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Ned
(member)
12/04/07 08:12 AM
Vista: Good news and bad news  


THE GOOD
I've been running Vista on my old 2.8GHz machine for about a month. The one thing I haven't seen mentioned in any review is how sharp the screen text is. If you're not seeing it on your PC running Vista, hook up a recent LCD monitor using the DVI connection. For those of us over 50, the quality of the screen is a major point for moving to Vista.

I think Vista is faster and smoother than the Win 2000 it replaced.

I have successfully installed Ubuntu Linux on the Vista machine. Dual boot works fine. The order in which you install the OSs is important.

And last, Vista _can_ share files with an XP machine, but it requires an update to the XP system to work. Vista also needs to be adjusted, and the Home versions lack the tools to do it, so buy Business or Ultimate.

If you have several PCs all running Vista, I can see how the overall system could operate better and be easier to manage than with older Windows versions. This is just speculation; I haven't tried this.

THE BAD
Unfortunately, Vista can corrupt if you're moving huge amounts of files. Like 35,000 or maybe 10,000. Think you couldn't possibly have 10,000 files? Try copying your C drive to another. You'll be shocked. The corruption can be fixed by restarting, but it still makes me nervous.

It took me about two _weeks_ to get Vista, all my applications, and the other computers working well. Since I'm trying to use the enhanced security of Vista (rather than run as Administrator all the time), I'm still encountering speed bumps here and there.

AW2K runs well on Vista and the migration was painless. The very first rebuild of the DB on Vista failed (none worked), but a second try and all was well. No problems since then.

Endicia still doesn't guarantee that Dazzle will work on Vista, but I haven't had any problems.

BEST TIP: If your business depends on your PC, and you are buying a new one, get a PC powerful enough to run Vista well, and use XP Pro on it for now. Later you will upgrade to Vista, so you want a PC that can handle it, but let others work out the bugs first. I know this seems shocking advice for a product that's been out for a year, but trust me on this--do not buy Vista until at least Service Pack 1 is released. Even if this approach seems to be more expensive, it's not, if you think your time is worth anything.


Merry Christmas and Best Wishes to All for the New Year

Ned




bluepennylady
(Pooh-Bah)
12/04/07 08:20 AM
Re: Vista: Good news and bad news new [re: Ned]  

Ned,

Hey there!! How are you and yours doing!!!

Thanks for the update. I guess those of us running Vista have failed to communicate the perks and pits as we encounter them.

I have three Vista machines. I like you have found bumps here and there. But nothing too major. That is weird your rebuild failed the first time....Mine did too. Wonder what is up with that.

But any other computers I build will have XP Pro on them. I agree 100% on waiting for the service pack to be released before installing it. I have ran into a couple of bugs that required tech support to fix.And even then it was a full 1/2 day before we got it figured out.

You have a very Merry Christmas too!!!!!!

Judy/blue

Visit my eBay store!
http://stores.ebay.com/bluepennylady?refid=store
Visit our website too!
http://www.pennyworthsales.com

globalduk
(stranger )
12/05/07 08:06 AM
Re: Vista: Good news and bad news new [re: bluepennylady]  

I think the major issue that stores etc do not tell you when you buy a vista machine.

Many of your perphials will not work. Many are not releasing a driver to work with vista - you'll have to upgrade.

Also - i'm curious how many softwares work with vista. How many do not, and which companies will not make the older versions work on it.

I can't imagine having to upgrade the 10 different softwares I use on a daily basis. It would make a new computer cost overwhelming.




bluepennylady
(Pooh-Bah)
12/05/07 08:22 AM
Re: Vista: Good news and bad news new [re: globalduk]  

Hi,

The one computer on which Vista is installed has numerous software programs which will not work. Some software companies are releasing free upgrades. Others are not. And you are right, it can certainly get expensive upgrading.


Judy/blue

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http://stores.ebay.com/bluepennylady?refid=store
Visit our website too!
http://www.pennyworthsales.com

scalesusa
(stranger )
12/12/07 10:52 AM
Re: Vista: Good news and bad news new [re: bluepennylady]  

I also just started using Vista on my new Dell. It is fast, but then its a new pc with a quad processor. No advantage to the video, in fact, it is slightly worse than the same screen with XP. I think a new viseo driver is needed, but I have the latest. Other problems are an error message everytime I close a e-mail with AW2000, unread e-mails are not bold in AW2000, networking is a disaster, extremely slow not only on AW2000, but on every pc with Windows XP installed. My linux based NAS is extremely slow, the manufacturer can't yet get it up to speed. There are a few other problems as well.

