Zen Internet Support Forum

Hello redbutcher,

Thanks for your posting, its interesting to hear other peoples experience with Vista, your hardware is obviously much more well suited to the Vista hardware requirements than my system. The overall score of 3.7 says it all in contrast to my 1.0? LOL :-)

Ivan

The scoring is a benchmark

5 being the most powerful readily available PC when Vista was supposed to be launched (last year) hence the fact that you can score over 5

I guess I'm lucky, my score is 4.6. I don't find any speed problems now, but at first I did. Most of my early issues were hard disk related, it always seemed to be running. I found my issues were were due to Defender doing auto scans at start-up, shadow file back-ups, full back-ups and antivirus doing scans etc. I still have them all running, but now they have made their initial saves, they have speeded up no end. I also do regular disk clean-ups and defrags. Now, after about 2-3 mins of disk activity after a boot, Vista settles down and runs smoothly and fast.

I thought at first it was virtual memory. I had 2 sticks of 512mb DDR4 RAM and thought Vista needed more. So, went out and purchased some more. My overal score actually went down. It was 4.7 with 2 sticks, but 4.6 with 4.

Here is my Vista Software scores:

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And for the contrast, here are my scores:

 

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8000 Active
Draytek 2800
Linksys WAP54GX with SRX

Quick update: Dymo have released a beta driver for the Dymo 320. Loaded it and it runs fine on Vista Premium. Hope this helps...

First impressions....so far so good...however the lack of drivers has caused me a few problems....but all sorted now! Probably will have a dual bootable partition structure for both Vista/XP to allow for the older games to be played. Very few older games or third party software (mostly older than 9 months) work well with Vista if at all?

So far XP pro is best.....time will tell?

Hello,

After having put so much hard work into getting Vista Ultimate to work on my system only to have it crash & burn over some simple DLINK ADSL modem drivers, I've decided to leave Vista for atleast another 6months. Will probably reconsider again around August or September of 2007, hopefully by that time most of the driver related issues will have been ironed out or vendors caute up and written specific vista drivers.

**My problem is I dont want to buy a complete new system just for vista but I could upgrade in terms of extra new RAM plus a new more powerful graphics card but I wouldnt get much change from £350. So its not a cheap upgrade but there again its still cheaper than a new system. Thats vista for you GWB (genuine windows bloatware)??

**As I've said before Vista is VERY like AppleMac OS X which goes to prove that even Microsoft cannot reinvent the wheel. I'm almost tempted to go down the Mac OS route but its fraught with compatibility problems (between MS & Mac file exchanging) & a steep learning curve so I'm not motivated to do that. Hay Ho!! nothing is straight forwards is it !!!

Ivan

Have you got a link for the Dymo beta driver please? Dymo just keep telling me that they are working on the driver for my 320 - but they have changed the 'ready by end of March' message to 'ready by end of April' so I'm not holding my breath :(

 

Vista will run with 512Mb RAM, that's what I've got. It eats memory, I'll be in Bowlers this Saturday for 2Gig RAM. My machine is not happy when Adobe is running along with any other window!

One problem I've got, don't know if anyone else has come across it, Vista just will not save my mouse settings. No matter what I do, whenever I restart PC my mouse resorts to default settings. It's a brand new PC, dual core athlon, new microsoft cordless mouse. I have to go into mouse settings every time and change the cursors for some reason. When I click mouse and open the screen, the cursors I choose are still displayed, I just have to click ok.

 My AVG is fine with Vista, not had any probs at all but zonealarm is a no no, doesn't like it one bit. There are a few other programs which are incompatible, couple of them the patches worked (Roxio for example - patch worked fine) so I've left them on my old XP PC.
 

Hello,

A couple of things to mention with regards to Vista,

No.1 I read an article on the Guardian Online technology section (suppliment) about RAM and Vista. The article says DON'T buy more than 3Gigs of physical RAM for use with Vista because anything above 3GB's is a waste as Vista wont use it. (many people have been recommending 4GB's of RAM so don't fall for that as its just not true, you gain big fat zero and waste £50 to boot).

No.2 Actually the Windows Vista Firewall is far better than any of the previous built-in firewalls such as XP. The Vista Firewall is actually quite reasonable, the only thing it really seemed to lack was a more user friendly GUI so one could work easily with it. I found a nice free-bee add on tool that allows the Vista Firewall to be used much more easily.

See Vista Firewall Control by Sphinx Software. (sorry! dont have the URL to hand, but a quck search should find it easily enough.) Its a nice tool for vista too.

Ivan

Thanks for the heads up on the firewall program, looks promising.

The 3Gb RAM thing sounds like nonsense. Vista will use all the RAM it needs.

Most people will never need more than 3GB so would not benefit from having more. Although having said that superfetch will utilise idle RAM like there's no tomorrow 

 

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37756 

ive been using vista for a couple of months now and im very impressed with it, the main feature i like is the resource monitor (the button at the bottom of the performance tab of task manager) and you can see what files are being written to, read from, how much data particular processes are sending over the network. Much better than XP in this regard. looks much nicer too :)

Hello thesimo,

I think weather you like or dislike Vista, its extremely subjective. Personally my view of Vista Ultimate remains largely a negative one. Vista is massive, its a joke its total bloatware of the most excessive kind. Its definitely without question the biggest version of windows ever, it has a vastly increased size over say windows XP pro. 

