Myself and the others in my department all got new Vista-capable machines so that we can bang away on it for a while and learn what there is to learn. Well guess what...

...the 2003 Server administrative tools (adminpak.msi) will only run on Vista in a half-assed, semi-crippled manner and only after you run a script to manually register a buch of dll's...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930056/en-us

...and...

...it appears that it is not currently possible to run any Exchange management tools on Vista.

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/...6915&SiteID=17
Makes you wonder WTF exactly was being tested all those months in beta. Oh well, at least I now we can all cycle through our open windows in 3D.

 

I would say its a good lab OS for now....In a VM session I installed Exchange 2007 on Windows 2003 and had to run all sorts of MMC type of upgrades. I am still trying to get a hold of Vista to play on it though,

 

I think there were also problems with the adminpak when XP first came out.

 

 

Does Vista come with DX10?

 

http://uk.gamespot.com/features/6143...6143883&page=4

 

interesting...
I'm looking to buy a new video card for gaming right now but oddly enough, not even the high-end cards on newegg.com are DX10 compatible...

 

Aren't the nVidia 8800's DX10 cards?

 

You're right, they are. But those things are expensive as hell...
I guess I'll wait for a while till the prices on them come down and ATI releases their own DX10 compatible card...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814143075
This one's got nice specs but costs as much as PS3!

 

I wonder how Pac-Man would look on that thing.....

 

Actually, Newegg has a Bunch of DX10 cards all based on the Nvidia GeForce 8800, but I can't convince myself to fork over $400+ for a video card.

 

ugh, sounds like some of the problems moving from SQL Management Studio 2000 to 2005

 

Well I shut half of Vista's services off and it runs quite nicely now. Lots of unnecessary things run by default.

Overall I do like it. I just wish the improved networking, file browsing and directX 10 were turned into a SP3 for XP instead. I'd never pay money for Vista, I just cant justify several hundred dollars for something that out of the box runs poorer than its predecessor without anything big to show for it.

 

Me to my users: Vista? Yeah, we don't support Vista on this LAN

users: ........but it's new...

Me to my users: Exactly.

 

Looking at Vista from the (potential) perspective of my users, the thing that pisses me off the most is that I have to run Outlook in cached Exchange mode in order to get mail and contacts indexed by the desktop search. So let's see, I can either wait 24 hours to see any any changes to the global address list, or I can search in my mail and contacts. Nice choice.

 

VISTA is a POS sorry guys dont waste your cash, it's just a cheap attempt at OSX that will crash and burn. too bad for microsoft they are releasing there OSX equivalent while at the same time Leopard will blast well beyond whatever vista acheives. I cant beleive it took bill and the gang a full year and 24 designers to figure out the shut down menu, like wtf is happening there? who needs 12 ways to shut down a computer.

 

They only get it after I explain it...usually, by saying "let someone else be the beta tester."

 

My users are well behaved. They dont dare ask

I've got a copy of Vista per our MS license agreement, but I havent installed it yet. How are you guys getting around the KMS activation?

 

Fake KMS servers?

 

Well, I guess thats one way...

 

KMS is a total fucking pain in the ass. It's practically impossible to put Vista on just a handful of machines for initial testing. Thankfully, my boss is the contact for our M$ licesnsing agreement. He signed on to the Microsoft volume licensing site today and there's now an option to request MAK keys. That wasn't there a few weeks ago.

FWIW - The MAK key we received is good for a little more then 2x the number of desktop OS licenses in our agreement.

 

Well, I do have the MSDN licenses and a handful of our developers are testing on it because you know everyone and their grandmother will upgrade to it.

I'm not that impressed by this release, I guess maybe I have grown so used to XP being the nearest non-crashing version of windows.

 

Oh, super. I'll have to check that out then...Thanks...

 

here's some more FYI.. I have been beating this horse down to death for the past year to coworkers, on forums (don't you love it) and it looks like people are finally starting to understand my cynicism..

Compatibility Concerns Hinder Vista Upgrades, IT Pros Say
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2086889,00.asp

Vista Upgrade: The Not-So-Rosy Picture
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128355/article.html

I'll wait for the non-bloated and more-compatible version of Vista to come out, which I think will happen sometime after 2010. Until then, XP Pro ftw.

 

We (HP) probably won't start deploying Vista until at least November- after a SP has been released. Our server, which I support, are staying on 2K3

 

I've got 500/500 activations available under the MAK. Guess that will do for now