It won't, but if you really want to have it illegally why would you even bother with an academic license?

When 2000 came out, I swore not to upgrade from '95SE.

When XP came out, I swore not to upgrade from 2000.

Now Vista's come out, I swear not to upgrade from XP.

I'm not upgrading by choice to Vista for at least four years. That's about how long it took me to go to XP, and by then, it was more or less worth it.

I have Vista Business installed on a completely separate drive, which is admittedly not the best drive in the world, but that can only explain some of the BS so far. I spent over an hour running in circles to try and give myself privileges to use the bloody installer for my ISP. That one file WOULD NOT have it's privileges changed. It was a small miracle I was able to dial in without the bastardized thing and download it a second time straight into Vista so I COULD use it. No explanations why it didn't work, it just didn't. Apparently I'm not Administrator enough to do it. So privileges... I hate them. Loathe them. I have a feeling it'll be a nightmare when I finally move to Vista and move my files over. How many items will end up like that installer? And how many will be irreplaceable?

This can probably be attributed to the less than stellar drive I'm using, but in XP, on a fully loaded drive, I'm at the desktop in under 2 minutes. It's taking Vista almost 8. And there's nothing on the drive. I haven't had an OS want to take 8 minutes to boot in YEARS. And I meet all the recommended requirements. I find that pathetic.

Those are probably my two biggest issues. I hate the layout of folders, but that's just a customizable thing... IE7... I never want to use it again. Thank god Firefox just finished downloading. WMP... I've always hated, and I have little intention of trying this time.

Yeah.... I don't much like it so far.

When I had XP installed, it finished booting in a minute fifteen flat.

With vista, it takes about.. 2. Maybe two fifteen.

But I had XP heavily customized and cut down, and I don't know how to do much of that in Vista yet, so I don't see any severe slowdowns in loadtime.

Something changed at some point today... my boot time in Vista is down from 8 minutes magically to around 3 or 4. So yeah, about the same ratio as yours, twice as long or so.

Still hate permissions. I've never really had to deal with them before, so that's a complete learning curve, and I'm still not dealing with them much since I haven't moved any of my files to the Vista drive.

I'm glad .NET 3.0 is standard in Vista. MS kinda swept 2.0 under the rug as far as deployment to XP.

Videos playing in the desktop? Wowsers!

Search bar in the start menu ftw

Can't wait to see the DX10 games come out. UT2k7 baby!

My first thought upon seeing Vista was Mac OS X

A "meh." feature. I've been able to do that for along time, and it's pretty useless IMO.


Useful in that it saves me from using that retarded search window from XP.


Only OS X is prettier, has a more flashy effects, and is cleaner to work with in terms of navigation. My biggest problem with Vista right now is they're showing you like, three ways to get somewhere at once. I don't want to see all three at once.

I just installed it on my work computer. The very first thing that I did was turn UAC off. And right off the bat, I can see the guy who does the lab computers to do the same thing to all the lab images. I think UAC is the worst decision ever.

I'm going to slap in on my home machine. <3 universities and MSDNAA.

Is it really that bad? I've heard it's just got way too many annoying dialogs.

No, it isn't. Some people just can't stand the thought of having to click 'Yes, I'm sure this program won't rape me.'

I haven't used vista yet, so I'm wondering exactly how intrusive UAC really is.

IMO, Linux does it perfectly--- you are only prompted when you are making global changes or doing something potentially dangerous. (If you are doing something that can seriously break your system if done by an inexperienced user, you have to type in "Yes, do as I say!" before the OS will do it. That's good protection. How does Vista compare with this?

Yeah that's my chief complaint. I think it just pops up WAY to much.

I find this both highly amusing and somewhat worrying:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6320865.stm


Worrying, because of Microsoft's blasé nonchalance, and amusing because, well, I'm still running Windows 98 !

If you actually let your computer talk itself to death... you probably deserved it.

