Some thoughts on Vista....

[{OF}Eaglerapids]

Wow Chem, i wasn't even aware of your website. I went there from the thread on the Wii and read your reviews. Very cool.

I'm sure you know but I read at Cnet, I think it was, where they were saying that Microsoft has said that Vista will run games 10 to 15% slower than XP, because the 3d desktop runs all the time. To me that's unbelievable. If this is indeed true it will be a deal breaker for me. I was originally planning on buying Vista but I keep coming upon more reasons not to and it seems that as hard as I try, I can't come up with any good reasons TO buy it. For awhile they said you could only migrate Vista through one change, like a motherboard, WTF? I think they've backed off on that one but what's next? And like you pointed out in your review, they have stripped Vista of all the cool things originally planned. I do know this, I won't be the first on the bus:-). They are so worried and paranoid about the thing getting hacked they have convinced me to stay away from it and all the BS that will go along with it.
You predict it will last only two years. What will Microsoft do then, though? No way they can get another system out in two years. It'll probably take them longer than that to get this beast running comfortably on "everymans" computer. I can't wait. There will be lot's of good reading in forums and such when this thing comes out. They probably didn't put it out before Christmas because they didn't want to spend their holidays trying to support it! lol

[ChemicalWarrior]

To tell you straight up its dead wrong that games will run slower on Windows Vista. There's a number of reasons that games, even current and some older ones, will run faster on Vista. The key reason for this is that the driver model for video cards is completely redesigned and much more efficent in Vista. *That also happens to be the reason why DirectX 10 is Vista only, its a very legitamite reason.

My prediction of two years is more of a that's how long it'll be till a lot of backlash, even more the general consumer, starts appearing. At this point Vista does not hold a lot of advantages over XP. Its a bit better gaming platform but the core system is Windows 2003 (which is XP but with an updated kernel).

The next version of Windows after Vista goes by the name of Vienna. Suppose to be a very major departure from any previous Windows, but not sure that means anything.

The Vista story is a very long and ironic one. If you want to read up on it check out Wikipedia and search Windows Vista, you'll get to hear about all the crazy stuff like Whistler, Blackcomb, and such.

I'm still out on Vista, I'll probably grab it at some point simply because I game and therefore I'll want DirectX 10 down the road, but I might be waiting till Service Pack 1 (scheduled for Fall of 2007, and right around when I'll be upgrading again). I'd suggest that for most everyone.

A link to the article on the website and a discussion can be had at this post: How Much Does Vista Matter?

I'm curious to hear everyones thoughts about Vista. Also, make sure you tell all your friends about my site, the more traffic the better.

[Soul]

I can say that right now I am trying to come up with a reason to stay on vista - I finally got everything running, meaning I can play 2142 but performance doesn't seem that great yet... In order to get cames to work I had to back date drivers to 93.66 which were the vista rc1 drivers. With any luck the new drivers will be out soon and that will fix some of the issues, I will give it a few more days and I am heading back.

[ChemicalWarrior]

Yeah, Nvidia's Vista drivers are simply not there yet. From what I've read ATi support has been much better. Hopefully Nvidia will get them out soon, you'd think they would so they could release a few DirectX 10 demos to the public to show off the Dx10 features of the new Geforce 8 cards.

[Soul]

I just don't see any reason for Vista right now, once the DX10 games hit and maybe when I can afford a new video card it will be worth it. So, 2010 perhaps.