Vista... Sorry A Few Questions...

Alright guys…

Sorry if this has been answered / discussed already!

I am wondering how Vista is working for the current users.

I have been forced to buy a new laptop (my old one is busted). I am pretty much unable to get one with XP on it.

I know Renoise works ok, but do all the other plugins you use work ok? I mean, are there any install issues on stuff that was designed for XP? I use the Sonalksis stuff, Kjaerhus, TC Native Bundle (which is not developed anymore) etc.

Any views? Your input will be very much appreciated!

That’s what happened to me one month ago. I’ve bought a new with Vista business 32bit, T7250 CPU and 4GB ram of which only 3.5GB is usable because of 32bit. I haven’t gotten around to install music software yet but I don’t expect any problems. But I’d get XP if I could choose over, Vista just feels bloated and slower, oh and the graphic card fan just keeps running… I’ll probably make it dual boot with XP from the old laptop. :unsure:

Thanks for the info.

There must be a way to control the fan in the software… Has anyone managed this?

Just out of interest, Garf… Which laptop do you have, and does it have a PCMCIA slot (the old type, not express!)

Easy mate,

I was in the same situation - my old laptop died a few weeks ago. I’m running a Vista latop now (the same specs as Garf’s but with 2 gigs) and it’s sweet! No issues with installing or plugs at all and Renoise works pefectly.

I haven’t noticed Vista being slow at all. I’m sure it’s a little slower with applications than XP (~10% I’ve read), but I think it’s worth the sacrifice. I quite like Vista in itself too, it feels smart and has some really nice features such as SuperFetch.

Wish my Indigo worked with my new laptop though :angry:

well, you can always use the license of your old laptop, if you don’t need that one anymore.

if you haven’t got you license key anymore (or it was oem and you never even saw it):
there are tools to obtain the current product key inside of xp, but i’m not sure if this can be done without booting xp. (allthough i should be, but dunno)

and legally you can use pretty much any xp iso that is floating around in filesharing networks, as long as it corresponds to your license. (meaning xp prof != home != multimedia)

hm, but that’s just what i think, i’m not TOTALLY sure, so inform yourself before doing things that might be illegal in the end. (but i’m pretty sure it isn’t)

meh, just wanted to tell you, that you’re infact not forced to use vista. but perhaps it’s even what you want (as long as it works with your hardware/apps).

I got a Dell vostro 1400. When ordering i didnt look for PCMCIA because i thought this was standard in all machines, so i’m stuck with an Indigo as there’s only express card, I read on Echo’s page there’s an adapter, but they don’t sound like it work 100%.

The first Vista service pack is just around the corner, it’s said it have better power management maybe that help on the fans, else yes i’ll try find some software for it. Also many complain about slow network transfer speed, this might be improved in SP 1 too.

Alright mate. Long time and all that.

Yeah, so I need to get a new laptop by the end of the month. Mine is totally screwed. I have got my eye on a Lenovo T61. As I am getting it in Japan, it will be a Japanese language O/S. The Japanese hate anything mroe than 30 seconds old so it is INCREDIBLY difficult to get XP on new laptops over here, even if the UK or American equivalent has the option! Crazy, I know.

So it looks like I will HAVE to get Vista.

I run an EMU 1616M and thankfully the beta drivers are out for Vista now, which is lucky.

So… Skunky; everything just installs like it did before? You haven’t had any problems with stuff not wanting to install or things being silly?

Really would like to hear how it has been for you. PM me if needs be.

Yeah the reason I found out about laptops not having old style PCMCIA slots now, was when I tried to plug my card into the laptop at work. It got halfway in the hole and stopped!

So, I am have been looking for laptops with both slots. If EMU would release an express card version of the 1616m I would have no problems.

Also…

Does anyone have anything to say about the audio quality out of Vista? I read something ages ago about it not being as good as XP, because of some internal audio engine compression or something. This may have just been a rumour on the good old internet though.

Any ideas?

