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I have Dell Inspiron E1505, 3gb RAM, 120gb 7200rpm drive, 256kb Radeon video. This notebook originally had XP on it (with 2gb). When I put Vista Ultimate on (3-4 months after Vista's release), I made sure I added a Lexar 8gb ExpressCard drive and put ReadyBoost cache on it. with this configuration, I resume from standby in 12-15 seconds, and startup from cold in 30-45 seconds. It is much, much faster with Vista.
Is your HP and Nvidia graphics card using shared system memory? I have seen several machines where using slower system memory really drags down a system, both XP and Vista.
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Well, I've had several Dell Laptops running vista an it runs without a problem, my experience with Vista has been a lot better than my experience with XP (and I have more that 10 years as a user, not saying vista, but overall PC user). Also have an assembled PC at home that used to have XP and upgraded it to vista with 2Gb RAM and an NVIDIA 512Mb, and it runs a lot better that what it used to with XP, the CPU is an AMD 64 x2.
So in the overall I prefer Vista, it's much more stable and at least I do better with the options and desktop features, I've coded against XP and Vista and like Vista better (.Net coding). Also as a gamming platform I prevents a lot of crashes I used to have with the same hardware on XP. So I guess that like some people are saying it all adds up to your hardware configuration and overall needs.
I have been using Vista since the first Beta and I really miss it at work (I have to use XP due to company policies).
But in a fast remark I tend to agree that Dell hardware so far has been the best for Vista. 
It's not enough to do your best, you must know what to do and THEN do your best.
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"Is your HP and Nvidia graphics card using shared system memory? "
Not sure but I will check when I get home from work. I won't ever buy HP again though, I've been
burnt for the last time (I got this one on sale and that is the only reason I bought it).
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TonyJ wrote: It has a NVIDIA graphics card installed ... I have had MANY blue screens of death.
Recently? Or at Vista release? I have nVidia throughout all my machines, including two laptops with Vista, one 32bit, one 64bit, and a desktop with 64bit Vista.
Unfortunately it took several months after Vista release to straighten out the graphics bugs that were introduced by last minute market forcing Microsoft to support OpenGL and vendor-specific advances. Originally Vista was to be DirectX/Direct3D only, and supported absolutely NO vendor extensions (the Apple method). What you saw was what you got. The last minute shift away from this stance between RC2 and Gold release was part of the Vista disaster and I have tried to explain my part in that too. It took months of bug fixes to reduce the occurance of bugs popping up in the video drivers, especially blue screens. It is hardest for laptop editions, because laptop nVidia relies on Vendor releases of drivers, not pure nVidia releases, thus making it very, VERY difficult to get a non-blue-screen Vista laptop in the first 6 months of release. Vendors caught up, and nVidia and ATI both caught up.
Newer blue-screens pop up now and then when vendors try to adapt in vendor-specific updates to Vista. Remember that Vista was not designed internally for this, so they basically handed the vendor a pointer to memory to "do as you please, but be careful." There is absolutely no protection from vista for the video driver because of this. The 3D vendor, nVidia, or AMD/ATI has the absolute power to kill your vista machine at will, most other drivers do not have this ability under Vista.
_________________________
Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau.
Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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"Recently? Or at Vista release? I have nVidia throughout all my machines, including two laptops with Vista, one 32bit, one 64bit, and a desktop with 64bit Vista."
I just had a blue screen a few days ago. Vista did an auto-update yesterday and one of the downloads was a nVidia patch ... we'll see how it goes.
It's just sad when your XP laptop with 1G RAM runs a graphic intensive WPF app MUCH faster than your Vista high end PC with 4G RAM.
What graphics card would you recommend for my Vista PC? I'm 100% sure what you described above is what is happening with my graphics card. Thanks for the info.
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I have one BIG piece of advice and this applies to all graphics systems ati, nvidia, intel, s3:
NEVER use Microsoft drivers. NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER **EVER**!!! get your vendor or OEM drivers. In the case of nVidia I have always used nVidia OEM universal drivers except for laptops. Even my laptop is a cheat, it is a modified OEM driver to support the mobile 8600gt much more stable than even the sony driver. every system I have ever had runs nvidia drivers Linux XP and Vista. 
