Forced Software Upgrades Can Add Up for Vista Users

[rkr1958]

Windows users contemplating the cost of upgrading to Vista may need a fatter wallet than they thought.
Besides shelling out for faster hardware, users should expect to pay for Vista upgrades for many of their favorite Windows software.

Full article at,

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129608/article.html

[Nelson37]

I am at this time strongly advocating to all my customers that they avoid Vista.

It does nothing they need, mission-critical apps do not run, hardware requirements are steep, at this time XP is better. 2000 is better. Win98 is better. Whether or not Me is better would maybe be a close call.

This POS is not worth the money, and offers nothing to justify the hassle. IMO, MS has thoroughly screwed the pooch on this one.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Travel back in time and read http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=62124

Same old story. "Should I upgrade to XP from Win 2000?". Same old arguments.

Every new OS always leads to some software becoming redundant. Compared to other OSes, it's actually quite remarkable how much stuff from many, many versions ago can still run.

(FWIW, we recommend XP Pro SP2 or x64 for our apps though they work just fine on Vista).

[oldandinthe way]

Many computer manufacturers like Lenovo have provided for their customers lists of applications which must be uninstalled, those which must be updated, those which can run without uninstalling and reinstalling and those which will not run.

The lists are longer than I'm comfortable with, but I have no pressing reason to ugrade.

If your computer is your hobby, then upgrading without a reason makes sense.

If your computer is your business, its just plain STUPID.

And if there is something you can't do without an O/S upgrade, then upgrade you must.

I'm increasingly fond of dual boot systems. As well as retaining some old incompatible apps, it allows me a stable system to use to repair the new O/S.

[lacywest]

I read the article about upgrading to XP from Win2K.

I provided a computer [Spring 2006] for the clients I work with. I put on a legal version of XP ... within 2 weeks the windows restore was somehow screwed up and didn't work ... clients just couldn't resist getting deep into the computer and screw around with stuff.

They also started using the DVD Burner to make copies of their CDs using Windows Media Player ... so I took it out and gave them a DVD-ROM reader instead.

Well little by little the computer started having problems so they got a new one.

They got a ... HP Compaq EVO D51C D510 510 P4 ... 2.53 GHZ... from Ebay the tower cost me $90 bucks.

I put the same two harddrives in it ... Seagate 120GB and the same video card ... ATI 9800 Pro. And they have one gig of ram.

I am a registered user of Half Life and Half Life 2 and Half Life 2 ... 1st Episode ... and Doom 3.

I installed Half Life 2 and then used the Comcast Internet connection at work and downloaded all the addon games from Valve for Half Life 2 ... from the Internet.

Now that they have the computer for themselves ... they do not have a Internet connection ... if they did ... they'd be looking at porn all day.

I also put Quake 2 and Quake 3 and Quake 4 on their computer ... Doom 3 is also installed.

Everything works fine ... but they are now using Windows 2000 ... with all updates installed.

[Ron B]

When you've got a computer that's running fine with a bunch of complex software that people here would use, like Premiere, Vegas, other editing, encoding and authoring software, and say "heck, let's try a brand new operating system", that would be somebody with lots of spare time on their hands.

[thecoalman]

that would be somebody with lots of spare time on their hands.

And lots of spare cash, many of the users here use Adobe products such as Photoshop and according to that article they won't be providing a patch to make current versions run on Vista.

For myself I won't be upgrading, no need too. I'll wait a few years then bite the bullet. It's way beyond the point where your average computer can meet the needs of your average user, hell most could be using Win95 on a p1 233mhz... The exception of course would be those with multimedia or gaming capability.

[stantheman1976]

I just got a new Toshiba Core 2 Duo laptop which came preloaded with Vista. I haven't had a lot of time to install old programs, but I've already had a couple issues. I'm wondering if it would be worth it to try going back to XP with this particular system. Wondering whether I'd have hellacious problems with drivers makes me very weary of trying out XP on here. Plus, is XP with SP 2 optimized for dual core? If I "downgrade" to XP will I lose the advantage of having a dual core machine?

[BJ_M]

Xp pro works great with dual core - i converted my new laptop back 100% to xp

[stantheman1976]

I may end up going that route. I'm going to play with Vista for a while since I have it and see if I can get the main apps I use reularly working. So far I've installed DVD Lab, TMPGEnc Plus, TMPGEnc DVD Author, FLAC Frontend, and Adobe Audition. If I can get Vegas 6 and WinDV to work that will take care of most everything I need. Anyone have experience with those yet?

[BJ_M]

VEGAS 7 is not working 100% w/ vista yet -- not sure on version 6

[stantheman1976]

I installed Vegas 6 last night. It installed and started up fine. I don't have anything to edit at the moment so I can't say if it's 100% stable, but so far most everything works ok.

Vista doesn't seem nearly as evil as some are making it out to be.

