Buzz Out Loud Lounge: Silent Vista-loving majority?

I'm silently loving it...

...sorta. The only issue I have is my on-board sound didn't have any Vista drivers (no great surprise really). The XP drivers hadn't been updated since 2003! So I thought, oh well I'll be a PCI sound card. It's working but I can't get anywhere near as good a sound out of it as I did with the on-board sound. I guess I'll just have to wait for better drivers from Creative.

Still, I love it. I thought I would get sick of all the effects and what not, but I love them.

I wasn't going to get Vista at the ridiculous prices but I found a copy of Home Premium (Academic Upgrade) for $AU94 (definitely genuine)! So I thought, 'What the hell!'.

David

Happy to be a Vista Lover!

The only complaint I have had is the inability to turn off the hardware acceleration manually. Other than that everything I use has been compatible or has manged to work it out pretty quickly!

count me in

I've never had any of the problems that people talk about. I will admit that I do have some problems with vista but most of the time I just love it. The interface is good and its definately better than xp!
Tom

Not happy initially but loving it now.

I had some problems when I built this gaming computer in Jan and switched back to XP till some of the updates came out.

Only issue is with the onboard sound card gets a little quirky at times. I had better sound with XP and PCI card. Oh well, I can hear well enough to get killed in game!

Vista and Business

>I.T. departments cannot catch up fast enough because most companies won't shell out the money it would take to make all things compatible.

True to a point. It's not just the cost to 'make things compatible', it goes much deeper than this. Here's the breakdown:

* The cost to upgrade each employee's computer to Vista (probably easier to buy new computers than to attempt upgrading existing computers)
** The time and effort it takes to migrate each user's settings and applications from the old computer to the new computer
* The cost to upgrade and relicense each developer's computer to the newest Vista development frameworks
** The cost to upgrade each in-house application to support Vista
* The later cost to upgrade Domain Controllers to support more of Vista's advanced features
* The time it takes to train people on Vista new interface

There are a lot of infrastructure costs involved in getting everyone on the same page... more than what you might think. Even if a company was willing to outlay the cash to do all of this, what benefit have they gained? UAC controls are not enough to 'protect' users from themselves. UAC won't solve the overall issue that Windows tends to break of its own accord without outside intervention.

Then, there's the ROI (return on investment) here. Will companies reap any monetary benefits from doing a Vista roll-out company-wide? No.

Will the company gain better productivity from employees? Not really. Maybe to the extent that UAC actually delivers on its promise of more stability (not having to rebuild computers as often), but that productivity gain is quickly lost by the constant requesters that get in the way of doing actual work. So, while the computer might break less often, the employee must continually click through 'Are you really, positively and absolutely sure?' questions. If the employee is really determined to break the computer, UAC isn't going to stop them... and yes, there are actually employees who intentionally break their computer to force a 'break'.

Then there's the look and feel issues. Moving from 2000 to XP was fairly seamless. The menus were in the same places. With Vista, no longer is there a 'Start' button. The 'Programs' are now kind of hidden. Many of the control panels have been renamed and the overall placement of things is different. These fundamental changes mean a learning curve for corporate users who may not be the most computer savvy in the world. Changes such as this do require a learning curve from many people. So, getting them accustomed to where things have moved may take several weeks for them to begin to feel comfortable again.

For those of us who listen to BOL, most of us are computer savvy. So, installing and learning Vista may seem easy. For novice computer users who have grown accustomed to XP, the change to Vista will take some time to master. Again, this is productivity lost until they transition.

This is why it's a bit more complex than to 'make things compatible'. It takes time, effort and money to get every employee on the same page again with new computers in a change such as this.

Ultimately, the reason businesses are hesitant to upgrade to Vista is ROI: There will be a lot of money spent, but little in the way of return to the company or improvement for the company's customers. In fact, the company's customers likely won't even see any improvement as a result of a company upgrading to Vista. For this reason alone, this is the biggest argument against upgrading to Vista in business. The cost of Vista only serves to make Microsoft (and hardware makers) richer. The Vista roll-out, however, doesn't give any substantial benefit back to the affected company and offers several months of headaches, a large cash outlay, lost time during transition and possibly even downtime (due to unexpected incompatibilities).

(NT) Vista is awesome