# Is Vista Over Vilified?



## Chanticleer (Oct 11, 2008)

Hi! 

I built a computer recently, using several old parts, and decided that I would bite the bullet and put Vista Ultimate on it. I'd heard all about Vista's tech problems, but I'd also heard about all sorts of patches coming out and realized that a company with as many sacks of money as Microsoft wouldn't let it's golden boy stay tarnished for long.


So, anyway, after fiddling around with Vista for a while, doing everything from setting up networks to playing Call of Duty 4, I still didn't bump into any problems. It seemed to move perfectly fast in all cases and it never had any problems dealing with the old hardware I put into the system.

So I ask you, is Vista getting a bad name for little reason?


----------



## Runefox (Oct 11, 2008)

Yes. It is.

The reason? Vista was launched on systems with around 512-1024MB of RAM. With onboard video. This isn't enough. At all. So? Vista ran dog-ass slow. And people started getting anxious about it. Told their friends. Et cetera. Early adopters ran into driver troubles just like they did with XP, and started preaching the end of the world was nigh. Add this to the fact that most vendors like to bundle the likes of Norton in with the systems (yes, even the 512MB systems), and you've got a slow, unstable mess. Just like if you did the same with XP with 64-128MB of RAM.

With a computer with 2048MB of RAM or higher, Vista runs rather happily, particularly the (GASP!) 64-bit version. Driver issues are all but gone, "Cancel/Allow" prompts can be bypassed by putting UAC in "Silent" mode (recommended) or turning it off altogether, and speed is actually quite good if you have a lot of RAM. Vista will automatically pre-load your most-used programs into RAM on startup so that they launch exceptionally fast (Firefox and Chrome like this a lot).

It's not perfect, but it's certainly not the demon people make it out to be. Any modern system should be able to run it just fine, even _with_ onboard video. RAM is cheap, and anyone complaining about the jump in memory use should just go get more. Windows 98/ME could run on 16MB of RAM. Windows 95 could run on 8MB. When XP was released, its requirement of 64MB of RAM was considered outlandish by some, too, considering that the typical amount of memory was between 32MB and 128MB at the time - And really, running XP on less than 256MB is nothing short of a nightmare. By the time Vista was released, the typical amount of RAM in a computer ranged between 512MB and 2048MB. Very few new systems being sold at the time had less than 512MB of RAM.

RAM is cheap. Most computers now, even laptops, come with 2GB at minimum, with a lot being sold with 3GB or 4GB. Even if not, a 1GB stick of RAM costs about $30 CAD or less.

So yeah. No. Everyone, stop bashing Vista for things it's not guilty of. Stop it. Seriously.

For reference, my PC is a little powerful, but it's by no means obscenely expensive. The specs?

AMD Athlon X2 6000+
ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe
4GB generic DDR2-800
3 hard drives
Radeon HD 4850

The single most expensive part of this computer is the motherboard, which is overkill. You could easily get away with a motherboard costing half as much. Same with the hard drives. But how does Vista run? Very well. It's the only OS installed right now, and it's the 64-bit version. Driver troubles? No, not unless it's a piece of hardware nobody's heard of and has no signature (which can be forced anyway). It's blazing fast, even if it takes a while to boot, and it's rock-solid in terms of stability and reliability.

I must be running Ultimate, right? No, I'm running Home Premium, like most people who buy a new computer.

Vista's also very easy to install. An Ultimate DVD will install any version of Vista, which makes my job as a technician easier. Windows Update finds drivers rather well, and even obscenely obscure things like a fan controller for a Toshiba laptop have been found on it. The Solution Center actually works pretty well, too, which makes finding out why a certain program crashes so much easy. And if you've got a video card installed in your computer (instead of onboard video), you can turn on Aero to reduce the load on your CPU for normal tasks. It does take more memory, but again, RAM is cheap.


----------



## Mikael Grizzly (Oct 11, 2008)

DX10 is a scam.

Vista's backwards compatibility is non-existent.

Stick with XP.


----------



## net-cat (Oct 11, 2008)

Vista will work for probably 90-95% of the people who buy computers with it preinstalled. There are certain corner cases where it epically fails. 

(I/E: Non-standard network configurations, FPS-is-everything types and people with legacy applications. Official Microsoft solutions to those problems: "Don't do that," "you're imagining" it and "use Vista Business and Virtual PC, by the way any OS you run in a Virtual PC needs its own license.")


----------



## ArielMT (Oct 11, 2008)

Supporting Windows Vista is still a pain.  I generally spend half again to twice as long with Vista-related support and repair calls than I do with support calls for any other operating system, even over the same problems, because Vista often insists on being as HAL 9000-like as the Macintosh System was before Apple renamed it Mac OS: "Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?"

As for the OS itself, it was rushed to market, arriving incomplete and buggier than a trash bag of used Roach Motels, and that is the cause of the majority of problems and complaints that remain uncorrected even today.

This was compounded by Microsoft essentially lying about what Windows Vista's actual hardware requirements are.  Based on the published requirements, OEMs sold PCs with grossly unsatisfactory performance, and upgrading consumers found that PCs performing exceptionally well with other operating systems (including Windows XP) became little better than bricks with Windows Vista.

The result is that consumers with any need or desire for Windows have been forced into a complete hardware replacement cycle, since only the highest end PCs (a small percentage of all PCs available) were capable of even marginally acceptable performance when Windows Vista was released.  It's only the availability of new PCs with hardware meeting Windows Vista's requirements satisfactorily that has resulted in the perception (and little more than perception) that the OS's villification might be ill-earned.

