I'm trying Vista...

[ermi]

... and I don't like it so far. So this will be mostly a rant post.
Compared to XP:
1. Takes longer to start.
2. Eats more RAM.
3. The security stuff is STOOOPID. Example: Tried to create new empty folders in Vstplugins. In TC I couldn't do it so I used Explorer. I could do it there. But I had to confirm this action 4 (four!!!) times for every new folder (warning windows popped up). I didn't know that empty folders destroy computers. . Anyway, I disabled this BS in the security center by disabling "User Account Control". (As, I suppose most people will.) Then, an icon pops up in the tray because I disabled this. I go to the usual "Change the way security center alerts me" but there I can't choose to disable notifications only for this, like in XP. NO, I have to disable notifications for the ENTIRE Security Center, including AV, Firewall... Stooopid.
4. The Start menu sucks. This might come down to personal taste, but I don't like clicking and scrolling just to start a program. Can you choose to have the XP-type Start menu? No, only the very old Classic one.
5. The new Disk Defragmenter is a joke. You now have scheduled defragmenting, but if you want to do it manually you have no options whatsoever. You can't even choose which partitions/drives to defragment, it will defragment the entire system. There's only a "Defragment now" button and no progress indicator, anything. (see here) They probably dumbed down the Defrag on purpose, tho. Made a deal with Diskkeeper or something.
I'm using [teh] Ultimate version, mind you.
6. The network sucks even more than in XP. I often can't see the other PC (XP) I have in the network. Maybe if they were both Vista...
7. The default GUI sucks, too, IMO. I disabled it pretty fast. It all feels slow, unresponsive with it. Windows take longer to pop-up and some programs (like TC) display a smeared font. The good old "Adjust for best performance" does the trick and enables the classic look.
8. You still have to reboot for more or less small changes, no improvement here.

Good news is the programs, plugins and drivers seem to work mostly like in XP, no major compatibility issues. (I couldn't install this, for example, which uses a crappy Pace/ILok emulation or something.)

There are supposed to be some improvements in the way Vista handles audio... any more info on that? For what I've tried it seems more or less the same as XP. Crackles and pops are still there where they were "supposed to be". But I didn't do any recording, just playback, with both ASIO and Directsound.

Overall, I was expecting a more drastic change, since they were making it for so long. I'm curious to see if they change some stuff (like the Defrag and Security Center) in the future updates/SPs. In the mean time, I can appreciate XPs value, especially having limited RAM. I don't think I'll change to Vista until really necessary.

[chagzuki]

I tried the beta ages back but couldn't get a proper driver for my graphics card and therefore couldn't check out the aero spanky glass theme, which, as I was bored, I wanted to. Other than that I didn't notice anything much different from XP. I seem to remember the file browsing options were better. I always liked win2K. Can't remember why I stopped using it.

[A3ntar]

... and I don't like it so far. So this will be mostly a rant post.
Compared to XP:
1. Takes longer to start.
2. Eats more RAM.
3. The security stuff is STOOOPID. Example: Tried to create new empty folders in Vstplugins. In TC I couldn't do it so I used Explorer. I could do it there. But I had to confirm this action 4 (four!!!) times for every new folder (warning windows popped up). I didn't know that empty folders destroy computers. . Anyway, I disabled this BS in the security center by disabling "User Account Control". (As, I suppose most people will.) Then, an icon pops up in the tray because I disabled this. I go to the usual "Change the way security center alerts me" but there I can't choose to disable notifications only for this, like in XP. NO, I have to disable notifications for the ENTIRE Security Center, including AV, Firewall... Stooopid.
4. The Start menu sucks. This might come down to personal taste, but I don't like clicking and scrolling just to start a program. Can you choose to have the XP-type Start menu? No, only the very old Classic one.
5. The new Disk Defragmenter is a joke. You now have scheduled defragmenting, but if you want to do it manually you have no options whatsoever. You can't even choose which partitions/drives to defragment, it will defragment the entire system. There's only a "Defragment now" button and no progress indicator, anything. (see here) They probably dumbed down the Defrag on purpose, tho. Made a deal with Diskkeeper or something.
I'm using [teh] Ultimate version, mind you.
6. The network sucks even more than in XP. I often can't see the other PC (XP) I have in the network. Maybe if they were both Vista...
7. The default GUI sucks, too, IMO. I disabled it pretty fast. It all feels slow, unresponsive with it. Windows take longer to pop-up and some programs (like TC) display a smeared font. The good old "Adjust for best performance" does the trick and enables the classic look.
8. You still have to reboot for more or less small changes, no improvement here.

Good news is the programs, plugins and drivers seem to work mostly like in XP, no major compatibility issues. (I couldn't install this, for example, which uses a crappy Pace/ILok emulation or something.)

There are supposed to be some improvements in the way Vista handles audio... any more info on that? For what I've tried it seems more or less the same as XP. Crackles and pops are still there where they were "supposed to be". But I didn't do any recording, just playback, with both ASIO and Directsound.

Overall, I was expecting a more drastic change, since they were making it for so long. I'm curious to see if they change some stuff (like the Defrag and Security Center) in the future updates/SPs. In the mean time, I can appreciate XPs value, especially having limited RAM. I don't think I'll change to Vista until really necessary.

