No reason for me to upgrade at all. XP does me fine for what I use my PC for these days. That totals: photoshop for photos, email in thunderbird, and firefox for flickr and forums. Maybe one day, but I ain't rushing. I'll get it at work shortly I'm sure. If that happens and I really like it I might consider switching, but problem is I've just read NF3 isn't being supported for Vista by nVidia and I'll be damned if I'm upgrading hardware. tbh, though, I've been wanting to switch to Linux for a while, it's just finding the time to implement the change. I'll need to keep dual boot with Windows for PS, but apart from that it can go. But it also makes me think of going OSX. Using it on the bird's iBook, it is pretty nice and runs all the above that I need. Problem is, OSX requires new hardware like Vista. Linux is free.
I have the Nforce 2, where its REALLY not supported by Nvidia, and it works perfectly! Except the sound storm, I have to install the Realtek drivers to have proper sound. After some hack, I was able to get my sound storm working, but sometimes, it just stop working (like is the driver crashed) by surprise. But I don't really mind, as I'm plaining of upgrade the system either way. As for you, you don't have Nvidia SoundStorm, so it should be fine. I know that the Nforce 3 is basically the Nforce 2 with some tweaks. I was actually suprised to see the Nf3 and not the Nf2... Probably they removed it, as I think they have enough in their hands with the Geforce Vista drivers. One thing I expect is on my other computer, with my Nforce 4, is that Nvidia Firewall will be removed. As they removed it with Nforce 5 and 6. Which is a shame, as other with the flaws it had, it was a pretty neat firewall system.
I'm a gamer, I want the DX10 upgrade for Company of Heroes. That said, I'll wait until I can get a student copy for $10 or however much it costs.
Vista was thee last straw for me. I've mad the switch to Ubuntu and honestly, I think I'll stay with it, warts and all. I've got it set up ad a dual boot wwith XP64, but I think the only time I've booted into XP was to transfer some data to the linux drive. I'll probably go back for a while whn stalker and HL2E2 come out, but on the whole I'm happy with my decision to just say no to Vista.
isn't there supposed to be some DX9B or something that is DX10 that is a XP vesion? i don't remember the exact name, but am pretty sure it was DX9_ (_ was a letter)
DX9L is an XP version of DX10. But it will be nowhere near as good because of the fact the Unified architecture is inbuilt to Vista whereas it's tacked on in XP.
Alright, I heard that... The story: You have a bunch of people that purchase a Mac, and saw Vista, and now to trash Vista. They say that: "they used Vista deeply" (wtv that means) and start trashing it as it apparently suck. Also, there is an other group of people, that coincidently support the previous mentioned group, that downloaded a crack version of Vista. As we all know crack OS is the worth thing to do. So I'm sure nothing worked, and probably crashed randomly (like XP cracks). I still have, and using Windows Vista RC2, (NOTE: I still have XP), beside the fact that games are playing in poor performance due to drivers issue. and 3 idiotic glitches, that you just can't miss out (meaning for SURE they are fixed in the release, in fact I see no one complaining about these glitches, so I presume they are fixed). Vista is a fine OS. Yes, Vista has bugs, like Linux, like Mac OS, like all OS (nothing is perfect). BUT because Microsoft made Vista Beta publicly available... it's the first OS that has the LEAST number of bugs (and I'm talking about RC2 here, including the glitches) for an OS that was just released. You must understand that there will be always people complaining, and trashing Microsoft OS's, as it's Microsoft that make this product. People trashed Windows since Win95 (maybe before, but I don't recall), when you needed a "monster" computer to run it. And that was heard pretty loud (remember very few people had the internet back then). And people ended up liking it. and today most people uses Windows. Yes people complain you need a powerful computer, but don't you need one to play games in high settings, and smoothly?! I don't see anyone calling EA, Ubisoft, and blizzard, and trashing their games because they are not well optimize for performance. When we were in the DOS age, games HAD to be deeply optimize to allow them to run smoothly on the machines. If the company's now, really wanted, they could do that.. but then again you might have 2-3 games per year, and they might suck. Same for Windows... I'm not going to draw any conclusion, just mentioning the remarks that I saw from my eyes. The decision is yours. The last thing I want is having people killing them self on this thread, on what is best and not. If you have a proper setup (unlike having 64MB of RAM and trying to run Windows XP, if you know what I mean) Try Vista (from a clean copy) or look in Microsoft site for a demo, and test it yourself. See what needs upgrading if any. Remember, MOST people that trash something, doesn't know anything about the subject. When I worked for a company as IT, when we install new software, a majority of the company employees, call us, and said "The programs sucks you can't print! Get us new computers!" 1- No relation between computers and the software. 2- The program had a welcome screen at startup, and worked with tabs (tab welcome screen, tab 2 and above your project). when you click on the Welcome screen tab, the print button turn into disabled. Just because of this stupidity, people trashed the program or the computer. Think of that, you thing a company, were their goal is to make a maximum of money, would dare to spend multiple billion dollars on a project, and it end being as bad as you said... I think something is wrong if that is the case... Logically speaking, of course.
