Will you upgrade to Vista?

As you may remember, I've regularly had crashes on my Vista box due to graphics problems. The latest NVidia drivers helped but there was still the odd BSOD. I've got the thing set up to do Automatic Windows Updates but today one of these wouldn't install so I went manually to the Win Update website. While there I noticed there were about 25 Optional Updates. Clicking to see what these were, there were ones dating back to March on there. Amongst them was an compability update for NVidia cards from several weeks ago. Because this was an optional update as opposed to a critical update, Auto Updates hadn't downloaded the fix to the biggest problem I was experiencing with the system! Well done Microsoft.

That sounds about right. I try to check the updates site for XP about once a month just in case. And for automatic updates I have it set to notify me of new updates, but not to download them until I've checked. Sometimes they include big updates that I don't need.

I'm not sure how the situation is over where you guys live, but complaints about Vista have been mounting, both from consumers and consumer organisations alike. Coupled with major PC manufacturers reverting to selling XP-equipped systems, it's looking more and more like Microsoft made a huge mistake releasing its next-gen OS in its current form.

Unless my XP installation disc spontaneously implodes, Vista definitely won't be seeing the light in any of the PCs I use. Even if said implosion does occur, I'd rather go for Linux Ubuntu, or make the switch to Mac OS.

Weren't alot of people the same with XP though a few years ago? Like, sticking with 2000, or switching back to 2000.

I think XP will stay on alot of peoples/companies/schools computers for quite a long time yet. My previous school only switched to XP about a year ago. And they still don't have a clue how to set up the computer properly. They are still about as slow as they used to be. Well, slower. The computer facilities at the college that I am at now are much better. College's network seems to work pretty well (with XP), and things like eBay, GMail and forums arn't blocked. I just wish they would have proper keyboards in the library.

I'd say that the majority of stuff I want to do on a computer could be done on NT4, so I'm sticking with Windows 2000. Can't really see much point in changing. It always seems to work and it has hardly ever crashed.

Has anyone used newer versions of MS Office, like 2003 and whatever the new one is? I loaded up Outlook 2003 at college the other day and it said it has a much more efficiant way of working than previous versions. I don't really see what is efficient about being completely different to what one might be used to (for me, outlook 2000 which I use everyday without problems). And I don't see what has changed in MS Word except for having new icons which are hard to recognise.

And does anyone think that IE7 is just Microsoft's attempt at copying Opera and FireFox?

Amusingly, over the summer the computer lab at Uni finally switched from 2000 to XP. I'd imagine Vista won't be on those until at least 2014.

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Originally Posted by Stephen Coates

Weren't alot of people the same with XP though a few years ago? Like, sticking with 2000, or switching back to 2000.

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That is very true. Windows 2000 didn't really come to the normal home user, so most made a big leap from Windows 9x to XP and it was a big difference that shocked a lot of them. Also many tried to do a system upgrade from 98 or Me to XP and obviously it all went horribly wrong as no one that knows about Windows would recommend trying.

The other big thing at the time XP came out was the sudden lack of DOS and many older 9x programs not working. We all know that ditching DOS was the best move M$ ever made and I think eventually the general public did catch up and realise this too. XP SP2 is a very stable OS when setup correctly. I only ever get system crashes in XP when something is actually wrong with the system such as a hardware issue. Never under normal use. Definitely can't say the same about the 9x OSs and their frequent daily BSOD virtual driver erros.

As for Vista, I don't quite understand the hatred towards it. Most people upgrading to it are coming from XP and it works pretty much the same, except for a bit more polish and shiny graphics. So what is everyone moaning about? The complaints I've heard come down to instability due to driver issues, and incompatibility with software. I've tried lots of different software in Vista now and everything that works in XO runs fine in Vista. I've got it installed on one of my systems and it works fine and is nice to use. The only real issues at the moment are compatiblity with some XP and older games due to the big change in the way Windows and Direct X now work.

People moan when an OS does keep moving forward and being updated and improved. Yet M$ do this with Vista and get flamed. Obviously when a new OS is launched, for the first few months it's new to everyone, even the developers. Something the general public don't seem to grasp. They want their PC to be all things with no problems. It's not going to happen.

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I think XP will stay on alot of peoples/companies/schools computers for quite a long time yet.

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Yep, again I agree. IT administrators don't want to introduce unknown code into an infrastructure, especially on a large scale such as a school or large company. With XP it is now a very mature OS with a lot of stable applications. For this reason it will be used for some time yet. And there actually isn't any reason for Vista in such locations at the moment. It's only real key new feature is DirectX 10 and only gamers really need that! OK, it does also have a much improved search feature which works so much better than XP's and would aid any business or school greatly, but it's not enough to upgrade in my view.

