It's official - Vista sucks

I picked up a laptap PC that came with this program. I'm not a big fan of Vista already, since it seems to be change for the sake of change. Rather than wipe it and run with XP (which I suspect would mean losing the tablet features of the laptop), I'm trying to make Vista work. I have to say, I really hate it.

When trying to update drivers and the like, I frequently encounter helpful messages such as : "Windows Host Process (Rundll32) has stopped working". I haven't encountered such a buggy OS since Win95. Installing my printer drivers earned a steady stream of error messages. Updating my video driver and it crashed half way through the update - always encouraging.

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Originally Posted by [AK]Clay

I picked up a laptap PC that came with this program. I'm not a big fan of Vista already, since it seems to be change for the sake of change

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Exactly.

That and change for the sake of taking in a whole lot of money.

Vista is evil. Stay with XP or better yet buy a Mac.

Speaking of the evilness - with WinXP there was a program called something like XP-cleaner that you could run to clean out some of the more onerous "features" of WinXP (like the information tracking, messaging crap, etc). Is there anything similar to that which I can run for Vista?

My research also reveals that one can download the trial versions of Office Vista direct from MS, and then run a keygen to avoid further financial support to the evil empire. I get nervous running random executables from underworld sources - is there one that folks recommend?

Better yet run Open Office. http://download.openoffice.org/2.3.1/index.html

Yup, I use Open Office and love it. It is compatible with pretty much everything and is damned near identical to MS Office.

The only small 'hope' you might have is Vista SP1 next month - but don't hold your breath. If you load the SP1 - the "fixed" versions of Office you are referring to may not run any longer (rumor).

If you would like a copy of Office 2003 (full version)... let me know as I can assist you in "obtaining" a copy. ;)

I still use XP, and DirecX10 is definitely NOT worth upgrading to VISTA for. After SP1 is out, I'll probably buy VISTA and install it on a removeable HD just to play with it and see how it goes. I'd love to switch to Mac at some point myself.

I like to use OS software, and Open Office is a very good ap - but it's annoying when you have a ton of Office documents that just aren't formatted right or are incompatible in one way or another (which is Microsoft's fault, not OO)... but it's still annoying. That's why I still use Office 2003.

I suspect Vista will have a similar life span and outcome as Windows ME.

Kinda sad since the "Idea" and "Theory" behind the new OS is good. It just missed some very fundamental things like drivers, and real-world user acceptance.

Microsoft's bull-headed decision to make DX10 a Vista exclusive will only hurt PC gaming. I have a few new, unopened games that I would like to play, but because I can't experience them in their full glory (DX10) without polluting my machine with Vista, I haven't bothered playing them. Also, I need a new laptop, but because I don't want to bother with Vista or XP (a seven year-old OS), I'm going with a MacBook Pro. I would just run Linux on a new laptop PC, but I need Photoshop, so that's out. I never thought I'd buy a Mac. It's a dark day, indeed.

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Originally Posted by [AK]Palooka

I never thought I'd buy a Mac. It's a dark day, indeed.

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Just convince yourself you are really buying an over-priced UNIX machine. :)

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Originally Posted by [AK]Palooka

Microsoft's bull-headed decision to make DX10 a Vista exclusive will only hurt PC gaming. I have a few new, unopened games that I would like to play, but because I can't experience them in their full glory (DX10) without polluting my machine with Vista, I haven't bothered playing them.

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I put Vista on the Windows partition of my Mac Pro. All my XP licenses were tied up. To make matters worse, i had to buy the full blown version as all my XPs were upgrades. :P

Still, I'm not in it much at all now that I'm back into WOW.

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Originally Posted by [AK]Squidly

now that I'm back into WOW.

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Weak, 'Quitter' quitter.... You're the Lindsay Lohan of AK!

I will say this about Vista though.....it is the first OS my wife has not been able to totally hose with viruses, adware and trojans in a matter of weeks. With the controls on installs and the constant verifications.....just the pure hassle of installing her silly little programs has kept her computer clean and running well despite her best efforts to the contrary.

So....my vote is that Vista is for the computer illiterate. It should be a mandatory upgrade for all those that think its cute to install free smiley icons and funny animated icons that came free in their email.

Vista may be slow on the implementation but it's here to stay. With a lot of shared code with Server 2008, Vista has the legs to stay around for years. The big problem is that companies weren't motivated enough to upgrade; but that's changing. My company is going to be rolling out 60k+ Vista workstations next year alone. SP1 will help with a lot of the problems but having played with Vista for the past week (My new Levono came with it) I'd have to say that most of the annoyance are just my inability to find what I'm used to finding. They hid things that shouldn't have been hidden thus making common tasks more difficult. This may be more of a retraining issue, at least for me.

