Vista Opinions

linthat22

Regular
With Vista being MS's new OS next to come out, my question to everyone is: Who's going to get it?

Me, I'm getting more and more put off by the DRM requirements that I've read and how you need certain hardware in order for your PC to work. Now I don't know if that all has changed recently, but to me that's a big put off. Seems like MS is trying to control more and more crap, and I'm getting just a wee bit over it.

I'm seriously looking into other OS's and will load what I can on a spare machine at home to see what I like. Linux is a no brainer to try, I want to use something from gnu, any other options?

So what you say?
 
Vista is Windows XP + to me. (except WDDM)

About alternative OS there are a lot of them.

ReactOS which intend to be a Windows compatible clone.
FreeBSD (UNIX) (DesktopBSD & PC-BSD are distros of freeBSD)
DragonFlyBSD (some kind of modern FreeBSD)
Haiku (BeOS clone)
SkyOS (a new OS)
Linspire
QNX Neutrino

I'm keeping track of freeBSD, DF-BSD, Haiku (of course) and SkyOS.

I'm not sure about Windows Vista, being MS free is more and more appealing to me.
 
ReactOS has come a long freakin way, i never expected the project to even last, to be honest.

It's not all there yet, mind you, but... damn.


If you're looking for an EASY os right now, just use Ubuntu.
 
I'll probably pick it up sooner or later, depending on how cheap I can get it for... I've been quite happy with MS since Win2K.
 
Me, I'm getting more and more put off by the DRM requirements that I've read and how you need certain hardware in order for your PC to work. Now I don't know if that all has changed recently, but to me that's a big put off. Seems like MS is trying to control more and more crap, and I'm getting just a wee bit over it.
Can you elaborate more on this point? I'm using Vista on several machines and have no issues with requiring a specific type of hardware, or DRM somehow ruling my life. It works the same way as my other XP / 2000 machines

I'm not going to buy it right away, but I'll be purchasing it probably by the end of next year. I mainly use my computer for two things (outside of my work duties): playing games and listening to music. "Alternative" operating systems have no relevance to me, because 95%+ of the PC video game market is based on DirectX, and it will probably get even more so in the future. And I don't want to buy a console because I want to use my keyboard and mouse...

So, since that means I'm going to be using an MS operating system, I'm going to keep at least somewhat current. The Windows NT5 is a great OS base to be sure, but it's death has now been foretold. Which means that, one way or another, you're going to stop using it and either go to a competitor (*nix, etc) or you're going to upgrade.

About 30 minutes ago I finished writing a post to someone on MSFN who was wondering why we want Vista... With higher CPU usage, higher memory consumption, to him it seemed like nothing more than bloatware, and why would anyone stop using XP?

My response started with three lines:
We stopped using the "slim and efficient" Win3.11 OS to upgrade to a bloated and unstable 9x OS. Why?

We stopped using the "small and effective" Win9x to upgrade to a MUCH larger and more resource intensive 2000/XP OS. Why?

We're stopping use of the "functional and likeable" 2000/XP OS to upgrade to another MUCH larger and more resource intensive Vista. Why?

If you can answer the first two, you can answer the third.
 
I used beta 2 for a few months and it was the most stable beta 2 out of any previous MS OS's. There were a couple of nagging issues,most which resovled by turning off UAS. RC-1 should be out in a few weeks. Try it out for yourself and that'll give you a very good idea of what the final will be.

Besides Creative drives, all my hardware and software worked fine which was quite surprising. It would seem that other manufactures are being pro active with Vista which will help ease the transition.
 
Can you elaborate more on this point? I'm using Vista on several machines and have no issues with requiring a specific type of hardware, or DRM somehow ruling my life. It works the same way as my other XP / 2000 machines

I'm not going to buy it right away, but I'll be purchasing it probably by the end of next year. I mainly use my computer for two things (outside of my work duties): playing games and listening to music. "Alternative" operating systems have no relevance to me, because 95%+ of the PC video game market is based on DirectX, and it will probably get even more so in the future. And I don't want to buy a console because I want to use my keyboard and mouse...

