vista , what is your experience ?

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peanuts

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Are there any real advantages in upgrading ? I see so many problems posted on other forums. Everywhere I look I see folk re-installing Win Xp on recently purchased PC's and notebooks due to software incompatability issues etc.
 
In my experience, no, stick with XP. SP1 for Vista is due early next year, I think, after the 'unofficial' bug reporting and fixing period (the first year of release) - perhaps consider it then. For now, XP is the stablest home PC operating system Microsoft have produced (better than 2000 and 98SE, and so much better than Me and 3.11).

Vista is prettier, and has better search capabilites, but is slower and more memory heavy. I have both, and much prefer my XP machines.
 
I'm running Vista on my main PC, both the laptops and my work PC - works great as long as you have enough RAM. Only software issues I've come across is on the PC - Creative Labs didn't make the Audigy ZS 2 stuff work properly. Everything else is spot on.

If you're happy with XP, stick with it. No need to upgrade at all unless you want to play some of the newer Vista only games (some of which have been forced to run under XP with certain patches).
 
mmm this is what I thought. My Sister has just bought a laptop with Vista installed and has no other software installed. She can't do anything with it but if I format and install xp and some other software it will probably void her warrantee . ? what to do
 
As someone`s who`s just interested in the os working and not crashing all the time, my laptop with Vista`s not crashed once. I`ve had it for about five months now.

Surely I`m doing something wrong?.....
 
peanuts said:
mmm this is what I thought. My Sister has just bought a laptop with Vista installed and has no other software installed. She can't do anything with it but if I format and install xp and some other software it will probably void her warrantee . ? what to do
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Don't be silly.

It won't void the warranty at all.

BUT

Unless you go out and buy XP you'll have problems legally :p
 
Matt Charlton said:
I'm running Vista on my main PC, both the laptops and my work PC - works great as long as you have enough RAM. Only software issues I've come across is on the PC - Creative Labs didn't make the Audigy ZS 2 stuff work properly. Everything else is spot on.

If you're happy with XP, stick with it. No need to upgrade at all unless you want to play some of the newer Vista only games (some of which have been forced to run under XP with certain patches).
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What about MS office and Corel and all the other software ? did you have to purchase the latest 2007 versions ?
 
minky_monkey said:
As someone`s who`s just interested in the os working and not crashing all the time, my laptop with Vista`s not crashed once. I`ve had it for about five months now.

Surely I`m doing something wrong?.....
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Not at all, it happens occasionaly - you get people who genuinely have a good windows experience ;)
 
peanuts said:
What about MS office and Corel and all the other software ? did you have to purchase the latest 2007 versions ?
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I got told that "only office 2007 worked with vista" by a sales guy at PCworld.

Isn't true, as my OH's puter runs Office XP just fine! Not sure about corel though :thinking:
 
peanuts said:
What about MS office and Corel and all the other software ? did you have to purchase the latest 2007 versions ?
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MS office will run on it no matter what - 2000/2003/2007 all work fine.

I'm running 2007 because I've got it through work at no cost so thats easy.

It has the same compatibility options as XP (more in fact - you can make programs think they are running in XP/2000/98)

Its more hardware drivers and REALLY old software that cause problems. A lot of the compatibility issues were sorted out during beta and RC1 - once the hardware manufacturers got themselves sorted out and the drivers were released all was well.

The in-laws had problems with their HP digicam/printer - HP decided not to develop proper drivers for it and so they can't import the pictures using the dock anymore. This is more a manufacturer issue than a Microsoft one and is designed to force you to upgrade your camera and printer/dock to their latest models at yet more expense.
 
mattyh said:
I got told that "only office 2007 worked with vista" by a sales guy at PCworld.

Isn't true, as my OH's puter runs Office XP just fine! Not sure about corel though :thinking:
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Hahahahahahahahahaahhahahaahaha

Sorry.

PC World sales people make me giggle.
 
Oh I forgot to mention - Running Corel 12 on my workstation at work with no problems. Older versions would probably be fine also.
 
Matt Charlton said:
Don't be silly.

It won't void the warranty at all.

:p
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PC world refused to honour a notebook warrantee recently because the hard drive had been formatted and xp had been installed.When you do this you are unable to use the restore disks that come with the laptop
 
I built a Vista box last week ....

I had to buy Elements 5.0 as 4.0 wouldn't install and Vista won't store my Outlook 2002 password :bang:

That's the stuff that won't work so far , still got a shelf full of other stuff to try :(
 
You should have taken them to the cleaners.

