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Windows Vista

cgsigns_jamie

New Member
...I would be willing to bet that in 2 1/2 years, there will be a lot of whiners complaining about Windows 7 too. I heard the SAME complaints when XP was released. It is amazing how XP was sooo hated when it was released, but now everyone is clinging onto it like a security blanket....

I agree 100%.... but I'm still sticking with Mac OS 10.5
 

smdgrfx

New Member
Same Problem

I feel everyone's pain. I spent a year testing Vista with another machine that was not in my production flow. After many months of waiting for all necessary drivers (for my equipment) and patches (for software), I finally built another machine to use as a workstation. It worked great for a month and finally when I decided to migrate everything it crashes on me. This past Thursday. I spent night Thursday and all day Friday trying to fix it. I threw in the towel yesterday and reverted back to XP today. I'm in the middle of reinstalling everything for my new machine, but at least I'll have the piece of mind that it will be stable. And I really was liking the bells and whistles of Vista. I liked most of the new file structures and abilities to put shortcuts on the sidebars and a few other things. I didn't like all the questions it asks before you try and do anything. Ultimately, the registry is what crashed and I couldn't fix it. I'm back to XP.

And by the way, my machine was no slouch. E8500 @ 3.99 ghz, X48 Gigabyte board, 4GB of Crucial PC8500 @ 1200mhz, 2 Seagate 320GB in raid 0, ATI 3870. My network is all T1000 utilizing teaming gigabit ethernet. 60mbs transfers across my network. Vista rated my machine all at 5.9 except the processor (5.8). 5.9 is the best you can get for those that don't know.

I'm excited to hear about the new 64 bit stuff and I will probably try again when those applications become available.
 
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Techman

New Member
It is amazing how XP was sooo hated

Yes it was hated. That is until it was hacked tweaked and twisted into a good OS.
If one looks back Xp was hated by a very vocal few who hated the activation nonsense. Especially those who had a legal copy but got locked out and got a hassle getting it fixed. AFter all that activation crap was fixed,,, and M$ realized that being a hard butt to honest users,, and smart legal users hacked it,,, XP became the darling it is now.


As for Vista being such a good OS... There is a very large majority that will disagree with that. Including Intel who is a partner with M$. They are not going to use Vista at all.

And next. The average joe will like vista. He just wants to run his machine. For those who do other work,,, Vista Sux. I have copies of it. I work on machines that have it.. I don't like it. My customers don't like it. But I do make a nice amount replacing XP onto Vista machines.

Change. There is change for good reason and there is change that is nothing but rearranging something. If the change is good and leads to enhanced user pleasure. If that change makes for a harder more complicated work flow but does nothing else better,,, that change is useless.

But any way. Off the soap box. The market is the true show of acceptance and the market is showing a non acceptance posture for Vista. Period. No matter what those who get M$ incentives will say.

Vista is nothing more than a tweaked windows 2003 server.. That is all it is.. The real vista is coming out in about a year.

If anyone wants to revert to XP on a Vista machine,, all you have to do is get your drivers,, (yes you can find them. Very often your Vista drivers are the exact same as for XP except renamed) get NLite, get your sata driver,, and make a slipstream CD.

Install your stuff and you got XP again.
 

SignBurst PCs

New Member
Techman, there are many large corporations that skipped XP and stuck with 2000. Does that mean that 2000 is better than XP? Probably not. It just means that they didn't find enough reason to upgrade. This makes sense as the thought of upgrading thousands of computers is a daunting and expensive task. Timing could have been bad too.

I have plenty of customers who have upgraded to Vista. A good majority of them were very happy with the upgrade after they saw what it can do. There are still those who prefer XP as well. I work on it every single day. I get plenty of work done and it seems that I often find new ways to tweak my work-flow to be more efficient in Vista than I ever could in XP.

The market is not a great gauge of the quality of the OS. It is more of a gauge of the marketing strategy. MS did a poor job in that respect, not to mention Apple did a great job in distorting the truth and creating some very funny advertisements.

I get no $$$ from MS to promote Vista. As a matter of fact, we still offer XP and are very happy to install it if the that is what our customers want. It just so happens that very few systems get shipped with XP any more. There are too many good things about Vista. We do have an advantage though. We are able to limit our hardware and drivers in a way that the larger manufacturers cannot. By offering just a few models, we know our hardware and drivers are stable in Vista and will perform well. I just have a hard time selling a computer with yesterday news inside. Vista does improve on XP in many ways and I am not about to sell a customer a computer with a legacy OS unless they insist.

