Apparently I’m entitiled to a free upgrade, but after reading the rant about it over in the BBQ pit I wonder if it’s such a good idea. What do you think?
If it aint broke, dont fix it. This goes double for computers.
I would definitely wait at least until Microsoft upgrades to Service Pack 1, or there is a piece of software you need/want to run that requires Vista.
What do you hope to gain by upgrading to Vista? If it’s for the nice new graphical interface (Aero), make sure that your hardware can accomodate it.
If it’s for the desktop search, I would settle for something else like Google Desktop search in the meantime.
If you are expecting a better gaming experience, then make sure that there are enough games taking advante of Vista features to make it worthwhile. I’m not a gamer so I don’t know what the situation is, but my impression is that most games aren’t really taken advantage of the “new” Vista graphic possibilites.
I personally don’t see any convincing reason to upgrade to Vista if your computer is currently running XP (service pack 2.) If you buy a new computer, I won’t say that Vista is necessarily a bad idea (though remember that other desktop OSes are a possibility), but I would still wait until Service Pack 1 to run it, myself.
Reluctantly, I have to agree. I’m not sure which side of the fence to come down on. If you’re an enthusiast or gamer, I would advise against it unless you don’t mind experimenting and tinkering with new stuff (like me). Autolycus is basically right though, Windows wasn’t broke and didn’t need fixing, but whatever. If you are a casual user looking for better file organization, tagging, and ease of use then I could endorse the upgrade, provided you meet the processing horsepower requirements. I’ve been running it since the release in late January, though I was never a beta tester. I’m a computer enthusiast, so I’m always upgrading my components. I probably upgrade my motherboard, processor, and memory every 18 months and my video card every two years to keep up with emerging technologies and stay on the relative cutting edge. I’m not an “early adopter”, but I’m a gamer at heart, and I hate working on a slow computer. If you’re keen on Vista, you won’t want anything less than a Core 2 Duo with 2GB of memory and a solid video processor released within the last 1-2 years. Honestly, I think 4GB of memory is Vista’s sweet spot. My own processor is about the cheapest Core 2 Duo there is (running at 1.8GHz) and it is frequently struggling to keep up. I want to upgrade to something faster with a bigger cache, but it’s not worth the expenditure to me right now.
Problem with Vista is that it’s a bit undercooked. Sort of. The hardware vendors who make the equipment that goes into computers haven’t all released Vista compatible drivers yet. Even big companies like Creative, nVidia, and ATI were slow to release updated drivers. I still don’t think Creative has lifted a finger. The existing drivers work, sure, but things aren’t quite the same. Gaming is not as fast, sadly. I installed Supreme Commander on two machines, a brand new Dell XPS M1710 (a killer gaming laptop) and my Vista desktop, which has a very similar spec to the Dell. The Dell actually plays faster, and I don’t think it’s because the processor is a little faster, I’m pretty sure it’s because it’s running XP. I played the Supreme Commander beta on my desktop when it still had XP installed and it was much smoother. SupCom is a pretty hefty game though, but even other games show some signs of twitchiness and slowdowns. The drivers just aren’t optimized enough for Vista yet, though I think when DirectX10 games start coming out in the months to come, you’ll notice the quality/performance gap between XP and Vista begin to narrow.
Still, you’d think the hardware manufacturers would have been on top of this. It’s almost like they got ahold of Vista at the same time the rest of the public did before they started to work on making compatible drivers. It’s getting better though. Many developers are starting to release compatible software now.
Personally, I think Ubuntu Beryl Linux looks even slicker than Vista, perhaps considering it’s free. 
I’d like to try it out one day. Trouble is … games aren’t made for Linux and that’s really the only thing holding me back from completely switching over to Ubuntu. As one of the comments on that video page says, Linux users are constantly playing with their desktop because they don’t have any games to play, hehe. If I wasn’t a gamer though, I’d be using Ubuntu.
WOW. Ubuntu is quite amazing.
This is something that really pisses me off–why do you call it an UPgrade? Yes, it is new, and yes it is different–but that doesn’t mean it is better.
The manufacturers always push their "up"grades, for obvious reasons. But the era of constant changes is over and finished. Maybe 8 years ago, there were huge advantages to be gained by moving up-- say, from a 486 computer to a Pentium, and from 16k of Ram to 64 k. And the new versions of games and programs were worth it, because there was a real difference in the way they worked.
But nowadays, almost everybody is satisfied with their computer and whichever programs they use. So don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.
We’ve gotten used to our work habits–almost blindly, our hands know how to click on certain icons at specific locations on the screen.
Learning to do things differently is just a pain in the ass, especially if all you get is a translucent window. Whoopee!!!–just what I’ve been fantasizing about all my life, yessiree, bob. I just gotta get me translucent windows so my Word document won’t block out the picture of my cat.
