Quote - so what accounts for P5 not locking up in Vista?

In genera; Vista is a more efficient OS. It handles resources better and makes better decisions on scheduling and memory allocation. It is quite possible this might have a beneficial effect on P5. I am also curious to see if the USB Drive acceleration stuff might help Poser and other high memory applications.

Quote - "Vista PC should have a DVD-ROM, 1 GB of memory, a 1 GHZ CPU, and a 40GB hard drive with 15GB of available space. Over 80% of portables and 80% of business PC's do not meet this spec. This does not include Vista's video memory requirement of 256MB."

:: shrugs :: There is a lot of info, good and bad, flying around. That's one of the reasons the most intelligent thing to do is gauge by what actually works - and what you can see with your own eyes. That's part of why MS making the beta publicly downloadable is so cool. You can just try it for free.

I am simply relating what actually works... what I have seen with my own eyes. Vista runs as well or better than Windows XP on the same hardware one very machine we have tested it on. Of the systems we have tested it on, only 2 of them met or exceeded the specs you listed.

Quote - This was from an article I was reading that was included in on of the posted threads here.
Here is yet another article on how testers are not happy with Vista (link at top).

Obviously there will be much balanced information on a Mac site. Hey, while your at it why don't you learn about the recording industry and copyright law from Slashdot? :: rills eyes ::

The Vista beta is free. People should just download it and try it. Why listen to rumor, FUD and bullsh*t when you can just try it?

Quote - Everything I am reading just backs up what I read or heard before. That the program is resource hungry, bloated, top heavy, packed full of unneeded gadgets, buggy and so on. Not to be rude but I'd sure like to know what machine specs you folks running vista are using.

One test system is a Celeron 600+ (like 660 or so) with 256Meg of ram and a 40gig HD. The video card is an Nvidia Geforce 4 series generic (PCNY?) 128 meg. The soundcard is a built on, but SB compatible. It works just fine. Its slowish, but so is XP on that box. We do not get Aero Glass on hat machine.

We have a p4 series CPU laptop with 512meg and a Nvidia 256meg video card that works just fine as well. Its a 800mhz system.

Quote - Vista sounds like it will eat most of this up.

You keep saying "sounds like". I am telling you what it IS like.

Quote - And I'm sorry but MS track record of security SUCKS! A Microsoft OS is not out but a few months and the hackers have already chopped it to ribbons.

Their "track record" is not as bad as it seems. But then again if you get your MS news from a  Mac fansite you'll never really know anything about that.

The simple reality is that flaws in MS products are highly publicized because it is the dominant OS in the world. It is a big target and flaws have a large impact.

Quote - Then MS sends you these daily, annoying patches and updates to try to stay ahead of the hackers.

Yeah.. much better to not get updates.

Look, I admin a fair number of Linux boxes of various flavors as well for clients... and if your not updating them almost weekly your not paying attention. The Linux OS is a kernel hung with a lot of code form a lot of different groups - almost none of it having had a serious code review. There are hundreds of utilities, kernel drivers, patches and misc stuff that can and does have flaws in it constantly.

At least with MS I get my important patches from one place. No OS in the modern world is beyond the need for constant updates and patches.

Quote - It seems the more crap MS puts into one of their OS the easier it is to hack. And if you think for one minute that this Vista is going to be any safer then feel free to uninstall all your spyware, virus protection and firewalls. 'Cause it aint gonna happen.

One of our test machines runs only the security tools that ship with Vista by default, is Internet connected and used and has acquired ZERO viruses, bots, spyware or other crap. The reason is simple... it is much easier to run Vista as a non-admin user. Additionally under Vista IE runs with dramatically reduced privileges (b below those of the current logged in user even). These things alone make it a much, much safer system that way.

Even on Windows XP, a "out of the box" SP2 install with all the recent patches is fairly secure. Add the available from MS for free tools and your doing OK. Of course the "M$ is the sux0rz" websites won't mention this.

Quote - And what version of Vista do you buy when it's out of beta and on the shelves? There is like...um..6 versions? Does this mean that if you purchase the version you can afford that you're screwed out of something you wouldn't have got if you had purchased the next version?

You get the one with the features you need. I don't really see how that's confusing at all. You look at the feature lists, you pick the stuff you want / need and then you decide if it's worth the money. Like any other tool you might need.

Hell, Softimage XSI comes in three versions. Lots of tools have versions

In general? Most people will want the "Home Premium" edition. That is the one that has all the stuff you have in XP home, all the Vista upgrades and includes what used to be called "Windows XP: Media Center". Most Windows XP Pro users will go to "Vista Business". It's really not that complex.

Quote -
No, I'll sit back and observe and wait (much like I did with Poser 5) till a more stable program is created.

By all means, wait as long as you want. The choice is, as always, in the hands of the consumer.

Quote - Nice fairytale.... try using Vista or XP on a 256meg Celeron 600mhz and play a DVD in it.

What is the problem? Since DVD decoding is 99% a factor of the video card (hardware decoding always helps) and the drivers, why would this be a problem?

However no, I have not tried using software DVD decoding on Vista on that machine yet. I wouldn't be surprised if it failed... that machine couldn't do it well under XP either.

Quote - Wonder why some people I know upgraded their system to run Vista more comfortable and some of them used pretty advanced systems already.

I have no idea. Then again I don't know what you consider an "advanced system". Of courese we live ina  world where a 1gig ram, 2.8mhz system with a 17inch LCD monitor can be had for less than 700$ (even from Dell or similar) so power is cheap.

Quote - Always remember a tip from the past- don't by version x.0 of anything (to update it, just wait until the first service pack release..be it Win, Poser 5 [couldn't resis..;], or anything..;) Learned this with Dos 3.0..;)

Not a bad point of view - but I think the world is changing some now that fast, constant updates are the norm. UI use many tools every day that are effectively "1.0". Hell, many of the web based tools I use are still calling themselves "beta".

The nice thing about a free public beta is that you can simply try it. We did the same thing with XP that we are doing with Vista...running the beta for a few months to make sure we are happy with it. When Vista hits the release I will be all over it because I already know from months of personal experience what it can and can't do.

Peole can run it or not - I don't make a dime either way. I just resent FUD.