Windows Xp To Vista

[munkee]

Bought a copy of windows xp home from staples at start of december/late october and the fatboy housemate just said that windows are letting people upgrade to vista for like half price or something if you bought windows xp during a certain time period recently. Any truth in this you think?

[Token]

Yeh, your more than likely able to get a discount off of Vista. You can get Vista upgrade that installs over XP for alot cheaper than the full oem of Vista.

Read a non-biased review of Vista, and 9 times out of 10 they'll say its exactly the same as XP except for a pretty Aeroglass feature and abit more security. So I cant justify spending over a 100 quid for that just yet.

[Orgun_Donor]

Just installed vista on to my machine now, its a bit meh, but i think all the drivers will work so ill probably keep it for now. But yea, if you can get a trial copy, to make sure your machine is working ok with vista, driver wise, then for the future, would be worth it.... but if not, then best off waiting.

[poopipe]

we've had vista on a couple of test machines at work for a while now.

the release candidate seems alright, most everyday type stuff seems to work and it's definitely pretty.

personally I'm not touching it until the first major service pack but I actually have work to do on my machine.

[Danny]

Read a non-biased review of Vista, and 9 times out of 10 they'll say its exactly the same as XP except for a pretty Aeroglass feature and abit more security. So I cant justify spending over a 100 quid for that just yet.

Anyone that says that is pretty much a moron. So much low level stuff has been completely rewritten such as the networking stack which has been pretty much rewritten from scratch. Fair enough on the surface it only looks like a fancy new GUI but underneith it is so so much more.

Ive been running the final version it for a good 2 months now and i AM going to BUY it yes thats right £££ next pay day. An OEM copy of home premium costs about £80. With a lifespan of say 4-5 years its hardly breaking the bank.

[Greetings]

If you visit MS website, you'll find a little program which will scan your system and tell you exactly which programs will stop running on Vista, and with what hardware you might have problems.

Made me change my mind about getting Vista, I'm sticking to XP for the time being.

[Hendrix]

Vista sadly sucks!

I had a Demo version from Windows, and I wasn't impressed. YES it has very cool features, but the face that it'll keep crashing your machine, screw it!

I'm either on XP Home Edition - or - Windows 98

If I'm unlucky I use my 2007 Power Book

[Danny]

it'll keep crashing your machine, screw it!

Do you have ANY evidance to back that up? Sure Vista has a few driver issues currently but so so so much less than XP ever had when it was released.

[Hendrix]

Do you have ANY evidance to back that up? Sure Vista has a few driver issues currently but so so so much less than XP ever had when it was released.

Microsoft alegidly posted that.

If your machine is not over 4GHz Ram, and has over 200gb space, this program will consitantly keep crashing.

NOW. I know as a fact 4GHz is impossible to fir in a laptop, yet PC world are selling you Laptops with it on

[munkee]

Microsoft alegidly posted that.

If your machine is not over 4GHz Ram, and has over 200gb space, this program will consitantly keep crashing.

NOW. I know as a fact 4GHz is impossible to fir in a laptop, yet PC world are selling you Laptops with it on

Now you are talking bollocks.

[Hendrix]

Now you are talking bollocks.

I will email a guy I know whom does Beta testing for Microsoft, and ask him to verify exactly what he told me...

[Danny]

Microsoft alegidly posted that.

If your machine is not over 4GHz Ram, and has over 200gb space, this program will consitantly keep crashing.

NOW. I know as a fact 4GHz is impossible to fir in a laptop, yet PC world are selling you Laptops with it on

Since when is ram measured in ghz? Fair enough 1Gb is about minimum for it to run nice with Aero. But 4Gb which i presume you mean is total bullshit. Anything over 2Ghz with 512Mb-1Gb ram with a GFX card from the past 2 years will run vista perfectly fine.

Its actually been proven that Vista will run faster than XP if a user has over 1Gb of ram.

[munkee]

I will email a guy I know whom does Beta testing for Microsoft, and ask him to verify exactly what he told me...

Ugh please dont bother.. this will only spark up another pete wright style thread

[Hendrix]

Since when is ram measured in ghz? Fair enough 1Gb is about minimum for it to run nice with Aero. But 4Gb which i presume you mean is total bullshit. Anything over 2Ghz with 512Mb-1Gb ram with a GFX card from the past 2 years will run vista perfectly fine.

Its actually been proven that Vista will run faster than XP if a user has over 1Gb of ram.

I only repeated what I read, and have been told.

It's quite likely I've read/heard it wrong

[Fixed Pants™]

Inur - do you have the link to the test thingy, i can't seem to find it.

Would be interesting to see if it would work on my comp, doubt i'd buy it though.