_________________________
Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau.
Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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My XP laptop screams my WPF app and uses a nVIDIA 7400 ... my newer high-end HP desktop came with an nVIDIAGeForce 6150 SE nForce430 and is EXTREMELY slow at running the same WPF app and has MANY blue screens of death (I've had 3 in the last 3 days).
I blame HP more than I do nVIDIA because they claimed (verified?) my PC as VISTA ready. I will never buy another HP product again (only bought the last PC because it was on sale).
I'm going to go out and buy a newer nVIDIA graphics card that I know is VISTA compatible. I beleive the graphics card problem that you outlined is one of the main reasons VISTA has taken such a public relations beating.
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I think you nailed it when you brought hardware into the discussion regarding Vista. Hardware definitely plays a role in the performance of Vista, and any other current OS for that matter. If you skimp on hardware, you're not going to have a good experience whether it's Vista, XP, Linux, or other. I've been using Vista for over a year, and have had a very positive experience with it. The only issue(if you can call it an issue) was learning where to find some of the things that were moved around. Very smooth interface and performance with rock solid reliability.
I currently have three machines running Vista:
A home built 3.2ghz 64bit dual core, dual nVidia video, 8gig memory running Vista U64 SP1 (14 months)
An HP DV9000 Laptop 2ghz 64bit dual core, nVidia video, 2gig memory running Vista U64 SP1 (10 months)
A Dell Inspiron 530 2.4ghz quad core, ATI video, 4gig memory running Vista Home Premium SP1 (4 months)
I've had no problems whatsoever on any of these boxes, they have been rock-solid with zero instability or blue screens. But as you can see, none of the hardware listed is lacking. All of these boxes are maxed out on memory and run the fastest CPU the mobo supports. Also, all of the hardware (including my homebuilt box) is quality big-company-name components. I learned a long time ago that quality components cause far fewer problems. A $15 network card will cost you several times more in time and frustration than a $100 network card. It's even more true for video cards. You simply can not slap the cheapest parts on the shelf together and expect a solid performing machine and good user experience, Vista or otherwise.
BFinney
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Yeah... This hardware issue just gave some sense to me... In my case, I also have a good Vista experience partly because of an expensive desktop machine in the office. But when I compare it to my home PC, well, Vista did gave me issues... I mean both PCs have quite similar specs but the home PC was the cheaper brand... (AMD is not 'at all bad' compared to Intel, right?)
think fast, be brave and dont stop.
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Very bad experience with Vista. Hardware:
QX6850 OC (3.3GHz)
4GB 800MHz DDR2
nVidia 260GTX OC (need timings? I doubt it'd be relevant)
320GB 7200rpm hdd
Tried Vista Ultimate x64. It snailed like the slowest snail I ever witnessed - and then we're not even talking about The Annoyance (bad enough to deserve capital letters)
Now running XP Pro x64 like a charm. There aren't even any driver problems.
IMO Vista has no excuse to run bad on that hardware (it runs Crysis better than Vista, ha!)
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I'm using Vista on a Dell Precision Workstation and it works fine for me, but I noticed a lot of issues trying to use some of the software I often use for WinXP, so I decided to install a second hard drive where I have WinXP.
For all of my development tasks I use WinXP most of the time.
Hardware config: Dell Precision T3400, Intel Core Duo E4500 (2.20GHz/800Mhz/2MB L), 3GB DDR2 SDRAM ECC, 256MB PCIe x16 nVidia NVS 290, 160GB SATA Hard disk.
Best regards,
Lizandro Campbell
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that Bill G eats Churros. Oh, and to try the Conquistador - it runs snug.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire!
Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)!
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VCF Blog
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In my 4 months of intensive use of Vista Home Premium SP1 (got it at home as Toshiba OEM preinstall) I can't say that it's better than XP because it has it's own quirks, but XP isn't better either because some Vista gui elements are better and I use Vista's quick search often.
