I can take my Dell 630m from 1GB to 2GB, but not sure if it's worth it as it's running XP.
 
vista (even vista lite -vlite) runs pretty badly on 512mb

i tried it on my gf's laptop, super light, even she said 'put the other one back on'
things like firefox launching & performance is noticeably worse on vista 512 (you can expect this though, because it's got a lot more running than xp)

relaistic minimum specs..
xp 512mb
vista 2gb
 
thanks for all your replies guys. has certainly helped put my mind at ease.

the laptop comes with 1GB ram and i've already been looking at prices of ram as I want to add another GB...it seems really cheap!?
 
Im still out to lunch on Vista myself

I am lucky in that I have a fair few PCs and so, I have had the opportunity to try Vista out on a number of systems.

I have to say that Vista is for some and not for others, but its also for some PCs too and not for others.

I will give you an example.

I put Vista ( Premium 32 ) onto an Abit A8N-SLI, with Opteron 175 and 2x6600GT and 2GB and it went on fine and runs absolutely lovely, smooth as silk blah blah.

However, I have tried to put on Vista ( Ultimate 64 ) onto my main PC ( DS3 - Q6600 - 8800GTX ) and had at least one issue with it each and every time I have tried it ( I go back every few weeks just to see ). I have had it running perfectly once, but it caused the HDs to lcick like hell so badly that it scared me. According to WD and MS, this is a known issue with Raptors. I have since failed to get it to run properly.

So, 2 extremes there.

I have also been told, and indeed there are pages and pages of info about Vistas inability to run on certain hardware, but in a lot of cases, I ahve the very same hardware and I found Vista to run fine.

One such example is that the NForce 3 chipset is supposed to NOT work, but I have Prem64 running perfectly well on an MSI neo3 - Opty144 - 7900GT - 2GB

So, while one person miht say its great, and another person might say its not...

I would say that each individual must make their own minds up.

I am utterly sick to the stomach of seeing people have issues with Vista, but then someone who has had it easy, comes along and then belittles and knocks the other user because they cannot get Vista to run properly. Simple fact is that some PCs just cannot use Vista. Hopefully yours will of course, but if it does not, then you are fully entitled to a 100% full refund. whether you have tried to use it or not... The EULA does not apply if the software does not work 100% for you.
 
ohh fatrakoon, you must be a newb & not have installed vista properly, everyone knows that vista runs brilliantly & people who have problems obviously dont know what they are doing :D

ps op good luck with vista, I have reinstalled it for the 8th time now in another attempt to try to like it. Its still an unpleasant experience though :(
I keep going back to xp & ubuntu.
 
I've been running Vista since January and have had no problems with it. It runs smoothly with my low spec (inc just 1GB RAM) PC and I have had no driver issues. The only problem I had intially was occasional pauses/freezes of a minute or so for no apparent reason, but even they have stopped now (due either to updatres or a reinstall).

Thoroughly recommend Vista.
 
m_cozzy said:
ohh fatrakoon, you must be a newb & not have installed vista properly, everyone knows that vista runs brilliantly & people who have problems obviously dont know what they are doing :D

ps op good luck with vista, I have reinstalled it for the 8th time now in another attempt to try to like it. Its still an unpleasant experience though :(
I keep going back to xp & ubuntu.
Click to expand...

Installed Vista x64 way back in January(less then 30mins),runs great and I have all the drivers too :) .

Last count was 42 games installed all running great,software runs fine too.
Vista speed wise is faster then when I had XP on it (that had 4GB of ram too,well 3.5GB due to 32 bit limitations).

Would I go back to XP,no way.
 
m_cozzy said:
ohh fatrakoon, you must be a newb & not have installed vista properly, everyone knows that vista runs brilliantly & people who have problems obviously dont know what they are doing :D

ps op good luck with vista, I have reinstalled it for the 8th time now in another attempt to try to like it. Its still an unpleasant experience though :(
I keep going back to xp & ubuntu.
Click to expand...

I have been through my hatred of Vista stage. I have coem on *** other side and I neither love or loathe it.

Its the next stage of Windows whether I like it or not.

On some machines its great, on others not so much so, but then again, this is exactyl what happened with XP ( I stuck with 2K for yonks and I still have it and recommend it to anyone who still does not have a powerfull enough PC to run XP ) and it was the same when moving from 95 to 98, the same in fact with 3.1 to 95 - It has always been like this.

Vista does not run perfectly on all PCs and anyone who says otherwise its living either a dream or a lie, but if it does work for oyu and your PC, then great.

As I said, its on a couple of my systems, not on others.

My own personal favourite is XP64 because its much faster than anything else I have tried ( My opinion )
 
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