30 Days with Vista @ [H]

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Jason_Wall

[H] Consumer Managing Editor
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From the same guys who brought you "30 Days with Linux," we bring you its sequel, 30 Days with Vista. After dropping some not-so-subtle hints in the previous discussion, we've put together what we hope is an objective, thorough accounting of Microsoft's new operating system. It turns out that some of our worst fears about Vista were unfounded, but there are still some major problems with the OS that we hope to see addressed by Microsoft.

I can see what Microsoft was trying to do, but it may be that keeping Windows backwards compatible and making it more secure, all while trying to keep the OS stable may be an impossible task. I don't know if Vista will be improved with the next service pack, but the problems I found seem to stem not from flaws in code, but flaws in design.
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TBH I nothing I didn't expect, I will probably end up switching to Vista-64 but for now I'm quite content with Windows XP (cannot be bothered with all that instability!). Can I ask will we receive a 30 days of Leopard when it comes out? :D
 
A lemon, eh... all I'm going to say about this this time around is:

30 days ain't all it's cracked up to be.

'Nuff typed.
 
Love the reviews, just read the Dell water cooled review, love them. I just received 5 days ago my Gateway NX860XL w/vista Premium. Before I got the computer and learned of Vista through this site I bought WinXP Pro SP2 retail for almost $300 from Newegg thinking I was gonna get rid of Vista (being the uneducated Vista user). You know what? I love it. Now I have a (never been touched) $279 OS sitting here lol. I'll keep it for my library and end up building a system, but sure wish I would have used Vista even for a few days before doing what I did.
 
scathing!

naw, nothing suprising. what little benefits there might be to upgrading (now) are clearly not worth all the pitfalls associated with a brand new and unrefined product
 
You've got your facts slightly wrong, Jason, but good review:

"We don’t claim to be experts in computer security, but what I can tell you is that a system that requires you to enter a password only you know is a much harder system to crack than one which may just require you to click on something or hit a quick standard keystroke. If a malicious program makes its way onto your system, activating a quick keystroke or even taking control of your mouse in order to select the “Allow” option is certainly theoretically possible."
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The reason it pops up and grays out the rest of the desktop is to indicate that no other programs are being allowed to run. Essentially, the operating system has full control, so it would take the operating system to be fully compromised before that would be a possibility. The UAC measures are designed to prevent malicious programs from installing (specifically) and also utilizing/modifying system resources. So without a fault or security hole giving OS access, what you're talking about is impossible (theoretically).

Don't believe me? Test it using Synergy or any program that simulates keystrokes.

Irony is that this was a detriment to my purposes, since I prefer to use Synergy to control my Vista machine -- all my computers are linked to one central keyboard/mouse setup, and anytime a UAC window popped up, I lost control. I turned off UAC, and I don't regret it.
 
I have been using Vista for over 5 months and never had any data loss. I have used the beta, RC1, and then the Business edition I have now. I overclock and run a raid array, and it has worked like a champ.

I realize that I am just one person, but I am sure there are many others. I just hate to see something called a "lemon" in a reveiw just because one person had issues.
 
nunyabiz said:
I have been using Vista for over 5 months and never had any data loss. I have used the beta, RC1, and then the Business edition I have now. I overclock and run a raid array, and it has worked like a champ.

I realize that I am just one person, but I am sure there are many others. I just hate to see something called a "lemon" in a reveiw just because one person had issues.
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Same here. No problems nor a single BSOD caused by the OS (only BSOD was caused by new ATI drivers). Can't really say that Vista is a lemon. It might not be the end of all OSses but a far cry from a lemon. Hardware and software was easier to install than on my linux box and drivers come out left and right lately.
Dunno, maybe with all your stability problems, you actually DO have a hardware problem?
 
I run Vista on my Laptop, it works perfectly for me. I haven't had any BSODs or stability issues as noted in this review, though I have had a lot of compatibility issues that have left me to prefer my Windows XP and Linux setups.
 
