Why DON'T you use Vista?

This is not intended as flaim bait.

I have already tried Vista on three workstations and I have rolled each back to XP for various reasons.  There are two main reasons I cannot run Vista:

1. No support for SQL Server 2000.

2. Lack of hardware drivers for legacy devices, like HP 5550 officejet drivers.  (Bought this less than a year ago)

Why can't you run Vista?

sicRrh wrote:

Why can't you run Vista?

I can and do run Vista, and the final two issues I had with it have been solved this week (SPDIF passthrough solved by Creative's new drivers and I installed a hotfix that allows WMP11 to sync to my PDA's SD-card again).

XP is now officially only for testing and the occasional game on my machine.

I'll just wait for it to mature...

just compare xp rtm to currrent sp2, that's why i'll just wait ...

and lack of drivers is also a big factor

Why can't you run Vista?

The best PC I have at this time is a laptop with a 1.2mHz Pentium M (maybe 1.4; I can't remember off the top of my head) and 512MB of RAM. I'm fairly certain, even after upgrading to 2GB RAM, that it'll be as slow as molasses. Also, I don't have actual XP Pro CDs; just OEM Repair and Restore CDs with Norton Ghost images of the OS and OEM apps and utils. My experience has been that you had to have the install CD for the qualifying previous version of Windows to do a clean install with the Upgrade version, otherwise it would install over an existing Windows installation. I prefer clean installs whenever possible, but to do that with this laptop, I'm afraid I'd have to get the Full version of Vista.

Sorry, double post.

SwamiYogurt wrote:

Why can't you run Vista?

The best PC I have at this time is a laptop with a 1.2mHz Pentium M (maybe 1.4; I can't remember off the top of my head) and 512MB of RAM. I'm fairly certain, even after upgrading to 2GB RAM, that it'll be as slow as molasses.

I'm on a 3.5 year old Pentium 4 2.4ghz with 1GB of RAM and a Radeon 9600 running Vista Business with Aero enabled. It's probably not any faster than Windows XP usually was but it's certainly a lot smoother.

You could try borrowing someone's copy and dualbooting it without activation, if you really want to try it out.

Then again you're probably better off trying the Upgrade Advisor.

sicRrh wrote:

1. No support for SQL Server

That's logical.
You should install the express edition, Vista is a desktop and not a server OS after all!
Sql Server (except dev edition) didn't run on XP as well.
SQL server express is perfectly fine for development and you can still run a VPC image if you really need to do testing with the full blown server.

I run Vista on my desktop (my kids are using as a TV). I don't run it on my laptop though cause I have a PowerPC Powerbook. However I do run it also at work on my test machine cause our membership is getting Vista.

If someone would like to donate enough money so I can chuck my powerbook I'll get a Vista PC (BTW: Nothing wrong with Macs except you really can't code .NET on them I don't think).

1) Money (I'm a poor college student )

2) App compatibility (got one app that I need that's not vista-ready yet).

sicRrh wrote:

Why can't you run Vista?

because it lacks the proper drivers for my doomsday machine.

no, really, I have problems with my printer drivers: they load on Vista but their printer preferences dialog crashes and I can't use them.

I'm trying to find out if there's a way to work around this problem by writing a COM application that communicates with the driver services but it seems hard

sicRrh wrote:

Why can't you run Vista?

But I do run Vista....

For anybody that have problems with drivers - I don't know to what extent this trick works but I was able to use my network card with old XP drivers (because there was no vista driver).
Probably this will not work with graphics card/motherboard drivers but you can try it for peripheral devices like printer.

Any tech guy that can explain when XP drivers will work?

sicRrh wrote:


Why can't you run Vista?

I can't run Vista because I use Mac OS X, and the whole reason I switched was to avoid upgrade hell that comes with Windows. I'm tired of Windows updating itself over night only to corrupt itself. And then when I fix it, it kindly lets me know that I am up to date!

That's not the only reason, haha. I've actually used Vista, and I have to say that it is nice. But I don't feel like installing it on either of my Macs (I have 2 Intel Macs). I keep XP on one of them, but only for rare cases. I will be waiting a while before upgrading it to Vista.

That, and you ALWAYS wait to upgrade a Windows system (or to upgrade to it).

...You all knew that was coming

I don't because while my two machines are more than capable of running it (even my 3 year old machine) I don't have any strong reasons to upgrade at this time.

However, my next machine WILL run Vista.

sicRrh wrote:

Why can't you run Vista?

Because I'm still waiting for it to arrive. I bought a PC just before Christmas with a promise that I'd get Vista in the new year. I've followed all the instructions and I'm just waiting for it to arrive now.

I'm waiting until I build a new machine sometime soon then I'll buy Vista and dual boot Vista and XP.

It took a while for XP to be the most common OS in people's homes and it migth take even longer for that to happen with Vista because 98 was just so clumsy that most people wanted to get XP but now that XP is working so well there isn't that much reason for most people to switch to Vista unles they're geeks like us.