and it’s going smoothly so far. 
I only have 512mb of RAM and it’s not bogged down or anything.
w00t
What the heck did you go and do that for?
Dude it’s sooo pretty…
And a lot of things like sound and wireless networking work much better than XP…
Hey, wanna give us some screenshots of the pretty new vista?
man I fucking hate reformatting…
I think hating windows vista or microsoft products in general has become more of a trend now. It’s always the same people bashing microsoft who are playing halo 2 on their beloved xboxes bragging about how they pwned some noob. /minirant
Anyway windows vista really isnt as bad as everyone makes it out to be. I find that its a great improvement over windows XP despite the anti-piracy add-ons.
Its not bad, its just resource hog. Hey VK any noticeable difference with with blender or full screen apps?
due to the way vista handles windows, blender ALWAYS redraws its 3D window, even when ‘minimized to taskbar’, the benifit of this is that when you want to check the rendering progress, or fluid baking progress, you can simple hover your mouse over the taskbar and a live preview will popup, no more ‘black window syndrom’…Of course, XGL have been doing that for some time now…
however, a default ultimate install (RC2) takes up 470mb of RAM on boot with no service tweaks… making running blender a pain. hopefully the retail home premium edition will use less.
One thing I wished they’d fixed in Windows was the ability to boot from external drives. Other systems have been able to do that for years (I feel this is going to get said a lot concerning Vista). Sadly they haven’t fixed it and you have to get Windows embedded.
Most of it looks wrong to me. None of the fancy effects seem to have any real purpose. The glass look of the windows is distracting because you can see what’s behind the window you are focused on. The window resize buttons are different sizes. The window switcher isn’t that great because you can’t see the entire contents of the windows. The windows fading in is plain silly. It makes it look like a computer from the 90s when screen redraws weren’t fast enough. Gadgets on the desktop is pointless. The whole reason you have these things is so you can get quick access to apps you use a lot and hide them when you’re not using them. The gadget bar is no better than putting the app inside the taskbar or dock.
As for live updates, other systems have been able to do that for years and better because you don’t have to hover over each item to see it. You still have a registry, you still have activation, you still have endless popups, you have less choice in anti-virus software etc now that Microsoft are going to favour their own security products ( http://www.betanews.com/article/Symantec_MS_Making_Vista_Insecure/1161117633 ) and you can’t use a Zune. Microsoft’s own music player doesn’t work with it’s latest system - it probably will when Vista is released but it should work now. Not that it matters because you can’t boot Windows off it for two reasons: you can’t boot Windows off an external drive and you can’t use the Zune as an external hard drive. You still have loads of different versions of the system too. Why do they have to ship both a 64-bit and a 32-bit version, a home version and a pro/ultimate version, an embedded version, a media centre edition etc? You know in the basic version, you don’t even get aero, media centre capability or a remote.
bash, bash, bash 
The one thing I think is good about it is it finally has a proper GUI for the installer and not some old dos-looking text input. But it’s crazy that it’s taken them until 2007 to get there.
Pretty much everything you just said is wrong except for the gadget bar. I haven’t used it at all
“None of the fancy effects seem to have any real purpose.” Is that so bad? It’s the same for OSX.
“The glass look of the windows is distracting because you can see what’s behind the window you are focused on.”
Never had a problem with it. It’s usually only with system applications (explorer, control panel) and it’s never transparent on places that you’re looking at directly.
“The window resize buttons are different sizes.”
Not really enough to be noticable.
“The window switcher isn’t that great because you can’t see the entire contents of the windows.”
Yes you can. And the task bar gives full window previews as well.
“The windows fading in is plain silly. It makes it look like a computer from the 90s when screen redraws weren’t fast enough.”
Definitely not. It’s actually very very similar to OSX now.
The one thing I think is good about it is it finally has a proper GUI for the installer and not some old dos-looking text input. But it’s crazy that it’s taken them until 2007 to get there.
Windows XP had that I believe.
NodeRanger:
No kidding. You never realize how much time has gone into configuring your PC until you format it.
I needed to format it anyway so it’s not really bothering me all that much.
*nix + AIXGL is lightyears ahead of all the so-called “vista eye candy”. I mean it’s almost a joke when microsoft labels it as something “innovating”.
I’m so glad I took the time to learn Linux over theese past 2 months.
I won’t have to buy vista, or any other windows OS ever again.
Good ridence.
Consider the difference between “Alt+Tab” behaviour between Vista Aero and XGL/Compiz:
-
Compiz lays the dynamic, real time previews horizontally as you would hope. Pretty and functional.
-
Vista, however, takes a step backwards because it stacks the previews in an utterly retarded fashion. You might find it pretty but I find it frustrating - I want to see what I am switching to immediately.
Does Vista have workspaces yet? Not that I know of…it really is behind the times. Use linux/xgl unless you are a heavy gamer or have to develop applications for Windoze. Otherwise, no excuse.
Koba
Why the hell would I use linux, honestly? I have absolutely no need for workspaces and superintensive effects and I don’t want to deal with the shitty compatibility because everyone else uses Windows.
edit:
Looked more into the aforementioned desktop managers…
Come on guys, those are really over the top. Truely pointless…
I have to agree intirely with OSXrules here. Microsoft may as well have photocopied Mac OS X and then munted it up, and what have you got… Vista!
Hasta la vista, Vista.
“Microsoft may as well have photocopied Mac OS X and then munted it up”
I don’t get how this is bad considering that OSX is said to be so good…
You wouldn’t. It’s only good for people who know how to use it, or have the time to learn it (it’s only then that the benefits become clear).
My point was simply that all the “innovation” microsoft keeps talking about in Vista, is old news from the linux standpoint, and has been old news for some time.
Videogames aside, Linux beats windows on every other level, mercilessly.
That’s all I was trying to say.
As for what you should use: I couldn’t care less.
XGL is great but its a pain in the ass to install. But then again, you cant compare linux and windows because they’re like apples and oranges. One is commercial, and the other is open source, meaning that the code gets constantly updated. OSX has several “fancy effects” too, i dont see any purpose in those either, other than just eye candy. Windows Vista is late, i’ll give you that, but it is an improvement over Windows XP. Personally, im the gamer type and I love PC games and most of them run on Windows. I’ve used Windows and Linux extensively but i still preferr Windows for entertainment purposes. I dont use OSX much so there’s not much i can say about that, but Windows being as popular as it is already advantages over it.
I can use it, infact my computer used to be dual-boot until I decided that there was no point to having Linux.
I play computer games a lot and Windows is perfectly sufficient for everything else as well.
You obviously have not seen a Windows pc before. Every single point you made is simple wrong.
Windows could boot from external drive for a long time already. And that’s just your first point…
Yeah, let’s bash Windows, even when we know absolutely nothing about it at all!
Yeah, sure Vista is probably one hell of a lot better than XP, but it would be nice if they did something original, instead of just ripping off Apple.