Vista is ME with new Facia

[WJA96]

Just to get my 2p worth in here;

1. Vista is much better than XP or anything that went before it from Microsoft.
2. There is almost no point buying Vista 32. Far better to bite the bullet and buy a 64-bit machine and upgrade the OS at the same time.
3. I am having a thoroughly miserable time with Vista because I have an NVidia chipset and NVidia graphics cards and neither have proper, stable drivers. That's not Microsoft's fault, it's NVidia's.
4. It'll be fine for me in about 3-6 months, when NVidia have finished the drivers.
5. Thank goodness for my XP Pro laptop!

 

[dayloon]

Actually he does have a point all this activation nonsense is a pain in XP and could be even worse in Vista. I think techincally the OS is definetly superior but the license that goes along with it is getting to be very very restrictive, and gets more restrictive with each windows release.

The license is no more restrictive than previous versions. If you have retail you can reinstall as many times as you like (regardless of upgrades) on 1 PC at a time. Same as it's always been. The activation is simply there to try and stop people pirating it, it doesn't define the OS. What is your problem with activation anyway ? You install windows, you activate it and thats it....is that complicated ? Vista is far superior to 2000.

 

[Domo]

Much appreciated posts by meglamaniac and NathanE. I have Vista Premium 64 tucked away in a drawer upstairs as I continue to use XP for fear of ending up with a glorious looking UI and not a lot else. Your posts have given me some motivation to bin XP once and for all .

I will go and install it this afternoon - should give my e6600 something to do at least - just a little worried about games and Saitek controller etc. Might need an additional 2gb of RAM though (having only 2 at the mo?).

 

[Fr0dders]

Actually he does have a point all this activation nonsense is a pain in XP and could be even worse in Vista. I think techincally the OS is definetly superior but the license that goes along with it is getting to be very very restrictive, and gets more restrictive with each windows release.

actually if you read the small print

the activation is slightly different in Vista. Vista retail no longer requires constant re-activation. Vista OEM only requires activation when you change motherboard. And thats because the OEM license is tied to it. So when you change it, your OEM license goes too (unless the board was replaced under a warranty repair)

Far better way of doing things.

and how can you say XP is "crap" just because it has product activation. Product activation makes no difference as to the quality / reliability of the software.

 

[bikes]

I think techincally the OS is definetly superior but the license that goes along with it is getting to be very very restrictive, and gets more restrictive with each windows release.

More restrictive? In what way? The way I see it is that under oem xp, MS were a lot more forgiving in letting people reactivate if they had a mobo change. But under Vista this could all change, we will have to wait and see.

You could also say that people with oem windows have had it far to easy for a long time regarding reactivation

But why should someone with oem, who has paid a hell of a lot less than someone who has bought the full retail version have the same rights to chop and change as and when they wish.

 

[FrankJH]

More restrictive? In what way? The way I see it is that under oem xp, MS were a lot more forgiving in letting people reactivate if they had a mobo change. But under Vista this could all change, we will have to wait and see.

You could also say that people with oem windows have had it far to easy for a long time regarding reactivation

But why should someone with oem, who has paid a hell of a lot less than someone who has bought the full retail version have the same rights to chop and change as and when they wish.

To My mind the difference to a full retail version and an OEM is the level of MS support you buy (ie as much as you want or None ) and that is what the price difference reflects.

Other than that I think a single licence should enable the licence holder (or purchaser) to have it install it until his dieing day on every subsequent machine he buys no matter what hardware changes. As long as he holds as many licences as he has concurrent installations it shouldnt be an issue.

Now if MS say to retail owners after a certain amount of changes or pc moves it basically becomes OEM and therefore no free support then fair enough, but to my mind its carp that for example if a piece of hardware now fails in no way faulting the user then they have to pay up for another copy of Windows also.

 

[Dureth]

Might need an additional 2gb of RAM though (having only 2 at the mo?).

You'l have no problem at all with 2GB of RAM. 99.9% of people here are running Vista with 1GB or 2GB without any slowdown at all. 4GB may be good in the future but right now its still a bit OTT.

For example even BF2142 (notoriously RAM hungry) runs silky smooth on Vista 64 for me with 2GB of RAM.

 

[Van Diemen]

To My mind the difference to a full retail version and an OEM is the level of MS support you buy (ie as much as you want or None ) and that is what the price difference reflects.

Other than that I think a single licence should enable the licence holder (or purchaser) to have it install it until his dieing day on every subsequent machine he buys no matter what hardware changes. As long as he holds as many licences as he has concurrent installations it shouldnt be an issue.

Now if MS say to retail owners after a certain amount of changes or pc moves it basically becomes OEM and therefore no free support then fair enough, but to my mind its carp that for example if a piece of hardware now fails in no way faulting the user then they have to pay up for another copy of Windows also.

I have the exact problem right now, I have a PC with Vista OEM installed, but the mobo has problems & will have to go. The new mobo arrives Monday, but what the hell do I do about my Vista licence??? Will I be able install Vista?? or do I have buy a new copy???

 

[meglamaniac]

I have the exact problem right now, I have a PC with Vista OEM installed, but the mobo has problems & will have to go. The new mobo arrives Monday, but what the hell do I do about my Vista licence??? Will I be able install Vista?? or do I have buy a new copy???

