Posts by Steve Campbell

I actually really, really like Vista

I've used Vista Ultimate 32 bit since March 2007; got it on a new machine.

I've had a wonderful experience with it so far, marred only by two things:

1/. initial nVidia driver problems - long sorted

2/. my propensity to 'I wonder what happens if I do/delete/alter that'

When I first got my new machine I plugged in my HP DeskJet 990cxi and it installed automatically without me having to do anything further. I've had no hardware problems, period.

Games? I'm not into FPS games but my RTS ones all run brilliantly, as do the simulators.

Networking has been problem free.

The Vista 'reliability monitor' proved interesting reading when I discovered it. It keeps a detailed log of all system hiccups; what I noticed was that 90% of problems were due to a few applications going postal - stand-up Firefox 2 in particular. Still love and primarily use Firefox but would like improved memory handling and the stability of IE7 on my machine. Looking forward to Firefox 3...

I oversee several Vista installations and they're all successful.

Yes, Vista is slower than I'm sure XP would be on my machine (overclocked E6700 Core 2 Duo with 3GB overclocked RAM) but that's why I bought a new machine. It would have been strange indeed for a new OS to come out 6 years after the previous one and it not demand greater resources. Doesn't bother me at all.

Service Pack 1 was a breeze, on all installations. Reliability is A1 on these machines.

Even the often attacked UAC (User Account Control) is actually pretty useful in stopping auto-click-happy-mania and after a relatively short while of using Vista hardly bothers you.

I say all this because too many people have:

1/. been too ready to blame MS for 3rd party application developers not getting robust drivers ready in time - despite having aeons of time. I'm reminded of an HP support guy telling me in 2001 that he didn't think HP would bother getting XP drivers ready for my recently purchased printer. 6 weeks it took them.

2/. installed Vista on unsuitable hardware. MS could've made things clearer it's true, with all the Vista Capable & Vista Ready labelling confusion.

3/. just been trolls who have wanted to diss MS because they love to hate MS. Corporations are corporations and none of them are 'goodies'.

I use other OSes happily enough but really like Vista and want to add some balance too.

Steve

No problems and...

........file transfers between disks (I have may of them) is hugely improved. Gone from about 2-6MB/sec to 60+MB/sec (bytes not bits).

Installed easily. No driver issues with my e-SATA set-up, nVidia 8800GTS or Creative X-Fi.