As far as the "real vista" goes, do you know something that I don't? I still haven't been able to get my hands on a copy of Windows 7. How can you know that it is going to be any better or worse than Vista? If you have a copy, please share!

How can you know that it won't have similar issues when it is released? I really think that you are setting yourself up for a fair bit of disappointment. I hope that you are right and it is perfect out of the gate, but I doubt that will be the case. I haven't seen any OS that was great right off, not XP, Vista, OSX, Linux, nada.

I dunno about all this. There really seems to be a great deal of misinformation out there. Vista is not some horrible scary beast. It is a pleasure to work on (most of the time). Nothing is perfect. Just make sure that your hardware drivers and software are compatible to run on Vista and you will be fine. Or to make things simple, give us a call and we can help you sort through it all.
 

Techman

New Member
As far as the "real vista" goes, do you know something that I don't? I still haven't been able to get my hands on a copy of Windows 7

Yes, I think I do..

Just as I successfully predicted the XP SP2 debacle for sign software and other cad, cam users.. And just as I was able to pre-alert many of a few other challenges that appeared.. after a few said I was misinformed. And just as I pre-alerted many of us here concerning the driver issues its,,, all the same. No brag, just fact.

M$ partners is not the only source for OS info.

Oh yes. There is a project that is just about to the alpha stage of cloning XP.. There's some very knowledgeable people on that site.
 

choucove

New Member
I saw a news article just yesterday that said Microsoft is planning its largest advertising campaign ever for "new products" and "revitalized Vista" and plan to spend upwards of $300 million, and have joined up with one of the leading advertising agencies for this task. This could be the beginning for advertising Windows 7.

From the research I did on it (albeit a few months back now) Windows 7 was being built up from Windows Vista, but they had gone in and rebuilt the core of the OS. They were able to create a stand-alone structure of all the base required programs and logic which was just right at 2 GB in size and can run under 512 MB of RAM efficiently. This is a HUGE improvement over the core of Vista. This Windows Core is even being distributed to be tested for use in a very simple yet powerful base OS for servers and so far appears to be the greatest hope for Windows 7 overcoming the tremendous amount of system resources needed for Vista.

In the Alpha (and perhaps the Beta?) releases of Windows 7 that have been reviewed, most have said that the appearance and feel is identical to Vista (as again, Microsoft basically began just building up from Vista) but they had gone in to modify and update some of the most basic Windows tools. For example, added features and power to the Windows Calculator, as well as Wordpad. They also noticed better power efficiency and management tools to help allow for longer battery life in notebooks as well as making better use of future hardware advances in notebooks such as hybrid discrete/integrated graphics from AMD's puma platform and such.

One of the biggest things that Microsoft was trying to push for including in Windows 7 (and is apparent in many of their advertisements for Windows 7 online) is multi-touch interface support. While for many this may never be useful, it does open up huge possibilities to mainstream computers for revolutionizing the way we interact with computers.
 

SignBurst PCs

New Member
Yes, I think I do..

Just as I successfully predicted the XP SP2 debacle for sign software and other cad, cam users.. And just as I was able to pre-alert many of a few other challenges that appeared.. after a few said I was misinformed. And just as I pre-alerted many of us here concerning the driver issues its,,, all the same. No brag, just fact.

M$ partners is not the only source for OS info.

Oh yes. There is a project that is just about to the alpha stage of cloning XP.. There's some very knowledgeable people on that site.

How can I argue with a psychic?

Actually, I have kept up on 7's progress fairly well. I have seen a MS "roadmap" showing that 7 is planned to be released in late 2009/early 2010, possibly. I also saw dates pushed back several times with Vista and fully expect to see the same with 7. Techman, I really hope it is released as planned. I am with ya. I love new stuff and am very excited to see 7 released! I just have serious doubts about the timeframe.

I have discussed the "backwards" compatibility with legacy software and have been told that it will be "virtualized", not binary. I am interested to see how this works out becuase this could be a really performance "downer", but may run legacy software better. There has to be a tradeoff.

All kidding aside, Techman, I am sure that you know your stuff. I think that we just have a core difference. While you are apt to say, "why change something that isn't broken?", I am more likely to invite the change and overcome the obstacles. There have been obstacles in Vista, sure. But, we didn't run into anything that wasn't fairly easy to overcome.