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Has anyone used newer versions of MS Office, like 2003 and whatever the new one is? I loaded up Outlook 2003 at college the other day and it said it has a much more efficient way of working than previous versions. I don't really see what is efficient about being completely different to what one might be used to (for me, outlook 2000 which I use everyday without problems). And I don't see what has changed in MS Word except for having new icons which are hard to recognise.

And does anyone think that IE7 is just Microsoft's attempt at copying Opera and FireFox?

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Yes, I used Office 2003 and like it over all previous versions of Office. It did change a lot of the layout and structure of the applications, with many of the old popup dialogue boxes now removed and replaced with the right hand panel, which is much better as it stops cluttering up the page.

I've not bothered moving up to Office 2007 yet for day to day use but do have a copy. The new ribbon control method in 2007 is a great idea, but personally I prefer to know the location of the menus and icons and don't like them changing to what it currently thinks I need.

And yes, IE7 was just M$s way of trying to keep up with the other browsers. It does so a better job of rendering pages correctly compared to IE6, but under the bonnet it is still using the same main IE6 rendering engine so isn't really all that new except for the annoying changes to the interface, hiding the menus and useful buttons.

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Originally Posted by Sharingan

I'd rather go for Linux Ubuntu, or make the switch to Mac OS.

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Linux as a main desktop OS for day to day use isn't that great compared to Windows in my view. It's just not polished enough. Stable yes, enough applications and utilities to do most tasks yes, but it's all still quite clunky graphically as the power is still at the Linux shell command line and it is a business OS at heart designed for speed, stability and data processing.

Mac OS is OK but as I've said many times before I personally think it's stuck in the past. I hate many elements of OSX, especially the one menu at the top of the screen instead of a menu in each applications window (yes this is how Workbench works too but that was 15 years ago). I also hate the quick launch bar at the bottom of the screen. But it is just a different way of doing things in an OS and as with everything each person likes different things. I prefer the way Windows does things and others prefer the Mac way. I also don't like the lack of overall control of the system. OSX is also not 100% stable, regardless of what Apple might try to make you believe. If I had to use OSX I would get back into using a Mac again pretty quickly but it's definitely not something I would pick as a day to day OS out of choice while others still exist. While Windows continues to enjoy the best support from the emulation scene it will stay the OS I choose.

Harrison, i didnt like Vista at first try, not because of stability, but because it is a quite heavy to a normal PC. I only have 1GB RAM and my CPU is at 1,4 ghz...the vista runs above xp performance, looks like it needs half of the memory just to boot up. I believe it will run ok in faster systems... but in my case (witch is still a lot of people case) it's no good. We need faster/powerfull machines to run it.

Good point and very true. Vista really needs a system with 2GB of ram to work very smoothly and as intended. 1GB of ram should still work perfectly well though. In your case I think it is definitely the speed of the CPU holding it back, and possibly your graphics card. Vista needs a good graphics card to run the full visual features on the desktop. These can however be switched off or reduced which will greatly speed things up and reduce memory usage. You could even remove the Vista look altogether which will making the system look like you are still using Windows 2000 does mean it runs well and you have all the advantages of Vista.

The big problem at the moment is that many normal home users have a system with 512MB of ram, and many laptops with only 256MB. Neither of which will run Vista well, of at all (and actually won't run XP well either).

This was also the case when XP was first launched, with most not having enough ram to run it well, and for a lot of people this is still the case. It is very common for someone to contact me asking if I can look at their system because it is taking ages to boot and being very slow once it has. The first thing I normally notice is they only have 256MB of ram. Many Laptops still do and this causes a huge slowdown in XP. The first thing I advise is to upgrade to at least 512MB of ram and then to remove all the junk that is loading up at start time. Why people think they need to have Skype, MSN messenger, their phone, camera, scanner and printer utilities and lots more loading at startup into the system tray is beyond me. Although that isn't always their fault because many installer set this up as standard and average users just use their computers and don't actually know how to manage them. And there is the problem.

But I think it is good that a new OS requires system specs that are quite high at the time of it's release. Many argue that an OS should be lightweight and not use many system resources. If you want that Linux exists, but if you want to actually take advantage of high end hardware and a system with good specs then why not have an OS that actually uses them?

You could argue that a system should automatically scale based on the hardware it is running on, but then people would complain that parts appeared to be missing from their OS.

hmmmmm

for me VISTA would only be of use in the 64bit version (for that 4GB of ram ;) )

thinking about it though, realistically to benefit from VISTA you would need a serious piece of hardware, for me atleast i would plumb for a very powerfull Linux BOX with WINE. from that i would signup to the Linux DirectX Dev team and help port Dx10 :D

its kinda sickening to be honnest looking at the need for a quite a dreary and somewhat poot OS, 600MB ram just to boot..... thats... thats f*cking disgusting....

anyway I thought i read somewhere that M$ were going to bring out a new OS 2009 / 10 ?

hmmm