Author Topic: Vista (Read 26553 times)

Jim · « **on:** November 21, 2006 »

My MSDN subscription entitles me to install the final version of Windows Vista. I'll be upgrading my XP install, so heaven knows how it'll all work out. See you on the other side, with luck!

Jim

benny! · « **Reply #1 on:** November 21, 2006 »

Hehe .. good luck, mate !

Jim · « **Reply #2 on:** November 21, 2006 »

It took 8 1/2 hours

It's just gone 2am and I've seen the desktop for the first time.
More later.
Jim

rdc · « **Reply #3 on:** November 21, 2006 »

Wow, that doesn't sound good. Let us know what you think.

benny! · « **Reply #4 on:** November 21, 2006 »

Quote from: Jim on November 21, 2006

It took 8 1/2 hours
...

omg ... 8 1/2 hrs are definately quite a long time ...
I guess I wouldn't have the patience to wait and I would have abort installation
after at least 2 hrs or so

slinks · « **Reply #5 on:** November 21, 2006 »

vista can go die as far as I'm concerned

benny! · « **Reply #6 on:** November 21, 2006 »

Quote from: slinks on November 21, 2006

vista can go die as far as I'm concerned

Havent seen / read a lot of vista yet. But if I remember the big changes (in a positiv way)
after I upgraded from Win98 to WindowsXP ... I would generally give Vista a chance.

But time will tell ... or maybe Jim

Yaloopy · « **Reply #7 on:** November 21, 2006 »

What Slinks said with cursin'.

slinks · « **Reply #8 on:** November 21, 2006 »

XP gave me nothing but problems, I prefer DOS-based systems thankyou. And what kind of specs must be needed to keep up with that god-damned graphical interface? Oh look, I'm organising my files...in 3d!!! Yes it makes all the much difference! And hey, look, I can now rotate my windows a full 360 degrees! Yay! Just what I always wanted!

Only good thing is being able to 'dog-ear' a document in order to mark its importance, and scrunch it up to show it's worthless. But 've always managed to get around with having files labeled 'important stuff' and 'useless ****', so what gives?

.:] Druid [:. · « **Reply #9 on:** November 21, 2006 »

I really enjoy vista. It introduces a lot of small things, useless..but finally so usefull..... Now I really don't know if I'm gonna upgrade my main pc..my 2cents...

benny! · « **Reply #10 on:** November 21, 2006 »

Quote from: slinks on November 21, 2006

XP gave me nothing but problems, I prefer DOS-based systems thankyou.

From my side, XP gave me a much more stable system than Win98!

Quote

...And what kind of specs must be needed to keep up with that god-damned graphical interface? Oh look, I'm organising my files...in 3d!!! Yes it makes all the much difference! And hey, look, I can now rotate my windows a full 360 degrees! Yay! Just what I always wanted!

Hehe ... I totally understand your side. Guess we all here are at least with half of our hearts
nerds who like the command shell. But on the other hand ... in the end a nice gui is advanced.

If we (the nerds) doesn't support new gui's - we will never end up with holo-displays and stuff

slinks · « **Reply #11 on:** November 21, 2006 »

Quote from: benny! on November 21, 2006

From my side, XP gave me a much more stable system than Win98!

Win98 FTW! At least back then when everything went tits up you could restart your computer from the ctrl+alt+del menu. And you could actually end the programs from there as well. Now if you try, it ignores your request half the time, leaving you with all kinds of broken stuff jammed and 'not responding'. And those yellow speach bubble pieces of **** that pop up every time you install a new program/somethings not working are irritating. And disabling EVERYTHING by default just so some ****s don't go and delete their system folders is really poor.

I'm very verbal on this topic, can you tell?

Quote from: benny! on November 21, 2006

If we (the nerds) doesn't support new gui's - we will never end up with holo-displays and stuff

By that point however, computers would be so powerful they could run 20 copys of half life 2, play 5 video files, alphabetize your folders, have 40 open browser windows, 6 msn windows and still have the RAM left over for a game of solitaire. Then the interface could be as advanced as they like, but right now I'm on a computer that was Â£300 LAST year, and can only just handle the graphical strain of micro machines V3, and I don't feel like upgrading my computer just to get a new interface.