I find Vista to be great. It runs very well on our systems and there are many new things that I enjoy. It is just a preference. Some of you make it sound like it is a big nasty beast and should be avoided at all cost. I see it as a nice shiny diamond sits on my desk. There are two sides to every situation.

For those here who are afraid to put it in their shops, we have many shops out there running Vista 32 and 64 on their SignBurst™ systems. No major issues to report. I cannot speak for other computer builders, but our systems are stable and fast. We are constantly testing RIP and design software on our systems and are very pleased with what we have found. I have to admit, we do know a few tricks and software versions to look out for, but that is our job.

All of the major rip and design software companies run well on our systems, with one exception. It is not just our systems that are having an issue with their software and it is not isolated to Vista. The same problems are showing up in XP with their newest release.
 

sjohn

New Member
Using vista 64 bit as rip server - best thing I did

The thing with vista is never ever go to vista "upgrading from xp" etc, all kinds of problems will appear - just a "no brainer".

Buying a new machine- then make sure get "vista ultimate", the home versions have too many features turned off, that they really have problems with some of the advanced image processing and rip software.

I am running vista ulimate 64 bit with 4 cpus & 8G of ram, breaking through that 32 bit restriction of only using about 3.7 G of the ram.

My computers are built for vista, vista 64 bit drivers through & through -
result = most reliable and high performance computer ever - it is rock solid! no kidding...

Onyx V7 has been designed so that it will run on vista 64 bit - and it really works - I would never go back, the only problem I have is 64 bit drivers for my cutter, so I run the cut server on an xp 32bit machine.

Adobe will shortly be releasing a 64 bit version of the creative suite that will properly use all the machines reasources, especially the larger memory - at the moment the adobe stuff will only run as 32 bit and only use limited ram.

Personally, I think the future is 64bit Vista (and its children) and any new machines I buy will be vista 64 bit. (64 bit XP only really worked with MS office, so a waste of time)

32 bit systems I suggest stick with XP, 32 bit vista does not really give you anything much over xp except hunting for drivers...

So to me the key question is switching to 64 bit (using vista), rather than xp vs vista.
As for MAC, unfortunately apple have been caught "sleeping" and macs now have bigger reliability and software compatibility problems than going for a good PC, and most rips will not run on a MAC - and PC based colour management is now much more powerful, and able to sort out what is really going on comapred with a mac. We do a lot of colour precision work, and we are frequently having to help out mac based designers to get jobs out, most are really shocked at what we can do with PC based systems, the reliability we get and get very upset that the world is not ruled by apple macs - they get very "religous" about it !

Bottom line from my view...
- leave xp systems alone & working do not upgrade
- New systems - think of introducing 64bit vista ultimate, but only some things will work properly now, but all new devices & new software being released will very quickly all be 64 bit. So plan a 64 bit migration over the next 12-18 months.
- Biggest problem with modern pcs, wrong version of windows installed (need the high feature versions), and usually not properly installed in the first place (usually wrong drivers), cheap hardware (must get good hard disks! & fast bus's)
 

choucove

New Member
64-bit computing has got to be one of my biggest complaints about the computer industry. Generally, any new computing standard (such as PCI-express 2.0) that is released is instantly picked up and adapted in software to utilize it to the full potential. But we have had the hardware capable of utilizing 64-bit computing over 32-bit computing for about a decade now but there are very few software companies that have gone to producing 64-bit capable packages. Even those that have generally have released it only as a beta version for testing purposes and has a multitude of issues as it is basically still the 32-bit software but repackaged as 64-bit software.

I know that the shortfall in a lot of this migration to 64-bit computing is based on the limited support of a 64-bit OS. Windows XP x64 was powerful an efficient at certain 64-bit compatible software, but only a certain, and many 32-bit applications had difficulties with it. For instance, the version of Adobe Acrobat Pro we use here at the School of Engineering will install and run properly on a Windows XP x64 system but the software installer is unable to actually install the PDF Writer to allow you to create PDF documents of course rendering the software pretty much useless.

