Windows Vista

[Danhalen]

I am currently burning the free Vista Beta 2 to DVD. I am just curious to see if anyone here has played with Vista yet. I've heard some good things so far. The worst I've heard is that it is a memory hog (worse than XP). Anything?

[Vitnir]

The only reason for me to upgrade would be if a new game would not run on previous OS, why would you voluntary double the RAM of your machine just so you could run the newest OS? From experience of previous "upgrades" I would estimate 2Gb RAM is required for Vista.

[Darat]

The only reason for me to upgrade would be if a new game would not run on previous OS, why would you voluntary double the RAM of your machine just so you could run the newest OS? From experience of previous "upgrades" I would estimate 2Gb RAM is required for Vista.

Definitely not my experience so far - Vista Beta 2 is running a bit slow on my PC but doesn't seem to be any worse then XP for memory requirements (on my PC - I have 1Gb of RAM).

[Darat]

I am currently burning the free Vista Beta 2 to DVD. I am just curious to see if anyone here has played with Vista yet. I've heard some good things so far. The worst I've heard is that it is a memory hog (worse than XP). Anything?

Don't run it as your main system - it is only a Beta and is still quite buggy, however for getting an idea of what it is going to be like it's now worth having a look at.

As for the "user experience" I'm slightly bemused, the OS definitely holds you hand more but they have grafted on new ideas to the old 95-XP UI and that results in something that I think is clumsy and counterintuitive.

[rjh01]

I do not bother to get the next versions of the operating system. I just wait until the computer is too old then upgrade everything. My old computer lasted 4 years then I gave it to a friend who is still using it 9 months later.

[Darat]

Not have the latest software? Does not compute. I mean how can you live without all those features you were managing to live without for years before?

It's thanks to people like you we have marketing departments... if the world was populated just by people like me all they would have to do is slap a ".1" on something or a "new" sticker and we'd be buying it.

[rjh01]

It works and I know how it works. Then in another 3 years time or so I will want something my computer will not deliver, so I get another one with Vista, only 2 years or so after you. In the meantime you and people like you find all the errors in the software. I am sure Vista will be around for 6 years or so. XP has been around for how long?

[richardm]

Hmm, I didn't realise it was an open beta. It's tempting to give it a go, I must admit.

Edited to add: But then I'd be tempted to buy the full OS when it gets released, and that will cost me money, dammit.

[Danhalen]

The only reason for me to upgrade would be if a new game would not run on previous OS, why would you voluntary double the RAM of your machine just so you could run the newest OS? From experience of previous "upgrades" I would estimate 2Gb RAM is required for Vista.I'm a sucker for the all the "pretty UI" enhancements they've been teasing me with. That, and it's free. Plus, I have an extra machine.

[Zbu]

I just won't bother this time around. XP does the job for me.

[Hagrok]

I've heard that is asks "Are you sure?" every time you do anything remotely useful on your machine. That would drive me insane (or, more insane, as the case may be)...

[Vitnir]

The upcoming game Crysis will require DirectX 10 which will be reserved for Vista so no doubt I will be forced to get it sometime next year. grrr

[Darat]

I've heard that is asks "Are you sure?" every time you do anything remotely useful on your machine. That would drive me insane (or, more insane, as the case may be)...

It's not so much "Are you sure?" as warnings that you are about to run something that is trying to mess about in the gubbins of the system; previous versions did seem a bit over protective however now I'd say it was about on par with OS/X. (And you can configure it so you don't need to enter a password each time.)

[Hagrok]

It's not so much "Are you sure?" as warnings that you are about to run something that is trying to mess about in the gubbins of the system; previous versions did seem a bit over protective however now I'd say it was about on par with OS/X. (And you can configure it so you don't need to enter a password each time.)
Hmm, sounds irritating. I actually had a similar problem with Windows stopping an application in XP when I was trying to play the new Rainbow Six game. I had to turn off some non-intuitive setting to get it to work.

[Darat]

Hmm, sounds irritating. I actually had a similar problem with Windows stopping an application in XP when I was trying to play the new Rainbow Six game. I had to turn off some non-intuitive setting to get it to work.

You're going to have to avoid updating to any new OS then, it's something that is pretty much in all the new OSs.

[Hagrok]

You're going to have to avoid updating to any new OS then, it's something that is pretty much in all the new OSs.
*whimper*

[Vitnir]

I've heard that is asks "Are you sure?" every time you do anything remotely useful on your machine. That would drive me insane (or, more insane, as the case may be)...
I don't see how a feature like that will improve security for the home user. The computer illiterates will continue to click "OK" in every window that pops up.

