Vista == Mojave == Wow?

vista + drivers + firewall + anti virus = 20gig = WTF!

that could be 20 games ive just lost space for

My Windows folder (Vista 64) is slightly less than 20 GB.

Games like Age of Conan, Vanguard, MTW2 and Oblivion + mods take more than 10 GB, sometimes even significantly more.

NWN2 + Expansion, World of Warcraft, Mass Effect and Gears of War are around 10 GB. The Witcher and Tomb Raider Legend are 7-8 GB. Many other modern games are in the 4-6 GB ballpark.

20 Games? Yeah, right.

I think complaining about Vista's HDD space requirements is a fairly bizarre thing to do.
 
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My experience with Vista has been positive for the most part. On my wife's itty bitty laptop (1GB memory, Dual 1.46GHz T2310 CPU, 80GB 5400RPM HDD) it runs ok. I did some tweaks and it runs better, not as fast as I am sure XP would be on the same system but it is functional. Upgrading to 2GB of memory ($40) was a good move.

My M1330 from Dell (2GB DDR667, 7200RPM HDD, C2D 2GHz 6MB L2, 8400GS 128MB) is blazing fast. It responds faster in Vista than my P4 2.53GHz/1GB/10k RPM HDD desktop does in XP. It runs great, looks great, and has a lot of nifty features. I love XP, but I am finding Vista on my M1330 to be a fine experience. Not worth forking over $100 to upgrade from XP, but for a bundle with a new rig I see no downside to it. It runs great and all my software and HW works fine with it. I know others have had issues, but it has been solid for me.
 
Really? Show me where you can buy a usable hard drive for $3.

It doesn't work like that. Not everyone has a spare (even) $50 or $60 to get a new HD.

If you're going to install Vista, then I think it's a reasonable assumption that you either have a HD or plan to buy one. Unless you plan to somehow install it into thin air. Now on that HD where you install it, the space lost to the OS is worth $3. You'll probably have a hard time to find a HD on the market which won't fit Vista on it. If they made Vista any smaller you still would need a HD to install it on, and the only difference would be that perhaps you save disk space worth a dollar or two. I don't find that significant enough to complain about. I could just skip a cup of coffee for a day to save that amount.

For the reference, I have about 17GB worth of pictures I've taken in the last year.

Or just compare to XP. It required 1.5GB. That would have cost you a whole $4-5 back then!
 
Stop trying to equate a dollar amount to the space used by the OS. You can't buy portions of hard drives so your analogy is invalid. You buy a whole hard drive when you have insufficient storage space. That or you give something up. Personally, I'd rather have those 20-30GB for other things like games or movies.
 
Holy Crap, are we not over this yet?

I have NO idea what the people who are having these major problems with Vista are doing (lying?) but for once, I'm speechless.

I have seven machines in my house, 5 of them run Vista (upgraded from XP_, 1 still runs XP, and 1 runs (kill me now) OSX (eugh). Compared to XP, Vista is:

Much faster in general - boots up quicker, open programs quicker, searches quicker.

Much more stable - don't get me wrong XP is a ROCK (the one machine that is still XP has been installed since Sept 2002 and pretty much turned on 99% of the time since then) but Vista is... nicer... in its stability. If "X" program crashes in XP, sometimes it closes down other programs too. Vista doesnt. It also tells you instantly if a program HAS crashed. XP just used to leave the program open, even if I close it down from TaskMan, and would close after "some" time. Vista cuts this down, and makes getting working much easier and less frustrating.

LESS intrusive than XP SP2 - You can turn UAC off, you can turn Defender off. If you told XP SP2 that you didnt need its software firewall it would still tell you all the time, and leave icons all the over place. Vista doesnt do this. OK, turning UAC off requires a reboot, but get anal about that, and I stop listening to you.

Better at managing memory - This is my work PC AND my game PC, so sometimes I just start a game while I have Photoshop open taking up 2-3GB RAM. On XP, this would cause massive stuttering and slow downs. Vista just sails on through.

MUCH better UI – a friend of mine used Vista for a week, and commented that it was “s**t”, mainly because it doesn’t have an UP button. “Just click the folders before the one you’re in on the address bar”. “Oh, NICE” said he “I didn’t *bother* looking at that”. Case closed.

