Falling into the Vista trap
 

hmm seems my predictions are coming true....

Heres the experience of someone upgrading to Vista...

Microsoft promises to wow people who are upgrading from Windows XP to its new operating system, but with the joys of Windows Vista comes plenty of pain.

I know, I know, I'm a sucker for technology.

The shiny new Vista disk was sitting on my desk, and I just couldn't resist giving it a try.

Even though I fell for Vista's promise - more security and certainly much more fun than tired old Windows XP - I tried not to be stupid.

I knew my four-year-old PC might have trouble coping with Vista, not least because of its wheezing graphics card.

When I bought it, my Dell Dimension 8200 was fairly state-of-the-art (a few stats for the experts: Pentium 4 processor running at 2GHz, 384MB of RAM, a 64MB graphics card, and a Creative SB Live audio card).

Since then I had added memory (to 768MB), a second hard disk, extra USB ports and a Wifi card.

A blunt message

But this was probably not enough, so I downloaded Microsoft's Vista Upgrade Advisor.


Microsoft's message was blunt but useful: Yes, my computer could happily run Vista, but it would need a few crutches and new body parts. Step-by-step instructions told me how to avoid problems:

* Get a new graphics card with at least 128MB memory;
* download new software for the Linksys Wifi network card, to sync my PDA with Outlook and to make good use of my multimedia keyboard;
* download the latest version of my Kaspersky Antivirus software.
* With a few minor exceptions, the rest of my set-up was given a clean bill of health, including my webcam and printer.

It turned out to be tricky to find the right graphics card. Most shopping websites were useless in providing information on Vista compatibility.

At least a dozen times, I discovered in the small print on manufacturers' websites that there were no Vista drivers for that particular piece of hardware. I finally settled on a Nvidia GeForce 6200 with 256MB memory.

Full Story
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I've been reading quite a lot of the same on a lot of techie forums - and don't be fooled by Microsoft - of course there going to try and get you to upgrade thats business....

oh well don't say I never told you so.......

What a load of shit. Typical ramblings of a writer trying to sensationalise something they have little knowledge about.

Smeggle, you should know better.

Actually Atmo there is a lot of issues with drivers and backward compatibility from what I've been reading and I posted this to show what happens when you go messing with something you haven't a clue about as this chap certainly seems to be in that category.

And as for him telling people that delving into your computers insides is a simple task etc ???

I agree with you what a load of shit and probably why the nugget ended up back on XP..

Of course there's issues with drivers. Hardware manufacturers are dossers at the best of times, and the OS has been officially released for all of a month. As for breaking backwards compatibility, it shouldn't be an issue for well-written applications, but this is exactly what "major versions" of software are there for. Full backwards compatibility means not fixing problems with the previous version. This is stupidity.

As for his problems with ActiveSync's replacement, Windows Pocket PC 2002 has been out of date for some time. It doesn't actually work with the latest ActiveSync for XP, as far as I know. His Pocket PC is also entirely craptacular (I have one on my desk, right now), X5s are nasty little bastards at the best of times ;).

He does bring up an important issue with Vista, though. Although Vista is fine and ready, software companies, despite being given quite some time to catch up with it, are not, in general. So yes, there will be issues, and for now if you want to update to Vista you should check your hardware before going ahead.

Exactly my point zoot and as I've said both before and after the release of Vista - wait because it's windows and there track record dating back to windows 95 has always been 'problematic'....
(I'm being in a kind mood today) ...

:)

Well, you could equally validly say the same about OS X, or Linux distributions. All of these products have their own teething troubles, it's just to be expected. This is why business always waits so long to upgrade software.

Absolutely.

XP had it's teething problems during it's infancy, but for some reason people seem to have forgotten all about them. There were plenty of apps/games that ran nicely on 98/SE/ME (which were the dominant OS' at the time) that refused to run properly on XP.

There was also a lack of mature drivers at it's release time and shortly thereafter, although you could sometimes get troublesome hardware to work with a Windows 2000 driver.


