Adcadet
Storage Freak
So, my buddy and I recently spec'ed out new computers, and basically went with the same hardware. (new computer link: http://www.storageforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6186).
My buddy decided that he had to have Vista. Why, I don't know. But he's the type who buys Norton Whatever each year, and he bought Vista OneSupport (or whatever it's called) along with Vista. He didn't want to wait until May when our school would have gotten us a discount, or until Service Pack 1 comes out. No, he really wanted to pay $200 or whatever it is for the pretty box and the Latest and Greatest OS. I've gotten a variety of answers out of him as to why he wants to run Vista, which range from "because XP isn't available anymore" (ignores Newegg link I sent him), better for gaming (ignores reviews which show up to a 30% performance hit), to better support (just left me speechless).
Fine. Whatever. I've agreed to help him build the PC. The parts are nearly identical to what I recently built, so it was a pretty easy build. I was happy to help with the hardware side, but not too interested in the software side. If he wanted to install XP, at least that would be a known for me and quick. But he wanted to install Vista. What the heck, I might as well see Vista, right?
Well, first, the Out of the Box Experience (OBE). Vista comes in pretty packaging, but it's remarkably hard to open. It took the two of us, complete with scissors, knife, and a combined 16 years of post-secondary education to figure out how to open it. And we still end up actually breaking part of the plastic box. Well, he did, but I wasn't much help.
Next, the install of Vista. Now, the big difference between his computer and mine is that he has two identical 250GB Seagate drives vs. my more motley collection. We go into the format section of the install, which requires us to create the partitions and format them in 2-steps, but without a choice of what file format. Annoying, but no big deal. Except that no matter what we do, Windows says it can't find a partition to install on. WTF??? I mess around with it, and he googles the error message and finds out that Vista can't differentiate between two identical HDs, and thus you need to create partitions on one and then reboot the computer so it knows which is which. Strange, no big deal except for the complete lack of information in the error message. Why couldn't MS have just said so? Surely their engineers knew about this issue for months. Is it that hard to put that info in an error message?
Vista finally gets installed, which is actually surprizingly quick. My friend ran it on a freebe 17" CRT, so it looked like crap. It also felt like it ran slow, which is odd considering that this was on a new Core 2 Duo system with 2 GB of RAM. Navigating around is a challenge at first, and it's very annoying to have to click "allow" each time you try to run an application.
So today I talked with him, after he apparently screwed up his OS after overclocking his computer and letting it run two copies of Prime 95 overnight. I again asked him why he was going with Vista, since he does have access to XP: to save money, since he'll upgrade to Vista eventually (never mind that he's about to go from paying ~30K/year for school to getting paid ~40K, with significant raises each year).
So, I'm staying the hell away from Vista until at least SP1. Maybe by then it will work almost as well as XP.
My buddy decided that he had to have Vista. Why, I don't know. But he's the type who buys Norton Whatever each year, and he bought Vista OneSupport (or whatever it's called) along with Vista. He didn't want to wait until May when our school would have gotten us a discount, or until Service Pack 1 comes out. No, he really wanted to pay $200 or whatever it is for the pretty box and the Latest and Greatest OS. I've gotten a variety of answers out of him as to why he wants to run Vista, which range from "because XP isn't available anymore" (ignores Newegg link I sent him), better for gaming (ignores reviews which show up to a 30% performance hit), to better support (just left me speechless).
Fine. Whatever. I've agreed to help him build the PC. The parts are nearly identical to what I recently built, so it was a pretty easy build. I was happy to help with the hardware side, but not too interested in the software side. If he wanted to install XP, at least that would be a known for me and quick. But he wanted to install Vista. What the heck, I might as well see Vista, right?
Well, first, the Out of the Box Experience (OBE). Vista comes in pretty packaging, but it's remarkably hard to open. It took the two of us, complete with scissors, knife, and a combined 16 years of post-secondary education to figure out how to open it. And we still end up actually breaking part of the plastic box. Well, he did, but I wasn't much help.
Next, the install of Vista. Now, the big difference between his computer and mine is that he has two identical 250GB Seagate drives vs. my more motley collection. We go into the format section of the install, which requires us to create the partitions and format them in 2-steps, but without a choice of what file format. Annoying, but no big deal. Except that no matter what we do, Windows says it can't find a partition to install on. WTF??? I mess around with it, and he googles the error message and finds out that Vista can't differentiate between two identical HDs, and thus you need to create partitions on one and then reboot the computer so it knows which is which. Strange, no big deal except for the complete lack of information in the error message. Why couldn't MS have just said so? Surely their engineers knew about this issue for months. Is it that hard to put that info in an error message?
Vista finally gets installed, which is actually surprizingly quick. My friend ran it on a freebe 17" CRT, so it looked like crap. It also felt like it ran slow, which is odd considering that this was on a new Core 2 Duo system with 2 GB of RAM. Navigating around is a challenge at first, and it's very annoying to have to click "allow" each time you try to run an application.
So today I talked with him, after he apparently screwed up his OS after overclocking his computer and letting it run two copies of Prime 95 overnight. I again asked him why he was going with Vista, since he does have access to XP: to save money, since he'll upgrade to Vista eventually (never mind that he's about to go from paying ~30K/year for school to getting paid ~40K, with significant raises each year).
So, I'm staying the hell away from Vista until at least SP1. Maybe by then it will work almost as well as XP.
