tell me about vista

[joseph finucane]

hi all pretty new to this so forgive if am a bit slow was woundering if anyone has the vista yet and what kind of operating system is it.heard you need at least 2ram just to run it is this true..... anyway if someone hass it and are useing it with noproblems would apprcate if you let me know how much better it is then windows xp

[addicted]

Vista is no better than windows xp. Its definitely not a user friendly OS. It does not support plug and play devices like flash drives, external HDD etc..., u need to install that device. The minimum RAM requirement for vists basic edition is 512 MB and for premium edition its 1 GB. One positive thing is that, its very much secured than windows xp. So I'd recommend windows xp.

[dickiesam]

Hi Joseph,
Sorry to disappoint Microsoft, but I agree with Addicted. I am running XP and tried out Vista recently on a friend's new laptop while helping him to get his new toy set up. I also found it quite unfriendly compared to XP and was very surprised at the lack of plug-and-play. The system appears to be very RAM-hungry and I would suggest that anything less than 2 Gb is asking for problems along the line.

If I recall correctly, when XP first came out it was recommended to run well on a RAM of 248 Mb, while in fact you needed at least double that to avoid a slow-running machine. It will be a long time before I consider moving to Vista.

[.:iE/Dixy]

I have been running Vista 64 bit since launch and in the main have had no real problems except for driver issues early on when all that was availble was buggy beta drivers but on the whole Vista a good upgrade. As the pervious post outline it is resource hungry and wouldnt try it with less than 2Gb of ram but as for plug and play i have never had a problem with external drives (i have a Western Digital 250g) or any flash drives i have tryed have worked without a problem. It can be a bit annoying constantly asking for admin rights to install or run software but on the whole its better to be safe than sorry where security is concerned.

Irish E-Sports

[Sean]

From my limited experience with Vista so, its performance heavily depends on the hardware, much more so than Windows XP. On a new PC, I would suggest getting at least 2GB of RAM or 4GB if you can afford it. Running Vista (Basic or Premium) on 1GB of RAM feels like running Windows XP on 256MB of RAM from my experience of all the PCs and laptops I have set up with the new OS, with the Levono brand feeling the most sluggish due to all its bundled software. I would also suggest getting a PC or laptop with a dedicated graphics card instead of an integrated one, as the dedicated graphics cards have their own memory and improve the GUI performance while Aero is enabled. For example, if an integrated graphics card uses 256MB of RAM, this leaves just 768MB for Vista on a computer with 1GB of RAM.

Don’t even think of getting a new Vista PC with 512MB of RAM unless you buy additional for memory for it at the time of purchase! I have recently set up a new Acer laptop for someone who decided to get a budget model and was quite surprised at how sluggish its runs. It took me over 2 hours just to install their HP multifunction software, AVG virus checker and OpenOffice.

If you have an existing PC with Windows XP, I would recommend staying with XP unless you are comfortable with Windows Vista, are certain that all your PC’s hardware and software is Vista capable (don’t assume it is) and that you are really interested in the new OS’ features. The main issue I have encountered with Vista so far is software stability, especially on systems with under 2GB of RAM.

Finally, one tip: Avoid buying a new PC or laptop while on holidays in a European country unless you are certain that it comes with an English installation of Vista; the goes with Windows XP or any other OS. I have already encountered someone who bought a new Vista laptop in Italy thinking that the interface could be switched to English like with most other electrical items bought in European countries (satellite receivers, mobile phones, etc.) Unfortunately, this is not the case as it requires the installation of an English language version of Vista and it is not straight forward to replace a foreign language keyboard on most laptops.

If you planning on getting Vista, but have not yet tried it, I would recommend trying it out on someone’s PC with Vista to get an idea of what it is like for the edition you plan on getting. The same goes with the new Office 2007 package due to its complete redesign of the GUI, unless you plan on installing an alternative Office package or a previous Microsoft Office version.

[mickomania]

Another reason to use Vista is DirectX 10. If your a gamer and like your graphics
dx10 will make a big difference as long as you have a decent graphics card
aswell. Unfortunately you will have to buy a graphics card which is compatible
with dx10 too. Shouldnt be too much of a problem for serious gamers. The rest
of us must save our penny's.