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Vista

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chuckcmagee

Veteran Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2006
Messages
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Location
Nevada
I am not that big of a fan of Microsoft. I am not a "anti-Bill zealot" either. Microsoft finally made a product I love, MSN Explorer/Premium. The main thing I love is no matter what laptop I use (and I have a bunch), my favorites/bookmarks follow me around. I know, I could use Firefox and Foxmarks. I do that too.

Anyway, 1 year after Vista hits the streets, I broke down and purchased a OEM version of Vista Ultimate. I love all the eye candy. The one I really love is the Aero "switch between windows", where it shows all the windows like plywood boards at a slant and you click on the one you want. I was smart enough to install it on a CoreDuo laptop with 1 GB of memory and a fast SATA hard drive, good video card. Hard drive is somewhat on the small side as I left XP Pro on the drive. 60 GB drive is just about the minimum if you want to keep both around. Vista seems to handle all the crud with "only" 1 GB of memory available. I am sure I would have disappointed if I had tried a less powerful laptop as my first try. You do seem to need at least a CoreDuo to handle all the years of "bloatware" packed into the hundreds of 'dll's.
 
The last laptop I got came with Vista. I thought Aero was pretty cool and it was a nice OS. I kept it about a week to play before installing the OS I prefer to use. That side bar thing was pretty neat even if it was kinda useless. The switch window thing was nifty but one thing I was surprised Aero didn't have was a OS X style expose function.
 
I hate Vista period! My Dad has it on his new laptop and it literally took 5 minutes to boot up (though I don't believe it was Vista related more to do with his stupid wireless Internet Connection which wanted to take over even when he went broadband).

Though Vista annoys me though the way it wants to present itself - it has to be so different to XP and that's what's most annoying. Some idiot came out and said you need 512Mb RAM to run it, I say base minimum needs to be 2Gb - 4Gb if you want to do anything serious!
 
This isn't directed at anyone, just a general rant...

I'm getting tired of people whining about how much RAM Vista needs. Its like an OS needing RAM is a totally new thing thats never been heard of before. Every time the next generation OS comes out, the specs bump up. Like when XP came out people generally had 256 with Win 2k and were all D: about needing 512 for XP to run smooth. Now its 1 GB for Vista. Why on earth is this such a huge shock? Its following the same pattern since the 9x era only people are WAY more vocal about it for some very annoying reason. Thats why all of the Vista computers I've seen have 1 GB stock of RAM. The only time I've seen a computer with Vista that was 512 had the crap "Basic" version installed and even then it wasn't THAT bad. Boot time wise, Windows was never legendary there unless you count 3.x, it was pretty quick :p

And another thing I've heard before is how you HAVE TO HAVE a multi core processor to do anything with Vista. BS! Of course SMP makes it run better, SMP would make ANY OS run smoother.
</rant>

I feel better XD
 
Vlad wrote:

I'm getting tired of people whining about how much RAM Vista needs. Its like an OS needing RAM is a totally new thing thats never been heard of before. Every time the next generation OS comes out, the specs bump up. Like when XP came out people generally had 256 with Win 2k and were all D: about needing 512 for XP to run smooth. Now its 1 GB for Vista. Why on earth is this such a huge shock? Its following the same pattern since the 9x era only people are WAY more vocal about it for some very annoying reason. Thats why all of the Vista computers I've seen have 1 GB stock of RAM. The only time I've seen a computer with Vista that was 512 had the crap "Basic" version installed and even then it wasn't THAT bad. Boot time wise, Windows was never legendary there unless you count 3.x, it was pretty quick :p

I was merely speaking from a users point of view and that's when RAM is dearly needed. When I was visiting a Video Editing Forum just to do some simply video stuff I was shocked to see how much memory people had (2Gb+) and a proper Processor (P4 or AMD equiv) just with WinXP. The strangest bit is, is Vista comes with a little bit of Video Editing Software and this is merely in a computer with 1Gb! I reckon just to do the basics with that you'd need 2Gb or 4Gb if you want to be a little bit more serious cause Video Editing lets face it is a long painstaking process to get things done and you don't want things crashing along the way! :-o I'm unsure if the File System in Windows is any better than XP though, defragmenting the HD seems to be a regular job! :-(
 
It was just a general fit, not directed at you at all CP/M User. I used to do some small time Video Editing, thats a rather intense process for anything. We had Mac's though, which could be good or bad, depending on how you looked at it :p
Video editing on Vista makes me shudder. You'd need some outrageous specs to do something like that with out lag or a LOT of swapping. File system wise I've always been a fan of XFS, but you can use that for windows :rolleyes:
 
I'm happy to tell you why I gripe so much about OS memory requirements:

I think most of us agree that an operating system provides a certain set of core functions. These necessary functions (File and console I/O, etc.) haven't really changed in many years. Even if we count just the Win 95 or later OS products, I fail to see the vast improvements that warrant this additional overhead. Prettier graphics? Better security (hah!)? No...I believe the answer is sloppy coding.