I hate to disagree regarding it being simply an interface issue. This week I have experienced more operating system failures and windows explorer resets than I can count.

One program I'm going to try to help turn off some of the "features" is:
http://www.woodclanland.co.uk/module...rticle&sid=457
I've used this in XP w/ satisfaction. It is updated to work for Vista as well, and I'm going to try it out.

I've been using Vista Basic for a few months, and have had no problems with it. That said, I use it for gaming and Internet browsing, and not much else (that's all I use my computer for anyway).

I had Office installed on my XP partition, but I just downloaded and installed Open Office on Vista last night. It seems to be working quite well.

Because of the new overhead processes introduced by Vista, I would suggest that 4 GB is the new 2 GB in terms of memory needs. My computer is running fine with 2 GB, but I suspect it would be smoother with 4.

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Originally Posted by [AK]Palooka

I never thought I'd buy a Mac. It's a dark day, indeed.

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Dark day? No. For jaded enthusiasts, you'll find joy in using your computer again. Imagine that.

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Originally Posted by [AK]Hylander

Weak, 'Quitter' quitter.... You're the Lindsay Lohan of AK!

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I took a break, as I've done several times. I never said I was done forever.

Is it possible for a machine to have a maximum memory it can take? I put in 4GB of RAM, yet Vista is saying I only have 3. Is this normal?

I think you might need a BIOS update. If I'm remembering correctly, the same thing happened with versions of my own board's BIOS (older than the one it had when I got it).

I can't speak for Vista, but wouldn't be surprised if the same doesn't hold true..

But, for XP, only the 64bit version of the OS can recognize more then 3GB.

Here's a Microsoft support link that explains the situation.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605

i gave up on microsoft a long time ago, and that sounds hypocritical b/c i do still use some of their products (like the phone i am typing this message from).
their drive for innovation has dried up. they can't make a web presence, so let's buy yahoo.

clay, i run all linux. if i really have something that i need (like WoW or Photoshop) i run it in wine. in fact, i get better performance on linux with wow than i did with windows. my kids use linux at home, and i i'm trying to get my wife to switch over....

if you run linux, you don't need anti-virus :)

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Originally Posted by [AK]Abaddon

Here's a Microsoft support link that explains the situation.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605

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Yup, there's the problem. I have Vista Home, which is a 32 bit OS. Apparently I need the 64 bit version to use all 4 GB of RAM.

I have Vista Home Basic as well ... I was unaware of that limitation until I looked it up. That makes no sense.

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Originally Posted by [AK]Abaddon

That makes no sense.

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Welcome to Microsoft.

(Just a note to self so I can click this hyperlink easily from work - downgrading to XP is not so easy, since Nvidea and HP have both removed all their support drivers for this laptop for XP - this link is to work-arounds to fix that and make the little guy work. have XP installed, just not all the right drivers. Feels faster - won't know for sure until I install a game, but overall doing things, switching between progs, and general navigation feels MUCH faster on XP now)

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/showthread.php?t=11987

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Originally Posted by [AK]Clay

Feels faster - won't know for sure until I install a game, but overall doing things, switching between progs, and general navigation feels MUCH faster on XP now)

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Its a figment of your imagination. Its like a bad marriage, once you commit it all goes down the drain! :beer:

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Originally Posted by [AK?]Brorlis

Its a figment of your imagination. Its like a bad marriage, once you commit it all goes down the drain! :beer:

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Au contrair my friend! The laptop came with an 8GB partition that has a full restor to Vista if XP turns out to be a fiasco. Soo, I'm not really committed at all. Except for the fact that I actually want the thing to be usable, rather than a slow dog with new error messages every few hours, which is what I had under Vista. So .. hmm..

Actually, this raises another intersting tidbit. That 8 GB restor drive has now been labeled as the C drive after a repartition/format. So all my installs etc. are going to the D drive. Which is a bit annoying, but no biggie.

My new Lenovo T61p has a restore partition but get a load of this: it's one time only. If you restore from the partition the partition goes away. Nice, eh? And Lenovo's Rescue and Repair discs that you can create using their tools, doesn't include the OS. So you have to call and get a copy of the OS from them.

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Originally Posted by [AK]Clay

Au contrair my friend! The laptop came with an 8GB partition that has a full restor to Vista if XP turns out to be a fiasco. Soo, I'm not really committed at all. Except for the fact that I actually want the thing to be usable, rather than a slow dog with new error messages every few hours, which is why I had under Vista. So .. hmm..

Actually, this raises another intersting tidbit. That 8 GB restor drive has now been labeled as the C drive after a repartition/format. So all my installs etc. are going to the D drive. Which is a bit annoying, but no biggie.

