I've been running it on a separate machine and so far love it for most applications. It's much nicer looking (sort of like my macbook). More functional with the instant searching (yes, I know...X1 or similar does a fantastic job on xp).

So far it's quite a nice upgrade. Now as soon as quicktime and Vegas play nice on Vista, I'll install Vegas on it and see how it goes. Sony would seem to need to find a solution to the media manager database problem as well. Soon?

The above comments about the inability to do clean installs with 'upgrade' vista media...what a shame. I read that yesterday and am very disappointed by Microsoft's decision. A clean install is the only way to do it as far as I'm concerned...and if you buy the less expensive Vista upgrade, you should be able to do a clean install. Even if it means that it has to start from inside xp THEN wipe the drive and do a clean install. How sad that if a machine becomes very corrupted, you'll have to install XP, THEN install vista on top. Dumb. One reason I won't buy the upgrade media until someone figures out a way around it.

Sean
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broadcast voiceovers

Sean, you can do clean installs but the only catch is that the upgrade has to start from within XP and it only relates to the Home Basic, and Home Premium versions. All it means is you cant boot from the DVD to do a clean install. Its not really that big of a deal honestly.

At least not until Vegas is updated to fully support it.

And given past history of MS OS upgrades, not until SP1 comes out.

Or maybe I'll just give it a miss entirely.

no OGL support = no me & 1/2 the gaming market. Guess "Games for Windows" = "Games running DirectX". :(

p@mast3rs,

It's a gigantic waste of time when you want to install Vista on a new hard disk. Now - you MUST install XP first and then do your upgrade. Not exactly what I would call "clean"

I was offered the educational vista for US$59 where the qulaiying guidelines were pretty wide, like any K1-12 school volateer, is this genuine or a rip from academicsoftware.com

"no OGL support = no me & 1/2 the gaming market. Guess "Games for Windows" = "Games running DirectX"."

Who says there is no support for OpenGL in the released version of Windows Vista? I looked on the "help" screen in Vista Ultimate and it says that OpenGL is fully supported as is Direct3D.

I know this wasn't true in the Beta1 version. Is that where you're basing your information from?

-Dan

So what you're saying is that you can use an update license for clean installs as long as you start the process from an existing, running winXP installation.

By clean install we're talking "wipe the disk and reformat" so you'd better have a backup. Maybe use ghost or Casper XP to clone the existing disk onto a new HDD.

It used to be that you could do clean installs from an update disk but you'd have to insert the old disk to be checked at some point.

time passes... Okay, I get the point. Some people end up doing total wipes and reinstalls. I've never needed to but I hear it's the nuclear solution that some people have to use. This could get very tricky for people who's hard drives die or who somehow totally f___k a disc.

Rob Mack

In the past I've used old install discs on new systems. I'd have to calll microsoft to say that I was moving the license to a new system (which was true) but they were very easygoing about it. I even did this on an oem disc, but it was an oem of a vanilla install.

I'm hoping they won't start being difficult about this. If they aren't, I've got about 5 licenses to use, most of which came on syystems that need to be retired anyway.

Rob Mack

It's clean if the process has to start from XP but still wipes and formats your disc.

Still, a major hassle on a brand new disk. Save those old XP discs!

Rob Mack

Yes, I read at least one post at OpenGL.net where a users says their openGL works just fine in Vista. It's an nvidia driver in this case, I think.

Rob Mack

Not tonight, certainly.

Vegas has to work on it (and so does everything else) so I'll wait to see what the bleeding edgers say.

I expect that Sony will have updates or maybe even new versions for most products sometime soon, and hopefully they'll be backwards compatible with XP.

There will be lots of crying and whining about this and that for the next month and then the fog will clear and we'll get a better idea of what the real problems are. In the mean time everyone will blame their slightest problems on things like DRM, true or not.

It's pretty obvious that there will be some who hold onto strange ideas about Vista for years, just the same as the odd things people are saying here about XP vs Win2k. You can pretty much ignore them.

