[TheNameless]

People, I had to remove a crapload of flaming, please keep your insults to yourself -- your opinions are welcomed, but calling others names is not necessary, never is.Thank you.

[benjamin89]

[quote:98ac0a1cb8]Hey im a Vista beta tester for a website and I can tell you that alot of PC worlds rubbish about 1 gig ram and such is just for utter money making www.vistababble.com for more![/quote:98ac0a1cb8]First of all, I am on Windows Vista RC1 right now, and Vistababble is wrong, I would not run Vista without 1GB of RAM, PC World is not bowing to the hardware manufactures on this one. Especially if you multitask.There are a lot of people complaining about the speed "downgrade" as some have called it. First, this is not the only operating system that requires better hardware, macs, linux, all have needed faster hardware on new systems. Second, the performance hit is not noticeable on a modern cpu (mine is an Athlon 3200+). In my unscientific tests, most programs run at about the same speed as they do on Windows XP. Some programs like, Office 2007 Beta2 run faster on Vista. Games do have less frame rate, but in my unscientific tests it is not noticeable during game play. However, for the few games that I can notice, I blame that on my beta drivers from nVidia. As for Aero, once again the performance hit is not noticeable, and for programs that it is, although I have yet to encounter one, one can set Vista to go to Basic GUI whenever that program is ran.One person complained about program compatibility issues, I have only noticed this with programs like Firewalls, or AntiVirus, or any other program that needs a special driver to install. Most regular programs, like Photoshop, Games, Word, will run just fine on Vista.

[smk2259]

I have been running Vista in all it's incarnations since the first public release. the current 5744 build is only OK. As I send this comment on the Vista booted drive my poor PC is using 516 megs of ram out of 1 gig. It is an incredable memory hog. Doing the same functions on XP Pro uses 149 megs. Turning off glass on Vista drops it to 210. Unless you have a PC that is over built for XP you will be unhappy with Vista. I plan on building a new PC late in 07 when the new video cards that support DX10 have been reasonableised (insane prices reduced) and the quad core chip sets are released. Vista is not for average home PC people running emachines, it simply will not work. I am glad I tried it before I bought it. As usual kiss all your printers keyboards scanners goodbye, like you did when you "upgraded" to 98. Hold off on Vista till you get a new 850 watt, 4gig memory, quad core 1 gig ram video card, SATA2 hard drives and a fan the size of a window unit.

[techie4fun]

I'm fine with XP.Thanks for the info PC World.

[hockeyrox20120]

What a load of crap, i just bought a dell inspiron 640m last summer for $2000!!!! Just to find out that it won't be able to run Vista Aero because of it's intel GMA 950. I have a core duo t2400 processor, 1 gb of ram, and more. It's just because of the GMA 950. I advise Microsoft to do something about this because if a $2000 laptop that's one year old won't run Vista well. I'll need to win the lottery if i want something for vista to last.

[Docusa]

EVERYONE STOP WHINNING ABOUT VISTA! IT IS STILL GOING TO SELL AND MICROSOFT IS GOING TO SELL MANY COPIES, BECAUSE IT IS THE STANDARD! IF YOU DON'T BUY IT, 4MILLION OTHER PEOPLE WILL! SO IN THAT CASE, YOU NOT BUYING IS IRRELEVENT!

[jh640s]

I am currently running Windows 98SE on my system, an IBM Aptiva 595. 128mb RAM, 600 MHz processor. This computer is slow at times, but it is all I need for my purposes (managing home finances, email, word processing, general Web surfing, and online music). Vista may be the flashiest, latest offering from Microsoft, but I am staying with 98SE for the foreseeable future. I've had this computer seven years and had a Win95 system before that (8mb RAM, 200 MHz processor). I firmly believe in staying with technology that works well for me, despite its being years out of date (read technologically old or even ancient). My only real system upgrade since purchasing this computer was going from dialup to broadband (DSL) about two years ago.

[Docusa]

[quote name='jh640s']I am currently running Windows 98SE on my system, an IBM Aptiva 595. 128mb RAM, 600 MHz processor. This computer is slow at times, but it is all I need for my purposes (managing home finances, email, word processing, general Web surfing, and online music). Vista may be the flashiest, latest offering from Microsoft, but I am staying with 98SE for the foreseeable future. I've had this computer seven years and had a Win95 system before that (8mb RAM, 200 MHz processor). I firmly believe in staying with technology that works well for me, despite its being years out of date (read technologically old or even ancient). My only real system upgrade since purchasing this computer was going from dialup to broadband (DSL) about two years ago. > > Dude you will have to upgrade soon, cause there is no more support for Win95 or 98 or Milli! So you will need to or you are going to have many problems in the foreseeable future!

[Cosmo]

I don't see why anyone would have to upgrade from Win95 or Win98. There are no more people writing viruses that attack that operating system, that's why I keep two of my computers with Win95 and Win98 around. They are still useful, and I see no reason to upgrade the hardware just to upgrade to WinXP, let alone Windows Vista.

