Pro Vista

[Susan]

I've been reading alot of disses of Vista these days (including this group)
and I was among them a couple of months ago. I admit that it took awhile for
me to actually move to Vista. I've had my share of problems, but now that I
have customized it the way i want and researched and fixed my problems (and
learned alot while doing so), I absolutely LOVE it.

Don't blame Vista if old apps don't run -- i would think it's up to the
software manu's to keep up!! Adobe released it's CS3 apps in order to keep
step and it was well worth the upgrade as the apps are more stable and more
feature-rich than ever (and better integrated). The new Office 2007 took a
bit of getting used to, but all in all -- a vast improvement and a great
upgrade.

I have 6 gigs of ram in my Vista (xeon) computer and am running 3-20" flat
screens (extended desktop), and it's fast, efficient, looks great, runs
snappy and hasn't crashed once!! My XP computer had 4 gigs of ram running
the same monitors and similar apps (CS2 stuff) and crashed constantly.

I personally feel that Vista is all-around a great operating system and a
BIG improvement over XP.

But, that's just me.

 

[Richard Urban]

I am glad you had the perseverance to work through the issues.

When all is said and done, Vista is nothing more than a tool to get things
accomplished.

The 90% of the users who agree with you will never post here.

9% of the people who have problems may never find these news groups.

Then there is the 1% who will say that you are wrong for liking Vista.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Frank]

I've been reading alot of disses of Vista these days (including this
group) and I was among them a couple of months ago. I admit that it took
awhile for me to actually move to Vista. I've had my share of problems,
but now that I have customized it the way i want and researched and
fixed my problems (and learned alot while doing so), I absolutely LOVE it.

Don't blame Vista if old apps don't run -- i would think it's up to the
software manu's to keep up!! Adobe released it's CS3 apps in order to
keep step and it was well worth the upgrade as the apps are more stable
and more feature-rich than ever (and better integrated). The new Office
2007 took a bit of getting used to, but all in all -- a vast improvement
and a great upgrade.

I have 6 gigs of ram in my Vista (xeon) computer and am running 3-20"
flat screens (extended desktop), and it's fast, efficient, looks great,
runs snappy and hasn't crashed once!! My XP computer had 4 gigs of ram
running the same monitors and similar apps (CS2 stuff) and crashed
constantly.

I personally feel that Vista is all-around a great operating system and
a BIG improvement over XP.

But, that's just me.

Whoa!...nice setup!!!
Graphic designer?
Frank

 

[Susan]

Yes, graphic designer. Guess that was pretty obvious, huh!! (I also do some
IT support on several SBS installs, so am not new to troubleshooting.)

I think the key with Vista is taking control. I just had to teach it who's
boss!!

 

[Jon]

I've been reading alot of disses of Vista these days (including this
group) and I was among them a couple of months ago. I admit that it took
awhile for me to actually move to Vista. I've had my share of problems,
but now that I have customized it the way i want and researched and fixed
my problems (and learned alot while doing so), I absolutely LOVE it.

Don't blame Vista if old apps don't run -- i would think it's up to the
software manu's to keep up!! Adobe released it's CS3 apps in order to keep
step and it was well worth the upgrade as the apps are more stable and
more feature-rich than ever (and better integrated). The new Office 2007
took a bit of getting used to, but all in all -- a vast improvement and a
great upgrade.

I have 6 gigs of ram in my Vista (xeon) computer and am running 3-20" flat
screens (extended desktop), and it's fast, efficient, looks great, runs
snappy and hasn't crashed once!! My XP computer had 4 gigs of ram running
the same monitors and similar apps (CS2 stuff) and crashed constantly.

I personally feel that Vista is all-around a great operating system and a
BIG improvement over XP.

But, that's just me.

This was the key phrase for me....

"....and researched and fixed my problems (and
learned alot while doing so), I absolutely LOVE it."

I'd go along with that. The quality of the experience of Vista is directly
proportional to the willingness to research and learn.

 

[Frank]

Yes, graphic designer. Guess that was pretty obvious, huh!! (I also do
some IT support on several SBS installs, so am not new to troubleshooting.)

