(OT) Everyone in love with Vista RC2 yet?

I'm just wading in, but I'm hardly impressed. Even after minor tweaking and
only a scant few security/utility apps added, it's a pig. Gosh, I guess this
means I have to go out and buy all new hardware. *snicker*

System is a "4.0" on the "Windows Experience" scale: (Build 5744)

Dimension 8300
P4 3.0GHz/800mhz Northwood CPU
1gb Samsung PC3200 DDR
Radeon 9700 Pro 128mb AGP
80gb Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm/IDE


-The included version of Windows Defender is updated but keeps reporting
that it's not.
-Didn't like AVG Free version 7.5
-IE 7 errors then dumps/crashes each time I attempt to visit the Windows One
Care Live site.
-IE 7 is a slow, bloated barge of a browser.
-Disk defrag appears to have lost its "analyze (disk)" function, or else I
haven't found it.
-CTL+ALT+DEL at desktop produces a very purty splash screen with options
menu rather than a minimalist click to choose task manager.
-The former desktop right-click to view display properties has been
altered/gone.

It's all very eye-appealing, but even navigating within Windows itself is
clunky with various security warnings and other features to save users from
themselves.

Ack. Thpppthppt.

It's early. jmo. YMMV. Bring hardware.


Stew

Stew, Thanks for the Vista review on a fast legacy system, well Vista legacy
anyway. Just what I was afraid of with the "Vista Experience". Install
Vista and buy all new peripherals and oh what the heck might as well get a
new PC too! That was my XPerience back in the Win98Se to XP days. I did
wait to get XP with new machines though, but HP and some others didn't
publish any drivers for my $500 corporate scanner, etc. So a hardware
Bonanza for everyone involved. Rant over.

Did Vista RC2 come with all the drivers for all your peripherals? As Tom
Scales said, it's mostly built on XP so I would hope they would continue
working.

Pat

"S.Lewis" wrote in message
...
I'm just wading in, but I'm hardly impressed. Even after minor tweaking
and only a scant few security/utility apps added, it's a pig. Gosh, I
guess this means I have to go out and buy all new hardware. *snicker*

System is a "4.0" on the "Windows Experience" scale: (Build 5744)

Dimension 8300
P4 3.0GHz/800mhz Northwood CPU
1gb Samsung PC3200 DDR
Radeon 9700 Pro 128mb AGP
80gb Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm/IDE


-The included version of Windows Defender is updated but keeps reporting
that it's not.
-Didn't like AVG Free version 7.5
-IE 7 errors then dumps/crashes each time I attempt to visit the Windows
One Care Live site.
-IE 7 is a slow, bloated barge of a browser.
-Disk defrag appears to have lost its "analyze (disk)" function, or else I
haven't found it.
-CTL+ALT+DEL at desktop produces a very purty splash screen with options
menu rather than a minimalist click to choose task manager.
-The former desktop right-click to view display properties has been
altered/gone.

It's all very eye-appealing, but even navigating within Windows itself is
clunky with various security warnings and other features to save users
from themselves.

Ack. Thpppthppt.

It's early. jmo. YMMV. Bring hardware.


Stew

"Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message
...
Stew, Thanks for the Vista review on a fast legacy system, well Vista
legacy anyway. Just what I was afraid of with the "Vista Experience".
Install Vista and buy all new peripherals and oh what the heck might as
well get a new PC too! That was my XPerience back in the Win98Se to XP
days. I did wait to get XP with new machines though, but HP and some
others didn't publish any drivers for my $500 corporate scanner, etc. So
a hardware Bonanza for everyone involved. Rant over.

Did Vista RC2 come with all the drivers for all your peripherals? As Tom
Scales said, it's mostly built on XP so I would hope they would continue
working.

Pat


snip


Pat -

Fair to say that Vista experiences will vary greatly depending on your
hardware configuration, settings and whatnot. Also, I've only had time to
play with this version for a very short period of time. I was hoping some
CoreDuo folks would chime in commenting on how wonderful the OS is on their
machine(s).

Regarding drivers, that system (Dim8300) is stripped of all PCI cards and
has only the AGP graphics card. All drivers were located except for the
SoundMax integrated audio. I grabbed the XP drivers for that off of the Dell
site. First attempt failed with errors, second install attempt worked. I did
not search for Vista drivers with any diligence, only a quick glance.

The machine is behaving poorly at present. I suspect the native Windows
driver for the Radeon Pro or perhaps the hard disk itself. 2-3 (blank) blue
screens, a couple of random reboots on a machine that was rock solid with XP
Home SP2.

I haven't installed my HP drivers (printer/scanner) yet. It's been an
adventure with just basic security/utility stuff. Ended up installing a
trial of PC-cillin 14 (Trend) just to have something on it.

