Vista
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I almost upgraded to Vista when I got a new desktop last year. I just avoided it because my machine was pre-Vista enough that I wasn't positive about the drivers, SP2 for SQL Server wasn't out yet, and I couldn't afford to Beta, Charlie, Gamma, or whatever term you want to use for testing software that's not really finished.
And I am glad I didn't. I saw the commentary on PC Magazine chief editor Jim Louderback that he was most displeased with Vista after spending 9 months working on it on a variety of machines. I commend someone so willing to jump in and learn, and I've questioned whether I should do that. I resisted all desktop upgrades from Microsoft before XP, having to be dragged into them by the IT departments. With XP I decided to give it a go from the start and while I floundered and wasn't thrilled with all the things being moved, I've come to really like it and use it as my primary OS on 2 machines for 5+ years.
I considered doing the same thing for Vista, but couldn't bring myself to do it. With all the reports about issues, I'm glad I didn't. So this being Friday, I'm asking:
Do you run, or want to run, Vista?
Let us know if you currently do so and what you think. Is this the next evolution for the desktop OS or is it a piece of @#$%$#. I've heard both sides, and while I can't believe the FUD boys at Slashdot, I can't also believe all the Microsoft people running Vista.
I'm not sure people at Microsoft, or even MVPs have much of a choice. After all they're kind of promoting the company and not running the latest OS would seem bad. I saw 20 or so presentations this year at TechEd and the MS BI conference and most everyone was running Vista with no obvious errors during the talks. However I see so many issues raised around the Internet, I wonder what the state of this new OS really is.
So give us your thoughts and experiences. And let Microsoft know if you'd be willing to pay a $49 a year subscription to keep XP around. I know I would. It works well, is very stable, and I like it.
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Of necessity, I bought a new laptop recently that came with Vista Home Premium installed. It's pretty and has some "fun" features but I'm not all that impressed. So far I haven't encountered any serious issues. I did discover that the desktop Windows manager (dwm.exe) takes up a *lot* of RAM (I've seen it taking as much as 1 GB from my 2 GB machine). Word online is that this is due to the pretty graphics and previews of the default style.
I also see that the SQL Server 2008 July CTP does not run on Vista. That is a big issue for me.
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Actually Vista Ultimate is the only Home edition you can run all features of SQL Server 2005 because Reporting Services require Windows Authentication in IIS and Home Premium does not have that.
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie -
I run Vista Ultimate and I like it.
It took some getting-used-to. I turned off the pesky user access stuff and enabled the Administrator account, which I use.
Vista is a fine OS. It's new, and there are bugs and quirks - just like there were with Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP. We tend to remember the pain of moving on until about six months before the next move - I have no idea why.
ME is the only OS Microsoft sholdn't have released. It was just bad. Vista is no ME.
Give hardware a year or two to catch up - when 4G of RAM in a laptop is considered 2 or 3 generations old. I believe folks will feel different about Vista.
:{> Andy
Andy Leonard, Chief Data Engineer, Enterprise Data & Analytics
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I've been running Vista Business to do development work for the past three months without issues. At home I use XP but will be upgrading with the new computer purchase.
It's not revolutionary, but meets my needs...
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I took the plunge on Vista with two DELL laptops recently. While it may look fancy I think it is a backward step from XP which I think does a pretty good job. I have not sorted out all my issues, keep losing internet access - sometimes just the browser some times the whole machine.
IE crashes quite frequently as well
And on top of that have to learn where they have hidden all the features - yet again.
I am dreading the upgrade to Vista of my Work Laptop. A collegues experience again on a new dell and connecting to a work environemnt was not enjoyable.
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I have absolutely no intention of running SQL Server at all on this machine with Vista Home. Never did. I had to have a laptop for basic internet access, etc. ASAP and so I went with what was available. Right now I'm trying to decide if I should just dual-boot this machine with XP Pro or replace it with a better-configured machine.
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I tested Vista on my son's PC. (Because he has a monster of a machine for games). He liked it. I did not. And after 3 months he also became tired of solving issues (mostly with games) and switched back to XP.
5ilverFox
Consulting DBA / Developer
South Africa -
I've recently bought 2 laptops with Vista Home Premium, and whilest much pretter the changes to the UI make it a pain to get even the simplest jobs done initially.
The worst issues are with compatibility, I can only speak for games as that's what these are used for but it's about a 50% incompatibility rate so far.
The next most anoying thing is moving or copying files 3 minutes to calculate how long it'll take and then less than 30s to copy the file, why? There is a patch for this but it doesn't always fix the problem, the proper fix is due with SP1.
I know that the next upgrade of my main machine will still be XP, maybe this will change after SP1 for Vista.
