Moving to Vista as my primary OS...

Pau11y · Oct 21, 2006

Hey BV, when I played w/ Vista and bitched about the nag screens, you mentioned that you found the nag screens can be turned off in user profile... Can you tell me where? I looked and can't seem to find it. Also, do you know if there's a tweak Vista site up yet to tweak the startup and services?
Are you using the Vista 64? I'm having some problems w/ some network print drivers...maybe give it another couple of months (HP Colorjet 2600n). I will be moving my HTPC to Vista 64 for sure for the HD-DVD playback in 1080P. I've got the video card (HDCP compatible), now just waiting for the DVD drive to become avail (NEC HR-1100a - can be had now by pulling the transport out of a $400.00 Toshiba upconverting DVD player, but expected release price for bare drive I think was pencil'd for about $500.00).

That's a lot of IP addys...but wait till we start to IP our fridges, nukers and toasters, cars and possibly our cells and land-lines, just to name a few...

SkaredShtles · Oct 21, 2006

I wonder how well it'll run on my 900Mhz PIII with 896MB of RAM.

Reactor · Oct 22, 2006

binary visions said:
Haha... Awesome. I clicked "add new printer", selected "network printer", it found my HP on the network and installed the drivers for it. Works great.

I installed a USB printer on my I-mac, I plugged it in and before I could look up at the screen the mac had installed it. :clapping:

Most of the fuctionality in Vista has been in macs for years. The new Gadgets feature in Vista is has been available in macs for years, but its' called widgets. IPV6 is available in XP, Linux, and OS-X. And there is of course entourage, which MS copied for Vista. They even call their interface Aero, when Mac's has been called Aqua for several years.

According to MS You need a fairly high end video card with at least 128 mb of video memory and 1.6gb of video bandwidth, oh.. at least 512 mb of system memory. They recommend at least a 1 GHz processor. According to Intel, you need a P4, xeon or core-duo processor to run Vista. http://www.intel.com/business/bss/products/client/vistasolutions/desktop.htm

Microsoft typically understates equipment requirements, they generally give the minimum to get the system operational.

Microsoft: Some premium features may require advanced or additional hardware. The Windows Vista Premium Ready program denotes hardware that can deliver these premium experiences, including Windows Aero, a productive, high-performing desktop interface.

You should at least double their minimums for reasonable performance, and probably quadruple it for what most people would consider "good" performance.

If you have the right equipment Vista looks pretty good, and I'll probably get it for my Intel PC for the enhanced security as much as anything else.

Pau11y · Oct 22, 2006

Oh yeah... no Vista 64 driver for my TV tuner card (MyHD130). That SUCKS! Have to look at another card, DAMMIT!

Pau11y · Oct 22, 2006

Nah, the rumor mills is spinning that my card is at the end of product life...no more driver updates. I could be mistaken about this but it came out of AVSForums. And, with the development towards CableCard, I can see this happening... I'm just bitching cause I got the card not too long ago... There's also never been a 64 bit driver for this card and I'd like to run the 64 flavor for no other reason than I have a 64 processor, and a 64bit copy of RC2

Reactor · Oct 22, 2006

binary visions said:
First point, if it was a USB printer, it would have already installed it. Read closer, it doesn't install network printers automatically, nor should it.

Your point? I didn't say it was a network printer, I said it was a USB printer. I'm just amazed that it installed in less than a second without needing any driver disk or operator intervention at all. I found it interesting.

binary visions said:
IPv6 is available elsewhere, but Vista has it specifically integrated as the top priority protocol, and even has IPv6 tunnels set up where possible. I found that interesting.

Since it's not available on most networks, including to most ISPs end users it's nice but not very useful yet.

binary visions said:
Who cares if something is available elsewhere? Macs have copied others designs and claimed that they're their own for years and years. They're no great innovators, they take designs that work well and design them nicely. They're a design company, not an innovation company.

Just find it interesting that the collective is going so gaga over features that have been around for years in other OS's. I just recently switched to the mac, I still have my 3ghz p4 winXP machine a few feet away. My duo2core I-mac blows it away, it literally feels ten times as fast when it's about 33% cpu faster. No weird hangs, pauses, swap-file spasms. Apps typically start in under 5 seconds, even MS office which was written for different family of processors.

binary visions said:
This particular piece of misinformation frustrates me to no end. Vista's system requirements are not that high. If you have a 4mb default card that came with a crap system, Vista will simply turn off all the fancy effects for you, and you'll have a system that runs perfectly well. Vista's memory requirements are a little higher than XP, but what did you expect? OS upgrades have higher system requirements. You don't need to double the system requirements, that's just ignorance. I installed RC1 on a Pentium 3, 1.3ghz w/ 512mb of RAM and the stock 4mb Intel video card, a lab computer at school. It runs just as fast as XP on the same machine.

