Wednesday 28 January 2009

Hasta La Vista.... Vista?

About 5 or 6 months ago I finally got round to buying a new PC, because the old one was getting so old and unreliable. The new one came pre-loaded with Vista, and I (wrongly) assumed that was a good thing... A good thing until I tried to actually put anything vaguely old on it that is... At first it was a minor irritant that something wouldn't load, but as the weeks and months have gone by, pretty much everything I try and bring over to my new machine won't work. Here's just a few of the things now deemed 'useless' by Vista:

- My modem didn't work on it, so I had to go buy a Vista friendly one just to get back on the net.
- My printer won't connect to it (yeah it's a few years old, but its a great printer).
- My version of Dragon (version 8, that I paid the best part of £100 for only last year) won't load.
- My version of Paint Shop Pro wont load on it.
- My Creative MP3 player software wont load on it.
- The fantastic external sound card that I use to MP3 up LP's and tapes wont work on it...

In fact, pretty much fuck all will work on it, unless you go buy a brand new Vista friendly product. I've been to the websites of all the above products and, predictably, no updated software\drivers for ANY of them have been released. As if that isn't bad enough, Vista isn't 'all that' anyway, I can't see I've gained anything with it at all.

So what happened to 'upwardly compatible'? and how come I haven't really heard anybody else moaning about this? Or is everyone so Microsoft compliant these days that they just do what Bill tells em, and go buy new stuff that will work?? I am currently as skint as a skinty thing, and have no chance of buying a new printer, MP3 player, sound card etc etc, and why the hell should I? I already have all these items and they work great!

Has anyone else hit this wall? Whats the solution, save all my files to disc, reformat and load Windows XP on it? If so how difficult is that to do?? And is Windows NT still supported? or will I just get tons of viruses as all the remaining virus loop-holes remain un-fixed?

Any tips, tricks or ideas are most welcome!

Piley

9 comments:

Axe Victim said...

Weeeeeeeeeeeeell I bought a new PC meself just before Christmas (worst time to hav eto shell out to replace a dead XP loaded bugger with Windows 2002 on it). So I opted to go Vista. I run a lot of multimedia type applications etc. and my techie nephew suggested it'd be good to go down this route. Except, like you, feck all that I owned works with it. I had very similar problems. Now I am running Office 2007 (which is wicked) and had to re purchase quite a lot of software that I already owned. It was a royal pain. I have heard that the new OS from MS is just about to be released which will probably knock Vista into a cocked hat - but it doesn't help you or me. What Vista is good for though is working with other Vista peripherals! It's great when you just plug something nto teh USB and it's immediatly recognised adn is automatically set up. I like it a lot now I am used to it. But at first it is a bugger. Stick with it. If you look hard enough you will usually find a driver that will sort your problems.

We need to talk about you becoming a named writer/reviewer on teh new look axevictim.com netzine. I want gig/album/book/style/movie/dvd/you name it I want it reviews and comments etc. All published under your real name laddie. You can then use it as a reference site for other writing jobs etc. Spread the word. Col is looking for contributors.

Furtheron said...

Yes well my experience with Vista is.... it sucks.

I gave up, bought a new printer, gave up trying to load old s/w - apart from Dreamweaver virtually everything else I had didn't want to know.

So yep - go Office 07 etc.

I have had no issues by the way with my creative MP3 player syncing it via Windows MediaPlayer to be honest - after giving up on the creative s/w

Mondo said...

My advice as a professional IT person? Can it off and go back to XP.

Vista sucks - literally, it's such an intensive system, that all the extra mem on your PC, gets used up to support a front end desperate (but failing badly )to be to be a Mac .

I gave it two weeks, before blasting it with XP - it's now faster, more adaptable and everything works

Anonymous said...

Yeah I agree, dump Vista and load XP.

I think XP was just just about the most stable Windows ever.

Its a joke but when I bought my last pc, PC World wouldnt sell me an xp machine unless I was a business customer!

So opened a business account and got access to a whole range of cheap high spec xp machines.

Never bought one though, the salesperson took so long sorting out what we wanted we gave up and bought one from a local guy who makes them to order.

Piley said...

Hmmm, thanks guys... on the whole, thoughts much the same as mine.

Col - I have stuck with it, but am more pissed off with it now than i was 6 months ago! I just keep finding more n more i cant do, all 've got here is a glorified internet machine!

Furtheron, Mondon, PH - Think a wipe and load XP is looking likely... but how easy is it to do???

P

Anonymous said...

I think its relatively straightforward but you do have to format the hard drive first.

You would need a copy of XP or at least a valid user key.

There will probably be some driver issues to resolve and the usual service pack stuff to load.

I know someone who will do it for about £20 or will give you some hints and tips about exactly how to do it yourself and what might go wrong, if you want talk it through with them let me know mate.

Anonymous said...

Piley, take my advice, once you try Mac you never go back! Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Partition your drive and install xp on that, have them both.

To be fair I upgraded to Vista from xp (Xp was shit for years but people forget) and I haven't had any problems, if you have more then 2 gig of ram and a ok processer its a cool OS, there are loads of bits running that you can turn off and it speeds it up no end, like Col says, old drivers will work. I wouldn't go back to xp now Vista has some greet features built into it, its just finding them. its also going to be the bases for windows 7, 7 uses the vista core drivers, and will be releasing the expected extras as free downloads, yes vista was bloated from the start but can be trimmed into a very good OS. hopefully they have learned from some of the mistakes.


Stick with it search for some bits to turn off, and your start to love it.

Piley said...

Cheers PH, may have to take your friend up on that! 20 quid sounds like a bargain to get all my peripherals working again!

JD - So they say fella!

Anon - cheers, but I cant get ANY old drivers to work on this shite! Creative don't even make Vista drivers for any old products and the old XP drivers simplt dont load... pants mate!

P