It's not so bad once you mess with the control panel a bit.
Google vista tweaks or vista optimization. Some of it is really worth doing.

This is work I was doing for a client, so it is a little frustrating and embarrassing, when I can't solve the problem with Vista. A little research shows that you can degrade Vista to a copy of XP. It is a little unclear, but I think you can only do this for 2 versions of vista.

I don't really understand how you can plug a brand new external usb hard drive from one of the major manufacturers and have vista unable to find any drivers. I'm not sure this is necessarily Microsoft's fault, but possibly Western Digital's who released a product that they advertise as vista compatible, when it isn't.

anyone have similar experience with external drives and vista?

Kayte R. wrote:It's not so bad once you mess with the control panel a bit.
Google vista tweaks or vista optimization. Some of it is really worth doing.

Best Vista tweak/optimization: Back up all your files, open a command prompt, run fdisk, format drive C:/, put Windows XP or Ubuntu Linux installation disk into the CD tray, shut down and restart the computer, follow on-screen instructions.

What are the advantages over XP?

My wife's new laptop came with Vista installed, and even though it has 2gb of ram and a cpu that far outstrips my decrepit PC, it ran terribly.

I stuck XP on it, and now it's ace. What gives? What are we stubborn, blinkered, XP users missing out on Vista-wise?

CRAP.

Adam I wrote:
What are we stubborn, blinkered, XP users missing out on Vista-wise?

3D! So it takes even more time to know what's where!

Adam I wrote:What are the advantages over XP?

My wife's new laptop came with Vista installed, and even though it has 2gb of ram and a cpu that far outstrips my decrepit PC, it ran terribly.

I stuck XP on it, and now it's ace. What gives? What are we stubborn, blinkered, XP users missing out on Vista-wise?

CRAP.

Nothing. The flashy bits are pointless and the other improved features you don't need. XP is fine, Vista, though I've tried hard to find it acceptable for nearly a year, is not.

Vista's performance improves with service pack 1, I'll give it that, but going from sub-sub-par to sub-par is not good enough.

Microsoft? Wank-crosoft more like.

CRAP.

Colonel Panic wrote:

Kayte R. wrote:It's not so bad once you mess with the control panel a bit.
Google vista tweaks or vista optimization. Some of it is really worth doing.

Best Vista tweak/optimization: Back up all your files, open a command prompt, run fdisk, format drive C:/, put Windows XP or Ubuntu Linux installation disk into the CD tray, shut down and restart the computer, follow on-screen instructions.

Does a parallels or bootcamp like thing exist for this? Double booting linux and vista I mean.

Kayte R. wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:

Kayte R. wrote:It's not so bad once you mess with the control panel a bit.
Google vista tweaks or vista optimization. Some of it is really worth doing.

Best Vista tweak/optimization: Back up all your files, open a command prompt, run fdisk, format drive C:/, put Windows XP or Ubuntu Linux installation disk into the CD tray, shut down and restart the computer, follow on-screen instructions.

Does a parallels or bootcamp like thing exist for this? Double booting linux and vista I mean.

It would only work well if you are willing to partition your drive for the other OS instances. Most linux distros come with some sort of boot loader that allows folks at boot time, to choose what OS they want to load. If you wanted linux on the machine with vista, create two partitons, install vista first, then linux. I wouldn't trust Vista to know what to do with an already installed instance of linux. If you didn't want linux, and wanted XP and Vista on the same machine, the best way to do it is to have two disk partitions, install XP first, then Vista.

Of course backup anything of worth to you first.

For my money I think I'd choose Novell's SLED over Vista.

Even so, Ubuntu is very close now to matching commercial OSes for out-of-the-box functionality.

I bought a new machine with Vista preinstalled and used it for some months until i got sick enough to install XP. I can't even list all the trouble i had with that fucking shit. Incompatible drivers, incompatible applications, those horrible menus, slow as fuck. And what's the deal with that stupid sidebar full with stupid widgets on the desktop? As the worst Windows edition, Vista is second only to Windows Me.

CRAP