Anyone who expects an OS that's only been available (for retail) for a month to have the same sort of support as an OS that's been around for five and a half years is insane. It's also not Microsoft's fault that companies like nVidia and Creative are late to the party.

Please tell me what problems listed were actual problems with Vista. Are you saying we should blame Windows when mature drivers don't exist? Or when a new OS needs a graphics card from the last few years to turn on all the eyecandy? Having an Upgrade Advisor is the best thing Microsoft's done in awhile, if you ask me! Just because it tells you things you don't want to hear about your machine doesn't mean the problem is suddenly with Vista.

I am sorry, but a computer with a 2GHz processor that was "state of the art" when it was built is pretty far outdated. Two years ago I bought a P4 3GHz tower, and that was middle-of-the-road. Wouldn't that place this guy's PC at about 4 years of age? Four years is crossing the line for making any statements about "current" hardware! Nothing wrong with keeping old (or in my case, ancient) Windows PCs running--they're very useful and I do it constantly--but I'm not going to blame the messenger when I'm told my system is lagging behind the times, and I'm not going to throw Aero at it and complain when it doesn't stick.

I think most sensible people will wait until Microsoft releases Service Pack 1 for Vista before switching from XP. By then, most of the bugs will be worked out of the OS, and most hardware manufacturers will have recent and working drivers available. So it probably wouldn't hurt to just sit tight for a little while. :)

Thats my point sarge - trying to get people to hang on for awhile. I remember when xp came out as Atmo says and the mess it was trying to explain to people why there games would no longer run...

I have had a look at Vista and it does have potential - apart from a few personal misgivings in how much ms is trying to control everything, such as installing there one help center will uninstall your AVG anti virus if you have it installed but that is another issue...

I'm trying to get the point across that it's up to you but please do be aware that you are going to have issues or possible issues as this person found out. Also that it is not a simple case of unplug this - unplug that before you go doing that there are certain precautions that you should take first. It's why I have been building computers for close on 10 years now...


as you say Sarge, take the sensible approach and wait XP is more than adequate for mast people and as yet, other than techies I have yet to find anyone using any where near half of what the system is capable of!

I absolutely agree that the average user will want to wait at least a month or two before going to Vista (most hardware/software companies have projected final driver/software versions for next month, at least the ones I know of.) But I have yet to see a single bug in Vista itself. All of the problems I have experienced--yes, absolutely 100% of the problems I encountered transferring an existing XP install into Vista--were third-party. Vista has been rock solid, and no programs that should have run under Vista didn't run. The ones that didn't run were either outdated or totally incompatible with Vista by definition (windowblinds, for example.) I was certain all my games would need reinstalling, but none have. I thought for sure migrating all those programs would be sketchy, but it wasn't. I was sure I'd lose some files, or some metadata would get borked, or SOMETHING, but so far I have no evidence of that.

In light of this I just have to face up to the fact that Microsoft has a stable release OS. If anyone knows of any Microsoft flaws in Vista, I'd love to hear about them--it's shocking, I know, but the flakiness just doesn't seem to be there.

This isn't the nightmare that was early XP. I know a couple of people that have taken the Vista plunge. It's been pretty painless.

It's also been pretty hard to figure out what the advantage of this OS is over XP, for the average user and hardware configuration, other than cosmetics.

I've played with it a bit. It seems like the control panel functions got renamed to make things confusing, but then, I'm still using the "classic view" in XP, which no longer exists in Vista. It will just take a little getting used to.

I can't find an advantage in running it on my XP machine, or I would. On the other hand, I can't find much of a disadvantage, except paying for Vista.

If I built a new machine today, I'd buy Vista for it.

No sweat. Nothin to see here.... move along :)

Well, if by "cosmetics" you mean "huge usability overhaul", then yes. But the thing is that, although it is much more secure like MS are claiming, nobody cares about this at all, despite what they may say.

There's no compelling reason to move to OS X, either. And the only reason I had to switch to Linux is that it doesn't cost anything. I think that the same arguments that claim no benefit from XP -> Vista also work from XP -> pretty much anything else. Most people will just get it with a new machine.

