I am impressed.

With Vista, for a simple and probably daft reason.

After installing Vista on my RAID array (which worked flawlessly as mentioned in the Techoff.) and reinstating all my settings from the migration wizard (which worked so well as to reinstate my office settings before I reinstalled office, so that when I did reinstall office e-mail etc... was already there!) I set about copying the 100GB or so of music and videos which had been backed up to my USB hard disk.

Which was taking a long time, so I went to bed - being responsible I turned the machine off.

So I turned the machine back on this morning and the copying resumed! Now I know off means sleep / hibernate but I was impressed that it could be put to sleep and woken up while copying without making a single complaint.

Plus it's all pretty, goes faster than XP and can finally burn recorded TV to DVD natively. Woo!

I'm officially, a huge fan. Before I was just giving y'all the benefit of the doubt.

(cue the trolls: ... predicted responses "My Ubuntu Server does that, all it took was a couple of scripts." "apple has done that since 1938", "Vista is l4m3 because it doesn't let me watch the p0rn I downloaded, but my custom built linux box can strip the DRM so that r00lz!")

Good to hear that Vista is generallay an improvement: I just ordered my new desktop with Vista pre-installed.
Now I just have to wait 9 working days while they build and test it

Thanks for the positive info.


Herbie

Ion Todirel wrote:

Thats nothing, try to suspend computer when you write something to a DVD and then resume..., thats cool.

Or try it while you are running a format

Or a defrag

ScanIAm wrote:



Ion Todirel wrote: Thats nothing, try to suspend computer when you write something to a DVD and then resume..., thats cool.

Or try it while you are running a format

Or a defrag

ah, ah!
Vista defragments the hard drives automaticaly.

alwaysmc2 wrote:


ah, ah!
Vista defragments the hard drives automaticaly.

That sounds a bit scary, but I suppose they tested it.  I picked up a copy of the O&O product that does the same thing, and after losing a few installs, I still don't trust anything that tries to defrag constantly.

ScanIAm wrote:



alwaysmc2 wrote:  ah, ah! Vista defragments the hard drives automaticaly.

That sounds a bit scary, but I suppose they tested it.  I picked up a copy of the O&O product that does the same thing, and after losing a few installs, I still don't trust anything that tries to defrag constantly.

Really?  I have been using O&O for a couple of years now and I gotta say, it works pretty well for me.

Well, with one minor caveat, I exclude folders that I store my raw home video avi's on.

Big Avi's (mine are 10 - 40 gig) make the thing choke for some reason, well not really chock, more like crawl.

I was using a Mirrored Raid setup (hey, easy backups, right?) and something went terribly wrong with my sh*tty ATI All In Wonder card.  The end result was that one of the drives was hosed and would never recover.  The other, mirror drive was behind on it's mirroring so while It restored, but I lost some stuff.

I haven't seen a BSOD or blackscreen since I got rid of that crappy ATI card, so it might be worth a try to reinstall O&O (until I install vista).

Dr Herbie wrote:

I just ordered my new desktop with Vista pre-installed.
Now I just have to wait 9 working days while they build and test it

Herbie

What did you order?

irascian wrote:



Dr Herbie wrote: I just ordered my new desktop with Vista pre-installed. Now I just have to wait 9 working days while they build and test it Herbie

What did you order?

I went with Evesham in the end; my work PC is an evesham and I haven't had any problems plus they came top in the PCPro consumer poll this year. Nearly went with Chillblast, but decided to stick to what I (kind of) know.

Got the Solar Base 7000 with as many extras as I could afford -- I think I went overboard with the graphics as I'm not really a gamer.

Main points:  2 Gb RAM, NVIDIA GeForce PX8800GTX graphics card, twin 400Gb hard drives (RAID 0).  Only a 2.4 Core 2 Duo Intel chip, but I find that the CPU isn't the bottleneck these days. And Vista Ultimate.

I only buy a new PC every 5 or 6 years, so this one has got to last.

Now I'm sure that someone will tell me I should have gone elsewhere, that Evesham aren't the best spec around, or that I could build my own for less money, but it's too late to turn back, it's ordered!

Took approximately four months of saving my 'disposable income' (that's a laugh) and a Christmas bonus to afford this one.  Not buying anything new for a while.

Herbie

That's an impressive sounding machine.

I find the hardest thing to choose when building a new computer is the motherboard. I'm picky about how quiet my PC is (http://www.silentpcreview.com is very useful)  so the case, CPU cooler and especially the power supply are also hard to choose.

Man, I love getting a new computer.  It's fast.  It always has massive amounts of free drive space that you think you'll never use, and you haven't 'crapped it up' with installs, uninstalls, reinstalls, driver updates, etc.

I usually use my tax money ever 2-4 years to get a new one, but my media center/server is starting to fall apart so....

Last time I bought a machine (the one I'm sitting at now) I just went to PC World (computer superstore) and bought a Compaq Presario off the shelf -- not a spectacular machine by any standards.  It's lasted about 5 years and while it's still serviceable, it's getting a little sluggish for my needs.

A lot of my tech friends/collegues sneered at me for buying from a superstore, and for not buying from some obscure techie company or for not building my own, but for me the PC is simply a utility object.  I don't really care about what goes on inside.  I'm the same with cars.

This time I decided to treat myself - I was in a depression after a minor car crash that morning and needed cheering up and something to take my mind of the crumpled car panels (stupid snow and ice on the roads! ).

Herbie

Get this, I was trying out a beta of Windows Dreamscene and thought I'd just chuck a 200mb wmv at it to see what it would do.

Vista froze... Not a good experience, but just as I was about to hit the good old reset button, the screen goes black, then up pops a nice little balloon telling me that my video card driver had failed, and Vista had recovered from it for me!!!!

It then proceeded to notify MS about the issue.

I was flabbergasted... Kudos to Microsoft for their efforts on this OS, it truly is the greatest. So long BSOD.

Admittedly I think I'm still running a beta video card driver, but Vista just takes it in it's stride... Fantastic.