Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Windows Vista.............how is it, so far?

When I got my new computer last December, it was just before the new Vista operating system was out. I got a free Vista home premium express upgrade "kit" sent to me (after much chaos on line, and the phone ).
I have (and like) Windows XP now, and have not yet tried to "upgrade" to Vista.

I have not heard much "buzz" one way or, the other about Vista, so............I thought, I could ask the many IT types here, for install tips, and some of the pro's and con's about Vista..........before I try this, later on.

IT guys, what say you?

If your computer meets the middle requirements (not just the minimum), then it's not too shabby. You have to get used to a few new things. I've not used it for extended periods of time, so I can't really say much other than that. If XP is working fine for you, there's no real technical reason to upgrade.

What Peter said. If XP works great for you then it would be more trouble than anything to update, I don't think it's worth it at the moment.

Those are the same things that people said with Windows 98. "It is just Windows 95 with Internet Explorer built in." Wait, I remember myself saying that.

Anyway, I am sure that it is a nice O/S, and there will be a day soon that those of us using a Microsoft O/S will say "I can't believe that we lived with Windows XP for so long." but for now, I vote "Don't Rock the Boat" too and say stick with XP.

Likewise, especially if you're using an nVidia graphics card. The drivers simply aren't all sorted out yet.

Let's see -- 1GB is OK, more is nice. Anything less don't bother.

If you don't have a DX9 or DX10 graphics card with good Vista drivers (ie one of ours ) then don't bother. The compositing UI ("Aero" ?) is nice enough that it outweighs all the stupid little changes, but if you have to run the legacy UI then all you get are the stupid little changes and IMO you're better off staying with XP.

The tabbed browser is nice but you can get IE7 (or Firefox etc..) on XP.

I think I'm going to wait until at least the first service pack for Vista comes out. I'm overdue for building a brand new system, but I've had other priorities (sound system being the biggest thing). I figure the longer I put it off, the better. I used to upgrade every six months. This will be the most meaningful upgrade I've ever done, when I get around to it.

Thank You, IT guys.

I forgot to list my computer "specs". in my post........if it makes a difference in the advice, here they are.

HP Pavilion media center M7690E
AMD Athlon 64X2 4200+ dual core 2.2GHZ
2GB DDR-667MHZSDRAM(2X1024)Vista capable
250GB 7200 rpm sata hard drive
15-in-one memory card reader,2usb,1394 video
HP w19b wide screen monitor
etc, etc, etc.

I'm going to take the IT collective's advice.......and not upgrade for now.
I do want to try and keep up, though.

Does anyone have anything to say about Media Center functionality in Windows Vista? How improved is it?

I like Vista... but with all my various PC's I still run several XP's as well. (mainly cause they are older machines)

The new MCE is pretty, but I was pissed that there wasn't anything really "new" except for cable card support, and cable cards are (about to be) worthless so, meh. The new music library is my favorite thing about the new interface.

Why do you think cable cards will be worthless? This is one of the things I have been waiting for for a media center. I want all the HD channels with the digital cable card and no antenna. A media center that can't record HD or only does OTA is no good to me.

They're only allowed for completely manufacturer-prebuilt computers. No build your own media centers with cable cards. Plus, good luck getting a CC 2.0 anytime soon.

I don't like the prebuilt part, but can live with it if it comes to that. The 2.0 part I don't care about much. I don't care much about on demand, and while the guide is nice I can live without it.

I'm moving in a couple of months, so I'll figure out what makes sense in the new house. FIOS will be available, I am hoping that means FIOS TV as well.

You PC would do a good job handling Vista.

But if you Win XP is working well for you, IMO don't bother to upgrade. I tried Vista is it isn't all that great. It is hyped up. It takes up a lot of resources and memory. I am into PC gaming and when I tried Vista I got my errors and my PC was more proned to crashes.

It happens to every new Windows OS that comes out to the market. M$ fixes bugs and issues after the first few months of release. After the first service pack, Vista should be fine.

I'd advise though to stick with Win XP for the time being.

I have yet to find one thing I like about Vista. This is the most irritating operating system MS has come out with yet. I am constantly clicking “allow” or some other F… pop up window to get it the heck out of my face. I’m already logged on as the administrator, but I find myself clicking this stupid allow button over and over again verifying I’m the administrator.

It has some ridiculous back up function that has been “full” from day one. I can’t even go into the back up drive and delete files to start over. I’m sure there’s a way to do this, but it’s not simple to find. It took me five years to figure out XP, now I get to start all over.

……Vista Sucks.

Ouch. Is this on a new computer or an upgraded XP machine?

New.... It came with Vista on it. If it was an upgrade, I'd have gone back to XP.

That's pretty sick. I guess that's another reason to hold off on building myself a new computer.

That reminds me of this MAC security commercial , my favorite of their current ad line.

That is dead on! I didn't want to cripple OS security either, but after 1 day just had to disable all of the Vista prompts. They drive one CRAZY!

Turn UAC off, it's worthless (the constant prompts). It's the only thing hugely negative about Vista IMO, and you can turn it off.

Back to Cable Cards... I'm not even going to get into the 2.0 debate cause EVERY device currently out there is a ver 1 device and won't utilize any features that 2.0 "could" offer... I guess I got into that debate. ;-)

Now the reason I say they are pointless is cable companies are all moving to "switched video" to deliver HD programing (some much faster than others, ie Time Warner). Basically ver 1 cable cards don't work with switched video. And ver 2 isn't the answer (see above).

Cable companies want cable cards to die more than anything. They want to force everyone to rent their boxes so they can push their on demand type services for more cash. That model only works well on a closed box/system.

Comcast just charges the same rental fee whether you get a card or box from them.

I'm hoping FioS TV is available after I move. If it is Comcast will be out of my house all together.

For UAC...

Go to Control Panel, User Accounts, and turn off 'User Account Control'.

Dam recovery drive... . It's full but won't let me delete any files or clean it up.

how can I do that?

One possibility is that your recovery drive is not hidden for some reason. Most laptop and many desktop manufactures use a hidden partition to store a backup of the factory install of Windows and sometimes other files. I know that for some reason with Dell running Vista this “hidden” partition is now visible but not usually accessible except to the backup utility.

If this is the case I wouldn’t mess with this partition unless you really must. It would be easier and safer to add another hard drive if you need more space. If you must delete these files the only way I know how is to reformat the partition which will wipe out everything on it.

If this is just a complete pc backup using the Vista utility and you want to make a more up-to-date complete pc backup I wouldn’t do it over my original factory backup unless I had an exact copy of the factory backup somewhere else.

I have helped a friend with Vista a little so I hope I can help you out but I chose to put XP and Linux on mine new computer as I already knew they worked and don’t like Beta testing for Microshaft.

Mike, I’m just curios why you want to mess with this D: drive?

Dean

Well, because it's full and I consttantly get these pop ups that tell me it's full. It's 7+ gigs of space. I click on the pop up that takes me to another disk clean up utility, but it won't let me do anything with this drive.

So I reckon I want to mess with it because it's pissing me off.

Quote:

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So I reckon I want to mess with it because it's pissing me off.

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One of the best reasons I know of

What is the exact message you get from the popup?

It sounds like the low disk space warning which then automatically takes you to the cleanup utility. If that is the case then try this:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windowsvista/ht/dislowdisk.htm

Make sure to backup your registry first.

When you get the pop up that takes you to the cleanup utility are you logged in as Administrator. If not try logging in as Admin and manually run the cleanup utility on the D: drive.

If you do get access to your D: drive be careful what you delete as this likely contains your restore files from your computer maker.