Vista Performance Guide from Microsoft

[Krusty]

Yeah, sorry. Was in a mood, it came across in my tone.

[Chalenge]

When I said "there never is a solution because..." I was speaking from first hand knowledge of one particular program and the only one that gives my system problems. It doesnt matter if I use 98 XP 2000 or Vista this program crashes (Chikka - a program for chatting with family in the Philippines). I do have issues with IE7 (I hate it) and thats pure MS.

I guess Im lucky but I cant say anything bad about Vista and I dont believe in luck.

[Ack-Ack]

Drivers for what? What games?

Majority driver issues with Vista our tech support gets are related to Nvidia cards and the other big one is related to Soundblaster cards, specifically the X-Fi line of sound card drivers.

ack-ack

[Ack-Ack]

Even in its smallish numbers, Vista has more than doubled our support load.  Out of the box, Vista is an abomination for gaming.  Its default settings are just horrible.

I know where you're coming from.  We did a survey of our PC customers and found that close to 73% still use XP and 27% use Vista but almost 75% of our PC related tech calls are related to Vista issues.


ack-ack

[Chalenge]

Majority driver issues with Vista our tech support gets are related to Nvidia cards and the other big one is related to Soundblaster cards, specifically the X-Fi line of sound card drivers.

I think Nvidia almost killed Vista from the start. Creative has issues too and its obvious if you use one with Vista. Their 24bit X-Fi line is not 24 bit for instance (they lost that law suit). Bluegears b-Enspirer is though and works wonders for Vista. I tried X-Fi on Vista 64 but if you ever initiated two sounds simultaneously then the sound would drop off and stereo location in AHII was dead from the start.

[Monty405]

Vista is good ... For me to poop on

[Ghastly]

It's not just video and sound card hardware drivers - or ancient legacy apps that are problematic either.  About a third of our standard modern business software was flakey at best on Vista - not to mention Vista being flakey at best itself. And it's not like you just say "oh well, time for a different software vendor" when your core business software packages in a vertical market runs poorly on a new version of the OS. I was actually starting to seriously consider for the first time ever moving to something like a Linux platform with a VM for the XP based apps as it would have been no more trouble and eventually pay off in terms of flexibility.

And trust me, I'm not minimizing in any way how expensive, ugly and time consuming that would have been. It would have been a one to two year project for at least half my staff, nearly full-time.

I took the easy route - and simply "outlawed" Vista on the desktops at work.  This works for me because we can control the software and hardware at the desktop - we're small enough.  I'm sure that many wish they could do the same.   

<S>

[DustyR]

I have Vista on this laptop & XP Pro on the desktop I use for AHII.  I loaded AH on the laptop & said that this is not going to be pleasant, uninstalled it & went back to the Desktop.      

[Vulcan]

I recently got a new lappie at work, top of the line NEC ultraportable. Shipped with Vista. I give it 3 weeks before I rolled back to XP (sp3). I found Vista slow when under load (ie Outlook, big Excel stuff, Filemaker, and browser all open at once) where XP has no problems, and I found Vista slow. I also found it's networking stack abysmal, it took ages to bring up a WPA2/EAP wifi connection that comes up instantly on XP.

It's also worth noting I'd dumbed down the GUI to XP level and it was still slow.

[Gixer]

Unlike XP never needed to read any tweak guides. Installed it since release day, never touched a single setting on it and has run perfect since day one and with far  less crashes then XP on my previous system. Infact the only software to ever crash on it is games, but that was due to a power supply when under load.

If anything Vista has probably suffered more then any previous OS simply due to the internet and blogger hype. True it has it's issues and requires a good system to run (just like any previous new OS) especially prior to SP1, but a lot of issues are over hyped and multiplied to ridiculously stupid levels, the whole Vista vs XP argument that's been beating around the internet since it's release is nerd at it's worst.

I would guess that the majority of issues are user related (RTFM) and hardware. Though due to the hype they automatically think it's a another Vista problem.  


