Is it OK to buy a computer with Windows Vista yet?

i bought one about a month back.

the only thing that sucks is that my printer/scanner doesnt work with Vista so i have to purchase a new one.

 

Don't have one, but from what I've seeing on other people's computers, it's pretty slick.

 

vista is pretty good.

i havent had any troubles yet. i havent tried learning what vista can do yet though.

I have Home Premium or whatever it is.

 

i have home premium..but am not going to install until i know all the kinks are worked out..which isnt the case now, alot of compatibility issues...BUT if you buy a computer with vista pre-installed...it should be a lot better than the ppl looking to upgrade...

 

Ive run into very few compatability problems, mainly with older hardware that the manufacturer isnt making new drivers for.

The system itself is really slick and works well.

but your hardware gotta be up to spec, which it should be if you are buying it new and preinstalled.

This OS isnt for everyone, older machines dont have a prayer of running it right, stick with XP for those.

Im not one to blow smoke up ur bum for M$, but Vista Ultimate is one nice running and looking OS.

 

I've been running Vista for about two months now. I'm ditching it in favor of XP as we speak. It was just a bit too unpredictable for me -- some programs didn't run as well, some didn't run at all, some drivers were a bit flaky, I just didn't like it. I'll revisit it in six months or so, but right now, it just doesn't do it for me. Among other things, I just never felt comfortable with Vista . . . It's slick, but for now, I'm going back to XP and Ubuntu.

 

Like Kam said, there are problems with driver issues. I beta tested Vista six months before the actual release and half of my hardware devices didn't even have an proper Vista driver. They still don't have updated drivers for most of my hardware.

I would stay away. The graphics of it are really good, but the downside is alot of your peripherals may not work.

Also you have to consider how much memory your computer has If it any less than 1GB of memory, it will run slow.

 

curious Vengenace

which progs are you having problems with?

I know you like to run smaller alternative programs for alot of stuff, is it with those?

for someone that isnt likely to run anything unusual(meaning just web browsing and stuff)...those problems probably wont popup.

 

Microsoft came out a few weeks ago saying that Vista was a failure and that it was rushed. I can find the article if you want. This is the reason why you have an option these days from companies to choose between XP or Vista.

I actually have Vista Home Premium and I wouldn't go back to XP. It took a while to get used to, but now I love the interface. I had no problems with any compatibility issues. The one thing I love is that all the drivers are automatically detected and installed. Reformatting is simple

Mine came with 1 gig of RAM but I upgraded to 2 gigs and I couldn't be happier. 1 gig would've been enough but I installed Norton 360 and it was slowing things down.

 

I had Vista Ultimate for about a week, then went back to XP. There were too many problems with drivers for my taste.

I'm a pc gamer, and so I have a lot of crap that needs to work just like I want it to. And it still being pretty early to have all the bugs and fixes (for your programs / hardware) cleaned up.

I will go back to my Vista OS some day. But until I know for sure all my stuff will run fine, I'll be with my XP pro.

 

it's a good idea to get atleast 2 gigs of RAM if youre going to have Vista.

 

On Topic: I don't think you could get away with buying a PC with XP... or can you?

I have a laptop with Vista Premium... so far, I have only had it crash on me a couple of times, only a few times, but I know it's that I have a lot of stuff "running" on the processor.

You do need a lot of memory, though, but it's slick, as you say, KAM.

 

Just some examples:

I tried to install and play Fallout and it was no good.
OpenGL performance is MUCH worse in Vista than it was in XP.
I haven't had much luck with Folding@Home for some reason.
PDFCreator didn't work. I ended up using CutePDF which I didn't like as much.
I know there were others, but those are the few that stand out in particular.

Yeah, it's not necessarily the stuff that will affect your average users, but it still frustrated the heck out of me. Plus I had a VERY bizarre ATI driver issue yesterday that was sort of the last straw. Not necessarily Vista's fault, but it was so random that I was just like "that's it, I'm done with this for now" -- I'd installed the new Catalyst package and rebooted . . . everything's cool for like 30 seconds and then my whole screen goes dim except for the mouse pointer. Not dark like it would when it did that User Acceptance crap (which is, holy crap, THE most annoying thing ever), but just dim . . . except for the mouse pointer, which was bright as day. I tried creating a new user and he didn't have that problem, it was just my profile. In the end, it was something with Windows vs. ATI and which one was handling color correction. And this morning I had a STRANGE USB problem too, but by that time I had made my decision.

 

Vengeance, you're the POWER, KNOW-IT-ALL, person to whom most "regular" Joes would come for help. Kinda like a master version of ME .

So... would you recommend WV to someone like a regular "Joe" who doesn't install Folding@Home or PDFCreator... say a high school student or a parent of a college student?

 

Ha, you know what's funny is that now I don't do tech support or any of that stuff any more (I do IT Audit, which I absolutely hate), but I miss it like crazy. And I don't know why, because I always felt like there had to be something better than tech support . . .

Anyhow, I don't know if I'd recommend Vista. I mean, it should be alright for everyone, but it just leaves something of a bad taste in my mouth. I guess it's probably something that's worth getting because eventually everything will be Vista (or whatever comes next), and XP will be a thing from the past. But I wouldn't upgrade from XP to Vista if I were a regular user. Your average user may like it alright, but I don't know that it'll really knock anyone's socks off.

I'm definitely overly picky, I guess. Among other things, there are some new interface things that I found frustrating. I don't know if they'd frustrate everyone else quite as much as they did for me. For instance, in Control Panel, there are like 50 icons in there. And the text is too long for most icons to display it all, so it has to end in that "...". And some choices have new names that I didn't think were quite as descriptive. Some dialogues are in unfamiliar places, and I also thought there were some sort of strange interface decisions. I *hated* the new Windows file explorer -- it was sort of cool with the breadcrumb-type navigation, but I missed the "up folder" icon there. Or take that new Alt-Tab window switcher. It's pretty spiffy, but you don't really get to see all of what's open, you just see the top one and then just the border area of the others. Then you tab through them one at a time to find the one you want. It just doesn't seem like any more than eye candy to me.

I'm definitely VERY overly picky about it, I mean, I have used so many awful window managers in Linux, you'd think I wouldn't blink an eye at anything Windows can throw at me. And to be fair, I didn't spend too much time customizing it -- it was largely an out of the box install. It did have some neat features, although I did think they were largely cosmetic.

Maybe it's just a case of "the devil you know", but I just think if you can hold out for the first service pack, Vista could really be nice. Sort of like how Win98 wasn't nearly what Win98 SE was. Or how XP improved markedly with each service pack (despite some SP2 networking oddities). I think your average user will have a decent experience with Vista, but I wouldn't go out of my way to get it.

 

I'd wait until the first service pack is out and enjoy the drop in prices of hardware that is made for Vista.

 

vengenace, you seem like a pretty smart guy aka a computer genius.


I have firefox, action smileys, marquee moving gif, etc. aren't working on message boards for some reason. Is there something i need to download?

 

*****I have firefox: action smileys, marquee moving gif, etc. aren't working on message boards for some reason. Is there something i need to download?