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Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:02 am
by Leisher
Class action lawsuit.
This'll be interesting to watch. A lot of companies use that sort of shady marketing (ever looked at the required specs on a PC game box?).
Is it ok to market a device claiming it'll run your product knowing that it will, only it'll run it poorly and with many features stripped out? Is it ok to market several products (each version of Vista), each with it's own features and requirements, as one?
Posted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:08 am
by TheCatt
I hate Vista. I cannot get it to see my XBox 360, which my XP MCE machine could see fine.
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:17 pm
by Vince
TheCatt wrote:I hate Vista. I cannot get it to see my XBox 360, which my XP MCE machine could see fine.
Really? Mine's constantly popping up with the message that it's seeing my 360. I just don't use Media Center on my Vista box so I've never run through the setup. I'd almost bet you have a firewall setting somewhere stopping it on your Vista box.
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:27 pm
by GORDON
I'm nervous about the first time I have to set up a LAN for a client with Vista machines....
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:01 pm
by TheCatt
Vince wrote:TheCatt wrote:I hate Vista. I cannot get it to see my XBox 360, which my XP MCE machine could see fine.
Really? Mine's constantly popping up with the message that it's seeing my 360. I just don't use Media Center on my Vista box so I've never run through the setup. I'd almost bet you have a firewall setting somewhere stopping it on your Vista box.
Sure, I get all those pretty messages too, it just cant see it when it tries to do the actual configuration.
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 8:01 pm
by TheCatt
And, if it TOLD me there was a firewall issue (which I've disabled, along with UAC), that would be nice.
Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 8:28 am
by Vince
TheCatt wrote:Vince wrote:TheCatt wrote:I hate Vista. I cannot get it to see my XBox 360, which my XP MCE machine could see fine.
Really? Mine's constantly popping up with the message that it's seeing my 360. I just don't use Media Center on my Vista box so I've never run through the setup. I'd almost bet you have a firewall setting somewhere stopping it on your Vista box.
Sure, I get all those pretty messages too, it just cant see it when it tries to do the actual configuration.
Ah... don't know then. Use my old MCE box as a dedicated media machine, so I've never gone through the actual config in Vista.
Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:59 am
by TheCatt
So, Vista Ultimate is the only version that should have ever been released. VHP is a crippled piece of shit, that in no way replicates the feature set that XP MCE offered to the user.
Of course, Microsoft is a business, and wants money. Unlike Apple, they have a significant corporate presence, and therefore benefits by segmenting their customers into those that are more and less price sensitive. Thus, we end up with this versions bullshit, instead of the Apple-like all features in the OS package (which I find strongly preferable).
The good news is that they aren't really trying too hard to keep people from pirating the software, so people who want Vista can get it, instead of the crippled POS versions. (Especially the "enthusiast" crowd which would probably end up in Apple/*nix worlds if not for games).
Vista Ultimate install was the simplest OS install I have ever had in my life. I put in the DVD, selected the partition (did a delete to remove the old OS), and that was it. 30 minutes later the OS is completely up and running. Of course, it needed about 50 software patches, so that took another hour, but, unlike XP, it was just 1 reboot after all those patches, and no more patches were needed.
Dynamic disk configuration was easy, and I was able to setup my RAID 0 2x1TB quickly. Driver installation was relatively painless, and more devices were automatically discovered and installed than in prior OSes. I did explicit driver installs on some important items (video card, RAID 5 card, network, and bluetooth) just to make sure they were the latest and greatest.
A lot of things are in a different place, just like each OS. Most things are the same as XP, but every once in a while you'll try to find some configuration option, and it won't be where you think it should be. I believe the grouping is more logical, but to those of us with a lot of XP history, it's just not where you learned it should be.
The GUI is shiny and pretty, but I don't really care.