[Darat]

I don't see how a feature like that will improve security for the home user. The computer illiterates will continue to click "OK" in every window that pops up.

Yes but it does mean that at long last MS can say like Apple does - "We warned you but you still went ahead and now you say it's our fault?" :)

[richardm]

I actually had a similar problem with Windows stopping an application in XP when I was trying to play the new Rainbow Six game.
I've had ZoneAlarm do this to me on more than one occasion when a game has for some reason best known to itself tried to access the network/internet. ZoneAlarm pops up a "Do you want to allow this?" dialog, but because the game's running full screen it doesn't get displayed. I sit there wondering what's wrong until the "Ah, Zonealarm" neurons get fired.

Right, I'm a sucker for something new, so I'm downloading this as we speak and will clag it onto my games PC. I'm going to install it on a separate partition (hopefully) so I can still dual boot to XP if need be.

[El Greco]

So what's new with Vista ?

I can't think of any feature I'd go crazy about except maybe... does it play old DOS games without problems ?

[richardm]

So what's new with Vista ?


Apparently it has an updated calculator app :wide-eyed

[tygirwulf]

I'm a sucker for the all the "pretty UI" enhancements they've been teasing me with. That, and it's free. Plus, I have an extra machine.

WindowsBlinds and a Vista theme. Although, MS has been trying to keep Vista skins off the net, but you know how it goes; once online, always online. :p

As for the OS itself, I highly doubt I will get it. I happen to like my PC the way it is, and I don't want some new OS making me feel like it's suddenly ancient because it's a badly coded pos.

[richardm]

I thought that as well, Tygirwulf. But I'm burning the DVD as we speak, and I'm actually feeling quite excited about it. Ah, the geek in me isn't dead yet!

On the other hand, I do have more than one PC; I might not be quite so gung-ho about installing a beta OS if I didn't.

[Darat]

I'm a long time WindowsBlind user and I've been running one the Vista skins for a while with per-pixel alpha blending (e.g. "glass" title bars" and even anow have a round start button however it doesn't look as nice as the standard Vista Aero interface.

[richardm]

Yes, it does look quite nice. It's a bit strange trying to navigate around the place, I can't find half the things I'm looking for. Par for the course with a new UI I suppose.

As you might have gathered from that I've got it up and running. The installation went very smoothly indeed - no problems at all, and I can switch back to XP with no problems either. The only catch is that with it effectively being a new installation it hasn't sorted out the applications and things that are on the other drives. And it hasn't found some drivers that are only on my original C drive either (obviously enough - shame there weren't some included though, it's not like my hardware is from Mars).
Perhaps some tinkering with the transfer wizard might resolve that.

Edited to add: I don't think it's as much that it's a memory hog, just that it's very aggressively prefetching data for the OS. If you start other things up I think that will reduce. In any event moving around the system seems to be quicker than XP; I was expecting it to be slower. If that is a result of the prefetching it will be interesting to see if it turns to treacle when I use it properly.

[Oleron]

Just installed it on an old Dell GX150, which is just on the cusp of being vista-compatible (1Ghz, 384MB RAM).

It crashed.

The problem was the Intel 815 on-board graphics chip so rather than mucking around trying to find a driver for it I popped in an ATI Rage Pro and it booted up fine.

My first impression is that it is a bit like our Labour govt - a nanny state. It confused me when it asked me if my network was public or private. It is on a lan with an internet gateway so I said 'private'. I guess that is for the firewall settings - it drops its pants if you say private but puts on a chastity belt if you say 'public'. But why doesn't it just say that it is adjusting the firewall settings?

With so little RAM the hard disk is getting a thrashing so I'll add some more when I get a chance.
The GUI does look quite good, I have to admit.

[richardm]

Well, I'm back in XP-Land today. Couldn't find a driver for my network card (3Com 3CRDAG675 wireless). No network = no likey. Pity, that. Oh well, I'll have another go later.

[Oleron]

I don't think there is a driver for that 3com card. :(

In fact, the one thing that has annoyed me about this beta is the serious lack of driver support for some pretty common hardware.

I hope the release version has a larger installed driver base.

[Darat]

I don't think there is a driver for that 3com card. :(

In fact, the one thing that has annoyed me about this beta is the serious lack of driver support for some pretty common hardware.

I hope the release version has a larger installed driver base.

I agree, I have two USB wireless network adaptors and neither of them have a driver (and both of them are under 12 months old). One I can get to work sort of it in an intermittent manner using the old XP driver the other just doesn't exist as far as Beta 2 is concerned. Strangely though the intermittent one did work under previous builds of Vista?

