T-shirt for the Vista haters

[rabb1t]

Jinx - EPIC Fail T-Shirt (http://www.jinx.com/men/shirts/geek/epic_fail.html?catid=79&cs=2&csd=7%209)

[rhagz]

What a stupid shirt. Even if I hated Vista I would think it's terrible.

Epic fail.. on a shirt? Wouldn't be caught dead in it.

[mwdowns]

It's funny, I read all the Vista hate on various boards, but my experience so far with Vista has been as good as, if not better, than my experience with XP.

[ikaoma420]

It's funny, I read all the Vista hate on various boards, but my experience so far with Vista has been as good as, if not better, than my experience with XP.

Yeah I got a new comp with Vista 64 on it and have had no problems with it. I really have zero complaints about the OS.

I wouldn't have touched the OS at launch but then again I never do I always wait until drivers catch up and the first service pack comes out.

[rabb1t]

Pretty much everyone who's gotten it that's posted that I've seen say they have no problems with general use. I've only seen trouble reports with things like music playing software (I don't think iTunes, but another one) or odd things like that which are super rare use items.

[AsheMan]

The only problem I've had with Vista is that it never puts icons for my games on the desktop! Sometimes it installs games into a special "Games" folder and other times the games make their own folders but almost NEVER will they make a desktop shortcut. I have to go find the program and copy/paste a shortcut to the desktop. I never had that problem with XP. It's very minor but a slight inconvenience I've had with my limited use of Vista.

[rhagz]

Vista has a Games folder and all new games use it and even some older ones that came out before Vista. I guess if the OS recognizes it's a game it does that.

I hated it at first too but now I love it. Keeps dozens of icons all in one convenient folder with nifty info, like performance ratings, esrb ratings, links to publishers and developers and websites. Pretty nifty once you get used to it.

[Amsra]

It's funny, I read all the Vista hate on various boards, but my experience so far with Vista has been as good as, if not better, than my experience with XP.

Same here :D Even ran it 6 months in beta with very few problems. I like Vista :cool:

[rabb1t]

Yeah, the game folder thing is a "feature" of Vista. I do recall, now that you mention it, early on reviewers hated it because of what you said - a lot of games wouldn't be recognized and placed into the folder. I'd actually forgotten about that, heh.

[acrobat]

Well consider me a none Vista fan.

I built myself an HTPC last year and I decided to put Vista on it because I wanted it to look pretty on my nice big HDTV. I researched which version to use and in the end I settled on Vista 32 ultimate because it does everything and has a bit more compatibility with codecs and whatnot, apparently. (Thanks to my job, I can get any version of Vista for free - legally, so I could just pick and choose whatever I wanted).

I really like some aspects of it. After using it for a while, and then going back to my normal PC (with XP), it really makes XP look old. And the games folder thing mentioned above is pretty cool once you get used to it. Besides that though, there isn't really a whole lot that makes it better to XP, to me it's mostly just cosmetic stuff. (Because for example the indexed search is no big deal to me - I already know where all my stuff is :P)

Anyway, the problem is that my storage hard drive, vanishes constantly. It is only usable if I reboot the PC. If I turn the PC on from sleep or hibernate, it isn't there. There is also a problem with the optical drive. It doesn't work in AHCI mode and some other issues etc..etc.. The PC also seems to freeze completely, like it's hung, for like 4 seconds and then it continues. I thought I could live with it, but in the middle of a game... freezing for that amount of time just sucks. It is also fairly sluggish some times. The specs of the PC are quite powerful, so it really shouldn't run slow and sluggish. As for the quirky drive vanishing etc, it took me forever to find the cause, and I eventually found some guru who said that there are problems like this if you install Vista32 with 4 gig of ram in the PC. He said I should format and reinstall with 2 gig, and then put the remaining 2 gig in after it's all installed.

These issues though are enough to piss me off and considering this is supposed to be just a little fun HTPC, I really need it to be hassle free. It's one thing working through problems on my main PC, but I can really do without having problems with my second PC. So if I have to reformat and then install all my crap again from scratch, then I'm just going to put XP on it. I know that way, it will run really fast and it will be absolutely hassle free. I can put a pretty desktop picture that makes it look nice, and I don't spend much time looking at the windows explorer view anyway... so I can live without the prettiness. I will either be playing a game, listening to music, watching a film, or surfing the web, and all those things are the same on XP as they on Vista, so that's what I'm gunna do.

I would never wear that T-shirt though ;p

[AsheMan]

You should have gone with Vista 64.