You fared better than most because you already know what Windows Vista's actual detailed hardware requirements are.  Is Vista's HCL as long yet as XP's?

Windows Vista's villification is still well-earned.  Consumers and manufacturers alike complained loudly and with a single voice: Windows Vista sucks.  The complaint was so loud and pervasive that Microsoft panicked.  They pushed the stop-sell date for Windows XP back by months, they are desperately trying to astroturf a "PCs don't suck" campaign, and right now they're scrambling to get Windows Seven ready to kick Windows Vista into the same trash bin of history that Windows Millennium Edition and Microsoft Bob share.

Microsoft Windows Vista is getting better, but the progress is painfully slow, and it has yet to become genuinely better received in the market than its number one competitor.  No, not Linux or Mac OS...  Microsoft Windows XP.  Even though Microsoft themselves stopped selling it, PC companies large and small are capitalizing on the Windows XP licenses they have left as if Prohibition was coming back.

And this completely ignores the many features eagerly anticipated for Codename Longhorn that got either pushed back to Codename Blackcomb/Vienna at the earliest or dropped entirely.

Windows Vista is neither over villified nor under villified.


----------



## SnowFox (Oct 11, 2008)

My only experience with Vista has been a bad one. It came preinstalled on a computer with 1GB of RAM and pre-infected with norton antivirus which I also HATE. It was annoyingly slow right from the start even before anything else was installed on it. The recovery disk also came infected with norton and all the other useless crap from the manufacturer so it wasn't much use starting again. I find vista tries to dumb things down too much and its very difficult to tweak settings like I can in XP. So much has been moved around that I feel like I'm having to learn how to use a computer all over again. Then when it all goes wrong it's much more difficult to try to fix it. I ditched it a few weeks ago and don't think I'll ever be trying it again unless I'm forced into it.


----------



## Tycho (Oct 11, 2008)

No, it isn't over-vilified.  It's Windows ME all over again, with a few extra annoyances.


----------



## Chanticleer (Oct 11, 2008)

Mikael Grizzly said:


> DX10 is a scam.
> 
> Vista's backwards compatibility is non-existent.
> 
> Stick with XP.



Uhh... I might have to debate the "backwards compatibility is non-existent" part of that. I am currently running an old IDE hard drive, a dvd-rom drive from 2005 and a wireless network Card from 2004, none of which have given me any problems.


----------



## Runefox (Oct 11, 2008)

> DX10 is a scam.


No doubt. Because there are so many games that _actually_ take full advantage of DirectX 10 and yet look the same as DirectX 9. DirectX 10 actually does have a lot under the hood that DirectX 9 doesn't, including a higher shader model (4.0) and tighter restrictions on texture quality and filtering quality. Also, things like soft particles (example: smoke that seems to properly flow around objects instead of clipping through them) are very difficult to get right with DirectX 9, while DirectX 10 allows it with little performance hit. All this is not to mention that it's designed for a different driver framework than DirectX 9 was and consequently has a different development environment. Perhaps you should read up on it.



> Vista's backwards compatibility is non-existent.


Of course, because F-22 Total Air War and Command & Conquer Gold (Tiberian Dawn) are examples of modern software. Oh, wait. They're both designed for Windows 95, yet they run on Vista. Hmm...

What about hardware? I can't really comment on it, because I haven't had anything save for old printers (and gameport joysticks) not work on Vista so far. Can you be more specific?

ArielMT: Yes, that's all pretty much true; However, it's also all pretty much crappy marketing and decision-making on Microsoft's part, not the fault of the OS itself. If Microsoft had made more apparent (and were more strict about) the minimum and recommended requirements to OEM's, then it wouldn't have had such a profound impact. The whole "Vista Compatible" and "Vista Ready" fiasco was what caused that particular quagmire. Further, most OEM's seem to enjoy piling as much crap into the computer as possible to "Value-add". I would challenge any late-model OEM XP machine's out-of-box state to compete with a fresh Vista install and see what happens. Things like Norton Antivirus and vendor-specific nagware (Acer, HP, Dell are all guilty) bring any system to its knees, regardless of the OS. The major reason Vista is portrayed as slow is precisely because these vendors completely and totally disregarded the specifications and piled as much shit in as they could. 512MB Vista + Norton + Acer's Crapsuite = SLOW.

As far as being incomplete on launch goes, I'd say that's a definite yes. So was XP when it was launched (in fact, it wasn't until SP2 that people largely stopped hating it). I'd actually hazard to say that Vista's more or less complete at this point, or at least, as complete as a piece of software will be. It's not really broken in any way.

Snowfox: Yeah, it's difficult to get used to. So much so that if not for the fact that I HAVE to be familiar with it for my job, I probably wouldn't have given it a chance to begin with. Half of your problems, though, are due to the manufacturer of your PC deciding to bundle a hundred and one different things (like Norton).



> No, it isn't over-vilified. It's Windows ME all over again, with a few extra annoyances.


Strange, I don't recall any install of Vista bluescreening or memory-leaking to the point of unusability within 24 hours of boot and/or dying randomly without some sort of hardware issue. Really, barring those issues, Windows ME would have been tolerable.

I'm not saying that Vista is great or anything, but it's not the terrible piece of crap that most people mark it as. I agree that XP is better for most people at the moment, but once Microsoft drops support for it, then what?


