Vista does not support AVC content

Here is a link that sort of explains what Vista doesn't support regarding AVC content. They also refer to the ieee 1394 (firewire bus). I was well aware that MS had dropped support for tcp/ip over firewire in Vista, but this AVC content stuff got by me.Here is a link that seems to date Febuary 2008.

Were most of you aware of this info and would it have any impact on you using Vista. I was searching for info on firewiire in Vista when I came across this. I am sort of moving into the Microsoft hater crowd. Most of these capablities I don't need. I went with Vista Home Basic to avoid MS media center and Aero crap. The statement does not support playback of content across ieee1394 is very vauge. Also, Microsoft has a way of burying info on what they don't support.

I will probably still buy a firewire audio interface, possibly Echo audiofire 4.At some point their will probably be Linux support for this interface.The main problem I have with Microsoft ,is that they seem to be putting more effort into making things not work rather than to ensure that things are working correctly.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944149

It's hard to believe that XP and Vista are from the same company. (As I understand it, because of the long term nature of the core teams responsible for OS releases from MS, that they tend to be all different personnel. Don't know if that's actually true but it wouldn't be hard to believe in this case.)

Vista is certainly the most mismanaged OS release from MS since Windows 3.0 -- and seems to be the most disastrous for the company ever.

It's not just geeks who hate it.

Everyday computer users -- folks who'd been using XP happily for years, and often '98 before it -- all seem to have horror stories about new machines that crawl or crash repeatedly, Vista-ready software that doesn't work, hardware that can't be used, and a generally confusing environment that is for many the hardest Windows yet to set up properly and use.

(I was just at a family party yesterday and a technically savvy longterm computer user -- a librarian at a very modern library -- was lamenting that while she was able to get an XP machine in the twighlight of the official release period of that OS, her folks ended up having to buy an HP with Vista on it and it's been a nightmare trying to get it just to do what the old computer did effortlessly.)

MS has too much obstinate corporate ego -- no doubt reinforced by some of the same suited idiots who forced the Vista "feature set" onto the development team -- to admit what a disastrous ongoing calamity Vista is for the company and its users -- but, sadly, they'll probably all get big bonuses when they finally leave the company, even though there is every appearance that they will have dealt MS an irreparable blow in the consumer and business marketplace.

This has always seemed to me like MS forgetting what it does best -- which is make an essentially solid core OS and development tools for it -- and chasing after some silly notion that they could compete with Apple in the trendy gewgaw department. But the trendy gewgaws they copied from OS X, as far as I can tell, were the silly bits that don't mean anything to getting real work done or were "advances" like the rescaling graphic engine that, so far, haven't done much more than give the world the "swoosh" (the tornado like animation when an open window is sucked down onto the Dock, the taskbar-like shortcut bar at the bottom of the Mac screen) and the ability to view open windows as thumbnails (nice but hardly a revolution in ease of use). But for those type of capabilities and other supposed advances that no one seems to have found yet, Vista trades away an enormous amount of performance.

Whenever I talk to regular users, with only a very small handful of exceptions, they lament that they thought they weren't able to get an XP machine now that they're 'stuck' with Vista.

If MS had any brains, they'd hustle XP into new packaging with a slightly new name but a big, can't-miss-it gold medallion type sticker that says somthing like "Tried and true, classic Windows XP technology," toss in some freebies but leave the core OS alone, and market it off the shelf and allow the vendors to start selling it -- starting tomorrow...

I am going to be keeping an eye on what companies like Dell do with Linux.As it gets more and more usable hopefully it will meet my needs. I am not saying Vista is unstable. I just don't like the feeling I get from Microsoft. It seems MS and their business partners view thier customers as enimies or potential criminals and are crapping on them at will. I don't think Intel is innocent either. It seems Apple is having thier own issues with firewire. Don't forget that they use Intel hardware. With both Apple and Microsoft concentrating on enabling and protecting content, maybe at somepoint Linux can save the day for people who want an uncrippled audio envirnment. The rumor that Apple was shopping its proffesional apps is not encouraging. Here is a Dell link regarding Linux. I am going to stick with Vista for now, but I am going to pay more attention to Linux.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/ubuntu?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&ST=dell%20linux&dgc=ST&cid=22125&lid=519235

Well, the business consumers are pointedly unhappy with Vista. As you probably know, many enterprises made a point of leaning hard on MS to continue releasing versions of XP for sales to enterprises -- even as those sales were denied or made annoyingly complicated to consumers.

