is it advisable to wait longer before installing Vista?

  • Thread starter Thread starter cherold
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cherold

I have a Windows Vista Ultimate disk, and the question is, should I
use it, or would it be better to wait for a while? My concern is that
there may be driver issues and a good chance some of the things I've
added to Windows XP (stuff in the context menu and such) won't work
anymore. My theory is the longer I wait, the more that will be sorted
out. But perhaps everything's been sorted out by now and it's not a
big deal?

My fear is it will be a disaster, like when I installed Windows ME
over Windows 98, but my hope is it will go smoothly, like when I
installed Windows XP over Windows ME.

I'd like to install it before Halo 2 comes out for the PC in May, so
the question is, should I wait another month or should I just go for
it?
 
The people who have no problems will tell you "why wait"? The people who
have issues will tell you to stay with Windows XP.

Do your homework and research and you should be fine.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User
 
Then again, if you are using the same computer since Win98, forget about
using Vista.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User
 
I've installed Vista Premium on a second partition on my XP machine, just to
sort out the driver and application update problems, and over a period of
about a month of occasional work with it, primarily on weekends, I've chased
down the driver and application updates I'll need to make it my everyday
system. So I'm nearly ready to go with my own machine.

On the other side of the office, I'm planning to replace my wife's machine
(a Dell XPS 800 that's about eight or nine years old) as soon as the video
driver situation stabilizes.

As an old timer in operating systems, I'm thinking that for Vista I'll wait
to replace my wife's machine until about May. I buy Dell machines these
days, and the best graphic card they offer on the XPS 410 is an NVidia part,
the 7900 GS, which is currently plagued with driver instability problems.

So I'm thinking that by around May sometime the dweebs at NVidia will
finally have their act together to deliver drivers with some semblance of
stability, and I'll pull the trigger on her machine.

On my own machine, I'm using an ATI card that's run just fine since I
installed Vista. I'm pretty happy with that system (a three-year-old 3GHZ
Dell XPS 8300 with 3GB of memory, a new ATI 1650XT Pro AGP card, and a new
320GB SATA hard drive) although the out-of-date AGP interface to the video
card will keep it from being a good game machine for the most recent games.
So I went ahead and activated the Vista operating system this weekend. I'll
probably migrate my personal data files over to that partition over the next
weekend or two and leave XP behind. Not that I don't like XP - it's been a
great OS for as long as I've used it - but I'm kind of an OS junkie and I'm
ready to move to Vista.

My suggestion to you is to take a careful look at hardware requirements, do
whatever hardware upgrades you need, and do the installation as a clean
installation on a separate hard disk partition instead of an upgrade. If
your machine doesn't measure up, leave it at XP. Microsoft has an upgrade
advisor that will give you good advice about your hardware setup, and so
does the ATI site. Check 'em out. Absolutely nothing wrong with staying with
XP if your hardware doesn't meet the stiff requirements of Vista.

For myself, on the 8300, I had to upgrade the video card, which then
required an upgrade to the power supply, and finally a memory upgrade to get
it to the point where it would be a good Vista platform. I probably spent
about $600 on hardware, but I bought the system another three or four years
of life.

Finally, for a game machine there might be a good justification for leaving
it at XP, since it's certainly going to require fewer resources for the
operation system than Vista would. Only if the games you want to play
require DirectX 10 or other Vista features would you need to upgrade. Think
about it.

Good luck with yours,
Tom Dacon
Dacon Software Consulting
 
I have a Windows Vista Ultimate disk, and the question is, should I
use it, or would it be better to wait for a while? My concern is that ...
Click to expand...

Good grief man .. you sound like you are going to get married.

Nothing in life is guaranteed, even though more than this groups fair share
seem to think so.


List all the stuff you can't live without, get the drivers or the Vista
compatible software and do it. If you can't find what you need then wait.

Rich
 
Despite the rantings in this set of newsgroups, the amount of problems with
Vista are small compared to the number of users and can typically be overcome
with a little forethought when installing Vista. (As with any software.)

Run Windows Upgrade Advisor.
Pay attention to the "potential problems" and have answers before you
upgrade.
Know where to find hardware driver upgrades for your BIOS, Sound and Video.

