Buying a new PC? 'Windows Vista Capable' barely hits the mark
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Configuring a PC around the minimum hardware requirements of an application or operating system may not be the best idea for users who hope to get the most out of Windows Vista.
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TechWeb - If sluggish performance and numerous bugs in your shiny new PC running Windows Vista have got you down, you can downgrade -- at no additional cost -- to Windows XP. It's not hard. Here's how.
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Preview Smaller than a laptop, bigger than a PDA - the perfect PC size?
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Ease of Access Centre gets thumbs up Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system has just been released for corporate consumption.â¦
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A white paper published this morning by hardware analysis firm iSuppli, based on its studies of Microsoft Windows Vista running on multiple grades of computer hardware, has concluded that the software publisher's stated minimum requirements for the system - which include an 800 MHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, and a 35 GB hard drive - may not be nearly enough.
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You rarely hear about a new OS causing people to panic. But IT consultant Scott Pam says that's exactly what his small-business clients are doing when they install Windows Vista on new PCs and run smack into compatibility or usability roadblocks.                                                    Pam's clients are not alone: Since InfoWorld launched its petition drive on Jan. 14 to ask Microsoft to continue selling new XP licenses indefinitely alongside its Vista licenses, more than 75,000 people have signed on. And hundreds of people have commented ? many with ferocious, sometimes unprintable passion. "Right now I have a laptop with crap Vista and I'm going to downgrade to XP because Vista sucks," reads one such comment.Where does all the vitriol come from?[ Get the big picture on  Windows XP's impending demise, from user reactions to licensing implications ? and sign InfoWorld's "Save XP" petition ]IT managers and analysts suggest a range of reasons, some based on irrational fears and others based on rational reactions to disruptive changes.Emotional effects "When we first deployed Vista, people told us it sucks, that it's not as good as XP," recalled Sumeeth Evans, IT director at Collegiate Housing Services, an 80-person college facilities management firm. A month later, he surveyed the staff to see if their views had changed, and they had: "They said it was very good, that they were getting used to it. We asked what was different, and they said they originally didn't like Vista because it was a change. That's human nature."Microsoft's overzealous schedule in replacing XP with Vista has exacerbated resistance to change, said Michael Silver, a research vice president at Gartner. The company had originally planned to discontinue XP sales on Dec. 31, 2007, just 11 months after Vista was made available to consumers and 14 months after it was made available to enterprises. The date for new license sales to end is now June 30.In practice, XP's consumer availability ended for many users even sooner ? just six months after Vista's release ? since storefront retailers  Best Buy and Circuit City and most computer manufacturers' Web sites stopped selling XP-equipped computers in July 2007. Typically, Microsoft has given customers two years to make such a transition, Silver noted.Burton Group executive strategist Ken Anderson suggested that the strong emotional identification with XP represented a fundamental shift in how people, including IT staff, now think of operating systems. They have become a familiar extension of what we do and how we work, thus not something  want to change often. "When technology becomes part of you, you don't want people to mess with it," he said.Anderson likened the reaction to XP's impending demise to what happened in the 1980s when Coca-Cola replaced its classic Coke formula with New Coke, causing massive protests by customers who had no reason to change what they drank. The protests forced the company to bring back what we now call Coke Classic. "XP has come to the point of being Coke Classic," he said, with Vista playing the role of New Coke.The further the better The Englewood (N.J.) Hospital Medical Center switched to Vista shortly after its enterprise release, since it had been in Microsoft's early adopter program. Most users ? mainly nurses and other medical staff ? didn't really notice the upgrade and had few complaints, noted Gary Wilhelm, the business and systems financial manager (a combination of CTO and CFO) at the 2,500-employee facility. That's because they don't really use the OS, but instead work directly in familiar applications that load when they sign in using their ID.Capacitor manufacturer Kemet saw a similar ho-hum reaction from most of its staff, says Jeff Padgett, the global infrastructure manager. And for the same reason: Users have little direct interaction with the OS. But the staff did push back on Office 2007, whose ribbon interface is a departure from the previous versions. They rebelled to the degree that Padgett has delayed Office 2007 deployment and may not install it at all.Back at the Englewood hospital, Wilhelm did hear anti-Vista grumbling from people in the administration department, who work more closely with the OS itself for file management and so on. And at Kemet, another group of hands-on users complained about the switch to Vista, noted Padgett: "The people who suffered the most were engineers and IT people."The phenomenon of hands-on users being the most resistant explains why so many small-business users and consultants have reacted so strongly against Vista, noted Gartner's Silver.Conversely, those enamored of the latest technology tend to be Vista enthusiasts, said David Fritzke, IT director at the YMCA Milwaukee, which has been adding Vista to its workforce as it buys new computers. "Some users bought Vista for home and then wanted it more quickly at work than we had initially planned to deploy it," he said. Fritzke also found that younger users adapted to Vista more easily.In search of ROI Users' personal reactions, positive or negative, ultimately impact the bottom line and help drive the business decision of whether to roll out Vista across an organization.It's all about basic cost-benefit analysis, says Gartner's Silver. In most businesses, Vista offers few compelling advantages for users while introducing challenges. The cost of change is too high for the perceived benefit. For example, users often complain about Vista's constant nagging about possible system threats, about applications that no longer run, or about files that appear to be "lost" because they've been moved to new places by the OS, Silver said."It's really hard to convince someone to go to a product that's not quite as stable or as capable as what they're already using," Silver noted ? and so they get frustrated and angry. While IT managers and analysts appreciate some under-the-hood changes in Vista, these improvements don't have an immediate, obvious benefit for users. "Vista's benefits are not about the users," concurred Collegiate Housing Services' Evans.Upgrades from Microsoft's past have also colored expectations, Silver said. Users tend to remember the straightforward transition from Windows 2000 to XP, even though technically it was a "minor" upgrade, he said. (Silver also noted that until XP Service Pack 2, XP had its own share of compatibility and security flaws that annoyed users, something that most forgot with SP2's release.)And while the path from Windows 95 and 98 to Windows XP was rockier, the benefits were clear enough at each stage for most customers to make the upgrade investment gladly, Silver said.Some users have decided to skip Vista altogether and instead wait for Windows 7, whose release date has been reported as anywhere between 2009 and 2011 "Why shoot yourself in the foot twice? Windows 7 will be out next year; I'll wait till then," said one InfoWorld reader. If Windows 7 arrives sooner rather than later ? or if a miraculous Vista service pack addresses all the major objections in one swoop ? then the uproar over upgrading to Vista will quickly fade into the hazy past of other Windows upgrade snafus.
