Sooo... Vista, whats new?

[MathsPar]

Have Vista Home Premium arriving tomorrow for my new build, what major differences should I expect? I've used my friends a couple times and like the interface but is it all flash with not much substance?

[mas0n]

In my opinion the best parts of Vista are the changes to memory management and fetching algorithms.

[Thrax]

You can expect slower performance in games over XP, irritating popup boxes, random crashes and sluggish interface performance!

[Sledgehammer70]

random crashes and sluggish interface performance! While I can say I agree with the rest but the above quoted I have not noticed...

[Qeldroma]

There are things I actually prefer about Vista. Be sure to run all the updates immediately- do NOT pass Go until you do. If you consider yourself a "safe" user- i.e. you don't download craplets, visit weird websites, open strange e-mail attachments, etc., I'd highly recommend hacking the annoying UAC.

You should allow for learning new ways of doing things. I recommend getting used to some of the organization- it will take a while but it has some ups.

[mas0n]

Disabling UAC is a must in my opinion, but I was encountering several prompts during what are normal activities for me. I know some people who leave it on because the kinds of things they do rarely require UAC intervention.

If this is to be a high performance rig I would also highly recommend 4GB RAM and a very fast 4GB flash drive for Readyboost. After moving from 2GB to 4GB of RAM all my games perform as well as they did on XP if not better, and Vista really began to shine. With 2GB I would experience some slowdowns when Quality Settings were maxed in games like Quake 4 and Oblivion.

There is a new control panel, but don't do what we all did with the XP Control Panel and just revert back to Classic. Give the new one a try.

Anything you can type in the "Run" box you can also just type into the search built into the Start Menu.

There are some nice additions here and there that I appreciate such as system uptime listed in Task Manager and the throughput rate addition to file transfer dialog boxes.

I have not had any crashes, blue screens, or driver issues.

[Thrax]

Just realize that if you jump to 4GB of memory, Windows Vista 32bit will only use 3GB. To run a full 4, you must use 64bit which presents numerous issues in its own right.

[MathsPar]

You can expect slower performance in games over XP, irritating popup boxes, random crashes and sluggish interface performance!

Hehe guessing you're not a fan then. Not too bothered about playing high spec games now cause I'm saving my money again after this build, also have final year of University coming up. Hopefully by the time I buy some games Microsoft will have sorted most things.

Normally when I'd format my hard drive and had to use old XP I found it pretty rubbish til I downloaded Service Pack 2 so maybe Vista might really improve once Microsoft patch everything up.

[Madball]

What I don't like about Vista is its poor wireless performance. The connection is frequenly dropped and slower than other computers on my wireless lan. Its very annoying, especially when that's about all I use my laptop for.

Besides that, I haven't had any problems. It seems plenty fast to me on my 1.8ghz AMD w/2gb ram.

[MathsPar]

What I don't like about Vista is its poor wireless performance. The connection is frequenly dropped and slower than other computers on my wireless lan. Its very annoying, especially when that's about all I use my laptop for.

You know I did find that a lot when I used a laptop with Vista Basic on it although I just assumed it was a rubbish laptop.

[tmh88]

Same thing happened to me with the wireless until I upgraded my drivers. Haven't lost my connection since.

[Sledgehammer70]

Same thing happened to me with the wireless until I upgraded my drivers. Haven't lost my connection since.

I had an issue the first day I used Vista, but like normal I updated all my drivers and never had an issue again.