Learn how to install and run trusted programs "as administrator." It is not
needed often, but you may get tired of the UAC prompts during the first week
of use.

Research software BEFORE you buy it to determine if it is Vista compatible.
Compatible may mean running in XP compatible mode. Another feature you need
to become familiar with.

May is not that far away. Don't expect some big release of fixes in one month.
Unfamiliarity with the OS is not a bug.

With that in mind, go for it. IF you experience a problem, someone will
help, but the group in general will probably crucify you along the way.

Good luck!
 
Tom Dacon said:
I've installed Vista Premium on a second partition on my XP machine, just
to sort out the driver and application update problems, and over a period
of about a month of occasional work with it, primarily on weekends, I've
chased down the driver and application updates I'll need to make it my
everyday system. So I'm nearly ready to go with my own machine.

On the other side of the office, I'm planning to replace my wife's machine
(a Dell XPS 800 that's about eight or nine years old) as soon as the video
driver situation stabilizes.

As an old timer in operating systems, I'm thinking that for Vista I'll
wait to replace my wife's machine until about May. I buy Dell machines
these days, and the best graphic card they offer on the XPS 410 is an
NVidia part, the 7900 GS, which is currently plagued with driver
instability problems.

So I'm thinking that by around May sometime the dweebs at NVidia will
finally have their act together to deliver drivers with some semblance of
stability, and I'll pull the trigger on her machine.

On my own machine, I'm using an ATI card that's run just fine since I
installed Vista. I'm pretty happy with that system (a three-year-old 3GHZ
Dell XPS 8300 with 3GB of memory, a new ATI 1650XT Pro AGP card, and a new
320GB SATA hard drive) although the out-of-date AGP interface to the video
card will keep it from being a good game machine for the most recent
games. So I went ahead and activated the Vista operating system this
weekend. I'll probably migrate my personal data files over to that
partition over the next weekend or two and leave XP behind. Not that I
don't like XP - it's been a great OS for as long as I've used it - but I'm
kind of an OS junkie and I'm ready to move to Vista.

My suggestion to you is to take a careful look at hardware requirements,
do whatever hardware upgrades you need, and do the installation as a clean
installation on a separate hard disk partition instead of an upgrade. If
your machine doesn't measure up, leave it at XP. Microsoft has an upgrade
advisor that will give you good advice about your hardware setup, and so
does the ATI site. Check 'em out. Absolutely nothing wrong with staying
with XP if your hardware doesn't meet the stiff requirements of Vista.

For myself, on the 8300, I had to upgrade the video card, which then
required an upgrade to the power supply, and finally a memory upgrade to
get it to the point where it would be a good Vista platform. I probably
spent about $600 on hardware, but I bought the system another three or
four years of life.

Finally, for a game machine there might be a good justification for
leaving it at XP, since it's certainly going to require fewer resources
for the operation system than Vista would. Only if the games you want to
play require DirectX 10 or other Vista features would you need to upgrade.
Think about it.

Good luck with yours,
Tom Dacon
Dacon Software Consulting
Click to expand...

An off topic question for Tom...what score does the ATI 1650 give you for 3D
performance in Vista? A friend of mine is trying to decide between that
video card and a Nvidia 7600 to run Vista with.
Thanks,
Bob
 
It turns out I didn't need to ask for advice about whether to install
Vista, because my PC decided for me; after the installation ran for
about 3 hours and was, last I checked, 75% of the way through the
final step, it said, without explanation, that the installation had
failed and put XP Pro back on. Apparently that's not all that
uncommon; a google search found quite a few people whose installations
failed. Some of them unhooked all the devices for their PC and did
other stuff and still couldn't get it installed.

I think that's pretty bad, that it will just abort like that. ME
installed badly but even it installed. Anyway, I'm not going to drive
myself crazy over it. And I'm not going to go through the hassle of a
clean install for something that I keep hearing referred to as a
fairly minor upgrade (although from demos it did look like it had some
cool features).

I did contact Microsoft but they haven't said anything useful so far.
I'm hoping they're working to figure out why some people can't install
Vista and will eventually come out with a patch to deal with
installation problems, but for now I'm not going to bother with it.
 
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