[Nelson37]

What you are missing Stan is that while Vista may very well work OK for you, it is supposed to work for literally MILLIONS of people.

Large numbers of mission-critical apps do not work. The expense to upgrade to new versions is going to be considerable. Lots of hardware will not work.

Vista is more expensive, compared to previous OS, requires more hardware, compared to previous OS, and is much less reliable, compared to previous OS. It has transparent desktop icons, whoop-de-friggin-do.

MS has the marketing muscle to simply force this OS upon us. The consuming public has little choice. The next 6 months or so, Vista will become a fact of life. I'll make a lot of money dealing with its unneccessary complications, and MS will piss off a lot of customers. 2 to 3 years from now MS will do it all over again.

Many businesses are starting to realize they do not need the latest MS creation. Average consumers will hopefully come to understand this as well.

[ofbarea]

I may end up going that route. I'm going to play with Vista for a while since I have it and see if I can get the main apps I use reularly working. So far I've installed DVD Lab, TMPGEnc Plus, TMPGEnc DVD Author, FLAC Frontend, and Adobe Audition. If I can get Vegas 6 and WinDV to work that will take care of most everything I need. Anyone have experience with those yet?

I'm running Vista x64 and have tested TMPGEnc Plus, TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.5, WinDV and ImgBurn 2.2.0.0.

All of them worked just fine.

I think I will setup a Virtual machine with W2K just to run application that may fail with Vista.

[stantheman1976]

What you are missing Stan is that while Vista may very well work OK for you, it is supposed to work for literally MILLIONS of people.

Large numbers of mission-critical apps do not work. The expense to upgrade to new versions is going to be considerable. Lots of hardware will not work.

Vista is more expensive, compared to previous OS, requires more hardware, compared to previous OS, and is much less reliable, compared to previous OS. It has transparent desktop icons, whoop-de-friggin-do.

MS has the marketing muscle to simply force this OS upon us. The consuming public has little choice. The next 6 months or so, Vista will become a fact of life. I'll make a lot of money dealing with its unneccessary complications, and MS will piss off a lot of customers. 2 to 3 years from now MS will do it all over again.

Many businesses are starting to realize they do not need the latest MS creation. Average consumers will hopefully come to understand this as well.

Calm down there, amigo. I didn't mean to get anyone worked up. I understand the tactics MS is using for Vista. If I had not bought a new laptop that already had the OS I would not even think about switching yet. My PC at home will remain an XP machine until it dies. It boils down to circumstance for me. I wanted a laptop months ago before Vista became common. I couldn't afford it then. Now I can buy a laptop and the are all coming loaded with Vista so I face the choice of living with it or trying to put XP on a brand new system that I don't know the ins and outs of yet.

[BJ_M]

I installed Vegas 6 last night. It installed and started up fine. I don't have anything to edit at the moment so I can't say if it's 100% stable, but so far most everything works ok.

Vista doesn't seem nearly as evil as some are making it out to be.

some scripting doesnt work - some plugs dont work - machine control doesnt always work - some NET related items not functioning - rendering about 30% slower (typical for most NLE) - etc etc etc ..., avid , sony and others do not certify their apps on vista - though at some point they will have to ...

biggest issue is the speed - it is slow and do anything requires twice as many mouse clicks

[ron spencer]

check this out..

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197700789

[oldandinthe way]

check this out..

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197700789

Irrelevant to the topic.

[lacywest]

check this out..

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197700789

Irrelevant to the topic.

Oh for Pete's Sake ... we are talking about avoiding Vista for several reasons.

Ron Spencer ... posts a link about DOT ... doing the same thing and you post a reply ... it is not ... relevant to the topic.

Are we racking up post counts or what ??

[BJ_M]

as has been mentioned by others - all these same comments were posted when XP came out ....

and when 2000 came out before that -- in some ways Nt4 was screaming quick .....

people just seem to upgrade and learn to live with it ..... in the end ..

[lacywest]

as has been mentioned by others - all these same comments were posted when XP came out ....

and when 2000 came out before that -- in some ways Nt4 was screaming quick .....

people just seem to upgrade and learn to live with it ..... in the end ..

Before Vista was on the shelves ... I kept an eye out for sales for WinXP ... and Bestbuy and CompUSA had some pretty good sales.

Early February ... CompUSA was selling WINXP Upgrade for $40 bucks ... a month or two before that Bestbuy was selling them for similar prices.

I use my Win 2000 Setup CD ... to allow the Upgrade version to install.

I bought two of them for $40 bucks each at CompUSA and they are not opened up yet.

[stiltman]

what most do not know,

If you have a vista license, you can use XP instead. We confirmed this with MS. We are now buying all our PCs with Vista (and with vista media) but as soon as they come in, we blow them away and install XP. We are saving the Vista media (labeled to match the system they came with) for the day we deside to upgrade all our systems