So who here has purchased Windows Vista?

I'm just curious as to who has purchased Windows Vista for their home computers, not their business machines.

I really want the retail Vista Ultimate for both the 32-bit and 64-bit and because I want DreamScene. I was thinking about going to Best Buy and getting it, but it's a bit expensive at $399 and I got hit with a bunch of bills this month. OEM is an option, but I would have to select between 32bit and 64bit; although the 32bit key works on 64bit OEM media and vice versa. I anticipate I will be purchasing a copy soon enough, however.

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keatron

Got it for free for presenting at the Vista Launch Event.

Slowhand

I've got the "pre-retail" edition that I'm going to install on my home machine, at some point. (Got it at the launch event in San Francisco.) For my part, I'm not going to buy any edition of Vista until I have a new machine to install it on, or if I get a new laptop. The hunk of junk I have at home is currently dying, and I can't really rationalize getting a brand-new OS that'll "just run" on a box that I built out of spare parts when I worked in a tech shop.

We'll have to see what the future holds, but I'm looking forward to getting Vista Ultimate Edition, once I do buy it. Hopefully, it'll be running on a machine worth installing it on.

Plantwiz

Happy using OS X. I figured if I wanted to use the fluffy GUI, I'd just start using MAC and guess what

I don't have to upgrade my hardware the next OS release

I have Vista Beta and it was a dog...hopefully it's improved since the Beta I was using (and from reports it sounds as though it has), but I'm going to sit this one out as long as possible.

NPA24

I actually bought the Vista Upgrade Ultimate Edition Signature by Bill Gates. I don't really think he signed it himself. I was lucky enough to get a low number on it though.

01119 out of 25000.

I'm not going to open it. I've already read the horror stories of incompatibilities, etc. I just bought it just to have and keep for an ebay auction in the future, lol.

I do have the Vista beta installed on my desktop. Its funny the other day I saw the PC/Mac commercial and they had the security guy behind the pc asking allow or deny....it was hilarious because it's what I have to deal with everyday on my version.

JDMurray

I use Vista for free at work from my MSDN subscription, and I expect to pick up a free copy of "Ultimate" next month at a Microsoft security briefing for Vista. I don't plan on using it personally until I buy a 64-bit laptop (in 2 years?) and Vista SP2 is released.

Non-Profit Techie

been using vista ultimate on my main pc for over a month now. works great with little to no problems. Biggest thing so far is drivers, but there is nothing i havent solved yet.
I just installed dreamscene from windows updates the other day and have had no probems with that yet either. Im really starting to like this version. Its way to Apple like, but you get used to it.

JDMurray

As an aside, Microsoft is feverishly working on Windows Vista Service Pack 1. I haven't been able to get the date of its planned release, but it's safe to say "sometime in 2007." If you are not trying Vista for fear of bugs, incompatibilities, or insecurity, Service Pack 1 may be your ticket to peace of mind.

Plantwiz

jdmurray wrote:

As an aside, Microsoft is feverishly working on Windows Vista Service Pack 1. I haven't been able to get the date of its planned release, but it's safe to say "sometime in 2007." If you are not trying Vista for fear of bugs, incompatibilities, or insecurity, Service Pack 1 may be your ticket to peace of mind.

Well, I'm not 'NOT' using it for fear of bugs, incompatibilities or insecurity...it's a MS release for heaven's sake

OF course it's riddled with those things. :P I know my Xerox printer won't function with it, it won't even function with the 64-bit XP Pro (due to Xerox being dorks and refusing to upgrade drivers....never, never, never again will I buy a Xerox printer... my HP printer that is older...has drivers for the 64-bit XP and Vista Beta...HP has the best printers -as a whole - compared to any other manufacturer).

I'll guess they'll have SP1 by Q2.

JDMurray

Plantwiz wrote:

Well, I'm not 'NOT' using it for fear of bugs, incompatibilities or insecurity...it's a MS release for heaven's sake

You're an OS X person who's secretly dual-booting Vista on her Intel MacBook Pro and lying about it.

Plantwiz

jdmurray wrote:

Plantwiz wrote:

Well, I'm not 'NOT' using it for fear of bugs, incompatibilities or insecurity...it's a MS release for heaven's sake

You're an OS X person who's secretly dual-booting Vista on her Intel MacBook Pro and lying about it.

I am a recent OS X convert who is openly running XP Pro through Parallels on her Intel MacBook Pro because....I do like XP

Vista was only on my Desktop and I did try that as a dual-boot, a single drive full install, and through VMware then Virtual PC...and didn't like it. Too slow and half my devices didn't function as there weren't drivers for them at that time. 2.5GB of Ram and an AMD3200+ the performance was less then favorable.

But if I do break down and install Vista again one day .... it will likely be with Parallels on the MacBook.

blargoe

Last I heard SP1 is expected in December

KGhaleon

I just got a chance to play with Vista for the first time the other day at work. We got three or four systems in with Business edition on them that I had to setup. I really like the changes so far, even though it's going to take a little time to get use to all the new names and locations of old XP features.

Took me at least two minutes to figure out where Add/Remove Programs was. lol

(that being long for me)

KG

Plantwiz

blargoe wrote:

Last I heard SP1 is expected in December

Do you have a link?

Well, it's nice to see that an end of the year release is when they'd figure their SP1...don't other software people just call it a new release?

