Vista 64 bit

For me the items in Vista which deserve the largest praise is that you dont need to worry about defragging your hard drives every once in a while, and in Ultimate Edition I find Dreamscene amazing and the in built imaging system works flawlessley, I can completely restore my 100GB Vista instalation from a image on a second hardrive in about 40 minutes. Yes I know there are many third party solutions which perform this task, but none in my opinion work this well.

It's just given me less to worry about really - and device/driver support at this stage in Vista's lifecycle is pretty much on a par with XP now.

Sorry RR - i've just read your question about the Windows 7 Beta.

I would expect that to revert back to Vista once the Beta has concluded, you would have to do a fresh install of Vista. Alternatively I would imagine if you kept using the windows 7 beta once it is commercially available then something similar to Vista's black screen of death will happen when it realises it is'nt genuine.

But since between now and when Windows 7 comes out, I will be upgrading my main OS hard drive to a SATA II, I knew I would be doing a clean install sometime soonish anyway.

As far as the upgrade was concerned, I have never had an easier time installing an OS. I would recommend you choose the option to remain online and check for compatibility issues - the only thing it said it would'nt like was Nero 6 - so i uninstalled that first. The only thing i use Nero for nowadays is to burn iso images, and Windows 7 can do that nativeley so I'm very pleased.

The only downside so far has been that although my creative X-FI sound card works flawlessley under Windows 7; the Creative software bundle which comes with the card does'nt quite work as it should - there is a very neat effect with X-FI cards where is makes stereo sound behave like surround sound, it is simply stunning. When I try to do this, the back two satellite speakers do not work. I've read a lot of posts from people with similar issues. Windows 7 itself though - watching DVD's and playing games, my 5.1 works as it should - it's just the Creative own 3D sound effect does'nt work. I imagine Creative are on the case - but i must say being able to use Windows 7 far outways this niggle.

Thanks Snootchies, I think I'll let you early adopters iron things out & hope for a vista to 7 upgrade option to cut down on the upheaval

A minor point of clarification; PS CS4 64 bit mode is officially *unsupported* under Win XP x64. See http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb404901&sliceId=1

Regarding Windows 7, if anybody wants to try it out the best way is to set up a second hard disk partition; here’s how you go about doing that: http://lifehacker.com/5126781/how-to-dual-boot-windows-7-with-xp-or-vista

A minor point of clarification; PS CS4 64 bit mode is officially *unsupported* under Win XP x64. See ]http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb404901&sliceId=1[/qu...
Ah well it runs still great, better then cs3 does so I'm happy even if Adobe didn't test it throughly on XP64.
XP64 might even be a better option compared to vista 64, it use the same core operating system as Windows Server 2003 which is very stable so far as I know and it use less system resources compared to vista.
The plus side of 64bit system also is that it's immune to certain types of 32bit viruses.

Since everyone is happy about windows 7 I'll wait for that I think and skip Vista. When does windows 7 come out btw?

Hi Stefan.

Some reports suggest Windows 7 will be out in late 2009, which Microsoft have always denied. Microsoft have, however, dropped hints on an early 2010. Either way, I'll get a fair bit of value from my free beta.

This is interesting:

Link to full story including beta download: http://blogs.technet.com/mdop/

Creative haven't been able to sort out drivers properly for their cards for sometime and basically turned a blind eye to hacked drivers available on cd's. They then had second thoughts and started to issue threats.
There's about 220 pages on the Creative Forum as a result.

I don't use Vista (Audigy 4 on XP Pro) but read quite a bit about the cd's etc. You may be able to find a solution following the pages at this site link

shim

Wow, very intersting. Thanks for the information Shim, I was'nt aware of this, since I do not have Creative's previous generation of sound cards - my X-FI has been absolutely fine on vista.

Why on earth Creative want to shoot themselves in the foot in this way and actively prevent greater compatibility is beyond me. Let's take the Omega drivers for instance - the only third party drivers created which ATI have gone on record to support and dont have an issue with (I presume that's the same for Nvidia too).

Creative's business model needs to keep with the times and to embrace this kind or behaviour. This is not detrimental to their business, sound cards still have to be bought from Creative whether they use third party drivers or not. Endeavours like this not only to improve returns on sound cards should be maintained but also Creative should consider indivuals providing this kind of service from a recruitment perspective too.

I just dont think Creative have the best intrest of their customers at heart here.

RR well i wouldnt recommend using the 'upgrade' option from vista to windows 7. So you cant really revert back to vista if you do this. If you get a serial key which is easy now that they are public, the beta will expire in August.

And your are not going to want to buy a license for a beta operating system
not that you can, but ull have to wait for full release and reinstall it.

to avoid any problems i installed it on a new harddrive, or you could put it on a new partition. Ive had no problems with it- apart from my creative Audigy 2 cutting out every so often, so im using my onboard sound atmo. - thankfully all the vista drivers work for W7. Installation is super simple and quick - but i dont know about updating from a previous version RR. I wouldnt personally just in case

I've just downloaded Windows 7 because I am refurbishing the fastest machine in the office (new hard drive) and I can't get any of my XP Pro disks to work.
Is Windows 7 essentially Vista? in as much as using up all the system resources just to run itself and look pretty even tho' you never see it if you are working properly?

Bob, Note that first post from July 2006 was edited only 12 days ago,(Edit: Whoops! 1 year and 12 days ago) no doubt toned down. I must admit at least one of the CD's which was available from Sofpedia and other sites was a bit naughty.... basically let you use the latest Creative Apps with any of their older soundcards, but their software's always been full of bugs anyway. I constantly have two DVD-RAM disks on my computer for drag and drop archiving and if I play an MP3 on my computer with a fairly recent version of MediaSource player it starts searching the two DVD-RAM disks for media files which is noisy and takes ages and I can hardly hear the MP3. I'm going to put the free version of MediaMonkey back on.

It was the same with Nomad Jukebox, crap software until someone brought out an alternative called Notmad. I only tolerate their stuff because I like their MP3 players, I've still got a Nomad 3 and a Zen 20gb which I sync using their software and firewire port. I actually use an old M-Audio Audiophile 2496 sound card which is much better, but only stereo.

shim

Yes.

Microsoft are known to be working on a fairly revolutionary kernel redesign where it is split into meaningful chunks that are then loaded - and likely licensed - depending on the pc’s intended functionality.

Ignoring virtualisation this technology is backwards compatible with nothing and was apparently originally intended for release in Windows 7. However, somewhere along the line Microsoft have drastically scaled back their level of ambition and instead gone for what appears to be little more than a reskinning of Vista.

Presumably Microsoft believe they know what they are doing, but I smell another market failure with Windows 7 given the undoubted reluctance of corporates to invest in the current climate. I think they should have stuck to their original timetable and aimed for genuine architectural innovation rather than more entertainment gimmickry.

I'm happy now - i've just got the 3D sound feature on my x-fi card working nicely on Windows 7, so I have no issues with this operating system at all (at the moment of course).

I seem to have hijacked this thread - so appologies - but had to call the technical support team for my broadband last night (it's a tad slow at the moment) and I completely floored them when I was asked what operating system I had - to which I replied with Windows 7 and then I was asked "dont' you mean Vista?"

Just be aware that if you do go for the Beta - it appears that you could have support issues from your ISP until it's perhaps more widely known.