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Installing Vista on my Primary Computer: Bad Idea?
powerss
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm about to go out to Staples and pick up Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade for my Vaio Laptop.
This is my workhorse, and it has everything on it. Should I do this upgrade? Anyone have catastrophic failure of their computer after installing Vista?
I was going to run the GParted Linux LiveCD and partition my drive for Vista, then install vista on that partition.
Oh wait.
If i get the upgrade, I can't install it on the new partition, can I?
Shit.
This is my workhorse, and it has everything on it. Should I do this upgrade? Anyone have catastrophic failure of their computer after installing Vista?
I was going to run the GParted Linux LiveCD and partition my drive for Vista, then install vista on that partition.
Oh wait.
If i get the upgrade, I can't install it on the new partition, can I?
Shit.
powerss on
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See, I come from the world of the Mac. When apple releases an OS, you fucking installl it because you'll know it will work well, with no issues.
And you certainly wont lose all your data!
You're right about the sunday part, though.
The driver issue is the only real problem with Vista at the moment. That is a rather large problem for some people though.
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Quite true. I can't stand hopping back to XP now, as things react slower, hang more, and I've really adapted to stuff like 3d flip and instant search. I waste seconds on XP trying to hit one key and type to find stuff or waiting for things to load after sleep mode. Still can't use my printer (April, according to Dell) but that is the ONLY issue I've had. Most programs run faster, crash less (err... not at all), hang much less, and all that.
Also, there's not going to be a SP1, as such. It'll be a rollup of patches and fixes, but there's no huge gaps in Vista, like there was with XP. Hell, XP didn't even have a public beta, much less a 9-month plus one like Vista.
Also, instead of just spitting out "cyclic redundancy error" and such when it hits unreadable data on a cd or dvd (and wasting all the time copying so far), it pops up a box to skip it, retry the file or abort the copying. Bloody brilliant.
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I disregard everything else they have to say on the subject because either:
a) they haven't been paying attention to the development cycle of this product, and how it differs from the launch of XP, nor what MS has been saying about its future,
and (most likely)
b) they haven't used it extensively...because it puts XP to shame on virtually every level if u have a modern pc...i played with the various betas for the last 6 months of its development cycle, and every time i rebooted and logged back into XP, a little part of me died, because even in an unfinished, driver error filled state, it was so much better than XP.
are there sometimes compatiability issues? of course...but the only one I wasn't able to surmount within 2 minuntes of running into it is the iTunes issue, which will be addressed pretty soon, I'd imagine.
and those compatability issues with certain older programs aren't just going to dissapear...they will always be there so waiting isn't going to help anything on that front.
With one caveat. As long as you have over 1gb RAM gaming on Vista's fine. There'll be an FPS drop but for most games it's negligable.
edit: Actually, probably closer to 1.5gb. I'm also unsure of how well nVidia's drivers play with Vista.
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Just make sure you backup everything critical before you switch and you'll be fine.
PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
What do you want Vista to do on your computer that XP isn't doing already?
Is that more valuable to you than driver stability and gaming performance?
Anyway, I'll be running Vista again as soon as Nvidia get their act together, because I really do prefer it over XP.
If your going to buy into vistas stupidity, alteast wait until they have decent drivers and SP 2 comes out.
Drivers are only worth waiting for if you're unsure if the specific hardware you have is supported (though this is testable). As said multiple times in this thread, Vista's fine without a service pack, and by default leagues ahead of XP.
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If you're planning on playing games and multitasking, wait. I couldn't play WoW with any music going, BF2142 flat out didn't run faster than 3FPS, along with a ton of other performance issues.
Interface wise, it's great. I loved the picture frame widget and I loved Aeroglass. However, performance wise it is sucky as hell. Not necesarily microsoft's fault, but people just haven't programmed for it yet.
I am normally one of the "wait at least until SP1" folks, I did it for Win2k, and I did it for XP...
With that said, after my first Vista wireless support call (I'm a level 3 tech for time warner) I installed Vista Ultimate Edition on a spare partition just to tool around in. I was honestly surprised at how much of it just worked right off the bat. No driver issues, no problems at all really. Now, I'm not a microsoft flunky by any means, and am usually very skeptical of new versions of windows, but I'm quite impressed with Vista so far, bar a few things:
UAC: Turn it off off off.
Wireless support is a little flaky
Larger font took some getting used to
I actually noticed an FPS increase when gaming (Eve-Online), and the new interface is actually pretty nice. Which is saying something because I've ALWAYS used the classic theme in Windows. Aero Glass has some smooth effects, and the Flip3D thing is pretty cool.