----------



## ArielMT (Oct 11, 2008)

Runefox said:


> ArielMT: Yes, that's all pretty much true; However, it's also all pretty much crappy marketing and decision-making on Microsoft's part, not the fault of the OS itself. If Microsoft had made more apparent (and were more strict about) the minimum and recommended requirements to OEM's, then it wouldn't have had such a profound impact. The whole "Vista Compatible" and "Vista Ready" fiasco was what caused that particular quagmire. Further, most OEM's seem to enjoy piling as much crap into the computer as possible to "Value-add". I would challenge any late-model OEM XP machine's out-of-box state to compete with a fresh Vista install and see what happens. Things like Norton Antivirus and vendor-specific nagware (Acer, HP, Dell are all guilty) bring any system to its knees, regardless of the OS. The major reason Vista is portrayed as slow is precisely because these vendors completely and totally disregarded the specifications and piled as much shit in as they could. 512MB Vista + Norton + Acer's Crapsuite = SLOW.



Value-added crapware slowing down any system out-of-box: Truth.  Doubly so for bundled trialware, such as McAfee Internet Security, Norton Internet Security, and Microsoft Office.

512 MB RAM for Windows Vista is as much a crime as 128 MB RAM for Windows XP is, even without crapware.

I would argue that being honest about Windows Vista's actual requirements would have had the same profound impact, though in a different way.  OEMs couldn't competitively price PCs meeting those requirements, even though they've since realized they simply must have capable enough hardware that they did without for Windows XP.  The Windows Vista public betas and release candidates should've made it perfectly clear to reviewers, myself included, that it wasn't ready and that Microsoft were grossly understating its requirements.  It booted with that minimum, but it transformed the hare into the tortoise.



Runefox said:


> As far as being incomplete on launch goes, I'd say that's a definite yes. So was XP when it was launched (in fact, it wasn't until SP2 that people largely stopped hating it). I'd actually hazard to say that Vista's more or less complete at this point, or at least, as complete as a piece of software will be. It's not really broken in any way.



I don't recall Windows XP Gold being regarded as worse than Windows ME.  I do remember considering Windows 2000 Pro better, but not Windows ME.

Personally, I admit I did harbor objections to Windows XP when it was new, but they were almost exclusively philosophical, not technical.  My objections centered on Windows Product Activation, which was expanded after SP2 to include the Microsoft malware called Windows Genuine Advantage.  Unlike then, my objections to Windows Vista, like those of so many who harbor any, are almost exclusively technical:  Windows Vista simply was not ready.  I agree that Windows Vista is about as complete as it will ever get, but even today it's still not ready.  It's just nearly two years too late to do anything about that, though.

Also worth considering is the fact that Windows XP SP2 differs so much from Windows XP Gold that it's often considered a different version of Windows entirely, much like 98 Gold and 98 Second Edition, but without the upgrade price tag.



Runefox said:


> Strange, I don't recall any install of Vista bluescreening or memory-leaking to the point of unusability within 24 hours of boot and/or dying randomly without some sort of hardware issue. Really, barring those issues, Windows ME would have been tolerable.



I have only ever witnessed Windows Vista blue-screen once with my own eyes, and that was on a PC with Windows Vista pre-installed.

I have, however, witnessed and experienced Windows Vista do things, and refuse to do things, that actually make a blue screen a welcome alternative.  Most often, I've had the OS simply freeze without a single error message or log kept anywhere hinting at why, even on a pristine Windows Vista image without any other software installed.



Runefox said:


> ... but once Microsoft drops support for it, then what?



If Microsoft are smart, Windows Seven will be ready by then.  If they're not, then Windows Seven will be either out well before then (rushed) or a very long time away from completion.

If Microsoft make as big a mess with Windows Seven as they did with Windows Vista, then Apple, Dell, and a few others will be standing by ready to clean up that mess with non-Microsoft operating systems pre-loaded and as compatible with Windows-only applications as possible.

Microsoft are keenly aware of this now, or they're in worse shape than even their harshest critics allege.


----------



## Emil (Oct 11, 2008)

I dont really speak the language when it comes to computers, but I havnt really had nearly as much problems with Vista since I removed my messanger program Trillian. It was making all of my programs quit responding and my computer shit itself. Maybe the problem isnt really with Vista so much as it is the programs youre running on it? I dunno.


----------



## Takun (Oct 11, 2008)

Well my laptop has crashed to blue screen......5 or 6 times.  Locked up numerous times.


>.>  <.<


----------



## Emil (Oct 11, 2008)

Takumi_L said:


> Well my laptop has crashed to blue screen......5 or 6 times.  Locked up numerous times.
> 
> 
> >.>  <.<



Ive gotten that a few times. But only when I try to play a really old ass game on my computer. Pisses me off that I cant run the original Unreal Tournament on here. But its no biggie.


----------



## Neybulot (Oct 12, 2008)

Simple way to look at it.

If you've got single-core, stay with Windows XP.

If you've got dual-core or better, might as well go with Vista. Unless you don't care too much about DX10 or a few other features.

Vista was designed with dual-cores in mind, which is probably what all the whiny responses are about. People are trying to run it on a slow single-core to which Vista says "Ugh" and fails.

Oh, and make sure you have 2 gigs of RAM or more when running Vista too.

EDIT: If you can't take the heat from either, get a Mac you fail noob and shut up.


