Vista and Office

[krissytgirl]

Hi :-)
Just wondering if anyone is getting Vista and/or the new Office? I'd be interested in hearing any opinions on the matter... specifically, the Home Premium Vista...what's it like, is it worth it, etc... If you upgraded, I'd love to know how smoothly it went :-)
Thanks!
Krissy

[Ecstatic]

I'm holding off for a few reasons.

1) A new server comes first: dual core P 3Ghz 2-4 GB RAM RAID 5 750 GB SATAII hd running Linux (you'll like that, Krissy).

2) Since I've been upgrading M$ PCs since, oh, DOS 3, I always wait until the product has been proven in the marketplace for at least six months and all the early bug fixes and patches are in.

3) For every $1 you spend on Vista, you'll drop at least $9 on hardware and software upgrades. System requirements for Vista (minimum):

1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 GB of system memory - that's just for the OS; you need 2 GB for basic operation and I'd recommend 4 GB for a real workstation (for running Photoshop professionally alongside multiple other apps)

40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space - d'uh, that's if you don't want to save anything; I think 250 GB is the real world minimum

Support for DirectX 9 graphics with:
WDDM Driver
128 MB of graphics memory (minimum - I'm told 256MB is more like it)
Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware
32 bits per pixel
DVD-ROM drive

4) In most cases, you don't want to try to upgrade an existing PC (it's doubtful you have the required hardware or that the motherboard will even accept the required upgrades); instead, you'll want to purchase a whole new PC.

[robin]

I'm holding off.

[deadparrot]

I'm on a Mac. :D

Although..it is an intel macbook. I could put Vista on ( I believe ). I haven't yet but have been thinking about it for gaming. As I have a copy of XP, I probably won't bother with Vista.

[WillowQueen]

I am aiming for a new PC, but I don't want to put Vista on it. It's the DRM crap they seem to enjoy pulling. All the bugs and stuff that they seem to take great delight in overlooking. Even though I have XP, I think it's truly unfair that you need XP as the existing OS to install Vista. So what happens if they don't have XP? They have to plop down over 100 bucks for an OS they're not going to use? Thanks Bill, you're a real pal.

[robin]

It's kinda like a MAC (http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/living/16555680.htm) :eek:

[Ecstatic]

PC users all over the world are touting today as Vista Day. Do you know what today is for Mac users?

































Tuesday.

[deadparrot]

"laughing at Vista day"

[syntax]

Vista was designed to handle the new wave of powerful hardware that's coming out...

all of my connections are still IDE :lol:

no point me spending the $220 until I get a machine that is upgradable with parts made AFTER 2003... :D

purely because I don't feel it's worth the money simply for the new fancy shmancy look.

But in tiiiiiime, in tiiiiiiime.

[icarus2112]

I feel almost guilty for not using a beta version of Vista that I got a few months ago after volunteering to be a test subject, but after I said yes and then looked into system requirements I decided not to try it out, it seemed it would max out my system a little too much and my video card was not up to standards.

Im going to upgrade my pc soon but not right away so Ill wait, I wonder if microsoft wants there beta version back? haha

[njlatintslover]

been running it for about 3 months... nothing to be excited about... I would wait before buying it

office on the other hand is worth it

[kwjones]

Well I tried Vista for about a minute and soon realize that it's a memory and cpu hog. You definitely want to have a dual core and 2 gig of ram to at least feel some type of speed. Anything least your system will be moving super slow. As far as Office 2007 I love it. I use the Office 2007 Enterprise Edition and must say that MS finally done a good job on this one. To me its worth its money

[WillowQueen]

I certainly can't run it on this thing. I mean I have XP on 256 of mem. It's already slow enough. No wonder it was so cheap.

[Ecstatic]

The first PC I used was a dual floppy Wang Office Assistant: no hard drive, virtually no RAM. The first PC I owned was a stunning Commodore, with a whopping huge 20 MEGABYTE hard drive and 640 KILOBYTES of RAM! Nowadays, my Dell Dimension 8200 with a 2.4 GHz P4 cpu, 1 GB of RAM, and a total of 1 TB (terabyte) of hard drives (4) is a wimp too frail to handle the new OS.

Time was when all you needed was WordPerfect 5.1 and Lotus 1-2-3.

Sheesh.

[krissytgirl]

Thank you all for your input :-) I really appreciate it...so nice to have a forum like this!

I suppose I'm probably going to wait until I get a new computer for Vista...but it seems like the Office 07 upgrade is worth it... :-) Guess it's time to go shopping!

Thanks again!
Krissy

[uriah]

Messed around with the prerelease for about 3 months before it came out and it's got some bugs in it but that may of been handled in the premier...It's like XP when you first get your hands on it...Pretty but I like the previous version better until you get used to it...Best bet...Most PC's are comming out now preloaded with XP...Some now are with Vista...Get your hands on a XP version that has the garantee it will be upgraded for free with Vista within the next 8 months like my new laptop I'm typing on now!!!by then all the bugs are worked out and your set stylin!!!

[deadparrot]

The first PC I owned was a stunning Commodore, with a whopping huge 20 MEGABYTE hard drive and 640 KILOBYTES of RAM!

I remember those days. First PC I saw was a Vic 20, first one I owned was a Commodore 64. First "actual" work type computer i had was a Mac 2vx. Now-a-days most thumb drives have more memory than what my older computer did.

Reading some of the specs for Vista blow me away. A little crazy.

[syntax]

The first PC I owned was a stunning Commodore, with a whopping huge 20 MEGABYTE hard drive and 640 KILOBYTES of RAM!

I remember those days. First PC I saw was a Vic 20, first one I owned was a Commodore 64. First "actual" work type computer i had was a Mac 2vx. Now-a-days most thumb drives have more memory than what my older computer did.

