Vista: Yay or Nay?

[aneeshm]

I'd like to ask people here whether or not installing (or rather, upgrading to) Vista would be a wise move. Will RC2 remain free forever? What are the new features that make it better than XP? What are the flaws or snags? And does my hardware support it?

2 GB RAM
3200 + 64-bit processor from AMD (should I go with the 32-bit Vista to avoid driver problems?)
More than enough HDD space (SATA disk)
6600 graphics card (will this be too slow or too little?)
nVidia A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard, with integrated sound (will this give me driver trouble?)

And does it play nice with other operating systems? Does it include a bootloader which detects other operating systems and gives the user a choice? Or do I have to boot from a LiveCD and fix the bootloader back to GRUB manually?

[LordShiva]

RC2 will stop working in June 2007.

Worth it, IMO. Definitely will be in June, 2007.

[flipside]

Not yet. Let it f*** up for a while. There is no compelling reason to change. In approx. a year or so change.

[Solver]

This is a case where you can definitely skip a version and upgrade to the next one. I do not see any features in Vista that would make it a compelling upgrade. And don't get me started on Vista's memory usage.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by LordShiva
RC2 will stop working in June 2007.

Worth it, IMO. Definitely will be in June, 2007.

Any way to make it overlook the fact that it is supposed to die?

And what will be the cost of Vista when it comes out? That's my biggest problem, actually. It'll be something like 5,000 Rupees, which is way too expensive for an OS.

All my important data is on Linux, nothing is on XP, so even if something screws up, I won't have a problem. Is it worth it then?

[Jon Miller]

Generally Microsoft hasn't worked out enough of the bugs to make it worthwhile to change until SP2 or so.

JM

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Solver
This is a case where you can definitely skip a version and upgrade to the next one. I do not see any features in Vista that would make it a compelling upgrade. And don't get me started on Vista's memory usage.

Could you please be a bit more specific? As in, could you tell me what is it that is new? And what is it that is broken?

About the memory usage - is 2 GB enough?

[aneeshm]

Oh, and seems nobody has answered one question - is my hardware powerful enough?

[LordShiva]

Hardware looks fine. 2GB is enough. And you'll want to go with 32-bit unless you intend to upgrade beyond 4GB.

Vista Ultimate is listed at $400 (non-upgrade), which is pretty steep. Home Premium has almost the same features (it's missing some of the Business Edition features like Bitlocker, which nobody will use, and other useless stuff) will cost half that. Though I'm sure it will be, er, available for much cheaper in India, eventually.

[Dinner]

I wouldn't buy Vista as an upgrade though when I buy a new computer it will certainly come bundled with Vista. It does seem like bloatware though.

[Solver]

Why use the 32-bit version if you pay for a 64-bit processor?

Well, Vista has a revamped interface, which I don't really consider a major feature. The sidebar is nice, for many, but there's a crapload of applications that will do that for XP. It has automatic backups which are pretty good though. Speech recognition is included, though I'm unsure how good it is.

Vista has a lot of new annoying security popups with its new user access control. Something that I feel is greatly annoying...

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by LordShiva
Hardware looks fine. 2GB is enough. And you'll want to go with 32-bit unless you intend to upgrade beyond 4GB.

Vista Ultimate is listed at $400 (non-upgrade), which is pretty steep. Home Premium has almost the same features (it's missing some of the Business Edition features like Bitlocker, which nobody will use, and other useless stuff) will cost half that. Though I'm sure it will be, er, available for much cheaper in India, eventually.

It'll be "available", all right. Going into any more details would get me banned, though.

Of course, the funny thing is that only Vista Ultimate will be "available" - why would a bootlegger bother with anything lower? It's all the same to him, anyway.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Solver
Why use the 32-bit version if you pay for a 64-bit processor?

Because software and driver support will be an issue for the near future, and because the 64-bit version doesn't yield a performance advantage unless you have >4GB of RAM.

[Victor Galis]

Why would anyone upgrade? (i.e. What at are the compelling features?)

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Victor Galis
Why would anyone upgrade?

Because one can

Being bleeding edge