Off Topic - Vista - My personal conclusion

[Tom Speirs]

350 bucks for a working search feature.....

[Nologic]

LMAO

[Herbiman44]

I must agree, knowing i would have to upgrade someday i went and got a copy of home premium and managed to get it up and going eventuly!!!.

Its great to get as many blue screen crashes as my old windows ME days!!! driver support is poor at best for the moment, Thankfully im using a dual boot setup so my strangly stable windows xp pro install is whats alowing me to do the bulk of my work at the moment.

Cant complain about how vista looks maybe its just me but i cant help feeling a bit of a anticlimax (sad i know) about th whole areo 3d interface. After hearing months of hipe about this fantastic new 3d desktop interface, i get vista up and running only to find that the only 3d part of the whole desktop is a little button on the start bar that alows you to view and task switch between your task windows, which is a cool feature but is hardly a brand new 3d desktop interface! all the rest can mostly be recreated with a vista transformation pack for xp and windowblinds.

hopefully things should get better and over time vista should become stable but with 5 years in development you would expect something possibly a little more stable

AMD 5200+ OC

asus crosshair

jantech storm psu 700 watt

1 gig ddr 800 corsair xms2

msi 8800gtx

3 x wd 500 gig hds

[Tom Speirs]

I must agree, knowing i would have to upgrade someday i went and got a copy of home premium and managed to get it up and going eventuly!!!.

Its great to get as many blue screen crashes as my old windows ME days!!! driver support is poor at best for the moment, Thankfully im using a dual boot setup so my strangly stable windows xp pro install is whats alowing me to do the bulk of my work at the moment.

Cant complain about how vista looks maybe its just me but i cant help feeling a bit of a anticlimax (sad i know) about th whole areo 3d interface. After hearing months of hipe about this fantastic new 3d desktop interface, i get vista up and running only to find that the only 3d part of the whole desktop is a little button on the start bar that alows you to view and task switch between your task windows, which is a cool feature but is hardly a brand new 3d desktop interface! all the rest can mostly be recreated with a vista transformation pack for xp and windowblinds.

hopefully things should get better and over time vista should become stable but with 5 years in development you would expect something possibly a little more stable

AMD 5200+ OC

asus crosshair

jantech storm psu 700 watt

1 gig ddr 800 corsair xms2

msi 8800gtx

3 x wd 500 gig hds

I'm in a similar situation a lot off stuff I use dont work on it, so Im having to use an (again very stable) XP Pro installation, while I do things such as hack a copy of netmeeting on there, sound drivers, and try and get a working CISCO Vpn Client.

So your not getting the pretty but pointless window zooms?

I agree it will get better, and will be good in the future, but for now, for getting work done, I just cant use it..... yet....

[Tom Speirs]

This is a nice tweaks and tips site.

http://www.tweakvista.eu/

[Will]

Getting the graphics card involved at a deeper level in things is a pretty important step, but I think MS really over hyped what it would mean for most people...which is next to nothing. I'll stick with Linux and use Vista in VMWare until I get my Upgrade CD from Dell in a few months. Even then I can't imagine caring much!

[hansolo77]

I can agree to this. I'm also in a dual boot setup right now on my main PC. I got Vista because I wanted to use the new Media Center on my MCE/GameEx box. It's a helluva lot better in some way, and needs a helluva lot of work in others. I'm reinstalling it over again now. I've reinstalled Vista now 3 times on this box, and still can't get it to work right. When I first built my MCE box last January (has it been that long?!) I had this same problem. It just seems to randomly crash whenever it feels like it. I don't get it. I'm pretty sure my solution before was installing the VIA-AGP drivers before installing the actual video card drivers. Problem now is that Vista takes over driver installations, and you don't have and option to "CANCEL" their driver to install your own. So there's no way to get a "clean" install. Plus to make matter's worse, VIA doesn't have VISTA capable drivers for my MB yet, and the manufacturer considers this board an obsolete and "no-longer updated" antique, even though it's only 1 year old! So I'm probably gonna be stuck going back to XP. As for my main computer (using now to type this) I finally fixed the mouse problem with the help of a kind buddy. I haven't gone back over to it to install more things yet since I've been busy racking my brain on the MCE box. I agree with everybody though. It does seem like VISTA has a lot of "expected" bells and whistles that just don't seem to be all that great. A big feature that I'm interested in using is it's hefty security features. Most "normal" people aren't to worried about ID theft and such, at least not as much as they should be. My next door neighbor had their ID stolen via a web site, and they were evicted from their home, car was repo'd and their bank wouldn't deposit their pay check. That's some real serious shit, and you better be protecting your self as best you can. I try to keep everything personal off the computer, but when I need to do stuff with it, I have a seperate login account to the OS that I use ONLY for that, to keep prying eyes away from seeing it when I'm not using it. Anyway, the price is worth the package if it holds up. Like most things that are new, there are going to be problems. Remember when XP first came out? People were wanting to sue Microsoft for years because their systems crashed. Now it's the most stable version of Windows ever released! We just gotta wait out the storm.

