Upgraded to Windows Vista Ultimate - What Fun!

[Wildandcrzyguy]

I love being on the edge but my god, this OS is unreal! I have a ASUS P4C800 Deluxe motherboard P4 3.6 2GB ram, and 4 - 400 GB hard drives, with a Nvidia 7600 GS with 500mb and an X-FI Creative Labs soundcard. Everything in the PC is a name brand, 3 hard drives are Western Digital and one is a Seagate drive.

I am presently working with Microsoft research as to why I can access 3 of the 4 hard drives and every time I access the last one the machine Blue Screens?

Watch out people! Hewlett Packard has pretty much told me to go F__K myself, they are not making drivers for my scanner Scanjet 2200c or printer Photosmart 1000. I have written them a nasty letter, saying that basically you have written updated drivers for every other scanner and printer why not for Vista. Remember Hewlett-Packard you are not the only game in town.

Creative labs only has a beta driver for the X-Fi card and thats just a driver, no software is ready for it!

Do yourself a favor and look at your hardware before you leep, you will be shocked at the non driver-support every other vendor has not supporting Vista. This is especially true if you build systems like myself and do not buy them directly off the retail store outlet floor!

[frostbitetwice]

Few companies have drivers for Longhorn. BTW, I urge consumer to stay away from this new OS. Frankly it does not offer any real advantage over XP.

[insanesquirle]

I also would advise staying away from it... Several reasons why....

Also, if you decide to go with vista... dont just go out and buy a graphics card that says "vista ready"... yeh, it may work with vista.. but its not FULL vista ready... Vista is compatible with directX10 There is, i think like 3 (not sure about how many) graphics cards out right now that actualy support directX10... so before you go spend 400 dollars on a graphics card.. make sure its directx10 (be prepared to spend... a WHOPPING ammount of money)

[michaels39]

Vista just isn't ready for prime time yet,the driver situation is dismal,especially if you have a high end gaming PC.Nvidia's drivers for their graphics cards are terrible right now,including the new DX10 cards,and there's no support for SLI yet.The same goes for sound cards like Creative,right now,you'll get better sound from onboard audio.Some games and programs won't run,or run at slower speeds than in XP.I say ignore all the hype and wait a few months,at least,for MS and hardware companies to get their act together and provide drivers that actually work.

[flipper812002]

Well im smarter than the average bear so what i did is use 2 hard drives one with xp pro and one with vista 64 bit. Was kool and i liked the side bar then noticed to start my dual core machine with crossfire on vist i used 938mb ram i was shocked.

So being the way i am i did some snooping, I defraged vista which i dont like that way they changed it because you cant see what it is doing, Then i restarted and got on xp and checked with the xp defragmenter and it was almost pure red. So i defraged it from xp , restarted and vista was 10 times faster that impressed me.

So i start loading games and programs and on one game it wouldnt play at all no support, Then i tried to load a few programs and i kept gettting a message that the program wasnt compatiable with vista and may not work right. Instead of giving me a choice it just said stopped installation. I honestly gave it my best shot for almost 5 weeks then gave up. I now use xp pro and raid 0 on the drives and am totally happy.

When xp first came out i remember how it was i got it the day it came out and fought it till sp1 then i just had to fight it to get sp1 to work right and mostly it did. I honestly think i will wait for at least a year to upgrade if even then. To much work anymore and i like my sound card sound.

[michaels39]

I know people say that there will always be some rough spots when a new OS is released,but what ever happened to learning from past mistakes?Considering Microsoft had to delay the release and missed the pre-Christmas selling period which upset a lot of the major computer vendors who had hoped to use it as a selling point,you'd think they'd have done a better job of it .And the hardware producers have to take a hit on this,too,it seems they were totally unprepared for Vista.NVIDIA made a name for themselves with their dual graphics card SLI technology,but don't even have reliable drivers for it in Vista yet.Same goes for their new 8800 cards,whose big selling point was their DX10 capability.And all those high priced audio cards Creative sold are crippled in Vista by a combination of bad drivers and Microsoft's inferior Directsound.And the scanner/fax/printer that I got from HP not even a year ago would be useless because HP has all but said their in no hurry to offer driver support for past printers,they want you to buy new ones.The main problem here is that Microsoft has no real competition to spur them on,the way AMD shook up Intel and forced them to develop the Core 2 cpu's.Without that competitive pressure,Microsoft has gotten lazy,sloppy,and complacent.They figure whatever inferior product they put out,people will have no choice but to use it.

[flipper812002]

The whole idea behind vista is money, You have to have more ram better processors , new programs, new printers and so on. It isnt that it is more secure than xp even though that has been said it isnt, It is about the computer market being in a slump and they had to do something to get people to buy new parts so therefore vista. The money hogging OS.

[michaels39]

Not to mention memory hogging.It uses so much of your systems resources just to run,other programs and games actually run slower than in XP (that is,if they run at all).And their claims that it's more secure is a joke,people were finding vulnerablities almost as fast as it was released.Heck,they should have put the hackers in charge of developing drivers,at least then we might have ones that actually work!

[fiedav]

>> Vista just isn't ready for prime time yet,the driver situation is dismal,especially if you have a high end gaming PC.Nvidia's drivers for their graphics cards are terrible right now,including the new DX10 cards,and there's no support for SLI yet.The same goes for sound cards like Creative,right now,you'll get better sound from onboard audio.Some games and programs won't run,or run at slower speeds than in XP.I say ignore all the hype and wait a few months,at least,for MS and hardware companies to get their act together and provide drivers that actually work. >>

The major problem is with manufacturers who haven't written drivers. MS doesn't write drivers. However, my nVidia 7600GT works fine.

>> The main problem here is that Microsoft has no real competition to spur them on,the way AMD shook up Intel and forced them to develop the Core 2 cpu's. >>

The problem for Microsoft is that the "competition" is people who have older Microsoft OSs. MS has to convince them to upgrade.

>> And their claims that it's more secure is a joke >>

Symantec was forced to admit that Microsoft can do nothing extra to make Vista safer.

All of these things happened when XP came out (apart from the security issues).

[michaels39]

I in no way excuse the hardware manufacturers in this,they do share blame for poor drivers.But in some instances,such as audio,Microsoft created the difficulties by only supporting their own DirectSound system,forcing developers to come up with patches and workarounds to support other audio programs like Creative's.Perhaps if MS had concentrated more on working with major manufacturers and less on creating "eyecandy" and intrusive Digital Rights Management,these problems wouldn't be so bad.
As for competition,competing with yourself just doesn't provide the kind of incentive as having a rival taking away your marketshare.Can you blame people for being reluctant to switch when forums are filled complaints about these problems.Yes,this happened with XP in the beginning,too.Which is exactly my point - how many times does MS have to go through this before they learn from past mistakes?