Uncreative Labs

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 2:53 am

I've got Vista Business Edition (from MSDNAA) and in my hour or so of actually using it, it's not a bad OS. I wouldn't spend money to upgrade yet, but I like some of the things it does. For one, it has adopted the philosophy that RAM is available, might as well fill it with cache from the hard drive while it's not busy. For example, while using Mozilla it might load the Mozilla application then fill memory with the parts that would remain on disk. When you need something that Mozilla would normally have to go to disk to read, it's already in memory.

I'm not sure about some of the hard disk use, though, my hard disk light looked like it stayed on all week. Hopefully the hard drive wasn't actually working all that time. That will shorten failure time tremendously.

They've gotten rid of XP's Fisher Price scheme, and come up with something slightly different and not so "toy like." If I determine my laptop can support it well (it's 2.8 gHz with 512MB of RAM) I'll probably install it on there. (The desktop PC it's on now is kinda a Guinea pig.)

This is my opinion, based on limited use. Your mileage may vary, no warranty of any kind is offered on this information, expressed or implied. Caution: Life may be dangerous.

Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:34 am

Update:
My laptop won't support Vista, or rather Vista won't support it. (It's only 3 years old. It should be walking and talking and getting Mommy and Daddy in trouble by repeating things it hears by now!)

The problems I've run in to come from not having Vista drivers for my Network card??????? or video card (ok, so XP doesn't have them either, but it does allow 1024x768x32 bit without them). I'm puzzled how my network card can be unsupported, I'd think by now there'd be enough of a common interface that most 100 mbit cards would be recognized. Linux does it, why not Vista?

Despite the driver problems, Vista installed fine and did so without complaint. However, it was difficult at times to install it because the install was designed for better graphics than the install selected. Oh well, the compatibility tool did warn me... but I expected at least 600x800x16.8 million. I wasn't able to adjust the resolution easily post install either. (To be honest, I gave up after I figured out it wouldn't support my NIC.)

I'm drawing analogues in my mind with OS/2 2.1. It's a neat OS, but it's taxing to the hardware of the time. Perhaps when Vista++ comes out they'll rethink the system requirements. System requirement wise, I think you need to plan for 700 mHz and 256 MB of RAM with ~30 gig HD space yet. That's kinda going to be your baseline.

This post, like the previous one, is my experience and opinions, and is designed to be read by a living person. If you're a dead person reading this post, please note that while it's allowed it is unsupported. I accept no responsibility for anything that happens if a dead person reads this post.

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Now that I am finally learning assembler (again) and have patched some buggy programs half assed maybe its time I move up to Windows 2000 from 98 since vista is out. I think they can be coaxed to barely work under 2k I will find out in a few I guess.

Hmm at this rate I will be trying vista sometime around 2015

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

26 October, 2015?

Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 15

Anonymous Coward wrote:

26 October, 2015?

Oh yeah... I think I might wait this long...

The day Queen Diana visits our female president Washington. Wink

LOL!
Nope, I think I might just save me the money and buy a PitBull hoverboard by Matel.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

I still use DOS and windows 98 as my primary OS and have no plan for getting vista. maybe I should save the money and get a flying car conversion instead of a hoverboard. Very Happy

Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 4:53 am

IMHO, you're missing out by running Windows 98. The Windows NT 5.x line (i.e. Windows 2000 and XP) makes several very necessary improvements, including stability. My mother and sister have noticed that XP doesn't crash very often at all, and they're not really computer people.

That being said, there's definately something to be said for running what you've got. (-;

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

I have copies of windows 2000 and xp I got from work but i use 98 because I have some dos programs that don't work to well under the newer versions of windows and Xp won't be to happy on a p90.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Stack the P90 full of RAM and Win2K wouldn't be too horribly bad on it. I've got it on my old CyrixP166 w/64MB and once I "optimized" it, it's actually quite snappy (once it finishes booting)... Wink

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

I really don't get all this "more stability" stuff about Windows NT, I had a ROCK SOLID Win98SE setup for years. Of course, I'm a tech, I build/configure my own machines, and know what to and what not to access o the web that can knock stability to it's knees, plus I'm not as heavily influenced by eye candy, and walk on the dangerous side by not using an Anti-Virus (since I never get executables and code via E-mail anywho).

2000/XP is great, but on anything with less than 128MB of RAM, it runs like a snail of valium. A well taken care of O/S will last you rather well....Here's my chart for what I equip my stuff with, according to CPU.....

DR-DOS 6 - Picky XT clones with 1.44MB FLoppies on the "wrong" controller
MS-DOS 6.22 - 8088-early 286
MS-DOS 6.22/Windows 3.1 - 286/10 w/ 4MB of RAM or more
MS-DOS 6.22/Windows For Workgroups 3.11 - 386 & 486<66MHz/32MB RAM
Windows 95 OSR2 - 486 DX2/66 - 486 DX4/100 <64MB of RAM
Windows 98 SE - 486 DX4-100/64MB - PIII 700 MHz/384MB of RAM
Windows 2000 - PIII 800+ - present
Windows XP - only there if it came with it

Of course, there's always Linux and OS/2, which I also use on some machines, as well as older versions of NT when I feel like it.

Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:31 am

PC Techs don't count. (-; We usually know what to avoid to keep our systems running stabily. (I also take the time to erradicate a program I don't want to keep. Who said they could keep their settings.ini file on MY hard drive? I asked for a complete uninstall, that means EVERYTHING.)

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

Today i saw vista on modern hardware. I was a bit surprised that it ran smoothly on a 1.8ghz machine. The reason it ran smooth is most likely becuase it a clean copy without all the crud on it. I notice tHAT alot of the icons are swiched around and it kind of hard to do anything. It took me 10 minutes just to access the hard drive contents because i couldn't find the my computer icon anywhere. All of the shiny colors gave me aa headache and I wont use vista at all for many reason. Im keeping win98.

Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 15

386er wrote:

I still use DOS and windows 98 as my primary OS and have no plan for getting vista. maybe I should save the money and get a flying car conversion instead of a hoverboard. Very Happy

$400USD should be enough for a Pitbull Hoverboard (Retail Price of Windows Vista Ultimate ~ $400 in 2007). Hover conversion for your 2004 Rice Burner, $40,000 USD?

BTW I would be proud too if I owned 486 and below computers because I could make a fortune selling them on eBay for $250+.

Oh well, I suppose I will use my AMD K5 system when my Athlon Xp goes caput. It runs DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 For Workgroups. I'll save the money thoughout the decades and in the latter half of the 21st Century buy a Zero One Versatran.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

who in there right mind would pay 400 dollars for vista? XP is around $100 dollars to install were I work at, plus we evan install office 97 for free after that. 40000 dollars for hover car conversion doesnt seem worth it my 1988 ford ranger is only worth about $1000 dollars.

Joined: 21 May 2006 Posts: 47 Location: London, England

$400? Here I can get Vista Home Premium for $120, which is the same price I can get XP for Laughing

That is also taking into consideration the $ to £ exchange rate.