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Calm Down, Apple.

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Seeing all those Mac vs. PC ads (U.S. only?) made me wary of Vista. All the internet hype didn't help, either. So, three weeks ago, I bought my new Gateway PC (Dual 3.2 GHZ Pentium D, 1 GB DDR RAM, 250 GB HD). It has Vista Home Premium... and...

It's fine. Nowhere near as bad as it was hyped to be.

Any other Vista users have input?

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I've got Vista Business on my laptop, and so far I haven't had problems with it. Certainly some things work slightly differently from XP and it eats more resources (the laptop has 1 gb ram and performs pretty close to an XP with 512 mb), but I don't have anything negative to say about it.


@DJ_Haruko: Forming your opinions on an OS based on what support calls or e-mails you get will only earn you a biased opinion. After all, you are basing your opinions on calls you get mostly from computer illiterate users, right?

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My laptop came with Vista Home Premium preinstalled, was the first time I had ever used it. BUt after poking around in it for a few days I reformatted and installed XP instead. Vista works and probably works good but it is far more resource hungry (600 Mb in use after boot vs 200 for XP). Also I'm sure that its fancy Aero interface drains a lot more battery power than the plain old (skinned) interface. That's just not done for a laptop.
Personally I also hate that they redesigned a lot of the networking dialogs. I spent hours clicking through windows after window after dialog trying to get a simple peer to peer connection up and running with a Windows XP computer. I got it working but still do not know how.
I do expect Vista to take a while before it is as accepted as XP is now, just like was the case with XP before. Remember the complaints about how resource hungry and slow it was? And how nobody liked the fact that the interface could be skinned? It'll just take time again.

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Jodwin said:

@DJ_Haruko: Forming your opinions on an OS based on what support calls or e-mails you get will only earn you a biased opinion. After all, you are basing your opinions on calls you get mostly from computer illiterate users, right?

I'm not a user of Vista, but I have used it personally. This personal experience has put me off as well. One thing I am glad to see, however, is that it asks the user for their password to perform certain things that could potentially harm the system.

In terms of support, I help take care of smart classrooms at a university and often have to go configure a professor's laptop for them to get it working with an LCD projector. This means on-site support, not over the phone or e-mail. On top of this, I have had some experience with the two computer labs I take care of. Though the boxes don't run Vista, we have had to start looking at it for future use.

I don't agree that forming an opinion partially on the support calls I get for it will make me biased. Part of the OS's features is that it's easier/safer for both end-users and "IT" people like myself (sidenote: I dislike the term "IT"). An OS, for me, is not just about how well it works with my office suite or how well it plays games and movies. An OS has to also stack up well in other areas like system and user management, drivers, deployment, networking, and security. Troubleshooting and support needs don't always come from the end-user.

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I was forced to get a vista pc by my gf. I didnt mind so much because I noticed that with each critical update my XP machine was getting slower and slower, especially the media player, it was refusing to just play .avi files, preferring to pretend it was cacheing them from the internet or something, hence jerkovision. In Vista those same movies play smooth. Ive not really had a problem yet after 3 months.

I think apple is shooting itself in the foot with those stupid adverts. So apples are good for fun and the pc is just for boring spreadsheets???? who do apple think they are kidding?? I could never trust a company that puts such blatant lies out.

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I was pleasantly surprised to see how well XP emulation works for running old games. I got the Sims 2 running perfectly with only a few compatibility tweaks.

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I just want to have the possibility to buy the pc/laptop I want without an Os. I think Vista would be much better if people would have that choice. Anyway the greater the market share of apple, the better for the windows users.

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Don't try running World of Warcraft on Vista unless you like random game crashes.

I'm fine with XP at the moment. I only bought my copy back in March or so anyway.

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The first service pack for Vista is supposed to come out this November, so we'll see how it performs then. After going through the 90's with my family upgrading to the latest Windows right as it came out, I no longer upgrade right away, as they all have their kinks and flaws. I will upgrade when gaming does.

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W2K Pro works well enough for me. And I always got XP as backup. I'll wait until Me II is dead and XP II is king before making the jump.

Plonker said:

I was forced to get a vista pc by my gf.

A.K.A. the one with the balls in this relationship.

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Coldfusio said:

Anyway the greater the market share of apple, the better for the windows users.


uh, what?

Anyway, I use Vista and like it, even though there isn't that much of a difference over XP. The instant search/run box in the start menu is awesome, even if it's similar to the menu searcher in KDE.

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yomoneyboat said:

Seeing all those Mac vs. PC ads (U.S. only?) made me wary of Vista.


I always felt that the Mac vs. PC commercials ended up pimping the PC out more. My friends and I made parodies of all the ads, and added a few more because of their weak advertizing campaign.

Mac: Hey, I have a built-in webcam in my monitor!

PC: Oh yeah? What happens when that breaks, Mac?

*Nazi storm troopers take the Mac off-screen*

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Coopersville said:

I always felt that the Mac vs. PC commercials ended up pimping the PC out more.


That's because the Mac ads are for idiots, by idiots.

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The blokes who did "Peep Show" made thier own versions in the UK, which are far better...

"And this section can be split into 33% japes and 66% capers. And that's what i did on my holiday. What do you think about THAT?"
"It's as if i was there"

"The naughty step is ALWAYS serious."

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Ahhh, Mac related threads are always SO MUCH FUN...don't you agree, Hobbs? :-D

Disregarding Apple's past, now Macs are little more than modified PCs with a different BIOS and different OS, without any sort of exclusive hardware to set them apart.

Ironically, the ads themselves admit that you can run XP on a Mac :-) Will it be equally "that much better" than the PC then?

I'll admit I like the ads though, I collect every single one of them :-)

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I haven't got Vista yet. The Apple adds, however, have ensured that getting a Mac is very, very low down my priority list. I just found them disgustingly patronising and insidious. In a world where I expect to be mislead (advertising), Apple seem to have taken the blatancy of doing so to new heights.

What I did notice this week, however, was quite a few games on the shelves with "requires Windows Vista" stamped on the box. So I guess that's the start of it and an upgrade is inevitable, wanted or not. :/ I should be getting a free upgrade for a laptop I bought a few months ago anyway so that should be a relatively painless test.

In other news, I didn't see any games that said "requires OSX" or whatever the current Mac system is called.

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John Smith said:

Not really no.


O_o

...is that what I think it is?

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I wouldn't mind Macs so much of their users weren't so completely snide and elitist about their machines while at the same time being completely ignorant on how either PCs OR Macs work.

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I dont actually know anyone who uses their home pc for spreadsheets/databases type stuff. Most of the PC owners I know are musicians, artists, designers, writers and most of all gamers.

I have only met a few mac users and none seemed happy with their mac, they were a bit clueless and angry at being conned into buying their 'fun' computer

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Scuba Steve said:

John Smith, 1882?


heh

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Scuba Steve said:

John Smith, 1882?


Heh. I think we all know who that might be but no finger pointing, please...

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Danarchy said:

I wouldn't mind Macs so much of their users weren't so completely snide and elitist about their machines while at the same time being completely ignorant on how either PCs OR Macs work.

Most of the mac users I know are incredibly skilled and knowledgable geeks, ie. the very last people I'd consider ignorant about how PCs work. I can think of at least 6-7 people that I know that fit in this category. In fact, almost all of my (real life) geek friends have switched to Macs.

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Well I do know one person who was an adamant Mac user and probably the most knowledgeable person I know when it comes to computers, but he ended up switching to PCs. Hid dream job is working for Microsoft even. He was subcontracted to them for a while until the job ended.

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