So, since that means I'm going to be using an MS operating system, I'm going to keep at least somewhat current. The Windows NT5 is a great OS base to be sure, but it's death has now been foretold. Which means that, one way or another, you're going to stop using it and either go to a competitor (*nix, etc) or you're going to upgrade.

About 30 minutes ago I finished writing a post to someone on MSFN who was wondering why we want Vista... With higher CPU usage, higher memory consumption, to him it seemed like nothing more than bloatware, and why would anyone stop using XP?

My response started with three lines:
We stopped using the "slim and efficient" Win3.11 OS to upgrade to a bloated and unstable 9x OS. Why?

We stopped using the "small and effective" Win9x to upgrade to a MUCH larger and more resource intensive 2000/XP OS. Why?

We're stopping use of the "functional and likeable" 2000/XP OS to upgrade to another MUCH larger and more resource intensive Vista. Why?

If you can answer the first two, you can answer the third.

Great post.

I use my PC in pretty much the same way as you (add to that net surfing aswell but im sure you do that too) and I couldn't imagine my next high end gaming rig not having Vista.

I for one will be getting it in the first week as long as its reasonably priced (i.e. no more that £100).

My reasons? Largely the eye candy and extra functionality over XP. Also the wish to have the latest and greatest available both to show of and purely for myself. And perhaps most importantly I'll have a DX10 GPU and 64bit CPU by then so would like an OS that supports both (in the case of 64bit than supports it well).
 
When the time comes I'll get Vista. "Alternative" OS have been nothing but headaches for me and simply not worth the trouble, I'd have to give up nearly all my programs I use on a daily basis.
 
i'll assemble my vista rig when it appears im missing out on gaming goodness. until then, i'll fiddle around with my fx-60 XP rig. with the dx9 x1900xtx.

im suspecting that will be well into '07.
 
Vista is Windows XP + to me. (except WDDM)

About alternative OS there are a lot of them.

ReactOS which intend to be a Windows compatible clone.
FreeBSD (UNIX) (DesktopBSD & PC-BSD are distros of freeBSD)
DragonFlyBSD (some kind of modern FreeBSD)
Haiku (BeOS clone)
SkyOS (a new OS)
Linspire
QNX Neutrino

:cry:

Damn, everybody hypes quad core CPU's but the only OS that would truely fly just went MIA. Solaris is probably the only OS that is as scalable as BeOS was (or would have been by now).

:cry:
 
I wouldn't be so sure that Vista is going to somehow "miss" the other cores. The new network stack finally uses Receive Side Scaling, or the ability to allocate individual network sessions to seperate CPU's. The "audio stack" does the same thing with sound streams, so does the "video stack" (WDDM).

Nearly all of the Vista kernel and ring-level-zero functions are written to multithread from the beginning. The NT5 kernel and other RLZ functions were aware of multiple processors, but never really utilized them. One nasty point to prove that would be network traffic: until just recently (with the release of the MS Scalable Network Pack) all network traffic was handled by the first logical CPU -- always. So on a 10GBit link, all that TCP overhead on top of any session informatoin was entirely bottlenecked on the first processor. God help anyone trying to run a "high end" webserver with a fat pipe.

In fact, it made it even worse when you had a top-end Windows rig attaching to a SAN via iSCSI (fiber card or similar.) That wonderful link was also subject to the first logical processor bottleneck, and if that heavy SAN usage was stacked on top of heavy network usage, it would completely swamp the box even if you had seven more cores doing nothing.

MS finally got smart in Vista and made the whole damned setup intelligent enough to evenly distribute load across all available physical (and logical) processors. I think this will be borne out when Vista goes into production and we start seeing some load scaling benchmarks.
 
MS finally got smart in Vista and made the whole damned setup intelligent enough to evenly distribute load across all available physical (and logical) processors. I think this will be borne out when Vista goes into production and we start seeing some load scaling benchmarks.

I hope that you will be proven right by Vista.