[firebrand_X]

350 bucks for a working search feature.....

That was the funniest thing I heard all day long!

I guess for now I'll just stick with the Google Desktop's search features.

My next door neighbor had their ID stolen via a web site, and they were evicted from their home, car was repo'd and their bank wouldn't deposit their pay check.

Sweet Jeebas!! That's horrible. Is there any way they can find out who did it and then shoot his ass?

[headkaze]

Whenever I install XP one of the first things I do is run through a bunch of registry hacks I've collected for "fixing" certain features of XP. Two of the reg files are for the search feature; one turns off the annoying search assistant and the other makes the search feature search all files including unknown file types (by default the Windows search only searches files for registered extensions).

So now no reason to get Vista?

XP_Search_Fix.zip

[Tom Speirs]

Whenever I install XP one of the first things I do is run through a bunch of registry hacks I've collected for "fixing" certain features of XP. Two of the reg files are for the search feature; one turns off the annoying search assistant and the other makes the search feature search all files including unknown file types (by default the Windows search only searches files for registered extensions).

So now no reason to get Vista?

hmm, what would be a cool thing to do is right a small app that configures XP for pros like us. I probably tweak my installs similar to you. Although I also turn off the GUI.

The issue with XP search though is its still way too slow though, even when the indexing service is running, and you can't tell it not to scan archives. That can be a real pain if your searching a drive or folder that contatins roms. There's loads of search software out there and I've heard google desktop is pretty good.

I actually bought myself a new PC upgrade to run Vista as my main work horse. Im owning up now. Although I'm seriously considering putting XP on it, and just waiting a while....

In regards to my HTPC:

I see NFORCE4 drivers are available now. Still no Creative X-FI though.

[Nologic]

Well there are several different types of searches...and as such there is thus far not a good one size fits all application out there for it.

That said here are a few of my picks...if one doesn't mind spending a few bucks.

PowerGrep

Ava Find

Duplicate File Detective

UltraCompare

[headkaze]

hmm, what would be a cool thing to do is right a small app that configures XP for pros like us. I probably tweak my installs similar to you. Although I also turn off the GUI.

The issue with XP search though is its still way too slow though, even when the indexing service is running, and you can't tell it not to scan archives. That can be a real pain if your searching a drive or folder that contatins roms. There's loads of search software out there and I've heard google desktop is pretty good.

I actually bought myself a new PC upgrade to run Vista as my main work horse. Im owning up now. Although I'm seriously considering putting XP on it, and just waiting a while....

In regards to my HTPC:

I see NFORCE4 drivers are available now. Still no Creative X-FI though.

I know what you mean about searching zip files, even if you just open a folder containing alot of zips it takes forever because it searches through each archive for some strange reason. There is another fix for this too though..

Run the following command

regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll

Then install a program like 7Zip/WinZip/WinRAR for managing your zip files. Now Windows dosn't take forever anymore

[Adultery]

Remember when XP first came out? People were wanting to sue Microsoft for years because their systems crashed. Now it's the most stable version of Windows ever released! We just gotta wait out the storm.

So wait until SP2 comes out for Vista is what you're telling me.

I try to stay on top of things when it comes to computers, since I'm kind of the resident nerd and help people fix easy-to-solve PC issues and do virus removal. Anyone who asks me, I say wait at least a year. Vista will be 100x better then. I'm getting a new laptop with my tax check and it''ll have Vista preloaded. I hope that doesn't present problems with networking them later... *gulp*

[Will]

I think the real reason to wait is to just wait until you get it for free with a new PC. I installed it last night (for real not in VMware) without a single hitch and everything worked fine on the first boot. Things seem fairly snappy and seem to work well. I don't see how Vista is any real improvement yet, so it doesn't seem worth the money, but if you get it free it's a good upgrade. That's my advice!

[hansolo77]

I still believe the biggest problem with Vista right now is driver related. Windows XP was the same way when it first came out. Once everybody gets some solid drivers that don't crash the system every 10 minutes, things will start to work out.