No,no,no,no (EmBee), let me lay out a scenario for you: you have just been up all night putting the finish touches on the greatest TC that Jedi Knight has ever seen, and so, hungry, you go off to make a sandwich. However, you're scheming meddlesome sister comes in, bypasses your anti-sibling software, and tells your files to go sod off into cyberspace - your poor Windows Vista, unaccustomed to the female creature, quickly subdues at the sound of her sultry voice (or it might just crack at the sound of her prepubescent whiny voice, depending on age of sister). After you return with sandwich in hand, you officially move your sister to the recycling bin, and sue Bill Gates.

Hahhaha.

Or you could just not put your mic on all the time

Or lock your computer when you walk away.

In addition to that, Vista won't accept voice commands for UAC so that's another good reason to leave it on.

okay. something that is SERIOUSLY angering me.

When you transfer large amounts of files. It spends so much time calculating the estimated time it will take to transfer, instead of actually transfering the files.

If anyone knows a way to disable the "estimated transfer time," please let me know..

Uh, it's still transferring while it is calculating >.>

What a pitty, Jedi Knight (DF2) isn't right working in my Windows-Vista Ultimate. So first i get probs with the menu overlay which forces me to switch betwen the windows (ALT-Tab) every Game-Start and menu act.
After i've installed the DX-9 version (The latest release) i got more problems, so HOMs under D3D mode everywhere you look around, which forces me to use software acc.

I think Windows XP will be the best windows for me, according on the hardware and software support.

My computer is well a fast machine , E6300 Intel Core2Duo (1.86Ghz), MSI-Mainboard (P4M890-ML), 2x512 MB Memory and a GeForce 7500 Graphics Adapter. The OEM-Version is a Windows XP MCE (preinstalled version by the reseller). But now it is a slow machine

The HOM problems happen under XP as well as Vista. Your best bet is to roll back to DX7 if you want to solve those problems.

(Note: I do not advise this)

This would be a good story if it were a mod for a game people care about.

I've had problems with JK in Vista but I've found passing -windowgui to it helps. I haven't actually tried to go in-game yet... even if fullscreen doesn't work, it's possible to get in-game into windowed mode as well, but only in software 8-bit mode.

Geforce 7500?

I've tried Vista Ultimate on my Laptop. It's nothing impressive. Pentium M 1.4GHz 757MB RAM Radeon Mobility 9600. It's everything I need in a laptop. I didn't mess with it too much, but it dragged pretty noticeably on my laptop. It rated my specs with a 2 as far as "Aero Experience" (or whatever) was concerned. Navigating system settings were more "user-friendly" so basically you have to learn some new stuff. The organization is good, however. Aero was nice. Beryl is 10 times better, yet it runs smoother on my laptop. (I still just use Metacity now for better load times and less crashes) I will, no doubt, end up with Vista on my next desktop build (alongside Linux), but for now I'm not going to touch it.

Am I the only one who has had no problems whatsoever with JK in XP?

I had absolutely no problems with JK in XP either.

Problem games I've had in Vista:
NWN2 - Slower than usual.
KotOR - FMV sequences and saving game causes blank screens
JK - Blank screen on start up. I have to alt+tab

I installed Vista without hesitation, because last summer with beta 2, all my hardware and most of my software worked extremely well. In particular I was concerned about my E-MU 1212m soundcard, but I was pleased to find that beta 2 fetched drivers from the net for me. But, of course, it does not work in the RTM release, at all. Now I have to wait for them to release Vista drivers, and no one knows when the hell that will be.

Nope, once you get to 3d mode, fullscreen is fine As long as you use -windowgui JK is playable. I haven't noticed the HOM problem though.

I personally don't like Vista for a few reasons.

1) Slower at games and video encoding (benchmarks proved that).
2) Incompatibility with some programs, (Sygate for one, which bothers me)
3) Some security features are more of a hassel then help.

With time, everything will go well.

nope.

I finally had a chance to try vista, and I can't say that I'm impressed at all. Give me the latest version of KDE instead.

To me, Aero is overhyped-- the stupid glass effect is nothing more than eye candy that doesn't allow me to work any better and is often annoying at worst. I fail to see Microsoft's reason for wanting to protect it so badly.


The least that microsoft could have done was add multiple workspace/desktop support along the lines of what has been in Gnome of KDE since... forever.