----------



## Hollow-Dragon (Oct 12, 2008)

I've had vista for about a month now, and it's been working fine for me, no errors or annoyances at all.  Those of you who refuse to switch to Vista from XP, you may as well switch to an expensive Mac (which from my perspective, Macs suck.), otherwise, you can expect your system to be out of date by 2010 when microsoft will stop supporting XP.  Most likey by then, people will have bought more up to date systems though.


----------



## dietrc70 (Oct 12, 2008)

Runefox said:


> Yes. It is.
> 
> The reason? Vista was launched on systems with around 512-1024MB of RAM. With onboard video. This isn't enough. At all. So? Vista ran dog-ass slow. And people started getting anxious about it. Told their friends. Et cetera. Early adopters ran into driver troubles just like they did with XP, and started preaching the end of the world was nigh. Add this to the fact that most vendors like to bundle the likes of Norton in with the systems (yes, even the 512MB systems), and you've got a slow, unstable mess. Just like if you did the same with XP with 64-128MB of RAM.
> 
> ...



Good points.  Also, Vista was awfully buggy at release, particularly the 64 bit version.  After about 6 months of updates it became pretty solid.

I can dual-boot into XP, and I much prefer Vista 64.  It multitasks better, and with a powerful video card the Aero interface is much faster than XP.  I also like the screen fonts.

MS really screwed up by claiming that Vista would have good performance on underpowered systems.  I'd only recommend Vista 32 on a multi-core system with 2GB of RAM, and there's no point in using Vista 64 unless you have at least 4GB.

My specs:
DFI Lanparty LT X38; Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 3.20GHz
4GB OCZ Reaper (2x2GB)
Radeon 3870 512MB
Seasonic 650W PSU
1TB RAID 10
1TB RAID 0
70GB 10K RPM Fujitsu SCSI boot drive
(I also like to splurge on motherboards, and memory, and on the PSU--it's not really necessary, but it can save headaches if you like to tinker with your system a lot. )


----------



## Hanazawa (Oct 12, 2008)

My school's library swapped all of their PCs over to Vista. As far as I can tell, no issues except PEBKAC. and it popped up less annoying "are you sure you want to do this?" windows than XP started doing with SP3.


----------



## Neybulot (Oct 12, 2008)

Hollow-Dragon said:


> I've had vista for about a month now, and it's been working fine for me, no errors or annoyances at all.  Those of you who refuse to switch to Vista from XP, you may as well switch to an expensive Mac (which from my perspective, Macs suck.), otherwise, you can expect your system to be out of date by 2010 when microsoft will stop supporting XP.  Most likey by then, people will have bought more up to date systems though.



It's cheaper to spend $500 to upgrade your current computer to a computer that will work with Vista than to spend even more on a Mac.


----------



## Hanazawa (Oct 12, 2008)

Neybulot said:


> It's cheaper to spend $500 to upgrade your current computer to a computer that will work with Vista than to spend even more on a Mac.



no shit. if someone offered me a PC with those specs at that price, I'd laugh them into next tuesday.


----------



## Eevee (Oct 12, 2008)

get a mac mini for $600 (which includes the OS) and plug your existing peripherals in



man if only there were some other OS that runs on any existing hardware and won't just stop receiving patches when a company doesn't feel like patching it any more


----------



## Tycho (Oct 12, 2008)

Eevee said:


> man if only there were some other OS that runs on any existing hardware and won't just stop receiving patches when a company doesn't feel like patching it any more



When Warhammer Online runs seamlessly in Ubuntu Linux, THEN I'll dedicate my computer to it.


----------



## Takun (Oct 12, 2008)

Hanazawa said:


> My school's library swapped all of their PCs over to Vista. As far as I can tell, no issues except PEBKAC. and it popped up less annoying "are you sure you want to do this?" windows than XP started doing with SP3.



Oh no doubt that 99% of the problem is the users.  My laptop has been shit from the day I got it and I can't get it replaced.   I'm "accidentally" dropping it soon >.>


----------



## Hollow-Dragon (Oct 12, 2008)

Neybulot said:


> It's cheaper to spend $500 to upgrade your current computer to a computer that will work with Vista than to spend even more on a Mac.


 
Ah, very true, I forgot about the upgrades.  You can also get a decent system with a system that will work with vista just fine for jsut about $500 too.


----------



## Neybulot (Oct 12, 2008)

Hanazawa said:


> no shit. if someone offered me a PC with those specs at that price, I'd laugh them into next tuesday.



Not to mention, it has shared memory graphics too.


----------



## Wait Wait (Oct 12, 2008)

Neybulot said:


> It's cheaper to spend $500 to upgrade your current computer to a computer that will work with Vista than to spend even more on a Mac.



hackintosh

*hackintosh*


----------



## Eevee (Oct 12, 2008)

Tycho The Itinerant said:


> When Warhammer Online runs seamlessly in Ubuntu Linux, THEN I'll dedicate my computer to it.


WHO doesn't run on OS X either as far as I'm aware

actually it would probably run better on Ubuntu than a Mac


----------



## lilEmber (Oct 12, 2008)

Vista is better than XP in every way.

If you don't have the RAM you can get two 2gig sticks of ram now, DDR2 PC-6400 for about $20-$40 depending on where you get it. Two gigs of DDR2 for $20? Wow that's ridiculous, Microsoft should be ashamed for wanting programs to load faster and for the ram to actually be used...

