# Off-Topic Discussion > The Lounge > Tech Talk >  >  Windows Vista

## TweaK

So.

RC2 is out (at last), and I&#39;ve taken my chance to download a 64-bit ISO for myself and a 32-bit version to burn and snail mail send to poor Kaniaz, seeing he&#39;s on 56k. I&#39;ve installed it, and _God_&#33; 
Words can&#39;t describe this man. It&#39;s all so smooth, it looks awesome, and above all.. It looks awesome.
The new features and stuff.. it&#39;s all so great.  :smiley:  On the 64-bit version you have 2 program file directories: _Program Files_ and _Program Files (x86)_, the latter being for 32-bit applications. The installation is really simple and smooth too. I like it way better than Windows XP&#39;s installation.

As I said, it looks awesome and it&#39;s really smooth. This is all thanks to Aero (well, Microsoft, but yeah): Windows Vista&#39;s environmental graphics managing applications. A screenshot can be found Here.

Then there&#39;s the image viewing application. You remember Windows Image Preview Viewer Thingy? The default XP image viewer? It&#39;s gone and has been replaced with something similar yet totally different. If you zoom in on a way too large picture it doesn&#39;t go all blurry anymore. 

*Holy holy &#33;* As I was typing this topic, I found an awesome feature. I can&#39;t describe it, so I&#39;m just going to post a screenshot. [Click&#33;]. What does this do? If you haven&#39;t guessed yet, you can just switch between windows quite easily this way. Click a button, see this window, and click a window to open it. Fuck yeah&#33;

I could go on and on for a long while, but I&#39;m just going to post one more quick awesome feature. *FTP client*, woo&#33;

So, I suppose you want to know where to download it now, eh? You can download Vista RC2 right Here. *PROBLEM&#33;* You need a Windows Vista pre-release key (ie, RC1/Beta 1/Beta 2 key). I don&#39;t know where to get these, I got mine with a Windows Vista Beta 2 DVD I got with a PC magazine.. So, you&#39;re on your own on that one.

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## Ne-yo

> *Holy holy &#33;* As I was typing this topic, I found an awesome feature. I can&#39;t describe it, so I&#39;m just going to post a screenshot. [Click&#33;]. What does this do? If you haven&#39;t guessed yet, you can just switch between windows quite easily this way. Click a button, see this window, and click a window to open it. Fuck yeah&#33;
> [/b]



That awesome freature is called* Flip 3D*  It&#39;s only available on _WinAEro,_ it&#39;s inaccessible on Starter and Home Basic. You can Stack the task bar buttons 3D the same way. By the way wtf  ::wtf::  is Kaniaz doing on 56K?

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## arby

hahaha.... windows is starting to copy mac...... i find that amusing.

Now its gonna be like macs exept with more errors.

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## TweaK

> That awesome freature is called* Flip 3D*  It&#39;s only available on _WinAEro,_ it&#39;s inaccessible on Starter and Home Basic. You can Stack the task bar buttons 3D the same way. By the way wtf  is Kaniaz doing on 56K?
> [/b]



Why exactly did you.. capitalise the E in WinAero? And yeah, I know, but Windows Vista will put Ultimate, Starter and Home on the same DVD if I&#39;m correct, so it&#39;s all good. What Kaniaz is doing on 56k? The same reason he&#39;s a farmboy: He has to.





> hahaha.... windows is starting to copy mac...... i find that amusing.
> 
> Now its gonna be like macs exept with more errors.
> [/b]



_Ringdingding&#33;_
Oh snap Batman, what&#39;s that? 
Don&#39;t worry Robin, it&#39;s just the Mac Fanboy alarm. Just ignore it, it&#39;s nothing serious&#33;

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## Keeper

> hahaha.... windows is starting to copy mac...... i find that amusing.
> 
> Now its gonna be like macs exept with more errors.
> [/b]



you said it&#33;

My cousin keeps telling me how Microsoft keeps coming out with all thise "new" features that Mac had for several years.

Apparently, no-one pays any attention to just how bad microsoft is, because of bill gates markiting skills ... and as soon as I finished typing my book im going to put Unix on my machine. Or get my cousin to do it for me.

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## Kaniaz

> That awesome freature is called Flip 3D It&#39;s only available on WinAEro, it&#39;s inaccessible on Starter and Home Basic. You can Stack the task bar buttons 3D the same way. By the way wtf  is Kaniaz doing on 56K?[/b]



Yes. People who use Starter/Home Basic are probably going to be "your grandma who just checks her e-mail" anyway. I&#39;m on 56k because broadband isn&#39;t available where I am. Sorry, &#39;get-connected&#39; brigade, but you are liars.





> hahaha.... windows is starting to copy mac...... i find that amusing.
> 
> Now its gonna be like macs exept with more errors.[/b]



Don&#39;t tell me "pretty user interface" or "a sidebar" is some sort of exclusive Apple idea now? Such an innovative brainstorm may have come up before. As for "more errors", well, that&#39;s gonna need to be more specific.





> My cousin keeps telling me how Microsoft keeps coming out with all thise "new" features that Mac had for several years.
> [/b]



Who came up with a feature first has absolutely no actual value when you&#39;re deciding. I&#39;m kind of more worried about whether or not it works well. Not if Apple (or Microsoft) beat the other to the punch. Not really. It does however tell you how competent the company is in pulling up releases and being _agile_ about their development.

I could probably draw up a list where Macs have beaten Windows and Windows have beaten Macs. Does it really matter, though? A minor victory in one field doesn&#39;t often say a lot for the rest of the OS, although it&#39;s important to note Apple is a more agile company and Linux even moreso. They don&#39;t have all these corporate contracts and back compatability things to worry about. They don&#39;t have, in other words, huge reprecussions in the form of 90% of the desktop market share.

One small change to a dialog can upset thousands and thousands of people who just aren&#39;t capable of understanding change. For Apple that&#39;s not so much a problem as they have less users and Apple is really good with UI design. For Linux they don&#39;t even have a UI to play with half the time so that&#39;s okay. I think this is a major pitfall of Microsoft&#39;s, although they&#39;re trying to rectify that somewhat now.





> bill gates markiting skills[/b]



...I don&#39;t think Bill Gates is quite known for his ability to market. In fact, Microsoft is well known for the ability to absolutely _suck_ at marketing. Microsoft&#39;s idea of a catchy name is "Windows Presentation Foundation", whereas Mac will use a hipster name like "Cocoa". Let&#39;s not even talk about Linux here. But really.

Steve Jobs can shoot all kinds of beautiful presentations at you and make you want to have his babies. Bill Gates wears frumpy sweaters. I do kind of like frumpy sweaters but they wouldn&#39;t convince me to use bad software.





> put Unix on my machine[/b]



If you have to get someone else to put Unix/Linux on your machine, it is probably not the solution for you as of yet. There is a time and place for Linux, just like there&#39;s a time and place for Windows. I&#39;m not saying Windows beats *nix into the ground on every count or vice-versa.

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## TweaK

*Very nice sweet etc etc request:* If you want to be all mac fanboy-ish-y-esque and flame Microsoft, get the fuck out of this thread and resist the urge to post in it. Thanks&#33;

_Edit_ And I just had to say this, but.. Guys, do you even realize that Mac *JUST* released the 2-button mouse? Windows has had that since.. There even was a mouse pointer&#33; Oh fizzle snap. FIB-BOING.

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## Alex D

Fanboys on both sides.

What a fun topic.

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## Kaniaz

> Fanboys on both sides.
> 
> What a fun topic.[/b]



See, I define a fanboy as someone who can&#39;t see both sides of a topic. I&#39;ve seen the "I&#39;m so good for being withdrawn and curiously neutral on the discussion" pattern before, though. Don&#39;t tell me you&#39;re so Zen&#33; DON&#39;T TELL ME THAT VARIOUS IT-RELATED TOPICS DON&#39;T MAKE YOU *MAD&#33;*

Okay. So maybe they don&#39;t.

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## TweaK

> Fanboys on both sides.
> 
> What a fun topic.
> [/b]



So, tell me how there is fanboyism on my side in this topic? Yeah, I&#39;ve been going all _omg vista roxor my boxor_, but I&#39;ve never said Mac is shit compared to it and how Mac stole *2 button mouses*. Ok so maybe I have said that last, but still.

..Ok you got me.

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## arby

Hehe, i&#39;m no mac fanboy. I just used macs for a while one at a University helping people a reasearch project by being the tester.

I looked at pictures for vista and was like... "Holy hell, is that a mac or windows?" no, seriously, it looks like mac... Like, that thing where all the windows arrange so you can select one.... Thats like f10(or something) on macs. Then there were a couple more things that I saw that were other features from mac. One such thing is that control panel that has like time/day and weather and stuff. I think that was like f11 on the mac... It look almost exactly like it too. Exact same style.

So there =P i&#39;m not being a fanboy because my arguments are well founded. Plus I hate the mac&#39;s single button mouse > :Sad:  It drove me nuts.

You may want to look at yourself and see if you&#39;re being a fanboy.

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## Kaniaz

> Plus I hate the mac&#39;s single button mouse > It drove me nuts.[/b]



I&#39;ve never actually seen a single button mouse. I always thought the idea was weird. I mean, does anyone really use that in the wild? Has it never occured to them after all those years of single clicking that maybe two (if they can handle that many) would make everything more efficent and streamlined? Mice get more and more unecessary as time goes by to me. They _need_ that extra button.

And that Mighty Mouse. Ugh. Some guy wrote about that once. "You have to lift your left finger up to right click, sure, but it&#39;s really good" - um, not exactly my idea of a fun time.





> I looked at pictures for vista and was like... "Holy hell, is that a mac or windows?" no, seriously, it looks like mac...[/b]



I&#39;m not entirely sure about that one. For a start, the colours are radically different. Macs are very bright compared to Vista which is slightly darker (in the taskbar). And speaking of the taskbar, it&#39;s at the bottom, and there&#39;s not an Apple logo in sight, and...well...where&#39;s the resembelance? Vista&#39;s more like Mac with the fluid desktop effects and all that.





> Like, that thing where all the windows arrange so you can select one.... Thats like f10(or something) on macs.[/b]



Vista is - sadly - lacking in Exposé features. They have Flip 3D now, but I&#39;ve used Exposé and really Vista&#39;s got nothing like it. +1 Mac there, it has to be said.





> One such thing is that control panel that has like time/day and weather and stuff. I think that was like f11 on the mac... It look almost exactly like it too. Exact same style.[/b]



A sidebar? Um, Mac has a Dashboard, sure, but that&#39;s overlaid only when you press the Dashboard key. Vista on the other hand has a sidebar that won&#39;t go away* and is always at the side (as opposed to overlaying itself over the desktop). It really does look nothing like it. Sure it has _gadgets_ and the idea is more or less the same, but the look is completely different.

* I mean it. It won&#39;t GO AWAY&#33;

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## MSG

I just installed Vista RC2.

The only thing I have to say is...

When this thing gets released, Apple&#39;s screwed.

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## l3xicon

> I just installed Vista RC2.
> 
> The only thing I have to say is...
> 
> When this thing gets released, Apple&#39;s screwed.
> [/b]



Lol.



I&#39;m running RC2 also and am very happy with it. It runs smoothly and looks great.

I remember seeing a video about folding down corners of windows to see whats hiding under it, was this was taken out? Did this ever happen? I can&#39;t seem to find any info on it or how to do it. I think I might be going insane.  ::lmao::

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## MSG

> Lol.
> I&#39;m running RC2 also and am very happy with it. It runs smoothly and looks great.
> 
> I remember seeing a video about folding down corners of windows to see whats hiding under it, was this was taken out? Did this ever happen? I can&#39;t seem to find any info on it or how to do it. I think I might be going insane. 
> [/b]



Naw, that&#39;s XGL in linux.

I tried that once, it was amazingly butter smooth, especially on the crap computer I tried it on. When you moved a window it moved like jello, it had a mac expose thing with tiling problems, and you could switch between all four virtual desktops on a hueg cube, but in the end it just got annoying ( openGL didn&#39;t work inside of it too well ) and I got rid of it.

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## l3xicon

Sounds kinda cool, glad I&#39;m not insane.   ::bigteeth::

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## icuurd12b42

Post more screen shots&#33;

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## MSG

Screenshots you say?

Click here
My desktop (semi-default). Yeah, that&#39;s Kaniaz&#39;s blog in the RSS feed.

Click here
The nice task switching thing ( I don&#39;t use it much though ).

Click here
There is no max score, and it seems to change sometimes for some strange poltergeist reason.

Click here
The new desktop image changer seems alot more user friendly

Click here
Live search = amazing. No cumbersome mouse needed. Simply press the window key to bring up the start menu, and type the beginning of what you want... It&#39;ll list every match. Amazing&#33; Now no more arguing about mice&#33;

Click here
...

Click here
ERROR: Everything&#39;s okay&#33;

Click here
10x more awesome then tiling 4 random pictures across an oversized folder icon (XP)

Click here
Print screen crapped out on me so I tried the new "Snipping Tool", it captured a bit of the subtle but totally awesome window fade out shrinking transition.

Click here
IE&#39;s lookin pretty sleek these days, watch out Firefox.

If you want anything specific, just tell me and I&#39;ll post moar.

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## Ne-yo

Your screen shots looks good. I&#39;m having a Vista moment right now.

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## TweaK

If you&#39;re talking about a near-orgasm, I&#39;ve nearly had these moments non-stop since I installed Vista.