I like the Explorer navigation, now that I have finally gotten used to it. It has a horizontal array of drop-downs that represent the folder hierarchy in which you are in. If you want to change folders, just select the appropriate level of the hierarchy and a list drops down for you to select. This takes up a lot less space than XP, and it's nice to see something take up LESS UI space rather than more as seems to be the trend.
XBox 360 streaming performance is MUCH better than with XP, even with no network change. The UI is much pretty for media center, and more things are integrated. The navigation is better, and setting up media center is a little more elegant than it was in XP. Vista seems like it was designed to work with streaming, whereas XP MCE felt like extenders were just bolted on as an afterthought.
Shadow copies are built in to the OS. (This would have helped Thib earlier with his file overwrite), and I'm excited to finally have that feature enabled (Although, Mac's Time Capsule software is much better from a user perspective).
Overall, I am a small fan of Vista. I have not tried any gaming, cuz, quite frankly, I'm not much of a gamer; So I cannot comment on that aspect. That being said, only Ultimate is worth owning, and all other versions are piles of shits.
Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 12:41 pm
by Vince
Hmm... you're making me wonder if I should upgrade my Media Center PC from MCE2005. It's a dedicated Media machine. Would the Home edition be okay for that? What say you?
Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 1:11 pm
by TheCatt
If you're just doing media (no dynamic disks, no need for remote desktop, etc) then yeah, I would recommend it. It's a soft recommendation though. If you're talking $95 for the upgrade, it may not be worth it, it's not really much better functionality wise. Just... less rough around the edges. Better UI, prettier pictures, snappier presentation, etc.
If you were streaming to an XBox 360, I'd say HELL YEAH upgrade. It's so much better it's not even funny.
The one thing I've yet to do is music, cuz the files are still transferring over. But the overall navigation is better, just not sure how much better playlists, etc are.
Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 3:56 pm
by Vince
Yeah, I stream to my 360. I've got a dual TV tuner in the box and if it's recording the xbox tends to lock up from time to time. If I'm recording 2 shows at once it locks up regularly.
Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 4:09 pm
by TheCatt
I'll do some tests next time I'm recording and let you know if it's much different than MCE. Of course, my Vista machine is brand new, with much better hardware, so whatever issues may not happen any more.
In general though, I just found the XBox 360 was a little choppy (specially jumping forward and back during video), and it's like using the machine itself now. Above mentioned HW changes may help though
Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 4:10 pm
by TheCatt
Of course, the old machine was no slouch: Core 2 Duo 2.13Ghz (E6400) with 2GB RAM and 2x500GB SATA RAID 0; so I have to think it's more than just the new HW
Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 5:36 pm
by TheCatt
Two things I like about Vista:
1) The sound mixer is per application. So you can control the volume and mute-state of each app. Want windows sounds muted, but your browser playing? Want your browser sound reduced, but windows media center at normal volume? All doable.
2) Explorer. I like the new navigation, and the new integration with the title, the new views, and the ability to filter based on various columns names quick and easily.
Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:07 pm
by Vince
TheCatt wrote:1) The sound mixer is per application. So you can control the volume and mute-state of each app. Want windows sounds muted, but your browser playing? Want your browser sound reduced, but windows media center at normal volume? All doable.
I really liked that, too. Funny, but I just stumbled on it. Seen others talk about how they liked it and wondered why MS wasn't giving that function a little more play.
Not that it's a big programming achievement or anything, but it's one of the really cool and handy things in it.
Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 10:01 pm
by Malcolm
Vince wrote:Seen others talk about how they liked it and wondered why MS wasn't giving that function a little more play.
Cos my left nut is smarter than Microsoft's managers.
Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 7:03 pm
by GORDON
Senior microsoft execs knew there were problems prior to launch...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008....=slogin
Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 9:36 pm
by Malcolm
I would love to know how many members of the Vista team in the know actually switched to Vista within a month or two of release.
Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2008 10:44 pm
by Leisher
Dell employees still aren't using Vista. What more do you need to know about it?
Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 6:31 pm
by GORDON