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General discussion

New Vista Computer - no problems

Jul 19, 2007 9:38AM PDT

I've put off buying my new computer for 6 months due to the posts on this forum. I finally dove in (Alienware Area 51-7500, 2 X 8800 GTX in SLI, 4MB memory, Blue Ray, overclocked processor, plus more)and I couldn't be happier. Downloaded iTunes, no problem. Vista recognized my HP 3310 All-In-One and needed no updater. Installed 5 of my old programs, and Vista immediately notified me of a conflict with Vista, provided a link to the company, and automatically downloaded the Vista update. I'm telling you this OS is beautiful. I can only conclude that upgrading an old computer is risky, but a new one with power is magnificent.

Discussion is locked

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i agree.
Jul 19, 2007 10:15AM PDT

i' enjoying vista a lot with no hitches. i was put off for a while because of all the negative comments, but i'm happy i made the choice to go with a new system with vista.

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Yep!
Jul 19, 2007 11:18AM PDT

I agree wholeheartedly! It's an awesome system so far. Smooth, fast and sexy.

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Early adopter, couldn't be happier
Jul 20, 2007 1:49PM PDT

I bought two new HP PC's (one desktop, one laptop) one week after the O/S release and COULDN'T BE HAPPIER with them!

My desktop is Windows Vista Home Premium and I have not experienced any problems with it. My little neices and nephews are here on vacation playing with it and I am very pleased to see it stop them in thier tracks when they try to hit "questionable" websites. The parental controls are pretty cool. I did not experience any compatability issues. Every piece of hardware and software connected and or installed with ZERO problems.

My Laptop that is primarily used for work actually came loaded with Windows 64Bit Ultimate! Again everyhing worked flawlessly with one exception which was 64Bit related (not Vista) but later resolved with a new software release (my Etoken for VPN connection). In 6 months time I've had one BSOD on the laptop and it was due to me installing an incompatible driver. Since then it's been smooth sailing and extremely stable.

When I read about all of these people scrambling to get back to XP I just don't get it. With a little patience I think they would come to like the new O/S.

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Couldn't be happier, I agree
Jul 20, 2007 8:52PM PDT

I bought a HP PC with Windows Vista Home Premium. IT?S GREAT!! It took a day to explore the system and setup the programs and features I wanted, and disable some programs in the start-up that were using to much of the resources. I?m still finding my way around, but I can shift from the Vista view to the Classic view no problem. I did the ?Windows Vista 101? course on Cnet. It gave me more confidence to stay in the Vista view rather then returning to the Classic view and I understood the features better .

I like the speech recognition feature, still learning though. The Snipping Tool is great, so convenient. I love my Sidebar, it?s more versatile the Widget dock.

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i forgot to mention....
Jul 20, 2007 11:28PM PDT

a speedier boot up and shut down with Vista than XP. XP always took a long time to load. also, Vista has a more fluid feel to it overall.

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New computer with vista
Jul 21, 2007 9:29AM PDT

I have been using Vista on a new computer for 2 months. As soon as I complete one project, I will go back to XP Pro. As far as boot time, I checked it against my other and even with less programs installed on it, it only booted up just a little over 1 sec faster. Yes it does hang and yes it won't always shut down. One thing is better "alt crtl del" does work much better than the others. I use a computer for it's utility, not it's looks. So the beautiful graphics is not a plus to me. Same reasons I sold my Mac. To me vista is ME2. Those who like it I am glad. Please no flames, as I am not to change my mind.

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sorry about the taxman's negative experience.
Jul 21, 2007 9:55AM PDT

but i stand by my speedier boot time with Vista, although it could have something to do with my new processor too...hum. regardless, it's faster. i used to be able to boil an egg waiting for XP (on a single core processor) and my virus program (avast - which continues to be my virus program with vista) to load.

taxmam maybe...well, never mind.Happy

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Very Few Problems
Jul 21, 2007 9:27AM PDT

I really like Vista on my new HP Pavilion desktop. I made sure I bought plenty of RAM (2 GB)and a good fast procesor (Core2 Duo E6420) and a fast hard drive. Also treated myself to a 22 inch LCD monitor to see these pretty screens. Easy Transfer brought most of my stuff over from my old XP machine with little problem. I did have a problem learning how to get the Vista machine to sleep and wake up properly; also had to learn about Backup, Restore, Recovery, Shadow Copy, etc. which took some time. I eventually bought an external hard drive to be my Backup location, well worth the small cost. Also switched to Office 2007 and very happy I did; the new interface is easily learned and quite facile.

