I'm Actually Getting into Vista...

[Anderton]

I have a PCAL computer with a removable system drive, so I can boot into XP or Vista-64. When I first got the computer I booted into Vista, tried it, hated it, and went back to XP. Certainly the buzz on Vista supported that decision.

 

But in the past few weeks, I've been sort of "forced" into Vista 64 bit because of Sony Vegas now doing 64 bits, and the time savings are so substantial it was worth running under Vista 64. So I'd grit my teeth, boot up in Vista, get my work done, then go back to XP.

 

Well, at the risk of people piling on, now I'm really getting into Vista. It confused the hell out of me until I got the book "PC How-To Guide for Windows Vista," which has been a life-saver. For example, you really need to forget about the whole file folder/drill down multiple levels metaphor: If you think of Vista as more like Google, when you get what you want by typing a few words into a box, you're much better off.

 

I think the biggest problem with respect to adopting Vista is that the file management system is radically, not just subtly, different compared to XP. If you sit down at Vista and try to make it work like XP, you'll emit a string of colorful swear words. If you can manage to forget everything you knew about XP and look at Vista as a clean slate, it helps.

 

And speaking of help, for the first time in Microsoft's life, the Help functions built in to the OS are actually lucid and helpful. Imagine that!

 

Slowly but surely, I'm going from "I hate Vista, I'm sticking with XP" to "Well, Vegas is so much slicker with a 64-bit OS I'll put up with Vista" to "Okay, I'm getting it." However, all this hinges on a) disabling UAC (not hard to do), and b) having SP1 installed, which fixes a lot of performance issues.

 

Yeah, I'm surprised too. And I'm sure I'll run into more road bumps, but right now, I'm the happy Vista-64 user Microsoft has been trying to find And frankly, I'm also surprised that Microsoft has been so incapable of getting across what Vista's about. It shouldn't take a magazine/book purchased at a local drug store to explain to me what's cool about an OS.

[John Sayers]

 

I think the biggest problem with respect to adopting Vista is that the file management system is radically, not just subtly, different compared to XP. If you sit down at Vista and try to make it work like XP, you'll emit a string of colorful swear words.

 

 

I have that kind of problem with XP - I have NO idea how the techs at microsoft think, totally weird. Take for example the file management system of windows media player - I have no idea how they came up their system - it still doesn't work for me. Similarly with outlook express which is just chaos.

 

I'm going to stick with XP more because of the devil you know.

[Jimbroni]

I have a PCAL computer with a removable system drive, so I can boot into XP or Vista-64. When I first got the computer I booted into Vista, tried it, hated it, and went back to XP. Certainly the buzz on Vista supported that decision. But in the past few weeks, I've been sort of "forced" into Vista 64 bit because of Sony Vegas now doing 64 bits, and the time savings are so substantial it was worth running under Vista 64. So I'd grit my teeth, boot up in Vista, get my work done, then go back to XP. Well, at the risk of people piling on, now I'm really getting into Vista. It confused the hell out of me until I got the book "PC How-To Guide for Windows Vista," which has been a life-saver. For example, you really need to forget about the whole file folder/drill down multiple levels metaphor: If you think of Vista as more like Google, when you get what you want by typing a few words into a box, you're much better off. I think the biggest problem with respect to adopting Vista is that the file management system is radically, not just subtly, different compared to XP. If you sit down at Vista and try to make it work like XP, you'll emit a string of colorful swear words. If you can manage to forget everything you knew about XP and look at Vista as a clean slate, it helps. And speaking of help, for the first time in Microsoft's life, the Help functions built in to the OS are actually lucid and helpful. Imagine that! Slowly but surely, I'm going from "I hate Vista, I'm sticking with XP" to "Well, Vegas is so much slicker with a 64-bit OS I'll put up with Vista" to "Okay, I'm getting it." However, all this hinges on a) disabling UAC (not hard to do), and b) having SP1 installed, which fixes a lot of performance issues. Yeah, I'm surprised too. And I'm sure I'll run into more road bumps, but right now, I'm the happy Vista-64 user Microsoft has been trying to find And frankly, I'm also surprised that Microsoft has been so incapable of getting across what Vista's about. It shouldn't take a magazine/book purchased at a local drug store to explain to me what's cool about an OS.

