The advice to double the "official" RAM and video memory "minimums" is probably a very good idea.

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It's a pretty good shift in how things are done.

The video card I initially had in the machine didn't pass the Microsoft "cool enough for Aero" test, so I grabbed a cheapo GEForce5200 just to see the new UI.

I'm not sure how worth it the investment was.

What I'll need to see before I upgrade anything is a killer app that takes advantage of whatever it is Vista brings to the table.

I'm not all that impressed/concerned about the "high security" features, since preliminary reports are that it's still full of holes. :-
The machine I put it on is an AthlonXP 2800+ with 1 GB of RAM.

I did a bare-metal install.

Some things were really nice -- the SATA driver for the mobo I was using isn't part of Vista's base package (because an Asus/SiS dive is so esoteric?!?) so since nothing ha sa floppy anymore, it lets you plug in a USB thumbdrive (while the install is running) and grab the driver off of that. I thought that was pretty slick, after suffering thru countless "Press F6 for a storage driver" issues with Win2K and WinXP.

But performance didn't seem better or worse than a clean-install of XP.

The User Access Control is so obtrusive that it was the first thing I turned off. I figure other users won't figure out how to turn it off (it's a control panel setting) so as years of providing tech support have taught me they'll just ignore the warnings and just click any button out of confusion... which defeats its purpose...

Everyone says don't upgrade, and I tend to agree. Upgrading an OS is rarely worth the pain, and with the pretty beefy hardware requirements, new hardware seems the most prudent choice.

I tend to agree with most of KK's assessments.

But I'm not at all sold on the necessity of Vista as a solution to anything beyond Microsoft's need to maintain and provide upgrade paths. I'm pretty happy with XP.

Edited by - Jeff @ IAFD on 1/28/2007 10:32:45 AM

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Me? I'm sticking to XP for a little while. New OS = new bugs and problems.

"The universe is hostile, So impersonal. Devour to survive." - Tool

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I'm very pleased with how my XP systems are running. I simply have no need to "upgrade."

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For at least a decade Microsoft has set their resource usage targets for new releases based on what they think will be commonly available on the date of release. In other words a developer is permitted to use ridiculous amounts of memory, disk space, CPU, etc, as long as it's projected to be common at release.

This time it appears that they guessed wrong badly in a few places, namely video cards - Vista needs a lot more than is commonly available. That's an amazing error given the schedule miss Vista had. Hardware compatibility is also poor, but that may be due to the misjudgment on what would be common in the market.

I'd wait to see reports on how Windows-compatible Vista really is before considering using it. I'm not aware of anything it has that is of value.

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Along the lines of what some Linux nerd said - I ran Enlightenment on FreeBSD about 8 freakin years ago and it had transparent windows and nifty real-time system monitoring gauges and other pretty hoo-ha and it was free as in beer and ran on a Pentium II.

There is no compelling reason for businesses to upgrade desktops, laptops or servers, period, no matter how much or how loud all the CMP trade rags hype it up.

Windows Mobile, on the other hand, with Exchange Server = nice BES killer. FUCK BES.

What're we talking about? Vista? Fuck Vista. I think I'll load it up on my new laptop, though, just because I can waste half a day doing it in the name of 'research' and play Chess Titans the rest of the day. Hold me back.

Hey ya'll! Air kisses. Mmmm-mah.

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It crashed a lot, though. Enlightenment + Gnome never really worked right. A lot like the next 2-3 years of Vista will be until the second or third service pack.

I'll let you know how this wee Duo T2050 with 1 GB of RAM Inspiron handles the upgrade I'm about to do to slap on it.

The real decision is whether or not to reinstall ten bloated overwrought gigs of Visual Studio, MSDN Library and SQL Server when WAMP + PsPad + CodeIgniter takes like what - ten megs?

I'm not a Microsoft hater because it's cool to hate Microsoft - it's just that they're the Hummer of the software industry. Yeah, nice code there, big 'un. What does it run on, a Cray?

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http://www.tomcoyote.org/tech/vista-upgrade-invalidates-your-xp-key/74/

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If you answered the PC games section give yourself a pat on the back.

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I had all the old Windows Mobile software from my PDS; plopped it on my Treo; and off we went.

It took a bit longer to figure out how to get the certificate from the Exchange box onto the phone over the air (answer: fuck it and just use the wire); but once that was squared away; I can configure a new phone for co-workers in about 5 minutes and they're in love that their secretary can add something to Outlook and it pops up on their phone two minutes (if that) later.

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Loved the Register link, K! Now cut me some slack!

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You just need to add the cert to the phone's store. I'm not sure about Cingular, but there's a small app that MS has will do this for you.

You have to copy the .cer file off the Exchange box and onto the phone.

(I vaguely remember there being some issue doing this, but I can't recall what... I do know that Google had the cure for it...)

Once you get the .cer on the handheld, run the little app, and you're good to go.

Microsoft's KB with the certificate adder: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841060

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I bought a larger hard drive and added Vista Business x64 as a third boot option.

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The reason? Vista's IP stack was re-engineered from the ground up. Win2k and XP have a stack based upon FreeBSD (which they don't acknowledge) and as such have years and years of hardening built in to them. Vista is having to start from scratch and apparently hasn't gone through the list of known TCP/IP attacks.

Another data point: Peer to peer file sharing IN THE OS is turned on BY DEFAULT. To me, this is an enormous red flag screaming "all hackers please break the peer to peer support and infect all Vista machines ASAP. Thanks!"

Vista is incredibly bloated in terms of it's code base. It has reached a level of complexity, that, IMHO, is no longer supportable. Vista may be stable at some point, but I won't run it for at least several years.

Want eye candy, stability, real security, and ease of use? Pay a little more, lose the Windows bias, and get a Mac.

Dr. P

Edited by - drp0rn0 on 3/16/2007 11:56:44 PM

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I've had a few compatibility issues. Some programs that worked fine with XP just won't work with Vista. Some of them won't even install. Give me some message about no having enough room in the target folder or I don't have permission. WTF? I don't have permission to install a program on my own computer?

Then, there's at least one annoying security feature that I've concluded you simply can't turn off. That's nice. Maybe the next generation of houses will have security lights that are just hard wired and you can't choose to turn them off if you don't want them on all the time.

Sometimes my icons spontaneously change sizes for no apparent reason. I change them back to my preferred size but their insolence persists in the form of spontaneously changing sizes yet another time sometime later that day...or the next...or a week later. Bottom line? If it's not supposed to happen and it happens once.....you can bet it will happen again....and again. It should be fun beating my head against the wall waiting for Microsoft to work out wrinkles that really shouldn't even be there. I checked for updates twice last week and was informed that there weren't any. Hmmmm. Not one?

There are a few nice things. I've only gotten the BSOD about 10 times so far. Of course, I never got it with XP unless I really fucked up. It's really cool because my monitor makes this really weird clicking noise when I get BSOD and it's so abrupt....the noise, along with the sudden change to solid blue, manages to scare the snot out of me when it happens.

I finally figured out (I think) how to get all of my folders to have the same view settings. That was also kindly hidden somewhere in the labyrinths of multiple redundant menus. You know...if I wanted this kind of complexity, finicky behavior and clunkiness out of something I have to use every day, I'd have gone to work for NASA or something years ago. I'm neither impressed or amused by software that charges the customer $400 and then makes them guess how to use it.

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