Vista *FINAL* RTM now available on MSDN

[DJWillis]

Can't we boot the yanks off the download? I keep getting disconnected!

No chance, they are awake now .

Still, not that I am that interested I am going to install Business on my test rig to mess with and test our apps on it to get a feeling.

[Stoo]

pretty much the same here, I've got a spare machine to use so I can get a feel of how it's going to run on the corporate network

[shaithis]

Finally had a play with it and really like it.

Will take a while to get used to autourising everything (after a couple of hours using it I felt I was going to get a Yes/No prompt when I farted...) but it will help stop viri and spyware, so its all good I guess

Just need ATI/AMD to pull their finger out with regards to vista drivers that support Crossfire

[dangel]

The ATI drivers are rubbish - i'm sticking with the default drivers for now (which work just fine tbh)

[Stoo]

It still feels sluggish around the desktop even on an opteron 180/1gb ram/x800xt (my 'spare'/'testing' machine)

[shaithis]

Found the ATI drivers (while not supporting Crossfire) to be good.

I played a few games and had no issues at all, including running WoW at 2560x1600 with absolutly everything maxed and it never dropped below 44fps.....I was quite impressed with that.

I also found the desktop to be very snappy but my RAID disk access is very fast which could account for it, I've recently been playing with a scratch install of XP on a stand-alone 200GB SATA Maxtor DiamondMax 9 drive and it seems very unresponsive in comparison.

The one issue I did hit though was that sometimes when I start it up I get a "Cryptographic subsystem failed a mandatory check" Blue screen.....no mention of it anywhere that I can find and it only happens sometimes on bootup....system runs completely stable once in Windows.....very odd indeed.

[dangel]

Desktop very quick here - 2gig of ram/x1800xt. When I installed the ATI drivers I had problems with NSIS installers coming up 'non themed' and reporting missing entry points in uxtheme.dll (nice), rolled back problem gone.
I'm not gaming on it at all tho, tis all for work.

Would I use XP instead now (for work)? No way..

[Spud1]

Bit sluggish here but then I only have 1 gig of ram in...and it's ram hungry for sure

Been using it for a while now and I wouldn't switch back to XP..nice and stable and all the new MS applications fit in so well..Visual studio integrates nicely and obviously office 2007 fits in perfectly I've even switched from using iTunes to the new Windows Media Player now..

If only ATI could fix the shoddy drivers and I could get more ram..i've got a spare 1gig flash drive in as readyboost but it doesnt really make a difference from what I can tell ;/

[dangel]

My impression is that Vista isn't that bad on RAM - it's just that it uses a lot on startup as a cache for the system - as soon as you load a large app your memory drops down.. Weird, but it works
I was running 2 gig for XP so i haven't upgraded for Vista..

[nichomach]

Still no SLI for us nVictims, though...

[magneticman]

Finally had a play with it and really like it.

Will take a while to get used to autourising everything (after a couple of hours using it I felt I was going to get a Yes/No prompt when I farted...) but it will help stop viri and spyware, so its all good I guess

Just need ATI/AMD to pull their finger out with regards to vista drivers that support Crossfire

You can turn the 'hand-holding' off you know, in user accounts iirc...

[starbuck]

any way us "normal" ie non-msdn subscribers can get hold of this version? I'm currently running RC2 and want to know how to get hold of this latest version.

[DR]

Mine is running *real smooth...

[DJWillis]

any way us "normal" ie non-msdn subscribers can get hold of this version? I'm currently running RC2 and want to know how to get hold of this latest version.

Buy it when it goes retail in Jan. That really is it unless you have an MSDN (OS or higher) sub.

If you were in the beta program and submitted one or more bugs (via the bug reporting tool, not just automated) then I understand MS will be giving you a free copy of Ultimate (at least that is what they have told us).

Have to say that Vista Business running on my test rig is very solid, really shocked to be honest as I was all ready to slate it and am a big Linux user on most of my home boxes.

Am I the only one who likes the sense of 'sudoing' all requests for admin access. Well written code on Win32/64 should need minimal access to the admin level anyway so it's not a huge problem having to click now and then .

[x64united]

Dont get RETAIL. (too expensive £219.99 for home premium). Get OEM will be much cheaper basing on the fact of the difference between OEM and RETAIL prices for xp.

[Stoo]

It's not that's it's slow, or unsmooth, it's just mainly the transitions etc which feel un-needed and lend to it feeling sluggish, turn them off and it's nice and snappy.

I think in the attempt to copy the OS X look and feel, they've over-done it which degrades the experience.