Attn: Vista Users

**Bella** · January 29, 2007, 10:42 PM

anyone here already have a final release installed?

from the demands of my boss, i had to buy a copy of vista home premium this morning from newegg. i'm just looking for anyone here with experience with the release build so i might can have a list of things to look out for.

one thing i've heard is it will sniff out any and all media files, apparently without your permission. can anyone confirm this?

thanks in advance.

**Admiral Nelson** · January 30, 2007, 02:12 AM

Your boss forced you to buy something? Hopefully it wasn't your money lol...

Anyways, Vista is pretty cool. I'm still figuring out how everything works myself though.

The purported "slow down" is not nearly as bad as I had been led to believe.

**Bella** · January 30, 2007, 03:39 AM

yeah, i'm going to be reimbursed for the purchase, so no worries there. he just wanted all the employees to make sure we're using the same basic operating system.

it's leaving jersey right now. looks to be here sometime thursday, i think.

but oh well. i'll just have to adjust with the times i guess. all else fails, i'll just go back to xp. i think i heard somewhere that microsoft extended support for xp til 2012 but i might be wrong on that one so don't quote me.

**wipeout140** · January 30, 2007, 03:41 AM

all else fails, i'll just go back to xp. i think i heard somewhere that microsoft extended support for xp til 2012 but i might be wrong on that one so don't quote me.

2014 is the correct date

**Giorgos** · January 31, 2007, 02:04 AM

promises have been made, and broken, before.

**Vanquisher** · January 31, 2007, 05:06 AM

Well tbh there are a lot more pro's than cons with moving to vista (infact I don't get people who are complaining of slow-downs lol, all new operating systems create more stain than previous versions) But anyway many of the features are so cleverly optimised unless you have an old pc you won't suffer any performance decrease. Infact many operations do work much much faster (as long as long as you have the memory

Windows Aero infact shuts down when a full screen 3d application starts so for all the eye-candy there is 0 performance hit

Plus the final gfx drivers will be arriving tommorow so we shall see some great performance increases in games. The only thing that is nagging me is that Creative haven't made final drivers that support 5.1 sound yet

**SPARTAN VI** · January 31, 2007, 11:00 AM

There's a Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade available at campustech.com for $69.00. Now I hear the upgrade doesn't allow you to do a clean install, but of course people found a workaround. I'll be dual booting XP and Vista very very soon. At least I get to put my GTS to work (to some extent).

**Freddie** · February 01, 2007, 07:24 AM

Originally Posted by SPARTAN VI

There's a Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade available at campustech.com for $69.00. Now I hear the upgrade doesn't allow you to do a clean install, but of course people found a workaround. I'll be dual booting XP and Vista very very soon. At least I get to put my GTS to work (to some extent).

Sounds like you brought the OEM version. I hope your motherboard doesn't need replacing any time soon.

As for myself I believe Vista has to be the most pointless upgrade of 2007 (2006 being the Physics cards), it will take at least 10 months to a year for all the software developers to make their software Vista optimised. Benchmark results from Tomshardware showed it took 28% longer to encode XVID video's under Vista then it took under XP.

**Bella** · February 01, 2007, 12:09 PM

from all the reviews i've read, OEM Vista is the way to go with this one. all it requires when changing out major hardware is deactivation and reactivation on the new machine, much the same as Photoshop CS2 requires.

**SPARTAN VI** · February 02, 2007, 12:56 AM

Originally Posted by Freddie

Sounds like you brought the OEM version. I hope your motherboard doesn't need replacing any time soon.

As for myself I believe Vista has to be the most pointless upgrade of 2007 (2006 being the Physics cards), it will take at least 10 months to a year for all the software developers to make their software Vista optimised. Benchmark results from Tomshardware showed it took 28% longer to encode XVID video's under Vista then it took under XP.

Nope, there is no OEM upgrade. They only come in retail.

Just placed my order, no tax and free shipping! So I paid $69.89 for Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade. Just an experiment, if anything. I don't plan on making Vista my primary OS.