What will force me to use Vista? Well, I'd like to get a new laptop someday. Not soon, but someday. And probably some essential piece of software will require Vista-someday. And there's the fact that I'm going to have to get familiar with it for work - our main client will be selling sytsems with Vista and we have to write support training. I won't have to have Vista on my own machine but eventually it'll be more convenient to do so.

Rob Mack

If I get a new laptop with Vista on it, I'll do three things in order:
1. Image the hard drive (to keep the installers for the OEM apps)
2. Format the hard drive
3. Install XP

Or if the system is one that has a recovery partition, be sure to make the recovery disks. Then you can wipe the system if you want.

Since most of people's rants are based on myth and missinformation, I'd probably give Vista a try for a while before deciding to go back to XP. But I don't see any reason to rush into Vista at the moment.

One thing I know is that you can configure Vista's interface back to something close to win2k. It get's a lot snappier when you do that. (For that matter, you can configure the XP interface to be identical to win2k. It's the first thing I do on an XP system.)

Rob Mack

"Nothing, and better security my a**. This OS is moronic."

Maybe you need to read up on this somewhat, have even used it? If there is a breeze, vista will ask if you will allow it. This is the single most important new feature of vista, and you just can't say that xp is more secure, because it is not. One of the biggest downfalls of xp is that it installs by default with the default user having administrator privileges which mean when an exploit is found by a they can do anything. Anyways, i'm not a ms evangelist, but it's hard to stomache such unjustified comments.

>>>>"Nothing, and better security my a**. This OS is moronic."

Maybe you need to read up on this somewhat, have even used it? If there is a breeze, vista will ask if you will allow it. This is the single most important new feature of vista, and you just can't say that xp is more secure, because it is not. One of the biggest downfalls of xp is that it installs by default with the default user having administrator privileges which mean when an exploit is found by a they can do anything. Anyways, i'm not a ms evangelist, but it's hard to stomache such unjustified comments. <<<

Can you read? I have tested this POS OS enough - no way is it even under consideration - at all. Maybe you need to read up on it "somewhat".
Maybe you need to justify the idiotic visuals it offers but it has no place in a streamlined system used FOR CONTENT CREATION.
And most in the know will disable 90% of this - so WHY EVEN BUY IT?
You can scream about security all you want - I don't care, I'm not concerned about the security of w2k/xp/xp64 or this inane vista. It doesn't matter or apply. Good luck with it, I give the craps hands on this OS.

>>>One thing I know is that you can configure Vista's interface back to something close to win2k. It get's a lot snappier when you do that. (For that matter, you can configure the XP interface to be identical to win2k. It's the first thing I do on an XP system.) <<<

And so why would any user here want to use it and not just use XP/xp64 (barring all the other issues alone)?
Just use xp/xp64 and get to work, I say...(rather than WASTING time with a goofy os release that offers very little more - if anything at all except a deep reach into the fools pocket).

Oooweeee - but it does offer that "cool new search engine" (sarcasm firmly ON).

But don't just take my word on it I'm sure you've read all others responses.
here's a fine article as well. linky

It's not for me. M$ is trying to get too much of a foothold into MY system with this one. For mom & pop user at home surfing the 'net and playing solitaire, they wont ever know the difference. I am not that type of user.

My problems with Microsoft and Vista:

From the issues with the protected kernel (initally preventing third part virus apps). So they can sell virus software... Did I miss something here?

The onerous licensing transfers (another thats POSSIBLY been relaxed).

The demand of WHQL drivers and hardware.

Recent findings that they have hidden more API's (harkening back to their 1993 anti-trust reviews).

Attempt to bastardize a format (ie Java) to fragment the code base. They LOVE that strategy and use it often. This is one of the main reasons IE is as big as it is now - not to mention their anti-trust trial on bundling.

Their current attempt to get an open document format classified as a standard that is dependent on M$ licensed technology.

