Going to the dark side

[Admin]

This weekend I will be going to the dark side - Windows Vista

 

It seems to me that MS always seem to alternate between a good and bad release:

 

Windows 95 - shocking

 

Windows 98 - good

 

Windows 2k - shocking

 

Windows XP - great

 

Windows Vista - ????????

 

Office 95 - shocking (the forgotten version)

 

Office 97 - great

 

Office 2000 - shocking

 

Office 2003 - great

 

Office 07 - ???????

 

Apart from drivers is there any other things anyone can advise to look out for - oh, I will also have a new motherboard and processor (AMD 6000+) to make sure it is compatible.

 

Also building a super duper triple monitor dedicated Flight Sim PC with:

 

3 x Samsung 22" wide screen monitors

 

1 x Matrox TripleHeadToGo Digital monitor splitter for wrap around vision

 

1 x Intel E8500 2 core 3.16Ghz

 

4 x 1gig Corsair DDR3 ram blocks

 

1 x Gigabyt GA-EX38T-DQ6 motherboard (wow)

 

5 x Western Digital 320Gb 7,200rpm 16Mb Buffer SATA Hard Disks set in a RAID 5 configuration

 

1 x Dual Processor (onboard SLI) XFX PCIe 2.0 9800GX2 1GB xXx Overclocked (Black Tie version) graphics card

 

1 x Silverstone 750w power supply

 

1 x Antec 9000 gaming case

 

Saitek Pro Flight Rudder pedals

 

Saitek pro Flight Yoke System

 

Saitek 3 lever Throttle Quadrant

 

Saitek Evo Force Feedback Joystick (left/right handed)

 

Logitech Z5400 Digital 5.1 Sound System with THX and Dolby

 

This is going to be one beast of a Flight Sim PC

 

 

[Matt]

From my experience with Vista, it's a massive resource hog (memory and processor) - make sure you install SP1, it does make a difference. Also, unless you really like the "fluffy" look - turn it all off and make it look classic windows - will save a few hundred MB of memory just doing that. FSX does work a great deal better on Vista than XP though which is key given your intended use. I run what was a high level gaming machine about 2 years ago (single 3.2GHz, 512MB video, 4GB RAM) and FSX with the performance options tweaked (there's a few articles around on how to get best performance) I regularly get 30-40 fps - plenty for us humans.

 

Office 2007 - having used if for a year or so I have no complaints (other than initially not being able to find stuff) and actually think it's the best release yet.

 

Cheers,

 

Matt.

 

 

[Guest Graham Lea]

There is an old saying:

 

Feeling lucky?

 

Upgrade your software.

 

If you ever experienced Dos 4.0 you will know :-)

 

Vista?

 

I run around 9 machines and stick with XP for all of them. But not into graphics too much. My supplier reckons it is still bad news ...

 

All the best though and I hope it works well - it certainly sounds grreat!!

 

 

[Admin]

I have opened accounts with h/ware importers so after I have finished this build I will put together some options on new PCs for forum members just at the same cost I get the parts for direct from the suppliers including the option of having MS Flight Sim pre-installed as well - winter is coming so at least we can still fly - well sort of

 

 

[Guest airsick]

I run Vista with Office '07. Can't say I have any real gripes with Vista other than what Matt said. It seems stable (can't recall any BSOD's aside from a couple that were hardware related) but as Matt said, make sure you install SP1.

 

Office '07 is right royal pain in the backside until you get used to it. It is a real culture shock in terms of finding things but once you have gotten your head around it I think you will begin to like it. I am not sure what you use Office for but I use Excel for some pretty heavy mathematical modelling and have noticed it is much better than previous versions. Word and Access also seem better to me.

 

So what to look out for? Everything. You will really need to look hard so once you spot it make a mental note!

 

 

[hihosland]

I do some complex mail merge with nested "if..then" etc and found it impossible to get Word in Office '07 to merge to Eudora so went back to '03

 

.

 

 

[Ultralights]

cough cough. Leopard.. cough....

 

 

[antzx6r]

Ultralights,

 

Do you run FSX on Leopard? I've heard it can be done somehow. If so how does the graphics hold up.

 

I owned an old IBook laptop with tiger for a while. Apart from the fact that so much software comes out for PC only, the apple was AWSOME. Everything just worked. No conflicts or configuring graphics. Internet was just a case of 'plug it in and go'. It would be great if FSX could be set up on MAC...

 

Ant.

 

 

[Ultralights]

you can run FSX on a Mac, but you have to do it from Vista or XP, i have the drive partitioned and one is running leopard, and the other boots up into Vista, FSX is installed in the vista portion of the drive. i also have fs9 running in XP via Parallels though for some reason its not very good.

 

FSX in Vista is running at 35 frames per sec at maximum resolution and every grapic option turned on. though my mac is a dual core 2.6 ghz with 5 gig of ram. and nothing elses installed ont he vista partition except flight sim and gps stuff.

 

 

[Admin]

WHAT ON EARTH IS ALL THIS STUFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

My brain hurts :hittinghead: with this Windows Vista (Ultimate) and Office 2007 (Professional) - looks mighty pretty but where has everything gone

 

You are right, they have very cleavily disguised it all in a real graphical interface that is going to take some time to find it all. I think it would be very nice for the average user but to someone that pushs it all it is rather confusing - especially getting use to the new control panel icons, the start menu, explorer and that is just windows. I took one look at Office and close it quick smart - going to take days just to get use to Outlook :confused:

 

 

[old man emu]

From my experience, if it runs on XP, it won't on Vista.

 

I have a flight sim that works with XP, but doesn't with Vista. Most annoying.

 

OME

 

 

[Admin]

I am really starting to like Vista and especially the new Outlook 2007 - great with RSS feeds and very fast on downloading emails

 

 

[spacesage]

Make it all look like it used to.

 

Ian,

 

Right click on your "start" (now windows symbol) button and select "Properties".

 

Click the "Classic Start Menu" radio button and click "OK" it will go back to the good old windows menu lay out. Just like XP or windows 2K.