I think the key with Vista is taking control. I just had to teach it
who's boss!!

Yeah...we found that out early on.
Better be in control of it or else!
Frank

 

[Merle]

I too have had my share of problems with Vista, but after a few weeks of
hunting new drivers and fixing a few problems with some software, I love
Vista. Not enough people tell it like it is. My machine sings.

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Jon;
"The quality of the experience of Vista is directly..."
Replace the word Vista with just about anything new.
There will be something to learn if the benefits are to be best used.
This is not unique to Windows or even computer technologies.

 

[Susan]

Will admit that i have no idea what the basic experience a general "home
user" encounters (not using the 'home' version -- am running Vista
Business).

Yes, i had some issues...irritating ones at that. Silly stuff like trying to
copy/paste a dumb font file out the fonts folder to another folder -- and i
was denied access (that didn't last long though!!). That's just to name one
stupid one (but it made me mad at the time). Most were just dumb things and
personal preferences (how folders display, etc). My XP box is nicely
customized as well.

But, that said, the generation using computers now should know how to have
control...and limit it as well. Not a bad thing.

 

[Susan]

Jon,
EXACTLY... some have a harder time with 'change' than others.
and some -- are still using windows 98.

 

[Jon]

Jon,
EXACTLY... some have a harder time with 'change' than others.
and some -- are still using windows 98.

Perhaps, but many of the ones that still use Windows 98 are far greater
ubergeeks than I'll ever be.

 

[Susan]

i somehow doubt that...

Perhaps, but many of the ones that still use Windows 98 are far greater
ubergeeks than I'll ever be.

 

[=\(8\)]

Every new version of Windows has went through this. We all have our
complaints, gripes and forehead slapping while trying to figure out what
Microsoft was things when they did what they did. But in the end once all of
the dust settles we go back to loving the operating system we hate the most.

=(8)

 

[Gary R.]

Don't blame Vista if old apps don't run -- i would think it's up to the
software manu's to keep up!! Adobe released it's CS3 apps in order to keep
step and it was well worth the upgrade as the apps are more stable and
more feature-rich than ever (and better integrated). The new Office 2007
took a bit of getting used to, but all in all -- a vast improvement and a
great upgrade.

I think, unfortunately, that you're comparing your Vista to an ailing XP
machine; your XP shouldn't have been crashing in the first place. I have
run various configurations in many machines devoted to graphics, including
2/4 GB of memory with RAID, multiple displays in some cases, and have never
had any issues with crashing or lockups; either with Photoshop CS2 or other
significant applications. The problems I've seen with movie rendering and
editing software was generally due to the application, not XP.

It's nice that you don't mind buying a new machine so that it can handle the
extra load of Vista, and more memory, new applications and peripherals in
some cases, but not everyone likes to just buy new stuff to stay in
essentially the same place. I've been using Vista a while on a couple of
secondary machines, and frankly don't see any big deal about it. It's
certainly more glitzy, I guess they had to do that so the Mac crowd would
shut up, but that doesn't really add to its usefulness. It's definitely
slower, given equal machine and memory, than XP, just because it's more
demanding.

Obviously we have different needs, since I regard PSCS3 as being the least
significant upgrade ever; and I've used every version since 3.0. There are
a few things I like (curves palette, RAW converter improvements), but for
the upgrade price it's not much of a bargain for what I do with PS. Office
2007? Yeah, it's cute but what can I (note the 'I', as regarding what I use
a computer for) do with it that I couldn't do with 2003 or even earlier?
Little or nothing.

So it's a place to spend your dough, redecorate your workspace, and get new
stuff; but really, for most of us that's all it is. There is certainly more
security, but I never had significant security problems with XP anyway. I'm
not knocking Vista, I think it's OK and I don't blame MS for coming out with
a new system...it was a long time between XP and Vista, and they handled it
much better than Apple and it's permanent wallet drain of OS updates. While
I "like" Vista, it just doesn't seem much more than "XP is old, guess I'll
buy something new and throw out a lot of my old peripherals because they
won't work".

