New laptop with Vista. So far so good.

[cstreit]

I needed a new laptop for the business and was having a hell of a time finding a decently priced machine without Vista on it. While shopping I found a killer deal on an HP laptop with everything I wanted, except it had Vista. With the amount of money I saved on this over buying an XP Pro laptop with the same specs, I was able to get a nice 22" monitor.

I've installed the software I need, and some hardware accessories and everything is working, umm, fine.

THe aero inteface is nice, but not "all that".

I do notice that I use up a GB of ram easily and the HD is running quite a bit, but the hardware seems to handle it. (Dual core AMD x64's).

Waiting for the bomb to hit...

[Joeaksa]

Wait until it asks you for approval to do the simplest of things 20 times in a minute, then the format option will be calling your name very loudly.

[SlowToady]

I understand where you're coming from, but that's just the result of people harping on MS for so long about better security. Security is usually a PITA.

The UAR or whatever it is called is really just a GUI version of "sudo" under GNU/Linux and UNIX.

Cstreit, you may well end up happy with Vista. I have heard some success stories...mine just wasn't one of them.

Originally Posted by Joeaksa

Wait until it asks you for approval to do the simplest of things 20 times in a minute, then the format option will be calling your name very loudly.

[Mule]

Go to control panel & turn off user account controls, if you haven't already. I'm surprised you haven't already gotten a "break it over your knee & go get a Mac" post yet.

[stomachmonkey]

Turn off UAC. That's good advice there. At least you admit that MSFT's attempt at a security feature is a joke.

That other operating system does it differently. It prompts you for the user password upon initial installation or first run or download of an application/executable. So you approve the app once, not every time you run something not properly signed or identified.

Linux goes even farther requiring you to explicitly set permissions for the installer to run before you can actually run it.

The constant pop ups of UAC can over time have an opposite effect. The frequency of the notifications train people to automatically hit OK without thinking about it. Negates the intent of securing the system.

Or you could turn it off and leave yourself open to the same old security issues.

UAC has good intentions but it's implementation falls short of delivering. Not surprisingly it is poorly thought out.

As far as improperly signed apps that trigger it even MSFT themselves can't get it right.

I have a MSFT development tool that sets off UAC every time I run it. Makes me laugh, "The publisher of this software can not be verified..." Really? How reliable is it if they don't even recognize their own products?

[tchanson]

Originally Posted by cstreit

I've installed the software I need, and some hardware accessories and everything is working, umm, fine.

THe aero inteface is nice, but not "all that".

I do notice that I use up a GB of ram easily and the HD is running quite a bit, but the hardware seems to handle it. (Dual core AMD x64's).

Waiting for the bomb to hit...

Same here.

I bought a new $2500 MacBook Pro last month. It would inexplicably drop the wireless connection over our 802.11n network every couple of minutes when trying to use Apples's own AirTunes through an AirPort Express, a problem which did not exist on any of our various Windows machines. Go figure, but not working with AirTunes was deal breaker.

After a combined total of almost 15 hours on the phone with Apple Tech Support to unsuccessfully trace the MBP dropouts, as well as a last gasp visit to the "Genius Bar" at my local Apple Store (where Skippy the Resident Genius thoughtfully offered to email me a copy of the manual as a solution ..), I sent it back.

With much trepidation, I ordered a Dell XPS laptop with Vista a few weeks ago. So far its been strictly plug and play. Networking was simple and easy, same with file sharing. Works perfectly with AirPort Express and AirTunes, unlike the MBP. Aero is OK, not earth shattering. The sidebar, and the available gadgets, seem the equal of the Apple dock/widgets.

With 3GB of RAM and a 7200 RPM hard drive, boot and access is plenty fast for me. Everything's certainly better looking.

Security has a few more dialog boxes than XP, but nothing especially intrusive in my experience.

Takes some time learning where stuff went in Vista vs XP, but overall, after a week or so, I like it, and it works.

And from MSFT. Who knew?

All the same, my fingers are still crossed.


Tim

[Mule]

Heretic, Heretic, Heretic! How much were you paid to post this obviously fraudulent story. As has been posted repeatedly by numerous Mac zombies, Macs have NO problems. They perform flawlessly always, never break & are worth more than you paid for it in 10 yrs. Your hair will have more "sheen," women will find you more attractive & your car will be faster.

Originally Posted by tchanson

Same here.

I bought a new $2500 MacBook Pro last month. It would inexplicably drop the wireless connection over our 802.11n network every couple of minutes when trying to use Apples's own AirTunes through an AirPort Express, a problem which did not exist on any of our various Windows machines. Go figure, but not working with AirTunes was deal breaker.