It depends.

On XP they used to let you get away with it a couple of times without even questioning you. For example, I had OEM XP Pro on my laptop. The laptop died, and I decided to see if I could get that CD key to work on a spare PC I had around the place. Not only did it work, it activated automatically - no questions asked - and that wasn't just a motherboard change!


Basically, with XP they decided not to muck you about unnecessarily and would only get you to phone them if you were mucking them about.

In Vista, the OEM license haven't changed significantly; according to the license, the OEM version is still tied to the motherboard. Whether Microsoft's policy on how strictly to enforce the license has changed is another matter. Chances are, you'll be able to activate that motherboard fine. If you can't and have to phone them, just tell them that the other one failed unexpectedly or that Vista is having some huge problem with it and just won't run stable. They can't really argue with that excuse if it's the first time you've used it, and Microsoft's policy so far has been to allow OEM transfers (remember, they consider a new motherboard to be a new PC) in cases of terminal hardware failure.



I'd certainly be very grateful if you could post back on Monday telling us whether it worked, or if you had to phone etc.
Thanks!

 

[bikes]

I'd certainly be very grateful if you could post back on Monday telling us whether it worked, or if you had to phone etc.
Thanks!

I think a lot of people would be grateful for this info mate lol

 

[csmager]

On XP they used to let you get away with it a couple of times without even questioning you. For example, I had OEM XP Pro on my laptop. The laptop died, and I decided to see if I could get that CD key to work on a spare PC I had around the place. Not only did it work, it activated automatically - no questions asked - and that wasn't just a motherboard change!

That's most probably because your laptop came with windows preinstalled - preinstalled Windows tend to be installed as images using a form of Volume License key, so your original key would never have actually been activated by MS. Hence it worked withou issue on your new PC.

Chances are, you'll be able to activate that motherboard fine. If you can't and have to phone them, just tell them that the other one failed unexpectedly or that Vista is having some huge problem with it and just won't run stable. They can't really argue with that excuse if it's the first time you've used it,

They could argue that you have either 3 or 30 days to click the 'activate' button (can't remember which), so you really shouldn't've done so till it worked.

But I can see them being sympathetic.

 

[Sel]

When I upgraded from Win98 to XPHome it was awfull I ran quickly back to 98, I did try XPHome on a couple of PC's but it never ran form more than 5weeks.
A year or so later (SP2) I got XP-PRO and it was much better, I even got it run for over a year without having to reformat which was a huge improvent for me.
I do install everything I can find so it does get messy.

I won't be getting Vista for a long time just to give it chance and let everyone sort out the bugs for me, when I have a problem it's nice to have a large dadatbase of people who really know how things work rather than just guessing which is usually the case in the early days.

I do still think it's bloat ware because of all the backward compatabilty that it has to drag along with it.
I just wonder what an OS would be like today that could be built from the ground up with no compromise to whats gone before.

 

[meglamaniac]

You'd be surprised.

Vista x64 has dropped support for 16-bit programs finally, so now only supports 32-bit programs (pretty much everything written in the last 5 years or more) and hot off the press 64-bit programs. In addition, DX10 has been rebuilt from scratch which is why it's not being backported to XP.

Vista x86 still supports 16-bit apps though, just in case you have anything hanging around from your Windows 3.11 days...

 

[Sel]

No I don't think I'll be looking for any of my old 3.11 stuff.

 

[WJA96]

Vista x86 still supports 16-bit apps though, just in case you have anything hanging around from your Windows 3.11 days...

A huge amount of industrial automation software is written for 3.11 because you can use the DOS timing routines. The Windows timing routines are less accurate (by a factor of almost 100x) so if you need to time things you're better off with 16-bit Windows.

Things don't always get better!

Plus you can run those old programs on pocket calculators these days. You can run Windows 3.11 and Word 6 in 2Mb of RAM. The entire operating system was supplied on 4 floppy disks. You can't speed that up by getting 4Gb of RAM

 

[Sel]

I think my experience of 3.11 was a little different than most as I had to run it under emulation on a Risc PC and to say it was awfull would be Kind, hardley anything worked what a huge waste of money that was.

 

[TC1]

Well, Vista is running really well on my PC. Stable with no crashes etc etc. Can't fault it.

 

[Gimpymoo]

To the OP. No disrespect, but that post made me LOL.

Vista has WAY more going for it than XP ever did. All because it may look "similiar" - Does that make it the same?

An OS is about function, not how it looks.

I personally, in the time using it since launch as my main OS, have not had reasons to doubt it so far.

Only issues have been with drivers and that is hardly MS's fault is it.

 

[Van Diemen]

I'd certainly be very grateful if you could post back on Monday telling us whether it worked, or if you had to phone etc.
Thanks!

Okay, new mobo arrived today. Installed new mobo, re-installed Vista (vista-OEM) & to my complete surprise it activates.

Dont ask me how, it just did

 

[meglamaniac]

Okay, new mobo arrived today. Installed new mobo, re-installed Vista (vista-OEM) & to my complete surprise it activates.

Dont ask me how, it just did

Great news!
Glad to see they're still going easy on the enforcements.