DX10 works amazingly on games that actually support it fully and it makes less performance loss than the DX10 hack for dx9.

I myself am running Vista 32bit, soon going to be upping it to 64bit premium or course. The only thing stopping me is the fact I will be purchasing it at the same time I purchase a new PSU and at least one new video card. So gotta save up!

I did actually have some issues with blue screening, like 10 times in a hour at one point. First it happened a few times on my XP version, then it happened a LOT more when I swapped to vista, funny thing was it turned out my RAM was faulty, completely fried ram. After actually attempting to use it again on a different PC to see if it was actually it, the RAM caught on fire. So it was the RAM and I'm happy with my new Dominator RAM that makes vista purr like a cat being pleasured. 

Yes I had to add the last part. PINK!


----------



## Bladekitty (Oct 12, 2008)

I originally ran Vista on a quad core, 2GB of DDR2-800 and an 8800GTX (this was my "work" PC during my woefully brief stint as a game reviewer) and that put me off it for some time, considering that the performance was bad in games that had no right to be, most notably Pro Street. This was pre-SP1

Now more lately I've tried it on my home PC, a tad lower spec than my old work PC but essentially replace the quad core with a dual core and you've got the same PC. No problems whatsoever - true it's slow to boot up and shut down, but otherwise it runs everything satisfactorily, even in DX10 graphics (of which most games I've played with it, only Bioshock has little to no noticeable difference in actual graphical fidelity).

As for backwards compatibility... even my older games work, and my DOS game collection needed DOSbox in XP as it does in Vista, so no issues there. It's 32-bit so the incompatibility issues are probably slightly less pronounced, but nevertheless.

I'd say that originally it deserved it's criticism, but since Microsoft got off their backsides, it's improved vastly. Give it another try if you haven't already.


----------



## Magnus (Oct 12, 2008)

Asus p5k-e wifi ap solo
5Gb kingston ddr 2 667 
8800gts alpha dog edition 
2x 500Gb maxtor drives 
600w coolermaster psu
q6600 intel core2quad cpu 

not the best, but it was freakin cheap :3 

I have vista ultimate 32bit (NO SP1!!!) and it works like a charm, its way faster then xp and the UAC can be turned off so no bitching about that. I also have Ubuntu on it, the one you can install while running windows, also works perfect although it did spend an hour on updates ^^"


----------



## ADF (Oct 12, 2008)

Commenting on Vista has always been a problem, namely because no matter what position you take someone is always going to disagree with you. All I can give is my honest opinion, sod what everyone else has to say.

I have been messing with Vista since the beta, even in today's fully patched form I'm still getting a better experience with XP.


----------



## Pi (Oct 12, 2008)

i'm boggled by the fact that an OS needs 2 gigs of memory in order not to complain.

but then again I do useful work on a 166 mhz pentium with 64 megs of ram, so


----------



## Runefox (Oct 12, 2008)

> get a mac mini for $600 (which includes the OS) and plug your existing peripherals in



... And get an underpowered, non-upgradeable computer that will be obsolete even by Apple's standards next year (the hardware is already woefully underpowered for the price; You're paying for the Apple logo and the small form factor). I could put together a far more powerful desktop in a Micro-ATX case for less than it would cost for a Mac Mini.

But meh, as far as usability is concerned, I find Linux has Mac OS beat. Gnome and KDE (the most popular desktop environments) are way more user-friendly than Mac OS, or at least, they are to me. I'd actually love to run Gnome in a Windows environment (or be able to run Linux on my desktop and have my sound card work properly - Stupid Creative). For me, a hackintosh is a waste of time and effort.



> i'm boggled by the fact that an OS needs 2 gigs of memory in order not to complain.



Actually, it runs happily on 512MB-1GB, so long as you don't want an antivirus, are willing to turn off Windows Defender, and don't need Aero. It doesn't exactly complain even if you did have all those things enabled. From what I hear of Mac OS nowadays, a gig isn't much to the Mac crowd, either.



> but then again I do useful work on a 166 mhz pentium with 64 megs of ram, so



And you'd be running either Windows 9x (maybe even 3.x if you're a legacy junkie) or some variation of Linux/BSD. Win2k, in my experience, doesn't like working efficiently on that kind of hardware (though it does work), and good luck getting XP to do anything meaningful. Even most distros of Linux nowadays need 512MB of RAM or more to run happily - Ubuntu is one of them. Less than 512MB of RAM with Ubuntu is a pretty sad sight - I should know, my laptop was a case in point on that one before I added a 512MB stick to top it up to 768MB. Oh, and take a look at Mandriva's requirements:



> Processor: Any IntelÂ®, AMD or VIA processor.
> RAM: 512MB minimum, 1GB recommended.
> Hard disk: 2GB minimum, 6GB recommended.
> Graphics card: NVIDIAÂ®, ATITM, IntelÂ®, SiS, Matrox,VIA. 3D desktop functionality requires an NVIDIA GeForce (up to 8800), ATITM Radeon 7000 to HD 3870, or IntelÂ® i845 to x4500HD.
> ...



Hmm... That sounds familiar...



> Vista:
> 
> Minimum Requirements
> 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
> ...





> Mac OS X Leopard:
> 
> Minimum Requirements
> Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor
> ...



... Huh. That's strange. Every modern desktop-oriented OS seems to have the same system requirements... Hmm...