A 1ghz requirement for the latest and greatest OS is NOT unreasonable, it's not like everyone is going to run out and upgrade right away anyway.

I'll believe it when I see it in a production environment. I've been doing the I.S. gig for almost 30 years now (even in the Navy), and have more Microsoft and non-microsoft certs than I can count. I've never seen a Microsoft windows OS (back to windows 2.0 in 1987) that didn't require at least double the stated minimums to be fully functional in an office environment. I've been a beta tester for almost every major Microsoft os release. I've even had Microsoft employees tell me exactly just what I posted. 2x the stated minimums, for reasonable performance, and up to 4x before you get truly good performance.

I did post links Microsoft's and Intel's stated minimums. The best predictor of future performance is past performance, and in the past Microsoft has vastly underestimated the memory and CPU requirements of it's OS's.

Microsoft initially recommended

Although it is recommended, Windows XP does not require 128 MB of RAM. The operating system can run with 64 MB of RAM. For many workloads that involve Web browsing, e-mail, and other activities, 64 MB of RAM will provide you with a user experience equivalent or superior to that of Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me) running on the same hardware.

Microsoft originally recommended 64-128mb for XP. How many people do you know using less 256 or even 512mb on windows XP? So most people are using 2-4 times more memory than Microsoft's most generous recommendation. They recommended a 300Mhz pII processor. Have you ever used XP on a machine less than 1GHz and less than 256 mb of ram? It's painful. When XP came out our in-house testing determined that we needed a minimum of 256 mb of ram for someone to hit the network and open e-mail without sending machines into a disk thrashing swap file spasm. We also determined 512 MB was required to actually have a word processor, two sessions of IE and our e-mail package open at the same time. We had to retrofit over 200 machines we purchased at Microsoft's "recommended" level with more memory at a significant cost. Not to beat a dead horse but that's four times Microsoft's recommended level and eight times their minimum level.

I'm very concerned with memory usage since we are switching to dot net at work. We are seeing memory usage go up by a factor of four to eight times. System internals has seen the same thing. Combine that with the quite possible memory usage increase in VIsta and a business is looking at a lot of money for RAM chips. I'm going to discuss the .net memory issues at the dot net class i'm attending next week. but I don't expect any good answers given Microsoft's memory usage on the programs they wrote in-house.

I'll admit it's possible with most of vista's advanced features turned off it may run on the same hardware as windows XP. But I doubt it, vista been longer in development than any other MS OS, has more lines of code, and the programmers have had re-prioritize reliability over speed, after Bill's "turstworthy computing" iniative.

syadasti · Oct 22, 2006

Reactor said:
The new Gadgets feature in Vista is has been available in macs for years, but its' called widgets.

FYI, Konfabulator was bought by Yahoo and is the original (for OSX). They came up with the original "widget" concept in 2003 for Mac and 2004 for PC and Apple borrowed and added the Dashboard rip-off a few years later in 2005.

They are originally called "object packs" by the real innovators but they changed the name of their product's objects to "widgets" as Apple naming is the Kleenex of consumer tech terms with their marketing power. Desktop X for Windows was the first 5 years before Dashboard - released in 2000.

As BV says for most consumers (and I might add, choice and competition is usually a good thing):

Who cares if something is available elsewhere?

And historically this is their core strength:

Macs have copied others designs and claimed that they're their own for years and years. They're no great innovators, they take designs that work well and design them nicely. They're a design company, not an innovation company.

I have RC1 x64 burned to DVD. I never installed it. Got fed up wasting my time with the other prior versions and all the beta software required (x64 drivers/software and the lack there of) and I'm fine with XP. I'd rather run OSX, Vista isn't mature enough for my main OS and I'd rather do other things in my spare time if I'm not being paid to beta test it...

Reactor · Oct 22, 2006

syadasti said:
FYI, Konfabulator was bought by Yahoo and is the original (for OSX). They came up with the original "widget" concept in 2003 for Mac and 2004 for PC and Apple borrowed and added the Dashboard rip-off a few years later in 2005.

They are originally called "object packs" by the real innovators but they changed the name of their products to widgets as Apple naming is the Kleenex of tech terms with their marketing power. Desktop X for Windows was the first 5 years before Dashboard - released in 2000.

