Windows Vista

Anyone beta testing this? I don't like what I'm reading in the reviews. Apparently it has a lot of annoying features. What's the low down from those who used it?

Windows? Vista? Annoying features? Never! ;)

Once it's stable, it's going to be realy nice!

Don't bite into all the pre-final articles. Any beta software will suck at one point or another.

Remember what we said about xp before it was released... i'll never get xp, it sucks<-- hehe that was me.. and now i think it's great.

Same will happen to vista.

One very annoying thing is the new 'security' that asks if you're sure everytime you change anything, i was looking for a way to disable it within an hour.

Vista... it's certainly very nice looking (if you like Mac/Linux hybrids)... but I see no real functionality over XP AND you need at LEAST either 1gig or a dual core/multi processor setup just to get the OS responsive again.

Of course, much of the public beta 2 was compiled with debug code and with the further tweaks that are bound to occur in the meantime, the actual release version is bound to be less resource hungry and faster... to what extent remains to be seen.

However, I see no reason for users to upgrade from XP to Vista, except perhaps DX10. I'll revise that sentiment when Vista SP1 is released.

> the actual release version is bound to
> be less resource hungry and faster

LOL! Come on, I'm looking forward to playing Minesweeper using 1.5Ghz. It's za future baby!

Minesweeper (and all the other games) have all finally had very nice updates. =] They aren't the same games that have been in since Win95.

Yeah it was stuff like the 'security' mentioned previously that sound annoying... and I hear some options seem to be purposefully hidden under a large number of menus. I hope they listen to the testers and it improves.

Most things are accessible with only one or two clicks more than in previous versions. Some things make more sense, some don't. The hardest part of getting to grips with Vista is learning the new layout...

I don't really see any new security features, there's that UAC or UAP or whatever thing, but I have honestly never ever had a program write data to some other programs dir before so I don't see it as security so much as I see it more of an uneccesary annoyance. It's easy to turn off though and eventually any decent/popular program will be modified to save in the places designated safe by MS anyway.

I don't see either of those as 'annoying' enough to warrant not using the OS. I just don't see the OS as being a substantial improvement enough to warrant using it over XP.

Thanks for the info Toby. I take it you've got the beta?

Ummm, virus, back-door, etc.?

I like the new navigating system - It dose just seem so much easier todo stuff.

I Also realy like the new startmenu search , it saves loads of time if you have loads of programs installed. Normally In XP I just have it set to classic startmenu because of how bulky it is - but in vista i'll use the defualt one.


this dosent bother me much , mabey cause I dont do much low level OS stuff.

On the visual side of things - the areo glass thingy (whatever its called) dose make it look better but I would probally just still use the default XP theme just for speed issues , etc.

There are loads of other things too that some people might like or not like, for example the personlize desktop feature I feel is quite nice. It did take me a while to figure out how to change the desktop background though - but the new system dose make sense once you get used to it.

Installing vista was extermally easy. And I was suprised that installing it on my laptop was much easier then installing it on the desktop - due to the duel gfx cards and also it dosent like the wireles card I have in it.


I agree - All the games look much better, however I didnt see pinball in there :/

Seeing as i'm mostly likey to be the only person in the house to use the computer - the adult controls, etc. dont really effect me so I cant really say anything about them.

.. I did have more to say - mabey I should have written this while using vista. ( Its installed on the laptop , which is upstairs , and I REALLY can be assed to walk )

Never in my life had a problem, as I said.


I had a similar experience... old hardware actually runs Vista better than new hardware. I only installed it on my home machine because I thought it would run well - after testing it on a poorly machine at work - a retired server - dual PIII 1ghz's, 512MB RDRAM and a SCSI harddrive of some sort... with a Matrox 32MB card... actually quite good, except the video ram lets it down. Vista ran extremely well on there. Then my home machine, an Athlon64 3000, 512MB DDR400, SATA harddrives... GeForce6600 256MB... was barely usable until I bought more RAM... and then Vista crashed altogether =] Tho that turned out to be a Vista/nVidia incompatibility... so atm I'm stuck using my shitty old GeForce3...

