Okay so I'm ready to upgrade my PC. New motherboard, cpu & ram. It might be an opportunity to put Vista on instead of XP. I've read some LFS-related posts about Vista and most (?) people have it working okay.

However I've still not used Vista at all - never trusted it. But I *do* fancy DX10.

So whats the opinion on Vista at the moment? (for general stuff, not just LFS)

Get Vista Business

I have defended Vista as I have been using it on all my computers (home and work) and have had no issues with it at all (other than microphone socket not working, but thats a issue with it being on a macbook!). Vista ultimate throws up a few errors and some freezes, but have never had an issue with business edition

Hmm, opinion of blista? It kinda works, for some things.
Would I recommend it? Never, ever.

In short, blista is the new millennium edition.

Unfortunately, I have to use it at work, but would much prefer XP as I have at home (actually asked the boss for XP, but I got vista business anyway ).



Regards,

Ian

I have no problem with Vista at all. I'm running Vista Home on my laptop, and XP SP3 on the PC.

User Account Control is probably the most annoying feature on there but you can just as easily turn it off. After disabling a few services here and there and some start-up programs, I got it to run pretty quickly. It's pretty annoying how much RAM vista sucks up but disabling services will ease the pain. Other than that, it's like XP with some graphic changes and a few new things.

Vista uses a little more RAM, but the main point is superfetch (which caches stuff to make programs open faster) - this will use more RAM, the more you have, which usually gets around 50% RAM usage if you've got 1 GB or 4 GB of RAM (as tested by me). When an app actually needs the RAM superfetch should release it to the program.

XP has this too, but to a lesser extent.

If I was building a new PC and had to choose between XP & Vista, it'd be Vista - but £70 to upgrade to an OS with very VERY few noticable upgrades? Not really worth it tbh.

UAC sucks balls, but can be disabled in less than a minute. Some other annoying things are the tablet service (using 100mb of RAM even if you have nothing touch sensitive plugged in) etc which are running all the time, but don't need to be. Spend 5 mins tweaking your OS (like all Geek's should) and all will be fine.

i use vista on my system and it uses a tiny amount of power when idle. If you get it get the oem version of home premium it costs £100 less than the retail version and all it is missing is the fancy box.

Quote from Luke.S :

If you get it get the oem version of home premium it costs £100 less than the retail version and all it is missing is the fancy box.

And you're also missing a licence that allows you to transfer it to a different machine.

Well personally I was a bit hesitating as well when I bought Vista. The best solution that helped me a lot was installing Vista on my second HDD and keep XP on my previous one. That let me use both of them, which seemed very handy and you don't have to choose only one of them and be afraid that you might not like it etc. Think about that only if you decide to spend some more money on a second HDD, although you might find that choosing which OS you like everytime you reboot might become a bit frustrating at some times .

I have nearly all OS under the sun in my computers at home - 95, 98, XP, Vista, Ubuntu, Fedora (yeah, both are Linux, I KNOW)... Only no macs (that is Unix in disguise )

New computer? Vista.
Despite what the naysayers say, its much better than XP, and the market for apps and drives has matured enough so you can use it with no (or little) hiccups.
If you'r an advanced user, disable User Account Control. If you dont know HOW to disable it, DONT disable it - you dont know enough yet. It WILL be annoying as hell, but it WILL protect you. I caught a virus hidden in a no-cd patch for a game via UAC - the patch was trying to wite to /windir/system32 - something a patch shouldnt do. It is way safer (sometimes annoyingly safer), and has a much better interface - not only looks-wise (way past the time for a OS to use the uber GFX cards everyone now has), but usability-wise too.

For example, in XP, you open an explorer window in say... the LFS/Data/Setups folder. In those 2 billion files, you want the one named "XFG_somethingorother". You hit "X" and it will select the first file with the X letter. And thats it. hit "F" and it will go on to the files starting with the letter F.
In Vista, however, you hit X, and it pops to the "X" files. Hit F and it will go to the "XF" files. Hit G -> "XFG" hit the underscore "_" and "XFG_" and so forth.
Makes it finding file a HELL of a lot faster. Its an idea imported from linux, and a very good one. (though linux will show you a little box so you see what you've been typing).

