Thinking of getting vista? Well here's a word, 2 links, and a description of advice:

[Muzer]

Don't.



Get this instead (http://ubuntu.com)
Or stick with this (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/xp)




My mum got a new laptop and with it vista... IT'S HORRIBLE! Annoying user account control, occasional random BSODs, horrible compatability, long boot time, low stability, crappy features that most of which you can get for XP, Setting up wireless connections is horribly confusing (see below for an example), huge memory hog, etc, etc, are just some of the new great things for you to enjoy in Windows Vista! Suxxorage to the max!


EXAMPLE: How to connect to a workgroup.
Windows XP:
Go into control panel and go to Network or Internet connections, and then click Network Setup Wizard. Follow the easy to follow steps and enter your workgroup when asked. Easy!
Vista:
It may seem easy when I list it here, but just imagine trying to find it for yourself with no clue what to do... especially in the over-crouded wireless network screen (which is the wrong place anyway...)
Go onto the system properties menu (the easiest way to do this is going to start, right clicking on Computer and clicking on properties
Scroll down and click Change Settings
A god damn blasted UAC box will pop up. Click continue or enter your admin's password, depending on version
In the Computer Name tab, click the change button and finally, there is the box for the workgroup name.
As I said, it may seem easy here, but this is a very weird place to put it, AFAIK it hasn't been put here for a long time, if ever. And it takes ages to explore every option of the Wireless Network Settings screen, so it was only when I finally gave up and went onto Windows Help and Support that I found it.

[MrBunsy]

Now I've heard a lot of good reasons against Vista, but from what I've seen of it, it's certainly stable and if not faster than XP, then at least as fast, provided you've got the rather heavy specs it requires. BSODs generally come from hardware faults, where did you get the laptop from?

[SilPho]

BSODs generally come from hardware faults, where did you get the laptop from?

If you say it's an Acer I won't be surprised.

Generally I have no gripes with Vista, I can't run it on my own laptop because it is a system guzzler and my graphics card barely scrapes the bucket with 64MB of VRAM, but Vista itself... not a whole lot to worry about.

I don't advise people to start relying on Vista to do absolutely everything at the moment, such a massive operating system is going to have teething issues, we all recall that XP was a mess when it was released but now look, you're telling people to stick with it.

We all know that when vista's successor comes out everyone will say "stick with Vista" but once the bugs are sorted, compatibility raised and the hardware catches up, it's all good.

It does look like XP with a fancy skin, but really XP looked like 9x with a fancy skin. It's after you start looking at the actually very helpful features that you realize what it does for you. (Not having to have mice plugged in at boot up is a huge help)

And one final note before I finish this rather surprisingly Microsoft positive post, you can turn the UAC off.

[Xinos]

Yeah, you can turn of that extremly annoying UAC thing, and it's easy too.
Run -> msconfig.exe -> services -> disable UAC. It was basically the first thing I did when I installed Vista.

I've been running Vista for well over a month and I've never had any bluescreens (apart from my BSOD Screensaver ;)). It's quite stable and runs smoothly, the only problems I've had where lack of drivers for componants like my PlayStation 2 controller -> USB converter. Their Vista drivers just don't work.

Vista boots slower than XP, sure, but it's only something you do once a day or so. But in all fairness, Linux boots the slowest of all OS's.. But when it's up and running it's quite pleassant, the Aero Glass theme is lovely, and does not use any resources when playing games which many seem to beleive. Games run just as well as in XP, some say faster, but I can't tell.

However, Vista is known to not run as smoothly on DX9 as on DX10, and most people don't have DX10 cards yet. So if anything you could/should wait for that. But for me Vista works as well as XP, which I still have installed just in case.

Edit: My old computer could not run Linux, I've tried many different types, but there was ALWASE something wrong, like network, sound. My linux teacher could not figure it out when he tried installing linux on my machine at a LAN. So does that mean I should make a thread advising everybody to stay clear of linux? =P

[thomasp]

Don't.



Get this instead (http://ubuntu.com)
Or stick with this (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/xp)

Or even this :p (http://www.apple.com/macosx)


As for creating networks (wireless or wired), open system prefs, choose the appropriate network connection method (wired or wireless), click appletalk on, turn filesharing on, go back to the Finder, open any window and choose "Network" from the sidebar, double click on the computer of your choice and enter the PW.

By the sounds of things, I could do that, then have time to go and make a cuppa before Vista has got past the 3rd "Are you sure you want to do this?" window from when you foolishly tried to open the System Properties menu.


And while we're on that subject: http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_480x376.mov

[Xinos]

Heh, I just now timed the booting times of XP and Vista with a stop watch. From the instant I press the powerbutton to as soon as the desktop with icons show up.

