Vista, this says it all

[Mukik]

http://www.blip.tv/file/340692/

[Minute]

LOL so true. I fucking hate Vista. So far I've been able to stay with XP without a hitch. Even work around for games that require vista/DX10.

[Ddrak]

The funny part is it's all exactly the same sort of bullshit arguments put out against XP when it came out (Win2k was apparently awesome back then), and now we find people willing to defend XP against Vista.

/yawn. Try some truth rather than fiction if you want to slam Vista. There's plenty out there, but I didn't see that video touching any of it. In fact, all the criticisms I saw there were outright fabrication.

Also note - no games require DX10, which is why you can run them on XP with some hackery.

[Minute]

The only complaint I ever about XP was that it was pre-candy coated. A feature I still to this day turn off immediately after install. XP was actually pretty stable and not chalked full of annoyances. Windows Server 2003 was the best of them all. Which is why I use Windows XP 64, being based on that kernal and allowing my 8 gb of memory. Vista's amazingly bloated, which is why you see an extra gig of memory requirement on all software IF running on Vista. Almost everything I run takes longer on Vista and trying to make it run on anything beyond a brand new system is a joke. Lets not get into those god damned security verifications for EVERY FUCKING THING. I won't bitch about the lack of drivers out there, cause that will come, but having to have every driver be 100% verified by them or not loading them at all is another thing that absolutely sucks asshole.

[Ddrak]

Like I said - my real complaint about that video is it misses the mark on all the points it makes and really just tries to be "funny" rather than factual by inventing shit and playing on names.

Might not have been you, but there was a bunch of complaints about XP when it came out about how "bloated" it was compared to Win2000 and especially Win98. I mean, XP installed all sorts of crap like Media Player, Fast User Switching, that Fisher-Price shell, IE6, mandatory activation, much less stable etc. etc. Hell, you even needed 512M of memory for it to perform well at all without swapping, instead of the 256 that win2k was happy in and the 128 that Win98 would live in.

Most OS instability is from drivers. XP64 was crazy unstable when it first came out because drivers really weren't there. I really haven't found Vista itself as unstable as XP64 was at release, but then again, I don't have a lot of weird components. I do know that Vista32 does have issues with some modern games that blow out their 2G limits, because Vista uses more memory for the desktop rendering manager. Of course, you can turn that off if you want and have Vista look like Win2k/Win98 as well, but most people don't.

As I said when XP came out, don't upgrade current systems to a new OS. Put the new OS on the new system - it's been designed for current systems, not older ones, so trying to ram it down th ere is bound to give you disappointment. Of course, that makes the criticism that it takes more resources perfectly accurate and one I expect, as it's the same criticism levelled at every iteration of every consumer OS since DOS 1.0. The real question is whether you get value for those extra resources - on Vista it's not that clear you do (in fact, on XP it wasn't either).

A gig is a little extreme (I usually see about 25-50% more), but point taken.

The whole security thing I'm not so convinced is a bad thing. Sure it can get annoying if you like tinkering with your system but in everyday use it should never come up. Certain programs are poorly written and have issues, but is it really the fault of the operating system if it's warning you that an application is actually doing something that may tinker with critical system files? It *is* probably telling though that I've turned off those notifications on my gaming box, but not on my work laptop - probably because I enjoy tinkering on my gaming rig more, and get annoyed because a lot of games are written stupidly and need admin rights. I also trust my work network less than my home one.

Not sure where you got the idea Microsoft had to sign all the drivers, but it's not true. All drivers for Vista64 have to be signed, but the driver writers can sign those drivers themselves. Microsoft doesn't have to get involved. For example, I'm running nvidia beta drivers on my Vista64 box right now. What you may be thinking of is that to play DRM-laden media files, all your drivers have to be signed by Microsoft. Personally I think that's a bonus - the more DRM stuff angers the consumer, the better for everyone.

On the DRM note, Vista has way too much DRM junk in it. I hate that. While I haven't actually seen the impact at all, I know it's there and I know MS could have taken a stand against the retardedness in Hollywood. Similarly, their activation scheme is worse than XP's for no particularly good reason. I'm not convinced that activation helps sales at all, and it certainly harms consumer attitudes when you implicitly call them criminals until they prove otherwise.

