Vista has launched...

Vista Business. So no server yet :-\

where's your imaginiation?

Leopard will suck the wind right out of the death ship's sales (ha! a pun!).

Vista promises to bring great things... like the shameful retreat of Microsoft from the OS business (and there was much rejoicing). Ah... well, we can only hope.
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and besides... Apple released Tiger Apr. 29th, 2005... I know it seems like M$ is beating Apple, but really, Apple just narrowly missed lapping them

Isn't this the same OS that Microsoft promised us in 2004?

So far, I'm not impressed...

try april 2001, even before XP shipped. after a rename, and a scrap of several features, the bloated, reskinned Xp is out.

this thing take a whole lot of system requirments just to install. try 15gb of hard drive space JUST FOR THE BLODDY OS!!

think about this, in that same time span (6 years), apple has shipped 7 OS revisions (Mac OS 9.2.1 and 9.2.2, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4), and is on the verge of shipping Leopard, which is going to support macs as far back as 1999 (sawtooth G4). I know my B&W wont be supported by leopard, but some tweaks should fix that. can't wait to try time machine.

-digital

I've been using it for about a month and a half. It sucks.

i know it sounds blasphmeous, but ive actually not had any problems with it, and im running rc2. its actually a decent os.

Its decent if you have good hardware. I would run it on my 3GHz PIV box, but I need lots more RAM. Only has 256mb now.

Vista has ALOT of ripped off stuff. Like widgets, now "Gadgets" in Vista...

Until it is p0wn3d, which is rather quickly (~15-30mins), an un-patched, un-virus-protected XP actually machine works quite well, boots fast, and is pretty snappy.

Seems to me that by now, someone, somewhere, should have come up with a method to isolate a network, without compromising any mission critical user connectivity, so comprehensively that 200 or so security hotfixes and desktop virus protection wouldn't be necessary. If this could be accomplished... it'd be neat. Why haven't we heard of anything like this?

I got 2 copies with their own keys, DVD and a 5-CD Version. I am installing the CD one while i get my DL DVD's in the mail. I tell ya, those suckers are expensive. at least not as much as Blu-Ray.
Anyways, will probably be able to test it tonight, as I finally got them downloaded. I should get the DL DVD+R's in about 3-4 days, depending on how fast NewEgg ships.
I have only played around with RC 2 from the beta days. I was not sure how it would end up, but I am seeming to get reports about how restricting MicroCr*p's Vista is. but then again, i only got a VGA connection (no HD) and a single 5.1 Emulated SRS Sound On Board. I am not looking to play with HD Content, i am more worried about using it for work and getting other stuff done, not playing games.

I understand that Macs and Windows has a place in the world and business office (Mac's are NOT toys!, although they CAN be [mini]), i just want to see how fast M$ is going to lose the market, and if they are. We shall see in the next year if Microsoft is going to pull a win98 (where the Windows system REALLY picked up) or whether it will be a Zune (bomb whistling before hitting the ground)

I know apple will always come out in top for innovation, but i want to see what the other player brings to the field and experience it first hand. If it hinders my work within the PC world, i will be the first one to get rid of it. I will just wipe the drive and throw out the discs (thank god this is free) and I am setting up a dual-drive dual-boot system, so it shouldn't be too hard to go back to XP

Anyway, i shall see by tomorrow.

I've used Vista myself, and will be getting a free copy as perk of being an electronics and computers retailer. My opinion on Vista is that it is good. Its an improvement on XP, and although by no means has surpassed OS X, is a pretty damn good catchup effort. That said, with the release of Vista, I'm considering moving 100% to Mac. At the moment I'm primarily a Windows user, just for the fact that my fastest Mac is only a 9600 with a G3/400, but I'm looking at iMacs and MacBooks quite seriously now. I'm thinking that seeing as MS has ripped off all of OS X's nice features, I might as well go with the OS that implemented them first (as Vista is bound to be as bug-ridden as... well, a thing full of bugs).

one thing that scares me, that since the release (yesterday?) they already have 5 security patches. Hmm.., I wonder how many more are to come...

Anyway, playing around with vista, i have found that none of my videos have been degraded by Vista's Media DRM system. Of course, i have been using VideoLan Client, but other than that, i have not been hindered by it. And iTunes seems to work, as well as uTorrent (for yet-to-be-released Fan subs of Anime)
I have had to download Updates to some pieces of software, as it has broken some of mine, but nothing the update doesn't fix (Nero 7 of course being one of them) and I seem to like it more than XP. None of this sickening blue eye candy crap, and I happen to like the Aero Theme. I am still sticking with mac though, although I seem to find the SideBar and Gadgets of little use, but then again, i don't even use dashboard (disabled it by TigerCacheCleaner) and find that both take up too many resources.

check this out:
Reducing Memory Use on Vista Put together @ tweakvista.com
I dropped my memory from 78% (at 1GB of memory) to 35% by disabling some of those services. (about 352MB)

The video degredation issue will only occur on protected content that is being played on unapproved hardware. If your content is not protected, then there will be no issue.

MS 20Q in DRM found via:
/. article.