Vista Ultimate 64-bit may have slightly improved its compatibility and stability with 32-bit software. I actually have been running this on my laptop for a little over a year to practice with Vista, test, debug, etc. But even Vista has a long ways to go to work well with 64-bit compared to some releases of Fedora 64-bit or Red Hat 64-bit that I have worked with. Still, there is a lot of hope for future transition to 64-bit computing and the biggest reason is system RAM. Your average desktop computer purchase can now max out the amount of usable RAM in a 32-bit system with no problems, which means for hardware to continue to expand and operating systems to follow with the upgrade in hardware, they must change to 64-bit. I hope we will be seeing this transition moving more steadily and smoothly in the next year or two.
 

FrankenSigns.biz

New Member
Apple re-developed the entire OS from the core up at OSX. This UNIX based re-write forced the Mac software development community (Adobe, Quark, et al) to re-write their programs as well. This was a ballsy move by Apple but it seems everything turned out marvelously in the end.

I believe Microsoft should do the same thing. Start fresh. Base it on Unix, Linux or some new kernel. Currently Vista is just old architecture built up to appear more modern, it's just massivly bloated.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/microsoft_we_know_vista_sucks_so_keep_xp_msft_
 

SignBurst PCs

New Member
64-bit computing has got to be one of my biggest complaints about the computer industry. Generally, any new computing standard (such as PCI-express 2.0) that is released is instantly picked up and adapted in software to utilize it to the full potential. But we have had the hardware capable of utilizing 64-bit computing over 32-bit computing for about a decade now but there are very few software companies that have gone to producing 64-bit capable packages. Even those that have generally have released it only as a beta version for testing purposes and has a multitude of issues as it is basically still the 32-bit software but repackaged as 64-bit software.

I know that the shortfall in a lot of this migration to 64-bit computing is based on the limited support of a 64-bit OS. Windows XP x64 was powerful an efficient at certain 64-bit compatible software, but only a certain, and many 32-bit applications had difficulties with it. For instance, the version of Adobe Acrobat Pro we use here at the School of Engineering will install and run properly on a Windows XP x64 system but the software installer is unable to actually install the PDF Writer to allow you to create PDF documents of course rendering the software pretty much useless.

Vista Ultimate 64-bit may have slightly improved its compatibility and stability with 32-bit software. I actually have been running this on my laptop for a little over a year to practice with Vista, test, debug, etc. But even Vista has a long ways to go to work well with 64-bit compared to some releases of Fedora 64-bit or Red Hat 64-bit that I have worked with. Still, there is a lot of hope for future transition to 64-bit computing and the biggest reason is system RAM. Your average desktop computer purchase can now max out the amount of usable RAM in a 32-bit system with no problems, which means for hardware to continue to expand and operating systems to follow with the upgrade in hardware, they must change to 64-bit. I hope we will be seeing this transition moving more steadily and smoothly in the next year or two.

Most of the RIP manufacturers are seeing the light.


  • Onyx is already Vista64 compatible
  • Wasatch will officially be by the end of the month (although the current version is unofficially 64 bit Vista compatible already)
  • SAI engineers told me they are good on 64 Bit Vista
  • Roland VW is not officially supported, but I have several shops running VW on 64 Bit Vista
CS3 will work fine on XP64 and Vista64 given the right "know-how" (even the pdf printer you spoke of works). It took us a while to get it all sorted out, but we can install CS3 on any of our 64 Bit systems with very little problems. As a matter of fact, CS3 is VERY FAST on our 64 Bit systems.

I have seen Microsoft timelines showing 32 Bit being phased out relatively soon. As a matter of fact, I believe that Server 2008 is the last server sku being released in 32 Bit. In the future, it will all be 64 Bit. I have not seen a timeline on the "client" or desktop OS, but I would guess that it won't be far behind. As you said, we need to move on.
 

Techman

New Member
we need to move on

Ya,, The computer world economy loves it,, The computer shops love it... Each time we "move on" we all are forced to buy new machines, new printers, new software, new this and new that for each "move on". Planned obsolescence.. the great equalizer
 

Replicator

New Member
Just got (2) NEW computers with XP Pro and SP3, running great and running all programs without issue.

I will never use Vista again . . .

I just hope Microsoft wise's up for their next major release !
 

SebastienL

New Member
I just hope Microsoft wise's up for their next major release !

I'm pretty sure someone said that after the release of Windows ME. But it doesn't look like they learned a thing. The next OS will brobably be just as crappy, but people will still buy it anyway...

Hurray for progress:corndog:
 
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