Still learning the ins and outs of the new Search facility(s), but on the whole, it is very powerful.

Norton Internet Security 2007 gives me a bit of trouble sometimes freezing during Live Update. IE7 is much better than IE6, I like the tabbed browsing a lot.

I try to keep computer systems for about five years before upgrading, and now well set for the next five years.

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Acer MT500A good deal
Jul 21, 2007 9:58AM PDT

I got a good deal on an Acer MT500A at Best Buy, a computer package for $599, which includes Vista Home Premium, 2GB of memory and a 320GB hard drive, Dual-core AMD 4400+ processor..they were out of the 19" widescreen monitors, so Best Buy threw in a 22" Westinghouse monitor to take its place, plus an all-in-one printer.

I added a Hauppaugue WinTV USB2 TV tuner from CompUSA so I could take advantage of Windows Media Center. That made the total investment around $750. The WinTV application is great, although for some reason I can't get any audio from the FM radio.

I strongly recommend getting Acronis True Image version 10.0 to backup images in case you mess something up while you are experimenting with Vista. I've had to use Acronis True Image once or twice so far to restore a previous image...at one point I wasn't getting any sound from the sound card.

A few programs from my older PC's do not work with Vista, including Microsoft Works 4.0 (I like this version of Works better than the newer versions) and Super MP3 Recorder (from Admire Soft). Microsoft Office 2003 works with it, as does Microsoft Money 2001 (I like Microsoft Money 2001 better than the newer versions.)

It can see my Windows XP and ME computer, although my ME computer cannot network with Vista. My Vista computer cannot connect to my older Epson printer which is attached to the older ME computer (I like that older Epson printer as it is not an ink hog, like some newer printers.) But I am able to easlily move things to my ME and XP computers from Vista if I ever need to print something.

But overall, I am very pleased.

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Acer mouse problem
Jul 21, 2007 10:15AM PDT

I might add that I had a problem with a "jumpy" Acer mouse, where the pointer would be "all over the place". I replaced it with a Logitech LX3 mouse...the Logitech mouse is working great.

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One positive, but I'll be honest about the negatives.
Jul 26, 2007 3:45AM PDT

Well no wonder you love Vista so much: you bought a mega computer that can handle it! Granted, I find it curious that your experience with 4MEGA Bytes is superior to my experience with 2GIGA Bytes, but I guess the SLI somehow makes up for this ... ? lol. Ok, seriously: My first experiences with Vista were not positive at all - and I do still hate and loathe some things about the OS. But I'm starting to think that my original problems with the OS were due to crappy HP drivers, not so much Vista. For example, I frequently got the BSOD on my recent HP laptops running Vista. (yes, plural. don't ask. just know that i've got experience.) When I first got my HP laptop, the bootup and shut-down were both INCREDIBLY slow! This was a shocker, since my old laptop running XP was blazingly fast on startup and shutdown. Just to test things out, I installed XP on the laptop, and presto magico: The blazingly fast startups and shutdowns returned. So I COMPLETELY disagree that Vista startup and shutdown is faster than XP ... My experience has been completely opposite when testing both OSs on the same system. And my laptop is not slow: 2GB memory and AMD Turion X2 TL-60 2.0 GHz (was the fastest available a month or two ago), NVidia 6150. The gpu isn't the greatest, but it is by no means bad - certainly, it ought to be good enough to smoothly run simple tasks. But Vista is too bulky to allow that! And it doesn't give you the option to revert to the XP style - only the mind-numbing 98 style. Bah!

But I recently built (and am continually building upon) a gaming powerhouse, and I have to say: Vista is a whole different experience when running on a computer that can actually handle it. I can actually *enjoy* looking around rather than dealing with an underlying frustration with lag. And it's nice. There are, however, several things that still bother me to no end that are inherent to the system: (1) I cannot for the life of me understand why the new start menu with a scroll bar is an improvemnt. I like to see EVERYTHING, not peer through a keyhole. (2) The intrusion of the security features is infuriating. It actually asked for my permission to copy text to the clipboard!!! I kid you not. (3) Networking harddrives is unreasonably difficult. (4) If you read forums much, especially forums for mice, you'll find that the jumpy-mouse problem is a *very* common problem. I was lucky enough to resolve the issue by unplugging then re-plugging in my mouse receiver. So ... Those are some things that I really loathe about this OS, and some things that are just irritating.

