Windows Vista forum: should i shouldnt i.

I've installed a lot of games and programs without any problems.

I still can't get drivers and software for my scanner and a lot of programs are not yet compatable with Vista.
The people I have talked to at Microsoft, HP and a couple others say that things are starting to happen much faster now and vendors realize they have to get their products Vista compatable as soon as possible.
HP seems to be the worst and their excuse is they have thousands of products to upgrade, but they even say things should be much better by the 1st of July.
Wayne

I would stay with XP for now. I bought a new PC in March of this year with Vista installed on it. My older PC had 98se, still worked pretty good but had problems finding software for it, so I took the plunge. Now I regret it. Nothing works with Vista. My printer/scanner/copier that I've had for a few years (Lexmark X75) will scan but not print or copy. I bought a Bluetooth/USB tongle at the same time as the new PC, just refuses to work. Tech support emails back with "Please be advised.... not vista compatible." Bought a TV tuner card at same time as PC. Had to download drivers for Vista off website and still buggy and blotchy. Bought 'Middle School Success Delluxe 2007' software for my daughter to get ahead and even though the box states "Windows XP or higher" their tech support informs me that Windows Media Player is not backwords compatible for Vista, but if I had tried it on my old 98se PC it probably would have worked just fine.

Bottom line is I am telling every one I know to not buy Vista yet. Its just too buggy when trying to find anything that works with it. And yes it has crashed twice on me and locked up completely once, requiring a hard re-boot.

User Account Control is very annoying, but you can turn it off.
Indexing my entire hard drive is scarry, somebody will come up with a virus that exploits it, but you can turn it off.
Half the cool new and exciting features aren't available on the basic program and I'll be tied to a pig and roasted if I'm gonna spit out another $100 just to see things a little different.
Office 2007 has re-arranged everything in the way of tools, so for now until I re-learn where everything is and what they call it now its incredibly time consuming. You go one place to make headers and footers but someplace else to change them later.
I have my new Vista PC and my wifes XP PC on the same hub but Vista refuses to see the other PC even though XP sees Vista just fine.

Bottom line is, for right now about the only thing I can do with Vista is surf the web, unless I want to go out and buy more expensive stuff. Pretty cool huh?

Final note: I would have bought XP but the one store I was at was sold out and M$ isn't gonna ship them any more. I should have gone to a different store. Get your XP while you still can.

That is, do you have a disaster plan ready?

For me it would not be unreasonable to clone your drive, install the update and see if it all works out. If not you can go back.

Bob

Yes, you can get Acronis or Ghost and create a backup image of your current drive, either as an unused space on your HD or on DVD-R, DVD+R etc...

But why install now. Wait about a year until Vista has all the kinks worked out of it and IT folks in the workplace will begin supporting it. Wait for the Vista equlivent of Service Pack 2.

Question is not should i? but rather, will you?

Have you checked to see if all the drivers you require for your computer and peripheral devices exist from the vendors?

Should you find youre unable to obtain those drivers cause the vendors have been total dolts at creating them then the next question is, are you prepared to shell out more cash to replace those perfectly good units so as to move into vista?

Once those checks and considerations have been attended too, make sure to check that all your favorite 3rd party software is compatible with vista, you will be surprised as to how much of a nose bleed these can be should they be incompatible.

Lastly, have you checked to see if your computer is going to function at an acceptable participation speed once you load vista. You will need to understand that the bare minimum is no valid indicator as to you computers efficiency.

Bare minimum IMO for home premium is 1 Gig of RAM but 2 is way better, 40 Gig HDD but more is great and a graphics card with 256 Meg of RAM as a minimum and a kick ass CPU is desirable ie 2.8 P4 is the absolute minimum if you really want Vista to behave reasonably, anything else is just pie in the sky stuff which will give you heartache and cause you to temporarily act as though you have a bad case of turrets syndrome for the day youll spend upgrading.

Enjoy & Have Fun

I bought Vista premium upgrade for my HP Mini Tower.Put it on around 3 weeks ago.

Looks pretty, thats where it begins and where it ends.

Absolute nightmare!

In my opinion it has been released way to early.And as for the UAC (User Administrative Control).........

Save your self a LOT of grief, time and energy and turn it into a drink coaster.

I spent 2 weeks unloading, reloading, updating (went $75.00 over my internet limit) only for windows explorer to stop working. Restart, stops, restarts, stops. Tried restore, repair, everything known to me.

2 weeks work down the drain. I'm seriously looking at going Mac.

Tell us how you really feel DJHRVV !!! I think you meant Windows ME not Windows XP Home.

TAYLHORA wrote
quote: I WOULD WAIT UNTILL THEY GET ALL THE UPDATES FIXED

Microsoft has been fixing XP for the past 5 years and it still has updates daily. Should I wait until they have it perfect and there are no more updates before I install?

If apply that logic to vista then it will be 6 years from now before I can load it on my 'puter.

But wait why would I do that since I run far superior software.....Linux and Mac

I bought a new HP computer about 2 months ago and I was a bit excited to try the "new" OS from big brother, but that excitement has turned to dissappointment. Its almost all cosmetic. Vista is really more of a headache than anything. They have added new "features" to try to assist the less qualified population in using their computer, but it has essentially ruined it for those of us who are well versed in computer and OS operation. Quick simple tasks have now become a pain in the butt. AND I HATE THE NEW START MENU!!
I have a 3yr old Alienware laptop running XP, and through various updates, addons and modifications, I have a rock solid OS. I cant say the same for my vista install. I realize that it is still a new program, but its very frustrating to have my new AMD 64 X2 4600 with 3GB RAM, 320GB HDD, 512MB Radeon 1950 Pro and SB X-fi Fata1ity Pro brought to its knees by a program that flies on a Intel P4 3.2Ghz with 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, 128MB Radeon and sound onboard. Yes, I have all of the latest drivers and I know how to configure them correctly. The efficiency just is not there. Vista kind of tells you itself that it is a resource hog too. When you get your "index score" via the OS, the 3d graphics/gaming score is almost always higher than the Vista Aero score. I realize there are different factors in the two scores, but you have wonder how much of a hit gaming performance is taking with a bloated shell runnning in the background. And I am not just a gamer, I use a lot of 3D creation programs like 3DSMax, Poser, DazStudio and Bryce as well as many DTP programs.
Long story short, my little venture into Vista is almost over. I have a new copy of XP that will soon be replacing my "most advanced operating system". I recommend sticking with XP.

The other thing I would check is with suport downloads from Dell, download all of the updated drivers for your machine from Dell, burn them to a cd. This insures you will have the proper drivers for YOUR machine in case the generic drivers don't work. I received my Inspiron E1505 with Vista home premium, and though everything worked out of the box I spent the beter part of the first evening updating drivers through both Vista update and support.dell.com. Just know that programs are being updated almost daily, including Vista itself.