The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

GM: Don't even try it w/o using vlite to shrink it. It'll ruin the experience for you lol. It does have a lot a of bloatware, but you can pretty much take out ANY of it that you don't want, and I mean ANYTHING. I really don't like the way soooo many people say that vista is garbage w/o doing anything about it to take out some of the trash. I must say before I used vlite, I never realized how much pure unnecessary BS they stuffed into it...
And btw, those cm fans you recommended are amazing.

 

That's the problem. People hear things about Vista. They don't actually try it out. Vista is pretty damn good. I personally don't have issues with it. It's much nicer, and MUCH MORE INTUITIVE that XP. Yeah I went there. The Drivers are MUCH easier to get. It automatically installs most of them. Windows Vista 64 has wayy more support than XP 64.

It's not that much of a resource hog. It has prefetching which kinda eats up the RAM. I have it running on a older AMD Athlon 64 system with 1GB of RAM and it has been running perfectly fine since Vista came out. That's my Dad's business computer, and no complaints. They prefer using it over the XP computer they have, and they both have the same specs.

MRK, looks like I'm gonna have to try that Vlite.

 

You are honestly the first person I have EVER heard agree with me. lol

And yeah everyone should try it out. The amount of things you can remove is HUGE. It allows you to even enable or disable services on install and add hotfixes and updates so you don't have to update when you install. You can even pre-enter your product key, user name, pw, and a lot of other settings so it automatically installs after about two or three clicks, and you don't have to wait around for it to finish and set the settings after.

 

superfetch is one of the main reasons its faster then XP aswell

im sure when XP came out it ate more resources than 98?

im still waiting to see exactly what software vista installs with it which is bloatware?

if its going to be the demise of MS, how is it the biggest selling OS?


and russ do you have a link to what you said?

 

I agree with what mrk says, but not with what you say shaff, mainly because of the use of the word 'faster'. On a similar system boot time in XP versus Vista is 1m45 vs 8m15. I can see how you might perhaps shrink that to three minutes, but that's still a lot longer than XP.

 

abuzar1,

Well some of my sources are Major stockholders in Micro$oft, and the stockholders are not pleased! Vista was late coming out because every time they thought they had it ready, someone upstairs wanted some new feature added. That's why all the core kernel changes! M$ has poured so much money in Vista, that it will never pay for itself. Stockholders don't like losing money! Especially when it's their money being thrown away!

And why would anyone want a slower operating system? Comparison tests in the last month or so show Vista can't keep up with XP in terms of program speed, and Windows 7 is rumored to be even faster than XP! vista Ultimate uses about 17GB of disk space. SP-1 adds about 2GB to that! Vista was flawed when it was finally introduced, and M$ knew it, but they released it anyway! The lawsuits have continued to grow to over 100,000 people. Most are suing over all the security BS and the fact that Some vista machines can't be converted easily to XP-Pro. People feel that it's their computer and they should be able to install any operating system or components in it they want, without issue! The evidence of sneaky dealings and outright blackmail that M$ used to force manufacturers to support Vista only machines, is overwhelming. Even the hard drive manufacturers are forced to make a certain percentage of pre-loaded drives as Vista or M$ won't grant them a license to buy them at all! M$ knows darn well that without an operating system included, these companies could go out of business since they are not licensed to buy OEM Pre-loaded drives unless they agree with Micro$oft's terms! Like I've said, it's hard to sell a computer with no OS!

There are 28 Subpoenas drawn up, for virtually all the heads of all the major companies that build Computers and perifials for computers. They will only be executed in the event this does go to Court. These are the people's witnesses, not Micro$oft's!. The States Attorney General has already said that given the scope and depth of Micro$ofts complicity in this matter through the evidence collected so far, the State may seek Indictments against some of microsoft's Officers, for Illegal Business Practices! The funniest thing is that Micro$oft actually put it in writing in the license agreement! Not quite as threatening as the way things really happened, but if the President of Dell goes on the witness stand , the signed license agreement backs up every claim of foul he makes! It's "Payback Time" for years of abuse by M$, and the CEOs and Presidents all know they can only win, and there's nothing M$ can do about it! Man, it hurts when you drop that Toilet lid on your whosis! LOL!! Just ask M$!

