Vista public BETA released

[cymon]

A video card isn't worth shit if there's no drivers.  ATi's drivers are poor quality, so there goes any advantage of a more powerful card, especially on Linux/BSD.

[Lead Head]

Well there is more to a Video card than raw performance. Many people avoid ATI because to this day, they still write very shitty drivers. Even if ATI drivers didn't suck, they would still be a no-go for me because they don't support FreeBSD at all.

Yes, but their drivers since the 6.x have been getting progesivley better with every version

EDIT:Odly enough, they support BeOS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon

EDIT: What do you mean there goes the advantage? ATI is ontop of the ORB and still leads in games, nVidia has to resort to QUAD SLI to keep performence up. Plus nVidia said they were gonna have HDR+AA support with 7900 series. They didnt.

[toadlife]

Yes, but their drivers since the 6.x have been getting progesivley better with every version

EDIT:Odly enough, they support BeOS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon

EDIT: What do you mean there goes the advantage? ATI is ontop of the ORB and still leads in games, nVidia has to resort to QUAD SLI to keep performence up. Plus nVidia said they were gonna have HDR+AA support with 7900 series. They didnt.

I've been hearing the "ATI's divers have been getting better" schtick for years now, and my experience tells me it's simply not true.

For a long time at work we specified that our machines get Nvidia only cards, because we had all had bad experience with ati drivers and didn't want to muck around with driver issues. Recently we bought five computers and our vendor shipped them with ATI x800 cards. The drivers cause random lockups and the machines were virtually unusable until a new driver came out about a week later. The driver was so bad that even Microsoft released the updated driver via Windows update.

In 2004 we bought some Alienware laptops for everyone in the department and the Radeon 9600 drivers have caused periodic BSODs ever since then. I finally got a new driver a couple of months ago and havn't had a bluescreen since. Look like it only took them two years to get that one right.

Bottom line: ATI's puts out too many unstable drivers.

[inane]

Ok well here's my current XP partition... with litestep I think it looks better than Vista could plausibly hope to look. Notice that it only takes up 19 mb... it seems that Microsoft can't even take a hint from it's third party developers.

BTW the litestep theme is Go! and the native vistual style is Glitch. Both are untouched.

[pofnlice]

Ati is for some and not for others. I have a Radeon 8500 LE in this one and it runs smooth and fine. Never had any problems with it.

Another older computer of mine is running and OLD ASS Radeon 7200, no problems at all.

One of my other systems (my SUSE puter) has a Nvidia Geforce 4, MX 4600. CRAP. It's why it's on my linux machine. I can't use it to play games in Windows, and support for it is better in Linux, except that I loose 3d emulation with it.

Besides all this kewl hardware bragging...and tech talk...and callin bullshit, I think you all proved the point of what I was getting at. At least an upgrade will be necessary to run it...

[Orethrius]

So you pulled that price out of your ass. That's what I thought.

Actually, considering pricepoints of XP, and the fluctuating claims between UE being $250 - $380 and everything in between, I don't think that final estimate is too far off - and the situation did not warrant your flippant remark.

Anyhow, almost nobody pays retail price for Windows. They buy OEM copies with their new machines, or the parts they buy for their new machines.

Yeah, and if Microsoft ever decides to shore up that loophole, millions of vendors, users, and so on have just become pirates.  Congratulations, you need to buy ANOTHER copy!  That whole issue really only exists because the manufacturer edict is that "Windows OEM may only be sold with new computers"... it doesn't specify what constitutes a new computer (I know a couple places that sell it with Cat-5).  If Microsoft can make vociferous claims that every copy of Windows that fails WGA is pirated, what makes you think they're going to claim anything else for perceived distribution violations?  After all, they'd only get more business from the deal.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Be careful there.  My brother's computer is a 7-year old Compaq Deskpro (500MHz P3, 384MB RAM, 10+80GB hard drives).  Nothing in there has ever broken.

Well, he probably got lucky, my first PC a Compaq broke in 3 months. And I know many other people who have had problems with their compaqs ... and I've had lots of experience with them in computer science classes ... nobody wants to use them because they blow goats. Dells are at least 100x better and just as cheap.

So you pulled that price out of your ass. That's what I thought.

Here is my ass:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/30/windows-vista-ultimate-450-us/

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4463/53/

I never pull things out of my ass ... I pull them from Google's ass

[WMD]

Well, he probably got lucky, my first PC a Compaq broke in 3 months. And I know many other people who have had problems with their compaqs ... and I've had lots of experience with them in computer science classes ... nobody wants to use them because they blow goats.

Those were probably consumer-level Compaqs.  That's the trick.  The Deskpro is a business machine.

[cymon]

about the RAM
you know Vista reqs a DDR2 ram not DDR ot SD !
so if you had computer from back then you are screwed
your mother board will not be compatible with that too...
and if you want a healthy system with fat-type of fsys
you are screwed tooo !
so i do not like vista i aint upgrading just for that ...
maby fot Half-life 2 or some other major hit that i like
but not for M$!

Processors and motherboards require DDR2, not operating systems.  Vista doesn't care whether you're on DDR or DDR2.

[toadlife]

Well, he probably got lucky, my first PC a Compaq broke in 3 months. And I know many other people who have had problems with their compaqs ... and I've had lots of experience with them in computer science classes ... nobody wants to use them because they blow goats. Dells are at least 100x better and just as cheap.



Here is my ass:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/30/windows-vista-ultimate-450-us/

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4463/53/

I never pull things out of my ass ... I pull them from Google's ass

Thanks Tex.

If XP pro was $300.00 when it came out in 2001, that would translate into $325.00 adjusted for inflation today. So, if those guesses are correct, ultimate will be more expensive that XP Pro was.  But ultimate is media center/tablet PC edition rolled into one, so there are more features. One of the lesser editions would probably suffice for most people. I'm curious what the other version will cost.

I still maintain that quoting retail prices is not realistic, as almost no one pays them, and the idea of Microsoft "cracking down" and preventing people from buying OEM versions sounds far fetched to me. One of the things you give up when buying OEM version is support from Microsoft. Providing support is expensive, which is why OEM versions cost so much less. When you buy a retail version, you are entitled to a certain amount of free phone support directly from Microsoft. With OEM versions, Microsoft offloads the responsibility of support to the OEM. If you buy an OEM version from newegg, then the "OEM" is you.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Those were probably consumer-level Compaqs.  That's the trick.  The Deskpro is a business machine.

Oh ... still I bet an equivalent (business machine) Dell is better and just as cheap.