The issues that Jason experienced during the "30 Days of Vista" were nothing short of disheartening of course. I built my current PC with the full intention of moving to Vista sooner or later, but I have been waiting for Nvidia to work out their Vista driver issues on the 8800 series of cards before I jump fully on this machine.


Nunyabiz is also correct in that Jason was one of the few people that I'm aware of at this present time to have experienced the problems that were documented in the article. As was mentioned in the article, there are people whom have had no problems since upgrading to Vista and there are also people who have had nothing but. I would say evaluate your current system and needs before seriously considering the jump.
 
ScYcS said:
Dunno, maybe with all your stability problems, you actually DO have a hardware problem?
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He doesn't have these problems under WinXP, so it's got to be driver/Vista related. If this is the case, Vista isn't ready for prime time.
 
I been running it since before the final. And once the finel was out I must say I like it alot. I got final before it was released to public.
In fact I run it as my main now. never any crash BSOD's reboots. Games run just fine that I run. I will be installing a few more soon since it is now my main OS. though the problem with superfetch and indexing need to be fixed . Or shut down if you really want a nice running system.
See MS wants the software companies to start writing software properly.or it will not run. This is also the reason for permission to run software. once they approve it it will run fine.

The only issus i have with software is poorly writen software. I have many programs that are so old and run fine.
No loss of data here either in well over a month.

Though I can understand why you say lemon if you were getting reboots and loss of data.
 
Adobe Photoshop CS2 would run but it kept prompting me to register every time I started the program - after I had already told it I did not want to. This behavior is unique to Vista and is not exhibited on Windows XP. Indeed, Adobe says that it will not make it's current Creative Suite offerings compatible with Vista, and that Vista users should upgrade to Adobe CS3.
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Let me hazard a guess that you are running a RAID array here (I haven't read the machine specs), and if so this is NOT a Vista problem as Photoshop CS2 has a habit of doing this on systems with RAID configurations. Adobe acknowledge this as well on their Support Pages. I can tell you that CS2 operates perfectly on Vista (I use it here myself for 90% of the day!!!).

I have been using Vista for a LONG time now (pre-beta releases) and changed to the full version of Ultimate on the retail Launch day and would not revert back to XP Pro SP2 now for all the money in the world. Yes I did have one problem during the transition which was down to the Logitech DiNovo drivers from XP not functioning correctly and corrupting Explorer.exe but that was resolved by doing a full install instead of an upgrade install.

My reliabled 'Vista Capable' Toshiba notebook runs Ultimate edition perfectly fine with no downside to performance over XP (which I used to run in Classic mode yet Vista is running with full Aero options enabled).

I had to look to see if the author of this article was the same one that wrote the OSX article last month as it reminded me so much of his style of writing and comments.

Chalk me up as another very happy user of Vista, and this is coming from someone who has worked in the industry for close on 20 years now & hated XP when it was launched!).
 
I don't doubt your experience running the OS was poor, but it doesn't seem that much was done to correct the issues you were having, or to research them. Granted, your average user isn't going to know how to approach them, but at the same time, your average user is going to buy systems with vista preinstalled- they're going to buy it through a system which has it preinstalled, and fully functional.

My personal experience with vista has been fantastic. The only times I've experienced BSODs with Vista were with Dreamscene, which was rectified by simply not playing movies in the background while gaming (decided to torture it and see how it worked, failed).

Compatibility wise, I had to install one driver. In my experience helping other people with Vista and printers, it's more of a craps shoot at this point, but the driver support is steadily getting better. Companies seem to be getting the hang of making Vista drivers (finally).

There are some criticisms I have though: the power button, by default, should be set to shut down, not sleep. This can be changed by going into power options,advanced settings, then changing the setting from sleep to shut down. I've seen on a number of systems issues where putting a machine (not mine, others) into sleep mode will cause the system to being incapable of powering back up again. I'm not positive as to why this is, but looking at the number of returns and complaints from customers only a select few seemed to have problems with this, and I can't say the store I work at has ever taken a return due to a shutdown issue- usually we make the above adjustment and customers are on their way with no further complaints.

