I'm afraid of vista
 

and I am starting to think about what I am going to buy later on this year in the way of a new computer.

So far, everything I've heard about vista has been horrible. So this is causing me to pause and think maybe I should electronically change my computer orientation and go with a mac?

I'm not a complete idiot, but I have never worked on an Apple PC. I know there is plenty of software for me with regard to podcasting and I am sure I can adapt.

I have LOADS of files and documents on my PC and I don't want to lose them or have to fight to convert them to an mac-friendly format. Is this something I should even be worrying over?

This won't be happening for a while, but with a PC that is almost 7 years old, it's time to start thinking about a new baby.

Everyone should have a healthy fear of a 1st generation Microsoft OS.

Get a Mac. They dual boot now and you can run Windows from it.

That said, my friend has been running Vista for awhile and has had no issues with it.

What she said.

Not only can you boot Windows on a mac, but you can even run it simultaneously using an application called Parallels (and it's native, not an emulation).

Plus, I'll bet that most of your files will open in the os x environment without needing to open windows at all.

So far, the only people I've seen having issues with Vista are the people who are down in the nitty gritty of the operating system. Regular users don't seem to be having much issue beyond the new learning curve of any operating system (which you'd have anyway with a Mac).

I haven't used it much myself yet, so I could be wrong.

But if you're buying it later this year, I'd just assume on spending X amount of money and then wait and see how it shakes out by the time you get around to it.

What formats do you currently have that you're worried about? Most of the big ones shouldn't be a problem but individual proprietary formats could be a problem. The primary reason Lani keeps her Mac going (she switched last year from 20 years of Macs to a PC) is because of some things that just can't easily be moved over.

The transition to Vista isn't as scary as you've heard. As Alex said, unless you're really pushing its limits and/or getting into some advanced features, it's not an issue.

If you have any software over a year old - it may not run. Best to find out before hand or have the $$$ to replace it.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. My new laptop arrives tomorrow and I had no choice in the matter. I was told that Dell only offers Vista on their new laptops.

I would have preferred XP.

I've heard that a lot of software isn't working on Vista...XP had the same issue when it came out. Biggest program I can think of is iTunes, though Apple said they will release a new version which makes it compatible in the next few weeks.

I toyed with the idea of putting Vista on my Mac, but I don't really see a reason to. It doesn't offer any real improvments that I've been able to see over some flashy new graphics, and I've heard that it is really unreliable and buggy. If you decide not to go with a Mac, I would wait until Vista SP1 or SP2 came out. They will fix a lot of the bugs.

I'd like to hear exactly WHO is saying that Vista is really unreliable and buggy.
I've been running it since before RC1, and the only really bad experience has been Nvidia's graphics driver support.

As for program compatibility, Vista has a lot of EASY to use ways to run older software - I've even been able to run a few old games in Vista that I couldn't run in XP without some serious trickery/voodoo/blood sacrifice.

If you spend some time on Digg and similar sites, you will find plenty of people having problems with their graphics drivers, to the extent that anything OpenGL on a lot of systems just blue screens.

Not to mention the insane memory requirements of Vista. I couldn't even use the beta on my Dell with 512 MB of RAM since it was so slow.

I think the biggest software incompatibility problems I've heard are DivX (won't even install), AVG Anti-Virus, ZoneAlarm, WS-FTP, Second Life, Adobe Premier, Winamp, WinRAR, Paint Shop Pro, and iTunes.

Are we talking out of the box from Dell, HP, Gateway, etc., or are we talking the latest high end Rage card from Fry's?

Well PSP is my graphics program of choice because I can't afford photoshop :( so if I can't run that, it will be an issue for me. iTunes, yeah, that too.

Thanks to everyone who has responded, I appreciate the feedback. :snap: :cheers:

This just shows me I need to do much more research and also just chill out until it is time to order the new toy. Unless my current, doddering old PC gives up the ghost in between now and the fall, I'm good to go.

Circumstances forced me to buy a new computer earlier this week and unfortunately the one that best mixed gaming ability and HTPC-goodness came preinstalled with Vista.

So far, though, I haven't had a single problem (running 4 days without a reboot) and have installed all of my necessary software for work without any hiccups (even a two-year-old version of HomeSite).

I have a friend who just last night upgraded Alienware (but severely tweaked) machine to Vista and while the install took 2 hours (on a blazing fast machine) it went smoothly and the only already installed software that had problems was AVG, which just required a reinstall.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. Snowflake... sweetie... get a copy of Photoshop Elements. They're like $60 and actually easier to use than regular Photoshop, IMHO. I have both, and I typically use PS-E because some of the functions I like best are easier to find.

:)

Great advice, Morrigoon. My dad has thousands of slides that he's slowly been scanning and 'tweaking' for his archive. I got him a copy of PS-E, and he couldn't be happier.

I also have Photoshop Elements. Works fine for what I need.

Speaking of slides. Anyone know of a reasonably priced product to mass scan slides? We've got oh say 30,000ish that my Mom would like to scan in but one at a time will take forever.

Ok, I was wondering how all you people could buy copies of photoshop

Buy?

Okay where are all you people getting free copies of Photoshop - did they give them out in breakfast cereal or something?

You will need something like the Nikon CoolScan products. Here is the link to one of them at their web site. Since they are fairly outdated, you should be able to find one for much less than their original prices that went towards $1,000. Just make sure to get the optional slide feeder.

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One of my coworkers installed Vista on a new iMac today. It will be intersting to see how things go.

I've been using Vista for about 3 weeks now and have had zero issues with it. I don't love it, as I don't see much of an improvement over XP. Still, it has handled everything remarkably well so far. Even the Sims2 runs flawlessly on my laptop, which I didn't expect.

That would be very cool. We've got 2 copies of vista coming (eventually) from Dell and I would love to be able to run one on my system. I seem to meet the requirements but have one particular program that we were told would not run. (by the manufacturer.) Maybe they are just stupid (not all that far fetched - it's industry software and they... well let's just say it's possible they just didn't know how.) about how they are trying to do it.

That would be cool.

I thought this was funny....