IE7 not being backward compatible with legacy sites. Ones that use custom ActiveX controls are having fits with this...

More (as in knee-deep) DRM. With the issues I've had with the current DRM for music this CANT POSSIBLY be any better.

As to security, that is a joke. When was the M$ "Security Initiative"? 2002? How many exploits have been found in XP since then and since their "most secure OS yet" statement for SP2? Now the code base is 5(?) times larger and it is supposed (again) to be secure... Yeah right.

On top of all of these, IMO, they are too big now. I see no reason to give them any more money or reason to get bigger. Bloated, shiny screen buttons/windows, that only slow things down, is just not that important to me. They never will be for that matter.

I might as well throw my 2 cents in here too.

I'll get Vista on my home PC with the next PC I buy, which will probably be in the next 3 - 4 months or so.

I'm in the IT field at a large (slow moving) corporation, and I am sure we won't touch vista on any of our 65,000 desktops until about 2 - 3 years from now, at the earliest.

I also co-own a small business, and I don't think I'll put any Vista machines out for at least 9 months or so, depending on how my experience with my home Vista machine is.

And when I do deploy Vista, I'll most likely disable all the fancy graphic features and run it "plain".

Jaydee, i'm not recommending Vista to anyone, nor can I really think of a reason to use it at the moment.

When I started using XP there were only a couple of reasons: NTFS, greater stability than Win98/ME, better dual display support than win2k (Win2k was a little older than winME. WinME had better dual display support than win2k and I sure wasn't willing to go backwards to win2k from winME)

Not a lot of reasons. Will there be good reasons with Vista? Hybrid hard drives? Superfetch? Vegas finally using DirectX? A more viable Vista64? I really don't know and I don't expect there to be much of a consensus for many months.

No, it won't be Aero.

Will it reach into my pocket? I make my living creating training materials for computer support people. I'll make more off of Vista than MS will make off of me. But to do that I'll have to hold my nose and use well before I really want to.

Rob Mack

>>Will it reach into my pocket? I make my living creating training materials for computer support people.<<

I see, so you're using Vista because you have to. It won't reach into YOUR pocket (but that doesn't make it ok). That's different than the usage of most.
Just clarify this to some users here. It's a sluggish, bloated, useless product you can make $ off of. Understood.
In a sense, your vista training products are also part of the problem - another small vehicle used to help this moronic OS move forward (even though all of us would do the same ;).

That's different from " awe, c'mon people - quit over-reacting. It's gonna be decent one day". Well , it isn't going to to be. It's crapola.
The move from win2k to xp was a bit odd and bothersome in the grand scheme of things...but this one?...this one takes the cake on sooo many levels of wrong.

I am still waiting for SOMEONE to tell me and everyone else here how vista is going to help users here (content creators,editors, etc.). Anyone?

I played with the betas for five months and tried the RTM at work. I prefer XP. I won't upgrade until someone can give a single good reason to. The truth is. There is no good reason to spend the money.

Not to mention msft did not work with 3rd parties on drivers. While there are 3 to 5 decent changes, 99% of it looks and feels exactly like XP. The entire upgrade path was a disaster decision by MS. You have do do a fresh install of XP every time you want to install Vista again. Or of course, buy the non-upgrade version for much much more $$$.

The terrible truth is that Vista is ok for a free upgrade, or packed with a new computer. But no one can legitimately claim that vista is worth more than $49. It gives you next to nothing new.

It gives you next to nothing new.
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Why should it give You, the end user anything?
Part of the problem with OSs like Vista is they try to do just that, make the end user feel there's something in it for them. Result is the development gets bogged down in things for You and not what it should be focussed on, providing better support and features for software developers.
I'm not saying Vista is going to be a good thing or a bad thing but I don't spend much of my day directly using any OS, I use applications that run on top of an OS. If an OS can be improved so the applications that I use can do more then I'm all for it.