Apparently there is fish in the OS too.

And as for a loaded question isn't that kind of what these forums are about..to get people chatting about this and that. Besides I'm interested in what the group discovers.

Well, so far I've discovered that for no reason what-so-ever Vista wants to hang for a few minutes. I'll be typing something in Firefox, or just clicking on a link and the program hangs. I get the "not responding" message in the title bar, but I can't bring up the task-list to kill it as basically all of Vista is hanging....but only for a short few minutes. Then it comes back and everything is fine and I don't even have to kill Firefox. It's happened with other programs also, all without actually crashing the entire machine or even the program in question, but it just....hangs....for a few minutes.

I'm wondering if I'm running out of RAM, as I have 1Gig and it's obvious from my trials that it needs at least 2Gigs to function properly. I'm going to try it for a few days on the "classic" UI and not the Aero UI to see if that alleviates some of the memory problems.

I also can't get any DVD to play in my machine without it complaining about digital copyright violations...even though I'm using store-bought DVD movies. But Nvidia thinks it's still a driver issue.

Well, I got my network running ok - almost! I set up Vista to allow anyone on my network to enter. Vista can see and access both the XP and Linux machines. The XP machine can access Vista. But the Linux machine can't - Samba asks for a user name and password but nothing works: access refused. While this is no big deal - the Linux box is running my Web site and I don't usually want to access other machines from it - it is a little puzzling. Maybe MS doesn't want Linux machines, er, penetrating its new baby?

Other than this, so far everything seems ok. I even copied Solitaire across (I enjoy the intellectual challenge ) and that works ok. There are problems accessing MySQL from my XP machine but this is probably due to my not setting up MySQL correctly - I'll investigate further when I have time.

Apparently there is fish in the OS too.

Ouch. The practicality of a qualifying statement just struck me.

Disclaimer: All posts by Max Bell in this thread are provided for entertainment purposes only, and should not be used by pregnant women or while operating heavy machinery. Do not play in or around.

Well, the dance is over. I had to reformat my HD and put XP back on. The temporary system hangs that I described above were just too much to actually use the computer. For no reason at all it would just hang for a few minutes then come back.

Not to mention it was a total RAM hog. 1Gig is NOT enough to run this monster, even with Aero turned off. Who knows if they'll fix this stuff or not.

Thanks John, for puting this item on discussion and a direct link on the blog. Also a direct link on Linux distros.
That´s really increasing the debate on these topics.
4 me it´s quite clear the way ahead: Keep using the good old proven XP on my main PC, that by now has almost every quirk ironed out. Upgrade to Linux on my second machine and start checking on Wine (windows virtual machine) to close the gap of unexistent/unqualified apps. And also try Ubuntu/KDE on my iBook.
Bloatware is the main achilles heel for me. I don´t have the money to shell out to use bloated software. Of course, in one years time, the specs to use vista will be much cheaper to attain. but for now, NO!

(support the campaign: Vista Next Year - starting Jan 01 )

Today's Vista test was in two parts:

The power-off test. This consists of starting it up, waiting until it has settled down, then literally pulling the plug. After all, in the real world, the power does sometimes go (which is why I have UPSs for my machines) and any worthwhile computer should be able to cope with this. And Vista did, with no problems, except that it decided the network and
Internet no longer existed. In fact both did - I could connect to the other machines and to the Internet, even though Vista told me there were no connections. I re-started it normally and it "re-discovered" the net.

I have the feeling that networking is still a weak point in Vista, although I can't imagine why - it's not exactly rocket science these days.

My other test was a full install of Office 2003. On my XP machine, Word is prone to random (although infrequent) crashes, especially when used with IBM Via Voice, so I'm interested to see how it behaves here. I'll install Via Voice tomorrow and see how that goes, too. For the moment, Word seems to work normally.

Excel also worked fine. I copied across a couple of fairly complex spreadsheets and they work as they should. I won't be trying the rest of Office since I only ever use Word and Excel. (Were I the boss of a company, I'd ban PowerPoint completely - it's the most pernicious element of modern business, IMHO.)

Still no BSOD (touch wood, fondle rabbit's paw, cross fingers, etc - difficult to do all that simultaneously).