The Vista hardware requirements are far more demanding (not that this in itself is that important, its an obvservation) than before which means Vista is utterly aweful on old hardware that previously ran XP quite nicely. It feels to me like there was a conspiracy (an agreement) between Microsoft and the hardware (PC makers) to bump up the hardware requirements for Vista in order that people had to (were forced) buy completely new hardware (new PC's) just inorder to have and run vista.

**Frankly, I instensly dislike what Microsoft have done with Vista, DON'T like the horrible eye candy design, hate the bloaded split start menu and search function, hate the complexity of the darn thing. Microsoft have done their usual trick of re-arranging many previoulsy very useful functions down several menu layers in Vista and even removed some completely.

**I instensley dislike what MS have done to windows shell or windows explorer, the file system is dreadful and the use of virtual folders only makes even worse.

**OK!! one good thing is that Vista does now have a genuinely good quality firewall built into it.

** In my opinion I would still say that Windows XP remains the best version of windows ever, that sadly Vista is NOT a step forwards for windows as an operating system. And there is little or no hard evidence that Vista is more secure that XP.

**I cannot see myself upgrading to Vista in the near future, I removed it from my machine and restored XP and I'm happier with XP (horses for coures as they say).

Ivan

I bought a Notebook with Vista Home Basic on it about two weeks ago. I managed to get a BSOD doing a windows update and had to roll it back :) (never ever had a BSOD with XP)

I must admit that I do like the look of Vista and it gives the impression of it being XP in a new dress. All the software I used with XP as installed and worked perfectly so far and I have managed to find drivers and software for all my hardware.

I would not have bought vista as an XP upgrade but I am quite happy with it on the laptop it came on although I had to upgrade from 1Gb of memory that the machine came with to 2Gb  as it was into virtual memory as soon as I ran any software. The 2Gb upgrade made a hell of a difference.

 

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Ken

Zen Active 8000

Middle age is when your classmates are so grey, bald and wrinkled that they don't recognize you.
-Bennet Cerf

Hello Ken,

I have installed Vista Ultimate a few times on a very good specification machine that ran XP Pro beautifully. But the Vista installation was a dreadful experience to put it mildly, it was so slow to install that at one point I thought it had hung or failed. Thats because the Vista install process hides everything it does from the user, unlike the old days of earlier windows versions.

**Frankly, I think Vista is PANTS!! its horrible, in fact I would go so far as to say its just about as worse a version of windows as the old windows ME.

**Ken, I think you have been extremely lucky with your laptop & vista home basic. Vista is still dreadfully fraught with problems & bugs & wierd & wonderful glitches.

Vista has a MASSIVE FOOT PRINT!! its horribly resource hungry & will gobble system resources for breakfast so too speak. Actually thats the problem a) most retail laptops & notebooks are way under specification for Vista hence having to add the extra 1GB of Ram b) Yes! 2GB's of Ram is the minimum hardware specification for Vista but nobody will tell you that. NOTE:- Microsoft first demonstrated Vista on machines running x4 GB's of RAM.

Vista is also horribly bloated for an operating system (Microsoft offical bloatware in my opinion), MS have just added way way to many features & functions. They have also done their usual trick of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, meaning that useful features in XP have been changed, renamed, or moved to menu locations 3 or 4 layers down so finding them is a pain in the backside, or some features have gone completely.

**Device driver compatibility remain an area of major problems for a vast % of Vista users, as both hardware & software companies are still playing catch up writing new drivers to work with Vista even 12months after the UK launch of the OS.

**Software compatibility with Vista (i.e. Vista compatible or Vista ready) is also a major problem

**Apart from the new Aero Glass interface I have seen little or anything that convinces me that I should move up from XP to Vista. I have been running XP Pro for 6 years soldily now & I have tweaked & tuned it to run as fast as I can and I am of the opinion that if it ain't broke dont try and fix it. No! I'm sticking with XP Pro until I have a good incentive to change.

**Its been stated that Vista cannot use more than 3GB of Ram anyway, I cannot remember what the precise technical reason were for this arguement. But there was a guardian technology article on this issue.

Ivan

I take it you don't like Vista then Ivan

When I bought the laptop I went for the Vista version because I have a now unused version of XP Pro in the cupboard just in case. I buy stuff from a little shop and have a very good relationship with the owner who told me that and I quote "Vista is ***" and he also took back the 1Gb of memory when I upgraded so I did not lose out there.

Since I went to 2Gb Vista as run quite well and as I already have machines running XP and linux it is also interesting. I remember Windows 95 giving many similar problems with the lack of drivers and under speced hardware too but we have to remember that new software including OS's come out to give hardware sales a needed boost and not for our benifit.

Do you remember when hardware was very expensive and we always needed to upgrade because the latest version of word or a new game would slow things down so much. then hardware suddenly became much cheaper (maybe to cheap) and PC specs rushed ahead and have coped well with new software for the last couple of years or so.

Microsoft are just redressing that balance

Two years ago a 1Gh laptop, very basic even then cost me £800, last week a 1.7Gh notebook (new word:) with every port I need plus a DVD writer cost me £399 and is far better in build quality  than that old rubbish asus was.

 If it was not for the software we now want an old 486 would be more than adequate.

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Ken

Zen Active 8000

Middle age is when your classmates are so grey, bald and wrinkled that they don't recognize you.
-Bennet Cerf