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Windows Vista Ultimate
The Death Of Hilarity
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Windows Vista Ultimate came in the mail today, and I am left wondering what to do with it. I currently have a WinXP SP2 setup that I've put a lot of work into making look nice, but it has become a bit unorganized lately, and I know cleaning it up would be stressful. I also have no experience with Windows Vista, and don't know what to expect from it. I have about 100 gigs of media that I want to hold on to, and no easy way to back them up. What are my options, and what would those of you with Vista experience recommend? Right now I am thinking I can do any of the following:
1. Put Vista aside for a while
2. Partition hard drive and dual boot into Vista
3. Partition hard drive into a media and a main folder, format the partition with WinXP and applications on it, then install Vista on there.
4. ??
1. Put Vista aside for a while
2. Partition hard drive and dual boot into Vista
3. Partition hard drive into a media and a main folder, format the partition with WinXP and applications on it, then install Vista on there.
4. ??
The Death Of Hilarity on
0
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I got Vista with my new machine a while back and it's fine; it can do anything XP can do in terms of everyday stuff like managing your media. If you really don't have a good way to back up your stuff, though, nothing wrong with sticking with XP for now.
Right now it's dual booting.
Sata1 is my Maxtor 120GB drive with Windows XP installed.
Sata2 is my Fujitsu 160GB drive with Vista installed, and also became the boot drive (because Vista's bootloader will recognize Vista and XP, but XP's doesn't recognize Vista.
When I choose XP, it boots my Maxtor as C:, with the Fujitsu as
When I boot to Vista, they are reversed. So far I've had no problems at all in this config.
Additionally, I think the XP bootloader remains intact on the Maxtor, so if I ever had to take out the Fujitsu/Vista drive, I'd just correct my BIOS to boot from SATA1 and it should just boot right to XP.
When I installed Steam on the Vista drive, I just installed the steamclient, then shut down the steam client, copied my apps directories from the other drive to this one, then started Steam again. It immediately recognized all the games as being installed, and I've not had any cache problems at all.
The one and only issue I had was getting Vista to recognize my SATA drives, which it did on the second attempt through the installation process. That's it. Vista has been running like a dream. Unless you have very specific business applications you need to run that haven't yet been updated with Vista compatible drivers or whatnot, there is no reason not to power into Vista right now.
I've found that more RAM helps Vista run a lot better so I'd recommend at least 2GB. If you go over 3GB, I'd recommend Vista64. You can get a 64bit disc from MS for $5-$10 shipping (I forget the exact price) by entering the key for your 32bit version. The only problem I've had with Vista64 is that the install kept crapping out with a BSOD claiming conflicting IRQs. Turned out to be something with my BIOS and the Vista install having problems registering all 4GB of memory. I popped out 2 sticks of RAM (left 2GB in system), installed Vista, popped the 2 sticks back in and it works just fine.
I have to agree about gaming being problematic on Vista.
I recently upgraded from XP and now wish I'd dual booted Vista/XP instead of just upgrading.
Most stuff is great in Vista, but when I'm playing newer 3D games the performance really is noticeably slower.
Not so much of a problem if your PC has oodles of hertz, but my borderline PC definitely need every FPS I can milk it for.
For everything else it's fine. Honestly, if you are going to re-install windows, Vista is fine. If you want to keep XP, that's fine too. Really, there is no really terrible decision here.
I have been using Vista since launch, and it's actually a lot better now than it was at launch, and pretty much a different OS from the Beta versions. I, for one, actually like it.
Quoting an article from july makes you look silly, quoting an article from February might make you look like a complete idiot.
Firing squad have a nice pair of articles from last month looking at Vista vs XP performance and the current state of DX10. DX10 in particular is looking really nice at the moment. We're barely 5 games in and already we've had the promice of better looking graphics with a faster framerate delivered.
Personal advice to the Op Post is don't bother until you're comfortably able to do a fresh install. Installing any OS can fuck up unexpectedly so no point risking precious data on a whim.
I'll echo this with my own subjective view on Vista. I probably would have never bothered with Vista over XP, but it came preloaded on a new machine of mine. Now that I'm past the initial "Oh god, where is X? I knew where it was in XP! This sucks..." stage, I'm quite pleased with it. It seems just as stable as XP, and I'd argue that the gaming performance is better than XP (though this might not be true with < 2 gigs of RAM). That whole "Vista learns what programs you use, and allocates RAM accordingly" seems to work quite well, and I seem to get much more reliable high performance than with XP. And I'm one of those folks who rarely ever had problems with XP, too.
Obviously OP, your experience might be totally different. But I thought I'd at least balance the evidence in here that Vista is not always as bad as folks say.
I loved vista at first. I got annoyed at a few things as time went on .. but i was able to work around them for the most part. The one thing I was unable to work around was the VPN install my company uses.. its just not working on Vista.
Gaming performance was just great.. especially as time went on, and drivers were updated. I never had a sound issue, and memory management was clutch.
I had issues with the UAC (yes i could disable, but that defeated the purpose), and 64bit versions of some applications.. firefox 64bit was awesome.. but lack of flash was annoying.
I am in the process of emulating some vista things now... and I would consider going back if these issues are addressed
Librarians harbor a terrible secret. Find it.