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## arby

hehe... you can find a list of "interesting features"... HERE

godammit i love that site. XD

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## TweaK

MSG, *KIND REQUEST*.
Either link to the images, or don&#39;t post them at all. But you&#39;re fuxxing up my topic&#39;s layout D:

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## MSG

> MSG, *KIND REQUEST*.
> Either link to the images, or don&#39;t post them at all. But you&#39;re fuxxing up my topic&#39;s layout D:
> [/b]



And your server, since that&#39;s where they&#39;re hosted.  ::D: 

sroory D:

fixed now

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## ilovefrootloopz

I&#39;m pretty much more biased towards the apple side of things (a few notches less than a fanboy) but I have to say Vista is pretty impressive.  I&#39;m suprised their interface is as cool as it is, I thought it would be some sort of dumbed down aqua mess.  Also, the translucent windows rule.

That&#39;s right, apple and the people working on KDE, work harder.

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## Tsen

Lookin&#39; good--I&#39;m especially glad to see that they&#39;re finally enabling color changes on the taskbar beyond "bland blue" "vomit green" and "ugly, tarnished silver".

Anyway, my current computer is beyond hope, so I think I&#39;m going to change it to a Linux box soon to try and drag out its life a few more years, then I&#39;ll build my own computer and get Vista on there.

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## TweaK

> And your server, since that&#39;s where they&#39;re hosted. 
> 
> sroory D:
> 
> fixed now
> [/b]



Haha, the server is no issue, I just don&#39;t like posts screwing up the forum&#39;s layout.  :tongue2:  
Quite irritating to read the topic then.

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## Ynot

y&#39;all need to stop focusing on the cosmetics
at the end of the day, they don&#39;t mean shit

under the skin, vista isn&#39;t that different from XP

where is WinFS ??
where is Palladium ??
where is the Windows PowerShell ??

in fact....

where are all the features originally planned for vista??
they&#39;ve been dropped

everything that would have made it kick-arse (WinFS, especially)
ain&#39;t there

it&#39;s a new look XP, end of story

PS. and would you take a look at Vista Media Centre
it looks shite &#33;&#33;&#33;
(lucky for me, I&#39;m a mediaportal convert - but still......)

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## TweaK

> y&#39;all need to stop focusing on the cosmetics
> at the end of the day, they don&#39;t mean shit
> 
> under the skin, vista isn&#39;t that different from XP[/b]



Oh but in fact, it is.  :smiley:  And cosmetics do "mean shit" at the end of the day.





> where is WinFS ??
> where is Palladium ??
> where is the Windows PowerShell ??[/b]



As you said, yes, these features have been dropped. They will probably (and Windows PowerShell will be for sure) released later, as standalone tools.





> in fact....
> 
> where are all the features originally planned for vista??
> they&#39;ve been dropped[/b]



A lot have been dropped because they would make Windows insecure, instable and/or buggy.





> everything that would have made it kick-arse (WinFS, especially)
> ain&#39;t there
> 
> it&#39;s a new look XP, end of story[/b]



You&#39;re looking at this from one side and being a very naughty biased boy. 





> PS. and would you take a look at Vista Media Centre
> 
> it looks shite &#33;&#33;&#33;
> (lucky for me, I&#39;m a mediaportal convert - but still......)
> [/b]



I have looked at it and used it even, and yes, it looks like shit. But it does the job. Anyhow, there are plenty of alternatives.

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## Ynot

so, TweaK, as you&#39;ve put yourself in my firing line....

can you give me 5 reasons why I should upgrade to Vista

good solid reasons

and if the word "Aero" appears anywhere in your reply, I will be forced to beat you

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## Kaniaz

> where is WinFS ??[/b]



They blabbed some crap about it being in SQL Server, but it&#39;s been in development for 10+ years or something and you&#39;re surprised it&#39;s dropped? Probably better they didn&#39;t try to push something horrible out the door.





> where is Palladium ??[/b]



You want that sort of thing rushed? It&#39;s gone mostly undercover for years now. Haven&#39;t heard much on it.





> where is the Windows PowerShell ??[/b]



Right here, baby.  I agree it sucks that it&#39;s not being included in Vista from the word go.

And besides which, Vista is not just a UI upgrade. I think Microsoft, if they really wanted, could probably have pumped out the UI upgrade in a year and not had all these several year long delays in the release. They could&#39;ve done what they&#39;ve done with way too many releases and had release after release in which nothing changes except perhaps a few gimmicks. But they haven&#39;t gone and made their shareholders feel a bit wobbly for a superfical upgrade. They certainly don&#39;t break application compability if they don&#39;t have to (and they really have in a lot of places, which is crap). As for the changes in Vista:
 UAC, or User Account Control, in which annoying dialogs will now pound you into the ground when a program first tries to run (and tries to do something that requires administrator control). This makes it actually possible to run on a general user account without wishing you were dead - because it will ask you to type an administrator password and so forth to set up the privileges. A very much improved search engine from the creaky ass thing that&#39;s been featured in Windows since about the &#39;95 release. This leads onto a very much improved start menu - million dropdown menus no longer&#33; - and basically kicks Google Desktop all around the block. There&#39;s also the revamping of some core programs like Explorer (the file Explorer) to something that doesn&#39;t come directly from the stone age. Craploads of kernel improvements, I think they moved graphics to user mode now or something like that - don&#39;t quote me on that one though. It&#39;s _meant_ to be more stable, and there&#39;s now a system relability monitor for when you want to watch it all go down the pan. SuperFetch, in which Vista now manages your memory in a much more efficient way than just leaving it all dead in the water. It tries to fill up all your free RAM with stuff it thinks you&#39;ll need, thus trying to make it responsive. A pretty good idea and one of the best &#39;under the hood&#39; things, but it&#39;s still got some problems: see this blog post for a better explanation. You yourself probably won&#39;t find this feature useful at all, but there&#39;s the (crappily named) ReadyBoost in which you can plug a high speed flash USB key into the back of your computer which Vista can utilise as extra &#39;swapfile&#39; kind of space. It&#39;s less noticeable on computers that already have tons of RAM, but probably a handy way to give grandma a boost. Much improved bundled firewall that comes with way too many rule customisations and policies you can use, along with Windows Defender bundled by default which runs as the equavilent of the family dog (barking its head off at everything that moves) I went this far without really mentioning Aero, but, AERO&#33;
Please provide a succint rebuttal to all of these features. I WOULD LIKE THAT. (Actually I wouldn&#39;t but hey).

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## Seeker

OK, so it looks pretty and it has a few more bells and whistles.  How about performance?  You don&#39;t get all those bells for free.  Anyone done something as CPU intensive as editting or encoding video?

I can live without the eye-candy.  In fact I still run my XP systems with the Classic windows theme.  What I want it performance?  How well does it handle multiple processors?  What are the limits?  How memory hungry is it?

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## TweaK

> so, TweaK, as you&#39;ve put yourself in my firing line....
> 
> can you give me 5 reasons why I should upgrade to Vista
> 
> good solid reasons
> 
> and if the word "Aero" appears anywhere in your reply, I will be forced to beat you
> [/b]







> They blabbed some crap about it being in SQL Server, but it&#39;s been in development for 10+ years or something and you&#39;re surprised it&#39;s dropped? Probably better they didn&#39;t try to push something horrible out the door.
> You want that sort of thing rushed? It&#39;s gone mostly undercover for years now. Haven&#39;t heard much on it.
> Right here, baby.  I agree it sucks that it&#39;s not being included in Vista from the word go.
> 
> And besides which, Vista is not just a UI upgrade. I think Microsoft, if they really wanted, could probably have pumped out the UI upgrade in a year and not had all these several year long delays in the release. They could&#39;ve done what they&#39;ve done with way too many releases and had release after release in which nothing changes except perhaps a few gimmicks. But they haven&#39;t gone and made their shareholders feel a bit wobbly for a superfical upgrade. They certainly don&#39;t break application compability if they don&#39;t have to (and they really have in a lot of places, which is crap). As for the changes in Vista: UAC, or User Account Control, in which annoying dialogs will now pound you into the ground when a program first tries to run (and tries to do something that requires administrator control). This makes it actually possible to run on a general user account without wishing you were dead - because it will ask you to type an administrator password and so forth to set up the privileges. A very much improved search engine from the creaky ass thing that&#39;s been featured in Windows since about the &#39;95 release. This leads onto a very much improved start menu - million dropdown menus no longer&#33; - and basically kicks Google Desktop all around the block. There&#39;s also the revamping of some core programs like Explorer (the file Explorer) to something that doesn&#39;t come directly from the stone age. Craploads of kernel improvements, I think they moved graphics to user mode now or something like that - don&#39;t quote me on that one though. It&#39;s _meant_ to be more stable, and there&#39;s now a system relability monitor for when you want to watch it all go down the pan. SuperFetch, in which Vista now manages your memory in a much more efficient way than just leaving it all dead in the water. It tries to fill up all your free RAM with stuff it thinks you&#39;ll need, thus trying to make it responsive. A pretty good idea and one of the best &#39;under the hood&#39; things, but it&#39;s still got some problems: see this blog post for a better explanation. You yourself probably won&#39;t find this feature useful at all, but there&#39;s the (crappily named) ReadyBoost in which you can plug a high speed flash USB key into the back of your computer which Vista can utilise as extra &#39;swapfile&#39; kind of space. It&#39;s less noticeable on computers that already have tons of RAM, but probably a handy way to give grandma a boost. Much improved bundled firewall that comes with way too many rule customisations and policies you can use, along with Windows Defender bundled by default which runs as the equavilent of the family dog (barking its head off at everything that moves)Please provide a succint rebuttal to all of these features. I WOULD LIKE THAT. (Actually I wouldn&#39;t but hey).
> [/b]



*AERO&#33;* Woo, go, woo, yay&#33;





> OK, so it looks pretty and it has a few more bells and whistles.  How about performance?  You don&#39;t get all those bells for free.  Anyone done something as CPU intensive as editting or encoding video?
> 
> I can live without the eye-candy.  In fact I still run my XP systems with the Classic windows theme.  What I want it performance?  How well does it handle multiple processors?  What are the limits?  How memory hungry is it?
> [/b]



I havn&#39;t done any video editing, nor am I planning to. In fact, Windows Vista uses nearly *all* your RAM.. But this is all for the better, no more tons of wasted RAM, like in XP&#33;  :wink2:

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## Tsen

But it DOES have a major increase in required RAM to run the system, and it uses quite a bit more than XP did just for system processes--so on older computers, it&#39;s going to be running pretty slow.  But if you&#39;ve got a gig or two of RAM, it should run pretty nice.

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## Umbrasquall

Doesn&#39;t Vista have the instant-shutdown/freeze mode? It was a problem to put your computer to sleep before because the drives are still draining power from your batteries if you had a laptop, and hiberation took too long.

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## Ynot

> Doesn&#39;t Vista have the instant-shutdown/freeze mode?
> [/b]



don&#39;t all windows versions have that

hahahaha*snort*aahahaha

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## MSG

Yeah I accidentally tried that yesterday, today it said "resuming windows"

hrm. I didn&#39;t test if I had any programs running but I&#39;ll do that next time.

/me installs after effects

I&#39;ll try the performance thing.

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## MSG

Tooltips have significantly improved, no more of that creamy crap anymore. The corners still need help, though. Also in the screenshot, the sleek office installer.


You can now change the color to virtually anything you want. And for all you whores, yes you can turn off transparency. Which makes no sense, come to think of it, aero actually runs from the video card. Since the graphical effects dazzly glitter is offloaded to the GPU now, you have no reason to do so. For comparison, check out this picture of Mac OSX:

Clicky linky
Seriously, that&#39;s pretty ugly. Their color scheme goes as follows:

Blue
Grey
Greyer

I admit I once used a WindowBlinds OSX theme, but I uninstalled it after I got tired of it.


The new rebel start button bubble extends a bit farther than it&#39;s normally allowed to go, so if you have any programs with dedicated buttons within that small range of pixels, that might be a problem. The hit area is still big enough to be humanly clickable, though, so all you lazy-but-not-lazy-enough-to-use-the-windows-key people can still just force your mouse to bottomleftmost corner of the screen and click.

*EDIT:* Yeah I drew that ugly blue highlight, that&#39;s not what happens when you mouseover.

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## Tsen

...I want a green and white themed Vista.  I&#39;ll settle for my bastardized white wannabe theme right now.  But I seriously want the real thing.  &#39;Cuz it&#39;d look awesome.  (By the way, can you customize the colors of the mouse-over highlight on the start menu?)

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## MSG

> (By the way, can you customize the colors of the mouse-over highlight on the start menu?)
> [/b]



No, lol I just drew that to show where it&#39;s clickable ...

I knew it would be confusing >.<

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## Tsen

No, not what you drew in your picture, I knew you drew that in.  But don&#39;t the start menu items highlight as you mouse over them?  Like in XP they lit up in light blue...do they still do that, and is the color customizeable?

----------


## MSG

Oh, yeah they highlight. I&#39;m not sure if the color matches the theme color or not, but it should if it doesn&#39;t. Else that would be ugly. I have the start menu in this screenshot. I can&#39;t test now cause I just switched back to my XP drive, but I&#39;ll fool with it later.

One thing I don&#39;t like is how windows is paranoid about everything I do... When I moved something from the C:&#092; drive to my slave drive it asked for admin priviledges, and when I saved something to the slave drive from a program it didn&#39;t let me at all ... which could get annoying very fast. ( I know it&#39;s probably easy to change that, but still... )

----------


## TweaK

> Doesn&#39;t Vista have the instant-shutdown/freeze mode? It was a problem to put your computer to sleep before because the drives are still draining power from your batteries if you had a laptop, and hiberation took too long.
> [/b]



Yep yep.





