I'd like to know what everyone's first impression is of vista. The eye candy is tremendous, but I've found myself reverting to many 3rd party apps.

I'm not sure it's worth the upgrade from windows xp as of yet. Lack of support is my concern right now and comfort with XP.

However, the visualization is tremendous takes from Apple. Also a steal is the sidebar.

Just was wondering what your impressions were.

AMD Athlonxp 3200+ OC
Asus A7N8x-deluxe-E
ATI AIW 9600pro
2x WD SATA raptors/raid0
160gb
Corsair XMS3200
16x Lite-on DVD
12x DVD-R
wireless card used as p

First impressions... Yes there is some nice eye candy around the system,,, Waiting to see what kind of hardware support might also be able to be incorporated from some vendors.

Older hardware drivers don't work, even trying to have them run in compatibility mode first,

there are quite a few features that seem to have been built upon from XP and expanded,

Overall I have to say It is a version of XP with an expanded capability to have a 3D desktop. That ability requires some heavy duty hardware though,

Disk access time is still the slowest part of a computer and that seems to me to be the only thing slowing down anything in the operating system, What changes that can be made to the services and registry values for acceleration of various parts remains to be seen,

Overall though In many ways I do like it ,,,

MSI 845e mb 1 gb ram and a p4 2.4n running xp ,win 2000 advanced server and win 98 SE alot to learn and I know so little !!!!

As an average Joe I have been wondering, what is the minimum space required for Vista, as M$ says a 20 gig drive with at least 15gig free!&^£$&"£%%$!$!£!!!! Is there some validatiy in that area?

Well considering Vista is NT6, it is just XP with Eye candy and based on 20+ year old technology which has never been much cop since M$ decided to re-write OS/2 which was always better written becuase IBM were originally responsible.

There is no real justification to have Vista except as a one upmanship exercise but will make loads-0f-money for M$ and retailers...

This was a discussion about a week ago.

http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/152485.html

http://computervitals.com/

Resource hog is my first impression running Vista. Also this will be the first time that budget to mid range pc's that were bought last year would have to upgrade their hardware in order to run Vista decently.

Aero glass is OK, but nothing spectacular.

Many programs have still yet to get on 64bit bandwagon, which give consumers little reason to buy Vista 64.

An evolutionary OS, but not a revolutionary OS.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7800GT
SATA II 2x 200gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

I agree with cobra. Companies need to start migrating for this big push toward vista. I tried it and didnt like it, too many resource hogging programs, and it asking you everytime to run a program. I think that with some tweaks and to minor down all the eye candy, and have a decent firewall and antivirus, without it saying that it doesnt work well with this software. I have emailed microsoft and they stated that they are working on antivirus programs to work along side of the OS, but if I have to go out and buy a new virus and firewall program then forget even upgrading.

Jim R

I remember seeing some neat functionality in the days when they were showing off longhorn. I dont see any of that functionality now.

"the right to swing my arm ends where your nose begins."
-Claude Adrien Helvetius

Hello

I've been working my way through the Vista beta's this new release beta 2 build 5384 is alot "prettier" and runs a lot better (less crashing) than the previous versions.. with 2 exceptions, 1: I cannot get my head round the new IIS.. how complicated is that?? anyone know of any tutorials? and
2: It takes 15 mins to start up.. no kidding! I havea 1.6GHz cpu and 1GB ram.. you'd think that'd be enough (although i havent looked at the required spec)..

and just a note to jessejames, vista isnt XP with eye candy.. unless I've been misinformed its built on a whole new technology!

If it takes 15 minutes to boot something is wrong. Check your startup services.

http://computervitals.com/

bexm:

Go to RUN and type CMD.EXE, what does it say in the COMMAND PROMPT BOX ???

It is not new it is just an enhancement!

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

Call it whatever you may; enhancement, eye-candy, pop tart - 5 years is more than enough hiatus for an upgrade from Windows XP, which is void Vista hopes to fill.

So far, it's working pretty well on the system I installed it to and I'm having fun with it.

I have had ZERO driver issues. Both the Video card and sound drivers loaded automatically. With the sound drivers, Vista had to go out and get them on the net, which it did fine and fast.

Today I plugged in a Brother Laser printer to the USB port and Vista loaded a driver and reported it "installed" in just under a minute! I was printing with it immediately. To me, that's better then XP ever did for me until SP2 was released.

