Feorthas

My take on Vista is that it would be a horrible idea to put it on a currently functional and already built system; however, you're probably going to want it sometime in the future for some feature that it has, if only DX10 support. So, if you're building a new system, grab Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate and use that as your OS; if not, stick with what you've got as you don't ~need~ any of the new features anyway and making sure all of your hardware works will be a pain.

For instance, I've been running XP64 (consumer build of Server 2003 x86_64 ed.) since my last reinstall simply because, during my Vista / XP64 research, I found all of my drivers and thought that I might as well go ahead and use it. Everything run smoothly and Server 2k3 is mildly better at process & memory management than XP so it's pretty much a win/win situation; however, although I have a Vista Business ISO & License (MSDN subscriptions via school are nice), I've already decided that I'm going to keep XP64 on my current box as the 'upgrade' wont be worth it. While the system is definitely good enough to run Vista, I have some older / odder hardware (TV Tuner card) that could be very problematic to get running in Vista--heck, it wasn't supposed to be nearly this easy to get running in XP64.

 

Caligula

Vista is currently a disaster. I would not recommend it to anyone. I work technical support for a software company and I have not heard a *single* good thing about it from any of our customers who have it installed. My boss (Network Admin *VERY* knowledgeable about computers) spent over 6 hours working on upgrading his system to Vista.

Your "older" programs (Diablo 2 anyone?) will not work. Windows help files from older versions of Windows aren't compatible. You will have a nightmare installing software. It's a resource hog.

Wait for the service pack. Trust me as much as you can trust an interweb stranger.

 

subscience

Windows upgrade rule of thumb #1.

 

• Dozer

What? I played Diablo 2 on Vista this morning. I have had zero problems installing anything since March. My FPS is identical to what I had on XP.

It's a "resource hog" at first glance, sure..... If you actually know what you're looking at though(and read up on it), you'd know that Vista does all sorts of housekeeping tasks while the system isn't being fully utilized, and will free up the memory/processor time when you need it.




That being said, I wouldn't actually recommend dropping 200 bucks on it (or putting it on a PC more than 2 years old), but calling it a "disaster" is baseless hyperbole.

 

kavalier

I don't think it's worth it to "upgrade" to Vista Basic from Windows XP.

That said, Vista is definitely not a disaster. Once I got used to the UAC feature and figured out how to install and patch World of Warcraft and other programs, I have been enjoying my Vista experience.

There are still quite a few software compatibility issues that bug me. For example, I am pretty much unable to use my Adobe video production suite because it simply refuses to work with Vista. I installed Premiere Pro and now I am literally unable to uninstall it no matter how hard I try. Granted, I bought this production suite about 3 years ago, but I know I would not have this problem if I still used XP. Sony Vegas does not "officially support" Vista either, but I'm not sure if it'll have the same severe issues. So if you are looking to do some advanced video editing... you probably want to wait. DivX player/web player also have a few issues (the codec works fine in WMP) so you might have some problems watching videos on the Stage6 website.

 

Feorthas

For compatibility issues that don't require hardware acceleration on the video output, there's always the "run XP in a VM" solution. For those that do require 3D acceleration, there's always "run XP as a 2nd boot option". I have a feeling you could be well served by the former if you want to put time into setting up XP in Virtual PC.

 

Zerve

Well, I made the mistake of getting Vista on my computer. It's so damn annoying. Every ten seconds you get a "are you sure you wish to open this program" or "this program requires your approval before opening" message. Sure you can choose to ignore it, but then Vista doesn't help you at all.

And in my opinion, the Aero theme is the worst designed GUI I ever seen. I use the old Windows 95 theme instead I hate it so much.

Although other than that, Vista is a pretty solid operating system, although I wish I would've stuck with XP.

 

Mulva

I recently put a fresh install of Vista Ultimate on my machine. While it has a pretty big footprint of its own (700 MB ram with just vista running) I haven't had a single performance issue arise. With the latest drivers I still run 40 fps+ most of the time. The only two issues I have with it, is that VS.NET 2003 isn't supported (they didn't want to update the compiler for the platform or some such thing), and divx player (stage6) doesn't play nice with Aero. As far as WoW is concerned I haven't had a single hiccup.

System Specs:
Intel 965WG Motherboard (yes I know I should upgrade)
Core 2 Duo E6300
2MG PC6400 RAM
GeForce 7950GT
SATA2 Seagate drive

I'm just curious if the people that are so anti-vista in this thread have actually run a system with vista on it. Of course doing an upgrade instead of a clean install runs more risks. Just backup data (not programs etc), and a clean install of vista, drivers, and applications and you'll be running well if your machine can handle the version of vista you're installing.

As for the issue of it always asking for permissions, in the window that pops up it tells you how to disable all those popups.

I don't really play PC games besides WoW (more of a console gamer really - so sue me), so I don't know much about compatibility for say WC3 and the like.

 

Casander

I am currently running vista premium and didn't notice an FPS drop when going from XP to vista, but that when I upgraded both my video card and got a bigger monitor at the same time that my FPS dropped by about 20-30. I am now using the old 19" Acer AL1917W as a secondary monitor for my dual montitor setup with my main monitor being a 22" LG Flatron Wide. My old card was a GeForce 7600 GT and I went to a GeForce 8800 GTS 640mb. I'm not sure how my performance went down even with the fact that I went from using 1.3 million pixels to 1.8 and going dual monitors. The other monitor is just the desktop, not sure how it can be taking up video memory if it is.

