Windows Vista

Post by **KrAzYdAvE** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:23 am

So I got my free copy or business edition in the mail 3 weeks ago and finally got around to installing it tonight...

The "Aero" thing is cool, but pretty much worthless.
If you ask me, it reminds me in many ways of Mac OSX
Some things are cool so far, and some things seem pretty stupid. And of course they had to make some things 5 times harder to find, like the "create a new connection" icon! FFS, all I want to do is create a VPN connection!

But overall, I like it...

Anyone else playing with it yet?

TooLBlue · Post by **TooLBlue** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:59 am

If I get it for free I'll try it.

Post by **KrAzYdAvE** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:17 am

Here's something pretty cool...
The sidebar has gadgets and I found this one that monitors up to 3 servers... So now I can see easilly if anyone is playing on our servers...
Sweet!

Post by **KrAzYdAvE** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:50 am

TooLBlue wrote:If I get it for free I'll try it.

You mean, when you get a computer than can actually run it also? lol

Post by **D.A.R.K.[CotC]** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 3:42 am

I keep hearing that it's too early to upgrade to Vista, for many reasons. First off, there is no Tech. support yet for Vista. Secondly, Vista right now seems to want to use up a lot, and I mean A LOT, of the computer's resources while idle, running background stuff. It takes up at least 512 MB of ram with these background things, that don't even show up in the processes as using memory. There's also a few compatability issues as some companies are still developing drivers and whatnot for Vista itself.

Post by **Neophyte** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 3:48 pm

I've read that OpenGL isn't in Vista final version. DirectX 10 and Windows Gaming for PC sounds really nice, but I still want to be backwards compatible. I'll stay with XP for a while until things are sorted.

At work, I'm not even sure what Novell products are supported under Vista. I'm not too concerned with all the RAM and CPU burden that Vista places on a computer.

One thing is for certain, Vista is a lot more security conscious than Mac or XP. In many ways that is a great thing, but it is one of those be careful for what you wish for situations - where you have to go through 5 windows just to change your wallpaper... I'm satisfied that Vista will be a good OS, but there isn't any features (other than security) that make me jump up and down in needy anticipation.

This is a real bother with all the anti-trust lawsuits, but I feel that Microsoft needs to put some more applications into Vista to make it more competitive with Windows XP! Had they put something like Timbuktu, Sony Vegas, or Paintshop Pro in with Vista it might be more attractive to me. But as a plain vanilla OS, the offer just isn't enticing.

Post by **Akira** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 4:11 pm

I see no major reason to upgrade to Vista from XP (if you are using XP).

The differences I see are Aero and the gadget sidebar. Even then, Aero requires alot to be able to use it.

Aero and sidebar (even with MacOSX) were all taken from features available in Linux.

TooLBlue · Post by **TooLBlue** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 5:21 pm

KrAzYdAvE wrote:
TooLBlue wrote:If I get it for free I'll try it.
You mean, when you get a computer than can actually run it also? lol

I figure if I can run Vanguard and Oblivion at max settings flawlessly, I can run Vista, too.

If not, something's fishy =P

Post by **KrAzYdAvE** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 5:22 pm

the new task manager in Vista rocks, hands down...
It also has a "Resource Manager" button that gives you info on what process or service is using CPU, RAM, HDD, or Network
Very handy when trying to figure out what is slowing your computer down!

So far, the problems I've found consist of:
A compatability problem with Limewire being that it turns off the Aero features when you launch it.

The latest Nvidia drivers for my video card don't have the handy little system tray icon available yet. So I can't quickly adjust my brightness of my monitor before I launch a game. But I'm sure that'll be fixed shortly.

My abit motherboard has a uguru microprocessor for monitoring\overclocking the CPU from within windows. Which I had to find the latest driver for to get working.

My Wacom tablet didn't have native drivers, but again, a simple visit to their website fixed that.

But that's about it. Everything else worked flawlessly, including installation of my RAID controllers.

Post by **Serpent** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:29 pm

KrAzYdAvE wrote:the new task manager in Vista rocks, hands down...
It also has a "Resource Manager" button that gives you info on what process or service is using CPU, RAM, HDD, or Network
Very handy when trying to figure out what is slowing your computer down!

So far, the problems I've found consist of:
A compatability problem with Limewire being that it turns off the Aero features when you launch it.

The latest Nvidia drivers for my video card don't have the handy little system tray icon available yet. So I can't quickly adjust my brightness of my monitor before I launch a game. But I'm sure that'll be fixed shortly.

My abit motherboard has a uguru microprocessor for monitoring\overclocking the CPU from within windows. Which I had to find the latest driver for to get working.

My Wacom tablet didn't have native drivers, but again, a simple visit to their website fixed that.

But that's about it. Everything else worked flawlessly, including installation of my RAID controllers.

I think what we all want to knows is - what games work and what dont?

Call of Duty? Source-based games such as HL2 and CS:S? Doom 3? Quake 4? etc...?

Post by **KrAzYdAvE** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:27 pm

Honestly, CS:S is all I really play anymore and it seems to work just fine as it did with XP...

One thing I do wish that they would've implemented into Vista was the ability to run different wallpapers on multiple monitors, and the ability to have your taskbar go across each monitor showing only the windows that are on each monitor.

With XP I use to have an app called UltraMon that did that for me, but Ultramon doesn't work 100% on Vista yet...

Post by **Neophyte** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 9:29 am

KrAzYdAvE wrote:Honestly, CS:S is all I really play anymore and it seems to work just fine as it did with XP...

One thing I do wish that they would've implemented into Vista was the ability to run different wallpapers on multiple monitors, and the ability to have your taskbar go across each monitor showing only the windows that are on each monitor.

With XP I use to have an app called UltraMon that did that for me, but Ultramon doesn't work 100% on Vista yet...

An innovation that would have been forward thinking, indeed... I hate to doubt MS's focus, but Vista just seems to be Mahjong with a polished Windows XP, of which was a polished Windows 2000... Are they done innovating in Redmond? I hate to say it, but Windows 95 was the greatest leap forward that they made. Win2000 was nice, but it was WinNT with plug-n-play and Win98's look and feel.

If Linux had more apps and better gaming, I'd not bother with Vista at all.

Post by **Serpent** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 11:06 am

Neophyte wrote:If Linux had more apps and better gaming, I'd not bother with Vista at all.

I've been using varying distributions of linux since the early 90's and can say this with a great deal of certainty -- anything you want to do in windows, as far as apps goes, can be done in linux - often better...and most games will play via emulation in linux anyways... not all, as i wish the c&c stuff did... but still. pretty close.