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At work we only went to XP two years ago from NT4 and after extensive testing and a major rollout operation replacing all the desktop hardware. Everything has to go through fairly tough extensive testing and security approval before any rollout and although we have a Vista installation or two in for testing, it won't go corporate for a long, long time.
Personally I shall resist the move at home until we move at work. I bought a new desktop just pre-Vista and my laptop is also XP pro so we'll stick. I still run a windows 98 machine because my high quality scanner doesn't have xp drivers available. I only use it infrequently so why should I spend 20% of my monthly income to upgrade? Likewise with XP to Vista - if it ain't broke don't fix it.
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I've had my Dell 9400 laptop for eight months now. For the first three months it was running Windows XP and since then its been running Vista Ultimate and Office 2007. When I'm at home I find I'll use the laptop more than the desktop because it's still running XP and Office 2003. It's frustrating to try and do something the old way now.
The Administrative Tools available in Vista are very cool. I especially like the Reliability and Performance Monitor and the Firewall is almost like a real live firewall (unlike XP). The rating system applied to the components could by pretty useful as well if its extended beyond just Vista. The Snipping Tool is fast becoming another favorite as well.
On a constant basis, I'm running SQL 2005, SQL 2000, Reporting Services, SQL EXPRESS x 2, Outlook, Excel, Word and about a dozen web pages are open. Memory usage generally hovers around 1-1.2GB which is around 55% of the total available.
My only real gripes are a) being a laptop my poor hard disk gets quite a thrashing and things tend to slow remarkably when there is a lot of disk activity going on, and b) with the secure screen for UAC (where it grays out the desktop) caused frequent screen flips which was causing the graphics driver to fail.
Plus I really like my sidebar gadgets
David Thomas, if you want to take the chance with warraty violation etc..., I'd suggest wiping your laptop and doing a fresh install without including all the Dell baggage. I did this when I first got my laptop and it was running XP. Ran like a dog until I did the fresh install.
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Colt 45 - the original point and click interface
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About 5 months ago I bought a desktop with Vista Home Premium pre-installed. While I liked the new interface and some of the new features I soon run into problems with incompatible applications. Especially video editing software and codecs can make your system really unstable. I constantly received message that either a DCOM error occured or that Explorer had crashed and needed to restart. I reinstalled the system with Vista, but after adding some applications I soon ran into the same errors. Windows Mediaplayer stopped working totally.
So after 3 or 4 reinstalls and retries with diiferent applications I finally decided that XP is still good enough and at least stable with the software I want to use.
Maybe I give it enough try next year the more Vista compatible apps are available but for the time being I won't do any more upgrade on my other machines.
Markus
[font="Verdana"]Markus Bohse[/font]
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I ran Vista Ultimate on my new Dell laptop (fresh manual install) for about 6 months before giving up and installing XP. I had the forethought to leave enough space for XP initially and so can dual boot - although I haven't in 2months now.
I too switched off UAC as I had numerous problems, not least installing software from a network share as the UAC account had no network priviledges - is this just me?
Copying files was ridiculously slow - not good for a sysadmin. Glass is a gimic. Forced to use IE7 - why is the menu bar there? Stupid use of modal dialog boxes for things like network connections - I have approx 6 VPN connections I use and about the same wireless access points. VPN stopped working as Vista decided I no longer had an internet connection, even though I did and it was working fine.
Biggest gripe, the amount of change for change sake - same applies to Office 2007 in this regard. Where are proper 'classic' options, i.e. one which gives me menu bars and 'Display Properties' from right-clicking the desktop (it's been in that place for over 12years, why change now?)
To take I have embraced virtually all MS OS's quickly, with the exception of ME and to a lesser extent '98 (I found 98 to be an overbloated 95)
/rant.
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I purchase my Notebook PC on October 1st, 2006 and found out it was just shy 25 days of getting the free upgrade to Vista. I am glad that it was that way because the upgrade would have given me the 32-bit version when my Notebook PC has a 64-bit processor. I have been running Vista on the Notebook PC since February and I have enjoyed every minute of it. I upgraded my Desktop PC a few months after that, and I can definately say that I have upgraded and never looked back. There are applications that I hardly ever used that would not work under Vista, but I have found out that I really did not need those applications so much, and for the rare times that I would need those applications, I just boot a Windows xp Virtual PC and be done with what I need. I wished that at my company that we were using Vista, but I have heard that we will be rolling it out soon.
James E. Freedle II -
We hear all the same talk everytime there is a new MS OS coming out (remember XP...) As all new software on the initial release need some tweeking and more bug fixes, waiting for the first service pack is a good thing...I heard it is coming out soon or it is out already.
I had to juice up my home PC with more memory before going to Vista. I will be upgrading in the coming weeks. I am approaching with a positive attitude...
As for work PC, that's another thing. No time to lose on fixing issues while working. Let's wait some more before waking up the monster!!
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