PC Manufacturers used to put stickers on the case joints on the back of a PC so that you couldn't do a RAM upgrade without voiding your warranty. This was outlawed because of the whole idea of what a PC was. I can assure you that removing the operating system on a laptop does not void the warranty.

A restore CD would work on a laptop if you took the original hard drive out and replaced it with a new one (the hardware swap out "may" void your warranty). Trust me, I've carried out many, many reinstallations.

The laptop is yours to do with as you please, you can install whatever operating system you like on it. PC World cannot refuse to honour the warranty because you wiped the system.

It may have been that your recovery disc was stored on a hidden partition on the hard disk, meaning you didn't need to use a cd to restore it. In that case when you format the drive and remove all partitions you can remove this utility partition by accident. You can request that the manufacurer supply you with the media to re-install windows on the laptop for whatever version of it that you purchased with the laptop. They might charge you a fiver for the media but they have to supply it.
 
I expect there will be lots of old stuff stuff that won't install or work too well with it. I heard there were quite a few USB type broadband modems that wouldn't work due to drivers issues . Probably sorted now I expect.
I have a couple of spare PC's I might try a vista box myself this w/e if I can find a beta version somewhere.
I have a touch screen notebook. What would be really neat is to have something similar to the software on the Apple Iphone for images
 
Matt Charlton said:
You should have taken them to the cleaners.
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wasn't me ..someone on another forum but it was in the early days of vista and the store may have operated a differant policy then.
I suppose my Sister could always install win xp as a dual boot os
 
peanuts said:
wasn't me ..someone on another forum but it was in the early days of vista and the store may have operated a differant policy then.
I suppose my Sister could always install win xp as a dual boot os
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Doesn't matter when it was its illegal and PC world were talking B*llocks (not for the first or last time).

The hardware warranty stickers I was talking about date back to around 1996/7.

I hate PC World. As long as you can go in there and not have to talk to any of the numpties its fine. I sometimes chuckle to myself when I hear them giving "advice" to other customers though.
 
they are appalling arn't they. where do they find them ? I love watching the `techs' look as though they know what they are doing. £120 to sort a laptop ...daylight robbery
 
Its always fun to find one and ask them a really technical question and just watch their eyes glaze over, then they go and find someone who knows the answer who tells you that what you read and saw on the internet must be wrong.

They charge £14.99 to fit a RAM upgrade, Thats two screws, two plastic levers and one good push (if its a more modern screwless case then you're looking at one thumbscrew).

I think they charge nearly £60 for a health check now. And then recommend that you buy Norton Internet Security *Shudder*.
 
I've been running Vista almost since release and it's been a good experience, no unsolved issues just minor things that needed updates, etc. It was a clean install and I suspect a lot of problems people have had are legacy issues from upgrading.
 
minky_monkey said:
As someone`s who`s just interested in the os working and not crashing all the time, my laptop with Vista`s not crashed once. I`ve had it for about five months now.

Surely I`m doing something wrong?.....
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yeah..you have a duff windows OS. Microsoft failed to put in the bugs and viruses and various other problems that they have shipped with every other OS, and various batches of vista. you must of been one of the unlucky ones that received a computer from the batch that had a clean vista.

;)
 
I've been running Vista for around a year (first in Beta and now in full version), and it's great, the only compatibility problem I had was with a fire-wire card reader?

Otherwise, all my programmes run smooth as silk, and run far more efficiently.

I disagree that vista is slower, I find it much quicker than xp, although it uses more memory (and as memory is so cheap nowadays it isn't an issue), it manages processor and memory resources much more efficiently than xp ever did.

I'm pleased I went with Vista, it's so much more user friendly than XP.

And with every major software upgrade, you get the usual scaremongers warning of doom and gloom.

It was exactly the same when XP came out, you had a vocal minority telling everyone to stick with Windows 98 :)
 
I still like Windows 98 ;(

I miss it dearly.

Then again, I remember my dad bringing home a beta of Windows 95 (back when betas used to ship in retail boxes). None of my games would work because there wasn't enough expanded memory (memmaker anyone?). I'd forever be re-formatting and sticking Dos 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 back on so I could play Wing Commander, X-Wing, Doom and many others.

Those were the days, where you had to have a games boot floppy that loaded up just the drivers you needed for sound and memory tweaks, the first 640kb was king.

I feel old ;(
 
Matt Charlton said:
I still like Windows 98 ;(

I miss it dearly.