My concern is that they won't multithread enough by splitting the processes into more and smaller threads, which was the beauty of the BeOS. I think still the "pervasive multithreading" idea of the BeOS and its applications is key to getting a truely scalable multi core platform.
 
I hope that you will be proven right by Vista.

My concern is that they won't multithread enough by splitting the processes into more and smaller threads, which was the beauty of the BeOS. I think still the "pervasive multithreading" idea of the BeOS and its applications is key to getting a truely scalable multi core platform.

Well, to be fair, I can't speak to exactly how granular they got with multithreading. But assigning individual network session loads across processors, or seperating audio streams in the same method, or even seperating video contexts in the same way makes me think they're going down the right path.

We both know the truth will come out some time :)
 
I've been messing around with the 64bit version of Vista for a while now, and on the whole I like it.

The main complaint is lack of drivers. This is by no means Microsoft's fault though, so I can't blame them for that. Obviously the closer we get to the official launch, the driver situation will be much improved, with hardware manufacturers having to get their act together.

I like the whole new look and feel, and I've also found it very stable. Considering it's still in beta form, this is quite impressive. Aero glass looks soo slick, and the sidebar gadjets can be quite nifty. The wizards are annoying as hell though! While setting up connections and hardware, you seem to go around in circles trying to find a way around them. :rolleyes:

I haven't found any opressive DRM nastyness really, no more than what's in XP anyway.

I reckon I'll pick it up pretty soon after the launch.
 
Who's going to get it?
I'll buy it as soon as I can afford it, once released. Vista > XP, in my book. Besides, it means I can put my copy of XP Pro on my old box, and finally get that remote desktop crap to work the way I always wanted it...
 
I'll get it the day I'll really need (and want) to run a DX 10 game, which requires me to do the PCIe transition and get a DX10 GPU in the first place, so that's several years from now..
I have some upgrading to do before the big one (get a geforce 6 on AGP, a RAID 1, some RAM..) and I'll have no problem using NT 5.2 for some more time, it's so nice of an OS.

I also want to see if we can get Vista under 100MB RAM, using the classic scheme, disabling useless services, cleaning interface and explorer clutter etc.
I hate how with every new major version MS makes the defaults ever more complex, busy and with annoying crap (start bar grouping, yellow dog, hidden menus items with chevrons, huge start menu, ugly left pane etc.), Vista seems another steps towards that, more bars, wizards and all. Are we able to clean all that up like we can do with XP's crap.?
 
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I'll get it the day I'll really need (and want) to run a DX 10 game, which requires me to do the PCIe transition and get a DX10 GPU in the first place, so that's several years from now..
I have some upgrading to do before the big one (get a geforce 6 on AGP, a RAID 1, some RAM..) and I'll have no problem using NT 5.2 for some more time, it's so nice of an OS.

I also want to see if we can get Vista under 100MB RAM, using the classic scheme, disabling useless services, cleaning interface and explorer clutter etc.
I hate how with every new major version MS makes the defaults ever more complex, busy and with annoying crap (start bar grouping, yellow dog, hidden menus items with chevrons, huge start menu, ugly left pane etc.), Vista seems another steps towards that, more bars, wizards and all. Are we able to clean all that up like we can do with XP's crap.?

i don't usually do this, but... Q.F.T.! ;) well... except for the whole, "still on AGP" thing. wtf man! XD i'm proud of you. i couldn't do it! but mostly because i needed a new pc...
 
ill download it whenever the final version comes out and run it as my sole OS unless hardware accerlled desktop still proved to be a slower than XP.
As for DRM... [Moderated] you're ill informed !
 
My solution to the Vista issue is a shiny new MacPro running OS X. I will run Vista dual booted when I want to play games, and otherwise run it inside a Parallels/VMWare desktop if I need any MS specific non-game apps (doubtful)

Linux desktops suckass, Mac OS X gives me Unix and gives me a great desktop too. I'd like it if it run on any HW, but oh well.

Vista looks like a heaping pile of buggy shit right now.
 
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