The patching issue with Warcraft is one that I'll also say was a pain, but you can hop into shortcut properties and change the admin approval mode to elevate without prompting, which allows you to run the game at any point as an administrator without turning off the UAC. The UAC itself is also fairly configurable, allowing you to change when and how the prompt pops up. If the defaults were toned down a little, I would like it more, but without optimization of the system I can't say I'd be too pleased about it.

I feel that like with spotlight on my mac, once you get into the hang of using the start search function, finding and accessing virtually any information on the system becomes phenominally faster and easier. I almost never access "Computer", and very rarely do I click on the Control Panel or All Programs.

Right now I'm working on migrating all of our computers to Vista, with both my fiance's and my machine running the system with few, if any issues. I'd say after 60+ days with Vista, I'm groaning each time I use XP on the tecra I'm using to post this. My primary desktop in my signature is running Vista Ultimate's RTM Retail (provided by Intel's retail edge purchase program), her machine is running Vista Home Premium RTM OEM, and I'm looking to upgrade the laptop to Vista Business. My Apple doesn't have an Intel chip in it, so my testing with Vista through Parallels is going to probably not happen anytime in the near future.

I do have one question though- Did you run the Vista upgrade advisor prior to installing? If so, did you have any compatability issues not detected by the advisor, or did issues occur as predicted? Also, how much time was spent researching specific issues to rectify them, or did they seem to appear with no rhyme or reason, or finally did you suppress the urge to google issues to more closely mirror a consumer's approach? My gut reaction is you've got a hardware problem with both machines as it sounds your issues go a bit beyond what I've experienced on a fairly large scale as problems with the OS. Working with BBFB I've sold and consulted a lot of people on using vista on their own machines, and I've never seen issues as far ranging as you've experienced.
 
I was getting the exact same random rebooting in Vista Home Premium 32bit and the cause of it was Firefox. I get the random reboots in XP as well using firefox, specifically when accessing ebay.co.uk (have to use IE otherwise guarantee reboot) but in Vista, they were much more frequent but all related to high intensity websites with lots of javascript,etc.

Stopped using firefox and my problem is gone.
 
I thought I'd chime in primarily for the verbiage "unfit for any user." While I agree that it is likely not entirely ready for the mainstream (though interestingly enough, Dell seems to see no risk to their business loading it on just about every machine they sell), I feel that I am a user that Vista is fit for. While the interface improvements are just "kind of cool" and give you something fresh to look at for now, there are a lot of things to like. So many of the search features are very useful in a way that so many of the previous search features... simply weren't usable. And as a Vista Business user, having IIS7 with unlimited domains right there to set up web site development environments is indispensable. It's something I can't live without now that I have it, so even if I had been having problems with Vista, I'd probably have to shell out the cash for Server 2003 just so I didn't have to go back to XP and give that up. Of course, I play games, too, so it's nice that I haven't had any issues. My system parts vary from a year to three years old, but Vista runs very nicely, but to be fair, I play older games like WoW much more so than any of the latest releases. I use Photoshop, various Mozilla products, Roxio 8 (no artificial file format limitations here - were you using a specific data backup utility?), Visual Studio .NET and Visual Studio 2005, SQL Enterprise Manager 2000 and SQL Server Management Studio Express, Office 2007, Winamp, FlashFXP, Trillian, AVG, Microsoft Virtual PC, BitTorrent, Cisco VPN Client, iTunes, Quicktime, AllOfMP3 Explorer, DVDX Copy, WinRAR... all without any sign of instability or performance degradation. And I've been using it for maybe sixty days now. So if I was writing the review, I'd have the impression that it was absolutely ready for everyone, because I can't imagine too many things you couldn't do on it. And I only had to install once. Once clean install, and I haven't looked back. So hopefully before long, more and more people with have good experiences and we'll see that Microsoft (or the companies writing hardware drivers) have along far enough to consider this ready for prime time.
 