One very important thing for me when installing Vista was: its much easier on ATI based notebooks as their beta driver installs with mobiles with no prob.

For NVIDIA you are a little ass kicked as you will need to go to laptopvideo2go and mod your vista driver, which is just insane as beta stuff should run on all systems to test it usefully.


And on the graphics problem: Did you disable Vista Aero and use Basic instead? (or even Windows Classic!)
Should solve at least some of the problems ... although you most likely still will need a modded driver to fix the craptastic NV beta drivers for vista.

I like that in Vista they have put a bit more effort into catching up with the secure user priveledges in every other operating system, and they finally stopped using that ancient Alt-Tab menu.

It will be interesting to see how many developers misuse the Games directory. I somehow can't see EA making seemless, clean games that don't leave junk everywhere. (I've noticed that games published by EA in particular will put all their stuff in plain sight in My Documents, which is not the correct place to put stuff without the user's permission, so it seems unlikely that they would put their games in the Games folder. Rather, I think they would make an EA Games folder within the Games folder into which half of their titles will put themselves while others will strangely forget about it and do things right (or completely wrong).)

I don't have the beta here, so I have a question:
Does Vista's Explorer have features like in Nautilus (Gnome/Ubuntu) where one can apply emblems to files and write notes for the folder they are in?
It's a simple feature - all it needs is for the Windows developers to finally use meta data.

Also curious about icons; Are they nice looking? Can they be resized? When looking at a 4 GB Compact Flash card completely filled with enormous images, will Explorer still attempt to generate preview images for them causing a horrible slowdown? (I know preview images can be turned off, but they're Usually nice, so it should pop up a question in the event that there are hundreds of files asking if I want them and telling me how big Thumbs.db will be). Does it do previews of text files?

It wasn't a graphics problem - it was an all out incompatibility problem. Vista would hang during boot up (the grey scrolling bars/XP-like loader thing) - this also affected the Vista setup DVD, unless I booted it into safe mode.

XP installed and ran fine, so it wasn't a hardware problem.


I'd wager that would have been a part of WinFS, had they not scrapped it. They claim to still be working on it, so maybe it will make it into Vista SP1.


Everything is pretty in Vista. Yes, they can be resized, but you have no 'direct' control over their size - you generally have the same old sizes available to you as in XP, plus there's an even larger mode where an icon on a 640x480 resolution will take up half the screen. I am not joking.


Yes, unquestionably. It's worse this time around - Explorer now knows how to generate preview images for movies as well. Don't worry - they aren't animated. But it doesn't just decode the first frame... the preview image seems to be taken from a random point in the movie... which for formats that use delta/keyframe information, can be costly depending on which frame has been chosen.


I have Glass switched off atm, so I'm not sure. I -think- I remember seeing html previews but I could be wrong.

I'm really through with Windows. Heck why else would I switch to Mac. Many trouble I had with Windows in earlier versions promised to be fixed in XP, were never fixed. Somehow I always wish that MicroSoft would focus on a stable version of Windows first before they start expanding.

Oh, I guess the upcoming competition of MacOS X and Linux will force them to take this road. Sometimes I've wondered if it's the DOS basis that Windows still uses (not in a way as it was in Win95 but still), does that. UNIX has been known as very stable, and you see that back in MacOS, Linux and other UNIX based systems. Well, I won't see it happen that Windows will go over to the UNIX base, but it was just a speculation. I've also heard many sounds that the instability is the doing of the IE implementation. I heard that when you install IE for Linux, that Linux will suddenly become as instable as Windows, if not worse. Oh well, that's beside the topic, I suppose.

When it comes to expansion, which is still what MicroSoft focusses on, I wonder how much inspiration other systems were. Oh we'll never get Microsoft to admit that. A few features do look interesting though.