So, offloading screen rendering to the video card, thus freeing the CPU for more important tasks doesn't help you work any better? :downs:

There's been a PowerToy for XP with that since... forever. I bet it'll work with Vista too.

I have some tips for getting games to run at a sane speed:
- Don't play windowed mode. Fullscreen mode should force Aero glass off.
- To force Aero glass off manually, go into the EXE or shortcut properties, Compatibility tab, and check "Disable desktop composition."
- Set the process priority of the game to Above Normal using Task Manager or some other tool, but be warned it'll make the rest of the computer sluggish while you're playing.

The fact remains, though, that MS hasn't published the availability and location of these powertoys. I seem to recall an interview (perhaps with Bill Gates?) where he said that they had incorporated these powertoys into Vista (the file searching, for example). Given the increasing common..al..ity...of multiple-monitor systems, it would seem sensible to include support in the OS itself.

It's what my System Monitor says. 512+256=769 give or take I guess. I've got a 1.5GB swap though. :downs:

Y'all see the new Mac/PC commercial where they made light of the UAC in Vista?

I got Vista off MSDNAA and I already had to reactivate (I moved some hard drives to another controller and booted up once with only one hard drive... vista is touchy about hard drives). Luckily I had a perfectly understandable robotic Indian on the other line, and she quickly spat out the numbers I needed to reactivate.

nVidia has terrible drivers right now and they don't support SLI, although they are at least beginning to be stable. The problem here is not with Vista but with nVidia. More on that later.
Creative has a similar problem, and EAX is generally broken except on X-Fi. GG creative support, we didnt all buy your top of the line product, I guess we don't deserve drivers that work? My Live! 24bit quits working when I come out of sleep mode. Nice.
Nero 7 is the "Vista Edition".

Other than that, desktop performance for me is waaaaay higher than XP. Less windows that dont update, slow UI performance, etc. It's all butter smooth, and faster than XP. The only programs that AREN'T butter smooth are retarded skinned apps like GPGnet and STEAM. Way to go game companies.

Vista also BOOTS faster, for me anyway. I don't know how they accomplished that. I'm running all the same stuff I had on XP (and I carefully monitored my startup programs in XP too).

ATi driver support is pretty meh. Performance is down by a little, and CCC is still slow in Vista. But hey, it was slow in XP too. It's alot more stable than nVidia though.

All of my games so far have worked. Even Grim Fandango.

Oh, and it's prettier.

Alot of people complain about how Vista "uses more memory on initial boot". THESE PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS AND NOT TO BE TRUSTED. In Vista, Microsoft came up with this thingy called "Superfetch" which loads up a whole bunch of files it thinks you might use based on the programs it has observed you using alot in the past, and based on when you use them. It's very clever, and the more you use your computer, it's likely the more ram will be used at boot. Is this a BAD thing? No, it speeds up your programs dummy! It's better than just leaving all that ram empty...

Other people complain about slow disk performance from the indexing... it only really does this for the first couple of days. Since then I haven't noticed it at all, and the benefits it yields are great. The new start menu is very handy; you can search for programs just by hitting "windows key" and typing a matching string. For keyboard heavy users like myself, it's very useful and quick. You can also search Control Panel, provided you aren't using classic mode.

The only thing I feel they screwed up is explorer. Breadcrumbs would be well supported by an "Up" button, especially when theres only enough space to show ONE breadcrumb. Very annoying. The whole explorer interface is cluttered actually, and includes things it really needn't include. I turned it to classic mode. They also break one of their UI recommendations by having no text in the title bar. WTF? Annoying.

One thing I'm wary of is all this DRM the opensource people keep complaining about. As far as I can tell it's all nonexistent right now, but that doesn't mean things won't get locked down years later. Some people make claims like "Vista is gonna force you to DRM all your MP3s and Videos!!!". Ignore them. DRM will basically be like it was in the past. I do not know though, how trusted programs will fit into this. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Most of the problems with Vista right now stem from stupid companies who have been sitting on their asses the whole time the new OS was being developed. As a result, alot of them don't have drivers ready yet. Oh and UAC is annoying. But I turned it off immediately. As easy as WINDOWSKEY > "contro" > ENTER > "UAC" > click turn off. Searching with keyboard yay!