My Vista Exerience/Review So Far

M

morpheus9394

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 8, 2002
Messages
369
I have been running Vista on and off since beta1 and having generally been pretty happy with it though not enough to use it as my main OS.
With each subsequent release it got better, faster and more stable.
Yesterday I succumb to the hype and purchased Vista Home Premium and this is my experience so far.
I decided to buy the upgrade version after reading about the "upgrade/clean install" workaround but decided that in order to save time I would using install from within XP Pro.
During the initial setup, Vista told me that I could not do an upgrade from XP Pro to Home Premium so I was forced to do a Clean Install, which is exactly what I wanted anyway.
Vista then copies your old OS to a "Windows.old" folder on your C drive in case you need to recover old files/settings etc.
After a reboot the installer continues and about 20mins later it was done. It is nice to have an OS install with very little user interaction.
Once the OS started, it ran an index on my hardware, which got 5.1 (hardware is in my signature). The only drivers I had to install were for my Audigy 2 and my Geforce 7950 but again that was very painless. I did get one BSOD when trying to test surround sound but that was probably due to the beta drivers I am using.
First impressions were very good. Vista felt fast and very responsive and very easy to use.
The UAC thingy (the security warnings) can get annoying but it is nice to know the OS is protecting you.
Once Vista was installed I then installed the following applications:
Nero 7 - Latest version
UTorrent 1.6
NOD32 2.7
PowerISO - Latest version
DiskJuggler 4.650 (I think)
Office 2007
iTunes 7.02
FireFox 2
Winrar
Acrobat Reader 8.0

All the applications installed and work with no problems at all and they all seem to run better then they did under XP Pro.
I have not installed any games yet partly because I am too busy playing games on 360 and PS3 to worry about PC games at the moment and partly because I know the nvidia drivers are not very good at the moment.
The new Index/Search feature is very good. As you type the word you are looking for, it automatically and instantly lists all files, programs and web links that you have on your PC, which VERY handy - though a bit dangerous if you have p0rn hidden on your PC and your wife/girlfriend/partner searches for "big" :D
Anyone, back to vista...........Readyboost is a nice feature and it allowed me to use my 1GB Kingston USB stick though I have not had time to see if it made a difference or not.
Vista also has a built-in partition manager allowing you to increase or shrink your partition sizes. I was able to reduce my D drive and increase my C drive (which are both on the same physical disk) on the fly and without having to reboot and I was still able to surf and download torrents while it was doing it, fantastic!!

Overall I am very happy with Vista and I am sure things it will improve as drivers become more mature and once MS release the first service pack. While is it is quite the 2nd coming that Microsoft proclaim it to be, it is definitely a worthy successor to XP, especially if you have decent hardware and loads of RAM.
It is has a lot of nice features to add accessibility while at the same time increasing security and stability.
Hopefully by the time the first back of DX10 games are releases, the drivers will have improved, especially the nvidia enough, to make vista a good gaming platform. In fact, at the moment, according some benchmarks I have seen on Tomshardware and Anandtech, Vista is currently a pretty good gaming platform. ATI drivers are currently better, meaning that the benchmark scores will pretty much the same on Vista as they were on XP using the same hardware. Nvidia drivers are not yet as good but even so some of the benchmarks showed an improvement of XP so the future looks very promising.

Anyway, i hope you found this to be informative.
 
This pretty much reflects what i think. Did you also notice some slow startup with nod32 2.7? It seems Vista pauses for a good 20-30 seconds on boot before Nod actually kicks in and gives my network connection a go....
 
NOD32 works perfectly for me, no slow downs noticed at all. I am very happy with NOD32. This is the first time I have used it and first impressions are good. I have always used Norton's in the past and have been pretty happy with it, though it can hog resources at times.
But now with Windows Defender, NOD32 and Vista's inbuilt security there is less of a need to have something like Norton Internet Security.
 
I like vista alot too.

Tho i have found driver support extremely lacking. i dont buy the its only been out for a few days crp. vista has been released to the rtms for a couple of months. manufacturers have had the needed source (albiet restricted) to perfect their beta drivers. they have also no doubt have had an rtm testing machine (nvidia, intel etc)for a month or so. There is no excuse in the driver front ( i understand smaller firms longer development time.. but the big boys come on..) ATIs driver absolutely sucks big time. I have mine connected to my hdtv via hdmi and it wont even let me select options for 1080i/p yet i could under xp, their video decoder sucks ass on my x1900 in my media centre, there driver feels very much like a beta. i love the new media centre its nice and has the waf factor (mine loves it). I am struggeling to get my optical audio out running correctly, it works 50 percent of the time. it feels like a beta driver altho the website did not state any of this..

I am still in the process of testing all my software out, tho i suspect people will stop dual booting when drivers work as good or better than xp and the software front too.

