Vista observations and opinions

[swaaye]

Well I've given Vista a run around on a laptop of mine. I had only used it at work, and not on my computer there. So having it on a home comp of mine has been a much more "intimate" experience of this new MS cash cow that basically everyone who buys a computer will get to enjoy and/or despise.

Notebook specs:
Athlon 64 3000+ (clawhammer 1 MB 1800 MHz)
Radeon 9600 64 MB
2 GB PC2700
60 gig 7200 RPM (Hitachi 7K100)
Dell 2005FPW 20" LCD
Audigy 2 Notebook
external firewire 250 gig
wireless logitech desktop
Vista x64

I use this machine as an always-on station. It uses very little power. It hides under a desk with wires coming out of every orifice lol.

Good:
-Pretty.
-Superfetch is neat.
-The new start menu is very useful. I really like this. Best thing they've done to the Windows UI since 95.
-Prioritized I/O is really cool. Makes hard drive grinding less of an issue for performance.
-built-in scheduled defragger. I guess this is just MS slowly creeping up on 3rd party defraggers.
-I like the greater control over power management options.
-Sidebar is useful. Weather, stocks, performance monitors.
-Seems very compatible with old apps.
-Icons resizeable.
-Out-of-the-box mouse options are better in Vista. Can control number of lines the wheel scrolls, for example.

Neutral:
-The requirement to use admin privileges to install stuff and edit some things is very reminiscent of Linux. Interesting.
-Windows updates take a lot longer to install in Vista.
-Can't uninstall Windows components, you can just "turn them off" lol.
-Not sure what I think of that new Add/Remove programs panel. Why did they change this, exactly? Just because?

Bad:
One rather annoying quirk I found with Vista the other day is that it can't share files with puters running Windows 9x. I can browse files in shares and see their icon images, but when I try to copy it will error out after a long pause. It then says the device is no longer available. After a few hours wasted searching for solutions, I couldn't find any. Apparently Vista drops support for those old operating systems. Not a issue for most I'm sure, but I do mess with some old machines occasionally and not being able to access my glorious share of ancient and archaic updates, DVDROMs, etc, is really very annoying.

-UAC (turned it off, uhg). This is actually reminiscent of all those Linux popup windows asking for your root pass, tho. I don't like them either.
-Signed drivers in x64 (very bad for the free software folks). ATI Tray Tools requires you to disable this signed driver requirement if you want to use the app, for example.

Aero the Glitzy Gimmick bogs things down a little compared to a simple 2D GUI. Diagonally stretching windows, for instance, is choppy. I also don't like animations or translucency, honestly. I've always disabled window animations. Also turned off the fade here. I just want windows to pop up ASAP. Call me some sort of minimalist, I guess. Couldn't find how to switch off Aero, the option for Aero Lite or whatever wasn't in the drop down. Only Windows Classic.

-Copying and deleting files can be strangely slow right now. Glad to hear a fix is supposedly on the way.
-Game performance is not up to XP level. Guild Wars was noticeably slower even with Catalyst 7.7 which is 7 months of driver updates since Vista's release.
-It's big. Lots of gigs just for your "OS".



So, I guess, it's ok. But really I see no reason to go to it from XP right now. I just hope the performance issues are gone by the time it is the only OS to use for gaming. And I hope the solution isn't just throwing more hardware at your "OS" . XP actually can run smoother than 98 and 2K on some machines, I sure don't see that ever being true of Vista.

 

[Davros]

Well
Good:
-
-Out-of-the-box mouse options are better in Vista. Can control number of lines the wheel scrolls, for example.

Xp has that :

 

[Arwin]

The sharing thing isn't down to the firewall stuff? That's where we had issues initially, but that was with XP computers.

I just bought my wife a new computer, and of course it came with Vista (though if she had had a choice, my wife would've gone for XP). So I'm getting my first intimate experience with Vista now as well. So far, I think I like it, really.

One of the things you mentioned as neutral I find a big advantage. When I'm setting up things under my wife's account, I can give her limited rights, but I can still easily configure and install new stuff without having to log off under a different account. Yes, Linux got it right earlier, but that doesn't mean I'm not glad it's in there now obviously.

On the other hand, it gives you a few extra clicks if you're logged in with an account with admin privilidges. I guess it's safer, but it's still annoying.