The only problem I'm experiencing is finding where the "glass" theme is :)

Anyway, just my opinions of course!

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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You should have had the 'aero glass' theme by default when you installed Vista Beta2, what happens when you hit Windows key & press tab, do you get a 3d view of all open windows, because if you do then 'aero glass' is running.

In any case, you can enable it by Right Clicking the Desktop - Personalization - Visual Appearance - Enable transparent glass and that should take care of it.

If not, head into the registry (Regedit).

0. Navigate through HKEY_local_machine/Software/Microsoft.

1. Right Click Microsoft - New - KEY & name the newly created key DWM.

2. In the new DWM key you created, create a DWORD (32bit) named EnableMachineCheck.

3. Set the value to 0, this disables hardware checking.

4. Reboot & activate the transparent glass.

I still prefer Windows 2000 though. Still running Windows 2000 and it has never failed on me.

The way I look at it is Windows 2000 is to Windows XP as to Windows XP is to Windows Vista.

Until MS does a complete redesign of the file system format then to me all Windows Vista is just another OS update.

Blackcomb windows next version that is set to be released in 2012 is suppose* to come with a hole new file system format that will retire NTFS.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7800GT
SATA II 2x 200gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

Hi Sabertooth!

Hitting the "Windows key and TAB" does nothing but "tab" through the menus.

When I go to "Personalize/Visual Appearance" transparent glass is not one of the options.

I'll try the registry tweak now, but I'm wondering if it isn't a limitation of my display adapter. It's a GeForce MX440 with 128MB and 8X AGP.

Amyway, I'll post back after I try the tweak.

Thanks for the info!

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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Sorry for the double post.

I tried the registry edit and nothing changed. Here are my choices under "Visual appearance:

Musky's Vista desktop

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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Have you rebooted and tried to re-enable aero glass after editing the registry?

If you have 'images' enabled in your computing.net profile you should see a portion of my desktop in Vista (shown below) with aero enabled. I used the snipping tool in Vista for the capture & highlight the related translucent effect of the scheme and other points of emphasis.

Yes, I see your Image post. I didn't post mine that way because it seems most people have their images turned off in Computing,net.

I haven't tried the snippet tool yet, but I'm really impressed with the results you got :)

I have rebooted after the registry change, with no effect.

I wonder if I could try extracting the theme from the Vista DVD?

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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I don't have the "Change your color scheme" option either??

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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That is normally what I got after clicking Personalize - Visual Appearance.

I know your MX440 isn't officially supported but I was hoping the registry hack would somehow allow a workaround so that you can enable Aero.........Oh well, you got an excuse for getting a newer video card.

GeForce FX 5100
GeForce FX 5200
GeForce FX 5200LE
GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
GeForce FX 5500
GeForce FX 5600
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra
GeForce FX 5600SE
GeForce FX 5600XT
GeForce FX 5700
GeForce FX 5700VE
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra
GeForce FX 5700LE
GeForce FX 5800
GeForce FX 5800 Ultra
GeForce FX 5900
GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
GeForce FX 5900XT
GeForce FX 5900ZT
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra
GeForce PCX 5300
GeForce PCX 5750
GeForce PCX 5900
GeForce 6100
GeForce 6150 LE
GeForce 6150
GeForce 6200
GeForce 6200 LE
GeForce 6200 with TurboCache
GeForce 6200SE with TurboCache
GeForce 6500
GeForce 6600
GeForce 6600 LE
GeForce 6600 VE
GeForce 6600 GT
GeForce 6610 XL
GeForce 6700 XL
GeForce 6800
GeForce 6800 LE
GeForce 6800 XE
GeForce 6800 XT
GeForce 6800 GS
GeForce 6800 GT
GeForce 6800 Ultra
GeForce 7300 LE
GeForce 7300 SE
GeForce 7300 GS
GeForce 7300 GT
GeForce 7500 LE
GeForce 7600 GS
GeForce 7600 GT
GeForce 7800 GS
GeForce 7800 GT
GeForce 7800 GTX
GeForce 7800 GTX 512
GeForce 7900 GS
GeForce 7900 GT
GeForce 7900 GTX
Quadro FX 330
Quadro FX 350
Quadro FX 500
Quadro FX 540
Quadro FX 550
Quadro FX 560
Quadro FX 600
Quadro FX 700
Quadro FX 1000
Quadro FX 1100
Quadro FX 1300
Quadro FX 1400
Quadro FX 1500
Quadro FX 2000
Quadro FX 3000
Quadro FX 3000G
Quadro FX 3400
Quadro FX 3450
Quadro FX 3500
Quadro FX 4000 SDI
Quadro FX 4400
Quadro FX 4500
Quadro FX 4500 X2
Quadro FX 5500
Quadro NVS 440
Quadro NVS 285

