Windows Vista Drivers

[PBinWA]

If you are going to be on the bleeding edge and try and load Windows Vista on your PC then you will need some new drivers.

Here's a web site that is tracking Windows Vista drivers:

http://www.radarsync.com/vista/

[Doc]

Who will be the 1st brave soul to load it?
I'm creating a vmware server and plan to put it on a partition there, but that will be used as a test OS. No way will I replace my workhorses with this new OS at least not just yet.

[PBinWA]

Dargo's running it already. I think my free upgrade is lost in a processing black hole. I'm probably just going to buy a copy soon.

[Doc]

I'm still waiting on my 'free' upgrade in the mail. No way would I consider paying for it knowing I have a free upgrade coming.
Is yours coming from Dell PB?

Dargo, let us know how you like Vista, and what problems you've had with it (if any).

[PBinWA]

Dargo posted in this link.

My upgrade is through CyberPowerPC. Actually, they just had a site that prints out a form that you fax/email/mail to a processing center (blackhole). I sent mine in but got no confirmation.

I'll probably need two licenses anyways so I'll just buy the other one on my next trip to BestBuy.

I decided to upgrade the motherboard on my new computer as I screwed up and ordered the wrong one with it from CyberPowerPC. I got a new one from newegg but it died almost immediately so now I have to go through the RMA hassle. My Vista urgency is not high but I do want to get this new box set up so I can migrate my work environment to it.

[Dargo]

I've not had any issues yet. I had to transfer my email from Outlook Express to Microsoft Mail and the "transfer wizard" couldn't find the default folder for Outlook Express, but I was able to manually point to that folder and all was well. Other than that obvious program flaw, I really like Vista. It runs much faster on my system and has not crashed once yet. I was forced to reboot every day or so with XP or it would develop all sorts of odd glitches. Vista doesn't seem to suffer from those problems either.

Last night I saw Apple's new commercial with the two guys where Apple is taking shots at Vista. For the first time I have to say that I think Apple quit touting the benefits of their OS and are grasping at straws. Their commercial tries to get the viewer to believe that a user of MS Vista is constantly hounded by the security portion of the program. Plain and simple, that Apple commercial is misleading and I just lost a lot of respect for them. I have my security set at nearly the highest setting and I have no such problems they try to portray in the Apple commercial. As I made quite clear, I have been seriously considering buying a Mac. After seeing the apparent desperation and obvious attempt to mislead in their latest ad, I'm completely turned off by Apple and now think that MS may finally have an OS that has them worried. Otherwise, why lie and try to mislead the public rather than have the common "cute" commercials that point out certain benefits that the Mac had over Windows. So, after running Vista for a couple of weeks now, Apple blew it with me with their misleading attack ad. I no longer have any desire to purchase a Mac. And, that's from someone who was extremely open minded and very likely would have purchased one. From Apple's reaction, they apparently no longer have any advantage over Windows, now that Vista is out, and have resorted to misdirection to try to sell their system.

I've had no driver issue at all yet. The only conflict was that my 2005 version of Norton AntiVirus was not compatible. Honestly, I'm not that impressed with Norton anyway. I'm currently using the 90 day free trial period of MS "Care One". It seems to work fine.

[Doc]

That's good to hear Brent. Glad to hear your Vista experience is a good one. I'm not impressed with Norton either.

I saw that commercial also. It just plain wasn't as funny as some they've done. It's like the 'security' was playing the role of firewall or router. Duh, all computers use those.
The one with them taping the camera to the PC's head is funny, but also a stretch if you listen to what they are saying.

[PBinWA]

Having lived and bled through many different revisions to the Mac lineup I can tell you that the Apple campaign is so full of hypocrisy it isn't funny.

Apple is lucky they are in their niche market and that they aren't as popular as the PC/Windows platform. The consumer backlash against some of the stuff they pull would be fierce. There are still customers runnin Mac OS 9 due because they have legacy software that can't be upgraded. Granted there aren't that many but every time Apple does an core OS change or even a hardware change (Motorola 608X0? -> PowerPC -> Intel) they just tell a certain percentage of their customers "tough luck" when they decide to not support certain legacy features.

Ultimately, I don't really care. I like my Mac and it's fun to have lots of different OS's to play with but from experience I won't hesitate to point out Apple's hypocrisy.

[Deadly Sushi]

Norton, IMO is pure evil. But so is Vista at this moment. Im a hard core geek and I have been on many many boards reading about all aspects and details on Vista. And at this moment, its just not worth it. It sucks up FAR too much memory. Its SLOWER running many apps. Infact it will not run 1000s of games.
The OS itself is faster, but just not running programs. ANd running a program is why you HAVE a computer right?
I can go ON.... and ON.

[Dargo]

Originally Posted by Deadly Sushi

Norton, IMO is pure evil. But so is Vista at this moment. Im a hard core geek and I have been on many many boards reading about all aspects and details on Vista. And at this moment, its just not worth it. It sucks up FAR too much memory. Its SLOWER running many apps. Infact it will not run 1000s of games.
The OS itself is faster, but just not running programs. ANd running a program is why you HAVE a computer right?
I can go ON.... and ON.

Well, since my past life of building computers taught me that RAM was important to a computer's operation, I do have 4 GB of RAM on my office system. Honestly, I couldn't tell you if that is even considered a lot anymore. I can only comment on what I've seen. I haven't read anything about VISTA on any boards. I only know that I consistantly had stability issues with XP that were extremely inconsistant.

Since I learned long ago, again, back when I was building systems, that games very often have flaws that take down systems, I have not had a single game on my office system in many years. So I suppose my comments about VISTA being considerably faster would only apply to general internet use and about a dozen or so business applications. With what I use, I'd have to say that I notice about a 50% increase in system speed with the exact same programs utilizing the exact same data (since I did the "upgrade" type of conversion to VISTA Ultimate).

[Doc]

Sushi,
How much memory do you have in the system that is running Vista? I wonder if that is why Vista is slow on your system. Like Brent said, memory can make or break a system, and what ran XP just fine (1 gig for example) is not enough to run Vista. I think the minimum is 2 gig, but I have not verified that.

[PBinWA]

Word on the street is 2GB min for memory and 4GB is the sweet spot.

Vista has a new caching engine that will pre-cache most of your frequently used apps into memory. The more memory - the less disk I/O and better performance.

My new machine has 4 GB of RAM just waiting for my stinkin' Vista upgrade to show up!

[Deadly Sushi]

Sushi,
How much memory do you have in the system that is running Vista? I wonder if that is why Vista is slow on your system. Like Brent said, memory can make or break a system, and what ran XP just fine (1 gig for example) is not enough to run Vista. I think the minimum is 2 gig, but I have not verified that.

I dont have Vista. Im not loading that Devil Dog on my precious machine. Before I dive into something, I research the hell out of it. As an example, before I bought new tires for my car I did research for a cumulative of approx. 15-19 hours.
I have done, currently about 7 hours of research and learning about Vista in all aspects of it.
The place where I used to work was a large custom computer mfg. and all of the engineers and techs didnt like it. I wondered why they didnt, so I began looking into the matter.
What I found was wicked bad.

(BTW, even though you can run Vista with 512 MB of RAM, it will not show the new Aero features/look. (provided you have Home Premium) 1 GB of RAM should be a minimum and 2GB standard. It also helps a LOT if you have a 1GB thumb drive parked in a USB port, as Vista takes great advantages of that.)