All in all though, everything I need to do with it still works, and so far I like. But yes, it does require a lot from your machine. Hopefully we get a remake that has a smaller footprint, as basically XP was an optimised 2k.

 

[Speccy]

I'm sharing between XP and Vista on my home network OK. All it does is the first time I connect is it requests my password that I log in to my Vista account with.

 

[Albuquerque]

I think sharing to Dos / 9x boxes is a function of NetBios and poking the appropriate hole in the firewall. I think it's 139? Can't exactly recall... Humorously enough, I believe the firewall settings has a checkbox with a verbose description that has exactly what you're looking for.

The UAC makes more sense in the "credentials" mode, where it prompts for an actual user ID / PW versus the simplistic allow/deny message. Corporately that's what we're deploying with...

 

[Geo]

a very nice trip report.

Dude, if I was going to do Vista on a pc with those specs that needed to regularly talk to Win9x clients. . . .I'd shoot myself first and hope that got me out of having to do it at all. The only bit, spec-wise, that didn't cause cringing on this end was the 2GB of RAM.

Seriously, you are a braver man than I, and the amazing thing is not that you found some things not to like, but that you found anything to like at all.

 

[Skrying]

I don't get it, there's nothing really bad about that notebook at all Geo. No, its not top of the line but.. its more than enough for a decent Vista experience.

 

[swaaye]

Dude, if I was going to do Vista on a pc with those specs that needed to regularly talk to Win9x clients. . . .I'd shoot myself first and hope that got me out of having to do it at all. The only bit, spec-wise, that didn't cause cringing on this end was the 2GB of RAM.

Seriously, you are a braver man than I, and the amazing thing is not that you found some things not to like, but that you found anything to like at all.

Heh heh. Yeah it is getting a bit crusty these days. But it runs Vista pretty well.

The system we have at work running Vista uses a 945G IGP and it is actually very smooth. I don't think a 9600 is going to be worse off than that. They score about the same in the Vista bench.

I actually upgraded the machine's HDD and RAM just for Vista. I'd had 1 GB RAM in it for years but the machine at work with Vista was not all that smooth at 1GB (it's now 2GB). That 7K100 hard disk, btw, is about the fastest you can get for a laptop these days....

 

[Geo]

That 7K100 hard disk, btw, is about the fastest you can get for a laptop these days....

Fair enough. Most lappies of that vintage (going by the CPU) had 4200rpm drives in them.

 

[swaaye]

I think sharing to Dos / 9x boxes is a function of NetBios and poking the appropriate hole in the firewall. I think it's 139? Can't exactly recall... Humorously enough, I believe the firewall settings has a checkbox with a verbose description that has exactly what you're looking for.

The UAC makes more sense in the "credentials" mode, where it prompts for an actual user ID / PW versus the simplistic allow/deny message. Corporately that's what we're deploying with...

Interesting. I'll look for that. I went through bunches of forums and MS help pages about network authentication protocols in the security policies. But the issue with the big delay and "device disconnected" didn't seem like authentication to me at all. Just some strange data transfer quirk.

I'm still on the fence about UAC's usefulness though. A credentials mode does seem to make more sense. My biggest issue with it in its normal config is that you click it so much that you end up ignoring what it's asking. I think a lot of people will end up on cruise control with it and just allow everything. So, it will end up being entirely an annoyance and not stop a potential threat at all.

 

[Rainbow Man]

Vista has lots of good stuff and do many things 'right' (that should have been done right many years ago by all that's holy).

The help center is actually worth a damn now! It's great to be frank and has fixed my problems (almost) every time I've used it.

I also like Aero. I think it's sweet. Finally a windows that actually looks GOOOOOD. In fact I like aero so much I'd like to make the 3D window flip thing the permanent alternative for alt-tab but it seems I can't.

It only flips between open windows it seems to me. If I minimize something to the taskbar it won't show up in the animation.. But that's not too mcuh of an issue really.

However despite the good stuff vista also tends to nag the user to death ou of the box before all the annoying stuff has been tunred off (takes quite a bit of work and reboots of the system! grrr).

Did you start this program? Did you install this thing? This program wants access to your copmuter. Windwos firewall has blocked this program from accessing the internet. Click here to partake in windows experience quality useage survey. Security Center: user access control is not active! Click here to enable it. Blah blah blah and so on and so on forever it goes. Nag nag nag nagnagnagnag.