 

◊ Shadowed

It's a hassle mainly, if I was buying a completely new computer I'd probably go with Vista since I'd already have to deal with transfering everything anyway, but it doesn't have anything that looks amazing and makes me want to deal with the hours of upgrading/transfering/setting up over waiting for a service pack and more apps/drivers to be upgraded.

 

Dirich

I am anti Vista because of Palladium. Tough it's ok to try to stop internet sharing of music and programs, it's totally outrageous that this technology locks your hardware if it's not one that he can recognize. Actually this means it's been "approved by" and registered to (by paying a certain amount) a certain society (the one founded by the palladium consortium). And it's the death of freeware too, because you'll need to pay to register your programs in order to them to be recognized by the system (if it's not, the program is locked because considered "possibly hacked").

This is something I read a couple of years ago.

By the way, I tried vista on another PC and I have to say: it gave me problems, it asked for stupid amount of memory and this only for the sake of an idiotic new cool look... I disabled the desktop graphic on my XP (I can't remember the correct name of this option.. my desktop just look like the 98 version). One word: faster. It's supposed to be an OS, it should concentrate on do his work good (or just doing it, in certain cases), instead of providing majorly only some graphic.

 

dr_AllCOM3

With the latest (graphic) drivers Vista is ok. Only a few games are problematic.
I'll wait for the Service Pack too

 

◊ Kalman

It's also basically completely inapplicable to the Vista we got, rather than the one that was being discussed several years ago.

The only real DRM technology that made it into Vista is the protected content path for HD content.

http://mmorchive.net

The WoW forums, explained:

 

Nirija

I'm sorry to ask again but is there really no difference in Home Basic to everything else but the Aero UI and more programs that come with it? I'd have to shell out money for XP if Ultimate worked better than Basic.

 

sp00n

http://beqiraj.com/windows/vista/editionen/index.asp (German)

Item Ranking Rogue [horribly outdated]

 

◊ Lum

Not all of those cards are supported by Vista. The minimum supported cards are R300 or NV40 series adapters. That means that NV30 FX card isn't supported by Microsoft or by Nvidia for Vista use. Yes, you can plug it in, and Vista will show a picture, which is something it will do for many adapters that aren't technically "supported". But you'll never get anything more than the Vista in-box video driver, and that's where your performance will suffer.

Edit: Let me put it more into context. Of course you're going to see poor performance when you're listing basically the most bottom-of-the-barrel cards here. You're going to see poor performance when using the minimum spec of anything.

I used to work in the WHQL section at MS, and I can tell you that Moogle is absolutely right. You need to do the research, find out if your hardware is supported. You absolutely can see worse performance in Vista than in XP under certain hardware restrictions. The OS is written differently than XP, give it time; it'll catch up, especially with newer hardware.

 

Aphyrax

This guy is in dire need of a second tinfoil hat. He did manage to get his 15 minutes of fame out of that drivel though.

Back on topic, if you have the right hardware then Vista runs extremely well. It scales better with resources than XP. But if you do not then stay away. Vista + WoW on a 1GB machine is not optimal.

The most annoying thing is the random missing driver. I just bought a printer from a brand name manifacturer and cannot use it because apparently they botched the driver signing. Very irritating.

As for people saying, "wait for the first service pack", that is really not applicable to home users. That is for businesses that care if they get 99.99% or 99.999% reliability.

 

Caldar

Just turn off the UAC, like 90% of users do.

FWIW, I run vista and think its ok. Not the revolutionary system it was suppose to be, but meh. I have a rather high end system (scored 5.9 on all Vista tests) so I don't notice any performace issues at all. If you have any kind of older system, you will notice it though, because the OS is a pig (esp. with Aero enabled)

 

embrauer

Purely antecdotal, but I switched to Vista and lost about half my FPS (~30FPS in Shattrath to ~15FPS), with a 7900GTO and code2duo 2.4ghz, 2gb of RAM. A pain in the ass because I really like Vista and its non-wow components. I didn't actually re-install WoW though I just ported the folder over because I'm pretty lazy - could this be the issue? I also disabled Aero and the performance loss is the same. I see people with 7xxx series saying the game runs well for them.

 

• Snowcrasher

After some concern and hesitation I went with Vista Ultimate for my new PC (~6 weeks ago) and so far have had 0 issues. The only games I've installed and played on it are WoW, Age of Mythology & Sid Meier's Pirates but all have worked perfectly.

I hated the XP interface and would change every computer I touched back to Win95 classic. But I've been enjoying the new interface (with Aero) in Vista so I'm keeping it. Performance has been very good but this is with fairly fast components (E6700, 8800GTS etc).

 

Celandro

Im running vista with 2 gigs of ddr2, a 8800GTS 640 and a core2duo 6400 and get 50-60fps in ironforge. If you have this kind of machine and you are getting 30, something is wrong with your drivers or hardware imo.

 

Hongten

You aren't really right here. First of all what is your FPS in Shatr? I bet it differs from IF. Also most people here dont notice 1 thing:
http://us.download.nvidia.com/Window...ease_Notes.pdf
page 22. Windows Vista 32 bit Issues:
World Of Warcraft has low Frame Rates.
So its kinda official.

PS. 100.54 version of drivers hadn't that issue, but its 6 month behind and i switched to XP back, so cant test it.
PPS: Just looked deeper in Release Notes and didnt notice that there is such issue in 64 bit Vista...

 

Caldar

I virtually never dip below 60 fps anywhere in game and typically see 150-200 fps in most places running WoW on Vista Ultimate.

As I said, if you run Vista on old hardware (and by old I mean anything more than probably 6 months to a year old at best) expect problems and decreased performance over XP.

 

Celandro