Vista still a no go?
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I've been using Vista a work for a while now and I'm interested in hearing from other people that have been using it for a while how their experience has been.
Personally I see very little difference from XP aside from the hour I spent shutting off "user friendly" pop up stuff a month or two ago.
So has it been the train wreck everyone keeps making it out to be, or have they worked out most of the bugs and because I'm a little late switching over its fine?
Personally I see very little difference from XP aside from the hour I spent shutting off "user friendly" pop up stuff a month or two ago.
So has it been the train wreck everyone keeps making it out to be, or have they worked out most of the bugs and because I'm a little late switching over its fine?
Replies
I think Vista's performance can be helped somewhat by disabling unwanted services, but I haven't tried it personally, and you probably wouldn't want to, on a work machine.
This is nothing new, really. Microsoft has released a pattern of alternating "good" and "bad" operating systems for years now.
NT4 = good
Win98 = bad
Win2000 = good
WinME = bad
WinXP = good
WinVista = bad
So... this pattern has been going for a long time now. The irritating thing is that Microsoft has pulled xp from the market, when people still want to buy it.
By pulling XP from the market, they artificially boost Vista's sales numbers... I guess that makes them look better, or something, but it's just disrespectful of their customers.
The differences are mostly under the hood. The new video driver model is very good and means that a full screen app can't crash and take your screen with it. You always have CTRL-ALT-DEL that will supercede it now, and bring up a new menu that will let you take your machine back. Very nice.
There are lots of other nice little things too, but I don't know where to start. It's been well over a year now, so XP is a distant memory, and it looks like an old dinosaur every time I see it.
It's the best OS I've ever owned. The UAC stuff is really nice too. It does a good job of letting you know when a piece of software might be trying to do something you don't want and lets you confirm it.
But it's an OS, and it depends on how well you know how to use your machine. If you make a mess of your own machine, run all kinds of crazy kermel and explorer mods, then who knows. This OS is stable as a rock, and the only time it black screens of death anymore is when there is something wrong with the machine's hardware at a low level, or rarely, a badly written device driver.
I had system crashes and random reboots and all sorts of problems, but they were all related to installing drivers with the user protection shit running. I haven't had any problems since I disabled all of that crap and re-installed the drivers.
There is only one thing that I think is good about Vista, and that is when you go to delete a file it deletes right away instead of telling you you have to wait 30 seconds.
Office 2007 benchmarks seem to run a lot slower under Vista: http://www.xpnet.com/iworldtest/
I expect polycounters would be more interested in 3D performance... Tom's Hardware has some benchmarks for Max and Maya: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xp-vs-vista,1531-6.html
Tom's benchmarks are from last year, though... driver improvements might have narrowed the gap since then; I don't know.
One thing that Vista definitely has going for it is stereo 3D support. Nvidia seems to have stopped releasing new stereo drivers for XP. If stereo is important, you'll likely need Vista.
Issues mainly relate to older games/software that even XP had a hard time with (names escape me, but these were things probably intended for 95/98 that shouldn't be expected to run).
Isn't Windows 7 supposed to be released like next year? That would lame since Vista is just maturing into a decent OS.
can run max9 (64 bit), photoshop cs3, zbrush3, and unreal ed all at the same time with no loss of performance.
i have an amd X2 2.4ghz and 4gb ram.
then jump to Vista
i have been using vista since its 3rd month on market, and i'm very happy with it. All performs better than in XP (at least for me because i own a nice computer). You disable a few things and it's perfect, the same as XP but better. Vista 64 bits is excellent.
We should have in mind that the OS was designed to fit the needs of too many ppl, if you find useless a service, just disable it, quite easy. I really would like M$ to do an OS exclusively for me, but it can be helped
Windows seven w0n't be enough good for too many people, it's being designed mainly for the "new pcs", tablet pcs (do you imagine yourself working on a screen?). It surely will have tons of features we will need to disable... and for sure it will need more ram, and a better machine.
Vista haters being shown a "new" os that they like, only to be told it's Vista
My experience with vista has been hit and miss. The Service Pack made it so my dvd drive sorta worked. always looked for drivers and could never find them. That and there was an update that was released that made it so all usb keyboards and mice were no longer recognized.
I have since reinstalled and have had no issues at all with Vista. Only issues I have is some programs have issues with the fancy graphics interface. Visual Studio 05 had a couple issues as did xsi. both were re-draw issues that were due to how things were coded.
Vista is solid. Sure it has some issues, but what OS hasn't? The fancy graphics can get turned off to remove complications with other apps, and sometimes vista is smart enough to turn them off for you (ie; running 3dsmax).
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/article.asp?CIID=108936
That being said, don't install Vista unless you have a decent machine (anything Athlon 64 and up). And turn off the ridiculous UAC.
1. DirectX 10.0/10.1
2. The x64 version has a muuuuuuuuuuuuuuch better Virtual Memory system than XP... and that means you can work better with large model assets.
I like having a similar setup at home as I do at work, so I'm considering moving to Vista at home as well. I've only got 2Gb RAM, so I've been really reluctant. Might just get some more RAM and see how I go.
-caseyjones
I haven't noticed anything be slower, but I had it on a new machine from the get-go so I've no XP to compare against. I guess what I mean is I haven't noticed anything be noticeably slow that wasn't before :P
*edit; Granted I've turned off a ton of useless shit that comes with Vista like all the fancy visual effects and I had to wrestle with it to get it to leave my wacom well enough alone.
-For CS3 to run properly you *need* 3d Aero to be turned on. Otherwise you can't lay down a stroke after panning the document with spacebar. You have to zoom in and out again to 'fix' this.
-But if you do turn off Aero, 3DSMax turns it off automatically on launch. So basically you can't texture a model if you rely on a CS3+Max setup.
-Photoshop also turns Aero off if you use the file open 'Adobe Dialog' instead of the 'OS dialog'. All these display settings change don't exactly go unnoticed either - each time the screen goes fully black for a second basically.
-CS3 crashes if you use the OS dialog and browse files too fast.
-If you don't like the idea of a computer running at night when you don't use it, and actually turn it off daily - you need to wait for several minutes for it to start up in the morning.
-The thumbplugTGA thumbnail extension doesn't work on Vista.
So yeah Vista is fine I guess.
(haven't used it much though)
I also haven't noticed that the start-up is any slower than XP. Infact I'm pretty sure it loads faster than my old XP did. I just let the PC hibernate anyway, close enough to being turned off and it springs back to life damn fast.
As for hibernate ... if I do that, the Wacom sensitivity get lost most of the time. So I ended up simply letting the computer running 24/7. Nice huh? I heard somewhere that MS stated that a computer is like a TV, you just leave it on haha. Save the planet!
My XP32Home loads in a flash compared to Vista64Pro. I bet it has something to do with some network crap.
Talon, on my work setup I rely on some very dirty tricks to make CS3 run properly. Network things again. Like, you have to setup a FAKE printer to override any network printer you might have, otherwise there is some stange check going on and even the smallest jpg takes 10 seconds to load. Also if there is still a document that has been printed on the network printer in your recent list, well the 10 seconds thing kicks back. So you have to manually clean that list throughout the day.
I used to have loads of problems with the sensitivity being dropped from my tablet when alt+tabbing or hibernating. I read somewhere the trick was to let Photoshop boot up completely without selecting any other apps or windows ('cause I tended to open PS then go off and load up modo while PS was sorting itself out). If I just hit the PS shortcut and don't touch anything until PS is sat there all loaded up, it seems to fix the problems for me. Might be worth a try...