Windows Vista

[masraum]

Originally Posted by SlowToady

Overclock your CPU, Memory and Videocard? Yea. Take everything that website says with a grain of salt.

In addition, a lot of performance tweaks out there for most Windows versions are VERY wrong. It doesn't take much googling to find out. Primarily, running without a pagefile does NOT boost performance, and is *not* recommended (for example).

Always do a good bit of research before implementing "tweaks," a lot of them are just snake oil.

Right, the link that I posted above addresses many of those sorts of things. I read several pages that said, go into Vista and turn of x, turn off y, and turn off z. Then reading the link not only told me not to do those things, but told me why. Some of that stuff however is so far off that you don't need an article to know that they are wrong.

Overclocking is great if you want your stuff to reboot randomly.

Not that it can't be done. I've had a system with an o/c cpu that ran fine for years, and I had a video card that could handle some o/c without rebooting or crashing the system.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by dd74

I wish there was a Linux software that was as easy to install as Mac OSX.5.5, or XP.

I'd like it to install, recognize all my peripherals, and be done. I mean, is an internet connection and printing capability so hard for a non-tech guy to get with Linux?

I've been through something like five Linux versions, and finally just threw in the towel.

The last version of Fedora I installed back in the spring did internet fine, but I haven't tried to install a printer. I know that getting a printer to work was the big one back years ago when I first tinkered with Linux.

[porsche4life]

I had Vista on an emachines that my parents bought and it SUCKED. I mean it was fast and pretty and all but it never quite worked right. You would find something that was screwed and then there would be an update and it would work but something else wouldn't WTF. I got a new laptop right before dell stopped shipping with XP as an option on all models.

[Halm]

I seem to cycle on how I feel about Vista. I originally put it on my 3 year old laptop with 1.5.Gb of ram. I found it interesting but very slow. I reverted to XP and was fine. I then had a need for new hardware, and I went high end and Vista. I thought Vista was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Then the issue of application compatibility hit me (mostly industry specific business stuff) and it again fell out of favor.

To the point many make about Vista: performance. Info World ran a great article last spring. The heart of it was “Windows Vista is a bloated pig of an operating system. In fact, compared to Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or 3, Vista requires roughly twice the hardware resources to deliver comparable performance. Even stripped to the bone, with every new UI enhancement turned off and every new background service disabled, Vista is a good 40 percent slower than XP at a variety of business productivity tasks.”

This pretty much defines a road map for home users and Vista. Unless you are upgrading to serious new hardware, don’t expect to see any performance improvement. Conversely, if you do upgrade old hardware, be ready for a performance hit, even with more RAM.

Most of the other issues with Vista are being resolved via SP1, hot fixes and more 3rd party participation. Too bad, because with Windows 7 now on the horizon, Vista could become, in fact, the new Win ’98 ME.

[Rick V]

I did find that I couldn't install my printer on this version of Vista, that sux. It is the 64bit version and my printer can't do it. I need to use my USB storage unit for my printing needs, PITA. I should also mention I am the home user that doesn't need or expect alot from my laptop. Ya'll computer geeks, that have a higher need are way above my abilities. I just stick to working on Porsches.

[JavaBrewer]

Originally Posted by dd74

I wish there was a Linux software that was as easy to install as Mac OSX.5.5, or XP.

I'd like it to install, recognize all my peripherals, and be done. I mean, is an internet connection and printing capability so hard for a non-tech guy to get with Linux?

I've been through something like five Linux versions, and finally just threw in the towel.

Have you tried the latest Ubuntu? You burn the iso to a CD and reboot your computer. It runs in memory so you can test internet and printers before actually doing the install to your hard drive. If you're happy you just double click the "Install Ubuntu" icon on the desktop and you're done. The last two versions of Ubuntu worked out of the box for my wired internet (Cable), HP printer, wireless keyboard/mouse, monitor, sound, etc... Wireless LAN takes some setup but there is excellent documentation for all card vendors. It took me 10 minutes to get that working correctly.

[SlowToady]

Also, I just thought I'd add, that all the driver issues and 3rd party software not working, that people are having...is NOT MSFT's fault. You can blame that on lazy, hack-ass developers who decided to take the easy way out, instead of Doing it Right. If your printer doesn't work with Vista, blame the printer company for not writing a driver for it. Software XYZ doesn't work? Chances are that behind the scenes --no matter how "nice" it looks or how well it works --it was poorly designed and implemented using a bunch of non-standard procedures and relying on old bugs. I believe it was Borland that was famous for this a few years ago. Their compiler relied on a certain bug in some Windows OS, which was fixed in the next generation and the compiler no longer worked properly. Instead of Borland fixing their **** software, MSFT was pressured into *re-introducing* the bug.

Vista and MSFT in general, are taking a lot of flak for problems that aren't theirs.

edit: I just re-read this, and I can see how the intonation could be taken that I'm "getting attitude" with some posters. I'm not, I'm definitely not. I'm just *****ing about the state of software today