The move to XP was more convincing because 9x was genuinely shitty. XP's pretty solid, it just has a few flaws and ain't very pretty.

I don't see it. It's windows. I don't have security problems with my computers, so ????.

I'd buy it if I could find a reason. I don't own any DRM hardware, and at the price of HDDVD/Blueray hardware, I'll be watching DVD's for years to come.

Well, the thing about usability is that you don't notice it until you use it normally. It's usually when you go back that things start to bug you; I'm not sure people who use Vista will be comfortable going back to XP because of the newer usability improvements. It is very difficult to "notice" other than in the accompanying extra prettiness, though.

You have a good point there though. Despite the screamings of zealots over the years, there's really no good reason to upgrade; XP is simply good enough. "Upgrading" to OS X is different because it implies purchasing a new computer. If you were to buy a new computer now, it would most likely come with a working install of Vista, but that's not the scenario we're talking about.

Em - You were saying?

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=266999

:rolleyes: Told you so Told you so neh neh neh neh meh ;)

edit - oh pooh it was a hoax....

http://keznews.com/2442_Windows_Vista_Keygen_a_Hoax_

:igor: :igor: for me then lol :rolleyes:

(Hey least I can laugh at myself :D )

I don't see any reason to upgrade an existing pc from XP to Vista. Vista hogs more memory and resources for what purpose? For some silly gimmicks. Just wait until you buy your next PC, that way you will (most likely) be buying a machine that will handle the new OS painlessly.

Well, that's the point. Adding usability and prettiness is not "hogging" anything, but if you're concerned about resource usage in order to have these things, then I don't think upgrading would be for you. In fact, Gentoo with Fluxbox is probably the OS configuration for your tastes.

But yeah, as I said, it's probably not worth paying to upgrade for most people. That's not because Vista is bad, though; it's because XP is good. It wouldn't be worth paying to upgrade to OS X if it were available for the platform either, but when you're buying a new system, get the newest OS you can for it.

Actually, Vista will perform *better* in many ways than XP, due to some of its new technologies (the improved I/O scheduling in particular).

Yeah, and a bunch of other things. Theoretically with a newish graphics card Aero's fancy effects will make the system run faster too, since there's more responsibility for the windowing put onto the graphics card. :)

Yeah, but it's the I/O prioritization that really makes me go "about time!"

Seriously, how hard of a concept is that? That's the only reason my XP machine slows down right now.

'Course, the other stuff, like much better memory usage/caching, flash memory caching, Aero (FINALLY NO FUCKING VERTICAL TEARING YOU STUPID FUCKS—YOU'RE ONLY A FUCKING DECADE LATE), the new networking stack (presumably faster?), etc is all cool too.

Do you mean they wrote their own networking stack this time?

*That is obviously only a half serious comment.

I am really considering a windows free computing environment here. My last windows box is relegated to being a PVR. If I feel like fooling around for a while, it would be better to run mythtv. The only thing I haven't gotten working is the remote. That would just take some time.

I need a new laptop, that will be a MacBook. Other than that, I am really finding no reason to run windows at all..... and a lot of reasons not to.

My only reason for not using Windows is that I like to play around with *nix stuff, and I can get a functional OS for free. There's not a really convincing reason not to use Windows on most systems other than cost.

There is, however, good reasons to use other things. That doesn't mean Windows is poor, it just means other things are also good.

It is kind of funny to me that the same thing you guys are saying about how XP is adequate for most users & there's no reason to upgrade yet -- that's how I feel about 2000. 2k is only a year and a half older than xp. Other than the GUI changes, I don't feel there's that much of a difference. And it runs faster than xp on a 4-year old board & processor.

I agree with that 100%.

If you primarily run XP, then go back and spend some time in 2K it does seem a little bit primative, with a couple of features missing and some differences here and there, but it still gets the job done. That's why a couple of boxes on my home network run 2K instead of XP.

Vista & XP will be the same in a few years, except for DX10 and some DRM stuff.