----------



## ArielMT (Oct 12, 2008)

Clearly, everyone's experience with Windows Vista is different, running the complete range from "nothing works" to "nothing could be better."  There's something seriously wrong with either the operating system or its corporate authors when the actual hands-on experience is so wildly inconsistent and evenly divided between all the extremes.

To those of you who have had good experiences with Windows Vista and blame all our bad experiences on bad hardware, kindly stop.  It's rude and shallow-minded, like blaming a car's poor fuel mileage on bad windshield washer fluid.

Some of our bad experiences have been through bad or faulty hardware, yes, especially those with mixed experiences of other operating systems on the same hardware.  But the rest of our bad experiences have been through hardware known to be good, known to be in perfect working order, and in almost every case marketed as compatible.  However, I suppose that should be expected when, of the more than 52,000 devices in the Windows XP Hardware Compatibility List, far fewer than 10,000 of them appear in the Windows Vista Hardware Compatibility List.  Note that these links only work in Internet Explorer and browsers configured to spoof Internet Explorer.

Lots of people have had very good experiences with Windows Vista, but it's a smaller percentage of total Windows Vista users than the percentage of Windows XP users who have had very good experiences with Windows XP.

I share Pi's bewilderment that an OS would need two thousand megabytes of memory to really be happy with the lightest of recommended features, but then I remember it's Microsoft.  It's the same microcomputer software company whose very first product ever, a BASIC language interpreter for the MITS Altair microcomputer, had a minimum hardware requirement of fully 16 times the total memory of the computer it was compatible with, and requiring a memory expansion board from third parties.[sub][W][/sub]

Edit:  About reducing Windows Vista's memory footprint, it's additional work required by those least likely to know how.  Of the tasks named, only turning off Aero sounds completely sane.

I remember being floored when I saw that Windows Vista's barest minimum requirements, including an unprecedented _fifteen gigabytes_ of _empty_ space (enough to hold the entire Ubuntu software repository for a single architecture), dwarf even the most bloated of Ubuntu's system requirements.

Edit again: Even with as little as 512 MB RAM, Ubuntu's performance has been so good that I've been known to go entire days before discovering my swap partition has been turned off.


----------



## Hakar Kerarmor (Oct 12, 2008)

Does Vista have a task manager that works even if a program is somehow hogging the cpu? I hate that in XP. You'd think stuff like the task manager would have maximum priority.


----------



## net-cat (Oct 12, 2008)

Hanazawa said:


> no shit. if someone offered me a PC with those specs at that price, I'd laugh them into next tuesday.


To be fair to the Mac mini's they are basically laptops. They use all laptop parts and they even have the Intel Mobile chipset.

... doesn't stop them from sucking in just about every way, though.



Eevee said:


> man if only there were some other OS that runs on any existing hardware and won't just stop receiving patches when a company doesn't feel like patching it any more


To be fair, most Linux distributions have a set end-of-life. Although they also tend to offer very easy upgrade paths. (In Ubuntu's case, you can actually continue using the OS _while_ it upgrades you to the next version...)



NewfDraggie said:


> I myself am running Vista 32bit, soon going to be upping it to 64bit premium or course. The only thing stopping me is the fact I will be purchasing it at the same time I purchase a new PSU and at least one new video card. So gotta save up!


For the record, unless your license actually *says* 32-bit or 64-bit explicitly on the sticker, (A few OEM licenses do. Most don't.) you can use your existing key with any 64-bit Vista disc. (A call to MS licensing might be required, but usually not.)


----------



## Takun (Oct 12, 2008)

Manufacturer: TOSHIBA Model Satellite X205 

Total amount of system  memory: 2.00 GB RAM 

System type: 32-bit operating system 

Number of processor  cores: 2 

64-bit capable: Yes 

Total size of hard  disk(s): 222 GB 

Disk partition (C)24 GB Free (110 GB Total) 
Disk partition (D) 112 GB Free (112 GB Total) 

Display adapter type: NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT 
Total available graphics  memory: 1023 MB 
      Dedicated graphics  memory: 256 MB  
Dedicated system  memoryz: 0 MB  
Shared system  memory: 767 MB 
Display adapter driver  version 7.15.11.138 

If anyone knows a way to run Vista better on this, let me know >.>


----------



## net-cat (Oct 12, 2008)

Don't use the OEM Vista install.

In my experience, Toshiba is one of the worst offenders in that regard.


----------



## Wait Wait (Oct 12, 2008)

Runefox said:


> From what I hear of Mac OS nowadays, a gig isn't much to the Mac crowd, either.



runnin great on 640 mb


----------



## Sabine Sommer (Oct 12, 2008)

Vista is interesting. I'm still fine with my XP build for now. 

Howver, I will say for all the complaints about Vista, I'm glad it's out there. In essence, Vista has gotten me excited to see what they're going to do for Windows 7.


----------



## Eevee (Oct 12, 2008)

net-cat said:


> To be fair, most Linux distributions have a set end-of-life. Although they also tend to offer very easy upgrade paths. (In Ubuntu's case, you can actually continue using the OS _while_ it upgrades you to the next version...)


of course; no version of any software will be supported forever.  but Linux distributions don't have quite the huge leaps between versions, precisely because they tend to be free.  if you _really_ want to stick with Hardy then you are more than welcome, but there's generally no reason not to jump to Intrepid when it comes out and get the incremental improvement.  rather than going from 2000 to XP to Vista, Linux distributions act more like continued improvements to a single product.  occasionally you can draw the line when something big like KDE4 happens, but this isn't quite so common.



