To V, or not to V?

[Wrayth]

Sorry, couldn't resist the clever title for this one.

Okay, so a little background first. I'm a "geek" who loves to play with the latest and greatest and generally a fan of Windows products, and therefore an early adopter of new versions of Windows. But I remember how bad XP was when it first came out, and then became much better with SP1.

So 18 months ago, I was excited to get my hands on Vista and since I like pretty toys it was a cool new GUI to drool over. But then as I actually tried to so something with it, I discovered how bad it was. In the following period til now, I've seen very little to change that initial opinion. Sure, I've seen plenty of people who use it and like it and have no problems, but I see just as many who have major problems. I had been swearing off of Vista until the first SP came out, figuring that like XP, it wouldn't be good to use until SP1.

Well Vista's been out for over a year now, and more and more people are being forced to use it as they buy new machines and can't buy them with XP. And now SP1 has been pushed back, and even then, some of the reviews I've read, don't give me the impression that it is going to make a huge difference. But, since I'm the one everyone in the family calls for help, I have to find a way to start getting familiar with Vista so I can help them.

So I kind of have a 2 part question..

First of all, one thing that the happy users seem to have in common is they are using it on brand new machine.

Is that the best way to work with Vista? A brand new machine? Because I can't afford a new machine right now.

Second, what then is the best way to create a usable platform for me to learn it on? What's the best recipe for success?

I hope I'm not being too vague here. I didn't see a sticky or post that seemed to address my question.

If someone has a link I should read, that would be great too.

Thanks,

Wrayth

[Zxian]

What kind of hardware are you running on now? I've got Vista installed on my laptop, which is by no means a high-performance machine by today's standards (Pentium-M 1.86Ghz, 2GB RAM, 128MB ATI X300). I find that I'm able to go about my business much faster than I could in XP, partly because of the way Vista handles multiple processes, but also because of the general layout.

Many of the initial problems came from a lack of drivers. It's been a good solid year now, so if the device you're using still doesn't have a Vista driver, blame the manufacturer - not Vista.

My best recommendation if you want to give Vista a shot would be to image your current setup to save a "copy" of it. Then do a fresh install with Vista, and restore only those documents that you need. Use it for a few weeks. If you get stuck, Google for the solution. Things in Vista are generally speaking the same, but some settings and options have moved. Once you find where they are, most of them make more sense than the locations of their XP counterparts.

[Wrayth]

Zxian,

I have several machines of varying levels of hardware. My laptop (my primary choice to use) is a 3.5 year old Dell Inspirion, 1.5 Pent-M, 1GB RAM, ATI 9600. It's the machine I used when I had a copy of the Beta 18 months ago. But I have 2 desktops that have better hardware than that.

As for making an image - I have another post elsewhere addressing that topic (looking for best software for that)

[Andromeda43]

About a year ago, I built a brand new system just to run Vista Beta. MSI mobo, AMD dual core CPU, 2 gigs of ram, etc.

When the beta version died on June 1, I reformatted the HD and installed XP-pro and migrated everything off of my old PC onto this new one, which I'm on now.

Recently, I wanted to try Vista again, so I can get used to setting it up and making it more user friendly.

I didn't want to mess up my XP install so here's what I did:

I bought me a new SATA2, Maxtor, 160gig HD. ($69 at Staples)

I cloned my old 200gig SATA2 drive to the new one.

Then I disconnected the new drive, now with XP on it.

I Left the old 200 gig drive in place and installed Vista right over XP. (Upgrade version)

Vista didn't like my Intel 537EP modem at all. Some new drivers downloaded from MS, seemed to stop the errors the modem was allegedly causing. Now Vistas' Hardware Manager sees the modem and reports it as working, but when I try to make a dial up connection, the connection wizard says that it cannot see an internal modem.

I also had to reinstall both of my Epson printers, which are now working OK.

The rule of thumb says that whichever drive is connected to the first SATA port on the mobo, will be the default boot disk. I now have my XP drive on that port. If I want to boot into the Vista drive on the second port, I just tap F11 during the first few seconds of the boot and go right into my boot Menu. I pick the second HD and VOILA, I boot into Vista.

I have a Ghost image of each drive stored in the second partition of the other drive, so if one drive crashes, I loose nothing. I just replace the crashed drive, restore the Ghost Image for that drive and I'm back in business in just minutes, with NO loss of data.

In the ten years that I've been using Ghost, I've crashed many HD's, but I've yet to loose the first important data file.

Cheers Mates!

Andromeda43 B)

[DL.]

The keys to be able to use Vista are lots of RAM (at least 2GB) and no odd/special hardware, a fast HD is also quite useful (not your typical 4200 or 5400 rpm laptop drive, but rather a 7200 rpm).

If you don't want to mess with your current installation you could get another HD and install to that one.

Ghost has worked just fine for me too for years, but many people use Acronis True Image.