 

My girlfriends laptop has vista. I bought for her for christmas last year, and it has been a dog. I was embarassed. I figured the cpu and ram specs would make it run good regardless of all the bloated vista stuff I was hearing about. Its not like she's a power user, she wouldn't know the difference, I thought. Boy was I wrong, that thing was a dog.

 

Anyway, after getting into it. I removed all the sony vaio software, turned off a bunch of services, and the eye candy stuff. It now runs like a pc of its spec rating should. To your point all the tweaks took me longer than they should have, because I was looking for them as if I was on one of my XP machines. Nothing I mean nothing was in its normal place.

 

I'll have to check if it has sp1, because if it makes a difference I'll be doing that update as well.

[Jon Doe]

I hear you, but I'm still of the opinion that I shouldn't have to relearn computers just because MS wants to rejuvinate it's revenue stream. They're getting into the "change for the sake of change" marketing approach now, and I've got better things to do than completely relearn desktop OS's.

 

Imagine if the automotive industry did that. You'd be required to retake your driving test every time you got a new car.

[Anderton]

 

I hear you, but I'm still of the opinion that I shouldn't have to relearn computers just because MS wants to rejuvinate it's revenue stream. They're getting into the "change for the sake of change" marketing approach now, and I've got better things to do than completely relearn desktop OS's. Imagine if the automotive industry did that. You'd be required to retake your driving test every time you got a new car.

 

 

I find that many of the changes, like the way search is handled, are considerable improvements over what came before. And interestingly, the new Start menu is almost exactly how I set up XP for program selection. The self-diagnostic and repair tools are way advanced compared to previous versions of Windows. I don't think it's change for the sake of change, but I cannot fathom why Microsoft didn't put up a screen when you run Vista for the first time that says "Here's the stuff that's really different from XP, better read this or you'll want to throw your computer against the wall."

 

Vista definitely has some frustrations, but my sense is that once they wrestle the loose ends of this code to the ground, and we live in a mostly 64-bit world, that the next version of Windows will be to Vista as XP was to 98SE.

[Anderton]

 

My girlfriends laptop has vista. I bought for her for christmas last year, and it has been a dog. I was embarassed. I figured the cpu and ram specs would make it run good regardless of all the bloated vista stuff I was hearing about. Its not like she's a power user, she wouldn't know the difference, I thought. Boy was I wrong, that thing was a dog. Anyway, after getting into it. I removed all the sony vaio software, turned off a bunch of services, and the eye candy stuff. It now runs like a pc of its spec rating should.

 

 

I had the same problem with XP machines I bought for my mom and daughter; they were from an office supply store (the computers, not my mom and daughter) and came loaded with crapware. The key was getting rid of Norton and all its tentacles. Once that @#$%^ was out of there, the machines ran smooth as silk.

[UstadKhanAli]

I have the same experience as Jimbroni and Craig. I purchased a laptop, mostly for my girlfriend to use. It was slooooooow as molasses. I did all the usual fixes - turning off the useless graphics, services, etc. that things like tweakhound.com list. I never did have Norton installed in it, so that helped. Better, but still slow. I finally stuffed 4G of RAM into it. Much more enjoyable, and now, actually fairly fast.

[MikeRivers]

We're engineers and musicians, not computer technicians. Why should we have to "learn" an operating system at all? Why don't the people who write application programs provide us with programs that don't require us to see the operating system for anything beyond starting the program?

 

Remember back in the DOS days when there used to be file manger programs that made more sense than using the OS command line? I haven't seen one of those for Windows in a long time.

[Cry Logic]

 

"... Why should we have to "learn" an operating system at all? Why don't the people who write application programs provide us with programs that don't require us to see the operating system for anything beyond starting the program?

 

 

I'm surprised you have that attitude Mike.

 

Computers and operating systems are just tools to be used to achieve

our goals.

 

If we follow your line of reasoning,why should we learn anything at all?

Why bother to learn about frequencies or music theory or how to set

levels in a mixer?

Lets just get someone to write a program that does it all for us.

I'm sure you wouldn't want that.

 

As we evolve, new technologies evolve to help us keep evolving.

Operating systems are just part of that evolutionary chain.

 

As with all evolution it's a simple process of adapt or die.

