Have You Made the Vista Switch Full-Time?

Or are you still dual-booting?

from WinCustomize Forums

Well Windows Vista has been out for a little while now, and several us have written about our experiences at the beginning.  I have read probably hundreds of forums posts across many communities about peoples experience with Vista, and how some are using Vista as their main OS, and some just using it as a secondary on a dual-boot system.  The reactions have been very mixed, but the biggest complaints seem to be hardware compatibility, especially in the video card area that is stopping people from running it full-time.

I recently built a new PC and tried to run Vista as my primary OS, but with my printer not working with Vista, and a few other incompatibilities I had to partition off some space and go back to dual-booting again.  Now I have been reading many posts here at WinCustomize and have noticed a few people who have purchased Vista, so I was interested in knowing how many members here are using Vista full-time, or are dual-booting still.

 

 

17,255 views 62 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Although im not using it myself for a number of reasons i am also curious to know the answer to your "poll"
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
My work laptop is running Vista, but my home PC and primary work desktop are still XP Pro.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I run Vista full time at on my primary systems at home and at work.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Primary and secondary machine got Vista. secondary still got my XP partition in dualboot just in case I would need some legacy apps or games to work. But I haven't even used that for a several months.

My laptop still got XP, but that's because I don't use it that much. Only a convenience for when I travel of go to interviews.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm still dual booting. Vista sometimes has troubles with my ASUS MB.
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Purchased and ran OEM's of Vista Home Premium on both personal machines (1 DIY desktop, and 1 Dell notebook). Although I really enjoy the icons, address bar navigation, ease of networking, and the idea behind the new Windows Driver Display Model - I nevertheless have reverted back to XP Pro on both machines for the following reasons:

1 - Adobe CS2 runs much better on XP Pro at this time.

2 - The ATI drivers are still in their infancy and are basically just 'vanilla' drivers.

3 - Nero 6 just works on XP Pro and I am not excited about all the extras in Nero 7 - especially the fact that 'Nero Scout' is not offered as an optional install on the downloaded version (not sure about the CD version).

4 - The search functionality, multimedia functions, and Tablet PC functions all increase the process count to the point that my poor Dell notebook with a single-core 760 processor has it's hands full just trying to run the OS. Turning off some of the Tablet PC functions is possible so that a Wacom tablet driver will only run 2 or 3 processes, but stopping the search and multimedia processes just defeats the whole idea of a Vista upgrade.

All in all, I have to say that Vista is exactly what I expected; a new operating system that has a lot of potential for use with hardware that has yet to be released (or is currently on the 'bleeding edge'). I think the need for a multi-core processor is absolute if you want to run 45 - 60 processes in the background and still enjoy efficient use of the installed programs. I look forward to next year when a good DX10 video card can be purchased for a reasonable price and will be supported by stable drivers with good control options. This should also give me time to save enough to invest in Adobe's CS3 package.

Of course, I may just decide to go with the Mac platform by that time.   

Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I am fully Vista. The only time I have booted into XP since I installed it was to get a list of installed apps.

All of my drivers work fine. The Nvidia drivers aren't that bad. I only have issues when gaming for a long period of time. BF2142 works great!

I have 2.8ghz, 1.5gb, 250gb, GeForce 6200 256mb.
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I've switched, just ditched the nVidia card and bought an ATi, thats how dedicated I am

(eVGA 7900GT 256mb to Radeon X1950 XTX 512mb)
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Triple booting here....

XP Pro, XP Home for my gaming platform and Vista Ultimate.

My HP printer 3-in-one isn't fully functional in Vista as yet, so I'll reboot into XP Pro when I need to print up documents typed in Vista. Other than that, Vista does pretty much everything I want/need it to, so I'm probably in there most.

Still setting up Vista to how I want it, but the more I use it the more I like it.... and Dreamscenes/Deskscapes are absolutely awesome. Thanks MS, thanks Stardock, thanks to all the artists who've created the fabulous content.
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I've been using Vista & XP dual-boot since about November. Due to beta drivers etc I had on the system and few errors, from last week got rid of both XP and Vista and reinstalled Vista Ultimate. Very happy with it no real problems so far.

