Da ubber PC up and running, Windows Vista pitfalls

Finally, finally! got my PC up and running at full capabilities, that is of course with an absence of 1-2 days having to deal with unsupported so far my experience with Vista had been a bitter-sweet one, but I guess that is something I will have to live with as Windows XP, though faster have it’s software limitations as well. The last weekend was spent mostly backing up my data, about 400GB odd of work and raw video which took almost a whole day plus and overnight transfer over 4 harddisks before I can free a spare 500GB drive for my PC.

When I finally got vista up and running, Benchmarked my PC 3D Mark 2006 score of about 11600 at stock non-overclocked speeds speeds which is reasonable for a not so high end budget upgrade. Based on future mark’s website other systems based on my similar Quad core processor, single GPU configuration can go up to close of 15k scores when overclocked, but overclocking is something I won’t be doing.

Getting vista to run programs is almost like my experience with trying to install series 60 symbian applications in my phone- It’s horrible! Many of my favorite programs are not compatible and I had to scourge the web for updates and support. Here are some difficulties of “complains” as of date.

• Vista is very slow
  Especially when updating patches after Service pack1 (SP1) it can even take 10-15mins to shutdown. System resources on boot takes up more than 1GB of ram default. True there are registry tweaks here and there and disabling eyecandies, but these are just merely ways round the main problem. Moreover, vista deals with files very messily, leaving alot of fragmented items here and there so that it can index it’s searches faster, defragmenting and putting all these during startup/shutdown adds to the load times.
• Vista folder structure is very different from XP
  You need sometime getting used to the directory structure and how vista stores their files here and there. Gone are the “documents and settings: folders in place of the “Users” folder. I am ok with it if that is the requirement for But as mentioned, it’s not a big flaw but just increases the starting learning curve alittle, especally if you are a user of the previous verisons of windows.
• Lots of software are incompatible with Vista
  My version of Norton internet security 2007 had problems even starting up in Vista, prior to changing to a more reliable antivirus system, I had to make do with my old one as I have few spare licenses still yet to be used. Thankfully, symantec they have an update on their website.
  Vista can still make do with few of my older programs such as MIRC, and Winrar which I brought as older versions, it seems that the more basic the program, the least compatibility problems it have with vista. On top of that, my work and productivity programs like Office all running fine as well.

  On a sidenote, DirectX9.0 is not included in Vista, even in SP1 so you need to install it if you have older DirectX9 specific programs and games.

• Lots of drivers are incompatible with Vista
  This is my biggest headache. There were quite alot of trail and errors trying to get vista to work with old XP driver. I had to junk my old WinTV Tuner card as it caused bluescreen errors upon shutdown, so no watching TV and FM radio on my PC from now on.

  Moreover, I initially had a hard time get my old Creative Audigy soundcard to work in Vista, even the official Creative drivers are so so horrible in getting it done- it didn’t not do a proper job to install the gameport drivers. That where I got some working third drivers from Brazilian programmer Daniel Kawakami, who wrote a Vista support universal package installer and auto-detected my card and installed the required drivers in a charm (contrary to creative official ones having to manually select your model). But such drivers will be quite shortlived if you were to follow the sate of lawsuits at the moment, so as he said after being threatened by Creative:

  Creative purposely modified the Audigy drivers to disable some features when Vista is detected and also purposedly introduced some bugs to prevent some XP utilities from running.

  I did a complete analysis of the driver to determine where all the checks and bugs were introduced and started modding…

  Creative drivers had long notoriously been horrible, not to mention their super-paranoia bundled programs available on their website only as updates (you cannot download full programs there, even if it requires the hardware to run). The thing I do not understand is that why must they eat into and condemn 3rd party drivers which actually work while theirs don’t?

  Moreover, the fact that they are purposely not supporting their older products to get people to buy their newer ones is a big no-no to me, in terms of customer relations with respect to PR and marketing. I am starting to drift further from patronizing Creative soundcards now, they should be rest assured that my next soundcard will definitely not be a Creative one. Patriotism? eat that home-grown slime.

  You can read more of it here

That is all I have to date. Luckily I did not purchase the 64-bit version of vista, or I don’t think I will even be done installing all the crap by now. For the good side, the “Im lovin it” part of vista will definitely be the Aero interface which allows 3D scrolling of windows together with effect. So as I come to know, can be enabled at the quick launch menu or pressing the “app” icon on my Logtitech G3 mouse, wow so at least I am fully utilizing my mouse now! The instant search function is also neat too.

The thing is now after installing all the need MS patches, things are starting to get up to speed. So in the end once you get it all up and running, that is where everything will truely shine. Fired up C&C Kanes Wrath last night and continued my saved campaign, completing all campaign missions on Hard difficulty at the ultra settings and 1920×1200- I am starting to appreciate what I can’t do on my old PC now.