I downloaded it here a few days ago, and I've gotta say, it's TERRIBLE.

There are tons of new features ... but 99% of them don't really do anything but hog resources (Aero interface, I'm looking at you). Sure, it looks great, but in the end, I'd rather have an ugly OS with better performance than a pretty one that hogged all of my system resources so I couldn't do anything else... I tried running a few different games on it (Oblivion, Counter-Strike: Source, Age of Empires III) and got very noticeably reduced performance than I did on XP...

Not to mention the massive amount of bugs in Vista... Several applications I usually use on a daily basis (VLC Media Player and Java, for example) "aren't Windows compatible"... So whenever I go to a website with a Java applet Vista will disable all transparency ? Not only that, the new "feature" where it'll pop up a dialog saying "<insert application here> has stopped working, what do you want to do?" is a piece of crap - about half the time it'll pop up when said application in fact IS still working, but you can't close the dialog without closing your program as well... Not to mention your standard Windows bugs (unexplained crashes, BSOD's, etc.) And yes, it is beta software - but beta software shouldn't be this buggy (kind of how the Ubuntu 6.06 beta wasn't). This seems more like early alpha software to me...

I thought some of the screen shots looked nice, so I thought I would give it a shot and install it on a high end Dell that my iMac replaced.  Even though I have no intentions of going back to Windows, I still like to keep up on what's happening in the industry (I am MCSE).

I've heard of 2 day downloads, so I immediately decided to spend the $10 for the DVD.  I of course couldn't use the Microsoft DVD order pages correctly from either Safari or Firefox on my Mac, and even Firefox on Windows had problems.

So I finally got the order form to work with IE on Windows, filled out the entire form, provided credit card info, and then got a screen that simply said "Error."  Nice error handling.  It will be interesting to see if the credit card gets charged (good thing for chargeback protection).

If Microsoft can't even get the DVD order fullfillment process to work correctly, then I'm done spending time on this.  So my first impression was formed rather quickly.  Back to work and fun on OS X...

Looking back at my brief experience with Vista...I'm wondering where I'm suppose to be excited about some of the features.

I actually like being asked each time the OS was about to perform something that needed Admin approval. I liked the parental controls...though I'm wondering how effective they were if you used Firefox instead of IE. But I liked being able to set up the log-in to be used only certain days and hours.

I'm looking at the Aero interface and I'm thinking to myself...why? It's pretty and all....a little chunky looking (do the borders and title bars on the windows have to be that big?)...but is it really useful? Yes, OSX has eye candy galore, but some of that candy is actually good for you. Vista looks like it just has the candy for the sake of candy. Drop shadows...um...ok, how useful is that other than you needing more power to generate them. Transparency in the window frames, totally useless and a resource hog...period. The 3D page flip thingy, just for show but useless for everyday use where alt-tab is just as good and faster.

I don't know...as it stands now, I'm not going to be picking this up with it comes out next year. I'm going to stick with XP unless OSX comes out as a stand-alone OS. Don't say that Apple won't ever do this, for as they've shown us in the past few years: never say never.

My first impression was... That's it? I expected a more dramatic change or break from XP.
I have a machine where everything is BETA. Windows Vista, Office 2007, messenger live etc. BTW, Java stops IE 7 on Vista from loading completely, so I had to take it off.
After a few days with it, I like it, although (old habits die hard) I am annoyed by the difficulty of navigation from my profile into the computer and network. In XP the explorer displays all of them in the same window. I am shocked by the number of icons in classic view of the control panel and disappointed that all the settings in the display properties window from XP did not consolidate in a single un-tabbed window for ease of use. They are now split into many windows.

After a few days with it, I like it, although (old habits die hard) I am annoyed by the difficulty of navigation from my profile into the computer and network. In XP the explorer displays all of them in the same window.

I just litter the desktop with shortcuts to the machine's 2 hard drives, the network machines and the programs I use most. Result: my Vista desktop looks exactly like my XP desktop. I wasn't allowed to load Aero because Vista apparently can't handle my graphics card (although graphics works just fine).

I put Vista 32bit on my old pc.

