Finally rid of Vista!

For the record, Vista isn't too keen on widescreen displays; it's really not keen at all dual widescreen displays; it's not a huge fan of Nvidia; it really loathes Nvidia's 7950 series, and throws a complete hissy fit at SLI configs; it also gets very grumpy with VPN clients. It also insists on asking "are you sure you really want to do this" about 15 bloody times every time I want to do something as simple as change the bloody properties of a shortcut.

So at about 22:30 last night I finally decided I'd had enough. In my younger days I quite liked tinkering about with betas, with figuring out obscure registry hacks (or INI hacks as they were back then) and generally messing around with the next big thing. Now I just want something that works. I'm sorry Microsoft, I tried, for three sodding months I endured this, the biggest pile of **** poor poo since Windows ME, and at 22:30 I finally gave up and formatted.

XP disc back in. Crap. Forgot the XP install process doesn't like RAID drives and you need to get the drivers on a floppy disc beforehand. Except my computer doesn't have a floppy drive and the motherboard doesn't even have a floppy header. So, fire up the other half's computer, download drivers, copy XP disc, slipstream drivers onto a new install, burn new disc, try again, success! About a hundred squillion critical updates later, finally, at 02:58 I'm finally back and running with a PC that just does what I need it to.

[rictus01]

Got to love it though, all those trend setters battling away to get the thing to work, priceless.

Hardware or software only get changed when they no longer do what I need and that's it, so normally they're well sorted by the time I get them, my sons gaming machine looks like a cross between a car radiator/ chav nova and a spaceship control system and he's always playing with it, me got a blue and grey box (and I thought that was fancy when I got it) and works reliabley most of the time, XP Pro on two machines, but the filestore still runs fine on 3.51, all but one of the network probes (laptops with sniffer software) run 98.

I won't be touching vista for a while yet I'm afraid, about the most is the one machine running XP in 64 bit mode.

Cheers Mark.

vista was named wrong should be called ME the revenge. tho the beta of server 2008 is supprisingly good

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by MiniMatt

For the record, Vista isn't too keen on widescreen displays; it's really not keen at all dual widescreen displays; it's not a huge fan of Nvidia; it really loathes Nvidia's 7950 series, and throws a complete hissy fit at SLI configs; it also gets very grumpy with VPN clients. It also insists on asking "are you sure you really want to do this" about 15 bloody times every time I want to do something as simple as change the bloody properties of a shortcut.

So at about 22:30 last night I finally decided I'd had enough. In my younger days I quite liked tinkering about with betas, with figuring out obscure registry hacks (or INI hacks as they were back then) and generally messing around with the next big thing. Now I just want something that works. I'm sorry Microsoft, I tried, for three sodding months I endured this, the biggest pile of **** poor poo since Windows ME, and at 22:30 I finally gave up and formatted.

XP disc back in. Crap. Forgot the XP install process doesn't like RAID drives and you need to get the drivers on a floppy disc beforehand. Except my computer doesn't have a floppy drive and the motherboard doesn't even have a floppy header. So, fire up the other half's computer, download drivers, copy XP disc, slipstream drivers onto a new install, burn new disc, try again, success! About a hundred squillion critical updates later, finally, at 02:58 I'm finally back and running with a PC that just does what I need it to.

Poor Matt

I came to that conclusion after 3 days and wiped.

Just wasnt worth beta-testing for Microsoft.

As a coincidence, I too was installing XP last night - well running the System recovery disk on my laptop

Makes you feel better, I got sick of windows throwing a hissy fit on a Fujitsu tablet laptop I have.

intalled linux Ubuntu, worked first time, connected to the WPA wireless network nicely (there are a few problems with linux and WPA), playing any DVD with some extra minior configuration.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Otherall a lovely experience, looks nice tweaked as well. I am using the Gnome but I intend to use Kbuntu which is a KDE version on a new build desktop for a bit of fun.

overall, an 8 out of 10 for the OS.

Cheers

Rich

Originally Posted by rwoodcock01

Makes you feel better, I got sick of windows throwing a hissy fit on a Fujitsu tablet laptop I have.

intalled linux Ubuntu, worked first time, connected to the WPA wireless network nicely (there are a few problems with linux and WPA), playing any DVD with some extra minior configuration.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

Otherall a lovely experience, looks nice tweaked as well. I am using the Gnome but I intend to use Kbuntu which is a KDE version on a new build desktop for a bit of fun.

overall, an 8 out of 10 for the OS.

Cheers

Rich

Even easier, you can install ubuntu whilst Windows is running, reboot, and you have your OS. How easy is that? Check out Wubi.

I've used SUSE Linux (versions 6 & 9) and Mandrake 10 in place of various flavours of Windows.

Replaced Win98 with SUSE 6.2 but had to remove it because there were just too many configuration issues with my hardware

SUSE 9 was much better though ... but then XP came along

Got sick of XP, so installed Mandrake 10, which was nice, but had one hell of a problem trying to get drivers for my USB ADSL Modem (supplied by Tiscali). Tiscali were about as much use as a chocolate teapot, and after hours of trawling the internet (dual boot machine thankfully!) eventually found a French site that contained some vague instructions and some drivers. When I finally got it working, it was great

Have only seen Vista briefly (on a PC I bought for a family member), and from what I saw it was very nice ... although it does have an annoying habit of telling me it's blocked a startup program from running ... its supposedly stopped the "Adobe download/update manager" from running?! But when I checked this in the configuration panel for "blocked startup programs" it shows as being NOT blocked and that it indeed HAS just run!?!

I have an old PC (given to me by the family member who's PC I replaced for them with a newer one), and might consider throwing some flavour of Linux on it instead of Windows ... IMO Linux is a much better OS - it's just not as popular due to the early days of useability problems (probably caused by most people being spoon-fed Windows-style).

That's no disrespect to Windows users - I've been a Windows user since 3.1 Thats how PC's should be - that is they should be easy to use, intuitive (not with Windows 3.1 on it!), and alas that's not what Linux was to begin with.

Pete

My old box had XP Pro on it - very good it was too.

New box has Vista Business Edition on it and seems to work okay...... the only issue I have it with M$ Word (Office 2007) when throws up an error and tries to restart itself when closing it. Most of my old software works just fine; just waiting for ZoneAlarm (free version) to be released so that I can ditch the OS's own firewall.

Got to say that, overall, I like it.

The Murder-in-Law has a swish new Dell PC with Vista "Home Basic" on it - seems to work okay too, but lacks a few things that my Vista has, but that's not a problem really.

Originally Posted by Pedro68

That's no disrespect to Windows users - I've been a Windows user since 3.1 Thats how PC's should be - that is they should be easy to use, intuitive (not with Windows 3.1 on it!), and alas that's not what Linux was to begin with.

Pete

I remember my first ever Linux install. It was SuSE, but way before 6.x.

A friend had given me the CDs, saying "here, stick this in, boot, follow the screen, you'll love it."

It didn't detect my graphics chipset, meaning the GUI installer didn't run. It didn't detect my mouse, which was besides the point, since I was left sitting at a command prompt.

I didn't know any commands (not even 'ls'), and had to install an operating system using the manual supplied. That only detailled how to install with the GUI.

After a while of messing about, SuSE up & running, and working happily with my eth broadband modem. Thankfully.

That took me around 3 months to sort out, but I'm still a fan of Linux now.

Why do you think that I switched to a Mac? Everything just works.
If I hadn't gone for Mac, I'd certainly be using Ubuntu instead, as I'm a long-time Linux fan. The Mac was more for Mrs Wyrdness' convenience.