As far as mfr's being responsible for keeping up, that's true, but MS makes
$$ when they sell Vista; most companies that have to write the new drivers
for their already-sold stuff don't make a cent off it, it's just a financial
drain unless they can sell new equipment. In some cases it costs them a LOT
to just keep up, so I think it's a bit simplistic to just blame them. Even
some of the more prosperous ones...look at the NVidia situation, are still
having problems.

Sounds to me like if you'd followed the advice you're giving people for
Vista, on your XP machines, of "take control" and "spend the time necessary"
you'd have had a smooth running XP machine...because mine are smooth as
anything. Sounds more like "new computer excitement" when everything is new
and works (for a while).

I have 6 gigs of ram in my Vista (xeon) computer and am running 3-20" flat
screens (extended desktop), and it's fast, efficient, looks great, runs
snappy and hasn't crashed once!! My XP computer had 4 gigs of ram running
the same monitors and similar apps (CS2 stuff) and crashed constantly.

Well, your Vista machine certainly should run well and be fast with that
setup; you paid well for it. And blaming the poor XP machine for the
crashes, well, maybe it just needed some attention.

I personally feel that Vista is all-around a great operating system and a
BIG improvement over XP.

I probably agree, until you get to the "big improvement" part; it's an
improvement in some ways such as security, and if you care about the fancy
looks, but a tradeoff and annoyance in other ways. I like it OK, but
thrilled? No.

Gary

 

[Spirit]

Many of the problems we see here are issues caused with using OLD HARDWARE
or
buying a new system that really is not vista capable..... next largest
problem is installing
"crapware" and wondering why the system messes up.

 

[Adam Albright]

Yeah...we found that out early on.
Better be in control of it or else!
Frank

Six months is early on Frank?

 

[xfile]

I am not an expert literally almost on anything, but...

[...]; your XP shouldn't have been crashing in the first place.

That's true. Neither Vista nor XP with proper installations and
configurations should experience this.

The problems I've seen with movie rendering and editing software was
generally due to the application, not XP.

That's also true based on my limited experience and mostly those of our
designers.

Obviously we have different needs, since I regard PSCS3 as being the least
significant upgrade ever; and I've used every version since 3.0. There
are a few things I like (curves palette, RAW converter improvements), but
for the upgrade price it's not much of a bargain for what I do with PS.

For CS3, one thing I can say is, at least "performance" has been improved.
Since Adobe allows CS2 and CS3 to coexist in the same system but one
instance at a time(if CS3 is upgraded from CS2), so I tried both on a normal
system (2GB DRAM, P4 2.6) and CS3 ended up with much faster launch time and
opening files. Of course, features-wise, it depends on how designers do
their jobs and if they care about the "speed" improvements, so I have no
comment on it.

In short, we recently upgraded designers' systems to desktop and notebook
workstations, and they chose to use CS3 suites but stay with XP. They are
absolutely happy with it. Resist to change? LOL, I don't see any from
them, on the other hand, I see they are smarter than many and know exactly
what they want or not.

 

[Adam Albright]

I have 6 gigs of ram in my Vista (xeon) computer and am running 3-20" flat
screens (extended desktop), and it's fast, efficient, looks great, runs
snappy and hasn't crashed once!! My XP computer had 4 gigs of ram running
the same monitors and similar apps (CS2 stuff) and crashed constantly.

I personally feel that Vista is all-around a great operating system and a
BIG improvement over XP.

But, that's just me.

Didn't have room for a fourth monitor?

ROTFLMAO!

 

[Susan]

all excellent points.
well taken
xp problems were most graphics related and not necessarily xp's fault.
but i'd been upgrading that box for 4 years now
and it was time for a new one
but, if i remember correctly, we all had the same growing pains with xp
and it was worth it
so maybe this one will be too...it is so far.

Adam: i'm working on that fourth monitor!!

 

[Susan]

ah...and STILL running the xp box...

input 1: XP box
input 2: Vista box

certainly not abandoning XP .... can't