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WIndows Vista Ultimate ... worth upgrading ... CNET say no!

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broken85:
I'm flattered, the possibility of having the longest post on DC, and only on my 54th post. Imagine the possibilities... *DC server quivers*

But nudone, I agree; An experienced user can, I'd guess, get things done probably almost equally as fast on any NT platform (well, from 5 on up) because it performs essentially every function that, to most people, an operating system should perform. Vista is most assuredly not an essential purchase, at least not at this point, for any application that I can think of. It's just sort of a "user experience makeover," or something along those lines, for SP2 with a bunch of extra software thrown in which already did have 3rd party alternatives available which most of us probably already have.

But it's the latest and greatest, and as much as I would like to deny falling for the hype, it does feel really shiny and new. I've been trying to tweak the hell out of XP for several years now to try and get just the right blend of barebones windows services and 3rd party replacement apps for all sorts of default programs, and I think it's kind of neat that Microsoft finally started just including a lot of the functionality into the operating system where it will probably run faster and definitely run cleaner than a 3rd party drop-in replacement. I'm all for installing the minimum amount of software necessary, or else Windows tends to slowly diminish in speed as more things are installed and uninstalled.

One thing I'm pissed about is that I just bought Tune-Up Utilities 2007 right when it came out, apparently without reading about the Vista compatibility statement in enough detail, so after a couple months of enjoying the best tools around I'm stuck until they release my "free upgrade" to Vista compatibility.  :'(  Oh well, I guess if Vista really needed tuning up already a lot of the stuff I said up there would become sort of comical... but Tune-Up's also still pretty shiny and new, and I miss it.

kimmchii:
hope this is not a repost, Vista is slower compare to XP.

Windows XP vs. Vista: The Benchmark Rundown

Conclusion: K.O. For Windows Vista?

Windows Vista clearly is not a great new performer when it comes to executing single applications at maximum speed. Although we only looked at the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Enterprise, we do not expect the 64-bit edition to be faster (at least not with 32-bit applications).

Overall, applications performed as expected, or executed slightly slower than under Windows XP. The synthetic benchmarks such as
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f0dder:
If you remember back to W2k release it clearly aimed at businesses and not at general users.
-Carol Haynes
--- End quote ---
...which was pretty unfortunate, they could've done away with 9x and moved to exclusively to NT codebase a lot earlier if they marketed it differently. AFAIK that was actually their plan, initially, but it got changed around.

There were huge issues with lack of drivers for hardware that MS later addressed in WinXP which meant that a lot of people were put off and there was a lack of support for games too.
-Carol Haynes
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Drivers might have been a problem for people with quirky hardware, luckily wasn't an issue for me nor any of my friends. Lack of game support is an urban legend, most well-written stuff worked just fine (sure, there were problems with old DOS games, and p.o.s coding that relied on Win9x insecurities, but that wasn't a lot). I used to game a lot back then :)

i can't remember what machines were like around win2k's release, was it still common to use 486's and pentiums?
-nudone
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I had an Athlon700, and win2k really flew well on that. 128meg was pushing it, 160 was fine, and 256 ran smooooooth. I'd say my machine was mid-end back then, and relatively low compared to what some of my friends had :)

I'm not going to drink the VISTA kool-aid anytime soon... but I guess I'll be forced to do a test install just to see how bad it really is. "But it's because of immature drivers!111!!!" - yeah, perhaps. And gobbling up resources for no good reason.

Carol Haynes:
I think you are right - nothing much of use has been added since W2000 - and certainly W2k was probably a bit leaner and faster.

Whilst I do appreciate that a lot of people will really like Vista it still seems to come down to the user interface eye candy at the end of the day and from what has been published it seems that if you use the Aero system there is a processing overhead which means you end up with a prettier but slower system. Personally I can live with a boring look if it does th job quickly so even if I were to upgrade to Vista I would be turning off all the gimmicks.

Think back to Windows XP release - after the initial interest lots of people were turning off themes and stopping all the extra unnecessary rubbish that appeared in the task manager. I would guess that once the initial "Ooo isn't that pretty" in Vista most people will prefer a faster less pretty machine on a day to day basis.

No one has really given me a sensible reason why anyone would want a pretty desktop that uses up massive amounts of system resources before the computer is actually asked to do something.

As for simplifying the layout of systems utilities and applets I have to say my impression of the Vista release candidate was that there was a lot of obfuscation of these applets - especially the ones that allow you do anything other than Vista's preferred settings. Have you for example tried to tweak wireless network settings - in RC1 it was like going round and round in ever decreasing and frustrating circles trying to find any of the controls.

Carol Haynes:
There were huge issues with lack of drivers for hardware that MS later addressed in WinXP which meant that a lot of people were put off and there was a lack of support for games too.
-Carol Haynes
--- End quote ---
Drivers might have been a problem for people with quirky hardware, luckily wasn't an issue for me nor any of my friends. Lack of game support is an urban legend, most well-written stuff worked just fine (sure, there were problems with old DOS games, and p.o.s coding that relied on Win9x insecurities, but that wasn't a lot). I used to game a lot back then :)
-f0dder (February 09, 2007, 06:48 PM)
--- End quote ---

I suppose my experience of W2k was a bit coloured because a number of bits of hardware I had at the time effectively bit the dust because of lack of drivers. There were also a number of games companies (Chessmaster is the one that immediately springs to mind but their were others) that explicitly coded their installers so that the products would not install on Windows 2000 because it was seen as a business OS (even though they eventually installed on Windows XP).

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