Your Vista experence , Love it or Leave it

Thought I start a thread for people to share their thoughts on using Vista in its final version. Just a heads up for people who plan (or are forced) to get it so they know what to expect. How about some tips and such. Perhaps a list of things to try and not to try (things that trigger bugs every time). as you settle in to the new OS.

 

So far so good. One tip, get a flashcard or usb drive and enable readyboost. Makes a hell of a difference, especially in startup.

 

I've been using Vista RC1 for nearly 6 months, and I've had no problems.

I love it. Much better than XP, in my view.

 

Speaking of startup time, is it true that windows startup (from totally shutdown state) in Vista is much, much quicker? Without ready boost that is.

 

Hmm... as in leaving a big flash card in the card reader? I hadn't thought of that. Neat trick. How big a card do you need? Is a 4GB card overkill? But then you'd lose use of the reader for your other cards right?

 

It's faster for me, from what I can tell.

 

dude now you guys are making me wish that i waited a couple more days to get my computer, to have vista pre-installed...

your supposed to make me feel good about when i bought it!

 

So I shouldn't post a screen shot of Vista in all it's glassy glory?

 

no i have looked at many screenshots, and im starting to regret it, but at the same time i do love xp and i know i will be very happy with it. also, i will get to choose when to upgrade, at my own convenience...

and no, please dont show us another screenshot!!!

acually if you want to, then do it... im kinda curious how you set up your desktop look

do you use wincustomize.com ??? its a really good site to customize your computer looks... (log-ons, boot-ups, widgets, icons, desktops, etc)

 

XP suck compare to vista. after u try vista, u will never want to go back to XP. anyways, who would still want to use a 5 years old OS when there is a brand new OS coming out

 

Nah, the only thing I use is a few custom sidebar gadgets.

 

aw shut up.... lol

now stop making me regret my decision...

 

lol that was to HP fan, not you....

so i just found out about wincustomize... its a great site and i cant wait to customize the look of my new hp dv6000t

o and by the way:

 

do those sidebar gadget things take up system resources and slow things down or cause issues? I thought the yahoo widgets were cool till they started slowing down startup time and locking up things. Is a local weather (with wind speed) available in the gadget form?

 

you can probably find a widget like that if you search wincustomize.com ...

and they shouldnt slow down you computer too much from what ive heard....

 

I don't think I really "need" Vista. I see it as more of a novelty at the moment. XP still does everything I need it to do and there's nice Linux distros such as Ubuntu and Suse which is good for most dev work.
That being said, I like the slick Vista interface and its overzealous security features which keep on reminding me that every action I perform is insecure, blah, blah, blah. I'd love it to have the XGL style wobbly windows because the current Aero effects are still to minimalistic for my liking.

 

Not that I've noticed.

Both my Core 2 Extreme Qx6700 and Core Duo T2050 systems load up quickly and don't seem to be affected by the sidebar and its gadgets.

 

the sidebar only takes up 15-23 mb of memory. no biggie. At first, i thought i didnt i need vista too because XP was doing really good. but after trying out VISTA, XP was history. never want to see that thing again lmao. it dosnt look right u know

 

Last I measured, it took 1 min 20 seconds to boot up to just when widgets showed without readyboost. With readyboost, it took 43 seconds, with 10 second of that getting to bios screen(press f10 to enter setup). I'd say heck of a difference with ready boost, but this is with just a few applications installed. I'm sure it'll take longer to boot, as I load more applications. Boy, can't wait to load those norton products to see how much hit It'll take.

The card you stick in serves dual purposes, as your data card and as readyboost, which you control the size. Personally, I prefer to use one card in the card reader for readyboost only and use a thumb drive or usb card adapter like hp digital drive and plug it into usb port for my data. My opinion and this is how I've done for now. I believe this setup will also lessen file fragmentation on the card being used, therefore, better performance.

I'm currently using 2 gig sd card that I had lying around, but 4 gig is max, a limitation since these cards are formatted FAT32. Based on my reading somewhere, anything above 4 gigs give diminishing returns anyway, so waste of space if over 4 gig. Eventually, I may pickup a 4 gig card, if future tests show bigger cards give better performance.

 

I absolutely love Vista, and I'm with HP_Fan, there's no way I can go back to XP now.