Another country heard from. :rolleyes:
My friend’s brother got it and he’s not happy with it so far. I think waiting for a long time is the best way to go. Let everyone else work out the bugs.
Slight emendment to an otherwise very good post – as a rule of thumb, I wouldn’t trust a new MS OS until after Service Pack 2
My boss waited to long to purchase a new laptop, and was forced into Vista. (Couldn’t convince him to buy off ebay). My coworker and I have been wasting a lot of time trying to support him…of course the problems must be our fault, because Vista is the “latest and greatest”.
I’m curious why it is that the people who piss and moan about Vista are the same ones who never go into specifics about why. I cited a lack of compatible hardware drivers at launch, which I wouldn’t use as an excuse to label Vista an epic catastrophe whose radioactive half-life will leave it unapproachable until Service Pack 47.
What is your brother not happy with, Kalhoun? Why is your boss (aside from being an executive) not capable of working the computer, Kevbo? What exactly is it about Vista, outside of driver support running behind schedule, that has everyone making baseless remarks about it? I’d say it’s running a hell of a lot better out of the gate than Win98 ever did two months into its launch.
Hope I’m not chasing my tail by asking people to support their anti-Vista arguments.
Too bad he/she did not look around more. I just ordered a Dell Latitude laptop last week, and had a choice of Vista or XP. (Obviously, I took XP!)
Not sure, as my friend is computer illiterate for the most part and I don’t talk to her brother. I’m not saying leave it alone forever…just for a while. I’m not one to fuck around with stuff to get it to work. I like it to just work when I turn on the computer. My guess is that my friend’s brother is the same. I am not saying it’s an “epic catastrophe” but I’ve heard enough complaints in passing that I wouldn’t buy it just yet.
I haven’t really heard anyone say that Vista is truly bad. It is just that XP has gotten to be pretty good and stable in the approximately 6 years that it has been out. XP Service Pack 2 was a major upgrade even though it seemed seamless and trivial to many. Vista will get to be good as well but it is one of the most complex things ever designed and the only real beta test is the one going on now (actual users). I am not sure what will happen in the business world. Countless billions of dollars worth of custom software, systems, and procedures came into being as the IT world took off and XP was dominant. I know that my mega-corp hasn’t mentioned a peep about Vista and I work in IT.
Personally, my main disappointment about Vista is the price, and the fact that after 6 years of development time by Microsoft, I was expecting more new features than the operating system actually offered. I’m sure that there is much more happening “under the engine” that I am not aware of, but from my uneducated glance (since I’ve only seen Vista in a VMware environment) it should be called Windows XP 1.5.
A Kiwi wrote a paper arguing that Vista was a kind of corporate conspiracy that was bad for everybody. It’s long and somewhat technical, but the arguments about medical imaging problems and national security concerns would make me think twice about using it in our aerospace environment.
I guess most people won’t care either way. But I was rather peeved by the alleged amount of time the CPU is spending time playing content cop and shelling yet more money for hardware upgrades. I’m always trying to slim down non-useful threads via Task Manager to enhance my flight simming resources. Upgrading to Vista seems to be a step backwards at this point.
If you accept the digital rights management technology in Vista, then you would benefit from the security of Vista. Understand that the changes in Vista are mostly on how the operating system works, not so much the addition of features you can use. It’s an environment where rights are more strictly controlled and thus the system is more resilient to attack. (Since I don’t suppose aayone will take the above as unbiased, I think Vista’s a failure and Linux/BSD are nice–but then you have it for free.)
I got a Vista laptop as a loaner while mine is in the shop - free with my extended warranty, so I can’t complain too much. It is a 500 MB Toshiba with a 2.85 GHz Celeron M, and it runs like a dog. (I feel like dragging out my Win 98 machine to have something fast again. 
It’s pretty depressing when you use Windows Explorer to look at a directory and get a program not responding message.
On the good side, they got plug and play really working - at least for my printer, which I plugged in and had to do absolutely nothing else. On the bad side I’m running into incompatibility problems.
I’ll see how my collection of Star Wars games runs. On the whole, I’ve seen absolutely no reason to upgrade. I don’t do anything fancy, so Vista working for me doesn’t say much.
I asked Fry’s for am XP laptop they might have laying around, but no luck. I’m going to wait at least a year for this to settle out.
Oddly, this laptop came with a 60 day trial of Office 2007, which is more than enough to last me until mine gets back. It’s less scary than I imagined from reading various columns about the need for retraining. I’ve never know Microsoft to give trial versions before - maybe it’s not selling?
Get your upgrade cd now, while you still can. Decide on the install seperately. In two years you can install the up grade if you want.
That’s my plan.