Topic: Windows Vista: worth the money? (Read 16361 times)

Alegis · « **Reply #50 on:** 01 Jan 2007, 10:24 »

And holy ****, while configuring my mic (it was actually much better to uninstall the audio programs that came with my mobo and have Vista select another driver automaticcaly) I noticed I forgot to use the speech recognition feature. Been using it the past 2 days and absolutely love it.
While I used speech recognition before, this beats it hands down. I miss the option to make custom commands (and not just add dictation words), but it is lovely so far. Just like the search (which works much better than Mac OS X's in search) it is spread over the OS.

Open Limewire for example will open it immediately, even though one may have only installed it and not have made any shortcuts or the like. I was surprised by the accuracy of the dictation mode, it's learning process and ease of correction. It makes navigating faster and a whole lot more fun - I think I'll make a seperate topic about this later as it is an overlooked feature that really has me "addicted to it". It is not entirely new of course, but its implementation now in contrast to 3rd party software is much better and new.

"Open Questionable Content" ^^

Scytale · « **Reply #51 on:** 01 Jan 2007, 15:38 »

As a home user, unless you want to play games, there is really no reason to run Windows. It's just a shame Direct X has so much traction, Open Gl is doing really interesting things of late. I was really dissapointed about Neverwinter Nights 2 using direct x, thats the main reason I'm still running a dual boot.

ackblom12 · « **Reply #52 on:** 02 Jan 2007, 10:32 »

...There are people who don't play games on there PC? MADNESS!

Scytale · « **Reply #53 on:** 02 Jan 2007, 13:06 »

I managed to go about 14 months without playing a game until NWN 2 and the new Dawn of war game came out.

My uni grades improved quite a bit...

Toba · « **Reply #54 on:** 02 Jan 2007, 15:38 »

Vista looks shiny. Verrrry shiny. But then, OSX looks shiny too and I don't use it.

FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOM

Yes. I am a massive nerd.

nihilist · « **Reply #55 on:** 03 Jan 2007, 19:36 »

The problem with Vista is that it hasn't hit consumer availability yet, which means that some companies haven't got release drivers out yet (I'm looking at nVidia here). Worse yet are the applications that haven't been modified to work on it, which is utterly nuts, given the fact that it has been in development for a damn long time. The biggest offender of this is EvenBalance/PunkBuster (anti-cheat protection for games, in my case Battlefield 2142). If you try to play 2142 under Vista, the game will crap out after five minutes, because PunkBuster believes that running games on Vista means you are cheating. Beyond weak.

the_tard · « **Reply #56 on:** 07 Jan 2007, 05:06 »

^ Gaaah!! No! My precious BF!

8ilbo · « **Reply #57 on:** 07 Jan 2007, 07:31 »

Given its ?140 for ultimate plus at least ?70 for some more RAM...I'm going to leave it till I get it free on the MSDN Academic Alliance....by which time they will have hopefully ironed out most of the bugs...

I mucked around on the beta for a bit, but never really got to use it properly (thanks to a dodgy four way putting my computer out of action for a month)...the little I did use of it didn't wow me that much...

Hell I might just roll back to 2000 pro

....

Come to think of it, if I'm depressed enough I have an ME disk taunting me somewhere....

elcapitan · « **Reply #58 on:** 07 Jan 2007, 08:19 »

In its current state, I will not pay money for this. It's as simple as that.

The Cosmic Fool · « **Reply #59 on:** 08 Jan 2007, 12:31 »

If you just like the look and feel of Vista, you can spend a bit of time and patience altering XP to look like Vista. It's not overly difficult.

You can use StyleXP or WindowBlinds to give you the Start Menu and Explorer interface. You can use Styler to alter the Explorer icons to look identical to Vista's. You can use Samurize to simulate the side bar with all the widgets. And if you look around, the Vista system sounds have been leaked at various websites. And bootscreens aren't hard to find either.

Resource intensive? True. More than actually putting Vista on your system I bet though. And no hassle with driver conflicts. No spending $400 on Ultimate.

nihilist · « **Reply #60 on:** 08 Jan 2007, 20:20 »

Vista is very smooth with the graphics, because it is all native 3D stuff. Offloads to the GPU, so it is much faster eye candy.

