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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Vista 64, July 17, 2008
New rating: 4/5
Just a quick note before I begin: I run 2x 1GB GeForce 8600 GT on an MSI n570 SLi motherboard with an AMD Phenom @ 2.6 Ghz with 8GB DDR2 RAM. I am not a hardcore gamer or PC enthusiast; this is the first rig of this calibur that I have ever built.
That being said....
Ah Vista. How anxious I was to try you out myself. I've heard lots of different things about you, some good, and lots of bad. I'll reflect on my initial experience with this OS in this review.
Installation was a breeze. Vista rarely prompted me unnecessarily (for example, it just restarted instead of prompting me and waiting for 30 seconds), and the whole process couldn't have been longer than ten minutes. And for those of you updating your system from XP (or some other Microsoft OS), Vista has an "update" feature and a clean install feature; the former saves all of your personal information while the latter is pretty self explanatory.
My initial reaction went something like this: wow, this looks pretty slick. And it continues to look pretty slick. Microsoft piles on the visual goods with window shadowing, transparencies, and tight color schemes. All of these effects work right out of the box, so if you're a sucker for visuals this won't disappoint you. On the other hand, if you reminisce about the days of 3.1, you can always turn these features off. I would recommend this for users that experience lower performance than they desire.
Vista is also loaded with control features. I ended up removing many of them in favor of less hassle and better performance, but for those of you that like prompts and many security features, Vista will again support your desires. Vista's initial settings will prompt you whenever ANY program tries to access the web and whenever ANY program (that isn't started by the OS) runs. I felt that this was a little much and disabled both. It comes with a firewall, Windows defender, performance monitors, a new look for the control panel, a new sidebar, and an improved search engine (which I've heard plenty of complaining about, but it works great for me... its on the start menu people, its not hard to find!).
There are some down sides. If you're looking to disable security features that Vista insists on running as defaults, you're going to find it pretty difficult. As in, look around for a half hour, give up, get a coffee, come back with friends and look for another half hour before you find it difficult. Also, it could boot a little faster. I was expecting blazing booting speed with the rig that I built but honestly my family's computer with XP gets up and running quicker, and it runs on spare blender parts. Additionally, when you see "32-bit compatibility" advertised, they mean that you can run a program that allows a single program to run in an XP environment, and choose whether or not to run it in this format permanently or not. Forget about playing older games or running old software as well; 64-bit Vista does not support 16-bit code.
All-in-all, the goods far outway the bad. It runs smooth, looks great, and allows great flexibility while providing excellent security and features designed to aid any kind of user. I would recommend this to anyone that plans on running a lot of 64-bit software, or to PC builders that plan on using more than 3GB of RAM (32-bit OSs don't support any more than that!). Other than that though, I would say just stick with 32-bit Vista as you will run into less compatibility issues in the near future.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
VIsta 64 bit , February 11, 2009
I rcently built my first PC from scratch and was debating 32 bit or 64 bit. I went with the 64 bit VIsta Home Premium 'system builders' dvd. at first i wasnt sure if that was the one ineeded (system builders) but if ure building your own home pc, this version is just fine. only thing is that it will be married to your motherboard of ur PC (so cant be installed in more than one computer)
First time i ever installed an OS and i have to say it was very very easy with Vista. No driver issues, everything was very simple. I like vista as it is definitely more user friendly. I did not have a lot of compatibility issues with the 64 bit (though my old epson printer driver is not supported.
I can run limewire, itunes, ms office, flight simulator, call of duty, skype, trend micro internet security and a tonne of other programs without problems. Only thing i had some issues with was the enhanced security. sometimes vista 64 does not give u permission, even as an administrator to make file changes! like deleting files. it says "u need permission to do this" . I keep user account control switched off.
I love the gadgets with vista. have a omega watch/ stock ticker/ weather / and news feed gadget.
Overall for the price this is a good kit if u are building your own home PC. having 64 bit allows me to install my 12 gb of ddr3 memory with my core i7 and evga x58 motherboard.
Though if i were you, id wait for windows 7 and install that instead of vista. should be out later this year. supposed to be better than vista.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
I wish I got 32 bit Vista instead., August 28, 2007
It is a good operating system, and updates have fixed more then a few problems, but before buying this I did not realize that quite a number of programs did not support 64 bit windows. I wanted to use the zonealarm firewall and spyware doctor, but they're not supported on this. I thought 64 bit would be better than 32 bit (which it is in some ways) but not enough software is supported on it. So I would suggest that you stick with 32 bit vista (or XP) for now.
P.S I did not have any problems with PC games working on it, they worked just fine, even Oblivion did.
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