Reading some of the specs for Vista blow me away. A little crazy.

My Commodore had the disk drive...

all the kids would come to my place to play it, cause they had the stinky tape drive.

"LET'S PLAY A GAME!!!"

"YEAAAAH!"

*Waits 25 minutes to load*

"Nah this is shit, let's go and throw rocks at ants"

"YEAAAAH!"

:?

[deadparrot]

haha. so true syntax. Typing that run command in was about to set you into 4 bit pixel video game heaven......10 hours later..

[Ecstatic]

And remember the huge breakthrough of CGA color? Color!! Not just green or amber or white. Wow.

[versatileboy]

GGGGRRRRRR i am so fed up with MicroShite! 5 ys of development, and THATS the results? i mean, is Vista for imbeciles? desktop search-wtf??? all that photo-mdia mambo jambo i couldnt care less and the requirements are just ridiculous. i still use my pentium 2 400mhz with 200mb ram and win2000 and it does the job fine. i mean, what do all those dualcore people do anyways? running NASA? if ure not a gamer or edit movies todays computers are way to powerful regarded what is beeing done with them (namely running mp3s, surfing the nets and doing office work), its like driving to the shopping mall with an indy car. (hell, i still use my jolly good ole apple powerbook duo from, 1993 (?) for work...)
actually, i think Vista is a shame. they could have done a leaner, ´faster, better thing. of course they did it the MS-way. bloat as bloat can

[kwjones]

Unfortunately they put vista together to give the user a better experience. Its mostly because of people downloading MP3s, videos and images. even with Windows 2000 and XP I can basically run on a computer with a Pentium 2 CPU. Heck you can run a linux program from a CD, run a web browser, an office suite with less than 128MB of RAM and 2gig of hard drive space, a Pentium 2 and isn't prone to viruses.

[robin]

Learn from the experts (http://break.com/index/how_to_properly_load_vista.html) how it's properly done. :shock:

[WillowQueen]

Unfortunately they put vista together to give the user a better experience. Its mostly because of people downloading MP3s, videos and images. even with Windows 2000 and XP I can basically run on a computer with a Pentium 2 CPU. Heck you can run a linux program from a CD, run a web browser, an office suite with less than 128MB of RAM and 2gig of hard drive space, a Pentium 2 and isn't prone to viruses.
Yes, but isn't Vista and media players that might come with it supposed to screw you over because of the DRM. Meaning you can't play illegally downloaded media? One of the many main reasons I'm not touching it.

[kwjones]

You can play anything you like. DRM is a feature that's included in MP3s from certain online providers but there's also a alot more that doesn't included it into their catalog. Besides its easy to get around the DRM. Just use Record Anything. Its a software that records anything that is played through your soundcard, thus the DRM is gone....lol. But check out this article on reason why not to buy Vista
http://apcmag.com/5049/10_reasons_not_to_get_vista

[WillowQueen]

Well there you go. Some of those reasons I was already aware of... and more of a reason to not get it. Now I have reasons to flip off Gates if I crossed his path.

[travelling_fun_male]

Guess I'll weigh in here. I worked with an operating system called OpenVMS (or just VMS) years ago. Still allive, still quite viable. The O/S that Bill Gates ran his financials on at Microsoft for years before he trusted Windows NT.

Windows NT was built on VMS principles but not a very good job was done initially. With XP and Vista, Microsoft Engineering is catching on, but they still can't equal HP's OpenVMS, even today.

If people hadn't become enamoured with GUIs and Apple hadn't done such a poor job of countering Microsoft and critical junctures, OpenVMS might be the server operating system of choice today. Except for two things that happened in the interval:

Admins had less time to focus on maintaining their systems

Users accepted 2nd rate applications and operating systems - following a general disposable trend

Hardware became cheaper, so many features in the more sophisticated operating systems like OpenVMS migrated elsewhere, like into firmware.

Alternative operating systems appeared including Linux and Mac OS X.

I discovered while working at a company producing commercial security software that even though our product did not run on Macs, virtually all development was done on Macs. And this was a bunch of guys who truly understood the ins and outs of secure software development! Think about it.

Finally as I'm sure most reading this are wondering "what is he talking about and why am I still reading this?" I leave you with this little mystery:

What do you get when you add "1" to the acronym V M S ?

That's right! You get W N T as in Windows NT, Microsoft's first "next generation" operating system, from which Vista descends.

<Cue the Twilight Zone music>

[Trator]

Hi :-)
Just wondering if anyone is getting Vista and/or the new Office? I'd be interested in hearing any opinions on the matter... specifically, the Home Premium Vista...what's it like, is it worth it, etc... If you upgraded, I'd love to know how smoothly it went :-)
Thanks!
Krissy

Krissy, I heard it's still having a lot of issues. I did some reading about it, and I'd say to wait till at least 2008 to upgrade. Microsoft will issue updates throughout this year to fix the bugs. Also, I read on CNet that there really isn't much of advantage to upgrading at this point.

[Ecstatic]

I agree, Trator. I won't upgrade to Vista at least until sp1--if ever.

[krissytgirl]

Krissy, I heard it's still having a lot of issues. I did some reading about it, and I'd say to wait till at least 2008 to upgrade. Microsoft will issue updates throughout this year to fix the bugs. Also, I read on CNet that there really isn't much of advantage to upgrading at this point.

Thanks Trator :-)
I am waiting on Vista but going to try and upgrade office... I've heard mostly good from the few people I've talked to about the experience and I like that they have a 3 user office version :-)
Kisses,
Krissy

[flombago]

Use Linux whenever possible. Roll your own kernel. Paradise for hackers.