Vista's adoption experience - I'm quick learn, but people around me have hard time coping with even computer logic itself  , let alone confuse them with new versions of OS (they are better off with XP's wide known gui).
All programs that I use on XP work also on Vista without a problem, and I haven't found one yet that doesn't work.
XP downsides - it's a bit old now
XP upsides - great software support in all areas
Vista downsides - Nero 7 doesn't work with Vista and I don't wanna spit $1000000 for Nero 8 Ultra right now.
Vista upsides - Alcohol 120% works AOK (even a bit older version, 1.9.5.3823, only needed new SPTD driver first).
What should be definitively fixed in Vista? - UAC is useless, and the lack of free margin space between icons in folders (it's hard to select several files in one stroke).
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I more or less agree with the title. Vista is a little better, certainly no worse than XP, but it's not that much better to make it a compelling upgrade by its own functions and features. I usually try to defend it, but don't argue it to better than XP. It's usually a waste of time though. It's has become "cool" to hate Vista and people mindlessly reiterate what they hear about it, adding their own hyperbole and misinformation to the mix.
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I have XP. It does what I want. Why should I pay money to change?
Expategghead
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I use both (on different machines). On initial use of Vista, the backup and restore facility didn't work with my Freecom NAS, although sorted by having mapped drives rather than UNC paths. I hate the UAC but I understand what it's for so I applaud MS for having it. Security is often a necessary pain.
I also don't like the fact that you can't drag and drop files into VS2005 like you can with XP.
But I'm now settled with it. I wouldn't be happy with it at work though.
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An option that opinions are for those that have used it for more than a month and eitehr liked it or not. Most people attack it without ever trying it or try it for week and find it is a bit different and consider it bad.
Vista is the best version (althought I have not checked out Windows server 2008 yet) Microsoft has released. With the proper hardware and drivers Vista 64 is more stable, fast and and complete than any prior version (although I do not remember the stablity of Windows 3.11, but we will just leave that out ). Additionally, it may be more secure.
Most of the moaning and complaining I have heard is usally due to running it on old hardware with little RAM or is using a bad driver, which is not Microsoft's responsiblity and they should not have the blame.
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Rocky Moore wrote: although I do not remember the stablity of Windows 3.11
That's because there was none.
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Have you not heard of Windows for Workgroups , Shame on you.
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srobertson wrote: Have you not heard of Windows for Workgroups , Shame on you.
Are you under the impression WFW was stable? 
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My mistake, I thought you'd implied there was no 3.11(the Upgrade that was really a patch), but yes even so I was quite happy with WFW, certainly better than 3.0 & 3.10, and as far a stability goes it beat the crap out of 95 & 98 Early XP was borderline until SP2 came along. Vista, now that SP1's in is not too bad. I think the real problem with the OS now is that we're asking it to do too much which is why Windows is so bloated with stuff next to nobody needs or uses every day, I know that ms dos & win 3.11 wasn't exactly feature rich but it loaded fast and let you do things straight away, now we've got to wait for the bloat to load before you can log-in let alone fire up even a browser. I say to MS give me the Lean Mean OS basics then let the sofware vendors build the rest and stop charging me for the crap I don't need, if you want to include it in the install then fine but just don't load it unless I ask for it.
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srobertson wrote: wasn't exactly feature rich but it loaded fast and let you do things straight away, now we've got to wait for the bloat to load before you can log-in let alone fire up even a browser.
And lets not forget how uber people thought we were when we typed win at the command prompt to load Windows when people didn't have it in autoexec.bat. Ah, the old days.
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Vista is an unfinished toy which even my dog does not want to play with.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep!
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Well, I feel rather fortunate that I am smarter than my dog, and do not take advice from him on my computer systems.
Vista is much faster, more stable, more secure. Case closed.
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In other words - depends on the situation. For a new home or business machine, I do recommend Vista.
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