In my experience, there is absolutely no reason other than cost or Windows Activation to run Windows 2000 over XP. It's not faster (unless you all the annoying flashy UI stuff in XP on), it's not more stable, it's not more compatible...

No, there's not that much of a difference, and 2000 is a great O/S. I just don't see any advantages over XP.

...wait up.. there's no classic view anymore in vista? omg wtf have they done o_0! :'(
i cannot understand the stupid jargon they put into the "categorized views", or they put display options in "graphics crap" .. gah .. well i need a new pc anyway.. running:
2.5ghz celeron 512kb cache, 512mb ddr400, 2x200gb hdd @ 7200rpm, nvidia geforce 4000mx 128mb, ac97 onboard sound :p

That computer is not that old. If you don't game, you don't need much more than that.

Activation is cost if you take my meaning. If I could install and activate my wife's legit copy of XP on this computer, I might have done so already.

When I said 2k is faster, I mean the time taken to get from point a to point b, not necessarily the time it takes the computer to do something but the time it takes me to do something. Example: when I press f3, I'm ready to type in a term for the search, not to wait for the cute little doggy to ask what type of search I want to make. Add that to just not knowing how to disable all the granny-friendly stuff.

Really, I'm not advocating anyone choose 2k over xp, but I am saying that I haven't felt that I was missing anything important. It's likely I'll skip the xp stage altogether.

Say, how did licensing work on 2000? As in, how many computers are you allowed to install it on?

The eula says only one, but there's no limit so long as you have the 25-digit number on the cd.

edit: I'm not convinced wga even works with 2k because I've seen machines pass that should not have.

No, the limit is one. It's just not technologically enforced.

I think there's more emphasis on catching false XP keys, and has been for a while. It certainly does work but as you say it's less effective.

That is the wording I was looking for, yes.

Sorry, it's just that some people don't realise that licence terms still exist even if there's no enforcement in the software.

I haven't read the thread, only the article, and the following bothers me:

How is that Microsoft's/Vista's problem? XP/OSX Doesn't support the original Command and Conquer. Poo on them?

MS's fault?

ditto.

The article notes several lack of compatibility issues caused by third parties refusing/slowly making their products available to work with Vista, but it is billed as if this is MS/Vista's fault.

Cost?. I don't care about cost. The cost would be worth it if windows was a good OS.

Really, using windows irritates the shit out of me. Vista is a little better, but it's major claim to fame is the DRM platform that provides maximum consumer unfriendliness.

And when your hard disk blows up and you have to call to reactivate your legitimate copy of windows and that takes two hours..... Microsoft can blow me. About that One machine license.... It's $50 on a new factory machine........ But if you buy it, we start at $100 for stripped down Vista. It's like they charge you like they know you will run it on more than one machine, but keep you from doing it.

I have an old business license for windows 2000 server. I was a small ISP for a while. There is almost nothing that Vista does, except DRM, that this 1998 version of windows won't do.

I think that's amazing after 9 years and hundreds of millions of bux.

It is. Sorry if that disappoints you.

If it's not what you're looking for, fine. But it is a good operating system.

DRM platforms in general do this :). Doesn't do anything to you unless you use it, and if you do, it only affects the specific area that you're using.

But don't let that stop you spacking out!

Apparently you're unfamiliar with fundamental business and economic concepts and have misinterpreted this entirely. No biggie; economics is hard!

I was going to start listing things, but I realised that you said that Windows 2000 was a "1998 version of Windows" (although it entered beta in 1998, but this is before Web 2.0 meant that people would consider things marked beta as "released). Clearly, you are being deliberately full of shit. :blah:

But sure, OS X, Linux, XP, Vista, Solaris; none of them do anything significant over Windows 2000, you're right. They each do various things better, but apparently minimum functionality is fine with you. If you're running a server, it's probably more than sufficient.

Just to pipe in, I can't stand IIS. The only thing I think windows servers are really good at is print servers. Although Microsoft SQL is pretty decent along with a few other things. But Windows is not my first choice for a server in very many cases.

IIS is awesome for .NET websites, and it sucks for most other things. As with quite a few things, MS software only really plays well with other MS software.