My biggest practical gripe about Vista is the Windows Update stuff that runs in the background (TrustedInstaller.exe) now and then just decides to chew up a bunch of CPU time for no particularly good reason. That's pretty dumb, and something that they should be fixing. I find it a little annoying that it's a hell of a lot harder to set Explorer to always show the details view instead of guessing what I want, but at least it remembers to put a tree view on the left all the time now. The Games browser doesn't excite me, but Layani loves it - go figure.

Honestly, Vista's not worth upgrading to but I wouldn't go out of my way to NOT get it on a new PC. There's probably a bunch of stuff you can do if all the frills annoy you, I just haven't gone past turning off the security stuff because the rest of it really doesn't upset me and I do like some of the new stuff (which I've said before, so won't go over again).

DX10 is certainly no big draw card just yet, at least not in the way I originally thought it would be. The most I've seen is some cute water and fog effects, but nothing eye-poppingly awesome or any significant increase in frame rate. Maybe as the cards get more powerful, but until then it's just not worth even worrying about. If you've got Vista and a DX10 card, then yay or something, but you're not missing out if you don't. Something of a disappointment for me, but I'll get over it!

[Ddrak]

Oh - interesting fact:

The XP kernel can handle more than 4G of memory, but Microsoft disabled that ability in service pack 2 because a *lot* of the drivers written didn't handle it properly. So now, the desktop 32 bit systems all are limited at 4G (well, about 3.2G actually) thanks to driver writers being lazy and not coping properly with large memory sizes.

Dd

[Bahd Zoolander]

Oh - interesting fact:

The XP kernel can handle more than 4G of memory, but Microsoft disabled that ability in service pack 2 because a *lot* of the drivers written didn't handle it properly. So now, the desktop 32 bit systems all are limited at 4G (well, about 3.2G actually) thanks to driver writers being lazy and not coping properly with large memory sizes.

Dd

I just upgraded to 4 gigs cause memory has been crazy cheap lately. I have 3.5G physical memory available according to task manager. I was expecting less, but I guess I got lucky.

I dunno if it's a lazy thing so much as a how much is it worth to support that <1% (at the time) set of customers. It's not just driver writers either, there are hardware issues involved that make addressing >4gb impossible in some cases. I think capping it was the right choice given the circumstances and the number of people that it actually affects.

[Klast Brell]

The reason you are showing 3.5 gigs in the manager is that windows is limiting you to a total of 4 gigs including [/b]the memory on your video card. You have 512 megs of memory on your video card/cards so that leaves only 3.5 for your ram.

[Partha]

You know, maybe it's because I'm not a tech head, but I did just fine with 3.1....and 95...and ME....and XP....and will be just fine with Vista - because I'll let it mature before I install it. Early adoption isn't the thing to do with a new OS, folks.

[Rsak]

The only problems I have with Vista is the WindowsDefender will not run or allow you to install it and graphic crashes with games when in full screen mode (Bioshock and EQ2 specifically). With a good enough graphic card I find zero problems with playing in windowed mode and full size resolution and just tabbing back and forth.

[Ddrak]

What graphics card, Rsak? I have some issues with my 8800 and Hellgate:London (makes the driver unstable after a while), but none with bioshock/eq2.

Just curious here.

Dd

[Rsak]

8800 GTX... pretty sure you have same since we discussed it in the Bioshock thread.

Both Bioshock and EQ2 give the same type of behavior. Bioshock gave no message and was only during zoning. EQ2 is just random as it transitions between the hidden zone lines in the mega zones... http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/post ... _id=381100

I have finished Bioshock and EQ2 is never played enough to matter so windowed mode is the simple solution.

[Minute]

I was reading somewhere that you could /pae to get your full 4GB on a 32 bit OS.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pl ... ae_os.mspx

That true? I have an older system running XP86 that has 4 gigs I'd change if so.

[Flunkie]

Microsoft is putting out a command line only version of Windows Server. I wish they would develop a minimalist version of the workstation. I'm not calling for a command line version, I don't think anyone wants to go back to DOS as their desktop, but it would be nice to be able to get the core OS without all the excess junk they add on.