Regards,
Russ

 

Yes, XP was a right hog when it first came out compared to 98/Me/2000 but when they realised it didn't crash perpetually, people were all over it. Vista may not be unstable, but major corporations are turning it down as an upgrade for their PCs, I don't recall that ever happening with XP. Those who think Vista is good haven't had it take a dump on them yet, just you wait...

 

sammorris,

I couldn't agree more!

shaffaaf,

OK, one at a time! Vista is not faster! There have been many vista/XP performance shootouts, and XP has won every one of them, handily!

Yes, XP did use more resources than 98, but 98 was DOS based. It also does a heck of a lot more than 98 ever could, and it does it all better and faster than 98! Point being we did get an improvement all around for our money! That's not the case with Vista!

Bloatware? Oh, I don't know. There's over 1GB in printer drivers alone! I would guess even more for video cards. I'm not keen on giving up better than 10% of my 160GB HDD to any OS! The drivers should have been put on a driver DVD!

A link pertaining to what? I said I wanted to link to the Anandtech Shoot-Out, but I can't get the page to load. That was the newest Vista/XP shoot out I've heard of. It was conducted, in early July 08. I posted it here back when the review was first posted on Anandtech!

The lawsuit I can't go into any more datail on, at this time! People don't want Vista, that's the bottom line. I wasn't until this lawsuit took place, that M$ even considered continuing the life of XP in the form of Windows 7.

I don't think this will be the demise of M$, but it could be if they are stupid! The best selling OS in the world of all time is XP! over 52 million computers have been produced worldwide this year alone. Internet usage is up to over 1.2 billion users and growing every day! That's a huge amount of profit for M$! BTW, this link is perpetual!
http://www.peterrussell.dreamhosters.com/Odds/WorldClock.php

Micro$oft today revised their predictions for XP's market share, raising it 7% to a 22% share for the coming physical year. That's a huge increase, given the fact that M$ wrote XP off as dead!.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9027532

Vista is outselling XP, now but how much of that has been forced on us because of all the dirty dealings? People buy into the hype of vista, but when the product doesn't work right after months of use they tend to get a little pissed when they don't have a good working alternative. Now they're going to get one, XP, Windows 7 and XP-Vista, all XP based. I for one expect that 22% to grow much higher in the coming year!

Micro$oft has also released drivers previously unavailable for XP on some Vista machines, which is a good sign. The people have spoken, and their choice is overwhelmingly XP! It'll be around a lot longer than Vista as we know it today will.

I've had one Vista machine and have worked on many others. Even with a totally recovered laptop, it still had some glitches, even after all the upgrades and patches were applied. Oh, the person I sold it to, he converted it to XP!

Regards,
Russ

 

its never taken more than 2 mins max to start up for me sam.

and its been more than a year, nothing worse than xp so far

try vista out properly. i was liek you before, im sure boozer was, but we are fine

 

I will eventually boot 64 bit Vista, time will come when I have to, and I have a second Raptor to do it, but I need to acquire the OS first.

Just received my HD4870, now installed. Quieter than the HD3870 so far at idle (same decibels but a pure light-hiss tone, rather than that horrible grind) - max speed sounds fantastic though, almost identical to a jet, and I'm not joking this time, the vast number of blades on the fan means the frequency is several KHz.
Installing Catalyst. Rebooting to properly secure the card, will probably run 3dmark as a check then going out for the day.

 

That would be me, I guess? I purchased another new laptop later, and of course, it came with Vista. After installing Vista on this laptop, with no updates added and no other software loaded, I only had 757MB of free memory out 2GB of memory.

I backed up Vista with Acronis, just in case I could not convert it to XP Pro, and it took 11GB compressed. After installing XP and all the updates, plus Office 2003 Pro, and all my necessary software, it only took 4GB compressed to back it up.

