vista or not?

ICEMAN6166 · Post by **ICEMAN6166** » February 10, 2007, 11:22 pm

anyone take the plunge and try it yet?
my puter is 5 years old, and with the upgrades and cost needed to install it (you mean its not straight forward http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/)i figure in 2 more years a whole computer with it already installed will cost less than messing with this one now.

f100fordguy · Post by **f100fordguy** » February 10, 2007, 11:38 pm

Brian, as the Instore Technician at staples here in MI, i would advise currently not to do it to your pc. I have had a lot of headaches with vista so far due to software manufacturers and downloading patches to get the stuff to work on it. Is about like getting programs onto a windows 98 machine. Another thing i didnt like very much was the fact that you had to upgrade from xp-vista and it wouldnt work with anything else. Another con is the only office products you can use are office 03 and office 07 on vista machines. Not to mention the fact that HP and other manufacturers are going to not come out with drivers for some of the printers and scanners that they make. Another drawback to it is some flash drives (thumbdrives, usb drives) i.e. memorex and a couple others are also non vista compliant. Unless you have a pentium 4, 2.5ghz or similar and at LEAST 1 gig of ram all you are going to do is cuss at it. Just my .2 cents worth but all it is is a slower more complicated XP. as for me im going to tuff it out with xp till the end and upgrade when i have to.

Tim

Model_T_46804 · Post by **Model_T_46804** » February 11, 2007, 7:09 am

Brian,
If it aint broke, don't fix it.
Jim

ripsnorter · Post by **ripsnorter** » February 11, 2007, 8:00 am

speaking from the other side of the line, unless you have a real NEED to run vista at the moment, dont do it.

Seems like I've been asked this question by about everyone I know lately too heh.

as fordguy said, there are quite a few problems with compatibility at the moment, along with the fact that some HP printers will never work with vista. If you have an Ipod (can't stand em, but some people use them) it will not work with vista at the moment either.

For the moment vista is just a stream of headaches waiting to happen, with no real positives. In a few months (6 maybe would be my thinking) drivers will have caught up, the new DX10 graphics cards will be readily available and cheap, and things will be synching up a lot better. Until then, dont worry about it.

At the moment Windows XP is the tried and true, steady workhorse that runs without too many troubles, and everything works with. Vista is the new hotrod stallion on the block that needs a bit of time to settle down its crankiness and run.

Oh and for anyone considering buying a computer at the moment... dont do it unless you have to. give it 6 months and there will be new tech on the market that will make anything you buy now cry.

Horsepower · Post by **Horsepower** » February 11, 2007, 8:43 am

Well I did the winders thing 4 times. Now I'm a Mac guy! Thats right I said it, I did it! I'm so happy I did. I can run anything and everything on my Mac. It's like jumping 10 years into the future and bringing back a PC.

Sure it cost more but in the long run I'll save. Upgrading my PC every year was getting to me. I have only upgraded the memory on my Mac and I did that when I bought it. After 3 years it's still more puter than any PC on the market. And did I mention FAST!!! If it were a Slick it would run low 7's in the quarter.

FORDBOYpete · Post by **FORDBOYpete** » February 11, 2007, 12:21 pm

Brian,
Don't know how long you been into Digi Tech, but look at it this way. There are no Engine mounts, X-Members, and the like. things do not "un bolt" to be removed. If you go back in time, Win 3.1 to Win 95 ruined a lot of systems, there were several patches, upgrades etc, and then Win 98, which ruined a lot of systems, there were patches, upgrades, then 98 Select, then Millenneum and patches and upgrades and ruined systems, and then ad infinitum . . . . . . Do I need to keep going?

Let Mr Bill work out the kinked glitches, get Vista into a stable configuration, commonly installed in many brands then purchase an entire system with a working Vista Op-Sys already installed in it.

That's my game plan.
I'll limp along with my NT2000, FAT32, NTFS, style system until the hype and dust settles before I look at R&R of what I have. . . .My

FBp

Slick Fan · Post by **Slick Fan** » February 11, 2007, 12:40 pm

The timing of this thread is funny. On the way home last night, I bought this year's version of Turbo Tax to help me with my stinkin' taxes.

Well, I get all ready to go bright & early this morning, slap the disc in the 'ol drive & ... ...

disappointment. It figures that it's not compatible with the windows 98 (yeah, I know) that I'm currently running on my friggin' confuzer.

Let's see...$45 for Turbo tax, and it looks like at least $100 for a windows XP upgrade. Taking my taxes to the tax guy is sounding better every minute.

I hate confuzers some times.

ICEMAN6166 · Post by **ICEMAN6166** » February 11, 2007, 2:15 pm

i had no plans to do it. as i said in my post, in a couple years i can buy a new puter for less that will already have it on there.

i ran xp service pack 1 until the last day free updates were available.

willy3486 · Post by **willy3486** » February 11, 2007, 2:48 pm

Being a computer tech for right at 20 years now has taught me something. Often the lastest and greatest is often the first and the worst. In other words I do new computer stuff like I do autos, I let some other guy work the bugs out before I get it. I prefer to get the ones after the newness has worn off. And if you are thinking about apple reguardless of what the comercials say they have their own bugs. I woundn't own a apple at this point and I am certified on them. You can only get replacement parts that are apple and you are at their mercy. Also on apple they are designed to be replaced about every three years.

61 Merc · Post by **61 Merc** » February 11, 2007, 3:26 pm

Ice, I just upgraded my system this week from XP to as Unix based system. Haven`t got all the bugs worked out yet, but it something to keep me busy for the next while. It came with a Office program that runs MS Office and Firefox. All for free.

