My little brother's college gave out free windows vista and windows office student edition. However he uses a mac, so I was wondering if upgrading my 2 year old HP notebook was worth it. The specs are
AMD Athlon 3200 at 2ghz 64bit
Ram 2gb
Video Card 129mb ati radeon xpress 200m.
Is it worth it to put vista on my computer or should I stick with XP?

 

I say do it. But than there some stuff about vista that irks me. I have home premium edition on my desktop but still have xp pro on my laptop.

There is some perks for vista (visual is nice) but there are some bugs that they need to fix. The bad part is you must update all your stuff..like video card and such..don't trust Window Update to give you the best update, go to the manufactuer website and download the driver is my best advice =)

 

IMO do not upgrade to Vista until there is some gotta have application that won't run on XP.

 

I already upgraded. I have vista on my new desktop and theres never any errors, so far so good on my notebook computer. It actually feels faster I guess because it wiped all the crap I dled and never got rid of.

 

I am beta testing SP1 for Vista, and all in all it looks good, they fixed a lot of the grips consumers had.

 

Can you still sign up for the beta?

 

You never could sign up for the beta. MS may notify you in a few weeks if you're an MSDN or Technet subscriber and you beta tested Vista before or if you're currently beta testing Server 2008 on the connect site you can take a survery in the hopes to be chosen. Or you can be super special like it seems beelzebub is and get in on the super secret beta (at least it was until it got leaked all over teh 'nets (was that you who leaked it beelzebub?))that's been going on for a month and a half. If you don't know what the programs I mentioned above are then no you can't beta test.

In regards to Ultimate if it's free then heck yeah do it!! If you gotta pay for Ultimate and you aren't a power user (if you are one then you know you are one) then no go with Home Premium for home use or business for business use.

 

No I am part of Connect as Stunna said, which is the super special Microsoft beta program, I can see almost all the pre release Microsoft software. But only have access to the OS's and SQL.

If it's free then go for it, but most of the stuff in Ultimate is unnecessary.

 

labtop?

 

At work I'm running Vista on this pc:

AMD Dual core 2.4ghz
3GB of ram
SATA 7,200 drive
256mb graphics card

I've been running Vista since it's been announced and I'd have to say that on the laptops at work it's slow. I'm not talking old laptops either, try Lenovo T61's with Core Duo processors , 2gb ram etc.

On the PC above it's OK but not spectacular.

At home I'm running these specs:

Windows Vista Ultimate
2 X Western Digital Raptor 10K drives (raid)
1 X Maxtor 750GB Sata
Asus Pearl Motherboard
762mb PNY video card
Intel Core Duo Quad 2.6ghz
4gb Corsair Dominator
Sb EFX Fatality Sound Card

Vista is fast but again not everyone geeks out their PCs. One thing that is annoying is the constant prompts for 'do you want to do this, do you want to do that? Office 2007 Standard Edition as well and that's actually very good so far.

 

It's probably slow cause you got some anti-virus software running which is very well known to cause slow down. Plus you probably got a bunch of craplets running also in the background, that' why pc are slow not cause of vista.

 

Nice machine

The first thing I do for my machines is turn UAE OFF. it annoys the crap out of me as I am always doing admin tasks.

 

Vista for me so far has been a lot faster, much better than XP. The only thing was XP was still on my machine and it took up 50gb. So I delete all the previous versions of windows so far so good. I don't know why everyone complains about vista, so far vista has been the most stable windows OS.

 

man i turn UAE off and it still asking me every freaking time.

 

Follow this

Look at Scenario 3.

 

Like what?

 

I never thought that M$ could make an OS worse then Millennium Edition but they've gone above and beyond ME in terms of total junk. Dell is now offering free downgrades to XP. I'd stick with XP for right now. There's a reason that none of the government and almost all private businesses aren't making the switch. Maybe take another look at it once Vista Service Pack 1 comes out around January.

 

x2

 

Bwahahahahaha! That's not saying a whole lot. That's like saying the Yugo is the most reliable Zastava.

 

Well, you must be one of the lucky ones if you're seeing some actual improvements and stability...Cuz, I'd go as close to Vista as I would to 98ME.

Sorry.

 

Im running 3 Vista laptops with no issues...

 

yeah vista is very stable. They only problems you'd be having are almost ALWAYS caused by shitty drivers from Nvidia or creative or any other company that was clueless to the fact that MS had been developing a new OS for the past 5 years. Right now the only BSOD I get are caused by shitty drivers for Nvidia ethernet or graphics card. Everything else is going good. MS released to hot fixes last week that made a HUGE improvement, I mean it was almost like a service pack. Mos def give Vista a try now if you tried it out when it first came out it's very different now. Almost everyone has got solid drivers out and MS has released a handful hot fixes to improve compatability with drivers and programs, etc. MS doesn't rely as much on Service Packs anymore like they used to they now roll out signifigant updates with Windows update instead of waiting a while and doing it all at once. They still will be adding a few things like support for newer technology and a few more options in defrag, group policy, etc. While still important don't expect service packs to be as grand as they used to be.

 

Nope it's Vista for the most part. It's stable just kinda muddy it's not XP fast for the most part it's quite a hog of an OS.

 

My whole problem with vista isn't the stability or anything, but rather the stupid addition of User Account Control. UAC is at best a poorly conceived feature, since it just attempts to patch the security issue. Really, they need to not default to administrator type accounts. Make everyone a standard user, and only give administrator privileges to particular accounts used for software installation, etc. In short, follow the much more secure and stable UNIX model.

 

Thanks,

I turned off UAE and for the most part the prompt misery has been subsided.

Vista is definitely best left on all the time and simply accessed -vs- shutting it down and turning it back on constantly. Here at work I have had it running with only one BSOD over 4 months.

 

Another thing to add is definitely turn Aero off if you don't need it. Aero is much like (but not nearly as cool as) Beryl, Kiba or XGL. The main difference being that you can run Ubuntu with all the bells and whistles and still be fast and stable. Windows on the other hand paired with crappy drivers for video cards makes Vista slow down. Turn off Aero and you might see an improvement. I noticed that someone had a PC here without Aero and it was faster for fetching new apps and swapping around open apps.

 

^^ You can also disable all the Vista visuals to make it more like XP.

 

But then you'll be wondering why you paid for Vista. IMO Aero Glass it the only reason you would want to get Vista.

Plus if you go with XP today on purpose, you'll have to pay for Vista in the future anyway. Get Vista, save yourself the cash later, and put up with a few quirks while enjoying the the nice graphics.

It took me a while to get my Vista setup working on, many of the drivers are still not up to part, but so far so good. I like having cool graphics on the desktop now as opposed to just in games, I like the nice big preview icons for pictures and movies, I like how it does standby and resume a little bit better, and I like the new Media Center.

Nobody really needs Vista today, but you'll want it eventually. If you're going to pay for an OS today, you might as well pay for something that will be supported for several years longer. Wait until you get a good deal, and get it for "free" if you're getting a new PC. It'll get better with service packs and patches.

And don't bother getting Vista Ultimate unless you're a real business user who also needs Media Center.

 

Hey now, I thought it was labtop too!..................................about 15 years ago.

 

Lol, I meant laptop. I made a mistake sorry it happens. Anyways I guess it depends on the computer maker. I have had Sonys and HPs. Never had any major issues, now with Dell I had a ton of issues.

 

Ultimate is the only version my lil bro's university gave out. So I am using ultimate, its pretty sweet thats its free. I wish my college gave out free OS upgrades oh well.

 

Brands mean next to nothing now days. All the major computer players put out machines that range from complete crap to very good.