Vista review!!!!

[Mr_LoL]

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista.asp
Its not complete yet but it answers most of my question about the upgrade process. You can buy the cheaper upgrade dvd as long as you hold a physical copy of xp.

[PeterJensen]

yea i love his site.

[Bearclaw]

That site is awesome. Ultimate is so expensive though. I might have to settle with Home Premium which has all the features as enterprise except for 4 or 5. With the student discount it is only 70 bucks to. FTW.

[superklye]

Yeah, I'm reading this right now since our production and development servers have been down all day and this is getting me really excited for Vista!

[netviper13]

You know, $250 for the Ultimate Upgrade is sounding more and more affordable as time passes. Argh, yet another way for me to blow lots of cash!

[Mr_LoL]

I think Windows Vista Home Premium is the best upgrade for me. I really dont care about a game tweaker tbh.

[superklye]

I think I'm probably going to go with Ultimate just 'cause.

[einstein_314]

I think I'm probably going to go with Ultimate just 'cause.
QFT!

For my main rig anyways....I'll probably pick up a copy of home premium for my laptop. And I get a free upgrade to home premium for my media pc (I bought WinXP media center 2005 a month ago so I get the free upgrade).

[Bman212121]

I think I'm going to have to get either business or ultimate simply because home premium doesn't allow you to run RDP. On second thought, I'm sure someone will post the fix for this, since it is probably as simple as a file copy and a reg hack, so I guess home premium might work for other pcs.

[superklye]

QFT!

For my main rig anyways....I'll probably pick up a copy of home premium for my laptop. And I get a free upgrade to home premium for my media pc (I bought WinXP media center 2005 a month ago so I get the free upgrade).
Nice!

Depending on whether or not I put together a server with some spare parts I have laying around, I may snag another copy of Home Premium.

I can't believe how excited I'm getting about an OS! :D :p

[einstein_314]

Nice!

Depending on whether or not I put together a server with some spare parts I have laying around, I may snag another copy of Home Premium.

I can't believe how excited I'm getting about an OS! :D :p
Yeah, Vista is pretty sweet so far. I've been using RC2 since it came out (2 months ago?) and it's awesome. If only nvidia would release some drivers that support SLI...that would make my day!

[A101Sugar]

Thank god I get Vista Ultimate coming to me from the Retail Edge bundle.... if not I would have been ****ed :)

[LycosV]

I think Windows Vista Home Premium is the best upgrade for me. I really dont care about a game tweaker tbh.

Game tweaker? That doesn't appear to be in the RC2 copy I'm running. Is this one of those mystical "Windows ultimate extras" that doesn't exist yet but is supposed to make us all want Ultimate? I think home premium is the way to go, I'd buy unlimate in a heartbeat if it wasn't so danged expensive.

[OldOfEvil]

Vista looks cool, but I belive I will wait until the first SP comes out. WinXP works just fine for me, and is rock solid. Aero does look way nifty though, but I got OS X for eye candy.. :p

[brady]

FWIW, my wife is loving vista. As you can see from my sig I've got the RTM running on both systems now. Even more so than in xp she's able to move about pretty easily and do all the things she wants to do without any hassle.

Setup was easy. All my hardware was detected (as it should be), and I love that I don't need any of the software from my new printer. Vista covers faxing, scanning and printing extraordinarily well.

I have found one problem with the final version of vista that I'm very surprised has been overlooked. When you first install the system and setup your account information you only have the opportunity to setup one user account. In and of itself that shouldn't be a problem. However, for some unknown reason, wmp11 doesn’t not operate properly if the OS only has one user account setup. What I mean is that you can put all your digital media into the media folders and have wmp monitor those folders but wmp will never "see" the media. It's as if it's not even there.

The solution? What I did was installed vista. Created the initial account. I created a second admin account which I intended to actually be the primary account used. I then log into the initial account and try to compile a library list in wmp11. It won’t work. I log out. Log into the second account and try to compile the library and it then works only for the second account. Essentially, once you have created two accounts, whichever account you try to compile a library in first, will be the one that does not work properly in wmp. Be warned. Like I said I'm shocked that this has presented itself in the final build. And yes I am certain I'm using the proper RTM.

Windows defender works very well. I was installing daemon tools and during the install defender found that daemon tools had installed "whenu.savenow". It suggesting removing the software and with one click took care of the whole situation in he background. I wasn't even aware that daemon tools had it in there. Sneaky.

I love the look. I don't know what else to say about it. All the things that I intuitively want to know are present. It's just...easier. This is especially true for media files. I love big tiles and clear previews right in explorer. At first I was skeptical about the start button and menu but I like it this way much better. I like not having a giant succession of menus spreading across my screen when I go deep into the menu system.

Oh yeah, this may seem trivial but I love that finally the "documents" folder can be properly used for documents and that all the other media folders are not contained in it. That always annoyed me. Maybe I have computer OCD or something but it just makes a ton more sense having the former "my documents" be simply "user" and then having all the various media folders contained in it.

Probably doesn't need to be said but it's nice to finally have native DVD decoding and I love how easily the DVD creation software is integrated into wmm. My wife has already used this functionality for something she has wanted to do but was out of her technical league. In xp media center it wasn't possible (read: easy) to edit the large recorded TV files. In vista they load quickly into wmm and it makes it a snap to edit, clip, whatever and then easily slide all that stuff over to DVD maker and pop out a DVD. She loved doing it. Like I said, it was easy.

Anyways, this has gone on for longer than I thought it would...sorry. I haven’t even mentioned the more intuitive networking options and security! Anyways, I feel like one of the main attractions to vista gets overlooked in allot of reviews so I just wanted to point it out. Vista is easier to use than any other windows. And not just a little easier. Very, very much easier. My wife has done more "real" computing in vista then she ever did in xp or anything else for that matter. I guess the big indicator for me has been that since we've been running vista I haven’t heard "Hey Brady?!? How do I do [fill in the blank]?" I think that's something a good number of husbands are going to thank Microsoft for. I know I am.

I also feel I've been able to use my computers for more actual computing. Instead of tracking down drivers, troubleshooting, ect. I don't deny that I may get exposed to some of the less visible bugs as time goes on, but so far things have been pretty good. It's a little strange. In the past with 3.1, 95, 98, and even xp I always had something to fix or fine tune or troubleshoot. Besides the wmp problem it’s been strangely quit. I guess it may be not such a good thing after all. Like I said, before I've always had something to work on. Now, I sit down do what I want to do and then realize I don't have any "babysitting" to do...so what do I do now?...

edit: It should be obvious I avoided any statements about games and games performance. Performance isn't good now. It's that simple. I you want to game either stay on xp or dual boot. I don't game on my pc's anymore since I picked up an xbox. I love pc gaming but I am simply choosing to not spend a great deal of money on the hobby right now.

[Mr_LoL]

A good summary of points there Brady.