Your Thoughts on Thinkpad and Vista

[DaveMackenzie]

Hey People,

I've been reading the recent news about upcoming Windows Vista which will be released 30th January. I thought it would be an idea to start a topic going in this area, talking about your views on the latest Microsoft OS.
Lets start with our thinkpad T4x series, are there any of you willing to perform the upgrade? if so, why do you want to do this, is it for the better functionality, or the ''fisher price'' style to it (my term ever since XP was released)
I've currently been a member on the MSDN for a good 3 years now and have tested to date, 7 versions, from the first 4xxx release of longhorn, this was tested on a sony vaio tr1mp, a little below the spec required but ran smoothly nonetheless. I've kindly been given a final release which i may try on a spare 100gb hdd that i have lying about but i am not sure whether i will need the functionality plus losing some thinkpad resources such as the hotkeys etc. I've mainly tried vista ultimate on my current server and have to say its an excellent OS, but somehow it reminds me of a photographers shop, it has the ''Apple'' edge to it, infact, i would call it an elegant style os. It looks like computers are becoming more and more user friendly, with fresh backgrounds, colours, buttons, almost like buying your first Mac, it looks beautiful at first but somehow just doesnt pack the punch you once thought it had.
so my main question is, who is going to be buying / downloading it and giving it a try, and what are your reasons for doing this?

[pianowizard]

There is a whole subforum dedicated to running Vista on Thinkpads.

[GomJabbar]

Since I was able to get Vista beta 2 and Vista RC1 for a nominal fee, I gave them both a spin. It was interesting, but I kind of doubt I will upgrade to Vista RTM. $$$

To begin with, I have a T42 with the ATI Radeon 9000 and 64MB VRAM. This will not support all the features of Vista Ultimate. It makes more sense to me to buy a ThinkPad that fully supports Vista and comes with it pre-installed. That way I don't have to stuff BG's pockets unnecessarily.

Another consideration is that currently, Lenovo does not have all their drivers and utilities fully ported over to Vista. A lot of other software is not ready for Vista either. So at this time, I will stay on the sidelines (unless someone cares to donate me a copy and COA ).

[Ken Fox]

Since I was able to get Vista beta 2 and Vista RC1 for a nominal fee, I gave them both a spin. It was interesting, but I kind of doubt I will upgrade to Vista RTM. $$$

To begin with, I have a T42 with the ATI Radeon 9000 and 64MB VRAM. This will not support all the features of Vista Ultimate. It makes more sense to me to buy a ThinkPad that fully supports Vista and comes with it pre-installed. That way I don't have to stuff BG's pockets unnecessarily.

Another consideration is that currently, Lenovo does not have all their drivers and utilities fully ported over to Vista. A lot of other software is not ready for Vista either. So at this time, I will stay on the sidelines (unless someone cares to donate me a copy and COA ).

I've acquired 3 new thinkpads in the last couple of weeks and chose to pre-order the almost free Vista Business upgrade disks I could get for $10 each. I don't intend to install them, rather I ordered them to have for resale time. I think it will be easier to sell my machines later with an included Vista disk, as a "vista machine."

But I don't intend to do the upgrade myself. Life is too short for that, especially in these next few months when the ratio of frustration to benefit is likely to be high

[DaveMackenzie]

Good points,

I think the idea of the re-sale would be an advantage, such as a young student wanting the classy look when they start their first day at college! Im sticking with xp, i see no point in installing it in the T41 as there will be some lag along the lines.
The only thing i found quite interesting was the use of direct x 10, has anyone seen the upcoming game ''Alan Wake'' it uses the new direct x 10 architecture but i have to say, for microsoft this is a totally different route for gaming, it gives me the impression of a ''myst'' kind of mystery roll playing game, graphics and textures are impressive, but to be honest........ Its still microsoft!
The next thing i would like to find out about is if there are people out there creating virus's and trojans for vista, and why the hell are they doing it!

[Jedacite]

I've ordered the upgrade myself, and when I get it and have a lot of spare time I'll more than likely image my laptop, then upgrade to vista. It would be good to see how Vista runs on my T60. I find it doubtful that Vista will stay on my laptop as I don't intend on upgrading the amount of ram in my notebook (not at least yet.)

[makaveli559m]

On the retail I hope the fixed some problems that I had with the rtm build. I cant use WMP11 to play videos, I cant use Movie Maker, IE 7 has issues with Yahoo taskbar. I cant play videos at full screen from Yahoo Movies. Power management and Battery MaxiMiser doesnt work with it. My Dynex card that I recently bought doesnt work with Vista, it reads but doesnt do anything when I hook up any usb device. Games that I could play on my Thinkpad no longer work as smooth as they did on XP on Vista. I am not in the mood to replace my Thinkpad any time soon.

_________________________
Thinkpad A20m 850mhz Pentium 3 M 80 GIG hd, dvd rom, 512 MB of RAM.
Thinkpad 770 233mhz Pentium Pro 8 GIG hd, 256MB of RAM.

[BruisedQuasar]

I guess I'm way out on left field with this one. I plan to never slide over to outrageously priced Vista. I prefer Win 2000 Pro for notebooks and have one XP desktop only because I must. I'd have a MAC, if options were not so &*% limited.

My main PCs and my adult children's PCs are all Ubuntu Linux. Their children have their own accounts and they never crash Ubuntu, not even the toddler's. Ubuntu is free and the very good software is free. So far, no viruses or spyware, malware, etc, so I am not bothering with security scanners until I get a reason to do so.

My inlaws give me big headaches so often with their Windows XP snafus I've been buying & giving them used University auction MACs. No more headaches for me so far. I told them if any of them get Vista, don't call me, go to the local computer guy shop.

To me buying a Windows system is like buying a 1970s MGB, a fine sportscar if you dont mind working on it all the time.

--Bruised

[makaveli559m]

As of now I figured out some ways to fix those errors I had also the one with my Dynex card So I have switched over to Vista entirely. The only problem now is that it uses to much ram lol but everything works. Everything works good if you use Vista compatible software

[SafeHarbor]

Well, I've about decided to try it out on the R-52. It'll never run Aero, so I thought about Business. This is really sort of almost for the hell of it.

I need to sync a Palm LifeDrive and Tungsten T5 with my media center big box, so I'll wait for Palm to make "manager" software compatible with Vista before upgrading that one.

I do product support for mobile users, so I'll need to be familiar with the sync center of Vista for my customers. (I do some real hand-holding sometimes.) I figure I can sync my PPCs and Smartphones with the ThinkPad for now, and pick up Vista Home Premium for the HP when Palm is ready. Right now, my Motorola Q phone is the only device that syncs with the TP.

Lamar