VISTA ! ! ! ! !

[MikeyPC]

Is this any good?? Was thinking of doing a full refurb and starting afresh with vista instead of XP but don't know wot to do??

 

cheers

 

Mikey

[brundle]

I've held off for a long time, running XP Pro as my main desktop OS and using Vista on occasion (dual-boot), also using Vista Premium as a main OS on a 1GB work laptop for over a year and still not being entirely convinced - I finally decided to move to Vista on the desktop last week. Frustrations with UAC mitigated with Norton's surprisingly handy and lightweight UAC tool and TweakUAC, plenty of issues with permissions on many of my own files, sorted using the command line "takeown" command (you may need to use icacls too if you can't solve things entirely with "takeown"), a couple of problems with some files not being indexed (tick the indexing box in file properties, never mattered with XP's hopeless indexing support, but it does with Vista). I can't say I prefer it to XP, the search is better when you've tweaked it to index the places you want (though I always relied on AgentRansack to actually find things anyway) and the improved security is probably beneficial, though turning off UAC and losing the Protected Mode of IE7 is not an issue for me as I use Firefox almost exclusively. I think it's worth the time to get used to it, but it's nothing like the jump from Windows 98 SE to XP - most of the features in Vista can be obtained with third-party software in XP, it tries very hard to stop you accessing areas that are not exactly security-risks (Start Orb/type `sendto` - not allowed access), gives you multiple UAC warnings for trivial activities like moving a few things around in the Start Menu and adds more steps to ordinary activities like accessing network and sharing configuration for no apparent gain.

To sum up, turn off all the fancy graphics (I'm running in admittedly dull-looking Windows Classic theme), tweak UAC and search indexing, get used to running the command prompt as adminstrator all the time and you'll have removed many of the irritations. It's not the OS it should have been (and don't even bother if you have less than 2GB of RAM) but it does have some useful modernisations compared to XP - built in media centre for example (unless you have Vista Basic) and much better picture/movie/audio management.

 

First post for me, so I'm including links last;

Norton UAC; User Access Control - Vista User Account Control - UAC | Norton Labs

TweakUAC; Disable annoying Vista UAC popups with TweakUAC (FREE)

Add index locations; Adding Indexing Locations in Windows Vista :: the How-To Geek

Takeown/icacls (but not for deleting files) ; Tim Sneath : Windows Vista Secret #11: Deleting the Undeletable

 

I must mention that I did an in-place upgrade from XP Pro to Vista which is something I would normally avoid, so you may not suffer the issues I have with a clean Vista install.

 

HTH

[RandyL]

It's a big change indeed brundle. Some things I like and some things I detest. It took me a while to figure out how to tweak it but it's been working fine for me.

 

Either way if you're going to buy a new Windows OS there is no point in buying XP at this point. Vista will be supported longer. You could wait for Windows7 but who knows how long that might take.

 

I'm not familiar with the programs you mention but one thing I do know is you will never see a Norton product on my PC again. (I had a trial when I bought my computer)

[Guest Wolfeymole]

When you talk of the word refurb do you mean completely wiping XP off to replace it with Vista?

 

I'll warn you now that you could run into problems as the hardware on that pc may not meet the Vista requirements Mikey.

[Tootech]

Make sure your hardware is up to scratch - miniumum 1GB RAM, really need 2GB..

 

Try running the Upgrade Advisor on your PC as it is, it'll give you some insight in to what will work/what won't in your setup if you used Vista.

 

Get Windows Vista: Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor

[Dalo Harkin]

But after said and done Vista is far superior to XP, as the others have said - MAKE SURE that ALL your hardware supports Vista - some MOBO drivers you may not be able to find for Vista depending how old the PC is

[iwillbekingin2030]

vista

 

i know nothing about OS's but if u like pretty colors and shiny things (as i do) then i suggest vista. It looks as nice as mac but theoretically works as good as xp. what more could you want. I love vista better than any OS (i've nicknamed it the OS of the gods :) ...but it's the first work which is never the best. Just wait for windows 7 to come out.