A Cautionary tale...

straight

wings cru
A word of warning to any of you buying a new Windows based system, Vista is literally the devil. Sure it looks pretty and it calms a bit of that whoosy mac desktop envy but if you actually attempt to use it for anything other than itunes and the internet then you're in trouble. All the music programs i have ran worse than they did on my 4 year old, 733, 512ram laptop (new one is pentium dual core 2 ghz, 2gb ram) and crashed with any mp3 player or phone that was connected. on top of that there were no drivers for my midi/audio interface and midi controllers so i was faced with either buying a load of new equipment and wait till the first service pack lands in february or sacking it all off and getting XP on. got a moody copy and transfered the license from my old laptop and it runs like an absolute dream, tested ableton with 15 tracks of audio and numerous fx for an hour and it didnt even crackle. After a fortnight of Vista induced weeping im now back to my cheery old self.

So in summation, if you are rich enough to have a murderer of a processor or are a 12 year old girl who wants a computer to listen to mp3s on, stick with vista. If you actually need to do some work drop it like a hot potato.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I deliberately got a new system with XP for precisely these reasons. I knew I would face issues getting my aged sound card/audio interface to work...
 

straight

wings cru
yeah it jokes, vistas been doin the rounds for a year and still all the audio drivers are wank or non existant
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
Its just an operating system- there appeared to me zero upside to "upgrading" to vista from XP (which at least works) unless you *really* want a flashy mac-os style graphical front-end.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
XP is definitely the best Windows in my experience; nice and stable, works with pretty much everything (that I've tried to use - I don't make music on it or owt).
Not used Vista and have no burning desire to.
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
'Upgrading' to Vista is a bit pointless but like XT it does run pretty well as long as you turn off a lot of the extraneous nonsense. I hate all the flashy GUI effects anyway and there's loads of services you don't need to have running. Makes a big difference if you shut 'em dahn.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm
http://www.speedyvista.com/services.html

What's really pissed me off recently is the 'obsolescence' of PC Card slots on laptops. This has been very inconvenient.
 

RobJC

Check your weapon
I agree with the general apathy towards Vista - I was a early adopter as I demo new technology for a big corp, and as of then and now, I can find any reason for recommending moving 3000+ PC's from XP to Vista.

My own experience is that its fairly stable, but doing anything is like running on a 486, for example just starting a 3 minute mp3 takes ate least 20 seconds from clicking on the file to getting WMP plating it - why?

Also, there is a XP SP3 coming out that is suposed to make that work faster, so clearly MS are still investing in XP.
 

mms

sometimes
my newish laptop runs vista
terrible, utterly incompatble
excel 2007 runs on it and that was a total mistake, unusable and full of bugs etc. same with word.

really shit
 
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PeteUM

It's all grist
When I bought a new laptop the first thing the pal I have who minimises the problems I have with computers did was ditch Vista and install XP. Don't think I've had a problem in almost 6 months, which is kind of unholy for me.
 
I bought a new PC the month Vista came out and was forced to have it. Although it seems generally stable on it's own, I have had many problems with hardware and software. This includes Microsoft stuff. My 2000 MS Office works fine, but the 2006 MS Works that came free with the PC doesnt work at all, neither did any of the ISP CD's that shipped with the PC work. It's practically the case that it is questionable whether Vista is a proper PC system, or an alternative platform, like Macintosh.

The main thing about Vista is that there is no guarantee that anything is compatible. Nor is there any guarantee that Vista drivers for old software ('old' is presumably prior to 2008) will have any effect. I would imagine that it is common practice in the industry to release placebo drivers. My scanner's update driver attempted to fix things but didnt quite manage it.

Another irritating thing is that companies seem unwilling to accept that Vista exists, though to be fair they shouldnt have to spend money fixing Microsoft's problems. But it is annoying when you phone a computer helpline and they tell you how to sort things out like you would in XP. It's not that Vista doesnt have these features, it's just that they have been placed in different folders, and if a big company like BT hasnt been made aware of this, has anyone?

Currently my big problem is that I cant get wireless internet working on Vista, as if that wasnt hard enough to set up in the first place. And I'm pissed off that I cant download Nintendo wii virtual console games!

THE RELEASE OF VISTA IS NOTHING SHORT OF A SCANDAL, AND THERE SEEMS TO BE VIRTUALLY NO ONE ON THE INTERNET WHO IS TELLING IT HOW IT IS.
There is this site here http://badvista.fsf.org/what-s-wrong-with-microsoft-windows-vista
but it's not really aimed at your average computer user.
 

dHarry

Well-known member
Currently my big problem is that I cant get wireless internet working on Vista, as if that wasnt hard enough to set up in the first place.
I tore my hair out trying to figure out how to do this with my new-ish Vista'd up laptop, then I found the Wireless button on the keyboard :)o), it found the network, I clicked "connect" and it worked! What's the problem with yours?

No other Vista problems yet, though I haven't really done anything with it yet except surf the web...
 

UFO over easy

online mahjong
Its just an operating system- there appeared to me zero upside to "upgrading" to vista from XP (which at least works) unless you *really* want a flashy mac-os style graphical front-end.

vista will be required for a lot of newer things which utilise directx 10 visual stuff.

so if you do graphics or play games vista is pretty much unavoidable now.
 
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