As BV says for most consumers (and I might add, choice and competition is usually a good thing):

And historically this is their core strength:

People have been stealing GUI ideas since the days of BTOS/CTOS and GEM desktop, if you remember those. The point which you have compounded is that Microsoft is even less of a innovative company than apple or a thousand others it has crushed. Microsoft is a hugely successful company, it crushes other companies, buys them takes their best ideas. Then they bind it all up with a ribbon and bow, and make sure it fits into their business strategy, which is to make you buy other Microsoft products. There is a good reason why the federal government prosecuted them as a monopoly, and why the E.U. is looking at the same thing.

Vista will come out, it will sell millions of copies on it's opening day, it's guaranteed to just from the OEM sells and back-orders for "Vista ready" computers. And in all probability will be the largest selling OS of all time. It will also probably also run like badly if you run it on a 512mb 1ghz machine, with e-mail, spreadsheet, word-processor, and a couple of internet explorer sessions open. Unless you disable all the advanced features that would make it desirable over win XP, and then it will only be poor.

And I like OS-X sooooo much more than XP. I'll probably get parallels desktop and run vista or XP in a VM, because I need it for VS2005, but I won't be buying another Wintel machine in the forseeable future.

syadasti · Oct 22, 2006

Reactor said:
Unless you disable all the advanced features that would make it desirable over win XP, and then it will only be poor.

Win NT kernel (Win2K, XP, etc) works fine and most problems are caused by bad drivers (not MS' fault - thats why they made their signed drivers program) or poor security (mainly due to the decision to integrate IE with the OS). Vista on a slower PC will still have the improved security. That said I agree OSX is a better choice for consumers and more mature.

Reactor · Oct 22, 2006

syadasti said:
Win NT kernel (Win2K, XP, etc) works fine and most problems are caused by bad drivers (not MS' fault - thats why they made their signed drivers program) or poor security (mainly due to the decision to integrate IE with the OS). Vista on a slower PC will still have the improved security. That said I agree OSX is a better choice for consumers and more mature.

The security is the thing I'm most interested in. In then past it's been pretty poor. Microsoft says everyline of code has been looked at in an effort to make it more secure. That's probably a large part of the delay associated with longhorn.

johnbryanpeters · Oct 22, 2006

The dominating part of the delay has more likely been, as it usually is, compatibility testing with the sea of existing applications.

syadasti · Oct 22, 2006

Reactor said:
The security is the thing I'm most interested in. In then past it's been pretty poor. Microsoft says everyline of code has been looked at in an effort to make it more secure. That's probably a large part of the delay associated with longhorn.

Well any OS still has many security flaws, discovered or not, and Vista will be no different, but with so many more users the payoff for finding them is bigger both for malware useage and media attention. The intial user security settings are more secure (as they should have been years ago) and tasks require more user interaction to prevent the installation and spread of malware and poorly written third party software.

When you first plug in a OSX system the update packages are pretty numerous too - you'll DL over 100 MB if you have a new XP SP2 machine or OSX machine out of the box.

I would take JBP guess for the delay - testing and validation on a massive scale.

Reactor · Oct 22, 2006

From info world.

Microsoft had scheduled the beta for 2004, but earlier this year said its release would slip into early 2005. The company is adjusting timing for the test version again because of all the work it had to do, and still is doing, on security, especially Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP, people familiar with Microsoft's product plans said Thursday.

"I don't think you will see the beta in the first half," one of the sources said. "SP2 has been a very big deal."

The first delay of the Longhorn beta also was attributed to work on SP2. Many developers working on Longhorn had been reassigned to work on the security-focused service pack for Windows XP, which is due out next month, Microsoft has said. The work on SP2 and the focus on security essentially set a higher quality bar at Microsoft, the sources said.

There is always a lot of testing, but this time XP sp2 pulled off a lot of developers and a lot were pulled off for the "Trustworthy computing initative", at least that was the reason Microsoft gave for the first two delays.

syadasti · Oct 22, 2006

Reactor said:
There is always a lot of testing, but this time XP sp2 pulled off a lot of developers and a lot were pulled off for the "Trustworthy computing initative", at least that was the reason Microsoft gave for the first two delays.

They also pulled some of the cooler features from Vista like the new file system (hopefully makes it into a SP rather than a full version update) :rant:

Reactor · Oct 23, 2006

binary visions said:
Since you were 12, eh?

I was actually writing production code in Junior high, and wrote my first compiler before you were born.

syadasti · Oct 23, 2006

Reactor said:
I was actually writing production code in Junior high, and wrote my first compiler before you were born.

When did you first start working on atomic equipment :biggrin:

Reactor · Oct 23, 2006

syadasti said:
When did you first start working on atomic equipment :biggrin:

1983.

syadasti · Oct 23, 2006

binary visions said:
I take that to mean your soul has been completely eaten away, then?