Those who adapt will have the advantage over those who don't.

[bbach]

 

b) having SP1 installed, which fixes a lot of performance issues.

 

 

After installing SP1, Vista runs noticably faster.

[Rabid]

I had to disable UAC on all of our Vista systems to get some Microsoft programs to work.

 

Microsoft has fixed some bugs. One particularity amusing and annoying crash would result in Vista reporting that the driver "Windows Vista" had caused the crash.

 

I've had to turn off the new search feature. With my Vista machine holding my music collection plus a lot of Zune rental music, every time I would change meta info in an MP3 file it would take minutes to get control back from the computer. The combination of re-indexing of the search engine with thousands of music files was too much, even for my custom built machine with a clean install. I don

[Cry Logic]

 

"...The key was getting rid of Norton and all its tentacles. Once that @#$%^ was out of there, the machines ran smooth as silk..."

 

Norton!!! Yuk! What a disaster it's become.

It's hard to comprehend how they're still in business.

And uninstalling it can be a nightmare for the average user.

It's often easier to just reformat and re-install.

[Lee Flier]

If we follow your line of reasoning,why should we learn anything at all? Why bother to learn about frequencies or music theory or how to set levels in a mixer? Lets just get someone to write a program that does it all for us.

 

That's not what he's saying at all. Learning new things is great - having something arbitrarily rewritten (often not for the better) isn't. Particularly when you have people relying on computers for a living and speed/efficiency of use may be of the essence for their job.

 

Even though I'm an IT professional and have to constantly revamp my skills, I have the same opinion as Mike about operating systems specifically - they should be intuitive and any idiot should be able to use them without fanfare. There should be options to tweak them further for those who want to, but no one should have to. The OS is for talking to your hardware, hosting your apps, organizing your files, and managing networking and security. If you have to think about your OS too much, the OS sucks. You should be free to focus on your applications, and your computer should have plenty of resources left for your applications when the OS is done with it.

 

I do like Vista's search feature that Craig mentions - it's one of the few bright spots - but considering Windows Explorer was always crashing, that made it kind of a wash. The degree to which Vista slowed down my computer's performance, even after spending a year looking for more tweaks to make it better, was what really made it unacceptable to me. Then it took 3 hours, a call to India, and a Microsoft tech having to take over my computer and run a registry patch for me to install SP1. That was the last straw for me.

 

It looks pretty, but you have to turn off the pretty stuff in order to get even remotely acceptable performance (unless you have the latest and greatest hardware and a crapload of RAM, which again, you shouldn't need just to run the OS). I had Vista running on my laptop - which is a dual core with 2GB of RAM, and that ought to be plenty for the relatively simple tasks I do with my laptop. It wasn't. I'm now running Ubuntu (Linux) on it and it finally performs as I would expect a computer with those specs to perform.

 

And for those who want 64 bit apps and whose hardware can support it, there is a 64 bit version of XP. I'm still running XP on my main desktop, and it's solid and fast. I'm not switching any time soon, until MS gets their {censored} together.

[bbach]

 

Norton!!! Yuk! What a disaster it's become. It's hard to comprehend how they're still in business. And uninstalling it can be a nightmare for the average user. It's often easier to just reformat and re-install.

 

 

I liked how Dell allowed me to tell them what software I wanted pre-installed. I was happy to leave off everything except the OS. However, they did still stick in some internet crap, such as AOL on the machine, but other that having to clean out that stuff, I was able to load what I wanted and get up and running.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

We're engineers and musicians, not computer technicians. Why should we have to "learn" an operating system at all? Why don't the people who write application programs provide us with programs that don't require us to see the operating system for anything beyond starting the program?

 

 

If you purchase a turnkey audio computer that is expressly made for audio, that's about as close as you're going to get to that.

 

I hate fiddling under the hood as much as anyone, but I've found that I have to learn about the OS to make everything run. Unless I've got a computer technician on standby, no one's going to tweak or fix anything for me.

 

Just like engineers of analog equipment need to troubleshoot, clean, align, fix, and demagnetize equipment and understand its functioning (running tape at +3, biasing, 15ips vs. 30 ips, Dolby, which tape to use?) to make things run smoothly, we need to do the same with the equipment we have at hand.

[wheat]

 

I've got better things to do than completely relearn desktop OS's.