Again, Vista is pretty sweet, but until the drivers hit, and the apps are updated, I can't do it. I suspect by the middle of the year all will be well, though. Especially since it is projected to have over 100 million users by the end of this year.

est · « **Reply #61 on:** 09 Jan 2007, 03:03 »

I don't understand the doomsayers on this. Heather was running Vista a while back and apart from a few driver/app incompatibilities as Mike says, it worked just fine. You can make it look and behave remarkably like Windows XP or even 2k with just a little tweaking. I'm gonna do my usual for OSes, which is wait about 6mths from release, download & install it & turn off any "features" I don't like. I should have the money to upgrade my hardware by then, so maybe I'll do it all as one big "OMG NEW PC" ritual this year.

nihilist · « **Reply #62 on:** 09 Jan 2007, 03:38 »

My PC is now a whole one year old. I'd love to do the new PC thing, but I'm sure I can find other things to do with my cash. However, I agree with the six month waiting thing.

8ilbo · « **Reply #63 on:** 09 Jan 2007, 04:01 »

On a related note....

"Windows XP ProN"

mmmmm....

I'm not too keen on the eye candy - I don't tweak my hardware much, so I try to get as much performance as possible by minimising background processes....and seeing as I spend most of my time when I'm not gaming using Firefox, I see no reason to make the rest of the Windows desktop pretty.

nihilist · « **Reply #64 on:** 09 Jan 2007, 04:26 »

I actually got a theme that minimizes how big the titlebars and stuff are. I hate having them waste space.

Spike · « **Reply #65 on:** 09 Jan 2007, 04:48 »

Quote from: est on 09 Jan 2007, 03:03

I don't understand the doomsayers on this. Heather was running Vista a while back and apart from a few driver/app incompatibilities as Mike says, it worked just fine. You can make it look and behave remarkably like Windows XP or even 2k with just a little tweaking. I'm gonna do my usual for OSes, which is wait about 6mths from release, download & install it & turn off any "features" I don't like. I should have the money to upgrade my hardware by then, so maybe I'll do it all as one big "OMG NEW PC" ritual this year.

Remember, beta versions do not necessarily reflect the finished product. Let's take a look at Battlefield 2, the demo (incomplete) ran wonderfully while the finished product was buggy as all hell.

Even I'm a bit conflicted about it, I don't think any company could be so stupid, but that's followed by, " Wait, yes they can."

Grawsith · « **Reply #66 on:** 09 Jan 2007, 16:42 »

This guy is absolutely right.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196800670&pgno=1&queryText=

Yes, it beats XP, but that's all it beats.

nihilist · « **Reply #67 on:** 09 Jan 2007, 16:50 »

Quote from: Spike on 09 Jan 2007, 04:48

Remember, beta versions do not necessarily reflect the finished product.

It isn't beta; I'm running the final version no problem. (I set it up on another computer last night.)

8ilbo · « **Reply #68 on:** 09 Jan 2007, 17:02 »

Quote from: Grawsith on 09 Jan 2007, 16:42

This guy is absolutely right.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196800670&pgno=1&queryText=

Yes, it beats XP, but that's all it beats.

Although I hate to use sarcasm, I feel in this case is justified...

"My what an unopinionated article"

To be fair it is supposed to be an opinion article, but once again people have confused UI with OS....

The penultimate paragraph sums it up really -

Quote

However, is it significantly, or even slightly better than Mac OS X? Maybe in a couple of low-level ways, like the randomizing memory address usage function, or being able to use USB memory sticks as additional RAM, but at the human level? Not even close.

He indicates that he has badly missed the point of vista in his article.

Spike · « **Reply #69 on:** 10 Jan 2007, 01:54 »

@Mike: Then it seems I'm letting my distrust of big businesses get the better of me. I shall still wait and see.

nihilist · « **Reply #70 on:** 10 Jan 2007, 08:06 »

I have no trust for anybody; I just tried it and liked it.

Now to get a new laptop so I can get the DX10 stuff going on.

elcapitan · « **Reply #71 on:** 11 Jan 2007, 04:20 »

At the moment, "laptop" and "DX10" sound pretty much incongruous.

nihilist · « **Reply #72 on:** 12 Jan 2007, 06:08 »

I suspect it'll be a while till mobile DX10 parts become available. But that's okay, my warranty goes till October or November of this year.

THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)

Author Topic: Windows Vista: worth the money? (Read 16361 times)

Alegis

Scytale

ackblom12

Scytale

nihilist

the_tard

8ilbo

The Cosmic Fool

nihilist

nihilist

8ilbo

nihilist

Grawsith

nihilist

8ilbo

nihilist

nihilist