MS has mismanaged the relase of Vista utterly woefully and as more and more people make the move to Vista with its headaches, disappointments, and turgid performance, the already troubled relationship of consumers with MS seems to be turning into outright antagonism and bitter disappointment.

Vista users take a huge performance hit (over an optimized XP machine) but also have to put up with software and hardware that either simply does not work or work properly, or limps along under the big burden of Vista. And it offers what?

No one has explained to me just what I would be getting by switching to Vista. If I had all 64 bit hardware and software to make use of that, the 64 bit issue might be a little more persuasive -- but performance of 64 bit Vista is EVEN WORSE than 32 bit Vista and will only start paying off -- it at all -- when memory requirements go through the old roof.

Sort of standing back a bit, my impression is that the Windows platform will have to divvy itself up in the future, releasing two distinct versions of WINDOWS:

As mentioned before, I use x64 VISTA on an x64 machine. I use SONAR x64, which does indeed run faster and more smoothly than x32. The downside (and a big one) is that SONAR x64 does not recognize 80% of my DX and DXi pluggies. Forcing me to install both versions--- and shuttle back-and-forth between them.

Vista really isn't so bad anymore... Eventually you just have to move on.

The 9/11 hijackers should have flown a plane into Redmond. But they didn

What a messed up thing to say/think. Web forums...

Vista really isn't so bad anymore... Eventually you just have to move on.

Does the phrase pry out of my cold, dead fingers suggest any sort of acquiescence to you?

I think it's funny that there are going to be so many demi-switchers blissfully using XP on their Macs while the upcoming generation of Vista users struggle to run that OS on their PCs.

I can guarantee you I'm not the only tech-savvy user who is seriously wondering if he can possibly hold out for Windows 10 -- or wondering if he can even reasonably believe that there's any chance W10 won't also be woefully late and come out just as bloated and troubled.

Happily, my primary database clients are doing everything they can to hold off any moves to Vista because the owner has already bought several Vista machines and has had seriously unreliable and sluggish performance on machines from two major vendors. This is a guy who bought his first PC in 1983, so he's not a naive user. But he's not a geek. He's an end user who simply wants a machine that works reliably. And he's not happy. So that's kept me from having to bother. (More and more of my work is online, so maybe it won't even matter.)

But, sure, I understand that at some point, it seems likely I may have to make a move to a 64 bit architecture and OS and it will be sooner rather than later. As it is, I've frozen my music production budget. And nothing I'm running would be woefully constrained by the practical memory limits of my machine and XP32. But I'm not even half-filled with regard to RAM. So, you know... I could double my memory relatively painlessly. So why should I break all the stuff that works for me, throw myself in tumult, and have to buy new, much higher performance hardware just to achieve little better than the actual performance I have now?

I can wait.

Struggle? You actually know these people or that's your impression of things based upon what you've heard? Vista runs just fine here on a generic PC...

I moved to Vista a while back for my software development machine. I don't find it to be much of an issue myself. It has the kinds of quirks that a major new release always has of course. But it's been very stable for me, though the overhead is definitely higher than XP. I still use XP on my DAW.

I am basing that on a broad collection of anecdotes from people I've actually talked to or who have discussed their experiences credibly on the web. Opinion among people I've talked to in the real world is running heavily negative. People really hate it. I'm not making it up. And I wish they were all just clueless losers. But they're not.

I'm happy you're satisfied, and every guy like you and Dean -- because I consider both of you guys quite credible (and Dean's a serious geek, and I mean that in the most complimentary way) -- moves me just a little farther from a sense of abject dread. Unfortunately, you guys are way in the minority of the people I talk to. When I talk to someone who is using Vista -- as I did just yesterday, I probe their experience level, I listen for obvious cluelessness, and I listen to their stories and opinions. Like I said, people really hate it. No doubt for many reasons, maybe not all of them warranted.

But I've heard and read their stories -- and I've seen entirely credible benchmarks that support the negative estimations of performance.

Since you like it, let me ask you this: did you get it preinstalled on a new machine, or did you switch to it?

If the latter, can you really claim that you percieve the performance as anywhere close to being on a par with the responsiveness of XP on the same machine?