Shockwave · « **Reply #12 on:** November 21, 2006 »

I must be a luddite because I stuck with Windows98 for donkeys years, I upgraded to XP and on this notebook there was an option to have an upgrade to vista but I decided not to bother.. Knowing M$ it will have lots of bugs, the install on your PC seems to be taking forever Jim. Hope it all works out nicely for you and that the upgrade will be worth it.

slinks · « **Reply #13 on:** November 21, 2006 »

And won't you agree 98 was more friendly shockwave? Like any long time windows user, I just had to have the original looks back, none of that fancy chunky button crap for me!

Jim · « **Reply #14 on:** November 21, 2006 »

Well, the first 3 hours of that were it refusing to install correctly at all...for some reason it won't install from DVD and I had to mount the ISO image on a virtual DVD drive using PowerISO...the rest really does take that long - remember though this was an upgrade installation, I'd expect a clean install on a blank disk to go a hell of a lot quicker than that.
So far I've noticed that I've had to replace most of my installed software.
VisualStudio2003 and Nero are incompatible. Sun Java and my video driver needed updating because they kept crashing explorer. The Vista ATA driver is now 103Mb to download!
So far, and it's early days yet, the only thing I've noticed is my Windows folder is 7.2Gb.
Aero desktop looks pretty though

Jim

taj · « **Reply #15 on:** November 22, 2006 »

My god Jim from the way you describe it, it sounds postively awful! It reflects that fact that Microsoft know that there will be relatively few upgrades compared to clean installs (by Dell etc). Its long been said that Intel have benefit from making software "advance". The more demands it makes on the CPU, the more intel sell CPUs. Now graphics card manufacturers are in the same position with the alpha heavy desktops. So Microsoft concentrate on support for OEMs instead of the home user, make Vista easy for them and you can sell lotds of new PCs. It makes sound business sense (from a Cartel point of view) but doesnt help me at home. In essence they dont want you to upgrade, there is instead a wider interest in you buying a new PC.

I'd prefer to stick with XP, really I cant afford to buy Vista and I agree with slinks that things are getting a little out of hand (though thats not how you put it :-). I just upgraded and bought Windows XP Home so I wont be shelling out for Vista in the near future. My god! 103Mb for drivers? I mean OK sdk, but a fundamental thing like drivers! No. It means you need a good cpu, a good gfx card, and a fast internet link. Its getting expensive.

On the other hand I heard Vista was stable and more secure than XP (but it would be, without being in huge numbers, its not a target yet). Also I guess Breakpoint will run compos on vista :-( meaning Ill be forced to upgrade or at least find somebody with vista locally. I'm cynical about the hollographic displays and such argument. Displays will develop anyway - its a very different market - but even if the argument is generalised, I see the point from a processor point of view, more power -> new techs, but O/S? I mean my compuetr seems to install dozens of processes which I have no idea what they are doing but they go off upgrading software for me so I'm forced to learn a new interface whilst gaining support for ISO-78987/IC-XX which I never use and mean time, I can no longer use the bloody thing I was using (thankyou Nero).

Uh rambling. Stop now.
Yeah so I agree with the ludites. Give me some spanners.

combatking0 · « **Reply #16 on:** November 22, 2006 »

Some vandals broke my windows. Does anybody know if Micro$oft sell double glasing?

Jim · « **Reply #17 on:** November 24, 2006 »

Haven't used my PC that much since I installed Vista. But I keep getting 'COM Surrogate Error' messages - God knows what that means, and about every 10th thing I click in control panel thingies either doesn't do anything at all, or explorer crashes and restarts. I think I've got rid of the BSOD though, and my remote access ssh and IIS server are working again now.
Thing I'm battling with now is two days in a row in the morning the screen's been off, deactivated, yellow LED, and it won't come back on again, despite the fact the PC's still running.
At the moment it's a debacle. Teething problems I hope.

The extra security is only really evident in the 64bit Vista apparently, which I don't have. The biggest problem with that version is it won't run 16bit apps though, so no .com files. Probably have to install MSDOS on VirtualServer to get them to run.

On the plus side, the tiny OpenGL demos and stuff posted here still works.

Jim

Ghost^BHT · « **Reply #18 on:** November 24, 2006 »

SOunds like a nightmare.

taj · « **Reply #19 on:** November 24, 2006 »

Quote from: Jim on November 24, 2006

On the plus side, the tiny OpenGL demos and stuff posted here still works.

Jim

Fabulous! Best news I've heard this week - thanks Jim. Hope you get thrpough the other issues one by one. Keep us up to date please, its quite fascinating.