> don&#39;t all windows versions have that
> 
> hahahaha*snort*aahahaha
> [/b]



Err.. Yeah.. But buggy ones. The Vista one is way improved.




> The new rebel start button bubble extends a bit farther than it&#39;s normally allowed to go, so if you have any programs with dedicated buttons within that small range of pixels, that might be a problem. The hit area is still big enough to be humanly clickable, though, so all you lazy-but-not-lazy-enough-to-use-the-windows-key people can still just force your mouse to bottomleftmost corner of the screen and click.
> [/b]



Yep - that&#39;s what I do. I just throw my mouse (well, not literally) into the most bottom left point there is and click. Yay for easyness on that.





> Oh, yeah they highlight. I&#39;m not sure if the color matches the theme color or not, but it should if it doesn&#39;t. Else that would be ugly. I have the start menu in this screenshot. I can&#39;t test now cause I just switched back to my XP drive, but I&#39;ll fool with it later.
> 
> One thing I don&#39;t like is how windows is paranoid about everything I do... When I moved something from the C:&#092; drive to my slave drive it asked for admin priviledges, and when I saved something to the slave drive from a program it didn&#39;t let me at all ... which could get annoying very fast. ( I know it&#39;s probably easy to change that, but still... )
> [/b]



I&#39;m unsure if highlighting colours match your colour theme, but I have the Frost theme selected atm and my highlight-over-applications-in-start-menu is blue. It&#39;s very soft blue though, I think it fits every colour theme, so no biggie there.

I agree with you about the User Account Control. It tends to be *too* strict. I mean, it&#39;s good that it&#39;s really "Hey dude, something is going to run. Accept?" and all, but everytime I started an installer, I got that. Then when the installer was loaded and was in the first "Welcome to the installer of [x]"-screen, I also got it. And right before it started extracting files, I _also_ had the popup. So I just turned off UAC. I&#39;ll rely on Windows Defender and OneCare to make sure spyware and stuff doesn&#39;t make it&#39;s way into Vista: UAC has become more of an irritation than something useful for me.

----------


## Ne-yo

RC 2 Link will turned off Oct 14 So if you haven&#39;t gotten it, Get it&#33;  :Boxing:

----------


## TweaK

> RC 2 Link _will turned off_ Oct 14 So if you haven&#39;t gotten it, Get it&#33; 
> [/b]



English classes never get turned off though :F (just kidding, don&#39;t take this really offensively  :tongue2: )

----------


## Ne-yo

That&#39;s what I get for rushing. It Be&#39;s that way Sometime

----------


## MSG

So.

I just installed Vista on my other (crappier) computer.

...My Windows Experience Index on this one is 2.0

...

No aero for me then, heh.

----------


## Kaniaz

I just about get Aero. And, yes, for lack of a better phrasing, my computer is cack.

----------


## TweaK

*So*. My WLMD (_Windows Live Mail Desktop_) kept getting closed by Data Execution Prevention (DEP, in short), and within 5 seconds too.

Soooo. I googled for a long time, but finally found my answer&#33; It&#39;s all because of FlashPlayer 9. In the first version, it had Vista bugs. Now there&#39;s a Beta 1 fix  especially for Vista (I think), and it fixed my problem.  :smiley: 





> 1. Uninstall previous Flash Player
> Click Start->Control Panel->Add/Remove Programs (Uninstall Program link),
> then right-click Adobe Flash Player, then select Uninstall.
> 2. Close Windows Live Messenger and any other applications that might use
> Flash Player (just to be safe)
> Right click the Messenger icon in the Windows TaskBar (bottom right corner
> of screen), then select Close.
> 3. Open http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer9.html to get ready to
> install
> ...



So if any of you Vista users get an issue like this.. Here ya go.

----------


## Unknown_Dude

Sounds nice but it seems hard on gpu,cpu,ram(um everything  ::D: )
Anyway im sticking to Linux  :smiley:

----------


## MSG

> Sounds nice but it seems hard on gpu,cpu,ram(um everything )
> Anyway im sticking to Linux 
> [/b]



Oh my god

It&#39;s hopeless...

----------


## Wolffe

> Oh my god
> 
> It&#39;s hopeless...
> [/b]



Don&#39;t give up hope, I&#39;m sure you&#39;ll find _someone_ else in the world that actually likes that hyped-up heap o&#39; crap  ::D:  &#33;&#33;&#33; xD

----------


## The Blue Meanie

There&#39;s no WAY I&#39;m getting Vista.  Not with all this new digital irghts management, copyright shit.  Plus, who the hell wants a fancy new OS that does fuck-all anything important other than look pretty?  I kept Windows 98 until last year on my games computer.  It just used less resources.  Sure, there were compatability problems, but seriously.  For now, I&#39;ll stick with XP professional.  XP has its problems, sure, but there&#39;s no WAY I&#39;m going to upgrade needlessly to some stupid OS that requires double the resource drain, just to give me prettier graphics and protect digital fucking rights.  Screw that.   :Pirate: 

Basically, I&#39;d like to present Microsoft with a big Fuck Off I Like My Processing Power And Ram Thank You Very Fucking Much So Why Don&#39;t You Just Shove Your Silly New Vampire OS Where The Sun Don&#39;t Shine.

----------


## MSG

Look, here&#39;s the thing. I don&#39;t think that everyone should rush out right away and buy Vista as soon as it comes out, I don&#39;t think the improvements are worth &#036;280 to most people, but god you guys are just pulling stuff out of your asses, making up reasons not to buy it, it&#39;s really irritating.





> There&#39;s no WAY I&#39;m getting Vista.  Not with all this new digital irghts management, copyright shit.[/b]



Where? So far I haven&#39;t seen any anti-piracy shit except some protection against pirating Windows itself. I successfully moved a good portion of my pirated music onto this computer and it hasn&#39;t had any trouble playing any of it, copying any of it, burning any of it to disk, hell it even lets me send shit to my friends through MSN messenger. It would be extremely foolish for Microsoft to get involved in protecting against music piracy, it&#39;s not their business. I don&#39;t know if you read digg or not but if you do, please refrain from doing so from now on.





> Plus, who the hell wants a fancy new OS that does fuck-all anything important other than look pretty?[/b]



My GFX card is really bad, and I don&#39;t get Aero. I still would take Vista over XP in a heartbeat, even without Aero. Even if Vista looked exactly the same as XP.





> Basically, I&#39;d like to present Microsoft with a big Fuck Off I Like My Processing Power And Ram Thank You Very Fucking Much So Why Don&#39;t You Just Shove Your Silly New Vampire OS Where The Sun Don&#39;t Shine.
> [/b]



Maya runs faster (renders alot faster too) and is more stable under Vista on my 2.8 ghz computer than under XP pro on my 3.2 ghz computer. No idea why, but I&#39;m lovin it. I&#39;ve found that I&#39;m using this (slower processor, less ram) computer more often than my other one (beast, but old and has an inferior operating system [xp])

----------


## The Blue Meanie

Look, it all just comes down to:  There&#39;s just no WAY I&#39;m going to "upgrade" to an OS that drains nearly TWICE the system resources as the old, in exchange for pretty graphics that, quite frankly, look gimmicky and pointless, and a few extra bells and whistles.  XP does everything I need.  Hell, fucking 98 did everything I needed, till microsoft pulled support and compatability.

I like my powerful new computer.  I&#39;m not going to waste resources I can use for games and other programs, for some stupid bloody pretty windows that are semi-transparent.





> It would be extremely foolish for Microsoft to get involved in protecting against music piracy, it&#39;s not their business. I don&#39;t know if you read digg or not but if you do, please refrain from doing so from now on.[/b]



They already DO get involved.  Media player, etc.  And, it IS their business: if Microsoft manages, through a new OS, to make piracy harder, then that means that they can make all sorts of deals with legal music and video download sites and "middleman" companies that supply the means to access such media.

As for being able to pirate Vista?  Meh.  Somebody will do it.

I stand by what I said.  the ONLY way Microsoft is going to get me to "upgrade" is at practical gunpoint, like they did with 98.  Make it so IMPOSSIBLE for me to use my computer on the old OS, because of compatability problems and pulling support.

Basically, Fuck Microsoft.  I can&#39;t go Linux because I&#39;m just not skilled enough to make the most use of it.  So, between Mac and Microsoft, it&#39;s basically a duopoly.

----------


## Wolffe

Too true

----------


## MSG

> I like my powerful new computer.  I&#39;m not going to waste resources I can use for games and other programs, for some stupid bloody pretty windows that are semi-transparent.[/b]



All of that is offloaded to the GPU, and the only time you&#39;re really using that is when you&#39;re playing games, which are full screen (no aero transparent windows), so the only time you need your GFX card is when Windows doesn&#39;t.





> They already DO get involved.  Media player, etc.  And, it IS their business: if Microsoft manages, through a new OS, to make piracy harder, then that means that they can make all sorts of deals with legal music and video download sites and "middleman" companies that supply the means to access such media.[/b]



Your only somewhat strong anti-Vista argument is that you won&#39;t be able to steal more software/music/movies? This isn&#39;t even valid, like I said, Vista hasn&#39;t had a problem with any of my pirated stuff, except for Flash MX (which is 5 years old, and it was a compatibility problem, not a piracy deal). Media player hasn&#39;t spat one song back out at me and yelled about DRM or anything, so I don&#39;t know where you&#39;re coming from.





> As for being able to pirate Vista?  Meh.  Somebody will do it.[/b]



Of course they will, it will be harder, but if there&#39;s a will theres a way. If you had a product that you sold, wouldn&#39;t you take measures to ensure that people didn&#39;t steal it?





> I stand by what I said.  the ONLY way Microsoft is going to get me to "upgrade" is at practical gunpoint, like they did with 98.  Make it so IMPOSSIBLE for me to use my computer on the old OS, because of compatability problems and pulling support.[/b]



*Here&#39;s a list of programs that don&#39;t work on this computer, problems in parenthesis:*
Flash MX (starts right after an install, but will never start again)
Sauerbraten (open source, says my GFX card is too old)
Google Earth (doesn&#39;t recognize OS, installer quits, I bet I could get it to work with some effort)
Ethereal (works, but can&#39;t find my ethernet card)

*Now here&#39;s a list of the programs that do work copied from my programs list, problems in parenthesis:*
7-Zip
Adobe After Effects 6.0 (runs like shit due to my 512 RAM)
Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0
Apache HTTP Server 2.0.59
Audacity 1.2.4
Azureus
Blender
DivX codec/player/stuff
FileZilla Server
Inkscape
iTunes 7 (buggy as shit, but it&#39;s the same on XP too)
J2SE Runtime Environment 5 (Java)
Maya 7.0
Microsoft Office Professional 2007 (Beta) (of course)
mIRC
Mozilla Firefox
Paint.NET 3
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 (wouldn&#39;t even run on this computer with XP)
TeamSpeak 2
Trillian (crashes all the time, but that&#39;s because it&#39;s trillian)
Vim 7
WinDirStat
WinRAR





> Basically, Fuck Microsoft.  I can&#39;t go Linux because I&#39;m just not skilled enough to make the most use of it.  So, between Mac and Microsoft, it&#39;s basically a duopoly.[/b]



Oh god don&#39;t go Linux. I suffered through that forever, I couldn&#39;t do anything with it besides play around with a web server. I could never get anything done, most of the time I was trying to get a program to work or searching for the program in the first place. Linux is like 10 years behind in technology, and almost all of the programs are underdeveloped pieces of crap. Mac&#39;s are almost just as worse, they only thing they can do is flaunt having a nice GUI that isn&#39;t even pretty. It&#39;s a fucking ugly grey milky bubbly piece of shit, I&#39;d take windows classic theme over that anyday. Our school has a video editing station with Mac&#39;s... horrible. This next statement is for everybody who wants to get into video production:

*Don&#39;t EVER let ANYBODY tell you that video editing on a Mac is better than on Windows.*

But I&#39;m off topic, I&#39;ll go do my homework now

----------


## Kaniaz

Facts. Do you use them?

The answer is no, you don&#39;t.

I haven&#39;t seen any DRM. Ever. OK, so Hyperactive Linux Blogger might claim that you won&#39;t be able to budge an inch when you buy Vista and it will lock down all your music and you can&#39;t play DVD movies but that is just bullcrap. Microsoft are not stupid. They&#39;re not going to take a bullet for the media industry by shoving in DRM. DRM&#39;s a touchy subject (I want free music and I want it *now&#33;*) but it&#39;s nowhere near as bad as, say, Sony sticking rootkits that compromise PC security on music discs.

They also know if they DRM their software to kingdom come then nobody is going to buy it. I&#39;m not a market analyst, you&#39;re not a market analyst, but I think that&#39;s pretty obvious in the long run. They&#39;ve probably enabled DRM more. That&#39;s true. I think the media companies lean on them enough. But somehow, I don&#39;t think Microsoft is exactly going out of their way to be "evil" or anything. I get the vibe you guys are just a little too fanatical in your claims about that. If that doesn&#39;t sastify you, the European Comission is all over Microsoft&#39;s shit. They are not going to perform some sort of DRM coup. If they do I will be very upset and stomp my feet until they reverse their decision.

And really Vista does not hog your resources, guys. There&#39;s a lot of memory managment changes you should read about before claiming anything of the sort. I mean come on, the last release was XP in 2000 or something. 6/7 years to the next release of an OS? Of course there&#39;s gonna be some spec rampup. I got Vista working just fine on 386~ MB RAM, no graphics card and a 1GHz processor. Okay, so I won&#39;t be playing Battlefield 2 or rendering super 4D glowing space cubes, but the baseline has not been ramped up at all that much.

