Tried it today.  Well, it was an interesting experience:

Installation
I allocated a 6GB partition for it, but the setup complained that it requires at least ~7GB (I was like double you tee eff?)  Anyways, I then gave it a 8GB partition, but the setup said that ~9.5GB was recommended.  Finally, I gave it a 12GB partition, and it accepted it.

Interestingly, I got a legal copy of Vista Business from Uni (some MSDNAA stuff).  However, I couldn't be bothered doing all the poo poo to obtain a serial number, so I got a Vista Ultimate key, and it worked :P  Not only that, it allowed me to install Vista Ultimate!

Anyways, so I started installing.  It was going fine, then restarted.  Showed the Vista loading screen, then I got a BSoD   Restarted, but still kept getting a BSoD.

So then, I tried installing from the boot DVD rather than from Windows.  Well, it went fine, so I finally got Vista.


Using
I must say, I really found the effects rather intriguing, even though I personally don't care too much about looks.  But apart from that, I didn't actually find much of a difference between it an XP, except:

• So much has been rearranged
  
• Looks (obviously)
  
• Amount of RAM it takes :gasp:
  
• Amount of services running :suprised:
  
• The fact that it basically asks your permission for everything
  
• Comes with a lot more stuff (surprisingly, I didn't manage to find much "poo poo")
  
• It has a "welcome screen" which resembles that of some Linux distros
  

Well, basically, I found nothing special about it - I still have to test the speed.  Unfortunately, it looks like a 32bit version - I really wanted a 64bit one - oh well.
I did happen to spend about 30 minutes playing Chess :)

I've heard a myth about Vista running faster than XP - I might think about testing it, but according to others, Vista does indeed run slower than XP:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,16...943,00.asp
The difference seems to be rather small though, for games at least.  For video encoding, Vista does seem to be a fair bit slower:

Quote:Wee are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP. There aren't newer versions available, and wee don't see immediate solutions to this issue.

Anyone else tried Vista?  What do you think?

sounds complicated



/confused

(This post was last modified: 01/04/2007 01:20 AM by Shady.)

i fear that my laptop with 30GB hd and 512MB ram can't even handle vista ;p

edit:
how is the total memory footprint of vista?

(This post was last modified: 01/04/2007 12:25 PM by bstronga.)

idk if i want to try vista, just like every new software/os that is released there are things that kill it I've heard about every little thing it asks you for permission would just piss me off and i would probably take a hammer to the screen, not the first time either :yes:

Can't exactly remember the memory usage now, but If I recall correctly, there was a ~600MB paging file, and about ~300MB-400MB usage by default (not clearing any services).

Yeah, stupid prompts all the time...  I think you can disable them somewhere though :/

the permission thing probably part of the added security in vista, i think :p

they say ppl find the prompts so annoying that they disable uac entirely, which is the only way ot get rid of them, and disabling uac makes vista less secure than xp.

^^Wow, really?
I personally don't give a damn about security - never had any issue in the years I've been screwing around with computers...

uhu

I've had Vista Ultimate since about 6 hours after it was released (found a quick download :yipi:), and I love it.

Personally, I've found that it runs faster than XP for me, but then again, I had so much spoon on XP that it wasn't funny, so that would explain it.

I installed it in a 55GB partition, so I didn't get any of the errors you did ZiNgA :P

I love the look of it, looks so smooth, and the Aero Theme: Pure Awesomeness.

I love the new features of it; so much has changed since XP.

It organises things so much easier, so it's easier to find things anywhere on your computer.

And yes, Vista does take up some more RAM (Recommended 1GB for Ultimate), but the upgrade is worth it.

If you want to turn off the User Account Control, follow these instructions: http://tweakvista.com/article39024.aspx

I'm so used to Vista now; whenever I go on the computers at school, they have XP, and it just looks, feels and acts so plain.

I guess that's my view on Vista. I can safely say that I will never go back to XP. EVER.

-Dilligaf