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Ughh.. I would assume that you wiped the active partitions and started over from scratch. Thats not really a problem thats gonna go away there bud. If the XP install works out I would probably wipe the entire drive including the partitions and truly start over from scratch. Restore partitions are annoying, I would much rather take a good load, image the drive, and keep it as an .iso file instead of loosing a full 8g to a restore partition.

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Originally Posted by [AK]Palooka

I never thought I'd buy a Mac. It's a dark day, indeed.

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I've been a MAC owner for a month now and I can express nothing but joy in my purchase. Yes it cost more then a windows based laptop. However the quality and performance make up for that. And with features such as Boot Camp you can deploy and run XP sp2 or Vista with ease. Or you can make a 80$ investment and purchase VMWare Fusion and run a VM of any OS you want to. At one time I picked on Squidly for being a MAC person. Now I can only hope to sit at the cool table beside him :beer:

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Originally Posted by [AK]StitchJones

I've been a MAC owner for a month now and I can express nothing but joy in my purchase. Yes it cost more then a windows based laptop. However the quality and performance make up for that. And with features such as Boot Camp you can deploy and run XP sp2 or Vista with ease. Or you can make a 80$ investment and purchase VMWare Fusion and run a VM of any OS you want to. At one time I picked on Squidly for being a MAC person. Now I can only hope to sit at the cool table beside him :beer:

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What did you get?

For everything but game variety, it's the superior choice, IMO.

And the dual boot thing removes the gaming limitation.

I still use both (due to my work) but my Mac usage has made computing fun again.

Just got my brand new MacBook Pro today. It's the base model with the 7200RPM 200GB drive upgrade. So far, I'm nothing short of thrilled. Within a few minutes of booting up, I was already video conferencing with my biz partner. Shortly thereafter, I got almost all the software I need (Firefox, Thunderbird, Cyberduck, etc.) installed. Software installation is so easy, a caveman could do it. Drag. Drop. Drool. I just need to download a cross-platform Photoshop CS3 upgrade and install VMware Fusion (for testing dev work in Winblows), then I'll be ready to roll. Oh, I also installed 4GB of memory (something like $70 from mwave.com after rebates, which sure beats $400 direct from Apple), which only took a few minutes. It seems as though doubling the memory has made a big difference. It will certainly help when I'm concurrently running OS X, XP, and Photoshop.

I've only had one issue so far: I noticed that the up arrow was only sporadically working. I popped the key off to make sure everything beneath it was in place. It all looked fine, so I popped off the down arrow key to compare. Everything looked identical. I put the down arrow key back on only to find that it was now malfunctioning, too! Beneath the key is a little inverted rubber cup-shaped thingy. If I pressed it directly, the input worked fine, so the little nub on the underside of the key was obviously not reliably pushing the inverted cup-shaped thingy down far enough provide good contact. Thus, I put a little piece of tape on the underside of each key and popped them back on. Voila! No more problems.

My partner has been telling me to get a Mac for a couple years, but I always replied that Macs were for fags. Who's the fag now?

I hope to go Mac sooner or later as well. It's just a matter of funds and wanting to take the time to migrate all my work flow over. I do so little PC gaming any more that it's really not an issue for me. I'll just keep a rig for my sim racing.

Interesting that it's been all over the net and in the mags that Microsoft is whipping their developers into getting the VISTA replacement out 3 years early - by the end of 2009. Yeah, Microsofts quality is so great that pushing the product out the door 3 years sooner should really be an improvement over VISTA. :eek3:

I just caught my wife in a moment of weakness:

iMac Pro
Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
2GB (2 x 1GB)
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (Two dual-link DVI)
One 16x SuperDrive
Apple Mighty Mouse
Apple Keyboard (English) + Mac OS X
AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro

I'll probably pick up 2 more GB of memory from a third party seller.

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Originally Posted by [AK]Bribo

I just caught my wife in a moment of weakness:

iMac Pro
Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
2GB (2 x 1GB)
500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (Two dual-link DVI)
One 16x SuperDrive
Apple Mighty Mouse
Apple Keyboard (English) + Mac OS X
AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro

I'll probably pick up 2 more GB of memory from a third party seller.

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Prepare to enjoy the finest computing experience of your life. Well done.

I got the Macbook Pro 2.2ghz 15" model
Upgraded the memory to 4gb
Swapped out the HDD to a 320gb drive
zoom zoom zoom ;)


Palooka and Bribo, Congrats to both of you guys with your Mac investments.
It's getting to be like a big old apple tree around here. Maybe Hylander or Clay could bake us an apple pie :glasses:

I really recommended getting "The Missing Manual - Mac OS X Leopard Edition" It's a really great book and I have already learned so much from it. it has awesome tips and tricks and it's written in a down to earth easy to follow language.

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Originally Posted by [AK]Squidly

Prepare to enjoy the finest computing experience of your life. Well done.

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Amen to that.