However, here is the *positive* thing that I have to say about Vista: I LOVE the Media Center! It is the most amazing media-managing program i've ever seen/heard of. It's incredible for watching television and browsing pictures, videos, and everything else. It's fantastic. And when I combined it with the incredible HP remote and tv tuner (that I had to buy a pci-to-express-card adapter for), the experience is just ... beautiful. And now that I've fulfilled my duties to this topic, I should also mention a third con: It is INFURIATINGLY difficult to adjust the resolution of the full-screen MediaCenter when it's on an external display! I often have to exit the program and start it back up ... Sometimes, the issue doesn't get resolved at all, and the picture just gets cut off around the edges and I learn to live with it. All because it's basically impossible to figure out how to adjust the resolution from inside the program ... And no, adjusting the resolution of the display via the display settings doesn't do squat because MediaCenter re-sets the resolution when you put it on full-screen. It makes my blood boil!

So ... Vista is bad on an average system. It's fair of a mega-system, but even then there are things that will turn your stomach.

My question for the original poster: What kind of power supply did your Alienware come with?

If anybody can help me with the MediaCenter resolution problem, I'd seriously appreciate it.

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1000 watts
Jul 26, 2007 7:06AM PDT

Sorry about the MEG/GIG memory lapse (no pun intended). The Alienware comes with 1000 watt power supply which is required when you choose the 2 X 8800GTX/SLI, as is liquid cooling. Some have commented about the slow boot, not me. After pushing in the "Alien" power button, I get full screen in about 10 seconds. I guess I'm helped by the WD Raptor 10,000 rpm system drive.

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Nice
Jul 27, 2007 3:17AM PDT

Yeah, 10,000 ought to do it. Now with that 1000 watt psu, are you running dual processors? You think 1000 watts would be enough for dual processors as well as sli? How about dual *quad core* processors and 8800GTX sli? (i'm thinking of the future here)

I'm just asking cause I've been trying to figure out an adequate power supply for my system whenever i upgrade it (though it's brand new right now), and I'm concerned that more powerful power supplies might be too big for my case. And God knows how much power I'll need for microsoft's up-and-coming "Windows 7"! Heh.

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Here's what I got...
Jul 27, 2007 4:14AM PDT

I no computer geek, just did a lot of homework reading mags and this forum. I'm no gamer, but I wanter rig that would last 5 years without becoming a problem, wanted top graphics capability, and wanted speed.

This rig has the Dual Core 2 Duo Extreme QX6700 overclocked to 3.2 GHZ. I'm going to try my damndest to keep junk off it so it doesn't slow down over time. I got the Raptor system drive ONLY FOR PROGRAMS, and an additional 500 GB drive for data. I was going to get a external hd for backup, but the Blue Ray disk holds so much data, who needs one? I know this rig was expensive ($7200) but I figure I got upscale assembly and stuff that will last a couple of years longer than a less expensive computer, evening out the price.

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XP vs VISTA boot
Jul 27, 2007 3:21AM PDT

Oh, by the way ... If you really want to test the boot time of each OS, you should try installing XP and seeing how long *it* takes - my guess is, near-instant with your system. heh. I mean, you've got a mega-computer with a 10,000 hdd - of course the OS is going to boot fast. But remember: a 10-second boot might actually be *slow* for your rig. To really compare OS's, you have to compare them on the same machine.

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I agree
Jul 27, 2007 6:16PM PDT

with that much power 10 seconds sounds kinda slow lol

I wanna get vista but I'd need a new computer I bought a top of the line desktop 2 years ago and it could handle vista with a new graphics card and some ram

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Me too
Jul 28, 2007 12:30AM PDT

I have to agree with what a lot of people are saying here. If you're buying a new machine with a multi-core processor, then Vista is really, really great. It looks great, works great, is stable, smart, easy to use and has a lot of great "little" new features vs. XP that you may not even find for a while, but will love once you do.

And keep in mind that buying a new multi-core machine can be very reasonable. I got a fantastic HP laptop with Vista pre-installed for like $800 and my dad just bought a really nice Core Duo PC with loads of features and Vista Ultimate for the same price.

