Topic: Changing Your OS.

[Smackintosh]

My first ever poll.

It's going to take awhile to get all the bugs out, and so far I see more reasons NOT to upgrade (for me anyway).
So, I will stick with XP for a good while until its no longer supported by MS.

I've read alot of complaints about the unavailability of hardware drivers, problems with music files,
the forced upgrade to WMP11 (which I refuse to do).

[mephisto_kur]

While I am very anxious to get my hands on Vista because it is The New Thing...  We are holding off a bit.  Driver support isn't very good, even including the big names - ATi, NviDia and Creative.  What is funny is that nothing on my system is incompatible, and one of the devices that hasn't been updated for awhile has drivers included with Vista.  I love my GTXP, even after many many years and I don't want to move on from it.

[DeadGoat]

Three things:

1) Vista takes an insane amount of memory and power to run.

2) this video.

3) This Picture

[Smackintosh]

Vista does look pretty, I must admit.

Its got that interesting (but completely un-useful) "aero 3d flip screen" thingy
thats the graphical version of Alt-tab...  but its not available in the
basic home version for some reason.

I do like the way it fades out when you close a window.
They moved alot of features that are available in other versions to keep it confusing for everyone.
I'm used to the control panel having an icon, now it looks like any other folder.
The more simplified they make an OS, the harder it is to fix a complex problem.

[Nameless]

Yea I'm going to wait for a while. Being that I have a free copy of vista coming to me anyway I'll just wait out a bit. No harm no foul 

[raVen]

Not going to upgrade for a while . Vista doesnt add any value,  other than the new cool UI look  [AERO] . I do envy  anyone who have just done an upgrade [Smack , Nameless] and have a VISTA ready PC .

 64 bit processors are the future but no OS or apps exist to take FULL advantage of it .  Vista IMHO will be the last of the 32 bit OS  .  Will wait for vista 64 , directX 10  to release and mature  .

 I am hoping my next upgrade will be a quad core processor , 8 gigs of RAM , 1 Gig Video card  , and a Tera byte of HDD     .Might seem far fetched now , but by Moore's Law , should be possible in 11/2 Year for as little as  $1500  . .

recommendations :

IF your machine is already old , upgrade and get Vista but , Do not upgrade just for running vista . If you do , in a year  I will point and  laugh at your silly dual core machine  with the measly 2 Gigs of RAM    . I plan to upgrade my peripherals this year [Monitor , Key board , mouse]

[Smackintosh]

There are 64-bit versions of XP and Vista, but from what I'm reading there is no reason to switch,
you'd be in a worse situation with drivers than 32-bit Vista (as of now)... even LESS driver support. I've heard people
talking about LAN cards and sound cards not working as well as the all important video or motherboard drivers with a
64-bit OS.

I can't believe the difference in gaming my dual-core has made though, even games with seemingly crappy graphics
(like COH) look alot better. I'm seeing detail in CS:S and hl2dm that I hadn't noticed before (look full bloom effects\HDR).
Was it worth the money? I dunno, I could have lived with what I had, but there is never a perfect time to upgrade.
Technology changes weekly.

[Marvin]

I went to my friends house and played a bit of css on his new G card and my view of CSS was completely different. It was unbelievably beautiful as well as playing F.E.A.R. Extraction Point.

I heard Vista was gonna have direct X 10. True?

[Nameless]

Yep. Vista has Direct 10. It was built for Vista but your not going to get the full measure of its power with the current card drivers out there or without a Direct 10 card like the Nvidia 8800 series. Don't get me wrong, other cards still work with it and it's all "backwards compatible", meaning you can play Direct x 9 games too. Still there aren't any Direct 10 games out yet to really make use of it... I hope they come out with better drivers soon though so I can at least play my normal games at the same level on Vistas, as I do on XP.

[batt-76]

i will probably wait till later this year or next not much support for drivers and dx10 sure it would be nice but you know microsoft service pack 666 should be out soon for vista 

[kerchief]

I just don't like change when it doesn't directly benefit me.  I can't see this directly benefiting me.  So I won't change.  Ever.  Well... at least until someone decides to give me a new computer or I'm done with college and have a good job.

[jschnider]

yeah  i'm not changing from xp  with all the driver issues  and the nice litlle vidio  from deadgoat's reply   just doesn't look good

[dw3099]

i have the beta version it looks ok but like meph said not enough driver support  sata and so oo
i will wait          happy with xp pro

[dj]

I've been using Vista for about 5 days.  I couldn't resist installing it since the DVD came in last month's Microsoft Action Pack.  At the very least, there are beta drivers for all my hardware, so I haven't had any serious issues.  I have an nForce4 chipset.  There were problems with the Vista betas and this chipset, but the final version supports nForce4, including sata raid.

I like the sidebar gizmos, previous versions of files, and most of the other new stuff.  User account control can be annoying, but I think it's a good addition for the "average" pc user.  The new prefetcher is great.  Apps I use most often open almost instantly, and CSS takes about 15 seconds to load.

Overall, the new features are cool, and most of them are useful, but I'd still be using XP had I not received the DVD in the mail.

[mephisto_kur]

Yeah, I have several machines to upgrade, so i will be grabbing the action pack when I decide to make the change.  10 licenses for less than the cost of 2 retail or thee OEM is a no brainer.