what's the deal with Vista these days?

The Unavoidable

The Unavoidable

jättebög
May 27, 2008
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Umeå, Sweden
How is it coming along? I just might be getting a new computer in a month or so, and all the ones I'm checking out all ship with Vista. Sure one could install XP on it, (don't know where I'd find one of those though) but is Vista really as bad as the word was back when it was launched? Surely by now just about all developers have gotten proper Vista compability with all their products, right?

Anyone running it in their studios atm?
 
Yeah, I have thought about it but I'm a complete dolt when it comes to computers. I could probably get a friend of mine to help me out with it though, since he recently put together one for himself. Also I would be mainly be looking to get a laptop, so I guess that kind of rules that out. And yes, it would be for studio use only.
 
Windows XP is your best bet IMO. Vista nowadays may be more stable, but never did wonders for me in the audio department, XP is far more reliable in that area. Also Windows 7 is coming out this year and it's "supposed" to be the best windows ever :p I'm about to see that lol
 
It's not too difficult once you get your head around it really, there's only a few cable types and it's pretty difficult to botch anything up.

You probably won't be able to build a cheaper pc than something you can buy from a manufacturer though, but the thing is when you build one yourself you know what's going in it, so you can source better quality components.

But yeah, XP all the way until they make something better.
 
Beta testing Windows 7 over here. Cubase 5 is running well in 64 bit mode, feature parity with the Mac version is great, seems equally snappy in both operating systems on the same box.
 
+1 on XP. Vista was preinstalled on my new machine and I had to get rid of it as Cubase kept constantly freezing and I just couldn't make anything work on it. Sometimes the brand new quad core pc with 4 Gb memory had difficulties startin up. Even though I disabled alot of crap that runs in the background the ram was always eaten up by something and you could hear the hard disk crunching all the time.
Got rid of vista and installed XP. No problems since then.
 
Get whatever OS you want installed for now but Windows 7 is the shit. Its like Vista should have been and it performs as well as XP. You always should choose stability and compatibility over 'newness' if you are doing important shit on your computer but if you aren't upgrading until October or so, go directly to Win 7 IMO. And RAM is so cheap these days that Win 7 64-bit is a no brainer.
 
Well I got myself a new computer a year ago and all the new ones came with Vista so I closed my eyes and bought it. And I have no reasons to complain at all. I have the 32 bits and I never had any compatibility problems or whatever. Vista comes with many functions that look nice and all but for the audio are not necessary at all, so you take them off and the badtrip is over. And some say that the OS cannot read more then 3 gigs of ram but there is a way to tweak it in the dos window but I don't remember how but it can be found. And there are a couple of not bad ways to tweak the system shown on youtube.

And I know a dude who got the new computer with the Vista and then "downgraded" it for XP and some of his drivers are not working anymore and it is not something you want to do imho. I think it could be repaired but I am not one who will do it. :p

My machine is a 3gigs of ram, 350 gigs of stocking memory ( pardon the vocabulary ), with a external hard drive of 750 gigs and I am quite happy. The only bad thing I would say is that if you don't tweak your system at all and you have 350 gigs of storage, when you have around 100 free gigs left the machine starts to slow down. So this is why I mentionned the external hard drive that cost me around 120$. And I use Cubase and sometimes it freezes but I honestly think it is because sometimes I abuse it.

However, the stupid fans sucks ass big time! In my system there is only one and it is loud and very emo. Emo fans = crying too much! But fans are like 10$, I should get one. I know I could put up to three.
 
Moonlight_Seeker said:
Well I got myself a new computer a year ago and all the new ones came with Vista so I closed my eyes and bought it. And I have no reasons to complain at all. I have the 32 bits and I never had any compatibility problems or whatever. Vista comes with many functions that look nice and all but for the audio are not necessary at all, so you take them off and the badtrip is over. And some say that the OS cannot read more then 3 gigs of ram but there is a way to tweak it in the dos window but I don't remember how but it can be found. And there are a couple of not bad ways to tweak the system shown on youtube.
Click to expand...

I might be wrong here, but I think you have mixed up a couple of things here. The RAM limitation is actually a limitation of the 32-bit operating system, not Vista itself, and can not be tweaked. I think you have confused it with the file size limitation in FAT filesystems. FAT partitions can easily be converted to NTFS from the "dos window", thus getting rid of the file size limit.

And I know a dude who got the new computer with the Vista and then "downgraded" it for XP and some of his drivers are not working anymore and it is not something you want to do imho. I think it could be repaired but I am not one who will do it. :p
Click to expand...

