Pleasantly Surprised with Vista

[jbaerbock]

So I have been a supporter of Ubuntu and disliker of windows for awhile but I gotta say I got this new computer with Vista Home Premium and am pleasantly surprised. Having a home folder and whatknot remminds me of a lot of the things i liked in Ubuntu. So for now I'm sticking with Vista.

3gb of Ram helps too hehe.

[cdtech]

As a multi OS advocate myself I find Vista very useful. I myself run three different operating systems on my laptop, each handling it's own capabilities and expectations.

I become to bored isolating myself to only one OS..........:)

[lisati]

Who says we should limit ourselves to one OS? Some tools suit some jobs better than others.

[cdtech]

Who says we should limit ourselves to one OS? Some tools suit some jobs better than others.

Isolating not limiting. :)

[jbaerbock]

Yup multi OS is fun. But im too lazy this time around lol.

[flytripper]

I'm just happy to be free from having to buy new hardware to do tasks my current hardware is more than capable of doing. And also free from the microsoft " you changed your hardware, I wont work anymore hal" (at least i think its the hal that decides)

[karellen]

Vista is ok (if you have a decent PC) and in time it will be the next "old good XP" (I believe I'll see this line very often after Windows 7's release)

[jbaerbock]

Well I needed a new PC and wanted one capable of playing todays games so end result was something that could easily run Vista.

[rockface]

So I have been a supporter of Ubuntu and disliker of windows for awhile but I gotta say I got this new computer with Vista Home Premium and am pleasantly surprised. Having a home folder and whatknot remminds me of a lot of the things i liked in Ubuntu. So for now I'm sticking with Vista.

3gb of Ram helps too hehe.

The truth of the matter is that 'the best tool for the job' is nearly always the correct mantra.

I dislike Vista but have to use XP for certain legacy software (old games, multimedia etc).

'3gb of Ram helps too hehe' is a telling statement. Neither XP or any version of Linux I know of needs this amount of ram to run smoothly.

[jbaerbock]

True that, but again I knew I wanted that much so why not put it to good use. It is expandable to 8gb so if Microsofts next OS needs that much I'll be ready.

[Midwest-Linux]

Vista has a good hard drive shrink partition program.

[Sand & Mercury]

I like DWM... apart from that I was quite unimpressed, but well, if you strip back its annoying new features what you're left with is a prettier XP essentially, so I was happy with that.

[LaRoza]

Vista has a good hard drive shrink partition program.

Which only works with two file system types ;)

It is something Vista can do, alter a mounted partition, but there is a reason why Linux doesn't let you do that.

As for Vista itself, it isn't "bad", it is just not worth its cost.

[Dr. C]

Vista is defective by design. Enough said.

[tamoneya]

how are those virii treating you?

[3rdalbum]

Vista isn't too bad except for the RAM bloat, but Windows users hate it because it's different from XP.

If Windows 7 isn't just XP with newer software and drivers, there will be a riot.

[Sand & Mercury]

It is something Vista can do, alter a mounted partition, but there is a reason why Linux doesn't let you do that.
Why is that? Just out of curiosity.

[LaRoza]

Why is that? Just out of curiosity.

It isn't safe.

[Bachstelze]

Tried Vista for a bit and also kind of liked what I saw, but I don't think I will switch to it. I would if there were only XP and Vista available, but since I do all my daily stuff in Linux and use Windows only for video processing, it seems a bit overkill to switch to Vista just for that.

(On the other had, if you gave me 64bit-optimized AviSynth and plugins...)

[fiddledd]

Tried Vista for a bit and also kind of liked what I saw, but I don't think I will switch to it. I would if there were only XP and Vista available, but since I do all my daily stuff in Linux and use Windows only for video processing, it seems a bit overkill to switch to Vista just for that.

(On the other had, if you gave me 64bit-optimized AviSynth and plugins...)

Vista might actually be faster at some video, although I can't be certain. Here's the times I got, decide for yourself:)

avi to mpeg2 using Qenc and avisynth:

On the Desktop in my sig running XP it took 12 min to encode.