Sabine Sommer said:


> Howver, I will say for all the complaints about Vista, I'm glad it's out there. In essence, Vista has gotten me excited to see what they're going to do for Windows 7.


maybe they'll actually put in some of the things that were meant to be out three years ago, oh boy!


----------



## Verin Asper (Oct 13, 2008)

*doesnt use Vista cause it hates his Homeworld 2 game*...why wont you play it...whyyyyyyyy, is it cause XP had a freaky good time with it...is that why...are you jealous of XP


----------



## ADF (Oct 13, 2008)

Sabine Sommer said:


> Howver, I will say for all the complaints about Vista, I'm glad it's out there. In essence, Vista has gotten me excited to see what they're going to do for Windows 7.


I heard they are pulling a DX10 with the entire OS; in that they are cutting backwards computability and all existing software will be emulated.

I seriously doubt they would take such a huge extreme though.

There is also talk about it possibly becoming a service OS; were you rent some features.


----------



## lilEmber (Oct 13, 2008)

Magnus said:


> Asus p5k-e wifi ap solo
> 5Gb kingston ddr 2 667
> 8800gts alpha dog edition
> 2x 500Gb maxtor drives
> ...



Uh...um... No 32 bit OS can read more than 4gigs of memory so having 5 gigs is pointless, also not having SP1 is lame, it will jump your FPS in game up about 20+FPS alone, no joke. It will also make everything smoother, actually if I were you I would simply go get vista 64 legit and get SP1, your computer will thank you when it can use itself fully. 

(actually less than 4 gigs of ram can be used in a 32 bit OS I know, but doing the math, 2^32 you can see the maximum memory a 32bit could ever use, same equation only 64bit 2^64 you can see the MASSIVE difference for 64bit)



net-cat said:


> For the record, unless your license actually *says* 32-bit or 64-bit explicitly on the sticker, (A few OEM licenses do. Most don't.) you can use your existing key with any 64-bit Vista disc. (A call to MS licensing might be required, but usually not.)



I know that, my key, though valid. Is not, per say... I never paid for my current key I have a OEM disk that auto-fits a randomized OEM key on every install, it's bare-bones and actually runs much lighter than normal vista basic, but it is actually ultimate, the reason is a lot of system tasks are not started because they are not needed, at all. 

I want to actually pay for my own copy of Vista 64 premium though, silly as it is...



Hakar Kerarmor said:


> Does Vista have a task manager that works even if a program is somehow hogging the cpu? I hate that in XP. You'd think stuff like the task manager would have maximum priority.



Actually yea I have noticed Task Manager is much more responsive in Vista, honestly. Also if you are having issues with that try picking up a Logitech G15 keyboard, there's a g15mod for the lcd that places task manager through the LCD, so if your PC locks up and won't let you to the TM, use the LCD one and it works every time. Very, very handy. Also a bunch of other mods for things such as MSN so you can literally type through MSN on the keyboard, and not alt+tab in and out at all.


----------



## Talvi (Oct 13, 2008)

I think people are way overly-critical of Vista, it's really not that bad. However, you aren't missing out on much by sticking with XP.


----------



## Pi (Oct 13, 2008)

NewfDraggie said:


> Uh...um... No 32 bit OS can read more than 4gigs of memory so having 5 gigs is pointless, also not having SP1 is lame, it will jump your FPS in game up about 20+FPS alone, no joke.



32-bit PAE has ways of working around this limit in ways similar to "bank switching" although far more sophisticated.


----------



## net-cat (Oct 13, 2008)

Pi said:


> 32-bit PAE has ways of working around this limit in ways similar to "bank switching" although far more sophisticated.


Well, perhaps he meant that no 32-bit consumer version of Windows will allow you to use more than 4GB of address space.


----------



## Eevee (Oct 13, 2008)

ADF said:


> There is also talk about it possibly becoming a service OS; were you rent some features.


this was originally planned for XP's lifetime


----------



## Bladekitty (Oct 13, 2008)

Problem with pae is that you need to have the program coded specifically for it, like 64-bit. It's also slower than 32 or 64 bit because of the extra clock cycles consumed to use the extra 4 bits :/

Rather use 64 bit if you need more than 4GB memory.


----------



## dietrc70 (Oct 13, 2008)

NewfDraggie said:


> Vista is better than XP in every way.
> 
> If you don't have the RAM you can get two 2gig sticks of ram now, DDR2 PC-6400 for about $20-$40 depending on where you get it. Two gigs of DDR2 for $20? Wow that's ridiculous, Microsoft should be ashamed for wanting programs to load faster and for the ram to actually be used...
> 
> ...



LOL!  Now I have a good reason to be glad I bought the expensive RAM!  It hasn't caught fire yet.


----------



## dietrc70 (Oct 13, 2008)

Hakar Kerarmor said:


> Does Vista have a task manager that works even if a program is somehow hogging the cpu? I hate that in XP. You'd think stuff like the task manager would have maximum priority.



I agree, and that did get fixed in Vista.  One of the major changes in Vista is that it's very hard for a out-of-control process to hog the CPU.  The Desktop, Task Manager, and other programs will still get priority if you switch to them.

Another trick I like is that I can run two video encoding jobs simultaneously with 100% usage on both cores, and I can still browse the web or do word processing with almost no speed loss.  The multitasking in Vista is really good; MS did get that right, at least.