I have to say I'm really disappointed in this review. In the linux review, you dropped into the command line at times to fix issues, editing xorg files and custom settings. Granted, thats the normal experience for Linux even if it would be beyond most mom & pops. However, the stability issues you experienced in Vista are either driver, or hardware related. Nowhere did you mention attempting to get the latest drivers (Vista's good at it but seems to only update to WHQL which aren't always the latest bug fixing drivers) for any of your kid beyond your scanner.

The speed issue on Whakataruna is probably directly attributable to drivers as well. Especially since the NVIDIA gfx drivers (and chipset drivers) have been crap since launch. The few instability issues Ive had have been directly related to the IDE and display nvidia drivers I was using at the time.

Having said all that, I've been using Vista now for almost a month and a half. I've run into only a few issues (WMP11 taking 100% cpu performance playing an mp3 so switched to foobar | HP not writing drivers at all for vista. Guess they were on vacation) and only two blue screens that again, related to NVIDIA drivers. Vista in my experience, compared to the XP launch, is doing far, far better.
 
BombermanX said:
You've got your facts slightly wrong, Jason, but good review:



The reason it pops up and grays out the rest of the desktop is to indicate that no other programs are being allowed to run. Essentially, the operating system has full control, so it would take the operating system to be fully compromised before that would be a possibility. The UAC measures are designed to prevent malicious programs from installing (specifically) and also utilizing/modifying system resources. So without a fault or security hole giving OS access, what you're talking about is impossible (theoretically).
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That "theoretically" is what had me particularly worried. No doubt that it locks out other programs, but they could have done this and required a password, creating a layered system of security. As you said, if the system was fully compromised by one piece of malware, this would be a problem, because then it could install other pieces of malware. And we've seen (.ani vulnerability) that this is possible.
 
nunyabiz said:
I have been using Vista for over 5 months and never had any data loss. I have used the beta, RC1, and then the Business edition I have now. I overclock and run a raid array, and it has worked like a champ.

I realize that I am just one person, but I am sure there are many others. I just hate to see something called a "lemon" in a reveiw just because one person had issues.
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You're right and one of the things I mentioned (but am not sure made it into the final edit) is that there are people who have absolutely no problem with the OS and people who have nothing but problems with the OS - and I'm completely baffled as to why that is.

Still, I don't think this was "just one person" having problems with the OS. I tested this over a prolonged period of time on two different machines with two different versions of the operating system and the same issues - random reboots - kept coming up.
 
TheNomad said:
Let me hazard a guess that you are running a RAID array here (I haven't read the machine specs), and if so this is NOT a Vista problem as Photoshop CS2 has a habit of doing this on systems with RAID configurations. Adobe acknowledge this as well on their Support Pages. I can tell you that CS2 operates perfectly on Vista (I use it here myself for 90% of the day!!!).
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No, actually, we were running bog standard SATA connections on both.
 
BrndNtrl said:
I don't doubt your experience running the OS was poor, but it doesn't seem that much was done to correct the issues you were having, or to research them. Granted, your average user isn't going to know how to approach them, but at the same time, your average user is going to buy systems with vista preinstalled- they're going to buy it through a system which has it preinstalled, and fully functional.
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This is a legitimate complaint but my big issue was with the reboots - and those were so random that they defied diagnosis.


I do have one question though- Did you run the Vista upgrade advisor prior to installing? If so, did you have any compatability issues not detected by the advisor, or did issues occur as predicted?
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I did run the Vista upgrade advisor on Whakataruna months ago and believe I got no errors. Pugetina was specifically designed to be both Linux and Vista compatable, but I will admit I didn't run the Vista upgrade advisor there.