I've been tinkering with Vista Ultimate RC2 in Parallels. It runs decent on my MacBook but good grief it's a drive hog.

I'm not terribly impressed either. The only reason I wanted windows on my MacBook was for the VPN for work, and the VPN software won't run on Vista. Back to Win2K for me. Maybe I'll try it again in a few months after a dozen or so patches have been released.

I'm not a fan by any stretch of the imagination, but don't discount Vista as just "XP reskinned". The really interesting features like WinFS failed to make it through development but there are enough changes at the core of the OS to justify numbering it NT 6.0.

Security is better in fundamental ways -- alas, most are invisible to Vista users but they do exist. The most visible security measure is User Account Control (UAC) which sucks in its implementation. UAC is the right thing to do and should protect naive users (and force developers to write applications that run in user rather than admin mode). If you are infuriated when installing lots of apps at one time, turn it off AND then switch it ON when completed. If you are infuriated on a daily basis, consider whether you are fiddling with your PC too much! [Microsoft's documentation for the first generation of every operating system is usually wrong on fine points. I suspect that UAC is poorly documented and that there are work arounds some idiot limitations.]

Enforced driver signing in the 64 bit version will hopefully filter through so manufacturers will stop shipping junk. Aero Glass will encourage application developers to create some funky but useful effects -- just as Mac OS X Quartz encouraged Microsoft to enhance the graphing function in Office.

Some Vista stuff is just the same as every other version of Windows -- dialog boxes have been designed by developers with no human understanding (or grammar), and user interface testing appears to have been performed using monkeys accustomed to jumping through Windows hoops (Wanna join this computer to a domain? Just press the confirm button three times to restart your PC. Has anyone examined this code since NT4?).

The requirement for 15GB free disk space is for the process of installation. At the start of installation, about 4GB of files are copied from the installation source (DVD, network share) to the hard disk. The files are then expanded to the hard disk before installation starts for real. Microsoft simply chose an installation mechanism that is quick for the user rather than efficient on free disk space (if a PC can run Vista it should be possible to free enough disk space for installation). But don't do upgrades from XP -- always backup and perform a clean install.

On my test install on VirtualPC 2007 (ie a bare install with no big apps), Vista Enterprise claims to use about 8.8GB when running. 1GB of that is the page file and the install can be cut down by omitting options such as Windows Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, games etc. Vista spotted that it is installed on VPC so there is no hibernation file which would normally increase disk usage.

Considering the other requirements for processor power (NOT speed in raw MHz), RAM and graphics card: relatively, these requirements aren't so different than for Mac OS X 10.1. You could install 10.1 on a min spec machine that was four years old, and it would run so long as you didn't use graphics or disk intensive apps. But you knew that you were just playing with OS X until you could afford a faster Mac. If your PC fails on more than one of the key Vista factors (disk space, RAM, graphics for Aero Glass, processor speed), you probably need a new PC rather than a minor upgrade.

My boss asked me to create at a "worst case Vista installation". The system that I picked met the minimum requirements for a Vista Ready PC (look it up on the MS Vista site), having a 1GHz Celeron (Tulatin, fast!)) processor, 512MB RAM, nasty integrated video using a Via chipset and nasty Via IDE controller. It also has a nasty Via NIC that can redefine the concept "packet loss". When running IE7 and Office 2007, the experience was positive. Of course I did not try to run Word, Excel, IE, Messenger and Photo Gallery simultaneously. Like Mac OS X, Vista worst case is OK for testing and limited use.

Be cautious when assessing reviews of RTM Vista on old hardware. It's early days so easy fixes to common problems aren't widely known.

Example: Vista ships with a generic "Standard VGA" driver for older graphics interfaces. Modern graphics interfaces support WDDM drivers (for Vista Aero Glass) but older graphics interfaces use the XDDM drivers for XP (no Aero Glass). By default, the Vista installer installs Microsoft's generic driver on older systems and performance is horrible. In most cases, Vista will accept XP video drivers (expand the download and look for the folder called WDM or look for INF files) and performance is much improved. With a suitable driver, everything is much more responsive than when using the MS driver. In my experience, OpenGL apps fail to run on the generic MS Vista driver they perform well with ATI's XP video driver.

it corupted my files, and caused me to lose data. I took it off, and in order to do that, i have to reinstall the WHOLE system. It screwed up my XP install two times (i fixed it both times) and gave the Vista 2 chances. It's utterly worthless. It was always borking apps (like FireFox or it would crash the control panel) and I am going back to XP. I know it is still early, but I happen to like the fact that my apps and hardware works with XP. I am sure M$ is going to love that I keep having to reinstall XP, mostly because I have other Microsoft products that keep screwing up the machine.
I have shelved the CD/DVDs for now, and will not use them probably for about a year, until they fix EVERYTHING that was causing me problems. if not even then. I am setting up a dual boot system for XP Pro/ ubuntu. It seems more fitting to have a system that works, than a novelty that M$ puts out that is half-crap.

I will NEVER Recommend this OS to ANYONE. I don't approve of XP itself, but Vista is something I hate with a passion now.