Vista : Is it worth me installing ?

SeantheMan

I got another Dell recently, MC XP Edition...same as XP tbh

Anyways, i have all my music, and about 20 or so games installed on it and everything set up nicely
Been using XP for since its out now

So Dell send me out a free copy of Vista Home Premium Edition in an upgrade pack which i got a few weeks later :eek:

So, i get 2 discs to install this vista with,both are Dell discs, so i got 1 or 2 questions

If i upgrade to this Vista with the discs, will it just be like standard reformatting and ill lose everything ??

Also, is it worth it ?, all the time and hassle to install all my games again, and the fact that some people say they have problems trying to get some games and applications working :eek:

I'd like to try it out and see what its like, but....is it worth my time tbh ? are yous all happy with the results yous have gotten ? :rolleyes:

Just so you know, i wouldnt be using it for editing photos or word or working from home. All i do is to play games..which XP does fine, and listen to my music through Winamp, so Media Player dont make a difference to me

Black Swan

There may be some compatibility problems with VISTA. One of my spyware programmes that worked with XP-2 does not work with VISTA. A game that worked fine in XP-2 malfunctions with VISTA. You might want to wait until they have worked out a lot of the bugs?

VISTA is a resource hog. Needs at least 1 gig memory. Runs slower than XP-2.

Tar.Aldarion

You can upgrade and keep your files. I work on Vista all day, every day. Maybe wait till you feel that it is more stable and all the major bugs are out of it/everything supposrted?
What is your set up like, you need a fair bit of RAM, as Vista is about shinyness.

_Kaiser_

I got Vista through our MVLS agreement so installed Vista Business on my office laptop and home PC (yes our Agreement covers home use rights before anyone complains! )

Yes it looks nice, there's some nice new features and it's going to be the new standard soon enough... BUT it's very resource heavy, a lot of basic things (Word etc) run slower, there's a lot of compatibility issues and ultimately (no pun intended) there's no REASON (yet) to have it.

So I've gone back to XP on both. I'm sure I'll reinstall it when I need to but for the moment I'm a lot happier and don't miss it at all (and this is from a guy who usually adopts and sticks with the latest and greatest Windows as they come out).

mathias

I have Vista set up on my PC , the machine was about a year old when I did it , it took about 2 weeks to hunt down all the drivers but got everything working eventually.

The latest games I had , Fear , Far cry etc , all work fine , here are some that didnt ,

Max payne , the fall of ,
Painkiller
Hitman , ( any version )
Unreal 2003 ( 2004 works )

etc . , you get the message , look up your games on the net and see if they are compatible or not ,
With the new drivers the games are no slower or no faster , they perform about the same as they do on XP , but given the fail rate of old games theres no need for you to upgrade and I wouldnt if I was you.
Also I doubt very much if anyone is going to patch those old games for Vista , in Vista terms they would be obsolete , so as you just play games I would say no to Vista.

For everything else , I'd Wait for the first service pack. I like Vista , but it definitely takes work to get up and running properly.

Tar.Aldarion

It's just shiny XP yet, no reason to upgrade now.

cooperguy

I reckon ull need 2GB of RAM for it to run comfortably. I have 2GB and the CPU/RAM clock widget says its using about 45% of my RAM when its doing nothing more than showing a desktop (im assuming its an accurate clock). So i wouldnt go near Vista without 2GB RAM.

Kolodny

My advice would be wait. I got a complete laptop replacement from Dell recently and while Vista does look very nice, it's just too resource hungry (with 1gb RAM anyway) and there are just too many currently unresolvable issues with software I use. I'm probably going to reinstall XP for now.

8T8

SeantheMan I'd go with waiting for Vista SP1 in your case as you have a modest interest in Vista but XP is working fine for you wait till SP1 comes out later this year and adds an extra layer of polish before committing.

The graphics driver situation has gone a lot better recently to the point it has turned a corner & games haved reach parity on XP/Vista in terms of FPS but still rough spots here & there however it is improving given another few months the remaining kinks should be worked out.

RE*AC*TOR

I got Vista Home Premium pre-installed on a laptop i bought, absolutely no problems so far, and I quite like some of the features (the search function is superb).

Mr. Presentable

8T8 wrote:

SeantheMan I'd go with waiting for Vista SP1 in your case as you have a modest interest in Vista but XP is working fine for you wait till SP1 comes out later this year and adds an extra layer of polish before committing.

The graphics driver situation has gone a lot better recently to the point it has turned a corner & games haved reach parity on XP/Vista in terms of FPS but still rough spots here & there however it is improving given another few months the remaining kinks should be worked out.

I'd agree with this and maybe go further. Wait until you buy your next PC with Vista on it. There are still issues as mentioned above and if XP is doing the job, why change?

jor el

SeantheMan wrote:

I'd like to try it out and see what its like, but....is it worth my time tbh ? are yous all happy with the results yous have gotten ?

I got a new Laptop after Christmas with Vista pre-installed. After about a month I wiped it and went for XP. Vista has absolutely nothing to offer over XP, and for me anyway, took some of the usability of XP away. If everything is fine on XP then don't change.

Vista is a hog, Windows Explorer has become annoyingly unusable, they moved everything to different locations and all the new security features will drive you nuts so you just disable them (making them pointless).

Donald-Duck

cooperguy wrote:

I reckon ull need 2GB of RAM for it to run comfortably. I have 2GB and the CPU/RAM clock widget says its using about 45% of my RAM when its doing nothing more than showing a desktop (im assuming its an accurate clock). So i wouldnt go near Vista without 2GB RAM.

Careful on giving information like that. Vista is not windows XP. Its using the free ram to pre-open programs etc instead of just leaving it unused. Hence why it always shows a high % being used.

Homer129

I recently upgraded my PC having participated in Dells "Express" upgrade program. It offers 3 options: 1: Upgrade, 2: Clean Install, 3: Fresh Install

1: Preserves everything (apparently) - tried 4 times and it rolled back to XP each time, gave up. very slow to run
2: Only touches your c: drive so all stuff on D is fine, creates a windows.old directory where it saves "most" user stuff (but not, I discovered, user application data, so make sure you back up things like outlook files and contacts). much faster
3. Works by booting from the CD - I understand this saves nothing

I went with 2, very clean. radically improved my internet connection speed, so it was worth it just for that