Vista Operating System

[Dennis Sherrod]

Hello. I am getting ready to purchase a new laptop. I prefer Windows XP Pro, but am wondering about experiences others have had with the Vista Operating System. Any input, suggestions, comments, etc. would be greatly appreciated. Has anyone experienced any compatability problems with software, etc?
Thank you all.

 

[Chris White]

I have posted quite a few posts of why Vista didn't work for me eventually UPgrading to XP. I should say some have said Vista works great for them with no problems(great) but, without rehashing all of my old posts here's a couple threads to be aware of;

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=11979&highlight=vista

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=11027&highlight=vista

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=13061&highlight=vista

Also, just do a general search on Vista and their are dozens of hardware/software specific issues. I posted most of my Vista woe/saga's on another board. Keep in mind if you buy a Vista laptop with the option to downgrade to XP if all else fails you will likely need to load XP SATA drivers so it may not just be as simple as popping in a bootable XP CD and expect everything to work (depending on what you get).

In my situation, when I needed a new laptop (March or so) neither dell or gateway had the option to build it as an XP machine, now they do. That should give you a bit of an indication of the markets acceptance of Vista right their.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

FWIW, I've had no problems with Vista on my relatively-new Dell I6400 (same as E1505). As with almost all big OS upgrades, there are hardware and software incompatibility issues, though I haven't yet run into one with my stuff. You could always dual-boot, if you want. I set up my laptop to dual-boot Vista and Ubuntu, but dual-booting Vista and XP shouldn't be too hard.

 

[Doug Lee]

I've been dealing with Vista issues as part of my job, even though I don't have it on my 'puter. I have 2 general pieces of advice:

1. Turn off the UAC (User Account Control).

2. Turn off and leave off the Vista firewall. If you want a firewall, use one from a different source.

I will say one thing about going to Vista now: When everyone else changes over after the bugs are taken care of, you'll be ahead of the curve! If you can't help anyone else learn about Vista then, you'll at least have bragging rights.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

For fun, I installed Vista on my laptop and in the end I formatted it and put XP back on it. Personally, I hate Vista. It uses too much system resource even if the computer is just idling.

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

I've been dealing with Vista issues as part of my job, even though I don't have it on my 'puter. I have 2 general pieces of advice:

1. Turn off the UAC (User Account Control).

Why do this? The entire point of UAC is for system security. Much like 'NIX distros require superuser privs to do anything off the beaten path, Vista requires UAC (which is basically a superuser prompt without the password entry requirement) before doing anything that exposes system files. UAC is a good thing. It's annoying because so many software developers have been writing such terrible code for XP for so long, meaning that legacy programs often have the UAC prompt, but it's there to save your butt.

I agree with the above post, though -- Vista does use a lot more resources. However, some of this is deceptive; Vista does some interesting things with memory that XP never did. For example, when you exit out of a program, it doesn't free up all the memory right away; it leaves it resident until you do something that requires more memory space. This way you can quickly restart a closed program without having to reload it all back into memory. Basically, it does a better job of memory management. However, your memory meter will read that you're using a great deal of memory, even though in reality much of that memory is free for use.

 

[rdale]

UAC is useless, turn it off...

 

[Darin Brunin]

At first I was skeptical about Vista, but after using it for a while I seem to like it more and more all of the time. I really like the organizational features and would actually pick it over XP now that I am familiar with it.

The best advice I can give you is that Vista is built for the future and 1gig of RAM or less is definitely not the future so don't bother with Vista unless you have 2GB of RAM or more. Otherwise you'll want to rip out your hair.

 

[Skip Talbot]

I'm running Vista on my chase laptop, which was designed to run Vista. I do not recommend upgrading from XP to Vista unless you have a new computer, mainly to avoid compatibility and resource issues. Your new Vista machine should also have 2GB. With 1GB or less you are going to take performance hits. It really bothers me that there are laptops being sold with Vista on them and 512MB.

With that out of the way... Vista runs great on my laptop, and handles all of my chase software without issue. In fact there are several very nice improvements over XP that I take advantage of while chasing. Connecting to my bluetooth devices (phone, GPS), works much better under Vista. They automatically reconnect after standby without interruption. I always had issues getting my GPS to fire back up after standby under XP. Installing things under Vista was also a much smoother process. The more general Vista upgrades are also nice. File indexing and the search feature makes finding anything on the computer a snap. Vista also preloads all of your frequently used software into memory. So in my case, Street Atlas and GrLevel3 start almost instantly. As for UAC... personally, it doesn't bother me, and I use it stop programs from phoning the mothership.

Hardware/Software setup:
Delorme Street Atlas 2007
Holux 236 GPS with Franson GPS Gate
V3xx Motorazr tethered via a bluetooth modem
GrLevel3

 

[Tarmo Tanilsoo]

Although I have had most of my things done on Vista for half a year by now, I still do not recommend it to others... I am very pleased to use Knoppix(a Linux Live CD) as well...

 

[Marko Korosec]

After around 5 months of Windows Vista I can say its a really good system, although two things disturbing me sometimes. Vista often leads to defragmenting disks, even few times per day sometimes. The other thing is that security thing everytime and running things as administrator (UAC), it often gets some errors on some programs. As I see from the posta above, it can be disabled.

But system overall is very stable and I did not have any problems with it. Once again it should be noted that it need powerful PC configuration.

 

[Dennis Sherrod]

THANKS

Thank you to all who replied and gave their input. Opinion seems to be fairly split between the two systems, which is about the same as I feel. In the long run, Vista appears it may be better, as long as an initial larger memory, processor, etc are not too cost prohibitive for some. I am sure, as with all newer programs, there will be bugs to be worked out and updates or Service Packs will be available before too long. I just don't want to get caught dead-in-the-field with an unknown or unresearched problems.
REMINDER, As I am sure all know, now is a great time of the year to get all your equipment and vehicles serviced and checked for the next season. I know I take the time and split the expenses over a couple, few months to prepare. Santa might even bring some new goodies and gadgets if I cry and beg enough.
Everyone: Stay Safe.

 

[Jon Miller]

If you're wanting to get a new computer soon with XP , better act quickly as I recently read , this past Fall ,that Microsoft is pulling XP off of the market in early 2008 - possibly in January. I bought a new laptop this September and had to hunt hard to find one with XP on it. Everything in the "big box" chain stores came wth Vista. I finally found a couple at locally owned business oriented computer stores .I was told that businesses are having a lot of trouble with Vista and are still wanting XP.
Dell, Acer and HP still offer XP on some of their business oriented computers including laptops.

 

[Mark Blue]

I've been using Vista since last April and it has worked out for me. I also have XP on my other 2 rigs. The deadline for Microsoft pulling XP off of the market was extended to June 08. I turned off UAC after about 2 weeks of asking myself why I should confirm the action I just requested a split second ago. UAC is basically a POS, end of story. I think a mountain has been made out of a mole hill in the media and tech magazines with respect to Vista as it really isn't as bad as they would like you to believe. XP was probably the best OS ever developed by Microsoft, but eventually folks will have to get used to Vista. Those Mac commercials with that goofball that pretends to be Bill Gates are hilarious in my opinion!!

 

[fplowman]

What will Vista do that XP wont?