Then again, I remember my dad bringing home a beta of Windows 95 (back when betas used to ship in retail boxes). None of my games would work because there wasn't enough expanded memory (memmaker anyone?). I'd forever be re-formatting and sticking Dos 6.22 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 back on so I could play Wing Commander, X-Wing, Doom and many others.

Those were the days, where you had to have a games boot floppy that loaded up just the drivers you needed for sound and memory tweaks, the first 640kb was king.

I feel old ;(
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Me too :(;). Memmaker...ah, I'd all but forgotten that. Yep, your games boot floppy, and another with PKZip and PKUnzip were the most important tools back then.

I still run 98SE on a datalogging machine. Solid as a rock.
 
Matt Charlton said:
first 640kb was king.

I feel old ;(
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640kb....luxury, of course we had it tough, Spectrum ZX81, our family were the bees knees cos we had 48k of memory, they came from miles around to watch Manic Miner zip along with so much power at our fingertips :)
 
I use Vista on my Laptop (using the Business Version as that what Microsoft sends me).

I've not had any major problems with it other than an inital lack of drivers from the makers when I first installed (but that's not Microsoft's fault). Yes programs crash on it but you never know whether that is the program or Windows thaty's falling over.

I personally wouldn't bother searching out an XP machine or downgrading to XP unless I had a really low spec machine (1GB RAM is really the minimum for Vista, preferably 2GB) or I had a critcal program that wouldn't run on compatibility mode.

I still use XP in my CarPC and on my MediaCentre and they crash more often than my Laptop but then I have stripped down XP for use in the CarPC to speed up boot time.
 
Jan's machine is running Vista, mines running XP. She's just bought 'Stalker' and it wont have it at all on her machine, despite downloading every Vista game patch out there, but it runs just fine on my PC.
 
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!.... I was only talking PCs ;) , if you want to go back to the start we had the paddle thingys with pong (although to be fair I can't really remember playing on that), an atari 2600 then I think we got the ZX81 followed by the C64, Atari ST then the Amiga, then the PC (with a variety of consoles strewn in along the way). I think we were fairly late into PC gaming, I didn't have a 286, although we used them at school, first PC we got was a hand me down 386 we had for a few months before spending £1500 on a Gateway 2000 P-60. One of the first pentium chips that arrived on the scene.

Its funny, I remember reading a gaming mag about MMX (multimedia extensions for those who missed them) and how it would change the face of gaming on the PC. I think POD was the first MMX game to be released. That was when you needed a 3DFX card to overlay a 3D image over the top of your normal graphics card too for decent graphics.

I also have fond memories of the Ghostbusters game on the C64, some of the later games came with a version of space invaders called Invaderload that you could play whilst your proper game was loaded. Trouble is, sometimes playing the space invaders game would cause a crash which was a pita when it took 15 minutes per game to load in the first place.

Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy.

What else was there on the Speccy?.......

I love my games ;(
 
CT said:
Jan's machine is running Vista, mines running XP. She's just bought 'Stalker' and it wont have it at all on her machine, despite downloading every Vista game patch out there, but it runs just fine on my PC.
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I think my brother has run Stalker on vista, I think he got it when he had an XP build but he's on vista now and I'm sure he's played it.

Its a beast of a game, I've got nothing at home that'll run it.
 
CT said:
Jan's machine is running Vista, mines running XP. She's just bought 'Stalker' and it wont have it at all on her machine, despite downloading every Vista game patch out there, but it runs just fine on my PC.
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Do you have a dual processor.
My wife has trouble in vista with her dual FX64 she has to change some games to single processor and then they work fine.
 
Weird! From what I can gather scouring the web, loads of Vista users can run it and loads can't.
 
That just sounds odd Cedric. Must mean its hardware related rather than OS related though.

I know certain games have had issues with certain graphics chipsets in the past. Sometimes they list the incompatible ones on the back of the DVD case near the bottom. "Will not work with Blah chipset".
 
Staggerlee said:
Do you have a dual processor.
My wife has trouble in vista with her dual FX64 she has to change some games to single processor and it then they work fine.
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Both machines are dual processor. Jans is the more powerful and she has the better graphics card, although mines not bad.

We did actually get the game running on Jan's machine, but totally unreliable - sometimes it would be OK other times - badly corrupted graphics.

Awesome looking game, but a bit too complicated for me. :D
 
Could be heat related - that can cause graphics corruption in the more intensive newer games, especially if airflow is a problem either around the components (PC) or just between the laptop and the desk its on and where the vents are positioned ect.
 
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