Of course, to put a bit of perspective on the matter, the maximum memory configuration for one of my AS/400s is 1GB. At that level it supports 460 interactive users. Plus batch processing. Plus network traffic. And it is a lot more secure than anything that comes out of Redmond.

Now, I don't mean to bust on Microsoft specifically. 10 years ago, Linux was a great alternative, but it has come to suffer from the "lets do everything" mentality that has bloated Windows. I've got a version of SCO (from around 1995) running on a 486 with 16Mb that will still nicely support 32 interactive users, plus network traffic, printer spooling, telnet sessions, etc. I also think Linux is going to die from lack of standards, but that's another topic altogether.

Macs are just as bad, from what I've heard. Their memory requirements have generally been as high or higher than the requirements of the contemporary Win offering.
 
I meant Vista specifically when I said tired of hearing about RAM requirements, but non the less you make a very valid point. Especially with Linux, but thats another topic. I think basically Vista became another ME disaster and MS can't sweep it away as quietly as they did before, especially with the whole upgrade to XP thing going around. Sloppy coding? Has MS ever released an OS with out that feature?
 
I feel neutral on Vista, the only anger is brings out of me is that of hearing "you need this and that to run it". I ran the beta, WITH the Aero interface, WITH all the enhancements, just to see if I could drag my Pentium III 1GHz 512MB box down to a halt, and let's just say the worst I have to say about vista is the load time. Every driver loaded and gave me no trouble, networking was a cinch, and when I tweaked it down, it ran pretty much how I'd expect XP to run on my current PIII based computer (which runs Windows 2000 and is VERY snappy, it gives my 100 Mhz 486 running Windows For Workgroups a run for it's money in boot time).

However, I go to work, and It seems everyone is still busy infecting their pee-cees with spyware. "Oh, your computer is obsolete, you need at least 2 GB of RAM, and a Dual Core processor, and a hopped up NVIDIA card for Vista to work". I had one of the more recent betas that I tried out, the case was anything but. Heck, even the games I play that ARE a little on the slower side at times (Postal 2, The Sims 2) were no worse than usual. Yes the boot time was around 3 minutes, but given the NT based Windows general stability, I could'nt care less, my 2K box sits running 24/7 now.

As for day to day tasks, if I could give up my 3-D games, I swear I could still use an 80486 for everything. Actually, I surfed the web quite a good bit in Arachne on the 486, and I must say that browser is actually quite awesome for something that runs on a 16 bit operating system. My 80486 was a print server while the PIII was down, as well as did a lot of web surfing whilst watching DVD's on my laptop and rendering youtube videos in Cinemaforge on the AMD K-6 II.

This thread interests me though, as I am throwing together a dual core box right now, and I'm at an indecision on what O/S to use. I could still use 2000 Pro, or I could move up to XP, or go the Vista route, I'm not sure which I want to use, I'm leaning towards an OEM copy of XP, but I have others telling me Vista is must-have. Most likely I'll try 2K first, and if it gives me crap, I'll buy XP and put that on there.
 
Chuck, my laptop had the same specs as yours. My advice: Kill every useless service (including the 2 'speed' services that do nothing w/ 1GB) & executable (sidebar, startup blocker) you can! You'll be MUCH more happier
 
I have a 2GB Core Duo Tablet PC running Vista from Gateway. For about half a year I was running all the Aero features, but maybe the past three months or so I switched the majority of that stuff off for an even better speed improvement and stability. It's slick and all, but entirely unnecessary from a functionality standpoint. Compatiblity and driver support is definitely improving as well (when I first got it, it was pure frustration), to where I've now made my Tablet PC my primary PC over my old Dell desktop running XP.
 
Bill_Loguidice said:
It's slick and all, but entirely unnecessary from a functionality standpoint.
Click to expand...

Bloatware. Don't you just love it. :D

I don't use VISTA yet. All the computers I have at home would be too underpowered. I'll wait until my next computer (and Vista service pack 2 or 3).

On a related note, XP can be trimmed amazingly if it's not networked. I have an old non-networked 380MB RAM ,celeron 500Mhz I use in my computer room. It's used for hosting vintage software for serial or parellel port file transfers to the real machines. By turning off all the unecessary (default) services I managed to get XP down to a mere 78MB of memory usage.! Before I started it was up around 200Mb!

It now runs at quite an acceptable speed!
 
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