[RicH_87]

until i start trying to download programs and there is only the option for vista, i'm not going to buy it.

i personally don't think it looks that nice, (i always preferred windows classic over the xp theme) the see-through thing is a nice idea, and going by steam it can be useful when smaller windows automatically open underneath larger ones, but anyone who buys an OS simply because it looks nice is a fool imo (cough mac cough). plus you can just download themes that make xp look almost identicle.

no doubt the security is good, but i have no problems with my pc at the moment so that's no reason to upgrade. plus judging by the windows security on sp2 i bet the one on vista is amazingly intrusive. (i can imagine it blocks everything off the bat and gives you the option to unblock things when you run them for the first time).

plus i can imagine there being at least one or two issues for me personally, with driver availability for at least the next 4 months. (again, if it isn't broke, why fix it)?

not to mention the spec sheet it needs to run. surely it drains resources??? i've seen people with 4gb of the top of the line ddr2 ram, dual core processors running something silly like 3.5ghz, and still having a low rating on it's built in (and suspiciously dodgey) vista-experience-o-meter.

basically, i'm not doubting vista is any good, (i'm certainly not going to say it's shit when i don't even own it, like a lot of people have done so far all over the interweb...) but i am defiantly saying, why should anyone want to upgrade to it yet? the majority of people have only just caught up with this generation, in terms of pc speed and xp actually running well, why throw it all away for an operating system with no obvious benefits??

what exactly can i do on vista that i can't do on xp??? and more importantly what can i actually do better???....as far as i know i'm almost certain vista will actually be WORSE than xp for the first few months, or at least until the first inevitable update.

there is only one reason anyone would buy vista now imo, and that's for the bragging rights.

plus it's start button is actually the most retarded thing i've ever seen on a GUI. seriously....there better be another option on there somewhere when i eventually get a copy.

anyway yeh, just my 2cents. if you feel like replying to some of the questions/opinions (danny or anyone) then i'm genuinely interested, as i'm not a member of any computer discussion boards or anything, so can only go on what i'm self taught.

[Orgun_Donor]

Just been using it for a while, and i must say its running unbarably slow

The whole fancy newtorking part and the control panel wouldn't load, and also unable to play a DVD, to little memory apparently.

Ill try again when i finally upgrade my PSU so i can run my new x1950. But ill stick to xp at the moment.

[Tomm]

but anyone who buys an OS simply because it looks nice is a fool imo (cough mac cough).

I have three things to say:

1) Mac OS X is soooooo much more than just pretty looks. I ranted about this in another thread, but you're sadly mistaken if you think that's the only reason for getting a mac.

2) If you are using something every day, surely you want it to look nice? That's why people clean their cars and tidy their houses. Nothing wrong with that is there? If you're used to OS X as I am, XP looks and feels like crap, so it's about time they gave it a bit of a spruce up. Having said that I've not used Vista yet (or even seen videos etc) so I dunno how much it's actually changed. I will probably end up buying Vista when I have some money kicking about, and when they get the driver issues sorted (at the moment apparently you can't run the combination of an nForce3 mobo + ATI graphics card - which is what I have ).

3) When was the last time you bought a T-shirt with a logo on? Why? You could just buy a plain one from Primark or Asda. Everyone likes pretty things.

If I'm unlucky I use my 2007 Power Book

What are you talking about? There's no such thing.

[philth]

My two pence.

Vista sucks! simple.

It came installed on my new computer I bought recently ( the guy who built it tests for microsoft ).

I couldn't run any of the software I wanted to....it had some nice MAC rip off features but crashed every five minutes.

It asks fr verification on everything.... I mean everything.

I tried to switch back to XP but there is no way to uninstall Vista...It won't allow you to format the C:/ drive. I ended up having to take my computer to have the harddrive pulled and formated on another computer.

Crap!!!

lots of other four lets words to describe VISTA, none of which are good.

[Token]

Vista forces you to re-activate, or so I am told, if you look at it in the right way. Microsoft, in possibly the most shortsighted move in the company's history, decided to lock Vista down to the first PC it is installed to and not allow you to move it legally. If you call it up, whine and lie, you can socially engineeer a few reactivations, but technically this is a licence violation. I won't do that.

So, when I change the mobo on my box, or an unspecified other bit of hardware or three, Microsoft decides that my box is a new computer and my 100 quid copy of Vista is a doorstop - I must spend another 100 quid to continue working. Bill Gates does need the money, he gives away a lot of it on trips to cities thinking of moving to Linux.

[Krisboats]

Well the machine i had a go on looked alright, and was pretty stable. In fact, i didn't see the system hiccup once.

I'm with poopipe on the whole not buying it till they release a major service pack, but i WILL buy it.

Hendrix, shut up. From what i've read the full blown and fancy settings on vista only use 750mb or so of RAM. Someone who has 4GB and its still running slow obviously has issues elsewhere. And needing 200gb of disk space is just silly. You HAVE heard/read it wrong.

Fatpants: What your after is the windows vista upgrade advisor, it goes through and scans your computer and tells you what you might have problems with. Seems Nero 6 won't work at all on vista

[RicH_87]

I have three things to say:

1) Mac OS X is soooooo much more than just pretty looks. I ranted about this in another thread, but you're sadly mistaken if you think that's the only reason for getting a mac.