In the start menu, you got a small box that is the equivalent to the run command. HOWEVER, this box can also be used to SEARCH the start menu.
Pu in the box "paint", DONT hit enter, and it will find the paint shortcut in the start menu for you. (or just type PAI and it will show you all the shortcuts with PAI).
Invaluable when, like all other users, your start menu is a mess of 2348796429874263 differente folders and 2314981239048761 different programs. Even better, the typing cursor is automatically put in the box when you click the start menu, so to being a prog you dont really know where it is, just hit the start menu (or windows key, a-la XP) and type the first few letters of the program. No need ot use the mouse at all.

Theres several of these small additions (like the omni-present search box on all windows) that REALLY help your life.
Going back to XP, though its more "familiar" feels somewhat clunky and clmusy. Navigating through endless folders just feels weird (in vista you got those dropdown foldertrees from the "triangles" in the address bar of the explorer window).

On an old computer - not worth the cash.
On a new one, though - go for it.

HOWEVER - THIS IS IMPORTANT.

If your computer is dual-core (as it should be) get Vista 64bit.
64-bit vista has about 70% less problems than vista 32-bit. 32-bit vista IS XP on a drag. (which is just win98 in a drag, BTW).
Also, get 2 gigs ram at least.With vista, firefox, and some otehr apps, I got 30% free physical mem free (from 2gigs). 1 gig is NOT enough.

EDIT: forgot to mention I also tried vista 32 on this computer, and it was hell - diVX didnt work, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. kept crashing, had a zillion little problems that had me go back to XP (this was a year ago). I got vista 64, and no problems so far.
Gotta love being a computer science student with free access to loads of microsoft products!

Quote from Stigpt :

For example, in XP, you open an explorer window in say... the LFS/Data/Setups folder. In those 2 billion files, you want the one named "XFG_somethingorother". You hit "X" and it will select the first file with the X letter. And thats it. hit "F" and it will go on to the files starting with the letter F.
In Vista, however, you hit X, and it pops to the "X" files. Hit F and it will go to the "XF" files. Hit G -> "XFG" hit the underscore "_" and "XFG_" and so forth.
Makes it finding file a HELL of a lot faster. Its an idea imported from linux, and a very good one. (though linux will show you a little box so you see what you've been typing)

BTW that's in XP too :P

I've gone to Vista x64 (got 4gig of RAM) as well and not had any major problems. Like Jakg said, spend 30 minutes on a few Vista tweak sites and you'll be much better off and learn a few things.

I had slight issues with my wireless pci card and connection but it's all sorted now.

Quote from Stigpt :

Gotta love being a computer science student with free access to loads of microsoft products!

I think being a student is the main reason.

Apart from that:
If you are happy with XP there is really no real need to upgrade (yet). Vista from my experience (trying home premium and business) is simply a Windows ME II (as Ian said), with everything more diffucult to navigate through (for instance changing some network settings) and more hardware dependend (my Notebook runs about 30 mins longer under XP, and yes it came with Vista).

UAC is a pain but can be disabled, as some other useless stuff as well.

As already suggested, get a spare hdd and install vista on that one and see yourself and give it a proper test if you like it or not. That's probably the best solution.

UAC is utter bollocks. It's never going to protect anyone, because if people don't know what they're doing, they click yes anyway. I know countless people who just click Yes to anything, regardless of what it says. Waste of time.

Also you would think with something that pops up every 5 seconds that m$ would make it fade in nicely or something, but no, the screen flashes black then it shows the message. Fantastic.

Actually most people I know go "OMG AAAAAAAH!" and then click "no" because they're scared they've broken something - sure, it means they never do much on their PC's anymore but it keeps them safer.