Real Fiero Tech

The wife purchased a Dell laptop for her business late last year and the purchased included a free express upgrade (+ a nominal shipping fee) to windows vista business.

So the disc arrives yesterday and we run the compatibiliy wizard (as recommended by dell/winvista) and it said there would only be one issue and that was concerning the wireless lan drivers but updated drivers were available.

Well, after a couple hours of installation we find that the vista upgrade didn't go as flawless as microsoft said it would be (remember upgrading from Win 95/98/ME to XP?). There were more than a few driver issues and I had a hell of a time getting logged back onto my secured wireless network because it is an absolute PITA to find and change network/wireless settings in VISTA.

After several minutes of screwing with it, the network finally connected (although I didn't really change anything, it all of a sudden started to work...???). Got on the net and downloaded the updates I needed and everything went ok there. Now I started playing around with Vista to see how it worked.

First off, the "AERO" function is pretty much useless. The same function has been always been available on the taskbar in previous windows versions. The only difference is AERO can show you what you were doing in multiple programs at once, that is assuming you have a monitor big enough to actually read/see what you were doing. Secondly, and the biggest POS is this damn "User Access Control" function. Remember that Apple commercial where the Windows guy had the "secret service" agent standing behind him always asking for permission to do things? That's right; that's pretty much EXACTLY how UAC works. Even something as trivial as a change to the display settings triggers a UAC warning. DUMB! However, this function can be turned off. (I have not yet explored Vista enough to see if the type of things UAC monitors can be changed). Oh yea, startup and shutdown take longer than WinXP. In fact, pretty much everything you do in Vista takes longer to find/execute compared to WinXP.

Aside from that, the graphics and sounds of windows itself is better, but will be familiar to those WinXP users; so don't expect anything too exciting in the upgrade. Probably the biggest "upgrade" I experienced was concerning the bundled games like solitare that come with the Windows OS. Graphics and sounds are much improved over previous versions. Well worth the $10.00 shipping price for the vista upgrade we paid for when we purchased the laptop.

Final Thoughts:
Save your money and only upgrade if you have to. Windows Vista appears to be nothing more than a re-skinned version of WinXP. The only difference is now there is a lot more BS to sort thru before you can find what you want plus there is a lot more useless security measures to deal with. Windows Vista appears to have been designed for the typical, dumb-dumb computer user and not for the technolgically-adept user. If you are the latter, you will probably be disappointed by Vista, which brings up an interesting thought. If I remember correctly, I recall some talk over a year ago about MS working on a completely new OS that would not really have anything in common with WinXP-type OS's, but that OS wasn't called Vista. I personally think Vista was designed to fill a gap (in Bill Gates' pockets more than anything) in the OS software market before MS rolls out this "fresh" OS they were supposidly working on which probably won't be ready for release for another couple of years assuming what I heard was true.

Now this post just represents my opinions concerning my inital experiences with Vista. I suppose after I use it more, I may discover some more useful features it has vs. WinXP Pro. But I seriously doubt these additional features will justify the full-price upgrade costs of Vista. So my advice to anyone wanting to jump on the "latest techonogy" bandwagon is: wait on this one for a while. It will probably save you a lot of frustration in the long run in trying to track down drivers and patches (that may not be currently available) for your legacy software that absolutely will not work (in current form) with Vista. There are several PC games on my desktop computer that I had trouble with getting to work with XP which I am sure will never work under a Vista environment. Furthermore, the MS-Vista compatibility tester (which you can download from the MS website) reported that games such as Call Of Duty would absolutely not work under Vista (and that game isn't even that old! -2003-).

-ryan

Hey, someone else hates Vista! What a surprise. :salute:

Now back to XP with you! And take this with you! :thumbleft:

La la... :la:

You pimp that nlite crap almost as much as hostfile.

...

Though I am using an nLite version XP right now

They're two things that every computer user should know about. Maybe not so much Hostfile but definitely nLite. It undoes all the crap that makes XP bloated. HAH! I just called XP bloated! What's that make Vista! :bootyshake:

Sinister Fiero wrote:Secondly, and the biggest POS is this damn "User Access Control" function. Remember that Apple commercial where the Windows guy had the "secret service" agent standing behind him always asking for permission to do things? That's right; that's pretty much EXACTLY how UAC works. Even something as trivial as a change to the display settings triggers a UAC warning. DUMB! However, this function can be turned off. (I have not yet explored Vista enough to see if the type of things UAC monitors can be changed).