2) If you are using something every day, surely you want it to look nice? That's why people clean their cars and tidy their houses. Nothing wrong with that is there? If you're used to OS X as I am, XP looks and feels like crap, so it's about time they gave it a bit of a spruce up. Having said that I've not used Vista yet (or even seen videos etc) so I dunno how much it's actually changed. I will probably end up buying Vista when I have some money kicking about, and when they get the driver issues sorted (at the moment apparently you can't run the combination of an nForce3 mobo + ATI graphics card - which is what I have ).

3) When was the last time you bought a T-shirt with a logo on? Why? You could just buy a plain one from Primark or Asda. Everyone likes pretty things.

What are you talking about? There's no such thing.

1* yeh ok it was just a stupid dig really. just that, almost every single mac advert i see, is a petty dig at windows, and basically it has something fit/pretty/good looking representing mac. I was just making a joke based on how Mac's are portrayed by them self. I still don't think it has anything over xp though.

2* I agree, you don't wanna use anything that looks cheap/ugly on a regular basis, but at the same time, surely you wouldn't replace your beige working toaster, just so you could have a stainless steal one? Its a waste of money. If you genuinely need to upgrade, and it happens to look pretty too, then fair enough, but almost everyone i've spoken to, or every article i've read about vista, the first thing they have said is, "it looks really good".....well great, i bought a ferrari and it looks really good too, but unfortunately it hasn't got an engine....

3* i can see your point here, but in my case i usually buy plain fruit of the loom, or band t shirts. i don't agree with paying to advertise, although i do own a fair few branded t shirts i've been given.

my post probably sounds hostile which isn't at all what i want. Basically, i can't get my head round why anyone would buy an inferior/unnecessary product that looks nice, over one that actually works, is form over function really that important???

sorry but i can only think of ipods as a comparison. almost everyone has an ipod....why? because of how it looks. before ipods the majority of people didn't even know what an mp3 file was, never mind own an mp3 player. Suddenly, ipods are cool, so i'll buy one as a fashion accessory, and suddenly i'm the worlds biggest music fan. If it wasn't for ipods, i don't think many people would even have an mp3 player at all. so why buy something you wouldn't otherwise get, just because it looks nice?

[Krisboats]

Vista forces you to re-activate, or so I am told, if you look at it in the right way. Microsoft, in possibly the most shortsighted move in the company's history, decided to lock Vista down to the first PC it is installed to and not allow you to move it legally. If you call it up, whine and lie, you can socially engineeer a few reactivations, but technically this is a licence violation. I won't do that.

So, when I change the mobo on my box, or an unspecified other bit of hardware or three, Microsoft decides that my box is a new computer and my 100 quid copy of Vista is a doorstop - I must spend another 100 quid to continue working. Bill Gates does need the money, he gives away a lot of it on trips to cities thinking of moving to Linux.

Xp is the same. It gives you a maximum of five different configurations before you need to re-activate it. Adding a soundcard etc is classed as a hardware change. I don't think they can legally force you to re-buy it, especially as things like component failure may lead to you needing a new component in the computer, you can actually claim a refund if thats truly the case. I reckon it'll be much the same as XP, in that when you change a piece of hardware you have to ring up microsoft and get them to give you the new code thing.

[Token]

Well MS has been working on SP1 for Vista before it released the final OS. The service pack is codnamed 'Fiji' presumably after a pretty looking island. In a statement regarding the service pack Microsoft admits that Vista has "high impact" problems, whatever they are? But not to worry as the Service pack is apparently on "fast track". It'll be here soon.

To Krisboats: Apparently Vista is locked down to the first computer its installed to, theres no chance of changing configuration and then having another go at it. So what can you do? Buy another license? If you call it up, whine and lie, you can socially engineeer a few reactivations, but technically this is a licence violation. I won't do that.

Check this:

Amazon UK - Windows Vista Ultimate Edition = 327 GBP

Amazon US - Windows Vista Ultimate Edition = 195 GBP

a 132 quid more to buy this in the UK, they are both exactly the same. Rip off britain!

Edited February 10, 2007 by Scopse

[Krisboats]

Well MS has been working on SP1 for Vista before it released the final OS. The service pack is codnamed 'Fiji' presumably after a pretty looking island. In a statement regarding the service pack Microsoft admits that Vista has "high impact" problems, whatever they are? But not to worry as the Service pack is apparently on "fast track". It'll be here soon.

To Krisboats: Apparently Vista is locked down to the first computer its installed to, theres no chance of changing configuration and then having another go at it. So what can you do? Buy another license? If you call it up, whine and lie, you can socially engineeer a few reactivations, but technically this is a licence violation. I won't do that.

Check this:

Amazon UK - Windows Vista Ultimate Edition = 327 GBP

Amazon US - Windows Vista Ultimate Edition = 195 GBP

a 132 quid more to buy this in the UK, they are both exactly the same. Rip off britain!

32 bit vista

64 bit vista

Hardly that expensive to pick up an OEM copy. And that licensing thing only applies to the OEM versions, the retail one can be re-installed at your whim, where as OEM is locked to your motherboard.

EDIT: Heres the retail version of vista premium... Oooh so expensive

Edited February 10, 2007 by Krisboats