This is a bit misleading, too. It's a fact that the driver base for Vista is still miles away from perfect, especially in our field of work. Your friend might have had problems, but you shouldn't tell people not to downgrade to XP on that basis. After installing a new operating system, you install new drivers that are designed to be used on that OS, so there is no way the drivers would have been broken because of installing XP :)
 
hehe well, jhakwe knows more then me. :p But now I will search that link about the 4 gigs of ram or fat.
All I can say is I don't have any problems. But I highly appreciate my external hard drive.

edit : Apparently if you do that in the Vista 32 bits->

1. Click on the start menu, and type CMD.
2. Right click on the Command Prompt, and Run as Administrator.
3. Type "BCDEdit /set PAE forceenable" in the command prompt.
Click to expand...

And then you re-open the computer, apparently you will have 4 gigs of ram. Maybe someone who knows more then me can confirm?

edit II : But now I wonder if going from Vista 32 bits to XP with a computer who came with Vista 32bits is easy and wise?
 
This is just a guess but i reckon that's just a DOS command to make the amount of ram show up right. My system shows 3GB or RAM in some places, 4GB in others, but i drfinitely have 4GB, and it's def all being used
 
If I were you I might even take a beta W7 rather than Vista. After running Vista for a year on a hi spec machine and still finding it slowing me down, it had to go! I discovered it was all the minor features that were wrong with it that eventually ground me down into my reinstall of XP. And here I shall be staying until windows 7 comes out with its first service pack. Until then windows 7 will stay on vmware to be poked at.
 
Moonlight_Seeker said:
hehe well, jhakwe knows more then me. :p But now I will search that link about the 4 gigs of ram or fat.
All I can say is I don't have any problems. But I highly appreciate my external hard drive.

edit : Apparently if you do that in the Vista 32 bits->



And then you re-open the computer, apparently you will have 4 gigs of ram. Maybe someone who knows more then me can confirm?

edit II : But now I wonder if going from Vista 32 bits to XP with a computer who came with Vista 32bits is easy and wise?
Click to expand...

Check the Microsoft Knowledge base article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929605

Yes, that may make a 32-bit Vista report all of your installed 4GB's, but on a 32-bit system, that's all you can get. Also notable in that document is the system requirements for PAE-forcing to work.
 
Thing 1: Drop 32-bit as soon as you can.

Thing 2: Unless you're at least as patient as I am with computing engine bullshit, you probably can't go 64-bit right now. I'm at the edge of my patience with an OS that has been ready for 64-bit computing and terabytes of RAM for years, so I'd hate to see what Windows is able to pull off.

Thing 3: Don't be afraid of building your own computer. It's bloody easy, as long as you follow a few simple rules - things like 'keep yourself grounded', 'follow instructions', 'no more to drink than you'd have before driving' - and treat things as the expensive motherfuckers they are. You'll save tons of money, learn more, and have control over *everything* in your box.

Thing 4: The *one* happy Windows user I know (yeah, an odd one) claims that Windows 7 will be a lot along the lines of what Vista should have been, and he already enjoys the beta... then again, he only leaves his room for class and runs Server 2008 on his desktop (hosting several other systems as VMs, for reasons I'm not clear on), so I'm not sure what to make of his impressions.

Jeff
 
I've ran Vista on my recording computer since the week Vista started shipping 2 years ago.

With Vista 32 bit Home premium, it's been rock solid.

I installed SP1 a couple weeks ago and my M-Audio Profire wouldn't work at all, even with the correct drivers. I ended up having to do a system recovery to get back to regular Vista and everything is fine since.

I think with OS's, as with most things, experiences vary. I can say that when I ran XP for audio, it was way more buggy and Nuendo would crash VERY often.

My current computer setup with Vista has proven to be the most reliable and stable setup I've ever had.

As with all threads related to Vista and all those who bash it, I truly am puzzled to hear anyone say XP worked better...For me it's been the complete opposite.
 
I personally had to stop doing computer service for people as soon as it came out. Day-of-release was not a happy time for my phone, and I cut off ties with several people who - despite my warnings - went out and bought Vista without considering system requirements, stability of new products, or the fact that they'd want to use their computer again someday.

Comparing stability between Windows versions is... what's the phrase... an Asian dick-size competition? Same goes for security, although (because of Microsoft's new driver certification policy) Vista 64-bit won't be as horribly nerfed as XP 64-bit.

Using Vista for audio requires removing all features that make Vista 'better than' XP. In any case, a copy of XP from the local university bookstore or used software company and a Vista upgrade can easily be cheaper than a full, non-upgrade version of Vista, and upgrading will probably be easier than downgrading.

Jeff
 
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