Vista - What am I missing?

[Garp]

My XP install was getting nicely b0rked for various reasons I haven't sussed yet and so as I was going to rebuild the box I figured I'd give Vista a shot (I did identify a memory timing issue during the install which may explain a fair number of the oddities)

So.. Vista Home Ultimate 64bit edition. Nice. Identified almost all my hardware (Audigy2 and Webcam failed).

What am I missing? I know I've approached Vista as a skeptic, but so far all I've seen just re-enforces all I already thought about it. Its just a fancy GUI on top of XP so far as I can see (can't really say I'm impressed with the GUI, compiz / beryl does it better under *nix). Its slower than XP, is more bloated (my old XP install was more than a little bloated but still used less memory & swap than Vista), seems to spend a lot of time hammering the hard disk, looks like swapping a fair bit even with 2Gig of RAM.

I'm going to give it until the weekend to impress me, but to be honest I don't see that happening unless someone can persuade me whatever it is I'm missing that makes folks rave about it?

One thing that really irritated me: Vista doesn't like being installed to the non-primary HDD. Most folks won't notice, but I have an IDE HDD in my box that I use for backups. Vista wouldn't tell me why it couldn't install to the primary partition on my SATA drive, just that no appropriate drives had been found even though it had formatted it. Out of desperation I tried booting the box with the IDE drive unplugged, and lo and behold it would then install happily. XP has its own quirks in that regard but it will install to that partition (just calls it drive d:, unless you remove an IDE device) I would at least have expected Vista to tell me why it couldn't install.

[Feek]

If it's swapping with 2Gb RAM then something is wrong. It should be blindingly quick with that sort of memory.

The hard disk hammering will be the initial indexing, after an install it does a full system index for fast searching and that's noticable for a while. Perhaps that's the reason for the disk access you're seeing, not swapping?

If you're thinking it's using the page file because task manager shows 0 (or very low) available RAM then think again because it's using it for pre-caching. You'll be shown the RAM currently in use, the RAM free and the cached RAM. That cached RAM isn't page file. Memory management in Vista is so much better than XP. With XP if you're using 700Mb out of 2Gb, you have 1.3Gb sitting idle, Vista monitors your application use and uses the spare memory to pre-cache the applications it thinks you're going to be using.

[Daz]

Vista is very unfriendly when it comes to bootloaders during setup, but then doze always has been.

It really isnt XP under the hood. The network stuff is worse imo (the old school network connections 'folder' is buried under all sort of crap). The event viewer is bloatier, I'm undecided if the new options are worth that odd GUI. The scheduler is much improved, you can schedule things on event triggers now which is handy. Or rather will be with Server 2008.

Dont worry about the disk hammering just now. It'll do it for a but while it's building it's indexes, but settles down eventually.

You're right though, while it's pretty and for Joe end user I think the experience is better, I think it's mostly a sideways step. If you're on XP I dont see a reason to move, but likewise if you're on Vista I dont see any reason to go back either, assuming all your hardware works and your box can handle it.

[Admiral Huddy]

I've just bought a new upgreade and will be making the permanent switch to Vista this weekend. I've been toying with the 32 bit version for awhile and haven't come across anything that's a show stopper to be honest.


The only thing I'd like to try is the 64bit version because I've just bought 4gb of RAM. So I might load that on to the workshop PC first. However, I need to clear the 32-bit version that's in dual boot with XP.

How do I remove vista, leaving XP? A straight format isn't going to do the trick, surely the boot loader will need to be changed. Any ideas?

[Daz]

Should just be able to delete the Vista partition and re-install XP's bootloader from the recovery console.

[Garp]

I've disabled indexing, as I do under XP on first boot, so its not that.

I had Task manager up and was watching the pagefile hit over 2Gig just playing HL2 last night, and physical memory usage peak at around 75% whereas it wouldn't come close to that before.

[Admiral Huddy]

Should just be able to delete the Vista partition and re-install XP's bootloader from the recovery console.

Using CHKDSK /r ?

[Will]

I forced windows to install on my primary HDD - so when it came to putting Vista on it just went on there wihtout a problem. I then removed the old xp installation with no hassle.

I'm liking Vista - it is clearly quicker. Everything's rated at 5.0 or above which is why I guess it's quite happy.

[LeperousDust]

My vista install is pretty awful for my laptop hardware (general core duo, ok only a gig of ram but i'm browsing the web and windows explorer for christs sake i dont NEED 2gig!) gefore 7400 go to take the GUI off the processor. But vista is visibly slower than XP. By a long margin for me :(. I'm only using it becuase it came with the sodding laptop, and i dont actually own a real version of XP so it wouldnt make any sense to swap back. I'm really not that happy with it personally, and dont get me started on the frigging network transfer bug.

Vista is meant to be quick and guess what im going to do next but apparently i just sneak up on it all the time and i sit there watching the (great AA'ed looking) new loading icon.

/Not particulary happy but i get on with it... :(

[Garp]

I forced windows to install on my primary HDD - so when it came to putting Vista on it just went on there wihtout a problem. I then removed the old xp installation with no hassle.

I'm liking Vista - it is clearly quicker. Everything's rated at 5.0 or above which is why I guess it's quite happy.

Likewise, I get nice high performance scores, but it is definately slower than XP, and significantly slower than the now-getting-bloated Ubuntu.

The only thing that dips me below a 5 on performance index is my CPU, but its no slouch being an X2 3800.

CPU: 4.8
RAM: 5.8
Graphics: 5.9
Gaming Graphics: 5.7
Primary HDD: 5.4

[Will]

I was a skeptic, but I'm really turning my opinion around. I've cleared out lots of temp files etc that seems to bloat the Vista installation. I don't know why it feels so slow for you - the only bit of slowness I get is the initial logging on that takes about 30s to load all apps and programs, but that's fine for me, once logged in, everything opens within seconds of a double click, and I don't get any judders from the audio (in itunes) when doing hdd intensive stuff, or when using my computer as I generally use it. Maybe I'm not as much of a power user as some people, but for day to day tasks it seems pretty snazzy for me - and that's with a dying gfx card! It's definitely no slower than XP x64 that I had installed previously.

[Daz]

Using CHKDSK /r ?
Nay, that's just a file system checker. Use fixboot and fixmbr.

[Mark]

I'm OK with Vista. It's certainly not the best thing since sliced bread, and for me XP does everything I need at the moment, but I do have one fully working Vista install and I'm sure I'll set up more as and when (or if) the issues I know of with some of the software I want to run on it are fixed.

I think my biggest concern is going Vista 64-bit. There are some things I use that don't like 64-bit at all (A2DP profile on Bluetooth, Nebula software, and one of our in-house utilities). I can probably live without the first, the second might get fixed soon, and the third I might fix, so we'll get there eventually. :)

[Wellington]

I'm very happy with 64bit home premium, loaded all my hardware straight off. Plays the game I want without too much of a performance hit, can't wait for some of the new games designed to run on vista to come out (bring on Crysis). Noticed a performance hit on some of my older games but was suspecting that anyway.

Still getting used to the whole navigating through the files under my computer, just another way to do things I suppose.
I do like the gadgets there quite nice, ("dilbert" and "Calvin and Hobbs")
The whole aero thing is interesting not much use to me as I never have that much running anyway but looks pretty.....

Not had much in the way of network problems, had a little hiccup with setting the LAN between the vista machine and my girlfriends XP machine. Downloaded a patch for her's and all has been fine since (something to do with network protocol)

[BillytheImpaler]

Maybe you're missing some files that you've copied: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=829

;)