On the Laptop in my sig running Vista 32 bit it took 13 min

I've rounded it to mins just to illustrate the point, but I would have expected the C2D 6300 to out perform the C2D T5450 by a higher margin than that.
Like I said, it might be faster.

[Jim!]

Vista is ok (if you have a decent PC) and in time it will be the next "old good XP" (I believe I'll see this line very often after Windows 7's release)

I'm thinking Vista is going to become something similar to Windows ME and Windows 7 will be the "new XP". @OP, Its good to see your happy with Vista:) Have you switched from Ubuntu/Linux completely or do you still use Ubuntu for certain tasks?

[jbaerbock]

My laptop is Ubuntu but it overheats fast hence the new computer. And my new computer has a geforce 6100se card that I have yet to figure out how to get running in Ubuntu so not much choice but to stick to Vista. But Vista is not that painful. When my hardware is supported I'd probably switch to Ubuntu again. And Vista is loads better and more stable than ME. ME just plain sucked the big one.

[insane_alien]

well, i'm much more pleased with vista than before to be sure. just got to work out all these teething problems.

i also note from my notebook back in my win98 days that these are the same problems i had 8 years ago on windows. well, except wireless issues but they've disappeared for now.

i've forgot so much about using this thing. still it IS satisfying my urge to tinker with things. linux was getting boring here as nothing NEEDED tinkering with.

i decided to overcome the bloat on this by getting a pretty powerful laptop but it still feels titanic.

in a month i'll likely be back on ubuntu.

[karellen]

I'm thinking Vista is going to become something similar to Windows ME and Windows 7 will be the "new XP". @OP, Its good to see your happy with Vista:) Have you switched from Ubuntu/Linux completely or do you still use Ubuntu for certain tasks?

I dual boot Mandriva 2008.1 and Vista :). I like to keep my options open

[jbaerbock]

I'll prolly end up dual booting down the road but until then as someone above said it is satisfying a need to tinker.

[screaminj3sus]

I'm thinking Vista is going to become something similar to Windows ME and Windows 7 will be the "new XP". @OP, Its good to see your happy with Vista:) Have you switched from Ubuntu/Linux completely or do you still use Ubuntu for certain tasks?

Comparing Windows vista to ME = fail . ME was almost DOA when it was released, they were already nearly finished with a much more stable NT OS. ME was dead before it started, it was Incredibly unstable. Vista is a generally stable OS, changes to the driver ect.. help eliminate BSOD's for things like video driver crashes (Instead your screen will flicker and it says "You're driver crashed but has been reloaded") Windows 7 WILL be very similar to vista, it is built on top of vista. In vista a lot of the windows core was rewritten and many new technologies introduced which Windows 7 will build on.

On my mid range machine vista is not slow AT ALL. it is more responsive than Ubuntu even, so I'm not sure where all this speed bashing comes from, I haven't even tweaked my vista install at all and it boots a couple seconds faster than ubuntu. (30 seconds to the desktop from bios http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPDQEykE1dE )

If there is any real criticism in vista is it is even less customizable than xp (Which is already way more restricted than linux) in a lot of places, like the windows explorer layout ect.. and they completely unnecessarily reorganized the control panel making it worse and my favorite, the incredibly annoying folder view bug. Also on very low specced machines it chugs, but any cheap $500 PC with 2 or more gigs of ram and a dual core runs it flawlessly.. But honestly vista is a decent improvement over xp albeit overhyped.

I also see many comments still today about how vista is $400 dollars. First of all you can download it straight from Microsoft for $219 for Ultimate. And Home premium is only a little over $100 dollars from places like newegg or from microsoft,

[Giant Speck]

I'm thinking Vista is going to become something similar to Windows ME and Windows 7 will be the "new XP".

I was kind of thinking the same thing.

I love Vista, though. A lot more than ME. I hated ME. I can't wait for Windows 7.

I wonder if it's going to be released as "Windows 7" or if they'll release it with an actual name like Vista.

[jbaerbock]

Think it is funny that after the long wait for Vista suddenly they decide lets change the name and add some pointless features so people buy from us again hehe.