Flutterby™! : Vista ad 2008-02-08 15:18:13.693422+00

Vista ad

2008-02-08 15:18:13.693422+00 by Dan Lyke 5 comments

Snicker: The real commercial for Windows Vista. On that line, we were unpacking some new toys last night, and on the instruction manual for one I noticed that the French word for "Warning" is "Avertissement". Yeah, sounds about right.

You know - I'm almost ashamed to say this - but I've quickly become fond of Vista. Home Premium came pre-installed on my new desktop. Initially, I thought I'd just give it a try but now I find myself frustrated in XP on my laptop looking for features of Vista.

Of course, my new desktop is a pretty beefy machine - 2.4Ghz Core 2 Quad CPU, 3GB RAM, dual 320GB SATA drives, nVidia video, 22" monitor. But that's not an expensive box - NewEgg is now selling it for $659 (without the monitor - that was $239 from Dell).

Sure, Vista is bloated but Moore's Law seems to be taking care of that just fine. And the last time I tried to install Linux (Ubuntu) on a system, it wouldn't do it because it ONLY had 384MB of RAM.

I think the difference between Microsoft Bloat and Linux Bloat is that Microsoft recognizes that Moore's Law is a geometric progression - not linear!

As for the complaints in the video: I'm using AVG antivirus with no problems. I turned of User Account Control in Control Panel->Users - which disables the annoying "are you sure" queries every time you turn around (basically, makes users in the administrator group REAL administrators). I turned down the visuals in Aero (I really dislike UI transparency effects). I also haven't experienced a single BSOD or odd reboot since I got the machine. Task Manager currently reports 68 hours of uptime - not great compared to Linux - but this is my desktop that I use for development - not a dedicated server. I use ObjectDock to organize my applications so I only use the "Start" menu when I need something I don't use that often and spending a few extra moments searching for it doesn't hurt.

As I sent in a message following-up the Chugalug mention of this, I have mixed feelings about Vista. I've got the glitzy crap turned down, and the security model is making the best of a bad situation (I mean, the shadow registry stuff is total crap, but since the registry itself was an extremely bad ill-thought-out idea to begin with, it sucks less).

And I've had very few crashes, overall it seems like the next version of Windows.

Oh, okay, I'll tell you one thing that annoys me to no end: Vista takes the idiocy in its TCP/IP stack versus "internet connection" to new ~~heights~~ depths, causing me to reboot or do other wackiness every once in a while to get it to connect to our wireless network. All other machines here work fine.

vista came with my new computer. once i made friends with vista i haven't regretted the change one bit :>

I like to play games on my computer, my 5.1 sound in XP comes out as 2 channels in vista and my nvidia 7950gt which gets about 60 fps playing s.t.a.l.k.e.r. under xp gets about 20 frames under vista. Wow, which also locks at refresh rate of 60 fps under xp gets about 30 under vista. I realize these are both driver issues, however the biggest selling point of windows to everyone is "you just plug stuff in and it works, unlike linux where you have to twiddle with settings"

Of course, I dual boot ubuntu and that one actually does play 5.1 surround sound and my world of warcraft is locked at 60fps in both xp and ubuntu with almost no twiddling on either side. Seems to me, ubuntu's a better option for an upgrade than vista, but that's just my personal opinion as a linux junkie.