You turn one annoying thing off, another annoying thing pops out like a jack-in-a-box to warn you that annoying thing #1 is disabled.

And then there's the whole "ultimate" debacle as well. You pay through the nose for the uberest version and what you get? One ultimate extra isn't even finished yet (the animated desktop thingy: iot's just a buggy beta) and the language packs refuse to install for me. It downloads and installs, and when the install is finished minutes later it says it did not install.

Oh and the vault thingy needs motherboard support or it refuses to work.

So..yay..not.

This thing needed more polish IMO. It's pretty good but could have been much better. Or if released as is it should hae been a hell of a lot cheaper IMO. The only version reasonably priced is heavily criplpled.

So it seems development and/or management over development had a lot of issues considering how damn LONG it took to finish this thing and how many features that got cut.

Peace.

 

[Albuquerque]

I'm still on the fence about UAC's usefulness though. A credentials mode does seem to make more sense. My biggest issue with it in its normal config is that you click it so much that you end up ignoring what it's asking. I think a lot of people will end up on cruise control with it and just allow everything. So, it will end up being entirely an annoyance and not stop a potential threat at all.

You're thinking exactly the way we are; it's useless if you can just "click" and be done with it -- that's no better than any other "popup" that Microsoft has built into IE6 or Explorer about "Do you trust blah blah blah". Actually having to type your credentials in makes you pause a bit longer to consider if that's REALLY what you want to do

As for the firewall, I may still be incorrect, but I think that will fix you right up. When I get a chance later tonight or tomorrow morning, I'll boot up an old DOS network disk and try to hax0r my Vista PC with various firewall settings. If you haven't already replied by then, I'll let you know what I find...

 

[swaaye]

Fair enough. Most lappies of that vintage (going by the CPU) had 4200rpm drives in them.

I'm sure they are still shipping those beauties. Heh. Ick.

 

[Albuquerque]

I'm sure they are still shipping those beauties. Heh. Ick.

They are

We tested with an IBM X41 Tablet that came with both the Intel IGP (a really REALLY old crusty one!) and a 4200RPM drive. So long as you had at least a gig of ram in it, the performance (even with all the tablet goodies) was quite reasonable...

 

[Davros]

Dude, if I was going to do Vista on a pc with those specs that needed to regularly talk to Win9x clients. . . .I'd shoot myself first and hope that got me out of having to do it at all. The only bit, spec-wise, that didn't cause cringing on this end was the 2GB of RAM.

Seriously, you are a braver man than I, and the amazing thing is not that you found some things not to like, but that you found anything to like at all.

Eh your saying a 3ghz cpu isnt enough for vista ?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Eh your saying a 3ghz cpu isnt enough for vista ?

Athlon 64 3000+ (clawhammer 1 MB 1800 MHz)

It's a 1.8Ghz cpu Dav.

 

[Geo]

I thought we were talking about a 1.8GHz one? :smile:

A google tells me that CPU was announced 4.5 years ago. If you think 4.5 yr old CPUs are generally fit for a next generation OS release, then I can only conclude that your experience has been different than mine over the last 25 years.

Microsoft may say so, of course. But then I've usually found their min reqs to be ridiculous.

 

[swaaye]

Heh. I'm just trying to take advantage of the supposed glorious power of the original K8 with it's AMD64 support!! Just like folks who think GF8 and R600 are going to get better with age and DX10!

That laptop is no dog. Especially with 2 gigs o RAM and that HDD. Sure it's nothing compared to my 3.1 GHz Conroe sitting next to it, but both browse the web pretty darn well. lol

 

[Geo]

I'm not trying to put down your rig, actually. Tho re-reading it probably seems that way. You've done more to get it Vista ready than most folks with that vintage lappie would have done, for sure.

I just made a different choice, and ordered a ThinkPad T61p to replace my lappie of roughly the same age.

 

[swaaye]

As for the firewall, I may still be incorrect, but I think that will fix you right up. When I get a chance later tonight or tomorrow morning, I'll boot up an old DOS network disk and try to hax0r my Vista PC with various firewall settings. If you haven't already replied by then, I'll let you know what I find...

Yeah definitely let me know how that goes. I looked through the firewall settings and didn't see any specific options for NETBIOS. Remember that I can browse shared folders just fine. It's the transfer of the file that it hangs up on. It's definitely not a networking quirk that I've ever run into before.....

There's not a lot of info about this out there at all.