----------



## lilEmber (Oct 16, 2008)

Pi said:


> 32-bit PAE has ways of working around this limit in ways similar to "bank switching" although far more sophisticated.



Could you show me this? I haven't seen it and going by my equation of 2^32, the 2 meaning 1 or 0 any 32 bits can only use roughly 4 294 967 296 bits, witch is the maximum amount of memory it could ever use, unless this actually changes something about how it actually uses the RAM...possibly making it less efficient in the process.

Not that I'm saying it can't happen, I've just never seen it, got any links?



dietrc70 said:


> LOL!  Now I have a good reason to be glad I bought the expensive RAM!  It hasn't caught fire yet.



It was good RAM, I checked into it and apparently at the same time there were other with the same issue, must of been a mistake at the factory. Meh what ever people sometimes make mistakes nothing on my PC got harmed and the sticks are guaranteed for life anyway so I will get new stuff later and sell it/give it away. Now I have really good ram so I'm glad it happened!


----------



## net-cat (Oct 16, 2008)

Bladekitty said:


> Problem with pae is that you need to have the program coded specifically for it, like 64-bit. It's also slower than 32 or 64 bit because of the extra clock cycles consumed to use the extra 4 bits :/
> 
> Rather use 64 bit if you need more than 4GB memory.


That's not quite true. Your _operating system_ needs to be coded to support PAE. Regular 32-bit apps will run blissfully unaware of PAE, just as they will run blissfully unaware of x64 operating systems.

But yes. There's a performance hit associated with PAE. PAE is just sophisticated bank switching. Switching banks takes time and invalidates the contents of your processor's cache.



NewfDraggie said:


> Could you show me this? I haven't seen it and going by my equation of 2^32, the 2 meaning 1 or 0 any 32 bits can only use roughly 4 294 967 296 bits, witch is the maximum amount of memory it could ever use, unless this actually changes something about how it actually uses the RAM...possibly making it less efficient in the process.
> 
> Not that I'm saying it can't happen, I've just never seen it, got any links?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Yes, there's a performance hit. (See my response to bladekitty above.)

And the Intel architecture is byte addressed, not bit addressed. So you have 2^32 bytes available. Not bits.


----------



## lilEmber (Oct 16, 2008)

net-cat said:


> That's not quite true. Your _operating system_ needs to be coded to support PAE. Regular 32-bit apps will run blissfully unaware of PAE, just as they will run blissfully unaware of x64 operating systems.
> 
> But yes. There's a performance hit associated with PAE. PAE is just sophisticated bank switching. Switching banks takes time and invalidates the contents of your processor's cache.
> 
> ...



Now that makes sense, ok so it can be done, it doesn't seem the most feasible in any way. More worth your time to simply get a 64 bit os unless your processor doesn't support it I guess... still with something that old you should just upgrade or stay with 32 bit.

Still thanks for the response, it's something that would be fun to tinker with, not use for anything...


----------



## net-cat (Oct 16, 2008)

PAE has been around since the Pentium Pro days when when 64-bit wasn't even on the radar. It also provides things like the NX bit on 32-bit systems.

But, like anything else in the computing world, it's subject to a cost benefit analysis.

"I have a legacy application that doesn't work on x64 will cost many figures of dollars to replace in terms of licensing and training."

PAE might be appropriate in that case. (There are, of course, other solutions. But it's an option.)

In terms of consumer usage though, there's very little reason to use PAE's extended address space. (Although a lot of systems still enable it for things like the NX bit.)


----------



## Bladekitty (Oct 16, 2008)

Actually 64 bit has been around since the 1960s (in Supercomputers). It's just that it only been around for servers and higher end workstations since the 90s and only hit desktops 40 years on...


----------



## net-cat (Oct 16, 2008)

Sorry. I should have been more clear.

"Wasn't even on the radar for x86 systems."

I know there have been 64-bit processors available for quite a while.


----------



## Bladekitty (Oct 16, 2008)

Sorry didn't mean to patronise, but I did feel that needed to be cleared up.


----------



## Runefox (Oct 16, 2008)

> In terms of consumer usage though, there's very little reason to use PAE's extended address space.


Hence why, while the NT kernel has supported it for a long time, Windows XP is shipped with no PAE support (and hence why there's a "4GB" cap).


----------



## net-cat (Oct 17, 2008)

Not quite.



> Although support for PAE memory is typically associated with support for more than 4 GB of RAM, PAE can be enabled on Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, and later 32-bit versions of Windows to support hardware-enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP).



http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/pae_os.mspx

That's actually a very interesting read about the basics of PAE and the advantages and drawbacks of PAE with Windows.


----------



## Runefox (Oct 17, 2008)

I actually had no idea that PAE had anything to do with DEP, though now that I think about it some more, it makes perfect sense. I should give that article a read.

Edit:



> 2. Large Cache
> Using additional PAE-enabled memory for a data cache is also possible. If the operating system supports this feature, applications need not be recoded to take advantage of it. Windows Advanced Server and Datacenter Server support caching on a PAE platform and can utilize all of the available memory.


Now _that_ is an interesting concept.


----------



## nek0chan (Oct 18, 2008)

i've honestly had no problems with vista, my only problems stemmed from my poorly designed laptop which overheated wiping out a few of my key windows files, and this was easily fixed with a repair disk which is available online.

Vista looks clean, and if you have a beast of a computer its pretty nifty


----------

