You really want to buy Vista?

[BoredBloke]

got it in my action pack and think it's fine. Wouldn't pay that price for it though

[Cowboy Bob]

got it in my action pack and think it's fine. Wouldn't pay that price for it though

That's exactly my point. I've never said it's bad as a whole. I don't like the extra DRM bundled in it, but that's the customer's choice. What I have said is that I don't understand how MS has the balls to claim that they have this new "Wow" OS that's taken them 5 years to develop and it's yours if you hand over a couple of hundred quid and upgrade your computer to run it - when in fact there's nothing really new in there.

[Cowboy Bob]

I've never had a problem with drivers and considering I use my Linux box to drive my recording studio which is pretty demanding

As I used to - with Studio To Go - though now I have my Mac I find GarageBand perfectly adequate for my needs, which incidentally came free with it.

[Cliphead]

As I used to - with Studio To Go - though now I have my Mac I find GarageBand perfectly adequate for my needs, which incidentally came free with it.

Oh yes, STG is an excellent distro. I have to confess I do have a second box which I use for Sonar and Reason which I couldn't do without.

Other than that...

[expat]

All the 'new' features that Vista offers I've already had for the past 2 years in Linux / KDE without all the annoying sh1t.

I've never had a problem with drivers and considering I use my Linux box to drive my recording studio which is pretty demanding, I find no need to actually spend money on any Microshaft product.

Jump in here and froth at the mouth any time bogeyman.

I'll switch over to linux when the Gimp does 16-bit (or at least 12-bit). 8-bit images are just not enough for serious photography, at least from neg scans.

Until then it's Photoshop, which means Windows or Mac.

[Cowboy Bob]

I'll switch over to linux when the Gimp does 16-bit (or at least 12-bit). 8-bit images are just not enough for serious photography, at least from neg scans.

Until then it's Photoshop, which means Windows or Mac.

You need Film Gimp (or CinePaint as it's been renamed) - http://www.cinepaint.org/ - which is used in post-production by the movie studios and can handle 8, 16 and 32 bit images. The core engine for this project is apparantly being moved over into the regular release of the Gimp in the near future.

[expat]

You need Film Gimp (or CinePaint as it's been renamed) - http://www.cinepaint.org/ - which is used in post-production by the movie studios and can handle 8, 16 and 32 bit images. The core engine for this project is apparantly being moved over into the regular release of the Gimp in the near future.

I have been thinking about it but its feature set is different from the Gimp, so it looks like Cinepaint for initial 16-bit processing, then convert to 8-bit and go to Gimp. Which is probably not as bad as it sounds: I currently use PS7 and its support for 16-bit is limited, so I do levels in 16-bit and then convert to 8-bit.

AIUI Gimp might someday get 16-bit with GEGL and not the Cinepaint engine (which is C++ where Gimp is C, no?) but that's been coming for years, and won't be in 2.2, maybe in 2.4. My guess is not.

[basshead]

If you're an MVP you can buy Vista Ultimate from the MS shop for $45 inc p&p

[marcus2704]

I bought OEM 64 bit Vista Ultimate from OCUK for £130 odd inc P&P, its tied to whichever mobo its installed on so whilst I can happily change components like Ram, GFX card etc I can only install my OEM copy onto this one mobo. Not a problem if you have no intention of changing mobo, but it would be if you were wanting to update the mobo at a later date. In my case Im running it for the 28 days activation period so I can thoroughly test it on my rig before committing to activating it for this mobo.

So far so good, it is always confusing when everyday things get moved and options changed but Im used to the changes now.

I have a domain set up and my biggest annoyance is the removal of the traditional login box and the domain box is now gone. So I have to manually type DOMAINNAME\USERNAME and then enter password. If I want to log on as a different user, I need to click Switch User, select Other User and then do the above. A bit of a pain really. I suspect this is different in the business version of Vista, as the Ultimate one is geared towards home users the majority of which wont be using a domain.

With a A64 3500 and Geforce 7800GTX + 2GB ram I can barely run 1080p content now, this is probably the only real reason I would have for upgrading my mobo, ram and GFX card. It idles at 800Mb memory usage, and I hear the HDD churning away almost constantly. I was told it uses a silent defrag which could be the reason why. Other than that, it runs fine, and XP already seems a bit out of date, not to mention its a more mature 'adult' GUI by far.

[Cowboy Bob]

Ahh, that's a proper report.

So, from reading your post I see you've paid £130 for an updated GUI, some networking problems that you didn't have before, an HDD that is constantly churning (no doubt shortening its life), 800Mb of RAM used up just by running it, the requirement to upgrade hardware to watch HD content properly, and the inability to install it on a new machine should you wish to.

Bargain...