To Vista or not to Vista, that is the question...

[DaddyRabbit]

From my couple of weeks using it as my primary OS:

From Soveriegn

Pros
- Fancy interface
- DX10 support
- May be "easier" for some people to use, depends on opinion
- More secure from user stupidity than a stock XP installation with no additional software on said XP system

-Aeroglass is cool no doubt, I was running Windowblinds with transparency enabled skins under XP which was more flexible than Aeroglass but the new UI has quite a few advantages above that. With the Ultimate edition you can use "Dreamscape" to display looping hi-res video on the desktop while playing another video in a foreground window and the coolest thing is when you switch to "flip3d" the windowed video is still playing in the flip3d window while the dreamscape video is running on the desktop. Maybe not very useful but cool nonetheless. I also thought Flip3d was a gimmick but after getting used to it I love the feature as I tend to have a lot of open windows.

- DX10 = no games yet

- Ease of use will be relative I agree, I don't find it that different from XP but still have to "hunt" for things. I'd probably have a harder time switching to a Mac

- From the security standpoint UAC is ok but I think many will disable it, I like IE7's "protected" mode and the IE7 controls will be on my sons PC post haste. It is a move forward but security is a never ending battle.

From Soveriegn

Cons
- Uses more memory and in general requires a more powerful computer
- Price
- Incompatible hardware/software
- Draconian DRM
- Lower FPS in games
- SLI/CrossFire support incomplete/nonexistent
- Driver issues (beyond dual-card setups)

- I too was alarmed at the amount of RAM that Vista used when I first installed it (and undoubtedly some of it is bloat). On my 2 gig system from a cold boot I am at 32% ram usage, after running a few apps and surfing etc I get to 50%. Then I read about "Superfetch" which changed my way of thinking about memory footprint a bit. One of the quotes in the article was "free RAM is wasted RAM"... I'll be loading Home Premium on my sons system with 1 gig so I'll be looking closer in a few days.

- I totally agree about price, it's rediculous, which makes me a dummy cause I'm typing this from the Ultimate upgrade

- DRM I haven't had any problems with... "yet"

- I really haven't had any noticable frame rate issues in games but the DirectSound3d removal IS a problem for 3d audio in games!

- Hardware and driver support is not a cakewalk by any means, even "Vista certified" drivers can be spotty...

[sleepyhollow]

C'mon guys, really! I dont mean to be rude, but I didnt join this forum to listen to crap like this. Not sure how political history fits into "general computing".

Absolutely.

[Sula]

That said, I can burn my iTunes library to audio CD, rip the CD to MP3, and listen to it, all on Vista, all day with no DRM issues other than I would be violating my EULA with Apple.

Vista has way more DRM inside than Xp ,next MS OS or ever SP to Vista will bring more of it. What will you do when after such uppgrade you will not be able to burn your iTunes lib? It will be too late unfortunettaly.

DRM is here but as fast as the checkpoints are put into place they are being "worked around" and that won't stop IMHO.

Not really true. Last years almost all DRM , "trusted computing"and so on systems were all software only. Now it is integrated into hardware and OS core. Look what is happening with movie/graphic market - HDCP is just a start. But it is scary right now.


But beside that - i dont think that Vista is good choice at least right now. If you really need Windows ,i would suggest to stick with Xp for now ,and change to Vista when you really must...(fe in a 2 years when all games will be dx 10 only)



EDIT:


Ooops it seems i dig out old topic ,sorry i din't saw the date.