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At this point in time my personal opinion is no, don't put yourself through the torture. Not only does Vista require a mammoth machine to even run correctly, but it is also infested with bugs. Don't be the first guy to buy the new model from the car lot. Let the company work out the kinks and then consider it later if necessary.
I am writing this document on Windows Vista Business, using Open Office (free alternative to the ridiculously expensive Microsoft Office). Since installing Vista for the third time on the same computer, I have finally learned what i can and cannot do in order to keep it from crashing constantly.
Even before opening this program to write this review, the computers task manager reports that it is using 522MB of ram just sitting there. The CPU meter jumps from 5 to 35% usuage as I sit and watch, and who knows what else is going on behind that cool looking 3D green, umm, stringy....uh light ray looking thing that is the default wallpaper.
For one thing, I cannot tweak it like I do Windows XP in order to run much faster before it is even a recording pc candidate. If I start to tweak, it starts to cry and eventually throw itself on the floor in a screaming fit of no's.
Keep in mind that at the time of this writing, Vista has only been available to the public for a very short period of time, so I am sure that a service pack or two will smooth things out, along with hardware vendors writing new, more compatible drivers.
If you use Vista as a recording pc, you are no doubt going to experience things like; Sound jittering, video pauses, explorer crashes, corrupt files, huge memory leaks, and worse.
Although a lot of current software does run on Windows Vista, there is also a lot that doesn't. Not to mention that Microsoft has made the tactical decision to stop supporting the .hlp file format with the winhlp32.exe file. So your help files in most of your software are useless on this platform.
You can download winhlp32.exe from various web sites and use it to manually open help files, which is a slight comfort.
In the mean time, software developers now have to rewrite their help files to accommodate the new format, isn't that nice :-)
Hardware Info on this PC; I am running an ASUS board at 1600Mhz FSB, a Dual Core AMD FX60 processor, and dual channel ram, 2GB of it! A mongo PCI-Express video card with the Nvidia 7600 Chipset, and high definition sound from realtek. I have two 120GB drives running RAID 1, and two DVD burners, one with Lightscribe.
Now you might think this is enough to run just about anything at a fast enough pace right? Well, not quite. Vista still bogs out and crashes.
In closing, if you go to buy a new Dell or Gateway machine and they try to force Vista on you, go somewhere else. Or do what I always do and build your own with parts purchased at Tiger Direct!
This document is sure to change with the onset of service packs. Once i believe it is stable, I will post a tweak section to ready your Vista machine for the recording studio!
Some things you can do to ease the load on the pc if you are using Vista;
That's all I am willing to advise at this time, I do not want you to blame me for your Vista crashes. :-)
If you need to know how to do the above things, google it. (or msn, yahoo, whatever)
Vista Usage Update: Just when I thought it could not get any worse, I am on my third installation of Vista on the same machine because of crashes and bugs. Now, explorer.exe crashes about every 3 minutes and wants to restart. It restarts fine and quickly, but this is certainly a HUGE reason to beat those upgrade thoughts out of your head for now. (upgrade????????)
I have found many posts on the net from people with the same problem on many different hardware platforms, and there apparently is no fix as of this writing. One guy said that Vista is the biggest embarrassment to Microsoft since Windows M.E. :-)
Yes it's pretty, it's neat looking, the graphics are awesome, but it's on it's way to being the biggest laugh-fest yet for the Mac and Linux guys.
Vista Usage Update 07-05-2007 The fun continues, with my fourth installation of Vista. This time it is on a different hardware platform. I have decided that using the above mentioned hardware is a waste if I put Vista on it, since Vista is pretty much useless at this point. Soooo, I formatted that one and installed XP Pro and now have a very fast working pc for recording audio, video editing or whatever else I would like to do.
I put together some parts from older machines I had laying around; AMD Athlon xp 2200, 512MB pc2100 DDR, Shuttle AK32A motherboard, G-Force 2 video card, plain jane onboard sound, and a 20GB hard drive.