MUCH more hardware friendly – I have multiple gfx cards, many hdds, multiple monitors with card readers, a Bluetooth phone, two wireless cards, two gigalan conn’s, a camera, an old-ish scanner, a R300 printer, and a joypad. Not one problem. ALSO – install a new piece of hardware on a XP machine, and choose “search the internet for drivers”. Only ONCE did this ever find anything (old LAN card), on Vista, it has now found everything I’ve got. HTPC Shuttle machine, found all the VIA chipset drivers, Nvidia Chipset drivers, ATi 4870 drivers – beautiful.

I also just want to make a passing mention of the new GFX layer. Ok, I’ll admit that it *might* cause slowdowns (10% though? And tbh, I’ve not seen this myself). XP was generally slower than Win95 for games for the first couple of years too, people seem willing to forget that. BUT! In other areas, its BRILLIANT. Like I say, I have dual monitors. XP always seemed to have a primary gfx screen, so if I ran games on that one, fine. Move them over the other, and slideshow. I can now play games 50/50 on the monitors without problems. Also, moving an MPC window from one screen to the other would sometimes cause MPC to crash, and I would have to start TaskMan to close it. In a year of using Vista on this machine, that has NEVER happened.

I'm not sure where the idea of bloat comes from either... My windows folder is currently 11GB (after a year) on a 500GB drive that cost the same as an 80GB drive did when XP was taking up 5GB of space. Vista takes up 2% of my space, where as XP was taking up 6%. Seriously, people don’t look at the big picture sometimes.

Going back the start of this thread, ShaidarHaran, taking about setting time said “How many does it take in Vista now? 47?” If you disable UAC, it DOES take one more step than XP, (2 as opposed to 1, which some people will scream it takes “100% LONGER!”, eeshk) but as someone pointed out, this is because changing time can be a security issue. People said that XP wasn’t secure enough, then slated Vista for annoying them with its security. I stop listening to those people too.

The long and short of it is, I use it for my entertainment centre, and I use it for my mission critical stuff (ie, client work), and after 18 months, and 5 machines, it’s not failed me yet, and I'm VERY picky about stuff.

It’s so good, and easy to use, and work with, that I put it on my dad’s machine, and it’s going on my mum’s computer soon.

I would have LOVED WinFS, but Vista is a nice step up from XP in all areas. Not enough to do an upgrade “just so”, but if it comes on a new machine, or you have to do a reinstall anyway.

I’m not a MS fanboi, I’m a “whatever works best” fanboi, and at present, for the average home user, or those who want to actually do stuff *with* their OS, rather than *to* their OS, Vista is just about the best thing on the market at present.

EDIT - Apparently, I wasn't THAT speechless.
 
what does your pc score on that vista performance index ? im guessing over 5.0
then how can you tell it opens programs quicker ?
thats like trying to find the supercar with the highest top speed on a quater mile straight
you would need a pc that takes a second or two to open the average program which again im guessing you would be looking at a late pentium 3 era pc try that with vista
 
Admittedly this machine does score 5.9 on every index , but then they haven't increased the index yet, so even newer, relatively low powered machines can reach 5 easily. I do have other machines though, a 3500AMD, 1GB ram, onboard GFX, which is like a 3.0 for all but the GFX (1.0 baby!). I installed Vista on this machine, which previously had XP on it.

I also have a Coreduo laptop 2.6Ghz, 2GB RAM, 7600 GFX (a £400 lappy, entry level (scoring 5.4 CPU, and 4.9 RAM btw)), and a Coreduo desktop 2.4GHz 2GB ram, 1900XT GFX. In all but GFX tests, they score pretty much exactly the same (PC Mark, SiSoft etc). The desktop has Vista 64 Home Prem on, the Laptop has XP on it. I can open Photoshop or HL2, and it's on the desktop before the laptop. I just tested this now.

My issue isn't with really old machines. I'll admit that Vista needs higher specs. But my point is that those higher specs have tangible benefits. In my last post, I freely admitted that installing Vista just for the hell of it, probably won't happen. But if you use your computer every day, and it's reasonably new, you should be using Vista.
 
Good posts, Dooby. I can echo your sentiments. I use Vista on a laptop and a desktop. It's been great so far.

I don't understand all the Vista hate, especially from people who claim to be technology fans (e.g. PC gamers). Perhaps it's just an anti-Microsoft thing?
 
what does your pc score on that vista performance index ? im guessing over 5.0
then how can you tell it opens programs quicker ?
thats like trying to find the supercar with the highest top speed on a quater mile straight
you would need a pc that takes a second or two to open the average program which again im guessing you would be looking at a late pentium 3 era pc try that with vista

I have 3 systems running.