Also, how much time was spent researching specific issues to rectify them, or did they seem to appear with no rhyme or reason, or finally did you suppress the urge to google issues to more closely mirror a consumer's approach?
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With things like driver compatability, googling and researching often produced a definitive "no answer to this problem" answer - which included things like the HP printer drivers. My major issue were the sudden reboots which seemed utterly random and defied diagnosis.

My gut reaction is you've got a hardware problem with both machines as it sounds your issues go a bit beyond what I've experienced on a fairly large scale as problems with the OS.
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Considering that these issues occured on two very different machines, and did not occur in XP, we really don't think it has anything to do with hardware compatability.
 
I love this website, and the work you guys generally do. This review however is not up to your normal standards. It feels like you went in to write a negative article and then wound up doing so. *shocker* :rolleyes:

Home built PC, AMD Athlon X2 4400+, Asus A8N32-SLI, 2 GB Corsair RAM, (2) 7900 GTX 512 OC's in SLI...all of it on water cooling and....Windows Vista Ultimate.

ZERO problems with stability, Rock Solid, *NO* data loss. The only issues I've had since upgrading this system at launch have been with nVidia's drivers for SLI. Single card..not a problem. The only SLI issues I'm currently seeing..are well...called out in the errata on nVidia's website for their current driver...makes it an nVidia issue, not a Microsoft one.

I think this review should be revisited....just like Mythbusters. We call BS, you try it again. :cool:
 
petesmc said:
I was getting the exact same random rebooting in Vista Home Premium 32bit and the cause of it was Firefox. I get the random reboots in XP as well using firefox, specifically when accessing ebay.co.uk (have to use IE otherwise guarantee reboot) but in Vista, they were much more frequent but all related to high intensity websites with lots of javascript,etc.

Stopped using firefox and my problem is gone.
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Really?

This, quite frankly, is stunning if this was the cause (for multiple reasons.) But yes, on both of the machines, I installed Firefox. In fact, I installed Firefox almost immediately, even on the 64-bit machine.
 
argosreality said:
I have to say I'm really disappointed in this review. In the linux review, you dropped into the command line at times to fix issues, editing xorg files and custom settings. Granted, thats the normal experience for Linux even if it would be beyond most mom & pops. However, the stability issues you experienced in Vista are either driver, or hardware related. Nowhere did you mention attempting to get the latest drivers (Vista's good at it but seems to only update to WHQL which aren't always the latest bug fixing drivers) for any of your kid beyond your scanner.
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The problem is we often went to the manufacturer's page to find out if any drivers existed. Problems in Linux were difficult to solve but a solution did exist. Here, it seems that we hit "brick walls" early and often.
 
Ozona said:
I love this website, and the work you guys generally do. This review however is not up to your normal standards. It feels like you went in to write a negative article and then wound up doing so. *shocker* :rolleyes:

Home built PC, AMD Athlon X2 4400+, Asus A8N32-SLI, 2 GB Corsair RAM, (2) 7900 GTX 512 OC's in SLI...all of it on water cooling and....Windows Vista Ultimate.

ZERO problems with stability, Rock Solid, *NO* data loss. The only issues I've had since upgrading this system at launch have been with nVidia's drivers for SLI. Single card..not a problem. The only SLI issues I'm currently seeing..are well...called out in the errata on nVidia's website for their current driver...makes it an nVidia issue, not a Microsoft one.

I think this review should be revisited....just like Mythbusters. We call BS, you try it again. :cool:
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Again, the problem seems to be that for some people, everything works in Vista. For other people, Vista is unstable. I believe that we did our due diligence by testing on two different machines with very different hardware configurations. Keep in mind that HardOCP has also had a problem with Vista's stability on other machines as well (including during our examination of multi-core gaming with Supreme Commander.)
 
