Windows Vista

[Silentblade]

Anything I should need to know about it? I have to get it for my college classes.

It is coming auto with service pack 1 so no worries there. Not sure what version I'm getting whether it is Ultimate or what.

How is gaming with it? Most peripherals have drivers for Vista now?

I guess I have two options either way it will be a reinstall but either just have Vista or have a dual boot with XP also. Which will have to be installed after Vista.

I'm just wanting to ask those that have used it more than me. i have only troubleshot it on customers computers when I was doing IT work on the side.

[Almuric]

I use it at work all day on my laptop and the personal laptop I just bought runs it too. Plays NWN and Company of Heroes just fine (I havent tried anything else yet). You'll want to have at least 2GB of RAM or it will run slow as crap. I havent had any issue with peripherals, but I dont have anything that's very old either to hook up to it.

[Silentblade]

I think everything that I have has vista drivers for it so I'm not worried to much about that. I only have 2 GB of ram in it right now so that is borderline.

So I'm guessing service pack 1 fixed alot of stuff?

[Silentblade]

Well found out today that they are sending me Ultimate edition so that is good I will have all the bells and whistles.

[Almuric]

I used it before SP1 and never had any problems, but I didnt start using it for gaming until after SP1. SP1 reduced some of the resource usage but other than that I couldnt tell much difference. I use Ultimate edition on one machine and Home Premium on another. The only real difference I've seen is that you can download some extra "ultimate only" programs (mainly desktop backgrounds, screen savers, and games).

[Silentblade]

They are sending me Ultimate, I don't have a choice in the matter. I'll strip down all the unwanted extra crap that I wont need or use.

[Almuric]

the ultimate stuff isnt installed for the most part. what you get is access to a "ultimate only" download area on windows update.

[Silentblade]

They told me that Ultimate can be installed in either 32 bit or 64 bit is this true and what are the differences....I have a 64 bit CPU so should I install the 64 bit version.

[Almuric]

Unless you have 4MB or more RAM I would just install the 32 bit version.

[Silentblade]

well I have 2GB but I went ahead and installed the 64-bit version because I plan on upgrading my box after tax season.

[Bushwacker]

Should of went with Linux... I did.

[Almuric]

Linux? For DirectX games? Didnt think that was possible.

Anyway, he went with Vista because he needs it for a class.

[Silentblade]

Yeah I ended up reinstalling it to 32-bit because of some incompatibilities that I couldn't get around.

yes Bush that is the reason that I had to install it was for college.

[Bushwacker]

Oh I was just giving you crap man. I did install Suse 11.1 on one of my other rigs though, but I wouldn't run it as a gaming PC.

[Almuric]

so how you like windows 7?

[Bushwacker]

I liked it just fine. Way better than Vista I can tell ya that.

[Almuric]

i look forward to installing it. :)

upgraded my laptop recently. went from 3gb to 4gb of ram, and moved from a 250gb 5400 rpm drive to a 320gb 7200rpm.

[Bushwacker]

You should see a considerable performance gain dide. Good job bro.

[Almuric]

well, since I'm running 32bit OS it wasnt a big RAM gain, but I enjoy the improved boot times and faster game loads of the new HD. The additional space is great too.

[Bushwacker]

Just curious here, but why havent switched to a 64bit OS?

[Almuric]

I'm using 64bit on my work laptop. It works fine, but I dont have to worry about game support either. :)

[Bushwacker]

Game support? Are the games you play have issues with 64bit?
I only ask because I play different type of games than you for
the most part and I don't have any issues.

[Almuric]

Currently I only have Company of Heroes, Warhammer:Dawn of War II, and Neverwinter Nights installed. Of those 3 games I would bet that NWN is gonna have issues. It has issues with Vista period, so I could imagine that adding 64-bit to the mix would make it even more interesting.

[Silentblade]

I never had problems with any of my games running on 64-bit. It was other applications that had a problem running. I had to invest into a 500 GB HDD so I picked up my first SATA drive and love it so much space, Now I need to pick up a 1.5 TB storage drive so I can get rid of my DVD's and stream them to my Xbox and never have to change out discs again.