Excellent post, GoodBytes... I agree Also, I guess I was right about the one feature in Vista, now I know that it's referred to as SuperFetch. If I interpret it right; lets say I use a few programs mostly... some of which are kind of large programs. As time goes on, will I notice that these applications to be loading faster, and maybe the whole OS being faster as a whole?
You got it! Also every time you BOOT windows, it looks on what you need and don't. When I tried Windows Vista Beta2, the first time I ran it, the startup was slower then XP (Much slower), then I realize that ALL services was starting up as default. I knew about the SuperFetch technology at the time, so I decided to test it to see how it works. After 5 reboots, I discovered that most services were turned to disabled. And it was starting approximately at the same speed as XP (Under RC2, it's slightly faster). Ah yes! I also realize that under RC2, it does more then changing windows settings, it changes them only the first couple of reboots, then it stop (so that if you don't print for a month, it won't disable Print spooler service, so that you can still print after a month without surprise). It also concentrate more on disabling feature you don't have (for example disable wireless service, as you don't have a wireless card). It does other things inside itself which I don't know, but it does loads faster. Now to be realistic, it won't take 2 sec to startup after a year you use Vista. It does this curve that peeks in performance after 2-3 reboots, then stabilize it self. SO basically at the time you finish installing all your software, and update windows, it should be near the peek. Now, remember, I do not have the official release version of Vista, so I don't know what changes was done on it. Also remember, that SuperFetch applies on your programs too. I never calculated the number of seconds it takes to load, but I did count the number of bars it passes during the loading: XP: 5 Vista RC2 first time run: 8 Vista RC2 after multiple reboots: 3 1/2 Please note that when I got RC2, Vista stop starting the first time, with all services turned ON, (it got wiser). And I'm starting to thing it doesn't touch certain services... I mean important services for a normal user. (like added services, audio and drivers)
Ahh, I see I believe I may dual-boot XP and this Home Premium edition I have.. Thanks for the explanation, I appreciate it
Once I upgrade my laptop's RAM to 1.5GB system and 512MB for Video I'll probably buy the Vista OEM, since the only way I'd updgrade hardware is if I bought a new machine that would come with Vista anyway. $200 for RAM, $200 for Vista Ultimate, so I would be paying the full retail $400. I'm hoping to get it soon, but marked "I'll wait a while" mainly because of finances. See, I actually want to install it and have it screw up. I'm an IT Admin and nothing is worse than supporting something you've never used. (See also: my boss' boss just got an Apple and I only borrow my wife's iBook every now and then to learn how to troubleshoot them) I must say Vista according to the advertisements and banner ads I've seen looks pretty lame, but actually playing with it, tagging files in explorer, and especially looking at all the real-time network monitoring and event log monitoring it has included makes it pretty nice looking. Ideal setup would be 2 laptops: MacBook with 2GB of RAM running OSX Tiger (+ XP pro in parallels) and whatever decent PC laptop with 2GB of RAM running Vista. I'm still not sold on running Vista in a VM or dual-booting the MacBook because of hardware issues, and I've given up on caring about upgrading a desktop since it has been 5 or 6 years since I've upgraded my desktop at home.
Vista on VM? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!!! I tried Vista RC2 (not retail, as I don't have it) with my PC (AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Socket 939, 2GB of RAM, and it wasn't pretty)
Well yeah... but the 128MB FX5200 is undoubtedly what held you back But jesting aside... that system should've run Vista no problem at all
I meant using Virtual PC. p.S: I have a Geforce 6600GT 1280MB of RAM, and Vista RC2 runs perfectly as main OS, yet of course a better video card is a must. I'm going to buy the Geforce 8800GT but I'm waiting until the price drops