None of this is a problem since it is an extra machine. I also suspect
problems will be minimized on new systems built/configured with the OS.

At present, the decrease in performance is marked. I'm going to grab another
gig of RAM for it when I have a moment and see if that puts a dent in it.

I also noted that hyperthreading was disabled after the install (which had
been enabled previously in BIOS).

Stew

"S.Lewis" wrote in message ...

-Disk defrag appears to have lost its "analyze (disk)" function, or else I
haven't found it.

I think I read some blurb about the interface being dumbed down because
many people couldn't make sense of it. A classic MS move if true.

I'll predict once again that Windows Vista will be known as "The Hardware Sales
Act of 2007." Remember, you heard it here first. And why should anyone
expect anything different from Micro$oft anyway? After all, there were the
Hardware Sales Acts of 1995, 1998, and 2002 (XP).

Look out especially for obsoleted software and device drivers. If history is a
guide, support for certain printers, scanners, and other devices will not be
there.

To paraphrase the Spanish philosopher, George Santayana: "He who does not learn
from history is doomed to repeat it." Think of all the lemmings who will rush
to the midnight sales of Vista at all the retail stores!

If your computer isn't broken, don't fix it, especially by installing Vista. If
there is some compelling need to buy Vista or if you have a lot of money and
curiousity, buy a new computer with Vista pre-installed... Ben Myers

On Sun, 12 Nov 2006 13:20:13 -0600, "S.Lewis" wrote:


"Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message
...
Stew, Thanks for the Vista review on a fast legacy system, well Vista
legacy anyway. Just what I was afraid of with the "Vista Experience".
Install Vista and buy all new peripherals and oh what the heck might as
well get a new PC too! That was my XPerience back in the Win98Se to XP
days. I did wait to get XP with new machines though, but HP and some
others didn't publish any drivers for my $500 corporate scanner, etc. So
a hardware Bonanza for everyone involved. Rant over.

Did Vista RC2 come with all the drivers for all your peripherals? As Tom
Scales said, it's mostly built on XP so I would hope they would continue
working.

Pat


snip


Pat -

Fair to say that Vista experiences will vary greatly depending on your
hardware configuration, settings and whatnot. Also, I've only had time to
play with this version for a very short period of time. I was hoping some
CoreDuo folks would chime in commenting on how wonderful the OS is on their
machine(s).

Regarding drivers, that system (Dim8300) is stripped of all PCI cards and
has only the AGP graphics card. All drivers were located except for the
SoundMax integrated audio. I grabbed the XP drivers for that off of the Dell
site. First attempt failed with errors, second install attempt worked. I did
not search for Vista drivers with any diligence, only a quick glance.

The machine is behaving poorly at present. I suspect the native Windows
driver for the Radeon Pro or perhaps the hard disk itself. 2-3 (blank) blue
screens, a couple of random reboots on a machine that was rock solid with XP
Home SP2.

I haven't installed my HP drivers (printer/scanner) yet. It's been an
adventure with just basic security/utility stuff. Ended up installing a
trial of PC-cillin 14 (Trend) just to have something on it.

None of this is a problem since it is an extra machine. I also suspect
problems will be minimized on new systems built/configured with the OS.

At present, the decrease in performance is marked. I'm going to grab another
gig of RAM for it when I have a moment and see if that puts a dent in it.

I also noted that hyperthreading was disabled after the install (which had
been enabled previously in BIOS).

Stew

"I'll predict once again that Windows Vista will be known as "The
Hardware Sales Act of 2007." Remember, you heard it here first. And
why should anyone expect anything different from Micro$oft anyway?"

Even if you are right about what happens, IT'S NOT MICROSOFT. Microsoft
is not responsible for driver development. That's up to the ATI's,
NVidia's, HPs, Lexmarks, Epsons, Canons, Logitechs, etc. of the world.

So, would you have MS never do another OS that required new drivers?

Or, if you were a hardware vendor, would you spend tens or hundreds of
thousands of dollars of your and your stockholder's money developing a
driver for a product that was discontinued 4 years ago?

Come on, quit bitching and answer the questions: Would you?

And as to not installing Vista, there is another option: Install XP AND
Vista, dual boot. And do your scanning, or whatever, under XP if it
won't work in Vista.



Ben Myers wrote:
I'll predict once again that Windows Vista will be known as "The Hardware Sales
Act of 2007." Remember, you heard it here first. And why should anyone
expect anything different from Micro$oft anyway? After all, there were the
Hardware Sales Acts of 1995, 1998, and 2002 (XP).

Look out especially for obsoleted software and device drivers. If history is a
guide, support for certain printers, scanners, and other devices will not be
there.

To paraphrase the Spanish philosopher, George Santayana: "He who does not learn
from history is doomed to repeat it." Think of all the lemmings who will rush
to the midnight sales of Vista at all the retail stores!