Talk about bloat..... Who said it wasn't bloated?

 

Initial test results:
http://img376.imageshack.us/img376/1237/48703dmarkeb7.jpg
Not as good as the HD3870 crossfire combo, but I suspect that's due to the lack of scaling for 4800s in Canyon Flight. Return to proxycon scaled well, as did Deep Freeze.

In real world games, it's going to be a far more pronounced difference.

 

sam your going to love me beating you at fragsoc in october

see you on the 13th

and ur gonna love this:

i have been speaking to yewen (shop worker and forum admin) for a good few months on hwo to implement it, and now i think, there is no problems with you now? esp as it is next day, BUT it does have a stipulation.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=12285133#post12285133

 

Sure thing. You know my nick, it's in my signature.
I'll see you there, buddy, I will see you there.

 

sammorris,

The big thing with Vista when it does go belly up is it doesn't seem to make backup files for drivers like XP does, so failed drivers can cause horrible problems. When you roll back XP with system restore it calls on the backup files to insure that if the problem is an existing driver, it will be corrected. This does not seem to work with Vista. Installing something as simple as Power DVD7 should not bring the computer down. For me, I would have to replace most of the software I use, and that would be expensive. I prefer Photoshop 7 to the newer versions, and I've been using it since it first came out. You can't use it with Vista. I have the Enterprise Edition of Office, but I prefer the older Office XP, which again isn't compatible with Vista. I have no problem with change, but why should I have to fork out all that money for new software, when I'm perfectly happy with what I've got now. The company I do the air turbine work for was going to switch the entire office to Vista. Fortunately I got wind of it and convinced them not to do it! Had they done that I would have had to do a dual boot system, just to be able to use most of my programs. Just to upgrade our Auto-Cad system (which is custom) would have cost more than a couple of very nice C2D computers. Auto-Cad gave us a quote of $3200 to port all our special stuff over the Vista, plus an additional $2200 for the custom drivers needed for our specialized hardware. Again, they would have had to replace most of the software they use now, in something like 26 computers and the servers. Even buying Corporate licenses for all the software, wouldn't be cheap! Of course HP now has a contract out on me, but that's life! LOL!!

Regards,
Russ

 

for vista display drivers what normally would caus bsods, jsut causes black screen for a few seconds, and say the driver stopped working,a nd what it does is it reverts to the standard vista drivers for the gfx (normally from windows update, so its up to date) and then allows you to repair the driver installation or remove etc.

 

What happens when the default driver doesn't work either then? You're screwed... Knowing windows update that'll easily happen at some point.

 

a year and nothing has happened.

not proof enough?

 

To be fair, you've probably had a better experience using an AMD card. Seems unusual to say this, but for Vista, AMD seem to have better drivers... :O

And on that note, it's curious how different cards respond to drivers in different ways, using the same driver (8.1 at the time) the X1900XT would routinely crash when in older Source engine games (CS:S and HL2 original, not the episodes or TF2) at 2560x1600, the HD3870 handled it fine.
The HD4870 can run Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the 3870 can't... weird.

 

shaffaaf,

You also have to take into account that you know a good deal about computers, especially when it comes down to what to do what not to do. The average person knows nothing about this stuff. They do dumb things with a computer that you or I wouldn't ever consider doing.

Vista is not what I would call user friendly. The addition of all those basically useless 20 or more icons in the control panel, just made a bad situation worse. Renaming some of them didn't help much either.

The point I'm trying to make is that I see a lot of screwed up Vista machines. I have no doubt that most of it is caused by the operator doing stupid things, yet I rarely ever see an XP machine in the same situation unless it's a virus problem.

BTW! I just tried every cure for someone putting in an Administrator password in a Dell GX260. Now we can't get into the Windows. The weird part is that it asks for an Administrator Password when you try to use a boot disk, and that's DOS, not Windows! I've never seen that before! There is no option for an Administrator password in the bios! Like I say, people do stupid things with computers! Any ideas?

Russ