Or he has become immune to stress hormones :twitch:

Reactor · Oct 23, 2006

binary visions said:
I take that to mean your soul has been completely eaten away, then?

Pretty much. :bonk:

Between, computers, nuclear power, and a closed head injury there isn't much left of me.

SkaredShtles · Oct 23, 2006

Reactor said:
<snip> wrote my first compiler before you were born.

I love geek chest-thumping.

Just something about it...

Reactor · Oct 23, 2006

SkaredShtles said:
I love geek chest-thumping.

Just something about it...

It's not chest thumping if you've done it... :brows:

I have the original greenbar printout somewhere around here, and the code saved on 8" Single sided single density floppy 180 K bytes, a radical new device at the time. We had washing machine siced disk packs that held an amazing 25 mega bytes of data, and vaccum collum 9 track tape drives. You coulf code the boot sequence manually by toggle switches on the front of the PDP 11/45.

We use to walk to skool....5 miles...uphill....both ways...............

SkaredShtles · Oct 24, 2006

Reactor said:
It's not chest thumping if you've done it...

Yes it is.

Reactor · Oct 24, 2006

Not hardly. 20+ years of experience on a diverse set of systems, programming and administrating has given me a true understanding of how computers and the computer environment work in quite a bit of detail.

No refelection on anyone here, but most of the younger computer people we interveiw are barely competent to write any code. They are extremely poor analysts, and have very little understanding of the larger computer environment. To them systems integeration means getting two MS SQL servers to talk, and if you can't do something in a DFS package they are lost. The Microsoft "network people" are some of the worst, if it wasn't covered in MCSE class it doesn't exist, they don't have any systems integeration skills at all. Buzz words, yeah they got them, results they don't.

syadasti · Oct 24, 2006

I've never encountered anyone who was impressed with MCSE certification other than non-technical people. Some vendors do give discounts on their solutions though if you have certification and thats a valid reason - saving money.

Reactor · Oct 24, 2006

There are a few, very few, younger computer people that have impressed me. The department I work for right now stole me from another agency because they couldn't find anyone of any age to fill my current job.

SkaredShtles · Oct 25, 2006

Reactor said:
There are a few, very few, younger computer people that have impressed me.

Dude. You're in the desert of AZ. Do you see *ANY* "younger" people anywhere?? :confused:

syadasti · Oct 25, 2006

SkaredShtles said:
Dude. You're in the desert of AZ. Do you see *ANY* "younger" people anywhere??

Maybe he thought Silicon Valley was any place with sand in the soil:biggrin:

Reactor · Oct 25, 2006

SkaredShtles said:
Dude. You're in the desert of AZ. Do you see *ANY* "younger" people anywhere??

They're over at los alamos playing with meth and nuclear weapons.

SkaredShtles · Oct 26, 2006

Reactor said:
They're over at los alamos playing with meth and nuclear weapons.

Ummm... you do realize that Los Alamos is *not* in AZ, right?

Reactor · Oct 26, 2006

SkaredShtles said:
Ummm... you do realize that Los Alamos is *not* in AZ, right?

It all looks the same :brow:

Not really, Arizona actually has an amazing variety of weather and beautiful scenery.

SkaredShtles · Oct 26, 2006

Reactor said:
It all looks the same

Not really, Arizona actually has an amazing variety of weather and beautiful scenery.

I know - I lived in Flagstaff for a short time in the mid-90's. Beautiful country.

H8R · Oct 29, 2006

binary visions said:
The last Vista thread was kinda cluttered so I thought I'd start a new one.

Right. This one is much better.

I installed Vista 64 on an old HDD last night. Could not find a driver for the wireless card (Dlink DWL G510) so I am hanging it up for now.

Runs really well on my machine. There are some nice features. If D-link ever gets off their ass to release a 64 bit driver I might take it for another spin.

And yes I can go wired but running a cable across the living room every time I want to go online is annoying.

syadasti · Oct 29, 2006

H8R said:
Runs really well on my machine. There are some nice features. If D-link ever gets off their ass to release a 64 bit driver I might take it for another spin.

Just poke around and try drivers with the same chipset (you get use to that after playing with linux).

They are just various generic drivers that work with same chipset cards - doesn't have to be a dlink driver - just one made for your chipset. Maybe check what chipset it is in linux web resource - that would be the best place to figure it out I guess?

My netgear card is a WPN311, I am using generic ar5211 atheros windows drivers both in XP and Vista - I gave up hope on netgear shortly after buying the card and wanting WPA2, so I never used their drivers.

Moving to Vista as my primary OS...

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