Aero really improves everything. I don't know how to explain it, the computer is just so, so smooth. Aero isn't just all fancy stuff, it changes a lot of dynamics of the windows you open. No longer if a program stops responding will you see a frozen window or a disappearing window like in 2000/XP or 98, that will not happen anymore.

Finally an operating system that takes advantage of your video card. Vista's new memory management far exceeds XP's. All my 2GB of ram is being used and cached. Everything just zips right along.

Once they perfect everything with Vista with service packs and improved driver and program support, Vista is gonna be amazing.

 

Here's a screenshot for my buddy Matt

 

Come to think of it I have a spare 1 gig SD card somewhere. I can't belive that it would speed things up since it always seems like transfering things to SD is not the fastest process compared to Compact flash. Yet if you say it will be faster then I will give it a shot when I get Vista.

If I'm getting a system with 2gigs of RAM built in am I still going to benefit from this readyboost thing or is it only for sytems with low RAM (1gig and under)?

 

Here's another screen shot for ya, Matt:

 

I read that Vista premium lacks Remote Desktop admin. Is there a work around? My dad constantly has problems with his XP PC so I would like to be able to log onto his PC to see what his deal is without having to go to their house every time.

 

Yes. You will notice a difference. ReadyBoost is like your swap file on a USB stick. But not all your swap file. It's the parts of the swap file that are faster to swap from a USB memory stick than from a hard drive.

There's a really comprehensive post about ReadyBoost that you should read if you have any questions. It answers very simply a lot of questions you might have about it. For example:

 

and heres some screenshots of how my future dv6000t might look with XP, not vista, installed!

 

If your dv6000t is running at 1280x1024 resolution, there's a problem with it.

 

hey those were just examples....

and yes, i know your jealous.

 

just orderered my dv6000T with Vista to replace my current DV6000T w/XP media thats going back to Costco.

$1,617 fully maxed out (including a 160gb drive) minus bogus software packages.

 

nice... you maxed it out!!! wow your rich! lol jk

 

I just hope the new Vista express card HP TV tuner is better then the last one which had no antenna and poor reception from over air signal.

 

Not really.

 

yes you are jealous! *wink wink*

so i have about exactly one week until the best day of my life!

lol

 

oh yeah, welll, i bet your Minesweeper doesn't look this cool, so there!

Vista FTW!

 

LOL!

Yeah, I love the look of the new minesweeper.

Quite contemporary.

 

holy crap, right after the screenshot, I played and I beat it in 15 secs, that has to be a world record or something!

 

Congrats!

 

Thank you sir.

 

Had a chance to play with vista at CC. How do you get 3d flip view to pop via keyboard shortcuts. I thought it was like Alt-tab or something but that doesn't do it in 3d flip. I see that I can activate it (3d flip) from an icon in task bar then use scroll keys to move through, but isn't there a faster way?

 

i need my computer already, im starting to get un-patient, frustrated, mad, and more frustrated! This crappy computer that i am forced to use is messed up!

 

I'm staying away from vista... TGDAILY and My personal experiance tells me currently.. It can be better.. TGDAILY article states a ~5% performance decrease in every test and this is using a machine prob ~50% than my laptop so.. I can only expect how slow it will run on my R40.. I tried vista and the stupid R40 won't read the disk either so I'm thinking XP UNTIL I HAVE TO HAVE TO HAVE TO (client compatibility) move to vista

EDIT:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/page11.html wrote:
Our hopes that Vista might be able to speed up applications are gone. First tests with 64-bit editions result in numbers similar to our 32-bit results, and we believe it's safe to say that users looking for more raw performance will be disappointed with Vista. Vista is the better Windows, because it behaves better, because it looks better and because it feels better. But it cannot perform better than Windows XP. Is this a K.O. for Windows Vista in the enthusiast space?

 

My system has a little icon in the Quick Launch to launch the 3D flip.

And I can use my mouse's wheel to flip through it really quickly.

I love it, myself. Cool looking and handy.



Here's a screen shot for those who may not have seen the 3D flip tool before:

 

So far I'm really liking it. Everything seems more "automated". No lag so far.

 

Try hitting Winkey+TAB to get the 3D flip! I don't even have Vista yet!