After a combined total of almost 15 hours on the phone with Apple Tech Support to unsuccessfully trace the MBP dropouts, as well as a last gasp visit to the "Genius Bar" at my local Apple Store (where Skippy the Resident Genius thoughtfully offered to email me a copy of the manual as a solution ..), I sent it back.

With much trepidation, I ordered a Dell XPS laptop with Vista a few weeks ago. So far its been strictly plug and play. Networking was simple and easy, same with file sharing. Works perfectly with AirPort Express and AirTunes, unlike the MBP. Aero is OK, not earth shattering. The sidebar, and the available gadgets, seem the equal of the Apple dock/widgets.

With 3GB of RAM and a 7200 RPM hard drive, boot and access is plenty fast for me. Everything's certainly better looking.

Security has a few more dialog boxes than XP, but nothing especially intrusive in my experience.

Takes some time learning where stuff went in Vista vs XP, but overall, after a week or so, I like it, and it works.

And from MSFT. Who knew?

All the same, my fingers are still crossed.


Tim

[Joeaksa]

Originally Posted by Mule

Heretic, Heretic, Heretic! How much were you paid to post this obviously fraudulent story. As has been posted repeatedly by numerous Mac zombies, Macs have NO problems. They perform flawlessly always, never break & are worth more than you paid for it in 10 yrs. Your hair will have more "sheen," women will find you more attractive & your car will be faster.

Was thinking the same thing... blasphemy! Someone had to pay him for this post when one considers the Mac lovers here!

[Halm]

Vista is ok, certainly better than the bashing it gets here on PPOT. We have been pounding it pretty hard since last June getting ready for a client project that ultimately got canned a couple of months ago for a variety of reasons.

SP 1 is an absolute "must have" install. It cleans up 95% of the big and little issues people talk about that are not part of the basic design, such as UAC. Also, take a look at this collection of tweaks: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2238 . It has a lot of good stuff in it.

That said, Vista is not ready for corporate prime time. It is very hardware dependent for decent performance. You better have at a minimum (real world) 1.8 Ghz Core Duo processor, 2 Gb of ram, a fast video card and a 7,200 rpm hard drive. There are not many boxes out there that will easily upgrade. And the real killer is that SP 1 failed to correct the issue with coping files to or from a network share. It is so slow that it makes the product almost unusable.

I am going to try the 64 bit version pretty soon and see if it corrects the copy issue, but even if it does, I don't know how many trade offs on driver and application support I will encounter.

[Mule]

I checked the tweaks. It gives no hints as to how to do all that stuff.

[onewhippedpuppy]

FYI, if you buy a Dell from their small business site, you can still order with XP at no extra charge.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by Mule

I checked the tweaks. It gives no hints as to how to do all that stuff.

Did you just look at the chart or did you scroll a bit farther down to the list of links that gives instructions?

[Mule]

Thank you Sir!

[cstreit]

I did turn off UAC pretty quickly. I almost forgot about THAT! How annoying, I couldn't move my mouse between screens without getting the "approval" message. I have no idea why that is implemented.

I was fully prepared (and still am) to swap to XP x64. In fact I've for a 64-bit machine but the Vista Home-Premium edition installed on this machine is not capable of taking advantage of it.

The remaining annoyance is that at certain times if I have a directory structure open on one explorer window and try and make a change to that structure (such as renaming a sub-folder) in another window, I get an "admin approval required message". Well I AM the admin stupid.

I wouldn't call myself a hardcore user though. Mostly Internet use and a lot of Dreamweaver work. THe Dual monitor setup ROCKS for doing this sort of development.

[CurtEgerer]

Hal - nice link! Should I assume that the "risky" pre-release SP-1 is not risky to install?

[gr8fl4porsche]

I've been running SP1 RC for a couple of months. Works fine. The official public release of SP1 is scheduled for mid-march.

I would wait until the final version comes out since you will have to uninstall any beta versions prior to the final.

[Halm]

Curt, like gr8flporsche says, the pre-release wasn't too risky. But wait for the public release in a couple of weeks. The beta is a PITA to install. And you have to uninstall it before you can put the real deal on the PC.

[450knotOffice]

I bought a new Gateway with Vista Home Premium about two months ago and can say that it has worked flawlessly. Granted, I am not a hardcore user, but so far, so good.

I've got 3GB of RAM and run a Intel Core 2 Duo processor

[JavaBrewer]

New Sony laptop with Vista Home Premium ~ 2 months ago and zero complaints. It was a dog with 1GB of RAM but $40 and another 1 GB cured that.