XP: 1 minute and 15 seconds
Vista: 1 minute

I was as quick as possible to sellect OS in the bootloader, so there may have been a few milliseconds difference there. =P

[Muzer]

Yeah, you can turn of that extremly annoying UAC thing, and it's easy too.
Run -> msconfig.exe -> services -> disable UAC. It was basically the first thing I did when I installed Vista.
I couldn't find anything mentioning UAC in that list
where did you get the laptop from
HP
BSODs generally come from hardware faults
Now you come to mention it, most (but not all) of the BSODs were when using the built-in webcam that vista supposedly has stable windows-signed drivers for... It's still MS' fault because they should've checked the driver actually WORKED before signing it.
Heh, I just now timed the booting times of XP and Vista with a stop watch. From the instant I press the powerbutton to as soon as the desktop with icons show up.

XP: 1 minute and 15 seconds
Vista: 1 minute

I was as quick as possible to sellect OS in the bootloader, so there may have been a few milliseconds difference there. =P
That would only be a fair test if you have done equal amounts of work on each (so there's equal amounts of registry and startup programs to load and stuffs)







I can say one good thing about vista: The voice recognition (the dictating part, anyway, the commands part sucks balls) ***S ALL!!!1!1!!1111111!!1!11!!

[*Splinter*]

Yeah, you can turn of that extremly annoying UAC thing, and it's easy too.
Run -> msconfig.exe -> services -> disable UAC. It was basically the first thing I did when I installed Vista.

Is UAC the annoying thing that keeps asking 'Are you sure?' and making your screen flash?

[Xinos]

Yes and no. It asks if you are "sure you want to run this program", but it's a regular popup. It does not make the screen flash..

[Muzer]

It does make your screen flash, don't be stupid Xinos.

It's the one that greys everthing out and says windows needs your permission to continue.

[Xinos]

I don't remember it doing that, but tuning out to gray is not flashing (http://www.thoraxcorp.com/flasher.gif).

[Cyclaws]

I'm using Vista, and it's certainly better than XP.

You can switch off UAC by:

Clicking start
Typing in User, then clicking User Accounts
Click on Turn User Account Control on or off
Then unticking the box and clicking OK.

Vista boots slower than XP

It boots about 10 seconds faster for me.

[SupSuper]

Yes and no. It asks if you are "sure you want to run this program", but it's a regular popup. It does not make the screen flash..Actually, it does make the screen flash if you have a Nvidia card. It's a driver thing.

And as has been pointed out, UAC is the easiest thing to turn off. In fact, Vista has a lot more "turn off" buttons than XP ever did, which is thumbs up in my book.

I think most people overreact with Vista because they except it to be exactly the same thing as before and completely different, all the same time. They whine about things that change, yet whine about things that had been done before (outside Windows). But with every new Windows OS, some things change, some things stay the same, and everything seems new at first and you gotta figure it out. Turn off what you don't like and set it up how you want. It's not any different from when you first got XP and probably had to look how to turn off the stupid Windows Firewall and (in SP2) the Security Center.

As for connecting to a network on Vista, I didn't have to do anything, it did it all for me when I installed. I think to do manually you just have to go either to Start > Connect To or Control Panel > Network and Sharing Control Center.

[thomasp]

Heh, I just now timed the booting times of XP and Vista with a stop watch. From the instant I press the powerbutton to as soon as the desktop with icons show up.

XP: 1 minute and 15 seconds
Vista: 1 minute

I was as quick as possible to sellect OS in the bootloader, so there may have been a few milliseconds difference there. =P
On a 2 year old laptop using a 5 year old processor (damn you IBM :mad: ), I can get OSX to boot up in about 55s. On my dad's Core Duo MacBook Pro, it starts up in about 40s.


I used Vista once for all of five minutes - I have to say it wasn't the most pleasant five minutes of my life, but nicer than the hour where I spent trying to get a Windows ME laptop to connect to our uni's network via ethernet - 50mins of BSODs :D

[Xinos]

Well, that's OSX. I bet Linux is the slowest of all too boot. But it probably varries on which distribution you got. But often it takes ages for it to get through all the pages of modules and whatnots to load.

The only thing in Vista that has every blinked, flashed of flickered has been the downloadable poker game Texas Hold Em. But I could care less really..

[*Splinter*]

and (in SP2) the Security Center.

You can turn that off???

[AndrewTaylor]

It boots about 10 seconds faster for me.

I'd hope you'd save more time than that by replacing XP with a clean install of XP.

[Xinos]

I'd hope you'd save more time than that by replacing XP with a clean install of XP.

The problem with clean installs is that they only remain clean for little over 6 hours.

[Cyclaws]

I'd hope you'd save more time than that by replacing XP with a clean install of XP.

I was comparing a week long install of Vista with a week long install of XP. It's a bit silly to compare two clean installs, doesn't really prove much.