But one of the reasons for having a public Beta is for MS to get this final data, and to give them some credit it this has happened in all their final betas from Win95 to WinXP.

[richardm]

In fact, the one thing that has annoyed me about this beta is the serious lack of driver support for some pretty common hardware.

According to Microsoft they have coverage for over 90% of devices, but typically enough the missing 10% includes virtually all of mine.

[Darat]

I'm trying to remember which game it was on but I remember a telephone discussion with the developers during the last push to gold and we'd just had a new build in for QA. This was the version now meant to be complete for supporting all game controllers (joysticks and the like).

Unfortunately we had a slight problem, two of the required input devices didn't work, one of the dev-team was quite belligerent about this (probably been working 24 hours to get the final devices supported) "But that's only two devices out of the 20 odd the game will support" to which I replied, "true but without keyboard and mouse support....".

[a_unique_person]

Why did they have to **** with the driver model again? One of the biggest pains in the **** with Windows is driver hell. Now they are doing it all over again.

[Almo]

Vista is evil. Requiring Vista for Direct X 10... They so could not get away with this crap if they didn't have a monopoly. Innovation my ___. :(

[Danhalen]

I can't get the damn audio driver to work. Apparently it's a common problem with conexant ac-link (all over the Microsoft fora).

[kevin]

I agree, I have two USB wireless network adaptors and neither of them have a driver (and both of them are under 12 months old).

I thought manufacturers typically wrote the drivers, submitted them to microsoft for testing (i.e. logo complliance) who then signed them and added them to the build. And I thought manufacturers typically a) first did drivers for their most common devices out there, which usually aren't their brand new ones; and b) usually wait 'til the later betas when microsoft has stopped screwing around with the APIs so much.

[joyrex]

I suppose the I/O prioritization (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/priorityio.mspx) is not yet included in this beta? Does this kind of design exist in other operating systems? Sounds to me like this could be the answer to reduce those horrible lags almost any Windows system has when there is a lot of hard disk activity.

[Darat]

Will this mean that at long last a PC can format a floppy disc without bringing the rest of the system to a standstill? :)

[moopet]

I've had it working on a laptop with a variety of processors, 1 or 2 gigs of RAM and a GeForce Go 6600 card. It easily exceeds the vista premium specs except the graphics drivers don't install (ends up using the MS DX8.1 version, which doesn't allow for Aqua, sorry, I mean "glass", and automatic updates crash it sometimes. And it's not very exciting for something that was started before my cat was born. He was up and running way faster, although with each passing year he does seem to use up more resources too.

[Wowbagger]

Hey, I know why I'm getting Vista: It comes with Purble's Place!! Yippeeeee!!!:) :) :)

No, but seriously, the only feature I am really looking forward to is better Tablet PC support, including the ability to train the system to your handwriting better. I have an XP Tablet PC, right now. I happen to like it, but handwriting recognition is something of a low point.

I have the Vista Beta running on a VirtualPC, at the moment. The sound doesn't work, and it doesn't accept my graphics card as "Glass" capable. But, I am sure that is VirtualPC's problem, not Vista's problem. In a week I will have a hard drive prepared to install Vista natively. We'll see how it goes.

I am preparing a bit of a list of other enhancements I happen to find noteworthy. I'll let you in on that, as soon as I conjure it up completely.

[scribble]

I suppose the I/O prioritization (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/priorityio.mspx) is not yet included in this beta? Does this kind of design exist in other operating systems? Sounds to me like this could be the answer to reduce those horrible lags almost any Windows system has when there is a lot of hard disk activity.

This has been in the linux kernel for some time. IO priority support was added in the 2.6 kernel. Here is the announcement of a patch from 2004 that, as far as I can tell, neatly adds support for the sort of priority levels that the white paper describes (support for other types of IO scheduling having been added previously):

http://kerneltrap.org/node/4406

I can also honestly claim I've never experienced horrible lag from disk activity on linux -- in fact, I've never experienced any lag at all from disk activity... rarely perhaps from the process that is actually doing the disk access. Never for other processes running concurrently.

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

I just put together a brand new system which I put XP 64 on, so I am going to try the Windows Vista beta on my old computer just for the hell of it. I know one disadvantage of Vista is that it is not at all compatible with 16-bit software. So if you have any old programs/games that you enjoy playing, you may be SOL unless someone develops some kind of emulator for it...

I'll probably stick with XP for a while until the initial bugs are worked out of the first release. I don't trust new Windows OSes until they've been out at least a few months.