You are coming to a sad realization. Allow?

I always thought it would be funny to see the security guy kick the mac guy's candy ass if the PC guy said "Do not allow".

Sinister Fiero wrote:Oh yea, startup and shutdown take longer than WinXP. In fact, pretty much everything you do in Vista takes longer to find/execute compared to WinXP.

Software bloat follows More's Law just like processing power. Opening Werd on a modern computer is no faster than it was when I was in high school working on a 486. The computational tasks a computer can undertake have gotten more complex, but the practical speed of using a computer hasn't gotten any better in over 10 years.

Sinister Fiero wrote:First off, the "AERO" function is pretty much useless. The same function has been always been available on the taskbar in previous windows versions. The only difference is AERO can show you what you were doing in multiple programs at once, that is assuming you have a monitor big enough to actually read/see what you were doing.

WTF is the AERO function? Is that what lets you flip through your open windows?

The Dark Side of Will wrote: Software bloat follows More's Law just like processing power. Opening Werd on a modern computer is no faster than it was when I was in high school working on a 486. The computational tasks a computer can undertake have gotten more complex, but the practical speed of using a computer hasn't gotten any better in over 10 years.

I got you beat. My first PC was a Packard Bell with a whopping fast 8088 dual speed processor running at either 6mhz or 10mhz! Besides the Apple IIe, the first PC I used in school was in HS and it was a 25mhz 286 running AUTOCAD. Wow, that was such an upgrade from my 8088 10mhz machine! BTW, I still have the 40MB HDD from my 8088 that had Win 3.11 on it. Before I got the 40meg HDD I had dual floppy 5 1/4" drives. Those were the days. When I got the HDD I thought there was no way in hell I could ever fill up a 40mb hdd and that was back when I was hosting a dial-up BBS on my 8088 machine. (back then we thought a 4800 baud modem was fast!) My how times have changed.

WTF is the AERO function? Is that what lets you flip through your open windows?

Yes, and if you don't have a 21" or larger monitor, it is pretty much useless.

first computer -the ibm xt 8080 8mhz machine - then the 8088 turbo xt at its whopping 10 or 12mhz if i remember right - then a 286 then a 386 then a 486 then a p1 then a p3etc.

First computer, officially, Commodore Vic20 with a modem and a tape drive.

I don't mind Vista. My only problem with it so far is that iTunes still isn't compatible.

Overall though not much is different from XP.

Windows 3.1 FTMFPwn

And people were wondering why I held on to windows 98 until a couple years ago... :la:

"Switch to XP it's faster!"

Kohburn wrote:first computer -the ibm xt 8080 8mhz machine - then the 8088 turbo xt at its whopping 10 or 12mhz if i remember right - then a 286 then a 386 then a 486 then a p1 then a p3etc.

Heh, I almost forgot about my ADAM computer that came with my Coleco Vision game system. The tapes looked like regular cassette tapes and it only had 2 software programs. Can't even tell you what processor speed it had but I bet it wasn't 10mhz.

Here is a link to what I had: http://oldcomputers.net/adam.html

The Dark Side of Will wrote:
WTF is the AERO function? Is that what lets you flip through your open windows?

No, that is flip3d. It is a part of it but not what is defined as aero.

Aero is the new full 3d accelerated desktop. You need a dx9 card and vista premium or better or it is not an option. With vista ultimate it goes one step further with the dreamscene full motion hd wallpaper. Yes it's eye candy but pretty damn impressive if you have the hardware.

user account control is a pain in the ass for people with a clue but it's not there for people with a clue. It's there for the 90% that click on every "your computer is infected click here to fix it" link and then wonder how their shit got so fucked up. If you have a clue and it bugs turn it off.

vista is not at all an xp reskin. Get past first impressions and dig down into it. Like every new windows there is a learning curve. It wasn't any different the first few months after xp was released.

First computer which was actually MY computer and not my families was a Tandy 286

DiggityBiggity wrote:First computer which was actually MY computer and not my families was a Tandy 286

Mine was a Tandy as well, 386 I believe. I even had a key to lock it or unlock it! My first decent computer was an IBM Aptiva, with the separate cd rom and floppy that mounted under the monitor. Ran the all new Windows 95.