If your computer isn't broken, don't fix it, especially by installing Vista. If
there is some compelling need to buy Vista or if you have a lot of money and
curiousity, buy a new computer with Vista pre-installed... Ben Myers

On Sun, 12 Nov 2006 13:20:13 -0600, "S.Lewis" wrote:

"Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message
...
Stew, Thanks for the Vista review on a fast legacy system, well Vista
legacy anyway. Just what I was afraid of with the "Vista Experience".
Install Vista and buy all new peripherals and oh what the heck might as
well get a new PC too! That was my XPerience back in the Win98Se to XP
days. I did wait to get XP with new machines though, but HP and some
others didn't publish any drivers for my $500 corporate scanner, etc. So
a hardware Bonanza for everyone involved. Rant over.

Did Vista RC2 come with all the drivers for all your peripherals? As Tom
Scales said, it's mostly built on XP so I would hope they would continue
working.

Pat

snip


Pat -

Fair to say that Vista experiences will vary greatly depending on your
hardware configuration, settings and whatnot. Also, I've only had time to
play with this version for a very short period of time. I was hoping some
CoreDuo folks would chime in commenting on how wonderful the OS is on their
machine(s).

Regarding drivers, that system (Dim8300) is stripped of all PCI cards and
has only the AGP graphics card. All drivers were located except for the
SoundMax integrated audio. I grabbed the XP drivers for that off of the Dell
site. First attempt failed with errors, second install attempt worked. I did
not search for Vista drivers with any diligence, only a quick glance.

The machine is behaving poorly at present. I suspect the native Windows
driver for the Radeon Pro or perhaps the hard disk itself. 2-3 (blank) blue
screens, a couple of random reboots on a machine that was rock solid with XP
Home SP2.

I haven't installed my HP drivers (printer/scanner) yet. It's been an
adventure with just basic security/utility stuff. Ended up installing a
trial of PC-cillin 14 (Trend) just to have something on it.

None of this is a problem since it is an extra machine. I also suspect
problems will be minimized on new systems built/configured with the OS.

At present, the decrease in performance is marked. I'm going to grab another
gig of RAM for it when I have a moment and see if that puts a dent in it.

I also noted that hyperthreading was disabled after the install (which had
been enabled previously in BIOS).

Stew

I just installed RC2 last night. Wanted to see what issues I'd have when
the RTM becomes available. So far, my printer (Canon i960), keyboard (MS
Natural Ergonomic 4000) and mouse (MS Comfort Optical 3000), and PDA (Axim
X51v) all seem to be working fine. I did have to download the latest
drivers for my video card (Sapphire X1800GTO) and on-board audio (ALC882 on
an Asus P5LD2 board), but those were recently released, so I was good to go.
TV Tuner card (ATI Theatre 550Pro) seems to be fine too. The rest of my
system is an Intel D 830 processor, 2GB of DDR2-5300 memory (Mushkin), 3
HD's with Vista installed on the biggest SATA drive, and a set of Dell 5650
5.1 speakers. I get an "Windows Experience Index" of 4.8, due to the
processor. The other scores went from 5.4 for the memory to 5.9 for the
"desktop graphics".

One of the reason I installed when I did was because I plan on upgrading my
processor and mother board next week to an Intel E6300 processor
(overclocking it to 2.4GHz, if possible, to get the memory and FSB in a 1:1
ratio) and an Asus P5W DH Deluxe, and I'd probably do a re-install anyway.
This lets me get the drivers and stuff I need for all the rest of my toys
already.

So far, the interface has taken some getting used to. I'd guess the more
time you've spent in the old ones, the longer it will take to get used to
the new one. I always set my Control Panel in particular back to the
"Classic" style, but this time, I'm pretty determined to fight through it,
and learn to use the OS as it was intended. But so far, I like it. Not
sure I like the new "Windows Explorer" yet, but I've got a lot of old habits
to break, after getting onto XP when it first came out, and using it at
least 8 hours per business day, plus evenings and weekends... That's a lot
of time! Right now, just using the Windows Mail program, I'm sitting at
about 1% CPU utilization, and 30% of my memory (about 600MB) used. I did
see some nastiness earlier today, but I figured out that was just the
Windows Search Engine doing it's thing. It was running at 75% of my memory
(more than 1.5GB) and higher CPU utilization, but I figured that was a sign
for me to go take a nap and let it do it's thing. We're both doing much
better this evening.

Tomorrow will be another day, as I try to get some tools like VS2005 and SQL
Server 2005 installed, as well as seeing about Office 2007.

BTW, I also have a Dell Latitude D 810 laptop, to keep this post sort of on
topic. I'm not sure how soon it will see Vista, as that's a work provided
laptop. It's also only got 1GB of RAM, and the most basic of graphics. It
probably will see Office 2007 shortly, though.

