Vista on the Z96Js: My experience

Here's a brief review of Vista Business how it applies specifically to the Z96Js, hope it helps you decide if you want to upgrade. Feel free to ask any questions!

The Good:

• Installing drivers was much easier under Vista than on XPsp2. Bluetooth was up and running when the computer first started up, and Vista (through MS update) found drivers for the Webcam, SD reader, TPM module, ATK0100 IN ADDITION to what would normally be found under XP. The only drivers I had to install was the sound card drivers, and my Gigabyte wifi card drivers.

• The Interface is nice as expected and it seems like Vista loads quicker than XP does (and I have done just about everything to get my XP to load fast)

The Bad:

• Wireless console doesn't install, it complains that ATK0100 isn't installed even after I have installed ATK0100 drivers from the Asus website. I guess I can't disable bluetooth in vista.

• When I try to run NHC (2.0 B4 w/ c2d patch) I get a blue screen of death, I didn't try P4G because it doesn't cut it for me.

• Perhaps because of the added load of the Aero interface on the GPU or because I can't get NHC to run, Vista resulted in about half an hour less battery life than in XP.

The Ugly:

• Nope it's not the new Aero interface, I would have to say the ugly would be the BSOD that I got when I tried to run NHC. In case anyone is wondering, it doesn't look much different than the one in XP.

Conclusion
I have decided that I am going to stick with XP for the time being because (as expected) not everything that I want to use is quite Vista compatible. Other than that I think that Vista is certainly a worthy upgrade from XP. I would compare it to going from 98 to XP. I wouldn't recommend going out and buying Vista yet if you care about these programs, luckily I don't have an investment in Vista because I got my copy from MS for free as part of the PowerTogether promotion.

 

Ah, the BSOD is back eh? I never got one on XP, had tons of ME heh.

 

John did you get the card reader drivers somewhere? Been looking for em so I can plug in my 1GB SD card for ReadyBoost.

 

I remember installing one of the betas. The thing crashed on copy & paste
I also had BSOD but that was more of a faulty memory issue.

 

@coriolis
I have never gotten one in XP either on my own personal computer but I have fixed friends that got them (from viruses and spyware) so much for those BSOD Mac ads eh?

@Gator
The card reader drivers I got simply by doing MS update, make sure you do custom or advanced (I cant remember which) so that you can choose exactly what software you want to update/install, I think the card reader drivers were one of them. I haven't tried using the card reader but it should work...

 

I've gotten BSODs in XP before... but it was due to a faulty stick of RAM.
Other than that... no such problems.

I won't be upgrading to Vista for a while...

 

Ive gotten dozens if not 100s of bsods with xp.


but i got more per capita when i was messing with vista

 

Is it possible to know what your specs are and to see your windows experience score? thx

 

Heres a picture of my Windows Experience Index for my:

Z96Js
1 GB 667 RAM
T7200 @ 2.0 GHz
100GB Hitachi 7K100
ATI x1600

Looks like the bottleneck is in the "Desktop performance for Aero" category. Mind you it's not much of a bottleneck since the maximum score is 5.

 

Max score is 5 but you got a 5.1 on your HDD lol

 

Actually max score in Vista is 5.9 for everything,

 

Whoops, yeah the first time I ran it I only got a 5.0 for my hard drive. I thought I read somewhere that 5 was max. Dang, if a 7K100 2.5" drive gets a 5.1 I wonder what a normal desktop drive gets!