 

I guess you can never be persuaded to try a new Macintosh, then.

 

Too bad; you don't know what you are missing.

 

I'm "getting into Vista" myself, but I still go back to my Mac running OS X 10.5 Leopard every day--and it's a huge relief.

[Lee Flier]

Just like engineers of analog equipment need to troubleshoot, clean, align, fix, and demagnetize equipment and understand its functioning (running tape at +3, biasing, 15ips vs. 30 ips, Dolby, which tape to use?) to make things run smoothly, we need to do the same with the equipment we have at hand.

 

Sure... and again, I don't mind doing that at all, if at the end of the day the OS doesn't suck.

[Lee Flier]

 

I guess you can never be persuaded to try a new Macintosh, then.

 

 

Now see, there's a good example of an OS that is well done - I can walk into a studio that has a Mac setup, even though I don't personally own a Mac, and can easily get up and working in a few minutes. Same thing with Ubuntu Linux and the Gnome desktop.

[wheat]

And for those who want 64 bit apps and whose hardware can support it, there is a 64 bit version of XP. I'm not switching any time soon, until MS gets their {censored} together.

 

You guys have specific, valid reasons for working with Windows (preferring Sony Acid for instance), but let me say...

 

Mac OS X 10.5 is 64-bit, too, and it gives you much better raw performance than Vista on equivalently spec'd hardware.

 

All current versions of Mac-compatible programs run on Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, because it accommodates 32-bit applications and drivers and 64-bit applications and drivers at the same time. There is only one version of Mac OS X 10.5, whereas there are over a dozen versions of Windows Vista (7 different products at different prices, and then there's the question of whether you are installing the 32-bit version or the 64-bit version of each).

 

i think Microsoft Windows Vista is the best reason yet to consider a new Mac.

 

I use both Vista and Leopard each day (and XP and Ubuntu on the weekends ) because I'm an IT professional and I want to be up to speed on everything. And working with both, I can't see why your average consumer would choose Vista.

 

I'm just sayin'.

[Lee Flier]

I use both Vista and Leopard each day (and XP and Ubuntu on the weekends ) because I'm an IT professional and I want to be up to speed on everything. And working with both, I can't see why your average consumer would choose Vista.

 

I can't either. In my case it wouldn't be practical to have a Mac (at least, not running the Mac OS) because I work from home and have to use Windows on the job. I also like being able to put my own PC together from parts, and I can get more bang for the hardware buck that way. But otherwise, I have nothing against Macs at all - I think they're great for the average user and several of the commercial studios where I work have Mac based systems, which I happily use.

[doug osborne]

 

... it, and went back to XP. Certainly the buzz on Vista supported that decision. But in the past few weeks, I've been sort of "forced" into Vista 64 bit because of Sony Vegas now doing 64 bits, and the time savings are so substantial it was worth running under Vista 64. So I'd grit my teeth, boot up in Vista, get my work done, then go back to XP. Well, at the risk of people piling on, now I'm really getting into Vista. ...

 

 

Last year, I built my studio computer - a Q6600 quad core processor, 4G RAM, etc., and ran it with XP Pro.

 

Two weeks ago, with all my main hardware finally having appropriate drivers and SONAR coming out with a new version, I bought an upgrade of Vista Ultimate 64 with SP1.

 

Leaving on all the eye candy, this same computer is much snappier. SONAR8 64 bit is running projects at a fraction of their S7/XP CPU (if I could only get my Presonus Faderport to work...). I downloaded and installed the Vegas v8.1 64 bit version last night but haven't used it yet.

 

My son, too, has one of those bargain office store laptops with Vista installed. We turned off some of the crap and he's perfectly happy now, but it was certainly underpowered. With appropriate hardware Vista is absolutely better than XP, and comparable with current Mac OS in speed, user friendliness, etc.

[blue2blue]

 

 

 

 

I've been pretty vocal in my distress about Vista, predicated on the horrible performance benchmarks in its first year of release, by the inclusion of a CPU (or more like it GPU) -sucking rescaling graphics engine (Aero, which most power users seem to disable, anyhow) and the mountains of problems that real world friends with Vista had run into.