After installing Vista on this machine, it tells me my Vista user experience is a 1 (lol), it was a 5.5 (5.something) on the other machine. But, this one has yet to crash. It has omitted things like the sidebar and some cutie colors and buttons by default, I guess trying to make up for this computers lack of power and speed. I must say though that Vista runs better on this older machine than it ever did on the new fast one. I have yet to have a crash of any sort. It does use most of the RAM just sitting there doing nothing, but it still seems to respond quickly. I have installed all Acoustica software on it without a hitch, but still have the same old vista problems with ripping and driver issues.
I attempted to create a video tutorial using this pc, but the capture software took up the rest of the RAM and the whole thing came to a stop, not a crash, but so slow that I couldn't do anything worth presenting as a tutorial.
It seems that the faster your computer, the more of your resources Vista will hog. Unlike XP where you use about 200MB of ram at an idle, no matter what your hardware may be. So this (to me) is yet another reason NOT to buy, use or install Vista on any pc for any serious work that needs to be done. I will stick with running it on this older machine until I see some major improvements in a service pack. Or at least some ways to persuade (hack) Vista into dropping the beauty pageant and running efficiently.
One thing customers tell me quite often is this : "I had no choice, they made me take Vista". this is not true, dell, gateway, HPO or whoever all have contracts to sell Microsofts new product. They present it to you as if it the best thing since pizza, and steer you into buying the new pc with Vista on it. Remember this, YOU CAN INSIST THEY INSTALL XP ON YOUR NEW PC!
A quick note about buying a new computer from a major pc vendor: They want to sell you this, that and the other thing along with the pc. Things like Norton security suite, super duper anti spyware suite, hard rock firewall suite, musicmatch, media centers, blah blah blah. Don't do it, just say NO! "I want a new pc, Windows XP, no office apps, no security crap, nothing but windows xp. If they want your sale, they will do as they are told, take it from an IT guy (me, duh), they will do it.
Once you get your pc, there will still be a bunch of junk installed on it that you do not need, and that will slow your computer way down. Uninstall anything like "Dell help center", "Image uploader" or any other junk that may be there. A software app called "The PC DeCrapifier" works very well on new computers. Follow the procedure on this page to tweak the system for best performance, Then go to this page to find yourself some good anti-virus and other apps that will NOT slow down the pc.
Still a doubter? remember, Vista means "The visual percept of a region". what does that mean for you the user? This OS is all about beauty, not brains. It crashes, hangs, eats resources so elegantly :-)
Vista Usage Update 04-18-2008
Ok, I have been using Vista on a desktop and a laptop now for a while (not as my main computers) for testing. Although certainly not the OS of choice for a recording pc, Vista is getting better. With the release of Microsofts Service Pack 1 for Vista, things seem to be a little better. I recently had to fight a sound card driver to the death on the laptop (Dell Latitude D650) in order to get the headphone jack to work, but eventually I outsmarted it.
A large percentage of Vista problems are the fault of incompatible hardware drivers, so always check the hardware manufacturers web site for updates.
The worst thing that has happened lately on either of the two Vista machines is that as administrator, I suddenly had absolutely no rights on the laptop. Aplications were throwing up errors saying they cannot write XX file or directory, etc. I ended up formatting and reinstalling the OS.
I have recorded a little on both machines, but as for a studio computer which will be used heavily for multitracking, there is no way in hell I would use Vista over XP....................yet.
Vista Usage Update 10-19-2008
I have been reading a lot lately about how Microsoft seems to be attempting to brush Vista under the rug completely. They have extended the XP downgrade again until sometime in the end of 2009, which will probably get pushed out even further. In conjunction with the extension of XP availability comes the news of a closer release date for "Windows 7". Windows 7 will be the next OS in the Microsoft line and it seems that the Redmond company has, in a round-a-bout way, admitted that Vista was a flop. The biggest issues Vista is facing are still the same as day one of it's release, hardware drivers and huge resource hogging services and eye candy. Via my sources across the net, people don't want to keep buying super computers just to run the latest and greatest OS, which ultimately for a lot of people means they have a 512MB video card, 4GB of ram and a 3Ghz cpu so they can email really #$!%ing fast.
This will be the last entry in the "Vista used for recording" series.
End result = Avoid Vista if you can.....and you can.
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