Really, there is no real reason to upgrade, but depending on your usage there may also not be any reason NOT to upgrade.
Vista is more stable, drivers or otherwise. Games do drop a few frames here and there; I've only found it noticable in MMOs though. They're more *stable*, however, as Vista runs drivers on higher levels, rather than in the core kernel (something I have the vaguest understanding of, but the effects are apparent).
For example, Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, buggy as it is, runs better on Vista. Why? 'Cause it has some issue that drops sound or rendering into some sort of loop, which crashes XP. Vista just closes the game, does an automatic check on fixes, doesn't find any 'cause Mark of Chaos is mostly shit. I can surf, play music, open PDFs or do a number of things that XP wouldn't be able to while this is going down.
I tend to run with a large number of windows open, and I've seen multitasking speed up with Vista. I'm not sure why anyone would experience otherwise, unless Vista gets exponentially worse with less than 2 gigs of RAM. At 2, however, it far outstrips XP in terms of stability and reaction time. Stuff opens faster and, more importantly, without hanging the whole system. Try to open a PDF in XP sometime, and alt-tab to something else.
XP's a good workhorse, but I'll put Vista on any machine I use now. Except a Mac, 'cause that would be stupid. I'd say OS X and Vista are compelling moves from XP or an older OS, but not necessarily between each other.
I have one gig of RAM, which used to be pretty much the standard. Vista kind of chugs a little. It's noticeably slower at everything, but not very much so. Still, I didn't see the point of staying switched, so I nuked it and put XP back on.
Also, I can't for the life of me get Starforce-protected games to work on Vista at all. The only one I care about is SC: Chaos Theory, of course, but still, it sucks to lose games when you shift operating systems.
Wasn't it pretty much the same scenario when XP/98/95 came out? At least hardware-wise.
I did use Vista on a 1gig machine for a short while; it didn't seem any different than XP for business purposes (half a dozen or more word, excel, pdf, etc documents open) if not a bit more stable. I could see where it would fail at gaming there.
At two, though, it's noticably faster.
This is my only problem.
I believe there is an updated Starforce driver you can download from the Starforce website.
http://www.star-force.com/protection.phtml?c=83&id=963
That link should get you there! Then your games should function normally.
PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
I suggest before you do this, you get some blank dvds and image your hard drive as it is now. That way, in case of catastrophic failure, you can pop right back to where you are now.
problem is that I read somewhere that MS was going to push out a token SP1 for Vista relatively shortly. The article speculated that this was just a move made specifically to counter the "wait for the service pack" crowd.
not saying its true. But I wouldn't be horribly surprised if they did this.
I'm trying to scrounge a computer at work to install Vista on just to get a feel for it and im not having much luck
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I must add... yes, turn it off for the first couple days while you install everything but if you leave it off after that period, you're essentially turning off 90% of the added security that vista brings.
in day to day work, I only get a UAC popup once or twice a day.
people complain about slower game performance... if you're NVIDIA use the 100.41 drivers. if you're benchmarking in the first week since you've installed it then don't take the numbers seriously. vista needs a week or so from install to start performing at it's best (Superfetch is...super, once it gets settled in.)
get 2g of ram, its cheap as balls these days.
Vista removed OpenGL support. Reduced performance in cpu intensive applications. Theres isn't any GOOD reason to get Vista. I would call it stupid because vista (currently) is pointless really. If you have a good reason to go to vista, I'm all ears.
Removed OGL support? That's odd, all my OGL games ran just fine.
The only reason I'm back on XP right now is because nvidia is slacking on getting nforce chipset drivers out that actually work right. When it wasn't BSODing due to driver crashes it was faster and nicer to use than XP by a good margin. I'll be switching back as soon as either drivers come out or I get some new hardware.
Before you switch, be sure to check online to see how your hardware fares. Support forums are your friend.
I can think of only one, really... but it's a pretty compelling one:
http://www.bizarreonline.net/news.php?id=14055
That combined with the fact that I was finally able to get ahold of one of those nearly mythical wireless 360 controller receivers for the PC is making it hard not to consider the inevitable upgrade. Damn those bastards at microsoft - obviously the only reason they placed a vista requirement on it was precisely to entice people like me to buy vista... and it just... might... work...
AUGHHHhhhhhhh!
edit: ...and to preempt the unavoidable comment - Yes, I know about Grid Wars.
Also, I think it is amazing that MS found a way to make people buy a wireless controller and then pay to make it wired.