TechJunky

Vista being new has as many bugs/problems as win98A when it first came out. I had a friend of mine try to install an X1600 video card and get it working properly... He was unable to do so. He finally returned his computer to BestBuy and explained the problem. This was a recomended part by BestBuy. After 3 hours of the Geek Squad working on it they explained that the X1600 would not work. He had to pay an additional $300 dollars for another gaming card. It then took them another hour to install the supposidly compatible card. So he ended up paying like 1200 dollars for a 900 box that was supposed to work from the get go. I hate how its almost impossible to downgrade to XP from Vista when purchasing a new PC as well.

I wont be switching to Vista anytime soon until they release drivers and fix the bloated OS deal.

I agree with the Mac statements. If I wanted an OS like Vista i would purchase a Mac. Atleast you have a unix shell to work with.

JDMurray

TechJunky wrote:

I had a friend of mine try to install an X1600 video card and get it working properly... He was unable to do so.

This is not Vista's fault. Checking the ATI Web site's Knowledge Base, I see numerous problems listed with the Catalyst Vista drivers and the X1300 and X1600 cards. The "fix" will be ATI releasing drivers for these cards that actually work with Vista. (I wonder if PCIExpress cards are having special problems under Vista.)

As an aside, my nVidia 6600 AGP driver works with Vista just fine.

royal

jdmurray wrote:

I wonder if PCIExpress cards are having special problems under Vista.)

No problems here with an Nvidia-based PCI-Express video card running Vista Business with latest WHQL drivers.

Lee H

i just got vista business in my action pack, currently using beta rc2, when my install goes sluggish i will install it then

royal

Well, just purchased Vista Ultimate 32-bit OEM off of newegg. According to UPS tracking it should be here Wednesday. Too bad I won't have time to install it till the weekend. I will be at a customer site after hours this coming week doing DST patching.

Plantwiz

Well, enjoy your Vista Experience

Love to hear your thoughts on it.

royal

Plantwiz wrote:

Well, enjoy your Vista Experience

Love to hear your thoughts on it.

So, I just thought about Vista threads and remembered this thread and figured I would post some thoughts on it.

Things I like:
1. SuperFetch - This uses your memory and caches all non-used memory so you are not wasting memory. This helps your applications start faster.
2. Aero - I enjoy the glass-like interface.
3. Startup and shutdown is much faster using Vista as it was than when I used XP
4. I like the Digital Locker where I can store my EFS certificate as well as Bitlocker certificate. This is an ultimate extra.
5. More group policy options
6. Parental Controls - Although I do not use this, it is definitely a handy feature. Parental Controls is disabled while joined to a domain.
7. Native support for Network Access Protection

Things I dislike:
1. Cannot drag items into command prompt to easily enter a path
2. When connected to a domain and using cached credentials while off-site, you are forced to wait at the welcome screen for 1-2 minutes while Vista will finally time out the process of looking for a DC and will finally log you in.
3. User Account Control. I know it's for the better, but it's annoying. This can be disabled in the user account properties. Alternatively, you can disable it for Administrators only in Group Policy.
4. I have a 5400rpm drive in my laptop running Vista business and it runs horribly. On my desktop with 2 10,000rpm drives in raid 0, it runs beautifully, however.
5. Direct3d sound was removed from Vista. This means, that 3d audio support for games has been removed. The new technology is called OpenAL which a lot of games do not support currently. Creative did create an application called Alchemy that does translate Direct3dsound calls into OpenAL to add 3d support back into non-OpenAL games. The only bad thing is, it's only supported for their X-FI cards.
6. It's a super long process to re-create the boot sector for Vista. For example, lets say you installed XP then created a new partition and installed Linux. Linux would create boot files on the system partition and use its own bootloader program. If you wiped Linux, in order to get XP's bootloader back, you would go into recovery console and do fixboot then fixmbr. It's definitely not this easy anymore in Vista as there are many steps you have to do. Luckily there are freeware utilities that will do this for you, but still...

I can't think of anything else, but overall, I'm enjoying Vista a lot more than XP.

RussS

I installed it from my Partner Program pack on one of my lab machines - 1.8 Celeron with 512 MB RAM just to see how it would run and am pleasantly surprised. Hopefully I can score a freebie at some stage soon to chuck on one of my home machines.

jojopramos

I bought an HP Pavillion 6000 and Vista Premium is installed in it...I just wondered why there's no gpedit.msc or secpol there....so I just disable my user account control which is annoying on my user account properties....

sprkymrk

icroyal wrote:

Things I dislike:
2. When connected to a domain and using cached credentials while off-site, you are forced to wait at the welcome screen for 1-2 minutes while Vista will finally time out the process of looking for a DC and will finally log you in.

In W2K and XP you can change this behavior with Group Policy. This was also the default in W2K - wait a million years for the network before using cached credentials. In XP by default it did the opposite, loaded cached credentials while detecting whether or not a network/domain was available in the background. Is this no longer configurable via Group Policy in Vista?

D-boy

I'm running Windows Vista Business from my work... I like the Areo feature, pretty slick...

royal

sprkymrk wrote:

icroyal wrote:

Things I dislike:
2. When connected to a domain and using cached credentials while off-site, you are forced to wait at the welcome screen for 1-2 minutes while Vista will finally time out the process of looking for a DC and will finally log you in.

In W2K and XP you can change this behavior with Group Policy. This was also the default in W2K - wait a million years for the network before using cached credentials. In XP by default it did the opposite, loaded cached credentials while detecting whether or not a network/domain was available in the background. Is this no longer configurable via Group Policy in Vista?

I originally thought it was that also till I read Vista uses the same setting in XP which doesn't wait for the network. I just tried disabling it right now but I'm in the office and I'll be going to a client a little later which I will then see if it works. I'll reply back with the outcome later on.

royal

Yep, the setting doesn't have any effect. It still takes forever at the Welcome screen.