[infornography]

Could one of you intrepid beta testers test something for me?

My number 1 complaint with windows, the thing that really gets my goat, the biggest issue I have amongst the thousands of issues, is that when you are copying a lot of data and something, anything goes wrong with a single file, it cancels the copy and doesn't tell you what didn't make it, what did, and what is only partially copied.

If they have fixed this, either by allowing it to copy the rest of the files and ignoring the one(s) that caused a problem or by providing an adequate error screen, then I will get vista without a doubt. If this problem, which has existed since time began, still has not been fixed, then microsoft can go rot in hell for eternity for all I care.

[Wowbagger]

I just put together a brand new system which I put XP 64 on,
(snip)
I know one disadvantage of Vista is that it is not at all compatible with 16-bit software.
I don't think XP x64 is compatible with 16-bit programs, either. (The one exception they make is for certain 16-bit installation programs for 32-bit apps. But, that only applies to the certain ones they coded the OS to specifically accept.)

I'll probably stick with XP for a while until the initial bugs are worked out of the first release. I don't trust new Windows OSes until they've been out at least a few months.
That is, indeed, a good way to go.

[Wowbagger]

My number 1 complaint with windows, the thing that really gets my goat, the biggest issue I have amongst the thousands of issues, is that when you are copying a lot of data and something, anything goes wrong with a single file, it cancels the copy and doesn't tell you what didn't make it, what did, and what is only partially copied.
That is a very good gripe to bring up! It might be difficult to test if Vista corrects this, but I'll see what I can do, and get back to you. Unless someone else has the answer, already...?

[rjh01]

That is a very good gripe to bring up! It might be difficult to test if Vista corrects this, but I'll see what I can do, and get back to you. Unless someone else has the answer, already...?

To test - try and copy files from an external source. Part of the way though stop the transfer. This can be done on a CD drive by removing the CD. A better way is try and use a faulty CD. One that stops after a certain time. Should be done on both XP and Vista.

Not sure what this will do to the CD or drive.

[Penny]

Could one of you intrepid beta testers test something for me?

My number 1 complaint with windows, the thing that really gets my goat, the biggest issue I have amongst the thousands of issues, is that when you are copying a lot of data and something, anything goes wrong with a single file, it cancels the copy and doesn't tell you what didn't make it, what did, and what is only partially copied.

If they have fixed this, either by allowing it to copy the rest of the files and ignoring the one(s) that caused a problem or by providing an adequate error screen, then I will get vista without a doubt. If this problem, which has existed since time began, still has not been fixed, then microsoft can go rot in hell for eternity for all I care.
Yes, this behaviour has been changed, thankfully!

[infornography]

Yes, this behaviour has been changed, thankfully!
Thank goodness. What has it been changed to? Does it just provide an adequate error message or does it allow you to continue copying the rest of the files?

[Penny]

Thank goodness. What has it been changed to? Does it just provide an adequate error message or does it allow you to continue copying the rest of the files?
To be honest, I can't remember off the top of my head. I think it allows you to continue copying; I'll test it tomorrow and let you know. Unless someone else has a Vista machine right in front of them now.

[Danhalen]

Thank goodness. What has it been changed to? Does it just provide an adequate error message or does it allow you to continue copying the rest of the files?I finally got mine up and running well enough today to get it to do this. It gives the error, names the file, and then asks if you want to continue.

[infornography]

I finally got mine up and running well enough today to get it to do this. It gives the error, names the file, and then asks if you want to continue.
GREAT!!

I do have to wonder what took them so bloody long though.

[Danhalen]

GREAT!!

I do have to wonder what took them so bloody long though.They added alot of nifty features like that. For instance: the device manager will try to find a solution to driver conflicts for you (so far it hasn't found a solution, but it did ask to), programs that install improperly are noted, and then Windows asks if you want to try to install it the "recommended way." There are more features like that, but those are the only two I could think of off the top of my head.

My current complaints are the lack of support for Nero7 and the wierd AMD Athlon 64 drivers that installed. I have a 2GB chip that windows sees as a 944MB. The video could use some work too.

Overall though, I'm pleased with the condition the beta version is in.

[Wowbagger]

I finally got mine up and running well enough today to get it to do this. It gives the error, names the file, and then asks if you want to continue.
I now got a screen shot to prove it:

http://www.mitchlampert.net/images/vistacopyerror.jpg

[jjramsey]

Why did they have to **** with the driver model again? One of the biggest pains in the **** with Windows is driver hell.

I think the idea is to replace the current driver hell with a saner system.