I have a Q6600 quadcore cpu, installed in an P5E-SLI motherboard.
Along with 4GB of RAM and 4 hdd’s in raid0 (yeah i know it’s overkill).
And my 32-bit Vista runs Renoise like implemented in my brain directly.
There is almost no VSTi that bottlenecks this rigg :yeah:

And i will always have respect for those tracking on “old” hardware, like my Pentium2 that
functions as an extra Impulse Tracker PC :lol:

Oh and I want to express here that the developers did a great job on optimising Renoise for quadcore.
The rendering is great and the realtime is even better.
(Had an E6400 oc-ed @ 3,7 ghz, now run @ 3,4 Q6600)

Haha, DJ Terrabyte, you sure live up to your name, nice comp… :)

yeah that is phat.

i was about to buy a lenovo t61 yesterday… but i broke my elbow!!!

MAD pain. Hospital bill has wiped out any chances of that for a while.

Boo hoo

Ok my fast “view” on Vista as I have it on my laptop for almost half a year already:

  • Renoise works without problems
  • ASIO works ok
  • Vista takes more ram and hard disk (a lot!!), sometimes this OS seems “going unstable in crazy way” ;)
  • Vista itself is buggy, it was very easy for me to crash Vista (blue screen) several times without proper reason. The XP instead is quite stable nowadays. Crashes on Vista are not the problem of hardware, I have also Linux Slackware (I use it more often than Vista) and I didn’t encounter any.
  • almost everyday new updates, a lot of time lost to install them (they fixed some crash issues anyway)
  • many restrictions (for example DRM), no proper default audio mixer in the system (sndvol32.exe does not exist, so older software can have problems), I had to install “PowerMixer” (not free) to have good option to select recording devices, etc and because of these, it is quite hard to create a “home studio” on Vista using common hardware. A big bottleneck - no “Stereo Mix” or “General recorder” recording option available anymore, so it’s the end of live “jamming” with recording on the same machine using several music programs at the same moment. This also means that there’s no support for hardware audio acceleration in DirectX as the signal have to go to Vista kernel first.
  • if company didn’t sign a contract with Microsoft, drivers disappeared (example: my Nikon D50 is not detected anymore on Vista)
  • no support for old software/hardware
  • DHCP implementation was changed slightly and “DHCP broadcast flag” was added in the Vista. In the specification of DHCP is written that this flag is not necessary to be implemented in the router, so problems can appear with cheap no-name routers and thus problems with the internet connection. I saw two places already - at my parent’s home with ADSL modem+router and one of the universities in States - where I was not able to get the internet connection working at all (even with workaround provided by Microsoft). I didn’t try to supply static IP address, as my private workaround for this situation was to run Linux which worked well :slight_smile: However, maybe they fixed already this problem - didn’t try recently.
  • problems with Force Feedback (joysticks, wheels), FF is not accessed directly

thanks for the info!

I recently also bought a new laptop that was preloaded with vista

Random error messages pop up every once in awhile
easy to crash
none of my hardware works with it
slow
buggy
no good

I’ve got Vista Enterprise at work and it works flawlessly… not sure about the less costly versions though :P

Link to the “Save Windows XP petition”
http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/

Personally, I will not touch Vista until hardware support (soundcard etc.) for XP is phased out. And by that time, I’m probably using some other OS anyway :wink:

Microsoft is going to loose the platform battle… it already lost it as soon as they ditched longhorn and restarted from “scratch”.
All this DRM stuff really put a necktie to the project and made them fishing behind the net.
XP or Linux is all the way to go.
As long as the majority refuses to use Vista, it will either die out or they will have to improve and remove the DRM shit that they put in it in the first place.

I will bet €100 that Vista will succeed in becoming the most popular and widely used OS.

Thanks :) the fun thing is, i track music since 1993, and i put that extra R in TerraByte on purpose!
Since it is ment to represent Terra as in Terraforming and the world, and byte, to make me an 8 bit part of the musicscene :)
Or one could read: The world of 8 bit music ;) DJ TerraByte :yeah: