Just used Windows Vista for the first time...
POSTED BY: deepgirl187
UPDATED: Tuesday, September 4, 2007 21:18
VIEWED: 4391
PAGE 2 of 2
Well I'm still on 2000 Pro. Can't even be arsed with XP.
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A word of caution to those who hate Vista to the point of downgrading their new systems to Windows XP: You can, and probably will void your warranty in regards to manufacturer support. They will not assist end users who have downgraded their operating systems until the original out-of-box OS has been reinstalled. That means that if you run into an issue (be it drivers or otherwise) they will require you to wipe your hard drive and reimage to Vista before they will assist.
And as a side note, Microsoft will only support Windows XP until about 2008 (2010 if you are a business/gov't entity).
Just a cautionary note, wanted to share. 
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Hmmm
I've been running Vista on both my laptop and desktop for a couple of months now with very little trouble. It's true that they've not taken pains to keep it as backwards compatible as in the past, but that's allowed theme to improve stuff. Anyway, I like it.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Ancient computer guru say: " You can always tell the pioneers-- they're the guys out in front of the burning cabin with the arrows thru their shirts."
Vista's been out for what, almost a year? gotta be some fixes, service packs, upgrades, patches, whatever out there. Gotta be a version 2 coming?
If not, fall back on the other ancient computer guru saying of wisdom: "Run what you got 'till the wheels fall off."
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Once you get the UAC disabled, it isn't too bad. (WashnWear's third link above tells u how to disable that) This will get rid most of the nasty prompting for everything you do. Just be aware why it is there before you turn it off. After that, it is a matter of locating all the administrative functions. Most of the dialogs are the same it is just finding them. (Control panel, admin tools, etc., just takes poking around) You have to turn on "Network Discovery" to use mapped drives, see a network, etc.
Also, Vista, by default, hides the “run” option that was usually in the start bar. To enable it follow this:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/enable-run-command-on-win
dows-vista-start-menu/
I had it early on to be the guinea pig for our dev shop. I had to install a hot fix a while ago to alleviate a UI problem with Explorer. Now, it seems the biggest issue I have is speed. Things like using windows explorer and getting to VPNs takes a while to load. Luckily, I haven’t had any trouble installing printers, software, or any external devices. Most of these troubles are a result of the UAC.
I know Dell makes you get Vista except for a limited number of laptop and desktop models where u can still get XP. (as of two weeks ago as a reseller) We are not allowing any of our clients upgrade to vista until the first SP is released. I would suggest the same for home users.
So, until the majority of industries I dev. and maintain software for go open source, I’ll plug away with Microsoft while the checks are still coming in. 
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I hate Vista when I first got it. Now I'm starting to get used to it.
However I cannot get used to the new Microsoft Office programme. I hate it.
******************************
Now with letters after my name.
http://www.myspace.com/muddy_waters
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One of my projects this past weekend was to remove Vista from my new Dell laptop and replace it with XP. The major issue I ran into is that a lot of new machines that ship with Vista have a more advanced Serial ATA (SATA) harddrive than XP can recognize. So if you try to install XP without changing anything, you'll get an error along the lines of "it appears that you do not have a harddrive installed on this computer." There are a couple of ways to fix this, one really easy, and one more difficult but yields more speed in XP. I used this tutorial to figure out how to do the latter: http://www.davidreedonline.com/wordpress/2007/08/03/installing-windows
-xp-on-the-dell-inspiron-1420 (I do expect that Dell won't take my customer service calls now, but I don't really care -- I've built my last two or three desktop computers by hand, networked my house myself (no help from hubby, heh), and hacked my wireless router, so I'm fairly confident of being able to handle any issues with the XP install.)
I think I could have eventually gotten used to the UI of Vista, but ATM it's so incredibly slow, and there are very few drivers out for games and such. I read over the weekend that MS is going to be releasing a Service Pack for Vista early next year (along with SP3 for XP -- so much for not supporting it anymore), and that, along with being out for several years, might make Vista more usable. MS can say that they're going to stop supporting XP all they want, but as someone who has worked in software development, they need to recognize one very simple concept: independent software development is what has made Windows so popular, and very few projects slated for 2008 or 2009 release have been developed with Vista in mind. They need to give it a few years to allow software developers to catch up. And they need to fix the problems with Vista -- no one wants an operating system that runs slower than the previous generation.
Btw, I'm extremely happy with the fresh XP install. From that webpage I linked above, I was able to find out all kinds of cool tricks to do with nLite, so I customized my install quite a bit. It runs sooooo fast now, it's awesome. All I need to do now is remap the Dell media keys to control Media Player, and I'll be all set.
~CK
You can't take the sky from me...
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I've had Vista for a while on my desktop computer. Ended up getting Business edition free from the university of arizona (enrolled engineers get some nice perks I guess). Anyway, with that said, if I hadn't gotten it that way, I probably wouldn't go out and buy it - not at least until service pack 1 comes out, which I think is slated for the first quarter of 2008. Vista is nice once you get used to it, but first generation items always have their bugs (*cough* iphone *cough*)
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