Of course, as has been so eloquently put, "MICROSOFT SUCK&#33;&#33;&#33;". Which is, you know, how they managed to get a monopoly and how they somehow ended up with some big brains like Bill Gates behind the scenes. They&#39;re not _stupid._ Although I&#39;m not entirely confident they won&#39;t go out and make a big wonderful fat blunder and fuck up Vista.

I&#39;ll be buying Vista, though. I bet I can get it cheap if nobody else buys it. Go boycotts&#33;

----------


## Wolffe

Bonjour Kaniaz&#33; 





> And really Vista does not hog your resources, guys. There&#39;s a lot of memory managment changes you should read about before claiming anything of the sort. I mean come on, the last release was XP in 2000 or something. 6/7 years to the next release of an OS? Of course there&#39;s gonna be some spec rampup. I got Vista working just fine on 386~ MB RAM, no graphics card and a 1GHz processor. Okay, so I won&#39;t be playing Battlefield 2 or rendering super 4D glowing space cubes, but the baseline has not been ramped up at all that much.
> [/b]



The whole point is that what if we _want_
 to play BF games?? BF2142 runs like shit on my computer, and I&#39;m well over the recommended specs. If I were to use Vista, this would completely nuke it&#33; Vista&#39;s new looks are so stolen AND they stop me killing virtual stuff > :Sad: 





> Of course, as has been so eloquently put, "MICROSOFT SUCK&#33;&#33;&#33;". Which is, you know, how they managed to get a monopoly and how they somehow ended up with some big brains like Bill Gates behind the scenes. They&#39;re not _stupid._ Although I&#39;m not entirely confident they won&#39;t go out and make a big wonderful fat blunder and fuck up Vista.
> 
> I&#39;ll be buying Vista, though. I bet I can get it cheap if nobody else buys it. Go boycotts&#33;
> [/b]




They got a monopoly from ignorant people believing there was no other way to use a computer than with Windows&#33; Besides, I wouldn&#39;t count on a no-blunder release; they&#39;re so desperate for qualified computer programmers to work for them now.

----------


## Ynot

Ok people
here&#39;s the deal

My main gripe is about DRM
but there&#39;s lots of other little things about Vista that concern me
but DRM is the big one

Search for "DRM" on slashdot, google, etc.
read up on it
make your own mind up

in a nut-shell
you are all criminals who pirate software and download music
DRM is therefore mandatory

But DRM is a small part
a component
It&#39;s bigger brother, is known as Trusted Computing





> "trusted computing" means that the computer can be trusted by its designers and other software writers not to run unauthorized programs.[/b]



^^ re-read that, just in case you mis-understood it

The "designers" (AMD, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Infineon, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems)
decide what is "authorised" and "unauthorised"
and "_won&#39;t allow you_" to "_run_" anything "_they_" consider "_unauthorised_"

Who&#39;s new computer is this?
who paid their money to buy it
You did

Who dictates what you can do with "_Your_" machine
"_They_" do

Make your own mind up
but while you do, please enjoy this intermission video

http://youtube.com/watch?v=K1H7omJW4TI


Tune in next week
when I&#39;ll be exploring the horrors of the different DRM standards cropping up

----------


## MSG

> They got a monopoly from ignorant people believing there was no other way to use a computer than with Windows&#33;[/b]



It&#39;s not their fault, you really think Microsoft would go out of their way to let it be known that there are alternatives (some free) to their product?

----------


## Wolffe

> It&#39;s not their fault, you really think Microsoft would go out of their way to let it be known that there are alternatives (some free) to their product?
> [/b]



Considering they will never be as big as Windows; yes&#33;
I reckon the main reason is &#39;cause they blatantly plagerise other software though. Anyway.

For piracy stuff, see http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/te...age-cracked.asp

----------


## Ynot

> For piracy stuff, see http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/te...age-cracked.asp
> [/b]



Ha
WGA gets cracked and patched every other week

----------


## Wolffe

> Ha
> WGA gets cracked and patched every other week
> [/b]



I was really looking at it as a source for




> Just today, Microsoft Watch stated "Come this fall, however, the Redmond software maker is planning to turn up the Genuine Advantage heat in two ways: By baking more Genuine Advantage checks directly into Windows Vista, and by taking aim at PC makers, system builders, Internet cafes and other sources of potentially pirated software."
> [/b]



that, to show the non-believers :3

----------


## Kaniaz

Indeed WGA does. I don&#39;t think Microsoft are stupid enough to believe they can destroy all piracy (and there is a certain amount of piracy that can actually be beneficial). I think the point is to _make it harder_. And, dear God, you know, I think they&#39;ve done that.

As for &#39;trusted computing&#39;, I heard about that like six years ago. I&#39;m not saying it&#39;s stupid to bring it up, though, the worry is genuine. I&#39;m beginning to get a little skeptical about it, though - I was more worried at the time - because we&#39;re probably no closer to the horrible technological utopia they envision than we were back then. Unless it&#39;s all going to jump on at once, in which case, light the torches and hide the children&#33;

----------


## Ne-yo

Yeah it&#39;s going to become a little more difficult especially since MS will encourage people to have legal copies only allowing authorized versions of the software to receive security updates.

----------


## MSG

> Just today, Microsoft Watch stated "Come this fall, however, the Redmond software maker is planning to turn up the Genuine Advantage heat in two ways: By baking more Genuine Advantage checks directly into Windows Vista, and by taking aim at PC makers, system builders, Internet cafes and other sources of potentially pirated software."[/b]
> 			
> 		
> 
> 
> that, to show the non-believers :3
> [/b]



Tell me, what&#39;s so bad about WGA?

----------


## Wolffe

> that, to show the non-believers :3
> Tell me, what&#39;s so bad about WGA?
> [/b]



It stops people who for whatever reason cant afford to buy Windows licenses from using Windows. A mixed blessing if they lose the majority of users because Vista is too expensive to buy, but no one can get pirate copies.

----------


## MSG

> It stops people who for whatever reason cant afford to buy Windows licenses from using Windows.
> [/b]



Exactly my point. Sorry buddy, if you can&#39;t afford windows, *you don&#39;t get to use it*.

----------


## icuurd12b42

> Exactly my point. Sorry buddy, if you can&#39;t afford windows, *you don&#39;t get to use it*.
> [/b]



Funny, that company made soo much money mostly because most people had a pirate copy of their OS at home. Now, with a flip of a switch, they could loose it all.

Windows became the most popular OS and won over OS2 and unix because of it&#39;s familiarity. Now, if schools and poor people with cheap computers have to return to Unix, there could be a major switch in the market in a decade.

----------


## Wolffe

> Exactly my point. Sorry buddy, if you can&#39;t afford windows, *you don&#39;t get to use it*.
> [/b]



Funny you lot say that, since last thing I heard, you were all using pirated betas&#33;

[Edit] Oh dear god&#33; They&#39;ve applied the Vista style to the various Live betas already ;_;

----------


## TweaK

> Funny you lot say that, since last thing I heard, you were all using pirated betas&#33;
> 
> [Edit] Oh dear god&#33; They&#39;ve applied the Vista style to the various Live betas already ;_;
> [/b]



Ehm, no, they are all real, authentic, downloaded from microsoft.com betas.

----------


## Kaniaz

OK, now this is getting lame. Once again everyone thinks Microsoft doesn&#39;t realise simple business economics like "too high a price and nobody is going to buy that". _Hi, I&#39;m Bill Gates, and that totally escaped my mind and the thousands of staff we have._

*EDIT:* Yes. All the betas were legal. Well, "pirated beta" is sort of a oxymoron. _Sort of._

----------


## MSG

Yeah, mine isn&#39;t illegal either. The microsoft BETA program is public now, and this installation I have now will expire on January 30th.

----------


## TweaK

Oh and guys, for you people that _OMG DUNT WANT 2 JEOPARDIZE WINXP PC CUZ VISTA R INSTABLE&#33;&#33;&#33;11&#96;&#96;&#96;HAXZ_, try Microsoft Virtual PC.

----------


## Wolffe

> Yeah, mine isn&#39;t illegal either. The microsoft BETA program is public now, and this installation I have now will expire on January 30th.
> [/b]



Fair enough then, I take it back ^^

----------


## TheUnknown

Looking at Vista from a purley objective view, having run both RC1 and RC2 (even though i&#39;m registered as a beta tester, i still had to grab RC2 through a torrent network since they decided to open downloads for like a day).  Vista final I can&#39;t expect to be much different.

The UI is very nice, Aero looks good.  One of the main gripes about Windows XP was that they stole the design from Tellytubbies.  It seems to run well provided one has relatively modern hardware, older hardware just turns it off.  

Its user management is nice for a novice user, by asking a crapload of questions and locking administrator rights out most of the time, security is will generally improve as programs will not have full access to the system as easilly.  However, for an experianced user, it might be wise to turn it off.  

One thing I noticed running Vista is it hogs ram, OSX is much like this as well.  From what I see though, it appears much of it is used as cache, so just like linux generally runs at its best after some libraries have been loaded, Vista takes advantage of this as well.

I hate one thing about Vista more then anything else.  It has like 8 different flavors.  I can understand server, regular (professional in most cases), and maybe something like a media center edition, but to have like 8 flavors, bullshit.  I&#39;m not the typical "I hate Microsoft" person, but this is REALLY agressive marketing.  Perhaps Microsoft is trying to become as insane as Apple now with Vista.

Overall, I expect many people will use Vista, gaming will initially suffer from the new DirectX and all the eyecandy, but for general use, the OS is looking like a needed improvement to XP.  

Driver support needs some improvement, especially for laptops, but its not bad right now.  I&#39;ll give it a year for everything to be good.

Myself, I cannot see myself using Vista, as I feel in most uses it is inferior to Linux.  However, for someone not as knowledged as I am, ease of installation and OEM support is not there for linux yet.  My hope is that in a year or two, distros like Fedora will improve to surpass Windows in security, driver support, and ease of use.  Myself, I develop with gentoo from time to time, which is why I have such a shift towards free operating systems.  The times are changing, just as web content has become more open, I believe users will become alienated with Microsoft&#39;s aggressive marketing and this slow wheel that has been GNU/Linux, will pick up and soar in popularity.  Indeed, Microsoft has lost a great deal of support due to the spyware/virii issue.

In the short-term, Vista should be a sucess.  In the long-term, I think Microsoft is going to have to be more competitive.

----------


## Wolffe

> In the short-term, Vista should be a sucess.  In the long-term, I think Microsoft is going to have to be more competitive.
> [/b]



Hopefully a little more original too

----------


## Kaniaz

> It has like 8 different flavors. I can understand server, regular (professional in most cases), and maybe something like a media center edition, but to have like 8 flavors, bullshit.[/b]



What, and like 200 Linux distros is not bullcrap at all?

Although all joking aside, I&#39;m thinking the same thing. It manages to confuse me to a degree and god knows how pissed off some people are going to be if they go out and buy the wrong version. Apparently - _apparently_ - they might be putting several versions on one DVD or something strange - so it might be a little less insane than eight entirely different versions of Vista on a shelf. And I think at least one version, "Vista Starter" or something is meant for poorer places, it doesn&#39;t come with Aero or much more than "just the OS" so I&#39;m doubting that&#39;ll even be available in many places, not that you&#39;d want it.

Memory _is_ "hogged", but in a good way. It&#39;s cached. It&#39;s better than just leaving it around dumbly doing nothing, I mean, it makes you wonder who came up with that stupid idea anyway.

Still, Vista hasn&#39;t blown me away on every level like they claim it should. It&#39;s a good upgrade, I&#39;ll get it, and there are some things that are just finally here that we should&#39;ve had before (decent search, better GUI). I can&#39;t think of a real reason you&#39;d want to stay on XP, other than maybe application compatability, and that&#39;s a problem that usually goes away with time. I would like to see how Vista gets adopted in the computing world. I&#39;m a little skeptical. I&#39;m thinking it might be pretty low.

If it&#39;s going to take them six years to come up with the same amount of improvements again then I think Microsoft might as well dig themselves a grave now, because more agile development (Linux, Macs) is becoming much more popular for a very good reason and becoming a threat all over again. It will be interesting to see.

----------


## Wolffe

> Still, Vista hasn&#39;t blown me away on every level like they claim it should. It&#39;s a good upgrade, I&#39;ll get it, and there are some things that are just finally here that we should&#39;ve had before (decent search, better GUI). I can&#39;t think of a real reason you&#39;d want to stay on XP, other than maybe application compatability, and that&#39;s a problem that usually goes away with time. I would like to see how Vista gets adopted in the computing world. I&#39;m a little skeptical. I&#39;m thinking it might be pretty low.
> 
> If it&#39;s going to take them six years to come up with the same amount of improvements again then I think Microsoft might as well dig themselves a grave now, because more agile development (Linux, Macs) is becoming much more popular for a very good reason and becoming a threat all over again. It will be interesting to see.
> [/b]



I reckon it&#39;ll be like &#39;Windows 2000&#39; again

----------


## Kaniaz

> I reckon it&#39;ll be like &#39;Windows 2000&#39; again[/b]



Nah, I think they learned from that particular mistake. Did I say mistake? I meant *utter failure*.

----------


## Ynot

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do...tsrc=hm_ts_head

----------


## MSG

You mean Windows ME?

Does anyone even remember that?

I do. And wish I didn&#39;t.