My primary system scores 5.9 on all settings. Butter smooth.

My HTPC scores 4.9 with several 5.4-5.9 scores. Processor is a little older but c'est la vie. It runs butter smooth as well.

My work notebook has a first generation Centrino setup and 2 gb memory and scores about about 2-ish (off the top of my head), it has an intel GMA950 IGP and it runs butter smooth WITH Aero enabled and running Vista enterprise. It runs much smoother/more stable and FASTER than my previous XP Pro setup.

I use my notebook as my baseline when people start talking about hardware specifications and how high the demand is for Vista. Not so... not if you actually use the damn thing and get over the expected and normal learning curve.

I am with Dooby. Even on my lower specced systems, Vista is butter-smooth and works perfectly fine. In fact the only issue I have ever had was Nvidia's previous WHQL driver which invariably crashed a couple of times a week. No issues at all with the latest WHQL 64-bit drivers, even with a tweaked setup to allow for easy Folding. I fold 24/7 and no slow-downs.
 
Stop trying to equate a dollar amount to the space used by the OS.

Why? Because you disagree but can't come up with a reasonable counterargument?

You can't buy portions of hard drives so your analogy is invalid. You buy a whole hard drive when you have insufficient storage space.

I already addressed that in the post you replied to. Repeating this is not a counterargument.

Personally, I'd rather have those 20-30GB for other things like games or movies.

Fine. But you're still making a big deal out of something that amounts to a couple of percent of a standard sized disk.
 
I'd like to know HTF people are coming up with a 30GB figure. I have several Vista 64bit full on installs and have yet to go over 15GB on the main install not counting swap and hibernate files. Are they honestly implying that people will be designating a full 8GB swap file and having an 8GB hibernate file? The later would require them to be running with 8GB of memory.
 
now remove some ram so you only have 512mb and re-run your tests

I don't think they even sell computers with that low of ram anymore. Not only that, but you can buy 2 gigs of ram for less than 30 dollars. I don't see the point in your statement, especially considering you needed to upgrade the ram for XP to get a good experience as well.
 
3 day old install of vista
no hibernate file
2346mb swap file
no indexing

installed programs :

drivers (mboard, gfx and sound)
zonealarm free
avg free
nero 8
opera




I don't think they even sell computers with that low of ram anymore. Not only that, but you can buy 2 gigs of ram for less than 30 dollars. I don't see the point in your statement, especially considering you needed to upgrade the ram for XP to get a good experience as well.

because im fed up of fixing problems on vista pc's that are sold with that amount of ram xp with 512mb is fine vista is just horrible
 
because im fed up of fixing problems on vista pc's that are sold with that amount of ram xp with 512mb is fine vista is just horrible

So? Windows 98 worked just fine with 256 MB of ram. Now go back in time 6 years and work on some XP machines with that little ram.

If it bothers you that much, keep some extra ram sticks around to temporarily speed up the PC's you're working on.

Progress requires progression. I'm pretty sure we learned long ago that "X kb of ram is all you'll ever need" wasn't all we ever needed.
 
Davros, I have no idea what you did to get such a different experience. How much space is in use for rollbacks and backups?

My Vista install from day one RTM and patched to SP1 and current with patches as of today shows 9.6 GB free of 24.9 GB. That's 15.3GB usage. I have the 4GB swap file on another partition.

Tally of software installed on that partition:
7Zip
Ageia Drivers
Core Temp
Creative XFi Drivers
Cyberlink PowerDVD
Daemon Tools Lite
Divx
DVD Info Pro
Eph Pod
Esset NOD32
F@H Monitor
Folding@Home
Foxit PDF Viewer
Haali Spliter
Image Burn
Logitech Drivers
Media Player Classic Home Cinema
Microsoft .NET Framework
Microsoft Silverlight
mIRC
Mozilla Firefox
MPEG4 Modifier
Nvidia Drivers
OpenAL Drivers
QuickTime Lite
QuickPar
PerfectDisk 2008
Real Alternative
Red Chair's Anapod Explorer
Silicondust HDHomeRun Drivers
Skype
AnyDVD
Spybot
Trillian
TVU Player
Abit uGuru
UltraVNC
uTorrent
VLC
 
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