Thanks Sabertooth,

So you're thinking that because the card isn't supported, that the "Change your color scheme" windows isn't showing?

It's funny that Vista had built in drivers for this card too :(

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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Question. Nvidia FX 5100. I never have seen those cards before, where they onboard video or something?

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7800GT
SATA II 2x 200gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

Which ATI chip sets are compatible?

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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http://www.vistaultimate.com/graphics_cards.htm

BTW, I thought I should let you in on this, hopefully it works this time around.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DWM

If you do not already have a DWM key, right click Microsoft - New - KEY & name the newly created key DWM.

In the new DWM key you created, create a DWORD (32bit) named below.

"EnableMachineCheck"=dword:00000000 (value = 0)
"UseMachineCheck"=dword:00000000 (value = 0)
"Glass"=dword:00000001 (value = 1)
"Blur"=dword:00000001 (value = 1)
"UseAlternateButtons"=dword:00000000 (value = 0)
"Animations"=dword:00000001 (value = 1)
"AnimationsShiftKey"=dword:00000001 (value = 1)

Notice you are to create this under HKEY_CURRENT_USER this time around. Make sure you reboot again and hopefully you'll have the option to enable aero glass.

Let me know how this pans out.

I'll give it a try, thanks again

Also, stupid question, but do I type in the quotation marks? I know sometimes you do and don't :)

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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If you're thinking this is one of those times that you shouldn't, you are very correct, please ignore the quotation marks.

I am curious to see how this turns out eventually because some folks with MX440 have made claims of running aero successfully.

I entered them without the quotation marks and I'm afraid it didn't help. Still no "Glass" or even a "Change your color scheme" option.

One thought though, there is already a DWM key here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM

Could it be that this is where the modifications should be put instead of just

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DWM?

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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Yeah!....Use the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM instead of the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\DWM. BTW make sure you have the latest drivers for your MX440 too.

Well, I made the changes in the registry. I also added the DWM key to:

HKEY_local_machine/Software/Microsoft/windows.

Just in case it needed to be there instead of HKEY_local_machine/Software/Microsoft.

But no luck, still no "Glass" theme.

I also downloaded the newest drivers from Nvidia. I had to use the XP drivers as the Vista Beta driver installation program told me the device was not supported.

The driver date is 6/1/06

Let me know if there is anything else you'd like me to try. This machine is set up as a "Demo" and I'm only using it to test Vista, so don't worry about hurting anything. If I need to re-install, it's no big deal :)

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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I think it's pretty much a shut case with the MX440, M$ may have upped their code ante in-between the prior builds of Vista and Beta2 and thus ruining every hope of enabling 'aero glass' with that GeForce..............;-(

If you have a better card that you can swap with to confirm this, It'd be nice.

I'll see what I can dig up, I have a few ATIs around, I'll have to check which are deemed compatible by the MS Gods :)

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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http://www.vistaultimate.com/graphics_cards.htm

any voodoo 5 hehe.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ OC 2.7ghz
2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200
Nvidia 7800GT
SATA II 2x 200gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0
Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

I have aDWL-650+ that works perfectly on my Dell latitude D800 with a 2wire Home portal 1800HW to access my DSL connection with PRTC when using Windows XP Pro. Now I installed Windows Vista and the card is recognize and the wirwless network detected but can nor connect. The message is "The capability of your network adapter does not match the requirements of this network" Any one nose the reason and the fix?

Hector

Hi Hector!

It would be best if you started a new thread for your network card problem as this thread has gotten a little bloated and you may not get the attention it deserves.

Meanwhile, I'll do a little research on your problem.

Musky
If the voices inside my head paid rent, I'd be rich!

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