----------


## Wolffe

> You mean Windows ME?
> 
> Does anyone even remember that?
> 
> I do. And wish I didn&#39;t.
> [/b]



Nah, I mean 2000. I dont think it&#39;ll fail, but it won&#39;t be the next XP

----------


## Kaniaz

Wolffe why are you never in IRC any more (don&#39;t you dare tell me you have a life).

People are getting too comfortable.

They need someone hyper to piss them off.

----------


## Wolffe

> Wolffe why are you never in IRC any more (don&#39;t you dare tell me you have a life).
> 
> People are getting too comfortable.
> 
> They need someone hyper to piss them off.
> [/b]



Ahar, *returns*

----------


## Umbrasquall

I have the final version of Vista Ultimate Edition installed. I have to say it is quite a bit more streamlined than XP. The Sidebar function is useful and I don&#39;t have to install all the tools I did with XP to optimize my computer because they come included with Vista. 

Office 2007 is also quite a step up from the last office. The layout takes a bit to get used to but I&#39;ve been using it since beta 1 and by now I&#39;ve concluded that the new interface is a lot easier to navigate.

----------


## pellucid

I&#39;ve had Vista running at work and it looks very pretty, seems to work suprisingly fast and all - but - it doesn&#39;t seem to offer any more than XP as far as features are concerned...

Having said that it will be interesting to see the capabilities of DirectX 10 coupled with 64 bit processing...  That aught to make my emails download quicker  :tongue2:

----------


## Ne-yo



----------


## Kaniaz

*L*inus *I*s *N*ot *U*r <strike>*X*</strike>*G*od?

----------


## Umbrasquall

Update on Vista impressions. 

Vista still has a lot of compatibility issues that I&#39;m not happy with at all. 

Media Player Classic/10 doesn&#39;t work well at all and fails to play a lot of media, especially videos. Media Center is glitchy, again, with the videos and also has frustrating organization and navigation problems. 

However, it does look a lot more smoother overall, and starts up very quickly. Still worth the switch I&#39;d say, but I&#39;d suggest keeping a partition with WinXP just in case.

And also, windows defender is annoying as hell.

----------


## Ynot

came across this and thought I&#39;d post it

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...vista_cost.txt

----------


## TweaK

Such a big file in .txt = automatic fail.

----------


## MSG

> came across this and thought I&#39;d post it
> 
> A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...vista_cost.txt
> [/b]



Microsoft is doing this because Sony will not allow them to play it&#39;s Blu-ray discs without doing so (duh). As for HD-DVD, would the recording industry even *look* at releasing stuff in that format if they didn&#39;t offer just as much protection?

Blu-ray and HD-DVD are going to flop, anyway, so no worries  :wink2:

----------


## TweaK

The thing is.. Blu-Ray is Sony&#39;s. PS3 is Sony&#39;s. Xbox 360 is Microsoft&#39;s. X360 and PS3 are sworn enemies. Sony will probably make a deal with MS that they get negative media attention before they&#39;ll allow MS to play Blu-Ray disc&#39;s (there is a lot more third party support for Blu-Ray)

Win-win situation for Sony.

----------


## MSG

I just bought a 2gb flash drive and am now using it as a readyboost stick

... I haven&#39;t noticed much of a difference except when loading the desktop

Cool&#33;

----------


## Ne-yo

If your installed RAm is already 1GB or more, you will not see much improvement if any.

----------


## Ynot

and in 6 months time, you&#39;ll have a dead flash drive......

----------


## Kaniaz

Nope, they already worked out algorithms that are meant to use different parts of the drive. I thought the same thing at first, but somehow I doubt they&#39;ll promote something that would crap out everyone&#39;s drives after the first six happy months of flash swap and they&#39;re claiming you&#39;ll still get &#39;years of use&#39; out of them.

----------


## Ynot

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/29/1811201

says it all really.......

----------


## Ne-yo

::chuckle::   He Shoots&#33; He Scores&#33;&#33;&#33; :bravo:

I agree with this one guy also. 





> Sounds like somebody will soon get a juicy job offer from Microsoft to tighten up the system...[/b]

----------


## Kaniaz

You mean a system that&#39;s hosted pretty much entirely on the local system is _crackable?_ Good God&#33;

----------


## MSG

Critisizing DRM on Vista is very dumb, the only thing that Vista does with DRM is behave better with it. If you stay away from encrypted media such as DVDs, Blu-ray/HDDVD, and music purchasing services such as iTunes, I promise you, you will not see a lick of content protection at all in Windows Vista. If you do, however, choose to participate in such scams like Napster, you&#39;ll find yourself in just as big of a hole as you would as in XP.

For the record, Windows Media Player has not spat out a single song from my pirated music collection due to improper licences, or anything else for that matter.

----------


## Ynot

drm is a lot more than music & films, now
keep up   ::wink::  

To the average user
(ie. if you haven&#39;t found out how to bypass it, as above)
you have:

- Only use MS signed drivers (no more, "it&#39;s not certified, do you want to install anyway?", oh no, "It ain&#39;t certified, piss off")

- The kernel is locked down to unauthorised tampering (no more hex-editing your ntoskrnl.exe to make a custom bootscreen, or whatever)
Only MS certified programs can hook into the system at kernel level (includes antivirus software and any MS software, so no nifty skinning programs)

DRM is bigger than music piracy, now

----------


## Kaniaz

I don&#39;t understand why signed drivers only is a problem _at all_. After all there&#39;s got to be some quality control, and that&#39;s been sorely missing beforehand. This is only actually true for x64, x86 will still load unsigned drivers but you will need to elevate to administrator through UAC for that which is not a big deal.

Microsoft are taking the opportunity for a hardline stance on unsigned drivers on 64-bit systems. In the words of one blog, "[we missed the boat] on securing x86 and don&#39;t want to make the same mistake again". I don&#39;t quite understand why it&#39;s such a big deal myself, I&#39;d have to read about it some. I&#39;m sure there&#39;s some reason they would want to risk hampering the development of drivers which are way imporatnt.





> - The kernel is locked down to unauthorised tampering (no more hex-editing your ntoskrnl.exe to make a custom bootscreen, or whatever)[/b]



Yes, and I&#39;m totally behind this particular decision. There&#39;s a lot more sinister things - and I think you realise this just as much - that can be changed in a kernel than the loading screen. Linux is the same way, in that you don&#39;t really go around recompiling it for a boot screen. Although I think that&#39;s obviously to do with the fact Linux was better architected in this case. A fault of Microsoft? Yes, but I&#39;d prefer them to do something about it and try and lock this down and correct the mistake than leave the kernel wide open to all sorts of code injections. It makes it less stable (obviously), less secure and really is just crap.

As for antivirus companies complaining and calling it monopolistic, most of the dire claims come from studies or straight out of <strike>shit</strike> _slightly misled_ folks like Norton who don&#39;t really want to update their software. In fact, they&#39;ve tried breaking UAC so they can spice it up with their <strike>crap</strike> _important notices_ and <strike>terrorise gullible users into updating subscriptions</strike> _better inform of security threats_. That&#39;s just plain stupid and would create more security holes which I&#39;m sure <strike>they&#39;d just love as it makes their business more lucrative</strike> _they would hate._

----------


## Ynot

maybe I&#39;m odd
but I use a lot of "unsigned" drivers

- DVB-C decoder
- Smartcard programmer
- Echo Mia soundcard (drivers not certified for some reason)
- Optimised graphics driver
- a budget, unbranded 10/100 NIC from some foreign land
probably some other bits I forgot as well

also hacked XP to allow for Raid support (supposed to be a vailable inserver &#39;03 only)
http://tomshardware.co.uk/2004/11/19/using...ppen/page2.html
if anyone&#39;s interested   ::wink::  

anyway, whatever
it&#39;s cracked now   ::bigteeth::

----------


## Kaniaz

Well compared to me, you&#39;re pretty jacked up there. But no kidding, you&#39;ve got a point there.

I haven&#39;t got an unsigned driver in sight. I can think of one unsigned driver I do use, however: WinPCap. I don&#39;t strictly need it but I love it. It doesn&#39;t work on Vista (fuck&#33 :wink2:  but I hope they&#39;re going to update that, if they can. The network stack&#39;s been pretty much entirely rewritten.

*EDIT:* Just checked it out today. Vista support now exists for WinPCap. I couldn&#39;t be <strike>more</strike> happy.

----------


## Ynot

yup,
knew I forgot things
Ethereal &#33;&#33;





> Well compared to me, you&#39;re pretty jacked up there. But no kidding, you&#39;ve got a point there.
> [/b]



well, maybe

still waiting for my debt card to expire, so I can bung it in the proggy
see if I can&#39;t make a fake bank card   ::bigteeth::

----------


## MSG

> - Only use MS signed drivers (no more, "it&#39;s not certified, do you want to install anyway?", oh no, "It ain&#39;t certified, piss off")
> [/b]



I&#39;ve probably installed an unsigned driver in XP, like what, once?





> - The kernel is locked down to unauthorised tampering (no more hex-editing your ntoskrnl.exe to make a custom bootscreen, or whatever)
> [/b]



Like Kaniaz said, this is a _good_ thing. <analogy> The average driver does not have any use in directly modifying the car&#39;s engine, and this help prevent anybody who uses their car (programs) from doing the same. </analogy> If you&#39;re the type that does want to mess with the kernel, then that&#39;s when Linux comes in to play and we wonder what operating system this type of person would benefit from using.





> so no nifty skinning programs
> [/b]



I don&#39;t see why _anyone_ would _ever_ want to skin Windows Vista.





> This is only actually true for x64, x86 will still load unsigned drivers but you will need to elevate to administrator through UAC for that which is not a big deal.[/b]



Okay, good, I was about to call bullshit on Ynot, because I&#39;m pretty sure that these drivers that I just installed were not signed.

----------


## Kaniaz

It appears my WinPCap drivers are also signed. Unless the UAC elevation the setup got meant I gave permission for unsigned drivers to be installed, which would be stupid.

----------


## Tsen

> I don&#39;t see why _anyone_ would _ever_ want to skin Windows Vista.[/b]



Alright.  Honestly, I&#39;ve got to sing Vista&#39;s praises.
At least momentarily.  

Compared to Gnome, KDE or XCFE&#39;s default themes, Vista is BEAUTIFUL.  
I&#39;m a big stickler on looks.
However, customizability of appearance has always been very important to me.  Yeah, it looks good.  But I get bored, even with "good" looking UIs.  So, on Ubuntu, I play around with my theme twice a week or so.  It&#39;s good for that--I can completely customize window borders, colors, button appearances, icon themes, boot screens, and pretty much anything else I feel like.  Any time I feel like.  I am a bit disappointed in the lack of eye candy, but Fiesty Fawn (Ubuntu 7.04) is coming out in April and will have either Beryl or Compiz window managers installed by default (I think.  I&#39;d have to check the forums again to see how that movement went over), and they&#39;re pretty dang sexy themselves.

I do have to cede the graphics war to Windows for now, but I&#39;m still disappointed in the lack of customizations Windows allows.  I AM happy that they finally allow you to choose colors other than blue, vomit and silver, though.  It makes a big difference to somebody like me who insists on having a taskbar that meshes cleanly with the wallpaper.
I just wish they&#39;d get off their high horse and let people tweak the appearance a bit.

BTW, I probably will eventually be dual-booting Vista and Linux (albeit probably a pirated version of Vista since I don&#39;t have the &#036;300 to shell out for Ultimate), so no worries Kaniaz--I haven&#39;t gone ENTIRELY pinko commie open-source yet.
Just mostly.

----------


## Kaniaz

> no worries Kaniaz--I haven&#39;t gone ENTIRELY pinko commie open-source yet.
> Just mostly.[/b]



Look, I&#39;ve been waiting for the invasion of the Reds since the start of goddamn Cold War, and now you&#39;re saying I&#39;ve got to tell all the pitchfork-wielding folk they have to wait even longer? This just _won&#39;t do_. Most of them are about ninety and/or dead and buried by this point.

What the hell.

----------


## Ynot

wow,
we&#39;re really geeky   ::|:

----------


## Ne-yo

Is the administrator account disabled by default? If so then WTF?  ::wtf::

----------


## Ynot

> Is the administrator account is disabled by default? If so the WTF? 
> [/b]



As far as I know (but I may be wrong) you supply an admin password on install, but can never actually "log in" as admin
If you want to do something that requires admin auth, you enter the password, and that action is granted admin auth

----------


## Tsen

In Vista, or Ubuntu?
Ubuntu uses something like that--they replaced root access with the sudo command.  Basically, you have the rights of an administrator, but when you try to do something that could negatively affect your computer it asks for your password before it lets you do that.  It&#39;s kind of annoying, and one of the few problems I have with Ubuntu.  I much prefer just being able to have root access when I want it.

----------


## Ynot

I was talking about Vista, it&#39;s followed in the footsteps of *nix

*nix has had sudo since, well forever
Mac OS X strictly enforces it&#39;s use for all admin access
although I didn&#39;t know Ubuntu enforced it too, most linux distros don&#39;t enforce it by default

guess this is to stop casual users getting owned over the net, as Ubuntu is a lot more desktop orientated

----------


## Tsen

Yeah, since Ubuntu is designed as a Linux distro for average Joes as well as advanced users, they disable root by default to prevent people from doing something stupid, like deleting their /usr/ directory on accident.

----------


## Ne-yo

Thanks Ynot and Tsen.  ::goodjob2:: 





> they disable root by default to prevent people from doing something stupid, like deleting their /usr/ directory on accident.[/b]



Yeah it looks like Vista has the same idea in mind which actually does make sense. It still sucks however, I did figure out how to enable it permantely. 