This one for example:

Clearly based on the F9 function in MacOS, only brought it into a 3D to make it look fancier. But the function of it remains the same. It was a feature that I always miss when I'm at work, forced to use Windows.

The new start menu also looks interesting:

I wonder how well it works, cause I was never fond of the XP style (I always set it to the classic style).

I've been looking though the screenshots as MicroSoft has put them on their site. I must say, that in visual looks the system has improoved, and it all looks very promising. But I'm afraid that when it comes to improovements THERE were it COUNTS, are not going to satisfy me. That's what I had with all Windows Versions so far.

Ew. Is that the schtart button? (hehe, sorry Tricky.)

I have to say XP has always been quite stable to me, with any problems I have due to hardware problems.

I've always been able to elegantly get out of any software crashes :)

I never liked Vista but recently i'm starting to look forward to it! :)

Guess not everybody likes the new "start" button. :D

XP has always been stable for me on many machines. Easily the Best Windows OS ever by some considerable margine.

Most problems in the win2k that I experienced at home and at work were with lousy motherboards with useless via motherboards that had terrible unstable 4in1 drivers.

I detested win2k, but loved XP, which ran almost flawlessly from RC1 till today. One of my computers has only had XP installed twice since XP was released and only because of a HD failure. My wife has used it daily for several years.

I'm looking forward to vista, assuming that those things that are annoying can be turned off if you follow a good tweak guide.

Bah, seems like MS is trying to be like Apple, but IMHO, for the Mac owners out there, they still hold Mac OS X dear, and if I could afford it, I would, too. Even the KDE of Linux seems like it'll win out on this. Bill Gates thinks he can win over Linux dual-booters like me, hehe... I mean, I do appreciate Win XP Pro and Win XP MCE 2005, but Linux seems to be the OS of choice when it comes to stuff like that, I hear that there's quite a few people that will turn to Linux instead of Vista, assuming that MS is going to tank with this OS.

I came down these two articles....

Now it's up to you with whom you agree...

(I recommend to read the upper first)

Why Windows Vista won't suck
Why Windows Vista will suck

Who do you think is right?

I hate the new Start button :P

Tricky, I have to disagree with you a bit:
The new alt-tab interface in Vista is not copying the F9 function in Mac OS. That's like saying the Alt-Tab window in Gnome is copying the Alt-Tab window in Windows, or the Ctrl-Tab window in one of those Firefox Tabs extensions is copying the Alt-Tab window in KDE.

Considering that Vista has been going for so many years, I think it's a safe bet that there are some nice little details and fixes hidden away in there to make it worth the wait.


I was using a Mac just yesterday, actually, and I was nearly won over by the nice UI...
I lost interest running the Setup program, though.
Setting up wireless APs seemed like a piece of cake. It detected my network, and then when I clicked on it it asked me for one thing: Password.
It's a safe bet that this Password field is for the WEP key, but the whole thing was really just stupid. Wireless networking is a very complicated thing; Nothing that intends to look in the slightest bit useable should limit itself this much. There was absolutely nothing giving me control over the IP address, the Subnet mask, the DNS, the gateway IP...'
Okay, maybe Apple, being apparently really good at UIs, have made a super-intelligent wifi setup wizard that can read my mind and get through the various strict rules in my network.
Nope. I selected my AP, entered my 128-bit WEP key into the "Password" field (No option anywhere to choose what kind of WEP it is... or if it's WPA), hit continue, and I got a very pretty and 'user-friendly' little error message.
It kept telling me, simply, that it didn't work. That is all it told me. Every other wifi network setup I have ever used has been able to give me some hint at what is wrong by at least giving me a log of what it did! This one, however, saw it fit to simply say that Something Failed.
Of course, Mac OS is designed under the mean assumption that I am a moron who hates anything that dares to tell me technical information, so I'll excuse that.
In the end, after even trying to connect to my neighbour's completely insecure network failed (with the same unhelpful error message), I told it specifically to Not Connect To A Network.
So, it's set up. Yay, we're logged in.
Configuring wifi after setup led me to many irritating attempts by Apple to sell their bloody Airport routers until I finally found the config for everything else (the Utilities menu has two things that set up Airport wireless, while Normal Wireless is nowhere to be found -- that config utility is accessed by clicking the little Wireless status icon), at which point it turned out that I was connected to the Internet. This is strange; The setup program quite plainly and simply told me that it can't connect to any wireless network (including the one it's connected itself to!) for mysterious reasons... and I thought I told it not to try.
After a bit of grumbling, I connected to my network and it worked fine. Curiously, the interface in this utility - hidden away to sell Airport routers, perhaps? - was much more normal as it let me choose what kind of security I am using and it let me use a static IP.
So first it gave me a stupid error message, then it tried to sell me Apple's routers with no clear alternative, then it secretly connected to the Internet without my knowledge, and it broke an unwritten rule of politeness in the process which is that it had actually connected to my neighbour's unprotected but clearly intended to be private wireless network.
Automatic wireless connection is nice and all, but I like it when an operating just does what it's told.
Expecting braindead zombies to use your OS is not good; it means that things become TOO simplified, and it digs a hole that is hard to climb out of.
Besides, I haven't encountered many Mac users who are brain-dead zombies, so I have to wonder who they think they're catering for. I suspect Mr. Jobs has an arrogant viewpoint on the intelligence of the average person.

