GAMERS: It's official, VISTA sucks!

so it took me several days to get XP 100% working on my X205 Sli3, but it was worth it. XP runs Bioshock better with all of the setting set to MAX than it did in Vista with all of the settings set to low, and DirectX10 turned off.

I don't know why, but my machine ran Bioshock like crap, but it's running it great in XP. Lot of work getting it going the first time, but more than worth it. Just won't be playing Halo 2 I guess.....sorry Microsoft.

 

I'm sure M$ will be deeply disturbed by the terrible news in your post. FWIW to you, somebody beat you to the punch with this same declaration here yesterday - you're just not on top of these issues.

BTW, there are about a bazillion people here who disagree with your findings.

 

Vista's fine for games. I really don't get what all the whining is about. I will make an exception in your case since you got sli on your laptop but other than for that, I see no reason not to get Vista when buying a NEW computer. If you have XP now, I think it should be your decision whether or not to upgrade but for people buying new, go with vista and save money. I have only had one issue with vista and that's running freelancer. That's the only game I had an issue with. I had a game designed for windows 95 running fine on vista.

 

I enjoyed the "vista experience", but Bioshock was the primary reason I bought a high end notebook, and it simply doesn't run well in Visto on MY machine. I don't know if it's a toshiba-specific issue, but even after upgrading video drivers, Bioshock just didn't work well at all. I can only imagine how Crysis will run on the X205 with Vista.

 

Not sure why it wasn't running bioshock ok for ya... I've got the SLi1, did a fresh reinstall of Vista when i got it to remove the bloatware, installed the latest drivers, including laptop2govideo drivers, and haven't had a single problem with any game yet... including bioshock... ran it side by side with a 8700 equipped X205, and SLI even in vista ran it better. at 1440x900 in DX10, with everything set to high, it'll show 25 on up to 40+ using FRAPS... not sure if that is what you were getting and you considered crap? But ya shoulda atleast gotten that, and should be better with the SLI3... what ya getting with XP? So far everything I've thrown at Vista and the SLi1 has ran fine and I've been pleased thus far... my sticky issue was Flight Sim X, and went through 3 laptops finding one to run it well, (Had the game a dang year, my 3 year old Sager (Pentium 4 3.2Ghz with ATI 9600) choked on it hard core ha) ha. But, this runs it very well.

Enjoyin' Vista so far though, ran through a couple tweak guides, and it runs without any problems best I can tell... guess your mileage varies

Good to know ya got XP up and runnin though, if I ever get a wild hair!

 

Basically, in order to game in Vista, you have to be smarter than the OS.

Vista requires tweaks and hotfixes...

It works just fine when the user can overcome Vista's shortcomings much like community knowledge has overcome XP's shortcomings.

 

maybe it's the Toshiba install, as I didn't try a "clean" install. I did do several restores, removing as much bloatware as possible, and ran the 1.69 drivers mentioned above, but it still ran so "jerkily" that it was not playable. I ditd many of the tweaks, and set everything in the control panel options to "performance"

Anyway, I get 6960 3dmark06 in XP, and I just don't miss Vista. Glad you guys have it working well. I've bought 2 copies of it that I'll save for when the magazines (max pc, etremetech, etc) say it's time to convert.

 

Yeah I agree 100%, this weekend I finally had enough of Vista (which was a fresh and clean install, not the toshiba install with all the garbage!!) and formatted the hard drive and installed XP and everything runs so much better especially all the games, so good ridens vista you piece of cr***p.

 

To be sure, Vista has its share of annoyances...

If you like XP better, then by all means use it.

However, Vista fully patched and tweaked should perform within a few percentage points of XP fully patched and tweaked.

 

I couldn't get starcraft/broodwars to work on my vista laptop. wouldn't even start the game, other than that vista rocks.

 

You can always use virtual machine for old games like this...

 

ok, how do I do that?

 

Get yourself any virtual machine software.
There is a comprehensive list there - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine (you need "hardware virtual machine")

VMWare is the best but it will cost you. But you can use a free VMWare Player + free EasyVMX to make VMs.

Xen is totally free and as I know it will work well if you have VT-capable CPU.

Just install minimum Windows XP or even Windows 98 to the virtual machine, and run your old games there.

 

what does any OS have to do with the run-time environment of a game if you have enough ram?

 

Just my way of doing things. When Micro$oft comes of with a new OS, I ignore for three years. Usually, most bugs and sometimes worse are irnoed out by that time. I did this with Windows (hung around DOS for a while before taking the plunge), Windows 95, Windows Me (which I regretted buying
as it always found an excuse to crash), and so on. Now I'm using XP SP2 and refuse to touch Vista until it's three years old, if then. case of if it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

I have XP on my older Desktop and Vista on my laptop...

Both work fine.


I can make something work if it doesn't work optimally out of the box, so I fiddle with it until it works right for me.

Most microsoft OS's start really turning the corner after SP1.

the best part about Vista is that at least the computer neophytes have to press the "yes I want to run the trojan in Admin mode" button...

 

This is a tad off topic, but is anyone else annoyed by Vista's "new and improved" disk defrager?

 

I consider myself a professional but I like UAC because it gives me a clear indication when particular application starts shuffling with system settings.

Bulit in windows defraggers are always were only barely adequate.
But why to be annoyed with it? Generally only thing you have to do is to schedule it and forget about it.

 

On mine it freezes about 4 hours in and just sucks up resources.

 

then get a 3rdparty one, they usually disable the built-in one.