For the audio benefits I doubt you will see any performance gains using ASIO.

Take a look at those two graphs and you will understand why

Audio Stack in XP:


Audio Stack in Vista:



Taken from: http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs ... ge.id=1694

[zircon]

Wow, sounds terrible. I'm not upgrading.

[A3ntar]

Oh, and FYI, WASAPI might eventually replace the need for ASIO drivers on Vista like core audio replaced the need for ASIO on the MAC platform...time will tell

[ermi]

Thanks, A3ntar. So no benefits using ASIO? That probably means no switching to Vista for like a really long time, then. I've seen that there are more per-app volume settings, tho. I'm talking non-ASIO apps, of course, like Messenger...

BTW, since we're talking about audio, Creative... There are two soundcards on this Vista PC, an Audigy and an Edirol UA-20. The Edirol works fine.
But the Audigy on default settings sucks pretty bad. Way worse sound than in XP. I was curious so I checked and I noticed that if I set the sound settings from the default 16 bit to 24 bit the sound improves drastically. It's not like the real 16 vs 24 bit, where you hardly hear the difference. Here, the difference is huge. On 16 bit it sounds boxy and there's like a high-pass around 60Hz. I wonder if this is a bug or a feature. If anyone has a Creative soundcard please let me know.

[VitaminD]

System Specs, OP?

[leonard]

Thanks, A3ntar. So no benefits using ASIO? That probably means no switching to Vista for like a really long time, then.

Good news then! :-p

I plan to use my P4 and Echo card for at least a couple of years.

[Freeform]

The point of Windows is to make it appear faster while demanding more from machines, causing a wave of purchases from the consumer companies (like dell), while providing basically the same features with a "new look", and changing the code base to manditorily, yet subtley morph from xp support to complete reliance on the Vista platform. Then this is simply repeated.

Try running Windows 3.1 on a new machine sometimes, and tell me if windows xp claim to be the "fastest OS yet!" still holds true.

Yes, I work in IT.

Linux is Jesus.

MS is the f**king NWO imo.

[pHz]

Linux is Jesus.

yup

many different faces
a promise of paradise
hard to completely define
means something different to everyone
doesnt ALWAYS deliver exactly what you expect

slainte (dabbling in linux right now) rob

[Barbarossa]

Thanks for sharing your experience.
This sounds very much like a marketing driven release, less because of technical innovation: the industry wants more and better copyright protection. Big Brother also wants less user autonomy. And all this is camouflaged behind better graphics.

I'm very satisfied with XPs stability and performance here and i will follow the golden rule: never change a well running system.

[deaf dunderkwac]

I just 'gave up' my win98 machine at work...
IT was all smilies (teh asses)
I now have -no control- on any-thing!
hardly worth going to work anymore.

scary thing... run a dos program on one of these new computers and be amazed.
Truly, you can run a basic program at much better performance than (when I) last checked. (audio apps in basic... hahahahaha)
why did I use those other routines again?

oh yeah...

2mHz!

[ermi]

System Specs, OP?

P4 3.3Ghz, 1GB of 400mhz ram (DC), 2 HDDs (with a fixed pagefile on both), 6800GT, Audigy on PCI, UA-20 on USB.

I forgot to mention that there's often some searching or something going on on the system drive for apparently no reason. (noise from the drive) It's not just pagefile, I'm sure. Somewhere I read it's indexing, since there is a more thorough search engine in Vista.
I don't like it tho, really, it's annoying. I'll see if it can be turned off. I rarely search stuff, anyway.

[Stupid American Pig]

ermi, turn off user acct control. That will prevent the annoyances you speak of. UAC is great if yer using it to surf the interweb and what not, but for DAW use its annoying. I dual boot into vista ultimate, and can say that some of my experiences mirror yours, except I find that vista boots faster than XP for me(and Vista is on an extended partition of my XP boot drive). I also hadnt noticed any issues with the search feature. I wonder if the indexing service was just building the indexes for you and that is a mostly one time drain? (dunno enough about it yet)

The only other problem I had was that I had to put a new video card in my PC(upped my radeon X300 to GeForce 7900 GS) to improve perfromance while using Aero glass. With my radeon, I noticed that Vista was about 1:1 performance wise with XP if I used the windows classic GUI. It was slightly worse with the "vista non aero" gui, and bad with Aero glass. After upgrading the video card, I now find that aeroglass is only slightly slower than the windows classic interface.

My PC is an Athlon 4800+ 2GB ram, video card mentioned above. My windows experience index is still limited by the video card, but now it is listed as 4.4, where it was 3.1 with the radeon X300.

[Stupid American Pig]

oh yeah, let me add, that while stability is not quite as good in vista, It does seem to be more forgiving to app crashes than XP. I imagine things will improve in the coming months as well. I have never been able to get FL studio to work though, as the app hangs as soon as I switch the driver mode from "windows sound mapper" to the ASIO driver for my UA-1000. Reason works fine, and the props just issued the new rewire installer to solve the rewire issues. Sonar 6 is working in Vista as well.