Other than that, Mac OS seems quite nice. It was refreshing to have some solid organization in there. Windows's arrangement of files is quite horrible.

The verdict, as always: They're all anoying in some way or another, so who cares?

I have KDE looking Vista-ish on a 500 mHz Celeron computer with integrated graphics, by the way :)

Yeah, Vista DOES look a lot like KDE, I'd much rather prefer using SuSE to Vista at this moment. Novell is a true rival to this, I have a hunch. Just better hope that Linux'll get the support it finally deserves, that much I can tell ya.

Linux will never have the support that MS have, and the only time it will, will be when MS decide to release their own distro.

Its sad, but what makes linux good, the number of versions there are, they amount of code available and the amount of stuff you can get is also what makes it so hard to use. so hard for newcomers to get to grips with and so god damn hard for developers and manufacturers to support it.

Blitz is a prime example, there are some distros that hate Max, or some Max+Distry+drivers that hate each other while working with other simmilar software/hardware.

this is something thats NEVER going to go away, until one UBER HUGE MOFO company grabs linux and shouts, "OI THIS IS OURS, OURS IS NOW THE STANDARD", and then proceedes to fill it chock full with the amount of base drivers and support that you get with windows.

I am in no way a M$ lover, I run Slackware 10.2 on my laptop, and have a second bootting OS on my main PC, My second PC runs another sunny OS, with I use some times for networking stuff.

And even tho I run like 4 diff OS, Id rather have one that does it all, if Vista provides this, and gives me access to the low level commands I get from Slackware while also providing the high level user interfacce that Windows is known for then I will be happy.

Yeah, I can see all the Mac owners calling Mr. Gates the laughing stock all over again. Wish I'd be a Mac owner myself, at least I'd have a "Neapolitan" PC, if you want to call it that, or in other words, a triple boot PC with Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and SuSE 10.1 Linux, just as long as you have a Mac with at least 1/2 TB HDD. There probably are some Mac owners that do have this type of setup, just as long as their HDD can accept three equal partitions.

Postulate.

Or more accurately BlitzMAX hates some distros (read: everything except Ubuntu).

Hate to say it but I'm with Yav 100% on the Linux thing - it's a waste of time for home users unless you get a massive thrill out of playing with your OS all day. Apparently quite a lot of embedded system manufacturers are starting to use it - but in doing so they're turning it into their own proprietary re-write.

I downloaded the Visa beta (legally) but every time I tried to burn it to a DVD I had write errors that prevented me from intalling it. It's a shame, really, because I would have like to have checked it out. I guess I'll just have to wait until it's released and purchase it.

Right now I'll just stick to Ubuntu for general use and XP for gaming.