I just received a new copy of Windows XP Pro last night, I have new hard drives waiting for it as well. I'm just going to remove and put away the original drives that came with it so that I can go back when fixes are made, however, generally speaking, it is not a improvement as far as ease of operation is concerned. Getting into the core of the operating system functions is made much more difficult.



Ned
(member)
12/12/07 11:17 AM
Re: Vista: Good news and bad news new [re: scalesusa]  

Scales--

Wow. Your experience with Vista is much worse than mine, and you have a new Vista-certified machine!

I think that ReadyBoost (where Vista uses a flash drive as swap space) really helped. I did no tests, but it seems that way.

Generally things seem to be running smoothly, although I continue to make backups frequently.

Reverting to XP Pro seems sensible to me. After the dust settles on Vista SP1 might be a good time to try again.

Merry Christmas,
Ned




bluepennylady
(Pooh-Bah)
12/12/07 12:23 PM
Re: Vista: Good news and bad news new [re: scalesusa]  

Hi,

Concerning the email error. You ought to get hold of AW2000 tech support about it at

info@auctionwizard2000.com



Judy/blue

Visit my eBay store!
http://stores.ebay.com/bluepennylady?refid=store
Visit our website too!
http://www.pennyworthsales.com

Ned
(member)
01/24/08 01:01 PM
Re: Vista: Good news and bad news new [re: bluepennylady]  

Just a note that I've been running Vista over a month now, and it is both fast and stable. I'm still doing daily backups, though.

Since Microsoft Updates happen automatically, I can't say exactly what's been going on, but there's been a lot of traffic and I suspect Microsoft is making headway in fixing things.

Ned





bluepennylady
(Pooh-Bah)
01/24/08 02:48 PM
Re: Vista: Good news and bad news new [re: Ned]  

Ned,

Yep, I've had a ton of updates too.

Glad your Vista is running smoothly. Thanks for keeping us posted.



Judy/blue

Visit my eBay store!
http://stores.ebay.com/bluepennylady?refid=store
Visit our website too!
http://www.pennyworthsales.com

Ned
(member)
04/24/08 12:16 PM
Re: Vista: Good news and bad news new [re: bluepennylady]  

I haven't been around here much, but I must tell my friends here--

If you have an older machine, don't bother upgrading to Vista. While my 2003-vintage PC ran Vista Original Flavor well, as soon as I added the SP1 update, things went to...well, you know where things go.

Original Vista was stable over weeks. SP1 -- multiple crashes within a day, guaranteed. Apparently something to do with the power management at the BIOS level. There were no newer BIOS updates available, and Vista SP1 could not be adjusted to avoid the problem. In effect, Vista SP1 is likely to have a hardware incompatibility with older machines.

If you got Vista on new hardware, you're probably in good shape.

If you upgraded from XP to Vista, you have everything you need to go back.

If you were running something earlier than XP and bought an upgrade from Microsoft, you may be in luck. If the Vista Upgrade was either Business or Ultimate, your license allows you to DOWNGRADE to XP Pro for free. You'll have to talk to live humans at Microsoft to get an XP activation code. The magic words are "exercising my downgrade rights". You can use any XP installation disk (not the restore disks some manufacturers supply). It doesn't have to be yours, because you'll be activating it with a legitimate code.

I had the XP Pro disk I'd used to upgrade my old laptop. I just used it to install XP Pro on the ex-Vista machine, and went through the activation process. All nice and legal.

Vista will never run on my old 2.8Ghz PC. XP's not nearly as pretty, but in the end pretty is as pretty does. Crashing is not good.

It's true that Microsoft is trying hard to stop support on XP Pro. I think the last date I heard was June of 2009. That doesn't mean all the XP machines will stop working then.

I figure by downgrading to XP I've bought myself two years before I must buy another computer. That'll probably be a Mac or Linux.

Ned






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