MS Vista (aka: beating a dead horse)

Wycke · 10-22-2007, 03:12 PM

OK, Vista has been a subject of much debate. There are those among us who have bashed it thoroughly (myself included) and those who have come to its defense. Now, I don't admit this often, but I may have been a bit quick to condemn Gates and his minions for creating an inferior OS. I was basing my bashing on 6 months of experience with the RC1 version on hardware that was barely capable of running Vista, even with most of the bells & whistles turned off (1.4 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM). I upgraded my primary desktop (2.2 GHz Athlon64, 2 GB RAM) last Friday and have to say that Vista is actually OK. So far. Here are some interesting notes, complaints and praises, in no particular order:

1. Vista is hungry. Lots of CPU and lots of RAM keep it satisfied (though not what I'd call "happy"). Running it with any less that 2 GB of RAM is just asking for trouble. That being said, as cheap as memory is, every machine should have 2 GB of RAM. It's responsive enough and I've only had one unexplained lockup in about 12 hours of operation time.

2. Did MS intentionally hide all of the settings that people actually USE? Because there isn't a Vista-compatible driver for my display (a Dell 1702FP LCD panel, which, I should note, never needed a driver under any other OS), I'm stuck at 1280x1024 resolution. The default size of the desktop icons at that resolution is HUGE. I guess MS noticed that there were tons of people who dropped their screen resolution to 800x600 just to make their desktop icons bigger (which, in a sense, is a good thing - they're finally listening to people!) and made them bigger for each resolution. However, for those of us graced with excellent vision, they're too damn big. How do you adjust them? Well, you can't do it via the control panel. OK, you can make them BIGGER via the "DPI" control panel, but not smaller. However, a quick Google search found the answer (ctrl key, click scroll wheel on mouse, then roll forward/up to enlarge them, roll backward/down to en-small them).

3. User-level protection (the "Are you really sure you want to do that?" dialogs) were a royal pain in RC1. It seems that they tamed this feature a bit in the final release, and it's livable. Obviously, I've been updating software & such with this being a fresh upgrade, so it's popping up left & right, but I don't think it'll be a problem in "normal" usage.

4. I have a 3COM 3C905-TX NIC. There are probably a billion of these on the face of the earth. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting one. Vista didn't know what it was. I actually had to download an XP driver and tell Vista to use this unholy, unclean, un-Vista-certified .inf file. PITA.

5. Sidebar is better than Dashboard in OS X. There, I said it. There is one feature of Vista that is better than the Apple feature it rips off. It's nice being able to see the weather without hitting a function key or moving the mouse to a "hot corner".

6. My does IE7 in Vista insist on opening my "Trusted Sites" in a NEW browser window? IE7 under XP didn't do this. It's utterly annoying when I'm trying to keep one window with a bunch of tabs rather than a dozen different windows.

7. Windows Backup blows NTBackup out of the water. I'm fiddling around with it and found out that it actually creates a virtual hard disk image (.vhd file) for each disk it backs up. This is vastly superior to the POS ".bkf" files that NTBackup in NT, 2000, and XP created. In a pinch, I bet you could even just throw that .vhd file onto a USB drive (or DVD, if it's small enough) and mount it via Virtual PC 2007. That's pretty cool! Of course, Disk Utility in OS X has had this functionality since, oh, about 2002 (OS X 10.2), but yea for MS catching up!

There are some other things I'm sure I'm missing, but all in all, I've got to admit (as much as it pains me to do so) that, given the right hardware, MS Vista is actually not that bad. I'm sure that my opinion might change (in either direction) as time progresses, but for now, it's quite livable.

OH, and one last thing, if you run an "upgrade" installation (as opposed to a clean install), uninstall your antivirus software BEFORE you upgrade. I spent almost 2 hours digging in the registry to manually remove Symantec Antivirus after the upgrade. Not fun.

-Chad

Striker9 · 10-22-2007, 04:14 PM

2. Since when did you need a driver for your monitor? Do you have an updated graphics driver? I'd expect that's what you need.
3. It's easily turned off if you get sick of it.
6. Firefox?

For anyone looking for Vista tweaks, take a look here: Top Windows Vista Tweaks You Can Find - Notebook Forums and Laptop Discussion

incynr8 · 10-22-2007, 04:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Striker9

2. Since when did you need a driver for your monitor?

The drivers are used for Vista hotpluggable display on the WDDM and dynamic config so the OS has a clue of what refreshes to apply at what resolutions and color depths to the given device. Monitor drivers in the windows world are more like parameter sets with occasional .exes for panel function replacements.

Frontier_Bill · 10-22-2007, 04:40 PM

I recently purchased a 'cheap' HP laptop with Vista home premiuim. It has 1gb of ram.