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By Pete Bach, The Post-Crescent, Appleton, Wis.  Feb. 20--Microsoft's new Vista operating system is wowing buyers less  intensely than expected, but a couple of Fox Cities computer professionals say  it's got a lot of pluses.
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Customers who have purchased an HP Pavilion or Digital Entertainment Center PC, or a Compaq Pavilion PC - all desktop models only - on or after October 26, with Windows XP pre-installed, will be eligible for upgrade kits for corresponding editions of Windows Vista next month, HP announced this morning
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A massively multiplayer beta test Review The most prominent feature of Windows Vista is its cost. So, before we get into the nuts and bolts of how it behaves, let's talk about value for money. Because at these prices, it had better be good.â¦
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Get your desktop computer for just Â£9,999 Vista only hit the shelves yesterday, but Microsoft's new operating system has already sent shockwaves through the PC retail industry.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Notebook PC users who upgrade to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista may have to disable some of the new operating system's flashy graphics features to avoid seeing a decrease in battery life compared to Windows XP. The drop will come from the extra power needed to run the high-end processors, graphics cards and memory capacity required to support Vista. Microsoft has designed the new OS to deliver novel visual effects such as translucent "Aero" windows on the desktop interface and improved performance as a digital media hub. The business version of the OS was released last month with the consumer version due out next month. PC and hardware vendors see Vista as a windfall because it requires faster, more powerful computers. But just as sport utility vehicles burn more gasoline than sedans, the extra power comes at a price. "Vista demands more compute resources for a given application than XP does. So you need a heavier battery or you will have shorter battery life because of the greater demand for watts," said Phil Hester, chief technology officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), in remarks made at the company's annual analyst day in New York on Thursday. Dell Inc. also said that Vista's appetite for computing resources will increase its draw on battery power. "If Vista is run in full Aero mode, with none of the Vista-provided power management settings turned on, it is likely to demand more power, and have an impact on battery life," said Dell spokesman Ira Williams, in an e-mail interview. "That said, if you run Vista in battery-optimized mode (using non-3D interface), we would not expect the battery life to be significantly different from XP in that scenario." A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed that Vista will allow users to disable or tune down graphics as part of a power management package meant to keep Vista battery life on par with Windows XP. But she said the graphics have a smaller effect on battery life than other hardware in the PC. "Although it is true that the Windows Vista Aero theme and components can use more resources than previous versions of Windows, the relative impact to battery life is minimal," said Microsoft spokeswoman Kristin Farmer. "Microsoft is working with device manufacturers to ensure their device drivers are optimally tuned for performance and power savings. We recognize that battery life isnât just a Microsoft issue and involves our partnerâs decisions as well." Microsoft has designed Vista to allow notebook PC users to save battery power by turning down the screen brightness, volume, wireless networking and other attributes, according to the company's Web site. Vista also has a power-conservation mode called sleep, similar to the "standby" and "hibernate" modes in previous versions of Windows. A spokesman for Gateway Inc. agreed that Microsoft's power conservation steps can make a difference in compensating for the extra hardware. "We've done extensive testing and we haven't seen [shortened battery life]," said Gateway spokeswoman Kelly Odle. "While it is true that Vista has higher system requirements than XP, it also has more sophisticated mechanisms to allow for power savings." Still, users who need to preserve battery life will face a tradeoff in giving up some of the most impressive new features, said Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC. "It's a common criticism that any new Windows OS will have a toll on battery life," Shim said. "If you look back at XP and Windows 98, it took a while for folks to learn how to optimize the hardware. And as the PC market continues to rely on notebooks to drive shipment growth, this will be a big thing." Notebook PC users can manage power by choosing to reduce the time it takes their processors and hard drives to switch into hibernation mode, turn off their sound and Wi-Fi, avoid running 10 applications at once, and turn down the brightness of their screens -- the one component that consumes more battery power than any other computer part, Shim said. Some hardware makers are also helping out, as they are striving to squeeze an extra 2 percent to 5 percent efficiency out of the chipset, graphics component and BIOS, Shim said. However, they face a limited power budget, since battery technology has not improved significantly in recent years, and PC vendors are unlikely to specify a larger cell, since that would add to the PC's size, weight and cost. "That can add up to savings, but it's not enough to overcome the fact that Vista is not battery-friendly," Shim said. Â
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The new waiting game Comment Vista is a step forward in security, but many businesses will be stuck with Windows XP for years to come, due to the cost of upgrading, the value of existing assets, and compatibility issues that trump security features.â¦
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Four months after the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft's claiming that 40 million copies have shipped -- but even Microsoft's not claiming that 40 million PCs are humming away with the new operating system. Computerworld.com gets to the bottom of the claims.