**bigfootedfred** · February 02, 2007, 04:13 AM

you can trial Vista free here http://www.cs.umd.edu/~meou/Flashes/WINRG/WINRG.html

This little flash will show you what you can expect from the latest windows.

**Freddie** · February 02, 2007, 04:33 AM

Originally Posted by SPARTAN VI

Nope, there is no OEM upgrade. They only come in retail.

Just placed my order, no tax and free shipping! So I paid $69.89 for Windows Vista Home Premium Upgrade. Just an experiment, if anything. I don't plan on making Vista my primary OS.

No that's ok then I wasn't sure what version you got, as you got the retail version you can make as many changes as you want.

Still I plan to hold off at least until there is service pack 1 version of Vista (around about a year), as there is bound to be a mountain of security holes in this new OS given how much new code it has.

**Vanquisher** · January 31, 2007, 05:52 PM

http://www.overclock.net/news-overcl...und-vista.html

Was done yesterday

I've just been using the nvidia 100.25 drivers on company of heroes and it works just as fast if not faster (it's certainly looking better). Can't wait till the full one comes out tommorow.

**Hadrian** · February 01, 2007, 01:24 PM

In all practicality Vista isn't, and never will be, "faster" than XP. "Finalized" drivers won't be available for about 6 to 9 months, as Freddie suggested. I strongly advise, as do almost all tech sites, that you wait until Vista is offered as the standard OS in mainline systems like Dell and HP before you buy.

Right now, Vista is only really ready for business applications and is terribly unoptimized for gaming, especially because of the immature drivers. No game has proven to run faster on Vista than XP yet. Even owners of the 8800 line of video cards won't get the full abilities of their cards until DX10 games arrive, with all their new bugs and flaws.
Microsoft isn't even sure the new security measures are effective and won't know until the OS is utilized by the mass public for a while. Some of their new approaches to security do look clever and promising. We will all eventually be forced to go to Vista though. By design Vista purposefully doesn't suport Open GL 2.0 (not good people).

The 64 bit version isn't backwards compatable with just about anything, software or hardware for that matter.Wait my friends, wait. The map through the mine field isn't complete or accurate yet....JMO

**Giorgos** · February 02, 2007, 05:27 PM

Originally Posted by Hadrian

I strongly advise, as do almost all tech sites, that you wait until Vista is offered as the standard OS in mainline systems like Dell and HP before you buy.

i agree. 100%. Plus i can't believe the price you have to pay to get the best version of vista. 500 something euros?! Insanity.....

**Bella** · February 02, 2007, 08:02 PM

don't buy the retail box version. you're paying the extra for the manual and microsoft support. just get an oem version. it works as an upgrade or as a full install for literally half or less the retail's price.

**jegui** · February 02, 2007, 04:58 AM

Freddie's and Hadrian's advice is the wisest one to follow… Vista is still in the early stages of being mass-tested and until some service packs and the new DX10 are released and tested I would also wait for a year or so before upgrading ;-)

**Bella** · February 02, 2007, 03:19 PM

all good advice, no doubt. for those who have a choice, do wait a little while to give drivers support time to mature.

but since i didn't have a choice, i have installed my full copy of vista home premium. it took about 20 minutes to install and the current catalyst vista drivers seem to work fine. creative's beta vista drivers for the x-fi line are a little quirky, but are doing the job. M2 doesn't seem to recognize my sound card yet though. i can only use the 2D emulated sound at the moment. other than that, M2 runs just as good on vista (for me) as it did on xp pro.

**tnick777** · February 02, 2007, 08:51 PM

I got ultimate edition, I started the instillation but then I got a pop up saying there were many drives on my computer that were incompatable at the time, and since best buy doesn't take back software... I'll have to wait for an update.. about 9 months from now.

Oh well.. XP has been serving me pretty good... Vista looks pretty good.

**SPARTAN VI** · February 08, 2007, 01:38 AM

So far, I'm really liking Vista. The new interface is sharp and sexay. For now, I'm just using it for web browsing, photoshop, and Chess Titans (16xAA chess?!?!?!)

Very fun OS.