FF:WA Vista

I took the plunge and installed Vista. I've heard a lot of bad things about it but I just can't bear to go too long without having the latest stuff. Razz
Anyway, after installing all my apps, games etc and using it for a bit all I can think is why didn't I get this weeks ago? Curse my foolishness in listening to all the naysayers. Vista rocks!
Every app, game, and hardware component has worked flawlessly. In several cases I had to get new drivers and patches etc but I wouldn't expect otherwise for a new OS. There's no big improvement but every time I use it I notice some little new thing and think man that's a good idea.
I guess every time a new version of Windows comes out, there's always problems but in my experience I've found that most of those problems aren't problems with Windows. Rather they're problems with hardware vendors not doing a good job of making sure their drivers are up to date (Creative and Logitech have always been some of the worst culprits). For instance, at the moment, Sony Ericsson haven't got phone sync software for Vista yet but I can live with that for now since I normally sync my phone with my laptop anyway.
Overall, I've found the switch to Vista has been far easier and painless than the switch from 98 to XP or the switch from 3.1 to 95. I've actually found some apps that I cound never get working in XP that now work with Vista.
I suppose not everyone will have the same experience but with all I've heard about problems people have had, I have to wonder if they're doing everything properly. As long as you take care to make sure you've got the right drivers, updates etc there shouldn't be any big issues. I found it a piece of cake to get up and running.

I suppose I should add that I've got a pretty high spec machine and obviously Vista might not be so hot on older computers but let's face it - No-one would expect the latest games to run smoothly on a 3 year old machine. It would be just as naive to think the latest OS would run nicely on older machines.

 

It certainly is faster and easier to install than XP or 98, at least on the "Home Basic" version. Did you pick up that one or one of those superduper bells-and-whistles versions I've seen around?

No complaints about Vista from here, either.

 

Home premium for me so I got the bells and whistles. One thing I've noticed a lot of is that a lot of my old software is no longer needed. I had a heap of utilities of varying quality that I no longer need since Vista has similar utilities built in (which are usually better). Only one I can't get rid of is my little utility to synchronise files between my laptop/phone/external hard drive etc. Vista does have a utility which does that but it's only available in the enterprise and ultimate editions. So far it's the only thing I've found that I can't get without going to the ultimate edition and I can live with that. Especially since buying a stand alone program which does that for $20 odd is a lot better than the extra couple of hundred for the ultimate edition of Vista.

 

soneil, is it possible that you, me, and the Jawa are the only people still alive in Western Australia?

 

If stinky & I ever stop posting in here then you'll know it's time to bring on the tumbleweeds. We were the originals.

 

Don't forget me.

Though I do agree this place has been getting quieter and quieter as time goes by.

 

Maybe we should get Shadow back off the ban to create life again.

 

If that doesn't work we could always create a shadow sock.

 

Home premium working well here...

Running a bit slow despite my large chunks of memory, but then again the PC is getting onto 2 years old (in August), graphics card wise it's still coping.. just not very well at high detail.

 

Several weeks on and still working flawlessly. I did find a couple of things that wouldn't work with it. One thing was the game Darkstar One. Not a realy gibbie since I was already through playing that game. The other was that I've been spending a lot of time recording all my vinyl on the my PC using Adobe Audition. Turns out the version of Audition's not compatible with the new windows recording mixer. All of Audition's functions work fine and I can play records so they play through my PC but when I record in Audition it doesn't pick up the sound from my soundcard's line plug. I'll be getting the new version of Audition but in the meantime I've installed XP on my machine so I can boot in to that when I need to do some recording. I can easily remove the XP install when I get the newer version of Audition and to be honest, I really don't like having to work in XP now I'm used to Vista. It's kinda like watching a VCR on an old tv if you're used to watching DVDs on a nice new quality telly.

 

Still weighing up whether to upgrade to Vista here. I'm just worried that some of my old games won't work anymore...I had that problem a lot when I went to XP from '98SE.

 

If you want to hedge your bets a dual boot with Vista and XP is a piece of cake. apcmag.com has some great guides for several different ways of setting up a dual boot. I've only come accross the one game that won't work though. All of the big games I've tried work fine. In the case of The Sims I needed to download a match to make it Vista compatible but with the patch there's no issues I've noticed. You really need to make sure your system's fast though with plenty of RAM otherwise Vista might not be so great. If you can run games like FEAR with the options dialed up to max and still get a nice framerate then you'd probably manage Vista fine.