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A Croatian college student has created a utility that installs a seriously stripped-down Windows Vista, saying the heft of Microsoft's biggest desktop operating system is just too big to believe."Who can justify a 15GB operating system?" asked Dino Nuhagic, a fifth-year student from Split, a Croatian city on the Adriatic. Not Nuhagic, or the uncounted users who have turned to his creation, vLite.The free program lets users pick and choose which Vista components, hot fixes, drivers, and even language packs are installed, then builds a disk image that can be burned to a DVD for unattended installation of the operating system."Why did I do it? Well, it's performance and work environment," Nuhagic said when asked why he came up with vLite. "Performance, that's easy to explain. The less things running, the more responsive the OS. But the environment part is where it gets down to personal preference."Those preferences include options for leaving out virtually every component of Windows Vista, from the minor -- such as the bundled screensavers -- to the major, such as the firewall or Universal Plug and Play.Some vLite users, in fact, have made it a contest of sorts to come up with the puniest-possible installation package for the operating system. While Microsoft recommends that users set aside 15GB of hard-disk space to install its pride and joy, Nuhagic's fans boast of squeezing it into an image file as small as 515MB that takes up just 1.4GB on the hard drive.One user reported condensing Windows Vista Home Basic into a 526MB .iso file and installing it in a virtual machine that used just 1.3GB of drive space. "It worked well inside the virtual machine and since I have 1GB of RAM on the host I guess the little Vista would work well," said amocanu.Nuhagic didn't come right out and say it, but he hinted that he -- like more critical users and pundits -- thought Vista was bloated and could use some reducing. "To be frank, I don't need 90 percent of Windows. But that 10 percent, which guarantees that you can run [the] majority of games out there, is what is worth isolating."Crafting vLite wasn't easy, he said. But the time Nuhagic spent on its predecessor, nLite, which similarly squeezes Windows 2000 and Windows XP, paid off in spades. "Since I had four years of experience with tampering [with] older Windows, it was a lot easier than nLite," Nuhagic said of the development of vLite. "Also, it was easier than in XP because Vista does not have the old-style installation. It doesn't install components one by one, but simply extracts the image. Where XP would fail during install because a certain file was missing, that issue is not present in Vista."Even though vLite features a simple graphical interface that lets users remove a component with a click, Nuhagic warned that the utility isn't designed for the average user: "Because of certain possible compatibility issues with the programs out there [that] expect full Windows, I'd recommend [it] only to users [that] want exactly that kind of tool. In other words, I would not recommend it to someone who installs their OS once every few years. But if you do it every few months, then it's a must."Nuhagic couldn't say how many people use vLite, or even the number of times it's been downloaded from his Web site. "I don't have counters installed because the FTP mirrors were donated, and I would have to upgrade my hosting for some extra script processing," he said of his shoestring operation. It shouldn't be a surprise, however, that nLite, the Windows XP miniaturizer, remains four to five times more popular than vLite, based on the number of visitors to the different nLite and vLite Web sites.Microsoft knows of the tools -- Nuhagic said the company has contacted him in the past about possible employment -- but it's done little to quash the condensing. When asked whether it had any thoughts on vLite, a company spokeswoman e-mailed a lukewarm warning."Microsoft does not recommend using any tool to strip out applications from Windows Vista prior to installing it on your system, as it may affect your ability to download future Windows Updates and Service Packs, and may cause your system to become unstable," she said.But vLite's users praised Nuhagic's efforts with blunter language. "Thanks for spending your time making our OS less bloated," said one.VLite 1.1 can be downloaded from Nuhagic's Web site.
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The Wow starts now... It might have had a mixed response from critics but Vista is being credited with a big jump in US retail computer sales. The launch of Microsoft's latest operating system apparently helped PC sales jump 173 per cent compared to the week before.â¦
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An IT professional discovers a way of getting a full version of Vista for the cost of a simple upgrade.
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A look back on Vista since Microsoft first released the consumer version of the latest Windows operating system.