Ozona said:
I love this website, and the work you guys generally do. This review however is not up to your normal standards. It feels like you went in to write a negative article and then wound up doing so. *shocker* :rolleyes:

Home built PC, AMD Athlon X2 4400+, Asus A8N32-SLI, 2 GB Corsair RAM, (2) 7900 GTX 512 OC's in SLI...all of it on water cooling and....Windows Vista Ultimate.

ZERO problems with stability, Rock Solid, *NO* data loss. The only issues I've had since upgrading this system at launch have been with nVidia's drivers for SLI. Single card..not a problem. The only SLI issues I'm currently seeing..are well...called out in the errata on nVidia's website for their current driver...makes it an nVidia issue, not a Microsoft one.

I think this review should be revisited....just like Mythbusters. We call BS, you try it again. :cool:
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So because you had a perfect install everyone should? I mean come on, all he was doing was presenting the facts and he received them. This article could have come out perfect had he not experienced any problems.

I thought the article was decent, but I am asking the same question as to why people have so many different experiences. I have friends that go through what you did and I have other people who have immaculate results and love the OS.

I personally think Vista is a very promising OS and hopefully the hardware vendors will catch up soon as that is core of Vista's negative reviews IMO.
 
Ozona said:
I love this website, and the work you guys generally do. This review however is not up to your normal standards. It feels like you went in to write a negative article and then wound up doing so. *shocker* :rolleyes:

Home built PC, AMD Athlon X2 4400+, Asus A8N32-SLI, 2 GB Corsair RAM, (2) 7900 GTX 512 OC's in SLI...all of it on water cooling and....Windows Vista Ultimate.

ZERO problems with stability, Rock Solid, *NO* data loss. The only issues I've had since upgrading this system at launch have been with nVidia's drivers for SLI. Single card..not a problem. The only SLI issues I'm currently seeing..are well...called out in the errata on nVidia's website for their current driver...makes it an nVidia issue, not a Microsoft one.

I think this review should be revisited....just like Mythbusters. We call BS, you try it again. :cool:
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No, he nailed it. The real crap here is Vista. He gave the experience 28 days longer than he should have to determine the OS is crap. This isn't the only review of Vista. Funny that most other reviews pretty much say the same thing. Try again? Dude, there's nothing in Vista to revisit...
 
No, he nailed it. The real crap here is Vista. He gave the experience 28 days longer than he should have to determine the OS is crap. This isn't the only review of Vista. Funny that most other reviews pretty much say the same thing. Vista is the only BS here. Try again? Dude, there's nothing in Vista to revisit...
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Hey, don't go flaming the OS when so far, drivers have been messed up. Companies have had time to make their driver good, and so far, many of them haven't. My friend's old AMD/ATi runs well, so does my Intel/ATI. I feel sorry for that friend who had that 7600 GT.

I agree to your point that reviews have been generally negative, I believe the launch could have been better, but to me, it appears to be a driver issue, not a pos os.
 
Brian Boyko said:
Again, the problem seems to be that for some people, everything works in Vista. For other people, Vista is unstable. I believe that we did our due diligence by testing on two different machines with very different hardware configurations.
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Count me in the camp of those for whom Vista is very stable - I've done a number of installs for home users, and so far it's gone very well.

One thing that you may want to consider is that you should revisit it and use IE and MS Office instead of Firefox and Open Office - I'm not convinced it's the operating system causing all your trouble.
 
Keep in mind that HardOCP has also had a problem with Vista's stability on other machines as well (including during our examination of multi-core gaming with Supreme Commander.)
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I find this most interesting, as with Supreme commander the only thing I ever had to do in Beta was reinstall dx9 after every build change, and have had 0 problems with the RTM.

Another thing: Does HardOCP plan on looking at Vista using ATI? Right now it's a world of difference when it comes to gaming performance. My fiance's machine can only really run WoW (XFX 6600) with comparable performance to xp, while my desktop (ATI x1900xtx) seems to actually outperform with Vista than with XP. I didn't believe it at first, but Firing Squad seems to have confirmed my observations when using an ATI graphics platform.
 