Athlon XP 2000
768 MB DDR 333 RAM
40 Gig 133 HDD
GeForce 6600GT AGP

I use it as a networked media PC in my living room.

I like it. Nice to look at and play with. System rating is only a 2.  I will be changing the motherboard and Processor to a K8N Neo/Athlon 64 3000+ early next week.  I may try the 64 bit version then.

I disabled all of the security pop ups asking if you want to do this or run that.  Makes working with it much better.  System hangs on start up and shut down.  Resolution center says I have drivers that are causing the problems, but one driver is listed in Jap or Chinese.. Not sure what driver it is yet.  I have a cheap tv tuner that can not be recognized even though XP can figure it out.  The Nvidia Vista driver(beta) from Nvidias website will not install..

I have 2 user accounts.  Mine and the old lady's.  Mine is Admin, hers is standard user.  Same on my XP rig.  I can share my docs folder for Me from the XP machine.  I can't share hers from the XP machine   I can see the folder on the Vista network and when I open it, I get a message about not being the owner... so I go to change it and I can't, even though I am the ADMIN.  Tried everything I know..The option is not there like it is with any other folder.  Both are on the same workgroup.  That is the only prob I have with folder sharing between the 2.  I read on Vistas help site that the admin account that comes with VISTA is not the same as an admin account that you create... So I try to log on with the admin account that comes with it....  It won't even show up?  Anyone know how to get it to show up on the log-on screen?  I have tried enabling the Cnt+alt+del and still nothing shows for administrator.  It is active under computer mang. Does it only show up when connected to a domain or something?

Other than those little things, I am happy with it.  Needs more gadgets though.

Looks frickin great on my Viewsonic 32 LCD!!



*I have since installed the new Nvidia drivers through Device Manager.. The install that comes with the download never worked.

Found out how to get to the Admin account....  Why do they hide it?....

---

Enabling the Administrator Account for Logon in Vista Beta2 5384

Those of you who have downloaded and installed Windows Vista Beta 2 (build 5384) may have noticed something annoying: unless you join a domain, it is awfully difficult to logon to the built in Administrator account.

To work around this:

   1. Logon as the account you created during the installation.
   2. From the Start menu, go to "All Programs", "Accessories"
   3. Right-click on "Command Prompt" and choose "Run as Administrator"
   4. Click "Allow" from the ConsentUI prompt
   5. In the resulting Command window, enter "regedit" and press enter
   6. In regedit, browse to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
   7. Add a new key at that level called SpecialAccounts
   8. In the SpecialAccounts key, create a sub-key called UserList
   9. At this point the path is: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
  10. In the UserList key, create a new value of type DWORD (32 bit) called Administrator and set the value to 1.
  11. From the command prompt enter: "net user Administrator /Active:yes"
  12. Reboot, and now you can logon to the Administrator account

For those of you who join your computer to a domain, you can easily logon as the local administrator account using Switch User, as long as you have enabled the account.

I went through a whole post in detail and my 18 month old son woke up, and the post timed out and I lost it... argh!

Anyway, I don't see what the fuss is all about. Like my wife said, its pretty. I had no problems at all installing, and the only real issue I have is that there are pathetic drivers for my audigy sound card. But I have XP on one drive and Vista on another, so I can easily dual boot. Take the advice on clean install... besides who wants to risk losing everything?

The real test was how my non-techie wife handled it, and she loved it. Her computer is currently running win2k, so she loved all the pretty bells and whistles. She does a lot of photoshop work and digital scrapping, everything ran great. She was not offended by having to click on continue more often than before. (neither am I)

Will I buy it? Only after doing the next hardware upgrade. Like I said, I haven't had any odd problems that won't be fixed by driver updates. TV Tuner not supposed to work, but does, just that the soundcard doesn't open the line in so I can't hear anything... beta.

Gaming is fine, maybe a touch slower? COD, BF2, etc. but they seem a little darker, but that might be my monitor.

My specs:
Antec Something or other Quiet 450 0r 500 watt PSU
Asus P4P800 mobo
P4 2.4 @ 2.82
1 gig Kingston 3200 @1:1
Radeon 9800 Pro
SB Audigy 4
Seagate 200 gig SATA (XP)
IBM Deathstar 30 gig (Vista)