But if you're planning on upgrading from XP on a single-core Pentium or AMD, you'll likely be disappointed with the performance. The machine I'm on is a 2.8GHz P4 machine with 1.5GB RAM and an ATI X850 video card, and I just turned off Aero the other day because it was a bit chuggy. It wasn't horrible, performance-wise, but I'm really impatient and since I've ordered a new multi-core machine, I can wait a few weeks to go back.

You do not need an "expensive beast" to run Vista well with Aero! My wife's PC is an HP that we bought at Best Buy for $500 and it runs Vista great with Aero.

Bottom line is Vista is fun. Customizability is very high and it's just a more elegant OS all-around.

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Not disappointed...
Jul 28, 2007 4:51AM PDT

While my "real" Vista PC (that I built, approx $1500) is nearly identical to that Alien machine (mine uses the E6600), and works perfectly, for Vista RC1, I originally used an old AMD 1900+ with 512 MB RAM, and an old nVidia 440 vid card. It also ran very satisfactorily --- yes a little slow, but not noticably slower than the XP Pro I had installed originally. The satisfactory experience is what prompted me to proceed to build my killer Vista box.

One of the things I believe is key to a good Vista experience is installing fresh -- no upgrade over XP or 2000.

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Three days in, second boot.
Jul 28, 2007 9:05AM PDT

We bought a new PC last Christmas with XP Pro sp2 installed with the Vista upgrade for free, about $650.00 US. Loaded the Vista on several months ago, it crashed. Maybe a mouse problem or I may have failed to push the activation button at the bottom of the introduction screen at boot up. This time we've loaded it onto a second hard drive to get the feel of it while we're still running XP Pro. Three days in all is going OK, so far. We ran Vista about a month before it crashed the last time.

Thou our machine was touted as being Vista compatible we've made some hardware improvement since December. GeForce 8600 GT graphics card replacing an ATI chip set. Improved CPU air cooler. D-Link DGE 350 Ethernet adapter to replace Realtek chip set. Second Hard Drive 400GB to run Vista/XP together. Second GB RAM to fix ram recovery problem. As mentioned elsewhere power supply may need to be upgraded to run all the new equipment. All this was surprising easy to install. The only tool required so far has been a Philips screw driver, really easy. You don't have to be an engineer to do this stuff. Just make sure you don't have compatibility issues. By-the-way, we did all this to improve XPs performance, reduce delays and improve videos.

About Vista, besides the graphics bell and whistles, much of it seams to be hidden. For instance there is an impressive performance feature hidden within it and many others as well. We have the Business version. We did get the Aero screen saver working after awhile. I do wish they'd left some things alone. Windows mail doesn't look or act any different then Outlook Express except for the new name that made it hard to find. Still bugs me that I don't log on to the net to do down loads. And many of them fail by the way (have you checked?). We'll give it a go but despite what I'm hearing here I think its unstable. But I do believe with some more updates, drivers, etc., it will be a fine system like XP, just has some bugs in it and some of it I'll just need to relearn. Now since I've said something good about it, it'll crash.

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Stability
Jul 30, 2007 12:05AM PDT

Yes, I also have to agree that Vista is not nearly as stable as it is being touted. I just think that many people aren't really testing the OS (and it doesn't take much stretching, with Vista). Even though I attributed Vista's instability to lousy HP drivers, it still crashes programs from time to time on my new barebones setup (approx. $2200 and counting). And just like you said, downloads fail frequently; for me, it happens when I use IE. I really cannot believe that the latest IE doesn't save the progress of your downloads the way Firefox does. Failed downloads is one of the worst things about IE. How could microsoft *possibly* miss that?

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Keep on keep'n on (Remember that one, about 1968 as I recall
Aug 10, 2007 10:00PM PDT

Vista still up and running. I have dropped XP off the second hard drive now a have Vista on both drives. The second will be a back up. I frankly don't trust backup disks. Most programs won't transfer to disk but you can move them easily from drive to drive. This is some more information on activating Vista:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=940315&SD=tech

On my second boot up, on the second hard drive I activated it during the boot installation and it failed. fortunately I caught it in control panel before it stopped the program.

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(NT) Appears more stable now after MS updates
Aug 16, 2007 3:26AM PDT
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Finally someone who agree's with me!!
Aug 17, 2007 10:12AM PDT

Yeah I upgraded my Windows XP to Windows Vista about 2 - 3 weeks back, And its the best move ive ever done computer wise! Vista runs almost perfectly MUCH better than Windows XP and one thing im really glad to say is that Internet Explorer (a disappointment on XP) is the best browser to run on Vista.