Vista one year on

Snakedoctor

Snakedoctor

Snakedoctor

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<The non Official Vista one year on thread>

Well, one year ago today, I took delivery of my OEM copy of Vista from OCUK. After a very shaky start, I find it now faster than XP in many respects, easier to install, quicker to boot up. I found it can be less tolerant of problematical hardware than XP but I wont go back as all this has now been replaced. I have tried the service packs but have uninstalled them now. I am awaiting the final release and may do a clean install before installing.

All my games and hardware work, this is an improvement over XP as I could not get my old 56k modem going in XP along with many other bits of hardware.

Driver support for x64 is not really a problem at all, although there was a bit of a wait for some stuff, such as Sony Ericsson PC suite and they still dont support update on x64, all my remaining hardware (GPU, Bluetooth, controllers etc) all work well.

So for me its been a bitter sweet relationship at the start, now I am happy as it is nice and stable and enjoyable to use, once you get used to the slightly different way of doing things.

What are your thoughts a year on?
 
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Apart from the slow transfer rate over GigE network I'm completely happy, SP1 just around the corner so all good really :)
 
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I've been running a year, i have had my moments when i was going to get shut but o haven't and know when i use XP i find myself trying to do it the Vista way and getting fustrated.

My main bug bears have been wireless taking longer than it did in XP to connect and the time it takes to copy large amount of data about with the stupid "Calculating Time Remaining..." window.

But the killer feature for me is the ability to press the Windows Start key then typing the first few letters of the programs i want, hitting enter and a way I go.
 
I got Vista about a year ago - been running it all that time and wouldn't go back to XP. However I'm unimpressed, it's a bit naff. I also got my first Mac a year ago and much prefer OS X to Vista.
 
i ditched vista after 3 months it didnt like borland builder that i used for programming, i went back to XP what a difference going back everything was much quicker. i will give it another chance one SP1 out.
 
Vista is definately better than XP. Much more stable, smoother and I find it generally faster. (I know maybe benchmarks in 3D games dont support this arguement)

Im definitely happy with Vista.
 
I got vista 64 last month... unfortunately it does not like my wireless card. So i am waiting for drivers to eventually emerge, or the more likely option, wire up the house. It runs smoothly and loads very well. All in all rather good and i havn't had any errors of yet. However all of the blasted security warnings :o
 
I've only tried Vista Ultimate for the last month and like the interface, looks, ease of install just pop the disk in and away it goes, appears to be more stable from what I've read but compared to XP Pro 1min boot times are upto 1.5 to 2 mins with the same apps at startup as before and after trimming services(thanks to blackviper site) and shutdown times are noticably longer.

O.k 3d06marks are only down by 80-90 marks with side bar shut down but hopefully newer drivers and upping my ram will improve my fps in games, so going to give it longer trial period after sp1 comes out.
 
I use Vista on my two home PCs and have XP and win2000 at work on a laptop and desk top. I hate having to use work PCs after using Vista for many reasons. I like superfetch, programs load much quicker. I like the side bar and miss this at work. I know you can get a sidebar for XP but it looks awful imo. I like having Media centre and games within the games folder with their box art. I like to fiddle with things, generally until they brake, but Vista seems quite robust and have not lost any hard drives or data. I used to get through hard drives on XP as they would all die. Perhaps it was my old Mobo. I like the fact I can use all 4 gb of ram for the larger games, no disc caching. I have compared 3d mark and games such as Crysis with my clean XP install and found virtually no difference in performance. I do not own a program which does not work with Vista, infact one game I own, Need for Speed Porche 2000 did not work with XP unless I fiddled with modded files, yet it installed and ran out of the box in Vista. So, a year on, I am finally pleased with the way its going.
 
Turophobic said:
The trouble with macs is there is no software as such.
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Exaggerate much? There's far from "no software". Ok so you can't play the vast majority of games on it, but there's not a lot else.

I prefer Mac OS X to Vista and Vista to XP. The difference in cost to run OS X may push me to Vista/next Windows version though, we'll see how I'm feeling when upgrade time comes.
 
About six months ago I built a cheap PC and put Linux on it for my day to day computing. But I used Vista for about 6 months before that and it's still installed on my gaming PC. No problems for me. Wouldn't go back to XP now. Vista is also much better than XP ever was when it was launched. It took two service packs to make XP what it is now.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
^^
Totally agreed, apart from games, there is no shortage of decent software on Mac.

Burnsy
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What he said - it may have funny names sometimes, but there isn't a single task I've had in the last year that I've been unable to find Mac software for.
 
Using Vista for a year. I've had my moments but always come back. I run ultimate x64 (vlited of course) and with 4gb of Ram it absolutly flies. With ram prices the way they are i cant recommend it enough!

One thing i have noticed, this install is about 6months old but compared to XP its seemed to stay nice and fast. Hasn't picked up little niggle errors over this time either.

Only niggle with the whole thing is sleep doesnt work. I don't use it but its the principle :p
 
Wang Computer said:
I found it absolutely useless from a power-user perspective. In the sort of media/gaming PC sense I suppose it's pretty good.
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I'm a power user, the type who dreaded having to reinstall XP after a mobo upgrade etc because of the amount of customisation I had done to XP but found absolutely no fault in Vista, in fact it's far less tedious to "power use" Vista than XP I found and backing up is less of a hassle too thanks to the "favourites" links function for folders and inline search feature!

Video wise the conversion software I need is also fully working on Vista (Handbrake, DVDFlick and VirtualDUB) - what else could you need :p


I've had Vista since February 2007 so it's exactly a year of running, this install (OEM) has seen an AMD system upgrade to an Intel system and has never been a foul OS or said "no" !
 
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