If your buying a new computer chances are your going to have to bend over and take windows vista with it. Here’s a thread to post what’s not working so we can search and not waste our time or money.

#1, Divx. Yes you can play divx movies but not likely in windows media player, and last I knew it took a bit of doing to be able to generate divx preview thumbs inside folders. God forbid anyone create a compression format other than wmv…

#2, Riva FLV encoder, doesn’t work. It worked for a while when I first got Vista but something in one of the vista updates must have caused it to stop.

#3, Arcsoft showbiz DVD 2, will work barely, but if you install certain codecs it will crash.

#4, driver software for several digital cameras, scanners and printers are non existent for vista. So when you plug in the cam you’ve had for three years vista says go fuck yourself.

This is just a start, if you have software/hardware that doesn’t work on vista please warn us.

I've had vista for about 6 months now, and i have never had a problem. But then again, i've never done or tried any of the 4 mentioned above by Hunter27. Hell, i've never heard of "Riva FLV" encoder, or "Arcsoft showbiz DVD 2" either.

Hunter27:

 
#4, driver software for several digital cameras, scanners and printers are non existent for vista. So when you plug in the cam you’ve had for three years vista says go fuck yourself.

For me this is the major 'pain in the .......'.  For time being I'm forced to use an old spare stand-alone desktop still running on XP i.o. to use simple things like my HP6540 deskjet, HP LTX scanner, external HD's, digital camera and retrieving data/files from some memory-sticks.  All this hardware relatively new and in perfect working-order. I simply refuse to replace good hardware already now just to be Vista-compatible.

It's exactly the same issue when XP hit the market years ago. No available drivers for old/not so old, printers/scanners etc.
Me being a "poor prick" I sadly stay well behind the new technology on the market, but I am still satisfied with what I have at the present time.
I can see/predict exactly the same thing happening in another few years from now ........

Oh Yeah !!!!

I run this 'old beast' on a mix of 98 and linux(yes at the same time now!)
But I've been out looking at all the special offers in the local warehouses.
Some great price deals about....BUT....try asking that 'nice' salesman, if
they sell anything that isnt pre-loaded with MS.....thats right! they dont!
That will be a 'special' order sir....puts the price up?? by about £120. ??
So it is cheaper to buy of the shelf and buy a new hard drive at the same
time and swap????? Funny old world, aint it?
yes they do selllinux loaded machines, all about two years out of date!

Have asked some of the 'local boffins' they all say vista is a pain to
delete completely from a drive.

Microsoft rools err, ruuules err Stuffs You........right!!

Drum

  Some people are having trouble installing the java runtime environment on the Vista OS. Meaning, if you like to play games like runescape and you have this problem your fucked. Here's the solution..

Sorry you guys but you should never buy a computer or an OS that just came out. They often have more bugs than they are worth and rarely compatible with existing program & codecs.

Thanks for all this. XP periodically crashing half a dozen times in a row and it being a month before I got my Small Wonder to convert its AVIs into WMVs, and even then having no idea WHY it suddenly started working right, sure is annoying.  I start to wonder whether it's time to start over.  Then it's nice to read that Vista would not be the end-all-be-all solution.  Now I feel better about holding off awhile longer.

Although Microsoft Holland is promoting Vista for all new PC's, the largest consumerprotection organisation in Holland after campaining has succeeded that customers now can choose from either Vista or XP, when buying a new computer.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=11036

 

Gemini37:

Sorry you guys but you should never buy a computer or an OS that just came out. They often have more bugs than they are worth and rarely compatible with existing program & codecs.

Sometimes you just don't have a choice!! I want to buy a laptop and they all come with Vista these days. There's no choice of OS, you have to buy Vista then change it yourself if you want to.

That sounds like the last whore who wanted me to hire her.  I told her she didn't have big enough tits for me, for what she was charging.  Then she had the nerve to ask me to pay for a boob job for her!  The heck with that noise.

this thread is full of mis-information about vista...

First of all. Vista is really easy to remove from a hard drive (as hard as XP is... just delete/format). You can do this with a Win98 boot floppy, a windows XP install disc, Vista install Disc, Vista upgrade Disc, Another operating system boot disc.

Second. Java can be installed with UAC on. I do this everyday at job. Sometimes it throw up an error, you just relaunch the updater and it works.

Divx: Just download CCCP (a codec pack). It comes with a DivX decoder and a Media Player (namely Media Player Classic) that works with vista.

Drivers: just go to hp.com (or whatver manufacturer made your device). Many device now have vista drivers or you can just plug it in, ask vista to check windowsupdate and most of the time it finds a driver. A last resort is to use Windows XP drivers. XP drivers will work most of the time.

Xephon:

this thread is full of mis-information about vista...

At time thread was started it was all correct - no mis-information.

It's true that step-by-step all necessary updates/upgrades of auxilliary software for Vista-compatibility become available.  That was just a matter of time.