Awhile ago i saw a post about 64 bit, well been thinking about this and i must say microsoft had an excellent Opportunity to make a 64bit only vista and drop 32bit completely. this would of worked as 64bit cpus have been out for a few years now. would of made things a hell of a lot easier on them, driver makers and software developers. now these same people need to make it xp comp, vista 32 and vista 64bit compitable... its a shame really, after all its us tech gurus who would switch first and the world a bit later. i remember the big noise that was made about 32 bit windows, but ms just went ahead and did it anyway and the world followed, its a real shame they didnt do this...

ps my son loves the games that come with vista lol.
 
I have Ultimate loaded on my HTPC and must say i am bitterly disapointed at this point.

In media center i cannot see my mouse pointer (i use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse- I do not have a remote). I did have it at one point but it went away again of it's own accord.

If i run 1080i through the component output (i had XP Media center working PERFECTLY)
it tears badly. I have to set it to 480P to make that go away. But still cannot properly control Media Center because i cannot see my mouse pointer!!!.
ARGGGGGGGHH!
I also cnnot do custom resolutions (overscan compensation) as i could in XP.
So i cannot see a bit of the screen on the left side.


Hardware:

Asus K8N4E- Deluxe
A64 3400
1 Gig OCZ 3200
250 Gig Seagate SATA2 hard drive
BFG Tech 7900GS.

Apparently it is the Nvidia drivers that are the problem.

I really cannot believe that Nvidia does not have a proper driver at this point.

I may try my X1800XT to se if it isany better but it doesnt fit inside my HTPC case as it has an aerocool cooler on it....

Me thinks i might be switching back to my old setup! (XP Media Center).
:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Not what i would call a great experience.
 
oh i had that issue, turned out i need to reinstall my turner drivers (had to do the unknowns manually... wasnt give an option to inc a directory with the search...) so check your device manager ...
 
Do you remember that Nvidia took Microsoft to court over royalties for the original Xbox?
Then surprise surprise, Microsoft choose ATI over Nvidia to provide the graphics chipset for the 360.
It doesn't then surprise me that ATI have a better, more mature Vista driver than Nvidia. According to "sources" Nvidia were given very limited access to Vista code till fairly recently.
Nvidia have always had very good drivers and seem to have the ability to greatly improve driver performance over time.
We shall see............
 
morpheus9394 said:
It doesn't then surprise me that ATI have a better, more mature Vista driver than Nvidia. According to "sources" Nvidia were given very limited access to Vista code till fairly recently.
Nvidia have always had very good drivers and seem to have the ability to greatly improve driver performance over time.
We shall see............
Click to expand...

You're calling a driver that doesn't have Open GL support more mature? That's rich. :rolleyes:
 
lifeinchains said:
You're calling a driver that doesn't have Open GL support more mature? That's rich. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

LOL - Very true. That is the one area where Nvidia still reigned surpreme. Their Opengl driver for Vista is as good or slightly better than their XP driver.
 
Hello,

When NOD32 initalizes (and every hour subsequently), it attempts to establish a connection with the update servers in order to download the latest signature updates for malware detection, the heuristics engine, the archive engine, program component updates and so forth. If your computer's Internet connection is not yet established then this could explain why you are seeing a pause for 20-30 seconds while a network connection is established.

This message thread in ESET's support forum discusses the issue in detail, along with offering several different tests and at least one possible solution for the problem.

Regards

Aryeh Goretsky
 
Thanks, i try these things. It might have to do with my wireless not completely being up and running while nod is trying to get latest definitions.
 
OK newer Beta Nvidia drivers got rid of the tearing in media center for me. (i am using the Component output by the way). And i found out that the mouse pointer in Media center will disappear if i use a custom DPI setting. SO i have to choose between being able to read the font on my desktop OR see the mouse pointer in Media center. Kinda Dumb.....

I hope this is a bug they can fix soon as i would like to be able to do BOTH!

Also i cannot watch a copy protected DVD in media center as i am using the component outputs (as far as i can figure out). Nero 7 works just fine though so no biggy.
I just don't understand why they allow playback on stand alone DVD player through component, but soemhow this is a bad thing on a computer?
Bigger brains than mine at work here i guess. :rolleyes:
 
kirbster said:
Also i cannot watch a copy protected DVD in media center as i am using the component outputs (as far as i can figure out). Nero 7 works just fine though so no biggy.
I just don't understand why they allow playback on stand alone DVD player through component, but soemhow this is a bad thing on a computer?
Bigger brains than mine at work here i guess. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Obviously if you are not using a secure HDCP compliant connection then you are doing illegal activities.
 
Hmm, we have been able to rip the copy protection from DVD's for years now. I can see them doing this with HD-DVD or Blue ray but for dvd? What is it i am supposed to be capable of doing with the signal from the component out? If i was making copies i would just do it disk to disk not capture from the component out. Just really dumb.
 
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