CNET article on XP vs Vista benches: http://news.cnet.com/Windows-XP-outshines-Vista-in-benchmarking-test/2100-1016_3-6220201.html

And, with regard to its acceptance by consumers and business customers, of course, now it's the only thing shipping out of Redmond, but while XP was still an active option, sales of boxed copies of Vista were a staggering 60% lower than XP sales during either product's first 6 months. 40 units of Vista for every 100 units of XP sold in each products first 6 months. So, I'm not imagining the antipathy toward Vista among consumers -- and the reticence of enterprises to adopt Vista has been much noted and worried over in Redmond, of course. A year after Vista's release only 13 percent of businesses had even begun to adopt Vista. That's not 13 percent of the desktops in business -- that's only 13 percent of businesses had bought any Vista copies or machines.

By the way -- I sit and watch those insipid everything-you-know-about-Vista-is-wrong adverts in stupefied wonderment. How dumb does Redmond think Windows users are anyway? They must think we're freaking simpletons. "Wow, this specially set up machine didn't crash once while I was using it while I was being filmed for an advertisement! I guess Vista must be really advanced, after all!" Come the fick on. This is apparently the problem when you let a bunch of secret Mac-lovers run your OS division and your marketing: you apparently get the worst of both worlds and apparent contempt for Windows consumer from the very people trying to sell to them. It's insulting.

It basically comes down to Vista's ardent support of DRM, and it's not just ieee1394, it's also SPDIF or any other external protocol that attempts to play back what Vista deems as illegal content.

What's AVC content and why should I care whether Vista supports it or not?

Now, Mike, ya gotta LEARN these things. There's only so much handholding we're willing to do on this Forum!

:poke:

Blue, I'm with you. I finally gave up using Vista on my HP laptop after over a year, and am now running Ubuntu Linux. I get MUCH better performance using the same machine, so the benchmarks don't surprise me at all. Vista just plain sucks, as I lamented in this thread. I run XP on my main desktop machine, and I'm certainly not going to "upgrade" any time soon.

By the way, for those who do want to run 64 bit apps there is a 64 bit version of XP too...

3 Steps to make Your Vista PC Run Better

Step 1- That brand new PC you just bought Has probably been sitting in a box in a ware house somewere for 5 months. All its crap is out of date from the moment you bought it. You need to upgrade your bios and all of your drivers.

Step 2- All those fancey animated windows and 3D craptacular effects make your fancey, high-end machine run like a dislexic midget with club foot. Turn all of that {censored} off and run it in classic mode.

Step 3- After you have tried steps 1 and 2, and your machine still runs like {censored}, uninstal vista, take it back to the store, and instal a free version of Linux!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264

Vista will tighten up and lighten up over time. A lot of these says complaints were made about XP when it first came out. It was too fancy and took up too much CPU for stuff that doesn't matter, and it was buggy, and all of that. Now we consider it the low end, efficient, and stable OS. It's just the great cycle of life.

Add search function to that list - it's really good, it's finally on a par with that of the Mac - in some ways it's better.

As mentioned previously, I still do 95% of my Windows-oriented audio and video work with XP but have a removeable OS drive so I travel to Vista-land from time to time so I can work with 64-bit Sonar. So far, so good but I must emphasize that it is a totally stripped down version - no eye candy, all the permissions stuff turned off, etc. I also turn off indexing and just run it from time to time so the search function stays up to snuff.

I think Vista has much potential, but I question whether Microsoft will spend much effort tweaking it when they're probably better off pushing for the next version as soon as they can, and get that one right out of the box. BUT from what I hear, the next version of Windows is built on the Vista code base, so maybe fixing Vista would be a side benefit of writing the next OS.

Thanks. If if has anything to do with video (watching or producing), it doesn't have any business being on my computers. That's why I have a TV set and a DVD player.

I'm just beginning to accept audio on the computer as a necessary way of life. My new Pentium 4 has XP installed.

Well I been using it for about 6 months now and theres nothing that impresses me. Its big and bloated with too much stuff you dont need.

The latest development/Issue i been having is a 15 second delay when I click on my computer. I did a littel research and believe it has to do with indexing and windows search. I disabled search under services and it worked for a short time then it didnt make any difference it was still 15 seconds.

I have shut down all unnessasary services and its still a bloated pig.

I think my Wife is buying an XP pro lisence of her sister who owns a business this week. I cant wait to change back over. My system should be cranking. Right now I just make due.

How about the fact that you still use it? Some sort of impression there...

Its not my Daw its on my new unit. I use for mastering and other functions.

I have XP Home but need to put XP Pro on there for some specific applications. Pro is still in the $150~200 range.