For Future ref:{[you have to type in the _"run"_ Control Userpasswords2. Go to Advanced/ then advanced again, and enable to enable the Admin account.}


Thanks Ynot and Tsen.  ::goodjob2:: 





> they disable root by default to prevent people from doing something stupid, like deleting their /usr/ directory on accident.[/b]



Yeah it looks like Vista has the same idea in mind which actually does make sense. It still sucks however, I did figure out how to enable it permantely. 

For Future ref: {[you have to type in the _"run"_ Control Userpasswords2. Go to Advanced/ then Advanced again, and enable Admin account.}

*EDIT:* Don&#39;t even ask what&#39;s going on with this post, I&#39;m messing around with so much stuff there is no telling what&#39;s going to pop up. I wouldn&#39;t be surprise if my next post is in codes..lol

----------


## Kaniaz

My RC1 lets you use an administrator (i.e. &#39;root&#39 :wink2:  account just fine. However, everything still runs as a user: the change is that you do not need to enter a password to elevate a process to an administrative one. If you are on a user account, you need to enter the admin password which is more secure.

I definitely agree with this change. It&#39;s a lot like Unix/Linux in that sense now, and it&#39;s better. You can run on a user account and still be able to elevate those troublesome programs and so on. You can turn off UAC in the control panel, but I wouldn&#39;t reccomend it. I don&#39;t find the dialogs too many or too intrusive at all.

Windows lets you make an admin account and just asks you to press "continue", probably because forcing users to create two accounts would be a bit of a hardline stance and a confusing change for a lot of users. But if you&#39;re tech-savvy, I would recommend making an admin/user setup: I&#39;ve been on a user account for about a month and it&#39;s nowhere near as annoying was it was on XP. Definitely a step forward in that sense.

----------


## TweaK

> My RC1 lets you use an administrator (i.e. &#39;root&#39 account just fine. However, everything still runs as a user: the change is that you do not need to enter a password to elevate a process to an administrative one. If you are on a user account, you need to enter the admin password which is more secure.[/b]



Wait, what? RC1? I sent you RC2.

----------


## Kaniaz

My mistake. RC2.

----------


## Ne-yo

I saw that also. I figured it was a mistake I was thinking to myself. "he doesn&#39;t sound like an RC1 guy"..lol

----------


## TweaK

Did I mention I have Vista Ultimate (out of the stores) yet? Well, I do.
It&#39;s awesome.

----------


## Kaniaz

I&#39;ve just ordered Vista Ultimate on _premium dispatch_. I&#39;ll have it by Friday. We&#39;ll see what it&#39;s like then.

----------


## Ne-yo

Keep us posted  ::goodjob2::

----------


## Wolffe

> I&#39;ve just ordered Vista Ultimate on _premium dispatch_. I&#39;ll have it by Friday. We&#39;ll see what it&#39;s like then.
> [/b]



_Version of Ultimate - GO&#33;_

----------


## TweaK

I must say, besides some icon and notification sound changes, I don&#39;t really notice any differences between RC2 and RTM beside some in speed.

----------


## Ne-yo

I must say I have to pinch myself to make sure I am not dreaming but Vista has been by far the most stable Microsoft OS I have ever used. Keep it up Billy Gates.

----------


## Tsen

Sounds good.  I&#39;m excited to give it a try, but it looks like it&#39;s going to be after an upgrade to my PC.  Need more hard drive space, but my power supply&#39;s not up to the task (cruddy 250 W that&#39;s having a hard enough time with a stock computer with only a wireless card added).  And if I upgrade that, I might as well switch the motherboard so I can upgrade the graphics card, and if I&#39;m going through all that I might as well be building a new PC.

----------


## Wolffe

> Sounds good.  I&#39;m excited to give it a try, but it looks like it&#39;s going to be after an upgrade to my PC.  Need more hard drive space, but my power supply&#39;s not up to the task (cruddy 250 W that&#39;s having a hard enough time with a stock computer with only a wireless card added).  And if I upgrade that, I might as well switch the motherboard so I can upgrade the graphics card, and if I&#39;m going through all that I might as well be building a new PC.
> [/b]



Ohh I know the feeling all too well.

----------


## Kaniaz

That feeling is progress&#33;

Vista Ultimate arrived today by the postman (who is called Bob, if anyone&#39;s interested). I think the hardest thing so far was opening the case, which is really small and fiddly. I found the iPod case to be _diabolical_ - it sort of opens from the top so the iPod nearly shot out when I did figure it out. It wasn&#39;t clever, it was more like a damn puzzle box. But anyway.

It&#39;s upgrading now. It has "copied windows files" and is "gathering files", whatever that means. And it&#39;s being pretty slow about this stage, but it _did_ say it could take up to several hours [ugh] to complete. I think this is probably because I&#39;m upgrading and not doing a clean install, but hey. The box actually came with both 32-bit and 64-bit DVDs, so that was nice.

I haven&#39;t heard satanic voices screaming "you are entering DRM hell" just yet, but I&#39;ve got my penguin cross dipped in open source kool-aid juice and GCC compiler at the ready like any sensible person would have.

----------


## Kaniaz

And now it&#39;s installed. It did wind up taking a few hours, probably because I was upgrading from a RC. The new sounds are a little strange but nowhere near as irritating as XP&#39;s were.

I haven&#39;t had a single driver needed installing, I wasn&#39;t asked a single setup question (apart from if I wanted to check for updates or not right at the start), and I went for a shower halfway through. Your mileage is likely to vary, because I bet if you come from XP or a full installation from a clear partition it would have to ask questions. But if that&#39;s not simple, I don&#39;t know what is. I wish it could&#39;ve been a bit faster though.

I&#39;m now also downloading a bunch of updates and two _Ultimate Extras_ already released - Texas Hold&#39;em and some EFS/Bitlocker enhancements that don&#39;t really matter to me. There is pretty little in the way of differences from RC2 to RTM. I haven&#39;t had any pains with Vista, so that&#39;s good.

----------


## Ne-yo

This is the one, This particular installation will go donw in Dreamviews history for all the world to see. 

I don&#39;t know about you guys but when Kaniaz made this particular statement..
Yup this is the one..




> Vista Ultimate arrived today by the postman (who is called Bob, if anyone&#39;s interested).[/b]



I heard, in the background the pitter pat of a silent drum roll. The clouds parted way and Champange rained from the Heavens. It just gave me that warm and Fuzzy Feeling inside. Kaniaz did you sniff the inside of the box? Because there is nothing like the Smell of A Fresh New O.S. on an early afternoon Day. 

So *GO GO GO&#33;&#33;&#33;*  and Pimp that new O.S. Show it who&#39;s the boss around these parts  ::goodjob2:: 
With all that being said. It&#39;s been a while, I believe you have a good feel for it. SO tell us what&#39;s your favorite new features? The  3D Page Flipping or the way windows "drop" away when you close them or could it be the new Aero look, maybe it&#39;s the SPEED&#33;&#33; Maybe none of the above for ya. Yeah I know what you like best. It&#39;s written all over your face, you love the incredible amount of built in drivers and support for old hardware don&#39;t ya? Haha.. It&#39;s a wonderful Life. 

Have fun and enjoy&#33;&#33;&#33;  ::goodjob::

----------


## MSG

> This is the one, This particular installation will go donw in Dreamviews history for all the world to see. 
> 
> I don&#39;t know about you guys but when Kaniaz made this particular statement..
> Yup this is the one..
> I heard, in the background the pitter pat of a silent drum roll. The clouds parted way and Champange rained from the Heavens. It just gave me that warm and Fuzzy Feeling inside. Kaniaz did you sniff the inside of the box? Because there is nothing like the Smell of A Fresh New O.S. on an early afternoon Day. 
> 
> So *GO GO GO&#33;&#33;&#33;*  and Pimp that new O.S. Show it who&#39;s the boss around these parts 
> With all that being said. It&#39;s been a while, I believe you have a good feel for it. SO tell us what&#39;s your favorite new features? The  3D Page Flipping or the way windows "drop" away when you close them or could it be the new Aero look, maybe it&#39;s the SPEED&#33;&#33; Maybe none of the above for ya. Yeah I know what you like best. It&#39;s written all over your face, you love the incredible amount of built in drivers and support for old hardware don&#39;t ya? Haha.. It&#39;s a wonderful Life. 
> 
> ...



I have no clue if that&#39;s sucking up, sarcasm, jealousy, overenthusiasm, or what - so I&#39;m just going to try and ignore this.

----------


## Kaniaz

> Kaniaz did you sniff the inside of the box?[/b]



Only _twenty times._

----------


## TweaK

> I have no clue if that&#39;s sucking up, sarcasm, jealousy, overenthusiasm, or what - so I&#39;m just going to try and ignore this.
> [/b]



Me neither, I found that post really, and I mean _really_, awkward.

----------


## BohmaN

Don&#39;t have time to read but.... 
Is VISTA considerably better than XP?

----------


## Tsen

...read the thread.
You don&#39;t have time to read, I don&#39;t have time to summarize.

----------


## MSG

> Don&#39;t have time to read but.... 
> Is VISTA considerably better than XP?
> [/b]



Depends on what you mean by considerably.

To be honest, grandma wouldn&#39;t exactly notice any difference between the two besides the look. Even then she wouldn&#39;t care. For the average user, Vista isn&#39;t worth the money to upgrade. When buying a new computer, should they get Vista instead of XP? Definately. But for now, it&#39;s not important. Not until programs start switching over.

For the more advanced user, then definately. Vista, in my opinion, has more teeny tiny improvements scattered about, and not much more huge features. For instance, the networking has been improved tremendously. The new start menu / explorer interface is amazing. The control panel has been completely redone, the fact that it&#39;s searchable being even better. Could I ever go back to XP? Hardly, I&#39;ve got two computers, one fast one with XP and one not so fast one with Vista, I find myself using the Vista one despite the obvious performance benefits of the faster computer. That computer has since turned into a remote storage machine, basically.  :Sad: 

There&#39;s no "WOW" when you first get Vista (unless you&#39;re upgrading from 98 or something), however, over time, it starts to set in. For instance, you don&#39;t find yourself looking for files the day you get it, and SuperFetch has no program usage data to use in speeding up your system. I&#39;ve hardly been inconvenienced when using Vista, the only thing I don&#39;t like is the annoyance of UAC, and that&#39;s it really.

Vista is more of a move to restandardize computers (getting rid of compiled html help, for example) than an upgrade for the customers, but it&#39;s a big enough upgrade for me, and that&#39;s why I use it.

----------


## Kaniaz

> ...read the thread.
> You don&#39;t have time to read, I don&#39;t have time to summarize.[/b]

----------


## Ynot

> Don&#39;t have time to read but.... 
> Is VISTA considerably better than XP?
> [/b]



In a word, no.

The only real reason to switch to Vista, as far as I can see, is gaming

future DX10 games will only work with Vista
(unless some kind sole back-ports it onto XP)

Any other reasons?
not really

----------


## Kaniaz

_And that&#39;s an unbiased opinion&#33;_

----------


## Ne-yo

> (unless some kind sole back-ports it onto XP)
> [/b]




I&#39;ve thought about that and I may have to run it over to my homies and tell them to hook that up on G.P.

----------


## MSG

Of course future games will be back-compatible

They&#39;re gonna have some sort of setup where the game can run on DX9 without the nice shiny DX10 features. It&#39;ll _work_, but it won&#39;t be amazing.

----------


## TweaK

I don&#39;t know if it has changed in RTM because, hell, I haven&#39;t gamed on it yet, but when I gamed with RC2 it didn&#39;t really.. perform like it should.

I have a pretty new and good graphics card (GeForce 7800GT), I have 2Gigs of RAM and my lowest Windows Experience score is 4.2 followed by 5.3 (only to go upwards to 5.9), and I _still_ experienced framerate loss and stuff which I did not experience under XP.

I hope this has changed in RTM. Or maybe it&#39;s just the fact the games aren&#39;t optimised for Vista yet, and when they do it&#39;ll be able to run high-performance games at, well, high performance, without framerate losses. 

One can only hope.

----------


## Kaniaz

Or maybe it&#39;s something else. MSG reported that he was able to run games fine on Vista.

----------


## MSG

> ...I _still_ experienced framerate loss and stuff which I did not experience under XP.[/b]



I didn&#39;t experience any performance loss, like, at all, it was more just stuff breaking... for instance Battlefield 2142 needed admin rights in order for online play (so every time I play it, I have to right click and "run as administrator"), and the valve logo in any of the source games never showed up. Aero killed itself when running fullscreen, which is good, since games tend to be really really chunky and rape your computer.

----------


## Ynot

Just came across this,
thought I&#39;d post it   ::bigteeth::  

http://images.apple.com/movies/us/apple/ge...ity_480x376.mov

----------


## Kaniaz

> apple.com[/b]



Guess I can trust that to not be biased  :tongue2:

----------


## MSG

> Just came across this,
> thought I&#39;d post it   
> 
> http://images.apple.com/movies/us/apple/ge...ity_480x376.mov
> [/b]



Oh my god

I wouldn&#39;t have expected you to stoop so low as to side with _apple_

I will never understand you Linux people

----------


## Kaniaz

> I will never understand you Linux people[/b]



Your mom was a SuSE lover&#33;

_*crowd gasps*_

----------


## Tsen

Haha.
I just installed openSuSE...
I like it, it&#39;s definitely a lot better looking than Ubuntu, and more customizable, but it&#39;s not as easy to set up.  Still having troubles getting NTFS-3g installed (Which is now officially out of beta and into stable release, w00t), and video codecs are a pain.
BTW, Just for Kaniaz and MSG, I&#39;m installing Vista Ultimate Monday.  Provided I can find somebody with a DVD burner by Monday.  Yay for 280 seeds and 1400 leechers.

