f13.net

XP Decided to shit the bed and frankly, it was time to upgrade. Got Home Premium. We'll see how long I last in Aero.

Thus far, it's been pretty easy.

Also, having 120GB of installed games all fit into the recycle bin is pretty weird.

Oh and RAM++.

Oh sweet. Firefox 3 doesn't render the f13 frontpage correctly. RAD.

I'm doing some playtesting at Microsoft tomorrow, so I fully expect to able to install Vista at home tomorrow.

Hm?

They like to give out software at those sorts of things. Back when I worked for a big company that was partnered with MS everytime they came down to visit they'd bring a big box of software with them to give out.

Well yea, I was just wondering what he was playtesting. At CompUSA I always made sure I'd go to one of those when a new revision of windows or Office had come out.

People really don't learn, do they?

How many threads have we had on Vista 64 that end in tears and regret?

Im not having any issues with Vista 64.

Every game and program I've installed has worked perfectly. Except for fucking PowerDVD, but it's not vistas fault. They took out HD-DVD support in 8 and now I'm left looking for a program that supports HD-DVD playback.

Nevermind. Someone backwards engineered the 8 release to let HD-DVD work in it from the beta. Word. No problems anymore.

Yup, had it for months and never had a problem.

Anyone know if your 32bit Vista key works on the same version for 64bit Vista? I'm thinking of switching to 64bit and getting some more RAM to go with it ..

If it's a retail key, it should. OEM won't.

90% of my development tools won't run. Games, sure they run, with 2x the ram. Web browsing/MS word works great!

Say hello to my computer?

Is the 2x ram a requirement because of Aero or just Vista itself?

You don't upgrade to vista unless you really want to run the RAM you can run in Vista.

Yep, I feel that you move to 64-bit because you want to use some more RAM.  It's all about address space.  Since XP 64 is balls, that leaves Vista 64.  So far I don't have any memory issues, and Firefox 3 is much less of a hog, so I'm still OK with XP.  Possibly a different story in twelve months.

Vista runs fine on 2gb of RAM, even better if you have a crappy flashdrive you can stick in there for readyboost.

I AM HIJACKING THIS THREAD.  I want to know what x64 software you guys out there are using for various things.  I'm having a hard time tracking down x64 programs for certain tasks, for instance I would like to install an x64 image viewer (like acdsee) to browse my awesome pictures.  

What are you guys using that is 64bit?

Fuck readyboost, just upgrade to 8gig and tun the pagefile down to 16mb. Everything runs better so far.

Let me know when Cisco makes a VPN client that works on Vista 64.

That's why your work should give you a laptop, like a normal company.

Aha, I didn't even think of that. Not that I use my home computer ..

We now use a web-based java VPN (I think it's Cisco) but it doesn't work on OS X, so I'm stuck using the deprecated version.

SmartFTP is the only native 64-bit piece of software I grabbed. But then, not much else I need on the machine. Cept Photoshop and CS3 works fine.

ACDSee Pro 2.0 works under Vista 64 and utilizes multiple cores.

Actually my company only uses Laptops - and the new ones are Vista.

But at the same time we use something different for VPN. The Cisco stuff is for my Other Crap(TM).

Frontpage?  What's that?   :awesome_for_real:

Well my trip to Microsoft was full of  :nda: and it was  :nda:, the  :nda: was interesting and  :nda:. I would definately do it again.

Illuminating.

How is AoC running in Vista VS XP ?

It runs better. Shockingly.

What are your machine specs?

Q9450, 4GB DDR2-800, 8800GT, P5KC mobo, external X-Fi/USB, Seasonic 600 powersupply.

I just installed Vista 32-bit with SP1 and it works great. Its stable, fast, runs AoC just as good as XP SP3 and it uses all my 4GB ram. I thought it was only 64-bit OS supporting 4gb, but SP1 sorted it.

This rig btw : X38-DQ6, 8800GTX 768mb, Core2Quad 2,4ghz, 4gb ram.

Yea - Newegg just got a bit more of my money so I can go from 2 to 4 megs of memory. Thankfully memory is cheap nowdays.

Why would you run the 32bit version with that setup? Doesn't make any sense.

Bzzzt. Vista 32 REPORTS full ram, but it can't actually use all of it, specially not with a 768 mb vid card. Check thread in PC Console Gamin under April Computer Builds for the long discussion.

I don't have the 64bit version at the moment and don't run anything heavier than CS3 / Open Office / games + default apps on this machine and just wanted to see if Vista SP1 was as good as advertised. So far, so good. Will pick up the 64bit version from my office this week and upgrade and check the difference.

Dang. Ah no probs, as mentioned I will do an upgrade this week.

Uhmm - why would anyone run the 32 bit version of Vista?

Well, there's that, yes.

You can order a 64bit CD from MS for $10 or just do like I did and download it somewhere... I'll be burning the ISO tonight and trying an upgrade from 32bit to 64bit here shortly.

I am downloading now, but its damn slow. I remember seeing it on Microsofts TechNet, but can't find it now, only the SP1.

Yah I had to find a torrent for it.

Apparently you can only do a clean install (no upgrade) so now I'm going to have to turn this into a full weekend project and backup my crap first. And then reinstall everything. Sigh. At least there's only two things I really need: Firefox 3 and EVE (and it's supporting programs).

You might want to make sure you have vista 64bit drivers for all your stuff before you start installing. It can be tricky especially for older things.

Got the 64bit version of Vista Ultimate today and installed it now. Gonna test some games (AoC) and then some heavy apps. So far it seems great and stable.

Vista has yet to cause me or my friends any trouble.  My friends had me around to design and build their systems and set up Vista on them, though, so they didn't do anything unwise like installing Vista on older hardware or getting a prebuilt PC.

Vista is accustomed to nice things.  If you try to get her a crappy system without a multi-core processor and at least two gigs of RAM, she's going to be bitchy.
Vista doesn't want you to be in charge.  If you run under an administrative account, she's going to nag.  A lot.  So don't do it.  Run under a standard user account and enjoy your virus-proofness.

You know that new computer i built? yeah, i'm still using XP.

why?

Because about 90% of my development tools will not run in vista.

One day i will upgrade, but not any time soon, not with how Vista runs.

So, I just wanted to add, Creative is possibly the worst driver maker ever. They should team up with ATI of old.

My microphone wouldn't turn off, or if I did turn it off, then it wouldn't work. Nothing like hearing yourself breath.

I found a great solution though. Pull the creative card and use on-board audio. It all works perfect now.

Other thing I don't like so far about Vista is the inability to defrag the system files. I'll probably reinstall once I get my new DVD with SP1 Slipstreamed in.

The turnip truck.  When did you fall off of it?

Creative has been shit since the 1980's, even when they were the only game in town.

Oddly, removing the crappy xfi drivers trashed my vista x64 install, so I got to spend the day doing a nice clean install. I was removing them as it kept randomly changing my microphone levels.

Actually, SP1 apparently toned the nag-screen frequency down a lot - I get the occasional 'please confirm', but it really hasn't been an issue, and has mirrored the frequency that I think Joe User should be asked to confirm shit.  While the first time I looked at the 'Performance' tab of the task manager was a bit sobering (1GB?!), Vista64 has been a breeze so far, even on a pre-built machine (what can I say - the price was right and I was feeling lazy).  Wholeheartedly agree on the nice things bit, tho - my friend's ex-roommate bought a C2D laptop with Vista (but only 1 GB RAM) and it's a complete dog.

I hear Asus has a nice soundcard...