I have just installed Vista Home Premium and love it rock solid no problems at all and all my hardware works fine even my Oki color printer, and all other things I have installed are great. I did install on a new hard drive and did a freash install and I DID NOT CHANGE MY INTERNET BROUSER. My brother built a new machine about a month ago and has had no problems at all either and he has a different motherboard and video card than I do and his system is rock solid also. We are both running a 6400 core 2 cpu, I have a Intel motherboard and he has a Gigabite motherboard, we both have 2 gig of XMS 6400 memory, I have a 7800 video card and he has a ATI 1900 video card, we both have WD 160 gig 16 meg cache sata hard drives. Both systems have been rock solid with quite a differnt setup and software installed. I know that Vista will not work well for everyone but for me and my brother we both see it as a very nice upgrade to XP. Neither one of us is a big gammer so the only games we have on are older simple games, for my slow refexes and simple mind.
 
I'll also note that the random reboot, if completely random, has me completely at a loss. The Firefox thing seems strange, though I've seen stranger.

The fact that this is probably gonna become the dominant computer OS over the course of about a year or two, I'm also curious to see if HardOCP is going to revisit the OS.
 
First off I have been running Vista 32bit Ultimate for 3 months before I purchased the oem 32bit ultimate from Newegg. I am a pc technician by trade. I have been working in this industry for 15 years. So my experience and how I handle running new ose's definitely won't be what the average user experiences. Vista in my opinion is the smoothest os launch in MS history. Are their issues .. of course. But compaired to Win2k or xp vista better off at start then those launches.

90% of the issues Vista has I have experienced when assisting retail constumers have consisted of.. Driver related issues. Either lack of drivers or buggy drivers. As the drivers improved the problems vanished.

SATA drivers for example can be hazardous. I had a nice blue screen that would occur with my PC. I figured out that when I attemped to install the RAID configurator software on my pc.. it would cause the bsod. I fixed it by just manually using the SATA drivers. And BSOD vanished. How did I figure it out? By taking notes and looking at when my problems started. Also I never give up on a problem. IF there is a crash I am having I am like a damn barnacle in that I won't let go of that problem till I figure it out.

I am currently running vista 32bit ultimate full oem.
my specs are an Intel e6300 core2,2gig ddr2 800 Corsair ram,Xifiextreme music,Ati 1950 pro,Seagate 300g SATA2 drive and a seagate Ata 300g drive. I Am running all the latest drivers. I have a Logitech g15 keyboard,G7 lazermouse, Acer 20inch wide screen monitor,
HP 1510 printer. Logitech 5.1 speakers.

And the system is running solidly. I am running C&C3,WOW,Stalker,Titan's Quest:IT,
open office2.2,FireFox (no crashes) Supreme Commander as well.

As far as your printer problem. I Suggest googling it because I have learned that some HP printers can work if you use a different model's hp driver in its place. And it will still allow the printer to work. I have used this for like 6 customers in the past month and its worked great. So don't give up on that printer. Secondly.. Never give up. your the "TECH GUY".

A regular consumer I Can see giving up.. but a Tech guy? Where is your pride? I would never let a damn printer beat me! EVER!
 
I actually thought it was a great article. Very objective like we're used to seeing. Though my system has been running fairly well for the past month and I generally don't have any complaints...(Well besides the BF2142 demo and COD2 MP not working which honestly PISSES ME OFF). I also thought it was surprising 64bit worked better in some things than 32bit. Photoshop CS2 works fine for me. As does Illustrator. The printer issue you had could be solved by looking thru the drivers Vista has already. I couldn't find a driver for Vista as well for my hp deskjet 3520 but when I went to the HP website it said to use the driver thats already there and told me how to install it. Although, it seems if you install the OS with it connected already and on, the printer works. It will NOT install it automagically if the OS is already installed though. Annoying. I also don't have a driver for my Epson Stylus Photo 820 but it might have it already.