----------


## Kaniaz

And boo for fucking SuSE. What are you, a masochist?

----------


## Tsen

Haha, no.  Actually, I had a problem installing MEPIS, so I decided to try SuSE, since it&#39;s one of the top rated distros over at distrowatch.com.
Haven&#39;t decided whether I&#39;ll keep it yet.  I&#39;m looking towards PCLinuxOS, actually, since it&#39;s one of the slimmest KDE distros out there, and I need something that&#39;ll run fast and smooth on my older system.

----------


## MSG

> BTW, Just for Kaniaz and MSG, I&#39;m installing Vista Ultimate Monday.
> [/b]



Yay

Also, make sure your computer is brand new and costed &#036;9000, because if it didn&#39;t, it definately won&#39;t be compatible

----------


## 2Fruits

I should be getting Windows Vista sent out soon as well. My laptop (with XP) which I bought 3 months ago, came with a deal where as soon as Vista came out you pay &#036;5 US plus postage and handling for Vista&#33; Yay, w00t for Sony VAIO&#39;s&#33;
 :tongue2: 
I still don&#39;t know how quickly I&#39;ll be installing it when it comes... my heart kind of lies with XP...

----------


## Umbrasquall

Wow, Kaniaz, MSG, and Tweak are dominating this thread.

----------


## TweaK

Of course we are - We&#39;re the true _wista fanboyz&#33;&#33;_

----------


## dragon-architect

Can I pipe in a bit and add my two cents (not that it really matters since those two cents will get stolen my uber expensive Microsoft apps, but anyways)?

I&#39;m not much of a fan of apple _or_ microsoft. There. I said it.

I run Win XP on my laptop, and the thing has suffered through five stop errors, I dunno how many other app issues, and several adware/spyware problems. I attract PC problems, really. Just recently, my Windows Defender stopped working properly, so I had to completely remove the whole thing to get rid of the annoying popup box. I hate my dad&#39;s windows-equipped PC because everytime I turn around, I have to click "allow" so the stupid firewall will let me do stuff.

I have every intention of disabling all the built-in forewall stuff if I ever get Vista, and just installing my own firewall stuff that I can have more control over. Microsoft is basically building in too much autonomy into its stuff for me. I like a program where you set certain options, and it doesn&#39;t do anything else. All the microsoft apps I&#39;ve used to date since I first experienced XP seemed to have a mind of their own.

I just don&#39;t like apple because it&#39;s annoying, and a little bit cumbersome. I&#39;ve had to use apple computers before. Not only that, but all the white just makes hte bright computer screens worse.

However, I do have an Ubuntu 6.06 live CD that I burned, and I absolutely love it. I have no Linux experience, and I was able to configure several things on my own. My next laptop will have Ubuntu and (although regretfully) Vista Premium. The Windows is purely because there are games that I have that I would feel more comfortable running in a pure-Windows environment. However, the Ubuntu will be for more mundane, less flashy tasks.

----------


## Kaniaz

> five stop errors[/b]



WOW THAT&#39;S BAD

----------


## dragon-architect

> WOW THAT&#39;S BAD [/b]



No kidding. And each time, I had to wait an hour for my laptop to reboot and recover itself. *thumbsdown*

----------


## MSG

> I run Win XP on my laptop, and the thing has suffered through five stop errors
> [/b]



That&#39;s nothing, my computer had to suffer from a YEAR of Linux

----------


## Ne-yo

::wtf::  WTF is up with trying to Telnet in Vista? Can it be done?

*EDIT:* Disregard I figured it out  ::goodjob2::

----------


## dragon-architect

> That&#39;s nothing, my computer had to suffer from a YEAR of Linux [/b]



How is Linux worse than Windows? It&#39;s more stable.

----------


## IceMan

Vista, Vista, Vista. I have to say that I tried a version of it and I thought the only good thing about it was the style, which had improved vastly since XP, however it isn&#39;t a good operating system, the backwards compatibility isn&#39;t good (you could say it was facing the wrong way) and even some of professional IT people I know think it&#39;s bad. I mean, yes I&#39;d use it for the styles, but why get it when you can download and install Ubuntu easily and freely and then update it online? Saves the trouble of paying £200 everytime your operating system is out of date.

----------


## Kaniaz

> How is Linux worse than Windows? It&#39;s more stable.[/b]



That&#39;s a very matter-of-fact claim, and also very wrong.





> the backwards compatibility isn&#39;t good[/b]



Why not? Examples? Every single program I&#39;ve worked with from XP to Vista has had no troubles. And I use a lot of programs.





> but why get it when you can download and install Ubuntu easily and freely and then update it online?[/b]



Because there&#39;s no such thing as a free lunch. Sure the OS is free, but it took me 10x longer to set up because of wireless cards and driver support (which "isn&#39;t Linux&#39;s fault", I&#39;m told, but from my point of view, why should I even give a sweet damn because it &#39;works on Windows&#39;?) to receive the reward of a crappy UI and feeling like I&#39;ve participated in some wonderful ritual that makes the world more &#39;free&#39;. Unfortunately, my time is money too.





> Saves the trouble of paying £200 everytime your operating system is out of date.[/b]



In the six years from XP to Vista? We&#39;re talking about you finding _nine pence a day_ over six years to accumulate that monumental £200, and there&#39;s no reason to even update your OS if you can&#39;t afford that wallet burning figure. Heck, I can find more money than that every day just lying in the street.

----------


## MSG

> How is Linux worse than Windows? It&#39;s more stable.
> [/b]

----------


## Tsen

Well, before these guys flame you too much,
I&#39;m an Ubuntu Linux user as well.  Simultaneously, I&#39;m running Windows XP Pro, and I&#39;m installing Vista Ultimate today.
So, here&#39;s a somewhat less biased view of the differences:

-NO, Linux is not more stable.  Provided you&#39;re not an utter moron, Windows is a pretty damn stable OS.  However, if you ARE an utter moron, you shouldn&#39;t be anywhere near Linux.
-YES, it IS free, and NO, that is not a bad thing.  Kaniaz had trouble with wireless drivers, and that is one of the weak points of Linux (which is being worked on extensively), but other than wireless and 56k modem drivers, Linux installs and runs perfectly and hassle-free on just about everything.  I actually had more trouble installing my wireless card in Windows than I did in Linux--Windows kept insisting it was an ethernet card.
-YES, Linux is virus-free.  However, provided you don&#39;t do anything stupid, Windows won&#39;t get viruses.  

Now, why I use Linux:
-More powerful tools and better control over my PC.  Linux disk partitioners kick the arse of Windows partitioners.  Further, Linux distros are extremely configurable.  I can make three distro&#39;s on one PC all get certain information from a single partition, making it so that I can share my application settings and configurations across multiple OS&#39;s (not including Windows).
-It&#39;s free, and none the worse for it.  Ever tried Amarok?  It&#39;s my idol among open source apps.  It kicks the hell out of every single one of it&#39;s competitors.  Firefox trumps IE.  Open Office...well, alright.  I&#39;ll give Windows a point there.  :tongue2: 
-It&#39;s shiny.  With Beryl or Compiz running graphics, Linux can do things Vista&#39;s Aero can only dream of.  Yeah, the whole cube thing is stupid, but it&#39;s got tons of other features that make it incredibly useful.
-No "Windows Genuine Advantage&#33;" pop ups.  No validation.  It&#39;s free, so it&#39;s unencumbered by all that jazz.  Although seriously, who came up with the name "Genuine Advantage"?  Makes me want to slap them every time.
-No reboots.  In Windows, you install just about anything and you&#39;ve got to reboot.  In Linux, the only thing that requires a reboot is a kernel change, and those don&#39;t happen that often.

Why I use Windows:
-It works.  Windows is popular, so people write software for Windows.  You can expect more (though not always better) support for a Windows product than you can the Linux alternative.
-The variety.  Once again, due to Window&#39;s popularity, there&#39;s a lot of developers out there.
-uTorrent.  It deserves it&#39;s own point.
-It&#39;s idiot-proofed.  It&#39;s easy to bork your system up in Linux if you do something stupid.  Linux, though it&#39;s trying to be more user-friendly, still assumes that you know what you&#39;re doing--for better or worse.  Windows, it&#39;s a bit tougher to screw up THAT bad.  Though, that safety net comes at the cost of making advanced tasks in Windows a bit tougher.
-It&#39;s prettier.  Compiz and Beryl make your window borders look all shiny, and they have some pretty good effects, but that doesn&#39;t do squat for your taskbar--and simply put, Gnome, KDE and X are all UGLY. 
-Photoshop.  Sure, Linux has GIMP, but GIMP, is...well, a gimp.  It bites, HARD.

----------


## Ne-yo

> Vista, Vista, Vista. I have to say that I tried a version of it and I thought the only good thing about it was the style, which had improved vastly since XP, however it isn&#39;t a good operating system[/b]



Why isn&#39;t it a good OS? I feel that it is for serveral reasons.Vista is pretty outstanding and much more secure. if its administered properly, then it has no problem with day-to-day operational stability._IE7_ running on Vista takes things to the next level. Running in protected mode, _forget about it_, the browser is totally isolated from the rest of the operating system and actively protects against malicious code. This alone is worth the price of admission.  ::goodjob2::  Have you ever paid attention to computers on T.V.? They never run XP, nor do they run anything that looks close to openSuSe 10.2. or OSX Those computers on T.V. run slick looking state of the art user interfaces, kinda&#39; like Vista. You see Vistas user interface is actually pretty slick and might even look good on CSI. With all of the Aero elements enabled I&#39;ll even go as far as putting it on the freaking Enterprise and it would still look good.  This is how an OS should look in the 21st century. All and all Vista looks good and it&#39;s quite usable and friendly.




> the backwards compatibility isn&#39;t good (you could say it was facing the wrong way) and even some of progessional IT people I know think it&#39;s bad. [/b]



What&#39;s wrong with the backwards compatibility? Facing the wrong way  ::wtf::  have you gone loco? That&#39;s because your outside looking in my friend, you&#39;re engaged in mirror mode. I always run my application using MSI API&#39;s sometimes (_e.g. MsiInstallProduct(), MsiInstallPatch() etc_.) and yes it works, not only does it works but it works well my friend, it works well.

Now on another note I have installed opensuse 10.2 on my older athlon box, and it runs pretty damn good. However it didnt find my netgear wifi card, as Suse 10 retail version does. All in all 10.2 is really nice and I think I will now move my x64 AMD to this code level, as it feels good, and even more polished than 10.0. Now granted Suse needs RAM to run, but not as much as Vista considering Vista is just playing out to be a resource<strike>hog</strike>(ful) OS But I Love it.

----------


## dragon-architect

This one goes to Tsen:

I find Linux (Ubuntu to be more specific) to be more appealing because it&#39;s not 100% idiot-proofed. That&#39;s pretty much why I don&#39;t like Windows that much. Granted there&#39;s more variety, and it&#39;s easier to install software, but the computer practically has a mind of its own&#33; XP

I do know what I&#39;m doing ot a certain degree. Heck, I managed to get Ubuntu to identify and use my laptop&#39;s built-in wireless within five minutes of tinkering around with the settings in the live CD. And I even remember what I did to get it to work.

What I don&#39;t like about Windows is that so many stuff comes already preconfigured, and it&#39;s hard as hell to change the "factory settings." I should know. I spent two hours trying to get the crappy built-in MSN messenger to stop signing on on startup, and it still kept signing in until I switched to the less self-reliant WLM.

I&#39;d rather take time to preconfigure a lot of apps, and _then_ let them sit and do their stuff. I like to know what my software is doing rather than trying to keep up with my own computer and going "What the [email protected] is it doing _this time&#33;&#33;??_"

Of course, I seem to attract annoying problems with Windows. :B

I just like to have more control over what my computer is doing, and I&#39;m just very uncomfortable with Windows because it doesn&#39;t let me have that control. I can&#39;t fine-tune anything at all, I&#39;ve had to completely uninstall or disable _several_ built-in Windows features, and I find it to be just a bit too... shall I say... "automatic?"

That&#39;s prolly why I absolutely loved AVG and still love Avast&#33; Home. They&#39;re more discreet and autonomous than Norton ever was. God I&#39;m never going back to corporate AV apps. x_x

Avast&#33; also doesn&#39;t bug me about every little thing I do like Norton did.

----------


## Kaniaz

To stop it from loading on startup, you check a box. I think it&#39;s possible your computer gained sentience somewhere along the line.

But yes, Norton is _crap._ I would recommend it to no man, except maybe my enemy.

----------


## TweaK

> I spent two hours trying to get the crappy built-in MSN messenger to stop signing on on startup, and it still kept signing in until I switched to the less self-reliant WLM.[/b]



Uh, _two hours_? Edit -> Settings -> [X] Start Messenger when Windows Starts -> UNCHECK

*Done*

That&#39;s the first place any idiot would look.

----------


## dragon-architect

> Uh, _two hours_? Edit -> Settings -> [X] Start Messenger when Windows Starts -> UNCHECK
> 
> *Done*
> 
> That&#39;s the first place any idiot would look. 
>  [/b]



I had checked and unchecked that stupid little box I can&#39;t remember how many times during those two hours. The thing kept resetting itself.

And, yes, I also clicked the OK button to "save" the settings.