[acrobat]

I still could I guess, like I said I can get any version for free. The only reason why I didn't is because some people on a tech forum said there are a few issues with codecs. I think when decoding blue ray or with some kind of codec or something... I can't remember.

This was about 6 months ago though so maybe that issue doesn't exist any more.

Hmm, so maybe I could do that. It's that XP is soooo tempting. It looks old and lacks some nice new features, but it's so quick and trouble free these days. Stick zonealarm and Avast! on it, and then forget about it.

[rabb1t]

At this point I'd say just grab the beta of Win 7. Just don't put anything 'permanent' on the system as the beta is likely to asplode later. Good to see if it stops your problems though.

[acrobat]

Yeah I can't wait to see how Win 7 turns out. I saw people talking about it and someone said it seemed faster than XP. Not sure if that's true but if it is... wow.

On a good system with XP, as long as it's not being bogged down by all kinds of toolbars and themes and crap, it runs amazingly fast. I'll have to have a think about what to do next on that PC. I am leaning towards XP because I don't really care too much about the prettiness, and I know with XP it's just so fast and won't require any work or effort. So I can just install all my games and junk and then forget about it. Although, most people seem to think that Vista 64 is just as reliable these days so.. Hmm :P

[Amsra]

I second the put Win 7 on sentiment. I've been running Win7 at home since beta was released and it is sweet. Very fast and lean. Faster than XP and waaaaay faster than Vista :) Oh and for sure go for the 64bit version, I've not had a single problem with codecs or drivers yet.

[acrobat]

Nice thanks! I was looking at it tonight online. I saw someone posting benchmarks of games on XP vs Win 7.

He only did two so far, I think one was World in Conflict and I can't remember what the other one was. One of them looked like it lost quite a lot of fps in Win7, but the other game (World in Conflict) was actually faster in Win7 than it was in XP. And this is with BOTH being run in DX9.

Not that any of this is important to me because my HTPC will only be playing films and music and old old games. But it's nice to know that they seem to have a pretty damn good OS on the way now.

[Hatto]

Guess I've grown beyond all that 'My OS is bigger than your OS' idiocy, but as said earlier, this shirt is just bad and the only people who like it are possibly those who think WoW endgame armorsets have a great and mature look. Like your average 10 year old.

[Amsra]

Nice thanks! I was looking at it tonight online. I saw someone posting benchmarks of games on XP vs Win 7.

He only did two so far, I think one was World in Conflict and I can't remember what the other one was. One of them looked like it lost quite a lot of fps in Win7, but the other game (World in Conflict) was actually faster in Win7 than it was in XP. And this is with BOTH being run in DX9.

Not that any of this is important to me because my HTPC will only be playing films and music and old old games. But it's nice to know that they seem to have a pretty damn good OS on the way now.

Why not try a linux box for that :) Linux is perfect for a media box.

[acrobat]

I have never even seen Linux tbh and I have no idea what it does or doesn't do. So I'll look in to that! Thanks :)

If it can run DOSBOX, browse the web, and play movies and mp3's, then there's a good chance I'll use it :) Although I also play some oldish games which don't use dosbox. Like System Shock 2 and stuff. They work fine in XP/Vista so I would have to check that too.

p.s. I've been looking more and more in to Windows 7. I wish it was out now! I really want it but I'm wary of installing it because it will probably need formatting and reinstalling everything once the finished version is released.

[Amsra]

p.s. I've been looking more and more in to Windows 7. I wish it was out now! I really want it but I'm wary of installing it because it will probably need formatting and reinstalling everything once the finished version is released.

If you already have Vista installed, you be able to upgrade it. If you have XP you will have to do a clean install. RC1 should be released in the next couple of weeks if you'd like to check it out :)

[Hatto]

Hopefully that version of Windows 7 won't bluescreen as soon as one tries to access a network drive. The quality of the beta wasn't that impressive.

Regarding Linux as a HTPC, unless you are a person who loves to invent the wheel on a daily basis, don't touch it. It has certain advantages, but it comes with a high price regarding useablity.

[Amsra]

Hopefully that version of Windows 7 won't bluescreen as soon as one tries to access a network drive. The quality of the beta wasn't that impressive.



Never had that problem myself, could access my gf's comp's drives just fine. And she's running XP. I was actually quite impressed with the beta, I've been running since beta released and maybe 20 crashes total....Building a new comp this week and gonna put RC1 on it soon as it releases :)