Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Tuesday 24 April 2007, 10:00 AM
Unconvinced about Vista
Let's start with the look of the thing, which is clearly one of the OS's main drawing points. It does look pleasant - so much so that when I changed the theme to "Windows Classic" in an attempt to get the performance back up, I actually missed the Vista feel and switched back again.
The other thing I like about it is the fact that I very rarely hear my laptop whirring anymore. This is fairly important.
What I don't like is that it takes longer to start up than XP did, and certainly takes about twice as long as XP to shut down. Hungry games like Oblivion also no longer run as efficiently. What does bump my Oblivion back up to normality is utilising ReadyBoost (pseudo-RAM from an SD card in my case), but frankly that technology doesn't seem to make as much of a difference as it should.
(Gamers: please note that I have Oblivion on pretty much the lowest settings. My laptop only has a gig of RAM, but the game ran fine on those settings under XP. It seriously struggles under Vista.)
Now, I understand that Vista is the OS we're going to be using for the next few years, and I understand that, while my laptop is new, a gig of RAM is going to be considered pretty weak in a couple of years' time. However, if I was thinking like a consumer here, and if I'd really been expecting "the Wow" to start now, I'd be pretty cheesed off.
As it happens, I'm thinking of it a bit more like a tech hack, and taking the long view makes me feel a little less cheated. But thinking that way also makes me wonder when a truly user-friendly version of Linux is going to become available.
Not that it will let me play Oblivion...
PreviousComments on this post
Actually, you can play The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion under wine (Wine is a wrapper that translates what a windows program does into output that gnu/linux will understand at minimal overhead), it has a "silver" rating on the application compatibility database due to one or two graphical bugs (some funny shadows or something).
In my experience, when a program can be run *almost* flawlessly under wine then it only takes a little tweak here and there to make it run 99% perfect (100% if your lucky :)).
If you want to try it out I would be very happy to help you with any issues you have (with the OS as well as wine).
Alan
PS, if you are looking for a user friendly version of gnu/linux the I'm sure you heard of ubuntu feisty fawn, it's a good place to start if you don't really care to actually learn the OS but just use it instead!
David,
I was experiencing the same problems that you are, until I doubled my RAM to 2GB on my desktop, and a custom spec'd Dell D620 Latitude Now Vista starts up faster than XP (I am using dual-boot configurations), and programs are generally more responsive.
Give 2GB RAM a try , this should improve things.
Tony.
I also think that having two sticks in a 'dual-channel' setup gives an extra boost, especially in Vista.
You wrote "understand that Vista is the OS we're going to be using for the next few years" as if the rest of the world will just fall in line like good and obedient little users.
It seems to me that somewhere within every article about Vista, even the ones that aren't particularly positive about it, there's a point where the writer tells us all that everyone will be using Vista sooner or later, because it's the only choice we have.
Maybe if enough people write it and say it, then MAYBE enough people will begin to believe and make it come true. Hmmm, maybe.
Then again, maybe not. I believe people are ready for a change, I just don't believe Vista is it.
I agree with the sentiment of what you're saying, Rainy Day, and wholeheartedly wish that the non-MS options out there were more widely recognised and adopted. However, reality taps on my shoulder and tells me that, for the majority of people, Vista will indeed be it for the next few years.
Hey, maybe the Vista experience won't improve, or Linux will get some unexpected boost in the consumer arena, and maybe the general public will turn their backs on Vista's successor - but in the meantime, I can't see how the average Joe won't simply stick with the OS bundled onto their home PC.
Interesting - I've had similar experiences except I've found my new laptop (a Sony Vaio SZ3 with 1GB RAM) makes more noise - in terms of the hard disk and the fans; and definitely runs hotter than when it was on XP. I decided to make the machine dual boot Ubuntu Linux when I did the upgrade - and I have to say that was a great decision! I find myself using Ubuntu more and more these days - particularly when I just want to surf the web or do emails. If you haven't already give it a go!
Interesting - the noise was one thing that improved with the switch to Vista...