I also agree Flip 3D was a gimmick. I wasn't impressed at all with it and I'm looking more toward what the mod community can do with it...unless MS didn't open it up to modding which would be a shame. Same with Aero. Otherwise...it sucks it didn't run as well for you as it does for some of us. I've had a stable overclock on it for a month and only set it back to default cuz its getting hot around here nowadays and I'm tired of having a hot fucking room after playing some games or just having the computer on all day.
 
Well written and researched article. There are some questions and things you did not address, I think.
First of all, you are running Nvidia cards in both systems. Did you upgrade to the newest drivers? And given that there have been so many issues with Nvidia drivers, how do you know that your OGL problems don't originate there?

Second, "As Emporer Septim was about to speak to the main character, he fell through the floor, never to be seen again, and the game was unable to move forward." ROFL.... Sithis was hungry.

Third, I felt that your trouble shooting attempts were slightly anemic compared to your Ubuntu experiences.Someone above mentioned your command line efforts etc, never did I read (except with Quake4) about you dl'ing patches or drivers.

4: It seemed like the VAST majority of your problems came from either open source software (Gaim, Xvid, Prime95) or incompatible software (Adobe CS2, Quicktime). I don't believe these were fair choices, as OpenSource is going to ALWAYS be a little behind when it comes to releases for new OS's, due to its nature. And using incompatible software is ok, but blame the manufacturer (Adobe or Apple, especially when the manufacturer SAYS it won't support Vista), not the OS. That's just walking into a wall and acting surprised it's there.

Same with your printer. If you were a person considering buying Vista, especially a [H] reader, you would research these things. It happened to me, when I upgraded, i knew that my scanner would be SOL (it was made for winME, shudder, and I had to force the drivers to work in XP), and I bought a new one. So to expect a printer that has no available drivers to work is a little odd.

And for the love of [H], WHY were you surprised that a BETA (Joost) with known issues:
http://www.joost.com/forums/p/2007/03/does-joost-run-on-windows-vista/
wouldn't run!? It's a Beta, and to factor it into this review is irresponsible.

5: On a personal opinion-side, I agree that Flip 3d is largely gimick. I thought it was cool, but I never use it. Just like I never use Expose on my Mac. i don't find it useful at all now that tabbed browsing is here. Back in Win ME/XP pre-firefox, it would have been worth it.
However, even as a power user I find the new navigation system and file structure an improvement. Being able to find all my saved files in one area (my pc's name in the start menu), divided into docs music etc, each with its own Start entry is awesome.

6: Finally, you COMPLETELY disregarded or skimmed over some of the best new technologies and features, and you broke one of your own rules!
You mentioned ReadyBoost in ONE sentence, never stating what kind of usb drive or flash card you used, how long you tried it (it takes time to be efficiently populated) etc...
You never mentioned Superfetch and if you saw any improvements over time. You never mentioned the 'breadcrumb trail' sytle bar when maneuvering through your files (THIS is HUGE for me).
You don't mention windows defender, contacts or calendar (built in). You don't mention your performance scores (one was given in a pic, but i don't know which pc it represents). You don't mention meetingspace or Journal. You Skimmed past the games section without talking much about it. You mention using 64-bit version of Vista but don't discuss the 64-bit version of IE7 that's included. You elect to use GAIM instead of the built in messenger despite rule number three! CHEATER! lol.



Ultimately, this was a good start, but it sounds like you used it for 2 weeks and stopped. The article does not reflect 30-days worth of usage.
 
Night Black said:
I agree to your point that reviews have been generally negative, I believe the launch could have been better, but to me, it appears to be a driver issue, not a pos os.
Click to expand...
Most of the negative reviews I've read have a similar rant on Vista. The main argument is that you just don't need to upgrade to it RIGHT NOW. And for new builds, XP is just more compatible with current hardware due to solid driver support. Without the proper driver support, Vista is essentially a lemon.
 
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