 

But, based on comments like these and some other reading, I'm slowly coming the conclusion that -- with sufficient and absolutely up to date hardware with appropriate, truly Vista-ready hardware drivers (hardware drivers seem to have been a serious pocket of problems for whatever reason -- certainly not directly MS's fault but when one sees across the board problems one has to at least suspect that MS bollixed some angle of third party preparations) -- that maybe, just maybe we were coming to a point where Vista might actually make sense over XP and XP64.

 

I'm not entirely convinced yet -- I still run into people who have recently bought machines with Vista on them who are having a lot of problems and who really, really, really regret that they ended up with Vista -- but I'm a little more hopeful.

 

 

One thing that was SUPPOSED to be in Vista but that was not included was a SQL based file system. (I'm unclear on the current state of the OS's native file format/system and that is my fault, so I'll take my lumps in the unlikely event that that earlier beta SQL based sytem made it into V-SP1. Frankly, I'ves simply been in denial over the forced adoption of Vista.) And that definitely sounded intriguing, as SQL underlies a lot of what I do in the ol' day job.

 

 

BTW... for those of you stuck with hardware that is not supported by reliable Vista drivers and disinclined to build their own machines or go to specialty houses like ADK or Sonica, good ol' Dell apparently still offers XP as a no-cost option on all or most of their machines -- but you have to ask. (Not an endorsement of using Dells for audio work, mind you. I love my old $343 refurbished beater box -- it's very quiet -- but that is, at least in part, because it is simply not a hot rod. If I was sinking a bunch of dough in a machine, I would build or look into a specialty shop.)

[Jimbroni]

 

I liked how Dell allowed me to tell them what software I wanted pre-installed. I was happy to leave off everything except the OS. However, they did still stick in some internet crap, such as AOL on the machine, but other that having to clean out that stuff, I was able to load what I wanted and get up and running.

 

 

This thread is very timely. A buddy just got a new dell laptop. I told him bring it over today, and I will remove a bunch of the dell stuff, and load open office, itunes, firefox, etc. Well I just got through looking at it, and going into tweak mode and all that. It had sp1 loaded. I noticed immediately that out of the box this machine ran noticeably smoother than my girlfriend's machine did. As I started looking for crapware and services to remove, I noticed this machine was pretty damn stripped down already. In my experience with Dell computers this hasn't been the case. My opinion of them has been improved after seeing how little crap ware, spam, product ads, demos etc. were on this machine today. I actually left the eye candy on, because he's not power user, and this machine was running pretty well. I was surprised.

[blue2blue]

My mom's refurbished 17" Dell lappy (bought a year or two ago with a 3 year drop and spill next-day warranty for $1040 to her door, including the heavy CA sales tax) came with something like seventy-seven background processes running after boot. It was utterly absurd.

 

But, basically, I just went into MSConfig, checked the 'hide Microsoft services' box and unchecked all but one or two non-MS services. I then uninstalled the AOL/Earthlink/etc crapware/offerware, got rid of the putrid MacAffee AV software (went with AVG; it's ok, I guess; I kind of feel she needs something... she's not exactly a power user, even though she's had some kind of computer for a couple decads now) and it's been a really decent little performer. (XP... I wasn't about to try to do mom-support on Vista, an OS I had no experience on).

[Anderton]

 

I'm not entirely convinced yet -- I still run into people who have recently bought machines with Vista on them who are having a lot of problems and who really, really, really regret that they ended up with Vista -- but I'm a little more hopeful.

 

 

One area where Microsoft really tripped up is they didn't mention that Vista has a serious learning curve, so people just expected to be able to sit down, make a few tweaks, and use it. There are still aspects of Vista that are quite puzzling/frustrating to me. It took me a LONG time to figure out that the default for search is not to use "natural language," but (fer crissakes!) Boolean search. Now, when someone's grandma goes to search for a recent photo, is she going to know to go "photo AND Billy NOT 2007"? Gimme a break! Vista is loaded with lots of little traps like that.

 

However, it's fantastic as a dedicated Vegas 64-bit appliance. I'll figure out the other stuff later. I will say that when I've had a situation where Vista made no sense (like "Where's the 'My Pictures' folder?!?"), once I figured it out, I generally preferred the Vista way of doing things compared to XP. Now, if you could just save Sidebar presets...then again maybe you can, and I just haven't figured it out!