What Exactly Is New In Vista?

Originally Posted by Mr. Wonderful

Nice set. I'm jealous.

How does the new ReadyBoost work? Does it actually help improve system performance?

I've never used it, I had downloaded vista and received a serial as a beta tester but never got around to it. I've since reformatted the drive with it though.

I'm sure it would make a system faster though as response time on flash memory is much faster than that on a hard disk. Remember, latency on a physical drive is measured in milliseconds, latency on a flash drive is measure in nanoseconds.

I'm sure it would help a moderate amount seeing as how aggressive vista is with its memory caching, I'd just being worried about it ruining my flash device as flash memory has a limited read/write lifespan.

also, I've since upped the clock on my system and upped the memory voltage and timings(i learned my particular set uses micron d9 ICs whereas most use elpida)

Originally Posted by My older Brother

Vista is nothing more than an overhyped POS. Having tested it on all beta releases, and having downloaded the second Release Candidate, I can safely say that, as an IT-literate person, and a seasoned technology student, I'm holding on to my installation of WinXP for a while.

He said, this he's pretty good with computers. So. . .I just decided to post.

He is somewhat over-critical but he isn't too far from the truth.

Oh well. I could not resist. I've said good-bye to XP, and now use Vista as my main OS.
And so far, I'm pretty impressed.

It does not really feel like I'm using XP anymore, it feels new and fresh.
Here's some quick facts thus far:

-The eye-candy is nice and appealing and can be customized quite easily.

-The Security is very annoying, the User account control is the most damn annoying thing ever. Have to push "Yes I know what this program is" "Yes Allow" everytime you want to change the slightest setting. Thankfully you can turn this pointless service off. It's alot better that way.

-The backward compatibility has been very good so far. Only Nero 7.5 and Sygate Personal Firewall not being able to install correctly. Everything else has worked like a charm. If a program installs correctly but does not work quite right, You can change it's properties and set it to a XP Service Pack 2 emulation. Works perfectly (So far only Need for Speed: Carbon does not work for me, even with XP emulation on)

-The Side bar is very handy, I thought it would be an annoying add-on. But some of the neat gadgets you can get for it makes it very handy and quite fun.

-Only have had it installed for two days and everything is going well...My PC seems to be running faster than it did when I had XP on. Which seems strange, it also copies files across the network about 3Mbs more a second than it did on XP, which is also strange.

But I'm not complaining.

Oh and here's a screenshot:

Originally Posted by V99

Oh well. I could not resist. I've said good-bye to XP, and now use Vista as my main OS.
And so far, I'm pretty impressed.

It does not really feel like I'm using XP anymore, it feels new and fresh.
Here's some quick facts thus far:

-The eye-candy is nice and appealing and can be customized quite easily.

-The Security is very annoying, the User account control is the most damn annoying thing ever. Have to push "Yes I know what this program is" "Yes Allow" everytime you want to change the slightest setting. Thankfully you can turn this pointless service off. It's alot better that way.

-The backward compatibility has been very good so far. Only Nero 7.5 and Sygate Personal Firewall not being able to install correctly. Everything else has worked like a charm. If a program installs correctly but does not work quite right, You can change it's properties and set it to a XP Service Pack 2 emulation. Works perfectly (So far only Need for Speed: Carbon does not work for me, even with XP emulation on)

-The Side bar is very handy, I thought it would be an annoying add-on. But some of the neat gadgets you can get for it makes it very handy and quite fun.

-Only have had it installed for two days and everything is going well...My PC seems to be running faster than it did when I had XP on. Which seems strange, it also copies files across the network about 3Mbs more a second than it did on XP, which is also strange.

But I'm not complaining.

Oh and here's a screenshot:

I love that background. Does it come as the default?

And are you running Aero? If so, at what resolution on your monitor? (I assume the full 1280x1024 based on that shot.) Is there any slow down with your 6600GT doing normal things, because of it? My laptop will have a native resolution of 1680x1050 running Aero off of a 256MB Go 7600, which I think will do the trick. The high resolution still is a slight worry to me though.

It still looks more to be an eye-candy software than actually improving things on various aspect. But that could change as MS, again, release newer updates, etc.

Originally Posted by Mr. Wonderful

I love that background. Does it come as the default?

And are you running Aero? If so, at what resolution on your monitor? (I assume the full 1280x1024 based on that shot.) Is there any slow down with your 6600GT doing normal things, because of it? My laptop will have a native resolution of 1680x1050 running Aero off of a 256MB Go 7600, which I think will do the trick. The high resolution still is a slight worry to me though.

Yep that background comes default, they've got quite a nice range of backgrounds.
My monitor resolution is 1280x1024, but I've got two monitors running. Therefore it's really 2560x1024. I'm am also running Areo, runs great! I am surprised how smooth it is running. It's been improved quite alot since Beta 2.

If you want a complete rundown, look at the Mac OS X operating system on any Mac, choose one. Doesn't matter. Apple even compared the two operating systems. Vista = Mac OS X clone.

Originally Posted by V99

Yep that background comes default, they've got quite a nice range of backgrounds.
My monitor resolution is 1280x1024, but I've got two monitors running. Therefore it's really 2560x1024. I'm am also running Areo, runs great! I am surprised how smooth it is running. It's been improved quite alot since Beta 2.

it's because they use the GPU to render the GUI as opposed to the CPU.

essentially it's a rippoff of apple's implementation turn of the century.
I'm not complaining though in time I'll likely be using vista or something similar.

or at the very least a modified version of XP or 2003 with hacked directX10 support

lol, looks like I might be out of luck.

Microsoft: Pirated Vista may be useless

Originally Posted by infoworld.com

Microsoft responded Tuesday to reports that said some Web sites have been circulating pirated copies of Vista and Office 2007.

The pirated Vista comes with a product key that users can enter to activate a version of the products on their computers without paying for them, a report on the Web site of The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said. A product key is a unique serial number tied to each package of a software product.

A second download, called an "activation crack," can then be applied that bypasses the activation process intended to guarantee that the Vista OS being downloaded is legitimate, the Herald reported. Pirated copies of Office 2007 can be downloaded just with the product key with no second activation code required.

But Microsoft said in a prepared statement that those pirated copies of the OS won't work for long.

"The copies available for download are not final code and users should avoid unauthorized copies which could be incomplete or tampered. This unauthorized download relies on the use of pre-RTM [release-to-manufacture] activation keys that will be blocked using Microsoft’s Software Protection Platform. Consequently, these downloads will be of limited value," the statement said.

Microsoft is still looking into reports of pirated versions of Office 2007 and declined further comment.

"Microsoft is happy that customers are eager to begin using Windows Vista," the company said.

If only Microsoft, that filthy corporation, can lower the freaking prices of the OS...

Been a Beta tester ftw.

Nothing about Vista impresses me. It's just a spiced up version of XP. I'd rather go with Linux or a Mac, but for the time being, I am stuck with XP Media Center 2005. My laptop rocks and eventually I will install Ubuntu Media Center on it. I am getting sick of Microsoft and all the errors that come with it. However I have to figure out what program will work with my IPOD for Linux.

--Jesse