[plug] [OT] Vista is a serious mess?

[Daniel Pearson (Flashware Solutions)]

Likewise, I've been using it every so often to test some software 
compatability for a customer, and (heh heh) running on a 13" MacBook with 
1gb RAM it runs without issues.. and using Aero too.

YMMV.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam Hewitt" <ahewitt at ursys.com.au>
To: <plug at plug.org.au>
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 8:47 AM
Subject: Re: [plug] [OT] Vista is a serious mess?


>
> On 14/03/2007, at 11:34 PM, Jonathan Young wrote:
>
>> caston at arach.net.au wrote:
>>> I quoted a customer for a new system recently being careful to  quote 
>>> them for XP instead of Vista yet on advice from their  accountant they 
>>> decided to flexi-rent a HP Media centre PC from  Harvey Normans running 
>>> Vista retailed for more than double my  quote. The setup was terrible. 
>>> IE kept failing to respond and had  to be shutdown sometimes taking 
>>> nearly 5 minutes. The system was  utterly sluggish. Took a lot of 
>>> tweaking to get it to play right  with Telstra NextG USB wireless 
>>> device. The system was behaving  like most OS's behave when they have 
>>> bad RAM but I ran memtest86  over it and found no problems. In the end I 
>>> sold them a OEM copy  of XP, nuked the Vista install and put XP on. The 
>>> XP installed  worked fine. SO to try and bring this ontopic I don't 
>>> think Linux  is going to have much trouble competing with Vista. They 
>>> have  really laid a turd with this one. However I admit I am yet to try 
>>> Vista on a PC with more than 1gb of RAM. With Vista 1gb RAM could  be 
>>> the new 256 or even 128mb. I have yet to meet a customer that  is happy 
>>> with Vista even when it does seem to run OK. As one  customer said "it 
>>> slows everything down". best regards, Chris
>> I have to reply to this if only to say that all my initial  encounters 
>> are coming back the same with most people claiming 2Gb  or even 4Gb is 
>> required and generally being disappointed with their  purchase.
>>
>> To quote a friend of mine who has a knack for summing things up  nicely, 
>> I recently heard him say, "Microsoft Windows Vista:   Putting the 'meh' 
>> in 'wow' since 2007."
>>
>> Personally I'm going to try and avoid it for at least the next six 
>> months... and then some.
>> <SNIP>
>
> I have to say that I have been trialing Vista since it was in Alpha 
> stages all the way through to the final release and I have had a very 
> different experience than those that have been described here.
>
> My system is an AMD64 3000+, 1.5GB RAM, Radeon X700SE and an nVidia 
> nForce3 motherboard with SATA and IDE RAID. The installation of  *every* 
> version worked flawlessly and the user experience has been  awesome. My 
> computer came in at a ranking of 3.5/5 (from memory) and  all the Aero 
> goodness was turned on by default. I ran a few 3DMark05  tests under 
> Windows XP and Vista and the results were within 20  points on either 
> OS...Strangely enough I also tried running the test  with all the Aero 
> goodness turned off and the scores were lower. Some  of the new UI took a 
> little while to get used to but I find it much  more functional than with 
> XP or before. I also found it to be very  snappy as far as speed is 
> concerned.
>
> On the other hand I installed Ubuntu on my laptop thinking that it  had 
> come time for me to switch back to Linux as my primary desktop  for work 
> (I am lucky enough to work at a company where desktop linux  is not only 
> encouraged it is practically a requirement) and I was  highly 
> disappointed. The main killer for me was that syncing my o2  XDA II Mini 
> was simply not possible. I spent a good few hours getting  all of the 
> components working as they should and I could "sync"  however I had the 
> same problem that apparently a large number of  other people had where the 
> sync would apparently work but not  actually sync anything. I also had to 
> go through a lengthy process to  get Beryl and XGL to work and despite 
> being cool there were a lot of  options which were totally useless such as 
> the wobbly windows (yes I  am aware that these options are all 
> configurable), and others that  were just stupid such as the transparent 
> window borders. While Vista  keeps a translucent outline around the window 
> title, beryl makes the  entire window border transparent (if you have 
> selected it) which  makes the title unreadable if you have the title over 
> the top of  other writing or windows.
>
> So after spending a day or so trying to get everything working as I 
> needed it in Ubuntu, I removed it. In my experience I would say that 
> Vista is an excellent update to the windows family, very stable and 
> usable, and Linux (at least Ubuntu) still has a very long way to go.
>
> Before you pass judgements on potential bias, I have the Linux  Certified 
> Administrator and RHCE certs and have worked with Linux in  a professional 
> capacity for over 6 years. I also had Debian as my  desktop at home for a 
> couple of years which I used to play games with  Winex....The fact is that 
> my requirements have changed and desktop  linux seems to have stagnated.
>
> Adam.
>
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
> http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.linux.org.au
>