It's also a matter of time before an avalanche of security-patches, critical updates and whatever for Vista will pop-up, like we have seen over and over again with all other Windows versions in the past.

Xephon:

this thread is full of mis-information about vista...

Wait a minute are you Bill Gates?

   Honestly Vista has vastly improved since I began this thread. I really have come to prefer it over XP since most of the bugs have been worked out. I have yet to re-look for drivers that support my hardware and am not looking forward to it much. The last time I plugged in my digital camera Vista wanted to know if I wanted to install scanner software. I figured what the hell and did, but of course it didn’t work.

   Divx seems to work fine now too. The only problem I’m having with it is at sites like stage6 or when trying to view Divx vids with certain players like win amp, it takes me several attempts to get the video to properly go full screen. Anyhow it is in fact improving.

Happy 3K to me!

Gemini37:

Sorry you guys but you should never buy a computer or an OS that just came out. They often have more bugs than they are worth and rarely compatible with existing program & codecs.

yeh i'm wishing i bought a new comp right before Vista came out but i was not in a position to do so at the time. so (to echo scoobysnaccks) i had little choice but to go with Vista. much as i like the idea of going with mac or linux instead, that's far too steep of a learning curve for me right now.

i just got a new laptop that is a huge upgrade from what i have been using, which i bought almost eight years ago. i'm also jumping from w2k to Vista, having skipped XP altogether, so there's a lot i'm still trying to figure out. i've already gotten some helpful input from Hunter but i'd also like to draw upon the collective experience here as far as internet security.

what i have found so far:

spyware: adaware and spywareblaster seem to work fine. i had problems with spybot s&d so i'm trying AVG's spyware software instead. no problems so far.

anti-virus: i've been using AVG on my old comp. how well does this or other AV software work with Vista in your experience?

firewall: i've read many nightmare stories about Zone Alarm on Vista. i've been using Agnitum Outpost on my old comp with great success and i'm going to look into what they have available for Vista. in any case, what firewall software do you Vista users have installed, and how is it working?

i'm still on my old comp and won't use the new one until i'm comfortable with its security set up, so any feedback is appreciated.

Well like I just mentioned in our other convo I may as well post it here also..

I browse the net exclusively with Firefox on Vista. There’s an add-on called no script here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

Quote from that page:
  Winner of the "2006 PC World World Class Award", this tool provides extra protection to your Firefox.
It allows JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from trusted domains of your choice, e.g. your home-banking web site, and guards the "trust boundaries" against cross-site scripting attacks (XSS).
Such a preemptive approach prevents exploitation of security vulnerabilities (known and even unknown!) with no loss of functionality...

  That in conjunction with Zone Firewall hasn’t seemed to let me down yet. Yes, the situation with zone alarm was rather horrific up until a few months ago. But after a lengthy beta period ZA for Vista has been available and working without error for quite some time now.

   I’ve only been running AVG Antispyware 7.5.1.43 free and it seems to detect and remove anything that might cause me concern, though I have a feeling I’ll eventually end up searching for a better form of AV.

Vista, It's the ME of the early 2000's. I've had debates with folks about that assertion; I always win. It's a stopgap bunch of bullshit designed not to do anything useful, but to get people to buy it, it keeps the business going, that's it. Useful for people... no. Useful for MS... yes.

As for Vista, wipe it and put XP Pro on the thing. Further by buying a Vista system, you're only making it worse, insist on a XP Pro system, or make your own. That last part is really where the fun comes in.

 

in reply to the first post here i thought it was just me, my 2gb mp3 player wont work on vista, my digi camera works ok but after it has there are problems with the computer for days, msn live messenger is worse than useless on vista, at least now i know why divx play's up ! dont know about where anyone else lives but round here you cant get xp anymore not even on a disc, i recon they should give you the option of which o/s you want to have on your brand new machine. when i first got a laptop running vista the day after i'd first turned it on and set it all up it installed 74 microsoft updates and hotfixes and then would'nt do anything, would'nt open ie or firefox, msn network connections, took it back and swapped it for another one thats been fine ! i miss xp !

 Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else here build their systems?  I have been building my own for over 10 years and have very rarely had any problems at all.  I have not yet even tried to build anything w/ Vista due to all of the complaints and negative aspects I've heard.  My current system could be used as a gamer's pc, albeit a budget one, but it can handle everything just fine using XP.  When you look at the hardware that mainstream manufacturers use, it's mostly cheap junk.  I've known several people who paid top dollar for Gateway computers only to have the hard drives fry.  Compaq used to use knock off cyrix processors.  If you go to a website that specializes in computer hardware and look at the names and ratings and then take a look at what's inside a store bought unit, you will always see the same thing...most of the component manufacturers for the store bought pc's aren't known for individual components.  Just my two cents worth.