[Ddrak]

Microsoft is putting out a command line only version of Windows Server. I wish they would develop a minimalist version of the workstation. I'm not calling for a command line version, I don't think anyone wants to go back to DOS as their desktop, but it would be nice to be able to get the core OS without all the excess junk they add on.

Just an uninstall would be nice...

Dd

[Bahd Zoolander]

I was reading somewhere that you could /pae to get your full 4GB on a 32 bit OS.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pl ... ae_os.mspx

That true? I have an older system running XP86 that has 4 gigs I'd change if so.

The reason that Microsoft limited the RAM to 4 gigs in XP is because of PAE. Execute protection on newer CPUs requires PAE mode to work so it's forced on in those cases.

If you don't have a processor with execute protect turned on then adding /pae may give you a little more RAM.

[Ddrak]

I was reading somewhere that you could /pae to get your full 4GB on a 32 bit OS.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pl ... ae_os.mspx

That true? I have an older system running XP86 that has 4 gigs I'd change if so.

It *was* true. It's how you get more than 4G on 32 bit Win2k3 server, for example. You used to be able to do it on XP prior to sp2. It got disabled because badly written drivers didn't always cope properly with PAE stuff and so caused all sorts of crashes if you tried it on XP with this enabled.

Bahd is also correct - PAE is turned on whenever you enable execute protection. It's essentially a side-effect of enabling PAE, but on 32 bit XP or Vista it still won't give you access to more than 3.5(ish) gig.

Dd

[Minute]

Microsoft is putting out a command line only version of Windows Server. I wish they would develop a minimalist version of the workstation. I'm not calling for a command line version, I don't think anyone wants to go back to DOS as their desktop, but it would be nice to be able to get the core OS without all the excess junk they add on.

Man so right. Truth is I'd love a closer to Win98/95 setup. I honestly can't think of anything in XP/Vista that I use so regularly that I couldn't start it myself as opposed to having it running in the background hogging up all my system resources.

[Desolus]

The funny part is it's all exactly the same sort of bullshit arguments put out against XP when it came out (Win2k was apparently awesome back then), and now we find people willing to defend XP against Vista.

/yawn. Try some truth rather than fiction if you want to slam Vista. There's plenty out there, but I didn't see that video touching any of it. In fact, all the criticisms I saw there were outright fabrication.

Also note - no games require DX10, which is why you can run them on XP with some hackery.

I have to agree with Ddrak 100%. I hated it at first, but now I love vista. The more I look at it, the people who hate vista fall into one of these categories:

-never used it before, unfamiliar with interface and how the OS works.

-dont understand technology at all. these are the people who just buy a computer to surf the internet and check email...maybe scrapbook or use office and other productivity programs.

-fanboys,haters with nothing else to do. these people sometimes are a combination of the above mentioned

-impatient people. these types are the ones who rely soley on instincts and previous experiences to get them through something new. they dont read instruction booklets...sometimes they dont fucking read at all and thus become frustrated and end up hating said product or experience.

Alot of people that have had me fix their systems and complained that vista crashed on them all the time or just " doesnt work" never bothered installing updates, dont know how to run updates, and in the case of some software and hardware, go hunting for the drivers themselves...they expect to just turn on the computer and have everything just work. I attribute a vast majority of the hating to laziness and impatience. Iike i said i hated it when i tried it out. Now I have it on all 4 of my computers.

Personally I didnt have alot of the problems people have been complaining about. I had lock up issues on my laptop, but that was just a BIOS update issue and it works better than it did when I had XP. I loved vista for the sake that when I put it on the custom built PC, I didnt have to tweak any network connections or install any drivers...it actually did all that shit for me with the exception of my sound card and video card which i found updates for on the respective manufacturers websites.

[Klast Brell]

I'm running vista ultimate at home. (won a copy at a giveaway at a trade show) I guess I fall in to the hater bracket. I'll keep using it, but it will continue to piss me off in some ways. Mainly. It assumes I'm a thief. Every other change from XP to Vista had something to do with DRM. And it impacts performance as it wastes processor cycles making sure I'm not trying to steal something every time I do anything.