Vista - some issues but I think I like it
 

Just started playing around with Vista Home Premium on a cheap notebook I picked up the other day. So far I like it.

It is not very different from XP Pro which I have been using since the beta stage. I do like some of the improvements. Unfortunately they are hard to list since they are very minor. So far all the software that I use daily works as well or better than with XP. Applications using a widescreen monitor are now easier to view than with XP.

I like how MS added partitioning on the fly. No need to reboot with the OS disc to add a partition. Vista allows you to create, delete, shrink or expand the partition sizes even after installation of the OS.

I-tunes still does not work with Vista - as soon as I plug in the pod, itunes crashes. Apple has been working on this problem for a year and still cannot fix it with their latest offering. I gave up and went with Anapod Explorer which works perfectly with Vista.

Anyone else like Vista - I've heard plenty from the negative side.

I have had nothing but problems with Vista. Explorer.exe crashes several times a day and every time it sits idle for a few hours it locks up completely. I have to force it down. If I wasn't past the return cut-off date it would be back at Best Buy and I would have a Mac. This OS is more buggy than Millenium ever was and that is sad.

Have to agree with Wayne. One of the reasons I love Linux so much is because it's so transparent.

This is where MS has totally dropped the ball - people don't buy an operating system for animations, pretty colors, features or dancing clowns - they buy an operating system because it allows my OTHER programs to run animations, pretty colors, features and dancing clowns. The OS shouldn't get in the way of allowing everything else to run correctly, which Windows (virtually any incarnation of it) is infamous for doing. Linux, by contrast just kind of sits there and does nothing - unless you want it to. MUCH better and more transparent, IMO.

What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away. :(

Wayne, I had reservations about Vista mostly from your comments about it running slowly.
I have only spent about 20 hours with Vista, but the new notebook is running quite fast. Boots up at about the same speed as my other XP machines and all applications have been running at speeds that I am used to.

I am using it with an Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Mobile Processor T2080 (1.73GHz)and 2g of ram.

Maybe a stupid question, but wouldn't there be a market for a bare-bones OS that would support the basic user functions; internet, e-mail, etc.

It would be great if you could boot up to a super fast stripped-down OS when you don't want all the other features.

I think I'll have to buy another copy of XP and lose Vista.

Hello, and welcome to Linux.

(or go back to win98, 95...)

If I could only get my wireless cards to work!!!

There's a lot of support out there for Linux - problem is you have to dig for a lot of it. There's only so much companies like RedHat or Mandrake can do to bundle the stuff in easy, ready-to-use packages for most "average" users that would rather just pop in a few CDs and be up-and-running. There are literally billions of possible combinations for what a particular user might have on their PC for peripherals, hardware, etc. To try and come up with an OS that supports them all directly via drivers is very difficult. I think in the case of RedHat they try to target the most common 50-60% of stuff people might have, which works for most but certainly there are going to be SOME users that tear their hair out trying to find such-and-such a driver for their thingamawhatsy peripheral.

Now that I have a dog and a television, I need a new project, and Linux is on my list. I don't know the first thing about it, besides that people keep telling me that I would like it.

So at some point when I begin I will start a thread on this, but in the meantime can anyone steer me to a starting point in my research?

Linux.org, google,...

www.ubuntu.com

Long time Linux user (10 years) but Ubutnu Just Works.

I teach a Linux admin class, and the first night of class I give out Ubuntu CDs and a lab machine to each student, instructions are nothing more than "boot from CD and install it". and at the end of the evening (1hr 15 minutes later) they all have working installed systems.

I think it'll get better with time.

We're running it on some machines at the office and for the most part, there aren't any big issues once you get a good set of drivers.

XP was also awful at first driver wise, the bonus with it was that hacked NT4 drivers usually worked fine once you forced them to install.

The driver model for video is much much different than it was on XP, and if you are a gamer you know how long it takes after every vid card comes out to get stable drivers even on XP. (Typically a few months) Vista just adds complication to that in that it's new and the developers aren't all that used to it yet.

On the other hand, there are a few really odd things that are broken that I can't figure out how they ever got released at all and/or not yet fixed. My biggest pet peeve is that on our network (all Windows Server 2003 based), DHCP works great with a fresh install of Vista, but after running all the current updates, quits working. Really weird.

I've been using a notebook with Vista since the first of the year with zero problems. Even moved Itunes over to it with it working on the first try.

Vista sucks and blows; it's bloatware that needs at least 2 gig of ram to run (even with all the "neat stuff" turned off), it's annoying how you have to "approve" any little change, the explorer window sucks, you have to run DOS windows as administrator to do a DHCP release/renew, no Hyperterm, the list is endless.

Every IT guy I know expect those of us who know we'll have to support it some day have downgraded to XP. Oh yeah and IE 7 blows too.....get a MAC!

Or Linux; SuSe, Ubuntu, etc, OpenOffice it's all free baby.