Clint

"Pat Conover" pat conover at comcast dot net wrote in message
...
Stew, Thanks for the Vista review on a fast legacy system, well Vista
legacy anyway. Just what I was afraid of with the "Vista Experience".
Install Vista and buy all new peripherals and oh what the heck might as
well get a new PC too! That was my XPerience back in the Win98Se to XP
days. I did wait to get XP with new machines though, but HP and some
others didn't publish any drivers for my $500 corporate scanner, etc. So
a hardware Bonanza for everyone involved. Rant over.

Did Vista RC2 come with all the drivers for all your peripherals? As Tom
Scales said, it's mostly built on XP so I would hope they would continue
working.

Pat

"S.Lewis" wrote in message
...
I'm just wading in, but I'm hardly impressed. Even after minor tweaking
and only a scant few security/utility apps added, it's a pig. Gosh, I
guess this means I have to go out and buy all new hardware. *snicker*

System is a "4.0" on the "Windows Experience" scale: (Build 5744)

Dimension 8300
P4 3.0GHz/800mhz Northwood CPU
1gb Samsung PC3200 DDR
Radeon 9700 Pro 128mb AGP
80gb Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm/IDE


-The included version of Windows Defender is updated but keeps reporting
that it's not.
-Didn't like AVG Free version 7.5
-IE 7 errors then dumps/crashes each time I attempt to visit the Windows
One Care Live site.
-IE 7 is a slow, bloated barge of a browser.
-Disk defrag appears to have lost its "analyze (disk)" function, or else
I haven't found it.
-CTL+ALT+DEL at desktop produces a very purty splash screen with options
menu rather than a minimalist click to choose task manager.
-The former desktop right-click to view display properties has been
altered/gone.

It's all very eye-appealing, but even navigating within Windows itself is
clunky with various security warnings and other features to save users
from themselves.

Ack. Thpppthppt.

It's early. jmo. YMMV. Bring hardware.


Stew

Clint-

Yep. My Northwood CPU (3.0GHz) is the reason for the 4.0 rating, and it
shows as the weakest component in the index.
Are you seeing the "User Account" warnings/prompts when navigating through
the OS (ie- when running msconfig or device manager, etc.)?
New interfaces are always a bit uncomfortable, which is another reason I've
installed it and plan to leave it on that machine for a while. I have a
genuine need to get comfortable with it for work.

Lots of new toys and settings built in. I'd imagine your homebuilt is doing
just fine with those specs, even before tweaking the glass/GUI settings.


Stew

"User N" wrote in message
. ..

"S.Lewis" wrote in message
...

-Disk defrag appears to have lost its "analyze (disk)" function, or else
I haven't found it.

I think I read some blurb about the interface being dumbed down because
many people couldn't make sense of it. A classic MS move if true.


Not only did they drop the "analyze" function and graphic, but they also
dropped the progress bar for the actual defrag. No % of progress, no bar
indicator to let the user know if you're going to be 15 minutes or 15 days.

Yeah, I'm getting the User Account warnings on a semi-regular basis. But I
figure, once I've got it the way I want it, how often do I go into those
areas? But am I glad my wife will get prompted as well? The benefits
of the second issue outweigh the drawbacks... I like her having the ability
to do what she thinks she needs to do, but it's good to get a warning that
she's about to install or configure something that may have an impact on the
system.

I haven't tweaked the glass/gui settings at all. From what I could see on
the custom settings, everything is turned on already. Having said that, I
don't think my life has changed for the better since switching to the new
UI. Kinda disappointed about that. Actually, one of my first e-mails I
recieved in the Windows e-mail was about a job offer, so I guess I can't say
that my life hasn't changed for the better, although the UI had nothing to
do with it.

While the glass thing is kind of cool, it is just a pretty face. One thing
I do like is the expanded view of things when hovering over items in the
taskbar. And the Windows-Tab key (instead of Alt-Tab) is pretty cool too.
And I do like the gadgets in the Sidebar, although that was available in XP
with an add-on, and I wouldn't want to run those on a 17" monitor (too much
screen real-estate taken up).

Clint


"S.Lewis" wrote in message
...
Clint-

Yep. My Northwood CPU (3.0GHz) is the reason for the 4.0 rating, and it
shows as the weakest component in the index.
Are you seeing the "User Account" warnings/prompts when navigating through
the OS (ie- when running msconfig or device manager, etc.)?
New interfaces are always a bit uncomfortable, which is another reason
I've installed it and plan to leave it on that machine for a while. I have
a genuine need to get comfortable with it for work.

Lots of new toys and settings built in. I'd imagine your homebuilt is
doing just fine with those specs, even before tweaking the glass/GUI
settings.


Stew