Dean

ripsnorter · Post by **ripsnorter** » February 11, 2007, 10:44 pm

what OS are you running merc? a Linux distro or FreeBSD or?

I've been pondering playing around with some sort if *nix on VMware, I've always wanted to but never wanted to screw with dual booting etc. I've yet to use VMware, but it should be quite a bit easier from the sounds of it.

The only real problem I have with any of the *nix's is there arent many games you can play on them. I do a fair amount of gaming, so I can't give up XP. yet another reason I wont go mac'ing.

By the way, for anyone that wants to try mercs free office software, its called OpenOffice. (I assume thats what you mean merc?) its free, well developed, and will do most stuff Microsofts Office will. It runs on XP and quite a few OS's as well.

BigTim · Post by **BigTim** » February 11, 2007, 11:26 pm

ripsnorter wrote:

By the way, for anyone that wants to try mercs free office software, its called OpenOffice. (I assume thats what you mean merc?) its free, well developed, and will do most stuff Microsofts Office will. It runs on XP and quite a few OS's as well.

Thanks for that Rip, I am going to give that a look.

ripsnorter · Post by **ripsnorter** » February 12, 2007, 11:49 am

http://www.openoffice.org/ is the website for anyone that wants to try it out.

Its a good free alternative to all the office suites out there. Plus you can open all the various office file types out there without having to go spend $500 on Microsoft Office 2007

Another one I would recommend for anyone wanting to get away from MS's junky software, (I like XP, but their add-on software sucks) is www.opera.com . Very good free web browser. Its been doing the tabbed browsing thing longer than firefox or IE7, has mouse gestures, pop-up blocker and quite a few other nice things. Its even a lot more secure than Internet Explorer. Great Free software.

61 Merc · Post by **61 Merc** » February 12, 2007, 2:29 pm

I just installed Ubuntu which is a version of Linux software. Still in the set up process, as I am having problems getting my wireless cards working. Open Office is what I was talking about, using it on both my daughters machines without any problems so far.

The Ubuntu download uses Firefox as a web browser. It speeds up the old pentium 2 laptop.

SCWIDVICIOUS · Post by **SCWIDVICIOUS** » February 19, 2007, 7:32 pm

i would give all the software people time to upgrade their software and upgrades for vista. I have it installed on a virtual computer for testing it out. My laptop has 2 gigs of ram, so it will run about anyhting you toss at it, but vista is a resource hog.

just like xp did, vista ill be mainstram soon, and all the software manus will support it, but as of this very moment, vista is barely suitable for a main OS. If you dont install software, games, or anyhting along those lines vista will be fine as long as you have enough ram for it.

MadMaxetc · Post by **MadMaxetc** » February 19, 2007, 11:43 pm

I just got a new Laptop with Vista on it. Runs nice but I would never upgrade an older comp to it. It to demanding.

I had to Uninstall Office 03 then install Office XP. Offive XP works fine.

You NEED 2Gb of ram for Vista, if you don't have that, then don't bother.

If you have 98 you should be able to go to 2000 pro without any problems. A lot of large companys still use 2000 so not to much of a problem there.

Fordman · Post by **Fordman** » February 20, 2007, 12:02 am

i have been told to never touch any thing until it is aleast a year old. that way most of the bugs have been worked out by then.

Johnny Canuck · Post by **Johnny Canuck** » February 20, 2007, 9:32 am

Microsoft are infamous for sending out half-baked software. I Started out on computers at work that used DOS, then went thru all the permutaions of Windows. I certainly would NOT recommend loading Microsoft Software within a year of it's release, as it's Beta testers are all the suckers who ran it in it's first year.

I never did own a copy of windows Millenium or XP on my home computer. But, with my new high speed internet bundle from the phone company (Telus) they give you a "Free" -yeah right) computer. So, I will be getting a Dell with Vista as our family's second computer. Not, that I am terribly thrilled with that, apparently it doesn't run a lot of peripherals, such as memory sticks, that aren't Microsoft aproved. And, before i read this thread, I only upgraded the memory to One Gig of ram, bet it hardly runs.

The scam goes on. Never mind the constant battle with viruses, worms,spam, and trojans. There are times I wish I had a Mac, although they dont run anything that would be of much use to me, and Steve Jobs has made it a mission for each one of his buyers to personally increase his own weath. He charges insane prices for those things, lawd help you if you need one fixed.

So basically, no matter what you choose, you are at someone's mercy.
(cue old Bob Dylan song "You got to serve somebody") You can try and load one of those freebie Linux type programs, but if you screw up or something goes sideways, you are totally hooped. There ain't some support guy in Pakistan you can phone. And try and run some mainstream software like Autocad on that.
Good luck.

JC

ICEMAN6166 · Post by **ICEMAN6166** » February 20, 2007, 12:41 pm

i had an issue once with my Dell that i called tech support about.after 2 hours of trying to decipher the broken english of the tech person i gave up and found the problem and fixed it myself.
other than the internal fan going out i have not had any major problems with the Dell , i fixed the fan by installing one a friend had when he gutted an old computer.
i like firefox much better than IE, wish i could delete IE completely but i am sure it would cause some weird problem so i have left it alone.

adrianspeeder · Post by **adrianspeeder** » February 20, 2007, 5:06 pm

Still rockin Windows 2000 pro on my main box here. Any upgrades from that will be linux. Gettin' good at ubuntu and slack.

Adrianspeeder