With my experiences on my laptop - I really like Vista. I only play 1 game on it (Dawn of War) and it has to be played on the lowest settings due to the integrated video and the fact that the integrated video uses my ram... so, between Vista and the game there is practically NO extra ram. Too bad I cannot upgrade the ram...

My only complaint is the incessant requesting of rights. But I can turn it off. Just too lazy to dig for it.

Mine came with Media Player 11 (does all Vista?) and I must say, I LOVE this iteration of Media Player. Burning CD's is really fast and easy.

Overall, I would give Vista an 85%. I figure a solid B is fair.

BTW - I DESPISE OSX!!! Freaking Apple products. Killed my inner child. I want to find Steve Jobs and kick him in the teeth.

incynr8 · 10-22-2007, 04:58 PM

media player 11 is the new version for xp and Vista, and ships with vista.
it will show as an available install with a 'custom' selection on a windowsupdate (wupdmgr) on all xp machines. 2k and others only go to mp9.

Striker9 · 10-22-2007, 05:12 PM

From what I've read, your Dell LCD has a maximum resolution of 1280x1024.

Wycke · 10-22-2007, 05:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Striker9

From what I've read, your Dell LCD has a maximum resolution of 1280x1024.

Hrm...it worked at 1600x1400 in XP. Guess I was just lucky...

incynr8 · 10-22-2007, 05:27 PM

if they'd only adopt a flat file config directory ...............

does this registry key exist in VISTUH?
HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG -> System -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> Video.

you then get a M$typical unintellegible hash for your vid card, open that and edit:

DefaultSettings.XResolution and DefaultSettings.YResolution.

to force other resolutions.

that xorg.conf is looking better now huh?

Wycke · 10-22-2007, 09:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by incynr8

if they'd only adopt a flat file config directory ...............

does this registry key exist in VISTUH?
HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG -> System -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> Video.

you then get a M$typical unintellegible hash for your vid card, open that and edit:

DefaultSettings.XResolution and DefaultSettings.YResolution.

to force other resolutions.

that xorg.conf is looking better now huh?

Well, I can "force" other resolutions, but then the desktop ends up bigger than the screen. I think I'll just use this as an excuse to get the department to buy me a bigger display.

Jaan · 10-22-2007, 10:50 PM

I still think Vista is a bloated ghetto version of OS X. And no, I'm not an Apple fanboy either...my 17" Mackbook Pro dual boots XP and OS X for a reason.

10-22-2007, 03:12 PM	#1 (permalink)
Wycke Supernatural Anaesthetist Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: The Plaines of Celestia	MS Vista (aka: beating a dead horse) OK, Vista has been a subject of much debate. There are those among us who have bashed it thoroughly (myself included) and those who have come to its defense. Now, I don't admit this often, but I may have been a bit quick to condemn Gates and his minions for creating an inferior OS. I was basing my bashing on 6 months of experience with the RC1 version on hardware that was barely capable of running Vista, even with most of the bells & whistles turned off (1.4 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM). I upgraded my primary desktop (2.2 GHz Athlon64, 2 GB RAM) last Friday and have to say that Vista is actually OK. So far. Here are some interesting notes, complaints and praises, in no particular order: 1. Vista is hungry. Lots of CPU and lots of RAM keep it satisfied (though not what I'd call "happy"). Running it with any less that 2 GB of RAM is just asking for trouble. That being said, as cheap as memory is, every machine should have 2 GB of RAM. It's responsive enough and I've only had one unexplained lockup in about 12 hours of operation time. 2. Did MS intentionally hide all of the settings that people actually USE? Because there isn't a Vista-compatible driver for my display (a Dell 1702FP LCD panel, which, I should note, never needed a driver under any other OS), I'm stuck at 1280x1024 resolution. The default size of the desktop icons at that resolution is HUGE. I guess MS noticed that there were tons of people who dropped their screen resolution to 800x600 just to make their desktop icons bigger (which, in a sense, is a good thing - they're finally listening to people!) and made them bigger for each resolution. However, for those of us graced with excellent vision, they're too damn big. How do you adjust them? Well, you can't do it via the control panel. OK, you can make them BIGGER via the "DPI" control panel, but not smaller. However, a quick Google search found the answer (ctrl key, click scroll wheel on mouse, then roll forward/up to enlarge them, roll backward/down to en-small them). 3. User-level protection (the "Are you really sure you want to do that?" dialogs) were a royal pain in RC1. It seems that they tamed this feature a bit in the final release, and it's livable. Obviously, I've been updating software & such with this being a fresh upgrade, so it's popping up left & right, but I don't think it'll be a problem in "normal" usage. 4. I have a 3COM 3C905-TX NIC. There are probably a billion of these on the face of the earth. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting one. Vista didn't know what it was. I actually had to download an XP driver and tell Vista to use this unholy, unclean, un-Vista-certified .inf file. PITA. 5. Sidebar is better than Dashboard in OS X. There, I said it. There is one feature of Vista that is better than the Apple feature it rips off. It's nice being able to see the weather without hitting a function key or moving the mouse to a "hot corner". 6. My does IE7 in Vista insist on opening my "Trusted Sites" in a NEW browser window? IE7 under XP didn't do this. It's utterly annoying when I'm trying to keep one window with a bunch of tabs rather than a dozen different windows. 7. Windows Backup blows NTBackup out of the water. I'm fiddling around with it and found out that it actually creates a virtual hard disk image (.vhd file) for each disk it backs up. This is vastly superior to the POS ".bkf" files that NTBackup in NT, 2000, and XP created. In a pinch, I bet you could even just throw that .vhd file onto a USB drive (or DVD, if it's small enough) and mount it via Virtual PC 2007. That's pretty cool! Of course, Disk Utility in OS X has had this functionality since, oh, about 2002 (OS X 10.2), but yea for MS catching up! There are some other things I'm sure I'm missing, but all in all, I've got to admit (as much as it pains me to do so) that, given the right hardware, MS Vista is actually not that bad. I'm sure that my opinion might change (in either direction) as time progresses, but for now, it's quite livable. OH, and one last thing, if you run an "upgrade" installation (as opposed to a clean install), uninstall your antivirus software BEFORE you upgrade. I spent almost 2 hours digging in the registry to manually remove Symantec Antivirus after the upgrade. Not fun. -Chad __________________ Porch Monkey 4 Life! s'ok...I'm takin' it back... My Feedback Thread