----------


## Tsen

I actually had the same problem a week ago when I was installing XP Pro.  For some reason, Windows kept changing the setting back when I rebooted.  Soft restarts, and I saved the settings.  I think it was because of system updates, but I&#39;m note entirely sure.

EDIT: BTW, now that I&#39;m on Vista, I must say I REALLY like how it uses RAM.  Everything&#39;s sped up considerably, the system feels much more responsive.  And to be honest, it&#39;s good to see 512 MB of RAM actually going to work at something.

----------


## dragon-architect

> EDIT: BTW, now that I&#39;m on Vista, I must say I REALLY like how it uses RAM.  Everything&#39;s sped up considerably, the system feels much more responsive.  And to be honest, it&#39;s good to see 512 MB of RAM actually going to work at something. [/b]



How does it allocate the RAM?

If I&#39;m ever to get Vista, I&#39;d at least have to double my laptop&#39;s current RAM. *faints*

----------


## Kaniaz

Intelligently. RAM that would otherwise be laying around is cached (depending on what Vista thinks you would be most likely to run or use next), lowering speed times when it is able to call that RAM into use and bam - half of what you need is already loaded. The RAM can still be used for other activities, though, if a program requests more of it.

It&#39;s a much better use of what would otherwise be a waste of space.

----------


## dragon-architect

> Intelligently. RAM that would otherwise be laying around is cached (depending on what Vista thinks you would be most likely to run or use next), lowering speed times when it is able to call that RAM into use and bam - half of what you need is already loaded. The RAM can still be used for other activities, though, if a program requests more of it.
> 
> It&#39;s a much better use of what would otherwise be a waste of space. [/b]



Now that&#39;s really interesting. I just wish that I wouldn&#39;t have to buy a new computer just to even _think_ about getting it. T_T

----------


## Ynot

it&#39;s nothing special
it&#39;s what an OS is supposed to do
managing and allocating system resources to any and all programs running on that OS

----------


## Wolffe

> I would recommend it to no man, except maybe my enemy.
> [/b]



I lol&#39;d

----------


## IceMan

> Because there&#39;s no such thing as a free lunch.
> [/b]



That&#39;s exactly what it says in the Ubuntu advert:





> No such thing as a free lunch* 
> (*Only when buying a timeshare villa in Spain)
> 
> Ubuntu is free and unlike other things, comes with no catches or charges.
> Free doesn&#39;t have to cheap plastic tat that breaks easily&#33;
> [/b]



so you see Linux was a few steps ahead of you there.

----------


## Kaniaz

What? "There&#39;s no such thing as a free lunch, but we&#39;re giving away this free lunch anyway". _Totally_ see your point.





> it&#39;s nothing special
> it&#39;s what an OS is supposed to do
> managing and allocating system resources to any and all programs running on that OS[/b]



No. Vista is the only OS (although perhaps Linux does it and doesn&#39;t make a big marketing brouhaha out of it) I know of that caches RAM for something that does not actually want to run at that particular moment in time, but _might._ Just look at XP. It will certainly allocate system resources when a program asks for them, but Vista tries to pre-empt this asking for them which is why you have, say, 512MB "free" RAM on XP and 0MB "free" on Vista. I say "free" because, like I explained, the cached RAM can soon be loaded with something else.

An OS is supposed to manage and allocate system resources, of course, but there are different approaches to that. Vista takes the "maybe this will run next, let&#39;s get it preloaded" method instead of XP, which is "I&#39;ll just scrabble to load everything as fast as possible when the program asks and never try to be one step ahead". Thus XP is rather laggy and caught off guard at times, whereas Vista at least makes the attempt to stay agile.

Frankly I don&#39;t see why it took so long to implement either, but it&#39;s there. It makes the way XP manages memory seem almost criminal with so much RAM just sitting by. I don&#39;t know what Linux does. Good question, actually. To be honest I bet they&#39;ve got a million ways if you "just patch your kernel".

Yes, I&#39;m very bad at explaining, but you can see the difference.

----------


## lefkos

i have the release candate 
my sister has a boyfriend who know lots of microsofts people(he&#39;s very handy with computers and stuff)
it only looks nicer  and sins DX 10 is not out yet i dont put it on my computer

----------


## Ynot

Kaniaz, are you talking about prefetching?

Ram is quite fast (it has to be)
but it still takes time, as the ram and processor are separate bits of hardware
so modern processors have caches of memory onboard
it serves as a faster go between

the wizardry is in the hardware, not the software operating system

all the OS has to do is be aware that memory caching is possible on the processor, and know how to hook into it correctly

----------


## Tsen

No, it&#39;s different than prefetching.  Well, sort of.  Same principle, applied to a different part of the computer.  Vista actually loads entire programs up into the RAM before you start them.  That cuts out all of the time for loading the data from the hard drive to the RAM, in a similar way to the processor prefetches.

----------


## MSG

Yes. It monitors what programs you like to use and when, and after a while, it can pretty accurately "guess" what program you&#39;re going to run and at what time.

Sometimes, doing the thinking for the user isn&#39;t all that bad

----------


## Ynot

ahh, fair enough

----------


## TweaK

> i have the release candate 
> my sister has a boyfriend who know lots of microsofts people(he&#39;s very handy with computers and stuff)
> it only looks nicer  and sins DX 10 is not out yet i dont put it on my computer
> [/b]



Having the release candidate is nothing special, it&#39;s going to expire in a couple of months anyway. The release candidate has been out since, what, October?

----------


## Kaniaz

> only looks nicer[/b]



_Please_ stop saying that. I didn&#39;t make 40+ posts in this thread talking all about it to have someone say that, surely, it&#39;s only looks nicer (because you&#39;ve only "looked" at it?)

----------


## TweaK

Sure, the sparkling mind-boggling prettiness is something great, but there are equally great underneath-the-skin options, fixes, tweaks, features, and so on.

----------


## Ne-yo

I&#39;d buy that for a dollar&#33; I would&#39;ve forked over &#036;500 for Ulimate, just so Microsoft could have and [x]tra &#036;100 in mad money or to give its programmers a little vacation on me  ::chuckle::

----------


## TweaK

> I&#39;d buy that for a dollar&#33; I would&#39;ve forked over &#036;500 for Ulimate, just so Microsoft could have and [x]tra &#036;100 in mad money or to give its programmers a little vacation on me 
> [/b]



I .. don&#39;t get that post.

----------


## Ne-yo

I just like that Microsoft has Mad Money and I&#39;m pretty proud to be a contributor. If I had access to your bank account tweak you know what I&#39;ll do with that 4 dollars you have in there? You guessed it, Give it to those guys over there at Microsoft to add to their 9.1Billion dollars in Crazy MAD Money. _(<-----May not be accurate gestimating_)

----------


## TweaK

4 Dollars eh? I&#39;m _rich_. RICH I TELL YOU.

----------


## Artelis

> 4 Dollars eh? I&#39;m _rich_. RICH I TELL YOU.[/b]



Half as rich as you were.

----------


## IceMan

As far as I&#39;m aware I thought that Bill Gates and his company were worth an excess of &#036;49billion.

----------


## Ne-yo

> As far as I&#39;m aware I thought that Bill Gates and his company were worth an excess of &#036;49billion.[/b]



You&#39;re probably right, hence the _<strike>g</strike>estimation._ If so, then that would make it even more MAD and CrAzY Money. You can buy Earth with that kind of money, it&#39;s ridiculous loot I tell ya&#33; Ridiculous&#33;&#33;

----------


## TweaK

Right, let&#39;s get back ontopic shall we?

I wonder when the first security patch will come out..

----------


## MSG

Psssh

Vista is so Q1 2007

It&#39;s all about Vienna now

----------


## TweaK

Of course, you&#39;re right. CLOSE TOPIC PLX.

----------


## i_speel_good

For hell&#39;s sake...

----------


## Ynot

http://news.com.com/Dell+brings+back+XP+on...ml?tag=nefd.top

----------


## TweaK

> "They know that XP works," Bhavnani said. "It&#39;s not that they don&#39;t want to upgrade to Vista. They just don&#39;t want to upgrade to Vista yet."[/b]



I think that&#39;s correct. I think the sudden change to suddenly make everything switch to Vista might&#39;ve been just a little too soon.

----------


## AndyNZ

I&#39;m not touching Vista till its been out for AT LEAST a year...

----------


## TweaK

Yes, perfect argument. You totally convinced me _why_ exactly. Keep up the good work&#33;

----------


## MSG

Because he&#39;s a slave to symantec

_Join the Microsoft crowd, we have cookies&#33;_

----------


## Burns

My hubby just built me a new PC with Vista, and I must say, I like it! It's so pretty  ::D:

----------


## Adam

Yeah Vista is good. Unless you have a really OLD PC the transition should be smooth to upgrade!

----------


## Tsen

My opinion is still overall negative.  It uses a lot of resources but doesn't do a whole lot that could be considered "groundbreaking".  And I still think Aero is bunk.  Beryl is just as "shiny" (and, at times, just as pointless), and can run on a five year old PC without problems--INCLUDING full transparency.

----------


## Ynot

Vista has failed
there's no two ways about it

It's come at the wrong time,
Offering the wrong features,
And going in the wrong direction

It started even before most people had heard of Longhorn / Vista
A lot of the new technology that would have set Vista apart from XP was dropped.  Of the features that did stay, most were gimmicky and people know it
I've gone over these features before, so I won't repeat myself

Rightly or wrongly, people view Vista as the pinnacle of in-built DRM content control and (possible) limitation & refusal

Say "DRM" to the guy in the street, and he'll moan about CD's authored by Sony, his 2-year-old "HD Ready" TV, and MS Vista
(I'll come back to TV's in a sec)

At a time when both Apple & EMI records have ditched DRM from their offerings, and the comical situation HD-DVD & Blu-Ray are in at the moment
No-one wants DRM

What's more, is the market today
computers have traditionally had a nice, steady, predictable price
£500 for a basic office workstation
£800-1000 for a full on gaming rig
etc.

But over the last 5 years or so, these prices have dropped like a stone
My machine at work cost my boss £300, inc. 17" flat panel
It's hardly anything to write home about, but it works fine

People have gotten used to these "_low, low prices"_ and people need a lot of convincing to spend more

When Vista was announced, but not yet released
retailers were encouraged to slap "Vista Ready", or "Vista Capable" stickers over their existing XP stock, and some of the larger retailers had vouchers with every machine for a free upgrade to Vista when it was released
(I have 4 vouchers in my drawer right now)

The issue was, that these machines were far from "Vista Capable"
at least not the Vista people had seen on the adverts
No 3D flipping or glassy windows on that machine, no sir-ee

The exact same thing had happened two years ago with "HD Ready" TV's that really weren't ready (and you know what, that was publicised far more and affected far more people than any OS could)

All it needed was a couple of stories & bad reviews, and people now equate "Vista Ready" machines with the same distrust in marketing as the HD-TV's of yester-year

Onto more current issues,
Anyone who follows the IT trade news will know that even those features that made it into Vista are now under threat
What with Google forcing MS to completely re-work the Desktop Search app

Not to mention the horde of cross-patent agreements MS are signing with Linux vendors at the moment
(A very strong indication that MS is going to venture into the *nix area in the future - or at least give a future windows incarnation a *nix backbone, a la OS X)

Nope, Vista is going into the failure bin
along with DOS 4.01, MS-Bob, Windows 98 First Edition & Windows ME

Will it make any difference
probably not

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## MSG

> Say "DRM" to the guy in the street, and he'll moan about CD's authored by Sony, his 2-year-old "HD Ready" TV, and MS Vista



Actually, say "DRM" to the guy in the street and he won't say anything. Tech stuff like this generally doesn't make it out to the public, but instead stays where it originated - on the internet. I'm not sure how the situation is in the UK, but everyone that I've talked to about DRM knows very little, if anything. Say "DRM" at a tech convention, sure, you'll get some moaning, but anywhere else people will just be like "wtf you tokin about".

Another thing I don't get is how grossly overhyped the Vista DRM has been - In the months that I've been using Vista, not once has it had any problems playing any music I threw at it whatsoever (compared to linux and it's drivers, oh the drivers). Right now I currently have my entire (90% pirated) music collection shared across the network to my Vista computer _using Windows Media Player 11_. The DRM just isn't there as long as you avoid buying defective products like Blu-Ray/HD-DVD and Songs from napster and whatnot. Vista simply behaves better with DRMed material than previous OSes, under obligation of the music industry.

Sites like badvista are just comical, however, don't they know anything about marketing? It's even worse than that one joke of a Linux commercial that Red Hat made, it only appeals to the people who already agree. Somebody having no previous knowledge of Linux, viewing the commercial, frowns at it's hostility and moves on. If I cared, I'd make a better one.

God today's been a shitty day

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## blade5x

> People have gotten used to these "_low, low prices"_ and people need a lot of convincing to spend more.



I wouldn't call today's gamings computers cheap. You put together a Core2Duo+Mobo and a 8800GTS and you are already at about $600 not including the monitor, speakers, RAM, hard drive, and etc.

It's just that the hardware side of things has gotten so far ahead of the software side things, cheap machines that cost $400-$500 total are capable of running a lot of today's applications and games at a perfectly acceptable speed.

I don't think Vista will fail... Remember how terrible XP was when it was first released? And now I love the OS - I never have any issues with it. But with that being said, maybe next year when Vista matures, and actually has a reason to upgrade (like DirectX10 gaming for example).

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## Ynot

Gaming machines have never been cheap, for obvious reasons
but, the fact you think $600 (about £350) for a dual core processor and top-end graphics card is expensive, merely underlines my point  :wink2:

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