So, I got vista with my laptop. I am far less than impressed. It won’t run any of my older games. It’s incredibly slow for World of Warcraft. And the processor is far from pathetic. I’m torn between going all ubuntu and making my laptop win2k pro. Ubuntu would let me enjoy the dual core 64-bitness of the machine. Win2kP would run all my games. I could just partition the hard drive with a windows partition, a linux partition, and a fat partition for WoW (so that I can run it under both wine and windows). Though FAT sucks, and might degrade WoW performance. Hmmm.
I’d really go with XP…but something along those lines will be necessary.
Yeah, is Microsoft still even pushing security patches for 2k?
see below: basically, I’ll be using my windows partition when in non-networked environments for entertainment purposes, to play antique games. I may occasionally play diablo from behind a firewall. =)
Yeah, I can understand the reason for the preference. But basically, I’d only boot into windows for airplane rides. Otherwise I’d be playing WoW under linux. =) Also, I have a 2kpro cd, but not an XP cd.
which version of Vista did your laptop come with?
if it’s not x64 version, it’s not even taking advantage of your procesesors. Do you have 2gigs of RAM? on a laptop where you are playing games you should have probably more. but you need the x64 version as well.
also, what speed of hd did you get?
the non-x64 version. Of course, that didn’t stop them from advertising the 64 bit dual core, now did it? I think it still takes advantage of the dual core. And the 64bit v 32 bit isn’t a big deal for the gaming experience.
It has 1G of Ram, and the hard drive it came with is… (lemme look that one up…) 5400 rpm, 100MBps max, 44MBps sustained.
The most demanding app I’m using on it by far is WoW. (Any favorites you’d like to recommend?) Firefox is a distant second.
And the video card is 256M (stolen from system memory via PCI-E).
well if you upgrade the RAM to 2gig, you’d see a huge difference in the performance.
more RAM also allows the video card to ‘use’ more system memory as well, but a 32bit OS can not use more than 2gig (3gig?) cannot remember.
eyah 5400rpm drive is not a ‘gaming’ hd by any means. minimum speed a desktop drive will be is 7200. a game that uses the HD a lot like WoW will have significantly longer load times.
i’d recommend Supreme COmmander – but wouldn’t try it unless your Windows Expierence Rating is above 3.5
Told yah Vista sucked.
I’m running Ubuntu and finding out that I don’t care much for it. Some things that should be simple are obscure, the system hides things from you and if a command line install gets messy it’s near impossible for me to see where various files and dependencies got scattered.
Not to mention I’ve had crashes and freezes that aren’t supposed to happen. 😛
I may be going back to XP in a few weeks
I’d feel a lot more comfortable with XP than 2k, especially with newer hardware.
In theory, your Vista CD key should work with an XP Pro, if you can bum an image.
Vista performance really shouldn’t be much worse than XP though, unless you’re running out of RAM.
Yeah, I’d also have to dig up the installation key, as it came pre-installed.
belarc advisor might be able to dig it out of your system.
belarc advisor might be able to dig it out.
re: fat hurting performance, i’d hope that the disk accesses would be cached and infrequent enough that it the FS wouldn’t be an issue.
_hope_.
It’s good to hope, but better to reassure. =)
heheh… i agree… but hope is all i can offer 🙂
actually, there must be some way you can actually determine that for yourself… the amount of disk access…
I’ve not had a bad experience with Vista, with the one exception of wanting to play Vampire on it. I played WoW and loved it in my new system, but it’s a desktop with 2gig ram.
You should start playing a new MMO! 😉
Well, my main reason for giving vista the bird is that it won’t play the old games, which was 95% of the point of getting a laptop with windows on it for me. I suspect that a hard drive and RAM upgrade would take care of my performance complaints in WoW, and that an OS switch would not.
Any particular MMO you have in mind? It’d have to be a very good MMO, because I’d have to convince alot of people to switch to it. =)
Nah, not really. I was more joshin anyway. I totally agree with the Vista compatibility problems… that just pisses me off. I, regretfully, reinstally FFXI recently, which was a huge mistake. I can’t think of any other really great action-packed MMOs right now though 🙁