10-22-2007, 04:14 PM	#2 (permalink)
Striker9 Seasoned Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: NE Ohio	2. Since when did you need a driver for your monitor? Do you have an updated graphics driver? I'd expect that's what you need. 3. It's easily turned off if you get sick of it. 6. Firefox? For anyone looking for Vista tweaks, take a look here: Top Windows Vista Tweaks You Can Find - Notebook Forums and Laptop Discussion __________________ Feedback: MCB PbNation

10-22-2007, 04:40 PM	#4 (permalink)
Frontier_Bill Post Whore Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Bozeman, Montana	I recently purchased a 'cheap' HP laptop with Vista home premiuim. It has 1gb of ram. With my experiences on my laptop - I really like Vista. I only play 1 game on it (Dawn of War) and it has to be played on the lowest settings due to the integrated video and the fact that the integrated video uses my ram... so, between Vista and the game there is practically NO extra ram. Too bad I cannot upgrade the ram... My only complaint is the incessant requesting of rights. But I can turn it off. Just too lazy to dig for it. Mine came with Media Player 11 (does all Vista?) and I must say, I LOVE this iteration of Media Player. Burning CD's is really fast and easy. Overall, I would give Vista an 85%. I figure a solid B is fair. BTW - I DESPISE OSX!!! Freaking Apple products. Killed my inner child. I want to find Steve Jobs and kick him in the teeth. __________________ Danger: Reading online forums may cause irreparable damage to your faith in Humanity. Team Rogue Cell #10 Feedback NO'MAAM #16

10-22-2007, 04:58 PM	#5 (permalink)
incynr8 Purify with flame Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: On some dinky hill	media player 11 is the new version for xp and Vista, and ships with vista. it will show as an available install with a 'custom' selection on a windowsupdate (wupdmgr) on all xp machines. 2k and others only go to mp9. __________________

10-22-2007, 05:12 PM	#6 (permalink)
Striker9 Seasoned Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: NE Ohio	From what I've read, your Dell LCD has a maximum resolution of 1280x1024. __________________ Feedback: MCB PbNation

10-22-2007, 05:27 PM	#8 (permalink)
incynr8 Purify with flame Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: On some dinky hill	if they'd only adopt a flat file config directory ............... does this registry key exist in VISTUH? HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG -> System -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> Video. you then get a M$typical unintellegible hash for your vid card, open that and edit: DefaultSettings.XResolution and DefaultSettings.YResolution. to force other resolutions. that xorg.conf is looking better now huh? __________________

10-22-2007, 10:50 PM	#10 (permalink)
Jaan XYZZY Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: People's Republic of Massachusetts	I still think Vista is a bloated ghetto version of OS X. And no, I'm not an Apple fanboy either...my 17" Mackbook Pro dual boots XP and OS X for a reason. __________________ If your glasses fog up and you want to make your own mask fans, here's how; V-Force Mask Fans JT fans with speed control "My happiness doesn't depend on anything. My heart is always happy. I do have anger issues though."