I do have issues with PDA software not compatible but this is only due to 64bit OS (had same issue with XP x64). Instead of dual booting I will be running a virtual machine (32bit XP) from within Vista. This will save an extra OS installed on another partition as well as not needing to reboot into XP each time want to update my PDA.

Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I switch to full Vista the day before the official release. I have some naggin unhappinesses with the Nvidia drivers but they are getting better other than that I am very happy with it. Having said that I am not upgrading the wife's or kids' machine with it. Not enough horsepower there. But on the Core 2 Duo T7600 in my laptop it smokes.

Dual booting by the way, Vista 32, upgraded over my XP and then Mepis 6.5 beta 7 64-bit on the second harddrive.
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Dual boot...using XP only for creating logons.
Everything else works great in Vista.
Reply #15 from JoeUser Forums Top
Personally I have Vista Ultimate on 2 systems, running spectacularly and Vista Home Premium on 2 dedicated Media Center PC's running spectacularly.

At work the entire company now upgraded to Vista (15 computers in all, 6 running Ultimate spectacularly, 9 running Business spectacularly.

All-in-all I'd have to say Vista has been trouble free and yes, spectacular.
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Very interesting responses.  Keep them coming.

 
Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Full time Vista Ultimate at home. Works amazingly well with no issues so far.

I have an XP Pro laptop that is a little underpowered to switch over so it will remain XP... or maybe go to linux.
Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top
2 desktops with Windows Xp MCE

1 desktop with Windows Xp Pro

Laptop with Vista Ultimate.

Vista is running adorably although a few programs have some glitches and others don't work at all, yet....still Vista is doing more than fine with Office, Thunderbird, Opera and other browsers, Winamp works fine (it' still not 100% compatible)...will try more this week but what I need it for, Vista is doing an excellent work (beside networked printers most of the time).
Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm dual booting...Vista isnt registered so I only have a couple more weeks.

And thats fine with me cuz I wasnt impressed even tho my moderately crappy pc ran it fine.Its less usable and less configurable than XP.Gui looks like a beginner designed it.(ok an accomplished beginner with some talent worth developing)

I hated the Start menu,task manager,the 'personalise dialog PAGE,shellstyle is gone,toolbars are the worst ever.None of my windowblinds make the crossover for crap.

I did like live folders and the zoomable thumbnails with previews(too bad they didnt work with .psd's)Dreamscenes will be cool eventually.Thats not much to like for 400$(I'm sure EVENTUALLY it will be a better OS to customise,but for now,it looked to me like 2 steps forward and 1 step back.  
Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'm running Vista full-time on both my laptop and desktop PCs. I have VirtualPC 2007 with XP Pro on my desktop machine just in case, but I haven't had to use it yet.
Reply #21 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Running Full time - Vista Ultimate, 64 Bit, Intel Core 2 6600 at 2.40GHz, 4 Gigs of Ram - nVidia 8800 Video Card, 320 GB HD, Cannon MP600 InkJet and everything with the exception of one or two programs have been pretty steady. No significant problems but I built the system with Vista in mind.
Reply #22 from WinCustomize Forums Top
New Desktop:  Vista Ultimate
Lappy:  Dualboot... XP Pro and Vista RC2
Old Desktop: XP Pro

Almost fully Vista... need to install Office 2k3 and see if that works, or if I need to buy the new one.
Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Dual Boot...No problems with Vista Ultimate to speak of, runs smooth..But then so does XP, which I have fully established, Vista is taking awhile..but im moving over..slowly...
Reply #24 from WinCustomize Forums Top
New laptop : Vista Ultimate
Workstation : XP Pro

All other machines (home & work) will stay XP until new hardware. I have to confess I work on the new laptop a lot. Installed VMWare und made 2 VMs with XP and 2k though to keep usual setups of clients and work in mind and for testing purposes.
Reply #25 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I'm dual boot. My camera software (Nikon) won't run on Vista and there are no plans to update it. So I will be running XP for the foreseeable future.

Also nVidia drivers are not up to speed. UT2004 runs ok and is playable with the 100.41 drivers, but fps is still a fraction of what I get with XP. Serious gaming still belongs to XP.

A very irritating annoyance with Vista is Outlook XP will not save my account passwords which meant having to type in all my passwords every time I start Outlook. I'm currently using Thunderbird. If anyone has a solution I'd be grateful.