[dacohenz]

[quote name='Docusa']Dude you will have to upgrade soon, cause there is no more support for Win95 or 98 or Milli! So you will need to or you are going to have many problems in the foreseeable future! > > You really don't need to upgrade, Microsoft will no longer be adding security patches and fixes for W98 and ME. W98 and ME will run fine as long as your PC is still running. If you have a computer running W98 or ME, the odds are that your computer wouldn't be Vista capable anyway. dave

[dacohenz]

Most people with any knowledge will not upgrade to or buy a PC with Vista loaded on it until Microsoft works out a majority of the bugs. I personally won't load Vista on my main computer for at least a year. Most businesses will not upgrade as well until the drivers problem is taken care of. The same thing happened with XP, a lot of businesses and smart consumers waited until XP's bugs were worked out. Down the road, Vista will be fine and the majority of computers will be running it as the OS, but I believe this will take longer than XP's popularity because of the expense of upgrading your current PC, the pricing on PC's loaded with Vista, and the price of the Vista software.Dave

[Irkos]

From what I can recollect, an OS job is file management, so I'd say stop harping about increasing performance, which is for other companies to do or other product lines to work out.

[mrgarrett]

It seems the single biggest question regarding Vista for personal computer users who are fairly content with their current XP systems is: Should I upgrade? Despite all the known Microsoft OS issues, at least XP for most people is not so painful an experience that we are desperate, frustrated, and frantically jumping to the next upgrade unlike the case for previous versions. In my analysis, the security, networking, and internal re-engineering of the OS is the most significant, valuable, and important feature in support of the OS to Vista upgrade. However, as Microsoft surely realizes, that's not exactly an exciting, inspiring, and compelling reason. I think they were savvy in combining the enhanced visual elements to the Widows OS to make the upgrade more "gratifying" and giving it that "wow" factor of the new and improved. Overall, to most people, I feel the upgrade issue is one of comfort and gentle roll-out verses a frantic race to convert or sink the boots into the ground taking the "I'll never upgrade, ever" approach. For average home users with a well tuned XP system there's no immediate need to go thought the cost and expense of upgrading. However, if a new computer purchase is needed or would be welcomed, it would be prudent to at least get a Vista capable computer preferrable with at least an "upgrade" certificate if you don't feel like waiting. Personally, I'll probably upgrade my system to Vista "just because" since I'm a techie head and like to have the newest and best available in at least that area of my life. It runs well on my existing system (HPZD7000 laptop) as best as I can tell from running the various Beta versions but I'm clearly aware that it's a luxury and not a need due to any specific, immediately compelling reason.

[desk51]

I don't know what gives by everyone over Vista. What no gets is that only part of Vista is really an OS. Without the 8 gb of flash memory that everyone seems to forget it is really hard to know what Vista can or can do. What Gates wents is for all to own a laptop that are connected to a Media center/server in the living room. Gaates wants to own it and especially so now with the 360 video game platform. All every one has right now is the 40% less and 40% improvement with the Core2 to work from. Samsung who has claim to have a hard drive ready to roll out but has not. Once it does they have stated it should give a half an hour to hour boast in battery life. Probably not until service pack 2 is brought forward will it match Apple. Until a really new BIOS comes into play because the present has next to northing in relationship to memory Vista is going to be cripple. 64,000 question is how to sell computers without the parts?

[Alperstein]

Who in his right mind would pay $400 for a new operating system that's 10% to 30% slower than the old and still loaded with bugs?

[Cosmo]

If you are going to waste your money on Vista Ultimate, then you better have the hardware capable of keeping up with it. I don't see why everyone is complaining. Look at the game market. You need a high powered graphics card, a large amount of RAM, and a fast processor just to play a game, say BF2, smoothly. On top of that, it costs 50 bucks. I remember when games cost 5-20 bucks. It seems that Microsoft is thinking along the line of the game community, and that is what annoys me most.

[clermont1]

I tried vista on a p3 700 to see how it worked, at 640 megs of ram, it was slow, at 400 megs of ram it was about the same, at 256 megs of ram, it was like running xp on a p200, I tried to crash it by opening the iexplore 32 times at the same time, they were still 70 megs left in the cache at 256 megs of ram and still was able to do stuff, talk about memory management ! so folks, it means that you can run it on only 256 megs of ram on an old computer, just don't expect it to make your computer faster

[TRAJIK]

we all know vista is gonna dominate the marketI mean, it's the last OS!

[IceMan]

Would This Rig Run Windows Vista Well....?66B - MicroFlex 66BMid Tower Black ATX Case with 500W Silent Fan Power Supply17 Inch flat panel LCD monitorIntel Core 2 Duo E6600 2048MB DDRII Memory 667MHZ250GB Serial ATA 7200 RPM1.44 Floppy and All in 1 Card reader with sockets for CF/MD/SM/SD/MMC/MS/XD18X Dual Layer (8.5GB)Multi Format DVD Burner and 52X24X52 CDRW (2 Drives)On Board 10/100/1000 Network CardMicrosoft Internet Keyboard and Optical MouseIntel High Definition Audio subsystemNvidia GeForce 7950GT 512MBMLI 991Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic

[Cosmo]

Your computer will have no problem running Vista.