<S>...-Gixer

[Skuzzy]

You really cannot put this all on the user.  Microsoft is the one who has stated they are working on the many issues with Vista.

The really big issues with Vista are compatibility, stability, and useability.  No matter what any of us say, Microsoft knows it, and that is a good thing.  Hopefully they will correct it all in Windows 7.

UAC is probably the single source of most of the complaints about Vista and why people, more and more, are loathing it.  Why?  It does nothing to increase the security of the operating system.  It is like a nagging child all the time asking, "Are we there yet?".  UAC is about as useful as that as well.  Every OEM computer comes with it enabled,

The difficulty in doing many things in Vista versus previous operating systems can be substantial.  Most, if not all, of the audio recording industry is dumping Microsoft and going back to Apple for sound editing systems as Microsoft made the brilliant move to dump DirectSound, which killed many high end audio packages.  All for the sake of DRM.  This will trickle down to the movie industry as well.  A small market with a big voice.

There are real problems in Vista that did not plague XP.  At least Microsoft acknowledges the issues, which is all that anyone can hope for at the moment, until Windows 7 is out.

All this posturing about Vista is rather pointless now.  Microsoft wants to replace it.  Its gotten bad enough they want to dump the name as well.  The people really driving this are the OEM computer manufacturers.  This is where Microsoft makes it living.  The independent computer builder is a drop in the bucket to Microsoft.  OEM's are not happy with Vista.  Dell is so over it, they are still shipping XP, by using a loop hole in the licensing arrangement with Microsoft.

It is Windows ME all over again.  There were also proponents of Windows ME who claimed it was a good operating system too, even though the industry at large knew better.  The same thing is happening with Vista.

Side note:  Gixer, when you say "RTFM" for Vista, just what manual are you referring to?  I have never seen one ship with a Microsoft OS.

[Gixer]

No there hasnt been a paper based manual since 3.1 and even that was little more a small paper back then a manual. Obviously im refering to modern version of RTFM which is the help within the OS itself Microsofts own website and google.  

The point i was making is that people dont look into the problem themselves they assume its another vista issue and just find a bbs to post their problem on and leave it to others to solve for them. Rather then taking a few mins to identify the issue and resolve on their own via the help options as above.


<S>...-Gixer 

[Chalenge]

Skuzzy I hear what you are saying too. I respect your opinion but you have to understand too that I see what I see and hear what I hear but in the end I MUST have 8-16Gigs of RAM and whatever system I use for 'work from home' is also what I will use for AHII. In my next job I will either be designing bridges or interiors for jets (big difference I know) and either one will require a monster to generate the 3D models. Whenever Windows 7 comes out I will probably have to have that too but only if it supports a larger memory model. For today I am very happy that Vista works so good even with all the problems. Im going to try to install XP Pro x64 on a separate drive but if I recall you didnt like that one either.

[Skuzzy]

The 64 bit versions of any Windows OS is pretty poorly supported.  If you pick your hardware smart enough, then you will probably be ok, but I do not think those 64 bit versions are ready for general consumption by the masses.

Gixer, I agree that most people when faced with something they acts differently or they do not understand, might jump to the conclusion that it must be a bug.   I deal with people every day who do not understand why things happen the way they do in our game and they instantly think it must be a cheat.

If Microsoft wanted to do a market friendly version of Vista, they would have created various editions to meet the demographics of the many marketplaces they sell to.  Instead, they shipped the worse single configuration version they could based on users who have never used a computer.  That may not be entirely true, but it feels like that.  The idea that everything should be enabled, even if iti s not needed, purveys the entire OS.  Why Microsoft will not do a simple configurator a user can run to tailor the OS to the environment is simply beyond me.

[Ack-Ack]

I would guess that the majority of issues are user related (RTFM) and hardware. Though due to the hype they automatically think it's a another Vista problem.  


<S>...-Gixer

From the technical calls our support center gets regarding Vista issues, the majority are not user related.


ack-ack